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Aug. 23, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:33
1731 The Theory of Moral Opposites
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Hey everybody, it's Steph. This is a response to a question that's come up a number of times about the theory of opposites.
And the reason that it comes up is people say, well they quote the part of...
UPB, the free book, Universally Preferable Behavior, Irrational Proof of Secular Ethics.
They quote the part of the book where I say that if an action is moral, then the opposite of that action must be immoral.
And people have a challenge with this, and I can understand that.
So let me go through my reasoning and add it to the list of things for part two, or I guess the second edition of the book, which will be out in infinity time, whenever I get around to it.
So this is my reasoning.
As always, of course, it's open to criticism and to question, but this is my thinking behind it.
So, the opposite of sickness, the opposite of being sick, is not being cured.
The opposite of being sick is being healthy.
The opposite of having something stolen is not having it restored, not getting it back.
The opposite of having something stolen is not having something given to you.
The opposite of having something stolen is not having it stolen.
The opposite of being raped is not seeing your rapist punished.
The opposite of being raped is not lovemaking.
The opposite of being raped is not being raped.
Let me sort of tell you why I think this is the case.
Well, first, if we accept the theory of opposites, and I think we kind of have to, antonyms or opposites are kind of foundational.
Whenever you set up something as UPB, say, or you set up something as the opposite of a positive is a negative.
The opposite of north is south.
I think we can all understand that.
And if the opposite of an immoral action...
Is not a moral action, then we have a problem.
Because what are you defining the immoral action relative to?
Because if there are no good actions, there can be no evil actions.
Because if there are only neutral and evil actions, then you're defining evil relative to neutral.
But evil is relative to good.
Evil is relative to virtue.
South is not defined as the opposite of the center of the compass, but the opposite of the opposite direction, i.e., north.
Minus one is not the opposite of zero.
It's just minus one from zero.
And the reason we know that is that a neutral has no opposites.
So minus one cannot be the opposite of zero because what's the opposite of zero?
I don't know. Infinity? It's hard to say, right?
What's the opposite of the center of a compass?
Well, there is no opposite from the center of a compass.
Because north and south and east and west are all equally distant or opposed to, in a sense, or away from the center.
So any one of them cannot be an opposite.
So you can't have an opposite from a neutral.
You can only have an opposite from a positive.
A positive direction called north has the opposite called south.
A positive number called one has the opposite called minus one.
So in the category of morality...
We have virtue and we have vice.
We have good and we have evil.
And evil cannot be the opposite of a neutral action.
It can only be the opposite of a good action.
Now, let's take out our handy-dandy UPB Swissblade and see what happens if we try to make a positive action UPB. So, if we say, well, the opposite of having my iPod stolen, which is immoral, it's evil to steal...
The opposite of having my iPod stolen is having an iPod given to me.
That's the opposite. Well, we immediately run into insurmountable, self-contradictory nonsense.
Because, and of course I'm not talking about the people who are struggling with this issue, because it's a challenging issue, for sure.
But we immediately failed a coma test.
A man in a coma... Can't be handing out iPods to people, and therefore we fail the common test, which is not proof positive, but it's a pretty significant problem to overcome.
So the opposite of having my iPod stolen can't be giving me an iPod.
I'm sorry, also, because it's a positive action, then virtue can only be attained by people with access to iPods, and virtue must be giving iPods to everyone, which is obviously impossible, and it's a zero-sum game, because even if you could manufacture iPods for the six billion people in the world, it would take a long time, and why would it only be iPods to give everybody everything would be then the opposite of stealing iPods.
And so, if you wanted to be a good, you would give everybody everything, which is the opposite of stealing.
So, it makes virtue impossible, right, for there to be a positive action.
So, it can't be the opposite.
The opposite of stealing cannot be giving people stuff.
Of course, the question is, how would you give everyone in the world an iPod?
Well, you'd have to take resources from people to make those, so it would be both a rejection of and an affirmation of property rights to say that you must steal from people in order to make enough iPods to give to everybody, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I think we all understand that a positive action, the opposite.
The opposite of stealing cannot be giving everybody everything.
Can the opposite of stealing be restoring property to someone?
In other words, stealing is the vice and restoring property to someone is the virtue.
Well, I don't think so, because what that means is that virtue is only possible after evil.
In other words, something has to be stolen in order for us to have the virtuous action of restoring it to someone.
And so evil creates goodness.
You can't have goodness unless someone steals first.
In other words, the goodness then is derived from or dependent upon the evil action of theft.
Now, that can't be right.
I mean, that simply can't.
I mean, I've been going to go into all of the logic behind it, which we could if we really wanted to get boring and technical.
But that's just plain not right.
You can't have virtue dependent upon someone doing evil first.
It's just crazy, right?
That's just plain crazy!
So, the opposite of theft is not giving people stuff.
It's not restoring the property that was stolen.
The opposite of theft is respect for property rights.
Because respect for property rights means that not doing anything is a good thing.
It means that it's not dependent upon People stealing, and it is the opposite, right?
