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April 9, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:30
1635 The War

It's deep, hidden, and essential to see.

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Hi everybody, it's Steph. I think it's time to talk about the war.
The war is very important, the war that we're going to talk about today.
I think it's all the more important because so often it occurs for us at an unconscious level.
And if it remains unconscious, it is confusing and destabilizing.
So, in our general raise the Titanic of history approach that we take here, We're going to talk about and make explicit the war that we are engaged in.
Now, just before we get into the actual topic, of course, there's a preamble or two which I'd like to mention.
A few people do get concerned about the war, the imagery or the idea of philosophy as a war, and I can understand that, of course.
And philosophy itself is not warlike, and it is not a war, but when philosophy Is attempting to hack back the predatory tentacles and the exploitive veils of illusion, then there is a combat and there is a conflict, in the same way that libertarianism is a war.
As I've talked about, I guess, as long ago as the Ron Paul series, which was, oh my goodness, over three years ago, I think.
If libertarianism It gets its way.
Then vast sweats of public servants will have to deal with a challenge to their standard of living and their pensions and the free market and all those kinds of good things.
And that is going to be a challenge.
And there will be a war about that.
And that is going to be a more violent war.
And this one is not a violent war, but the emotional violence that it does is brutal.
So let me talk a little bit about this war.
Whenever there is an opposition in ethics or in approaches to happiness, but particularly in terms of ethics, since most people believe that ethics is necessary though not always sufficient for happiness, whenever there is an oppositional principle, there is a win-lose.
There is a win-lose in the situation where there is an opposite approach.
And because there is a win-lose, there is, for every success in one path, A concomitant necessity for failure in another path, right?
So let's say that you and I are lost in the woods and we're arguing about which way to go to get to a town.
And I say, I know that it's north.
And you say, I know that it's south.
And we have phones.
Well, what happens if I go north and we split up, I go north and you go south?
And let's say that one of these is the way to the town that we need to get to or need to be at.
Well, if you show up at the town, I've gone the wrong way.
And if I show up at the town, you have gone the exact opposite way.
We can't both end up at the town because we have taken opposite approaches.
One gone north, one gone south.
Can't both end up at the town.
And I think that's really, really important.
So when we have an approach to happiness, and there are others in the world who have the opposite approach to happiness, we can't both end up at happiness.
Now, we could go east and west.
Let's say the town is north, we can go east and west and neither of us end up at the town, and it may be that two people have opposing approaches.
That neither of them end up at happiness, but I think it's important to recognize that there is a war that is going on in the world.
So, I mean, I'll give you some sort of, let me personalize this a little bit more.
So, my friends, when I was growing up, were all relativists and socialists, to one degree or another.
And because of that...
They found my free market and absolutist approach to be abhorrent.
So, for instance, theirs was acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding.
That was the path to happiness.
Acceptance and forgiveness and understanding of those who had done you wrong.
Which was not my approach.
Not even early on.
My approach was Understanding, of course, absolutely.
Acceptance, no. I found it fundamentally unjust to have the same standards of behavior or the same standards of value for people who had done me harm as for people who had done me good, right? So, if one guy helps me in some significant way, then I assume that I'm going to feel gratitude and so on.
And if some guy, you know, walks up and punches me in the face, then to have the same standard of response to those two situations seemed to me ridiculous, embarrassing, cowardly, pathetic, and unjust, right?
It was more than to me just, well, this is north and south.
It's not a moral opinion, right?
But it seemed to me that it was wrong to have those standards of behavior.
And so I judged.
And I'm sure those of you who've listened to the show for any considerable period of time know that Judgment and I are not exactly strange bedfellows.
And I did not believe in forgiveness as a willed activity, as I still do not believe in forgiveness as a willed activity, any more than I believe in love as a willed activity, or dieting as a willed activity in the absence of changing eating or exercise habits.
I don't believe that you can lose weight without actually changing your behavior.
It's not just a willed activity.
It requires a behavior change.
It requires certain specific behaviors in order to achieve.
In the same way, I feel that I believe, and I think I've made good cases for this, that forgiveness is not a willed activity, but requires changes in behavior on the part of another.
So I had this approach of judgment and standards of behavior, which were universal for myself and for others.
I was always concerned, deeply concerned, that to forgive evil in others without reformation in their behavior obviously serves evil, but even more fundamentally it is permission for immorality.
