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Jan. 1, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:17
1549 The Exploitive Value of Cliched Virtues
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Hi everybody, it's Steph. It is 2010.
What a science fiction year it is to be living in.
Always good to have made it this far in life.
I wish you all the very best in happiness and health and love and success in 2010.
May the year bring all your dreams to you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
For the last four and a bit years of Free Domain Radio, I think that we have done the world proud of In terms of bringing truth, reason, virtue, and logic to the masses, of which I count myself one.
So thank you for all of your interests and support and referrals and donations and honesty and openness and all the good things that are involved in your support of this show.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
So it struck me The other day, like a wet carp across the ear, that it might be interesting to talk about the traditional virtues.
I've been listening to, and I don't think I'm going to get much further in it, I guess I've outgrown Stephen King's writing, but I used to like his writing, and quite a bit I quite enjoyed, especially his book of short stories, Night Shift, the one with the guy who quit smoking and so on.
But I think I've outgrown his writing.
It just seems kind of cliched and amateurish and stereotypical and so on, right?
But there was a character in it, a guy in the army named Barbie.
That's his nickname, of course.
And Barbie has a number of what are in most literature, or historical literature, have been traditionally called virtues.
And it's very interesting to me.
When you see virtue depicted in a character, what He is considered virtuous.
I think that's really, really important.
What is the down-market perception of virtue?
What is the general perception of virtue?
What do the masses perceive virtue to be?
I think that's very interesting, and I think there are lots of different answers to it, but they all have a are supposed to respect or that are generally portrayed as respectful in the modern world.
And the first one is very interesting.
The first one that I see continually talked about is this.
It is virtuous to have physical courage.
Physical courage is considered to be a virtue.
Now, if you contrast this with something like intellectual courage, philosophical courage, moral courage really, the two are really at opposite ends of the poles, to have moral courage is to be a dweeb in the Big Bang Theory sense, or a cripple in the House MD sense, or mentally ill is in the monk OCD sense.
To have intellectual or moral courage is to be crippled, but to have physical courage To be a tough soldier, to be a tough cop, even with all the problems that are generally portrayed as being associated with cops, and to some degree soldiers, and sociopathy, drunkenness, and inability to maintain relationships, and so on.
It still is really interesting to see just how much physical courage is praised, while moral, or intellectual, or other kinds of courage is derided.
There are some exceptions to this.
In the movie, Gandhi, it's sort of portrayed in a different kind of way.
But for the most part, the way that virtue is always discussed in the mainstream media is courage.
Luke Skywalker, Indiana, it's all physical courage, physical courage, not moral courage.
Now, there is moral certainty, but there's no moral journey, which I think is very interesting.
So, there's moral certainty, but there's no moral journey, and the moral certainty is coupled with physical, physical courage.
Paul Newman in The Verdict is an interesting example of a guy who's struggling with a moral virtue.
But, again, these are, let's just say, for the sake of argument, the exceptions that prove the rule.
When you think of the majority of heroes, it's always physical courage.
It's always never moral courage.
Except maybe the guy in The Wire who legalizes drugs.
Anyway. Now, why would this be a virtue that is portrayed as valuable?
Well, I think for a very simple reason.
And the reason is this.
What is generally portrayed as virtue is that which serves the values, or the needs, or the preferences, or the greed, or the exploitation of the upper class.
What serves the upper class?
Physical courage serves the upper class.
Why? Because they need people to do dangerous shit to oppress the middle and lower classes.
So, that I think is really, really important.
Physical courage is portrayed as a virtue, because it serves the needs of the upper classes to have people believe that physical courage is a virtue, because they need the enforcers, they need the brutes, they need the thugs, they need the cops, the soldiers, the prison guards, and so on, who are all going to do nasty things to anyone who disagrees with the edicts of the state.
So, physical courage is portrayed as a virtue, and the destruction of the soul of the enforcers is portrayed as a noble sacrifice.
So, you can think of Hill Street Blues.
Sorry to go back a ways.
