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Dec. 17, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:17:23
1233 Free Will, Determinism And Self Knowledge - Part 1

The bare bones of a new theory about determinism, free will and self-knowledge...

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Let's get back to philosophy, philosophy, philosophy, let's get back to philosophy, because I'm mighty hard of typing.
Hi everybody, it's Defo.
You doing well. Time for a walk in the fresh Canadian powdery snowfall of, I don't know, December 17th, 18th?
Wednesday. I'm fairly sure of that.
And this is An exploratory cast, not even really at the level of a theory, just some thoughts that have been rolling around the old BCF for the last little while, and so I thought I'd share them with you and see what you thought.
I find certain phenomenon in debating and intellectual circles to be Really, really, really, really fascinating.
And it is the age-old problem which is, why do people refuse to see, or cannot see, or won't see, or avoid seeing, or who knows what?
We'll explore that, right?
But why do they avoid the obvious?
It's a big and important question, right?
So, in the book, How Not to Achieve Freedom, one of the things that I try to tackle is the question of why people have, for thousands of years, avoided the obvious reality that taxation equals force.
And it's a good question.
Because repeating it doesn't seem to be helping.
And that really...
I did a podcast a little while back about what I thought was the valuable thing that I had brought to philosophy, which is that the rules of the proposition include the proposition, which is UPP in many ways.
But the second thing I think that I've brought is...
It's just this annoying dedication to empiricism, right?
Which is, well, if stuff's not working, it's useful to know why, right?
But not to repeat the same things over and over, right?
Let's keep talking about the Fed and the presidents and what the real cause of the Great Depression was and why the gold standard is good, right?
All of the stuff that's been talked about off and on for the past, oh, few hundred years.
And which hasn't worked, right?
So that dedication to empiricism, which, I mean, I know people find annoying, and if it's any consolation, I must say that I find it entirely annoying as well.
I was much more contented in many ways when I was a monarchist, libertarian, or objectivist, or whatever.
And The whole question about why people refused to see the obvious wasn't even a tangential part of what I was doing for many, many, many years.
I was just repeating the same arguments and getting to exactly the same place, which was precisely nowhere.
In hindsight, looking back, it took a lot of willpower to avoid that basic reality, It took a lot of work, in hindsight, to avoid that basic reality of it doesn't work.
So, of course, when I went through UPP, which was very early in the podcast series, the article that was on Lou Rockwell, When I went through UPB very early on, I began to sort of understand that there was a lot of ethical questions that I could apply UPB to much more in my own life and so on.
And then I sort of began looking down that road and saying, well, given that You know, I'm no economist.
I couldn't even lick the egglets of Ludwig von Mises, and egglets is not as filthy as it sounds.
And I'm not any kind of theoretician that way.
I couldn't even remotely hope to approach a tenth of a tenth of a percent of the mathematical capacities of these fine thinkers.
So, I had to kind of assume, or at least I hoped, what I hoped was that applying the non-aggression principle, which is really what taxation equals force is all about, applying the non-aggression principle to, well, any situation, right? I mean, as a guy who's argued that ethics is universal, right?
Universally preferable behavior.
I don't have the luxury of Casting that aside when we get to the door of the family home or the childhood home or whatever.
That's not a luxury I have.
Physics doesn't stop in a family household.
Ethics doesn't stop at the doorway and part around a family household like water around a rock.
So that's part of the universality stuff, right?
And when I began to talk about Ethics in the family, then people began to find, oh, attraction!
Something we can do, right? Something which is meaningful to me, if this is something that people have experienced or seen.
So, naturally then, I hoped that it would be really hard, right?
It sounds weird.
I don't like that it's hard, but I hoped that it was hard, that it would be really hard to take that approach, right?
Because if it wasn't hard, then the fact that we've had our asses kicked for 2,500 years in terms of general philosophy and a couple hundred years in terms of The fact that we've had our asses kicked would make no sense,
right? If it wasn't hard to bring the non-aggression principle to bear on the family, if you weren't roundly attacked...
Like, if there was no warning shots, if there was no opposition...
The opposition doesn't make it right.
I mean... The non-aggression principle, of course it applies to the family, as it applies to the state, as it applies to imperialism, as it applies to a mugger, as it...
I mean, of course, right? Of course it does, right?
It's the non-aggression principle.
Not the non-aggression principle except for family relations, right?
Not, oh, it's designed to protect citizens who have independence and can arm themselves, rather than children who, fortunately, don't, right?
So... So, I wanted to extend the non-aggression principle to the family, as UPB completely indicates, right, that physics doesn't change.
When a man and a woman make the beast with two backs and produce bairn or spawn, they don't suddenly gain the ability to fly.
Neither do the moral rules which they should observe within society change within the home, right?
No violence and so on, right?
In fact, the moral requirements, to me, for protection are that much higher when you have control or authority over it.
I'm not morally responsible for a dog that dies in a ditch, who's a stray, and I don't know who it is, but if I have a dog, then I... So the moral requirements become higher when you have more power, control, and authority, and the So, all of this sort of stuff is self-evident to anyone who's willing to take even a flying swipe at integrity and universality.
And so, I put this stuff forward with regards to the family.
Now, if everyone had said, well, of course, right?
I mean, that's a given, right?
If that had just been so obvious that it was completely non-controversial that the non-aggression principle applied...
Within the family, then...
Then I would...
Okay, well, that's not...
That's not why we're getting our asses kicked, right?
That's not why we're losing, because that's not controversial, right?
When you have a logically consistent and easy-to-understand position that almost nobody believes, right?
Like taxation equals force.
Then you have to go where there is the most resistance to a similar principle, right?
