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May 4, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:42
745 Clarity - Mythology Part 3

Clearing up some loose ends...

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Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's 7.30. My God, it's early in the morning.
Just came back from milking the cows and plowing the back 40.
I've just had a really tough time unwinding after the podcast from last night, which was quite an effort.
So I thought I'd start with somebody who did a very funny...
I think it's very funny...
There's some suggestion, of course, about organizing this plethora of podcasts, which I think is an entirely appropriate thing, and I've done some technical stuff to create a way of reviewing the podcasts and looking at them through different categories and so on.
But this person gave an example which I think is just brilliant.
So he says, you know, we should have, it's like a spreadsheet, right?
It should have number, title, date, categories, description, and subjects.
Number, 8019, title, the letter G. Date, categories, philosophy, ethics, alphabet, description, G is for happiness, subjects.
The history of the Latin alphabet, the history of the English alphabet, Steph's favorite ice cream, the history of words that start with the letter G. How G? It relates to happiness.
Steph's take on the G-spot.
Oh, a movie review about Amelie.
Historical facts about G in Devanagari.
A request for donations.
I don't think I'm quite that consistent, but that's pretty damn funny, if you don't mind me saying so.
And I'd also like to say, you know, eye contact.
Thank you so much. I had the biggest single donation that I have received since I started.
I received this morning, and it just sends me up like a rocket.
I just can't tell you how wonderful it is.
Not that this lets you off the hook.
You, you, you there. Don't turn your head away from me.
You, the Mr. Consuming Without Producing.
And I've sort of thought, why is it that I don't charge and ask for donations?
And I sort of figured out, at least this is sort of the motive that works for me and I think is true.
I just don't want to take away the pleasure of you doing this voluntarily, which is a lot more pleasurable than...
Kind of having to pay sort of upfront or having to pay.
So I think that the voluntary donations, if you do it, I mean, the glow that you will get from it, not from me, but from yourself, is something that I wouldn't want to take away from you.
So thank you so much to the donator from this morning.
I have this habit. Here's more information than you ever wanted to know about me.
I have this habit.
If I wake up at night to pee, or actually what happens is I wake up and then it's like, oh, I guess I could pee, right?
So I sort of wake up and go to pee.
I'm still prior to the enlargement of the prostate that occurs, apparently.
I can't wait for that.
Sleeping in diapers, it's going to be actually kind of nice again.
But... Every night, if this happens, I get up to pee, and it's most nights.
I'm like, don't go to the computer.
Don't check on donations. Don't go to the computer.
Don't check on reviews. Don't go to the computer.
Don't look at the board! This is a tip for those who may have light sleep, and I have light sleep from time to time.
Don't expose yourself to any light.
Don't turn on the light when you go to the bathroom.
Just pee and pray. And so every night I have this thing if I get up.
It's like, oh, I really shouldn't go to the computer.
It's like, but I want to see.
I want to see if anyone's posted a review of a podcast or if anybody has sent me any money and this kind of stuff, right?
Especially now that I'm quitting my job, it's all become rather slightly more important than it did before.
I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.
So, I did this last night when I woke up at around, I guess this morning, it was around 6 o'clock.
And normally, well, the problem with 6 o'clock is it's a tough time to wake up.
Because it's tough to get back. It's 2 or 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, whatever, I get back to sleep.
But 6 o'clock is just too close to getting up, so it's tough to get back to sleep.
So then I did every conceivable thing that I could do, which would guarantee that I would not get back to sleep, right?
So I went to the computer, and normally I'm sort of leading up against the computer, checking my email, checking the board, and I'm squinting because I don't want my eyes to absorb too much light because it'll make it tough to go back to sleep, right?
So, of course, I checked my email at...
Six o'clock this morning, actually by quarter to six, and I saw this just gigantic, biggest ever monster donation, which again, it's just too great for words.
And then I was like, oh, that's great!
So I did my donation dance, which one day perhaps I'll show you.
Not in the car, but...
And so I did my Shugi Shugi donation dance and then I went back to bed and I thought, oh, okay, well, I was listening to the podcast I did yesterday, which just left me shaky for hours and with a light sleep.
And so, like, what could I do that would be conceivably worse in terms of trying to get back to sleep?
