All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 6, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:04:36
1199 Agnostic Psychology -- A Theory

A theory which might explain the general prevalence and emotional intensity of agnosticism.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
It's November the 4th, 2008.
It's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
I'm going to try a thing today as I stroll in this absolutely glorious Canadian fall weather.
I'm going to try...
I've sort of been fascinated by...
Some of the psychological aspects of philosophy, as you know, have always been quite fascinating to me, and I thought I would take a swing at trying to explicate, if only to myself and hopefully comprehensively to others, what is going on for the agnostics.
And I've touched on this subject before, but it's part of a larger thing that I'm Trying to work out, which hopefully will make some sense.
So, basically, in my experience, people who are talking about the highest abstractions are almost always actually talking about their deepest emotional experiences.
So, with nihilists, when they talk about there are no values, They're talking about a kind of despair within themselves, a hopelessness and an addiction to anti-value.
To create a value called truth, which is supposed to be that there is no value called truth, is of course so blatantly nutty that to avoid these kinds of things takes a kind of deranged, angry willpower.
And in a conversation I recently had with a With an agnostic, he said that nothing can be said for certain, which of course is one of the oldest problems in philosophy and has been talked about for literally thousands of years, has been analyzed, discussed and talked about, and of course the rational consensus or the rational understanding of this problem is simple.
Which is that if you say nothing is certain, you have already disproved yourself, right?
So I pointed this out as I am one to do.
This fellow said, well, we can't know anything is certain.
And I said, well, is that a certain statement?
And he said, well, here's where logic breaks down.
And that's such a ridiculous argument.
It's not an argument, right?
If you trip over your Own laces when you start out on the race, it's hard to say, well, this is where athletics breaks down.
It's like, no, this is where you've tripped, not where logic mysteriously fails, right?
And it's such an irrational, and fundamentally, I mean, who can respect anyone who says shit like that?
I certainly can't. I mean, it's ridiculous.
I understand, like, I can understand how people...
Can believe this stuff, right?
Because there's a lot of corruption and bad philosophy in the world.
In fact, it seems more so now than in the past.
So I can certainly understand how people would imbibe this stuff and repeat it, you know, like good programmed statist or relativist robots.
But when you're confronted with the irrationality, right, of what you're saying, A reasonably intelligent and reasonably emotionally mature human being will say, huh, never really thought of that. That doesn't seem to be quite right.
I will have to go and think about it some more, or perhaps you can tell me more about the contradiction that you have just described to me, right?
I mean, nothing can be certain.
Is that a certain statement? If yes, then something can be certain.
If not, then you're not actually allowed to say anything about truth, right?
The nothing is certain argument is using UPB to undermine UPB, which doesn't work, right?
I mean, can you imagine?
Just imagine how people would try and implement that philosophy, for want of a better word, in real life.
So I march up to the blackboard in grade 1 or grade 2, and I say, 3 times 3 equals 10.
And the teacher says, no, actually 3 times 3 equals 9.
And I say, well, you see, the problem with this, teach, is that here's where mathematics just breaks down.
And he's like, no, this is not where fucking mathematics breaks down.
This is where you've made an error.
If your statements are illogical, it's not logic's fault.
It's your fault.
Right? If you have made a mistake, or if what you say is contradictory, self-contradictory, then it is not the fault of logic, it is the fault of you.
So I think that's sort of an important aspect to try to figure out.
So, why is it that people would Be so addicted to this stuff, right?
Or, I guess another way of putting it is, why is this mythology of that which is possible outside the universe inflicting or impinging?
Why is it such a compelling mythology that God can exist outside the universe?
Why is it so universally or near universally in certain intellectual circles considered to be True dogma.
Why? Why? Why would it be believable?
Because this is the important thing to figure out when we have a widespread hypocrisy or delusion.
And philosophical ones are slightly different from religious ones, right?
Because the religious ones simply and openly talk about faith and its irrationality.
But philosophical errors Don't talk about faith, they talk about reason, right?
And if an agnostic comes up to you and says, strong atheism is wrong because it is an assertion, it contradicts the possibility of there being a God in another dimension, right?
Well, obviously he's saying then, consistency with the truth of the possibility of God, consistency is good, right?
But then, when it turns out that the statement, nothing is certain, self-destructs in about a second, then he says, well, but see, here's where logic breaks down.
Well, what would he say if the atheist, like he says, atheism is wrong because God could exist in another universe, what would he say if the atheist said, yes, It is true that God could exist in another universe, and it is true that that contradicts with the strong atheist position that gods cannot exist, but this is where logic breaks down.
I'm still going to hold this position, though it contradicts something else that I admit.
Self-contradiction is not bad.
The fault is with logic.
Well, he would say that's ridiculous.
Of course it's inconsistent, and therefore you have to abandon it.
But then, when you reverse the argument and say nothing is true is a contradictory statement, Well, nothing is true for certain.
Well, then he says, well, here's where logic breaks down.
So, the question to ask, or at least the question that I find most fruitful to ask is, why is this compelling?
Why would this nonsense be believable?
And the reason for that is an emotional one.
If something that is so easy to disprove Such as the statement, we can know nothing for certain.
If a statement like nothing is certain is so easy to disprove, but it is clung to, right?
