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Jan. 1, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
18:07
1548 A Brief History of Ethics Part Two - Universally Preferable Behavior!
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The History of Ethics, Part 2.
Well, what does UPP bring to the mix?
I think the first thing to understand is that ethics, like until, I would say, until UPB, ethics has been used as a mechanism of predation.
It has been used as a form of psychological predator that is used to strip resources from those who genuinely wish to be good.
Human beings as a whole, and I'm not just talking about those in political power or even religious power, but human beings as a whole, seem to love nothing more than creating universal moral rules And a little subtle exception for themselves.
Human beings love, love, love, love, completely addicted to creating moral rules in order to have power over others while creating exceptions for themselves.
If you don't see that ethics is a tool of subjugation and control and bullying and manipulation and exploitation, then you just don't understand what ethics has been used for at all.
I'll give you some examples.
Someone comes and criticizes me because I'm too hard on parents, let's just say.
It could be anything. I'm too hard on parents because parents really aren't that responsible.
They've had their own history and blah, blah, blah, right?
And so what they're saying is, I'm unjust because those people who've had harsh upbringings are not responsible for their actions as adults.
In which case, I who had a very harsh upbringing should not be responsible for my criticisms of parents.
Of course, right? I mean, just logically, that would be the case.
If parents aren't responsible, then I'm not responsible.
If adults aren't responsible, then I'm not responsible.
But that's what is called control, hostility, exploitation, and bullying.
And ethics is always used, always, always, always used for that.
And once you begin to see it, you simply won't see anything else in human interactions than a maneuvering for, you know, like this endless thumb wars of which principle is on top and who's being controlled by whose definition of virtue.
Always, always, always.
That is all that you will ever see.
You'll see it in books, in movies, in plays.
You'll see it in just about every interaction.
It's making me write through universal principles which don't include my behavior.
And of course, if you can get, I mean, this is the funny thing, if you can get people to believe in universal principles and grant you the exception, I mean, that's about as good as you can get.
If you are a thief and you can get everyone to respect property except you, you don't have to, then you know you're not going to face any competition in your thieving.
So, a thief is best off saying that everybody should respect property and then thieving.
And so this is just completely embedded in human interactions.
It is the most foundational aspect of human interactions.
It's the infliction of universal moral rules which...
Do not include the person who's describing them.
That is a fundamental, fundamental aspect of human interactions, and you'll see it once you sort of peel the lids off your eyes.
You will see this all the time in marital couples fights, everything all the time.
It is a constant maneuvering for the moral high ground by creating universals that ensnare everyone except yourself.
I mean, other examples, of course, the priesthood is a huge example of this.
We are all responsible and beholden to God equally, but God only speaks to me, right?
Well, how could we all be?
It's like, we're all responsible for delivering this message, but the message only got delivered to me.
Well, then we're not all responsible, right?
Everybody is responsible for what albinos do.
Well, only albinos would be responsible for what albinos do, right?
You understand, it's a complete contradiction.
We are all beholden and responsible to God, but God only speaks to the priests.
Only the priests are infallible, but everyone is responsible for obedience to God's will, but God only speaks to the priests.
I mean, it's a universal rule.
Everyone's beholden and responsible, but there are exceptions, right?
Which is that God only speaks.
It's crazy, right? It's completely nuts.
The army, of course. Thou shalt not kill.
Killing is wrong, killing is bad.
Oh, wait! We have costumes.
And therefore, it's all reversed, right?
But even when you start to question this, then the military is always portrayed in terms of self-defense.
And when you can disprove self-defense, then what is dragged out is a preemptive strike.
You know, we had to act prior to initial aggression because they didn't stop Hitler in Munich and therefore launching attacks against people who aren't threatening us but who might in the future is perfectly justified.
See, human beings cannot act or support an action without a moral justification.
This is what moralists staggeringly and stunningly have failed to understand throughout history, in my opinion.
