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April 24, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
17:14
1649 Frustrating Happiness

One of the main goals of immoral people is to make you feel frustrated and helpless -- don't let them!

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One of the most essential goals of evil is to frustrate and render helpless virtue.
See, evil is a horrible kind of depression in that there is a yearning for the good and there is a prior giving up on goodness to achieve anything substantial in life, which is why evil is always associated with cynicism.
And a taunting of virtue, because those who have become evil have, through circumstances plus will, have made the decision that good is futile, that goodness is a sucker's game, that the world is run by evil and evil.
So there are those who are strong and powerful in the Nietzschean sense, and those who blindly Twitter after virtue and are easily manipulated by irrational standards.
Virtue is a useful tool for controlling the sheeple, as is believed.
And for a man to become evil, which is to say, to become cynical and nihilistic, and to believe that That virtue is foolish.
Virtue is something that you outgrow.
Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
It is a lie that you outgrow.
It's a useful lie. You know, like Plato's divisions into metallic strata of society.
It's a useful lie to tell to children because children need to be controlled and managed and are willful and disobedient.
So virtue is a useful lie to tell to children the same way that...
The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are fun lies to tell to children, the same way that fairy tales are innocuous and pleasant lies to tell to children.
Virtue is a necessary lie to tell to children, but the wise man, you see, It's the man who outgrows the fairy tale called morality and accepts that the way to get things done in this world is simply to will, to act, to gather power, to control, and to use morality as one uses a bandsaw or a screwdriver in construction.
You use morality to achieve your ends, but you don't believe in it.
In the same way that if you wish to amass power, you may start a religion and you will tell people useful lies masquerading as truths, but not because you believe these lies, but because it will cause these people to relinquish voluntarily resources to you.
And this is the perspective that evil has on virtue, that it is a tool to control the gullible and only a fool allows himself to be controlled in this manner, that the purpose of wisdom is a kind of dark and cynical and effective outgrowing of the mythology of morality that the world It's empty of meaning and virtue,
and people need these comforting fairy tales of goodness because they don't have the strength to stand on their own two feet and to look at the world for what it actually is, but need to be addicted to look at it through the rose-colored glasses of ethical absolutes, which no more exist than do dryads, nymphs, fairies, and gods, and goblins.
So, to the evil, morality...
Morality must be defined as helpless.
In the same way that anybody who is in the grip of a fundamental and life-altering illusion is helpless.
Somebody who is under the illusion that you can build a canyon-spanning bridge out of soap bubbles is helpless.
They cannot achieve their goal because it's impossible.
But they're under the delusion that it is possible and it is essential.
If you think that something is possible when it's impossible and is essential, then you're fundamentally helpless because you cannot possibly achieve your end.
And For the evil, those who believe in virtue believe that something is possible, which is not possible, i.e.
that virtue exists and can be achieved and will make you happy and is effective and will triumph, right?
And they all lived happily ever after, right?
That's the fantasy of the virtuous, that if you are virtuous, you will live happily ever after.
And, of course, virtue doesn't exist, and...
It's like asking for strength and vitality, I'm going to drink the souls of fairies.
Well, you're not going to achieve your aim, but you're not going to do all the other things that will actually achieve your aim in terms of diet and exercise, right?
If you have a fantasy, you're fundamentally helpless.
Fundamentally helpless. So for the cynical, the amoral, the evil, morality must be helpless.
Must be. Because if it's not helpless, then it's not an illusion.
And if it's not an illusion, then they are in error.
And not just inconsequentially in error, or abstractly in error, but in error about virtue.
And there is nothing more terrifying to the evil than being wrong about virtue.
So then the question arises, how do the evil...
Provoke and maintain the perceived helplessness of the virtuous.
It's clever.
It's very, very clever.
So many of the smartest people are immoral.
Well, the way that they maintain their faith in the helplessness of morality is to constantly frustrate and paralyze And hinder and mock and ridicule those with claims to virtue.