And we see this with, I mean, almost all the debates that I've had I mean, I take down the other person's position bit by bit, brick by brick, and then what happens is they budge not at all.
Though they have admitted false, they have admitted contradiction, they have backed down from certain positions, they then bounce right back, you know, like that bobo clown you punch down the inflatable thing.
They bounce right back to their original position.
Well, why? Why?
Because if we don't understand that, Then we are, I think, missing the point of debating, which is to figure out, if you're right but not believed, to figure out why.
No point being right if you're not believed, right?
I guess it's okay for you, but you don't actually do much in the public sphere to change or improve the world.
So the question is, why is agnosticism so compelling for people?
And I'm going to sort of play around With an idea.
This is a cat batting around a ball.
This is not so logistic, but I'm going to play around with an idea.
And you can see the methodology that I'm trying to use and see if it makes any sense.
So, one of the greatest challenges in human life, of course, is projection.
And with regards to the universe, it becomes anthropomorphism, right?
That is where we say we are born and we die, and we are created by parents.
Therefore, the universe which comes into existence must have been created by a parent we call God, and so on, right?
And, of course, when children are children, They don't look at their parents and say, well, you were once children and there's, you know, turtles all the way up, so to speak.
What they believe, of course, is that their parents are gods who have always existed when they're very young and they don't understand that their parents were once as they are and have grown up and reproduced, and that's something that they get much later.
So, for a child, his parents were not born or came into existence in the way that he did.
They're just there, right?
And they're just permanent and eternal in that early conception.
And that's why people can believe Emotionally.
That's why people can believe in this idea of a God creating the universe, because they're anthropomorphizing it.
Because the universe was brought into being by an eternal God.
And, as DeMoss argues, God is feminine.
It's a fundamentally feminine concept.
You can look that more up if you like in his, I think, The Emotional Life of Nations book.
And so why is it believable?
Because, of course, whenever you argue with somebody about religion or even agnosticism, and they say the universe was created by God, that wouldn't be specifically agnostic, but at least some agnostics, or at least a lot of agnostics, seem to say that that's a possibility.
Well, how could that be remotely believable?
Well, because it's emotionally believable, because it mirrors an early emotional experience.
Right. Now, Freud argues in Analysis of a...
I can't remember the name of it, but it's Analysis of a Fantasy or something like that, where he says that the feeling of oneness with the universe, this sort of oceanic feeling that people get, of nirvana, oneness with the universe, feels true because we have experienced that with our mother, right? This fusion with what is fundamentally the universe when we're a baby.
We can't see very far. We can only see about a foot in front of her face.
So the universe is the curves of our mother, the suckling of her breast, and so on.
And we have fusion very early in our life with a mother, or maternal figure, And so later, when through drugs or meditation or whatever, people reawaken that original feeling of unity with the universe, it feels true, right?
Because we've already been there.
We've already done that.
And so it has this resonance.
Now, I believe that it has this resonance if the feelings remain incomplete, right?
If the yearning for fusion with the mother was not fulfilled because the mother was cold or depressed or withdrawn or absent or dead or whatever, Then that yearning for that fusion continues, and people will spend their lives attempting to recreate it in various forms.
Now, of course, when we are...
So, sorry, a baby does not see, does not of course understand, a toddler does not understand that his parents were once as he was, and so on, right?
Because when you say the universe was created by a god, that's anthropomorphizing in that we were created by what we perceived at the time to be eternal parents, right?
I'm not saying this is proof, obviously, right?
I'm not saying this is proof, but it's a methodology, a way of approaching the problem.
And so when you talk to someone and you say, well, if everything which exists must have been created, then God who exists must have been created, if that's the law, right?
And of course, if the universe can have always existed, then God can have also existed permanently, but then you don't need God to create the universe, because they exist, right?
So why is it that people falter In the face of that simple, logical proposition, right?
If they say, that which exists, like the universe, must have been created by something outside of it or anti-decent to it, but then what created that thing that is anti-decent to it?
Why would they not be able to understand that logical problem, that either the universe is permanent and perpetual, in which case you don't need a god, or if that which exists must have been created, you have turtles all the way down, the problem of infinite regression of what creates that which creates whatever, right?
I mean, that's not brain surgery, right?
And the real challenge of philosophy is to try and figure out why people are retarded, why very intelligent people are stupid and pig-headed and belligerent and evasive and slippery.
Why does that occur?
There's no point having the truth if you can't convince anyone.
And if people can't even get that basic logical problem and say, huh, you're right, that is a problem, right?
Well, why do they have such trouble with it?
Because that is an early experience That is the thinking of a toddler.
I came into existence created by eternal parents.
That is the perspective of a very young child.
Now, it certainly is the case, and this is pretty scientific, it's fairly scientifically proven to the degree with which these things can be proven, but it is scientifically well-known in psychological circles that trauma arrests emotional development.
So, significant trauma gets people stuck in certain emotional places.
And so, if a toddler who is in this phase of, I have been created by eternal parents, and the idea that they could also have been children who were created by parents before them, turtles all the way up, doesn't occur to a child that age, their mind is too young to process that, Well, if they experience significant trauma, their emotional development gets stuck in that place, right?
