Dec. 12, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:30
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Yo! It's Steph! And only Steph! | |
| Not one of our fabled interviews from these days, which I'm quite enjoying. | |
| There are quite a lot of preparation. | |
| It is a lot of fun to learn all this stuff. | |
| A free education for you and I. And it's nice how gracious all of the people are who are taking the time to have a shitty channel. | |
| So anyway, but you know, every now and then I thought, heck, why not share a thought or two Of my very own. | |
| So here's one. I was thinking the other day, or I guess I was asking myself the question the other day, why do people, why do a lot of people not recognize the power of social conformity? | |
| Or the power of ostracism, or the threats of disapproval, or all of these kinds of things, which Those of us who've taken a real stand with friends, family, colleagues, you know, wherever it has occurred, but those of us who've taken a real stand for virtue in our relationships, I think have really tasted the power of the social exclusion-o-matic propulsion system. | |
| And I think if you haven't experienced that Either, A, you're living in a group that is rational and empirical and values people over ideology and so on. | |
| In which case, where are you? | |
| I'd really like to meet this group other than ours, I think, in its better moments. | |
| Or, you are a conformist. | |
| In other words, you can't understand how a stateless society can work in your marrow, you know, in your guts and your bones. | |
| You can't understand how a stateless society will work if you've never stood up to a social group, if you've never stood up for what is right in the face of what is accepted. | |
| Because, of course, if you have done that, then you totally get How powerful social group ostracism and non-violent methods of enforcing social norms are. | |
| And one of the things that is... | |
| I mean, it wasn't exactly the plan in a sort of direct way, but one of the ways in which we really understand how society works is we act against its... | |
| Prejudice as we act against what society holds as moral or valuable or whatever, right? | |
| And through that process, we understand the power of social cohesion, of social ostracism, of disapproval, of criticism, of attack, of negativity, of all that kind of stuff, of being criticized. | |
| And once we understand how powerful those forces are when you say, Families are not automatically moral, when you say you should not spend time with abusive people if you don't want to, you're not compelled to, when you say taxation is force, | |
| when you say we don't need a government, when you say the government is immoral, when you take the stance that I think are philosophically and logically justified, then you really do run, you know, smack-dap, nose-splatteringly first into The amazing power of social cohesiveness and social conformity. | |
| And once you've tasted that power, oh, as so many of us have over and over, spitting out teeth and nostrils and so on. | |
| Spitting out a nostril? | |
| Please insert better metaphor later. | |
| Beep! Then we really do understand just how incredibly powerful this form of... | |
| Social organization is. | |
| It's more powerful than the state because, of course, it is the root of the state. | |
| So, I mean, I haven't seen my mom in like 10 years or whatever, right? | |
| And I was at the library the other day and was chatting with another mom. | |
| You know, up comes... | |
| It came up somehow that my wife is Greek, or I must have mentioned it for some reason, but... | |
| And the woman is, oh, is your daughter baptized? | |
| Did you baptize your daughter? And I said, no. | |
| It's a decision that she can make for herself, you know, when she gets older. | |
| Oh. Pause, pause, pause. | |
| A few minutes later. Does your wife attend church? | |
| Regularly. Because we have a church here and here, you know. | |
| I said, no, not really. | |
| Oh. Well, did you get married? | |
| Right, so these questions just keep coming on and on, right? | |
| And of course, you know, where are your parents? | |
| And I mean, you know, okay, it's a little nosy or whatever, but that's okay. | |
| I mean, our kids are biting each other, so it's okay. | |
| You know, it's okay to chat. | |
| But I still feel like a little... | |
| Let me show you pictures of my dental surgery instead. | |
| And that's, you know, when I'm morally very comfortable with the decision and I don't have anyone in my life who's criticizing it and I've reaped all of the benefits and rewards of getting toxicity out of my life and so on, right? | |
| That's... And I still feel like... | |
| Right? | |
| So I said, well, you know, I grew up in... | |
| So, you know, she's like, well, why? | |
| I said, I grew up in a lot of different cultures and I saw a lot of different religions and it's kind of hard for me to... | |
| You know, to settle on one as the truth, right? | |
| And so, you know, I have a tough time imposing something that I'm not particularly convinced of on my daughter, so I can't tell her I'm certain of something I'm not or whatever, right? | |
| So, pretty innocuous, and that's fine, you know, we chatted about other things. | |
| I mean, she was obviously a little uneasy, but she was also, you know, I can understand where you're coming from and so on, so she was, you know, she wasn't, like, scooping up her children and fleeing to the Vicar-driven paddy wagon or something. | |
| That would be a good name for a band. | |
| Anyway. And so even so many years into it, after therapy, and knowing that it was a great decision, one of the best decisions of my life, I still am like, family, oh God, and God's been like, oh my Lord, the last time I believed in any kind of deity, I was like five years old, so it's been 38 years, dear sweet heaven above. | |
| And still it's like, oh, so you feel that pressure of conformity and going against the prevailing currents of social ideology and so on. | |
| You get how powerful it is. | |
| You get how powerful it is. | |
| And once you get how powerful it is by going against it, ah, then you are pretty comfortable with the idea that it can run society. | |
| An engine this strong can move the world. |
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