All Episodes
Previous Next
July 3, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
54:49
816 Tennis Anyone?

A metaphor for moral action

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's July the 3rd, 2007.
Just as a note, I'll post this on the board.
There will be...
I will be on the radio tomorrow in Miami, Florida, and I will post more details on the board.
Also, Saturday, August, I think it's the 18th or the 19th, but it's definitely the Saturday, we are going to have the first ever Freedom Aid Radio Live Symposium where we are going to get together and talk about putting ethics into action in our lives, and that is going to occur sort of provisionally In Toronto, Canada, and I look forward to getting your feedback on topics.
Christina and I will be there, and Christina will lead the psychological stuff, and I will do my best to lead the philosophical stuff, and it's going to not be me lecturing for once, and it's not going to be Christina lecturing, but it's going to be a dialogue face-to-face, get a nice boardroom set up, and let's get this conversation in the flesh!
And so, go to the board for more information, and the location may change, since a good deal of the Free Domain Radio Friends are in the U.S., and we may need to move it to someplace in the U.S., like the foothills of Montana, but we're still working that one out.
So, I hope that you will join us there, and...
Donations are still a little thin, for some reason.
Perhaps it's the holiday weekend, but I would really appreciate it if you would shovel some cash my way to keep the philosopher in food and vittles and water and shelter, and also to pay for the staggering advertising budget, which is...
Drawing people to the conversation, but drawing money out of my bank account.
So if you could help me replenish that, I would really appreciate that.
That would do a lot to drive this conversation out to a wider audience, which I think is very important.
So I am going to blow your mind, I think, on this podcast.
It's not going to be the shortest podcast in the world, but it's something that I think we need to dig into.
I really do. This is a very, very important issue, and I think it's something that we need to dig into.
I'm going to use a couple of examples of things that have floated around recently and talk about my approach.
To debate versus action.
To debate versus action, particularly in the realm of ethics, where I think it is really quite crucial to not get lost in debate, but to instead start to focus on action within your life.
And I'm going to use a ridiculous number of sports metaphors.
I am a sporty philosopher.
I guess it's sporty spice. Sporty chat.
But I think that they really help.
I think that they really help. I mean, everybody from Plato onwards, and even Socrates and before, has talked about virtue as a kind of habit that you inculcate.
There's a kind of... You have a theory, and then you go out, and you practice.
And as you practice, you get better and better at it, and so on.
And I think that's certainly been quite true in my experience.
And I think that...
To take an example of, I don't know, a sport I've been playing since I was five, tennis, there are a number of things.
If you want to become good at tennis, then there are a number of things that you need.
Obviously, you need... You need to know the rules.
You need to have a court. You need to have a racket.
You need to have the balls. The balls need to be inflated properly.
You're playing with these soggy newspaper things that don't go anywhere.
And you need to have some hand-eye coordination, use of your legs.
Those are sort of the bare minimum that you need.
And you need a coach, right?
And you need a coach. Who is going to help adjust your form?
Who's going to point out things that work better and things that don't work better?
And ideally, I think that it's fair if you are going to take on a tennis coach, if you want to be a championship or a very good tennis player, that you take on a coach who has actually achieved what it is that you want to achieve.
I mean, that's sort of important.
And the reason I want to talk about this is because there has been, for me at least, a lot of bickering about details lately.
A lot of drilling into the minutiae, into the atomic level, gray area questions of ethics.
And I'd like to sort of provide a perspective that I think can liberate us from that.
And people will still come into the fray, so to speak, and will still try and work at this angle.
But if we can get a common conception of how to approach this from a conceptual standpoint, then I think it can really help place this in context for the people who are...
I mean, there's a problem, right, with an open philosophy conversation like that.
Which is that there are people who've been involved in this for over a year, and then there are people who come in, and there's no reason why they wouldn't have questions or doubts.
But there's a sort of reset to zero kind of thing, right?
So it's like there are some people who are excellent tennis players who are coming in and are hearing the rules of tennis explained to the newbies, and this is a constant problem with the Internet.
And it can't be solved except, of course, by hiving off the conversation into multiple levels, the same way that when you have people of different skill levels in terms of tennis, you have beginners and intermediate and advanced and so on.
And that's occurred to some degree insofar as the podcasts, which I just know, are going to be subjected to the wildest misinterpretations I have hived off to the premium section.
And that has at least diminished some of the controversy insofar as...
I mean, I'm sure people are...
I think it's possible. I shouldn't say I'm sure.
