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Nov. 12, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:52
909 Why we are different from our parents

The physical basis of our generation gap

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well.
It is the 12th of November, 2007.
If I can make a minor recommendation, I would suggest that if you want to listen to something about War, Soldiers, and Remembrance Day, that...
I think it's not too bad.
You might want to listen to or watch 907 and 908.
The first one is the Remembrance Show, which is also here on YouTube, a Remembrance Day show.
And the second is a call-in show, which I think was quite good.
Not available on YouTube because that's a long call-in show.
But I think that you'll find it interesting as I start off with the question of war.
And we end up with a very interesting question, a very interesting exploration of a listener's Down to the age of four.
I hope that you will find that interesting.
Now this show is going to, this particular show, I'm going to take a stab at trying to help you understand the approach that I take to the family and why do you care about my approach to the family?
Well, obviously there's a lot of criticism.
People think that I tell people to abandon their family and join the fortified compound up here in Canada, which of course is not true at all.
But I wanted to bring a little bit of science to bear on the question of intergenerational conflict and the relationship that we have with our parents and the degree to which that is shaped by biology or environment that makes us quite different from our parents.
Obviously, I'm...
Doing my best, rightly or wrongly, to move a philosophical conversation forward to do with virtue, particularly within the family, since I think that vice and corruption that arises in other areas of the state and even organized religion and so on, military, all has its foundational aspects in the family.
And you may want to listen to podcast 183 if you want to know any more about my opinions about that.
But I wanted to talk a little bit about what I think of the family and why I think it's so different now than it used to be.
And there's reasons for that, that shockingly enough have something to do with actual science.
I know, it's a little shocking.
Just, you know, get a paper bag and breathe through it.
We're going to actually bring some scientific knowledge to bear on these theories.
So I hope that that will help and make some sense.
There is... A real difference, I find, between our generation, and I'm going to lump myself in with the young folk here, but there is a real difference between us and our elders.
And it has to do with a fluidity of intelligence, a sophistication of intelligence, and in particular, the capacity for introspection, for reflection, for what is often contemptuously called by the elder generation, I mean, even elder to me, psychologizing or overanalyzing or whatever.
And I'd like to sort of put forward some science to help back that up.
I have an absolute adoration of the concept of the family.
I think the family can be the most beautiful institution in the world.
And in fact, I would say that the world cannot be beautiful If the family is not beautiful, the world cannot be virtuous.
If the family is not virtuous, the world will be corrupt if the families are corrupt.
The world will be violent if the families are violent.
The world will be abusive in the realm of the state and religion if the family is abusive.
And if we wish to unravel the evils, the institutionalized evils of the world, we must always start with the family because that's where...
Our understanding of authority, of ethics, of obedience, of conformity, all of that is formed in the crucible of our early childhood experiences.
So we can't understand the state without understanding the family, and libertarians go completely mental.
Trying to understand, if they don't understand the relationship between the power of the state and the crucible of the family, they go completely mad, repeating the same arguments over and over again as they have for about 150 years and getting precisely the opposite of what they want, which is a smaller state and a freer world.
And they can't understand. It's like, we're right, we've got all the best arguments.
We've got science, we've got proof, we've got Nobel Prize winning economists.
Why, oh why?
Do people not listen to us?
Well, they don't listen to you because every time you're talking about the state, people unconsciously understand that you're talking about the family.
And so they'll listen, and they'll nod politely, and they might even agree, but they won't change a goddamn thing until you get to the root of the matter, which is the family.
So when you propose a change, the question is, why now?
So when feminists say women should be equal to men, wonderful, wonderful idea.
Can't argue a damn thing about that.
Well, the question is why in the 1960s rather than earlier?
Well, of course, this was due to labor-saving devices in the home, thus allowing a woman much more free time, washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, ovens, and of course then, I guess in the 70s, it was microwave ovens.
But this gave...
The women, fridges of course, right?
Didn't have to go to the store every day to get food.
This gave women a lot more free time, and then of course, the pill.
I always remembered that when I was a kid.
