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Aug. 12, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
10:30
1721 Science and Statism
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So a question came up.
It's been on the list of podcasts to do for a while.
It's a good topic. Somebody was asking, why are scientists so statist?
And that's a great question.
And I think I have a good answer.
And I think that the answer only serves to reinforce the power of philosophy in the world and how essential it is that we gain the ascendancy in the long run over this debate about ethics.
It's so, so important. I'm going to suggest, or argue, that it is fundamentally, emotionally, and intellectually impossible for someone to argue for a system that deans or defines his present activities as immoral.
I'm going to say that again, hopefully a little bit more clearly and less ultimately.
It is functionally impossible for a human being to argue for a system that defines his current activities as evil.
This is the astounding power of morality in the world.
See, this is what gives me such amazing faith in the future, and more than faith, belief in the future.
If people really didn't care that much about Virtue, ethics, integrity.
If we weren't really passionate about it, then of course people wouldn't use it to control us, of course, if we didn't care about it.
That's sort of the most important thing.
The second most important thing is that people would have little to no problem getting interested in anarchism, no matter what they were doing, getting interested in non-violent solutions to problems.
Even if they were profiting from state solutions, they'd be like, oh, well, that's interesting.
Doesn't really have any relevance to what it is that I'm doing, or doesn't really have any particular importance to it, but it's an interesting thing to talk about.
But that's not what happens.
That's not what happens. What happens is that when people are confronted with arguments that throw their ethical qualities into question, to say the least, what they do is they cannot abide those questions.
They cannot abide those questions, and we've all seen that hostility.
I mean, this is the economic challenge of FDR in that it rests upon the voluntary donations of a very small group of very intelligent people, almost none of whom are in the public sector, which is the hardest hit group.
The youngest. Some of the listeners tend to be younger, and that means that it's the people who are the most unemployed, right?
So it's the fading gasps of possible generosity that keep this show afloat.
And I think that's a really important thing to understand.
It helps to explain why there is such uniformity.
In professors, in economists, in the media, in the sciences.
I mean, how could Richard Lix just imagine?
Richard Dawkins, right? I don't know much about the guy's life.
I mean, he's made a pretty good coin off his books, but he was a professor, I believe, for quite some time.
Maybe he still is. And what would it be?
What would it mean for him to say, That the initiation of force is immoral, taxation is immoral, the government is immoral.
And he's come close. But what would it mean for him to actually accept that?
Well, he would have to begin to change his behavior.
This is why people resist the definitions of virtue so much, because once the definitions of virtue change, behavior inevitably changes.
Inevitably changes.
Definitions are like gravity wells for people's behavior.
People struggle only to accept or reject definitions.
Once those definitions are accepted or rejected, behavior flows inexorably from those definitions.
The definitions are the first dominoes that go down in the endless causal chain of human action.
The definitions of virtue are what control the entire world.
So I don't believe That I've never met a human being who could say, I define what I do as immoral, and I'm going to keep doing it.
Never. Never.
Once you push or press people on that, there's always a justification.
I mean, even a hitman says, there's no such thing as morality, you take what you got.
Morality is a game for suckers, right?
He's got a system of belief that defines virtue as a fool's game.
So he doesn't define what he does as evil.
He says there is no such thing as evil, but it is stronger to use violence to get what you want.
And the brave and courageous and strong among us do that.
That's his definition.
And this is one of the reasons why governments and other corrupt organizations, and business included, are so eager to press money and unjust privilege into your hand.
Because they know that once you accept the money, you will begin your ex post facto rationalizations to justify why accepting the money is a good thing.
I mean, this is the pitiful nature of free market economist professors.
They take the money and they work their three to five hours a week for a good six figures, and they say, well, but I'm teaching people, you see, about the free market, and that's a good thing.
I wouldn't be able to reach these people any other way.
Well, that's, of course, nonsense.
And what they're doing is pushing people away from the free market by saying, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
I just want to talk about it.