I think it's possible based on past evidence that they're being sent around.
But at least people who don't have access to them can't bring them up without...
You can't bring up...
I mean, if you get sent a premium podcast and you bring up the contents in the general board and you don't have access to it like you were sent it...
Then you're not going to get very far in terms of an ethical debate, right?
It's kind of tough to make the argument for property rights using pirated software on a stolen laptop, right?
It's hard to come up with ethical arguments based on a podcast that is premium, which you've received illegitimately.
And it does, right? It does cost me money.
And it cost me money because it's a disincentive to donate.
If you can get the same goodies without donating, most people will not donate.
I mean, that's an ethical conversation.
That's for another time. But taking money from a philosopher who's given up...
Anyway, we don't have to get into that.
So there's this challenge, right, of different levels of skills and knowledge and so on.
And, of course, Most of the people who come new to a philosophy discussion don't have the humility factor of realizing just how much they don't know.
They just don't, right? It's just the way that we're taught, right?
Unfortunately, I think that we've swung from grinding the self-esteem out of kids to giving them an inflated sense of self-esteem.
And you see this all the time in American Idol, and people who can't sing come along and try.
Nobody tells them, you can't, right?
So there's that challenge, right?
But if you want to become a great tennis player, then there's one thing that you need to do to become a great tennis player.
And that's the one thing that I find the most missing from the Freedomain Radio conversation.
It's the one thing that I find the most missing.
From the Free Domain Radio conversation, and I'd like to invite people to contemplate this.
I'm not going to prove anything here.
This is just a conversation.
I'd just like you to contemplate this and see if it resonates.
The one thing that is enormously missing from the Free Domain Radio conversation is practice.
Is practice. And without practice, all the instruction in the world means nothing.
I mean, can you imagine trying to say, I want to be a great tennis player.
So I'm going to go out and find a good coach or a great coach or the best coach.
I'm going to buy the best racket, the best balls.
We're going to buy membership to the best tennis club.
I'm going to watch all these videos about how to play tennis.
I'm going to debate about, well, what if the ball falls here, and what was the best strategy if you'd want to change something over there, and should he have used a backhand or a forehand, or how could this person improve his serve, and so on.
I'm going to do all of this, and I'm going to get involved in the most unbelievable minutiae of was this ball in or out?
Was it on the line? What if only the hairs of the ball are on the line, and you can see it in slow motion, and you can...
And I'm going to do all of that.
Because why? Because I want to be a great tennis player, I say.
Unfortunately, the one thing that I won't do, the one thing that when pressed I studiously resist doing, is the one thing that all the theory is designed for, my friends.
The reason that you learn the rules of tennis is not so you can argue about the minutiae of the rules of tennis.
The reason that you learn the rules of tennis is so you can go out and play the tennis.
And this is My frustration and my exasperation.
And it's kind of understandable because we're taught that theory is divorced from reality.
But it's something I've talked about from the very, very first days of the board.
Which is, there are some virtues that are very, very hard to practice.
I just know that they are.
They're very, very hard to practice, but there's nobody who would say, who's at all interested in ethics and, say, sane.
There's nobody who would say that they're not ethics.
It's not ethical.
It's not important.
So, for instance, honesty.
See you next time.
Honesty is a reasonable virtue.
I mean there's very few people who will consistently say that lying is better than At all times, lying is better than telling the truth.
There are some gray areas where, you know, if somebody grabs you by the neck and puts a gun in your face and says, where is your wife?
I want to shoot her. And you say, well, I'm not going to tell you.
You say, oh, she's in Borneo.
Go to Borneo and get her, and they leave you alone.
Sure, absolutely. And in tennis...
There are times when you can't tell whether the ball is in or out, but that doesn't mean that tennis has no rules, right?
There are times when it's a hell of a close call.
That doesn't mean that there are no rules.
And those times in tennis, since I've played for many years, are pretty rare.
So... So that's the part that I sort of find astounding, because what I see...
This is to be perfectly blunt, and I'm only talking from an ethical standpoint here.
As a tennis coach, what I see is a bunch of out-of-shape people watching videotapes of tennis players And critiquing them because they say, well, we're really interested in quality tennis and we want to be great tennis players.
And the one thing that I cannot get these people to do, the one thing that I cannot get these people to do, is to pick up a racket and hit a ball.
We know these are the armchair quarterbacks and so on, Monday morning quarterbacks.
It's very easy to criticize those who are proposing theories and acting and trying to be good people in the real world and so on, just the same way as it's very easy to critique somebody who plays tennis.
