Jan. 15, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:53
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. | |
| This is the second in a response to media accusations against Free Domain Radio that have come out over the last few months. | |
| This is True News, number 17. | |
| It is the 14th of January, 2009. | |
| A pretty essential question. | |
| Free Domain Radio has been featured in the news recently, and the accusations seem to center around that it is a cult, that I am a cult leader who brainwashes children into disowning their families and vanishing into thin air and so on. | |
| Now, I have posted a detailed response to an eight-step process for identifying a cult taken from the oldest cult resource on the web, factnet.org. | |
| You can get this at fdrurl.com forward slash factnet. | |
| If you have written about me on my site and you've called me culty or cult leaderish, please correct any misstatements or contact me. | |
| And let's... I mean... | |
| It's so silly to have to go through this stuff. | |
| It's a podcast. | |
| It's a website. It's not a cult. | |
| There's no one locked in the basement. | |
| And so it's a completely voluntary and free resource. | |
| But given that some people seem to be quite confused about this, let's step through it. | |
| I appreciate your patience. I think you will find it interesting. | |
| And sorry for the small text. | |
| You can go high def in YouTube in particular. | |
| So this is the first way that you will determine a destructive cult, again, according to a standardized and well-respected definition. | |
| A destructive cult tends to be totalitarian in its control of its members' behavior. | |
| Cults are likely to dictate in great detail not only what members believe, but also what members wear and eat, when and where members work, sleep and bathe, and how members think, speak and conduct familial, marital or sexual relationships. | |
| Okay. First thing to actually understand about Free Domain Radio is that there are no required memberships or payments whatsoever. | |
| Anyone can download, watch, read, consume the philosophical material from the website with no contracts, no payments, no communication or membership requirements of any kind. | |
| No registration is required to access the media, no financial information is taken, no bills are sent for any level of consumption. | |
| Some people do like to chat with other philosophically minded people and to that end there is a message board and a chat room that is completely voluntary and unsolicited. | |
| People can join, chat, stay or leave entirely at their own discretion. | |
| There is no charge for any of these services and I do not communicate with people who decide to stop listening or chatting or posting on the website. | |
| Free domain radio says nothing about what members must believe, or how to eat, or work, or sleep, or bathe, think, shag, speak, conduct familial, marital, or sexual relationships. | |
| Certain commonly accepted virtues are encouraged in relationships, such as honesty, openness, vulnerability, and so on, but these are not required for people to listen, watch, post, or debate. | |
| Number two, what do we have coming up here? | |
| A destructive cult tends to have an ethical double standard. | |
| Members are urged to be obedient to the cult, you see, and carefully follow cult rules. | |
| They are also encouraged to be revealing and open in the group, confessing all to the leaders. | |
| On the other hand, outside the group, they are encouraged to act unethically, manipulating outsiders or non-members and either deceiving them or simply revealing very little about themselves or the group. | |
| In contrast to destructive cults, honorable groups teach members to abide by one set of ethics and act ethically and truthfully to all people in all situations. | |
| The entire foundation of moral philosophy is the consistent application of ethical and rational rules. | |
| My free book, University Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics at freedomainradio.com forward slash free, is entirely founded on proving and applying universal rational virtues. | |
| No pressure is put upon people who participate in the community to speak about personal and or emotional issues. | |
| Honesty about the philosophical principles discussed, the nature of the show, and the openness of the voluntary community are all encouraged. | |
| An 18-part free audio-video series, An Introduction to Philosophy, is available, which builds all of these values up from first principles. | |
| From a definition of philosophy itself, to metaphysics, to epistemology, to ethics, to politics, a clearer and more comprehensive definition of objective ethical standards is hard to imagine. | |
| Next, we have number three. | |
| A destructive cult has only two basic purposes, recruiting new members and fundraising. | |
| Altruistic movements established religions, their words not mine, and other honorable groups also recruited raised funds. | |
| However, these actions are incidental to an honorable group's main purpose of improving the lives of its members and humankind in general. | |
| Destructive cults may claim to make social contributions, but... | |
| In actuality, such claims are superficial and only serve as gestures or fronts for recruiting and fundraising. | |
| A cult's real goal is to increase the prestige and often the wealth of the leader. | |
