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Jan. 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:35
603 My Gift Part 2

If I could give the world just one thing...

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Good evening, people.
It's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
It's the 17th of January.
16... No, 1821.
It's twenty past six.
And I hope you're doing well.
I wanted to do a bit of a follow-up to yesterday's podcast.
Just to talk about some of the raucous eruptions of laughter that may have occurred when I said that I don't want to tell people to do stuff.
Just because, you know, hovering up around this number of podcasts, I thought it might be worth at least attempting to salvage any credibility that I might have by placing some random rhetorical fences around a catastrophic linguistic error.
Or maybe not. We'll see.
So... The philosophy, at least, that I really believe in around this idea that you're not wrong in your approach to life, I think is important to spend a little time mulling.
Mull, let us mull, like wine.
And basically, when you live a certain way, And I can absolutely guarantee you that if you've made it thusly far along the journey, then you are a hobbit.
And that you are sensitive, intelligent, curious, compassionate, you know, all the lavish praise that you would imagine, because I think that I am these things, and I think that I try to communicate them as openly as I can in the conversations that I have through this medium.
So I've got to think that either I'm doing a really bad job of communicating it, or we are of like souls in those ways.
And so when you realize these things about yourself, if you were a character in a book, how would people describe you?
I know with me, shiny and voluble is the two words that spring to most people's minds, but you would be described with certain characteristics as a character in a book.
And of course, if you couldn't be described with any characteristics, then you'd be a poor character and would have to be written out.
And we don't want that for you.
We just don't want you to go into a literary heap of cut characters.
So, you have these characteristics that I think are good.
You're willing to listen to reason, or at least my stabs at reason, and debate me, and debate others, and yearn to live a good and wise and compassionate and virtuous life.
Yay! That's fantastic.
And so, I know that this is how you're living.
I know that this is how you're living, or if you aren't living...
Or to the degree that you aren't living that, you would prefer to be living that.
I mean, we're not all perfect, heaven forbid, and I've certainly been involved in some corrupt messes in my day.
But, of course, it's the standard that counts.
It's not always the behavior that counts.
I just can't see where the ambulance is coming or going.
Anyway. So, I know that you are interested in truth and virtue and compassion and have these characteristics or yearn for these characteristics, have these characteristics and yearn for their action in yourself.
And so, what if you're just right about that?
I can guarantee you that you, I shouldn't say that, I mean, maybe I know that some listeners have been in the army, but I can pretty much guarantee you for the most part that most of you haven't, you know, killed anyone, or if you have, it's been in a delusory state capacity before you were, when you were indoctrinated and so on, right, before the age of reason that occurred at some point in your life.
And I can pretty much guarantee you that we don't have any professional thieves in our listenership.
And I'd be really shocked if we had any rapists.
I'd be pretty shocked if we had any pedophiles.
And so I think that we've got a pretty ethical crew on our hands.
I mean, we've had a couple of...
Oh, I'm going to put this in a nice way.
A couple of exceptions to that rule, mostly showing up on the boards.
And when I say mostly, I mean two or three.
But for the most part, we've got a pretty decent, great crew.
And I'm just enormously wed to the beauty of the Free Debate Radio crew.
And the intelligence, the wit, it's just amazing.
I have to wear arc-welding goggles when I read some of those posts.
They're just so funny.
And the wit, the intelligence, the curiosity, the compassion, I think the quality relationships that a lot of people are coming out of, not anything to do with Free Debate Radio in particular, but just due to...
We have a different yardstick here.
We have a different yardstick for what it is to be a human being.
And we are really raising the bar, I think.
And I think even if you just listen to a bunch of podcasts or read a bunch of posts from this source, I think that it's going to stretch your definition of what it is to be a human being.
I think that we're kind of moving the bar a little bit here.
Actually, quite a lot. So...
The real question is, I know that the people who listen to this are virtuous or yearning for virtue, that we don't have violent people among us, that we don't have rapists and killers and so on.
