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Aug. 20, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

28:52

1129 Life Among the Suited Savages

Don't startle them...

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	Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
	Hope you're doing well. It is 20 August 2008.
	I'm just popping off to get myself a microphone, which actually allows me to record at slight distances for audiobooks.
	I do so love my Sony ECM. It produces some wonderful sound, but unfortunately, I basically have to virtually fillet-slash-deep-throat it in order to get any bass, and that makes it a tad susceptible to pa-losives.
	So... I thought I would share a thought or two since, gosh, you know, it's been a while since I've done a lot of solo podcasts, but I'm remembering that they were actually pretty good, so I hope I'm not wrong in that.
	And so this thought that I've sort of had, if this makes any sense, is sort of related to what we were talking about yesterday in the Truth podcast, The Truth is a Drug.
	And I think that another thing that people are selling to you is smallness.
	I think that human beings seem to have a strong desire for and are willing to pay a lot for Getting out of the requirement or the necessity or the desire to be big and powerful, effective, virtuous, grand, great, you know, all that kind of good stuff.
	And it's one of these things that I think is sort of...
	Innate to human beings, this desire to have power, to be effective, to be virtuous.
	Because, I mean, the way that I work with this kind of methodology is pretty consistent, at least I hope so, which is that I assume that pretty much people are propagandized out which is that I assume that pretty much people are propagandized out of doing that which they are naturally inclined to do or to try and
	So, people are more or less propagandized into believing in religion and it has to be pounded into their heads as children repeatedly because they naturally don't want to believe in God.
	and don't believe in God, and so on.
	And I think that is an important aspect of things.
	I think that people have to be propagandized into being obedient to their tax masters, to the rulers, the powers that be, those who own the majority of the wealth because they have the majority of the guns.
	So people have to be propagandized into those beliefs, because it's so anti-intuitive, anti-empirical, anti-logical, antithetical to self-interest, and dangerous, of course, because they have the power to jail, draft, imprison, and so on.
	So, the slave, that sort of horizontal slave control aspect of life, Where you are attacked for daring to raise your head, right?
	The tall poppy syndrome.
	It is the tall poppy that gets cut down.
	It is the nail that sticks up, that gets pounded down.
	This hostility that people have towards you if you dare to be grand, if you dare to be big.
	I've faced this myself from a variety of sources, even within the libertarian world.
	The world itself, where, you know, the audacity of the goal that I have set myself to, you know, to lead the biggest, most powerful, most effective philosophical conversation the world has ever seen or participated in, that that is my goal, is considered to be...
	Crazy, you know. The goal of overturning the Fed with an old baby doctor, that, of course, is considered to be highly rational and practical, but the goal of stimulating tens of thousands of people with the desire for, the thrill of, or the terror of philosophy is something that's considered mad.
	So that which I've actually worked to achieve and have, to my satisfaction at least so far, achieved It's considered impossible and grandiose, but a political solution to the lack of freedom in the world is, all too sadly, considered to be, well, that's not crazy, but practical.
	And to me, this is very interesting because this idea that Size, greatness, power.
	And I'm not talking about making power up or coming up with things that are grandiose.
	You know, I can kill butterflies with my mind or something like that.
	I'm not talking about anything that is grandiose.
	I think it is really hooking into the power of the truth, right?
	When we are aligned with the truth, As thinkers, as communicators, as people who try to live their values, then we gain power and momentum.
	We gain traction with reality in the same way that the human mind, coupled with science and math, gains traction with regards to reality in a way that millennia of religion and culty superstition and enslavement simply never gave us.
	When we hook our minds into reality and into the truth, we gain an incredible amount of power and traction.
	The scientific minds of the last few hundred years, are they genetically different from the 50 or 100,000 years of homo sapien minds that preceded them?
	Well, no. Genetically, we are identical to our ancestors, virtually.
	But the difference is that we have hooked into the traction of science, the traction of reason, the traction of empiricism, the traction of evidence.
	And this, of course, so when a human being couples into rational thinking and evidence, then a human being grows in stature and power enormously.
	Enormously! It is not ten times bigger.
	It is not a thousand times bigger.
	It is, you know, go to infinity, take a tiny step back.
	It is that much bigger.
	The knowledge base that human beings have now compared to 5000 years ago is not a hundred times as much, it's not a thousand times as much.
	Instead of it being minus a million, it is plus infinity minus one, right?
	Because in the past it was the active Occlusion, or the active inhibition, or the active opposition to the pursuit of knowledge that was the basis of human thought, quote, thought, religion, superstition, and so on.
	So when you tried to think rationally, you were attacked.
	So actually going in the wrong direction, negative knowledge, had anti-knowledge.
	So where we are now is just about infinitely further ahead, because A, we're going in the right direction, B, we're going there in an ever-accelerating manner.
	And see things should come in threes.