Puncturing the vain fantasies of the virtuous is sport and meat and drink to evil.
And they do this in a number of ways.
They do this by pointing out...
And it's similar to atheism with religion, right?
So they do this by pointing out the 10,000 false moral beliefs that the world has and then say...
Do you really think that yours is the only true one?
There are 10,000 false moral beliefs the world has and has had throughout history when everyone thought they were right.
Slavery, subjugation of women, children, dictatorships, intense religiosity.
All of these were moral standards at the time that turned out to be utterly false.
So are you going to say that you've managed to find or you've managed to establish the one true moral?
And this is the same thing that we say to some religious people.
There are 10,000 false gods in the world.
Are you saying yours is the only true one, the only exception to that rule?
It's a very clever argument.
And until you be, I would say, unanswerable.
They will also ask for a meaning.
Whether it's the meaning in life, what is the meaning of life?
We should do that, which gives us pleasure and increases our power.
If the increase of power gives us pleasure, which for most people it does, then that's what we should do.
Pragmatic hedonism is the hallmark of immorality.
And statism. But I repeat myself.
So they will demand to know the meaning.
The burden of proof lies on those who have the proposition.
In the same way we say to religious people, I don't have to disprove God, you have to prove God.
I don't have to disprove morality, you have to prove morality.
That's a challenge that I've certainly taken on successfully, I believe.
And... Most of what they do, though, is in the interpersonal sphere, and what they will do is they will simply refuse to be bound by logic and evidence.
I mean, UPB demolishes the perspective of evil very clearly, right?
If it is silly, foolish, and impractical and wrong to believe in morality, then you've just established the virtue and value of truth and evidence and reason, and therefore you have established the first moral principle of Which is honesty.
So you can't nix morality through cynicism.
Any reasoned argument against morality establishes the value and virtue of honesty and truth.
Can't be done. Can't be done.
But... The amoral or the immoral will simply and continually refuse to be bound by logic and evidence.
They will continue to change their minds, or to change their arguments, to change their minds, to retreat, to dodge, to change, to attack.
And in this way, they are entirely, in fact, identical to the religious.
So how do they frustrate so much?
How do they have this magic power to frustrate?
Well, it's... It's actually quite easy.
It's blindingly simple, like all things of great genius.
It's blindingly simple, yet very hard to see.
Dare I say, like OOPB itself?
So the way that you are frustrated in your pursuit of virtue is as follows.
First of all, you are told that your existing relationships are absolute.
Absolute. That they are a value...
Irrespective of content.
Your family, your sports team, your country, your culture, your religion, whatever.
Jesus himself.
You're told that your existing relationships are of innate value regardless of content.
And what that means is you can't leave.
So to make somebody feel helpless, you first and foremost have to make them feel trapped.
You have to make them feel that their relationships are not voluntary.
Or that acting as if their relationships are voluntary is wrong, right?
And then what happens is your appeals to reason are rejected within that relationship.
So you're helpless to leave because relationships are not voluntary.
But you're also helpless to effect positive change within those relationships, because virtue is not respected.
Virtue is not respected, and you cannot leave.
And therefore, bida-bang, bida-boom, bida-bong-gong-gong, you're trapped and helpless.
And virtue becomes paralyzed.
Oh, and a great shiver of joy runs down the scaly, oily, inky obsidian hide of the lizard-like, amoral souls that ooze through the multiverse.
And that's really all there is to it.
And it's the same is true in religion.
You can't leave God, and you cannot reason with God.
You cannot escape the power of God, and you cannot reason with God, as Job so eloquently found in the story.
For those who don't know, the devil came to God and said, Job only loves you because he's rich.
And so God destroyed all of his wealth.
And then the devil said, No, no, no.
Now he only loves you because he's healthy.
And God then made Job sick.
Oh, he only loves you because he's got his family.
He blew up his family. He only loves you because...
Which is a typical, jealous, sociopathic relationship, right?