Check email, see a monstrous donation, and then listen to my podcast about social fictions, convincing fictions, which I did yesterday, which was quite an effort, let me tell you.
So, thank you, and if you're going to send me donations, don't send them in the middle of the night.
No, I'm just kidding. I don't care when.
I'll master that temptation.
Ha ha! I'm also, I mean, the donations, this is not a nag about donations, just to let you know what my mind works with.
I mean, donations and board postings and emails, of course, is my pulse of the nation, right?
It's my pulse of the Freedom Aid Radio nation of Ancapistan Central, I would like to say, of the capital of Ancapistan, if we may be so bold.
So I obsessively check the feedback because I want to make sure that I'm not going too fast, I'm not going too slow, I'm not making too many jokes, I'm not making too many tangents, that it's working for people, that it's clicking for people, that people want to keep listening, because this conversation is everything for me.
It's everything. I'll be perfectly blunt and right out there.
This conversation, other than my relationship with my wife, this conversation is the most important thing.
And of course, my conversation, my relationship with my wife, It's a direct outgrowth of this conversation.
So, this is the most important thing.
The most important thing that I could conceivably be doing.
And thank heavens for the internet.
This stuff will be around for centuries.
So, I wanted to clear up some things from yesterday.
I sort of put some additional clarifications in place because it was kind of a monster splurt and not in the fun money shot kind.
So... Oh, I was watching House the other day and he's like, well, I've got to get back to my computer.
There's a lot of porn piling up on the internet.
That stuff doesn't download itself, you know.
It's a pretty funny show at times.
Anyway, so... The fictional characters that I was talking about yesterday, and I was not...
I sort of wanted to clarify because that was sort of the first layer, and let me just go one layer deeper in this.
I wasn't sort of going to get it all in 40 minutes, 40-odd minutes, about 12 minutes without jokes and tangents.
The fictional characters that people say you should obey, I use the metaphor of a book that I wrote.
a book that I wrote.
But it's really not even that.
That sort of worked in with the pitching the screenplay thing, but it's not an accurate metaphor.
I think that was sort of a bridge metaphor.
Because what really happens with convincing fictions, like the ethics of democracy, whatever, right?
What happens with convincing fictions is that it's not a story that the person who's telling you wrote. ...
So, the metaphor that we talked about in the last podcast was, if you don't obey the fictional character in my book, then that fictional character will disapprove of you, and hey, don't blame me, I'm just the messenger.
I didn't invent these rules, this is just what the story says.
And I think that was a good start, and I think that we can see the ludicrousness of that approach.
Now, the ludicrousness...
Righty, let's switch to Linux.
Okay, the ludicrousness of that approach is pretty clear, but it becomes even more ludicrous when you understand that the reality of these convincing fictions in society is the following.
The truth is not, if you don't obey this fictional character in my book, he will disapprove of you.
The truth is, if you don't obey this fictional character in some book I read, in some book I read, that will be bad.
You will incur the displeasure of this fictional character.
But it's not even a book that...
Person wrote? It'd be like, I don't know, let's date ourselves.
Colonel Jessup, I think his name was, in the movie A Few Good Men.
Which is an excellent false self-confrontation movie.
If you want to sort of view it that way, it's well worth having a look at it from that standpoint.
The bluster and intimidation of the false self, but the fundamental illogic of the false self and the rage when confronted with that.
But Colonel Jessup, it would be like me saying, you must obey me, otherwise Colonel Jessup, in A Few Good Men, the movie, will be upset with you.
It's one thing to say you must obey my fictional character.
But what sheer, arrogant, deranged, satanic madness!
What unbelievable, unholy, gassy balls does it take to say, you must obey me, otherwise some fictional character in a book I read sometime will disapprove of you.
When it's not even your character.
Now, of course, they have to say it's a character in someone else's book, because that gives it a documentary aspect to it, but given that it's not a documentary, but fiction.
I saw a movie once, and can you imagine saying this to your kid?
kid I saw a movie once and the lead character would really disapprove of your actions so you'd better stop doing them oh oh the horror the madness Oh, my God.
Oh, these parents, these teachers, these educators, these politicians, these priests, these mad men and mad women.
Do you see what an asylum we live in?
Do you see?
And I swear they will look back in the future and say, they were all barking mad.
