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Sept. 16, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

19:19

1993 Self-Knowledge, Identity and Freedom

A great listener question from a recent Sunday show - what will personal identity look like without gods and governments?

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	So this is a question that came up some weeks ago on a Sunday show.
	And it's a very interesting, not essential, or at least certainly not immediate, but an important question.
	The question is, what would constitute identity in a stateless society?
	And by stateless society, I'm going to assume that we include an atheist society, since the two are going to have to kind of go hand in hand.
	What would it mean to have an identity in a philosophical, free, non-coercive society?
	It's a fascinating question.
	Of course, we have identities now based on geography.
	Somebody posted on one of my videos, I'm from Canada, who the hell is Free Domain Radio?
	And I replied back...
	Freedom Aid Radio is a philosophy show that would inform you that Canada does not exist.
	And so there wouldn't be national identity.
	There wouldn't be sports addiction identity.
	Of course, we all understand that these are actually quite the opposite of identity.
	But nonetheless, these things wouldn't exist.
	Would there be racial identity?
	I think it's possible that to some degree there may be some sort of racial identity that would maintain itself, but I think that that would diminish over time.
	And so all of these false identities, you know, my town, my county, my state, my country, all these layers of illusion and exploitation would simply not be there.
	Now, there would be some Would there be gender identities?
	I think that there would be fewer, far fewer.
	Gender identity. So this woman who was on the show, Cordelia Fine, has left a big impact, a big imprint on my mind about the degree to which gender is a social construct rather than an inevitable or internally generated biological state.
	Now, of course, men and women have different experiences.
	Menstruation, apparently orgasms are very much the same.
	I read a study once, because we're all drawn to orgasm studies naturally, but I read a study once where people described their experience of an orgasm, and when people read it without any reference to biology or gender, they couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman describing their experiences of orgasm.
	And so, but childbirth, menstruation, breastfeeding, and so on, I mean, these things are different for men and for women, and that's going to have some effects on personality, perhaps.
	So I think there may still be some of that.
	I don't think that there would necessarily be the same kind of materialism identity, right?
	So, like, preppy or grungy or emo or rocker or, you know, you see these guys, they just need beefy embodiments of Grateful Dead cliches.
	These guys who drive in the Harleys and they got the big beard and they got the gut and they got the saggy, faded...
	Jeans and the black t-shirt with bad graffiti and then the little leather jackets and the ponytails and a woman who weighs as much if not more on the backseat of these beasts.
	So, I mean, this I think would sort of diminish.
	But I don't think that that would be the end of identity.
	I mean, certainly not everybody would be the same.
	I mean, there would still be different levels of IQ. There would still be different artistic tastes, cultural tastes in terms of food and music and art and cinema and theater and so on.
	It would be different tastes. And so I think, and this has sort of been the dream of many secular artistic people.
	In particular, I'm thinking of The sort of irony slash literature addictions or exhortations of people like Christopher Hitchens.
	I think that there would be the achievement to some degree of the dream of identity through art.
	Through art. I don't go as far as Ayn Rand in saying that there is sort of good and bad art in Other than in terms of quality.
	Beethoven is morbid.
	I don't really believe any of that kind of stuff.
	And I think that a truly well-rounded personality can appreciate the darker music, the poppier music, the darker plays, the happier plays.
	You should be able, I think, if you are an open-minded and ironic and curious individual, you should be able, I think, to appreciate...
	The Taming of the Shrew along with A Long Day's Journey Into Night.
	You should, I think, be able to absorb and appreciate the artistry, however horrifying it is, in something like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
	As well, I think you should be able to enjoy The Producers or Showboat.
	So, that's sort of my feeling.
	I think that you should be able to enjoy Pink Floyd and Rush.
	Or you should be able to enjoy Tony Bennett and Sinet O'Connor.
	These are just...
	I don't think that there should be necessarily restrictions.
	Now, I think that there is certain kinds of head-poundingly ugly music that I think would diminish, because to me it just seems like such a shouting, reverberating echo of horror that it has to do with...
	Childhood trauma. And so, without that, I think there would be far less demand for that kind of music.
	But I think we should be able to accept and absorb and appreciate mournful art.
	I think that's reasonable because it's not like there's going to be no unhappiness in a stateless society in some ways.
	Freedom and peace is going to increase people's unhappiness.
	I think that's inevitable.
	If you are, I mean, assuming that the problem of death has not been solved, in a free and peaceful society, you will be very close to others, and you will be very intimate, and you will be very in love with your spouse and your children and your friends.
