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May 11, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:10
1062 The Virtue of Enemies

The pride of being hated.

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Hi everybody, it's Steph, hope you're doing well.
Look, you get a succinct podcast because it is 3.24 and this is take two, unfortunately.
My iRiver fell out, rebooted and lost the file.
So, you get the boiled down version because this is shortly before the Sunday show.
Just forewarned is forearmed.
I am, in fact, cleaning a bathroom.
And why? Because I only have, or Christina and I, only have one volatile emotional and dysfunctional relationship left in our lives, and that really is the relationship between Christina and the maids.
Apparently, sometimes they do not clean things correctly.
Things I was not even aware needed to be cleaned, but this is a betrayal of the First Order, and so we are between maids, and I am back on scrub duty.
So... I just wanted to remind everyone of the theory that a woman's home is in fact a hoo-hoo and a man's job is in fact his one-eyed trousers neck.
This theory remains somewhat confirmed by the events of recent weeks with regards to the great maid betrayal in terms of not cleaning things like the underside of the clear plastic dish in the microwave.
Oh, the horrors can barely be spoken of.
But I wanted to talk about enemies And I'm going to skip the intro, which I had shockingly, awfully, terribly, I know, for you.
But I think that you will find this shortened version even better and more helpful.
But when you do good things, when you devote yourself to morality and virtue and all these other kinds of good things, What happens is people will try to use your virtues to mess you up, right? They will try to use your virtues to against you, right?
This is something I've talked about before.
I mean, you don't care that much about board conflicts, and neither do I, but they do serve as useful examples, so people will come in who are mad at me or whatever in the conversation, why they care about me, right?
But And they will come in and say, well, you know, Steph, he's intolerant.
He just bans people who disagree with him, right?
I'll say, okay, well, that's interesting because I can just off the top of my head think of examples where people have arrived on this board or in this conversation and they have...
I've been statists and Ron Paul supporters and people even in the army, even those currently in the army, which obviously is not something that I am at least a big fan of, you know, people who are theists and agnostics and, you know, all these kinds. And then they haven't been banned for these reasons, even if they have maintained these beliefs and so on.
So I said, you know, just off the top of my head, I can't find any particular Evidence, in fact, I find evidence quite to the contrary of your assertion, of your accusation.
So perhaps you can provide me a way of seeing through this paradox that you say I ban people who disagree with me, when I can think of dozens of types of people, if not hundreds of people, who have arrived here with significant disagreements to what I say, and who have been welcomed and not banned.
And then what happens, of course, is they switch the story to something else.
Well, what...
What you are is hypocritical and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Go on, right? You say, well, this place is supposed to be free, but you ban people and so on.
And, uh, like, well, free doesn't mean free to abuse, right?
Otherwise we can say that we're free because the state has free to tax us, right?
If we inhibit the state's ability to wage war, we're taking away fundamental freedoms.
Not so much, right? It doesn't make any sense.
So people will try stuff, and when they switch stories in that way, and they'll try this with you, right, in your conversation, when they switch stories in this way, what they're really doing is they're trying to figure out two things.
The first thing that they're trying to figure out is, okay, well, shit, that combination didn't work to open the lock of control over staff or you and, you know, when this happens to you.
So I'm going to try using the old combination called...
You're intolerant, right?
And if that doesn't work, I'm going to, you know, without missing a beat, I'm going to switch to some other accusation and see if that combination works to give me access to guilt or self-recrimination or something like that.
And so people, what they do is they just keep trying different combinations and they'll see which one will work, right?
This is what manipulators do.
They have an array of Approaches that have worked for them in the past, you know, people who try to guilt you will do the same thing, right?
And they will try to get your guilt thing, right?
It's like, you know, people who say to me, well, you know, your mom is old and sick, and you feel that you should take do at least a little something to take care of her and so on.
It's like, okay, so if protection and care for the helpless Is a virtue?
Why is it that you're talking to me and not my mother?
Because she was the one who was abusive when I was young and helpless, right?
So she's actually violated your commandments.
I haven't, right? Because she's not so sick and old that she needs, right?
So why is it that you're approaching me and not my mother, right?
