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March 2, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:50
665 Be Nice! Part 1 - Self Protection

Ferocity in principles, gentleness in communication

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Good morning, everybody. Steph, hope you're doing well.
Freedom! Today is the day.
I'm going to chat with my boss, O-Rama, and they have offered me three days a week to stay, but I think that I shall not do that.
The only reason that I would be doing it is for the money, and it's kind of hard to say That I should stay just for the cash.
Because cash for what? Compared to what?
I have some decent savings.
I have income from Free Domain Radio due to the extraordinary kindness and occasionally nagged for benevolence of my wonderful, wonderful listeners.
And I think that I have been able to Achieve about half of the goal that I want to achieve so far, just working on it part-time, and I've got to believe that I can get more traction and do better working on it full-time.
And here's the thing, right?
Here's the thing about philosophy.
As you're aware, as you go deeper and deeper into it, the truth matters more than money.
The truth matters more than money.
I mean, beyond a bare minimum. If I don't have the bare minimum, I can't eat or podcast.
But that's not so much of an issue.
So, I am not going to do a transition period of three days a week on a contractual basis.
I am going to just leave and...
I'm going to go on vacation.
Because, you know, when you leave your job to pursue a highly risky venture, the first thing to do is to go on vacation.
And actually, I think that is true. It indicates faith or belief more than faith.
Belief in the future. And you've got to have a transition period mentally.
And it has you tanned, rested, relaxed and refreshed for the new venture, which I imagine is going to be fairly all-consuming.
I have a fairly ferocious capacity for work.
And I'm really, really looking forward to getting all of this stuff running on a more strategic and proactive basis.
So thank you so much to those who have donated.
I can't tell you what an opportunity this has opened up for me.
And I know that there's a small shred of caring about me, but I do believe that people have donated because I happen to have a talent for the truth and a talent for communicating it.
And I'm certainly not alone in that, but I am somebody who has a capacity to do that, and I know that people fund or donate because they want to appreciate what I'm doing, but I think that even more importantly, and perhaps at a deeper level, it is a way of amplifying what we're doing here to a wider audience.
And I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.
It's kind of funny. I have...
I got my first job when I was 11.
I put the New York Times together in a bookstore on Sundays for about four hours.
And it wasn't a bad job, but the best thing was that I could pick out books and they would remainder them and give them to me for free.
And that was just beyond wonderful.
I've been working solid since I was with...
And I took a year and a half off, but I spent that time, of course, writing four books.
So that wasn't exactly time off.
So, I had a, you know, as you know, a highly stressful childhood.
Certainly not the most stressful in the world, but a highly stressful childhood.
I've been working solid since I was 11, almost 30 years.
And it's not like I'm not going to work now.
I think I'm going to work even harder.
But it's that old adage that is quite true.
If you do what you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life.
And... I know that it's reciprocal, so I don't mean to indicate any kind of sacrifice on your part, those who've donated.
But I think what you've made possible is quite extraordinary.
And I thank you for seeing it.
That's really what I thank you for the most.
I thank you for seeing what we're doing here.
But I just wanted to point out that those who have donated, I think, have received far more back in tangible rewards than those who have not, I think.
I mean, maybe if you haven't, but for me, it's sort of like I spent $20,000 on therapy, and I have received far more back in monetary terms than that.
And of course, the most important thing that I have received from therapy is a wonderful, beautiful, magical marriage.
A woman who's supporting me in this, not more than supporting me, is encouraging me in this.
Christina was the one who actually said, not exactly, I'm paraphrasing a little, she's much more refined than this, but she basically said, screw part-time, go for it.
So, it was a little push from a willing jumper, so I think that's going to be great.
The other thing that's helping, of course, with this too, is that the Free Domain Radio conversation...
That you and I and others are having has been occurring for Christina and I for five years.
And the principles that we have worked out in our relationship, the principles that I talk about in this show, those principles she brings to bear on her patients.
And my God, is her practice doing well.
Christina and I spend a good deal of time talking about her patients and I try to provide what value I can.
I mean, she's an exquisitely excellent therapist, but she lacked philosophical training, and of course, how could she have it?
So she's able to do much more in terms of appealing to principals and abstracting from the family and say, if this was just some guy in your apartment building who treated you this way, what would your reaction be?