	There will be those bonds of devotion and human connection that the Grim Reaper hacks and pulls apart relentlessly.
	As he drags people clutching and gasping through the doorway of death.
	So there is going to be more weeping at funerals in a free society and less sentimental weeping in a free society.
	I think that's inevitable.
	So there is going to be much greater happiness.
	And as the natural shadow of the statue of happiness, it is going to be greater unhappiness, greater sadness, greater misery.
	If you never love, you never lose much.
	And the more you love, the more you're going to lose.
	That's the deal. That's the deal.
	I think it's still the best deal around, but that is the deal.
	So, will there be sad, mournful, angry music?
	Absolutely. Of course there will be.
	Of course there will be. And so, I think that is going to be the case.
	Will there be plays about family dysfunction in a free society?
	Well, sure there will be. I mean, we have plays and movies about medieval or quasi-medieval lives, like Dungeons& Dragons movies, Lord of the Rings, Kroll, The Conqueror, Conan has just come out again, so there is going to be, of course, there's going to be historical views of dysfunction, and we're going to view that as obviously pretty horrifying, but yeah, I think that's all going to be there.
	But I do believe that people are going to gain...
	I shouldn't say they're going to gain their identity through literature and art, but I think that their current life experience is going to be voluminously reflected back to them through their choices, and a wide variety of choices there will be, through their choices of art and literature.
	So, if you're going through a period of grieving, you're going to be drawn to particular stories and music and so on that is going to reflect and, I think, help you through that particular period.
	And that, I think, is going to be...
	It's not going to make your identity, right?
	There's this kind of annoying identity that goes along with art at the moment, right?
	So, if you're into...
	Death metal music, then you can't be wearing a suit and tie, you know?
	I once knew a guy in business who was an executive who was really into Eminem.
	It can happen, I guess, but if you're really into Motorhead, then you've got to have the...
	Spinal tap handlebar mustache to go with it.
	And the long hair and the pseudo-aristocratic grunge garb and so on.
	I mean, it's... So unfortunately, there's so much cliché that goes along with that.
	I mean, if you're into Led Zeppelin, then you've got to have pimples, a skinny torso, and shaggy hair.
	That's just a...
	It seems to be kind of inevitable.
	I know that's all too dated for words, but I'm sorry.
	I'm old. I'm old.
	Help me. And so I think there is going to be less of, to use a double metaphor, an Iron Maiden-ish constriction on your identity if you're into particular kinds of music.
	You know, like if you're into Spandau Ballet, then you don't have to be preppy or whatever.
	And that, I think, is going to be fun, more fun for people or more rich, I shouldn't say, more rich for people because you're going to have a wider diversity of stuff.
	You can be into jazz without being pretentious.
	You can be into heavy metal without being depressed and angry.
	You can be into Sade without being overpolished and creamy.
	So, I think you're going to have a more fluid identity that is going to be based upon how your culture, your society, your art, your friendships, how they relate to your experience of the world and your input into the world as your life moves through its various stages.
	And I think that's great.
	I think that has a kind of flexibility and richness.
	And by richness, I simply mean a non-judgmental experience of a wide variety of emotionality and intent within music.
	There are going to be times in a free society...
	When you're really angry, and you would have every reason to be angry, right?
	Somebody hits you in a car who's been drinking.
	I mean, these things are going to happen.
	Less, I hope, but it'll happen in a free society.
	Your wife dies suddenly.
	My goodness. I mean, that's just awful.
	And it's going to make you angry. It's going to make you sad.
	Assuming that you didn't plan it or want it.
	And so these things, I think, are going to be part of what it is that people call an identity, but it's not going to sort of circle around you and close off.
	In other words, if you see a guy wearing a 10-gallon hat in a pickup with a Confederate flag hanging off the back of his pickup truck, It doesn't hugely shock you when Garth Brooks comes out of his stereo when he starts up the car.
	It may be surprising if it's Philip Glass or something like that as a modern classical composer.
	And so what I'd like is for the cues to be more surprising than they are now, because it seems kind of inevitable.
	You see someone who looks a certain way, and you can almost tell the kind of music and movies and art that they're into.
	It's almost completely predictable.
	When I was a kid, Susie and the Banshees meant, emo meant Echo and the Bunnymen and all these kinds of Morrissey and the Smiths and all that kind of stuff.
	It was a cliché.
	Bow down before the one you serve.
	You're gonna get what you deserve.
	I think that was Nine Inch Nails.
	Trent Reznor? Anyway.
	There was this kind of cliché, and then there was this sort of boppers who were into Duran Duran and Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet and all this kind of stuff.
	And there was this kind of cliché about stuff.
