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Dec. 12, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
48:31
552 Types of Letters

Categorizing my correspondence

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. It is 8.06 on, I think, December the 10th.
What's the Sunday? Monday, Tuesday.
It is the 12th.
Let's get some freedom in here.
Let's get some freedom in here.
So I'm going to indulge myself, and I think that this will be of some use to you.
And no, that doesn't mean running through the entire score of the Mikado, though.
Trust me, when it comes to Podcast 1000, that's a pretty good idea, actually.
But I would like to chat just a little bit about types of letters that I receive.
Why is I think this is important or helpful?
Well, because I think that I am not alone in receiving these kinds of letters and communications of various kinds, and I think it could be useful for other people who receive this kind of stuff.
The one thing that I would say, and I don't think it's because I have not received communications from highly educated listeners.
I certainly have. Doctors, one guy who's a doctor and a lawyer, a couple of professors, people who are educated and should have some sense.
Although, of course, given what we know about public education, it's not exactly the first thing that we would expect.
I have received these kinds of communications from a wide variety of people, and I think that I sort of wanted to run through the general objections that they have to, I would say, philosophy as a whole, but they think it's to do with my ideas.
So let's have a little chat about that.
And see if this corresponds to anything that is going on in your life.
My good friend George has asked me to watch the sort-ofs.
He says that I only lose some of my verbal tics when I'm yelling, but I don't particularly want to yell every podcast.
However enticing that might be for you, I just don't think I'm going to do that.
So I will try and watch the sort-ofs.
And thank you for the reminder.
I appreciate that. Quality.
We always strive.
For quality. It may seem like quantity, and that's for sure.
But we aim at quality from time to time as well.
I would also like to recommend as a book that I bet is going to be frustrating in the long run, but has some teasing, pleasing stuff at the beginning.
It's A Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, which I've just started listening to.
I don't plug products on this show.
In fact, I've made a very conscious decision to eschew advertising, not because...
I don't think that advertising is a valid and noble aspect of capitalism, but rather because I think that given the size of show, although it's growing very rapidly, the size of the show that we have right now would only be able to grab the kind of ads that might not elevate the discussion of wisdom, truth, virtue, and beauty to higher levels.
So I'm not going to try and...
We talk about the evils of coffee and, you know, this is some of the other stuff that I've seen in the Mark Stevens Adventures in Legal Land show and Lou Rockwell and other places where they have ads.
There's some pretty nutty stuff that comes up, and you can't control some of these ads.
And this is also true of Free Talk Live and other shows.
I mean, I have no problem with what they're doing, of course.
No problem at all. But I think that for a show about philosophy, for me to have ads for weight loss and other kinds of conspiracy theories and The stuff that sort of does float around in an economic sense around the libertarian movement might not be the wisest of connections.
So I will eschew the income in order to gain the longer-term view of a bigger perspective, which is that I'd like to do the full-time, of course.
So I've decided to eschew the advertisements But before we get to the general topic, I just wanted to clean up a few issues.
I had criticized, or potentially criticized, our good friend Island Girl on the board for not posting her sources for her statements about bison and the use to which the Indians put the bison.
The The reality of the responses that she put up, and she did, to her credit, absolutely put up the post.
So my feeling that she wasn't going to was incorrect, and I apologize for that.
But she posted almost nothing but government sources and no primary sources.
So again, it's just somebody else's interpretation.
And the thing to be careful of, of course, in the pursuit of this kind of stuff, like when you pull out a heavy-duty criticism of other people that they're twisting facts to suit their theories, then you have to be on pretty certain ground yourself, I think. So there is lots of information that we've gotten about the bison and so on, and there's some government sources where...
People are basically saying the same thing as Island Girl is, which is that the Indians were efficient and used every part of the bison, whereas the capitalists were wasteful and so on.
And that, of course, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense when it comes to how we see the world, right?
I mean, a capitalist is not going to kill a bison and not use any part of it that anybody wants that's economically productive, right?
When you get rid of a cow, you get to the point where they've recycled a little bit too much, which is where you get some of the mad cow stuff, where they're eating their own brethren, so to speak.
But they will recycle.
They'll get the leather. They'll use the horns.
They'll use every conceivable part of the meat.
They'll use the blood, I think, for fertilizer and feed.
So they will try to use every conceivable part.
Whereas some of the tactics that the Indians used to kill the bison, such as setting a big fire in a square around the herd and running them off cliffs and so on, would not seem to me to be the most efficient use of everything.
And this idea that the natives prayed respectively to the bison they killed and lived in harmony with the land and so on is just a piece of nonsense and racist propaganda.
The Indians are, you know, they're kind of like us, right?
This phrase, they're kind of like us, can be used for a wide variety of things, really.
It's what I was talking about on Sunday with our friends, the tortured and brutalized Muslim children and young adults who still act out in bad ways and do evil things, but who are they like?
