All Episodes
Previous Next
May 17, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:51
761 Instincts and Anarchy
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
Steph, we are going to take a break from talking about odd board altercations and talk about a pleasant board altercation, which is this question that's floated around for some time, and I think it's a very interesting question, which is about Malcolm Gladwell's book called Blink, which I've read and found interesting.
Not authoritative, but certainly very interesting.
And it really is around the power of our intuition, the power that our intuition has to To help us to understand things that aren't necessarily consciously available to our minds.
And I think it's a very interesting book.
And there's some aspects of it that are troubling to people.
And one gentleman on the board has posted that he doesn't like the idea of the book Blink.
And he's read a critique of it, though he hasn't read the book itself.
Which, of course, is no problem. Why would you read something that you really, really disagree with?
I mean, unless you have some doubt.
And he says, I don't like to make decisions without thinking.
I like to make decisions by thinking through things logically.
And this, of course, poses a dilemma to people who believe in this intuitive kind of thinking, and I'm certainly one of them.
It doesn't mean that your intuitions don't need to be validated by rationality, but I would certainly say that intuition is a very essential part of life, and the way that our minds work and can help us.
that we can't think through everything from first principles, and we do have to go on our gut.
And, of course, that doesn't mean not training yourself to think.
But, you know, at some point when you're an athlete and you've spent all your time working on your form and working on your content and working on this, that, and the other, at some point you do have to say, you know, I'm just going to let go and play, and I don't need to think through everything, right?
I mean, when you're a kid, you really have to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
But as you get older, you don't need to worry about that as much, of course.
Because you can just walk.
You don't have to think about it anymore.
I can walk and drive or walk and podcast or drive and podcast or whatever.
And you can do all of that because stuff's happening automatically that at the beginning you really need to concentrate on.
But letting that part of you that needs to concentrate on these things learn to do them in a more automatic fashion I think is very important.
So, in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, There are several examples about how this kind of thinking can occur, right?
So there was some art fake that somebody walked in the room and said, oh, I'm so sorry, although it was a very well-done fake.
The person who said that recognized it immediately, and this occurred without a conscious analysis.
Now, I don't think anyone's saying that, you know, somebody walks in and says, oh, I'm sorry, that's a fake, that you don't need to do anything further about it.
Well, of course you do, right?
I mean, so that's not sort of the issue or the question, but...
There are certain things that I think our minds do very, very well that occurs at the level of intuition.
I have seen this split quite a bit, and the split is often between sort of concrete people, and I don't mean that in any pejorative sense, but basically people who are like engineers or computer programmers or, you know, the people who work with very concrete things.
That they tend to focus on the methodology of logic and the power of the conscious mind and so on, and all of that is perfectly appropriate.
I think one of the things that is a root of the success of at least my initiation of this conversation is that not only do I love logic and the rigor and process of thinking logically, but also I'm a writer, I'm an artist, and a poet, so I have to rely on inspiration for those kinds of things.
You can't You can't program a computer to write a good book.
So I think from that aspect, I have a great deal of respect for the power of instinct, the power of inspiration, the richness and depth of the unconscious mind.
So I think from that aspect, once you understand how powerful and important inspiration is to the life or to the productivity of an artist...
And, you know, I was watching some American Idol a while back while they had, like, Super Tramp and Sticks Bay, and Roger Hodgkins was saying, you know, where does a song like The Logical Song come from?
Well, I don't know. It's just an inspiration that hit him.
He wrote the song. It's a beautiful song.
And then he doesn't write, he's written anything that I know of for, like, 20 years.
And the life of an artist is usually considered around 15 years.
You know, you sort of do that dire straight string.
You have some smaller successes and then one monster success, and after that...
Not so much. And sadly, this also happened with the Great Rock God's Queen.
And Sting, too. You know, 15 years of, like, heavy productivity, and then you're done.
It seems to be the case, for the most part.
I guess Santana somewhat accepted.
So... Although, yeah...
Well, anyway, I don't have to worry about that.
Let's not get sidetracked into music.
So... This aspect of what is called thinking without thinking, or having this approach to the mind, which allows you to accept your instincts as potential sources of knowledge, I think is really important.
And there is a big divide, as I mentioned, between the engineers and the artists or whatever, right?
And the... The artists look at the engineers in a sort of stereotypical fashion.