Why is it called the pill?
Not just a birth control pill.
Well, because it was that revolutionary.
By giving a woman control over her own reproductive...
Organ set. You actually gave women a choice to have a sex life without getting married, which gave them the chance to pursue education without interfering with their sexual natures.
And so there was technology, both in the form of labor-saving devices and birth control, which gave women much more freedom and opportunity, which was wonderful.
But it's why then, rather than a generation or two earlier.
If you can answer the question, why now?
Then you've gone a long way towards understanding social change.
So I'm doing my best to, and it's like racing the Titanic, it feels like at times, but I'm doing my best to raise the bar as far as the family goes.
Because, as I said, if we can't free the family, which is a multi-generational project, then we're going to be forever spinning our wheels and sinking further into the mud of statism and religiosity.
So I really do take this approach of trying to elevate the moral ideal of the family.
And then people say, well, Steph, you want people to break with their families.
It's not true at all. Not true at all.
Nothing could make me happier than if people were to be close and virtuous and happy with their family.
I mean... You couldn't ask for better or for more as a moralist, then, for that to occur.
And that's really what I try to achieve with people.
I mean, if they say, I'm not close to my family, I say, well, go and be honest with your family.
Tell them how you feel.
If your parents claim to know everything about ethics, then ask them, as I talk about in my book on truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, Ask them how it is that they came about this knowledge, what this knowledge is, so that you can be sure that they're not using ethics to manipulate you, which would be a pretty corrupt thing to do.
So I try to bring people close to their family or to suggest that they go and talk about things with their family.
And if that doesn't work, of course, and even during that process, I strongly suggest talking to a counselor, a therapist, a psychologist.
Maybe not a psychiatrist, unless you're looking for mind-altering substances, but it's got nothing to do with bringing anybody closer to this conversation.
It's got just to do with this conversation getting people closer to the truth.
If you say you're close to your family, then you should be able to talk to them about what you think and feel.
And you should be able to criticize them if there were things in the past that were suboptimal for you.
And so I just say, well, if you're close to your family, then you should be able to talk to them about this stuff, so go and do that.
I'm actually trying to bring families closer together.
Now... If the families then collapse, because usually the kid, and often the youngest kid, is telling the truth, is being honest, if the family then collapses, well, I don't know, but people blame me.
People blame me. So it's like I see, I've used this metaphor before in a podcast, it's like I see people, they're all milling around this bridge and they're saying, this is an incredibly strong bridge.
This bridge can hold a super tanker.
It is so powerful and so strong.
And from where I'm standing, it looks kind of rotten.
So people say, oh yeah, yeah, I'm close to my family.
Yes, my father was an alcoholic and my mother was an enabler and they used to beat me, but I'm close to them.
Well, close to them is my bridge can hold a supertanker, and yet everything that they describe creates an image of a very fragile and unstable structure.
So everyone says, this bridge is like a rock.
It is like the Earth itself in its strength.
And I say, okay, well, then you should be able to walk across it, right?
If you want to get to the other side and you say the bridge is really strong, you should be able to walk across it.
And then people put one foot on this bridge.
And it collapses. And then they say to me, Steph, you made the bridge collapse.
No, I didn't. No, I didn't.
That's why I say to people, talk to your families.
Be happy with your families. Be close to your families.
Live what you say is real.
If your family is close, talk to them.
Be honest with them. Be open.
Be vulnerable. Be close.
Be intimate. But don't use the words and do the opposite actions and hide and talk about nonsense all the time.
This sports team, that weather, your auntie's gallbladder operation, no.
I mean, it's fine once in a while, but talk to them about what you think and feel.
If you say that the bridge is strong and you want to get to the other side, walk across the bridge.
And if the bridge doesn't hold your weight, you can't blame the guy who takes you at your word and says then you should be able to walk across it.
So the question is, why now?
Why can we, I mean, obviously there's this technology, we can communicate like this, which is wonderful, but why now?
Why now? Why is it now, why is now the time that we should be raising the bar of the family?
