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Aug. 11, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:40
1433 Our Achievements Part 1

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from, well, do I really have to say it?
I think not. It is, I think, August the 11th, 2009, 009, License to Thrill.
And I hope you're doing very well.
This is a confidence cast, which I think is perhaps long overdue, but I think worth having a talk about.
Now, I am, by nature, by training, and by, I think, a pretty fair and consistent commitment to integrity, a very cautious soul about making positive statements, certainty statements.
And I think that's...
I mean, I think that's the mark of a kind of important intellectual maturity and all those other kinds of good things.
And so I wanted to...
So I've spent a lot of my time really focusing on, you know, tentative things.
You know, when I say a lot of things are very tentative.
Oh, things aren't proven. I think I may have slain the beast of ethics, and I'm not sure.
And, you know, this is my best attempt, and this is not a fact.
This is only a theory, and this is my opinion.
So I'm very tentative when it comes to putting things forward.
And... That is a lot of what I do, because, of course, when I'm pushing, and I say, you know, when I say I, I really do mean we here, because this is a communal effort, and you are part of what it is that's going on here.
This is not a one-man band, right?
This is a symphony of everyone, because I can't be any smarter than the listeners, and the listeners are damn, damn, damn smart.
So, it is a communal effort, and I want to be sort of very clear about that, that it's certainly not just me, and I think that we can all take credit for a lot of what is going on here, if not most of it.
I'm sure the blame lies with me, but the credit lies with everyone.
So, when I'm pushing the edges of philosophy, you know, expanding the territory of the known, so to speak, I am tentative.
Certainly when I'm dealing with topics of self-knowledge and introspection and so on, there's not certainty to be had in the sort of syllogistical Aristotelian or scientific manner, which is not to say that such things are not of great value, if not enormous value.
There's no scientific algorithm To prove what is a great song, but most of us will know it when we hear it.
There's not a scientific algorithm to prove what is a great poem or a great novel, but that does not mean that there's no difference between dime store fiction and Ayn Rand, right?
So a lot of the greatest riches in life are in the non-syllogistical, non-scientific realm, and that's, I think, that blend of the two of a great respect for science as well as A great respect for the metaphor of the internals, the metaphor of the unconscious and of dreams and of self-knowledge in this area, I think is what gives FDR its power.
And so I'm pushing at the edges of things and trying to expand definitions and trying to, you know, turn the lights off in formerly dark and largely abandoned cities to bring them growling back to life.
And there's a lot of tentativeness in what it is that I do.
Now, that having been said, I think it's also important when we are hacking our way through dense and overwhelming obstacles and foliage and so on, that we also look back and see and remark upon and map and internalize, accept, respect and honor the ground that has been covered.
And it's, you know, I just, the other day, I just happened to notice when I was reviewing my YouTube info that my YouTube account was opened August the 9th, 2006.
Three and a sliver years ago, right?
And videos in total, almost two million views.
And that's not bad, right?
That's not too shabby at all.
And it's really only been a couple of years.
So, I wanted to talk about some of the things that I think we have fairly squared away.
And...
And, you know, with a minor bit of tentativeness, you know, generally open to discussion.
I mean, there are some things that to me are not open to discussion.
Reality. Self-ownership.
I mean, these things can't be objected to without being accepted, so I just don't bother with stuff like that.
It's just silly. And logic as a synonym or to some degree a subset of UPB, that is something which, you know, I just I have to accept the need for a reason and evidence, validity of the senses, all things like that.
These are just things that I'm happy and willing to accept, and you really can't do philosophy without them.
Those things are just givens.
And so we've got a lot squared away in that area.
But let's take, and this is just off the top of my head, there may be other things that I've missed, but let's just have a brief look back at the incredible ground that we have covered over the past few years, which is a tiny slice in the nearly 3,000-year history of philosophy, right? Three years out of 3,000 is one-tenth of one percent.
of the history of philosophy.
And I think that we can be justly proud of the progress that we've made in the realm of philosophy.
And by philosophy, I don't just mean the abstract topics and the syllogistical topics, but philosophy is founded on the principle of know thyself.
Know thyself. The unexamined life is not worth living.
And by life, that is meant internal life, self-knowledge.
To a large degree, as well as, of course, life as a whole, life in general.
Let me just check my sweet arms. It's not getting sleepy.