And it's very easy to critique a tennis coach by coming up with myriad bizarre examples.
Thank you.
So you say, a tennis coach says, you should serve this way.
And then somebody says, well, what if your arm is sore?
And what if it's really windy?
And what if it's really windy and it's hailing at the same time?
And what if your arm is sore, it's really windy, it's hailing at the same time and the ball breaks just as you throw it up into the air?
What then? What then, huh?
What are you going to do then? Oh, you see?
You don't know how to coach. You can't come up with a contingency for every conceivable...
You can't come up with an answer for every conceivable contingency, so you don't know what you're doing.
Huh. And so people get annoyed when I say...
Look, if you are at the point where you're criticizing good or great tennis players...
For their form or for their accuracy or for their speed.
All of these sorts of things.
If you're at the point where you can legitimately criticize people who can play a pretty damn good game of tennis, then you must be a really great tennis player.
that you must be an excellent, unbelievable, fabulous tennis player.
And then when you find out that these out-of-shape armchair critics have barely ever picked up a racket, and refuse to tell you how many games they've won, and refuse to let you see any videos of them and refuse to let you see any videos of them playing the game, then I think legitimately there's a certain amount of exasperation that would be rational in that situation.
And I'll give you sort of an example of what I mean.
So recently there was a lot of criticisms of me from people about that I had violated confidentiality.
I'm not going to go into this in any detail.
I'm simply using it as an example.
Steph violated confidentiality and all of these people who came out with stern moral pronouncements about, both in my inbox and on the board, stern moral pronouncements about how I had violated confidentiality and blah blah blah blah blah.
And they did this because they claimed, of course, that they were very interested in ethics and very interested in doing the right thing.
And Steph, of course, had not done the right thing.
Steph didn't do the right thing.
It's very important that you do the right thing.
And so I'm going to jump all over Steph for doing the wrong thing.
Fine. Great.
Except they were all wrong.
Now, I don't think it's that hard a principle to get a hold of that if you accuse someone of something unjustly, you apologize, as I did on the Sunday show.
So all of these people who were enormously interested in doing the right thing and that I hadn't done the right thing and I should do the right thing and so on...
Clearly accused me unjustly.
And even the person who was in question in the whole debate has said that it was an unjust accusation that he should have re-listened to the podcast.
So all of these people so absolutely amazingly fascinated with doing the right thing, not one person has apologized.
Except for the gentleman who was on the debate.
Not one of these exquisitely sophisticated moralists has apologized for an unjust accusation.
I know that.
I see that. I'm fully aware of that.
I'm fully aware of that.
If you don't even have the common decency to apologize to someone when you publicly accuse them of wrongdoing, which is false, Then you don't know shit about ethics.
And it's just a bully mechanism, right?
You don't know shit about ethics.
All these people so fascinated about whether I had done right or wrong.
All their accusations are completely disproven.
Any apologies? No, of course not.
Of course not. Astounding.
I mean, astoundingly hypocritical, base.
For those who accuse without apologizing, I'm talking about everyone here.
It's so important that we do the right thing.
That I've got to post all these things about Steph having done the wrong thing.
Oh, I accused him unjustly?
Silence! Silence!
Oh, I can't speak now!
Suddenly my interest in ethics seems to have been diminished somewhat.
Oh, God.
Oh, the horror.
It's not pretty to see.
There's so many people that I absolutely admire on the board and in my email correspondence and so on.
and people who are struggling to learn how to play tennis.
But the armchair critics, the people who just claim to be so interested in right and wrong that they'll go down to atomic levels of detail and they will criticize me for immoral actions and so on.
And then when the critic says, oh, man...
Silence. Suddenly they don't seem to be as interested in ethics.
They don't seem to be as interested in doing the right thing as they were before.
Gosh, their enthusiasm for ethics when it turns out to have backfired on them.
Their real focus on doing the right thing seems to have diminished just a little bit.
Silence. Revolting, actually.
There's another, this is not in the same category, but there's another conversation that was going on on the board.
Christina and I, to a self-lacerating woman who'd been extraordinarily abused, we did a girl at the time, she was 15 years old when she made the decision to misrepresent herself on the internet to gain some affection when she was locked in her house for months upon months.
And we said, hey, don't blame yourself.
Don't blame yourself. And then people were like, well, you know, how is it she gets a get-out-of-jail-free card and your dad doesn't?
And I said, well, she's a child.
My dad was an adult. Like, oh, okay.