Well, there has been, I guess since 1987, a generally recognized trend towards Increased IQs.
And the actual increase in the IQs has been occurring throughout the 20th century, but it was really first identified in about 1987.
So I'm going to read from a science paper here called Interpreting Rising IQs, Environment and Its Role by Claire M. Clymer at Creighton University.
And I'll put this link on the Freedom and Radio board if you're interested.
So here's the abstract. It says, During the latter half of the 20th century, psychologists observed dramatic increases in IQ. Flynn, 1998.
Dubbed the Flynn effect, this phenomenon has generated new data concerning the relative contributions of genes and environment to IQ. Inspired by these new data, this paper discusses proposed explanations for the Flynn effect as well as salient implications of this phenomenon.
First, the author will describe the nature and magnitude of the Flynn effect.
And then they go into other stuff, which is more around explanations, which is less important to me than the actual phenomenon.
So again, you can read this. It's not that long a paper, but I don't want to bore you with all the technical stuff.
So here it says, The notion that IQ scores are steadily rising was first articulated by James R. Flynn in 1987 and has since stimulated rigorous investigation and polarizing controversy.
This is why you've never heard about it.
For clearly established through the evidence...
4. Clearly established, though the evidence for this phenomenon is, interpretation of the Flynn effect presents a menagerie of ambiguities and conundrums.
It is actually the case that each generation arrives better endowed than the last, and that intelligence itself is increasing.
Has some pervasive change in human environments, e.g.
improved nutrition or widespread urbanization, precipitated genuine cognitive gains?
Or is the Flynn effect best regarded as a psychometric anomaly with no repercussions for intelligence at all?
While it is well beyond the scope of this paper to probe all these quandaries, one especially compelling explanation for the Flynn effect will be carefully discussed and explored.
So anyway, here's the description.
Before considering the possible etiologies for the Flynn effect, it is necessary to describe the nature and magnitude of the observed increases in IQ. Here it is important to emphasize both the immensity and consistency of these escalating IQ scores over the past 60 years.
This upward trend is reflected in the data for 20 countries, including all the advanced nations of continental Europe.
As well as nearly all English-speaking countries, Britain, Northern Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Nations of non-European culture, particularly Israel, Brazil, China, and Japan, also exhibit the substantial increases in IQ that are associated with the Flynn effect.
Overall increases in IQ are most pronounced in tests that are designed to gauge fluid intelligence in a culture-reduced format, such as the Raven progressive matrices.
According to the Raven results...
All 20 nations, except Norway, have experienced a secular IQ increase of approximately 20 points.
Massive! Massive!
Although somewhat less striking verbal IQ gains have occurred at the far from negligible rate of 9 points per generation.
Aside from unreliably weak samples, all data confirm secular IQ gains to be within this 9 to 20 point range.
Cumulatively, these data amount to an average IQ increase of one-third point each year.
Each year.
And remember, sorry, this is just off the paper.
The IQ is a bell curve, right?
So if somebody with an IQ of 110 is not 10% more intelligent than somebody with an IQ... Of 100.
They are multiple times more intelligent.
So it is asymptotic in its increase as you go up the scale.
So this is not just, well, I'm getting one third of 1% more intelligent than my parents sort of every year, every generation.
It is multiple increases in intelligence over the time period.
So... Dickens and Flynn introduced their paper by describing the underlying paradox that has frustrated many attempts to explain and attach causation to secular IQ gains.
On one hand, so substantial is the inflation of IQ scores that all conceivable genetic explanations prove severely inadequate.
And of course, you can't get this kind of increase in IQ through genetic causes over a generation or two.
Clearly, the genome itself cannot have changed enough to instigate such massive IQ gains, nor can differential reproduction patterns be designated as a culprit.
Some researchers have posited that heightened inbreeding is responsible for enlarged IQ scores, yet outbreeding itself long preceded observation of the Flynn effect.
Between 1952 and 1982, for instance, 18-year-old Dutch men exhibited a monumental increase of 20 IQ points In 30 years, 20 IQ points.