In Hill Street Blues, it was a sort of the world-weary, thin blue line.
They all were in these messed-up, decayed relationships, but they were portrayed as flawed heroes.
Who, you know, were dedicated to their cause, however messed up they were, and their relationships were the unfortunate sacrifice necessary to keep the world peace, and it was the sort of second layer.
And I think the reason this came about is that once you had the revolution in the 1960s, where the skepticism of authority was put front and center, and also when you began to have some psychological awareness Officer Bob was the one up here in Canada, Officer Bob the Helpful Cop.
Who will throw your parents in jail if he doesn't pay for the taxes to support the state monopoly broadcasting station?
Well, that's of course not mentioned.
Or if he doesn't pay, if your parents don't pay his salary or to pay for the school, then that is also something that your parents will be shot for.
And I think that's important, but of course can't be mentioned.
So physical courage is portrayed as noble.
Now, moral or intellectual courage, rationality, skepticism, is portrayed as dweebish and foolish and ridiculous and unsexy, you know, if, as in the case of Big Bang Theory, sorry about these references 200 years in the future, In the case of the Big Bang Theory, it is considered to be dweebish, and the girl overcomes the guy's dweebishness, the blonde, in order to have sex become his girlfriend.
She overcomes his dweebishness.
It's not something that she realizes is very attractive fundamentally, but it is something that has to be overcome.
And this, of course, is a completely mainstream perspective.
And the interesting thing, of course, is that most artists are not this way.
They're not socially competent in a very strong way.
Generally, the more imaginative and creative they are, the more they've been picked on and abused in the public schools.
But, of course, they have to appeal to the mainstream.
And the mainstream are bullies and lunatics and generally culturally addicted crazies.
And so they have to sell to that.
And so they can't portray a jock As an idiot, right?
As a socially conformist idiot.
You know, as a physically impressive slab of muscle over meat, over mind.
They can't, right?
Because that would offend the majority of people who either were the jocks or wanted to befriend the jocks.
So the majority of the writers, I would say, in the media are still continuing the self-flagellation of self-parodying class clowniness, that is, the lot of the one who is witty rather than strong, who is intelligent rather than physically able.
And of course, intellectual and moral curiosity is the exact opposite of what is helpful to the upper classes, right?
Because, frankly, the upper classes survive only because of a lack of moral and intellectual clarity and honesty and courage, and that, of course, is something that we, as a community, are trying our very best to remedy.
So I think that is very interesting.
The moral courage is derided because that would offend and undermine the power of the ruling classes, but brute self-destructive physical courage is lauded because that serves the interests of the upper classes.
And shows like The Wire are generally beginning to undercut that, and there are few people.
It's still a very strong belief system, and shows like The Wire don't threaten the fundamental orthodoxy of the cops as heroes bit, But it's beginning to chip away.
And we know that it's only beginning to chip away at it because it doesn't offend people.
They view it as cool and exciting. The moment it begins to be a dominant philosophy, then there will be a considerable backlash from the more primitive cycle classes.
That hasn't happened yet, which means we know it's not making any particular progress.
Anyway, so I just wanted to sort of mention and point that out.
Physical courage, good. Moral courage, bad.
Serves the ruling class, creates enforcers and cripples philosophers who are going to question the virtue of the ruling classes.
Now, the next virtue...
That is generally depicted as, I think, especially fascinating.
And it is the dichotomy, the split between the two opposing ethics that we always, always, always see in exploitive hierarchies.
And those two exploitive ethics are an eye for an eye, Old Testament, versus turn the other cheek, New Testament.
So, of course, as we all know, in the Old Testament, it's a pretty vengeful and primitive, psycho-class God.
And so, we have, if a man kills, then he shall be killed.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a nail for a nail, a sofa for a sofa, something like that.
And yet, in the New Testament, and these aren't clearly split, but generally in the New Testament, we have kind of dewy-eyed, hippy, dippy admonishments from Buddy Jesus, such as If your enemy asks for your cloak, give him your shirt as well.