I mean, because... Otherwise, it makes no sense as to why either people are then too stupid to understand that taxation equals force, and of course they're not.
It's very simple. Or there's a defense mechanism, a psychological defense mechanism at work that causes them to veer away from that.
And it comes down to, not the family, but it comes down to, as far as I can see, and I've gathered a fair amount of empirical evidence now, and as far as I can see, it comes down to The family, right?
Or we could really say personal relationships, right?
And that's where the greatest hysteria and resistance and hostility and anger and, you know, crazy static, right?
And so unfortunately for me, but hopefully fortunately for the future, that's where I must gird my loins and go, right?
And that's where I have indicated is important, a direction I've indicated is important, and where my listeners have pulled me as well, because that's the topic that personal coercion, right? Personal violence, personal betrayal, like the stuff that goes on in your life.
That's what people want to talk about, and who can blame them, right?
That's important. So...
And the level of defensiveness that we can see here, which is that libertarians as a whole seem to have as much trouble seeing the violations of the non-aggression principle within personal relations, within family relations, they seem to have as much trouble seeing that as the general population has of seeing taxation equals force.
It's a weird kind of embrace, you know?
There are a large group of people who are assiduously working to raise the awareness that the non-aggression principle, violating the non-aggression principle within the family is one, if not the most egregious of crimes, and they're kind of hugging the libertarians in a way, And they're looking over the shoulder towards the family, the libertarians are looking over the shoulder towards the Fed and the gold standards and fiat currency and imperialism and taxation, and there's just no connection between the two, right?
But the universality of the principles that I argue for in UPB scales top to bottom, right?
The initiation of violence against Iraq is wrong.
And the initiation of violence against children is wrong, right?
It's the macro equals the micro, right?
But that's hard, right?
That's hard. We have a really tough time seeing the universality of these principles, right?
And so here we see The, I mean, to my eyes, seriously nutty spectacle, right, of a bunch of anarchists and libertarians who hate politicians and the state and support without qualification the non-aggression principle, right, helping A mother who is a politician...
Oh, and they hate the media too, right?
Mainstream media, because it always mischaracterizes voluntarism.
So you've got a bunch of anarchists who...
or libertarians who hate politicians, hate the state, hate the media, mainstream media, and fully support the non-aggression principle.
And what they're doing is they're helping a mother who is a politician use the mainstream media to attack the voluntary choice of a young man who is escaping violence within his family.
That's how nutty it gets when people get defensive and irrational, right?
Principles mean nothing in the face of psychological defenses, right?
Because there's just a massive, and I sympathize, right?
There's a massive amount of anxiety avoidance.
When people end up doing stuff that is...
It's so not even remotely helping a politician use the mainstream media to attack the voluntary choice of someone who's supporting the non-aggression principle by escaping violence.
That's so far off the mark as far as the values of voluntarists and libertarians and anarchists go that it's out of control, right?
But this is what happens when people are defensive, right?
Become these very large and dangerous to some degree, to a small degree, acting out machines, right?
It's anxiety management, it's hatred, it's hostility, it's fear.
It's all, you know, it's not, there's no self-knowledge, right?
Particularly, and no reference to principles, right?
People act out and then they make up principles afterwards, right?
So, it's not a very edifying spectacle.
And it can't be that much fun to be caught up in the middle of that stuff, right?
From the hostile side and to To support people who have abused their children, who have violated the non-aggression principle against the most helpless and dependent of people within society, right? It's the children. And that's a tough thing to be caught up in, right?
And to have to justify within the Confines of your own conscience, right?
That's no fun, to say the least.
And that sort of gets me, shockingly, to what I wanted to talk about during our strolly time together, which was this idea of determinism, which I... I really have been trying to comprehend.
And I don't want to get into all of the arguments about it.
I've already done videos and podcasts, so my perspective is clear.
But I'm really, really fascinated in this question of...
So a determinist comes and says, you're wrong, which indicates a preferred state and choice and has a requirement of integrity that people should prefer and universality and all this kind of stuff.
You should correct your viewpoint, says the determinist.
As if you should yell at a rock bouncing down the side of a hill, you should go left, you should go right.
I mean, we would recognize that would be a crazy thing to do.
The addition of complexity doesn't change it.
I mean, the Amazon rainforest is an incredibly complex ecosystem, but we still don't debate with it.
The ocean is a very complex ecosystem, but we still don't debate with it.
And consciousness, as a predetermined But complex ecosystem.
Adding complexity does not mean...
Quantum mechanics is very complex.
Next to Newtonian physics, that does not mean that we argue with some atomic particles or any aggregation thereof.
So, if the only person that you're arguing with is a human being with rational consciousness, then you are automatically saying there's something different.
You can't categorize it.
You can't treat a few square inches of matter with the completely oppositely That you treat every other piece of matter and then say, there's nothing special about that one piece of matter, right?
It doesn't make any sense, right?
It's like digging through a pile of rocks to get to a rock and then saying, rocks have no meaning and no value.
It maketh no sense, right?
And it's such a logically contradictory position.
You could be a determinist and not intervene in anything and nobody would ever know you were a determinist, right?
But, you know, you debate.
I mean, it's so obvious, right?
I mean, and people aren't dumb.
I mean, this is the challenge, right, that I've been wrestling with for years, right, which is everyone's a genius and everyone's a philosopher.
But, you know, that theory is sorely put to the test when you debate about some of the basics with people, right?
I mean, literally, as a guy on the board recently, I don't think he's around now, but as a guy on the board for a while, It's literally saying, the senses are invalid, right?
I mean, typing this on a board, right?
Your senses are invalid.
Well, can I use my eyes to read that?