	So... This aspect of things, I think, is pretty important to understand.
	That... If you remember for a long time, I had dreams of...
	Tsunamis, you know, massive waves hitting me.
	And... This is part of the amazing aspect of thought and of dreams and of the unconscious that once I understood that this was how philosophy appeared to people or this is how what I was talking about appeared to people and I accepted and understood and worked through that I have not once had that dream again and I had it for years and years before I worked it out sort of last year with Christina's help and it's never come back.
	It's amazing the way that the unconscious works.
	It is truly a An amazingly powerful engine, right?
	It is the warp drive to our impulse, right?
	And so when we couple our minds with reason and evidence, we jump up in size relative to those around us.
	We loom almost infinitely large relative to their frightened, huddled, negative, minimalist perceptions, illusions, right?
	If you want to go somewhere, a real car is infinitely better than the illusion of having a car because if you're just sitting in your driveway pretending to drive somewhere, then you're not actively seeking for alternatives, right?
	So the illusion is infinitely worse than the actuality because the illusion prevents you from discovering Alternatives, right?
	You think you're getting somewhere when you're not.
	You think you have the truth when you in fact don't have the opposite.
	That is actually the opposite of truth, right?
	The opposite of truth is not error.
	The opposite of truth is the illusion of truth.
	Because then you stop looking, and I've talked about this stuff before, so I hope that that makes some sense.
	So, when...
	You gain the traction of philosophy, what happens is you explode in people's consciousness.
	You hit their consciousness like a tsunami.
	That is the power of human thought that is combined with rational empiricism.
	I mean, just think of the free market as the power of human creativity and activity combined with UPB in terms of property rights, rational objectivity in terms of prices, and all the other economic forces that go on in a free market.
	We're not just a bit more productive or a thousand times more productive than they were in the Middle Ages.
	We are almost infinitely more productive because they actually destroyed the means of production regularly in the Middle Ages.
	And human beings in particular.
	If you think of medicine, medicine is not just a bunch of times better than it was in the 10th century.
	In the 10th century they were doing stuff that was actually destructive to health.
	It was anti-medicine. It wasn't until the late 19th century that going to see a doctor actually improved your chances of getting well.
	It was a shamanistic, superstitious ritual designed to calm your fears of mortality and your fears of illness rather than having anything to do with actually helping you to get well.
	So, when you bring rational philosophy to people, and it's important to understand that the minds around you in terms of morality are pre-medieval.
	Pre-pre-medieval.
	Rank subjectivity is highly primitive.
	It's actually pre-Socratic. It's pre-Socratic.
	It's the pre-pre-Socratics!
	It is basically a caveman mentality, where if you are afraid of the dark, it is because the dark is full of monsters, objective and real monsters, and then if you can disbelieve at them, then they vanish.
	This magical, surreal, I am the universe, thought equals reality is really primitive.
	It's pre-medieval in its approach, right?
	So, when you bring philosophy into your interactions with people, you are bringing the power of science and the power of thought to pygmies, to medieval thinkers, or quote thinkers, to those who are actively opposing the truth.
	This is very important to understand, that you move among savages, you live among savages, And they are fearful, and they are superstitious, and they are angry, and they are frightened, and they are wedded to error, and they are destructive, and they are paranoid, and they are vicious, and they can be funny and charming, as primitivism can be at times.
	You know, you can't enjoy the odd African mask on a wall, right?
	As long as there's not a guy in blue paint behind it threatening to disembowel you.
	So, philosophy is at its lowest ebb, in my opinion, since its discovery, because we have actually the example of truth which is being rejected, right?
	Some of the Aristotelian, Randian, and Rothbardian philosophies, and so on, they're all available, and of course now, with the Internet, very easily available.
	So, it's quite different than it has been in the past.
	In the past, there was a lack of knowledge of these things, and now there is an active opposition to the presence of the knowledge that is.
	And that is very different.
	You live among suited savages.
	This is very important to understand.
	You live among frightened and angry pygmies.
	If you were caught in the jungle with an iPhone and a flashlight, In the Amazon, right, and a bunch of barbarous, savage primitives surrounded you with painted faces and nose rings and blow dots and so on, swinging Amazonian dicks or whatever, you would be very cautious, right?
	You would be very alert, let's say.
	And I think that's a very important thing to understand, that you are bringing flashlights and iPods and flares and all of the other alarming and scary things to a bunch of savages.
	We live in a world of savages.
	And if you have any doubt about that, just, you know, play around on the board and talk to people about the truth.
	And you can see that there's this polysyllabic, superstitious mumbo-jumbo hostility, denigration, emotional volatility, cruelty, passive aggression, and so on.
	And there's this superstitious fear.
	Now, of course, it's, you know, people have degrees, and they're sophisticated in terms of their language skills, and they know lots of big words, and so it's a little confusing, but fundamentally and foundationally, they are magical savages.