If this is such a violation of this moral rule, it's your objective and sole criteria for judging moral inequity and so on, right?
So people will try the guilt thing, and then when it doesn't work, they'll switch to something else.
And what they're trying to figure out is...
Am I going to be susceptible to some new combination of manipulation, some new approach, and am I going to notice that they've switched stories?
And I don't generally let people get away with that, right?
So if they try the old intolerance-manipulation combo, and I say, well, come on, I mean, right here on the board, there's evidence of dozens of different categories of people who disagree with me being perfectly welcome to post and debate and so on.
Then they'll switch to some other story, in which case what I'll do is say, well, wait a second, why are we switching to a new story when we haven't resolved the prior story, right?
And they get mad at that, right?
Because they don't want me to notice that they've switched stories and that, you know, they're just trying a bunch of different combinations, right?
It's like those ATM things, you only get three tries to enter the combo, it eats the card or whatever, right?
I don't want that. And the reason why this is important is that there is this belief that sort of floats around in the world, which is that a moral man should not have enemies.
And this is somewhat new in the world.
Oh, sorry. I shouldn't say it's somewhat new in the world.
It's somewhat new in the Western world, this idea.
And it really comes from this infection of Buddhism, right?
And there's these saffron-robed monks with eyeglasses and perpetual simian-idiot grins on their faces, and that a good man does not have enemies.
That only a man who is intolerant will accumulate enemies, or will gather enemies to him.
And that the reason that you will end up with enemies is because you have mishandled an interaction in some fundamental way.
Because you didn't listen, you weren't open, you didn't sympathize when sympathy was necessary that people who are Sort of, quote, mad at you.
I'm only mad at you because they feel misunderstood, because they don't understand something, because, you know, you're not being sympathetic, you're not listening properly, you've done something to escalate the situation.
And, therefore, you have accumulated enemies because, fundamentally, you've done something wrong.
You know, there are no strangers, they're only friends I... Haven't met yet, and so on, right?
And this is a very interesting proposition when you mull with it.
Well, for a number of reasons, but to some degree primarily because it really puts the power into the hands of bad people, right?
Because if a good man Should never have enemies.
Then a person can define someone as a bad person simply by being their enemy.
Of course it's a form of social metaphysics, right, to say good men should have no enemies because It means that we don't have to judge their virtue or lack thereof according to objective standards, but all we have to do is look for enemies, and by golly, if we can find them, then we know that they're not good men, right?
So it's a pretty cheap and sleazy, nice and easy kind of approach to figuring out somebody's virtue or lack thereof, right?
Well, lots of people dislike X person, Ayn Rand, me, whoever, right?
Therefore, you know, they must be doing something wrong.
Therefore, they can't be that virtuous, right?
And, of course, it's not a particularly virtuous thing, I would say, to grant the power of defining virtue Towards those who are the least tolerant, right?
So if this view comes about that a good man should have no enemies, and that if somebody is really...
I wonder if some prominent libertarian said to me the other day, he said, wow, you know, you really do have a knack for, you know, creating enemies, right?
And that, of course, is a fascinating statement, all like on 16 different levels, which we could go into for some time, but we won't.
I'm sure you can do that quite easily, handily on your own.
But it really is quite fascinating when he puts the onus on me.
Steph, you have a knack for creating enemies, right?
Because, you know, I don't create enemies.
Well, that may not be the best thing in the world.
It may not be the most noble badge in the world to be a man who goes through life in a corrupt and vicious world and does not upset anybody.
That may not be, in fact, I would say that that is not...
A mark of honor, but rather a mark of dishonor, right?
Of withdrawing before necessary fights and going on in the world.
But this idea that the presence of enemies is some sort of mark against the honor of a man, the first thing, let's say that this idea is not present in the world, but the idea becomes present in the world through repetition and so on.
And, of course, the thing is that the Tibetan monks say that a good man has no enemies and then complain about the Chinese government.
It's like, well, what did you do to piss off the Chinese government?
Well, no, no, that's different. It didn't apply.
