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Aug. 15, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
55:53
1722 The Souls of the Masters - Part 1

Examining the psyches of the rulers.

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Hey everybody, it's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
This is a talk about the masters.
We have spent a lot of time talking about what it is to be a slave, but we have not spent quite as much time talking about what it is to be a master, what it is like to be a master, and why we are masters, why they are there.
So I thought I'd start with a few general principles, just so we can begin to delineate the outlines of the Mahdi's that are those in charge, so that we can get a deeper understanding of their souls.
So, first and foremost, there is an anxiety to living that is alleviated, at least temporarily, by plenty.
Human beings, like all animals, are designed to experience discomfort in the face of a potential loss of resources.
Of course. I mean, so sort of think about it.
Why do squirrels bury nuts for the winter?
Because they will feel anxiety if they don't.
They feel bad if they don't.
And that's a very, very important thing.
The anxiety drive is as fundamental to survival as the sex drive.
The sex drive is the positive economics.
The anxiety drive is the negative economics of what goes on in the psyche.
So... If you're out of food in the moment, then you're hungry.
I think we can all understand that.
And the hunger is the immediate physiological response.
But in a sense, hunger says go eat something right now.
If you wait to hunt or plant food, if you wait until you're hungry, it's too late.
Because hunger means I'm running out of energy.
And so hunger is consume what you already have, anxiety.
Sorry, but it's too late to go hunting when you're hungry.
Because you're already running out of energy.
So you can't go sprint and hunt and hide and wait and Throw javelins and, you know, cut the meat and cook it or whatever.
And it's certainly, of course, far too late to plant.
Say, hey, I'm hungry. I think I'll throw some seeds into the ground and I'll have a meal, you know, lickety-split.
So the immediate sensation of want, hunger or thirst or whatever, just as the immediate sensation of sexual desire is lust or whatever, And those are helpful in the moment, but those we share with the animals.
And they're, you know, they're good, but they're not planning mechanisms.
So the great challenge of nature is to plan to avoid.
And for animals, this is around anxiety.
And for human beings, it's around anxiety as well.
And this is really important.
Think about this, right? Think of the amount of time that you have spent either worrying that you're not sexually attractive or worrying that you're not sexually attractive enough or worrying that you're not sexually attractive enough to the right person, the person that you're sexually attracted to.
Think about all of the time that you spend planning For sex, I don't sort of mean just buying condoms, but I mean shaving or primping or getting your hair done or buying the right clothes or working out or whatever it is that you spend preparing for sexuality, making yourself physically attractive and hopefully mentally attractive as well.
Think of the amount of time that you spend doing that versus the 94 seconds, hey, personal best, that you spend actually having sex.
That's quite a ridiculous proportion of preparation to consummation.
And I think that's really important.
Anxiety is actually a very healthy thing.
It's a very healthy thing. It's something that is uncomfortable, of course, but it's very healthy.
Discomfort is fundamental to health.
It's strange but true. Most smokers, of course, quit before they get lung cancer, and they quit because they feel uncomfortable or anxious about smoking.
That's a good thing. We would all like to live on cheesecake and muffins all day, but we don't because we feel anxious about getting some, you know, roughage and all that.
So we eat salad and stuff, right?
I mean, so the anxiety is very healthy.
We would all love to go out and blow every penny we have on whatever makes us happy in the moment, but we generally tend not to do that because we're anxious about paying the bills next month, and we have that anxiety about paying the bills in the next month.
So, what I'm really saying is anxiety is good.
Anxiety is a good thing to have.
It's a good thing to experience.
But it's uncomfortable. And this is the paradox, right?
This is why ambition or lust or any of the sort of drives that we have are never fundamentally satisfied because they just reset themselves, right?
So if you're, you know, if you want to have a lot of sex, you go have a lot of sex.
And then right afterwards you'll want a lot more sex, no matter how much sex you're getting.
If you are insecure about your looks and you go and get a nose job or, I don't know, a butt lift or a nipple tweak, whatever the hell goes on in those places, then you will almost immediately, all that will happen is you will change your yardstick.
So instead of comparing yourself to mediumly attractive people and feeling less attractive, you will now compare yourself to more attractive people.
Now that you're medium attractive, you'll compare yourself to very attractive people and still feel.
And even if you achieve the pinnacle and you become the most attractive person, then you will simply compare yourself to younger attractive people as you age and you will still feel diminished.
This sort of stuff. Never works, even if you're Bill Gates.
I mean, there's a reason he quit Microsoft and started doing his philanthropy, is that he became the richest man in the known universe, and it was no longer enough to have business success.
Now, he had the anxiety of, what do I do with all of this success?
How do I put it to good use?
And that's natural.
And now he's going to be anxious that he could have spent his money better, or that the results aren't what he intended, or that the governments are going to take over and pillage all of the stuff that he's sending over there.
So, he's going to send all of this netting and it's going to end up on eBay.
So, this anxiety is inevitable, and I think learning to live with this anxiety and learning to accept and embrace it is really important.
It certainly has been pretty foundational to me at Freedom in Radio.
Oh, something came in from PayPal.
Please let it not be a subscription cancellation.
Please let it be a donation. Right?
That anxiety is natural.
And it's healthy. One of the reasons I'm doing this podcast, despite the fact that I really want to, is that I've been sort of horrified at my lack of productivity lately because I do the Sunday shows, and then I spend a week doing a seven-minute video, which people consume on the podcast in about, oh, let's say seven minutes, and so I'm a bit concerned that my output is low, and of course I've had this on my list of things to do for a while, so anxiety somewhat drove me to do it, as well as desire.