The artists look at the engineers as sort of dry propeller heads who wouldn't know the beauty of a sunset if it, you know, cried angels' tears onto their tongue, right?
And wouldn't even understand that metaphor, which I'm not claiming is a very good one.
And this is talked about in, what was it, one of Charles Dickens' novels, I can't remember where, There's this thing that's put forward.
There's a classroom, right? And they're saying, what is a horse?
Well, a horse is a quadruped.
And the teacher says, what is a horse?
And a student says, well, a horse is a quadruped.
Bleak house, I think?
The one where someone falls down a pit, which is a ridiculous plot device.
But anyway, so one kid says, the horse is a quadruped.
And the teacher says, right. And another kid says something like, well, a horse is beautiful.
Those two are very, very interesting statements.
And we're going to get into beauty at some point soon.
I'm just finishing up my notes, and we will get into beauty at some point soon.
But those are sort of very interesting questions, right?
So the person who says a horse is beautiful will look at the person who says a horse is a quadruped, an ungulate.
The horse is a quadruped and we'll say, yeah, well that's true, but so what?
That's not the point. The point is that the horse is beautiful and moves you.
The horse running in slow motion with George of the Jungle strapped to its back.
The horse is beautiful, but that's the point.
Saying the horse is a quadruped is just a dry, dull statement of fact.
Whereas, of course, the person who says a horse is a quadruped looks at the person who says a horse is beautiful and says, well, that's just like a ridiculous impression that has no rigor in it whatsoever.
Right? And if it's true, so what?
That's just true for you. What I'm saying is true for everyone.
Whereas the artist says to the person who's the biologist, well, that's true for everyone, but so what too, right?
The important thing about a horse is that it moves you.
I mean, emotionally, not just physically.
So... In this sort of debate, I find that dreams are very, very important and very helpful, right?
So the dream analyses that we've done in the show are my ways of sort of trying to make the argument in a not-too-subtle manner for instinct, for the power of the unconscious to see the truth in the world that we're not allowed to see, right?
Or that we're punished for seeing, particularly as children.
So, that's sort of one of the reasons that I do the dream analysis, so that people can liberate themselves from mere logic.
And that doesn't mean anti-logic, it doesn't mean illogic.
Validate all you want.
But the truth in terms of meaning and self-confidence and universality often comes from the unconscious.
And certainly the theory of anarchic self-organization in the realm of DROs, even some of the universally preferable behavior stuff, came to me in a rush.
It came to me, the DRO concept first came to me during a debate with a Christian at work a couple of years ago, two years ago, two and a half years ago, something like that.
So, it's funny because we both ended each other's careers.
I toasted his belief in God to the point where he dropped out of school and he basically ended up changing my career pretty considerably by, I guess, somehow provoking the inspiration that led to this podcast, my articles, and my eventual transformation into an anarchist.
So... The inspirational aspect of what I'm doing is pretty important.
I sort of asked him, I haven't received a response yet, at least I haven't seen one.
I said, do you think that my podcasts are all logic, or is there inspiration as well?
And, you know, it's mostly inspiration.
I mean, it doesn't mean that I don't evaluate it logically and look at it logically, but the source of the podcast is inspiration.
I could not train somebody to do these podcasts, right?
I mean, to be a great actor, I mean, you can teach someone some basic principles, but to some degree you've either got it or you don't.
There's a story about Marlon Brando during the early period when he was, I think, Uta Hagen was his teacher at one of the Stanislavski schools.
And there was an exercise which says, your chicken's in a coop, and you hear a bomb about to fall, what is it you're going to do?
Everybody ran around, clucking and screaming and flapping their wings in something that would pretty much be a full nightmare scenario for any engineer.
And Marlon Brando pretended to sit down and lay an egg.
And, of course, the teacher said, well, that's exactly what would happen.
I'm guessing, right? I mean, I don't know.
I know the teacher said that. I'm not saying exactly.
I know why. But that kind of instinct, you can't teach that, right?
I mean, he went off and did, I think, at the age of 22, Stanley Kowalski, Streetcar Named Desire, 22, 23, 24, when Marlon Brando, sorry, when Tennessee Williams was looking for someone to play the role of Stanley Kowalski, the gaudy seat bearer, as he was called.
He went and talked to a bunch of actors, and then he ended up I had an apartment where Marlon Brando was staying.