So the value of the...
It's funny. I mean, this is the interesting thing about economics in terms of value.
Value will out one way or another, right?
So the value that...
Christina and I have had in the conversations that have culminated in Freedom Aid Radio.
That value is part of her clinic, right?
Mississauga, sorry, MetaVale Psychotherapy.
And that has caused an enormous amount of success in her clinic.
I mean, she's just getting referrals left, right and center because people find that she has something to offer that is not available anywhere else, at least to my knowledge.
I don't want to say that she's the only good therapist on the planet.
Of course, that's not the case, but...
I think she's just the best.
So that has also helped, right?
I mean, her business expanding has taken the pressure off me to provide the big whack of income that software work does.
So anyway, it's interesting just how this has all sort of come together as well.
Again, I thank you, thank you, thank you so much for your donations.
I know it's a tough thing to do, sending money to some renter over the internet.
It feels a little silly, and it feels like it's something that's almost infinitely postponable.
It's like, you know, it's good, I'm enjoying these podcasts, it's great.
And look, I've done it too.
I've just decided, based on my decisions, that I was running WinRAR from RAR Labs, which is my compression algorithm.
It does a better job of compressing WAV files than Zip.
And I bought it, right?
Because I've been running this thing for like years, and the nag screen has gone by.
So I do it too. It's just I'll do it later.
But I actually sort of feel better about just doing that.
So I've been going on a spending splurge on all the software with nag screens or all the software with voluntary donations and so on.
So I'm just telling you.
It'll make you feel better, and it'll give you some strength in your life in areas that will be surprising.
So, enough pitching.
Let us continue with the topic.
There was an interesting post yesterday, and you notice that I actually don't make up topics anymore.
Pretty much the whole show, until I leave this job, is going to be, so, somebody posted something, and it made me think, right?
This is not part of any big strategic plan.
I haven't really planned out these podcasts, because I wasn't sure whether I'd be doing them from a car.
We're doing them with the props and the easel and all of the magic of the home studio extravaganza.
So the next podcast, which I think are fine, will be, hey, you know, somebody posted something or read something in a paper or whatever.
It's not a big plan here.
But nonetheless, somebody did post something that was interesting, which was...
Some minarchists have come on board, and...
To be frankly, it's a bit of a jackal fest, and I must say that I'm not highly impressed, not highly proud of how some people are handling these minarchists.
You know, a friend is just someone you haven't met yet, and an anarcho-capitalist is someone you just haven't had the right conversation with yet.
And the onus is entirely upon you.
The onus is entirely upon you.
The power that you have in your life, it's not a sliding scale.
It's not like, well, it's 60% me, maybe I'll go to 65%, but it's definitely 40% the other person in terms of a relationship.
Why not just take 100%?
I mean, why not?
There's no reason to take 50-50.
And all too often saying, well, it takes two to tango, It just gives you an out.
It just gives you an out to behave badly.
I mean, not you, but, you know, it gives one an out to behave badly.
And you don't know if the person who's come on the board...
I mean, I'm just going to put it out there, right?
I'm not saying you should be bribed into being nice, but you don't know if the person who's coming onto the board happens to be a multi-billionaire who's looking to invest in some philosophical venture.
You don't know who's coming in who might have speaking...
Abilities that dwarf mine to atomic stature.
You don't know if somebody's coming in who has the most incredible connections at a television station.
You don't know.
There's a veil of ignorance over the nature of the people who are coming in to have a conversation with you.
Especially on the internet, right?
Emails and all so on.
And I'm not saying that you should then be nice because these other people might be able to offer you something.
I mean, I guess I am, but I'm not saying that that's the only reason.
I'm just saying that that's something that might give you point.
You don't know who's out there. You don't know what capacities and abilities they have.
You don't know what a little patience might generate.
And I say this, of course, based on my own experience.
I listen to like a year of Harry Brown's shows before I'm like, Oh, I think that voice is bad.
Right? And then it took another year beyond Harry Brown to go with the stateless society thing, which was mostly on my own.
I've tried reading Anarchist by Proudhon and Bakunin and so on, but they just put me to sleep.
