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Sept. 16, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:35
1994 Nausea, Despair, Hatred, Love - Freedomain Radio E-Mails of the Week, September 16, 2011
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Hi everybody, hope you're doing well.
Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Just before we get to some really, really great letters that I received, thank you so much to Ian and the gang who invited me down to speak at Liberty Fest 2 in New York just last weekend.
It was a great deal of fun.
I had a huge blast. It was fantastic to meet everyone and thanks to everyone who had such great and kind things to say about my ramblings.
Oh, I did take a picture.
Sometimes statism can be beautiful.
Here you go. So let's get to some letters.
This is a very moving one that I think we can all relate to.
Dear Steph, I wish I didn't know all the things I have learned in the past few years.
I wish that I didn't cringe every time I see something patriotic.
I want the blue pill back, but I already took the red one.
I try and doubt my anarchist views about true freedom and responsibility because there are so many people around me who are smarter and older than me.
And they believe that people need the gun pointed at them to be safe.
But I can't see that anymore.
All I see is butchers being cheered by the cattle that they are about to slaughter.
I feel like a swimmer in the ocean surrounded by people who can't swim and are dragging me to my watery grave.
Thanks for the videos, even though they have made me feel sick about the people around me.
I sympathize.
I empathize.
I understand. The volcanic eruption of sunlight in the murky depths of all propagandized souls is a painful, fiery, burning birth.
So I really sympathize Society presents itself as very nice, as very pleasant.
You know, like the Jehovah's Witnesses who come to your door, they're very pleasant, they're very positive, they're very friendly.
But if you dismantle their perspectives and arguments, you get a coldness and a viciousness that is just a fingernail scratch below the surface.
It is the fragility of relationships in society that is the great secret.
It is the fragility.
Society is a giant McMansion built on popsicle sticks.
It is very fragile.
The degree to which our true selves are hollowed at and we are pumped full of the mental formaldehyde of fantasy, of madness, of religiosity, of nationalism, of patriotism, of culture, That is the degree to which our relationships are eroded.
We end up living in these self-sealed bubbles of delusion which can't bump up against anything real for fear of puncturing and dropping us to our deaths, our spiritual deaths, as it feels like.
So as long as you agree, as long as all the salmon are swimming in the same line, in the same direction, everybody's happy and convivial, but the moment that you turn and question.
The viciousness within society is revealed.
The ugliness within society is revealed.
Letter from somebody who has lost or given up his Christian faith.
And he's saying, well, my parents are very Christian.
What is it that I do? And my response is, well, if you like your parents, you might just want to sit on this for a while and get used to this new clarity.
And if you have problems with your parents, then you should sit down and talk about those problems with your parents.
Because if you bring up the atheism thing, it's going to go that direction.
And the atheism versus religious thing is just a symptom of deeper problems within relationships.
But it's the very delicacy of these relationships, it's the fragility of these delusions that is the great secret within society.
And when you begin to bring philosophy into relationships, and it's hard to even call them relationships, but proximities based on The bitter spiderwebs of fantasy, everybody feels a terrifying and terrible anxiety, and they will very often lash out.
They're like a skunk.
Some people's defenses are vileness, are abuse.
You get too close, you threaten their fantasies, and they lash out in horrible ways.
And that is a way of attempting to provoke you into retreating to the high bone-dead ivory tower of abstract contemplation, of attempting to get you out of the fray of human combat, of human salvation.
Of removing philosophy, the power of philosophy, from the delusions of culture, nationalism, religiosity, superstition, astrology, all of this madness.
It is a way of driving it away by being so vile that you turn away.
Don't let them win that way.
Don't let them turn your face away from the necessary ills that you can help with, that you can save.
The defense of society is first beauty and second vileness, Jung said a long time ago.
Sentimentality is the superstructure or what is on top of a reaction formation to brutality that the more brutal a human being is the more sentimental and saccharine they appear and if you pierce that first level you get the viciousness and the viciousness is the second layer of defense designed to disgust you to the point where you flee the necessary combat of hauling people by their petards to the truth And this fragility is horrendous.
It is horrendous.
I mean, years ago, and for many years, I've made this argument called the against me argument, which says, look, if you support the state, then you support the use of violence against me.