The future, high future, will look back on us the way that we look back upon those medieval villages which contracted mass hysteria and danced themselves into death.
St. Vitus Dance, it was called.
They just started dancing because they were all hysterical and mad and living in a crazy fantasy world of plague and religion.
And they all just began dancing and dancing and they would dance until they died.
or collapsed with exhaustion, or fainted, or whatever.
We look upon them with a mixture of pity, and horror, and wonder, and jaw-dropping amazement at what can happen to the human soul under high pressure of fantasy.
And they will look back upon us.
And they will look back not upon you and I, who I think will be the voices of reason that will echo through the future, but they will look back upon us as a society, as a culture, and just say, my God, this is an extraordinary lesson in a worldwide asylum.
And now the other point of clarification that I wanted to make was with regards to these primary characters, right?
The protagonists. The protagonist in this fiction, in this book that I read, will really disapprove of you if you don't obey me.
And really, you're just obeying the character in this book.
And you know it's a character in a book because you can't talk to him, right?
I mean, that's how you know, right?
They obey God. Okay, well, I'll go and pray to God.
I don't need to come back to you, right?
See? I don't have someone who talks.
If I want to talk to my wife, I don't hire someone and say, can you say this to my wife?
And then she doesn't hire someone to give me a reply, which then is handed to three other people who then read it to me when they have time, if they have time.
I mean, that's not a very productive way to have a relationship.
And that's how you know the characters are fictionals.
You can't talk to them directly. Can I talk to the government?
No. Can I talk to democracy?
Can I talk to the majority?
Can I talk to a crowd?
I guess I could talk to a crowd, but I'm not really talking.
I'm just talking at a bunch of people.
Appropriate, I guess. And that's how you know that they're fictional characters.
You can't talk to them. I can't talk to Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men.
I can't talk to Atticus Finch because it's a fictional character.
I was thinking about this this morning as my early morning metaphor brain was churning away and dragging me back from the pit of sleep.
This is how fundamentally, ridiculously embedded this sort of truth and virtue thing is in my personality when I was a teenager, and I'm sure it comes as no shock to those who have followed my Lord of the Rings references, I was a dungeon master and a player of Dungeons& Dragons.
Loved it. Loved it.
And great, great, great imagination exercise.
And great for storytelling, right?
I mean, if you're a dungeon master, you're a storyteller with gambling, right?
Dungeons and Dragons is a kind of gambling, right?
It's not dice.
I had a paladin, and for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, who had dates...
You play this character in an imaginary world, and you advance that character through a variety of...
And there's no boards, right?
You exist entirely within language and graph paper and so on.
And somebody says, you know, there's a town ahead of you.
There's a town to the right. One town is this one.
Where do you want to go?
What do you want to do? And everyone you interact with is this amazing kind of storytelling that can occur in Dungeons& Dragons.
And it's a hearkening back to a time when...
Oh, excuse me. When storytelling was the primary form of entertainment and involvement in storytelling was a primary form of entertainment and so it combines ancient entertainment with gambling and it's very addictive but not necessarily in a bad way.
I mean it can be bad I guess but I had this character who was a paladin.
A paladin is somebody whose moral alignment, morality is important to Dungeons& Dragons, and there are nine moral alignments.
Lawful good, lawful neutral, lawful evil.
So lawful good is somebody who's into rules and is virtuous.
Somebody who's lawful evil is somebody who's into rules, but like fascism, like lots of rules, but they're kind of evil.
And then there's neutral good, neutral, and then neutral evil, and then chaotic good, chaotic, and chaotic evil.
And I was lawful good guy, and I played this paladin named Argoth for a couple of years, I think about two years.
And, you know, a virtuous holy warrior for truth and blah blah blah.
And of course I worship the god of reason.
It's all prefigured in my past.
Everything that I've come to now is all laid out in the past.
So it'd be kind of like...
I don't know, like I come over to your house and I say...
My paladin, whose name was Argoth, A-R-G-O-T-H, who lives on occasionally when I play fantasy role-playing games that I will still use the same name...
But, like the computer ones.
But, Aragoth.
Let me come over to your house and you say, geez, you know, I'm some woman.
I come over to your house and you say, oh, I just can't meet a good guy.