They don't move beyond it.
Now, of course, that's just true of their core emotional state of being and thinking, but that's not true, of course, of their intellect, right?
So if you get stuck in that place where you were born from eternal parents, you get stuck there emotionally.
You never grow beyond that fundamentally because of trauma, abuse, some sort of terrible thing.
Well, what happens is when you see or experience or read about a philosophy or philosophical approach which says that the universe is created, by an eternal God, it just feels true.
It accords with where you're stuck at or retarded emotionally, and so it enters into your mind as a true thing, because it just feels so damn true.
And the alternative, of course, to believing that it's true, like when you say, well, that can't be true, what happens then is you begin to challenge The place where you are emotionally stuck.
In this case, it would be toddlerhood.
And that reawakens the trauma, and that's why people fight so goddamn hard to hang on to this crap.
Because if they can believe that where they're stuck emotionally is actually an existential truth about the universe, they don't ever have to deal with it and work it out and move forward, right?
Because they get this philosophical backup for their emotional retardation.
Whereas, if someone has worked through the emotional state of believing that they are created by eternal parents, they've gone through that emotional...
It generally has to do with the lack of bonding or the infliction of trauma.
It would prevent you from doing this.
But... Sorry, a bug bite on my leg.
Oh, my shoulder. But if you get stuck here, then...
You are going to find philosophical confirmation to provide, it's going to provide you huge relief in this way, right?
So the alternative, right, is why you feel anxious or why people feel anxious when they're confronted with the logic of these propositions is because it reminds them or it evokes the trauma that they're stuck behind, right? And that's why they will twist and turn and make up whatever they can, or whatever they want to, in order to avoid, right?
That's why they deny the logic, right?
And that's why they're stuck in these repetitive patterns, right?
You've noticed this with debates that I have with people, right?
They're just completely stuck.
They can't absorb new information.
They just repeat like mantra.
They redefine. They evade.
They do all of these sorts of things.
And what they're avoiding is not the truth of my arguments, but the truth of their own emotional experience, which has kept them stuck in this place, right?
So that's sort of one way of looking at just one particular example of any logic that people experience and seem to have just such a tough time understanding or letting go of emotion, right?
This is just one example of The universe is created by an eternal God.
When you point out the logic of that, people won't process it, because it is emotionally threatening to them.
And, of course, we could look at, through psychosocial development, we could look at almost all the false tenets of mankind, and we could find where in people's emotional lives did the trauma occur that got them stuck there.
I mean, to take an obvious example, If we look at something like patriotism, then clearly my country, right or wrong, an allegiance to where you were born is a direct translation of the family.
The country is the family, right?
Because the country is where you happen to be born into, and you make a virtue out of that.
And the family is where you happen to be born into, and so you make a virtue out of that.
And when a child begins to bring questions of consistency and ethics and virtue to his parents, and to make an easy case of it, his dad thunders down, you know, I'm just right, dammit.
You know, you don't question me.
And when they also feed them the false giddy drug of obedience to authority equals virtue.
You know, my country, right or wrong, is...
My dad, right or wrong, right?
So what happens is when they start asking the natural questions around parental integrity that all children will ask, what happens is the parents get angry and shut them down, create propaganda, attack their curiosity, and they then get stuck in this place, right?
This is around the age of five, six, and seven when they begin to notice Some rather odd things about their parents, right?
Like their parents say, don't get angry, and then get angry, right?
So they start to notice these contradictions between the ideals their parents put forward and what the parents actually do, and they begin to question these things, right?
And what happens then is that they get slammed down.
Loyalty to the family. Family is everything.
All this mafia crap, right? And honor thy mother and thy father, right?
I mean, all of that is religion as well, right?
And patriotism. But that is very clearly the reason that people get stuck in patriotism and get hostile towards questions is because they're emotionally stuck in this place of five or six or seven years old where they got attacked for asking questions about the virtue of the arbitrary authority of the parents or the teachers or the priest,
right? So, when we look at people's, quote, philosophical beliefs, and we understand that where clear irrationalities are brushed aside, it's because the purpose of those irrationalities is to serve and reinforce the reality of getting stuck somewhere emotionally due to trauma or fear or abuse.
And to create a philosophical justification, quote, justification, for remaining in that place.
Suddenly it's no longer a place of trauma, emotional retardation, that any reasonable devotion to maturity would cause you to confront and process and overcome.
Well, suddenly it becomes no longer a scared and frightened corner of being traumatized, but instead, of course, it becomes A heroic and noble dedication to the truth, right?
So it feels true because it accords and shelters one from having to deal with early trauma, and then you make a virtue out of that truthness.
And that's why people are so retarded about these issues.
All they're doing is avoiding the trauma and turning the avoidance of that trauma into a virtue.
So, I think that's...
And you can look at almost every irrationality that people have in these terms, right?
What trauma are they avoiding by accepting this bullshit?
And this explains also why people react with such hostility and confusion and frustration and manipulation when you point out these obvious inconsistencies to them, right?
Like, nothing is true, right?
That's why they get so upset.
That's why they get so tense.
And that's why they're so immovable, because the truth is serving the trauma.
The quote truth, right?
The philosophical errors are serving the trauma.