But then it's not UPB. Well, UPB doesn't apply to children.
Well, but there's a logical proof that if a child says that UPB does not apply to children, then the child is logically incorrect.
This and that and the other. Oh my freaking God, people!
I understand the impulse like I really do, right?
I really do. When you're really afraid to pick up the racket and play the game, especially when you've put out extraordinary claims of knowledge, like this is an important question and this is something that Steph has done that is illogical or Steph's made a contradiction, When you're really afraid, like when you've talked a lot of stuff, right?
You've talked a lot about knowledge. It's not particular to these people, right?
I'm just talking in general. When you've talked a lot of stuff about your degree of knowledge, I'm an excellent tennis player, and I know this and that and the other.
I know how to play. I can win.
The staff as a tennis coach doesn't know what he's talking about.
Staff's telling you to do all the wrong stuff.
He's suggesting all the wrong stuff.
guy doesn't know what he's talking about I know so much more than Steph about how to be good and what is true and what is right And then I say, okay, we'll pick up the racket.
Let's play, right? If you're going to make all these claims, fantastic.
Let's play.
And then you don't want to play.
Or we say, or I say, well, great.
If you don't want to play me, that's fine.
But if you think that I'm totally out to lunch as a coach, let's at least see some videotapes of your playing!
Because if you're like an incredible coach and you're way better at tennis than I am, fantastic.
You could be my coach, if you'd like.
Wonderful. All I care about is not being the coach, but having the best tennis around.
So you can, uh, I'll be your acolyte.
Fantastic. The truth counts, not who's in charge.
But if you're like, no, I don't want to talk about...
I'm not going to present you any evidence of games that I've won or lost.
I'm not going to show you any videotapes, and I'm sure as hell I'm not going to pick up a racket and play.
Then is it okay with you if I'm a little skeptical about this amazing tennis ability of yours?
If you make all these claims to have this incredible tennis ability, but you won't actually play in front of anyone?
Can I be skeptical?
Like, is that unreasonable? In fact, can I be more than skeptical?
Can I just be openly disbelieving?
I think that would be reasonable.
And so, when people come with theories about virtue, theories about honor, theories about forgiveness, ah, the Buddhists try to come in with their theories about forgiveness and so on, If somebody comes and says, I'm a great coach.
Well, you don't want to get it wrong, right?
You don't want to be... Because when you learn bad habits...
You know, for the first year or so that I was playing tennis, I used these soggy, pathetic balls because we were broke.
And so I had to unlearn all of that crap.
I was hitting the ball too hard when it got real.
Solid tennis balls...
Then I put the word tennis in there to avoid the next mixtape.
when I got real solid balls.
Then I had to unlearn all of that stuff, Learning bad habits. If somebody teaches you the wrong rules for chess and you spend a year learning all these strategies and it turns out that the rook can't move diagonally, then you're way off.
In a sense, for the rest of your life, you're going to have to unthink all of this stuff.
So getting the wrong coach is pretty significant, pretty bad, right?
Especially in the realm of ethics.
God, ethics is much more important than tennis, right?
Happiness, restitution, guilt, virtue, integrity.
Much more important than can you play tennis.
So if somebody comes along and claims to be this great coach, I know so much more than staff, fantastic!
I mean, Saying it doesn't make it so.
We need to see some evidence.
We're scientific here, people.
We need to see some evidence.
So our good friend, a Buddhist, comes along and says, I know everything there is to know about forgiveness, and it's very different from Steph's idea of forgiveness, and I know that kind of virtue and this kind of virtue.
Great! So then I ask him, can you show me how this has...
How you've achieved this in your personal life.
Can you tell me a little bit about your family or a little bit about people that you've had some difficulty achieving this amazing degree of forgiveness and so on with?
Because either the person is totally born this way and they never feel any anger towards anyone and they've never had to forgive anyone because nobody's ever wronged them.
In which case... You know, you can't be a good coach if it's totally natural to you.
I mean, if you've never had any problem whatsoever, then you can't help people with the challenges.
And of course, I know that's not true.
Everybody has challenges in these areas.
But I'm asking for, hey, you say I'm a great tennis player.
I know exactly how to return Roscoe Tennis, 1,200 mile an hour serve.
I know, it's like, great, well, maybe...
You can show me, like it's great that you say that, that's fantastic, right?
But maybe you can show me some videotape of you returning Roscoe Tanner's 700 mile an hour serve.
Sorry about the, just blowing all the bugs off the microphone.
