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March 15, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:27
1615 God, the State and the Family - Sibling Abuse Part Four: Marxism and Christianity

An application of the theory to the challenges of religion and Marxism.

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Hi, this is Sibling and Abuse, Part 4, and someone posted something on the message board, which I'll read before continuing.
Sorry, there was only going to be three parts, but I had a good idea, and he pointed out something that's an extension on, or I guess more detail, about what I was saying about the original role of Lucifer.
So he writes, more needs to be said about Satan, a.k.a.
Lucifer. In Hebrew mythology, as Steph pointed out, he is a kind of advocate for God, but of a very special sort.
Other angels existed to tell mankind all about God and to advise them as to how to behave, but Satan had a slightly saltier role.
The word Satan itself, from the Hebrew, means adversary or bearer of adversity.
Satan's whole job as an angel in the Hebrew legend was to act as an agent of adversity on behalf of God.
In order to test his creation, he was tasked by God to screw things up for us.
For an example of this, see either the book of Job, rewritten in Christian mythology to appear more like a kind of duel between them, or see the story of Balaam in Numbers 22.
In the Lucifer incarnation, the devil is also the bearer of forbidden knowledge, and in Christian mythology a symbol of the sinfulness of pride.
Though scripturally this isn't so clear, there are numerous stories in Greek In the Old English mythology, see the story of Venus, for example, to sustain this image of him in the modern psyche.
So, in a sense, and I think this fits very closely with the theory, and just before we dive into that, I mean, I think people may be, and I had a few emails to this effect, sort of say, well, you know, what is the value of this sort of analysis?
How do we know whether it's true or false?
Well, I think there is some objectivity in art and in mythology, although it's not syllogistical or perhaps even mathematical, right?
So, is Bohemian Rhapsody a better song than the B-side, I'm in love with my car, or the B-side of Under Pressure called Soul Brother, which is a pretty wretched effort?
Although good vocals. I mean, can you objectively prove that Bohemian Rhapsody is a better song than Soul Brother by Queen?
Or something equally bad like Stealin'?
Well, no, you can't mathematically.
But we know, right?
We kind of know.
You can't mathematically prove that The Sixth Sense is a better movie than Plan 9 from Outer Space.
But we recognize that it does seem to be the case.
And there are a few people who would argue to the contrary, and nobody who would do so seriously.
Is Shakespeare a more complex, deep, and resonant writer than John Grisham?
Can you prove that mathematically?
No, but we guess.
We guess you could count the numbers of syllables and so on.
But anyway, I think we sort of understand that, I mean, is John Grisham more challenging philosophically than Ayn Rand?
Well, no.
And you could prove this to some degree with some word analysis and so on, but there is a way of evaluating things.
Is Henri a better painter than my daughter?
Well, so far, yes.
So you can say some intelligent things about trends in art, and what we are here is examining the kind of art and psychology.
But it doesn't rise to the Or empirical proof.
But we do look for patterns.
And patterns within the mind must be explained by something.
It must be explained by something.
If they're pretty common and universal.
So, in the instance of what this gentleman is quoting, he's pointing out that Satan is the bringer of adversity.
Now, since, of course, God did not create Satan and Satan doesn't exist, it must have been not a push principle, but a pull principle.
A push principle is something imposed from the outside, like be it work by nine or whatever.
A push principle is something that is generated from inside.
I like to paint or whatever.
And since there is no God, we must look for the universality of these systems, of these repetitive imageries.
We must look for it as serving some particular need within the human mind.
That need cannot be purely internally generated because it is universal.
And since I don't believe in the existence of a collective unconscious, there must be something that is general about it.
So, we have, of course, the problem in religion, which is foundational, old, and a really boring one, but worth mentioning in this context.
God is all perfect, God is all good, but we're all dying of tooth decay at the age of 22.
And, you know, half the women die in childbirth over the course of their life, and, you know, three-quarters of the kids die before the age of five, and you get...
Ulcers and abscesses and cancers and rickets and gout and, you know, all this shit that goes on.