Hugely and fundamentally failed to understand.
A human being cannot act without moral justification, right?
Just think of it. And you can run this experiment in your own life.
Don't take my word for anything.
You can run this experiment in your own life.
Let's say you're, I don't know, some sort of man whore who sleeps with everything that moves.
Well, if someone says that seems rather disrespectful to Others or yourself, you simply can't say, it is disrespectful, and I'm still going to do it.
It is disrespectful to myself, it will lower my self-esteem, and I'm still going to do it.
No. What will happen is you will come up with a justification for it.
Don't be such a prude, you will say, implying that those who might want to place limits on sexual activity, despite its link to childhood abuse as an effect of childhood abuse, those who might want to put limits on sexual activity themselves are prudes and stuck up and, you know, get that stick out of your ass and whatever, right?
Get off the Mayflower. And then you make them prudish, or you say, well, I can do it because I'm attractive, and you just resent me because you're unattractive.
You resent my capacity to get women to sleep with me, or whatever.
Or, you know, hedonism is good, and ethics is invented to control people, and you take the sort of Nietzschean bestial approach to life, the pursuit of power and physical gratification and all that is...
It's good and everything else is just nonsense.
Like, you simply can't act without a justification.
You can't act without a justification.
Even a thief will say, hey, it's a war of all against all.
If they're stupid enough to let me steal from them, then, you know, too bad for them, right?
He can't act, he can't say, it's immoral and it's predatory, it's hypocritical, and I'm still going to do it, right?
Human beings cannot act without justification.
And because moralists have not accepted this, and I would say it's because moralists have not put the power of ethics into place in their own lives, Because moralists have not accepted this, they have believed that there is no lever to make men good.
There is no power in the conscience or in men's minds or hearts to make men good.
And so we need a punitive God.
We need punitive parenting.
We need a punitive state to make men good because people, moralists, ethicists, everybody, they don't accept that morality has the power to make men good outside of violence or attack or infliction from a superior power.
And that's because they're not putting the values into practice in their own life.
Once you put the values into practice in your own life, you realize the power of morality.
And by morality, I simply mean moral justifications.
I don't mean UPB in this context.
So, if you are honest with the people around you, then you will immediately see the power of morality, of their justifications.
So, if your parents are mean to you and you Confront them about it.
You will immediately see their justifications come into place.
Or their excuses. Or their apologies with no comprehension.
And then the attack which inevitably follows a shallow apology, which is, I've already apologized.
What more do you want from me? In other words, now I've apologized.
Now you're being the unreasonable one.
And then if you say, well, but when I apologized as a kid, I still got punished.
Now you're dredging up the past.
Why are you so obsessed about the past?
In other words, you are obsessed about unimportant things in the past because you're petty and you won't look forward and you won't repair them.
Human beings cannot act without justifications.
They can't act without justifications.
And I challenge you, please, if you can find an exception to this rule, let me know and I will publicize it to the heavens.
I will do whatever I can to get it out there.
I have never, ever seen or heard of and can imagine a situation where a human being can act without justification.
I mean, we invade Iraq because weapons of mass destruction, or Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, or he used gas on his own people, or whatever, right?
But you can't just say, I want a war, right?
Human beings cannot act without moral justification.
They can't, they can't, they can't, and they never will be able to.
And if we understand that, then we can really, I think, begin to appreciate the power of UPB. So there are, of course, these endless battles for the moral high ground.
Most human interactions that involve any kind of values are endless and, once you see it, incredibly boring battles for the moral high ground, right?
So you're a libertarian and you go up against some statist, and the statist is basically, well, you don't care about the poor, right?
So you're heartless, you're cold, and therefore your philosophy is invalid because you're selfish.
This is a battle for the moral high ground.
And the libertarian says, well, I do care about the poor, but the poor aren't being served in the current environment.
And so on, right?
Well, who are you to make decisions on behalf of others?