And you think, well, I've got this guy named Aragoth that you should really date.
I mean, that would be...
He's virtuous. What does he do?
He does all these good things and blah, blah, blah, right?
But who shows up to dinner, right?
I mean, that's always the question.
So, if I have a story about my lawful, good paladin knight, who does all these good things, then the central character, and I touched on this yesterday, but I'll sort of try and be more explicit, believe it or not.
The central character in my story is not Argoth, but Virtue.
So when I was saying yesterday that I have this character named Bob, who's really a good guy, then clearly what I am talking about is not Bob, but then clearly what I am talking about is not Bob, but Thank you.
The moral of every story is virtue.
The moral of every single story is virtue.
There's a fundamental definition Ground-shattering thing to really wrap your head around.
The fundamental story, the fundamental character is always, always, always, always and forever about virtue.
If I say, I have this character named Argoth who is really good, then what I'm trying to communicate to you is virtue.
Not Argoth. If I have a character named Anti-Argoth, who is really bad, then I'm still trying to communicate to you about virtue.
If I have a great character named Who smokes and I have a great character, a very moral character who doesn't smoke and I have a very evil character who does smoke.
It's really not about smoking.
The smoking is a metaphorical plug for the virtue or the vice.
So in my own novels...
The central characters are always virtue, good and evil, right and wrong.
Everyone else is just an argument for or against.
I hope to make them compelling and realistic and fleshed out arguments.
Art gets past the false self in the way that humor also and tangents and ranting gets past the false self.
My whole goal is to slip past the net of the false self and to have a chat with your true self, my true self to your true self, and we can only do that by distracting the false self with entertainment and deadly serious humor.
Last night, just by the by, Christina and I had a conversation.
She's feeling a bit overwhelmed by what it is that I'm doing.
This whole save the world kick that I'm on, right?
And she's taking things sort of very seriously.
Like, I'm going to spend a couple of weeks just figuring out what I want to do.
She's taking this very seriously.
This is so serious.
This is so important what it is that you're doing.
It's holy. You've got to take it very seriously.
And I said that that is not true.
At least it's not all true.
At least not to me.
Yes, what we're doing is deadly serious.
And yes, it is holy. If we can reclaim the word.
But to take it seriously would be to kill it in the crib.
I can't do that.
I can't get the conversation out to the people I need to get it out to.
Because people abuse others with the moral fiction of morality, with this character called good and this character called evil.
And they are very, very serious.
About their infliction of fictional morality.
So I can't take that approach.
That approach is owned by bad people.
I can't take that approach. I have to take a different approach.
Which is self-mockery.
Which is humor.
Which is tangents. Laughter.
Emotional expostulation.
None of which is fake, but it's not accidental that...
I do all the shiny stuff to distract your false self so that you and I can have a conversation in a little tent.
Shield it. From self-attack, right?
Throw the shiny stuff over into the corner of the false self dots after it.
You and I can have a serious chat one-on-one while your false self stays amused.
Your false self is a scar tissue of inflicted false morality.
So if at any point I seem to be inflicting morality upon you, your false self would rear up and attack me, and we would lose this conversation.
You would. I wouldn't, but you would.
I have to be enormously respectful of the false self that we all have.
And if I appear to be imposing morality, taking it enormously seriously and inflicting it on people, that is way too close to the original scar tissue that produces the false self.
conformity not to just other people's opinions but to the fundamental fiction of right and wrong in the world.
Fundamental character in the Bible is not Jesus or God, but virtue.
Okay.
And we know that because it would not be the Bible if God or Jesus were considered to be evil.
It would be the anti-Bible, the anti-Christ handbook or whatever.
The one thing that you can't take away from the Bible and have it still be the Bible is the virtue of the Bible as it's considered.
word.
So the real character, the real fiction...
That all other protagonists, antagonists, plot devices, expostulations, descriptions of everything, the fundamental character, the fundamental fiction, the fundamental mythology, is right and wrong.
So it's not that people say, my fictional character will disapprove of you, it's a fictional character will disapprove of you.
you.
And the fictional character is always virtue.
Always and forever a virtue.
It's a good Will Hunting, right?
I don't know what Will, I guess his name was, right?
So good will hunting.