No, Marlon Brando came to his apartment because Marlon Brando didn't have a place to sleep.
And Marlon Brando fixed Sandy C. Williams' toilet, crashed on the couch, slept in the morning, gave her reading, and nailed the part right away and got the role with no home, with very little training and so on.
So that's just inbuilt talent.
You can't teach that. I couldn't teach someone how to do entertaining podcasts I could teach someone how to think, but I can't teach someone that kind of inspiration that occurs in these podcasts, most of which I do without notes of any kind.
Like this one. So, I don't think that...
I mean, I have to sort of balance the inspiration with the rational, right?
I think that's one of the tensions or the balancing acts that makes this podcast series successful, is that balancing between intuition and rationality.
If it was pure intuition, it would be repetitive and circular, initially interesting, but it wouldn't keep the interest of people for as long as it has.
Whereas if it was purely rational, then it wouldn't be that much fun to listen to, right?
I think. So, that sort of unity of things, and I think that...
Ayn Rand did not have that kind of inspirational stuff, and again, not trying to put myself into such elevated categories, but Ayn Rand did not have that kind of ability to work on this kind of stuff very easily.
She was not highly inspirational from that standpoint, and 13 years to write at Ashraf might be an indication of that.
So, I think that it's important to recognize that there is a bubbling up from the unconscious and the instincts and all that they represent are very powerful aspects of consciousness that can be very useful.
And to say that the only good ideas you get are from thinking, I think is to miss out on some very elemental and important stuff.
Now, the part that I have to say next is not related to any of the comments on the board, but simply a theory as to why we need to be separated from our instincts.
Just indulge me, and let's assume that what I'm saying about the instincts is true.
Let's say, sort of, why is it that the instincts are so highly opposed?
And they are, right? All the major religions and public schools and so on, they all, and parents, of course, all work to attack and undermine our instincts on a perpetual and constant and consistent level.
And why is that? Well, let's say, just again, for the sake of argument, that this evaluative power does exist, right?
That this theory is of thinking without thinking, of having great instincts that you can tap into very easily, that this theory is true and valid and accurate.
Well, this has enormous implications for the existence of the government, right?
So, let's just say that if people did take this advice and they listened to their dreams and they allowed their instincts full play and they validated them with reason and so on, if this was the case that people had this capacity to evaluate things so enormously quickly, what would that do in terms of our need for government?
So, I'll sort of give you an example.
In the book, it is mentioned that...
You can figure out whether a doctor is likely to get sued or not simply by listening to a muffled recording of that doctor's voice for like two seconds.
And when people, students, have taken a professor's course for a full year, they write these statements about, you know, good professor, bad professor, they write these course evaluations.
And they have found that these course evaluations match almost completely the impressions that somebody has over the quality of the teacher.
Again, after listening to a muffled voice off that teacher's...
So they can't even hear the words, just the tone, by hearing a muffled recording of that professor teaching for literally two or three seconds.
So you can either take the full-year course and write a long evaluation, or if you trust your gut...
You can listen to somebody's conversation for two or three seconds and you don't even have to hear the words.
All you have to hear is the tone.
Well, if we do have this kind of capacity to evaluate character at this level of detail, this level of accuracy, what would that do?
If people did have this capacity and they used it and trusted it, if we did have this near magical ability to evaluate character Within a second or two of meeting someone, what would that do to our need for government?
Hell, what would it do for our need for DROs?
So let's just say that if somebody was not trustworthy, that people knew that in some fantastical psychic manner, or they had a big UT emblazoned on their forehead in glowing letters visible from miles away, If untrustworthy people had really, really clear identifiable characteristics, if that were true, how successful would untrustworthy people be in the long run?
And also, how much sympathy would we have for people who were preyed upon by untrustworthy people?
Because the problem with merely looking at experiential rationality is that it's after the fact, right?
It's ex post facto. So you get involved with someone in a business deal and you find out later that they're dishonest while you've already lost your money.
And then what do you do with the next one? Just go in and hope for the best, right?
I mean, if we don't allow our learning from experience to inform our knowledge of the future, then there's really not much point.
We're just going through life looking in the rearview mirror the whole time and never being able to steer into the future with any degree of accuracy.
So you can't wait to get involved in someone in business and have them cheat you out of your money.
You can't wait that long in life, right?