| Oh yes, because if you really want money and prestige, quit your job as a fantastically paid executive to do free podcasts on the web, because that's all about the money. | |
| Free Domain Radio, this is the response, encourages listeners to pursue philosophical knowledge and virtue within their own lives. | |
| Some listeners do share their enthusiasm for philosophy and Free Domain Radio with others, but it is not any kind of requirement for membership since, as mentioned above, membership is not required at all. | |
| The basic purpose of Freedom Main Radio is to share the joys and challenges of logical philosophy with as many interested people as possible. | |
| I took a very substantial pay cut leaving my career to run the show, provide an enormous amount of philosophical material for no charge whatsoever. | |
| And by the by, there are feeds set up which are available on the website, which if you don't like the personal stuff, you can just stick to economics or philosophy. | |
| You don't have to deal with any of the personal stuff. | |
| You can bypass it completely. | |
| You can do searches. | |
| You can create your own custom feeds. | |
| If you just want to look at military history, go for it. | |
| And there's no requirement to listen to any of the other stuff or any of the stuff you don't like. | |
| Number four. A destructive cult appears to be innovative and exclusive. | |
| The leader claims to be breaking with tradition, offering something novel, and instituting the only viable system for change that will solve life's problems or the world's ills. | |
| But these claims are empty and only used to recruit members who are then surreptitiously subjected to mind control to inhibit their ability to examine the actual validity of the claims of the leader and the cult. | |
| The answer. Just as scientists accept that the scientific method is the most valid methodology for determining objective truth about the physical universe, Free Domain Radio works with the generally accepted philosophical methodology of syllogistic reasoning, with reference to empirical evidence. | |
| This methodology has been a core aspect of philosophical inquiry since the time of the pre-Socratics, More than 2,500 years ago. | |
| Listeners who present emotional or relationship problems are provided philosophical feedback, particularly in terms of ethics, and are strongly encouraged to enter into counseling with an accredited therapist. | |
| The arguments presented in the Freedom Aid radio podcast are a reason from first principles backed up by empirical evidence or presented as tentative theory, subject to further verification and validation. | |
| Where the ideas originate from other thinkers, those thinkers are clearly identified. | |
| If I remember in the moment, if people ask, I'll mention it later. | |
| It's so silly, isn't it? | |
| Number five. Well, response. | |
| I consistently defer to empirical rationality for the verification or rejection of theories presented in the show. | |
| I have publicly and openly retracted statements which have proven to be logically incorrect or for which significant counter-evidence is presented. | |
| I have openly apologized on air for errors in reasoning or misstated facts. | |
| I bow to other thinkers. | |
| I often present my arguments as a series of logical statements, each dependent... | |
| Upon the prior statement, in the traditional Socratic format, I consistently remind listeners that they're brilliant, and they need to think and reason for themselves, and never present my arguments as any kind of authority based on me. | |
| This is all just nonsense, but it does not conform to the bigotry. | |
| Number six. There are only eight. | |
| We're almost done. A destructive cult's leader is a self-appointed messianic person claiming to have a special mission in life. | |
| For example, leaders of flying saucer cults claim that beings from outer space have commissioned them to lead people away from Earth so that only the leaders can save them from impending doom. | |
| It's so ridiculous to respond to this. | |
| I'm a secular atheist. I openly reject superstition and the supernatural and the religious. | |
| I'm not on a mission from God, the devil, or space aliens of any kind. | |
| I am well trained in rigorous philosophical reasoning and regularly cite external sources, empirical evidence, and the enormous value of prior thinkers. | |
| Yes, I do think that what I do is the most meaningful and beneficial way to spend my life, my time on this planet. | |
| Otherwise, I would be doing something else. | |
| Number seven. A destructive cult's leader centers the veneration of members upon himself or herself. | |
| Priests, rabbis, ministers, democratic leaders, and other leaders of genuinely altruistic movements – their words, not mine – focus on the veneration of adherents on God or a set of ethical principles. | |
| Cult leaders, in contrast, keep the focus of love, devotion, and allegiance on themselves. | |
| I make no demands of any kind whatsoever for any kind of love or worship towards me. | |
| Quite the contrary, I constantly praise the intelligence and perceptiveness of my listeners, tell them to worship truth and reason and virtue, and make a good deal of fun of myself, making up silly songs and so on, making fun of myself all the time. | |
| So I think number seven is also a no-go. | |
| Number eight. A destructive cult's leader tends to be determined, domineering, and charismatic. | |
