All Episodes
Previous Next
April 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:20
721 The Blame Throwers
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
Again, sorry for the poor video quality for those who are ooh-vontubing it, but I am using a substitute notebook that's having even more trouble recording even low-quality video than my other notebook.
Not to worry, not to fret, not to fuss.
We are almost done, and then we shall be at Don La Studio.
Well, in my study for...
The future podcasts.
I don't imagine I'll be doing a whole lot of them on the road anymore since I would be on the road for long.
Actually, it's just another week. Another week and a day and a Monday.
So, it's time to pick on Sue, and I do this because I have an enormous amount of respect for whatever that means to her or to you.
I have an enormous amount of respect for the way that this woman stayed in the conversation.
Again, for the YouTuber, sorry, you may have to go back and listen to a podcast, the Ask a Therapist number 15, I think it is, Anatomy of a Breakup.
But this will be useful even if you haven't heard it, because...
This woman who was criticized to some degree, as is always the case when any of us submit to an evaluation, and she didn't exactly submit to it, but listened through to the end anyway, and have a good deal of respect.
This is a very, very intelligent woman who's staying in a conversation that is challenging, that is...
Pushing her right up against her defenses, family history, and so on.
And she's like heroically staying in there and staying in this conversation, which I just think is incredibly brave and very big-hearted and warm-spirited and so on.
I know it's a chilly area when we begin to really confront our defenses, but good for you for staying in the conversation.
Now, you posted something that was very interesting.
And it's very natural.
It's nothing to feel ashamed about.
Just talk about it with your doctor.
But you posted that it was Bob.
Let's say boyfriend Bob, girlfriend Susie.
I think that's what it was. Sue.
Bob and Sue. You said that...
You did things that were wrong in the relationship.
Fantastic. That's how you avoid repeating these kinds of mistakes.
And then the second thing you said was that Bob could have been more tactful.
Now, full disclosure, I have been, on occasion, accused of a lack of tact in my conversations with people.
And I have mixed feelings about it.
So, for me, it's a thorny issue.
I'll try and be as clear as I can and let you know where I feel hiccups in my instincts.
But when...
People have talked to me in the past about being tactful.
For me, it's a reversal of cause and effect, and I don't think it actually helps that much, but you can let me know what you think of this.
In the past, when someone is doing something that I think is wrong, and I tell them that I think that they're doing something that is wrong, Then they get defensive and they act in a poor manner or act in an immature or destructive manner.
It's not like I've never done it in my life, but we're just talking about this one side of things.
My side! And then what happens is the person who I criticized becomes defensive and angry and then they say, yes, I was defensive and angry, but you could have been more tactful.
It's like blame, and we're talking legitimate blame, not sort of defensive, aggressive, undermining, humiliating blame, but blame, you know.
If you got drunk and crashed a car, who's to blame for crashing the car?
Why, you are. Yes, maybe someone cut you off and this and that, maybe it was icy, but you crashed the car and you were drunk.
Blame is not that convoluted in many, many areas.
And... For me, when somebody says, well, I got defensive, yes, and that was wrong, but it was also wrong, and you could have been more tactful.
I feel a slithering kind of intertwining of independent entities that I think is closer to fusion or closer to a boundary-less merging of two personalities,
and I don't think is... I strongly believe, and not arbitrarily, that we are in control of our own actions.
Determinism aside, just for the while.
The mutant gene called compatibilism aside, just for the duration.
I'm going to go with the theory, and it's not a radical theory in most circles, and it is not a theory without empirical evidence.
I'm going to go with the radical theory that each of us is responsible For his or her own actions.
I can't, from here, like just looking through the YouTube screen, I can't make you scratch your ear.
Do it! Do it! Do it!
I can't make you cross your legs.
I can't make you insult someone.
I can't make you curse someone out.
I can't make you hit a child.
I can't make you bitch slap a dog.
I can't make you do any of these things.
You are in complete control of your behavior, just as I... I'm in complete control of my behavior.
So that's the basic.
That's the basic. There is ample, ample, ample, ample, ample, endless scientific evidence of this.
Insofar as my vocal cords, my body, my neurochemical system, my biology as a whole is controlled, Through my brain.
And my brain sits in my skull and has direct wetware connections to my spinal cord and my nervous system, and that is how I get done what I need to get done.