He has these bitter, angry, funny defenses, this Will fellow, Matt Damon's character.
And vulnerability and authenticity is what is praised in the movie, right?
The cockiness of his false self is the scar tissue of him thinking that his abuse was his fault.
His abuse by his parents was his fault.
And that's what the Robin Williams character, what Robin Williams character had to break through. . what Robin Williams character had to break through. .
Now, the fiction, of course, that it's one flood of tears and you get the girl and everything's great.
But that's okay. But the character is not Will.
The fundamental character, the protagonist, is not Will.
The protagonist is virtue.
And the virtue is honesty.
And we could do this for a million stories.
Thank you.
A million stories.
The fundamental virtue that is in the Bible is faith.
You wouldn't need faith if God were virtuous.
This is the secret message of the Bible that's blindingly obvious to people with the eyes to see, or with eyes, who just open them and crack them a little.
You need faith because God is evil by any rational standard.
You need faith because Jesus is psychotic by any rational standard.
I am the Son of God!
I was born of a virgin.
I can walk on water.
Give me that water, I'll make you some wine.
I mean, it's like madness, right?
I can heal the sick and drive pigs into the ocean.
Psychotic. Delusions of grandeur, narcissistic, megalomania, madness.
So, that's what...
The message of the Bible is.
The fundamental character in the Bible is the virtue they call faith.
Belief, not in the absence of evidence.
You can believe that there's a planet orbiting beyond Jupiter that we can just never see.
There's no evidence. You can believe that.
There's no evidence for it.
It's not impossible.
Tertullian's maxim, it is true because it is impossible.
I believe because it is impossible.
That's faith. Faith is the belief in the, not in the absence of evidence, but in evidence of the direct opposite.
Not only is there no evidence that God exists, and there's every piece and shred of evidence, logically, rationally, and empirically, that there's no such conceivable being as a God, but even if you believe that God does exist and you're a Christian, there is direct evidence that God is stone evil, genocidal, murderous, petty, vain, jealous. God as a fictional character must be evil for religion to work, because otherwise you wouldn't need faith.
Then it would be, I believe, because...
And the priests don't want it because they don't want evidence.
The central character in the Bible is not God, and faith is the word that is used, which simply means enslavement to evil.
Suspension of judgment in the face of direct moral evidence.
Belief in the opposite of morality as if it is morality.
healthy.
Belief that a genocidal, murderous God who approves slavery, rape, and child abuse is the highest conceivable virtuous being.
With direct evidence of the contrary, the Bible, religion as a whole, would never work if God were virtuous.
Because if you worship God because God is virtuous, then what it says is that your worship must be derived from the personal virtue of the object of your worship.
I only love God because God is good.
But that would translate to the priests.
And the priests are not good.
Priests are highly corrupt individuals.
So highly corrupt individuals would not bother creating a fantasy that says you must love someone because they are good because they're not good.
good.
How would it serve them?
It would drive people away from them.
You see how this applies, this protagonist theory.
Religion doesn't work if God is good.
Religion would never be invented as a story if God was good.
There is no God that I've ever read of that could be remotely classified as virtuous.
What's the point? The whole point is to get you to worship vice So that you won't question the priests who are evil.
Infliction of false moralities on children is worse than breaking their legs.
Breaking their legs, they've been abused, it hurts, they feel it, they get fixed.
They avoid in the future.
Inflicting false moralities on children corrupts them for the rest of their natural born lives.
And that's why, I mean, people are sort of baffled, right?
God is evil by any rational standards.
So why would God be evil?
Why wouldn't they just make God good?
Well, that's not the point. The point of religion is to get you to worship falsehood, corruption, and evil.
And so they give you a God clearly described as purely evil.
No question. A human being did what God did.
Maybe the man would be reviled beyond all of the mass murderers in history, all of the most satanic Nazi worshipping gulag creating abusers in history.
And so the central character is you, we tell you the evidence is and we tell you openly and explicitly that God is evil.
And that you must worship Him.
And that it is a virtue to worship God, though God is clearly and unequivocally described as stone evil, as is Jesus.
I mean, the central character in the Bible is the virtue, and the virtue is enslavement and worship of evil.
And that's why the story is invented.
How the hell is evil supposed to get goodies and worship and love from people?