Well, they're kind of like us. They're kind of like how we would be in those situations, because If you don't recognize the humanity of the Indians and that they did not live in harmony with nature any more than Whitey lived in harmony with nature, and that being in harmony with nature usually means getting killed by a saber-toothed tiger or killed by cholera, that the Indians were kind of like us.
And I say this both to rescue them from the noble savage ideation, which is very common and arises from a hatred of the self, a hatred of Western capitalism, and also a guilt over how they're currently being treated.
So I like to rescue Indians or Native Americans, Native Canadians, from the stereotype of the noble savage ideation.
And also from the stereotype of the drunken wastrel, which is the other aspect.
I spent a fair amount of time around Indians when I was working up north.
They would actually work for us to do some of the initial brush clearing, and they were not.
I mean, they littered like crazy.
They were, you know, just like anybody else.
They weren't noble savages and they weren't, you know, drunken wastrels.
They are, of course...
Drunken wastrels to a much larger degree than anybody else because of the way that the government treats them, and if you and I were in that position, and also because of genetic susceptibility to alcohol.
But, you know, sort of intellectually and emotionally and psychologically, they're kind of like us, as is true of just about anyone else.
So, where there was no economic incentive for them to use every single aspect of the buffalo or the bison, Then, by golly, they wouldn't.
And where there is economic incentive, then...
So there's always this war about who's better.
Well, who's better is who lives in a better circumstance.
I mean, I hate to say it.
I know that sounds a bit fatalistic.
But historically, it's true, right?
I mean, there weren't a whole lot of capitalist enterprises started in the Middle Ages.
Why? Because people weren't entrepreneurial?
Of course not. Because people weren't smart?
Of course not. Because there was no capacity for them to retain their earnings because of the aristocracy in the church.
And, you know, the 500 years of getting burnt up in an inquisition where they, you know, would kill heretics and witches and anybody who disagreed with them and anybody who informed against anybody else and that sort of genocidal stuff.
Put a cramp on the entrepreneurial spirit just a tad.
That didn't mean that people back in the Middle Ages were really different from us.
No, of course they weren't different from us.
They were just like us. The difference is in the circumstances.
The Muslims are just like us.
The difference is in the circumstances.
The Indians in the past were just like us.
They were both greedy and wasteful.
And the only thing that curbs the wastefulness is the greed.
And that's a good thing, I think, because there's no other way to do it.
And if the youth today are getting into MMA and getting into bumfights and getting into all of these kinds of horrible end-of-civilization decadent stuff...
Then it's not because there's something wrong with the kids today.
It's just these are the circumstances that they've grown up in.
They've grown up in an enormously permissive, both alternately permissive, dismissive, contemptuous, scornful, and brutal society, which is not doing too well by children, I would say, these days, but still better than most times in the past, and they've been raised without limits, right? I mean, it's... It's always a deep shock when somebody who's...
It's hard to say exactly what the age cutoff is.
I've sort of noticed it around people who are about 8 to 10 years younger than I am, who grew up in this sort of MTV Anything Goes kind of thing, and who had a distinct absence of parental standards, or who had nothing but cultural references that mocked any kind of standards, where a young sneering kid or who had nothing but cultural references that mocked any kind of standards, where a young sneering kid is considered to be the icon of wisdom, whereas a wise older man is considered to be
And there's, of course, some truth in that to those older men and women who aren't philosophical.
But as 8 to 10 years younger, there's just a deep shock when these fine young men and women run up against a standard that is intransigent.
And then we have this, like, that they don't already agree with.
And so these are the people who are drawn to libertarianism and anarchism because it seems to hold out the promise of...
No rules. And then when moral standards are put in place that actually affect them, right?
I mean, we're not out there killing and stealing and we're not working for the IRS and so on.
So when moral standards come out that actually affect them, there is a deep and enraging shock, right?
I mean, it's a spoiled brat kind of reaction in a way.
And this is said with some sympathy, of course, because there's not been a whole lot of limits that they can take seriously.
The limits that are put on children in school are all kind of silly and obviously petty and obviously power-based and so on.
But when you are given a moral standard or slighted by a moral standard that actually affects how you live your life, Like a guy I knew who worked for me, he was a friend of mine, and he said at one point, he said, well, you know, if you haven't gone all the way by the third date, then it's not, obviously something's weird, something's wrong, it's not going to go anywhere.
It's like, I mean, my God, man.
My God, I mean, where do you even start with that?
How do you even tell someone about trust and intimacy and growth and patience and so on?
And some of the wisdom that has been handed down that needs to be relearned sometimes, you know, about patience and getting to know someone.
And, of course, every single media...
That you see the couple meet, have an instant attraction, fall happily into bed, and then build a relationship thereafter.
And you never get to see much of the thereafter, because those kinds of thereafters generally...
Not very good. And I'll now get flamed by people who now say that I'm a prude and so on.
I'm not going to try and prove this.
I've already gone through a number of these kinds of proofs.
But, you know, give it a shot.
Just try waiting. See what happens, right?
Just try waiting and see what happens.