So, even if you are deterministic, for sure only my brain can affect my behavior directly.
Your brain has no tendrils into my nervous system.
I know this sounds like annoyingly simple, but it's important to look at this as not just being an opinion.
It's not just something I'm sort of saying, we all have perfect control over our own destinies because I heard it in the Journey song.
There are no tendrils, no nervous capillaries or neurons that flow between your brain and my nervous system.
So you... Have no direct control over my actions.
And I have no direct control over your actions.
I have no indirect control over your actions.
I can offer you benefits and punishments if I want.
Like I can say, give me your wallet or I'll shoot you in the toe.
And then you can choose one.
But you still have to make the choice whether you want to get shot in the toe.
I can say, come to work and tongue lick my Volvo clean, which sounds less filthy than it is.
And I'll pay you a million dollars and then you can make that choice.
So I can offer you punishments and I can offer you incentives.
But I still can't reach inside your skull and directly manipulate your body, your vocal cords or anything like that.
So that is a basic physical, biological, scientific fact.
And we always have to start with the facts.
Because otherwise everything is mere opinion and we argue back and forth.
Anyway, the wind blows.
By the way, go see We Will Rock You.
It's a lot of fun. So in that case, since we each control our own behavior, it simplifies conflicts quite a bit.
It simplifies conflicts quite a bit when we remember that we do not control other people's behavior.
And let me expound and expand upon this, albeit relative.
It's brief. It's brief in geological time.
That's the way to look at it.
In the span of the universe, each podcast is barely a sliver of a subatomic particle.
In the course of your day, though, it's a fair chunk.
It's the philosophy commute that we do together.
So, given that...
Only I can control my own behavior and only you can control your behavior.
Let's say that you and I get into an interaction where I say, you did something wrong and you get defensive and call me a jerk.
And then I say, you're only compounding your wrong by calling me a jerk.
And then you say, yes, I should not have called you a jerk but you should not have provoked me.
You should have been more tactful.
Let's break that down so that we look at how any of these romantic or relationship fights are scientifically supported by evidence, by truth, by facts, by reality, by logic.
Because how else are we going to resolve conflicts between us?
Make stuff up? Ask the invisible elves?
No. We look at the facts.
So, if I say, you did something wrong...
Let's just say you were really rude to a waiter.
You told the waiter that his service was shit, that he was a jerk.
I mean, just making stuff up.
But let's just say you did that.
And I said, that wasn't nice, and I can't really respect that behavior.
And then you get angry and say, well, you're such a pussy, you're such a goddamn pushover, you'd let people serve you steaming shit on a plate, and you'd lick it up and eat it, just like your mommy told you to.
And you'd love it. And you'd say you'd love it and you'd sing a song about how much you loved it.
I'm not painting you. This has nothing to do with Sue.
This is just a sort of extreme example.
And then I say, look, you telling me that I would eat shit and sing a song because my mother told me to about how much I love it because I'm such a spineless pussy is now insulting me, which is an example of the kind of behavior that I think is deplorable and that I don't accept or like.
And then you sort of catch yourself and say, well, okay, maybe I went too far.
You say to yourself, say, okay, well, yes, I apologize for calling you a mother-ordered song or sing-song or appraiser of poo-poo, but you really caught me by surprise.
I felt really attacked.
You could have been a whole lot more diplomatic or even a little bit more diplomatic and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Now, let's break down this interaction.
So first you insult a waiter and I say, I don't think that is good behavior.
You shouldn't do that.
Or to say, I don't think that's good behavior.
I don't respect or accept that.
Now, notice that I'm not blaming the waiter for your behavior.
I'm not saying that...
I'm not invested in you changing your behavior.
I'm simply pointing out that that is bad behavior, which I do not accept.
I'm not trying to force you to change.
I'm not blaming anyone but you for your behavior.
And I am not invested in changing your behavior.
I'm simply pointing something out, which is that that's bad behavior and I don't accept it.
And then you call me sing-song-and-toady-face-pussy-wussy-whatever, and I say, but this is even worse.
Now you're completely going over the top, and I am no longer at all enjoying this interaction, and I don't accept that behavior.
I accept that behavior even less.
And then you catch yourself, and you say, ah, I went too far.