In the great studio we call everywhere.
It's a great claim, right?
I'm not just going to believe some guy on the internet who says I know all about virtue.
I'm going to ask for some evidence.
And so it's like, hey, just show me a tape.
And when they won't show me a tape, and they won't show me any statistics, and they won't show any proof that they've ever even played Roscoe Tanner, right?
Then I'm... I'm skeptical, friends.
Right? A lot of bullshit in the world.
A lot of pompous talkers in the world.
A lot of people who claim knowledge without being able to prove it.
Especially in the realm of virtue.
What do you think religion is? Buddhism.
Lecture, lecture, lecture. I don't want somebody to teach me about ethics who hasn't done ethics.
I don't want somebody to teach me How to be a great tennis player who's never picked up a racket.
I don't care how much theory they know.
I don't! If you don't know the experience of playing tennis, then you can't talk me through the challenges because you haven't actually done it.
Sure, you talk about it. You know the rules.
You know the history of tennis. You are an academician of tennis.
You know tennis in books, you know tennis in video, you know tennis, you just don't actually know tennis in the experience.
Never picked up a racket and played.
Ethics is in the action, and we have far more theory than we could ever enact in our lives, ever.
Ever! I could spend the rest of my life just on honesty and still not be done.
I don't find lifeboat scenarios particularly helpful because that's like saying, Steph, what meal would you like to eat when you're 12,000 years old?
For your 12,000th birthday, Steph, what kind of cake would you like?
It's like, dude, that is so far beyond the span of what it is that I need to do or how long it is that I'm going to live in my life.
That's completely useless.
It's completely useless.
If you've achieved so much personal virtue in your life that the most burning question in your world Is whether, since I forgave a 15-year-old as a 40-year-old, whether I should forgive my brother who was 15 when I was 12?
If that's the most burning moral question in the world, then we're living on different planets.
And we're living on different planets.
And I know, I know, I know, I know, you won't believe me, you really won't, but I know, I know that you're just stalling.
You're just stalling.
It's so obvious.
It's so obvious when you've actually gotten out there and played the game for years, played tennis for years, and someone comes along and says, oh, you don't know what you're doing.
I'm a way better tennis player.
You got it all wrong.
Great. Show me.
Show me how to do it right.
Well, I didn't bring my racket.
Oh, I got a racket for you.
Well, I don't have my shoes.
Oh, here are some shoes for you. Well, I don't have my lucky socks.
Well, let's drive to your place and pick up your lucky socks and get back.
Oh, I don't have my keys with me.
My place is being fumigated.
Stalling! Stalling!
Do you not know how obvious it is?
Do you not know how obvious it is?
You just don't want to go out, pick up a racket and hit a ball.
What I mean by that is that this is the logic of personal and political liberty, personal first stuff you can act on first.
Why do people tangle themselves up in the endless nets and tripwires of ethical theory?
Why do they worry whether or not You're allowed to break into somebody's apartment if you're hanging outside and going to drop to your death.
Why? Is it because they have achieved every other conceivable virtue, and this is at the frontier of their knowledge, of actionable items, that this is where they are in terms of their actual actionable items?
I must tell you, with all due respect, I think not.
It's just stalling, people.
Oh.
It's just stalling.
I think I'm a pretty good tennis player.
If you come onto the court and say, ah, you got it all wrong.
You got to turn your wrist like this.
You got to turn your wrist like that.
Well, am I just going to say, oh, well, I think I'm a great tennis player.
I've been sure have been successful playing tennis.
Like I think I'm in the championship league.
I'm on my way to Wimbledon.
I've been playing for 20 years.
And you come along and say, oh, you're doing it totally wrong.
You're using your forehand where you should be using your backhand.
You should be facing away from the net and you should be blindfolded.
That's how it sounds to me. Then I'm going to say, wow.
That's kind of not how I've been playing for 20 years, and it's brought me great success.
Quarter century. Great success.
Top of the league, I think.
Not perfect, never perfect, but top of the league.
So I'm going to say, great, pick up a racket and show me.
Well, I don't think you need to see that, do you?
Kind of do. Kind of do, if you're going to make a knowledge claim about ethics, that's the kind of opposite of what has worked for me and what I've worked on theoretically and so on.
Non-scientific, non-rational, non-intuitive.
Then I'm going to say, great, if you think that I should eat this arsenic, or at least what appears to be arsenic for me, why don't you take a swig?
If you say arsenic is going to make me healthy, When I'm already healthy, and I believe that arsenic is going to make me sick, take a swig.