But the first thing that you would expect, if this belief were not present in society and then became prevalent or present in society, The first thing that you would expect is it would begin to be used by bad people,
right? It's like, well, if people don't believe that a good man has enemies, or if people blame a good man for having enemies, which you can see this guy came by with this non-violent communication thing, offered to mediate between myself and some of my enemies, in that, you know, all communication arises from misunderstanding and blah blah blah blah blah, In other words, it's...
And he approached me, not these other people, right?
Always screw the most reasonable person in the room, right?
That's pretty much the universal definition of what is commonly referred to as ethics.
And, of course, the implicit story there is that I have made a mistake and created enemies.
The first thing that you would expect is that people would...
Present themselves as enemies to a good man and thus discredit his reputation, right?
That as soon as you give bad people the power to discredit a good man by becoming his enemy, the first thing that you would expect to have happen is that the bad people would start attacking the good person, right? And being his enemy.
Because That would be perceived by everyone as discrediting the good person's ideas.
And because the person who is the enemy is actually the victim, he wasn't listened to, he may not have done everything right, but the good man has escalated or has done bad things or something wrong or whatever, then Since the good man is the one putting forward the claims of personal virtue, it is the good man who is criticized when an enemy shows up in a good man's life or as part of a good man's conversation.
So the first thing that you would expect when this belief became prevalent is that bad people would just start attacking good people and that that would be considered by many to be disproof of the good man's theories.
Good men don't have It'd be sort of like if I say that I have a foolproof way of not getting cancer, if I get cancer, that would be considered to be, of course, proof positive that my cure didn't work,
right? So if I say I have a foolproof way or a way of achieving virtue, and people assume that virtue means having no enemies, and then I show up with enemies, then people would take that, of course, as proof that My system of virtue did not work.
So, of course, it surrenders and gives a lot of power to bad people.
It allows them to bypass the whole process or problem, I guess you could say, of actually having to disprove the good man's arguments or whatever.
Just simply by attacking him, It is fundamentally an ad hominem argument, right?
But just by attacking the good man, they have disproven his arguments because the good man is thus revealed as having enemies and no longer being good.
And this, of course, is very common.
But what I like to say is that it would seem to me that having enemies would be the very definition of a good man or a woman, right?
A man without enemies is a man without honour.
Unless we are willing to assume that the world is perfectly honorable.
A man without enemies is a man without honor.
Unless the world is perfectly honorable, which will never happen.
Right? I mean...
We can also, and again, this is just people's failure to understand the basic principles of economics, right?
That the more we believe that a good man has no enemies, the greater the value we have given to bad people to attack the good man, to become enemies, right?
Because it's a foolproof way of discrediting the good man, right?
So we've actually created the good man's enemies, or certainly we have exacerbated Or increase the incentive for people to attack the good man by making the claim that a good man does not have enemies.
So we have created it, right?
But it would seem to me that...
It does more than seem to me...
That if you are a good man, and a good man means being brave in the face of corruption and calling a spade a spade and being honest and being open and certainly not being flawless or perfect or anything silly like that, but it seemed to me that the basic understanding that we should all have as reasonable human beings,
that bad people don't like to be called bad people, That a good man would largely be judged by the number and quality of his enemies.
Now, of course, having enemies does not mean that you are a good man.
Hell, George Bush has enemies, of course, and mafia heads have enemies and so on.
That's why I sort of say the quality of your enemies is But I think that that's something that we kind of need to get more comfortable with.
I'm more or less, I guess, sort of comfortable with it.
I view enemies as a badge of honor, right?
I mean, it would be...
I would sort of...
If I didn't have any enemies, I would actually be perfectly aware that I was doing something Wrong.
I mean something fundamental.
I would be doing something fundamentally incorrect if I did not have enemies.
It would mean that I was appeasing people.
It would mean that I was not confronting people who were doing wrong.
Or I did not have anyone around me who was doing wrong, which would be impossible.
But if I did not have enemies, then I would not...
I would not have pride in my moral courage, if that makes any sense.
And it is.
It is a fight for the soul of the world.
It is a fight for the soul of the world.
And between the good guys and the bad guys, well, frankly, only one of us is going to be left standing at the end.
Right? Only one of us is going to be left standing at the end.