If your enemy asks you to walk a mile, walk two miles.
Passive-aggressive exaggeration.
And if your enemy smites you on the cheek, then turn to him the other cheek, and so on.
Which I don't think means to moon him, but something slightly less complex.
And, of course, we see this as well with Socrates.
This dichotomy, even within the same person, it can happen, right?
So he was a soldier who smote and sliced up the enemies of the Athenian state, and then, so that was an eye for an eye.
At the same time, he was turned the other cheek when it came to submitting to their power, right?
To drink the hemlock and die.
So, why do these two ethics continually occur?
And we see this all the time.
You have revenge fantasies.
Right, the movies around someone's doing you wrong, you know, sleeping with the enemy, or there was one with Jennifer Lopez, I can't remember what the name was, where, you know, there's some guy stalking you or your ex-husband or whatever, and you end up killing him, or there's someone who's out to get you and you end up killing him.
And that is the slave-on-slave violence that is allowed and acceptable, right, because we're supposed to attack each other.
And so, well, the ruling class wants us to believe, and I'm saying this is conscious, it's just what happens.
The ruling class wants us to believe that our greatest danger comes not from their wars and debts and taxations and imprisonments and unjust laws, but from each other, right?
And so there are all these movies where...
Man, this is a long light.
There are all these movies where slave-on-slave violence is sanctioned.
A revenge fantasy, right?
And that is allowed and that is encouraged.
Slave-on-slave violence is always encouraged because it makes us worry about each other rather than the ruling classes.
To take an example of a script that...
Would never ever be allowed to be filmed.
At least not in the present. In the future, for sure, but not in the present.
Or for the foreseeable future, for a generation or two.
Imagine this, trying to sell this script as a revenge fantasy.
The district attorney prosecutes, and the government throws someone into jail unjustly.
And the guy tries to get recompense through court, and then when he can't get recompense through court, he kills the district attorney, like his wife or his husband, let's say.
I mean, let's make it as sympathetic as possible, right?
A father, his son, as unjustly imprisoned, he fights the system.
The system is corrupt, and so he goes and kills the prosecuting lawyer or the cop who arrested him or the politician who's responsible for these laws or whatever, right?
Or imagine this as a script.
Some guy He goes to Iraq as he believes that Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and 9-11 are all tied up in one neat little bullshit bundle.
Well, he thinks it's true.
And so he attempts to get his story out.
The media won't listen to him. And then he goes and systematically kills, you know, Dick Cheney and George Bush and what's his blobby, the black dude, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and all the people who lied to get him into war.
That would be, right?
That would be unthinkable. Try to sell that.
No, I'm not saying this is a good thing to do.
I'm just pointing it out that this would be a script you could not sell.
Now, if you want to sell a script about Munich, right, so where the Jewish hitmen go around killing everyone who they believe is...
I think there was a 72 killing of the Israeli athletes in the Olympics in Munich.
You can sell that script, right?
You can sell those revenge fantasies, because that's slave-on-slave violence, or state-on-slave violence, or state-on-state violence.
That's all allowed, right?
But you can't have a revenge fantasy film where a citizen goes and kills a state murderer.
You can't have that. I mean, that's unthinkable.
You try and sell that, people would just be like, are you crazy?
They would be afraid that it was a setup.
They wouldn't even want to answer that without a lawyer present.
Or they would want to make sure you weren't taping anything.
They'd think it was some setup to get them thrown in jail.
You couldn't conceivably have that.
I mean, we saw all the Vietnam movies in the world, all about the violence over there, violence back home, slave-on-slave violence.
What you never saw was a guy, you know, trying to get...
Trying to get justice through the system when he can't get it.
Just going and shooting Robert McNamara or anybody else who...
LBJ. People who lied about the war.
Or his recruiting guy in the army or whatever, right?
You can't ever...
Have an eye for an eye go up the chain, right?
It can only go horizontal or down the chain, because that's useful to the ruling class.