Show me how it works.
And if you're like, well, I don't really, I don't want to, I don't drink that stuff.
Dude, I mean, come on.
How do you think it looks?
Oh, my God. Now, this is the false self stuff, right?
This is the false self stuff.
How do people... How do you think it looks to somebody with the eyes to see?
You don't see it! Right?
So all the people who accused me of immoral behavior unjustly and who never apologized, they don't know just how contemptible and ridiculous they look.
And I do feel some empathy.
I feel sympathy. I really do.
That's a terrifying, awful, horrible place to be in your life, where you attack people and if it turns out you're unjust, you just slither away.
I mean, that's just horrible.
I don't mean horrible to me.
I survive somehow, but...
Yee!
For you? Oh, yuck!
Yuck! Justice accumulates to us, whether we like it or not.
The people who never apologize to me for unjust accusations, highly public unjust accusations, immorality.
The people who don't apologize to me...
The fuck do I care?
I have a wonderful life, but...
What is it going to do to them?
Well... It digs them into the pit, right?
It digs them into the pit.
It erodes their self-esteem.
It erodes their confidence. See, the reason that I ask people to apologize to me, the reason that I ask people to apologize to me is not because I can't live without the apology.
It's just words on the screen to me.
It's not because I can't live without the apology.
The reason that it's important to apologize to someone that you've wronged is for you.
It's for you. It's for your own integrity and for your own happiness.
I mean, you can look at me as a doctor who's saying, take this awful Buckley's tasting cough medicine because I just want to make you feel bad and I just want to have control over you and I just want to humiliate you, but that's projection.
That's projection.
People attacked me without evidence because they use ethics to humiliate people.
And so then when faced with a genuinely ethical demand, they get resentful and feel controlled and bullied.
Why? Because that's what they're doing.
If you force your children to drink cod liver oil, Just because you like bullying them and humiliating them and making them squirm and making them taste, you don't care about the health.
Then when your doctor says you should really drink cod liver oil, you're going to get resentful.
Why? Because that's the pattern that you have created.
So if you use ethics to bully me, I'm completely unimportant in the equation.
It's all the other people in your life that matter.
If you use ethics to bully people, or confuse them, or misdirect them, or, you know, well, Celsius and Fahrenheit and apologies and this, and the question is the most important ethical question in a world full of plague and famine and death and murder and destruction and torture and abuse and pedophilia.
The most important moral question is a thread a month or two old on an obscure philosophy forum on the internet.
I've got to find the proof of right.
Oh, God! So if you're focusing on me as the person who you need to really, really focus your moral energies on, it's the worst person ever.
But it's really just, in fact, kind of bullying.
And I know that it's bullying. I know that it's bullying and humiliation and criticism and attack.
They use the ethics bombs and lob them wildly and just hope that they injure a person who's interested in being good because that's what they were taught and that's what they haven't processed in themselves and so on.
They know ethics as a weapon to use to hurt.
It's like a doctor who knows the nervous system is the one who can cause you the most pain.
So studying to be a doctor in order to hurt people is a whole lot worse than just getting into bar fights, right?
So somebody who uses ethical theories and ethics to humiliate ethical people or to try to, that's pretty rancid, right?
So then, when they do something wrong, they can't be good!
They can't be! Because they use ethics.
To humiliate people, right?
They call people immoral in order to humiliate them.
And so when someone says, well, what you did was just immoral, they have to blank out.
Because they use ethics as a club, right?
So when somebody else grabs that they've been beating on, somebody else grabs the club from them, they got to run away, right?
Because there's no possibility.
That ethics can lead to happiness because they use it to cause and create misery.
Self-doubt, fear, insecurity.
But it doesn't work with me. But I'm sure that it works with a lot of people.
So why is it that I want people who've done me wrong to apologize to me?
Is it because I want to humiliate them?
No, of course not. Of course not.
That's not how I use ethics.
And of course everybody knows that's not how I use ethics.
Because I don't have people who listen to this show closing on 30,000.
Not bad for a philosophical conversation.
Bigger than Plato ever reached, which I'll consider a success.
Not because I necessarily am a better philosopher.
I think I might be. But because of the technology.
If I used ethics to abuse people, these people would never show up.
If I used ethics to humiliate people and abuse people, these people who come in and try and abuse and bully me, they wouldn't show up.
Because they'd recognize a kindred spirit and they'd go and prey on.
The crocodile doesn't eat another crocodile.