On one's own part. If evil can be forgiven in others without a change in behavior or without restitution, then evil can be forgiven in oneself without a change in behavior and without restitution.
So it just seemed to me that forgiveness for others was driven more out of a desire to do evil oneself.
I forgive others because I know deep down in the future that I'm going to need forgiveness for what I'm going to do to those around me.
So I was Not just skeptical, but hostile towards this idea.
So, uh...
I'll talk about, doesn't really matter, Fred.
It's not his real name.
This is a guy I grew up with, whose father was mentally ill.
I'm not sure whether it was biological.
I doubt it was biological, but was just messed up and crazy and intrusive and bizarre and caused an enormous amount of frustration and pain and rage for my friend Fred.
And I remember being over...
At Fred's house when I was in my early teens, and Fred was just screaming at his father, who was just continually coming in and interrupting and insisting on crazy things and all that, just really problematic behavior.
And his mother died quite young, which was tragic and may have had something to do with the Forgiveness and acceptance and understanding and non-judgment and so on.
Though, of course, this was not the case when he was younger, where he would get titanically angry at his father for this disruptive and intrusive and abusive behavior.
And there was just a switch over, right?
So it went from anger against this destructive and abusive behavior to this bizarre, levitated, willed forgiveness thing without any transition, without any understanding, without any processing.
It was sort of like, well, when I was 14, I was angry, but now that I'm 20, I understand and I forgive and this and that and the other.
Now, Fred went on to do some bad things and some significantly problematic things.
We don't really have to get into what they were, but they were definitely abusive and actually once got him arrested.
So that didn't seem to work very well.
Now, we took the opposite approach.
Forgiveness as something that is a push economy, you will it towards others, and it is immature and childish and even abusive to withhold it.
That was his approach.
Mine was that forgiveness is something elicited from others.
It is a pull economy.
Other people pull forgiveness out of you through restitution and reformation and apologies and self-understanding and so on.
And that was...
That was our approach.
And this is just a smaller subset of the relativism and I was viewed as puritanical and judgmental and brittle and ideological and all of these kinds of things.
So there was an opposite.
There was an opposite there. And it's a very important opposite.
And I would really invite you.
It's worth writing it down, worth making a chart.
Who did you grow up with?
Who had fundamental oppositional beliefs to you about what was right and what was proper and what was good.
There was a guy who played Dungeons and Dragons with, who became a fundamentalist Christian in his mid-teens.
So for him, it was obedience to Jesus that was the good.
And I found obedience to Jesus to be a tragic capitulation of self-determination.
And an abandonment of responsibility to the manipulative false mythologies of others.
The role of self-knowledge was something that I rigorously pursued, whereas other people was, you know, I was viewed as obsessing about the past because I really sat down and tried to work out both in written and verbal forms, tried to work out from 16 or 17 onwards, tried to work out what the hell had happened to me that was bad or abusive or tragic.
And I was viewed as dwelling on the past, not getting on with my life and obsessing over things long gone and playing the victim.
I was playing the victim because I was focusing on the wrongs that were done unto me and not moving on with my life.
So again, this was a negative judgment, an oppositional judgment.
See, the idea that we must struggle and strive to understand history in order to surmount it, that those who do not learn their personal history are doomed to repeat it.
That was my approach, and other people, most of the other people in my life, were...
I'll stop. Towards that, not just neutral, but like I've decided to learn Mandarin.
Well, that's odd, but what the hell?
But this was oppositional.
And my friend Fred, who was arrested for a domestic disturbance, let's say, he was forced to go to anger management.
I suggested, got him the name, worked hard to get him the name of a good therapist who I thought would fit, and he wouldn't go.
He wouldn't go. Because, you know, it doesn't matter.
I want to get into details, because details aren't important relative to the principle.
So this was oppositional.
Now, there are only three possibilities when you take oppositional paths, right?
Think of the woods, north-south.
If the person who goes north gets to the town called Happiness, then the person who's south has gone the entire wrong direction and must backtrack and has twice the journey that he would have otherwise.
I go a mile north, find a town called Happiness, the guy who's gone a mile south now has a two-mile journey, has to turn around, admit he was wrong, it's a two-mile journey.
So, if I go a mile north and find the town Happiness, and he knows this, then he knows that he's gone the wrong direction.
And he now has a two-mile journey in the dark, when he's hungry, without light, to get to the town called Happiness.
So when he hears that I got to the town called Happiness, he's not going to be happy.