But you can't ever suggest to the slaves that the revenge fantasies that we're all so addicted to, because we all got a lot of anger about being oppressed and repressed, of course, right?
But you can't conceivably let the slaves in on the idea that the revenge fantasy should ever flow up the power chain.
That just short-circuits the whole system because the media is there to make us afraid of each other.
You understand, I'm not saying revenge is good.
The revenge to me is reason and philosophy and a better life.
But what I'm saying is that if we're going to accept that revenge fantasies are very popular in media, then we have to ask that question, why is it that they only go downhill?
Why is it that we're only allowed to see revenge fantasies, slave on slave, or master on slave?
Never a slave on master. Because that's not allowed!
That can't be allowed.
That can't be even remotely spoken of.
That's illegal, I'm sure.
You can't have that.
You can have all the movies in the world that say go kill foreigners.
You can have all the movies in the world that say go kill Germans.
You can have all the movies in the world that say go kill stalkers or go kill racists or go kill whoever.
You can have all those movies in the world.
What you can't have Is a movie that says if someone you love is murdered by the lives of someone in power, that a revenge fantasy would be to go and exact vengeance on that person in power.
You can't have that. That's illegal, right?
So, this is why we have these two ethics of an eye for an eye, because an eye for an eye is what is used by the ruler to get you to go and kill the ruler's enemies, right?
He manufactures a threat against you and then has you go, an eye for an eye!
Justice, go kill, kill, kill, right?
Now, an eye for an eye, of course, should be that those who started the Iraqi war should face the death penalty.
Of course, right? Fundamentally, they should face, I mean, 150,000 or 200,000 death penalties, right?
Right? Because if you're the Washington sniper and you shoot a couple of people mowing their lawns, that's immoral and evil and you should be put to death and slowly and tortured and so on, right?
Or if you have information and you're tortured.
But if you actually order a war that gets hundreds of thousands of people killed, well, there are no repercussions, right?
You understand? It can't ever flow the other way.
You can't have a revenge fantasy where those in power...
Sorry, I'm repeating myself.
You understand? So, an eye for an eye is the ethic that is used to encourage slave-on-slave violence or master-on-slave violence.
So, what the hell is turn-the-other-cheek doing there?
Well, of course, turn-the-other-cheek is the second half of the equation.
Master-slave, slave-on-slave, eye for an eye.
The moment that the slave says, well, by that ethic, I should be attacking my masters, well, then, out is pulled.
Right? Out magically comes the turn-the-other-cheek.
Right? And this is not my original idea.
This is something that was spoken about over 500 years ago by Martin Luther, the original guy, not the guy with the Elvis surname, but Martin Luther.
He talked about it because he tried to reconcile this and he said, an eye for an eye is when you are receiving orders from the prince, but turn the other cheek is when you feel wronged by the prince.
He was very, very clear.
None of this stuff is new, right?
It's just, it's ridiculous to me that it's been 500 years and it's still the same shit that we believe.
It's embarrassing to me that 500 years this stuff has been spewed and we still don't know it, except unconsciously, which is not a healthy or good place for it to be.
And why would this show up in the Bible?
And why would it be split between the Old and the New Testament?
Well, to me, that's not hard to figure out at all.
And this, I will say, is somewhat original, but at least to me.
It's original to me. Why is to turn the other cheek in the New Testament, and why is an eye for an eye in the Old Testament?
Well, the answer is quite simple.
In the Old Testament, Christianity, sorry, in the Old Testament, there was no political power that was available to, there was no Jewish state, right?
There was no political power available to the Jews in the Old Testament, and so they were very much an eye for an eye.
You know, screw with us and we'll hit you back hard.
Because they were on the victim side of things, right?
They didn't have their own political power.
And so for them to fight back against their oppressors was not the end of the world, right?
It was somewhat okay, right?
Like if you were a guerrilla, if America had been taken over and you were some guerrilla fighter, an eye for an eye would make sense.
We're going to hit us back hard, right?
That's how the insurgents, as they're called, are operating, of course, in...