We starve to death pretty regularly, fats and disease and that.
So, when you have a fantasy of virtue in a situation of evil, the only way that you can maintain the fantasy of virtue is for there to be a scapegoat or a stand-in.
Which explains the evil, right?
And I guess in Hebrew mythology, Satan is the test, right?
So God is all good, and God gives you these tests.
And so it's God's love that creates the evil that you have to suffer because...
And it's all kind of nutty, but it makes sense in the context of...
Ancient Jewish or ancient world in general, patriarchies.
I beat you because I love you.
And the reason that this works, I think, from a psychological standpoint, is that to maintain the virtue of the parents...
Somebody else must substitute for the ills that are all around you.
So if you're some, you know, the seventh son of a seventh son, as the blues songs, say, if you're some younger sibling in a big family, and, you know, all the ills and beatings and teasings and manipulations and brain twists of the world are descending upon you from the family structure, you can either say, well, gee, my parents are doing a really bad job, Of creating a positive, functional, and loving environment.
And that brings you perilously close to the idea that your parents are bad.
And unfortunately, and you can read more of Dumas' stuff for this, the psychohistory stuff, unfortunately, given that infanticide was so common throughout history, children who displeased their parents would very often just be abandoned or killed.
And so it really wasn't productive or possible for children to stand up against their parents.
It is a massive taboo because it was so often fatal.
Or, if not fatal directly, fatal indirectly.
In that, you know, the parent would give the more food to the favorite children and the less food to the least favorite children.
The parents would want to cuddle by the fire with the favorite children and would not want to cuddle by the fire in the cold with the least favorite children, so you'd freeze to death or starve to death or just generally get weaker or whatever.
So, I mean, you understand this is why the taboo has remained so powerful even into the modern world.
But questioning the virtue of parents, It arouses life and death fight-and-flight anxiety for a lot of people, because that's just how we evolved.
And to question that, it renders us exceedingly, exceedingly anxious.
I mean, I know that was the case for me when I was going through it.
I mean, it's very, very scary.
It is a real taboo, and it's rooted in our biological makeup.
Now, that doesn't mean that I excuse people who don't confront their fears about this taboo, because we've been able to do it with women, right?
Violence against women. And so, of course, we should extend those principles, despite our anxieties, to children, where it's even more important, particularly those who say they're devoted to the health and peace of the world.
But when you have an evil situation to maintain the virtue of parents and to maintain the virtue of God, you have to invent an evil trickster, a Loki at best, and a Lucifer in the middle, and a Christian Satan at worst.
And that's how you maintain the virtue of the parents.
And the virtue of God is you invent another being who is responsible for the ills and evils Of the world, right?
So, when things go bad in the government for statists, they blame the corporations, you see.
They blame Walmart, right?
Or they'll blame the party in power.
They can never blame the principle of coercion that is the foundation of statism.
And when things go bad in the world, religious people can't blame God, of course, because that would be to question the virtue of God and the whole foundation of their propaganda.
What they have to do is they have to invent someone else to blame.
And in religion, it's all sibling blame, right?
So the elder sibling is Satan and the younger sibling is humanity.
And so it is Satan's attacks or temptations of the younger sibling which is responsible for the evil.
Fundamentally, it is the fault of the younger sibling, right?
I mean, blame the victim is absolutely essential for destructive families and for statism and for religion.
Blame the victim is Blame the insurance companies for attempting to survive in an increasingly tax-heavy, hyper-regulated, random fiat currency smashed up in terms of the value of money like society.
They're just trying to survive, and you blame them, not the government.
You blame the brokers on Wall Street for not wanting to give up A million dollars of easy money, which, of course, very few people would ever do, rather than the system which creates those incentives.
So, blame the victim is always the case.
And in religion, blame the victim translates into, well, humanity is the fault.
Lucifer is the result.
And this goes all the way through to modern times.
I mean, certainly in my case. I was always accused of playing the victim and blaming other people for my troubles and, you know, all the usual stuff that goes on in dysfunctional families.