So, I wanted to sort of talk about some of the letters that I get and the types of letters that I get.
And this will sort of lead on this afternoon, if I don't get interrupted by another impulse, to an overview of the arguments and how they've stood up over the last year or so.
And I sort of would go larger and say over the last...
25 years, but I'll condense it down to just a little bit, depending on how traffic's going, and we will have a look at the arguments and how they fared, because I've had some very smart people attack in some pretty passionate ways the arguments that we've put forward, or that I've put forward originally, in the Lou Rockwell articles and on my blog, and of course in these podcasts, and to a smaller degree in the videos, and it's worth having a look at how they've stood up.
But the types of letters that I get are sort of, I think, helpful.
I do get sort of the one-liners, you know, attaboy kind of stuff.
And those are nice, of course.
I appreciate those. Those are good.
But, of course, they don't...
I don't know why they're agreeing with me.
You know, I mean, that's nice that they think I'm doing a good job.
But I'm not sure...
I'm not sure why exactly they agree with me.
And that's, you know...
That's somewhat cause for concern, right?
I mean, if I write to some mathematician saying, great proof!
Exclamation mark! Exclamation mark!
Exclamation mark! I'm not sure that he's going to say, wow, I'm glad you like it.
And this is a little bit different from mathematical proof, because this strikes the humanity more so than, you know, 20 years of studying math.
But it's still, it's nice, but I'm not sure if the next time I write an article, if it doesn't happen to strike something that they like...
Then, um, they're gonna say, bad article!
Exclamation mark! Exclamation mark!
Exclamation mark! You know, you're the best guy ever!
You're the worst guy ever!
You're nothing in between!
Uh, that sort of stuff.
I mean, I appreciate those positive, uh, emails.
And I get quite a few of them, so don't think I'm too hard done by it, but I'm not sure exactly what it is that, that they like, um, especially when I put forward the arguments, um, I've had a lot of emails, of course, about the argument for morality, and I was very careful to put forward the argument for morality in syllogistic formats so that nobody would have to wade through the text and extract the principles.
And since the argument for morality was published, which is almost a year ago, Nobody has actually passed out any of the syllogisms.
I mean, of the, I don't know how many emails I've gotten on the argument for morality, no one, not one single person, education notwithstanding, not one single person has looked at the syllogisms that are all very carefully and constructed and laid out.
I think there's five or six of the different proofs.
I've got a nice table there equating everything.
I mean, that's about as rigorous and as concise as you can get.
And I've had people quibble about language.
I've had people say that universally preferred behavior is all about who likes ice cream of different flavors and how can that be universal.
I've had all the nonsense in the world poured upon it, but nobody has actually taken the time to pass out the syllogisms, which are not 20 steps.
I think the longest one is five and the shortest one is three.
Nobody has seen fit to respond to that.
And that is a shame, I think.
But I also think that it's...
Because I'd like for someone to take a real swing at the syllogisms to see if they stand.
I mean, this is just what I think is the case.
And I think that they're pretty bulletproof, pretty ironclad.
But I would really like when, of course, people disappoint me, right?
Like, you're wrong.
And it's like, wow, tell me how.
I mean, that would be great, right?
You're wrong because your nose is funny or something.
You know, it's like, you're wrong because I don't like your font.
And that is always a disappointment.
Oh, what a disappointment.
And I also get from the educated people in particular.
This is kind of funny.
I got a couple of these yesterday with regards to...
Because I got two published on the Rockwell in sort of two of their working days...
I got a bunch of emails where people had read a bunch of articles.
And one guy, I was going to read it, but it's just too long.
And I'm going to imitate him.
This is not how he sounds in my mind.
But it's something like this. Ah, Mr.
Mario, your articles are very curious, I must say.
You do have a habit of asking questions and then answering them yourselves.
And then there's a little bit of tangentialism, but we can forgive that in somebody as eager for communication as you have now.
What? And I just wanted to point out that Diogenes and Socrates do take issue with some of your perspectives, and it is really something that you might want to look into if you do get the chance to dip into a library, fine young man.
I just wanted to point out as well that I have received 14 doctorates from a variety of institutions around the world, and I also wanted to point out that I've mastered not only interstellar, but interspatial and interdimensional travel.
And I just wanted to point out that in my travels, and speaking with the various dimensional beings, I've come across that I wanted to point out that they all say, and I can't help but concur with them, that you're completely incorrect, and I really can't...
Get into why, or because it's multidimensional interstellar language symbols which would probably blow your little mind.
But I just wanted to point out that you are in fact incorrect, and I hope that you take this as a sign of encouragement.
I do want you to continue to do what you do, because obviously you enjoy it and it does occupy your time, whereas otherwise you would probably be groping yourself or some goat.
Yours sincerely, Brigadier J.J. Major General, blah blah blah blah blah, who seriously wishes that Borneo was still a colony.
Thank you. These kinds of guys I get quite a few of, right?
And they always sign with an alphabet soup of mishmash after their name and doctor so-and-so.
