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Aug. 26, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:44
1736 Freedomain Radio - E-Mails of the Week, August 26, 2010

Rage against the sheeple, morality without God, and how to organize anarchists?

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Hi, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
I'm going to try something here.
I'm just becoming so overwhelmed with the number of emails that I'm getting.
And thank you, everybody, so much for taking the time to write that I'm going to read some of them and try and provide some more generalizedly helpful responses than individual emails.
So let's start right away with a fellow who wrote, Hello, Steph.
Hi. Just had a pretty bad day, and I thought I'd ask your take on this.
I was just wondering, does someone like yourself, who is very intelligent and fully aware of the gross corruption and incompetence that runs rampant everywhere you look, ever get extremely frustrated with the many people who aren't aware and don't even care to be informed about such things which we could change and then help to make a better world?
Basically, he writes, I sometimes feel very alone and also very angry And frustrated at much of the world for not realizing or questioning the ridiculousness of things like statism and the iron grip it has on our day-to-day existence.
I almost want to scream out with rage at those going about their daily affairs who don't even stop to think that our world could be a much better place than it currently is.
People's apathy is appalling sometimes.
They are clearly distracted by sports, the media, news, sex, cars, their job, and even family.
If I had to try and answer my own question, maybe the Beatles had it right when they just said, let it be.
But then again, I feel motivated to take some sort of action like yourself, who educates people and is certainly making a difference.
Thanks, Geisner.
Well, I really, really sympathize, and yes, of course, of course, of course, I experience it as well.
I experience it less and less now, as I sort of get older and see the changes that are occurring in the world, but I certainly do experience and sympathize with that.
There's an old problem in economics, or at least in government economics, which goes something like this.
You can never solve traffic problems in a government system.
Why? Because, let's say you build a 12-lane superhighway that is really, really fast, and you build it for 100 miles going out of the city.
What happens? Well, your traffic problems are only alleviated temporarily because, sadly, people will just choose to live further away because they'll say, hey, you know, if I'm happy with a half-hour commute, now I can live twice as far away because traffic is so much better.
And so you have houses built further away and you end up with exactly the same problems as where you started.
So you can't solve those kinds of problems.
Interestingly enough, the internet, in my view, Has not solved the problem of loneliness and of isolation for people with rational or philosophical beliefs.
Because what's happened is people's beliefs that were extremely marginalized and very rare, such as philosophical or rational strong atheism or anarchism or any other number of beliefs, Rational beliefs.
A flame in your heart.
So it is a real challenge for people who have philosophical beliefs, who have reasonable beliefs.
And I mean this all the way from your standard libertarians all the way through to voluntarists and agorists.
In the past, there would have been no community.
I mean, there would have been like maybe 100 people in the country who would have believed what you believed.
And so there really would have been no community.
So it would have just been something that you kind of kept on the side burner or in the back of your mind.
But now with the Internet, you can connect with people in a way that keeps these beliefs really alive and moving within your own mind, which kind of makes you feel more isolated from the people in your immediate environment, assuming that they're not open to reason.
So I completely sympathize and understand that.
There are no, obviously you're a smart enough fellow to know, there are no obvious and easy answers to this problem.
Philosophical truth, like having some value in philosophy, is much, much rarer than winning the lottery.
I mean, over history, philosophy has a history of 2500 years or so, maybe a little more if you count the pre-Socratics.
Maybe, I mean, the average person maybe knows 10 or 15 philosophers.
I mean, just to go off the top of my head, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, then there's a big dead spot.
They may know a few of the medieval theologians like St.
Augustine, and then they might know Adam Smith, though he was more of an economist in a sense than a philosopher, though he did work in moral philosophy.
They might know John Locke. They probably know some of Hobbes, at least the sort of Nature Red and Tooth and Claw stuff, maybe some Nietzsche, some Wittgenstein, but it really is maybe a dozen people that the average layperson knows, and they probably don't know the content of much of those beliefs.
Maybe they know some Sartre, people like that.
Even academics, maybe 50.
So 50 to 100 people over the course of, say, 3,000 years is very rare.
Hundreds and hundreds of people win the lottery around the world every year.
Thousands, probably.
But there's very, very few people who have contributed something in the realm of philosophy.
Of course, it's madly ambitious for me to put myself forward as perhaps one of those, but that certainly is my goal because I was willing to quit my career only if I could make a substantial contribution in the realm of philosophy.
I'm very much of the go-big-or-go-home school of thinking, if that's a thought.
So recognizing the rarity of people who really contribute to philosophy is very, very important.