And so my sort of basic is like, well, what if we're right?
See, if we live a certain way, we're either living randomly, we're living virtuously, or we're living non-virtuously.
We're living in a corrupt, immoral, or evil manner.
And yeah, there's some blend and so on, but I'm just talking about the three general categories.
Either there's no way to live that could ever be defined objectively, and there's no standards that anyone could live by, and though everyone who accepts any standards is a sucker in the Nietzschean sense, and so on, which I don't believe, of course.
I think that's all nonsense, but either that's the case, in which case I can't imagine why my podcast would be interesting to people, but So again, I don't think that you've come this far unless you want to learn to understand something and then human beings would be the only entities in the universe not bound by any physical laws or obligations.
Obligations being sort of the moral side of laws.
So it's not random.
It's not random, I would say.
And if you are living in a non-violent manner yourself, then either you are...
It's hypocritical. Because violence is the right way to live, but you're just not doing it.
And I think, I don't know about you, I as a moral human being, or strive to be a moral human being, I have this terrible fear at times.
It's not so strong now, although it does come back occasionally.
I have this terrible fear that...
To be good is to be taken advantage of, and we all have this, I think, professionally.
Like, if you're good at what you do, then more work pours your way, and that continues until you become bad at what you do, right?
So, this occurs very much in the professional context, but it also occurs in relationships.
If you listen to feedback and you are reasonable and you're not volatile and you're not childish and you're not a bully and you're not a gossip and you're not a backstabber, if you're coachable, sort of fundamentally in other words, then people will correct you.
But if you're not coachable, and if every time anybody tries to correct you on anything, you go into long-winded explanations that are bizarre and vaguely frightening, or you get mildly aggressive, or you just become passive-aggressive and say, absolutely, I'm all over it, and then consciously or unconsciously do nothing about it.
If you're coachable, then people will correct you all the time.
And if you're not coachable, then people won't correct you, because they find it weird or scary or unpleasant or just too difficult or fruitless.
And so, who is it who gets the lion's share of corrections?
The person who is the most receptive to corrections.
And being corrected is not always a pleasant experience, and people don't always do it well.
So, the more rational you are, the more that people will abuse you, right?
And sometimes the corrections are not all that well-meaning, right?
So, if you've shown to be open to correction, or if you have the rational self-doubt that if someone...
If someone says that you're doing something wrong, you will at least listen to it without flaring or fighting back aggressively or passively.
Then people will do that, right?
I mean, because most human beings are like a liquid spreading, you know?
If there's an avenue, they'll take it, right?
If they can get through something, they'll do it.
So they only recoil when they meet with stiff resistance, right?
They don't have any particular shape to their personalities, and their inner standards are not really very well developed.
And so it's just, you know, whatever the hell they can get away with, that's what they're going to do.
It's like water, finding a container.
Hey, is there room over there?
Great, I'll fill it. Oh, that's where the room stops?
Okay, I won't go any further. That's how most people map out their ethics.
I'll sort of quote ethics. It's like, what can I get away with, really?
And so I sort of do have this kind of fear sometimes that to be a good person is to be taken advantage of.
And that's one of the reasons why I've tried to bring the sulfurous mix of anger and so on into some of these conversations, especially when I feel that as a good and reasonable person I'm starting to get beaten around a little bit too much, then I feel that it is healthy and positive to get angry.
So, I mean, that sort of explains that, if that makes any sense.
I don't want virtue to be a big sucker's bullseye on your forehead, you know?
Oh, I'll do it. I'll work hard.
I'll do this. I'll do that. So, if you live in a sort of virtuous, rational, non-violent manner, then either it's just your bag, man.
It's like, I don't know, liking Johnny Coltrane or something.
It's just your thing, you know?
And it's got nothing to do with anyone else, which is not true.
I mean... Or, it's really good to do violent things, but you're too weak to do it.
You're just, you're too, you call it virtue, but really it's weakness.