I'm still waiting for the master of interdimensional travel to sign his name.
Those would be more of the religious people who write to me.
But those kinds of people, in one form or another, they just use the argument from authority.
They establish themselves as an authority.
They refer me to a bunch of books that they assume I've never read.
One guy referred me to Plato.
Oh my god. It's like, you know, talking to an experienced doctor and saying, you know, there's this Hippocratic Oath that you might want to look into.
Or saying to a physicist, you know, you might want to have a look at this gentleman named A. Einstein, who I think will have some things that might be of interest to you.
I mean, please.
Oh my god.
I... It's really funny.
People point me to these completely obvious sources and think that I've just sort of fallen off a truck and decided to write philosophy with no...
not even looking up any of the opinions that came before.
And it says right there in my biography that, you know, right at the bottom of the Lou Rockwell article that I've got a fairly decent education and so on.
And... I just find that stuff kind of funny.
And I bet you dollars to donuts that the people who refer me to this stuff have not read the sources themselves, have not read the sources themselves, or if they have, read them like 20 years ago.
And it's this sort of... I always think of Frasier in this kind of instance, you know, where he can't...
He always has to work in that he went to Harvard, you know, within the first 30 seconds of meeting someone.
And that he was in the micarta.
Witty and gay!
It's funny, right? I mean, it's funny because if they think I'm going to be impressed by the fact that they're a doctor and a lawyer and a master of time, space, and travel, I just think that's kind of funny.
I mean... It's sad, really.
It's sad, and obviously it's deeply, deeply insecure.
And look, I'm not going to claim to be immune to this stuff.
I do throw out M.A. at the end of my name, and that may look silly.
It may not look silly.
But I do want to differentiate myself from a whole horde of self-appointed thinkers who are out there in the libertarian movement.
There was some good stuff that I got out of my master's degree.
There was some rigor in thinking.
There was an extraordinary exposure to a lot of great source materials which really have helped shape how it is that I view things and the semi-easy access until next year when my brain starts decaying.
but some semi-easy access to some source materials and to some historical examples.
So there's been some great stuff that I've gotten from that.
And so I sort of, you know, maybe that's a bad thing to do.
I don't say to anyone, though, that I'm right because I have a master's.
I say to people that, you know, I'm looking forward to your argument, right?
But I don't get that kind of stuff.
I do get a lot of condescending You know, a curious and interesting piece, young man.
And that's great, you know, and I generally reply and say, well, I appreciate you writing to me.
One of the things that you might try is actually responding to my arguments.
You know, I mean, it's great that you're sending me your resume and that you think that I'm wrong, but so what?
I mean, I could send my resume to whoever I wanted in the scientific community and say, I've been reading science for 20 years, and I think you're full of nonsense.
Well, that's great, but, you know, where have I made an error?
That's, you know, that would be kind of nice.
It's very sad, really.
Fundamentally, it's a broken soul who has to write to someone in a condescending manner.
Don't get me wrong. It makes me angry, too.
Fundamentally, it's kind of heartbreaking because, obviously, there's a genuine desire for knowledge somewhere in there.
There's a desire for education, and there's a desire for facts.
But this sort of crutch of credentials, and I guess maybe they're the big fish in a little pond, maybe this sort of person, that they're the most educated person around them, and so maybe they've used that education to sort of get their way.
And I think that's kind of sad, right?
Education should be about, you know, to me, I mean, if you get educated, and if other people around you have less education...
Then you should use that to help them.
I mean, I think, right? I mean, it's sort of like becoming a doctor and a nutritionist in a land where people are sick and sickly and simply applying all those principles to yourself and then prancing around saying, well, I'm about the healthiest person ever.
Aren't I really healthy? Look at how healthy I am.
Boy, you're not healthy at all. It would be great, I think, if you study all of these things, and we study knowledge in order to communicate knowledge.
We don't study knowledge in order to dominate other people and make them feel insecure.
At least decent people don't, right?
And moral people don't. You study knowledge in order to communicate knowledge, to communicate the joy of knowledge in very high-pitched tones, apparently.
So, I haven't, you know, the coffee's just not been relaxing my throat, so let me take a sip.
We study knowledge to communicate it and to use the study of knowledge to bully other people and to try to make them feel insecure and worthless and like they've just done a really terrible job.
It's a good effort.
It's like watching a three-year-old kid pound his forehead into the piano saying, well, that's quite musical for someone your age.
You might want to try your fingers.
But, you know, maybe one or two of them out of your nose and on the keyboards would be a good thing.
But, you know, the forehead certainly did make quite an impressive sound.
That kind of condescension, I mean, that would be pretty insulting for a child too, right?
But that kind of stuff is just sad.
And, of course, it doesn't escape my notice, though, of course, it's designed to.
It doesn't escape my notice that there's a chilling lack of...
Actual content in the emails that I get.
And I would say this is pretty true of just about everything that I receive.
There's not so much true on the Sunday chats, and it's not true of everything on the board.