Goes for a gazelle. So I'm not trying to get people to apologize to me because I'm in some power trip.
Got to win. Got to crush these people.
It's not retaliatory.
It's a good feeling.
It's a good feeling.
If you've acted in an inconsistent manner, ooh snake!
If you've acted in an inconsistent manner, when you apologize, if you've done something wrong, if you apologize, you're kind of happier.
It releases tension.
Religious detention of inconsistent behavior.
And that is really, really important.
So the reason that I ask people, you know, when they come in and talk about obscure possible contradictions in ethical theories and One guy literally had, if I remember rightly...
Okay, so there are these six ninjas that descend on skyhooks from the clouds, and then they do this, that, and the other.
Literally, I mean, literally had a bunch of people, I think they were ninjas involved.
This was his ethical question.
Dude, has this happened to you lately?
Right? Has this happened to you lately?
I mean, how it looks is that we're in the middle of a plague, people.
We're in the middle of a plague of subjectivism.
We're in the middle of a plague. The most dangerous plague.
The plague that will consume us if we do not fight it accurately and effectively and efficiently.
We're in the middle of a plague, and it seems like sometimes more than half the damn doctors are writing papers about people are dropping dead all around them.
And they're writing papers, sort of like, okay, so this guy gets to be 80, and he has diabetes, and a ferret is attacking him, and he gets hit by lightning at the same time.
What do you do? Man!
If the world were healthy enough that that was the most pressing medical question we had, I'd be overjoyed.
But that ain't where we're living, folks.
If the most pressing moral issue in the world...
Is whether or not I should apologize to a person for getting Celsius and Fahrenheit wrong, in an innocent mistake, if that's the most pressing moral issue, my god, what a beautiful and wonderful paradise we would be living in.
Like a bunch of doctors who all say, I know the cure to the plague.
That's what ethicists say. I know the cure to evil, corruption, and unhappiness, abuse.
I know the cure. A bunch of doctors who say, I know the cure for the plague.
And I say, well, great.
I've been applying this cure to the plague, and boy, has it ever cured a lot of people.
So many people are feeling better.
So many people are freer.
So many people are healthier. I'm not a healing touch, but after 8 billion podcasts, something seems to click.
So I'm applying this cure and it's slow and it's painful and you're saying, oh, there's a faster cure, there's a way better cure, you're doing it all wrong.
Great! Tell me and show me how you've cured the plague victims.
Is that an unreasonable thing to ask?
I'm successfully doing some cures.
So is Christina. And you say, yeah, you're getting it all wrong.
Or the most important thing is not what you're focusing on, but not about defooing or integrity, virtue, honesty.
Be honest with the people around you.
Spent a whole life doing that. Still not be done.
Refraining from abusing people you love or claim to love.
Refraining from snapping and being mean.
Spent a whole life doing that.
Still not be done. So I say, well, if you can cure people so much better than I can, great, go cure them, show me, give me the evidence.
I'll even take anecdotal evidence.
I'll tell you, self-reporting on your family relations, I'm happy with that.
That's all I ask is some evidence.
Because I've got the evidence for what I'm doing, for the fact that what I do works, and the people who stop fighting everything, and the people who stop nitpicking at everything, and just go out and do it, Just pick up the goddamn racket and go out and play some tennis?
They realize how far it is to go to be a great tennis player, and I'm still far from where I want to be.
Not far, but there's always more to go.
There's a kind of humility that comes from actually picking up a tennis racket.
There's a kind of humility that comes from stopping talking about how to cure a plague and actually trying to cure a plague, getting in there with the sick.
I was struck by a cure and I'm trying to replicate it for others and it was years for me.
Decades! Tens of thousands of dollars of therapy.
Countless books. I was struck by a cure.
I'm trying to reproduce it to others to the best of my ability.
It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but try to do it.
Or if you're going to say that I'm wrong, Then you need to show me.
And of course, the people who come in and just say that I'm wrong obviously haven't done it.
Obviously haven't done it.
I didn't just start off podcast zero by saying, ah, you're all wrong, you're all crazy.
Your family's evil, you need to live alone.
I mean, that's not that that's my whole message, but not even that's an accurate view of my message, but I didn't just start off with that.
90% of families are corrupt.
Ditch them and send me money.
Right? I mean, come on.
You show. You show.
You establish credibility.
And you show respect for success. .
You show respect for success.
If I'm at the top of my league in tennis and you come in and just say, you're doing it all wrong, Steph.
You know that I'm going to be tough to convince.
