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June 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:19
808 A Baffling Caper Dream

The toughest dream I think I've had...

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So, Bob's baffling dream.
This one completely baffles Bob.
I was with a physically larger friend.
It might have been Greg, but I'm not sure.
We were both wearing burglar-style outfits with lots of gadgets.
We were in some kind of illegal caper where we were in a building that we definitely did not have permission and were not supposed to be.
There was also a strong atmosphere of the Matrix movies and I recently saw Oceans 13, which also has scenes like that.
I think it was nighttime as the building was dark and we had torches.
Excellent supposition. We were in some kind of corridor which led to a large hall at the end of it.
However, In order to fulfill the objectives of the caper, we needed to break through a wall in the corridor.
The problem that we had was that the wall was made of solid metal, or had a large metal plate on it.
We had encountered some kind of security guard, who I only vaguely remembered, and I think was dressed like a SWAT policeman.
There were no details of the encounter in the dream.
We had somehow captured him, and we had a plan that involved pushing the security guard through the metal wall in order to break the wall.
Obviously, this makes no sense in terms of physics, but it did make sense in the dream world.
This was going to hurt the security guard, and remember that there was some fear about this by the guard, I think, but I'm not sure if we were concerned with this or not.
However, when we came to execute the plan, the security guard seemed to disappear from the story.
I began to smash corners of the metal plate, now clearly a plate with large bolts, with my open palm.
I explained to my friend that he should do this too, and that this is how we could smash through the metal.
We began to pound on the plate together, denting the metal with our palms, the buckling metal making extremely loud noises.
This meant that we had some kind of Matrix-style superpowers, and this did not shock me so much as I got the feeling, well, yes, of course, this is how we can do it.
At this point, noises came from the large room at the end of the corridor.
We knew that we were going to be found, and I tried to turn off a torch, but could not get it to turn off in time.
People were coming into the corridor, but to our surprise, they didn't see us at all.
The lights were on at this point, but we were completely invisible to them, but still visible normally to ourselves and each other.
When we realized this, we went into the larger room or hall at the end of the corridor and walked around among the group.
At this point, it seemed to be daytime, or half daylight in the dream.
The group of people turned out to be elderly folk, and it had the atmosphere of a group of retired American tourists wandering around the museum or something.
However, they were all having some kind of discussion or debate about whether to buy a property or purchase land and build.
I had a paper plan of the land which looked like some kind of grid of points on blue paper like a blueprint.
The other option was some kind of ready-made building in the mountains or something.
My friend and I thought they were going to make a bad choice on this property instead of the blueprint.
We began to try to influence their decisions as invisible people by doing things like raising one guy's hands and pointing at something to show faults in the building, or perhaps just pointing at the option we considered better.
We found it kind of fun to be invisible people who could move among them, raising their arms to point at things and acting like good ghosts in this way.
I remember we were laughing at this point.
I woke up. And then the dream dreamer guy got some feedback and he said, Thanks guys, that's really interesting feedback.
I never thought about the guard being my own defenses, maybe that's true, but if so, then I am still not sure what my subconscious is trying to tell me in this dream.
If it's any help, yes, I think we were good guys in the dream, even though we seem to be doing some bad things.
For example, it's almost like we wanted to use the security guard as a human battering ram against a metal wall, which is a horrible idea.
Then he vanishes from the plot.
Strong emotions, I remember from the dream, were that when we heard the other people coming towards us in the building, probably heard us making noises as we bashed the wall, I was expecting security guards in a fight, hence my hurried but unsuccessful attempts to turn off the torch.
When they showed up, they were harmless, even slightly ridiculous, old tourists who were making bad decisions.
And they could not even see us.
Fear and then relief, followed by laughter.
The idea that they are false selves seemed like a very good metaphor.
Maybe they did signify some people on the board.
There were lots of Americans on the board, but I'm not sure.
But again, what am I trying to tell myself?
I don't think this is relevant, but I loved the Matrix movies and thought Ocean's 13 was a big pile of crap.
Well, this is a very...
Sorry, I'm at the gym now.
This is a very tough dream.
No mistake about it.
This is a very, very tough dream.
It's highly compressed and has a lot of elements that are around the inversal of values.
So... I'll talk about some of these in general, and then you can let me know what you think.
The first thing, of course, is that when you look at something like The Matrix or The Ocean's Eleven movies, what you have is breaking the law in a charming or positive way.
The Ocean's Eleven movies would be very different movies if these guys were stealing from an orphanage.
