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July 31, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:28
1424 Freedomain Radio - The Educational Revolution

Truth not warped by power...

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Hey everybody, it's the 29th of July 2009, out for a walk in the Turner-esque sky of an absolutely wretched Canadian summer.
It has rained and rained and rained and rained and rained.
So, we're trying to grab a break, or a chance to get outside, in between the rain of hail, followed by frogs, and I believe there will be a plague of snow locusts that will descend upon us later today.
So, I've been mulling over the revolution that we kind of have underway at Free Domain Radio.
And I think it's worth talking about the impact of philosophy.
On people who would never normally have had a particular chance to explore or examine it, particularly in their own lives.
And I think it's something which is worth taking a pause to appreciate the depth and power of what we be up to around here, these parts.
So, the communication of myth has always been The purview of the intellectual or the priest.
And as I've talked about before, back in the early podcast series, pre-1300, in the dark ages of the podcast, let's say, I talked about how One of the great advances in human communication,
though not necessarily in fact quite the opposite of human liberty, was when the kings or the tribal leaders realized that if they could pay a class of individuals profits from the subjugation of the tribe in order for them to lower the physical requirement to dominate People in the tribe, then it became that much more efficient.
So in the same way we buy a dishwasher so that we have to do fewer dishes, you buy a myth maker in order for that myth maker to communicate to people How you should obey the king for moral reasons.
Morality was invented to subjugate.
It is attempting to wrestle the gun from its original purpose, which was to subjugate and cow.
The underclasses. That is what is a particularly volatile thing that we're doing here, right?
To attempt to reclaim morality from what it was actually invented to do, which was to crush and subjugate the hopes, dreams, independence, and universality of the underclasses, of the slave classes.
So, of course, if you can get a priest to invent a god that the leader represents, and to obey the leader is to obey the god...
Then you have lowered, and if you can get people to believe that, then you have lowered the cost of ownership of having slaves and subjugated underclasses hugely, because you don't need physical domination, which the leader will always lose as he ages, right? So if you can create a god, if you can also create a veneration for age, then you end up with a very interesting and much cheaper...
Ownership of the slave classes.
Because they end up obeying their own internalized set of, quote, ethics, which translates, of course, into obeying an increasingly enfeebled ruling class.
And this is, of course, how you get armies, right?
And this is how you get the rise of classism.
So... Morality is a tool of lowering the cost of ownership.
It is a way of causing the slaves to self-attack, to self-rule, to self-crush, and then it's much easier to control the right.
Morality is the drug that you administer to the boxer, your opponent, before you get in the ring, so that he's disoriented and ends up punching himself, and you claim a thunderous victory.
And so the communication of ethics, of philosophy, of virtue, has traditionally been entirely in the service of the ruling classes.
And this is shown in a large number of ways throughout history.
Of course, there is the The censorship, right?
The thou shalt have no false gods before me, the death to unbelievers, death to those who worship a golden calf rather than a Jewish zombie, and in the Muslim faith it's the death for apostasy or deconversion from Islam, or the death towards anyone who tries to convert someone, and so on, right?
And there is a peculiar The thing that occurs in the realm of morality, the morality which serves the ruling classes, which is a veneration of the feebleness of age, right?
A veneration and tenderness really almost towards the aged.
But at the same time, a harshness and brutality towards the true tenderness, which is, of course, the children.
And then this, of course, is what would be absolutely necessary for the creation and propagation of a parasitical, destructive and exploitive myth, which is that you have to create a veneration of age, which serves the ruling classes who are older and losing physical strength relative to the young.
But in order to brutalize the rationality and empiricism and objectivity of the young, you have to have a tenderness towards the aged, combined with a hostility to or indifference to the genuine tenderness of the young. combined with a hostility to or indifference to the genuine And we see this, of course, when we see parents who claim to be victims, and it's a very compelling story.
If the parents have been abusive, they will often claim to be victims afterwards.
And an indifference, so sympathy and fear of the victimhood of the parents, which is almost always, again, outside of this community and perhaps other communities that I don't know about, There is always a sympathy towards the sufferings of the aged, which, you know, hey, sometimes seems to me perfectly irrelevant.
But there is not an associated sympathy towards the sufferings of children, right?
And certainly the sufferings of the aged would be, we would assume, I mean, outside of medical suffering, conscience suffering would be the result of actions that they have chosen throughout their life, whether it's abuse or exploitation, if that's the case.
But the sufferings of the young are always inflicted upon the young and not responsible for what is inflicted upon them.
So the suffering of the aged is the accumulation of prior decisions, which they're responsible for, and which they believe that they are responsible for, otherwise there would be no suffering.
In the same way, we would see that a chain smoker who gets lung cancer at 50, we would feel some sympathy, but we would not say, gosh, what an innocent victim in all of this, but...