And we could go through the same thing, right?
Like, the opposite of rape cannot be punishing the rapist, because then virtue, which is the opposite of the evil of rape, virtue is then dependent upon somebody raping someone first, and it can't be that lovemaking is the opposite, therefore virtue is only attainable In 90-second bursts, followed by two hour naps, if you're over 40.
And therefore, since we can't be making love to everyone all the time, making love, which is virtuous, cannot be the opposite, if we wish to achieve virtue of rape.
So, respect for the property rights of self-ownership around the genitalia would be pretty much virtuous behavior.
In the realm of a rape, and murder, and blah blah blah, we understand, right?
So, this is why the...
Sorry, horns, just because some guy was not quite going fast enough off the green, so everybody thinks they're about to get creamed by a Mack truck.
Everyone who's hysterical like me.
So this is what I mean when I say that if an action is virtuous...
Then its opposite must be evil.
And if action is evil, its opposite must be virtuous.
And that, I think, is important.
Now, there are passive and active virtues.
So, respect for property rights is pretty much passive.
You stay home.
You handle only your own property.
And you're okay.
And so there's that sort of passive virtue.
There are more active virtues, such as intervening when you see a child being abused or doing something courageous in terms of honesty or standing up for your beliefs and so on.
And we can get into a further differentiation of those fabulously complicated and convoluted Thanks very much.
Alright, so let's talk a little bit more, this is a continuation, of the difference between these positive, these active and passive virtues.
A fine young lady, I dare say, posted on the board a follow-up to my comments on a recent Sunday show about what you earn and what you don't earn.
Things like intelligence or height, to some degree looks, to some degree health.
These are accidental attributes.
Certainly where you were born is an accidental attribute, both geographically and in terms of your family.
And... So it's important to understand the difference between what is accidental and what is earned.
And it's not completely black and white.
I mean, obviously, it's accidental where you're born and who you're born, the family you're born to is completely accidental.
But there are some things that you have earned.
And there are some things which you have earned, which are hard.
And there are some things which you have earned, which are easy.
So I am quite good at first-person shooters on the computer because I have spent not an inconsiderable amount of time playing them, both single-player and multiplayer.
So I've earned that, I guess, but it was recreation.
It was pleasure. I like the self-erasure, in a sense, the end of chattering that comes with such an intense and immersive experience.
It's self-transcending to some degree, and I quite like that.
I have a bit of a chatterbox brain, and I like to pour external imaginary high-stakes stimuli on it.
It balances out the inner promptings to some degree, and I find it very relaxing and enjoyable.
So I've earned that, but I'm not going to say that it was a tough thing to do.
It was a pleasurable thing to do.
I've earned some things around FDR because some of this show is very hard to do and some of it is scary and emotionally difficult to do and some of it is easy and more fun and so I've earned some of the stuff around this show and some of the stuff I have earned but it wasn't hard.
I mean, it's not hard to stay relatively slender if you love vegetables and you hate sweets.
It's, you know, relatively easy.
Whereas, of course, if you love sweets and hate vegetables, but you switch your diet to become more healthy and lose weight, and you do it and you maintain it, then you've really earned it.
The results are the same in both cases, which is, I guess, a more slimming and better healthy body.
A more slim and better healthy body.
But one is hard to achieve because you love sweets and hate veggies, and the other is easy to achieve because you love veggies and hate sweets because you are, I don't know, a reptoid from the past or another galaxy.
So I lost, I don't know, a little short, about 30 pounds over the last year, year and a half.
I'm certainly thinner now than I've been any time since my teens.
I'm 195 or so.
And that was relatively hard.
I had to cut out a lot of sugar.
I gave up meat more recently.
And so it was tough.
That stuff is all nice for me.
And I upped my exercise, which is a little easier.
I like to exercise. So I've earned that to some degree.
And for me, the big difference is...
Right, so we're talking about the difference between passive virtue, which is, I haven't strangled anyone today.
It's good that you haven't strangled anyone today, but it doesn't exactly save the world, so to speak.
Passive virtues are inertia virtues, right?
I mean, if you get the world in a good state and everyone is passively virtuous, then the world tends to stay in a pretty good state.
But the only way the world is going to get To a good state is if people switch over from passive virtues to active virtues.
Of course, the corollary of that is that you have to change your behavior quite a bit to lose weight, particularly when you're over 40.
Your metabolism is sort of working against or you lack metabolism.
So it was quite a bit of effort for me to lose the weight, but it's been relatively easy for me to keep it off.
And I can actually enjoy a little bit of sugar now here and there.
And so, the only way that things change is through active virtues, and through those active virtues, you can get the world to a state where passive virtue will continue.
Like, if you lose weight and keep it off for a year, it's pretty hard to regain it.
You'd really have to eat a lot or stop exercising or whatever to change it.
So, when we're talking about what you've really earned, the things that I think you can be really proud of, I would put them into the active virtues that are hard.
I think that's the stuff that is, right?
There's evil, which, of course, self-toxifies, turns you against yourself and shatters your contentment and turns you into a machine of destruction.