But they're stealing from, like, bad, mafia-style casino people, right?
So this is a kind of situation where the ethics are pretty ambiguous.
So here, of course, we are in a situation where when you look at the matrix, right, then you're breaking the rules of the computer, of the dominating machines, right, of the robots.
So, in that situation, breaking the rules is good, right?
It's being free. Whereas in the Ocean's movies, you are stealing from a casino owner with mob ties who Andy Guicey, I think, played him as a pretty unpleasant fellow.
And, of course, the guys who were doing the stealing were charming and handsome, and, you know, what would be called more of a rogue than a thief, and charming rogues at that, right?
So, there is a very strong tradition within art, within literature, which is the...
The noble thief, right? This is the Robin Hood sort of situation.
It's the noble thief. It's a Nietzschean character as well.
Somebody who does not believe that moral laws are put in place because they're right and wrong, but rather that moral laws are put in place to keep the weak down.
Or they're put in place by the weak to bring down the strong and to make the strong feel guilty and thus make the strong weak and put them under the power or control of the weak.
So... In the Matrix movies, the law enforcement personnel are laboring under a terrible delusion that they are enforcing the law when they are in fact serving the dictatorship of the robots.
And all of this stuff sounds very silly, but actually has quite a lot of resonance.
I think quite a lot of power.
The cops in the Matrix movies are...
They think that they're enforcing the law, but they're actually serving the dictatorship, right?
And, of course, that has a powerful sort of resonance in it.
So... In this situation...
Sorry, in the situation of the two movies that you reference, in The Dream, in those movies...
What is called the law is a game.
It's not ethical, fundamentally.
Now, in The Matrix, what is called the law is a delusion, and in the Oceans movies, what is called the law is simply a challenging game to get past, like a very handsome form of Sudoku.
It's just a game that you try to win.
So, when two people are playing chess, we don't think of it as a moral battle.
And when one person, in the Oceans movies, one person is trying to keep his property and the other people are trying to...
It has no more moral resonance than capture the flag.
Whoever ends up with the flag is the person with the most imagination and skill.
Not the person who is the most moral.
So, when you talk about this being a caper...
And caper movies and caper stories are very common, again.
The basic idea is that property is a kind of game.
Property ownership should accrue to the smartest and most creative and most daring, not to the person who actually has the right.
And the way that you do that, of course, is you simply make the people who are being stolen from bad people.
I mean, that's how property rights in general work, right?
That you simply portray a certain group of people as bad, and then you steal from them.
The corporations, the rich, whoever, right?
I mean, you just make people bad, and then you steal from them.
And so, property rights then becomes not an absolute right or anything to do with ethics, but just a form of mythology, right?
Just another form of storytelling.
Corporations are bad, we should tax them, the rich are...
The rich are rich because you are poor, so get the money back.
It's time to give back to society.
It's the redistribution of income.
It's a wonderful piece of mythology, implying that it somehow got distributed unfairly to begin with.
And so, this approach to property rights, which is very common, is the foundation for what is generally or loosely called property rights in the world at the moment.
Which is based on a form of mythology, right?
So, as I said, if the robots that enslaved human beings in the Matrix weren't evil, bad, dictatorial, nasty, ugly, unpleasant robots, then it would be a very different kind of situation.
Right? If...
I mean, just to take a ridiculous example, if you were...
If you were drugged because you were in an operation where a good person was trying to save your life and you tried to fight your way free of being drugged, that would be a bad thing to do, right?
That would be something which would cause a lot of problems.
So fighting your way free of a delusion or a drugged state or whatever is only important or has ethical content relative to that who you are opposing, right?
So, the way that most people try and make their fight good, or seem good, is to just paint a mythology that their enemies are bad.
That's a very fundamental aspect to how people define moral conflicts, disagreements, or battles in the world.
You don't really portray your side as good, other than through charming, handsome people, but you portray the other side as bad.
I mean, it's always in Grey's Anatomy, right?
It's always the good people, right?
It's not like bad people who die, you feel bad for it, right?
If you want to make somebody who dies, you sort of feel...
other people feel sad, you just make the person who dies a good person, right?
So there was some...
I think some train wreck where some woman came in who was...
Impaled through the middle and she was making jokes and she was dead and then there's some guy who has a heart problem who's jokey and funny and chatty and brave.
So you just make somebody virtuous and then that's how you make the argument.
And so you just demonize whoever you're fighting against and that's how you establish the morality of your cause.
So the caper movie is actually quite an accurate representation of what goes on in society around the transfer or the distribution of property or loyalty.