And that's healthy. That's good.
So if we understand that, we understand that anxiety Over a loss of resources, food, sex, water, whatever, shelter.
This is good, right?
You don't build a house during a rainstorm.
You build a house because you're in anticipation of the rainstorm, right?
And anxiety about how the rainstorm is going to negatively affect you if you don't have a house.
Anxiety is really the root of human progress in many ways.
And it's a good and healthy thing, though a lot of people have this belief...
That we need to free ourselves from anxiety, and we need to rise above it and live in this perfect jello tub nirvana universe of even EKGs.
And this is not... I don't think it's valid, I don't think it's a good goal, I don't think it's an achievable goal, and all that happens then...
is you end up fighting our base physiology and human nature which means you're going to fail which means that you're going to feel anxious about not being able to escape your anxiety and there are times when we we have that alleviation of anxiety I would say at least once a day I would just be completely overblown with love and and happiness and so on for for my family or what it is I'm doing with my life and great gratitude and joy and that lasts you know five ten minutes maybe more and then I go back to a usual state of fair chirpiness but with some anxieties and stresses as we all have but anxiety is a good thing and we are constantly driven to overcome that anxiety and the moment that we overcome it resets to a higher standard and now why am I talking about this relative to people in power well For this very important reason,
that people look for power over other human beings because that gives them a lot of resources, as I've talked about before, right?
Human farming. It gives them a lot of resources.
And that allows them to overcome the anxiety of shortages, right?
If you own a thousand slaves, you're not going to be short of resources.
Because you've got the slaves to work for you, you can eat the slaves if you're really running low on food, but if you have a thousand slaves, then you have no shortage, no shortages in the future.
So human ownership is the most fundamental way of avoiding the anxiety of shortages.
Own people, and you can vault over your anxiety over want.
Now, you get other anxieties, right?
There's no escape from anxiety, save through death, sometimes not even through sleep.
And so you will have the anxiety of rebellion, slave rebellions, or restlessness, or your slaves all get sick, or something like that, because of course you become really dependent on your slaves, if that's your approach.
And this is really, really important to understand.
Why do people want to be in the ruling class?
Because if you're in the ruling class, then you have no anxiety over resource shortages.
You have no anxiety over resource shortages.
And that's really, really important.
When I say the ruling class, I mean all of those who gain the majority of their income through violence.
The ruling class is not rich and poor.
The ruling class is which side of the gun do you want?
A rich entrepreneur is in the slave class.
A low-paid government worker is in the ruling class, right?
It's which side of the gun you want.
And this has been true throughout history.
We tend to conflate it into rich and poor.
Sorry, in the past, before the free market, then everybody who was rich was an asshole by definition, but that's no longer the case.
The people who are in Goldman Sachs are in the ruling class.
The unions who gained benefits from the government bailouts of car companies are in the ruling class.
Bill Gates, well, depends how you feel about copyright law, but not exactly in the ruling class.
It's not about rich and poor.
It's about violence and voluntarism.
That's the only definition of class that really means a damn thing.
By the way, sorry about my voice. I'm just getting over a cold because my daughter has become a DEFCON 4 biohazard weapon.
She picks up bugs and brings them home.
Actually, we picked them up together. Never had a lot.
So, this alleviation of the anxiety of scarcity, of the fear of scarcity, is what drives the ruling class.
So, if you're the Rockefellers or the Carnegies or any of these sorts of monsters, I mean, you have as much money as you could conceivably spend if you're...
I mean, if you're just Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, I mean, the amount of money you can get in the public sector versus the amount of money you can get in the private sector...
There's no comparison.
There's no comparison. Clintons make tens of millions of dollars a year.
$400,000 to get Bill Clinton to come to a speaking engagement.
Or, I think, 12 monikers.
It's something like that. I can't remember what the exact exchange rate is, but something like that.
You know, and... I just got my very first paying gig as a speaker.
It was not $400,000.
Let me tell you.
But that gives you a...
It's a good thing that philosophers work with humility first because you sure as hell would end up with a lot of humility if you compare yourself to You know, statists, war criminals like the Clintons.
Well, that's what people pay for.
They pay for balls going in holes.
I'm not talking about Clinton.
I'm talking about Tiger Woods and basketball stars.
They pay for that, and they pay for music.
They do not pay for wisdom, at least not much.
Ah, this is as old as Socrates.
Socrates said, in the trial of Socrates, he is reported to have said that he would take as his punishment for his philosophy A small bit of money from the government, enough to pay for his food and lodging.
He said, because you give that kind of pension to people who do well in the Olympic Games, and they give you only the appearance of happiness.
I give you the thing itself, so why not pay me at least what you pay some empty-headed athletes?
But, of course, they gave him hemlock instead.
And, of course, this is how far we've progressed since then.
So if you understand that all human beings are driven to minimize scarcity, anxiety, and the most effective way throughout history, right, until...
Human genetics is not designed for the welfare, sorry, for the free market.
Human genetics, what drives us as biological organisms, it's very primitive.
It's very primitive.
And it's not designed for...
Voluntary transactions because they just didn't exist throughout history.
It's just not something we were adapted for.
In the free market, human beings are fundamentally a fish out of order.
We are not designed very well to work in the free market.