Nope. So, let's have a look at what we've done sort of since the beginning.
Well, we have fleshed out to a...
Moral certainty and a great degree of practical detail the case for and the description of a stateless society.
Now, I'm not saying that that is, certainly, we are not the first group to work on that.
Of course, right?
This goes back to many, many thinkers before us.
Actually, not many, many. Some thinkers before us.
But I think that the explication of the system through the early podcasts and also with Practical Anarchy answers the vast majority of questions that people will have about the functionality of a society in the absence of a state.
That's remarkable.
That is a remarkable achievement to gather together in a series of podcasts and articles and a book That's a remarkable achievement, and we don't get a huge number of questions.
The achievements that we have can be measured in the diminishment of questions with regards to the topic.
So we started with the Stateless Society, an examination of alternatives, and that is an amazing achievement to have successfully answered The majority of the major questions as to how a stateless society will work fantastic, just amazing. Opened people's minds, blown people's minds.
And it's not that that is the be-all and end-all and we've answered all the questions, but what we've put in place is the methodology of asking and answering such questions, right?
So someone says, well, who would provide this?
It's like, well, if you were a DRO, how would you provide it and how would you overcome customers' objections and so on, right?
I mean, it's just a great, great, great achievement.
And we have also proven the workability of anarchy, right?
This is particular through everyday anarchy, but this was talked about to some degree earlier on, through looking at how A statist democracy works, which is through the enforcement of unwritten contracts, that democracy itself relies and subsists only on the worst possible form of anarchy that you could have, which is a black market under the table, no-contract anarchy, and it works beautifully.
So that is something...
We have a proof for anarchy, which is incontrovertible.
Because democracy does limp along and these contracts are enforced, though they are never written down.
How much more powerful would these contracts be?
Which the state cannot enforce, right?
These contracts. How much more powerful would these contracts be if they were able to be open and above board and so on?
We have, you know, great and largely nonviolent solutions through economic ostracism to the problem of violence within the state of society.
That, I mean, geez, that's an incredible achievement in and of itself.
A proof for anarchy, a compelling and explanatory description, and a methodology for thinking about solutions within a stateless society.
I mean, that's the intellectual work of almost a generation in many ways, and that's something that in the conversation and, you know, through the generosity of people who've allowed me to write these books, we have solved in terms of the methodology and a vivid and compelling and accurate description of how things can work.
So, amazing, amazing, amazing.
Now, here's Mr.
Motorbike Bicyclist. So, I mean, again, that's just something to be enormously, enormously proud of.
Now, another topic that we started off pretty early was the question of gods, religion, superstition.
And we have mown down an enormous amount of objections with regards to the existence or non-existence of God.
Objections to the non-existence of God.
So early podcasts, one recommended if you haven't listened to it, I've been meaning to do it as a video.
Is power or virtue a love story?
Explication of the Garden of Eden myth.
The early podcasts on atheism.
The later podcast series on agnosticism, which is a truly foul and challenging beast to wrestle to the ground.
And a sort of very deep and important and powerful series of conversations for the principles of strong atheism.
Not, oh, there's a little bit of X, Y, and Z, a possibility.
I'm 99.9% sure there are no gods and so on.
But the strong atheist position, which is to say, no, square circles do not exist.
Gods do not exist.
If they exist, they are subject to the laws of reality and science.
And if the laws of reality and science cannot detect them, then that's synonymous with non-existence.
We've fought off successfully, I do believe.
The... You know, other dimension nonsense.
And so in the realm of religion, we've really worked hard to affirm the strong atheist position, which I believe is the only position that will ever work to rid the world of religion.
If you give them a tiny percentage point out, then they relax and say, well, there's a chance.
Right? To take a grim metaphor...
You know, parents will continue to hope for the survival of a missing child until the body is found.
Right? Strong atheism is finding the body.
Right? Then in the DNA test and the dental records, right?
Then the parents can grieve and give up.
But as soon as there's that other chance, they continue to hope.
And again, not the kindest of metaphors, but I think you understand that the weak atheist position is not going to end religion.
You need a strong atheist position that takes no compromise and no quarter in the realm of the pursuit of truth.
So that's another thing that we've worked really hard and with great integrity and great success to solve.
Magnificent, amazing, wonderful, beautiful.
And will be the salvation of the reason of future generations.
Something to be incredibly and enormously proud of.
Free will versus determinism.