The majority of people are anti-philosophical.
The reason that they're anti-philosophical is that philosophy fundamentally deals in questions of good and evil.
Everything else is just noise-making bullcrap.
The fundamental aspect of philosophy that's really meaningful to people is the question of good and evil.
And good and evil is a curtain that nobody wants ripped back on the souls of themselves, and in particular those around them.
Once you introduce standards like the state is evil and support for statism is at best morally corrupt, once you understand that the state is evil and you accept the arguments, or even if you just can't reject the arguments, it's called dropping the E-bomb, or at least that's what I call it.
It's dropping the bomb of evil into relationships.
Immorality and immorality are very, very tough things for people to bring into their relationships.
It reshapes, it reformulates relationships.
It excavates the entire relationship.
It's very, very tough for people.
They don't want to do it. They don't want to do it.
Human beings are not fundamentally formulated for objective questions of morality.
They are fundamentally formulated to go along with the tribe and invent moral justifications for their subjugation and obedience after the fact.
Morality and ethics and philosophy as a whole is generally ex post facto Reasonings to make excuses for subjugation to the hurt, because we're designed to survive, not be philosophical, and survival throughout history meant going along with the tribe.
So people are just following their biological urges in a corrupt environment by going along with the tribe and inventing all of these moral reasons after the fact as to why it's a good idea, why the tribe is moral, why obedience is moral, why it's not really obedience but integrity or participation in the system.
I think that as far as what to do about it, I don't know.
I mean, it's tough. In some ways, I would almost say if you can let go of the moral side of things, I would let go of it, sink into the collective Borg herd, and live a life of easy conformity.
That has its great pleasures, and we should not underestimate those.
If you can't do that, then I wouldn't sort of sit in the middle.
I would just go whole hog for reason, truth, evidence, passion, clarity, integrity, and virtue and courage, and just go whole hog.
Become incandescent.
To those around you. Become a beacon.
Become a searchlight.
Become a supernova in the night sky that people can judge...
Their direction by, that people can guide themselves by, become a lighthouse so that people can avoid the rocks.
When you become bright in virtue, bright in reason, bright in intelligence, bright in passion for the truth, you will begin to attract people to you that will be boon companions and positive influences in your life.
So that's my goal. Either go big or go home, as far as philosophy goes.
Somebody has written to me, Steph, I know you're an atheist.
I would just like to take this time to try and convince you of the wonder of Jesus Christ.
Just kidding, he says. I believe in God, but I realize that other people have the freedom to believe whatever they want, but this isn't what I'm emailing you about.
It kind of is. People don't have the freedom to believe whatever they want, but they don't.
If they say that those beliefs are true, then they have to subject their beliefs to rational evidence.
Reason and evidence. You can believe, if you want, that God lives in the crescent moon on your toenail.
If you just say, that's my personal belief.
Like, I had a dream last night that elephants could fly.
That's just a personal experience or whatever.
But the moment I say elephants can fly, then that's a truth statement about reality.
The moment I say that God exists and therefore I believe in God, that is a truth statement about reality.
Not... I am driven to believe that God exists because I had dreams about him, but there's nothing true about God existing in the outside world, in the real world, in reality somewhere.
You can say all of that.
That's like ice cream.
I don't have to sort of prove that empirically.
It's just my opinion. The moment that I claim my opinions are based on a truth statement about reality as a whole, well, gosh, golly gee whiz.
Fill your boots with reason and evidence.
The scientific method comes a calling.
Rational philosophy comes a calling.
And you have to submit your beliefs to that evidence or withdraw them as truth statements.
So he said, you seem to be a philosopher.
Is that a nice way of putting it?
I suppose I do. And I want to ponder this for a moment.
What is the difference between logic and reason?
Logic is universal, like one plus one is two.
Reason is like logic, except it is more individualist and internal.
One person's reasoning for something might have flawless logic, but another person's reasoning for an opposing idea might be equally flawless.
A person's reasoning is their internal logic, where regular logic is more universal.
Now, I don't know that technically you'd want to distinguish between these two things, but I think what you're saying is that If logic is universal, then it must be derived from the objective and stable properties of matter and energy.
We have logic because the world is rational.
We have logic because, at least as far as sense perception goes, objects behave in a stable and predictable manner.
The table in your room Adheres to the law of identity and therefore we know it's a table and not a table and an ostrich at the same time.
Because we have atoms and stable physical laws, we can derive logic, laws of non-contradiction and identity and so on.
If two people are both reasoning correctly and they come to opposite conclusions, Then their premises are very likely incorrect, right?