They're serving to protect the trauma.
And so of course you can't budge them with logic, because they're not created from logic.
They're created as a way of avoiding trauma.
So that's one way of putting it.
Agnosticism, though, is even more fascinating than most, because it tends to be even more immovable than religion.
I mean, we've had a bunch of people come to the boards who have found their way free of religion, but very few, and I can't think of any, but there may be a couple, very few who have given up on agnosticism.
And that's because I would, again, rank theorizing, but I would put forward that Agnosticism comes from even earlier trauma than religion.
So, for instance, there is a scope limitation that is constantly talked about with agnostics.
So they say, well, it is true that we can use empirical logic and science to deal with the universe, but there's all this stuff outside the universe that limits the scope of what we can think about.
Now, when we look at scope limitation, why would this be believable?
Why would it be believable that there's this other world that could exist, that can be described, but whenever you point out it can't be described, everything gets rewritten?
Why would this be believable to people?
It has to be emotionally, because logically it's retarded.
So when people believe illogical stuff, you simply have to figure out what the logic is behind what they believe.
It's not syllogistic logic.
It's not empirical logic. It's something else.
So it has to be an emotional defense.
Why do people believe in rational stuff?
Because it's rational to avoid pain.
In the short run, it's not.
In the short run, it's rational to avoid pain.
Take a painkiller for a toothache is easier than going to the dentist.
It's just terrible in the long run.
So when someone has a perception that logic is limited and we cannot say that which is Outside reality, what we have to do is look back into their psychology,
and it doesn't have to be theirs, this is general psychology, and to try and figure out what stage of the evolution of the mind does this perception of limited truth with a wider envelope of chaos and confusion and don't-know around it What does this accord with?
Well, a newborn baby, as I said, can only focus on a foot or two.
The eyes don't go much further, and of course they tend to be in pretty, like they're in closed areas, rooms, and so on.
And so babies don't, like they have, they can manipulate things that is directly in front of them, right?
They can pick up a ball and roll it around, or they can at least grab a finger and make a fist, and so on.
They actually can't explore, until they get older, they can't explore the world that is beyond their immediate perception.
They can't focus visually on it at first, and then they can't reach anything which is outside their reach, because they can't even sit up, let alone walk.
And so babies have a terrific and foundational scope limitation.
And now, of course, babies' hearing is more acute than their vision, So babies can hear things going on elsewhere in the house, right?
Somebody humming, the TV on, a radio playing.
They have no idea what's going on, because they can hear it, but they can't see anything, right?
And so this idea that there's stuff that is happening outside their immediate perceptions, that there is a scope limitation, is perfectly in accordance with An infant's conceptual understanding of the world.
So this idea that there's stuff that we can see, but then there's this other realm that we can't see that has mysteries in it, perfectly accords with a baby in a crib listening to a television or hearing somebody clatter pots and pans or doors opening and closing and so on, right? There's something that's out there which we can't understand.
But certainly what is valid Right in front of my nose, in other words, in the agnostic view, that which is functional empirical logic and science in the tangible universe,
that's valid, but there's stuff outside of that that is mysterious and possible, and there's some evidence, but you can't ever prove it, but then there's no evidence when you Try to reproduce it because, you know, you can't reproduce pots and pans clattering as a baby, right?
It's going to happen or it's not. So there's this sense that there's this outside world or this world outside your perception which has things in it, right?
And this also helps us understand another question or issue around agnosticism, which is why do agnostics always talk about the gods in this other realm?
Why do agnostics never talk about Afro-unicorns?
Why is it always that they talk about gods in this other realm?
Well, this approach that I'm taking here answers that question very nicely.
Because the infant is going to have...
I mean, to the infant, the parents are gods, right?
They are the universe, they are gods, they are everything, they are the world.
And at some point, the infant does begin to associate these sounds and movements that are outside his perceptual range with his gods, with his parents.
He will at some point understand that when the door opens, which he can barely see but can hear clearly, when a door opens to his room, One of the guards walks in, so the guards must be coming from somewhere outside his immediate perception.
He begins to get this cause and effect.
If the baby develops in a healthy and positive way, then the baby expands this immediate range of perception.
To accept that there is nothing really outside his perception.
There's stuff he can't see, but it's still valid, it's still there, it's still logical.
That there's not some realm outside of his perception where logic no longer applies.
So if something happens to the child, again, I would submit, Trauma, but it could also be something as simple as undiagnosed vision problems.
A number of mystics that I've talked to had early vision problems, which means that they have problems focusing on reality and have to picture more than they see.
So the idea that the universe is fuzzy And thought is bigger than the world, or sharper than the world, can happen simply as a result of vision problems that may remain undiagnosed for years.
But it could be trauma, it could be astigmatism, it could be a lazy eye, it could be something which interferes with the growing acuity of perception around the world.
So if the child, the baby or the infant, for whatever reason, remains stuck in this idea that there is an immediate realm That has cause and effect, object constancy, and so on.
And then there's this foggy other realm, which we only get an inkling of through sounds, and the causal relationship between this other realm and the immediate realm is not clear.
Consciousness does not expand to begin to absorb that.
Then, of course, the child's going to remain stuck in this.
