April 14, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
13:12
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| Good afternoon, everybody. | |
| It's Zeph. It is 2.43, Monday, April the 13th, 2009, and I am playing with Miss Isabella, who seems to me in a pretty calm and quiet mood, unlike Daddy in perpetuity, so maybe we can get a few thoughts down. | |
| And this is something I was chatting about with Carl, who dropped by this weekend to say hello, which was a very nice and pleasant visit. | |
| When we get involved with people in debates or discussions, I think, and this is something I'm working on myself, so I hope this doesn't sound like any sort of guru lecture. | |
| This is just something I'm sort of trying to comb through myself. | |
| In my debates or interactions with people, There are two general modes, and I talked about this in the first bootcamp. | |
| I'll just touch on it briefly here. There are two general modes. | |
| One is the exploration of truth according to rational principles, with mutual respect, and, you know, all of the good stuff that really should be coming in in debating. | |
| And then there seems to be, and unfortunately this seems to be almost the norm, or very, very common to say the least, There seems to be an aspect of, quote, debating, which is about oppositional, fog, manipulate, win at all costs, or, you know, either active or passive aggression in the interaction. | |
| And that second type is very, very common. | |
| It is really the norm in general. | |
| And it comes, I believe, out of politics, right? | |
| Because politics is not win-win. | |
| Politics is win-lose, right? | |
| If I get the tax dollars, you don't. | |
| Or if we both get them, then there's inflation. | |
| If whoever wins the votes, the other person loses the votes, there's not mutual advantage in the way that there is in the business world. | |
| And as the... | |
| As the political world expands ever greater, we get the dominance of this kind of win-lose mentality, win-lose aggression, and so on. | |
| And what I've been trying to remind myself, I certainly have occasionally a bit of a hot temper, and I think that that's something I treasure in myself, and I'm trying to find ways to be more free with that without... | |
| Stress or any sort of abuse or ugliness and so on, right? | |
| This is just a little personal project of mine. | |
| But the kinds of interactions that occur when we get into these kinds of... | |
| In business, they used to be called, you know, you can do a pissing match with someone, you know, and then it just becomes, you know, pardon the phallic imagery, but it just becomes something that people end up... | |
| You know, you cling to your position. | |
| You can't admit faults. | |
| It's very food-based and, I think, very culturally based as well. | |
| And people end up in this difficult and unpleasant situation where, even though it's evident to everyone that they're wrong, they can't admit it and continue to try to... | |
| Win the point or change the topic and so on. | |
| And it is a real shame and it does come out of a bad education, bad family, bad religion, bad politics, and generally a pretty rancid culture. | |
| So the reason that I have tried to stop myself, and it does seem a little bit like a black hole, right? | |
| I'm going in, help, throw me a line. | |
| Don't let me... | |
| And getting out of it sometimes seems like, you know, when I worked up north, one of the things we had to remember, particularly when it got warmer, when we'd be crossing a river or a lake, there would be ice on it. | |
| And, you know, this is how we would cross when it was cold to get across to the other side. | |
| And if you fall in, it's very dangerous. | |
| If you fall into a lake that's frozen, right? | |
| If you go through the ice, because it's very, very hard to get out. | |
| And the reason for that is that if the ice is thin enough to put you through, you've weakened all the ice in a ring around you, and what happens is then you try to climb out, and you end up just pulling more of the ice that's cracked or broken into the water with you, and that's not good. | |
| So you're spending a lot of energy basically just getting colder, and that's when you die, right? | |
| And it can happen in a matter of minutes, if not less, depending on how cold it is. | |
| And so, if you're ever in this situation, life survival tip number two, I suppose, from FDR. If you're ever in that situation, what you need to do is you need to place your wet gloves on the ice. | |
| You need to wait for the ice to freeze to your gloves and then slowly pull yourself out. | |
| Do not stand up because that places all the weight on one piece of the ice. | |
| You go across like a wallowing seal to get to safety, just in case this ever were to happen to you. | |
| It did happen to me once, but we don't have to go into that tale of woe and intense hypothermia. | |
| So, getting out of these debates can sort of seem like that, you know, like I'm trying to get out and you end up going further back in and so on, right? | |
| So what I'm trying to do to remind myself to get out of these debates is to go sort of along the lines of the following, which is that if I'm not motivated by... | |
| I mean, there's sort of three things. | |
| For me, there's respect, affection, and love. | |
| And they sort of escalate in terms of my regard for someone. | |
| Not like my regard to someone is any kind of objective measure. | |
| It's just my particular regard for them. | |
| If I respect someone, I don't necessarily have to have affection for them. | |
| Or like them, but I can certainly respect where they're coming from. | |
| And I do that with people who have integrity to things that I disagree with. | |
| I mean, I at least respect the integrity, if not like the values that they have, right? | |
| So, in a crazy kind of way, like a Christian who says, yes, gays should be killed, and atheists should be killed because it says so in the Bible, you can at least respect the crazy integrity, right? | |
| And if all Christians did that, Christianity would end in about three minutes, right? | |
| So you can at least, I think, respect that kind of Integrity to insanity or to things that are irrational. | |
| I don't mean people who manipulate and fog, but people who are just out and out. | |
| You know, yes, the people who say, if you say, well, so you want to use violence against me to achieve social ends, and they say, you bet, right? | |
| You can at least respect the integrity. | |
| At least I can, if not like or have any affection for the person. | |
| And those people are pretty easy to debate with because you You know, they advocate the use of violence, so you don't debate with them, right? | |
| Don't give them the veneer of rationality if their basic axiom or approach is violence. | |
| So that's sort of one. Liking people is, you know, we share some values, and they have some integrity, but I don't necessarily respect a lot of what it is that they're doing, but at least I can like them in the struggle. | |