Have I correctly understood the argument?
So, the argument was dying down, and I didn't, but I was really tempted to edit one of his posts where he was debating something or other.
And just put in the lyrics to the Gilbert and Sullivan song, I feel pretty, I feel pretty, I feel pretty and witty and gay, or the Mikado, I think it is.
Anyway, just putting those lyrics in, and I would, you know, keep his argument in a notepad or whatever, and then he would say, well, what the hell happened to my post, right?
It changed, right?
And say, how do you know, right?
Well, I used my eyes, I looked at it.
Oh, no, maybe your eyes are in, you know, the senses aren't valid, you can't tell.
But this is how, again, this is an intelligent guy, right?
But why would people...
And this is why philosophy has made no progress, fundamentally, in thousands of years, because we just can't get people past this nonsense, right? Taxation equals force.
The senses are at least as valid as you use them to communicate, right?
At least that valid, right?
It's like mailing a letter to someone and saying, the post never gets delivered, ever.
Well, the post doesn't get delivered.
Then why are you mailing someone?
So using the senses to invalidate the senses until Vulcan mind melts become a possibility, that's what we're doing.
So people have this trouble getting past these basics, right?
And why? Because unknowingly, and perhaps unfortunately, I say everyone is a philosopher and everyone is a genius.
And I absolutely believe that to the very core of my being because It's like I talk about it on Truth.
Everyone dances around and absolutely knows when to avoid these conclusions.
So why?
Well, if we look at the recent media stuff, it's kind of a confirmation.
When you bring this kind of stuff up, people go crazy.
They just go nuts!
The inbox is full of all this, oh, you're a terrible guy, a cult leader, right?
People just go nuts, right?
When faced with a voluntary choice by a sovereign adult to see people as voluntary, avoiding violence, right?
Individualism, voluntarism, nonviolence, these are all, right?
And everybody goes crazy!
And if they didn't, then I would be tracking the wrong beast, right?
If there wasn't this level of hostility and nuttiness and self-betrayal and viciousness and all this sort of stuff, right?
And if it wasn't all so transparently manipulative, right?
I mean, media all crowding around, a bunch of people I ban for abuse, a bunch of abusive parents.
I mean, it's not even a pretense of objectivity, right?
So that's a confirmation, right, of the theory, right?
So the question with determinism, to me, becomes very interesting.
And again, this isn't even a theory, but I'm just going to share some thoughts which might be of interest to you.
And it sort of goes a little something like this.
I believe, and I have experienced, choice, if we just accept it for the moment in the standard definition, choice is not something...
That we have, right?
It's not something we are born with.
And maybe in the future, and maybe for some people now, but for the majority, right?
People. We certainly don't choose to go to the schools we go to, even if the families are fine.
So, most of us, I mean.
So, I don't believe that choice is something that we are born with, because when, and we all know this, right?
When we are debating something as Abstract, say, as the non-aggression principle, or taxation equals force, or truth is better than falsehood, whatever, right?
When you talk to the average person about just something like taxation equals force, doesn't it seem as if they really don't have a choice in how they respond?
He or she? Doesn't it almost feel like you're dealing with a A robot.
Input. Output.
Input. Taxation equals force.
Output. Don't be silly.
It's a democracy. We have a choice.
You can control.
You can get involved. You can move.
Doesn't it feel like you're debating with some health-sense, status-programmed Eliza machine?
You can feel the inevitability of the responses so many times.
And to me, there is a kind of determinism innate to the great majority of people's lives.
And that determinism centers around just anxiety avoidance.
So, What happens if people say, oh, taxation is force, right?
They hear that, and that, I mean, you really are unplugging them from the matrix, so to speak, right?
And that's really hard for people, right?
Because it flips up their whole life, and if they accept the principle, they're going to have to become some, you know, hell-sent warrior for voluntarism, and it's going to mess up their personal relations, it might lead them to the family.
Like, all of this, it's really, really tough for people, right?
And they get that, right?
Because everyone's a genius, and everyone's a philosopher, so they get...
That if they accept this, they are with the hosing, right?
As we all have, right?
Been and experienced and...
Sorry, a little windy here.
I have like three wind socks on this mic, but still, the beast she gets through.
But I think we all get that it works out that way.
If all people are doing is avoiding anxiety, Then they will just say, well, what happens unconsciously is...
The input-output is, this idea is startling.
I am a genius and a philosopher, as everyone is, and therefore I instantly understand...
All of the ramifications of this idea.
If taxation equals force, then I'm livestock, then I've been lied to, then my teachers lied to me, and why, and my parents, and I've got to tell them, I've got to tell my friends, I've got to tell my colleagues, I've got to...
Signing up for a lifetime in the undead army of the droning libertarian robots, so to speak, right?
Taxation is force, taxation is force, right?
And so they hear taxation equals force, and They get that it's true, and they get, because some people are not stupid, right?
They get that it's true, and then they also immediately get what will follow from admitting that it's true, right?
And they don't want that, right?
I don't want to be a pirate.
I don't want to be a libertarian.
I don't want to be a philosopher.
I don't want to be a truth-teller.
That's what happens for people, right?
They don't want to absorb this, right?
Now, of course, they already have absorbed it, right?
Because, and again, honestly, read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, on how fast people can process stuff, and this is pretty important to this aspect of the argument.
So they already have absorbed it, and they already have accepted it as true, right?
And they already get the consequences, right?
And they also get that other people's reactions are going to be very similar to their own, if not the same, right?
Hostility, fear, frustration, all that kind of stuff, right?
And so they're, you know, casting themselves out of the tribe, and a lot of libertarians are a tad on the freaky side, right?
Let's be honest, right? And so they get that...
