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Oct. 24, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
47:04
891 Frustration as Hypocrisy
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Time Text
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
This is Wednesday, October the 24th, 2007, 5.54pm, and we're going to do a little chat about the irrationality of frustration.
Frustration... So a gentleman has written a post on the board which goes a little something like this.
He says, okay, I'm ready to give up now.
For the last two weeks, I've been scouring the area looking for places I might be able to find like-minded, friendly people with whom I could exchange good ideas.
Those I find here, those I find elsewhere, and some of my own.
The reality is, no dice.
No dice. Stone walls, blank stares, sarcasm, and even outright hostility and derision is all I get.
The secular philosophy groups bite my head off for daring to question the mythology of the state.
And the mystical philosophy groups bite my head off for daring to question the mythology of the church.
The philosophy club back home bites my head off for daring to question anything.
The human race is truly in a dark state, and I... And I am fully prepared to admit it now.
Outside of the discussion on this board and some of the people I've met here, there is really no one left in the world worth caring about.
Why bother when everyone but you people have so much hate and hostility built up and I'm ready to cast it at the first sign of curiosity?
Well... That is true and sad, of course.
And I have a great deal of sympathy for what you're going through.
And I'm going to suggest...
A couple of ways of looking at it that may ease the burden, ease the pain, because my friends, I don't want philosophy to be a horrible sentence of hermetic, hermit-like isolation and frustration with the human race and despair about the future and alienation and contempt and derision and frustration.
Did I mention frustration? I think I did.
So I'm going to...
Give you a way of looking at it that I think is quite accurate.
It helps me and hopefully it will help you.
So it goes a little something like this.
What we dislike so enormously in those that we speak to, those that we talk to, what we dislike so enormously in them, is that they put forward rationality and evidence as their methodology for determining truth from falsehood.
And then they do not apply that In any consistent way, right?
So everybody claims reason and evidence, and even people who believe in God, they claim reason and evidence.
They just say it's not sensual reason and evidence.
It's a higher realm of reason and evidence.
Like, people don't say, I believe in God, like the way they say, I like chocolate, or the way they say, you know, leprechauns are cool.
They say, I believe in God, and God really exists.
You know, my belief in God is a mere derivation of the reality that God doth existeth.
So, everybody claims reason and evidence.
Nobody just says, I believe in God because I just make up the fact that God exists.
You couldn't maintain that.
You say, I believe in God.
Because God exists and you say, I believe in the state or the state is good because the state is virtuous and here are the reasons why and so on.
So, everybody claims reason and evidence.
And then they abandon it.
They distort it.
They skewer it.
They mutate it to serve their own self-interest and so on.
And unfortunately, I would say that a post like this shows exactly the same tendencies.
You know, with all due respect and sensitivity, and Lord knows I get stuck in it too, but...
A post like this shows the same kind of habits as those that are so frustrating to the poster.
It is a proclamation of rationality and evidence and philosophy, but a fundamental rejection of rationality, empiricism, and philosophy.
This is why it's such a trap.
It's so easy to be what we condemn.
At least that's my experience.
Maybe it's not for you, but it certainly is for me.
So I'm going to take you on a tour of a tasty little metaphor.
Oh yes, I have missed them, and I hope that you have too.
We're going to take you on a tour of a tasty little metaphor.
Two, in fact.
One involving calcium, the other one involving Richard Dawkins.
And hopefully it will make some sense of how we can look at this so as to reduce our own level of frustration.
So let's say that you are some brilliant bone scientist and you live in a society where everybody believes that calcium is bad for your bones.
Calcium, double plus bad for your bones.
And they only grudgingly give mother's milk to babies and then they wean.
The children have milk as much as possible and all other sort of calcium supplements or products and get rid of because calcium is really bad for you.
So naturally, of course, everybody gets osteoporosis and brittle bones and so on in their teens and 20s and so on.