Similarly, if he calls me and says, I got to the town called Happiness, I'm like, damn, now I'm just deeper into the dark wood.
And there are wolves.
Now, the degree to which he stormed off south calling me a retarded idiot for wanting to go north is the degree to which it's going to be even tougher for him to turn around, admit he was wrong, apologize for the abuse because I turned out to be right.
He's probably just going to keep heading south, saying that I'm lying or ignoring you, he's not going to answer my phone, whatever, right?
And this has been the case.
I tell you, I tell you, tell you, tell you that My friendships, the friendships that I had from my youth, from my youth, they took a significant turn for the worse when I began to gain real traction in terms of happiness.
When I made a movie, when I became a successful entrepreneur, and some of those friendships stayed okay, more distant, but okay, as long as I was not having great success in my romantic life.
But then when I met the beloved C, nobody wanted to know.
Nobody wanted to know.
And that was when my friendships began to really peel away.
Because I had an incredibly successful relationship with an obviously amazing woman.
Well-educated, warm, funny, brilliant, deep in self-knowledge, practices psychology.
I mean, the whole package.
Beautiful, right?
And so when I... I had achieved that, which was, I guess, eight years ago I met.
I met my wife. Future wife.
When that occurred, people began to really pull away from me.
Why? Because they saw that I had found the town called Happiness.
And that I had succeeded.
And every prediction that they had made was that I must fail.
I must fail.
Because I'd gone the opposite direction.
And I'm really telling you the truth here, that my friends and my family were almost infinitely harsher towards me for my choices than I was to them for their choices.
I don't remember a single time where I condemned any of my friends or family for the choices that they were making.
But I was condemned repeatedly.
I mean, I know this sounds like lopsided and so on, but I'm not actually much of a condemnatory person.
It's maybe been a dozen podcasts where I've roundly condemned someone out of almost 2,000.
But I was much more sinned against than sinning when it came to condemnation.
They all cursed at me for being an idiot.
They all headed south, and I just made my way north without attack.
But there was a war, and I didn't become aware of this war until later.
It's really, really important to understand this war, because if it's not conscious, then it's occurring in the unconscious.
Those who take the opposite approach to you need you to fail.
Because you take this with you.
You take this Greek chorus from hell with you, wherever you go.
So let's say that you separate from abusive people in your life.
A defu, a defriend, or whatever.
You work at it, you try to fix it, it doesn't work, you get help, and you separate from the abusive people in your life.
Well, those abusive people want you to be unhappy.
They want you to fail.
Because that's their prediction.
And those who are continuing to stick with abusive people in their lives also need you to fail.
And you bring this chorus of doom and despair and failure with you when you break from social conventions.
If you separate from an abusive parent and your parent dies, well, the whole Greek chorus is now, well, you're supposed to be miserable and regret that you didn't stick with that person because now they're dead and blah, blah, blah, right?
You're supposed to be worse off.
Oh, you may have some temporary relief, but it's bad for you in the long run.
It's like candy or cocaine.
And so, if a parent does die and you're not unhappy, I mean, you go through some mourning, you go through some sadness, but you don't experience regret.
They hate it. And they fear it.
They hate it. And they fear it.
This is why there is a significant amount of growth anxiety in those of us who live principled philosophical lives.
Because we create a great deal of anxiety in those around us who aren't living principled lives or whose principles are ridiculous or false.
Well, same thing. Right?
It's a war.
They need you to fail.
They want you to fail.
They're dying and begging for you to fail.
And I couldn't understand at the time why my friends would pull away from me when I was as successful and happy as...
Right, the last straw was Freedom in Radio, right?
That I was really pursuing my dream and really having a positive impact and really doing some great things with my life.
Oh, unbearable!
Unbearable to the people around me.
Unbearable. And I think it was in particular unbearable because there was no turning back.
I mean, my friends were married or...
If they weren't going to give up their prejudices for principals when they were 16, they sure as hell weren't going to do it when they were 35 and married with kids.
Especially with all that additional investment, especially with the additional abuse they'd heaped upon me for taking the principal approach.
This is straight out of the Fountainhead.
Every time that Howard Rourke has a setback, Peter Keating is overjoyed.
You see? Integrity doesn't work.
Virtue doesn't work. Philosophy doesn't work.
Self-knowledge doesn't work. Principles don't work.
And they need...
they need you to fail.
Because if you succeed, they're doomed.