I call my non-aggressive personality virtue because I'm just not aggressive and it's just a lot more, I feel a lot more smug and self-satisfied if I define my natural characteristics as being virtuous.
And so I'm just redefining my particular personality as that which is virtuous forever.
Wait, no, I'm not on rant, hang on.
So, that's sort of the other possibility that you've got this big scar tissue called virtue over things that you secretly dislike about yourself.
Like, you'd really like to be violent and go and kill and rape and scream at people and pound desks and be unreasonable and be a sociopathic manager or whatever, right?
But you're just too cowardly to, so you're going to retreat into your little shell of virtue and you're going to say, well...
That stuff's just wrong.
And I don't think that's true either.
I think that the people here who've sort of come through...
Because that would have been burned out a couple of hundred podcasts ago.
You either would have dropped out or that would have gone through a change.
So I don't think that's the case.
That you secretly believe it would be great to be violent or abusive, but you just, you can't get, you can't muster up the courage or the resolution or the cojones to do it, and so you're going to call those things wrong because you can't, right, in that sort of resentment way that Nietzsche talks about.
We define as evil that which we are powerless to achieve, right?
I mean, that is, that's his old buddy N's approach, old Freddie N, and I don't think that's the case either.
So, it's not that evil is good, but we can't achieve it, so we'll turn it back to evil.
I don't think that we all secretly want to be rapists and violent people.
So really, that just leaves one last alternative, which is that we are virtuous people in a universal way, in a way that is consistent with universally preferable behavior and so on.
And therefore, everyone else is just wrong.
Everyone who, you know, what they do is wrong.
I mean, their level of understanding all needs to be taken into account, their exposure to this, that, and the other.
I certainly couldn't have come up with all this crap on my own.
It's simply inconceivable.
I couldn't have come up with 1% of it on my own, but for the genius of, you know, people like Ayn Rand and, you know, thinkers who've gone before me and the fabulous crew on the boards.
So, really, that's the sort of confidence, right?
The first confidence that we talked about is to say, I don't know, it's not up to me.
And the second confidence is, you don't know, and it's not up to you.
And I think that sort of intertwined into all of that is to just say, you know, at what point in your life is how you're living just right?
Not your preference, not what you're used to, not what you're emotionally habituated to, not what your food did to you or anything like that.
At what point? Like, how old do you have to be?
And I remember having this conversation with Christina at one point.
She was insecure about starting up a private practice, and she was insecure about leaving the hospital and so on.
It's been a roaring success.
She credits FDR and her participation in it and the conversations that we have and what she's listened to on the podcast series is quite a strong blend of alchemy for producing the magic that is Mississauga therapy.
Oh, sorry, Meadowvale psychotherapy.
But she was very nervous about it.
And she was in her mid-30s.
And I said, well, tell me, you know, you've been doing this for...
12 years. You've got tons of education.
You were mentored for five years.
You've been highly successful. You've had certain aspects of a private practice before.
When does it get to be your turn?
Like, when do you get to be confident?
When do you get to be certain that your path is the right one?
And this is true at a personal level in terms of personal fulfillment, but also in a level of how you live.
In the moral things, not do you like jazz, but is violence wrong?
When is it that we do get to say that the way that we live is the right way to live?
Rejecting the initiation of the use of force in all its forms.
Rejecting exploitation and brutality and emotional abuse and physical abuse in all its forms.
Rejecting fantasies, God states, the morality of the accidental biological cage.
At what point do we get to say, you know, this isn't just for me anymore.
This is the truth. This is the truth.
And so with Christina, I was sort of saying, okay, so you've been practicing for 12 or 13 years and you're now 35.
When is it that you get to be confident and feel like you can do a good job?
Is it when you're 45?
So you've got another 10 years of feeling insecure and then pop one day.
So you feel that there's a very large difference between 12 years and 22 years in terms of your confidence.
Or maybe it's when you're 60, right?
So a couple of years before you retire, you finally feel secure and confident in what it is that you're doing.