That you support The use of violence against me, against me as an individual.
Now you'd think that a brother, a son, a father, an aunt, an uncle, because we're all told, you remember, we're told, family is everything.
Family relationships are bonds of steel.
Well, then the moment that your family realizes that they're advocating the use of force against you by supporting the violence of the state.
If you say, I don't think that Social Security is a productive plan, I want out.
No! Get in line.
Get in the box. Then people support you being dragged off by thugs in blue costumes for disagreeing with them.
Well, you'd think that the love of family would overcome the bloodthirstiness of ideology and propaganda, but how rare is that?
How rare is it that somebody goes to their family or their friends, their close, their old friends and allies for many years or decades and say, you know you're supporting the use of force against me.
How often is it that the love of those around you Will cause them to drop their support of violence for the sake of love.
But it's the lack of love in the world that is the great secret.
It is the hollowing out of propaganda.
It is the replacement of the vital blood of our true self with the dead, pulseless formaldehyde of propaganda.
That is the great secret in the world.
This is why there are so many zombie movies.
Why we are fascinated by the undead by vampires.
Because so many human relationships are based on the fragility of conformity and the fear of the truth.
So don't let the disgust with those who are reacting in this way turn you away from everybody who needs your help.
Look past the zombies to the true souls beyond who are just waiting.
I hope that helps. Dear Steph, I'm sending you this missive because I'm curious about your statements and politely request a more in-depth answer to your argument on self-ownership.
The answer is in your sentence.
We'll get there. The issue I'm having is with the evidence for the premise that self-ownership exists.
Now, if you have no evidence for the statement that self-ownership exists because you are only using it as a term for actions of the mind, then I have another problem.
If self-ownership is synonymous with mind-controlled action, then we just replace the word self-ownership with mind-controlled actions, and it would look something like this.
All humans have a mind that controls their actions, e.g.
making an argument, planting seeds, etc.
Therefore, if one tries to argue against mind-controlled actions, they must use their mind-controlled actions to make the argument.
Therefore, they are using a self-detonating statement.
So how does this prove that humans have property rights?
All it proves is that humans have a mind that controls their actions.
Mind controlled action is a clumsy word but you get the idea.
The argument seems to be equivocating or begging the question depending on which line of reasoning you use.
So if you can clear this up I would be most appreciative.
On a side note can I just say that your rhetoric is extremely effective and convincing and so are your videos.
Also your inflection in your voice is very captivating.
I still find your arguments wholly unconvincing and very unsound, but still you are a great promoter and a great speaker.
I should steal some of your tricks in the future.
Very impressive. Please do.
Okay, so we have a mind that controls our actions.
And the reason I said that the answer is in the first sentence, he said a more in-depth answer to your argument.
Your argument on self-ownership.
That's the answer. This person is saying, I have a disagreement with your staff's argument on self-ownership.
Well, I have used my mind to create an argument for self-ownership.
For self-ownership and therefore property rights.
But because I have used my mind to create this argument, I own the effects of my actions.
It's my argument.
So think of three people in a room.
And person A, B and C. Person A says to person B, self-ownership exists.
Person B says to person C, I disagree with your argument.
Well, person A is going to say, but that's not his argument, it's my argument.
That's property rights. I have made an argument.
I am responsible for the sound waves, for the video, for the YouTube channel, for whatever it is that I have used to create the argument.
I am responsible for the effects of my actions.
Whether it's a house on a hill or sound waves in a room, I am still responsible for the effects of my actions.
There's no different. Matter is matter.
Whether I move sound with the timber of my voice, or whether I build a house on unoccupied land, I am still affecting matter using my mind.
I am responsible for the effects of my actions.
So when he says your argument, bingo bango bongo, we're done.
We've already established property rights.
That I am responsible for the effects of my actions is my argument.
I hope that helps. Hello Steph, I understand that you have a master's degree in history.
I just began studying history, but on a low level.
Do you have any tips on how to study history?
Yeah, I would say that most of the people that I studied history with were looking at the mass of messy data called history.
Some theories, some dates, some facts and so on.