You make people good or bad, and that's where the ethics are derived from.
That's why ethics are fundamentally around mythology, around storytelling.
So the fact that you're in a caper movie, I think, is quite important.
It is around the transfer of ethics that occurs in the realm of mythology through portraying people as either good or as bad.
And that's the entire moral argument.
That's the entire moral argument.
So-and-so is bad, therefore aggression against them is good.
And you see this in sports movies all the time, right?
You follow one team, and they're good.
And you follow the other team, and they're bad, right?
You think of the Karate Kid movies, so this is bad guy, bad club, evil ninjas, right?
But then there's the good guy, good club.
And in every sports movie known to man, right, there's the underdogs who don't have a chance, and they're all good people, and then there are the...
The rich kids who have all the power and who condescend.
It's the revenge of the nerds situation, right?
There's no moral argument.
It's just a mythological portrayal of good and evil, and that's it.
You basically...
Evil is who I dislike.
That's the argument that's put forward.
Bad is who I dislike.
Good is who I like.
So... You're breaking the rules.
Some kind of illegal caper movie, you say, we're in a building, we definitely don't have permission, and you're not supposed to be there.
So you're breaking the rules, but it's a caper.
So it's like a dare. Like those old stories where somebody assembles a Volkswagen Beetle in somebody's room, they disassemble it, and then they assemble it in the room so it can't get out.
Well, they're trespassing and so on, but it's kind of like a joke.
It's not particularly serious.
It's not a violation of personal property.
So, that kind of stuff, I think, is sort of important to understand.
That here, you're breaking the rules, but it's a little bit cartoony, and the rules themselves are not to be respected.
The rules are not to be respected.
Because they're human-invented rules.
So, as you say, you're going down a corridor, and...
You need to break through a wall in the corridor.
It's a solid metal or a large metal plate on it.
You encountered some kind of security guard, so you only vaguely remember to think he's dressed like a SWAT policeman.
You captured him, and you're going to push the security guard through the metal wall in order to break the wall.
Now, when you're in a situation of human-defined rules, of evil is who I dislike and good is who I like, and you can do this, you know, X, Y, and Z, this, that, or the other...
And there's no rational or objective content to it, then you are in a mythology.
And partly the way that you know that you're in a mythology, and I think that the role that mythology is playing in these definitions of rules and the breaking off those rules...
There's a couple of references that are put forward pretty clearly.
The first, of course, is that there's a reference to a movie.
The second, of course, is that...
The three movies, right?
I mean, the one that you're in, the Caper movie, the Matrix, and the Ocean's 13 movie, but also...
I mean, there's the Batman-style costumes that you have, right?
Which is a reference to another kind of mythology.
And that is also another important aspect of things, right?
So, this situation that you're in, where you're breaking the rules that are mere human inventions, right?
They're not rules that you're breaking that are foundational to rationality.
You're not involved in science of ethics, so the rules are made up.
And breaking the rules is just like playing chess.
Somebody wins, somebody loses, but there's no moral.
But there's no moral dimension.
Now, in this situation, some very interesting things occur.
So there's somebody who's defending those rules in this dream.
And there's somebody who's responsible for defending these rules, at least we can say.
And that person is this security guard who's dressed as a SWAT team.
And that, to me, would indicate that SWAT guys don't...
We don't guard rooms.
We don't guard corridors unless those corridors have something to do with the state, right?
So a security guard is not somebody who's dressed as a SWAT guy, right?
A SWAT guy is somebody who guards government property and significant government property, which would indicate that you're in some sort of government situation, government scenario, right?
It could as easily in the dream be some old fat guy, right?
Some old fat guy who is dressed as a private security guard, but you have somebody who's dressed as a SWAT guy, right?
And the dream makes it a SWAT guy for a particular reason.
He's efficient and competent, and you're in a state environment, a government environment, and so on.
So, what happens next?
Well, there's an interesting collision in the dream, I think.
And the collision in the dream...
It's breaking man-made rules, which you can do with impunity.
So you're breaking man-made rules in the dream.
You're going into a caper, you're trying to break in, you're trying to do something, and it's kind of fun, and so on, right?
It's like a game. So if I say, don't step over that line, you can step over that line.
You can do whatever you want, right?
It's just a rule that I'm making up.
Including, don't kill, right?
I mean, whatever, I'm not saying you.
Make up any rules that you want, and anyone can violate them at will.
But then, you have an interesting thing that occurs, which is, instead of violating human rules, you're now violating the laws of physics.
Right? Or, that's your plan.
