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Sept. 1, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
13:26
1743 The Bomb in the Brain - An Introductory Video

Two listeners put together a great intro to the Bomb in the Brain series...

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Shhh It's oh so quiet Shhh, shhh It's oh so still Shhh, shhh You're all alone Shhh, shhh Shhh, shhh
I'm so peaceful until My name is Stefan Molyneux.
I work with the I run a podcast which usually translates into not good enough for radio.
And hopefully, I'm more used to doing just one camera, a red room, and just me.
So there's a lot of eyeballs here.
I'll try not to let it goose me.
I actually wanted them to build a red room.
I do the talk and just wave from the top, but apparently that wasn't going to happen.
If you've spent any time trying to convince people, as Socrates and philosophers onwards and libertarians and objectivists and anarchists have onwards, trying to convince people about...
Being better, be more rational, looking at the reason and evidence more objectively, you'll realize that it is a little bit like putting your forehead up into a cheese grater and repeatedly nodding your head, or rather shaking it, because people don't respond very well to reason and evidence.
A perception that most people have that what we start with is a kind of blank slate, like we start in the Lockean blank slate.
And then we receive reason and evidence, arguments, sense, perception, and so on.
We read books, we see documentaries, we go to school, and we get reason and evidence.
And from there, we get our beliefs.
And therefore, what most people who want to change the world do is they focus on reason and evidence.
They say, well, look, you have the wrong reason and evidence, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you better reason and evidence, and that is going to change the Your beliefs, because your beliefs are derived from reason and evidence.
But if you spend any time trying to debate things in the real world, you realize that this does not work.
What happens is you give new reason and evidence and people ignore it.
Or they will accept it grudgingly and then forget it the next day.
And you have to be willing to throw away that approach.
So I'm often asked, well, why do I deal with early childhood?
Why do I deal with family history?
Why do I deal with self-knowledge?
And why do I suggest therapy?
Well, Because I like facts and I like to do things that work.
There is no way to improve rationality without improving people's childhoods because reason and evidence is not the source of people's ideology.
The actual sequence that occurs within people's minds is there is some form of trauma.
Trauma doesn't have to be parental.
It can be based on religious terrorizing.
It can be based on the frustrations of really bad public schools or even really bad private schools.
It can be any number of things.
Trauma leads to dysfunction within the brain, to brain damage.
The brain damage produces an ideology, which is designed to shield the person from the knowledge of the trauma and of the brain damage.
I am not broken, say people.
The world is broken.
Once you have an ideology, you then go in a little circular revolving door called reason and evidence, where you go and seek out that which confirms your bias and you reject information that is contrary to it.
When you are afraid, when you are anxious, when you are frightened, the fear response shuts down your reasoning centers and you act in a very primal way.
We feel the impulse, we act, and then we have a story The experience of willpower is far more widespread than the reality of willpower.
This is not absolute. This can be changed with self-knowledge, with getting the coaching of a great therapist, with journaling, with introspection.
But first of all, you need to know that you don't know what you don't know.
Well, we can't heal the world, we can't make the world peaceful and loving until we know why it is violent and hateful.
And the main causes of violence, drug addiction, promiscuity, suicidality, and other dysfunctions are very clear.
Do you know what it is? Child abuse.
And then she, she, it's nice and quiet.
She, she, she.
Child abuse causes physical changes within the brain.
I'm going to be referencing the Adverse Childhood Experiences study.
This presentation will explore the relationships between adverse childhood experiences and future physical and mental health issues.
Physical abuse and verbal abuse were most strongly associated with body weight and obesity.
Adverse childhood experiences are strongly related to ever drinking alcohol and to alcohol initiation in early and mid-adolescence.
The number of categories of adverse childhood experience exposures showed a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung diseases, skeletal fractures and liver disease.
Persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experienced none, had a four to twelve-fold increased health risk for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt.
Adverse childhood experiences and chronic depression.
This is broken down between women and men, the difference being the classical distinction between women who aggress against themselves through depression and men who aggress against others through violence.
ACE scores decrease with age.
Life expectancy drop for significant ACEs is about 20 years.
Child abuse and neglect by relationship to victim.
In the category of other, 5.9%.
Unknown or missing, 3.9%.
Professionals, doctors, I would imagine priests, 1.1%.
Unmarried partner of parent, living boyfriend or girlfriend, 4.1%.
Other relative, 6.5%.
Parent, 78.5%.
The mind and emotional content of the brain are created in the first few years of life through the attachment bond between the infant and the mother.
They're created. We are not born violent.
We are not born warlike.
We are not born aggressive.