Is it then that you will accept that you can feel secure in what you're doing?
It's certainly possible for those of us who have more than a modicum of healthy self-doubt to stretch the insecurity phase of any new knowledge acquisition to near Peter Pan lengths.
And that's sort of an important thing to watch out for.
But at what point in our lives...
After the reasoning, the podcast consumption, the board participation, the call-in show, chats, the reading of all the other great philosophers in the world, and so on, at what point do we go, yeah, yeah, I'm down with the basics.
The basics are done. Violence, not good.
Fantasy illusion, not good.
Fantasy illusion inflicted on children through the threat of violence, either passive or aggression, double plus, ungood.
And that much I've worked on with, that I'm done with, that I'm okay with.
At what point do I get to say that I believe what I'm saying?
Well, I mean, for me, it was before I started the podcast, but it took a long time.
And I think it would have taken a lot less long if somebody had said, well, is it that two minutes before you die, you're finally going to feel certain about how you're living?
And certain in the ethical sense, in a universal way.
Is that when we get to feel sure that Is that two minutes before we die?
Is that when we get to feel certain?
Maybe it's ten minutes before we die.
Maybe it's a year before we die.
I'll tell you that, and this is a bit of a decision.
This is a decision where you have to, it's the ready, aim, fire.
Libertarians are a little again ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, loop,am, aim,aroad.
Whereas I would say that it's okay, It's okay for us to be certain by now.
I mean, we've put a lot of time and energy into this conversation.
There's lots of time and energy that people have put into other conversations with themselves, with others.
It's okay to be certain that the way we live is a good way to live.
It's okay by now.
You know, we're not kids anymore.
These ideas are not in their infancy.
And so it's okay for us to say, you know what?
I live...
Without violence. I live without violence.
I live with negotiation. I live with rationality.
Or if not rationality, at least not violence.
And that's universal.
There's no one out there for whom it is okay to use violence.
Or to be a bully, on the sort of more aesthetic sense.
To be exploitable to be a bully.
There's no one out there Who can do these things?
It's not just right for me, it's just right.
Because something as fundamental as the use of violence, there's really not a whole lot of middle ground.
There's a small amount of gray area in the middle, mostly due to a lack of facts and the possibility of mental illness, or lack of evidence.
But there's not... It's a pretty sort of fundamental core issue.
You use violence. Violence good, violence bad.
Violence good, violence bad.
Shooting people good, bad.
Raping good, bad. Theft good, bad.
I mean, there's some pretty strong basics.
And I think that one of the great leaps of ego, almost...
And I think it's a healthy one, though.
Because... Actually, I won't say because.
I think it's a healthy one.
Where you say, Hey, the way that I live is a good way to live.
And insofar as I don't use violence or intimidation or whatever to get my way, it's really a perfect way to live.
And there's nobody who gets to live in some different way.
There's no government official, no soldier, no tax collector, no prison guard, no whoever.
No one at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
There's no one who up and gets to say, I'm going to live using violence.
And that's what I mean when I say that it's a stretch of ego and it's a leap that it's very hard to make.
But I think it's pretty essential.
Because I'm not in some other planet.
I'm not on some other dimension.
I'm not on the other side of the canyon saying, live some different way.
I'm basically saying, what you do, that's right.
What you do, that's right.
And I know they're saying, oh, if everything I do is right, I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about the moral basics.
I don't know anyone who's talked about foo issues, either personally, through email, on the boards, in the call-in shows.
I don't know anyone...
Who's had the following foo issues.
They don't call up and say, well, you know the real issue is that I keep hitting my mom with a vacuum cleaner, man, and I just don't want to do that anymore.
That's not really the issues we get.
Well, I stuffed some firecrackers down my mom's cat's throat and it blew up and she's all upset.
So how do I get her to stop being upset?
Those are the family issues that I have.
The people who call up or who talk or who I've heard from all have the same story.
I'm being abused by my family.