And they all say, well, you know, the reason that I have these brittle bones is because I had calcium when I was a kid, so they take even more calcium.
So the solution, because the premise is wrong, the solution is always worse than wrong.
It's counterproductive. That's what statism and religion is all about.
But you, as the brilliant bone scientist, have figured this out.
And so, of course, the first thing you start doing, taking your calcium supplements and becoming more bone-healthy yourself.
And so your bones become strong again.
I mean, I don't know.
Medically, I'm sure they wouldn't. But let's just go with Fantasyland here anyway.
We're going to put Richard Dawkins in the 14th century later, so let's not be sticklers for complete empirical accuracy at the moment.
So your bones become strong and they are like rocks.
They are like diamonds. They are like diamond sticks.
And so you can do some pretty cool stuff, right?
Other people are sort of walking around with their walking chairs and walking canes and they're brittle and so on.
But you have these amazing mastodon-like bones.
And you know that everybody around you, because they have incorrect medical information, in fact, they have the opposite of the truth as far as medical information goes, that they're frail, broken, brittle, delicate.
And you know that you're strong.
You also know that they're delicate.
Now, let's also say that you doth liketh the rugby.
You like playing rugby, right?
And so you keep saying to people, let's go play rugby.
And you're the only person on the planet with strong bones.
The only person on the planet with strong bones.
And you keep saying to all these people, let's go play rugby.
Well, what happens?
Well, of course, what happens is you break them.
You break them.
Because for some reason, although you know that everybody's bones are brittle, and you've got the evidence, and you've got the tests, you've got the reasoning, and you know that everybody's bones are brittle, still, you come on with this full-on,
body-slam, loutish Australian rules, full-crush up against their fragile and brittle dry sticks of the bones that they have and you break them and they get mad because it feels like you're assaulting them right because it's like well you can get up and walk away but I just broke 19 bones or you just broke 19 bones by crashing into me now would it make sense Month after month,
month, year after year, to keep complaining that everyone you play rugby with keeps getting upset.
And you claim to be a scientist.
Reason and evidence has helped me understand this calcium thing.
Strong bones. But wouldn't reason and evidence also perfectly predict...
That if you play rugby with people who are incredibly frail, that you're going to hurt them and they're going to get mad.
I think it would.
I think it would be hard to claim reason and evidence as your guiding star if you kept playing rugby with frail, brittle people, hurting them, breaking their bones, and then saying, What?
What? What?
Because you know the theory that their bones are brittle, that they have no strength, and they don't know it.
They think this is just normal. They think that this is normal, brittle bones is normal.
Now, of course, to make the metaphor slightly more realistic, you are, in fact, telling them that calcium and blah, blah, blah, but they think it's calcium is what makes their bones brittle.
Not strong. Given that they're not taking the calcium, given that they're not taking the calcium, by your own theory, you should never, never play rugby with them.
Because what they're doing is they're sort of in wheelchairs and walkers, passing enough rugby ball to each other agonizingly slowly, and you come in there rolling in like a big honking 10-pin bowling ball going over a couple of matchsticks.
Poor houses of cards, smashing and crushing them.
By your own theory, because they've never taken calcium, they're brittle.
And then you wonder why they get mad when you break them playing rugby.
Not very rational.
Not very empirical.
Not very logical.
Now suppose you are Richard Dawkins.
Ah, the lovely and polite Richard Dawkins.
And you are going back in time to 14th century Rome, 14th century Italy, under the sway of the Catholic Church, to the Quattrocento.
And you bop in this time machine, you go back to the 14th century, and of course in the 14th century there's no such thing as biology, there's no such thing as Really, science as we would understand it, and some people working on optics and so on, but there's no biologist as we would understand the term today.
Certainly no theory of evolution.
But you're Richard Dawkins, right?
So you go back in time, and you pop out into the 14th century, into Rome, and you get an audience with an ecumenical council, or a council of worms.
I don't know if it's still running, but...