| That they have towards the truth, just as I like the fact that I'm still continually struggling towards the truth in all its varied dimensions and so on. | |
| The truth is quantum. | |
| You see it, it changes. | |
| Seeing it brings you to new vistas, so to speak. | |
| And then, of course, the love is people that I just, you know, rapidly admire and respect and feel a great deal of affection for and just worship their integrity and so on, my wife and, you know, some other people. | |
| So my general theory about this sort of stuff, if this makes any sense, is that if... | |
| I can't get to respect, at least to respect, in a debate with someone. | |
| And I don't go into a debate respecting someone or disrespecting someone. | |
| I go into a debate curious about how it is that they're going to behave. | |
| And then if they show basic integrity, I'll be happy to involuntarily almost give them respect. | |
| And if they're good-humored and positive and challenging and engaging, then I'll give them... | |
| You know, affection and then if they're just, you know, wonderful magical icons of maturity and humor and intelligence and curiosity and all of that wisdom, then I will give them love, right? | |
| And that sort of comes from an inner process is that I try to achieve these things myself and the degree to which I do, I have respect, affection and love for myself. | |
| But what I think I really have come to understand over the last couple of years is that A debate is a form of the mutual exchange of value. | |
| When you debate with someone, you are mutually exchanging value. | |
| It's exactly like an economic transaction. | |
| And if somebody is not providing value to me, in other words, if they're sort of fogging or evading or changing the topic or won't admit if they've made a mistake or, you know, you establish something and then two minutes later they pretend that you haven't, they agree to something, two minutes later they pretend that they never did agree and seem... | |
| then there is no mutual exchange of value, right? | |
| Then you're basically You know, you give yourself away, as Bono sings, right? | |
| And it is really a form of exploitation, right? | |
| Because one person is providing value and the other person is acting on a kind of narcissistic defensiveness, in my own amateur opinion. | |
| So if you're not providing mutual value, then it's not a positive interaction. | |
| You can't really get anything of value out of it. | |
| And if you can't get anything of value out of your interaction with someone, then you can't respect or like them. | |
| And if you can't respect or like them, I can't want to bring someone to the truth if I don't like him or her, if this makes any sense. | |
| I just can't want to do it. | |
| I think it'd actually be kind of unhealthy to want to do it. | |
| And of course, if you don't like someone, it's kind of impossible. | |
| Because we assume that we like people who have curiosity and integrity. | |
| And if they don't have curiosity and integrity, then they can't get to the truth, right? | |
| So if you don't like someone, you can't lead them to the truth, right? | |
| Because not liking someone is a recognition that they're not interested in the truth, but rather in defending some crappy illogical position and fogging and, you know, just being an unwise know-it-all, right, and unwilling to correct based on reason and evidence. | |
| So I sort of am recognizing, if I don't like someone, I'm recognizing that they can't, like in a debate, they can't get to the truth. | |
| They simply cannot get to the truth. | |
| And I don't want to Bring them to the truth. | |
| And there's two levels of truth here, right? | |
| And one level of truth is we're going to get to an abstract truth. | |
| The second level of truth is how do you feel when I have, like, if I have disproven something, how do you feel? | |
| How are you experiencing this debate? | |
| What are the emotions that are going through you? | |
| When you are in this debate, right? | |
| That's sort of a level of RTR or experiential truth. | |
| The first would be sort of philosophical or abstract truth. | |
| So that saying to someone, look, I'm going to stop this debate and tell me what it is you're feeling right now because I sense a lot of anxiety or a lot of You're kind of hyper-romantic or, you know, you seem very not calm and so on. | |
| And so what is your emotional experience of this debate, right? | |
| That's putting the brakes on to survey the landscape rather than just plunging headlong into yet another black and vapid tunnel. | |
| And I don't... | |
| I find that if somebody's not interested in abstract intellectual truth or if they're sort of... | |
| How to put it... | |
| Let me just... I'm just helping Isabella roll over a little here. | |
| If they're not interested in that kind of abstract philosophical truth, then they can't actually, usually, as I've found, like if they're manipulative in the abstractions, they can't be direct in the emotions, right? | |
| You can't RTR with them about their emotions themselves because they're just too stressed or too defended or too whatever, right? | |
| So, if I don't like someone, there's actually, it's bad to debate, because I'm only going to not, like, I'm only in a sense going to drive them further away from the truth, right, by giving them a position, particularly a public debate, which is almost all of my debates. | |
| A public debate. It's going to harden their position. | |
| It's going to make them defended and defensive about a rational truth. | |
| They will have done something that deep down they're not particularly proud of, and that's all a big and challenging problem, right? | |
| So the reason why I would sort of end debates... | |
| It's because I no longer wish to continue because I'm going to drive the person further away from truth. | |
| I have no interest in bringing them to the truth because I don't like them or respect what it is that they're doing. | |
| And so I can't do anything productive or useful with them. | |
| And in the absence of at least respect, if not love, if not affection, if not hopefully love, You really can't do anything productive or positive in any relationship. | |
| I would say that in the absence of respect, affection, and hopefully love, all you can do is undermine and turn people away from the truth. | |
| And that's why I'm letting my mitts freeze and pulling myself out of the frozen river because it just leads to a very unproductive place. | |
| Thank you so much for listening as always. | |
| And I need to, sorry, just by the by, to correct something, I do need to not be quite so polite and be more honest at the end rather than just execute myself with positive comments just to be more... | |
| I'm assertive and honest about what I feel at the end of an unproductive debate and sort of wish to correct that from the Sunday show that just happened. | |
| Thank you so much for listening. | |
| Thank you so much for your patience, my sweetums, my love, my baby, my princess. |
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