It would be great if we could find a way to learn more about people based on the clues that they were putting forward.
And that's partly why I've done such a detailed job of looking at these posts to say that where it ends up is right at the beginning.
It's all right there in the beginning.
So, if, let's say, somebody who was going to be abusive to his wife had a big letter A, a red letter A on his forehead, if you get involved with me, I will abuse you.
Well, two things would occur.
One, people who didn't want to get abused would never go out with him.
Right? That's fairly clear, right?
If you don't want to get abused, you don't go out with the guy who's got the big letter A on his forehead, because he's going to be an abuser.
It's guaranteed. And the second thing is that those who did want to go out with an abuser would not gain sympathy or resources and drama and pity from people.
Well, they might gain pity, but not for the reasons they want.
There would be precious little sympathy for this, right?
Right? Parents who had children with abusers, a big letter A on their forehead, of course this would mean a big letter A on both their foreheads, would not be able to say to their children, well I didn't know that your dad was abusive before I married him, it was an accident, I didn't know any of this, blah blah blah. It would be very clear, right?
There wouldn't be any chance of claiming a lack of knowledge of the facts, right?
So, this would be sort of pretty important.
Now, if you are an abuser, again, this has nothing to do with the people on the board, I'm just sort of talking theoretically.
If you are an abuser, you clearly don't want to have that big letter A put on your forehead, right?
I think that's fairly clear, right?
The same way that criminals want to hide their crimes and parents won't beat you in front of a cop.
So, it is clearly to the interest of bad people To say we can't trust our instincts.
Right? It is clearly to the interest of bad people.
If this capacity is real, if this possibility for this kind of knowledge is real, it is clearly to the advantage of bad people.
And again, it's nothing to do with the people on the board, right?
I'm just sort of working through this intuitively, slash logically, slash hopefully accurately.
Right? So abusers don't want the letter A. If people got into business with untrustworthy people, the UT people, and then ended up losing a whole bunch of stuff, they couldn't say, well, I didn't know.
Right? So clearly...
The desire to hide untrustworthiness, to camouflage untrustworthiness, or to make untrustworthiness appear to be trustworthy, is an essential aspect of any con man or con woman.
That's very clear, right?
I mean, if you're a predator of that kind, if you're a soft predator, a white-collar predator, then you're going to need for people not to see that you're a predator, right?
And you've got the tiger stripes in the grass, that's what it's for, so that you don't see the tiger until it's too late.
So again, in terms of things like this, People would lose an enormous amount of self-justification.
People would get much less sympathy for getting involved with these untrustworthy people, and the untrustworthy people themselves would have far fewer prey.
The government, in some ways, I think it can be reasonably viewed as a big, there was no way to know.
The government exists because people claim ignorance of people.
The government exists Because people claim ignorance of people, right?
So, if I have a contract that says, you and I are going to be in business for two years, I'm going to work 100 hours a week, you're going to work 20 hours a week, and then at the end of it, you're going to run off with all the money, and I sign that contract, then no government in the world is going to help me get my money back, right? In fact, there's no reason to have a government in that situation.
Right? This is pretty important.
Sorry to press this on you, but this is pretty important.
There's absolutely no need to have a government if I have a contract with you that I knowingly sign based on the fact that you're going to cheat me.
The government only exists because I claim that I did not know that you were going to cheat me.
And when I say government, I mean DROs as well, but let's just talk about government for now.
The government exists because people claim that they did not foresee the consequences of their associations or their behavior.
Right? If I sign a contract that says, you will cheat me, the government will not prosecute you for cheating.
Right? The government exists as a big catch-all for people to say, but I didn't know this person was going to cheat me.
Right? Now, when I look back on my life, I could have just been unlucky or whatever, but I can see the clear signs of people who treated me badly from the very beginning.
From the very beginning.
Now, if it's true, and magically, of course, since I have woken up to reality, I don't have that problem in my life anymore.
So now that I trust my instincts, and that means validate them as well, talk them over with Christina, but now that I trust my instincts, guess what?
I don't have a problem with people cheating me anymore.
Now I have new problems.
But I don't have that.
I mean, that's my lab. That's my experiment, right?
And Christina's the same way.
You can, of course, let me know what your experience has been with people when you get bad people out of your life and you learn to see the signs and you learn to trust your instincts, how you feel when you're around someone.