But you should have been more tactful.
Now, the moment that you say you should have been more tactful, that I was defensive because you were not being tactful or diplomatic, now you are blaming somebody else for causing your behavior.
So if I said, well, you shouldn't have insulted the waiter, and then you say, well, the waiter shouldn't have looked at me funny and bought me cold food.
Then you're saying, I am not causally responsible for my behavior, but another human being is causally responsible for my behavior.
And then if you say...
That you, Steph, should have been more diplomatic.
Then you're saying that you attacked me because of my behavior.
I reached into your brain, I flipped open the top of your skull, and I flipped the switch, which caused you to act completely and totally under my control.
Which is not true.
And which is fundamentally, scientifically, biologically, in reality, it's not true.
It's not, not, not true.
And so when I say, well, this behavior is completely unacceptable and I don't accept that I caused your behavior, and then you say, well, now you're making me angry because you're rejecting my apology, Then all I'm doing here is I'm stating facts.
I don't think that's good behavior, and I don't accept or respect that behavior.
I'm just stating a fact. I'm just stating a fact.
If you then say, well, I snarled at you because you attacked me, and now I'm getting angry because you are rejecting my apology, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then I say, well, I didn't actually hear an apology.
What I did hear was that you shouldn't have done it, but it was my fault for provoking you.
Which is not really an apology, right?
You say, oh, you just can't accept apologies.
You're so high and mighty.
You're so self-righteous.
I said I was sorry. What more do you want, damn it?
Whatever, right? You begin to sort of get...
I'm not saying it's nothing to do with Sue.
I'm just pointing out an extremity of an interaction that can very easily occur when you don't take responsibility for what it is that you're doing.
And this is, of course, this slide...
Into hell is exactly why everything from breakups to wars occur.
When people do not take responsibility for their own actions, they blame others as the causal agents for their actions and give themselves free reign to be abusive or hostile or negative or critical or distant or whatever, uninvolved, unengaged, uncommitted, And it's not their choice, you see.
It's because the other person is doing what they're doing.
And that eliminates their choice.
And they are merely reacting to what the other person is doing with no conscious control.
Or unconscious control.
No control at all over their behavior.
So they actually have the volition and moral responsibility of a wall socket.
You stick a fork into a wall socket, it's going to shock you.
And what these kind of people do, again, not putting Sue in this category, but what these kinds of people do is they act badly, and then if caught and confronted, they say, I shouldn't have done that, but you shouldn't have provoked me.
Like, we're both inhabiting the same body, and we've both punched ourselves, and we both shouldn't do that.
They can't take responsibility solely and totally and completely for themselves and say, I should not have done that.
End of sentence.
There's no period after accepting responsibility with these people.
They say, I acted badly, but you provoked me.
And you say, well, I don't accept that I provoked you.
I don't accept that I provoked you.
Well, you should have said it more nicely.
You should have said it in a more positive and friendly way.
Was I abusive? Was I hostile?
Was I derogatory? Did I call you names?
No, but there was something in your tone that was critical and negative.
And that was what I reacted to.
But it is not a universally preferable behavior.
It is not a moral or logical set of behaviors to say that I was responding...
If you say to me, well, Steph, I was responding to a tone that you had, and that's why I became hostile.
Because there's no...
This is a turtles all the way down situation.
This is a problem of infinite regression.
So if you say, Steph, I attacked you because I detected a critical tone in your voice, then you're saying, I reacted to what you were doing, and therefore that dilutes the responsibility.
I'm shifting the responsibility to you for provoking me.
Well, that's fine. But the problem is that the buck never stops there if you take that on as a principle.
Because the principle that is appealed to is my actions were caused by you.
But then I can very easily say my tone was caused by how you treated the waiter.
And the waiter can easily say my attitude was caused by the restaurant owner who yelled at me earlier today.
And the restaurant owner can say mine yelling at you was caused by my hamster that bit me on the foot this morning.
And the hamster... Did you see?
It's infinite regression. There is no...
It's a place where blame can conceivably stop, where responsibility can conceivably rest in this situation.
It's an infinite regression. It's turtles all the way down.
And therefore, it's completely invalid, logically.