Right, you understand? If you succeed, they are doomed.
They are lost in the darkening woods with wolves and bears and snakes and spiders forever.
And the dark and nighted wood will swallow them whole For eternity, they are doomed if you succeed.
Now, they're doomed if you fail too, but that's not what they're focusing on.
Opposite paths necessitate and require the failure of the opposite.
Their prediction, my friends' and family's prediction, was that I was going to become progressively more intolerant and self-pitying And unsuccessful in everything I turned my hand to.
Lonely and loveless and too high and mighty for anyone and everyone.
That was the prediction.
It's not something I'm guessing.
This is what I was openly told and repeatedly told.
And to be perfectly honest, I really didn't spend...
Sorry, I shouldn't really say that, like I'm not being honest.
I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about the futures of others.
I mean, I was just trying to deal with my own stuff and trying to build my own foundation for a happy life from the gravel bit from hell I was born into.
So I wasn't sitting there going, ah, you people will fail, fail, fail.
Now, when I did think about it, I thought, well, yeah, I mean, this is not going to work out well.
But I didn't sort of attempt to impress that upon them.
When you're hard at work building your own house, you don't have time to go and kick down the half-built walls of others.
Now, the important thing to understand is that...
And see, once you take this oppositional path to happiness and virtue and integrity...
I mean, another reason why I couldn't keep these people in my life, and why they sure as hell didn't want me in their life...
Was because the failure becomes necessary, and if it is not there, it will be created.
If your failure is not present to those who are incredibly invested in your failure, they will create it.
They will encourage you towards self-destructive ends.
They will fail to intervene and point out things that are problematic in your relationships or in your career or in your life.
They need you to fail so badly that if the failure is not present, they will create it.
They will inflict it. They will spread slander about you.
They will make up stories.
They will say you're not happy when you are.
Or they say that your happiness is blind.
Or they will create whatever mythology they need to to pretend that you have not made it to the town called Joy.
Because if you have, they are lost forever.
So I suggest to have a look around.
Have a good look around you.
See who is invested in your failure.
Who is on the opposite path?
And to recognize the truth about the dark side of the drive to happiness, which is inevitable, you and I are also invested in the failure of others who have taken opposite moral paths.
We are invested.
Now, that doesn't mean that we are completely subjective and blind, because invested doesn't mean blind.
In fact, it's really important to be aware that you're invested, so that you can recognize it is to some degree a bias, but in some ways it's not.
Let's say that you are an anti-smoking advocate.
In the 1950s or whatever, right?
Just when it was starting to come out that they were bad for people.
And you invest a huge amount of time and energy in getting people to quit smoking.
Well, obviously, you want those who quit smoking to get healthier.
And you don't want those who continue to smoke to get cancer or emphysema or whatever, right?
It's not like you want that.
It's not like I want immoral people to be miserable.
I mean, I'd much rather they weren't miserable.
I'd much rather they weren't immoral, obviously.
Politicians and the like.
Relativists. I would much rather that they see the light of reason and evidence and become happy.
That would be my preference. In the same way that you would prefer that people quit smoking.
But you understand, if you're an anti-smoking zealot, and the people who quit smoking get cancer, and the people who keep smoking can run marathons, then you have just spent your life Encouraging people to do that which is self-destructive.
You have contributed to cancer and emphysema and premature death by encouraging people not to smoke.
So if you look at a pro-smoking zealot and an anti-smoking zealot, Ayn Rand and Surgeon General, then the pro-smoking zealots Will feel bad if they accept and understand that smoking causes cancer because they have contributed to incidence of cancer.
And so they are invested in no cancer associated with smoking.
Right? They're invested in that.
Really are. And the people who are against smoking are invested in people getting cancer.
And it's tricky because it's not like you want people.
This is the important thing to understand.
It's not like you want people to get cancer.
The whole reason that you're an anti-smoking zealot is because you don't want people to get cancer.
But if nobody gets cancer who smokes, then you've wasted your life.
You understand? It's complex.
But, also not. I think we, again, I just really want to, you know, because I don't want people to write to me and say, so you want people to be miserable?
No, no, no. Of course not. I want people to be rational.
I want people to be happy. That's why I do this whole damn thing.
Take all these bullets, right?
That's why I do this. I want people to be happy.
But, I accept the reality that That the reason I'm doing this is because people won't be happy if they're not rational, if they're not philosophical, if they don't live with integrity, they won't be happy.