And you go in there and with great erudition and a very soft voice you tell them all about the theory of evolution.
And perhaps even throw in a little bit the heliocentric nature of the solar system.
Then also you can tell them with great erudition that it's not possible for God to have started Evolution, because complex organisms such as God can only result from evolution.
Evolution is the only way that we know for complex organisms to exist, to occur.
And you can give them all your metaphors about the gentle rolling slope up the other side of the steep hill, and you can give them the veil, and science opens the veil, the burka, and gives us more views, and this and that, right?
But... You're talking to priests.
You're talking to priests.
And you could perhaps be forgiven if you don't know anything about religion or the history of the church or whatever.
You could be somewhat forgiven for not understanding that they're not going to receive what you have to say with much positivity, right?
They're clerics! It's the Pope or whoever.
Their entire power structure, their reason for being, their justification for their existence is all based on God created the Earth in six days, rested on the seventh, the Earth is 6,000 years old, fossils are there just to test our faith, the Earth is the center of the universe and does not move, right?
That's the space that you're speaking into.
And they've never heard of the theory of evolution, and the moment they hear it, they associate it with the devil.
It's evil. You're counterminding the word of God?
Sinner! Burn him.
So you run. You flee.
Oh, I'll be right back. Off you go.
And you flee to Padua, and you flee to Venice, and you flee to city after city after city.
And every time you come to a city...
You step off the gondola or the carriage or whatever you're using to get there.
And you say, I'm a good man, to the first person that you come into.
Could you tell me where the evolution society is?
I'm Richard Dawkins. I'm from the future.
I'm looking for the local biologists or evolutionary society.
And the guy says, yeah, wait right here.
I'm just going to go tell this local priest that you're here talking about something like evolution, which is satanic, and you're evil, a heretic, a sorcerer.
And then you, every time, you barely make it out of town alive.
How long does this need to go on?
And how long...
Can you reasonably claim to be a scientist who works with reason and evidence?
How long can you reasonably claim to be a scientist who works with reason and evidence if you don't get that what you're saying is unprecedented and perceived as evil?
How long, as 14th century Richard Dawkins, can you continue to be shocked and appalled at how you are treated?
Look, I know, I know.
It takes a ridiculous amount of self-confidence.
I hope it's not misplaced.
I don't think it is. It takes a ridiculous amount of self-confidence.
For us to look at the unprecedented nature of this conversation, and I don't mean that we're the only thinking people or anything like that.
It's just that we really are constantly reminding ourselves to start and work with first principles and to apply them consistently and uniformly and so on.
But we can't get frustrated at other people being...
Anti-rational while claiming rationality, anti-empirical while claiming to be empirical, anti-philosophical while claiming that philosophy is a value.
We can't continue logically to be frustrated at everybody else, because that frustration is anti-rational while claiming rationality, anti-empirical while claiming empiricism, and anti-philosophical while claiming to be, ooh, so philosophical.
We just work from the evidence.
The theories that we've been working with, it's, gosh, coming up for two years.
The theories that we've been working with entirely predict the hostility of those we speak to, who are, you know, not the rare people who get this conversation and who have the honesty and the integrity and the virtue and the consistency.
To live by values.
We know! We know!
The theory perfectly predicts that the vast majority of people are going to react with extraordinary hostility to the idea of integrity and of truth and of virtue, on a consistent and particularly on a personal basis, particularly on a personal basis.
The theory perfectly predicts that.
The theory is, of course, That people blind themselves to the reality of violence for the sake of protecting corrupt people, and those corrupt people first and foremost are their parents, their immediate family, siblings perhaps, teachers, those they depend on,
that they suffer violence as children, they suffer corruption, they're lied to about virtue, And so they develop a blind spot in order to get through their childhoods, and then they spend the rest of their lives claiming virtue while trashing virtue, the same way that their parents did, the same way that their teachers did.