In Iraq and Afghanistan, it's an eye for an eye, right?
You invade our country, we're going to hit you back hard because you're not our political rulers.
So, it's okay, right?
It's okay to hit him back hard, because that's slave-on-state violence, or slave-on-slave violence, not slave-on-ruler violence, local ruler.
And so, because the Jews in the Old Testament didn't have a state, didn't have political power, they were fundamentally insurgents, trying to survive, trying to get by, and so they had this philosophy of an eye for an eye.
Now, when the Christians came along, and of course, remember, the New Testament was written hundreds and hundreds of years after, and certainly finalized hundreds and hundreds of years after, Jesus' death, if he even lived.
And so, it was written during a time when Christendom had been founded, when...
Under Constantine, I think it was, the Emperor Constantine, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, so it had achieved political power.
It had achieved and, in fact, had consolidated political power in the Roman Empire.
So now, Christianity was the ruling class, or at least the priests who were writing the Bible were the ruling class.
And so, as the ruling class, you don't want an eye for an eye anymore, because you have all the power in the world.
So you can't have an eye for an eye.
That's just not allowed anymore.
Because you're the ruling class, an eye for an eye is now going to be slave on state vengeance, and that is not to be allowed.
So when you are not the political ruling class, when you are the, quote, insurgents, then you've got to turn the other cheek.
But when you become the political ruling class, then you've got to switch to...
Sorry, you've got an eye for an eye when you're the insurgents.
When you switch to the ruling class, you have to, have to, have to.
Switch to turn the other cheek, because now that's the instructions that, as the ruling class, you wish to give your slaves.
Turn the other cheek. If we do something wrong against you, it is great, great, deep and wondrous virtue.
To forgive us our trespasses and to go an extra mile, right?
If we unjustly jack up your taxes, $1,000, pay us $2,000!
Because that's virtue. When, of course, that is never what is talked about when you are on the other side of the coin, right?
When you are slaves and you are fighting, right?
Then you have to have this eye for an eye stuff.
Or if you are the master instructing the slaves to do the master's bidding, then you have an eye for an eye if I tell you to.
But never against me. Never against the ruler.
So, that which is considered or called virtue in the traditional sense, as we can see, all completely, completely serves the ruling classes.
And this is why people are so bewildered, frustrated, and angered by UPB, because UPB takes that sword out and says, oh, okay, well, if that's the rule, let's make it a universal rule, and let's start pretending that it is just for the ruling class and so on, right?
But the whole point is morality was invented For the ruling class to control and exploit everyone else.
So the idea that you would take morality out of the ruling class and use it against the ruling class completely is counter to the entire purpose of philosophy throughout history.
Alright, so next we have the virtue of community and the family.
And my supposition from the beginning has been that whatever is considered a virtue in a state of society, given that education and the media are owned by the state, everything which is portrayed as mass market Virtue must be something that serves the ruling class at the expense of everybody else.
It must be. It must be.
There'd be no point. It would be like expecting Coca-Cola to take ads out against Coca-Cola and for Pepsi to expect the ruling class, when it owns the media and the educational systems, to promote ethics which were counter to its own interests.
I mean, I understand. This is impossible.
So, family and community.
So, to take the skeptical approach, which has been my approach from the beginning, which is not to say that it can't be overturned, but this is the evidence that I've seen.
If the value of, say, family were detrimental to the ruling class, then family would not be promoted, right?
So, for instance, where you have an extreme dictatorship, as in communism or certain forms of National Socialism, the family is a threat to the ruling class.
And so you have children paid to become informants on their parents, and children separated from their parents and raised, right?
So where the family is an interference to the expansion of state power, then it is smashed and destroyed.
I would submit, though, in the West that the family is not an impediment to the expansion of state power, but rather supports state power.
And the basic reason for this is that family has stepped up to substitute for Religion as the primary propagandistic mechanism by which the ruling classes convince people the power is virtue.
Well, there's a complex statement.
Should we take another swing at that?