	And there was a few bands that transcended this.
	But not many. And so I would like, and I believe this will be the case in the future...
	Someone may have a pickup truck, but the odds of them being in the country would be no greater than if they had a Maserati.
	I think that would be interesting, and I think that would be more human, less cliché, because a lot of that stuff seems to be kind of culturally enforced.
	Instead of a line from the Blue Bruce Brothers, we like two kinds of music here, country or western.
	So I would like it if stuff was surprising to people and you couldn't necessarily tell the art consumption of somebody based upon external cues.
	And I've always found that to be quite interesting and often delightful to see in people when I meet them as adults.
	If I can't sort of tell what kind of music they're into or if they're just into being open to different kinds of music.
	I mean, I went through a phase in my early 20s where...
	I was on the radio, and I had sort of access to what was then Napster, which was massive amounts of vinyl, like just a record store and a half's worth of vinyl music.
	And I could sort of check out and play and borrow whatever it is that I wanted.
	And I just, I got everything.
	Spyro, Gyro, in terms of jazz.
	I really got into Louis Armstrong for a while.
	It was a little earlier with my introduction to the real blues through Muddy Waters, but I got really into the blues through there and got more into jazz.
	And also, I had that great resource, and I just sort of would grab albums randomly and really listen to them, sit and listen with headphones to them and follow along the lyrics sheet if I could.
	There's some albums, actually, I kind of liked.
	I just remember the covers.
	If you ever know this, please let me know.
	It was a guy with his incredibly long straight hair spread out all over his guitar who sang stuff.
	And one of his songs was a really, really long...
	for a song about something about it's getting too heavy, baby, and I've got to leave or something like that.
	If anybody ever knows what that album was, I'd really like to listen to it again.
	But there was that kind of stuff where I would just go hog wild on wildly different stuff.
	And I remember one summer I went to see Otis Clay like one week and then the Beach Boys the next week and then I was at a jazz club and I just really got into just a wide variety of different music.
	And I think that was actually very good for my brain.
	Oh, and I also was very keen on medieval music with the original instruments, like, so the originally crafted sort of instruments, I found that to be...
	Just fascinating. And I got into Gregorian chants for a while.
	I found that to be very relaxing to meditate to or to work out to or to do yoga to.
	I found that to be quite fascinating.
	And some of that stuff is very skillful.
	And of course, I was introduced to a wide variety of music while singing at theater school.
	Just a wide, wide variety of music.
	And I had a girlfriend at the time who then got me into musicals.
	I'd never really had any exposure to musicals before.
	She was a musical fiend and just opened my mind to just an enormous variety of Of musicals, which I really, really enjoyed.
	And I also got into 50s.
	Anyway, I won't bore you with all of this sort of stuff.
	Sam Cooke. Sam Cooke.
	My God. My God.
	Above. What a singer. What a singer.
	What a singer. What a singer. And what a songwriter, too.
	Oh. Oh. Too bad.
	He got shot by a hooker.
	Anyway. So I got into just a wide variety of stuff.
	And I got into prog rock through Yes.
	I liked the Alan Parsons project as well.
	And ELO. My brother was more into ELO, but I sort of liked some of their stuff.
	And anyway, I just got into a wide variety of music.
	And I'm trying to think of anything I really didn't sample.
	I guess I didn't sample country that much, but I had a lot of exposure to country while I worked up north as a prospector.
	The only station we could get when we worked in the bush for about four months was a country and western station, which I distinctly remember is the top 850 country and western songs of all time.
	I do remember being struck by some of the cleverness of the lyrics, though.
	Get your tongue out of my mouth, I'm kissing you goodbye.
	Anyway, so it's sort of my hope that in the future, people's, quote, identities will be more a conversation between their circumstances and their artistic environment.
	That's going to be fluid, that's going to be...
	I was going to say changeable, but what are the synonyms for fluid that I can waste your time with?
	But fluid and responsive.
	I think that it's going to be hard to pin people down that way.
	Oh, you're into sad music.
	That doesn't mean that you're a sad person.
	That just means you're feeling sad at the moment.
	And you're into angry music.
	That doesn't mean you're an angry person.
	It doesn't become a sort of fixed identity.
	But it becomes something that is a reflection of your experience in the moment or at the moment.
	So I hope that helps about...
	I think art is going to become even more important and more responsive in the future because it's not going to be a guaranteed audience of, you know, fixed angry and bitter emos that you can write your music for.
	So it's my hope that that's how the future of freedom is going to look from an artistic standpoint.
	And so I hope that this helps.
	And of course, if you have any questions, comments, or criticisms, always drop by freedomainradio.com.
	And if you have some money to donate, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate is your generation, your generosity station.

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