It's so strange to see the devil to God as Iago is to Othello, whispering insecurities into a paranoid, murderous ear, creating more slaughter.
And Job finally says to God, there is no reasoning with you, and he is broken and smashed, and God is satisfied that Job does not love him for any benefit that God conveys.
And the very concept of love is smashed.
And the very concept of the Stockholm Syndrome Borg melding with the abuser is triumphed, because that is, of course, how virtue is paralyzed.
You cannot leave your abusers.
You cannot reason with your abusers, and therefore, any step you take towards rationality causes more pain.
See, virtue equals suffering.
And that's all that needs to be established for evil to triumph.
It's the principle that virtue equals suffering.
And if you can't leave abusive relationships, and by their very definition, you cannot reason with those who are abusive, irrationality is the foundation of abuse, then you are...
Sealed off from change.
And of course you can't reason with irrational people any more than you can shake hands with the wind.
And therefore the only way, and this is something that I have constantly striven for in this conversation with every fiber of my skeletal, of my musculoskeletal system, is to give virtue some That's really all it's ever been about, is to give virtue some power. That's why I say don't do politics.
You don't have power in politics.
Ron Paul will save me if everybody else agrees with me.
Forget it. Forget it.
It's a ridiculous proposition when it comes to autonomy and responsibility to place your hopes.
As I read today, 25% of those in the Tea Party movement believed that Obama may be the Antichrist.
Oh, yeah. That way, freedom lies.
Escape the Antichrist with us and we'll be free of everything but religious terror.
It's so sad.
Oh my god, people.
What are we going to do with the world?
Accept and prove it.
It really can't be made much worse.
And so you can't reason with irrational people.
And so the only thing that you can do is to withdraw, is to escape, is to avoid irrational people.
And they will tell you that, you know, oh, you're just running away like you always do.
You can't handle conflict.
You can't handle... Like, they'll attempt to infect you with self-attack on exit.
Now, that's so common, it's not even worth mentioning in its predictability.
But that voluntary association is the first strength of virtue.
In many ways, it's the only strength of virtue.
I cannot be with somebody who chooses a rational prejudice over the truth because I don't have a relationship with somebody where there is no truth.
We can only meet in reality.
We can only, only, only meet in reality.
There is no intimacy in fantasy.
There is no cohabitation in fantasy.
There is no joining.
There is no relationship in fantasy.
And particularly so when only one person has fantasy.
If two people share a fantasy, they can at least ignore the lack of connection.
We are one in Jesus.
Well, okay, fine. But you can ignore the lack of connection, but when one person has reason and the other person has fantasy, there is no relationship.
We don't separate from relationships.
We recognize that there is no relationship.
If somebody chooses irrational, paranoid, destructive fantasies over the truth, there's no one there to have a relationship with.
There is no one there to have a relationship with.
And that is something that is a fundamental fact that virtue recognizes, that empiricism recognizes.
There's no relationship with the irrational.
You can't have a relationship with the irrational.
So you're actually not withdrawing or breaking a relationship with somebody who is persistently, destructively irrational.
You're just recognizing that there is no relationship.
You don't leave God when you become an atheist, right?
It's the same thing. You don't leave the fantasy.
You don't abandon God when you become an atheist.
You recognize that there is no God and therefore there is no relationship with anything external to yourself.
There is a relationship with the concept of God within you, which is very important to understand.
But there is no relationship with anything external.
An atheist does not leave God.
That would be a contradiction because if there's something to leave, you can't be an atheist.
And we don't leave a relationship with the irrational.
At least I don't, because there is no relationship with irrationality.
Because prejudice and manipulation and falsehood and lies and avoidance and attack and all of this kaleidoscopic whirligig over a deep and endless void will forever be something that simply baffles and frustrates and undermines your efficacy.
There is no relationship with the irrational.
And that's the only and first strength that virtue needs to have.
Is to recognize that basic fact.
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