And that when you begin to talk to them about the gun in the room, when you begin to ask them questions, that they're going to react with extraordinary hostility and sliminess.
They're going to redirect.
They're going to misdirect. They're going to misquote.
They're going to exaggerate. They're going to give you false dichotomies.
Perpetually. Eternally. That it's going to be wrestling fought.
That it's going to be like trying to debate with a cloud.
And that the further you stay in that conversation with them, the more aggressive they're going to get.
Because deep down they know that they're using virtue to attack and undermine virtue.
But they don't have the ego strength to handle that because they were raised by corrupt people.
And they're going to spend the rest of their lives pretending to love virtue while attacking it in the same way that their parents pretended to love them while attacking them.
And they're reproducing the corruption they first experienced.
This we know. This we know. This the theory perfectly predicts and explains well.
The state is an effect to the family.
God is an effect to the family.
And for most people, what they call, quote, philosophy is just an effect of the family.
At least, that's the explanation that I've come up with to help understand why there's this ridiculous loopback nonsense that a five-year-old can figure out that is always occurring in the realms of, let's just say, of statism. So this is the nonsense that always goes on in statism, right?
Somebody says, the initiation of force is always wrong.
It's always evil. It's always bad.
And you say, well, then the state must be bad.
No, no, no, no, no. The state is not bad.
Because the state is voluntary.
The state is a social contract.
The state is approved of by the voters.
The state is participated by it.
It is voluntary. It's like, oh, okay, then we don't need guns.
No, no, no, no. The state needs guns.
Oh, then it's not voluntary.
Therefore, it's the initiation of the use of force.
Therefore, the state is evil. No, no, no, no, no.
It's voluntary. Right?
This back-and-forth pendulum.
This is just the family.
This is just the family.
My parents are good.
Well, didn't they do this, that, and the other that was bad?
Well, yeah, but they... I mean, they had to because I was a bad kid.
Well, how can you be a bad kid?
How can any kid be bad?
Would you do this to your kid?
No! No, I wouldn't do this to my kid.
I wouldn't keep my kid this way.
I wouldn't beat him. I wouldn't yell at him.
Oh, so what your parents did was bad.
No, no, no, no. Right?
It's the same thing. It's the same thing.
Coercion is justified. And then when you isolate it as coercion, it becomes unjustified.
Then it has to be diluted back in this non-contextual way into being justified again.
To avoid the pain of the past, but more particularly to avoid the pain of confronting one's parents about this in the present, which people will do almost anything to avoid, because we're trained from day one to not see this, to not see this.
So this the theory perfectly predicts.
Just as a theory about 14th century Richard Dawkins would perfectly predict that everybody's going to get angry at him or fearful of him.
There'll be a few people who'll be fascinated, but by far the vast majority of people are going to be shocked, appalled, horrified, and offended, and attack him in one way or another when he goes around talking about this stuff.
In the same way that somebody who understands that everybody's bones are brittle because nobody takes calcium should not keep engaging in rugby matches and get shocked and surprised when people say he's being abusive or destructive.
Now, this is all perfectly logical, and it's perfectly empirical, right?
So we always get mad if people say, oh, you've got to learn from evidence, you've got to reason from first principles.
Well, we have done the reasoning from first principles.
We know that this is what is going to occur.
And our empirical, our experience, our empirical understanding fully bears this out.
Fully bears this out.
So we have the theory and we have the proof.
And it's true. And it's true.
And still we act as if it's not true.
And still we go out looking for like minds.
Because we don't know how innovative we are.
We don't know how far ahead of the curve we are.
We pretend that we've just been trying to catch up with people, but we are miles ahead.
Light years ahead. Decades ahead.
And the evidence is very clear for that as well.
The world is getting worse.
And we oppose the dominant ideology.
The dominant ideology must be false and corrupt because the world is getting worse.
Violence is not violence is violence is not violence.
Well, of course, it's a contradiction. So, of course, its application is going to result in disaster.