	And that means that they're dangerous, right?
	Shit. Sorry, just getting my directions down.
	So... This, I think, is really important to understand, that you are at night, you hear savages around you in the jungle, and what you're doing is you're yanking out the igniter of a flare.
	And then your iPhone rings, right?
	And then you turn on your flashlight, and you also have those sneakers with flashing lights around them, right?
	And frankly, this scares the shit out of the savages, right?
	This scares the shit out of the savages.
	It startles them, it alarms them, it makes them angry, and there's lots of complex reasons as to why that occurs, why they get so angry.
	And it has a lot to do with vanity.
	Why is it that primitive cultures get so messed up when they come in contact with more advanced cultures, with more rational cultures, with more humanistic cultures?
	Why is it that religious people get angry at science?
	Well, because a primitive culture believes That it is as good as it could be.
	That it's the top of the evolutionary ladder.
	That it is the sin qua non of perfection.
	And when it comes across a more powerful culture, it is thrown into disarray.
	There is a violent blow to the base of the brain in terms of the vanity.
	And it is humiliating, fundamentally.
	It is humiliating.
	To come in contact with a far superior society.
	To take a silly example, if we can sort of understand that how would the American government and the American people, let's say, feel if a vastly superior A society that could stop nukes the moment they were launched, that the military was completely ineffective against and so on, landed and bringing a message of peace to mankind.
	And that superior society was a stateless society and said, oh my god, we got rid of the government the way you get rid of slavery.
	The government is violent and parasitical and destructive and stupid and brutish and evil and moronic and all this kind of stuff, right?
	And if they explained all of this and they had such vastly superior technology, imagine how Disorienting this would be to your average patriot and government employee and this and that, right?
	To be revealed as participating in an evil system of exploitation, war, and destruction, right?
	That would be incredibly alarming.
	Disorienting, right? Like some soldier who is suddenly told beyond really a shadow of a doubt that he is a hitman, right?
	And so some patriotic soldier is suddenly revealed as evil, right?
	And the people who have the flags up on their walls are revealed as petty, vicious tribalists and so on.
	Well, imagine how disorienting, how frightening and how angry they would get.
	You would take away, oh, and of course, imagine if these people had, the society had conclusive proof that there was no such thing as a God, right?
	They had a time machine, let's say, where they had taken authenticated footage of Jesus, or they could take you back in time and see that Jesus was You know, a crazy epileptic who never existed or whatever.
	And they had conclusive proof, you know, they'd scoured the universe, they had gone outside the universe or found that there was no outside of the universe, and they completely laid to rest any possibility of the existence of a god.
	I mean, imagine just how disorienting, frightening, and angry it would be for people who thought that they had the truth to be revealed as those who have the opposite of the truth, which is, of course, illusions paraded as the truth.
	They'd get messed up, you know, to say the least.
	They would be frightened, they would be angry, they would be hostile, they would snort, they would scorn, they would attack, they would ridicule, they would, you know, laugh in this pathetically passive-aggressive, pathetic way.
	Pathetically passive-aggressive, pathetic?
	PPAP way. And this, of course, is exactly the same thing, exactly the same experience that occurs when You bring rational, empirical truth to people's lives.
	They believe that they have the truth, and they believe that they are superior, right?
	You can see this with the dais and with the nihilists who've been sort of infesting the FDR boards lately.
	There is this problem, right?
	There's a humiliation, there's an insecurity, there's a pathology, an emotional, a defensive psychological pathology that occurs.
	And this shows up as emotional defenses, psychological defenses, twisting words, and so on.
	And there's a debate with this bearded Spock fellow on the board about deism that I think you'll find instructive, as you can see.
	He just weasels his way out of every definition, even those he accepts as valid, right?
	That we should go with reason and evidence, not defending a fixed position.
	He rejects reason and evidence and continues to defend a fixed position.
	So it's really important to understand that you move among savages and that they're easily frightened, they're easily scared, and they're easily angered.
	Like all insecure, jealous, paranoid, illusion-stuffed people, like any savage that you would come across in the Amazon jungle, be careful.
	Be careful that you move among dangerous savages.
	I don't mean, you know, not going to come to your house and, you know, smack you around or anything, but they will pull out all the stops in order to retain their own illusions of vanity, of superiority, of having the truth, right?
	I'll sort of give you, I guess, I'll sort of give you an example.
	Sorry, let me sort of give you another sort of sense of what it is that I mean.
	I'll give you an example. So what I mean, if this makes sense, is That people want you to stay in error.
	They want you to stay in error because if you stay in error, then they don't have to reject their errors.
	They don't have to experience their own smallness, their own error, their own antithetical stance towards the truth.
	This is particularly true if they...