Not, I'm abusing my family.
I'm being abused by my family.
They make me feel like crap.
They reject my opinions.
They're verbally abusive. They're dismissive.
They undermine me. They don't want to listen.
I feel empty when I'm over there.
They won't let me talk about anything.
I get disapproval whenever I'm myself.
All the gamut, too.
You know, I've got a history of having my dad beat me with a belt and my mom hit me with a bat and all the way from that kind of stuff.
But these are all people who have received great evil at the hands of their parents and continue to do so, and have not retaliated, and not saying, I have retaliated by cutting the brakes on my grandmother's car.
Can you help me find a good moral justification for that?
Well, I don't get those questions, right?
Well, what we hear from are virtuous victims of evil people.
Or corrupt people. So, we don't hear from people who are initiating violence or abuse against others.
We certainly have heard from people...
Sorry about my voice.
It's a little off today. I'm still on some painkillers for my mystery sore tooth.
But... We hear people who are the victims of violence, and people will say, well, yes, I was abusive in my past, but I haven't, you know, I got something, I understood something, I don't do that anymore, and so on.
So, I'm not saying to you, live differently.
That's why I say I don't tell people to change their lives.
I'm not saying to people, you need to go and punch your mom because she hit you when you were younger.
I don't say take up the sword of brutality that is falling from your parents' aging, liver-spotted and withering hands and smite them with it.
I don't say anything like that.
What I'm saying is, you know, that thing that you have where you don't abuse people, what if that's right?
What if it's not because you've got a really itchy trigger finger but no gun?
What if it's right not to abuse people?
Not to dismiss and undermine them and treat them with contempt and humiliate them in aggressive or passive-aggressive ways?
What if that's right? That's all I'm saying to people.
I'm not saying live your life differently.
I'm saying live your life like you mean it!
I'm saying, live your life like it's true!
Like you mean it!
Not like, well, abuse just isn't my thing, but it's obviously other people's thing, so who am I to say?
I've got to roll over and let them go at me.
No!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No!
Live like you mean it.
Live like what you're doing is the right thing to do and not just for you, or more particularly what you're not doing, which is not abusing people.
I'm not telling you to do anything other than extend your principles, the principles that you're living by already.
I could not remotely or conceivably tell you to change your core values.
So the people who I talk to, who talk to me and say, well, you know, my girlfriend did this, that, or the other that's really bad, and she cheated on me, or she smashed up my car, or whatever, and this and that and the other.
I'm not saying then...
Go set fire to her clothing.
I'm not saying go find somebody else and have sex with that person and rub her face in it.
I'm not saying any of that.
I'm saying, do you think it's the right thing to do to smash up your car and not...
Do you think it's the right thing to do to be unfaithful to your monogamous partner if that's the relationship you have?
Oh, so your parents mock your beliefs.
Whose beliefs do you mock?
Oh, you don't mock anyone's beliefs?
Other than complete idiots, right?
You don't mock anyone's beliefs?
You don't humiliate people?
Out of nowhere? You don't humiliate people who are genuinely looking for truth?
Well, maybe that's just right all round.
And if it is right all round to not humiliate people, or to not be abusive, let's just say, to not be abusive, if it's to refrain from being abusive is right all round, then that has kind of ramifications for your relationships.
Right, you know how there's this thing the atheists say to everyone who's religious, well, you don't believe in 9,999 gods that everyone else believes in.
You believe in one god.
I just go one god further, I don't believe in the 10,000 gods that makes me an atheist.
So you're all 99.999% atheists, because everyone who's religious doesn't believe in everyone else's religious god.
And that's sort of all I'm saying is 99.999% of your life you're living like abuse is bad and then when you're around your family abuse suddenly becomes just their way or it's okay or I guess I can put up with it or it's not really abuse or...
All I'm doing is itty bit by itty bit peeling off excuse after excuse after excuse forgiving other people for not living in the way that you live.
No more excuses.
No more excuses.