There's some lovely geese going by.
Outside the pail, right? Kicked out of the core illusions of the tribe, out of the matrix, blah blah blah, right?
Just like that guy in the matrix.
Put me back in with a nice steak dinner.
That's what I want. And I don't want to remember this.
And so people immediately grasp taxation equals force and they get that it's true.
I don't panic when someone says 2 plus 2 is 5 or the world is flat.
I just say, well, no, it's not.
Then it's false, right?
So people only panic, get frustrated and fearful and tense when they get that there's a great truth that will cost them.
Right?
But there's another feeling that occurs for people, right?
When they hear taxation equals force.
Which is that they don't want to know why they are rejecting it, right?
That's a kind of self-knowledge, like looking at your own dark side, accepting that you have the capacity to do bad things and you have the impulses and we all have the innovator, right?
That's the natural part of human nature and it's not actually bad, right?
It actually can be very good and give you a lot of toughness in a fight.
But when people hear taxation equals force, they...
They get that they're rejecting it.
They get that it's true.
And they also get that they're rejecting it out of cowardice.
And that's really tough for people.
It's really tough to look at people and say, you know, I just talk.
Because everybody talks about goodness and tries to be good and everybody...
Tries to gain control of the argument from morality, right?
So they get that it's base and ignomious to reject the truth because of a fear of social rejection or fear of social difficulties or whatever.
I mean, everyone gets that's not a good reason for rejecting a true and virtuous statement like taxation equals force or Child abuse is wrong.
Whatever, right? Adult relations are voluntary, and so on.
And this is something that...
That's where the hostility comes from, right?
It's like, you have made me look into my own heart of darkness and see the weakness and the pettiness and the cowardice, which we all have.
We all have.
And I don't want to know that.
I don't want to know that about myself.
The real matrix is not the state.
The real matrix is the illusion of virtue.
The real matrix is the fantasy of being good.
That's where we all don't want to wake up from.
I know that very well.
And I've seen that countless times through this amazing conversation.
The real matrix is not the state.
It's not the statrix. The real matrix is the belief that you're virtuous.
I was thinking about this the other day.
Oh, official tangent.
People love going to see these movies where High Noon and The Matrix and You know, all these kinds of movies where people love going to see these movies where, or reading The Fountainhead or whatever, where the man stands firm against evil and so on, right?
The Verdict, I think, with Paul Newman is another film that's a little less sensationalized, but it's this, you know, guy struggling to do good and the face is upped out.
Everybody loves this This story where the man is faced with good and evil and he finds it within himself to slam evil.
I think that was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
But everybody loves this story where the hero rises up and smites evil and takes a stand and becomes virtuous or becomes more virtuous and is heroic and all this.
Faces danger. And They love those stories.
Every story is that story, right?
Even romantic comedies, right?
It's the guy attempting, oh, tell the girl how you feel, right?
Overcome your fears and do the right thing, or do the honest thing at least, right?
All stories are about discovering virtue or overcoming cowardice or Fighting the good fight, and standing tall, and the bad guys and good guys, and the good guys have to fight, and sometimes they lose, but mostly they win, but they've got to stand up, and, you know, all that sort of stuff.
And they don't want to, and they can't get it, and everybody loves those stories, right?
As long as they don't actually have to be in them, right?
That's where things get to be a whole lot less fun for people, right?
We go see Superman, right?
Superman is fighting with this kryptonite and he's on his knees in Star Trek and courage and fight and face down evil.
And people even like to see this in Equus or in treatment or psychologically based stories.
The good will hunting and all of these kinds of things, right?
They love These stories where people become honest and authentic and find their strength and fight badness and so on.
Oh, do they love them?
Except if somebody says, and now these are your lines, right?
And people are not so much, right?
People are not so much with that, right?
Oh, the non-aggression principle, yes.
We should have violence is bad, especially against the helpless and the dependent and so on, right?
Wife beating is bad. Oh yeah, child abuse is bad.
Are people less comfortable with that?
I mean, very few people know, at least I don't think many people know, wives who get beaten up, but everybody knows a kid who's got some sort of problematic parenting, right?
Significantly problematic.
And there's an example, right, where you can be your own Batman, you can be your own Superman, right?
You can fight evil, right?
You can stand up, right?
And even if you don't know anyone like that, here's another example.
So... Taxation equals force.
State is the initiation of violence.
Well, that invites people into the moral tale of mankind.
You can go from an observer to an actor to a for real kind of moral superhero.
That's your chance to get out of the seat and into the screen and into reality, right?
Everybody who loves the tales of the man who finds his courage and the woman who finds her courage, when they hear the argument, taxation equals force, oh, by God, they get it.
They get it that this is their moment.
This is their moment.
This is the moment when the spotlight of moral potentiality shines down on them.
And it is their fork in the road that this is their Morpheus coming with two pills, right?
This is their sword in the stone moment.
They get it. This is their chance to step into the screen and into the real world as the kind of moral hero they have spent their lives worshipping.
The truth-teller is their Obi-Wan Kenobi, right?
No, they say so often.
I'm going to sit here, drink blue milk, and fix the droids, right?
The heroism that everybody just loves to see on the screen and read about in books is a song by Phil Collins and Dave Crosby, I think.
Heroes, they're really good, right?
A guy who wished that the hero could be himself, right?
It was one of those great stories that you can't put down at night.
The hero knew just what he had to do and he wasn't afraid to fight.
And it's not the guy.
He can't step into that.
He loves it, but he won't do it.
He can't do it. He fails.
He falls. He falters.
And he's left with that knowledge!