So if my premise is God exists and I'm going to find a way to prove that, and your premise is God does not exist, and you find a way to prove that, then it's our premises that are incorrect.
If my premise is that reality is subjective and your premise is that reality is objective, then our reasonings are going to go in different directions.
You know, the most abstract reasoning goes layer by layer by layer down to...
Sense perception and physical reality.
That's where reason is derived from, from the stable and objective properties of matter, atoms and energy.
And so two scientists can't both measure the speed of light in fundamentally different ways.
Both people can't say, well, this is the spectrum of red and have completely different answers.
So once we start to touch on material and objective reality, then we get consistent principles and that's where logic should be grounded.
Somebody wrote, hello, sorry if this is explained in a part of your site I missed.
I have a question for you. How do you define immoral or evil in the absence of rights, which you do not believe in?
Well, it's not that I don't believe in rights.
It's that rights don't exist. Rights are a concept within our mind.
They are like a description of preferred behavior, but they don't exist.
There are no rights. I have an arm.
I have an eyebrow. I have hair.
I don't have rights.
Rights do not exist in the world.
So it's not that I don't believe in them.
I accept that they don't exist.
There's a very big difference, right?
It's the view question that we had in the last response podcast.
So to continue, he writes, if you believe that evil and rights are not related in any way, I would still love just a definition of evil or immoral.
Well, for the long answer, you can check out my free book, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
Please go to freedomainradio.com forward slash free and grab it while the grabbing is good and it is good.
But the short answer is that moral is universally preferable behavior that is consistent.
That is not contradictory.
That doesn't change whether you put a Green Army costume on or take it off.
That doesn't change. So theft is wrong.
It doesn't change if you become an IRS agent where it suddenly becomes right.
Moral rules do not change when you go from the one imaginary line to another imaginary line in from one country to another.
They are universal and they are consistent, just as any scientific or rational theory needs to be universal and consistent.
Physics doesn't change from America to Canada.
Mathematics doesn't change from North to South Korea.
The same thing is true of moral rules.
So morality is universally preferable behavior that is consistent, universal, objective, and hopefully has some explanatory power.
about some basic historical facts, such as communism didn't work, the free market is very productive.
These things need to be explained by a moral theory, in my opinion.
The proof of the moral theory doesn't rest on that explanation, but they really do need to explain some stuff.
Whereas evil is to invent a moral theory to claim that it is universal and create exceptions.
That is evil and immoral to the core, but it's certainly corrupt and erroneous, and it's evil to act on it.
Somebody else wrote, Dear Steph, I would like to thank you for pushing me over the edge and showing me what I've basically known all my life.
Yeah, that's true. Philosophy is not invention, but archaeology.
We know all this stuff deep down.
He goes on, I would never consciously verbalize things to myself, but I sensed the non-aggression axiom to be my guiding light.
I was really into the Ron Paul campaign of 2008, and it was not until I listened to one of your podcasts that I realized how utterly futile that was.
I remember having a bit of an emotional jolt at that very moment and pretty much disliking you for a few seconds.
Hey, if you can keep your dislike of me down to a few seconds, that's very mature.
I immediately took the red pill.
He says, what a relief. You, along with a few others like Wes Bertrand and Mark Stevens, have helped me to know myself like I've never in my whole life.
I'm 49 years old and I'm convinced I've always been an anarchist.
What do you think, Steph? Could the propensity to accept logical arguments be a genetic trait?
I ask this because it is so disheartening to read and hear so many obviously bright people submit to the notion of overlords.
The irony is not lost on me when I hear and read people marvel at the technological advances of human beings.
It is almost humorous. Maybe that is why I enjoyed George Collins much, that human beings are still as barbaric as they've always been.
Well, see here, my friend, you don't want to create a rule called human beings are barbaric, because you're obviously promoting yourself as an exception.
You don't want to create a rule and then immediately propose an exception for yourself.
That is naughty philosophy, which must be spanked and oiled.
Anyway, that's another video.
So... I agree with you.
It's incredibly disheartening to see the degree to which people reject reason and evidence.
Absolutely, completely. It is hard to see.
The explanation lies in the trauma suffered by people in their early childhoods.
I know it sounds counterintuitive.
I know it sounds out of the left field.
Check out my Bomb and the Brain series.
with subject matter experts on this.
People who experience significant trauma as children grow up without the capacity to reason from first principles.
They grow up with such a massive amount of brain damage and scar tissue in their minds and souls, I dare say, that all of their beliefs are ex post facto justifications for avoiding or conforming to that original trauma.