I don't abuse people.
So why would it suddenly be okay for somebody else to abuse someone or to abuse me?
Well, she's your mom, she's your dad, great uncle, third cousin twice removed, Darth Vader's roommate, who knows?
But either it is or it isn't right to abuse people.
If it is right, you better get cooking, Mr.
Oh-So-Pacifist. And if it's wrong, I'm just saying, when does it get to be universal?
Ever? Does it ever get to be universal?
But then not abusing people would be just like liking jazz or not liking jazz.
Yet that's not how it feels.
I mean, don't we feel better or good about not abusing people?
Don't we notice that the people who do abuse people are miserable and hateful human beings?
So when is it okay that your most cherished principles and how you actually live, when is it time that actually can become a universal principle?
Because I'm telling you, you know deep down, you know in your heart of hearts, it is a universal principle.
Abuse is bad.
Violence is bad.
Theft, rape, murder, violence, bad, bad, bad.
When does that get to be universalized?
When do you actually get to say that how you live is right?
And the things that you refrain from doing, and for most people we refrain, and the world should thank us for this on bended knee, but doubtfully it will within our lifetime, we refrain from these actions because we know the pain of these actions.
We refrain from abuse because we know the feeling of her being abused.
We have learned about the heat of stoves with the degree burns.
And that's right, and it's tough that the lesson has to be so hard for those of us on this sort of cutting edge of this moral development, but I would say that it's kind of high time that we got to be just kind of right.
And consistent and to stop cluttering up this simple natural consistency with a whole bunch of excuses and foo-based or nationalism-based or God-based or class-based or whatever nonsense that people use to muck up the simple ethical gears of their conscience.
And to just say, yeah, you know the way that I live?
I'm going to live like I mean it.
Because what's our option? What's our option, really?
I mean, when you sort of break it down, what's our option?
Are we going to live like we don't really mean it?
Are we going to kind of half-live like it's sort of maybe a game?
How satisfying do you think that's going to be?
As you look back and bid your years goodbye, as they roll off the world like donuts off a conveyor belt, When you look back at the end of your life and you can barely distinguish your years of cowardice and compromise or excuses or insecurities or however you want to put it.
Your years of living like you didn't mean it.
Like it was just a kind of weird little preference that you had for not being abusive or for eschewing violence or rejecting force, rejecting corruption.
That it was just kind of like, but I like ice cream.
I like ice cream.
I like non-aggression principle.
I like candy.
And I'm a porcupine pacifist.
And they're in the same category, right?
Well... What if they're really not in the same category?
What if we are supposed to live like we really mean it?
Because, Lord knows, bad people, they sure fucking live like they mean it, don't they?
I mean, bad people, they take no fucking quarter.
They totally live like they mean it.
So why should good people?
Why is everyone else living like they mean it?
Defensive and aggressive and abusive and hostile and hateful and And why is it that the good people can't...
Why can't we live like we mean it?
Because we actually can mean it.
Because we're not good at the expense of other people.
I mean, other than the false selves of the bad people, of which there are quite a few.
And that's sort of when I say I'm not telling anybody what to do.
I'm just saying you're already doing it.
Right? 1% more isn't going to kill you.
And that 1% is a doozy.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's a simple step.
But I'm not telling people to live by any other ethic than they're already living.
And those who don't want to live by that ethic, I kick them off the board and I'm sure they stop listening to the podcast.
Thankfully. But that's really my sort of central main message when I'm telling people, I'm not telling you what to do.
And I'm not saying anyone has told me that I'm telling them what to do or anything like that.
I'm just sort of pointing out that this kind of humility...
The humility is just to say, okay, well, this is the way that I'm living.
I've thought it through. It's logically consistent.
Makes me feel good. I look to the people who don't live this way.
Makes them feel bad. Understand the theory.
Understand the practice. Got this, that, and the other.
You know what? Let's build this fucker.
The plans are drawn, they've been validated, they've been vetted.
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