Right? You lay the gleaming sword, the vorpal blade of taxation equals force Before a man or a woman who has worshipped the bravery of knights throughout his whole life, yearned for it detwentied himself into the 20th level
you stand before this man who dreams of being a warrior who worships warriors who worships swordplay whose heart thrills to the potential of heroism to stories of heroism
and you're shwing, you take out your sword, and you say, this is your sword now, you who worship swordplay and heroism and bravery and the bringing down of dragons.
And the man who goes his own way, and the man who fights his own way up the mountain, regardless of the jeers of those far below, you lay your sword in front of him, and you say, stop reading and start swinging.
Pick up your sword and be the hero that you have worshipped these many years.
You do not have to be passive.
You do not have to be a consumer.
You do not have to be a watcher.
You can join the battle that you have always said and felt you loved.
Take up your sword and join the congregation of those you worship, those who fight for virtue.
This is what we say to people.
When we say, taxation equals force, we tap into every movie, every book, every song, every comic, right?
comics, right?
They read: "Here is your, uh...
Here are your tights.
Here is your superpower.
And your superpower is called the truth." Now you can fly.
Now you can jet flames from your fingertips.
Now you can surf the skies through force of will.
Now you can take up your blade.
Right? The guys who watch Lord of the Rings over and over, or read it, none shall pass!
Admire Gandalf.
And then you say, well, you can join this company.
You can join this group.
You can take the ring to Mortar.
And they're given their sword.
Isildur is reforged and handed to them.
Join the company of heroes that you have loved for so long.
Stand up!
And oh my god, oh my god, do they so often hate you for it. do they so often hate you for it.
That light, that sky-burning light has fallen.
Like heavy pillows of fogs of blinding whiteness, the light has fallen into their dungeon.
And the locks have blown off the hinges of the doors, of the cell doors, of the jail doors, of the bars.
And truth and virtue and UPP and voluntarism and anarchy and philosophy has come flooding into them and the possibility has opened up for them to join the company of heroes.
They have always worshipped the dreams of a child, of being a hero and a soldier and a fighter and a knight for truth and virtue.
This power, this possibility, this light, this sword, it all falls into their hand.
It swallows them with incredible potential.
Taxation equals force.
UBB. Child abuse is wrong.
Voluntarism. The stateless society.
The argument for morality.
The against B argument.
The statrix. Right?
Not to write about virtue, but to live and spread virtue.
Not to read about virtue, but to absorb and inspire with virtue.
Well, we...
We few, we happy few, we give people this possibility, right?
We offer them up this treasure of glorious...
Sunlit combat of flashing blades that will lift them to fiery heights.
We give them all of this possibility.
We offer it up to them for free!
Oh, by Jove, they hate us for it.
So often. Not everyone.
There are a few who take up this armor.
And who go through the punishing learning of swordplay against darkness, against violence, against corruption, against lies, slander, libel, all this nonsense.
Some do. Some suit up.
I've been waiting for this my whole life.
I'm tired of practicing with broomsticks.
give me a goddamn sword!
But, how many, how many people, when this glorious light floods into their jail cell and the power of the truth when this glorious light floods into their jail cell and the power of the truth blows wide
How many people react?
With resentful fear, tears, empty tears, wind-blown tears from the bright lights, hostility.
I did not know that I would choose cowardice until you gave me this choice, you bastard.
I did not know who I had allowed myself to become Until you gave me a sword and I could no longer imagine that one day I would pick it up and join a virtuous company of knights against lies, corruption and violence, degradation of the human spirit, the calamities that swallow the world that I would have to stand up.
I didn't know that I would choose to hide and scuttle and burrow and run Until you offered me a sword, I didn't know that I would run away.
And if you want to understand the enmity of those in your life who remain resentful to you for bringing them the truth, that's why.
That's why. If you offer a man a chance for heroism, a chance for courage, a chance to take up a sword against darkness that he has worshipped his whole life, not the darkness, but the sword, if you offer a man a place in the company of heroes, and he refuses, oh, my God, he will never forgive you.
Never forgive you.
Because now he knows.
Now, he knows that he's been lying about it all along, right?
It's the guy who says, I can lift 500 pounds.
Struts around all the time, pompously puffing out his chest.
I can lift 500 pounds!
I am the mightiest man!
Right? Somebody throws down 100 pounds in front of him and says, show me.
And blows the lies off the empty visage of the braggart, right?
Blows them off! Well, the braggart will never forgive him for exposing him, right?
Never! The fiat currency of the false self is chased away by the gold of truth and the counterfeiters Whose livelihood and whose lives you have robbed will form cavals against you,
will attempt to cause you to try, they will try to cause you to feel the same humiliation that they feel for being exposed as false as all talk, right?
They will attempt to get you to self-attack.
Why? Because that's all they're doing since their exposure is fundamentally self-attacking.
There's no great mystery as far as that goes, right?
And if all people do is react, oh, I feel anxiety when you say taxation equals force or when you say the non-aggression principle applies to the family because, by God, it's universal!
Right?
It's like the non-aggression principle applies in situations as diverse as the United States and Iraq, but not from one goddamn house to another within the same street of the same town of the same country.
Madness. Madness.
And when a man feels the burning light of philosophy blow through his cell and smash wide his false prison, lay it open, and he scuttles to shut it and lock it tight again, he will never be the same.
He will never be the same again, because now he knows what before was only theoretical.
Now he knows that he talks tough, but will run from shadows.
Yes.
These people who want to take down the state, even the people who say violence is bad, and you point out the localized violence they can do something about, and they run.
These are the men who talk about taking down dragons and shriek and jump on the chair when a mouse squeaks by.
Well, good riddance, right?
Good riddance. We need to eliminate the weaklings in terms of who's in the company of heroes, right?