Oh my god, the amount of niggling and naggling about party politics and who they like and who they don't like and so on.
It's all just... It's just too dull for words.
I just don't find that there's...
It's just politics, right?
But anyway, so I mean, I sort of did the stateless society thing mostly on my own, but...
I think I'm a fairly smart fellow and it took me 20 years of really smart people talking to me.
But then look what happened, right?
I mean, so the idea that you're going to change somebody's mind in a post or two posts or five posts, there's a reason there's all these podcasts.
The reason I didn't just put two podcasts out with a couple of bullet points saying, taxation equals violence, state equals effect of family.
Right? That's the reason I didn't put all that stuff out.
God equals non-existence.
Because, of course, if it was that easy, then...
Then we would actually be to blame completely for the world's miseries, right?
If it was that easy, because then we would just have to say that and keep repeating it until people change their minds.
It's not true. So when people come on, and they are shocked, deeply shocked, and that shock takes many forms with different people.
With men, it's mostly aggression.
With women, it's mostly withdrawal.
But they're deeply shocked at the idea of a stateless society.
It overturns their planet.
It overturns their planet.
And the question is, you know, when do you push and when do you become...
Oh, I guess when do you...
I wouldn't say become aggressive, but that's the word that I'll just use for now.
It's like, when do you become aggressive?
And my basic answer, other than trying to bribe you with possibility and cow you with the difficulty of changing one's mind in this area...
What I would say is that you wish to be the world you want to exist.
You want to be the world you want.
You want to be the society you wish to create.
Don't lecture from outside the principles.
Don't lecture from outside the philosophy.
Be the society that you want to create.
Be the world you want to create.
And that means taking the principles of anarcho-capitalism, taking the principles particularly of free association, and exercising them.
And what that means, of course, is be optimistic for virtue, but accept the reality of corruption.
Expect virtue, but don't be surprised when there's corruption.
So the principles that I would put forward that I think would be helpful...
Would be something like this.
Would be, okay, so somebody comes on and they're a minarchist and they talk about the taxes are the price you pay for a civilized society and if you don't like it, move to China.
Whatever. Whatever it is that they come up with.
Well, treat them with respect.
If you're going to deal with anybody, treat them with respect.
Not for them. Not for them.
For you. So you think that you're giving something away when you treat someone with respect.
Especially if that somebody is tweaking you and being negative or difficult or hostile or whatever.
But treat them with respect.
Not for them. You're not giving sanction to them, right?
This whole idea of sanction to the enemy is just nonsense.
It's another thing I'll get into when I talk about Objectivism.
But this aggression of sanction to the enemy and this inquisitional, this aggressive dictatorial, agree with me or I'll flame you, I don't give sanction to the enemy.
Oh, it's nonsense. It's nonsense.
This is why objectivism flamed out.
I mean, this idea that you are aggressive towards people who disagree with you is...
And look, I'm not saying...
I'm just sort of thinking back to my podcast about the Marine.
Yeah, there's times I don't live up to it myself.
So I'm not saying that, good Lord knows, I'm far from perfect in any of these areas.
But this is sort of what the ideal is, right?
So I have definitely not lived up to this at all times.
I think if you listen to the Sunday shows, I'm trying to get better at it, so I'm sort of slugging away at this.
But... If...
Like, in anarcho-capitalism...
You're going to deal with somebody, like on eBay, right?
You deal with somebody and you order, I don't know, like a $10 thing from them, right?
And what happens is they don't send you the $10 thing or they send you an $8 thing or something, right?
Something that's just not pleasing to you or is not part of what is considered intent.
Well, what happens? Do you then start filling that person's inbox with Angry letters about what a jerk they are?
Well, no, of course not, because that's going under the wheels of corruption.
That's just being enslaved, ensnared, and enmeshed in corruption.
You just don't deal with that person anymore.
Somebody keeps sending you abusive emails, you don't talk back and get into an email war with them, you just block their damn email.
That's freedom of association.
It's not allowing your emotional life to be run by corrupt and difficult and dangerous and hostile and unpleasant people.
I try to treat people, even the people who I end up banning from the board, I try to treat them with respect.
I'm curious. I try to understand where they're coming from.
I try to talk them out of their approach or their behavior.