Now, I'm going to not go overboard on that, because human beings are, modern human beings are fundamentally against violence.
Fundamentally against violence.
That's why they need a state, because the state shields them from the realities of violence.
So people will get a welfare check without having to go out and rob people.
Most people don't want to go and rob people, but they want the welfare check.
That's why we have a government.
If human beings were all devoted to violence, there would be no government.
We would be in a stereotypical Hobbesian, red-in-tooth-and-claw state of nature.
But human beings, they want the goodies, they want the benefits of violence, but they do not want violence themselves.
I think this has been pretty true.
Certainly, for the past few hundred years, this has been pretty true.
That human beings don't like violence, but they want the goodies of violence, which is why you have the government.
So people are no longer sociopaths.
They're just hypocrites. And that's a huge step forward.
A massive step forward.
You realize that if we could not get people To accept and understand...
Sorry, if it was easy for people to point out the gun in the room, we would be doomed as a movement, right?
Philosophy would be completely doomed if people were perfectly willing and comfortable and able to point out the gun in the room.
If people said, oh yeah, there's a gun in the room called the state and I'm getting its unjust benefits and that's great.
I like that. That's good.
That works for me. Then we would be doomed as a movement.
The only hope that we have as a movement is that people don't like violence and they don't want to point out the gun in the room.
That's the hope. The hope is the resistance, you understand?
If there were no resistance, there would be no hope.
If there were no resistance, we would be pedaling a bicycle without a chain, just spinning and going nowhere.
The resistance is the progress.
The resistance to violence, to point to the gun in the room, to the against me argument, the resistance to violence is the progress of the movement.
So, scarcity, anxiety, overcome by human ownership.
That's the fundamental drive.
Human beings are the most productive livestock to own, and scarcity brings anxiety, so you alleviate that by owning human beings.
That's the fundamental drive.
And that's what is driving the people who are in charge.
The acquisition of scarce resources, and all resources are scarce, except perhaps air, But the acquisition of scarce resources is the fundamental drive for human beings.
And it's irresistible.
Ideology generally crumbles in the face of resource acquisition because human beings are not designed to be ideological, but they're designed to reproduce.
And because we're designed to reproduce, not be philosophical, acquisition of resources trumps ideology.
Now, the question then remains, well, why is there ideology?
Why is there such a thing as morality?
Well, as I've talked about before, and I'll just touch on it briefly here, the reason that we have morality It's because morality is the most effective slave-owning device that there is.
It is the most effective shackle that exists in the realm of human ownership.
You simply can't own people more effectively than inculcating morality within them, which is something religion has known for thousands of years, and modern philosophers scorn and mock.
Human beings aren't moral.
There's no such thing as morality.
So they cast aside the most powerful weapon and leave it to the hands of statists and religiosities, Religious folks and parents and teachers.
Human beings are fundamentally moral because human beings feel discomfort in the face of anxiety.
They feel discomfort in the face of contradiction.
And so a consistent worldview, which is really all morality is, is something that we strive towards.
And so people use this consistency, this desire for UPB, which human beings have, I mean, I can see this.
I've seen this for over a year in Isabella, right?
Oh, this ball rolls. Does this block roll?
No. Well, how about this triangle?
No. Okay, so only this block rolls and only the ball rolls.
Does the block, like, does the cylinder roll sideways?
No, only one. All she's doing is trying to figure out the universal rules.
All she's trying to do is figure out the universal rules for things and extrapolate into concepts.
That's all she's focusing on doing.
And human beings just naturally drive towards universality and consistency.
And so, since morality is all about universality and consistency, human beings have a natural weakness to being controlled through morality because it hooks into the most powerful aspect of our minds, which is the conceptualization, abstraction, and universalization that is required.
If we have a bunch of seeds to put in the ground, we don't have to think about whether every single one of them is going to grow into a crop, or is going to grow into a hippopotamus, or going to grow into a man-eating tiger.
We don't really have to worry about that sort of stuff, because we get the general principles.
Now, human beings have a drive towards universalization.
They have a drive towards philosophy.
It's an instinctive intellectual drive towards consistency.
With one fundamental weakness, which has been grown by the state and by religion, which is that the person who is giving you the rules is himself outside the rules.
That is something, and this is parenting, fundamentally.
The flaw that children have, it's not really a flaw, it's again, it's just around survival.
The person who's giving you the moral rules is outside the moral rules.
We can see this clearly in the realm of religion, where the ancient god Of the Jews and the Muslims and the Christians, Yahweh, just the most appalling and atrocious things.
Genocide, rape, murder, instructing people to slaughter the women and children of their enemies.
I mean, just war crimes and genocides and, I mean, stuff that makes the Nazis look like the Easter Bunny on a bad day.
And yet he's considered the most moral because he's the giver of laws, and the giver of laws is above the laws.
That is the fundamental weakness that has been inculcated, right?
So if you define the law, you are above the law.
And that is something that is convenient to people in power, because they then get to define the law, which means that they hook into the consistency drive of the slaves' minds, and then they place themselves above the law.
And you can see this all the time.
It's just got irrationally sucked back into a determinism thread again today.
Somebody was saying, well, but you know, determinism is, you know, it's not like a...
It's like, you know, if you argue with someone and you're a determinist, it's like you're pushing a boulder.
You don't think that the boulder has free will, but you're still going to push it.
Right, so that's creating a rule called determinism and placing the actor outside the law.