We need to pass by the people who Huddle and cling to their broken cells rather than stand and fight against the real violence that we can do something about.
Interpersonal violence. Family violence.
And through that gain the credibility to take on the state.
Right? You can't take on the army if you can't stop a person abusing his or her children and say, that's wrong!
Otherwise you're just hiding.
And I know it's terrifying.
God, I know how terrifying it is.
Oh my God, it took me years of therapy and journaling and 18 months of insomnia and battling, oh my God, with myself.
I know how hard it is.
I know how hard it is.
We, many of us know how hard this is, right?
But there's no other way. There's no other way.
We have to go to the place where it's hardest.
Because if we go to the place where it's easiest...
We're just bench pressing air and calling ourselves weightlifters, right?
And the people who just react, right?
People who claim to be against aggression, right?
But who then rail against the violence.
Like people who say, well, citizens should have the right to overthrow a violent state.
But who then rail against a young man who overthrows a violent family, or who escapes a violent family, then it's clearly not interested in the non-aggression principle, will never be able to take on the state, and is simply discrediting anybody who holds these principles.
Strike one for the opposition.
And... When people just react like that, when potential opens up before them, when a sword of heroism is laid before them and they shrink and run, and they can't sit there and say, okay, I shrink and run.
We all do it.
We all fail in our swordplay and our courage.
All fail from time to time.
Sometimes it feels like more than from time to time.
But we pick up.
We acknowledge, we pick up, we shrug it off, we stretch it out.
We get stitches and we plow on, as we are plowing on now.
Right? It's too important.
It's too important to fail.
This window won't be open forever, my friends.
It really won't. This window will not be open forever.
We're not the only people who like using the internet to...
To talk about things, right?
Important ideas. Very important ideas.
The most important ideas. Virtue.
Honor, dignity, courage. This window won't be open forever.
And we have to seize the day, I think.
I mean, that's what I feel, right?
Yes, I could create or sell or market another software system.
Meaning what? Relative to the true...
Needs and virtues of the world.
Meaning nothing. The world needs virtue, not bites, right?
But the people who just react, they feel determined, right?
Predetermined, not determined, sorry.
They're determinants, right? They feel that there's no choice.
Why? Because they haven't earned it.
Because they have not examined themselves.
Self-knowledge is the only possibility for virtue.
Self-knowledge is the only possibility for wisdom.
self-knowledge is the only possibility for freedom.
Think of your average libertarian, for God's sake.
Okay.
A bit of a freak, right?
Often kind of alienated, often kind of twitchy, often kind of volatile, often kind of isolated, often kind of off the beaten path of reason.
Look at the average Ron Paul supporter and his comments on my videos.
The hostility, the anger, the, oh, you're a disinformation agent, right?
Can we... Can we picture the average person at a Ron Paul rally the day after the gold standard is restored?
Are they free?
No. No, no, no, no, no.
No, they're not.
They won't be.
It won't work that way.
It never was going to work that way.
But this knee-jerk response, stimulus response, right?
Okay.
Criticism of Ron Paul.
Disinformation agent, right?
Applying the universal non-aggression principle to the family.
Cult! Right?
Knee-jerk.
Reaction. No processing, no comparison of the actions to virtue or ideals, no argument based on principles.
No, no, no, the non-aggression principle does not apply to children, and here's why, Steph, you're incorrect.
Fantastic, let's have that debate, but no.
Smear! Cult!
Libel! Slander!
Gossip! Innuendo! Shit!
Storm of misinformation.
All libertarians know slander works because that's the only thing that takes down the free market is slander.
Ooh, the Great Depression was caused by the free market.
It's not true, but it's slander and it works.
Libertarians who use slander are the vilest of all because we all know how effective slander is.
Ooh, the robber barons!
Capitalism was only saved by war.
It was only the Second World War that ended the Great Depression.
Without the Fed, we'd have unstable currency.
We need the government to protect.
The free market is predatory.
We need the Venus Flight Project or whatever the hell it is.
All we do is fight slander.
So libertarians who use slander are the vilest of the vile.
Because we know. It's all we have for fight is slander, so people who pick up the weapon that has beaten us down and use it to beat Voluntris down are shits of the first degree.
Because they know. They know, right?
How powerful it is, right?
Can't fundamentally harm a good man, so we'll flourish from it, but it is ignoble to the highest degree, right?
Not to engage in a philosophical debate, but simply to smear...
Like a monkey with shit on the wall.
Think you're doing art, right?
But those people who are like, oh, I feel angry, therefore I'm going to act it out.
I don't think, I don't consider, I don't look at the root causes, I don't go to therapy, I don't say, why am I wasting my life fighting all that?
They don't do that, right? They just act!
And they are determinists, right?
Why? Because it's true for them.
Because in the absence of wisdom, of self-knowledge, of deep and compassionate self-understanding, when you are stimulus response, when you are angry and you lash out, when you are affectionate and you love indiscriminately, when you are simply bouncing off the random ping-pongs of your own emotional states, well, yeah!
Determinism feels pretty damn true, right?
Because it is.
Because you haven't earned your freedom, right?
Because you haven't earned your freedom by comparing what you feel to principles, to the possibility of mistake, right?
To people who fall into anger, right?
Rage! Bottomless rage, repetitive rage, rage that can never, it's like an itch that can never be scratched.
It continues, it continues.
And they don't ever stop and say, okay, it can't be what I think it is.
It can't be whatever it is.
Well, they have no choice.
They haven't earned it.
They haven't earned it through self-confrontation, through authenticity, through the difficult work of overturning their own biases.