And if the child remains stuck in this idea that there's some other realm out there that the laws of this realm do not apply to, And, of course, we all understand that, right?
I mean, a child can roll the baby, can roll the ball back and forth once it can sit up and so on, but it can't will its parents to come.
And this is particularly true if, when he cries, his parents only come inconsistently, right?
Then there's this idea that cause and effect doesn't work in this outside realm.
I mean, I think if the parents come consistently when the child cries, then the cause and effect works.
And the idea that logic applies to this world outside the crib, outside the baby room, actually makes sense, right?
But if the parents don't come or they come and snarl or whatever, then the idea of crying to get help, which causes consistent behavior in the world outside the immediate perception, it just remains irrational, right?
What goes on out there.
There's no cause and effect. So if a person, a man, say, remains stuck Well, of course, intellectually he outgrows it and he understands that there's science and so on,
right? But emotionally, deep down in the central cortex, there is this emotional experience that there is direct perception and mystery outside it.
No cause and effect, a lack of consistency, a lack of rationality, which is inhabited by gods.
Because you have to have the two, right?
This theory would not work very well if this outside the universe thing was always square circles.
If people were just obsessed with square circles and talking about these, then this theory wouldn't work so well.
But it's always gods, right? Always gods.
And gods are always parents, right?
Our emotional relationship with gods is all...
And this is, again, this is not just me making stuff up.
There are very, very clear psychological studies that show that Children who are raised more violently have more violent gods, and children who are raised more peacefully have more peaceful gods, right?
And we all understand this, that the red states, the states which are more prone to be republican, have greater incidence of corporal punishment, right?
For liberals, liberals can question the government, right?
They can question and oppose specific things of the government.
They can't question the idea of government, because that's something we're still bringing to bear on society, but liberals can question and criticize foreign policy, what the government does, and so on, and that's because they grow up in families where criticism of the parents' specific actions, though not the authority as a whole, is allowable, right? So they grow up being able to criticize, they have greater empathy, And so they misguidedly apply this to social programs and so on, right?
Again, I'm not making any of this stuff up, right?
The correlation between patriotism and abuse is relatively...
Again, I'm not going to say it perfectly.
Obviously, this is psychology.
There's self-reporting.
There's all these sorts of problems.
But children who are more violently raised will also be more prone to enter into military service and so on, right?
So there's this sort of grim, resigned...
Adherence to or allegiance to parental authority figures is translated.
So parents are always the state, gods, you know, the abstracts that people are enslaved to.
And it all starts with the parents, right?
So the child who has this perception or this belief or this experience, really, of an immediate comprehensible world And a wider, almost infinite,
incomprehensible world with vague possibilities of existence and signs of existence that cannot be reproduced, cannot be controlled, well, those people are far more likely to grow up, and then when they encounter philosophical justifications that sit in perfect accordance with their deepest emotional experiences, well, they're going to believe them, right?
It's gonna make sense, right?
Yeah, that fits.
That's what people do with philosophy.
They say, yeah, that fits.
And then they go hook, line, and sinker.
I don't put myself outside of this category at all.
And I was not reluctantly swayed by objectivism, right?
I read objectivism like, yeah, that fits.
And someday I will sit down and figure out exactly what it fit.
But the first thing I read was The Fountainhead, which is, he has a, quote, brother.
There's a single mother who's entirely destructive, and there is a lonely kind of integrity, and that, of course, accorded with my familial experience.
So it kind of fit, right?
In a way that Atlas Shrugged really didn't.
But, I mean, I think The Fountainhead's a better book, but it doesn't really matter too much.
So, I mean, I hope that I have continued to apply logic and empiricism to these questions or these problems, but people get involved in certain philosophies because they fit.
And you can take so many different philosophies, erroneous philosophies, and sometimes even the accidentally corrupt philosophies.
You can take so many of the erroneous philosophies that people have in their minds, which they cling to in a devoted way, and you can trace it back to where their psychosocial, emotional, neurological development stopped.
And these, of course, represent In the psychohistory view, these various stages at which psychosocial or emotional development is arrested represent these different psychoclasses.
In my view, these different psychoclasses correspond to a variety of philosophies.
You could look at relativism, agnosticism, even certain kinds of atheism, Marxism, socialism, republicanism, democratism, and so on.
You could look at all of these as Ways that the psycho classes avoid their own traumas.
Of course, democracy is only possible when children are allowed more say in the family.
The emotional explosiveness that has come out of people when I put the Don't Vote video clearly is much more than would be explainable by voting or non-voting.
One in a hundred million, nothing's really going to change anyway, right?
So why is it that people...
I mean, there have been defuse over the voting issues.
I mean, that's staggering, right? That's staggering, and if you just look at it as voting and as political theory, it makes no sense, right?
But why is it that people are so hostile towards voting?
Well, when you say, I'm not going to vote, what are you really saying?
Well, what you're really saying is, I give up on attempting to reform this unjust authority, right?
Now, the state is the parent, right?
And so, why is it the parents are getting so mad at their children when the children are saying, I'm not going to vote?
Is it because they care so much about democracy and voting and can make a clear and cogent case as to why voting will change the world?
Well, no, of course not. There's no case to be made for that, right?