This is why people can't figure this stuff out.
This is why people have such a tough time.
We are driven towards universalization.
And we are trained that the creator of the law, or the identifier of the law, or the provider of the law, is above the law.
You understand? There would be no point training people in universalization if the trainer was...
I mean, in terms of power-seeking, if the trainer is subject to the law, right?
If the rulers are subject to the moral laws they teach, then they're not rulers.
So there's no point training people, there's no point training children in a morality that subsumes the moral teacher.
It's just not, there would be no point.
To universalize the moral law is to destroy evil power, unjust, violent power.
Right, so, I mean, this simple example, which I'm sure is very obvious, is a public school teacher.
Public school teacher says, don't use violence to get what you want.
But the public school teacher profits from the violence directed against people, parents and others, who must pay for the public school teacher's salary or be thrown in jail.
And if they resist, risk getting shot.
So that's really important.
They create a moral law called don't use violence so that the children don't grow up with aggression towards the rulers.
Not because violence is bad.
Violence is just bad for the slaves.
Violence is peachy, keen, super special, extra wonderful for the rulers.
It's just double plus and good for the slaves.
Slaves must be trained into an abhorrence of and fear of and loathing for violence.
But the masters Must use violence.
Violence is good for the masters and bad for the slaves.
It's good for the masters because, boy, don't you know, those slaves just rip each other apart without the master waving guns in their faces.
They make the slaves so afraid of each other, right?
And you see this all the time, right?
So, violence at the G20, something bad.
If it's private violence is really bad, public violence is really virtuous.
Well, that's natural.
That's inevitable, right? That simply can't...
that can't be questioned by just about everyone because it's such a fundamental humiliation and pain and childhood trauma that creates both the absolute rule and the unconscious or avoided exception to the rule, right?
So the masters will teach you that morality is universal, that ethics are absolute, and then with zero comment, with zero admission, Of any exception, they will act in the opposite manner.
And if you bring that up, you will be scorned and rejected and humiliated and attacked.
And, I mean, we all experience this as adults.
I mean, if you, I mean, I was in university or college.
I experienced it just like everybody else does.
I would point out the gun in the room, and people would just look at me like I'd sprouted an extra horn.
There was that incomprehension or, oh gosh, you're such an idiot or whatever, right?
Or what an irrelevant point, or that has nothing to do with our society, which is all basically fundamentally, don't point out the exception to the universalization.
Don't point out the exception to the universalization.
The universalization is for the slaves.
For the slaves, violence, or even question, thought itself, absolutely wrong.
Unthinkable. Literally, it has to be unthinkable.
It's not something you consider and reject.
It is something you do not even think of.
You don't even think of it.
There aren't even words to describe what is unthinkable.
It is merely avoidance.
And people, they think less unthinkable.
Of the universal, of true universal ethics.
They think less of that than they do of turning their wheel of the car into oncoming traffic.
I even think of that sometimes, not as a plan or anything, but I think if you were to build a road with the naysaying cluck cluck horde around, and they would say, and you didn't bring, build a big wall in the median of the road, they'd say, well, what's to stop some crazy guy from just turning his wheel on oncoming traffic?
And so you'd have no roads.
But we all accept that as a risk of life.
So I sort of mulled it over.
But I think about that maybe once a month when I'm driving.
But people don't think it.
They can't think about universalization.
It is too painful.
It is too traumatic. And the reason that it's too traumatic is it exposes such a fundamental evil.
I know we're talking a little bit about the slave experience.
We'll get back to the masters in a sec.
But I just wanted to sit on this for a bit.
Because you have to explain why the exceptions to the universalization is so unthinkable.
Why you can't even discuss them.
Why you can't even think about it.
Because it's so humiliating.
It's so humiliating.
The reason it's humiliating is that it's one thing to be a livestock.
I don't know if a cow feels particularly humiliated or not.
Probably doesn't feel great. Free ranch cows may be okay.
Like, glad there aren't any bears around to eat me or wolves or whatever.
I don't know what the hell eats cows, but you know what I mean.
But human beings will feel ashamed and humiliated about being slaves.
But that's not the worst thing.
The worst thing is that it's your virtue that makes you a slave.
It's your desire for goodness that keeps you enslaved to evil.
That's the worst thing, that people who are rulers, who are masters, fully recognize and accept that they are completely unnecessary, in fact, counterproductive.
And I've always said this, the rulers of mankind understand the moral nature of mankind far better than anybody else except us.
The rulers of mankind understand how much people want to be good, how much they are driven by virtue and conformity and a desire for goodness.
They all, all the rulers understand that so fundamentally.
That they are, in a sense, moral idealists of the very highest order.
You simply cannot get people who believe in the moral nature of mankind more than the existing rulers of mankind.
They truly get, truly understand, in their very bones, in their very evil scumwad bones, they really understand how much people are driven by morality and desire for virtue, because that's all they use to control us.
And the slaves desire For morality combined with this complete and peculiar and unconscious horror of true universalization.
So universalization to the point where they are subjected to the moral rules of pacifism and obedience and conformity and so on.
So they will accept universalization to the degree with which it makes them useful to the rulers and then they will be openly or in fact unconsciously horrified and pretend to be incomprehensible.
Pretend not to comprehend any further universalization that threatens the power of the rulers.
So all men are created equal is for the slaves.
The natural consequence of all men are created equal, which is no government, is beyond unthinkable.
There's no language to put it into words.