A child who's never smoked who gets lung cancer at the age of eight we would see as a tragic victim not at all responsible for his own right illness or if he got lung cancer as a result of secondhand smoke I don't know there's debates about it but let's just say then we would recognize him as a victim of his parents addictions so so that is a tragic thing that occurs there's sympathy for the aged Combined with hostility to or a chilling indifference towards the sufferings of the young.
And that of course is what would be standard, right?
The reason that this replicates itself is that The family is a mirror, as I've often argued, and as Hayek actually argues as well, right?
The family is a mirror of the state, right?
So the average, let's just say, the average father who accepts the myth...
Of the god-emperor, will subjugate himself to the god-emperor for the sake of virtue, and then he replicates that within his own home.
In fact, that's why he accepts it, so that he can gain, quote, respect and deference from his own family, not based on any particular virtue that he has achieved, but rather because of...
A veneration for things which are inconsequential, such as getting older, having sex, having children.
Being a father is not a moral category, right?
It is a biological category.
It is shared by apes and salamanders and, I guess, worms when they do their own Catholic Harry Palm thing with themselves.
It's not a moral category, it's a biological category.
But people will always attempt, certain people will always attempt to transmogrify a biological category or an accidental category into a moral category.
I'm an American. I'm old.
I'm a father. I'm your mother. I'm your parent.
I'm your teacher.
And they don't want to earn it through wisdom, concern, care for others, virtue, and so on, which will, I think, get you some kind of credibility,
but rather, instead, they will attempt but rather, instead, they will attempt to create a moral category that fits only themselves or their class, and then claim that obedience must be granted to that moral category without them actually having to earn it through being good, right?
So father, president, American, you know, sometimes white or European or whatever, right?
You're not getting sleepy, are you, sweet demons?
But daddy's talking. Can't be.
You're okay? All right.
So... So the father accepts this from the king and then reinflicts it on his own family, and that's what's really being sold, is obedience without respect for individual actions.
It's a counterfeit of virtue, right?
So virtue is invented to control and enslave, and so we are taking...
Virtue as it has been invented, and we are taking the principles and premises of virtue that has been invented to enslave, and we're using it to ennoble, enlighten, and liberate.
And that is, well, for a lot of people, that's pretty messed up, right?
I mean, that's pretty messed up.
To take the principles of universality and objectivity and virtue and so on, to take those principles, which are designed to be inflicted upon the slave population, the slave class, in order to keep them enslaved and have them attack each other and themselves, and to use a weapon of the ruling class against the ruling classes is really messed up, right? And of course it leads immediately to the family, not all families, but it leads immediately to a lot of families, because that same principle is there, and that's what's sold to the families, right?
So the priest tells the man, the father, to obey the king because the king is God.
And in return for that obedience, the priest tells the children to obey the father as if the father is God and to honor the father as father, not as good man by objective standards.
So the subjugation to the king is sold And what is bought is the subjugation of the children to the father.
That's the same pattern. I will enslave myself to the king in return for having my children obey me and respect me automatically as is my due for having sex, right?
Having children. And when you take up that weapon, right?
The shock and the horror of the slave picking up the whip that is used to beat him and advancing upon the master.
Well, that's just appalling.
That's just shocking. That's just unthinking.
Unforgivable. That is unthinkable.
Right? We're supposed to just shut up and be obedient, right?
I don't know if she's sacking a little in my snuggling.
Should I go on? I'd like to walk a little more.
Alright, let us continue and hope for the best.
You can always nap in my snuggling. So, actually, no, I'm going to head back.
She looks tired. So that's what we're really doing, right?
We are saying that...
We are saying, ah, to the myth-makers, to the priests, to the intellectuals, to the artists, we are saying, ah, so you say that virtue is objective and universal.
Very well. Let us take that premise...
And apply it, as you say, universally and consistently.
Right? So, when we do that, when we take up, when we snatch the whip from the master's hand and hand it out to the other slaves, the horror, the fear, the terror, the rage, the resentment, the Excitement, right?
The slow dawn revealed a ray of potential battle with a vastly outnumbered, overfed and pompous minority.
And again, I'm speaking only metaphorically here.
But that is a shocking thing to do.
That is a shocking thing to do, right?
So a typical exchange that occurs if somebody sits down with an abusive parent, or a priorly abusive parent, is the immoralities or the crimes of the past are brought up, and the parent says, well, I did the best I could with what I had, and I was a victim, and this and that.
And of course then, as I suggest, you ask whether you sort of say, well, were these excuses that were valid for me as a child?
When obviously I had far less capacity to control my actions, behavior, or circumstances than an adult would.
So, if as a child you were allowed to say, well, hey, I did the best I could with the, you know, I'm a victim here, blah, blah, blah.