So, we're not even going to talk about that.
There are the passive virtues, which do not, they don't contribute to negative self-esteem, but they don't raise positive self-esteem.
You can't say, I'm a really moral person because I haven't strangled a homeless guy today, today, at least.
We all understand that.
It's really hard to have self-esteem because you haven't put a cat in the river in a bag.
So, in order to gain self-esteem, in order to have things that you're proud of, I don't think you could also say to yourself that I'm very proud of what I have earned that was enjoyable and fun.
I don't think you can really say that with any real credibility with yourself.
I think the things that are genuinely yours that accrue to self-esteem are the things that you've earned that are hard.
And for me, I was thinking about this quite hard this morning.
I can't, for the life of me, think of anything other than courage as the fundamental yardstick or propulsion of self-esteem.
So, it's hard. It's hard.
So, I mean, just to take a relatively minor example.
So, in the call-in show yesterday, it's the 21st, I think, of August, so yesterday's Sunday show, a listener was not being forthright with me, and I don't mean that he was lying, I just think that he was used to not talking about something.
And I said to him, I said, I don't think you're telling me the truth.
Now, that's not easy.
It's not easy to say that to a guy who is asking for help and who's being relatively vulnerable, but he simply wasn't giving me the information that was necessary to form a useful, albeit amateurish and tentative, conclusion.
I don't like doing that.
And I don't like calling listeners...
I don't like accusing them of dissembling, however unconsciously, but I did that.
And because I did that, I think largely because I did that, he then talked about something that was directly relevant to his topic and we were able to make significant progress.
But it's not an easy thing to do.
Sometimes when I'm doing stuff that is provocative to people, particularly to long-term listeners, particularly to donators, hey, you know, it's not easy.
It's not easy. And so the things that I have courage...
That I need courage for because they're hard to do.
You know, like confronting a parent who's mistreating a child, confronting anyone who's mistreating anyone.
That is a hard thing to do.
It's a hard thing to do.
And putting out...
I mean, I really want philosophy to be more assertive, even to the point of being aggressive and taking back, particularly with these self-detonating statements.
And I was just working last night on the script for the determinism one.
I really want philosophy to go a little bit more for the jugular because I'm tired of it getting its ass kicked all these years.
That's a scary thing to do because when you get aggressive with philosophy, people react very strongly.
I don't think there's any other way.
Other philosophers, if they want, can try the last 2,500 years Socratic passive-aggressive, oh really, approach to philosophy.
I'm sick and tired of that and I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to go for the jugular.
With philosophy, that provokes a lot of anger and a lot of hostility and a lot of resistance.
I read most of the YouTube comments that Float into my inbox because I kind of want to get a sense of where people are.
And it's not easy.
It's not easy to put out stuff that is vulnerable.
It's not easy to put out podcasts where I may be emotional or angry or crying or something like that.
It's difficult for people.
So those things I can take pride in.
The work that I did in confronting my own demons through therapy, the work on self-knowledge, the courage that I think that I have In terms of helping to keep the debate within this community civilized or at least positive or at least useful or at least not abusive.
Let's go with that. These things are all difficult things to do.
They're hard. They require courage.
And so it is out of those decisions and actions...
Because whenever we face something that's frightening, my first impulse is to turn away, to recoil, to find something else to do and then to justify it after the fact.
But I have to sort of stop myself and say, no, no, no.
With reference to your values.
Not with reference to your reactions.
With reference to your values.
With reference to my reactions, I'd be eating cheesecake all day.
And I would have gained another 30 pounds and I'd lost them.
So, with reference to my values, I want to lose weight.
Not my impulses or reactions, which is...
Cheesecake equals yum yum!
And so, to pause and to say, how will I act in an ideal manner relative to my values, that provokes anxiety and fear and hostility and anger and stress, and so I grit my teeth and I do it anyway.
Why do we need philosophy?
Because philosophy helps us to do the things that, in the moment, we would rather avoid doing for the sake of future happiness.
Like, who likes going to the dentist, but we do it because we want to continue to eat peanut brittle morning, noon, and night.
So I think those things are really important.
What is your own? What is it that you can say is your own, that you've earned, that is something that you can really base your self-esteem on?
Well, it has to be something that's hard.
It has to be something that you don't naturally want to do.
It has to be something that is the right thing to do, a reference to UPB or rational values as a whole.
It has to be something that is beneficial to the world, or at least those around you, or at least to yourself in the long run.
And I would say that the more rare it is, the higher your self-esteem can be, right?
So, you know, lots of people don't like going to the dentist, like, just kind of don't like it, but they go because of that, right?
But I don't think you can say, I'm really proud of myself for going to the dentist.
Now, if you have a real phobia and you overcome that phobia, then I say yes and yay.
You should be really happy and proud about that because you've overcome a significant obstacle.
But I think... That you really need to focus on what you have overcome that was really hard and that was really virtuous.
That, I think, is where the real...
That's where real identity and self-esteem comes from.
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