So then, instead of just going into someone's place, or someone says, don't go into such and such a place...
You end up going into such and such a place.
Right? And that's very different.
That's a very different situation.
Now, your solution about how to get through this area is you are going to push a security guard through the wall, right?
Which clearly is not so much with the possible.
But again, this is something that is It's very interesting to see.
Very interesting to see how this comparison occurs.
So you've got the human rules that you're breaking, going into a building you're not supposed to, which you can do.
But then, you have the laws of physics, which you can't do.
And so basically what you're doing, I think this is the case, it feels right, which doesn't mean anything other than it feels right, but could be right as well.
So, what happens when you compare human rules to the rules of physics, to the rules of reality, to the rules of nature?
So, when you compare a human rule, like don't trespass, with a rule of nature, which would be something like you can't push a human being through a wall, then what happens?
Well, the SWAT guy is going to feel some pain, and then he disappears.
I mean, I think it's brilliant.
I really do. I think it's absolutely fantastic.
But human rules, like, don't trespass.
And then you compare those human rules to the rules of nature, to the rules of physics.
And what happens?
Well, the human authority, the SWAT guy, is going to face some pain, and so he disappears.
How many times do we argue with the statist, and when we begin to prove them actually wrong, they vanish.
They leave the conversation.
Right? Because it's going to be painful for them.
To see that, to feel that, to understand that.
That their rules are mere invention.
So everyone thinks that their own rules are physics.
And that's what we're taught.
The human rules that are invented around us are physics.
And then what we're doing through this conversation is we're comparing human rules to reality.
Do countries exist?
Do human beings have the supernatural power to have opposing moral rules from everyone they claim to have commandments over, or claim to have dominion over?
So that's all we're doing.
We're comparing human rules to the rules of reality.
The SWAT guy, by basically coming up with rules which he enforces at the point of a gun, is a SWAT guy, not an unarmed old fat security guard.
So he says, these are absolute rules which I'm going to enforce through violence.
And you say, well, great.
So, fantastic. If we could just make up whatever rules we want, then I can push you through this wall, right?
And then he's like, no, I don't like that.
And then he vanishes. So when we compare human rules to the rules of reality, to logic, to empiricism, to UPB, then people, they recognize that they're going to experience pain, and then they vanish.
Right? He disappears from the story, right?
As you say, this dream is a story.
It's a narrative. When you bring reality to a narrative, it causes people who don't know it's a narrative pain and they vanish.
They leave. They must run away from reality.
They must run away from reality.
So then you drive the security guard away.
The SWAT guy, the SWAT policeman, feels that he is going to experience pain by trying to be pushed through a wall.
Because he knows that he can't be pushed through a wall.
Some rules are not made up, right?
And that's going to cause him a great deal of pain, so he vanishes from the story.
But then, his fantasy infects you.
Right? His fantasy infects you.
So now you think that you can use your fist, or your open palm, to smash through the metal.
Right? Right? And in the dream, it dents.
Right, so feeling that you can somehow get through this metal in the dream is indicating that you're still not quite in reality.
Right, because metal doesn't dent when you hit it, unless it's not real metal, but you say it's a thick metal plate as far as if they end it with bolts.
Bolts are only needed if the metal is thick.
So you start to pound the metal with your palms, and you've got some kind of superpowers, and it's like, yes, of course, this is how we can do it.
This is how we can get through the wall, is we can pound it with our hands, and it starts to dent and so on.
But that's not reality, right?
Obviously, in reality, this can't happen.
And so the dream is still saying that although you've gotten rid of the guard, there's still a certain kind of unreality in your thinking, right?
Because you think it's a metal plate, but of course, if it's buckling, it's not.
It's not even plastic. I don't know what, it would have been papier-mâché or something, right?
So you're still in a kind of land or an area of unreality here.
Although you've dispelled a particular illusion in terms of external fantasies in the form of the policeman or the SWAT guy, you still have your own internal fantasies, which are still a problem.
So then, what happens is people are attracted by the noise, or they hear something about the noise, or people, at least, are you coming from a large room at the end of the corridor.
You're going to be found. You try and turn off the torch.
You can't get it to turn off in time.
People coming to the corridor, but to our surprise, they didn't see us at all.
The lights were on at this point, but we were completely invisible to them.
Right, completely invisible to them.
And this is important.
Very important. The effects that thought have...
On the outside world are extraordinarily powerful.
Extraordinarily powerful and invisible.
Right? I am invisible to my listeners.