| Such a leader effectively persuades followers to abandon or alter their families, friends, and careers to follow the cult. | |
| The leader then takes control over the followers' possessions, money, time, and lives. | |
| Okay, yes, absolutely. | |
| No question, some people have altered their personal relationships based on a review and acceptance, to some degree, of the philosophical arguments presented in the show. | |
| This is analogous to those women who alter their personal relationships based upon a voluntary study of feminism. | |
| The rejection of abusive or exploitive personal relationships based upon a dedication to reason, honesty, openness and virtue is the free choice of listeners. | |
| It's not replaced by any requirement for dedication to free domain radio or me. | |
| I do not demand or require payments for the shows, even for individual philosophical discussions with listeners. | |
| I do request, where appropriate, that those discussions may be available as podcasts, but listeners can always decide against that, and I respect their wishes. | |
| Listeners who decide to alter their personal relationships do so entirely of their own volition, and none of those personal relationships are supplanted by any demand or requirement for service or obedience to Freedom Aid Radio or me, or I'd be getting a massage right now. | |
| Not one single listener out of tens of thousands has ever offered me control over his or her possessions, money, time, or life. | |
| I would never accept such an offer. | |
| Madness. Anyway, so, I mean, obviously there's not a single shred of evidence of conformity between what Freedom in Radio is and does and these destructive cults. | |
| So, let's talk just you and I for a moment. | |
| Look, seriously... | |
| Be legally responsible in your use of language. | |
| Save words like cult and brainwashing for groups that kidnap, forcibly indoctrinate, steal, imprison, take over people's lives and finances, rip them off for everything they've got. | |
| I mean, save those words for groups like that, not a podcast on the internet. | |
| Using these words without detail and specific evidence represents actionable legal slander. | |
| This is important to understand. | |
| You can call me a jerk. | |
| You can call me a know-nothing. | |
| You can call me a tool or turd of the first order. | |
| You can call me all of these things. | |
| That's perfectly fine. I'm a big boy. | |
| I can take it. | |
| I know that philosophy is controversial and the charge of corrupting the young has not only been applied to me but is inherited from Socrates. | |
| You can call me all of these things, right? | |
| But you can't call me an embezzler. | |
| You can call me names. | |
| That's fine, right? But you cannot call me a thief. | |
| You cannot say that I kidnapped people and locked them in because that is now when you're starting to talk about facts. | |
| And as we've seen, there are very specific facts which need to be presented as objective evidence. | |
| In order to support the charge of cult. | |
| Cult is a very specific legal term that is different from jerk. | |
| You call me a jerk? Go for it. | |
| I'm never going to get bothered by that fundamentally. | |
| But when you're going to use words like brainwashing, cult, cult leader, and so on, that is specific. | |
| That is associated with criminal activity and you need to provide evidence or you need to withdraw those claims. | |
| If you call my show a cult, you call me a cult leader and you do not provide objective evidence from standardized definitions, you and I will have a problem. | |
| Don't do it. Let's not go down that road. | |
| That's silly. Let's keep the debate on principles. | |
| So these responses, I posted them at fdrurl.com forward slash factnet, one word. | |
| If you've written about me on my site, culty, blah, blah, blah, okay, no problem, right? | |
| Free pass. The media has been whipping up all of the villagers, and so, you know, have a look. | |
| Ask around if you're interested. | |
| Contact me if you want. | |
| I'll be happy to discuss it. | |
| But, you know, clean up. | |
| Be responsible in your use of language and don't apply these terms where there is no evidence, of course. | |
| I mean, it's ridiculous. | |
| The second plea that I have is to these media outlets. | |
| I mean, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Times, I don't know, Sky News, I think, did something. | |
| Who knows, right? But this Listeners speak to me on the condition of anonymity. | |
| I mean, this is the way it works. | |
| I don't publish identifiable details about them. | |
| Maybe there's a first name, but so what, right? | |
| But, I mean, particularly this young man and a few other people who've come up, if you were in the media and you've provided identifying details about Free Domain Radio listeners, particularly those with a reported history of child abuse, Please take these details down from your website. | |
| This is really nice. Publish about me, write about me, that's fine. | |
| I can take it. That's no problem. | |
| But, I mean, these young people who have survived these terrifying and terrible families, I mean, please take the identifying information off the websites. | |
| This is not a reasonable way to have disagreements with me and what it is that I do. | |
| So I really, really request that you do that. |
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