We have the theory. We have endless proof.
And the board, of course, and the emails and the contacts that people have through that allow us to validate the truth with other people in the same way, rarer people like us in the same situation.
Boom! Always comes back the same.
Always comes back the same. We have the theory and we have endless amounts of evidence.
And what do we do? We ignore them.
We ignore them.
And then... We go out and we say, do you know what's really annoying about people?
All I do is try and reason with them and show them evidence, and they just reject me!
But you're rejecting reason and evidence by going out there and pretending that people respect reason and evidence, when we know, theoretically and practically, that they don't.
I mean, my God, people!
If the vast majority of people, or even a minority of people, that was any decent size, respected reason and evidence, how on earth could there be religious people?
Can you imagine if I put out a book on philosophy that had one-tenth of one percent of the inconsistencies in the logic of the Bible?
I'd be laughed out of any academic circle, out of anywhere, anything.
But Christianity is doing great.
Islam lunatic. I mean, if I was a moral philosopher and I was thrown in jail for pedophilia, people might have some questions.
And if I said openly and wrote, pedophilia is the highest moral goal, she got Mohammed marrying a six-year-old and raping her when she's nine.
Nobody has any problems with that.
People don't look at reason and evidence.
We know that. We know that theoretically.
We know that practically. We know that empirically.
It's constantly reinforced. To ignore that is not easy.
I mean, that really takes some work to ignore that basic fact and reality of what we have experienced in our lives and what we have worked through theoretically and what we have validated in comparison to other people's experience.
So, why do we do this?
Why do we keep running out as if we don't know what's going to happen?
Why do we continue to reject theory and evidence, endless evidence, bulletproof theory?
And why do we keep running out, ignoring reason and evidence, and get mad at people who ignore reason and evidence?
How can we blame them when we're doing the same thing?
We can't blame them if we're doing the same thing.
It's called hypocrisy.
We can't have higher standards for others than we have for ourselves.
And we know that even if people did respect reason and evidence, it still wouldn't be enough for us to convince them if we weren't following reason and evidence ourselves.
Clearly, people believe nonsense that's hypocritical if it's presented passionately and early enough.
Well, we know that because of religion and statism and so on, the cult of the family.
Reason and evidence clearly is not enough.
Clearly, reason and evidence is not enough.
We've had the scientific method for 500 years, 600 years almost.
We've had rational philosophy, Socratic syllogisms for 2,500 years.
We've had bulletproof, unequivocal claims for the virtue and practicality of free trade for over 300 years.
And we have less free trade now.
Than when we first started and people are less rational now than they were in ancient Athens.
And people are less scientific now, in terms of a real respect for reason and evidence, than they were in the times of the Enlightenment, three, four hundred years ago.
So, clearly, rationality won't do it.
Clearly, A lack of rationality, or even anti-rationality, plus something else will do it.
We'll get to what that something else is in another podcast, but we're perfectly aware that reason and evidence won't do it alone.
Reason and evidence alone.
But we continue to ignore that.
Rush out. Keep putting our hand in that blender saying, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Do you know it's amazing to me that other people don't learn from their experience?
Ow, ow, ow, ow.
Repeat for decades.
See if you don't feel mad.
And we know, of course, that there's an enormous amount of calumny and attacks that are thrown upon any kind of rational consistency.
I'm part of this libertarian list.
I've sort of stopped receiving it now for a variety of reasons.
But these guys were talking about and putting an enormous amount of intellectual energy into debating the question of whether or not there would be cocaine vending machines in a free society.
Now they're moving on to...
Is praxeology scientific?
And of course I've tried a couple of times to raise the question of personal relationships and integrity.
So we say, well, the initiation of the use of force is evil.
Advocating the initiation of the use of force must then be somewhat corrupt.
Must be. Must be.
And so naturally, when you start bringing up the question, you say, okay, so the initiation of the use of force is wrong.
Advocating the initiation of the use of force must be wrong in some manner.