But if they don't want to listen and they just aren't getting abusive, I don't get into big arguments with them.
I just ban them and block their email.
And then if they still come in, I block their IP. There's no freedom of association.
I just don't deal with people. But we want to fight and we want to get angry.
We want to dig in and engage at this base level with people who are uninformed.
They're uninformed. And they're hurt.
And they're scared. And yes, it's coming across as bullying and aggression and so on.
But these are frightened, lost, lonely people who are aggressive.
And I would put you in that category if this is how you respond.
And there's no need for it. There's no need for it.
It is gentleness that will save the world.
Ferocity in principles, gentleness in communication.
That's sort of my approach.
Ferocity in principles. I don't give an inch on the principles.
Ferocity in principles, but gentleness in communication.
And where gentleness then becomes impossible, a withdrawal from the communication.
But escalation gets you nowhere.
Escalation gets you nowhere.
If we treat people like anarcho-capitalism already exists...
Then we are doing far more to create a free society than seven pages a day of essays.
If we treat people as if anarcho-capitalism already exists, and that we're in the majority, and that we're right, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
If we treat people, right?
If somebody comes up to you and says, the world is...
Somebody from the Flat Earth Society comes up and says, the world is...
It's flatter. Let's go even further.
The world is banana-shaped. Do you get angry?
Of course not. Of course not.
You don't get angry because you know that you're right.
Banana-shaped! What are you, some kind of idiot?
No, you're like, wow, this person has really had some bad parenting.
This person has really had some bad cognitive training.
This person is really lost.
I have some sympathy.
I see their history, right?
That's what empathy is, right? Seeing the history of people so you know where they came from and you know why they are where they are.
Like the woman who was a theosophist, right?
Who did past life therapies.
Yeah, we can be firm in principles and not give an inch.
What kind of upbringing did she have where the only value that she perceives that she's able to bring to people is lying to them?
What kind of parenting did she have where the only thing that she feels that she can bring that is of economic value to people is lying to them about how special they are?
What kind of shredded history did this person have to end up in this position?
Does it mean that they're wrong in what they're doing?
Yeah, of course it means they're wrong in what they're doing.
But that's ferocity in principles, not ferocity in communication.
So I said that it was for you that you should be gentle and curious and then respectfully decline to continue the conversation if the person gets unpleasant.
The reason that we should do that is not for them.
You're not giving them anything other than the respect which may cause them to change their minds six months, ten years, twenty years down the road.
You never know. You never know.
You never know when people are going to change their minds.
You can plant seeds.
I mean, people on the board sometimes, you're like somebody who plants a rose seed and then stands there staring at it, glaring at it, and getting pissed off because there's no rose bush yet.
Or they grab the first little bud that comes out and says, I'm going to help you grow and yank it and pull it out, root and all.
It's an organic process.
It takes time. Rewiring the brain is slow and painful and difficult.
It's horrendous. It's physiotherapy.
Somebody comes in with a, I don't know, some sort of heavily, like they broke their leg in 19 twisted fragment places and they've got to learn how to walk all over again.
You don't just say, well, I've entered you in the Boston Marathon tomorrow.
Physiotherapy takes a long time and that's just changing the body, which has no moral content.
Changing the mind morally?
My God, people have some freaking patience.
Have some patience, have some humanity, have some empathy.
Rewiring the brain from an ethical and reality and epistemological and metaphysical standpoint is horrendous.
And if you don't find it horrendous, it's because you haven't done it yet.
In which case you should have even more humility to people who haven't made the leap.
The leap which turns into flapping your arms hard for like two years.
But the reason that you should do it is not for them, it's for you.
Because we're all making errors.
We're all making errors.
All, all, all, all, all making errors.
The world that we are is the world...
I'm sorry to be so Zen-y, crappy, East-y, you know, Yoda.
But it's true. The world that we are is the world we expect.
Everything that we put out comes back.
There is karma unconsciously.
It's not in the world.
But we're boomerangs of exposition.
So, if we attack the world, the world attacks us back.
It doesn't mean that if we're gentle with the world, the world is gentle back with us.
Of course not. But if we're gentle with the world, we can at least figure out who the assholes are.
If you attack people, you never know who's just attacking you back because you're attacking them, or who's just an asshole.