Certainly it can't get it by saying, love virtue, because then you will revile and shun evil.
So they must say, love evil.
Love evil. That is the central character in the Bible.
Obedience to evil. Faith.
Everything is just a means, right?
It's all earthly, right?
It's got nothing to do with God.
The central theme of the Bible is worship bad people.
So they have to have a bad character called God that you're supposed to worship without question.
But that's why the story is invented.
It's a parasitism, right?
It's like The story clamps on your face like that taily handy thing in Alien and sticks its tube into your belly and lays a baby which then kills you.
That's why that metaphor is so horrifying because that's what goes on in this realm.
The government is clearly immoral.
The metaphor of the military.
The story called the military. The central character is faith.
It's a belief in the virtue of the military despite all evidence to the contrary.
Democracy. Belief in the virtue of the majority despite all evidence to the contrary.
government.
Belief in the virtue of violence, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The message is always belief in the opposite, not in the absence of evidence, belief in the opposite, in direct contradictory evidence.
Belief not in the absence of knowledge, but in the opposite of knowledge.
Belief not in the absence of truth, but in the opposite of truth.
That is the moral.
Obedience, enslavement, faith, subjugation to corruption, subjugation to falsehood, subjugation to evil, is the constant and insistent tale, endless tale, of all of these, quote, social virtues.
Social stories.
The stories are invented to steal souls.
The stories are invented to invert values.
The stories are parasitical lubricants.
Like when a mosquito sticks its proboscis in you to drink your blood, it anesthetizes your skin with its saliva, which causes the itch.
No, the story is the anesthetic.
And the story always gives contradictory information and then demands that you believe the opposite.
It gives you X and it says you must believe the opposite of X. This is the constant, constant social fiction that's in the world.
I remember I was in the movie Black Hawk Down.
Some gun-toting dipshit says, you know, it's only about the guy next to you.
It's all about the guy next to you.
Yeah, the philosophical soldier is another myth.
Go talk to some of these people sometimes.
They're just nuts. The philosopher with a gun is a constant myth in society.
The wise cop, the noble soldier.
What is it about the guy next to you who That's insane. The guy next to you is only in danger because you're all willing to go to Somalia and shoot people because someone tells you to.
It's not about the guy next to you.
I mean, what a load of madness.
But it's necessary madness.
Necessary for the rulers, right?
necessary for those in power.
But the central mythology, the central purpose of mythology is always belief to the opposite of evidence.
Belief in the opposite of evidence. And once they have that inflicted on, once they've inflicted that axiom on you, why then, they can do anything they want.
They can do anything they want.
That is complete latitude. So if by chance they do something good, you're like, well, that's great because, you know, I worship them so they're doing good things.
That's great. And then if they choose to do evil, then that's no problem because you have to believe without any evidence in good or, you know, despite the evidence for evil is more accumulation of the reason for obedience.
All roads lead to the cage.
Anywhere you go, you're behind bars.
People act good. People act well.
Fantastic. They're good.
If people act badly, if people are evil, then all the better.
Now you must believe more strongly in their virtue.
All roads lead to enslavement.
Complete latitude. Complete freedom.
For the rulers. And complete enslavement for those they rule.
And the rulers here, I mean, it's not a class.
It's parents and priests and politicians and so on.
Policemen.
Soldiers.
So, the sin is always disobedience, right?
Right?
The virtue is always obedience to evil, and the sin is always disobedience.
This is why Lucifer is, to many people, quite a sympathetic character.
And the central mythology, the central character in the mythology is obedience to the opposite of evidence.
Which benefits corrupt and contradictory people.
Benefits, more than benefits, it enables them to exist.
Our obedience creates corruption.
We get lied to, for sure, and that's a horrible and difficult thing.
But it's our obedience that creates the rulers.
The rulers are... I mean, not the political ones directly, because the political ones have a gun to our necks.
But it's even our belief in the virtue of that that creates it.
I mean, we are the makers of God.
We are the makers of government through our obedience.
And it's time to stop.
It's time to stop as a species.
We've just got to give it up.
We've got to grow up.
We've got to give it up. Thank you so, so much for listening.
Thank you again, G, for an astoundingly kind and wonderful and generous and benevolent and beneficial and beneficent, munificent donation.
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