While outbreeding possibly produced genetic changes, cognitive and otherwise, in the first half of the 20th century, by the 1950s it was far too customary to account for the later IQ gains.
With no available genetic explanation, environment appears to be indispensable to any causal interpretation of the Flynn effect.
The prevailing data, however, imply that a large environmental role is highly implausible.
According to strongly corroborated calculations by late adolescence, heritability is approximately 0.75.
Such a high estimate seems to have prohibited the extent of environmental contribution to IQ that the Flynn effect requires.
Rather than reject this high heritability, Dickens and Flynn resolve the Flynn effect paradox by configuring a model that explains how the importance of environment may be concealed through reciprocal causation between environment and phenotypic.
All right, so we're getting kind of technical here, and we don't need to go into this in too much detail.
I just wanted to point out that there is a massive and enormous increase in IQ over the past generation or two.
Massive and enormous increase in IQ over the past generation or two.
Whether this has been caused by genetics or environment and what factors, whether it's nutrition, whether it's education, which I doubt, but what this has been caused by, I know that, or at least I would guess, that in my own family, what has occurred is much greater stimulation of the mind that has occurred through television, through computers, through computer games.
We have much more rich and immersive media now than we used to in the past.
But also, I know that within my own family, however traumatic my own childhood was, it much, much paled, or hugely paled, relative to the trauma that my mother experienced, of course, in the Second World War.
I believe that trauma creates a kind of fixed and repetitive thinking that is the opposite of the fluid intelligence that is talked about in these kinds of studies.
So, I don't have any proof for that.
That's just sort of something that I believe, but I'm not going to put Fortnite forward as anything scientific.
Now, to help bring this home, we can talk about something that I've sort of noticed in popular media, which is when you look at...
And let's just take Seinfeld as a template.
Sorry if you're 15.
But if you look at the parents on Seinfeld, you can see that there is a massive, massive cultural gap, and you might almost say a gap in intelligence.
There is so much idiotic behavior or unenlightened or unwise behavior on the part of Jerry Seinfeld's parents in the show that they do almost seem to be a different species.
There's a lot of eye rolling.
There's a lot of conformity.
There's a lot of habit.
There's a lot of external locus of control like am I approved of by my peer group that occurs a lot more in the elder generation in these kinds of sitcoms.
And it's not like the younger generation is all that wise, but they have a fluidity of thinking and a capacity to explore nuance and comedy that the elder generation simply doesn't have.
And of course the sophistication of the comedy that occurs in Seinfeld is far in excess of anything that would have occurred in the 1950s, I mean particularly the masturbation episode.
So, if you look at that sitcom, we can see that the kids are smart, much, much smarter, relative to the parents, who seem to be a creaky, hidebound, fixed kind of thinking, other species almost.
You can look at just about any sitcom and see the same thing.
So if you look at the Friends episode, their parents were all kind of retarded.
And there was just no possibility of real communication.
The parents' minds were very fixed.
They tended to go in circles and repetitively.
They tended not to have the fluid kind of self-examination.
And to some degree, neurosis and angst that the younger generation had, which is, I think, entirely appropriate to modern times until you get philosophy under your belt.
What else could we look at?
Oh, if we look at Frasier, which of course is a very long-running sitcom.
We could see that Martin Crane, I think his name was, was very much fixed, hidebound, non-sophisticated, and of course he was a comic foil for the hyper-sophistication of the children.
But again, here you have, you know, essentially menial labor, ex-cop, you know, and scintillatingly intelligent children, and they just can't communicate because there is a massive intelligence gap that is portrayed in almost every...
Almost every sitcom.
And whenever you hear people talk about their parents, there's a lot of eye-rolling.
There's a lot of navigating around, you know, these prejudices, these bigotries, these lies that parents tell to themselves, which you're then expected to conform to, which, again, I talk about quite a bit in the book on truth.
So you can look at, let's just, I don't know, let's take another sitcom.