It is a constant, frankly, moral interactions of this guy, a constant slendering of the other person.
And if you look and see, you'll really see this everywhere.
99% of human moral interactions or human interactions around any kind of values or statism or any religion is...
A constant slandering of the other person's position in a desperate attempt to gain and maintain the moral high ground.
That's why the argument for morality is so powerful, because it is an incontrovertible moral high ground.
This is why people are drawn towards the argument from effect, because they're trying to bypass the moral high ground and argue from effects.
Whereas the argument for morality says, no, no, no, it doesn't matter what happens to the poor under a free society in the same way that it doesn't matter what happens to slaves after the slaves are free.
Whether slavery is moral or immoral is the only fundamental question.
So everyone is constantly trying to cast these nets of universality with a them-say-sized hole in the middle so that they can wriggle out, and they want you to not notice this.
So universalization, with exceptions, is the foundation of everything that is destructive, exploitive, and immoral in the world.
With exception. Think of communism, right?
Nobody owns anything except for the inner party, right?
All men are equal. There should be no hierarchy except for the party, right?
It is always, always, always universalization plus exception is the root of moral corruption.
It's the root of religion and of statism and, frankly, of unjust parental power.
Because parents will say a number of things that work towards universalization.
So I'm the parent, right?
Because I said so, do as I say, not as I do.
All of these things are principles that are put forward.
Or it could be the appeal to age, right?
Well, I'm just older and wiser, to which, of course, the teenager is quite just in responding.
So you always obeyed your parents.
So if I call up grandma, you will always have obeyed her.
No, I was a kid. Well, now you always obey her, right?
So if you can get So, then if you're the teenager and you can get your grandmother to take your side on an issue, your parent is bound to defer to the grandparent because they say age counts and blah, blah, blah, right?
So, it's always, always, always about creating a rule called age counts, right?
Age is more important, and I'm older than you, therefore I'm right, and then they want to create an exception when someone older than them disagrees with them, right?
It's this constant, constant establishment of universalization followed by an immediate exemption.
The will of the people. Like, it struck me the other day, in New York, some public sector union is demanding these raises.
I think it's the teachers, right? And to me, it's kind of funny.
I mean, it's sort of pointless.
I mean, if I were the mayor of New York, it would be a pretty simple thing.
I wouldn't argue with the unions, and I wouldn't make promises to anyone.
I'd be like, well, you claim to be, you know, you work for the people, so let's let the people decide.
I'm going to put a little checkbox I'm not going to bargain on behalf of other people who are actually paying your salary.
That doesn't make any sense.
It's the people who actually have some meat in the matter.
Then who should be determining the price?
So don't come to me. Go straight to the people.
You know, you can put out a website saying we're accepting donations for a pay raise for the public school teachers and you can see how much you get.
It's not up to me. It's up to the taxpayers, right?
And then next year we can decide whether or not they want to pay you at all.
But of course, everybody says, well, we work for the people and we're all about working for the people and democracy is the will of the people.
But then, of course, the last thing that anyone wants to do who's profiting from that lie is to actually have it ensconced as a principle.
Democracy is the will of the people.
Great. Fantastic. Then let's have the people send in the money that they want for the various programs because that's expressing their will, right?
So the rule, oh, it's the will of the people.
We work for the people. We reflect the will of the people.
It's like, great. Well, then let's have everyone send in as much money as they think is necessary for national defense and public schools and roads and that.
And then suddenly that's a terrible principle.
It's a terrible principle to live by.
And out comes the gun, right?
Parents, of course, fundamentally rely on power.
They don't debate with their children.
They don't ask their children's perspective or opinions.
They don't use reason. They don't use evidence.
Often, right? Most often, they just use power.
They use force in a not necessarily violent way, but the power of being a parent, right?
Time out. I'm going to pick you up, whatever, right?
And that's silly, right?
Because they're basically saying that whoever is stronger should get their way.