If you say, my behavior was provoked by others, then whoever you say you shouldn't provoke me to, whoever you say to you should not provoke me, their behavior is caused by your behavior.
So you can't ask them to change their behavior if you say your behavior was provoked by their behavior because their behavior by that very same principle is provoked by your behavior.
And asking them to change is irrational because it assumes they have responsibility independently of your behavior.
That they can make a choice independently of your behavior.
But you're saying, well, I can't make a choice independently of your behavior.
So it completely doesn't make any sense.
It's completely illogical and irrational.
And of course violates basic principles of science and biology about the sovereignty of the mind with relation to the nervous system.
So when someone criticizes you or says you should do something differently or says that you hurt them or whatever, whatever...
There is no conceivable, rational way that you can share, dilute, cross-transfer, cross-pollinate, submerge into the same tank or mix in the moral responsibility.
The moral responsibility is either yours if you acted unjustly or theirs if it is an unjust accusation of acting unjustly.
You cannot logically ever say, ever say, I did X because you did X or Y.
You just can't.
Because there is no direct biological causal relationship between anything that I do and anything that you do.
Not even a tiny, tiny shred of Now, it is true that if I stand in your face and scream myself blue, that your nervous system is going to be activated, that your ears are going to hurt and ring.
So yes, I can do things that will harm your physiology or affect your physiology.
If I give you a nice back rub, then that will give you endorphins.
So yes, absolutely.
But I still can't cause your behavior in a moral sense.
If you cover your ears because I'm yelling at you, that's not a moral action.
If you run away, that probably is a healthy self-defense reaction.
So you snap at the waiter.
I say to you, that's not behavior I can respect.
You attack me.
I say that that's behavior I respect even less.
And then you attempt to dilute the responsibility and say, well, you shouldn't have...
I've been so tactless. I know why people do it.
I know why people do it.
They do it because whenever they admitted responsibility for something in their family that they did that was wrong, they would be attacked and humiliated.
I totally get it.
I totally get it.
And that was a perfectly viable strategy for living in an abusive situation.
To never admit fault solely.
And of course, what would happen is when you're in a situation where people keep blame shifting, blame diluting, blame throwers when you're among those sorts of people, then everybody's always trying to shift all the moral responsibility to you.
So if your mom promises to take you to a movie you've been wanting to see for weeks, and then she just doesn't, just says, oh, I'm not going to do it because I'm busy.
And then you burst into tears because you're young, say, 30.
Then, of course, your mother is going to say, oh, stop being such a baby.
We'll go. So she blames you entirely for your unhappiness rather than saying, I broke my word.
And at least acknowledging that she did something wrong.
So people are always trying to shift blame on you when you're in a dysfunctional family.
People who have no selves can't accept responsibility for their actions.
Empty ghosts can't act and be responsible.
They can only react and blame others as if they have no choice.
But then of course they blame others as if those other people have a choice.
If you blame me for criticizing you tactlessly, then you're saying, Steph, you have control over your own behavior and you're responsible for it.
But you're not saying that about your own behavior.
Yes, I shouldn't have done it, but you provoked me.
So then you don't have responsibility over your behavior, but I'm supposed to have responsibility over my behavior to see what a mindfuck it is.
It's a complete mess.
And never, ever, ever, and this has nothing to do with Sue again, never get involved with people who don't get this.
Never, ever get involved with people who don't get this.
You will be mired in shit and confusion for the rest of your natural-born life, and your children will grow up as straight as strangled pretzels.
And again, nothing to do with Sue, other than she mentioned this, right?
And I thought it was a good routine to talking about this.
So I know why people do it.
It's because they've been abused. And every time that they would accept responsibility for something, they would get attacked.
I got it. I know why this occurs.
But when you do it as an adult, it may give you some instantaneous relief and a sort of temporary feeling of well-being that...
You have dodged a bullet, so to speak.
But there is a significant and monstrous price to pay for this.
It is a kind of heroin. Yeah, it'll make you feel good, or at least help you avoid pain in the short run.
But, oh dear, sweet God in heaven, does it ever cost you In the long run.
And of course, as Plato and Socrates both wondered about, do we just not act in a virtuous manner because we don't get the cost-benefit analysis down straight?
So here, I'm just going to tell you, I mean, I get the benefit.
You get to protect your family.