There have been some great feedback. But, you know, we still have a long way to go in terms of actual intellectual content and argument from first principles.
You know, if somebody says this is true, you can say, well, what is true, right?
So with this lady who goes and says, well, here's how the buffalo were used or the bison were used by the Indians, it's like, well, how do you know?
How do you know? Because a bunch of government people have told you so because somebody has written it down.
And you may say that the source articles that I use are not true, but at least they're consistent with what we see in the world today, right?
So we do see that capitalists use every part of a cow.
And we do see that Indians have certainly the capacity to waste enormous amounts of their own lives and waste the future and possibilities of their children.
So the idea that...
But then, of course, it's like, well, it's the white man who's corrupted them.
But when you go to source materials that are entirely contradictory to sort of knowledge that you have around you, then...
Sorry, if you go to secondhand information that's entirely contradictory, then it's sort of like in a court case.
When you say, well, I know he couldn't have done the murder because he's a nice guy, but it turns out that he had a smoking gun in his hand and this and that, then hearsay is a little bit, right?
Whereas if it's a character witness and the guy's got an alibi and this and that, and 15 people are swearing that he's the best guy ever, then that may have some validity.
But if it's in contradiction to the evidence, hearsay doesn't really count, right?
If someone tells you something that they read somewhere else, which is based on someone else's opinion that contradicts your direct experience of the world, i.e.
that capitalists love to use everything that they can get their hands on, they love turning waste into a product.
I mean, there's nothing better, right? Because it saves you the cost of disposing it, plus you make money from selling it.
So it's the best thing ever. But those kinds of things are just important to remember.
And I think we still do have a bit of a ways to go in terms of just working with syllogisms, right?
Working from first principles.
And it's tiring and it's exhausting and sometimes it feels like you're getting absolutely nowhere and sometimes it feels like you're going in circles.
There is still a lot of shooting from the hip.
And this is not on our board in particular.
This is in the society as a whole.
You see these kinds of bitchy philosophies.
This kind of bitchy philosophizing going on all over the place.
And so I do get the bitchy emails as well, right?
And these, you know, no disrespect to bitches.
But the bitchy emails are...
They're pretty...
They're pretty annoying. And the bitchy emails are just like, oh, so you want a society where people have to eat their own feet to stay alive.
Oh, you want this.
Oh, you're like this.
And it's like, oh, yeah, that's a freaking great argument.
Boy, what a titan of intellectual achievement you are.
Yeah, well, you're funny looking.
And those ones I don't generally tend to respond to too much.
I mean, I will sort of point out that they haven't actually made an argument.
Or you could just make an argument and help disprove me, right?
But this kind of...
They're tossing it off, right?
I mean, and this is sort of the contradiction, right?
Because this is the toss-off that you get.
That to British people is a little bit different than what I mean here.
But you will get this...
Oh, you know, I only have time to write you a very quick email because you're so wrong that I'm not even going to bother spending an enormous amount of time because where do I even start with the enormity and depth of your error?
But I just wanted to toss off a quick email to tell you that you're totally wrong.
Good luck next time.
You get the short, the curt email as well.
Where somebody says, oh, well, yes, but the government would dissolve.
Without the government, we'd just have nothing but warring tribes and society would end.
Oh, man, I wish I'd thought of that.
What a great objection. Wow, been writing this stuff, working in Libertarian 20, 25 years, and gee, I really wish I'd figured that one out.
Boy, that would have saved me an enormous amount of time and effort, and I wouldn't have had to put out all of this stuff in the public realm to embarrass myself as such a substandard and ridiculous thinker who can't think of the most obvious and automatic objection that everyone has to this kind of stuff, right?
And it's sort of like, you know, hey, I've invented a vaccine for cancer.
It's like, well, yes, but people don't like taking injections.
Oh, bummer.
Well, let me just put it away again.
So there's those kinds of emails that I get as well.
And then, of course, I get the Yours in Christ emails.
And those are from the Christian Libertarians, who will back up my arguments with Scripture.
Ooooooh! Chill.
That stuff's all quite exciting.
And I certainly will not let one of those go by without sending them back a link to, you know, maybe Proof Disproven Deities, I think Podcast 13, stuff like that, where I will have just a little bit of fun with them.
Just because the Yours in Christ emails are, well, they're kind of annoying.
They really are. I mean, it's like, oh, boy, the blinkeredness of these religious people, I'm telling you.
The blinkedness of these religious people.
They think I should be a Christian, right?
Because, you know, Christ, you know, the church said that Christ is good, right?
It's like why I should drink Keith's beer because Keith says it's really good.
So, of course, at least I can objectively taste the beer and so on.
But they say, well, Christ has told me that Christ is king.
And if it's Christ himself, then I won't email them back because they're obviously delusional, possibly psychotic, but...
It's like, well, my priest told me that I should give him money.
I mean, that I should obey the Lord.
And sometimes I'll have fun, sort of email them back and say, well, you believe that I should be a Christian because your holy book tells you that I should be a Christian.