There is only an emotional horror.
The horror of having had one's desire for virtue used to chain one down in the service of evil.
So let's say that you believe that a America invaded Iraq because America had this very strong desire to bring democracy to the Iraqis.
That's a complete nonsense, of course.
I mean, America in 1953, I think it was, overthrew the democratically elected ruler of Iran and put in a puppet instead.
And America strongly opposed The European countries who decided not to join in this ghastly war, because the majority of their population were against it, it strongly derided those who were actually acting in a democratic way and obeying the wishes of their people to not get involved in this war.
It's ridiculous. And, of course, nah, let's not get into Iraq.
It's too silly a topic these days.
Too ghastly and too silly.
So... It's the slaves' desire for virtue that is used to enslave them and bind them to evil.
That's fundamentally humiliating, and fundamentally horrible, and fundamentally inevitable.
Remember, our psyches were developed to survive Stone Age tribalism, and anything which got you killed became unthinkable, right?
So, those who disagree with pacifism on the private level are called criminals.
Those who disagree with pacifism at the public level are called rulers, are called presidents, are called el grande nacho, or whatever.
And so if you disagree with the universalization of non-violence for the slaves, then you are preying on your fellow slaves.
And they will all band together and they will stone you or lock you up, or they'll appeal to the ruler who will put you in jail or cut your hand off or something.
So that's not good. And so people have an abhorrence to violence at the private level, which is why there are relatively few criminals, despite the provocations of bad parenting.
Ah, but if you extend the universalization of non-violence, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, to taxation and war, to the public sphere, well, then you are a rebel, you are an insurrectionist, you are a terrorist, because you're opposing.
The exclusion of virtue that is necessary for the existence of the state.
Thou shalt not steal, you say.
Well, then, taxation is immoral according to the will of God.
Well, that will get you killed.
I mean, even in the modern world, that will get you killed.
I mean, that's simply unacceptable.
You cannot extend thou shalt not steal to the rulers.
You cannot extend thou shalt not kill to the masters.
That's unthinkable. That will get you killed.
Because to extend the universality...
I mean, acting on it.
I don't act on it. You understand?
I act on it in terms of podcasting.
But I don't act on it in terms of not paying my taxes.
Not obeying the laws. Of course not.
I'm not going to get myself killed.
What the hell would the point of that be?
I make the arguments because that's the most powerful thing to do.
But if you act on thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, and extend it to the rulers...
And they'll just kill you. They'll throw you in jail.
And if you resist, they'll kill you.
It simply can't be loud.
So, you understand, to act on thou shalt not kill among the slave class is safe.
To act on thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill from slave to master is suicide.
And to act against, to universalize, to act on universals among the slave class, no problem.
To act on universals between slave and master, instant death.
And to act against universals in the slave class, Death or maiming, through the slaves or through the state, who's your thief or whatever, right?
Murderer. And so, this is the reality that human beings have had to survive in for hundreds of thousands of years.
Hundreds of thousands of years! This is how we have developed.
We have a yearning-burning for universalization and consistency, and if that is destroyed, we become much less effective, much less profitable as livestock, because we become insane.
We literally become insane.
We'll plant stones expecting to grow tractors, right?
So if we don't have universalization at all, we're not functional as productive slaves.
So the universalization must be retained in the mind, but there must be a hole which cannot be seen.
A true hole, right?
The true hole is the one that you can't see.
Or can't even see the effects of.
That's exactly the same in your mind as something that isn't there.
You can't see the thing, and you can even see the effects of a black hole, gravity wells and so on, but you can't see the effects of something which is truly invisible to you.
And so you have to have universalization that is confined only to the slave class, but the universalization on pain of death must not be extended to the ruling class.
Must not be extended to the ruling class.
Because if it is, the ruling class will strike you down.
And so, when you're dealing, it's important to understand this, and it took me, look, I'm not saying that I'm any master of this, right?
I still have to remind myself of it, but we're dealing with defenses that are not personal.
They are collective. They are as fundamental to humanity as puberty.
They're as fundamental to humanity as eyesight, as walking upright.
These defenses. Universalization for the slave class and a complete avoidance, an unconscious avoidance of universalization for the master class.
That brings intense anxiety for people.
Anxiety like you are playing Russian roulette with them because literally that's what you were doing.
And remember, remember, remember, remember, my friends, the 5th of November, and remember that punishments for the slave class throughout most of human history, punishments were collective.
They were collective punishments.
So important to remember.
So essential to remember.
Why is it that the slave turns on the truth-telling slave?
Because the punishments were collective.
You're going to get us all killed.
The slaves laboring away on the pyramids, one guy says, well, why the hell is the guy with the whip not joining in?
Shut the fuck up, you're going to get us all killed.
Tortured and killed. Crucified, tortured and killed.
This is why the slaves turn on each other.
Now, there's still some of that, but it's not as fundamental as it used to be.
I mean, now the punishments are more individual.
But, of course, if you have any kind of family or social network, there's no such thing as really individual punishment, right?
I mean, if I advocated stupid shit about violence, got my ass thrown in jail, it's not like that would be an individual punishment.
I mean, my whole family would be punished.
So, the slave who comes along And extends the universalization of ethics to the masters, thus eliminating The master as morally justified and actually exposing them as morally evil is a great threat to every slave.
Psychologically, because of the past humiliation of having been enslaved to evil through your desire for good, that is the worst kind of shit sandwich that human beings can psychologically eat.