The guy who hates foreigners because foreigners come and take his job without understanding the true economics of the situation is never going to be able to escape his hatred of foreigners.
Until he can question and oppose the lies, the false mythology, he has no choice.
It's input-output, right?
No rational intervention, no conscious review, right?
And so determinism feels really true to these people, right? - Stimulus response, right?
And that's why they tend to be so irritable, right?
At least that's been something I've noticed with every single determinist I've ever debated with, that they're really bad-tempered people, which never makes any sense to me.
Surely the point of understanding that people don't have a choice is no longer ascribing responsibility to them, right?
And so that's the first thing.
The second thing I've really noticed about determinists is that They are almost universally and utterly and wildly and aggressively opposed to psychology.
right when you say And I've put this out to...
I can't even think how many determinists...
I would like to talk to you a little bit about your personal history, not with the view of over-determinism, but so that I could understand a little bit about what influences your history might have had on the development of your ideas.
I've put that out to I don't even know how many determinists throughout the years.
There's a grand total of...
Let me see how many...
None! Not one determinist has ever agreed.
To this process. Why?
Surely for a determinist to look at environmental antidescence to his or her belief system would be in accordance with determinism, right?
My theory, which is that you have to earn freedom through self-mastery, not self-control, not self-bullying, not self-attack, self-mastery, Which is the comparison of...
to put philosophy between stimulus and response to ensure justice and not reaction.
Justice, accuracy, honesty, not reaction, acting out abuse.
Right? According to that theory, determinants should be a ill-tempered and b staunchly and bottomlessly opposed to psychological questioning.
Right? Because if you oppose self-knowledge in that way, psychological understanding, you don't get freedom.
You are a robot of history.
You don't get freedom without self-knowledge.
Because you don't get choice.
Without self-knowledge, you just bounce off your feelings over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
And so determinism feels true. - Bye.
Because that's what you're living.
And that's why they're so irritable.
And that's why they can't master their own tempers.
Because they have no self-mastery.
They have no intervening thought between stimulus and response.
And that's why they will never submit themselves to an examination of their history.
Because they avoid pain.
I will submit to an examination.
Hey, you want to talk to me, ask me about my history?
Fantastic, let's do it.
I don't avoid pain.
I don't avoid the pain of my past.
I have done my level best.
for 25 years, to absorb and accept and use and rehumanize that history.
So I'm happy to submit to these kinds of examinations, because I don't have this pain avoidance thing.
If it hurts, I lash out.
If it hurts, I recoil. If it hurts, I distance myself.
If it hurts, I snap. If it hurts, I... Because that's just being a machine.
Like when I was six and we got our smallpox shots in boarding school.
Crying and... We understand.
It just hurts. We don't want it, right?
Like dentistry when you're a kid, right?
It just hurts. We don't want it.
We can't comprehend it. We don't have any means for submitting ourselves to it.
We just avoid it, right? And if what people do is avoid pain and anxiety, like children, like animals, right?
Cats don't like to be bathed, and you can't talk them into it, right?
They don't get it, most cats, right?
Dogs don't like to have their teeth brushed, right?
Because it's uncomfortable, they avoid it, right?
Like animals, like...
Then you're a machine, yeah?
And then you hear determinism, and you're like, shit, that feels right.
Yeah, that's... That's how it works, right?
And then psychology, which should actually be a great relief for you, because it's like your environment shapes who you are, that actually goes in accordance with determinism, right?
But they studiously avoid it.
And not once in many, many years have I ever got a determinist to open up.
Like a nihilist, right? You cannot get them to open up about their histories in any kind of honest fashion.
Why? Determinism should be relieved, happy, and worshipful of the idea that Environment shapes belief.
Oh, we're all billiard balls bouncing around, right?
Well, tell me about your earlier bounces.
No! Right?
Never! Well, that makes no sense according to the theory of determinism, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense in accordance with this theory, right?
That they have not taken the time to examine and understand themselves, to compare their actions to their values, right?
They just act and make up excuses afterwards, right?
So a determinist gets angry and I say, well, why are you getting angry?
Surely what I'm doing is predetermined.
Well, that's, you know, anger is a healthy...
It's like, it's just making shit up, right?
Not saying, you know what?
That's entirely true. If I say that rain is sent by the gods, then yes, I can shout at the gods for sending rain on my wedding day, right?
And if I think that clouds are not sent by the gods, then it makes no sense to shake my fist at the cumulus, right?
Right? To rage against the downpour in a Lyra-esque fashion.
But you can't ever get them to acknowledge these contradictions because they are anxiety avoidance machines.
They have avoided the anxiety of their histories.
They have avoided the anxiety of self-confrontation, of authenticity, of dealing with the dark side, of learning who you really are, of applying Objective principles to their own behavior of evaluating what they do relative to virtue and truth and righteousness and all that good stuff.
They have avoided all of that because it's uncomfortable.
So they are anxiety or pain avoidant machines, right?
And then it feels true, right?
Like imagine a guy, imagine a whole village of people who were incredible phobics about going to the dentist and you could never drag them to the dentist with 20 bouncers, right?
And you would then come to that village, and everybody would have no teeth by the time they were 25, right?
Well, they'd be dead from tooth decay, which is what got a lot of people in the past, right?
Love dentistry. God love it.
And you would go to that village, and everybody would say, well, no, nobody has any teeth past 20 or 25.
Yeah, half the population died.
That's life. That's inevitable, right?
And you say, no, it's not.
And they say, but everyone's like that.
Nobody has teeth here. Nobody goes to the dentist.
They say, well, why don't you go to the dentist?
Why would we go to the dentist?
It's a rip-off. We're going to lose our teeth anyway, right?
And round and round it would go.