But help me understand this.
Everybody's holy book, like the Koran, right?
The Muslim's holy book tells everyone that they should be Islamic.
And so, given that the principle is that you should obey every holy book, then why are you not an Islam?
Why are you not Islamic? I don't understand.
Because their book says, right?
Well, it's because my book is correct and their book is incorrect.
Well, how do you know that?
Well, my book says that well, but their book says that they're totally correct as well.
So how do you know that?
It's like, well, but I pray and God tells me.
It's like, well, but their God, you know, tells them that, and their priests tell them that it's all perfectly correct and everyone else is incorrect and so on.
And so I'll have a little bit of fun with that sort of stuff, right?
I mean, because, you know, the way that...
It's kind of funny, right?
And Sam Harris points to that as well.
The way that a Christian looks at, I don't know...
Zoroastrianism or Zeus worship or, I don't know, Satanism.
The way that a Christian looks at that, like, what a bizarre belief.
That's how Christianity looks to me, but times a million.
Right. I mean, if somebody who worships elves looks at somebody who worships goblins and says, well, that's just bizarre.
Well, how is it that somebody who recognizes that neither elves nor goblins exist looks at both people who are arguing about it should be a goblin or it should be an elf, right?
You both look a million times more bizarre, right?
So that the strangeness with which a Christian will look at somebody of a different faith, like the fundamental strangeness...
And you've got to take the widest conceivable faith.
I don't know what it would be, but maybe the way in which a Christian would look at somebody who worships the cat god's aman or whatever.
I can't remember. A set or something like that.
Or the way in which a Christian would look at a pagan druid ceremony and say, well, that's just weird.
I mean, that's exactly...
I mean, that's the furthest you could get away from Christians, the way that they look at other things.
That's how all religion and all superstition looks to somebody who's rational or, you know, sensible, but times a million, right?
Because it's like, well, my faith is, you know, deep and rich and noble, and their faith is just weird dancing in sheets.
So my faith is, you know, more sensible and so on.
But that's just the river you swim in, right?
I mean, the river you swim in feels like the right temperature, and everyone else's river feels like really warm and really cold, but...
Oh, it's just kind of funny.
So I'll, you know, say, so under what principle should I convert to your religion?
Well, because, you know, the holy guy says so.
It's like, but everybody's holy guy says so.
Why should I choose your religion?
Well, because our religion is the best.
It's like, well, why? Because the Bible says it's the best.
It's like, but everybody's holy book says that it's the best religion.
So why should I choose yours again?
And I'll sort of play around a little bit with that.
Of course, I mean, they never get it.
They never get it, right?
Well, because it will bring you peace and joy and love and brotherhood.
It's like, well, maybe, but of course everybody's religion says that they'll bring you peace and joy and love and brotherhood, so how do I know?
Well, all the other religions are bad.
Well, they say that about you, so I'm still not sure exactly why I should become a Christian rather than some other religion, a Hindu or a Buddhist or whatever, right?
Why should I not pursue that path?
And then they sort of give up in frustration and don't email me ever again, which is, you know, a good thing.
And I don't imagine that I'm making any converts.
That's just for funsies.
But that kind of stuff is always kind of enjoyable, those kinds of letters.
They're yours in Christ, people.
And they have like these multicolored footnotes of...
Bible quotes and so on.
It's never the ones that say, put atheists to death.
Never those ones.
Never the ones that say, sell your daughters into sexual slavery, but make sure you get a good price and do it reasonably.
It's never the one where Christ says that slaves should obey their master with fear and trembling and should obey their Christian masters even more because they're doing service to a Christian.
They never talked about that.
They never quote that kind of stuff.
Where, you know, one of the reasons slavery lasted so damn long in the world was because of Christianity and other religious texts.
And the fact that Islam got rid of slavery before Christianity did, never sort of focus on that kind of stuff.
It doesn't fit.
It doesn't fit. It doesn't fit.
Christ is love. But, boy, there's no love like a Christian questioned, right?
I mean, you can feel the love coming off the Christian or the religious person that you question.
You know, if Christ was love, I'm sorry, I'm just, you know, I'm almost at my office.
I'm in a minor tangent. But, you know, if Christ was love, I mean, I would have an enormous amount of greater respect for Christianity if when you questioned Christians, they responded with love and positivity.
Not with hostility and bitchiness, right?
The theory of psychology and philosophy would predict that when somebody is enmeshed in a collective fantasy for dishonorable reasons, right?
Conformity and fear and pomposity and self-righteousness and so on, that when you start to probe the intellectual crater that is their brain, that faith has wiped out all living forms of...
That they would respond with fear and hostility, right?
I mean, that would be the inevitable response.
And the more that they preach love and tolerance and so on, the more they're going to respond with a kind of pompous, self-righteous kind of...
Sorry, one sec.
Let me change my lanes, change my lanes, change my lanes.
It's like you're in the car with me and can't get a word in edge.