So there's the personal horror and shame and revulsion at having that which is the drive for the best of you turned into service of that which is the worst in humanity.
Lust for power, domination, theft, murder, war, debt.
There's the personal humiliation that people experience.
That's bad enough.
That's bad enough. But there's also the hair-trigger psychological defenses called slave-extending morals to masters will get us all killed.
There literally is that level of visceral fear and terror that people experience.
Extending morals which are used to enslave us to the masters Is death.
Collective death. The deaths of all of us.
And so you pretend that you haven't heard.
We all understand this, right?
And it comes from parents and it comes from teachers.
I mean, when I got caned for the non-violent action of climbing a fence, clearly they could not say violence is bad, right?
Although they did, right? Children got caned for hitting other children.
I've never hit anyone in my life, so it's not me, but...
They can no longer say, right?
So then the question that you would ask if you get hit for caning is, well, why is it okay for me?
Why is it not okay for me to hit?
Why is it okay for you to hit?
And since there's no fundamental answer to that, all that happens is that the hypocrisy of the rulers is exposed, and the resulting acting out of self-revulsion will take the form of additional and possibly fatal or maiming beatings towards you.
So, we shut up.
We shut up! Of course we did.
Because we're designed to survive.
Not to get ourselves killed in a useless challenge of revolting authority.
It's not what we're designed for.
It's not what we're all about.
And so we don't do it.
Now, we are, in fact, at the point where we can begin to lay these principles out more fully.
We can actually begin to talk about the moral nature of our rulers.
And extend the universalization which has been used to enslave us.
Universalization is a bubble that the slave class lives in.
We can say that the giver of the law is subject to the law.
And you understand, this is why people have such trouble with self-detonating statements.
Somebody makes a statement, they are automatically expected to be outside that statement.
Somebody says, determinism is true, which is a self-detonating statement, because if things are determined, there's no such thing as truth.
So if somebody says determinism is true, they are automatically expected Expect it.
It's not even a thought.
But the giver of the rule is outside the rule.
If I say nothing is true, it's a self-detonating statement.
If I say sound doesn't exist, how do I know that you exist?
I'm talking to you. I have to assume that you exist in order to talk to you.
All these self-detonating statements cannot be seen by people because the giver of the rule is above and beyond the rule, is outside the rule.
This is just a rule that humanity lives by in order to survive hundreds of thousands of years of slave-owning societies, slave-murdering societies.
The giver of the law is above the law, and if you try to put the giver of the law under the law, which is what we're trying to do philosophically, they rebel, they get aggressive, they attack you.
If the giver of the law is subject to...
See, philosophy is all about that the giver of the law is not the giver of the law, it's the identifier of the law.
We don't say to a physicist who puts forward a theory of gravity, this must mean he can fly, right?
We simply don't do that.
We don't assume that the identifier of the law of physics is not subject to the law of physics.
In fact, he's identified it because he's subject to it.
I mean, if it's true, the apocryphal story that the apple fell on Newton's head, well...
Newton was then subject to the law of gravity, which helped him discover or formalize the laws of gravity.
Einstein himself, while not traveling at near light speed, did experience a consistent and rational universe, which allowed him to extrapolate it into scientific principles that transcended mere sense data.
So in science we understand that the giver of the law is subject to the law.
In fact, he would not be the giver of the law if he were not subject to the law.
Philosophy is the same thing.
The giver of the law is subject to the law.
I mean, I identify universal principles which I am subject to.
I identify or create rational arguments that I am subject to.
I don't tell people to do the opposite of what I do.
The family stuff that we talked about, the stuff that some people find quite volatile, this is all about universalization.
This is all about universalization.
Extending to parents. Right, so feminists for hundreds of years have been saying that women do not have to put up with abusive relationships.
I extend that to the adult children of parents and suddenly this is, right, this is horrifying.
This is because it's a universalization.
People can't argue against it.
All they can do is get mad at it.
Because to argue against it would be to say that we should not worry about defooing, which is incredibly rare.
We should forbid divorce.
We should forbid wives from leaving their husbands.
Because clearly it's very bad to make voluntary decisions on your relationships based upon your experience of those relationships.
And, of course, we should start with women, adult women, because at least in the modern age, adult women have chosen their husbands, whereas children did not choose their parents.
So we should deal, we should punish those who try to exercise their free will to escape abusive relationships that they chose to begin with.
We should focus on those people, because surely they're worse than the people who did not have a choice in those relationships with their parents.
And so, short-circuits people, right?
Nobody's going to say we should forbid divorce to women who are in abusive marriages, right?
Nobody's going to say that because that would be ridiculous, right?
But people will say that is completely wrong for adult children to not see abusive parents.
People can't process that universalization.
They'll accept it when it comes to adult marriages.
But they find it repugnant and abhorrent.
Not everyone, but many people find it repugnant and abhorrent to universalize that to involuntary relationships like parent and child.
That universalization, well, it's a threat, of course, to people in power.
In this case, it happens to be abusive parents.
So we have to create an exception.
We have to, because that's what we're programmed to do by the violence of history.
So how do we change this?
How does our understanding of the ruling classes begin to change this?
Well, I think the first thing to understand is that the ruling classes are over-specialized parasitical organisms.
And like if you gave, let's just do something silly, right?
So if you gave sharks remora repellents, and I know remora, they help clean the shark's teeth or whatever, just imagine that they were pure parasites.