Everybody loves Raymond. Again, here we have fluidity and self-doubt and self-analysis and struggling to communicate in an authentic manner between the husband and the wife, and yes, it's this kind of Brechtian or Beckettian horrible situation, existential horror that he's no exit kind of world that he's stuck in, but...
The communication between the husband and the wife has a self-awareness and a fluidity and an exploratory character that is completely absent in the communications between the parents and the children.
And there is just this, I mean, especially the mother who's got this kind of cold-eyed manipulation that occurs and the father who's just spaced out, but they can't have an authentic moment or an authentic communication between the children and the parents.
King of Queens, you've got the same thing.
And you could sort of go on and on.
In the movies, we have this as well, right?
That the parents are just like vaguely retarded children that you have to step delicately around because they're kind of emotionally explosive, but you can't talk to them about anything.
Anything real. And one of the things that occurs with greater intelligence, and I talk about this to some degree in the Free Will series, one of the things that occurs with greater intelligence is you have the capacity...
To weigh long-term and short-term goals, right?
So one of the things that occurs, of course, with children, they'll eat all their candy, and then they'll be sick, and then they'll be unhappy because they have cavities.
But when we're adults, we sort of can balance this, so we know that if we do this, there'll be this effect in the long term.
Now, philosophy and psychology is really all about trying, and economics as well, is really all about trying to raise the bar of looking at the long-term pain versus long-term gain situation.
So, emotional defenses are really about shutting down questions that are uncomfortable because they're uncomfortable, right?
So, if you say to your parents, what is virtue?
You told me my whole childhood that I should be good and I would be punished for being bad.
Therefore, you must know a lot about virtue.
So, tell me how you came about that knowledge.
How do you know it? And so on.
Well, your parents then feel really uncomfortable, feel really uncomfortable, and so what they do is shut the conversation down.
They just slam it down, shut it down, either through just the thousand-yard stare or through irritation or through distraction or through topic changing or through, well, that's interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way and everything just kind of trails off and so on.
But they don't engage at that level in that conversation.
Why? Because it's very uncomfortable for them.
It takes a greater intelligence to say, I'm going to succumb or I'm going to put myself through this discomfort in order to gain something better on the other side.
So going to therapy is subjecting yourself to discomfort for the sake of a greater stability in terms of personality, integrity, and happiness.
In relationships, sitting down and being vulnerable and discussing things that are difficult and admitting that you're wrong and being humble and all these kinds of things in a non-manipulative way, that's all really hard.
It's really hard to do that.
But the payoff is an authentic and beautiful and positive relationship.
I would guess, and again, this is my theorizing, where the facts are the facts, that there's been a huge increase, a massive increase.
We're at least 25% smarter than our parents, and 25% smarter is a whole lot smarter.
If you have 25% more neuron connections within your mind, it's a many-to-many relationship.
It is absolutely asymptotic in terms of what you can do with 25% more intelligence.
You don't just solve math problems 25% faster or retain things 25% longer or come to insights 25% more often.
You will actually come to insights that will be impossible for people who don't have this extra intelligence for the elder generations.
So, when we look at this kind of information, I think that what we can see is that Because we're just, on average, much more intelligent than the elder generations, we can see further into the cost-benefit calculation and payoff.
And we can say, okay, this is uncomfortable.
I feel dizzy.
I feel scared. I feel confused.
I don't like this feeling.
But... It's going to pay off in the long run.
We can see that payoff, I would say, because of our additional intelligence and also because of the additional information that has grown.
Whether that causes the intelligence or is the effect, who knows, doesn't really matter.
We have many more tools and we have the capacity to overcome, to surmount our defenses.
Because the defenses are all about I don't want to experience this short-term discomfort, so I'm just going to make whatever is causing it wrong.
I'm going to get mad at it, I'm going to dismiss it, I'm going to put it down, I'm going to say it's wrong, I'm going to ignore it.
Whatever is causing this negative stimuli, I'm just going to get rid of it in one form or another.
That is the approach in general of the elder generations.
However, for us it's very different because we can see, we can see, we can understand the gains that can accrue to us through The pursuit of personal discomfort in the realm of self-understanding, self-knowledge, self-awareness, and the exploration of uncomfortable truths is something that we can really pursue with enormous payback.