We have...
I mean, to me, it's a clincher in that last debate that I had, which has put out arguments that have not been rebutted, and which of course can't be rebutted.
I mean, you just can't rebut them.
So we have solved that problem.
And again, that is a magnificent quagmire and swamp to have drained to lay down the concrete paths of clear reason on.
I mean, it's fantastic, magnificent, amazing.
You could work your whole life, finally crack that problem and consider yourself a monstrous intellectual success.
And we, as a community, have hacked that one to bits.
And that's something to be incredibly proud of.
The crown jewel, so to speak, in many ways, what happens when you have a commitment to philosophy and an acceptance of the rationality of strong atheism, is the question of ethics.
And UPB is great.
You know, it's holding fast, holding strong.
I'm still going to do another couple of videos on it.
Those are on the list, and I apologize for the length of time it's taking, but I want to gather the objections together.
But, you know, it's holding beautifully against, you know, fairly significant opposition and strenuous objections.
And unfortunately, people aren't calling into the Sunday show to debate whether they sort of snipe from a distance.
And that's fine. I mean, that just means that they're not confident in their position, which means that they don't have to be taken too seriously.
A refusal to debate or a refusal to raise objections live is, you know...
Pretty dishonorable, in my opinion, but anyway, so we've got UPB has solved the problem of secular ethics, rational ethics.
I mean, holy smack on a shit on a stick, that's just amazing and incredible to have achieved as a community.
The... Growth of corruption within the social institutional situations is something that we've also worked very hard to explicate, right?
Why is there evil and corruption in the world?
Well, there are many ridiculous and retarded answers, right?
Determinism, which says it's not evil, but suboptimal.
The Catholic position or some Christian position, which says it's original sin, it's the temptations of Satan.
The evolutionary or Dawkins position which says, to paraphrase, it is evolutionarily suboptimal to be evil, which doesn't really explain why evil exists, right?
Because if it was evolutionarily suboptimal for evil to exist, then the fact that it exists and dominates does not exactly answer the case.
In fact, evil can be extraordinarily optimal in terms of biology.
Extraordinarily optimal? What is it?
A quarter of Asiatics can be traced back to the gene pool of Genghis Khan, right?
I mean, conquest and rape are extraordinarily successful in terms of spreading genes.
So there's lots of non-answers or bad answers or half-answers or pseudo-answers, but damn, we've got a really great, great answer.
And that, again, is an amazing thing to have achieved.
Again, if that was the only one thing that a generation of thinkers had achieved, that would be an incredible step forward.
But it's just one of the many jewels in the crown, so to speak.
And we don't have a huge number of questions or issues around ethics anymore.
And that, I think, is fantastic, magnificent, and wonderful.
In terms of self-knowledge, And I think this is something unique that I bring to the table in terms of I have a strong history in art, in terms of writing poems.
I was an actor, a director, a playwright, a novelist, a short story writer, and so on.
And so I have a great deal of respect for metaphor and the power of the unconscious.
The sort of tripartite way of looking at the world and philosophy is to say, well, there's the objective world, there's the conscious mind, and there's the unconscious mind.
And a misallocation of emphasis on any of these creates a huge problem.
If you say that the physical world is all that is, Then you will very often become a determinist or a nihilist.
If you say that the rational mind is all that exists, then you become Sort of an objectivist, right?
And with a lack of respect for the inner, deeper, richer life.
And if you simply focus on the unconscious, then you become a mystic, right?
Because the unconscious is full of power and myth and metaphor and emotional and energy and instinct.
And you will tend to project that into the world and say that, you know, when I'm talking to myself, I'm talking to my spirit guide or God or whatever, right?
But we hold the tension between these three.
We say reality exists and the conscious mind is essential for philosophy and the unconscious mind is essential for self-actualization, for authenticity.
So we hold the tension.
We don't give any one of these dominance.
We hold the tension between them and that is called identity and truth.
So that's amazing. I mean, I've always given a great deal of respect to people's impulses and dreams and instincts and so on, which is not to say that they're absolutes, but that they are essential aspects of information that we have in building happiness, right?
The purpose of philosophy is happiness, which is a feeling, not syllogism, right?
The syllogisms lead to the feeling.
The purpose of medicine is not pills, but health, right?