And, you know, I apologize again for this sort of abrupt and caustic phrase, but let's just be...
As concise as possible.
I want this podcast to go on forever.
If you never ask a woman out, you don't know who would say yes.
And if you are hostile towards people who are coming in with a majority opinion and have never heard of what you're talking about before, you've got to empathize with these people.
They're coming in with a majority opinion and they've never heard anything close to anarcho-capitalism.
They think we're talking Molotov cocktails and Mohawks.
So, of course, for them even to talk to us is indication that they have a potential for extraordinary levels of intellectual curiosity and depth.
So, respect that.
So, the world that we create around us is how we expect the world to treat us.
How we treat people is how we expect them to treat us back.
If you verbally aggress against people who admit error...
You will then be unable to admit error and will become a fool.
And will become a fool if you're not one already.
Because fools are those who can't admit error.
Oh, by the way, it turns out that I was probably incorrect in the realm of admitting error.
It turns out I was probably incorrect in my interpretation of the commandment regarding thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Apparently, when it was written, the existence of other gods was accepted.
It's just that they were considered to be false gods.
It wasn't monotheistic.
It's just that our god is the best god.
And I haven't done... I've followed the links from the people who've told me, but two people have told me so.
I'm sure that's correct, so, oops, sorry about that, and please accept the correction.
So, yeah, if you aggress against people who can't admit, or who don't admit that they're wrong, then you will be afraid of admitting that you're wrong, and you will then have a position...
You won't be able to be curious, at least not nearly as much.
You won't be able to admit error.
You won't be able to learn from others. So you'll have to invent the wheel all the time yourself, and that sucks.
You won't be part of a participatory group where error is acceptable.
In fact, error is encouraged.
People who don't make mistakes aren't risking anything.
People who don't fall out of trees aren't going out on a limb.
So you want to be gentle and kind as much as you can be to people so that you are not afraid of the world.
If you aggress against people for making an error and then somebody points out an error in your thinking, you are not going to be able to accept it.
Why? Well, because you've already aggressed against someone, you're not going to allow yourself to be vulnerable that way, because you will expect them to aggress against you back, and frankly, you will have sowed the seeds that will have made that pretty inevitable.
It takes a pretty mature person not to aggress back.
Escalation is the infantilization of the species.
It's just what we're all taught.
It's what all happens as children, because we're not empathized with, so we have no choice but to Return aggression with aggression and escalation.
But if you break that cycle, and that is the cycle of violence, that is what occurs intergenerationally, is what occurs when you talk with somebody on the board or somebody in your life.
And respect and accept the other person's point of view.
That's why I said to the guy...
Who called in about God that the odds of him coming across somebody on an internet show who had anything useful to say about God would be tiny.
And expecting that and respecting that, validating the other person's perspective.
Right? To say that the odds that a small but dedicated group of philosophers in one corner of the internet have discovered the truth about family, society, art, history, logic, philosophy, and truth...
What are the odds? What are the odds that somebody's going to come across something they've never heard of before?
Free domain radio? What the hell is that?
I mean, this guy's not a professor.
He's not published in peer-reviewed journals.
He's not even Rush Limbaugh.
He's not even like one-tenth of one-hundredth of one percent of the listenership of Rush Limbaugh.
He's just some guy on the internet.
What are the odds that he's solved, in conjunction with his listeners, some pretty essential problems of the ages?
What are the odds this guy's proved morality?
Good lord! I mean, if he'd proved morality...
That's like saying I can generate infinite power from a sugar cube, but sadly nobody is interested in buying my invention.
Well, what's that going to make you think, right?
I mean, look at it from the outside.
Look at us from the outside.
What are the odds that we're right?
It's not like the internet is a stranger to lunatics, right?
Or people who are just weird or mistaken or whatever.
Fixed positions based on family history fundamentally.
What are the odds?
What are the odds that somebody's going to trip over our little community?
And immediately accept that these blinding, wild, deep, oscillating truths have been generated with no media attention, with no academic interest, without even the sales of Atlas Shrugged or anything like that. without even the sales of Atlas Shrugged or anything like I mean, how many copies of Revolutions are sold to Atlas Shrugged, right?