You know that. Why?
Because it's working. Because it's working.
So you know it's going to be tough to convince me.
So the best way to convince me is not to just tell me I'm doing everything wrong.
I need to do everything differently. Pick up a tennis racket, beat the pants off me.
That's the best way to disprove or to prove that you're a better tennis player.
So when our good friend the Buddhist, a number of Buddhists came along recently and they said, well, you need to show empathy to people and learn where they're coming from and so on.
It's like, well, but you're just lecturing people.
You're not showing empathy to them.
And you're not learning where they're coming from.
You're just lecturing them. So if you're not going to follow your own beliefs, why on earth should I? Listen to you, right?
I mean, that's how it looks, people.
It's like you spend an hour lecturing me on how I should play tennis, and you pick up the tennis racket, and every time I hit you a ball, even relatively lightly, you swing wildly, and your racket flies out of your hand and hits an ump.
I mean, it's sort of important, right?
If you're gonna say I'm a great tennis player, then don't say it.
Show us. Don't tell us.
Show us. Stop talking and do Because the obviousness of the stalling is ridiculous.
Honestly, honestly, I'm just telling you.
I'm telling you because I want you to be happy.
I'm not telling you because I humiliate you.
I'm telling you because I want you to be happy.
Stop lecturing people about virtue.
Stop nitpicking about the tiniest possible gray areas of when a zebra becomes a horse.
What are the atomic differences between one beaver and another?
I mean, honestly, stop stalling.
Stop stalling. I know that you're not honest with everyone in your life.
I know that. Because of the stalling.
Look, I'm not in a glass house here.
I'm not perfectly honest with everyone in my life.
It's something I'm working for. It's something I'm pushing the envelope off.
But I'm still six million miles away of whether me as a 12-year-old kid should have forgiven my brother who was a 15-year-old kid for what he did because I forgave a 15-year-old kid when I was 40.
Ugh! Ugh! Ah!
Drop the textbooks and pick up the racket.
Go and be moral.
Go and be vulnerable and honest with the people in your life.
Go and be good.
I always come to an internet forum and talk about it and people say, well, Steph, you're lecturing.
It's like, yes! Yes, I am lecturing.
I absolutely am lecturing.
I'm a coach. Been playing for 25 years, hit the top of my league, and I'm offering you coaching for free.
I'm only talking so much after having done for years and years and years and years and years, and that gives you humility.
So if you have the urge, and I know that you do, I can taste it, I can feel it.
If you have the urge to come in and nitpick about This or that way of being ethical or whether this ethical question...
If, in Thailand, if you were the Grand Priest Mufti of X, Y, or Z, and there was a human sacrifice and you had to please this, or if you didn't please this, there'd be two human sacrifices, and what would you do?
Like, oh my god, people.
Go out and be good. Why don't you go out and just like be honest to the people around you?
Why don't you go be honest to your parents?
Be honest to your parents. Be honest to your friends.
Tell them about your interest in philosophy.
Tell them about your fascination with virtue.
Tell them about the wild and exciting journey that you're on called being a good person without mysticism.
Talk about the challenge of meaning in a godless universe.
Talk about your fear of the world.
Talk about you for your friends.
Sit down with your friends and say, I'm terrified to have this conversation with you.
That's the kind of honesty and directness that I'm talking about in this conversation.
Not if 12 ninjas descended from the ceiling and...
Right? Fuck that.
Fuck that. Go sit down with your friends or your family and say, you know what?
I'm completely terrified to have a conversation about what really means something to me.
I'm terrified of your rejection.
Because I'm fascinated by philosophy and virtue and values.
And there's this guy on the internet who might be insane.
And I'm terrified of that.
You can write to me and say, Steph, I like a lot of what you say, but I have this really weird impulse to nitpick at everything.
And we can have a conversation about that honestly and directly.
Honestly and directly. Honesty is the first virtue.
The very first virtue.
The very first virtue.
And that's what we need to be doing.
Real-time relationships.
Yes.
Talking about what is honestly occurring for you when you're in the presence of someone.
That takes a long time, people.
That takes a long time.
That's hard. Nitpicking on the internet?
Dead simple. Who cares?
Who cares? Not gonna change your life.
Not gonna free your relationships.
Not gonna help you achieve intimacy.
Nit, nit, nit, nitpick, nitpick, nitpick, nitpick.
Like, forget it.
Forget it.
The plague is all around us people.
Let's worry about spontaneous combustion when the world is mostly healthy.
▲
Export Selection