I mean, even if they are watching a podcast, sorry, even if they're watching a video, I'm still invisible to them.
Because what's having an effect on them is not my face or my talking or whatever they can see.
It's the thoughts that are entering into their mind.
And that is what is having the real effect on people.
It's the thoughts that are entering into people's minds through...
These ideas. So that's, to me, very interesting.
That you're worried about being seen, but the real effect that is occurring is not visible.
They don't see you at all. A group of retired American tourists wandering around a museum or something.
So then these people are having a discussion about whether to buy a property or purchase a land and build.
And this, to me, is a form of identity.
Right? Are you going to buy somebody else's property?
In other words, are you going to just inherit somebody else's ideas and not build them yourself?
According to, again, objective plans, right?
The blueprints. So, are you going to think for yourself or are you going to just take somebody else's thinking?
And of course, that's the real challenge here, right?
Which is to stop taking my thinking and think for yourself.
Just as I spent 20 years, hopefully you won't need 20 years, I'm sure you won't, but listening to somebody else before I could think for myself.
So, the real challenge is to Surmount this, right?
And to not live in somebody else's house, but to build your own, which is individuation, right?
Individuation, right? So people, you know, lots of people say, well, I got here through Rush Limbaugh, and I believed in Rush Limbaugh for a while, but that's somebody else's house, right?
And it's a better house, probably than the one you came from, but it's not your house.
It's not your thoughts, your, right?
The whole point of this is to give you a structure and a framework so that you can be yourself.
I'm teaching you paints and paintbrushes and canvases so that you can go and paint your own pictures.
I'm teaching you scales so you can play jazz.
Or whatever you want. So, in this situation...
The thoughts, and I'm not saying that I've got this transition entirely down, but it's just something we can think about.
Plus there's other stuff I don't know if I can talk about.
But in this situation, you're out there trying to influence people, and now you're invisible to them.
And what this means is that this is the effects that you have on people when you're not around.
This is the thoughts that you are having with people when you're not around.
The conversations that you're having with people where you leave them with thoughts and ideas and then you're not around, so you're invisible to them, but you're having influence over them.
And this is very, very important.
So when you're looking at a bunch of people who are trying to figure out whether to buy something or build something, you think you're going to make a bad choice on this property instead of the thing.
So they're going to make a bad choice if they buy a ready-made building in the mountains or something, and that they should build their own.
And you see here, we begin to try and influence the decisions as invisible people by doing things like raising one guy's hands and pointing at something to show faults.
In the building, or perhaps just pointing at the option we considered better, we found it kind of fun to be invisible people who could move among them, raising their arms to point at things and acting like good ghosts in this way.
And it is. I mean, it's wonderfully empowering and quite a lot of fun to put ideas out there that cause people's behavior to change, which is sort of what you're talking about, right?
And this is really, I think, foundational to the argument for morality, that if we change the definition of ethics, then we change the world.
And there's no other way to do it, and there's no shortcut, and there's no better way to do it.
So I think that what this dream is saying is that the best way to influence people is through thought.
Right?
It's invisibly.
Through the influence that you can have over them, through the arguments that you make and the conversations that you have with them.
with a goal in mind and a goal that is defined.
And that, of course, is what philosophy does, is it influences us when, like through invisible mechanisms, right, through thought, through the desire for integrity, through the argument for morality, it changes people's decisions or it lets them make better decisions, although it is invisible to them many, many times, whereas people make emotions based on emotionality and all this other kind of nonsense.
So, I think that abandoning The caper, right?
Abandoning the fantasy of pushing people through walls, recognizing the powerlessness.
And the way that we argue against authority, like the SWAT team, and just authority, is that we say, well, okay, if rules are just made up, I'm going to make up a rule called, I can push through a plate of metal.
And the person's then going to say, well, no, that's no good.
But then they have to say, well, some rules are just made up, and they're futile and helpless in the face of reality.
And that, of course, is his whole justification for being a SWAT guy, that he believes his rules would justify him are not made up, but in fact objective and real, like physics, which they're not, right?
And then you try to pound through that, and that doesn't work.
I don't know if the corridor has something to do with your family, It certainly could be. But you give up on that, right?
You give up on that caper, and you then join people invisibly and help to influence them by making better decisions, and that has to do with just your own personal integrity and virtue and how it sort of infects in a positive way other people and helps them make better decisions, and that's much better than trying to pound your way through a plate of metal, which is fundamentally a fantasy. Anyway, I hope this helps.
It's a fascinating dream. I'm sure there's more in it, but that's the stuff that I got.
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