I mean, it wouldn't even show up as a comma on one page.
So what are the odds?
What are the odds coming in from the outside that you're going to come across anything coherent?
Just look at us from the outside.
That's sort of all I'm saying.
Look at us from the outside.
What are the odds? I'm not showing up on Jon Stewart.
And it's not even like there are 10,000 members of the board.
It's probably 560?
We few. We happy few.
It's not like there are a million downloads a month.
We got to 168,000 downloads or video views last month.
I think that's great. I think that's great.
You know, that's up like 15% from last month.
I mean, if we can keep this kind of growth up, fantastic.
But we're no phenomenon yet.
People haven't heard of us yet.
I mean, other than within particularly circumscribed circles.
We're no phenomenon yet.
We're no next thing. We're no big thing.
We're just, you know, the corner of the Internet, which nobody's ever heard of, where we say we've got the truth, you know, like every other crazy person out there on the Internet.
So, that's just, you know, we're all about reality and empathy, and that doesn't mean sympathy, but we're all about reality, but that's the reality of where we are.
And so, if we claim that we have the truth, and we claim that we are engaged in a discussion about virtue and so on, and then we come across as aggressive and intolerant, well, I mean, you just do a lot of harm. You're just doing a lot of harm.
You're doing a lot of harm.
I mean, that's sort of the thing that...
And that's the last sort of reason why I would say you do it.
Not just because the world we create is the world we expect, but because...
You don't get to screw with virtue.
You don't get to screw with the truth and walk away unscathed.
So I'm trying to give you some padding.
I'm trying to give you some protection here, some self-protection.
If you claim to know something about virtue and truth, and you are intolerant or hostile, then you are going to suffer.
Nothing to do with me. This is just reality, right?
This is just telling you, right? You smoke 50 cigarettes a day, you're going to suffer.
And if you claim virtue but don't act virtue, you will suffer all of the agony of the hypocrite and all of the agony of somebody who is using the greatest power in the world, the power of virtue and argument, the greatest power in the world for His own selfish self-aggrandizement.
It's not about you.
It's about the truth. It's not about you beating somebody or being right or dominating somebody.
It's about communicating the truth.
And whatever you've got to do to communicate the truth, just shut up and do it.
Don't worry about your ego.
Don't worry about being right.
Don't worry about being angry.
Don't worry about it.
It's not about you.
It's about the truth. For God's sake...
I'm only emphatic because I don't want you to be unhappy.
And you will be. If you use the truth to be right, to dominate, to humiliate, to beat, to win, to crush, if you use the truth for that, you will suffer.
It's not a curse, it's just a reality.
You can't use the truth for that.
You might as well use your physical strength to beat someone up.
You might as well use your money to buy friends.
It doesn't work that way. You can't do it.
It won't work. It actually totally, completely backfires, right?
So, you have low self-esteem, you come into a lot of money, you buy your friends.
Do you think that's going to help your self-esteem?
Of course not. It's going to make it worse.
It's going to make it worse. If you're an anarcho-capitalist because you believe...
That human beings are capable of acting in a civilized and positive and productive manner without having guns pointed at them, and then you go and dump on people and act in an aggressive and jerky way, you don't get the philosophy.
You're just not living the philosophy.
It's just an attitude for you.
You're just using it for something.
To be different, to be cool, to be smarter, because of your parents, or something like that.
You're using the truth, but for God's sake, don't try and use the truth.
Live the truth, sure. Express the truth.
Inhabit the truth. Express the truth.
But don't try and use the truth.
Don't try and use philosophy and virtue.
And your linguistic skills, which on the board are extensive and considerable.
Don't try and use it. Don't try and use it.
It will screw you up.
Trying to use it is like people trying to use force to achieve virtue.
It doesn't work. It just makes everything worse.
And the people who take up this weapon, it goes off in their hand.
Other people, they wander off.
But you will have faced the sort of fundamental shame Of knowing quite a bit about virtue, but ending up in a situation where you have used it to try and dominate people, to try and be right, to try and be superior, to try and sort of bolster up your self-esteem or false self for the sake of dominating others and not being sympathetic, not being empathetic, not being gentle, not being wise, not being curious.
And that doesn't mean being a pushover.