It's certainly false. You say, okay, so everybody on this list, or everybody in this room, or everybody who's a libertarian, who in your life advocates that you get shot?
Does your brother? Does your mother?
Dad? Cousins?
Aunts? Professors?
Students? Siblings?
Wife? Parents?
Children? Who in your life advocates that you get shot?
Either through religion or through any proximity to the Old Testament or even the New Testament.
Jesus affirms that he is there not to overturn one law of the Old Testament.
So if the initiation of the use of force is evil, the initiation of the use of force in the abstract must be pretty bad, and the initiation of the use of force against you must at least and the initiation of the use of force against you must at Must at least be offensive.
I mean, if I'm dating a fine Nubian princess, a black girl, And my dad's in the KKK? Don't I kind of have a choice to make?
Yeah, pretty much. Alright, pretty much.
But that, of course, is never talked about.
Libertarian circles, and this is why I'm not anywhere close to being invited, and never will be, right, to speak at conferences.
Because for most people, of course, libertarianism is a hobby.
It's like Sudoku. It's like a crossword puzzle.
It's like Scrabble. I could be really good at Scrabble.
It could be a world champion. I don't pretend to myself that I'm saving the world.
But when you start talking about people's personal relationships, and do you apply these values consistently in your personal relationships, Everything goes quiet.
Well, I don't bore people if that's what you mean.
False dichotomies, right?
And so we know all of this.
We know all of this.
This is not new. This is not startling.
This is podcast 891.
We know that the average person has no clue why they believe what they believe.
You ask the average person who has a, quote, factual opinion about anything, how do you determine truth from falsehood?
There's not one person in a million.
Not one person in a million from a philosophical standpoint can tell you how to differentiate a true statement from a false statement.
Or if they can...
There's not one person in a thousand of those people who lives it consistently, or at least has that as a standard that they aim for.
So I guess it's you and me and two other guys.
But this is the kind of nonsense that we always put up with in these kinds of debates.
These false alternatives, this imaginary stuff, this made-up, this like, oh, so, you know, you're into anarchism, you just want violence in the streets, and the poor to starve, and...
It's what people always say. It's what people say to me all the time.
Oh my God, if I had a dime for every time I got this complaint.
Oh, Steph, he wants you to leave your family.
He just wants to separate you from your family.
He says, dump everyone you know.
Follow me. What nonsense.
I mean, of course, like all of these silly attacks, it's the exact opposite of the truth.
Just put this out there for now.
Might as well know. I don't tell people I tell people to be honest with their families.
I tell people to get close to their families.
I tell people that if you've thought something and had a problem with your family for 20 years, talk to them about it.
Open up. Be vulnerable.
Be honest. Because your family always says to you, we love virtue and you.
We love both virtue and you.
We love goodness and we love you, my son, my daughter.
We love honesty, integrity, truth, justice.
And we love you. But the moment that you put these things together with your family, suddenly you're an enemy.
We love truth, and we love you.
We love truth, we love intimacy, and we love you.
But whenever you are honest and intimate with your parents, they kick you to the curb.
They throw you out of the plane.
They don't even tell you to roll when they push you out of the van on the gravel road at 150 miles an hour.
It's not my fault that families are corrupt.
It's not my fault that parents claim to worship virtue, but then attack people who act in ways that they would call virtuous.
It's not my fault. I don't tell anybody to leave their family.
People come to me and they say, oh no, my family's strong.
My family's good. My family's great.
I mean, yeah, okay, my dad was an alcoholic.
My mom let us get beaten.
But no, my family's solid.
It's good. It's solid, right?
So I'm like, okay, so great.
If your family is like a bridge and this bridge is solid, like a rock, then put one foot in it for me.
You're the one who's saying, it doesn't look strong to me.
It looks like it's really old and rickety.
But I don't want my theories to overpower reality.
That wouldn't be scientific. You're telling me That your bridge is strong.