And they studied these and they studied these and they studied these and got frustrated because they weren't able to come to any conclusions.
Well, to me that is not a great way to approach it.
My daughter is really into playing with sprinkles because she's very, very interested in seeing just how many she can grind into our heels and the carpet simultaneously.
And you know, sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles or whatever, they go on ice cream, they have lots of different colors.
Well, imagine a whole room full of chocolate sprinkles of different colors, red, blue, green, yellow, whatever, right?
And you just look at those looking for a pattern.
Then you stir them around, look for another pattern.
I mean, you may see vague patterns, but the moment you turn or the moment you move, then they're all gonna go again.
This is what happens when you just look at data.
You'll see a vague pattern, like if you look long enough, it's static on a TV. It's like, oh, I see a spinning spaceship.
Oh, it's gone again. But that's what happens when you look at data and wait for the data to give you theories.
It doesn't work that way.
You have to have some thesis that you bring To the data.
That allows you to choose which data to look at, it allows you to organize your approach to the data, and it gives you something falsifiable.
A physicist doesn't go to a hailstorm, stare at them, and wait for the theory of gravity to come.
Right? Even though the hails are bouncing off each other, bouncing off the cars and doing all these kinds of cool things, he has a theory and he will test it on a hailstorm perhaps.
But don't just read a whole bunch of history and wait for something to come to you in terms of coherence.
It's the coherence that matters in history.
Because history, the study of history, is not the study of history.
The study of history is not the study of history.
It is the study of the future.
If you're trying to cure cancer, you come up with some great drug to cure cancer, you do some double-blind experiment or test, then you look at all of that data.
That data is not fundamentally about the test of the cancer drug in the past.
It's about the cure of cancer in the future.
So don't forget, history is not about history.
History is about the future. History is about how we solve and deal with problems that are coming up.
It's the lessons of the past that we can use to avoid the disasters of the future.
You know, when you're driving, you've got your rearview mirrors, that's history.
What do you use your rearview mirrors for?
Not to stare into them, because that means you're going to crash.
What you use them for is to check your blind spot so that you don't hit a car when you're moving forward, right?
So you look into the past, you look into, this is true of as personal life as it is of history, you look into the past in order to avoid obstacles and disasters in the future.
So don't just go looking in the past and get lost there.
Like Scrooge, that's no good.
You've got to come back with something of productive value for the future.
So, have a theory, and I think there's lots...
Paul Johnson is a great historian, well worth reading.
So, lots of people that you can read who would be very...
I mean, Edward Gibbons has a great and powerful theory about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
You can look at the decline and fall of the Third Reich and all these kinds of things.
These people have some theories, some very powerful and valid theories.
Leonard Picard's The Ominous Parallels, I think, is a very good book about...
Again, I'm not saying whether these theories are all true or false, but they have theories, and that's how they choose their data.
And, of course, you have to avoid...
Cherry-picking and you have to avoid the confirmation bias as best as possible, but that's important.
Somebody sent me somebody who was criticizing my approach to ethics, which I'm still enormously behind and happy with, called universally preferable behavior a rational proof of secular ethics available for free on my website because I have the business sense of Cheez Whiz.
So here's an argument That somebody had an issue with.
Oh, sorry, but first of all, some people are saying, well, I've read through the whole book and I don't know what universally preferable behavior is.
Well, to me, that's like saying, well, I know what South is and I know what West is, but if you put the two words together, South-West, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Universally preferable behavior, to me, doesn't need a lot of definition.
Universal is pretty clear, right?
It's beyond personal opinion, something that is tied into reality as a whole.
Preferable is not preferred.
It's preferable. It means something you would choose over something else.
If you want to go to the North Pole, it's preferable that you walk north.
You can walk south if you want, you're just not going to get to the North Pole.
I guess unless you walk south enough.
Not the best metaphor, but you understand.
If you don't want to die, you need to eat and drink.
It's preferable to eat and drink if you want to live.
And it's universally preferable because it's not just a matter of subjective opinion.
Behavior simply means ethics applies to actions, not to thoughts.
So anyway, universally preferable behavior, I don't really know how to define it other than the words define it themselves.
So, here's an argument in support of the validity of universally preferable behavior.