You're absolutely and perfectly welcome at any time to discontinue your conversations with anybody who's being a jerk.
But don't be that jerk.
Because that will harm your capacity to love and be loved.
And it will harm your joy, a virtue.
And you know what will happen then? You'll just defect.
You will just defect.
And I don't want that to happen for you.
I don't want that to happen for you.
You'll keep trying to pick up the sword.
And every time you pick up your sword, you cut off a fingertip.
And then a toe. Right?
Don't do that. Because I don't want to lose you to the other side.
I don't want to lose you to the other side.
Everybody we have here is so absolutely and totally invaluable.
I don't want to lose you.
And if you keep picking up this sword called virtue and you keep swinging it around to try and beat people, you're going to end up getting burnt and cut and alienated and frustrated and annoyed and you're going to become cynical and you're going to become bitter and you're going to think that people are stupid and you're going to think that people don't listen to reason and they can't understand truth and they don't appreciate this, that or the other. And what's going to happen then?
Well, then you're going to lose anarcho-capitalism.
You're going to lose truth. You're going to lose philosophy.
You're going to lose virtue. It's going to drain away from you like water down a spigot.
It is just going to vanish from you, my friends, because if you continue to have these difficult and aggressive and escalating and negative interactions with people, you're going to become cynical about what you call human nature.
You will then start to invent human nature, which is you writ large, right?
That's the narcissism of most people who talk about human nature.
And I don't want you to have these bruising, negative, hostile, difficult interactions with people.
I want you to retain your optimism and your positivity and your pleasure in philosophy.
Philosophy is not something that should get you into endless, difficult, annoying, frustrating fights with people.
You'll lose your optimism, you'll lose your joy in what it is that you're doing, and you'll become cynical and you'll become nihilistic because you'll say, well, that's what the truth gets for you.
Every time I try and talk to people about the truth...
They just can't listen.
They're stupid. They're vain.
They're petty. They're aggressive.
They're this. They're that. So there's no hope for the truth.
The truth is useless. The truth won't get anywhere because people are just too fucking stupid.
So to hell with it all. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right? And then you live a life of emptiness and misery.
And deep down, of course, you know the truth, which is that the truth didn't fail you.
You failed the truth. And there's no need for it.
Just do what you can.
And it's never easy.
But do what you can to...
Try to respond with positivity, with curiosity, with pleasantness to people.
And you'll know emotionally.
Trust yourself. You'll know emotionally when the time is to withdraw from the conversation because you just won't want to talk to the person anymore.
But you've done the right thing.
You've done the honorable thing.
You've done the decent thing. And then you leave the conversation without frustration about human nature.
You leave the conversation without feeling like, Your values have been undermined in some fundamental way.
You don't leave the conversation with despair about the future.
You just say, hey, you know, I gave up my best shot at this person, and they turned out to be kind of nuts.
So, what are you going to do?
And that's been the way that I've terminated relationships in my life.
And I've got to tell you, I mean, I'm not trying to preach you anything that I haven't done.
It works. It works.
Try and treat people as positively as possible.
Maintain that positivity.
And when you're done, you're done.
And you know it, and you end the conversation.
It doesn't affect your cynicism.
It doesn't make you cynical. It doesn't affect your joy in philosophy or truth.
You just say, well, this person's not ready yet.
They may never be ready. They've turned against the truth, but they're not going to turn me against the truth.
Because it's the virus that other people are trying to spread.
Why would you want to give somebody that kind of power and control over you?
Why would you want to give somebody the power and control to make you feel hostile or negative or bitter or frustrated?
God, don't give that power away.
That's your steering wheel.
That's your rudder. Those are your sails.
Your emotional integrity is your greatest treasure.
I guess other than your intellectual integrity from whence it flows, but Don't hand out the power of irritation to other people.
Don't just sit there and say, well, anybody who wants to get this big red button on my forehead and anyone who wants to come along and push it and make me irritated is going to be able to come along and push it and make me feel irritated and then feel that somehow the world is bad.
Well, you're just putting yourself out there and saying, push this button and watch me dance.
Don't do that. Thank you so much.
I've got to tell you, I had a nice donation this morning.
I absolutely appreciate it.
It could not have come at a better time.
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