Strong like oxen. Great.
Put one foot on it.
Oh, no, no, no. I don't want to put a foot on my bridge.
It's strong. Just trust me. No, no, no.
Come on. One foot. One foot.
You're sitting here telling me that your family is so strong.
Be honest about your family.
Put one foot on it. And people, they don't want to put their foot on their bridge.
Because they know. They know what's going to happen if they put their foot on that bridge.
It's going to collapse. Right?
Everybody lectures me about the strength of their family, and then if they put one foot on that bridge, it collapses.
And then everybody runs around saying, hey, you see, Steph, he just detonates every bridge in sight.
He just blows up all these strong bridges.
Like hell!
One guy out here on the internet with a microphone.
I have the capacity to blow up all these bridges.
With my words, I think not.
People say my bridge is strong.
They put on a foot in it and it collapses.
And then all the fools in the world say, look at that, Steph.
The terrorists dynamiting all those bridges.
I'm just taking people if they're word.
It's not my fault the bridge is rotten.
I don't know your family.
I've never met your parents. It's not my fault that the bridge is rotten.
And it's also not my fault that you tell me that the bridge is not rotten.
I'm just saying, well, logically then, you should be able to put foot on your bridge.
If you have a great relationship with your parents, then tell them the truth.
Be honest with them. Be open with them.
Be curious with them.
Be vulnerable with them. That's a strong relationship.
And if that's what you claim you have, then let's see.
Not as a dare. It's just that it doesn't look solid to me.
What people report about their parents, about their families.
So people, parents will say, I love virtue, I love honesty, I love integrity, I love intimacy, and I love you, my son, my daughter.
And then you say, oh, okay, well, if you love truth and you love me, then you must love me plus the truth, the truth about me, the truth that I can speak about my experience within this family.
I mean, if I love hamburgers and I love ice cream, I can't justly hate a menu that includes both hamburgers and ice cream or a meal that starts with hamburgers and ends with ice cream.
If you love me and you love the truth, then I don't see how you could conceivably hate me plus the truth!
Right? So it's confusing, right?
Because the real sickness at the root of everything that we're talking about here, the real sickness at the root of everything that we're talking about here, is that the reason we plow out into these suicidal self-mash-ups With these people, the average people, the people we go talk philosophy with, we get rejected, attacked, undermined, ridiculed, scorned.
And I can tell you why we do it, if you like.
And it's not just, and it's not pretty, but this is why we do it.
If you are the guy whose bones are strong, and you go and play rugby with the 80-year-old osteoporosis victims, it's because you want to feel strong.
But of course, by matching your strength against the osteoporosis victims, you end up feeling weaker.
Mike Tyson beats up a Girl Guide.
We don't say, wow, that Mike Tyson sure is strong.
We know that he's weak because who's he picking on?
The Girl Guide. So, the reason that we go out and we try to have a, quote, debate with other people is because we want to master them, because we want to overpower them, because we want to be superior to them, but you cannot use philosophy for self-aggrandizement.
You cannot use philosophy for self-aggrandizement.
It's never going to work. It's only and forever going to make you feel weaker and worse than you did before.
Why would we live in defiance of reason and evidence?
Countless, accumulated, proven, validated reason and evidence.
We get into these debates because we want to win.
Because we want to beat people.
And that weakens us every time.
Every time.
It's like the girl or the guy who sleeps around in order to To feel worth something.
Well, you just feel worse and worse and worse.
And then it becomes a vicious circle, right?
So after sex you feel bad.
You say, well, if I have sex with someone, it makes me feel better.
So you get sex like heroin. It just gets worse.
And that's because fundamentally we're so used to being attacked for virtue.
Virtue equals attack. Virtue equals attack.
Virtue equals attack. That's the equation of our childhoods, both at home and at school.
People claim they want truth and integrity, but then whenever you provide it, they get angry.
They're the real sickness.
We don't get attacked for being good.