I think so. There was not any particularly strong indication of family feeling up until 19th century.
I mean, if you think of Dickensian childhoods, you think of in the upper classes, children being shipped off to boarding schools and in the middle and lower classes, off to nannies and infanticide.
There was no particularly strong family feeling.
But the way that people conflated or combined virtue and power was through religion.
Power versus virtue, a love story, is an early podcast you might want to check out.
If you haven't, you can find it at freedomandradio.com forward slash search.
But in the past, how is it that the state was considered virtuous, when all the state had was power, and it's the distinct opposite of virtue?
Well, power was virtue.
And when religion was doing that, by giving God all the power and all the virtue, and why was God virtuous?
Because he has all the power. Even though God does things that by his own commandments are immoral, he is considered the ultimate of moral.
Why? Because he is the ultimate of power.
So power equaling morality is the fundamental corrupt axiom of the ruling classes.
We have power, therefore we are good.
You should serve us not because we are powerful, but because we are good.
So you must serve us because we are good, and if you question that virtue, we will exercise our power against you.
That's the fundamental pendulum, right?
You obey us because we're virtuous, and we are virtuous because we are powerful, but if you question that virtue, we will simply exercise power without virtue and frighten you into submission.
And that was taken over by, that was the province of religion.
Now, when religion began to fall apart, you saw a concomitant rise in the virtue of family.
Well, why? Because the virtue of family is bigoted.
It's like saying the virtue of whites, the innate virtue of all whites, right, and the equivalent lack of virtue of all other races.
We understand that if somebody says all whites are good and other races are bad, then that is racist, of course, right?
And to say all families are good or family as an essence or as an institution is good is ridiculous.
It's like saying companies are virtuous.
No, there are good and bad companies.
There are good and bad people. There are good and bad families.
But one thing that families do have, one thing that parents...
And when people say families are virtuous, they always mean parents are virtuous, right?
You understand? Parents and grandparents are virtuous.
And you've probably heard this argument if you come from a not such a great family, you know, I'm older, you should obey me because I'm older, which is easily counteracted.
You just get an older person to side with you, and then your parent has to obey that older person, right?
See, it doesn't really work.
Just convince your grandmother to side with you, have your grandmother tell your mother, and then your mother has to agree with your grandmother and with you because your grandmother is older and age trumps less age, right?
Or just get any random person on the street, pay them five bucks to side with you and say, no, no, no, mom, this person is older, right?
Your mom wouldn't accept that because she's just using age as virtue as a way of gaining power over you.
Or you simply find somebody who's old who says something completely ridiculous, like, I don't know, dig up some quotes by Storm Thurmond about the races or whatever.
Or, I don't know, who lived to a ripe old age who was a dictator.
Robert Mugabe, still alive.
Find some crazy stuff from him and say, well, he's older than you.
Does that mean he's right? Of course not, right?
So when people say families are virtuous, what they're really saying is parents are always virtuous.
In other words, it's back to that same equation.
Power equals virtue.
Power over you equals virtue.
And of course, the ruling classes want everybody to believe that they have achieved their power through virtue.
They haven't seized power and then used virtue to cover it up.
That would be too obvious and empirical an explanation.
What they have done is they were virtuous and so they have power.
And that is, of course, demonstrably false throughout history.
It is not the most virtuous people who gain power in history.
It's quite the opposite.
It is the absolute scum of the bitches who gain power.
And so we understand that virtue does not derive from power.
Sorry, power does not derive from virtue.
Virtue is not the most virtuous people who gain power.
George Bush is the most virtuous person in the world.
And the whole planet. I mean, I don't know how people can even say this stuff with a straight face.
But it just shows you the power of propaganda and splitting.
So, sorry. I'm just going to enjoy that for a moment.
Excuse me. I did a hard workout.
I'm a little coffee. So...
To say families equal virtue is to say that power equals virtue, and that, of course, serves the ruling class.
And if you question the virtue of your parents, you will be attacked by everyone in society, just as if you question the virtue of the ruling class, you will be attacked as a good practice of slave-on-slave violence, right?
