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March 28, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
16:03
1316 Back From the Future

A way of looking at where we are...

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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph. It is March the 26th, 2009, quarter to two in the PM, and driving with Princess Isabella Molyneux, or Pimlet.
We're going to go and see Mama, who is currently seeing a patient.
And so I thought that I would try and share with you...
I don't know if this will be useful or not.
Maybe it will be, but I think it's worth recording anyway.
I thought I would try sharing with you an idea that I was discussing with Christina the other night.
I'm trying to figure out my relationship to the world as a whole, as it is to be with any luck.
And so this was a useful concept for us to work with, and I hope that it will be useful for you as well.
It's an interesting question, and I think a very important one, but it's an interesting question to ask.
How long do you think it's going to be before...
Okay, let's say we're right.
And, you know, atheism and anarchism and, you know, all of the state being an effect of bad families and so on.
Let's say that we're right about it.
I mean, obviously, I think we are.
Otherwise, we'd be talking about something else or correcting past mistakes.
But let's say we're right.
How long do you think it's going to be before these things are generally accepted?
And I don't mean, of course, by everyone, and I certainly don't mean by every country, but let's say in the West we generally accept that women are equal, that racism is bad, that slavery is immoral, and, you know, for quite some time, although these have been eroded lately, the rule of law was considered to be important.
And, you know...
Habeas corpus and all these kinds of things.
How long do you think it's going to be before these things are generally accepted and it's considered kind of fringe to not accept these things?
And that to me is a very interesting question.
I can't imagine...
And this... I mean, I have no idea, right?
I have no idea. This is all nonsense and it could be less, it could be more.
This is just my gut, which doesn't mean anything other than I had chicken for lunch.
But I can't really picture that it's going to be anything less than three to five generations.
In other words, 90 to 150 years from now.
I just...
Because this stuff...
Like, science can transmit its knowledge pretty quickly, although there is, of course, that myth, which I think is more than a myth, which is that for a new scientific paradigm to take hold, it requires that the previous adherents kind of die off, or at least retire, so that the new young Turks can come in with their new theories.
But there was a much faster transmission of scientific ideas than there is of the ideas that we talk about here, Which is both good and bad news, right?
So, a scientist, a physicist, you know, in the teens of the 20th century could work through the theory, special and general theory of relativity, and could understand them if he was open-minded, and then accept them based on the logic and the evidence and so on.
And it took a little longer, of course, for evolution, but that was largely because of religious superstitions and bigotries.
But once a scientific idea is out there, and it's proven, and it's logical, or at least there's enough supporting evidence that it's considered proven, then we pretty much go with, okay, that's valid, and that's not an intergenerational thing, right?
But the kind of stuff that we're talking about is tracing the effects of violent, evil, and destructive social policies or beliefs on the family, right?
And because philosophy is kind of the scar tissue that forms over the PTSD of childhood trauma, for the most part for most people who've had that childhood trauma, and they do seem to be particularly drawn to philosophy in many ways, then since philosophical examination is a defense against prior trauma,
a way of covering up and burying and abstracting and so on, then It simply is not going to be easy to transmit this knowledge, because the opposition to this knowledge is a psychological defense based on trauma,
and if you've ever tried to get to the root of this sort of stuff with people, and even if you do get to the root for them to actually change their lives, it's a multi-year process, even for the most dedicated and intense individuals.
It is a multi-year process at best, right?
And I'm not saying I'm any kind of champion with this kind of stuff, but for me, it was, you know, 15 to 17 years of studying philosophy and psychology.
It was a couple of years of really intensive therapy, three hours a week, eight to ten hours a week of journaling.
It was really an intensive, intense process.
$20,000. I had to get out of work at Three o'clock, twice a week to go to therapy.
It was just monstrous when it came to the amount of time and investment it took to overcome.
And that was with all the preparation of philosophical and psychological preparation.
And maybe the other people who do it way faster and so on, which is great, although I've never seen it.
But it is... I was talking to Lloyd DeMoss and asked him sort of what was it that...
Gave him the strength to do the stuff that he's doing, despite, you know, the defensive reactions he gets from other people.
I'm not saying everything he does is perfect, because Lord knows that's not the case with me either, but what he said was he said, you know, it was 25 years of therapy.
It was 25 years of therapy that gave him the capacity to explore the world from the sort of psychohistory perspective, that the history of the world is the history of parenting, which is not Exactly the same as the approach that we take, or I take, but it's pretty damn similar.
So it's 25 years, and he's still a statist, right?
But whatever, right?
I mean, he's not a philosopher, right?
So I think recognizing the extraordinary amount of difficulty it takes to overturn philosophies that are essentially psychological defense mechanisms Against prior trauma that must be rejected and is very clearly reenacted in later situations.
To take a minor example, there's this Alex fellow who I had the debate with.
I thought I was perfectly pleasant and complimentary and positive and enjoyed the conversation.
He said that he did too.
I guess he had a reaction to it later and posted all this Nasty, bitchy stuff on his blog about the debate without referencing the fact that he thought he'd enjoyed it but he'd changed his mind, which is kind of like lying, right?
It's kind of two-faced.
It's not kind of two-faced. It is completely two-faced.
And it is, of course, not uninteresting that somebody would be so interested in problems to do with ethics and yet would behave in such a, you know, kind of slimy...
And manipulative way.