Which is an experience. We've done all of that, really focused on the inner life and the self-knowledge in that sense, the history, how early childhood experiences lead, if unexamined and uncorrected, to The social corruptions are in the larger sphere.
Amazing, incredible, wonderful, fantastic.
To trace that from the beginning to the end, the alpha and the omega of amorality and immorality is just amazing.
And it gives us a path forward which allows us to achieve something real and tangible and productive in our own lives, which is magnificent.
So focusing on our own histories, the potential dysfunctions within our own personal stories, stories and what happened to us as children gives us a way to move forward in terms of building strength, happiness, intimacy, honesty and so on.
Oh wow that is one tiny little frog.
I thought it was a spider. So, again, magnificent, wonderful, amazing, beautiful, what we've achieved as a community.
And Voluntarism in Adult Relationships, a principle that is occasionally talked about by Libertarian and ANCAP. Theoreticians, you know, the opposition to the non-aggression principle, which goes all the way from recognition of the evils of child abuse to a commitment to not self-attack on ourselves.
Again, that is all an extension of just, valid and logical principles to amazingly untied together spheres.
I mean, this is the unified field theory of good and evil, right?
Is childhood corruption all the way to institutional corruption?
And the insight that people hold on to their beliefs, not out of adherence to those beliefs, but fear of the social and immediate and personal relational repercussions of abandoning irrationalities.
So again, something to be amazingly proud of and thrilled with, and massive useful and empowering insights.
Frightening, of course, but massive useful and empowering insights.
So, again, that's all something to be magnificently proud of.
In the realm of personal relationships, right?
The fundamental commitment to honesty represented by real-time relationships.
The book, the podcast, and the theory as a whole, that we need to be honest about our experiences before inflicting hasty conclusions and generalizations on others.
To be honest about our experiences, to be honest about our experiences in the moment.
Because it's easy to be honest...
Sorry, it's easy to think you're being honest about your experiences in the past, but very often that is not really the case.
We're actually not that honest because it's clouded by the vagaries of memory and possibilities of manipulation.
But when you're speaking to someone in the moment, in the present, then honesty is extraordinarily powerful and I would say absolutely necessary for any kind of intimacy and depth.
I'm all about practical virtues here, virtues we can actually implement.
Now, things we've been right about.
This is another thing. So, again, this is just something to look back upon and to realize the extraordinary distance that we've come in the implementation of practical values.
I think it's just something...
So we're not always looking forward at the next mountain we have to climb, but looking back...
At the mountains that we have successfully climbed and taking some just pride in what has been achieved in this amazing and very short-lived so-far conversation, which, you know, I'm going to be plugging at this for another 50 years.
So we got three and a bit under our belt, and that is, I guess it's coming up for four and a bit.
But that's something to be, you know, let's...
Let's flop into an easy chair and look back on the distance that we've traveled.
I think that we have moved philosophy forward an unbelievable amount in just a few short years.
And that is, I mean, obviously the brilliance of the community is central to that, but even more central to that is the amazing accessibility of the technology.
And since there's great profit in falsehood, this of course has created fear, loathing and opposition in the world.
And that's inevitable, right? Every advance creates enemies because people profit off that which is retarded, right?
So there is opposition for sure.
There are a lot of people who would certainly prefer it if I stopped doing what I'm doing, and that's certainly their privilege and their right, so to speak.
But, you know, I'm not going to starve.
Of course not, because I see the future generations who are so much in need of this truth, of this information, of this methodology.
So... That's, I just think, something else which we can be enormously proud of.
We have a vibrant and positive community.
You know, maybe there's always some person stalking around the boards who's fairly dickish, but, you know, out of thousands of members, it's not really that bad at all.
And so I think that's something to be very, very proud of as well.
I mean, the new parenting stuff, I think, is really important, and I've got some very positive feedback on that.
I think that's going to be very helpful for people.
In the long run, and that's another thing which I think we can be enormously proud of, and that's just the tip of the iceberg so far, right?
So, you know, understand that this is just starting out.
But that's another thing which conversations about optimal child-raising standards, I think, or approaches is something else to be enormously proud of.
Again, that's practical and applied ethics, which is the very core of what it is that we're doing, that philosophy in the abstract is...
Well, intellectual mag-whackery of the first order.
So... That's something else, right?
The family approach, the parenting approach, something else that we can be enormously proud of.
Providing moral clarity and reminders of voluntarism to people in abusive relationships is also something to be enormously proud of.