So people feel that determinism is true because they avoid the confrontation with their histories, the confrontation with the dark side, the self-knowledge, which actually creates choice.
So it feels true, and everyone they know is a determinist.
Or they're the pseudo-determinist, which is the person who says, well, the meat has magic that is given by God.
Our brains are wetware animated by ghosts, and the ghosts give us free will, and...
Right? I mean, that's nonsense, right?
And so they either just scorn those people, or they surround themselves with like-minded people, and then it all feels true, right?
They don't see anybody staring down bad habits and overcoming them and exercising choice and going through the grueling process of authenticity or authentication and self-actualization.
With therapy, with journaling, with books, to really come to the roots of some of our scarred and marred histories to unearth the glowing magic dust of choice, which we earn and we must maintain.
And then after a while, when their conscience becomes too bad because of the inactivity they have, well, the actions they have not expressed through choice, eventually, choice is not a lifelong privilege.
It's like health, right? If you keep smoking, at some point, it doesn't matter if you quit.
If you're a smoker for 30 years, 40 years, it doesn't matter if you quit.
It's not bad or anything, but it's not going to change your health.
It's too late. Certainly, there's no point quitting when you've got lung cancer.
Not really. It's not going to cure your lung cancer.
And if after a certain amount of choice avoidance, of acting like an animal or a little child, Simply avoiding anxiety and pain, well, there's no turning back.
You don't get choice.
It's dyed and dried up in you, right?
There's no possibility anymore, right?
Like, once you've got yourself some chronic diabetes from overeating and inactivity, well, guess what?
Right? You don't get choice.
You don't get to not be diabetic, right?
I mean, I guess you could do something with it in terms of diet, but you don't get to...
Things become chronic, right?
With enough avoidance of the necessary and difficult task, if you want choice, of self-knowledge, self-understanding, virtue, confrontation with the dark side, a strong therapeutic relationship with somebody who's damn good on the other side of the couch, right?
Nobody gets to be healthy without eating well and working out, right?
It's just work you have to do.
Nobody gets an income who doesn't inherit it without going to work, right?
Like I do. So, people don't get choice.
You earn choice. I mean, you get health when you're a kid, usually, running around.
You have to work at it when you're old.
That's why you have to go to the gym, right?
Don't smoke and don't drink much and all that kind of good stuff.
You have to earn this stuff, right?
And choice you have to earn and you have to maintain.
Choice. Like health, right?
And the people who never get off the couch and eat bonbons and, you know, chocolate-dipped apricots all day, well, I guess they have laxatives, but they don't get to be healthy, right?
They're going to be fat. They're going to get osteoporosis.
They're going to get diabetes. They're going to get heart disease.
They're going to get fatty liver deposits.
They're going to get subcutaneous fat, like an Ida down, right?
I mean, that's what happens.
If you don't exercise, you don't eat well, you're not going to be healthy.
And if all you do is avoid the pain of exercise and avoid the taste of broccoli and just pursue whatever you want in terms of eating, for the most part, you will just be unhealthy, right?
That's why we need nutrition and because our choices will lead to repetition and really non-choices.
Anxiety avoidance will simply lead to repetition and a lack of choice.
You get Balled in by your own historical tweaks, right?
Then people will just pursue what feels best in the moment, which is momentary anxiety avoidance, right?
And that's going to lead them to have no choice.
To have no choice. All you do is manage your own anxiety.
All you do is act out.
Something makes you mad, you lash out, right?
And that's... It's what you do.
That's your life, right? You're a machine programmed by anxiety avoidance and historical scar tissue, right?
It's like a last metaphor, I promise.
It's like this. You come from a family where heart disease is terrible and the men all die by the time they're 30 from heart disease, right?
And you can sit there and say, well, fuck.
So, everybody dies by the time they're 30, so there's no point, right, me pursuing any kind of good heart health.
Well, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And you will be dead by 30.
Why? Not because heart disease runs in your family, but because you believe it's inevitable and there's no point fighting it, right?
We're all born anxiety avoidance machines, right?
They all start off as blastocysts and then fish, right?
But if you say, well, my family has a history of heart disease, guys will die by the time they're 30 or 40, so I'm going to exercise, and I'm going to really eat well, and I'm going to get regular angiograms and all that kind of good stuff.
And lo and behold, right, maybe you will die at 30, right?
But you've got a hell of a lot of a better chance of not, right, than if you just sit around and get fat and don't exercise and eat like crap and all this kind of stuff, right?
So the inevitability becomes confirmation, right?
But it's not inevitable. It's only because you feel that it's inevitable that it becomes inevitable.
It's the same thing with determinism.
If you feel you don't have a choice, if you feel programmed, if you feel that everything is inevitable, well, gosh, oh golly, guess what?
Oh, yes. Suddenly, it becomes that way.
And you hang around people who are that way and who act that way.
Stimulus responds, and so it all just looks true, right?
But you know it's not.
Because if you genuinely thought it was true...
You would be more than happy to sit down and be examined about your history to see if there were any things that you had in common with other determinists that might have produced this kind of affinity to an idea, right?
I mean, why was I against the non-aggression principle?
Because I was the littlest kid and I was beaten up at home, right?
It doesn't mean that the idea is true or false, which is why I worked on UPB, but it does mean that there are Things which lead us to be open to certain ideas.
And what leads people to be open to determinism?
Well, a history of pain avoidance and an example of people who simply act out, which is why they're irritable and why they never submit to psychological questioning.
Anyway, nice to have a podcast back on the deck.
I hope that you've enjoyed it. Thank you so much for everybody's support and good wishes during these last month or two, and I will look forward to your donations, and I will talk to you soon.
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