You get to avoid that sinking terror of being blamed for something and then being attacked.
And you may not be attacked in the current situation.
It's perfectly valid to be criticized without being attacked.
You just have to be around mature, good, decent people.
So I get why people do it, but here's the problem.
Here's the problem, though.
By never accepting responsibility, you're never able to be happy in relationships.
You're never able to take any pride in anything that you do because you have said that my behavior is caused by others.
So nothing is yours.
Nothing is your choice. Even your mistakes and your screw-ups, of which we all have near infinite amounts, they're not yours.
Your triumphs are not yours because they might have been provoked or caused by something else.
You can't have a self.
It's the only thing you give up when you attempt to do this blame delusion or blame throwing is you just lose yourself.
You don't have a self.
To grip responsibility with both hands and say that I am responsible for everything that I do is scary and painful at times.
But by God, the alternative is sheer hell on earth.
Sheer hell on earth.
The other reason...
So not only do you lack a self and can't take any pride or accept responsibility by not accepting responsibility for the things that you do...
Here's the other problem that you face, which is a very significant problem, and this also ties into our good friend Bob.
If you're into blame-throwing or blame-dilution, which is patently irrational and anti-scientific, anti-biological, what sort of people are you going to need to have in your life who will accept this?
Kind of behavior, right? Who are you going to have to have in your life?
Who will accept this?
I mean, it's not the same, but it's like hitting someone.
If you're really into hitting someone in a romantic relationship, what kind of person do you have to have around you?
Can you have around you a strong, virtuous, confident, happy person?
Well, no, of course not.
Of course not. Because the first time you even reached a hit, they're like, pfft, bye.
I'm gone. Like, I'm gone.
I'm going to charge you with attempted assault if I feel particularly vengeful but I'm sure as hell never going to be seeing you again for a moment right this is the guy on and Brother of one of the posters.
During the prostitution debate, he opened up an IM conversation with Steph.
You were a total fucking asshole.
I was like, bye. I just closed the window, blocked his IM, never spoke to him again, would never respond to any emails.
There's just nothing. Nothing to do with it.
Nothing to do with that kind of language or that kind of behavior.
There's just no way that shows up in my life.
So if you're into blame dilution, Blaming other people for your actions.
What kind of people are you going to end up with in your life?
People who don't have a self themselves or who are struggling with the issue.
And then you're going to have to substitute other things.
Like maybe you're pretty or maybe you have sex readily or something like that.
You have to substitute other things to make it valuable.
But basically you will then have...
If you want the blame thing, you get no pride, no self-esteem.
You don't exist as a human being in a very fundamental way.
Because you're just whim-based.
Because you always have an out of blaming the other person for your behavior.
Whatever you did, you'll find a way to mix it in with the other person's actions so you never have to take full responsibility.
So you don't have any standards.
You can't have any standards.
Because anything that you do can be explained by something that somebody else did.
So the price that you pay is not only to lack a self yourself, so to speak, but also you are forever chained to this hellish underworld populated solely by people who will put up with this kind of bullshit.
Other people who don't have a self, who don't have boundaries, who don't have self-respect, who don't act in a virtuous and self-loving manner.
Because if somebody tries to pull that kind of stuff with me, I just get up and leave the restaurant.
I mean, if at the end of this conversation you say, oh no, Steph, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but you shouldn't have provoked me.
I'll say, well, I don't accept that as a standard, that your behavior is dependent upon what it is that I say and do.
I certainly wasn't insulting you, I wasn't attacking you, but even if I was.
Even if I was. You still don't have the right to abuse me.
You have the right to walk away and never see me again, of course, right?
But, I mean, you're insulting me now by saying that I provoked you, that I was rude, and this and that.
So you're saying that I was doing what I consider unacceptable in you, which is being rude and abusive.
You're saying now that I was rude and abusive and that's why you were rude and abusive back.
I don't accept that as a standard.
I don't accept that if I point out bad behavior in you, that I'm attacking you.
I'm actually, I mean, if you really do want the truth, I'm being the greatest friend that you could possibly have.
If I, in a positive and encouraging and clear manner, point out misbehavior on your part, it's not because I want to humiliate you, though, of course, that's how most people use it.
It's because I don't want you to be unhappy.