But, if we understand it in terms of anthropomorphizing a psychological projection, where the state is the parent, when the child says, I give up on this unjust authority and I'm no longer going to pretend to participate, the unjust parent, if the parent is unjust, will feel that as a personal rejection.
Do you see? The child says, I'm going to no longer pretend to participate in an unjust...
I'm no longer going to give my sanction to an unjust authority.
I condemn it as evil.
I'm no longer going to pretend that I have any possibility or capacity to participate or that this unjust authority will listen to me.
I'm not going to be manipulated into obedience.
I'm not going to beg for my freedom.
I completely withdraw, reject, and condemn this unjust authority.
How is an unjust father, say, going to feel?
Well, he's going to feel rage.
And I've had some communications explicitly along those lines.
So, once we understand that what people call philosophy is almost always an attempt to justify and elevate into abstract truth Particularly retarded states due to trauma or dysfunction, bodily or familial, emotional.
Then we can understand why people are drawn towards certain philosophies and why people are so immovable in those philosophies, right?
Why don't they ever change?
And of course they put forward all of these.
Psychological, quote, reasons as to why they believe what they believe, but when they're disproven, they don't change.
They don't change. They just don't, don't, don't change.
Now, some people will, right?
I've managed to make that leap. A number of other people have managed to make that leap.
It's hard as hell, right?
And the fundamental difficulty of it is emotional, not rational, right?
The reasoning is easy, right?
Nothing is true. Well, that's a contradiction.
Oh, shit. Well, that can't be right then.
I mean, how long does that take?
Well, play it back and see. Not long.
God created the universe because that which exists has to have been created.
Well, God exists.
Who created God? Oh shit, that doesn't work.
You're right. Again, how long does that take?
A few seconds. Easy peasy.
Not brain surgery.
This is not quantum physics.
This is not a PhD in brain surgery and physics.
This stuff's really basic.
But people continually resist it.
Why? Because it serves an emotional need.
The emotional need of avoidance.
The emotional need of taking an arrested or retarded emotional state, a trauma, and turning it to a philosophical universal truth, right?
I'm not broken.
I'm not broken.
The world is broken, right?
That way people can align themselves with reality, and since normalcy is to be pretty specific, is defined as a healthy relationship to reality, if you're broken, but you can say the world is broken, then you don't feel broken, right?
So, if you have this other universe where the gods might live, dysfunction, because of trauma or dysfunction within your infancy, But you can say that that is how the universe is, then your trauma becomes truth, becomes an accurate representation.
It's no longer trauma. It's no longer dysfunction.
Right? It is truth.
And if you begin to question that truth or unravel that truth, People sense what is going to happen to them emotionally, which is that the bullshit they're putting forward as, quote, truth actually just turns out to be a cover for trauma.
So the moment you begin to dismantle the irrationalities that they're spewing forward, what do they do?
Well, they begin to twist, they begin to evade, they begin to manipulate, they begin to falsify, they begin to aha, they begin to all of the logical, sophistic bullshit tricks that people do when they're avoiding trauma, right?
And projection, of course, is key, right?
So they will always call you intransigent, right?
This is inevitable, right?
And that's why when I have a debate with someone, I am under no illusions that I'm going to change his or her mind, right?
I'm not, right?
I mean, to me, it's like a presidential debate, right?
To use a silly metaphor.
I mean, John McCain is not debating with Barack Obama because he wants Barack Obama to become a Republican.
Vice versa, for Democrats.
They're not. John McCain is not debating with Barack Obama because he hopes that Barack Obama's wife will become a Republican, or his close friends, or his most ardent supporters.
That's not why these debates occur, and that's not why I debate with people either.
I debate with people because of the undecideds.
Because of the people who will go one way or the other, depending on what they first encounter, right?
They debate to grab the undecideds.
And that's why I debate.
And so people will say to me, well, do you think that he's going to change based on this debate, whoever I'm debating?
Well, of course not. Of course not.
But I'm not debating to change his mind.
I'm debating to... I'm not even debating to change your mind, right?
Because I don't want to change your mind.
I don't want to change your mind?
That wouldn't matter to me at all, right?
I mean, no nutritionist says, I'm going to cook all your meals, right?
I don't know. Maybe Madonna's nutritionist, but who knows, right?
But that's not what nutritionists don't want to cook your meals.
They want you to think about nutrition, right?
I don't want to change your mind.
I want to awaken your mind. I want you to think, right?
Because changing your mind to...
My thoughts is not education, it's indoctrination.
So, once we understand why it is that people are drawn towards particular beliefs, once we understand that it is the projection onto the universe of psychological trauma, which is why it's so stupid and Why people have this endless confirmation bias.
They only look for things which confirm their opinions.
It also helps explain why the most errant nonsense is accepted as truth.
Why is it that people believe in democracy?
It's errant nonsense. If all men are created equal, why do some have a monopoly on the use of force?
If there's a social contract, why was it never offered up voluntarily?
I mean, the amount of nonsense that people have to believe to continue to accept silly ideas, democracy, statism, Marxism, socialism, communism as a whole, religion, virtue of the family, loyalty, patriotism, countries.
I mean, so if we look at it like they have incorrect Arguments, or they have reasoned incorrectly, and if I reason with them correctly, like turning the wheel of a ship, I will turn their beliefs.