Ethics don't exist, property rights don't exist, concepts don't exist in the real world.
Concepts are imperfectly derived from instances in the real world.
Imperfectly derived, which means if there's any contradiction between the idea you have in your head and what is out there in the world, it's the idea in your head that has to give way.
World rules. Reality rules.
Concepts must wrap around reality like a really tightly wifed wrapped Christmas present.
Here's the argument. All organisms require universally preferred behavior to live.
You can't argue against that.
I mean, if you do, you're being ridiculous.
All organisms need food or need energy source.
They need rest of some kind.
They need drink, water, food, or whatever it is.
All organisms require universally preferred behavior to live.
No question. Man is a living organism, no question.
Therefore, all living men are alive due to the practice of universally preferred behavior.
If you're alive, and able to debate, let's say, let's say men, not children, if you're alive, it's because you've eaten, you've slept, hopefully within the last couple of days, you've drunk water, you have sought out shelter, so you have pursued universally preferable behavior.
In order to be alive. There's no question.
There's no man who can stand before me who can say, I have never eaten a bite of food.
No man can say that.
Or ingested any kind of energy.
Ooh, you've got people who've got IVs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can trick me all you want.
But the reality is, nobody who is alive has never ingested any food or liquids.
So therefore, any argument against universally preferable behavior requires an acceptance and practice of universally preferred behavior.
I can argue against universally preferable behavior, but I'm only alive to argue against it because I have followed the universally preferable behavior called eating and drinking and resting or whatever.
So no argument against the validity or existence of universally preferable behavior can be valid.
It can't be. Now, it doesn't mean that you automatically agree with everything I say about ethics.
Of course not. But anybody who's alive To argue against UPB is only alive because they followed UPB. Again, it's not ironclad, but it is a very strong supporter of the entire argument.
And people will pick on this kind of stuff and they don't understand it.
And I don't know how it's hard to understand, but anyway.
But these are all just supporting strikes for the theory.
Where people always stop criticizing my theory of ethics is when it comes down to the arguments against the four biggies in the ethical canon, which any reasonable ethical theory needs to deal with.
Murder, rape, assault and theft.
And UPB completely supports all of those things.
And so, you know, read the book, listen to the audiobook.
It's free, it's free, it's free.
I try to read it in as enjoyable and entertaining a way as possible.
Nobody has managed to overturn the way in which UPB shows that no ethical theory which supports Rape, murder, theft, and assault can be valid.
The non-aggression principle and property rights are perfectly supported by UPB, and so those are the areas in which you need to deal.
And remember, always think about UPB in terms of science.
If you want to say something intelligent and true and accurate about the universe, you need to use the scientific method.
You can't just guess, use your imagination, use chicken entrails and so on.
Those can be sources of inspiration, but they're not final and cogent proof.
So, if you want to say something intelligent about philosophy, then you need to use rationality.
Theories need to be consistent.
If you have a mathematical theory based on 2 and 2 making 5, it doesn't matter how many pages of proof you have afterwards, it ain't gonna work.
And so UPB is simply a methodology for evaluating propositions about ethics and of course it validates propositions about other things too but what we're focusing here is ethics so if you have an ethical theory you need to submit it to reason and evidence first it has to be logically consistent and hopefully then it's in accordance with the physical evidence with historical evidence with social evidence has to explain why communism doesn't work why the free market Generates wealth so much more efficiently.
These things are useful to explain, but first it has to be logically consistent and you can say well, but there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, but You're then saying that it is universally preferable behavior.
Do not believe in universally preferable behavior.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work.
That is incontrovertible.
Anyway, if you have questions or issues, I am really, really keen to always discuss ethics.
I think it's very much the cornerstone of good philosophy.
Thank you everybody for writing.
Thank you everyone for supporting this show.
Gosh! I mean, five, almost six years.
Oh my God. I'm going to be 45 years old on September the 24th, 2011.
I'm going to be 45 years old.
I am on the downward slope to a half century, ladies and gentlemen.
So thank you so much for all of your support.
Perhaps I hope to see you at Libertopia in San Diego, libertopia.org.
And as always, your support of this conversation is the reason it exists.
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