And yelling at waiters is a sure way to make sure that you end up in this crappy underworld populated by empty souls who will accept this kind of blame ladling and who you will never feel close to and the relationship will be volatile and probably sexually charged but highly disappointing and frustrating in the long run and you will become embittered and you will feel that love is impossible and you will feel that connection is impossible and that human beings are corrupt and I don't want that for you.
I don't want that. I want you to have the same joy that the other, I don't know, 12 rational people in the world have.
I want you to have all of that joy.
It's a beautiful thing.
But you're not going to have it if you act in an abusive or derogatory manner or humiliate other people.
That's going to chain you to this underworld of lost dead souls who continually strike out at each other.
And get involved.
And this is why conflicts in relationships get so murky and so complicated.
You know, like, up is down, black is white.
Who's talking about what the hell is going on?
Where are we? Where did we start?
It's just this massive fog.
And the massive fog exists because people just aren't taking responsibility for their actions.
They're diluting their selves.
They're mixing up their personalities with each other, and they're using blatantly contradictory criteria, like I acted badly because of what you did, and you're fully responsible for what you did, and I'm not fully responsible for what I did.
This is complete contradiction.
It totally violates what we define here at Free Domain Radio as ethics, which is universally preferable behavior.
You can't say that somebody else is perfectly responsible for their actions and that you are not perfectly responsible for your actions.
That's a violation of causality and rationality and logic.
So, the cost is enormous.
It's temporary relief from the pain and scar tissue of an abusive history with your family or with whoever, a sibling.
It's a temporary relief from the fear of that, but it locks you in the dungeon.
It locks you in the dungeon.
If you've been raised with little light, when the light comes in, it's going to hurt your eyes.
And you can either adjust to it and go through that pain, or you can crawl deeper into the cave, deeper into hell, and live in the darkness and the cave fish and the stalagmites and the stalactites and the stinky little ponds, which is not what I want for you.
Come to the light. Come to the light.
Same thing if you get injured, right?
You can either go through the pain of physio and recover your mobility and strength, or you can avoid it and stay hunched up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
Yeah, it hurts.
It hurts to lower your defenses and to be curious, right?
To say, wow, why, oh why, did I do that?
That was a very odd thing to do, because if someone did that to me, I would say that that's totally against my standards, too.
So, why would I act in such an aggressive manner towards a poor waiter?
Even if he wasn't the best waiter in the world, why would I let my standards of behavior be lowered by somebody who was just incompetent, or even the waiter was rude, and so on?
My behavior is my behavior.
The moment I start blaming other people for my behavior, I no longer have any standards that I can follow, or must follow.
I no longer have any standards at all.
I can't take pride in anything, can't take responsibility for anything.
There's no point having philosophy because the only philosophy that I have is how can I best blame others for everything that I do that's wrong or bad.
So that problem of not taking full and complete and total responsibility for your behavior and your reactions means that you can't be curious and say, why?
Why did I do that? Why?
I mean, I was just sitting here, we're having a dinner, and suddenly I'm flaming the waiter?
Like, what the hell is going on?
Now, that curiosity about yourself and about the behavior of someone else is a wonderful thing.
I mean, that's where the real beauty and power of personal growth and integrity and virtue come from, and love and all these sorts of good things.
All of that comes from that sort of basic question where you say, why did I do that?
Now, if you have an answer, if you have an answer, which is, well, I was aggressive because the waiter was rude.
I was aggressive because you were tactless, right?
Then you're saying you have an answer.
But it's not the case.
Logically, biologically, factually, scientifically, it's not the case.
That's not why you did what you did.
And the moment you think you have an answer, it's like people saying, well, let's have the government run welfare programs.
That's the answer. It's not the answer.
But when you think you have an answer, Then you remain abysmally ignorant.
When you think you have an answer, when you don't in fact have an answer, you remain ignorant.
And so blaming other people for your behavior or diluting that gives you the illusion of an answer as to why you're doing what you're doing.
Because of what the other person did.
But it's not the real answer.
It can't be, because it's not factually based.
And you just miss every opportunity to learn about yourself, to change your behavior, to upgrade your standards, and to live a life of real joy, love, romantic togetherness, happiness, intimacy, and just a wonderful, wonderful time.
Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to donations.
▲
Export Selection