Well, that's not how it works.
And we've all experienced this.
We all know what this feels like, right?
Where you get into a debate with someone, and it feels like he's fighting you tooth and nail, almost to the death, right?
And the arguments change, they shift, the manipulation begins, the emotions heighten, you feel this fight-or-flight mechanism, right?
And that's because you are pushing them closer to uncovering the trauma that the beliefs are repressing, right?
That the fantasies are repressing.
And this is our continual Experience of what passes for debate in the world, right?
People say, I believe what I believe because I have reasons.
And then you begin to dismantle those reasons and the beliefs never change, right?
Someone says, I am in Washington, D.C. because I followed this path on the map, right?
And you point out that they went in the exact opposite direction and they're actually in Washington, Oregon.
They just turn the Mac back and say, nope.
People say, my beliefs are perfectly derived from observation and reason, right?
And then you say, well, but you've contradicted yourself with the first part here.
Then they just change their definitions all the time, right?
So logic and reason is clearly not what is going on, right?
And if you look at the emotional intensity to which people cling to their beliefs, to their fantasies, the religious people's status, I mean, it makes no sense.
Why would people be so obsessed with it?
Why would they keep posting about it?
I mean, if you're an agnostic, you believe that...
Even if you believe there's a God outside the universe thing, clearly there is no God inside the universe, right?
And if atheists and you both believe that God exists...
that no gods exist inside the universe, then why would you come and for days and days and weeks and weeks and posts and posts and debates, argue with atheists, right?
It makes no sense, no sense whatsoever, unless we understand what's going on emotionally.
What is going on emotionally is that when an atheist says there is no other chaotic unknowable world, it's a meaningless statement, It takes the agnostic right back to the early trauma that created this fantasy that was later aligned with a belief system that was irrational.
That's why they fight so hard to retain it, because they experience the strong atheist position as an emotional unraveling and the infliction of trauma.
Because it is denormalizing their early emotional experience.
That there is this other world outside the immediate world and where the gods live or could live, right?
And that's why they're so obsessed.
I mean, just between you and I, and everyone else listening to this, I look at people on the board, and they come onto the board, right?
Guns blazing. Intent.
Intense. Really focused on getting this point across or that point across.
Digging in. Fighting. I always say to myself, why?
Why? Why is this such a big issue for you?
Don't you ever have that impulse to ask people that?
Why on earth would this be so important to you?
I don't get it. Why do I get such a sense of tension, frustration, anger, fear, confusion, hostility?
Why is it so emotionally charged?
Why on earth would somebody be emotionally invested in a theoretical realm of pure unknowability tens of billions of light years away?
I mean, come on, seriously, people, why?
Would somebody be so emotionally invested in a non-proven, purely theoretical realm, billions of light years away at best, which we will never reach, which we will never know,
certainly not in our lifetimes, which has no impact on how we live our life, And fight tooth and nail a group that they 100% agree with the non-existence of gods in this universe.
Why? I mean, this is what we have to think about if we want to be smart and really understand what's going on with people.
Why? Why? Why would somebody be so emotionally invested in a theoretical realm tens of billions of light years away that they will never experience and will never have any impact on their life?
Because it means something very important to them, right?
Because it means something very important to them.
And it can't be because they've experienced this otherworld, otherwise they'd have the Nobel Prize in physics.
It can't be because they can prove the existence of this other universe.
It can't be because they visited it.
It can't be because they ever think it's about to happen, because it never does, about to become visible or become clear.
And even if it did, it would just be part of this universe, right?
Why are they so attached to this?
Nutty, otherworldly, billions of light years away, never have any effect, no how, no where, no possibility.
Why would anybody give a shit about it?
But they do. But they do.
They fight tooth and nail.
This disagreement, this evasion, this nonsense, it went on and on and it's going on and on, right?
This Bill fellow on the board, right?
Why? Why would he care?
We can all understand that if I become obsessed and grindingly aggressive about the existence of unicorns, that it's not about unicorns.
I mean, we can understand that, right?
When he says, or when agnostics say, "God is everything, God is eternity, God is infinity," well, this is just an infant's experience of parents.
I mean, a parent is confused by an infant with the universe, right?
Then the child has a dim awareness of something existing outside the immediate sphere but can't ever prove it and can't ever nail it down until it gets older and integrates the expansion of consciousness and perception.
So, why would people get so emotionally invested in some unprovable, unspeakable, otherworldly realm that means nothing?
Well, because...
I mean, people aren't crazy.
They don't just get randomly addicted to abstracts.
They care about it so much because it is their early emotional experience of the world.
It is their unprocessed trauma.
Because only this theory, which is in accordance with fairly well-established psychological facts, the harsher the upbringing, the harsher the God, right?
That indicates parents equal Parents equals God.
The more harshly brought up, the more aggressive the foreign policy, the less criticism of the state.
Patriotism, war, militarism.
Republicans are considered to be more aggressive in terms of foreign policy, because Republicans are raised more violently.
So, state equals parent.
God equals parent.
This is not just made up, right?
This correlation works. And this correlation, the way that we talk about it here, in terms of agnostics or anything else that we wanted to talk about, is the only theory that explains why people fight so hard about this bullshit realm that nobody could ever prove.