And the parent said, oh, okay, well, that means I'm not going to get mad at you.
In fact, I'm going to sympathize with you.
Well, then the parent gets at least the moral right, not necessarily the logical right, but does get the moral right to claim that defense.
But if when the parent is in a position of power, the parent does not allow the child or specifically rejects the child's claims of a lack of power and choice to alter his positions or circumstances, if the adult,
when the child does something wrong, does not accept the excuse of I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had and I'm a victim and blah blah blah, If the parent does not allow that for the child, then the parent cannot logically claim it for himself as the adult later in life when the abuses are brought back into the light, right? That's just using ethics to manipulate, right?
And it is this stretching out of the universality of virtue that, I mean, to understand is by far the most shocking thing that we're up to here, right?
It is the revelation that virtue was invented to control, undermine, cripple, enslave and destroy.
But to take the premises that make virtue its most powerful in destroying, to take those premises and turn virtue then into something which frees, enlightens and nobles and strengthens, that is shocking!
That is shocking to snatch this weapon of mass destruction from the hands of the masters and to accept their premises of universality and virtue which have been used to enslave and to use it to liberate, to enlighten, to free. That is absolutely shocking.
Now, why has it not been particularly done before?
Well, because...
The myths of morality are made by the priests and the intellectuals and the writers and the artists and so on.
We just call them the priests because really, fundamentally, that's what they are.
Those who make myths about virtue to strengthen the rulers and weaken the slaves.
Well, in order to be allowed to Perform as an artist, as a myth-maker, as a priest, you had to support the ruling classes.
You just had to. Because if you didn't, you'd get killed.
Catholic control over book publishing and printing was shocking, followed very quickly by the Protestant control over book publishing and printing.
And so you weren't allowed to speak of myths and truths of reality, of objectivity, of reason, of evidence, of virtue, philosophy, ethics.
You weren't allowed to speak of these things unless you were supporting the ruling class.
Or unless you were supporting A ruling class on the horizon striving for new power.
So you were allowed, if you were Thomas Paine or John Locke, in a sense, to write if you supported either those who were attempting to overthrow an existing order or those who wished to impose a new one.
Then you were allowed to write.
And it would often be summer's data or underground stuff or whatever, right?
But none of this was...
In the service of the slaves, right?
And we understand this, right?
Because everybody from Aristotle to Locke and everybody in between only talked about those who had power, those who had some sort of authority within their society, right? Which was the white males, right?
Didn't talk about children, didn't talk about women, didn't talk about minorities, didn't talk about the other, right?
Others within their society.
They just didn't talk about those things.
Because those were the actual slaves, right?
The children and the women and the minorities were at the very bottom of the pile and therefore they could not be spoken to in terms of an ennobling and strengthening and universal set of ethics and principles.
That's why nobody talked about those people.
They had no power.
They're real slaves, right? And, of course, if you talk about the children as slaves and as property and as subject to the whims of the parents, then they will grow up to be subjugated to the ruling classes as well.
So, to come back to whip ourselves forward to the present, what's so fundamentally shocking about what we're doing here, my friends?
Is that I have zero authority and credibility within the existing cultural elite, right?
In fact, quite the contrary.
Even those who would support many of my views are quite hostile to the universality that I approach, right?
Because they seem to take it personally.
You know, like I'm...
I'm anti-religion, like it's a psychological quirk.
I am reluctantly where I am.
A hell of a lot easier if reason and evidence could sustain the dominant bigotries of society.
Wouldn't that be easier if reason and evidence supported the virtue and efficacy of the state and the existence of Of gods and gremlins and devils and ghosts and UFOs and empirical homeopathy and all of the crap and nonsense that floats around in order to fog and bewilder and control us.
I am reluctantly where I am.
I did not say, I hate religion, let me find a way to discredit it.
Hell no. Hell no.
I was raised with the arguments of religion, I read the arguments of atheism, I found that I could not overturn the arguments of atheism, and I reluctantly accepted the absence of gods and ghosts and gremlins and angels and devils and seraphim and seraphim and all the other layers.
Wouldn't it be much more convenient for me to have been able to find a way to accept the moral validity of the state and of the institutions of government?
Well, yeah, it would be great.
There's a big damn market out there.
For people who can't accept that.
It's not like being an anarcho-capitalist is your sure path to easy acceptance.
I'm reluctantly in all of these places.
I didn't want to get here.
In fact, I fought anarchism tooth and nail for over 20 years.
But you have to follow the reason and you have to follow the evidence or you're not a philosopher.
You're just using philosophy to support prejudice.
I mean, once you accept or have been exposed to the wider and larger arguments, or at least have not avoided them.
So, I am reluctantly where I am in the world of reason and evidence.