So if you gave sharks remora repellents, the remoras would be really upset because they've specialized themselves to hanging around shark jaws, right?
So parasites that drain resources from the host, which is states and religions upon the free souls of mankind, the parasites are over-specialized, highly dependent organisms.
Who will do anything to avoid losing their parasitical status.
Because being a parasite is a pretty good thing, because the host does the work, right?
And so, to change it, we have to get people to become more comfortable with anxiety.
We have to. Now, this is why it's all about self-knowledge.
This is why therapy is so important.
How do you get people to quit bad habits like violence?
Well... You build up their strength, you tell them about the negative consequences.
If there are no negative consequences, then nobody's going to change, right?
Human beings who have adapted based on a cost-benefit analysis and are only using ethics to justify that will not change their position based on ethics, will not change their position based on an ethical argument, will not do it.
If people have done a cost-benefit analysis and the only reason they're doing what they're doing is because of a cost-benefit analysis, the only way to change that is to change the cost-benefit equation.
It's to change the cost-benefit equation.
That's the only way to do it.
People take stuff and justify it afterwards, right?
They take stuff and they justify it afterwards.
It's not a moral argument.
The moral argument comes after the taking of stuff.
Right? Which is why governments know that if they give people shit, those people will end up justifying the government inevitably.
Inevitably, as I say, they understand the moral nature of mankind better than anyone except you and I. You give artists money, those artists will not expose the malevolence of the state.
The state will have to be a benevolent agency for those artists because those artists will have to create an ex post facto justification for taking blood money.
Inevitable. Inevitable.
Couldn't happen any other way.
Couldn't conceivably happen any other way.
You give teachers government money, you will end up with teachers who talk about the virtues of government.
They have to. They have to.
You give scientists who are your specialized universalizers, you give scientists government money, and those scientists will avoid extending the universalization of the principles they adhere to so strongly to the government.
They have to. They have to.
No man can survive in a situation he consciously defines as immoral.
It can't be done.
It can't be done.
In the U.S., Most, even for-profit colleges survive on 90%.
Government guarantees are student loans.
Are they going to talk about the immorality of the government?
Can't be done. Can't be done.
No, they will talk about the virtues of the government at all times, because they're taking money from the government.
To create moral conformity is very easy.
Just give people unjust things, and they will work for the rest of their lives to scrub the injustice of their corruption.
To pretend that their corruption and theft, participation in theft, is moral and good, and justified and necessary.
Just give people the proceeds of a crime, and they will spend the rest of their life claiming that the crime is a virtue.
They understand. They understand.
They understand. This is a self-driven activity.
It's not driven by other people.
This is a self-driven activity.
So, we have to get people to be more comfortable.
With anxiety. If you want to get someone to leave the public service, to leave the public sector, or you want to get somebody to be more comfortable with the private sector, they have to be comfortable with the anxiety that comes from privatization, from competition.
You have to build up their confidence to the point where they feel that they can do it, and that will help.
That will help. But of course, the question is, well, why would they do it?
Why would they do it? Well, why would somebody accept a reduction And social security benefits, right?
Because this is the big entitlement that's coming, right?
And people say, well, we paid into the system.
Well, so what?
I got myself a master's degree in history.
Does that mean somebody has to give me a job as a history teacher?
No. I paid into the system.
I got credentials. But nobody owes me that job.
I can put a lot of money on a blackjack table.
That doesn't mean that I deserve...
Well, but it was promised to us.
Well, so what?
So what? I was promised a good education.
I didn't get it. Right?
I was promised that society cared about children.
Not so much. It doesn't matter that people were promised.
And, in fact, there is no promise, as far as I understand it, in Social Security.
So why would people change?
Well, voluntarism and ostracism.
And that works, right? If you say to your brother, listen, you're a cop, which means that you will enforce violence against me if I disobey the state.
I am not going to be in your life if you continue to initiate the use of force against people.
You don't have to do it.
I understand. I mean, this is just an argument.
Nobody's forcing anyone here.
This is just an argument. But then the cost-benefit becomes different.
Now, either his relationship with you is going to be worth the stress and challenge of retraining to a less immoral career, or not.
But of course, voluntarists believe in ostracism, yet we're very afraid to inflict it, right?
This is what's so funny about us.
I mean, I believe in the DRO system.
I really do. Which is more of a framework than an answer, which is really all you can offer about freedom.
And so I believe that it is ostracism by which social rules will be enforced.
And so I enforce my moral rules, not enforce, but I support my moral rules through ostracism in my own personal life.
How could I not? How could I conceivably argue that ostracism is how society will organize itself in the future?
People who do wrong will be ostracized by the majority.
So ostracism is about the most powerful thing that you can do in a society.
How can I argue for that?
And also say that we need to live voluntarism in the here and now.
We need to live a life of integrity and philosophy in the here and now.
So ostracism is the most powerful thing that society can do, can enforce to maintain social rules.
And we need to live anarchic principles in the here and now.
Well, look, the inevitable consequence of that.
Is ostracism of the immoral in the here and now?
Of course. Of course it is.
Now, you may not agree with me.
You may say society should not use ostracism.
Well, that's fine. Then you don't have to use ostracism, but you have to come up with some other way without a state, without lies, without falsehoods that governments are going to maintain.
Oh, sorry, the society's going to maintain.
If it's not going to be ostracism, what's it going to be?