The amygdala of insecurely attached children are hyperactive and larger than those of securely attached children.
They have a greater surging of fight and flight, of adrenaline, of cortisol.
Plus, their prefrontal cortices are smaller, and so they're less able to control their fears or angers or other irrational emotional reactions in response to later interpersonal difficulties.
This is lashing out. This is acting out.
Robert Firestone reports all his suicidal patients hear parental voices telling them they should kill themselves.
Bessel van der Kolk, the most famous expert on dissociated mind states, concludes...
People with childhood histories of trauma, abuse and neglect make up almost the entire criminal justice population in the United States, with abusive childhoods causing dissociative states.
Boys grew up with less attachment strengths because careful studies show that mothers look at their boys less, because both parents hit their boys two or three times as much as they do their girls, because boys are at much higher risk than girls for serious violence against them, and because boys are continuously told to be tough, not to be a wimp or a weakling, not to be soft or a sissy.
Abused and neglected children have poorly integrated cerebral hemispheres.
This poor integration of hemispheres and...
Underdevelopment of the orbitofrontal cortex is the basis for such symptoms as difficulty regulating emotion, lack of cause and effect thinking, if I do this, then bad things will happen.
If I steal this, I might go to jail.
An inability to accurately recognize emotions in others.
An inability of the child to articulate the child's own emotions.
An incoherent sense of self and autobiographical history that's related to hippocampal damage and a lack of conscience.
Too much stress in too long a period of time is toxic.
It is a poison on the developing brain.
When you're in your fight-or-flight mechanisms or your fear response, your amygdala is overstimulated as it is during chronic stress and abuse, you can't learn as effectively.
You're dissociated, you're tense, you're stressed.
A study of 900 American mothers found that they most enjoyed socializing, praying, eating, exercising, watching TV, and cooking more than taking care of my children.
If babies are ignored, if their caregivers do not provide intense verbal interaction, their language development may be delayed.
If a child does not receive kindness as an infant, he may not know how to show kindness as an adult.
Dr. Murray Strauss, the co-director of the laboratory, noted how ironic it is That the behaviors for which parents spank children are liable to get worse as a result of the spanking.
If you spank your child, you are increasing their risk of alcohol abuse or dependence and major depression later in life.
It is abusive.
Children who have been sexually abused are at significant risk of developing anxiety disorders.
Two times the average.
Major depressive disorder is 3.4 times, alcohol abuse 2.5, drug abuse 3.8, and antisocial behavior, criminal, 4.3 times the average.
Enough identifying problems, what about solutions?
Well, I have a very short and succinct approach to solving these sorts of problems in the world.
It's sort of a five-year plan.
Two years in therapy, just do it, do it, do it!
If you want excellence, get a great coach.
That's just a natural thing.
At least take a parenting class and vow to yourself, just as you do with your other relationships.
You don't go and yell at and slap your friends.
You don't yell at and slap your wife, I hope, or your husband.
You never yell out, call names, or slap your child.
You just don't do it. It's just completely off the table.
You need to find other ways to interact with your children, recognizing that, of course, their brains are immature.
And I also strongly suggest, be home for the first few years of your child's life.
Ideally, if both of you can be home, fantastic.
What does that mean? Does that mean you have to move out of your house to an apartment for a couple of years?
Do it! I mean, what do you care about your house relative to your relationship with your precious and beloved children?
Don't be the parents who go out to work for 10 or 11 hours a day with a commute and see their children for an hour or two a day.
I mean, don't be those kinds of parents.
That is disastrous and destructive to children.
And this is why the only way for the world to become more rational, more humane, more empathetic, more peaceful, more caring, more loving, and happier is to, as an adult, examine yourself, examine your own impulses and your own thoughts.
We need to improve our relationship with ourselves, uncover and resolve early traumas, become better parents to our children, and then, and then, and only then, do we get a free, happy, peaceful, and prosperous world.
And there's no other way.
Every breakthrough is needed By the sign of the day Singing out our evolution Children showed the way They made out a charter Sealed with a song It took me across the river To where I belong Hurry home to your heart.
Hurry home to the voice.
There are times for interchanges.
Be ready for the choice.
Hurry home, said my love.
Hurry home to the stars.
Start a new generation with a freedom that's ours.
Start a new generation with a freedom that's ours.
Last thing that I will say, I hope that you will spend a few minutes, or even better, a few hours, spreading this information around the playlist for the Bomb and the Brain series is fdrurl.com forward slash b-i-b.
If you could post this to message boards where people are interested in this kind of information, I, and I think the world in the future, would be massively, massively thankful.
This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful life.
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