And it's not like I take a great pleasure at all in examining the moral nature and effects of the family.
I reluctantly go to that place Unfortunately, it just is empirically where you need to go to to become free.
At least in terms of that which you can control and affect.
It's not my fault that ethics are universal.
It's not my fault that logic is universal.
It's not my fault that empiricism is universal.
It's not my fault that values are universal.
It's not my fault that the non-aggression principle applies to children.
To invent that as some sort of bugaboo of mine is pathetic, ridiculous, embarrassing.
To blame me For the objectivity of reason and the universality of things like non-aggression principle and property rights is ridiculous.
Well, it's the ultimate ad hominem, right?
And, of course, the cheap psychologizing that goes on.
Anyway, we don't have to worry about all of that.
It's just silly nonsense that occupies people's time for no purpose whatsoever.
But what has changed enormously Through the internet, through podcasting, and in particular with the effect of free domain radio, is that I have a trumpet that can be heard around the world.
We have a trumpet, we have a symphony that can be heard around the world with no license.
I did not have to compromise in order to be heard.
Because it is a freely distributable, freely consumable medium.
I mean, I had to sacrifice income and stability and career and so on, but I did not have to sacrifice principles to be heard.
If you've looked at some of Jan Heldfeld's interviews with people in the media, the degree to which you would have to sacrifice reason and evidence in order to gain the mouthpieces of the mainstream media is chilling.
It's terrifying. It's horrifying.
It's awful. It's ridiculous. It's embarrassing.
But I don't have to do that.
For the first time in history that you can raise a trumpet heard around the world without having to buy your way into a cheap and sleazy orchestra with the endless compromises of the shrunken and broken.
I don't have to serve power in order to be heard.
That's the revolution that is so shocking and so unprecedented in history.
I do not have to serve power in order to be heard.
I do not have to crack and break the universality of principle in order to gain the short-term efficacy and pragmatism of print.
I mean, it's another reason why I've stayed away from advertising.
If you look at what happened to Bill Maher, After 9-11, when he said, hey, they're evil, they're a scum, but they're not cowards.
They flew planes into buildings. They're not cowardly, right?
Well, everybody jumped on him and got fired.
Spent years in the wilderness. He came back, whatever, right?
But you think that's not affected how he talks about things?
No, of course it has. He doesn't talk about that stuff anymore.
It has an effect. But I don't have to make those compromises, and yet I can still be hurt by 100,000 people.
I don't have to make those compromises.
I can release books undiluted by cautious and fearful and market-hungry editors with everything in line with principles as best as I can make it.
I can release those books, get 80,000 downloads.
And heaven knows how many more are sent around.
That's astounding. I don't have to surrender my principles in order to gain a voice.
That is fundamentally unprecedented throughout history.
You know, right place, right time.
That's the only smartness I could be considered.
Fundamentally different, that's the only difference between myself and prior thinkers, in my opinion, is that I actually have the capacity to speak truth to power without being subjected to the arbitrary whims of that power.
Now... Media attacks and nonsense like that, for sure.
But that's, again, pretty unprecedented.
It's a pretty tepid response compared to what happened throughout history to people who worked from first principles.
So I just wanted to sort of point that out.
And the other thing I think that's really important, the other thing I think that's really important is that most of the people who got to instruct the young, and I know that most people who listen are not particularly young, but for those who are, Most people are very, very cleanly and efficiently picked by those in power who get to instruct the young.
And they will always instruct the young on at best obedience and at worst confusion, right?
So if you can't get a slave, at least get a relativist who won't interfere with the remaining enslavements, right?
But here it's very different because we can speak to people Who are alienated from educational institutions.
We can speak to people who are fierce and driven in their thinking and curious and rabid in their consumption of philosophy and evidence.
And those in the past have always been picked who instruct the youth or who at least illuminate the youth.
They have been picked in the past for their ability to enslave and failing enslavement.
Confused. If you can't make a slave, at least teach people there's no such thing as slavery.
So that anyone who comes along and points it out will be fundamentally offensive and frightening to them.
At least you're neutralized.
You can't always turn...
Never mind. So the fact that we can talk to young people about principles, undiluted from the effects and fears of the powers that be, is really unprecedented.
It's absolutely unprecedented in history.
So I just want to point these things out because I think it's really important as we sort of slog through the challenges of philosophy and the detritus of our everyday nonsense, I think it's really important to just remember the power and permanence and excitement and thrill and depth of what it is that we're up to here.
It's unprecedented nature in the history of thought.
The clarity and purity that we are achieving undiluted by the fears of the powers that be Is unprecedented and I think will have an enormous effect on the world in the future.
I think it's the very largest effect, right?
Fundamental principles are the greatest and slowest levers to move, but once moved, they cannot be reset.
Thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your support.
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