And then you have to put that into practice in your personal life, because you've got to test shit out before you, right?
Before you inflict it on society as a whole, you've got to test it out personally.
That's the least you can do. If you're going to prescribe a diet for people that's radical and a reverse of everything they think is healthy, you better at least damn well try that diet out for yourself for a few years first to find out how it goes.
That's the very least that a thinker can do.
Then anybody who prescribes a cure for an illness that he himself has as well must take that cure for himself first, first.
So I believe the cure for statism is ostracism.
The cure for corruption and evil is ostracism.
I also believe that you have to live these principles in your own life first so you gain credibility with yourself and then you can gain emphasis with others.
Why am I passionate and committed?
Because I know this shit works.
Up, down, sideways, backwards and forwards.
I know that ostracism works.
Because it's also been inflicted on me as well, right?
The media stuff that happened a couple of years ago.
It was not an attack from the state.
It was an attack from ostracism.
Don't go to freedomainradio.com.
It's a bad place, right?
This was a proof of anarchy.
Not failed, of course, because it's false, but it was still.
It was not a repudiation of my arguments, but rather a confirmation of them.
That ostracism and social attack is the way that society should organize itself.
Not social attack, social rejection.
A libel, but social rejection.
I'm not saying it works in terms of changing other people's minds.
That's not what's important, right?
Non-participation with evil doesn't mean that evil becomes good.
It just means that there are consequences to being evil.
Or at least, consequences to being corrupt.
So, they have to be negative, and this is what I mean by, if people don't, like if the cost-benefit justifications, sorry, if the cost-benefit analysis doesn't change, then people won't change.
People who've made their decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis, if that doesn't change, then people won't change.
Because arguing with them about ethics is ridiculous.
Because they're not doing what they're doing as a result.
People don't say, oh, here's the ethics, and so this is what I'm going to do.
People in the public sector don't do that.
They don't do that. They say, well, you know, it's boring work, and it's pretty political, and it's, you know, kind of junky, but I get to retire early, great benefits, and a guaranteed pension.
It's a cost-benefit, and you understand, that's a cost-benefit justification.
It's exactly the same justification that people would have used to joining the SS in Germany.
There's no moral dimension to it whatsoever.
So arguing with people who've made a cost-benefit decision, arguing morality with them is pointless.
It's the tail wagging the dog. The morality grows out of the cost-benefit.
Cost-benefit comes first.
Morality comes later.
So you're not, you know, it's like trying to dig up a tree by pruning the leaves.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work.
You have to change the cost-benefit calculation, if you want people to change.
And at the same time, it's hopeful, hopeful and helpful that you could build up their Or that you could build up their confidence.
So trying to change people without using ostracism is like trying to get people to quit smoking while saying that smoking is good for you.
People quit smoking because there are negative consequences to smoking.
Because smoking is really nice. Smoking is really fun.
Smoking is really a fun concentration aid.
Nicotine is a pleasurable drug.
But people quit smoking because there are negative consequences.
And if there are no negative consequences to statism in your personal relationships, you're not going to quit.
Ethical arguments won't change anything because the ethical arguments are after the fact.
You don't try and steer a ship by moving the flag.
You understand that the flag is only flapping as a result of the ship's direction.
You don't try and turn the ship by turning the flag.
You don't mistake the cause for the effect.
So yeah, negative consequences.
And again, this is just my argument, right?
You can do whatever you want, but there are logical necessities, right?
And if you don't find this something that you cannot want to do, I'm certainly happy to hear alternatives.
But this is the result of my arguments, for sure.
I can't escape that. And if my arguments are incorrect, I'll change my behavior, but not just based on the possibility.
It has to be proven to be incorrect. It's either voluntarism or violence.
It's either ostracism or a government.
That's the only two things that I can figure out.
Maybe there's other solutions, but that's it.
We have to live our values before asking other people to live our values.
That, to me, is just basic integrity and confirmation.
You don't publish your scientific results before you do the experiment.
You do the experiment. You test the experiment called voluntarism, ostracism, and integrity in your own life, and you publish the results.
That's really all I've been doing for the past five years.
So we build up their confidence to the point where voluntarism becomes conceivable to them, becomes possible, that they can step out of the bloody womb cocoon of the state.
How do you get a priest to quit?
Well, he's got to have the humility to start over again in a free market.
How do you get a government worker to quit?
Well, negative consequences, ostracism.
I mean, if you can convince him of the harm he's doing to his own soul and his own relationships by being a parasite and receiving the fruits of violence, fantastic.
That's a rare person who will make those kinds of changes based on a merely moral argument.
It's a rare kind of person who will do that.
But negative consequences.
Not negative consequences in order to change someone.
I mean, if it happens, great.
But just negative consequences because you can't define somebody as sick and contagious Say that you don't want to get sick and then go tongue kiss them.
I mean, one of those isn't going to work.
Either they're not sick or you do want to get sick or you shouldn't hug them.
This is a triangle. One of those has to go.
And the children of the ruling classes are going to have to do that at some point.
I mean, the adult children of the ruling classes are going to have to say, you all need to stop owning human beings and profiting from violence.
You need to. I can't stop you through force, but anarchism runs on voluntarism and ostracism.
So you have to choose human ownership over me.
You have to choose between human ownership and me.
I can't love somebody who treats human beings as cattle and owns violence.
And that will give the ruling classes, I think, some real choice, some real options that otherwise they just won't have.
I hope this has been helpful.
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