And... Combat is not shameful.
I mean, certainly going out to seek combat and flame combat and so on is not productive, and we certainly want to avoid those kinds of situations.
But, you know, if you're not pissing anyone off, then you're not doing any real good.
And the good is not defined as the pissing off of people.
But if you're not...
If you're not harming the interests of any bad people, then you are backing down, I would argue, before some pretty essential and necessary fights, and you're kind of only mouthing the word virtue rather than living it actively, which is really, really enraging to people who are, you know, heavily committed to the dark side, let's say, right?
And so it is with enormous relief That I view my accumulation of enemies.
I am certainly aware that there are lots of bad, corrupt, annoying, disingenuous, manipulative people in the world.
I also know that bad people are tortured by virtue in a very fundamental way that virtuous people are not tortured by bad people.
I'm not tortured by the existence of my enemies at all.
In fact, I view them with relief.
Occasionally annoying, but I view them with relief that, you know, I'm on the right path, right?
I mean, if you're...
If the cancer gets angry at your treatment, it's because the cancer is losing, right?
So if you want to cure cancer, you want to piss off cancer, right?
You want to irritate cancer.
You want to take that approach, right?
And so... I think an understanding of that is really important so that we don't get tortured by the presence of enemies, but rather, in fact, we are reassured by the presence of enemies and those who wish us ill and those who attack us, right?
It's also, I mean, we could get into a lot of different ways of approaching this, but just sort of to sum it up.
It is a fight for the soul of the world, and in particular, it is a fight for the soul of the young, because it is the young who are themselves prior to – well, they're still fresh enough to their childhoods to remember some of the corruptions
if there were any, as there very likely were, and they're also prior to the situation.
Where they have made major life, major bad, majorly bad life decisions, like getting married to corrupt people, having children, abusing those children, or neglecting those children, or treating those children badly, in which case those situations are not likely to be survivable, right? I mean, sort of morally, your soul can die if you do bad things often enough, right?
I mean, it doesn't take one cigarette to produce lung cancer, but After a certain amount of time, it's very likely going to happen, right?
So there is a battle in the world for the soul of the young, and the good people and the bad people are arrayed at opposite ends and armed, right?
And the bad people are cunning and ingenious and, as I've often argued, have a very strong understanding of ethics and virtue and people's susceptibility to it.
It has always been a shame, That only the corrupt truly believe in the power of virtue, because that's what they use to rule, to control, to manipulate, to bully, to humiliate, to all of that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, there is a battlefield for the soul of the planet, for the kind of future that our children are going to inhabit and inherit.
And there are some bad people out there who are working very hard to ensure that their vision of the world...
Hypocrisy, nihilism, corruption control, and all that kind of stuff, that that world rules, that those principles rule, and it is a zero-sum game, right?
And they get it, usually, a lot more rapidly than good people do, right?
Which is why they tend to launch the preemptive attacks, right?
Because they get that it's a zero-sum game, that only one of us is going to be left standing in the face of history, and...
So they kind of make their decisions accordingly.
And rightly too, I would say.
I mean, according to their principles and their premises, they want to win.
And of course, the first strike capacity is very important.
So really sort of what it is that I'm trying to say is just to remember that it's a battle.
It's a battle, and there are forces of good, and there are forces of not so much with the goodness, right?
And there are positive people who we should treasure and keep close to us, and there are negative and destructive people that we should keep as far from us as possible, and that we should have no quarter in our approach to this fight.
That compromise and appeasement, right?
According to Churchill, appeasement is the hope that the alligator will eat you last.
But, appeasement, and this kind of infernal compromise, and the endless temptations of, quote, reasonableness, and all that kind of stuff, that this is our Achilles heel.
That we should be relentless in bringing the fight to the enemy, and impressing our advantage against the enemy, and we should not hesitate.
In the face of this kind of combat.
And we should recognize, as those who are our enemies do, that it is a fight.
And in a metaphorical sense, it is a fight to the death.
And I, for one, would not be at all comfortable with giving up my post or my resolution in this kind of fight.
And I hope that you will not be too tempted by that either.
Thank you so much for listening, as always.
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