So you have to just get into that.
It certainly does help, I think, to look into those.
It doesn't necessarily breed Zen-like peace and forgiveness, but it certainly does breed understanding, which is the first step, I think, towards making peace with the world.
I'll just cut this email down a little bit.
This is a fellow who went on a tour with his band and a friend of his.
He's an eco-anarchist in his mid-twenties, this friend.
So they spent a lot of time around the collectivist anarchist movement in the East Coast United States, and they have a huge amount of outreach organization and civil action that they take part in.
I certainly felt out of place.
He said, as I am a voluntarist, but also an anarcho-capitalist.
Which we very well know is seen from the top end of an upturned left anarchist nose.
That's a good way of putting it. So he didn't divulge much about his beliefs other than vague hints regarding my general knowledge of libertarianism and my support of anti-authoritarianism.
Imagine how silly I felt at the earth-first rendezvous in the northwards of Maine, an eco-anarchist gathering that culminated in a costly demonstration that prevented windmull turbines from being shipped up a hill to be planted in some clear-cut forest area.
He felt very silly, but he also felt real wonder.
In other words, these people are really getting stuff done.
He's got a list of stuff that they do here.
Let me just find it. How could a free market anarchist emulate left anarchist infoshops to the newsstands that are full of free literature often written by local or not so local activists pertaining to political philosophy and outreach to a public uneducated libertarian philosophy?
How could libertarians efficiently inform individuals in their area about the state and about the free market using a combination of these two activities?
What kind of form might that take and where would the resources come from to make such things possible?
My friend, a left thinker wary to take on political labels, my girlfriend, sorry, always poses the question, yes, you've got a philosophy, but what do you do?
What outreach do you do?
What education and information do you offer?
How can you compete with the efficient organization of the left anarchist community?
I think that's a great question.
Let me dodge it and then try to answer it.
The dodge is this.
All philosophies that are rooted in people's original experience of the family are like seeds that fall on incredibly fertile soil, and they grow like wildfire.
The family, as I stated before, and will doubtless state again, is socialistic, is communistic.
And so socialism and communism and left-leaning collectivist anarcho-communism, they all are philosophies that echo, mirror, and amplify people's original experience of their social relationships.
It takes a mature human being.
To understand that society cannot be organized in the same way that a family is organized for a wide variety of reasons that we don't have to get into here, but, you know, may make the subject of a good podcast.
And so people who have had, you know, hippy-dippy parents or even maybe over-authoritarian parents...
They have the sense that society should be run like a family.
And this really was what democracy is, right?
You have the state as parents, you have the citizens as children.
The children get a vote, but the parents make the final decisions.
There's a lot of propaganda, but the parents finally have the ultimate control.
You live In your parents' house in the same way that as a citizen you live in the country owned by the government and so on.
And this is the idea that, and it's not my idea originally, it goes back thousands of years, that the shape of society as a whole, particularly the shape of authority, political authority in society, mirrors the family.
When you have better families, you end up with better governments.
When you have non-authoritarian parenting, when you have totally pacifistic parenting with respect for the self-ownership of children, You will inevitably end up with a free society.
A human being can't fundamentally function in a society if he's unconscious.
He can't function in a society that is different from all of his experiences, from the shape of his brain, from the shape of his initial exposure to authority and hierarchical structures within the family, within the church, within the school, wherever he or she is.
If you want to change society, you have to change people's early childhood experiences because childhood shapes the way that we view society.
People accept a lot of nonsense about the government fundamentally because it accords with their early experiences of authority.
And that's why, as parenting has improved, we've ended up with democracy, which is certainly an improvement over feudalism.
We've ended up with rights for women and beginning to get a real sense of rights and self-ownership for children.
So, You're comparing apples to oranges if you're comparing a rational philosophy with an irrational philosophy like anarcho-communism, because anarcho-communism falls on the very fertile ground of prior childhood experiences, whereas objective morality, estate, the society, property rights and self-ownership, all fall counter to just about everybody's experiences of their family and certainly against their experiences of church and school.
So you're fighting a real uphill battle.
It's one that will win because we have actual truth and reality and reason and evidence on our side, but it's gonna take a long time.
So recognize that those people are, they're going downhill with the wind.
We're going uphill against the wind.
That having been said, there's a lot of stuff that you can do.
I will make that the subject of a video this week.
Hopefully it will be of some use to you.
And thank you everybody so much.
I wish I could get to everyone's emails, but it's about 200 a day.
I simply can't get some work done.
So thank you so much for watching and listening.
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