But if you get a creepy feeling from someone, don't let them babysit your kids, right?
You don't let them babysit your kids and then say, well, there's no empirical evidence yet.
No, you trust your gut, right?
So... If we did have this knowledge, and we did exercise this knowledge, bad people would suffer and there'd be no need for governments.
It's not accidental that I claim that we should trust our instincts.
Because if we accept the possibility that we know everything about everyone from the very beginning, and that in some fundamental way we can't be cheated without our consent, Without our participation, without being blind to what is going to actually happen.
If we accept that as a sort of very real fact, then we don't need a government to protect us.
Right? We don't need a government to protect us.
Because we're not going to be in those situations of danger.
Right? That's why I focus so much on the instincts.
And that's why I say to people, you know, follow your instincts, confront your fears, talk to people who you're afraid of, tell them your feelings.
Get to the truth, right?
Some gentleman on the board is concerned about his father and his father's indifference to his needs.
So I'm saying, well, go talk to him.
And he's like, I'm terrified too.
Well, it's because you know the answer.
We know everything about everyone from the very beginning.
That's why we don't need a government.
That's why the only government, quote government, that we need is our own instincts.
Right? Now, not everyone is going to have the same level of self-trust, and I'm not going to claim that I know that everyone has the same level of instincts, although I do believe that is the case.
DROs are dispute resolution organizations Our unconscious is a DPO. It's a dispute prevention organizations.
Maybe DPI. Dispute prevention instincts.
That can read the future based on intuition and empathy.
So, what happens is people don't learn about themselves.
They don't learn about truth and falsehood.
They aren't rigorous that way. And they ignore or reject or undermine the signs that are occurring in the people in their lives.
And then when the shit hits the fan, they cry out that they did not know.
I know. I've been there.
And so they say, well, I did not know that this person was going to be unjust to me.
Therefore, I am not culpable for what happened.
Right.
There I was, just walking down the street.
Right.
And five guys jumped me.
No way to know. It's like, well, you were in fact walking down a bad neighborhood with a clear plastic bag of money, drunk.
So, it may be that you do have some involvement in what's going on, that you weren't a mere victim, or pure victim, in that sense.
Right? If we do trust our instincts and we do say that we can read people very deeply, very quickly, we're not going to get into these kinds of messes.
It's hard to believe that we don't need a government when you still have bad people around you, right?
This is why it's so key to get the bad people you can.
I don't think you can be A passionate anarchist, unless you trust your instincts and recognize that we have all the knowledge in the world to thwart bad people.
That the integrity of our instincts, along with rational review and so on, the integrity of instincts is all the government we need.
It is, in fact, all the DROs we need.
If you get, and even if you don't believe that you can read people this way, If we really do get the principle that the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior, and we don't cling to the illusion of turnaround and change without significant self-intervention in the form of things like therapy and things like that,
if we really understand that, then bad people will have no power over us.
I mean, other than the force of government and so on.
But if we don't trust our instincts, and we don't understand the degree to which this human shield of virtue, integrity, and instinct, this incredible shield that that creates around us, bad people, it's amazing, they can smell it a mile away.
I mean, other than the board, bad people don't come into my life anymore.
And the board is something, they're not doing it for me, they're doing it to show off to others, right?
So, And of course, they're not coming in in my life.
I mean, I'm on Skype half the damn time.
Everybody knows my handle.
Stefan Underbaum all in you.
Talk anytime. But when you get just how powerful a protective device your instincts and your virtue is, then you will, I think, really and clearly understand that we don't need a state.
In fact, we don't even need DROs.
When we are at one with our instincts, and we trust ourselves, and we read things accurately, consistently, and honestly, and we don't have to work ex post facto all the time, we don't even get into these messes that require third-party mediation.
I mean, not that it would ever happen, but if Christina and I ever did get divorced, we would not need lawyers.
In fact, we've already talked about it.
We talked about it before we got married.
We wouldn't need a dispute resolution mechanism.
So, I think that it's worth exploring these instincts, and I think it's one of the most fundamentally good things that you can do for the cause of stateless society.
Right? It's to show how instincts prevent you from getting into these messes.
It's to show you how these instincts prevent you from getting into these messes.
And once you understand that, you can much more confidently espouse a truly free society.
So, I hope that you enjoyed that.
▲
Export Selection