And, of course, it's very easy, though emotionally very difficult, intellectually and from a time investment standpoint, very easy to unravel the Gordian knot of power and virtue.
You simply take the standards of virtue and apply them to power.
So if you were told by your parents, as I mentioned before, honesty is a virtue, then you should ask for honesty from your parents about things that you have problems about and see if they apply that same virtue to themselves.
And if they do, kudos to them, fantastic, heal and move forward.
And if they don't, then you have the problem of recognizing that your parents only gave you these virtues in order to have power over you and did not ever imagine or contemplate or picture that these virtues were ever Have to be applied to them or that they would ever have to live by them, right? That's moral hypocrisy, which to me is about the grave of sin, because it is in a way, in many ways, how all other sins commence, how they all start from there.
I'm going to say everything twice and backwards, because that's the kind of podcast it is.
So, as religion began to fall away, the state needed a substitute for the equation virtue equals power, and, of course, it nominated the parents, and in many ways, of course, religion was really derived from that power earlier, blah, blah, blah, we understand that, right?
And these are all empirically testable, right?
We simply apply the virtue that our parents convinced us of to themselves and see if they are thankful for such correction.
They should be, right?
Because that's how they corrected us.
If they are, great. If not, well, we continue to converse.
Now, there's many more, of course, we could go into, and if you're interested, let me know, but here's the last one that I'll mention.
Asceticism versus opulence is another one of these blablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablabl Mind exploding, but thingies that happens like turn the other cheek versus an eye for an eye.
So if you think of, it doesn't really matter, communist Russia, right?
So you have asceticism is preached to the working classes, right?
To the non-ruling classes. Whereas opulism in the form of massive military parades, incredible headgear and soldiers' uniforms and massive airplanes and all this kind of stuff, that is preached for the ruling classes, right?
So Obama says we have to tighten our belts, that's for the working classes, while you get this just vomit-ridden Oprah special panning past these monster gingerbread cathedrals and opulence and, oh, it just makes you want to ralph in your own mouth, except it's so boringly predictable I can't even stifle you on when I see this sort of stuff, because, I mean, how else could it conceivably be?
And you see this all over the place.
Communist China, right?
You're supposed to live in a mud hut because asceticism is a virtue, but for the rulers, you see, opulence is important.
And so, for instance, in Communist China, asceticism is a virtue and downplaying your wealth is a virtue, except when the world comes to the Olympics in Beijing, in which case it's pull out all the stops and substitute the pretty girl for the good singing girl and have fireworks and massive displays of opulence and parades, right? So... So, asceticism is a virtue and a value for the working classes, while opulence is a matter of national pride, and of course that means that opulence is a virtue for the ruling classes.
And you have to live in a mud hut, but you're supposed to feel ashamed if the world is not greeted with fireworks and flybys and immense displays of opulence and spending and so on.
And that's just, I mean, that's just inevitable, right?
You're supposed to feel like if you have to live in an apartment because you're broke, that's, you know, that's being responsible.
But if the US government is nearly broke and Barack Obama makes a symbolic gesture, which would not be unimportant, of moving into an apartment to say, hey, you know, a government's overspent, I'm head of the government, so just like you, I'm going to have to cut back.
People would find that shocking and ridiculous.
Why? Because asceticism is only a virtue.
For the ruled.
Opulence is the virtue for the rulers, right?
So, these kinds of things, I think, are really important to understand.
And morality is just a tool of oppression until UPB wrestles it back from the corrupt clause of the rulers.
And that's one of the reasons why people are so volatile.
And, of course, it is a virtue that you can bring to being in your life and those around you, which breaks the hierarchical predations of ethics as a tool of the ruling classes.
So I hope this has been helpful. If you find it interesting, let me know and we can do a few more ethics.
Or if you come up with your own ethical dualities, please post them on the board.
Thank you so much for listening and for donating and for watching my videos.
And I will talk to you soon.
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