And then if a bully shows up in the school, I mean, of course, they're completely horrified.
If the child becomes a bully and says, well, wait a minute, you're bigger and stronger than me, so you get your way and you get to punish me, so I'm bigger and stronger than the little kids or my little brother, so why shouldn't, right?
Again, it's universalization with constant exceptions.
Now, UPB... Blows this whole shitty tugboat right out of the water.
Blows this whole shitty tugboat right out of the water.
Because UPB says, I don't care what your conclusions are, you show me your principles.
I don't care what your conclusions are.
Murder is right, murder is wrong.
I don't care. It doesn't matter.
It's like saying, what does the scientific method think of rocks fall down?
Well, it doesn't really think anything of it, right?
It may think of something of the equations or whatever, but dumbass Cro-Mannian observations mean nothing according to any logical or rational epistemology.
So, rocks fall down, murder is bad, right?
I mean, it's just retarded, right?
And UPB says, I don't care what that is, because then, you know, people say, no killing, right?
No killing. Well, but, you know, with self-defense and preemptive, like, they just create all these exceptions, right?
And UPB says, I don't care what your conclusions are.
It doesn't matter. Stating a conclusion is something that is completely empty of content.
A conclusion has the same relevance to food that plastic fruit has to nutrition.
It's just the appearance of, not the thing itself.
So, UPB says, what are your principles?
What is your reasoning? And UPB detonates immediately several entirely nonsensical positions, as we saw with nihilism, as we see with determinism, right?
Nothing is chosen, therefore it is incorrect to say that something is chosen.
Therefore it is an incorrect choice to say that something is chosen because nothing is chosen.
But you can't have an incorrect choice if nothing is chosen.
And one thing that human beings will die rather than give up...
is their right of judgmentalism.
Their right to judge and criticize and condemn and bully and put down and feel superior to others.
Human beings literally will die, as we can see from those who volunteer for combat.
Human beings will quite literally die rather than give up their right to criticize and put others down.
And the way that they criticize and put others down The most effectively is through universalization.
And universalization of principles is simply a hook to try and activate the self-attack mechanism of the other person.
It's got nothing to do with any real or objective values.
Of course not, right? It's simply like, if I universalize this and I can fool you that I'm somehow not an exception, even though I am, then if you disobey these rules, you will self-attack and I can rule you, right?
Universalization in ethics is simply designed to trigger self-attack.
So, if the parent says to the child, you're being selfish in an angry way, well, clearly the parent is being selfish because the parent is acting on impulse to the detriment of other people instead of showing compassion and empathy by calling his or her child selfish.
It's a very selfish act, a very selfish and destructive act to call a child selfish.
So, there's a principle.
Selfishness is bad, and because of the attack which triggers the self-attack, you're too busy attacking yourself to question your attacker.
And that's why we have to have a positive relationship with ourselves before we can be philosophers with power in the world.
So that when someone comes along and says, you're selfish, you're like, okay, I'm not going to self-attack because I don't even know what the hell you mean.
I don't know what selfish means.
I don't know how you don't fit that definition by acting out in a destructive way against me, by putting your own particular emotional bullying needs ahead of mine, my own sort of self-esteem and so on.
So I don't know what you're talking about.
So tell me, what does selfishness mean?
How do you define it? How do you know that I'm acting it?
How am I the most selfish person in this interaction?
And so on, right? That's principles, right?
But what happens is people universalize to get you to self-attack.
And then when you self-attack, you don't notice that they're not following their own prescriptions, that they're hypocrites, right?
So universalization is just like a hook.
It's a hook that's designed to catch you by your fishy lip and haul you up to be gutted and munched upon by the golems of hypocrisy.
So, UPB detonates all of that because UPB says, but your attacks are meaningless because I don't even know if you know what you're talking about.
So, you know, step me through your reasoning and step me through how you have the right to apply these judgments because, you know, you're not expressing them yourselves.
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