And the encouragement of people to talk with abusers and to get therapy and to remind them that they are not chained to these people forever is something which I'm enormously, enormously proud of.
And it is a way of reducing the impacts of evil in the world to remind people that they are not bound to abusive people, that adult relations are voluntary, that therapy is essential, and that honesty in relationships is the only real definition of a relationship, right? Because dishonesty in relationships is the equivalent of counterfeit currency in the economics, right?
It's only the illusion of a transaction.
It's not real. That's something else which we can be enormously, enormously, enormously proud of.
Fighting off nihilism.
Can we not be enormously proud of the conquest of nihilism?
And for those who weren't around, we get these waves of certain kinds of people.
I guess they email each other about a fresh group of potential victims on the web.
And we have waves of these people come in, and we've had waves of nihilists come in, and they've left us alone.
And that happened in particular after I did a video on nihilism.
That is something else that we have taken down, and it's a pretty powerful movement, particularly among the modern youth, right?
I mean, because the lack of religion and the lack of faith in the state has led a lot of people to cynicism and nihilism, which is something else that we fight to varying degrees.
Well, I think to a great degree of success, although sometimes to varying degrees of success within ourselves.
And the opposition to politics.
The prediction of the failures of statism, which I made many years ago, which are certainly coming true.
Predictions of the failures of the Ron Paul campaign and the lack of integrity among those, which we've talked about before, who when told it would fail, said, well, it's all about education, but never measured the success of that.
And looking at the hidden costs of having an anti-evolutionary creationist Claim to represent libertarianism and economic common sense.
To explicate those has been very, very helpful.
So, you know, we were kind of right about all of that.
We were right about the continued growth of the state and the imminence of the financial catastrophe that, you know, is looming or certainly appears to be looming.
So, I think that's another thing where we took a stand.
And have been proven to be correct, right?
So again, that's just something else to be proud of, right?
I mean, that Ron Paul stuff was taking a real stand against what was the great white hope of the libertarian movement.
And that was not a popular stand at all, and that was a highly alienating stand, but I think we've been proven pretty damn correct about all of that.
And so that has been something else to be proud of, right?
Because, again, it's just about showing courage with rational principles and building credibility.
So I think we can be enormously happy about that as well.
And, you know, other things relatively minor.
We hung in through the media storm and came out stronger, I think, leaner and fitter than ever, which I think was something which was great.
I mean, that was a fairly negative set of lasers that were pinpointing us, and I think the survival has been great.
The support and enthusiasm of Me getting out in front of people and doing the old speaky speak has been great.
You know, my first real presentation to a libertarian group was only in March, a couple of months ago, in Nashua, the Free State Project, the Liberty Forum.
And then I did another one, I guess another two in Philly, just last month.
And that has been something to be, I think, very happy and proud of as well.
So, again, we could go on and on, and I do, but I think that it's important to look back upon the personal successes and triumphs that, you know, we've had individually and as a group.
You know, we've put a lot of faith, and I mean that in the best sense, right?
But we've put a lot of faith in each other, a lot of fundamental belief in each other.
It certainly has paid off in that I have, I mean, I put a lot of faith in listeners, To support what it is that I was initiating and that has paid off and that I have been able to live and eat and wear clothing, sadly.
And so thank you again so much for everyone there.
You all put a lot of faith in me and I hope that I have lived up to your expectations.
I certainly have exceeded my own expectations and that is always a thrill and an honor and something which is both makes me proud and also humble because of course it makes me think about what else it is that I could do that I have not thought of as yet.
So, this is just, again, this is just a quick sprint through the amazing, amazing, amazing things that we have achieved as a community in a few short years.
And we have decades more to go.
And I don't see the pace of innovation and growth slowing down in particular.
It may happen. But it doesn't really matter, even if we never invent anything new.
We have achieved, in my view, more in a few years in terms of philosophy, largely driven by the brilliance of the community and the technology that is available to us.
I think we have moved philosophy further ahead in a few years than it has managed in the last few thousand.
And I think for that we should just be enormously proud because ideas are the biggest levers that exist.
And the degree to which we can bring these truths to future generations is the degree to which the world will change enormously, productively, proactively, and for the better.
Thank you so much. So, so much.
For all of your belief in what it is that I'm doing, all of your participation, all of your support, onward and upward, my brothers and sisters!
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