My mom never said to me, I'm going to beat you up because you're such a good kid.
We get attacked because we display the virtues that people claim they respect.
Because we call their bluff.
So people say, violence is bad.
Great, no state. No, no, no.
Our parents say, honesty is good.
Well, this is how I feel about you as parents.
No, no, no, that's bad. That's bad.
Libertarians say, initiation of the use of force is bad.
Well, then shouldn't you get people out of your life who want you dead?
No, no, no! No, libertarianism is for message boards.
It's for podcasts. It's for papers.
A career. It's for conferences.
It's for speeches. It's for writing articles.
It's for talking, talking, talking, talking.
Not for doing. Not for living.
Not for implementing in the sphere where we can actually implement it.
It's for the future. It's for...
The vending machine companies in 300 years.
Cocaine or not cocaine?
Don't worry. Go back to this conversation.
Here. The answer is ready.
Just ready for you. Sorry we never got there.
So I strongly urge you that if you get the impulse to go out and debate these ideas without recognizing that you are engaging as a 240-pound linebacker with a bunch of asthmatic, osteoporosis-ridden, arthritic, oldies, oldsters, aged people, that you look at your motivations.
Why? I bet you, I bet you, It's to try and best your parents.
It's to try and feel stronger, but most fundamentally it's because you can't be virtuous without being attacked.
Separating that is really hard.
Separating that connection, that domino that goes down over and over and over again.
Virtue equals pain. Virtue equals attack.
Virtue equals humiliation. Virtue equals destruction.
That is such a hard habit to break.
It's such a hard habit to break.
And it does require patience, and it does require love of humanity's potential, and it does require a stern judgment of how people treat you.
And you don't go into a debate, you probe.
You probe, you don't grab random people on the subway, have sex with them, and say, hey, maybe we should think about starting a family.
No, you probe, you listen, you're curious, you find out if somebody's worth debating with, you find out if somebody even has the capacity to think about the possibility of learning how to think.
You explore. You are curious.
You don't lecture. You don't lecture.
You receive. You receive.
You measure people with a cold and calculating and rational eye.
And you say, are you up to this conversation?
Can you handle this conversation?
And you'll know. You'll know.
You don't need anyone to tell you. You'll know.
And if you're not doing that, then if you're not empirically judging situations and figuring out whether or not people can handle a conversation, if you're just rushing in, then you're trying to dominate them.
You're recreating the past.
It's all psychological nonsense.
It's got nothing to do with philosophy, nothing to do with curiosity, nothing to do with reality or arguing or debating or rationality or whatever.
Because you're not working empirically and rationally.
And so you can't...
Rationally criticize other people for doing the same thing.
I hope this wasn't too dispiriting.
But philosophy can be a beautiful thing if you don't try to use it.
If you're just curious about people.
And if you listen to them, listen to them.
They'll tell you everything you need to know.
Listen to them. Don't wander in there blindfolded, swinging a sword.
When you meet somebody or you feel like talking, don't talk.
Listen. Listen.
I mean, I spend a huge amount of time listening to the responders to this conversation.
It doesn't show up anywhere except in the content and the flow of the podcast.
But you listen.
You listen to people.
You keep your mouth shut.
Because it contains treasures and you don't throw treasures everywhere.
Or you end up empty.
You listen and you say, after listening for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, do I want to speak the truth?
Have these people earned the truth from me?
Can they handle the truth?
Because I'm not going to harm my love of the truth by putting it forward to fools who will only attack and humiliate it.
Because that's always ugly and that's always painful.
And we don't need to do it.
Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to your donations.
Please drop by freedomainradio.com.
Pick up a copy of one of the three books on truth.
The Tyrion of Illusion.
Universally Preferable Behavior.
Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
And the fabulously new release, The God of Atheists, a fabulous and brilliant novel.
I hope that you will drop by and pick those up.
I also look forward to donations. Thank you so much for listening as always.
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