I accept that. I don't wish it, I don't inflict it, I don't create it any more than an anti-smoker inflicts cancer on smokers.
But you accept that if you don't quit smoking, you're likely to get sick.
We accept this as a fact.
I accept that people who don't live with integrity Can't be happy.
Because happiness is around unity.
And you cannot be unified as a personality if you are at war with yourself.
And you cannot be at peace with yourself if you accept opposing principles.
I mean, you just can't be.
If you accept opposing principles, violence is good for the state, violence is bad for individuals.
Other people's religions are a superstition, mine is transcendent truth.
Forgiveness is a virtue, and those who don't forgive are also virtuous.
Because abusive people don't forgive.
If we say forgiveness is a virtue, then a parent obviously only abuses a child because the parent has not forgiven the child for some transgression.
So, if forgiveness is a virtue, then an abusive parent, by definition, is not virtuous.
But then they are virtuous because you have to forgive them.
It's all messed up, right?
So you can't have unity within yourself, or peace within yourself, if you accept hypocritical and opposing moral principles.
It's double, triple, infinity think.
It's the ecosystem, full-out war with itself.
And this is why a lack of integrity results in a lack of happiness.
Trying to live without integrity and be happy is like trying to diet while blending a salad in with a cheesecake.
It's taking opposing principles, mixing them together, trying to live by both, and ending up only with the effects of the worst.
You can't be happy without integrity, and you can't have integrity without reason and evidence.
And so, if you live with integrity, and people fundamentally believe that this will make you miserable, if the misery is not present, they will create it, they will provide it.
And this is why once you take a stand in life around virtue and integrity, around philosophy, reason and evidence, once you take a stand in life, then those who oppose you cannot belong in your life.
They're either going to make you unhappy and drag you back down, or you're going to break free of that quicksand destructive clutch embrace.
There's not much, at least in my experience, in the middle.
I mean, you can have some pleasant and empty social interactions, like I'll chat with my neighbors while our kids play together or whatever, but fundamentally, it can't be sustained.
And see, hypocritical, like bad people, people without integrity, people who are hypocrites, they really get the MECO system because they live under the domination of violent swings on the MECO system at all times.
So they understand the MECO system better than those with more peace of mind who don't, right?
In the same way that if your car breaks down continually, you know a lot more about your car than if it runs smoothly.
If you have to fix it yourself, right?
Which is the truth of all self-knowledge.
There are no mechanics, right?
There are only people who can hand us tools, which I guess is therapy, right?
Or other philosophy, perhaps.
Well, they understand the mecosystem very well, because they experience its vitriol and opposition continually.
Because bad people understand the mecosystem very well, they will attempt to inflame your conflicts by fueling criticisms and hostilities towards yourself.
They will attempt to create and provoke self-criticism, self-alienation, contradiction, frustration, paralysis, self-attack, continually.
Because they know how powerful it is, because they are swamped by it at all times.
That's why it's dangerous to have moral hypocrites around.
They will try to get in your head, and they will try to set you at odds against yourself, against truth, against virtue.
They will do anything to keep you from landing in the town called Happiness, because that places them in the deep, dark woods forever.
So be aware of this war.
Be aware of this war, and it doesn't matter if you haven't spoken to somebody in five years, a year, a decade.
The war is still something you need to be aware of, because the war is the echoes of others in your head.
Everybody in our life leaves an impression and a pattern within our mind.
Everybody, significant in our lives, leaves an impression and a pattern within our minds.
And we can detach from the person.
We can't detach from the impression within our minds.
I can leave my mom.
My mom is never going to leave me.
It needs to be accepted and managed as part of the personality.
So, to my mind, to my way of thinking, integrity is really impossible.
With corrupt and brutal people around.
Because we can only have those people around by pretending that we're not fundamentally at war and that it is a win-lose proposition and situation.
We can only, only, only keep those people around by imagining that our interests are aligned in some way.
In some way! We both want the same thing in some way, but it's not true.
Opposite moral approaches is a win-lose situation, or a lose-lose situation, if you're both, like, one goes to Buddhism and one goes to Christianity.
It's not fundamentally different, but appears different, I suppose.
But it's a win-lose proposition.
Do not keep people around in your life.
It's my opinion, right?
You can do whatever you want, obviously, right?
But my opinion is don't keep people around in your life who are invested in your failure.
And when you are invested in their failure, you really can't do each other anything but harm fundamentally.
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