And that's why it would not be particularly interesting to have other debates with ethics about him, because he doesn't get the basics of action, and therefore there's no point talking about the complexities of theory, in my opinion.
So, that aspect of stuff is really, really important, I think, to To understand, you know, that some of the religious libertarians would be anti-state because the state is secular and they want more room for religious authority or power,
which is not the same as reasoning from first principles and is kind of a, I mean, in my mind, it's kind of a defense mechanism, as I've talked about before, against the trauma of being lied to about gods and devils and hell and punishment and sin when they were children by their parents, right?
And religion is a scar tissue of dissociation and intensity.
Bred by lying to and manipulating children, right?
So it's really hard to overturn these kinds of things, which is why I can't imagine, even with the most dedicated effort, that it's going to be anything less than three to five generations.
And of course, it would have been a lot longer, as it has been really hundreds of generations since, at least a hundred generations since the time of Socrates, depending on how you count generations.
It's around 30 years, maybe it's less for some...
Certainly the Roman Empire, life expectancy of 22, it would have been less.
A hundred odd generations since the time of Socrates, and we've made some progress, for sure.
I think we should always be happy about the progress we have made.
Technology is really helping us expand that situation, accelerate the progress of the moral instruction of the species, and that's fantastic.
I still can't imagine that it's going to be anything less than three to five generations.
That having been said, let's...
Those of us who've made this leap are kind of from the future, you know, in a way, right?
Terminators thrown back in time.
Retroactive abortions, blah, blah, blah.
But we kind of... And I remember, I think it was the very first time I was on Francois Tremblay's show.
When he said, are you from the future?
And I made some joke about, well, yeah, because when I speak, it takes a couple of seconds for Skype to transmit it and all.
But... In a sense, right, I mean, if we're right and if these ideas are going to, these sort of logically consistent ideas are going to be spread more widely, then we are from the future and we are kind of thrown back in time to a more primitive era of irrationality, defensiveness, religiosity, superstition, and the worship of power and manipulation and so on.
And that is a very interesting thing to think about.
We're from the future, and we're cast back to a more primitive and superstitious time, and of course we have to be kind of careful about that.
And to understand that in a way that I hope is not entirely too metaphorical, and I'm not sure what the utility of it is, but it certainly gave me some comfort, so there it is.
I don't know what the hell it's good for, but it's good for something.
Which is to say, take the average...
Reasonably progressive, secular, liberal.
You know, slightly left of center and obviously anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist, and so on.
And yeah, all kinds of irrational ideas about economics and statism and so on.
But take this person and put him back Let's say 150 years.
To make the math simple, from 2000 to 1850.
From the year 2000 to 1850.
And that is generous, right?
It could be more because we've got the acceleration of the internet now as far as propagating these ideas goes.
But take the average progressive liberal and throw him back in time 250 years at a time when slavery is still hotly contended and that the majority of people are pro-slavery.
Something like overcoming racism would be completely incomprehensible to people, any more than we would say to modern people, you know, chimpanzees should be allowed to vote.
That's about as much sense to people as saying that the races are equal.
Religiosity would be so rampant that it would be inconceivable to us in the modern world, where at least there is some balance of more secular viewpoints, and their religion is much more apologetic now than it used to be in the past, right?
So there would be that aspect.
Sexism would be incomprehensible, the idea that women are anything really more than Chattel and cattle breeding and milk for the babies would be incomprehensible to people.
The idea that women should be equal to men would be utterly incomprehensible to people.
And, of course, there would be a huge amount of hostility.
And maybe you can use this to explain it to your statist friends, right?
There'd be a huge amount of hostility.
And if you went back in time as your modern, progressive, secularist liberal, even if you were religious, right, but more on the secular side, What would it be like for you to be in 1850 as a modernist?
Well, you'd have to bite your tongue, you'd have to watch what you say, you'd be perpetually frustrated, you'd know what the truth is and you would have a valid and just approach to the truth, but at the same time you would know that the context for people to understand what you were saying was still in the process of being developed and was in fact in its very primitive stages.
And I think if we can picture what it would be like to be thrown back 150 years, to 1850, right?
To a time before Darwinian, I guess it was Lamarckian evolution, but to a time before Darwinian evolution, before DNA, before...
I can't remember.
I think the germ theory was in the process of being developed...
Before the periodic table of the elements was completed, I mean, I don't know about all the facts, but it's a pretty long time ago, right?
What would it be like for the average person To be thrown back in time, what would it be like?
What would it be like for you if you were not an anarchist, not an atheist, but you were thrown back in time to that kind of situation?
What would it be like to live in that kind of world?
Well, if we are right and we are a couple of generations prior to a generally accepted moral truth around the universality of NAP, property rights and voluntarism and so on, Then, you know, the state is to 2008 as slavery is to 1850, although probably closer to 1750 or maybe 1050.
But I think that's an important perspective to have on this topic because we are kind of thrown back through the time bubble from the future.
And we are in a situation which is analogous to a modern man being thrown back to 1850 or 1750.
And yes, we can, I think, fully understand how weird, frustrating, alienating, and disruptive it would be to be thrown back within time.
But how amazingly useful it would be in many ways if you could get some communications out at that time to help move the conversation forward.
So I hope that provides some comfort to you.
It certainly did to me, if that makes any sense.
And it makes, I think, the tinfoil around my head, which does protect me from time travel rays, much more comprehensible, I think.
And I hope that it will for you as well.
Thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations and subscriptions, of course.
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