	And this, of course, is the advance but also the retreat of the value philosophy in that people will generally accept reason and evidence rather than faith, as at least those who come to FDR... Reason and evidence rather than faith as the basis for determining or separating truth from falsehood, right?
	Which means that when they then reject reason and evidence in favor of faith, they are acting with some conscious knowledge of what they are rejecting, right?
	I mean, a savage, it doesn't even recognize reason and evidence as a valid basis for figuring out Amazonian pygmy or whatever.
	It doesn't recognize reason and evidence as a valid means of separating truth and falsehood.
	So when you claim that as a virtue and then you reject it in practice, that makes you even more dangerous, right?
	Because it adds hypocrisy, right?
	At least when the pygmies are frightened of an iPhone and a flare going off, they are, you know, when your alarm clock goes off, when they're circling you wondering who you are in the jungle, right?
	I mean, the first thing they're probably going to do is skewer you with spears and destroy your alarm clock, right?
	As a possessed, dangerous, metallic little beast.
	So, you know, don't startle these people and recognize that they are in a dangerously unstable psychological position like all savages, right?
	I mean, you can see, look back at what happened to the first scientists in the middle to late Middle Ages.
	It's not pretty what happens when you startle the savages, right?
	So, you know, sort of be careful and be gentle around this kind of stuff.
	I think it's very important.
	to do that.
	And just so you understand, the primitives, the savages, they're going to want to Well, not even they're going to want it.
	They are going to...
	They want to keep you down.
	They want to keep you in error.
	Because if you're in error, right?
	And unconsciously we all know this, right?
	Whether we're right or wrong.
	If you're in error, then you can either submit yourself to the discipline of reason and evidence and work from first principles and do the hard, difficult, painful work of extracting yourself from the bog, from the tar pit of error.
	Or, if you're into magical thinking and you're a subjectivist, then you will attempt...
	You have the other option, which doesn't...
	Exists for a rationalist, but you have the other option, which is to attempt to spread the error until it becomes universal, and therefore, in your magical thinking planet, it's no longer error, right?
	If your error becomes universal, then it's no longer an error.
	This is why religion attempts to spread so much, and why religious people stick together, is that if everyone around you believes the same thing, this is the social metaphysics that Rand talks about, if everyone around you believes the same thing, Then you're not in error, right?
	And so when you gain the traction and you bring the power of truth to the world, to people, to people in the world, you jump up in size and power immediately to them.
	It threatens them. It makes them feel small because, in fact, they are small relative to the truth.
	It makes them feel small. They are suddenly acutely aware of their error, of their smallness, of their ineffectualness, and of their corruption, because this is not the Middle Ages, right?
	Science and freedom and reason have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
	And they know the truth, because they know exactly what to avoid, as I sort of mentioned before.
	So they will want to keep you down with them.
	They will want to keep you away from the Explosive power of reason and evidence, the traction, the growth, the size of reason and evidence, reasoning from first principles.
	And they will attempt to keep you small, they will attempt to keep you down, they will attempt to keep you in their petty, broken little fog planet.
	That's just the reality. Psychologically it works, empirically it has been my experience and the experience of course of thousands of other thinkers.
	That if you bring the power of the mind coupled with reason and evidence, the mind coupled with science and true philosophy, when you bring that power to people, it makes them feel diminished.
	It is like a flare going off in the painted faces of savage pygmies.
	It alarms them to scorn, attack, manipulation, all of the condescending tricks that occur in the world of frightened savages.
	And I hope that you won't fall for it.
	I hope that you will not let yourself be pulled down to vanish into the fog of collectively empty history, which is where these people are going.
	What they're secretly whispering to you is, don't frighten me with the truth.
	Don't reveal my smallness and my brokenness with the power and the glory of philosophy.
	Stay with me down here.
	Fight with me among the entrails of thought.
	Don't engage with me in the pettiness of my little criticisms.
	Don't grow larger than me.
	Don't outgrow me. Don't outgrow this smallness.
	Don't outgrow this narrowness.
	Don't leave me behind in this empty fog swamp Stay with me.
	Stay small. Stay petty.
	Fade with me into the nothingness of history to which I am naturally and inevitably destined to fall into.
	And if you fall for that, right?
	If you fall for that, then you will...
	You will kind of deserve the fate.
	This is how this stuff works.
	If you fall for that, then you will kind of deserve this fate.
	Because this is the test, right?
	The test of size, the test of avoidance, of smallness, of littleness, of pettiness, of emptiness, of fear.
	If you fall to the savages, then you kind of deserve the savages.
	You kind of deserve to stay in the prehistory of the species.
	I hope that you won't. I genuinely believe that you won't.
	But I just wanted to make that choice more clear for you so that you can more consciously resist this attempt to fade into the wallpaper, the woodwork, the fabric, the swamp of savage prehistory.
	Thank you so much. I look forward to your donations.
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