So once you give scientists grant money, and you give them privileges, and you give them a royal society, and you give them professorships, and you give them all these kinds of goodies, then they will just start to invent rationalizations for what they're taking.
The bribe is followed by the bullshit, right?
That's the general sequence.
I mean, so the people who do discern supercollateral, but from billions of dollars to build this goddamn thing, they say, well, but you know, science is a public good, and mysteries of the universe have no price, and, you know, the people obviously approve of it because they voted for governments which gave us the money, and blah, blah, blah.
And this is, you know, we're peering into the mind of God.
By the way, if you're a physicist, shut the fuck up about your God metaphors, okay?
Like, please don't make life harder for atheists by talking about we are decrypting the mind of God and we are picking out the cosmic dirt from under the fingernails of Vishnu and shit like that.
Just stop talking about God does not play dice.
Just stop talking about God.
I know that it packs a rhetorical punch and so on, but...
Please. You just confuse people who are already extremely confused and often aggressive.
So, I just wanted to mention that.
So, the government will buy you shit, of course.
The government is very happy to buy you shit because it knows the moment that it buys you shit, You are going to be all over justifying why you deserve that shit.
That is inevitable.
Here's some free stuff.
Hey, I really deserve this stuff.
I mean, that's inevitable.
It's good that I have this stuff.
You can't ask yourself, I mean, the most basic and elemental questions, you know, where did it come from?
And this is, you know, I've talked about this in RTR and other videos, but this is why people don't want to take on anti-status views.
Because... Everybody knows some arsehole who works for the government.
I don't mean everyone who works for the government is an arsehole, though I'm not saying I wouldn't defend that thesis, but everybody who knows someone, they know someone who is employed by the government or gets the majority of their contracts from the government or is involved in a military, whatever, a military-industrial complex or is a teacher and all that sort of shit.
And so when you talk about taxation as force, you know, it rips a pretty ugly band-aid off a pretty rotten scamp in society.
And people don't want to face up to that.
They don't want to bring their ethics to their personal relationships.
Because what happens is people get themselves into a, quote, corner where they say, well, my livelihood depends on it.
This is what I'm specialized in.
Like professors, right?
So you've been a professor for 10 years.
You've got two kids. What are you going to do?
Quit and become a podcaster?
Oh, wait. Okay, I didn't have two kids.
I didn't even have one. But...
They get themselves into corners, they get themselves addicted to this money, and then to question the ethics of that addiction, to question the virtue of receiving the stolen money, well, that's just unbearable for people because they don't feel that they can change.
Their soul has died, right?
It's very, very important not to argue with people and not to debate with people whose souls have died.
I can think of some debating partners of mine I would put into that category, but it doesn't really matter who.
But that's sort of been the big lesson, right?
I mean, when people have just become hollow shells of ex post facto justifications for their own shitty little corruptions, I mean, there's nothing to debate with.
I mean, there's no spark left.
There's no originality. There's no soul.
There's no blood in the veins.
Sort of ice-cold vampire-hunger-brain-eating monster zombies.
Not really much to talk about.
And this is true with scientists.
I mean, what's your average... What's a physicist going to do in the free market?
Well, get a real job, lose his pay, lose his toys.
At least those kinds of toys.
Lose his funding. And people don't want to do that.
They don't want to do that. And I know this because my whole history was fighting the definitions of these virtues because I knew once I accepted the definitions of these virtues that what was going to come out of that was going to be inevitable.
Philosophy is the most important thing.
It's like, well, why are you going to work for 10 hours a day then?
At a job that is not involved in philosophy.
You know? Don't make me.
I don't want to. But this is why we split ourselves up and carve ourselves off.
Because once we have integrity, our actions roll unimpeded from the consequences of those thoughts.
And that's why we want to muck ourselves up so much and confuse ourselves so much.
Because we know that when we accept the principles and shed the ridiculous confusion, our path becomes clear.
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