And that goes all the way through to the present, that you blame the victim.
So you've got Satan, you've got God, and you've got humanity.
And who is responsible for the ills of the world?
Why, humanity, of course.
And Satan is merely the effect of humans succumbing to temptation and to evil.
And that fits, I think, very well within the metaphor.
So, in general then, wherever you have an absolute power, a non-power, and an intermediate power, parents, younger sibling, elder siblings, the younger sibling, in order to preserve the illusion of the virtue of the greater power of the parents,
He's going to pretend that the evil he is experiencing comes from the middle power, from the elder sibling, and that he must appeal to the parent in order to protect himself from the evil elder sibling.
And we see this repeated over and over again in human thought.
Corporations are oppressing me.
I need to appeal to the government to protect me from corporations.
But the reality, of course, psychologically, is that the parents create the abuses of the elder sibling by being abusive themselves, as we've heard about in the last podcast which detailed the literature.
And this is why it doesn't work, right?
So you appeal to the parents to save you from the evil elder sibling, but it's the parents who are responsible for the evil of the elder sibling, because children aren't fundamentally morally responsible, at least relative to parents.
So that's on the one side.
Now on the other side, I think, is an interesting phenomenon as well, which is what about the elder siblings?
Well, I would say that certain punitive forms of Of libertarianism or republicanism, which blame the victim, are the elder sibling slash parent response to the vulnerability of the younger siblings.
And when the younger sibling is hurt or upset or thwarted or stalled somehow, then, as a result of the actions of the parent and the elder sibling, the temptation is to blame the younger sibling as if everything is equal.
In this way, the Republicans blame the poor for being poor, blame the blacks for being in ghettos, right?
Blame women for making less money and so on.
And this is very interesting, right?
To blame the victim occurs from the parents, the collusion between the parents and the elder sibling and the poor to stand in for the younger sibling.
And then the younger siblings say, well, I need the state to protect me from rapacious corporations and polluters and so on.
When, of course, the government produces corporations and polices and regulates them already.
So if corporations are doing evil and the government is far more powerful than the corporations and regulates all the corporations, then clearly it's the corporations.
That are not at fault, and the government that is at fault, since it has all the power.
But it is far easier to blame an elder sibling and excuse the parents than it is to place the blame where property relies for evil within the family, which is on the parents and the grandparents, and the extended family, and all of the adults, right?
So, I sort of wanted to point that out, that the blame the victim that occurs, where...
of pompous, wealthy white kids pat themselves on the back for being born on third base and thinking they've hit a home run rather than having empathy and sympathy for those who are born in horrendous circumstances and having some charitable impulses towards them as opposed to the self-made wealthy white kids pat themselves on the back for being born on And having some charitable impulses towards them, as opposed to the self-made man, right?
The rags to riches, the land of opportunity, and so on.
Well, of course, we've seen with child abuse that the starting block is far from equal.
Far from equal.
And so I hope that the idea that everything is equal...
Despite abuse is the lie of the parents slash elder siblings when looking upon the destruction of the younger siblings.
You know, we're doing fine.
Everything's equal. You have failed.
You have made a mistake. Anyway, let's move on to what I think is a real clincher to this argument.
You want to be able to have a theory that explains disparate, seemingly unrelated, but exceedingly powerful phenomenon, particularly a phenomenon of opposites.
And so let me give you what I think is a really great clincher that occurred to me yesterday while mulling over these topics.
So the general theory would be, and this is not specific to the sibling thing, but this is a general theory of self-knowledge that I work with, that all unprocessed trauma must find a root somewhere.
And if it does not find a root in the truth, which it almost never will if it is unprocessed, that's the very definition of unprocessed, If it does not find its root in the truth, then it will find its root in mythology, the mythology of nationalism, of racism, of collectivism, of religion, superstition, and so on. If trauma is not processed, then it will find substitutes in mythology.
Now, if that's the case, and sibling abuse is the last great unprocessed trauma of society, Then, the theory is able to explain an extremely interesting set of phenomenon that occur within the realm of libertarianism to Marxism.