Because it's not a bullshit realm that nobody could ever prove.
It is their early traumatized experience.
Why people remain so grindingly irrational?
Because defenses are always grindingly irrational and pampous and superior and unalterable.
You can't alter defenses, right?
You can only process the original trauma and then they will relax.
Why it's like a broken record, right?
Because it's the evasion of trauma.
The trauma remains perpetual, thus the evasion must remain perpetual.
Why do people believe this stuff which makes no sense?
Because It makes sense relative to the trauma which inhibited their emotional, psychological, social development.
Why is it always about God?
Why is it always about gods in this other realm?
Because this other realm outside perception is where the parents slash gods did live in the past, right?
So it doesn't feel true that there can't be any.
Because when I was a baby I heard noises and then my parents appeared.
So they must be out there. Or at least it must be possible that they're out there.
So, again, we went over a whole bunch of other things, but maybe this theory is complete nonsense.
Certainly, I believe it's true.
It is in accordance with a number of psychological trends, which are well documented.
But maybe it's not true. Maybe it's something else completely.
And that's fine, too. But this other theory, whatever it is going to be, We'll also have to explain all of this stuff, right?
Now, the problem...
Oh, sorry, there's one other thing that would have to occur for this theory to be true.
Well, for this theory to be true, or to gain a few rungs up the ladder towards truthiness or credibility, for this theory to be true, those who are the most obsessed with bizarre theories It would have to be correspondingly resistant to psychology,
to an exploration of the unconscious, to an exploration of the effect of early childhood experiences on later intellectual positions.
So if you could interrupt somebody in the midst of a debate that was going nowhere and say, I'd like to talk about your childhood, If that person said, well, it could have an influence, let's absolutely talk about it, then this would be a blow against the theory.
So the 9-11 truthers, which we've talked about before, if those people, when they were madly insisting About how evil the government was, which we've talked about before, because nobody believes that their parents are evil, so they have this loyalty and this hatred, which is what they feel towards the government of the present, and fear.
If those people...
In the midst of a fiery debate, or any kind of debate, fiery enough, if you were to say, well, I'm not quite sure where you're coming from, and I don't think we're getting far intellectually, do you mind if we change courses for a little bit and talk about psychological history, right?
Well, if truthers were happy to explore that, or Ron Paul, Paul Estinian, if they were content, or at least open to discussing that, Then that would be fine, right? That would be interesting, and that would be a blow against this theory, right?
So, it's kind of like this, right?
Sorry to use a metaphor, but hey, sometimes they would.
So, if some fellow is addicted to morphine, right?
Because he sustains an injury, and he claims that that injury is permanent, and maybe he's forgotten about it.
Let's say he hasn't forgotten about the injury.
And he's now addicted to morphine because he decided to take painkillers rather than go to physical rehabilitation.
Because, in the short run, it's easier to take painkillers.
Pain goes away. The problem is the underlying condition continues and exacerbates.
So, if this fellow is addicted to morphine and has taken handfuls of it a day, and if his underlying condition has simply gotten worse the more morphine he's taken, then we would expect that and if his underlying condition has simply gotten worse the more morphine he's taken, then we would expect that he would be hostile to anyone who says, "Oh, and first of all, he says, I'm not taking morphine.
Then when he's caught, he says, well, I have to take this morphine because my underlying condition cannot be cured, right?
But then if you say, no, it can be cured, and he's hostile, then you know he's just addicted to morphine, right?
And we'll just do whatever it takes to continue to take the morphine, right?
So, in the same way, if this theory were not true, If I were to switch gears in a debate and say to someone, okay, I think that we're not talking about the real topic here.
The real topic has to be something different, because we're just going round and round in circles here, and you're not accepting logical arguments and evidence that I'm putting forward.
And you're abandoning a position, and then two minutes you've taken it up again, as if you never abandoned it or rejected it.
Well, if this theory is true, that These bizarre beliefs simply mirror various stages of arrested development in the mind and in the heart and in the soul, then a psychological examination of the cause of these beliefs should be met with outrage, skepticism, hostility, derision, or whatever, right?
So, if I were to not accept being disproven, And somebody would say, well, you're not accepting this, what's going on for you emotionally, why is this occurring, right?
Then, I mean, I would, I hope, not have any problem with saying, that's interesting, I wonder why I would be so resistant to this, right?
Why I would feel that this should not, can I do this, right?
But if the theory about philosophy as a reflection of an arrested state of development is true, then the moment you say, okay, I'm going to put the brakes on this argument, it's not going anywhere, I'd like to know a little bit more about your childhood, if I may, just so we can figure out if something in your history is affecting the way in which you pursue truth in the present.
Well, if the person were to refuse that or scorn it or mock it or, you know, not participate in it, then that would be further proof of this theory, because that's what the theory would predict, right?
That if the beliefs are a way of avoiding psychological pain and truth, then psychological exploration should be mocked at, derided, right?
And tossed aside. So that would be another, and of course it's been my experience, that whenever you try to do that, people don't do it, right?
They constantly reject and scorn the psychological approach.
And what they'll say is, oh, you're losing, now you want to psychologize me.
▲
Export Selection