So, I don't want to try and keep this relatively short.
I just wanted to sort of point out that there are real basic fundamental biochemical brain differences Between ourselves and our parents.
And there is this war between the generations.
This war between the truth that additional intelligence reveals and the fantasies that lesser intelligence clings to.
The bigotries, the social niceties, the quote politeness, the don't be rude, don't upset, don't cause pain, don't cause problems, don't bring up anything uncomfortable, that's rad, that's bad, that's wrong.
All of the hidebound, small-minded defensiveness that our parents are so incredibly prone to.
It's not just a change in social mores.
It's not just a little bit more information.
It is a fundamental difference in our levels of intelligence.
And if you listen to the show, it's a Sunday call-in show, it's 9.09, I think, you can see how this manifests itself as early as a child of four who can come to some unbelievably intelligent, brilliant, astounding, astonishing conclusions about his family and his parents and The elderly generations instinctively bang right away.
So when you think about your relationship to your political leaders, to your religious elders, to your parents, to your parents' generations, to your grandparents and so on, it's important to understand that, again, on average, on average, they're kind of retarded.
No disrespect. It's just a fact, right?
It's just, this is what science is telling us.
This is what the tests are telling us.
When people take exactly the same test with no preparation that our parents took, they score 25% more.
They're many times more intelligent.
So the question, why is the examination of the family occurring now?
Well, it's because we're smarter.
It's because we're smarter.
And because we're smarter, we can up the ante.
And the reason that I wanted to talk about this is that yes, our parents so often did us wrong, did us bad things and so on, but there is a kind of peace, a peace, a gentleness.
It doesn't mean that you have to spend time with people you don't like or anything like that, but there is a kind of peace and gentleness that can come out of understanding the limitations of those who came before.
We don't know where this trend is going to end.
We could be completely retarded relative to our children and they could be levitating and seeing through time.
I don't know. But, of course, what we can do is continue to apply the principles that our parents believe in.
That's all we're doing is trying to apply the principles that we were taught.
The actual... Content of the principles, not the form, right?
So our parents said virtue is integrity, and by integrity what they meant was obedience to them.
We throw away the obedience to them and we look at integrity as a virtue, consistency between ideas and actions, and we apply that.
And that is something that is new, and I think it's new because the human brain has advanced so enormously over the past generation or two.
So when you talk to your parents and so on, I mean, be gentle.
understand that they can't grasp this stuff, that you're speaking a language that is too complicated for them, and that that gap in intelligence between parents and children is acutely discomforting to parents.
And if it is something that showed up very early in life, and I do believe that it is, then this is a discomfort that is relatively new in the sort of cycle of life in the human species, this discomfort between the supposed authority of the parents and the far greater intelligence of the children.
And it is agony, and it is horrible what is happening in the world as a result of this disparity, and as a result of the increased abilities of these kinds of conversations, which themselves, the technology that we have results from, the increased intelligence that has occurred within the human species, it is agony.
It is agony to see these gaps between the parents and the children and how no character on TV ever wants to go and spend time with the parents.
And the parents that, if you look at something like Father Knows Best or Wait Till Your Father Gets Home or the sort of 50s, 60s, and 70s Marcus Welby, the elders were wise.
And now the welders are idiotic.
The elders are clowns.
The elders are blind.
And that's partly, of course, because when society doesn't change, this kind of fluid intelligence is a negative.
When society changes continually, the kind of fluid intelligence that is evolving within our species is a great bonus, and it renders the prejudices of the elder generation no longer wisdom about foolishness.
So I hope that this helps you understand that we're just kind of different, and that's something that we had no control over.
It's just something that happened to us.
But that's one of the reasons why I think that it's time And we have the power and we have the capacity to move this conversation forward.
And perhaps we needed to be smart enough to look at something like a stateless society and the elevation of virtue above social norms as a standard for all humanity.
So thank you so much for listening and for watching.
I hope that you enjoyed this.
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