But, yeah, the more that you would expect that people who are enmeshed in a dishonorable collective superstition, when questioned, that they would respond with fear and hostility.
That's inevitable, right?
And, of course, if they did actually respond with love and tolerance and intellectual integrity, then that would be something, right?
I mean, you know, the real moment of truth, so to speak, Which occurs when somebody is confronted with an error, when you are confronted with an error.
The real moment of truth is, how do you respond to that?
How do you respond when somebody points out an error?
Do you get angry at them?
Do you get frustrated?
Do you try to change your story?
Do you imply that they just don't understand?
Do you change the topic? Do you ignore what they say?
Do you do all of these slippery, sleazy, dishonorable, eely kind of things?
Or do you say, well, that's great.
I appreciate that.
We march together as brothers and sisters in pursuit of truth.
That's wonderful. I really appreciate that.
Error is good, right?
I mean, if... If you think that eating chocolate is the best thing in the world and you're a steady diet of chocolate, and then your nutritionist says, well, here's the proof that that's not a good thing to do, do you say, well, screw you, you're a crappy nutritionist, right? Or, you know, make any of the other kinds of illogical...
I don't know.
when you prove somebody incorrect.
Do you do that or do you say, wow, I really appreciate that.
You have just saved me from a lifetime of diabetes.
That's wonderful, especially if, you know, say you're not paying.
The nutritionist, as is the case with most of the people who listen to this.
Do they say that?
No, most people won't do that.
And it's really a moment of truth, right?
That's where your future life really hangs in the balance.
It's not any curse of mine or anything.
It's just the nature of reality that if you, in that moment, this is where you get to be, you know, a grown-up and to deal with error in a mature and responsible manner, Or you stay a spiteful child, no disrespect to children intended, you stay a spiteful child and error becomes your home, and error becomes your ecosystem.
And the truth, you know, the truth doesn't fight back.
This is an important thing to understand.
The truth will not fight you.
The truth will not fight you.
I won't, I will rarely fight in that sense, but like I don't, you know, continue to pursue people who are obviously irrational.
You will not get any particular fight back from truth, right?
So if you, in that moment, if you sort of attack other people and get angry and get spiteful and get venomous and, you know, change your story, change your tune, change your topic and all this kind of nonsense, the truth will say, okay, I'm out of here.
And within your own soul, not sort of whatever, right?
But... The truth will just bugger off.
It won't fight you. It won't sort of lash you and so on in the way that error seems to.
But truth will just vanish from your life and it won't come back.
The way that if you yell at a first date, she's just not going to call you back.
If you abuse the truth, the truth just evaporates and vanishes from your life.
And then you continue to progress.
I mean, you get that flush of self-righteous happiness, which to some people seems to be a good substitute for correcting error.
And so you get that sort of immediate hit.
But what will happen in the long run, of course, is that you will end up with, you know, your life is hollowed out.
Your soul dies a little bit more each day and it becomes harder and harder to reverse that trend.
And you become sort of like a pestilence.
I mean, frankly, I think you become a sort of pestilence in the world because now you're committed to this error.
To this destruction of the truth and to error.
And so you spread it, right? You provoke it.
You are constantly changing people's stories.
This is where, of course, a lot of people send me emails.
And when I correct them, they don't respond.
Or when I ask them to actually clarify an argument that I can understand rather than just quoting me a bunch of unrelated, or even if it is related, just quoting me a bunch of other people.
When I say I'd really appreciate it if you would give me, I mean, if you're certain that I'm wrong, right?
Because this is what people have done, right?
This is what they have done. It's so important.
When they write to me and they tell me that I'm incorrect, what they have done is they have made a statement, made a claim.
You've really got to be careful about this kind of stuff.
They've made a claim. You, Steph, are incorrect.
And I didn't ask them to make that claim.
I didn't force them. I didn't hold their hands and make them type that claim.
They've put themselves out there, made a claim, made a statement.
And when you do that, then you are proposing something.
I propose something.
I say 2 plus 2 is 4.
Somebody comes back and says, that's totally wrong.
It's green. Then they are proposing.
Then now they're in a status of proposing something.
Now, if I've proposed something, and then I've made a logical error, and you point out that logical error, I'll come to the conclusion that I'm wrong, right?
I'll come to that conclusion, of course, right?
If somebody points out a logical error, I'll come to that conclusion, no problem.
But if somebody says, you're wrong, then they've obviously said, I know why you're wrong, right?
It's a very dishonorable thing to say that somebody is wrong without having some facts to back it up, or at least some theories, or at least an approach that is coherent, right?
Whether it's right or not, right?
But... If you go out there and you say, so-and-so is wrong, then if that person says, now you have to support your proposition.
So if somebody writes to me and says, Steph, you're wrong, I have every right to say, you now must support your proposition.
I can't believe that I'm wrong just because you say so, that would be ridiculous.
But they then will have to respond to that and to prove their assertion.
And what they do in that moment, what they do in that moment is so important.
It's so important. And I just, I bet you that people will not listen to this if they're this type of person.