So, Satan is a stand-in for the sibling.
God is a stand-in for the parent.
Corporations are a stand-in for the elder sibling.
The state is a stand-in for the poor.
Sorry, the state is a stand-in for the parents.
If that's true, then it explains with chillingly beautiful delicacy the following phenomenon.
We would then expect, if this is true, that those who had unprocessed sibling trauma would be very drawn to these mythologies.
And we would also find that those who were more religious...
Would tend to be less critical of corporations.
Why? Because they have the big receptacle, the big black bag of Satan to put all their sibling trauma into, to project all their sibling trauma into.
So they will be, the more religious they are, the more in general they will tend to be Free market.
Less afraid of corporations because corporations don't have the projection of sibling abuse and therefore they're less afraid.
However, Satan and God has all the projections.
In the same way, the more religious that people are, to some degree it would explain why more religious people I mean, in the modern world, I know I've had arguments against that throughout history,
but in sort of the modern American libertarian paradigm, because they have a big gas bag called God to place all their parental projections into, and therefore they can look upon the state as a thing itself, rather than a big bag of emotional projection.
So they can criticize the state because they're not unconsciously criticizing their parents.
But if you criticize God, they get very angry and offended because then you are criticizing their parents.
If you're saying God is not virtuous, they hear my parents are not virtuous at an unconscious level.
But because they don't project that onto the state, they can criticize the state very heavily.
On the other hand, you would then assume That people who were not religious, but who were also drawn to the same paradigm for reasons we've discussed, that they, because they don't have God and Satan to project their parental-slash-sibling abuses into, that they would be far more ferocious about the existing state and existing corporations.
You see? It's a diagonal, right?
So if you're religious, you can project parents, siblings into God and Satan.
And therefore, you can talk about the state and corporations slightly more objectively.
Actually, quite a bit more objectively.
On the other hand, if you are an atheist or agnostic or a skeptic or a rationalist or you're just not a fundamentalist, then you don't have...
The big bag of God to ralph up your projections into.
Therefore, they have to go somewhere else.
They have to go somewhere else.
Which explains why the more secular, humanistic, left-wing-slash-Marxist cadres within society tend to be so virulently anti-corporate and anti-current state.
And I think that is such a powerful explanation that it lends, to me, enormous weight to the theory.
And I think that it comes about as close as a theory can be in this realm to be valid or proven.
Again, it's not syllogistic.
It would require a significant empirical amount of research to figure all of this stuff out.
And you would have to have a lot of truths about the families of famous people that they probably never ever spoke about.
So, I think that's a no-go.
I think that we won't get that kind of empirical information.
You can get it through introspection and through honest conversations with those around you.
But let me just run through that once more.
It's so important that I'm sorry to...
I'm sure you've got it, but just for my own sake of my own conscience.
Right? So, your parental-slash-sibling trauma has to go somewhere.
The more it goes into the state, the less it needs to go into religion, which is why Marxists...
We're virulently anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-democratic existing quasi-monarchic governments within Europe of the 19th century.
They had given up on God, and therefore, like a massive sloshing tidal wave from one side to the other, leaving the left hand of the ocean dry and the right hand of the ocean submerged, and the shore to a hundred miles, All of the projections sloshes out of God and into the states slash corporations,
which is why Marxists are so virulently anti-capitalist because the capitalist is the sibling and the state is the parent, right?
And it's why they focus so much of their rage on the capitalist because the capitalist is the intermediate power with more power than the worker but less power than the state.
But they can't focus on the evils of the state because if they focus on the evils of the state, they have no solution because their solution is an ultimate state, right?
So the Marxists have to go that way.
Whereas the libertarians, who are very, very largely fundamentalist, or at least specifically Christian, and to some degree Jewish, but religious for sure, or heavily involved in religiosity, the libertarians don't have the same hate on for corporations and the state, because they can put all of their history and their trauma and their repressed experiences of evil into...
God and the devil.
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