But I sure hope that at least some of them do.
Or if those of you on the balance do, I think this would be great.
When somebody calls you on something, and I know it's horrible, and I know that it's really hard, and I know it feels like abusive.
When somebody calls you on something, when you go out there and make a statement that's kind of nonsense, and maybe you don't know it at the time.
Maybe you really genuinely think and feel that it's true.
But when you go out there and you make a statement and somebody says, interesting, let's see your supports.
Let's see your supporting documents.
Let's hear your reasoning. Then how you react in that moment, if you've been bullshitting, how you react in that moment is so essential.
I can't even tell you how essential this is.
This is the choice. This really is the choice between the true self and the false self.
If you've been bullying someone, if you've been manipulating them, if you've gone out and told them that they're wrong without any proof or evidence or reasons, then you need to say, I'm sorry.
Right? You need to humble your false self.
The arrogance of the false self, the bullying, the manipulation of the false self, you have to fight it.
It is like a devil, a dragon, a monster.
It is like that fog in lust, right?
I mean, you have to fight it.
Because if you succumb to it, you know, as I said before, power grows and so on.
But if you've gone out on a limb, if you've made a mistake, let's just say you've made a mistake.
Let's just say this is a bad habit you've developed.
Let's just say, and we've all had to go through this.
I've had to go through this. Christina's had to go through this.
We all had to go through this, where we just go out and say stuff in a curt or short or bitchy or whatever kind of way.
Somebody says, well, maybe you can back that up somehow.
What do we do in that moment?
If we look at ourselves and say, you know what?
I don't have an answer for this guy.
I've told him that he's wrong, but I don't actually know why he's wrong.
Well, you can either make something up after the fact, right, and say, well, the reason that I said you were wrong was because of X, Y, and Z. But if you didn't know that X, Y, and Z up front, then that's kind of lying, right?
Because then, you know, and again, that's going to give yourself permission to do it again, and it's going to give yourself permission for that kind of corruption.
It's going to make your life frightening because what we do to others we fear coming back from them.
Right? So don't do that.
Don't make up something after the fact.
Right? Somebody says, well, where's your proof?
Right? You know, if I say, well, why is it you disagree with the argument for morality?
And then you go back and read my essays and say, well, here's why I disagree with you.
That's dishonest. Right?
And I'll see that very clearly.
Because if you had all those reasons...
Then you would have put them in the email to correct me.
I mean, that's totally obvious, right?
That's like watching somebody cheat and then looking at them saying, hey, look, I got a great mark, right?
I mean, that's just so obvious.
Or you don't respond at all, right?
That's totally unfair. Going to somebody and saying, you're wrong about ethics is a serious, serious charge.
You're wrong about ethics.
And not only are you wrong about ethics, you're communicating to others, right?
about ethics and you are communicating wrong.
You're giving them wrong or bad ethics.
That is a desperately serious charge.
I take that very, very seriously.
The last thing that I want to do is to corrupt people around the truth and virtue.
I mean, that would be a disaster for me.
It would be worse than wasting my life.
It would be spending my life in the service of that which I despise.
Evil, corruption, falsehood, lies, and so on.
So if somebody says you're teaching people incorrect ethics, there's a hugely serious charge.
You hate the family. You just hate the state.
You just hate rules. You just whatever, whatever.
I mean, however people frame it.
It's a very serious charge.
And if you level that charge against someone and they say, great, what's your evidence?
And then you run away, that's pretty bad.
I mean, it's a pretty corrupt thing to do.
It's a pretty bad thing to do.
And, I mean, I'll survive.
I see it very clearly. I mean, you're not fooling anyone over on this side of the pond if you're not in North America.
I see it very clearly. So you're not fooling me.
Maybe you just want to fool yourself.
Maybe you want to, you know. But when you get caught doing something dishonorable, How you react to that is so essential.
It's so essential. And there is obviously a grinding kind of humiliation in having to say, you know what?
I just screwed this guy.
I just manipulated and lied to him and so on and so on and I shouldn't do that and I should change my approach and so on.
I mean, that's hard to do.
It's really hard to do. There's a lot of pain back there.
There's a lot of being humiliated.
And of course... Depending on how many times you've done this, and I'm guessing it's quite a few, if this is your habit, then you have a lot of people to apologize to.
You have a lot of your own dark side, your own capacity to manipulate and bully.
You have to sort of see that.
And through that, your true self emerges and you at least gain some ascendancy over the manipulation and lies of the false self.
But that moment, don't brush past it.
Don't blow past it. Stop and think, have I ever done this to people?
Have I ever done this to people?
Have I manipulated and controlled them and abused their integrity and insulted them and condescended to them?
And have I escalated in that manner?
And we all have.
We all have. I absolutely guarantee you we all have.
And if you can't admit it, it just means you're going to keep doing it.
You can't change what you can't acknowledge.
But that's a really worthwhile exercise.
What have I done in my life that's wrong?
Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more this afternoon.
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