All Episodes
Previous Next
June 6, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:53
2158 A Philosophy of Mental Health - Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio hosts the Corbett Report!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good evening, everybody.
How you doing?
It is Stefan Molyneux for the Corbett Report.
This is my last time at the helm for a while, I guess.
Here, it has just ticked over from the 28th to the 29th of May.
And I hope you're doing very well.
We have an interesting show this evening.
I definitely want your thoughts on the topic.
The topic is going to be mental health.
And I really want to talk about it with you.
It's a really, really fascinating topic.
I bring amateur philosophical non-expertise to the topic, so if there are any experts out there, please feel free to call in.
But I have thought a lot about it over the years, and mental disorders certainly are not unknown in my family.
And so I really would like to talk about it.
First of all, you know, for people who don't know, and there are very few people who don't know, About mental illness, mental disorders, because almost all families are affected by it and infected by it enormously.
Just looking at some of these statistics around, 26% of Americans ages 18 or older, or about 1 in 4 adults, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year.
And that's quite a lot of people.
And so, I think that's really important to understand.
Anxiety disorders.
40 million American adults, 18 and over.
18% of the population have an anxiety disorder.
And I think it's really interesting.
Panic disorders.
6 million Americans.
And I'd really like to talk about this tonight.
I have some thoughts about how philosophy can help us in our quest for Mental health, for good thinking practices, for an acceptance of reality, and for an acceptance of society, which tragically, because we do not live in a philosophical society, is often not the same thing at all.
So, after the break, I'm going to talk about some of the thoughts that I've had about mental health.
I think I have good mental health.
I floss my frontal lobes regularly.
I take my ears for long walks and try and get in and massage my brain, mostly through my nose.
And so I think I've got fairly good mental health.
I've had my trials and tribulations over the years, and I have a wonderfully happy marriage.
I have a successful, if unorthodox, semi-media career, and I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter.
I'm a stay-at-home dad.
So I think I have great friendships.
So I think I've got good mental health.
But I've really had to think about how to get that in a society that seems...
Well, fairly deranged on a regular basis.
And so I'd like to talk about some of the things that I've thought about.
I definitely want to hear your thoughts and call the number is 1-800-313-9443.
Just call in and we'll talk a little bit more.
But I'm going to spend the next segment talking about some of the thoughts that I've had about what mental health is, at least, you know, this is just my amateur perspective, what mental health is, how I stay mentally healthy.
And things that I think may be helpful, you know, may be helpful.
This is just sort of shared experience, may be helpful for you, at least things to think about.
It's a very, very important topic because we all want to be happy.
Can we follow the Socratic dictates that reason, if you're rational, you will then be virtuous.
And if you are virtuous, you will then be happy.
Let's talk about this when we come back from the break.
A very important topic.
Good evening, everybody.
Good morning to those of us on the East Coast.
Estefan Molyneux standing in for the Corbett Report.
Hope you're doing well.
So let's talk a little bit about mental health from my perspective.
So the mind has to relate to two major systems in the world.
It has to relate to objective touch, smell, taste, feel, empirical reality.
You know, the stuff outside your eyeballs impacting on your ears, touching your tongue and your fingertips, and sending smell particles up your nose.
That is an issue that we have to deal with.
You've got to go out and plant crops, you've got to go pick apples, you've got to go hunt boar, you've got to go out into the world and Process and understand the physical world correctly if you're going to survive as a living organism.
It's very, very important.
And we deal with that, I think, quite well as a species.
Again, watching my daughter develop over the last few years and explore reality and so on.
Is good with gravity, you know, with a few bumps and scrapes as we all do when we're kids.
She's good with, you know, she can throw and catch balls.
So she's good with sort of the arc of gravity and so on and all of that kind of good stuff.
She knows what she likes to eat and what she doesn't like to eat.
So she navigates through tangible, material, external, objective, solid reality really well.
Really well.
And that is a rational process.
That is a process of reasoning.
It's really a scientific process.
She's quite the budding scientist.
And reality, the objective empirical reality, it doesn't mess with you.
I mean, okay, maybe if she's lost in a desert, she will see a mirage, right?
Which is, you know, the light waves from a distant body of water bouncing between layers of differently heated air and all that.
But for the most part, like 99.99% of time, Reality doesn't mess with you.
And it's stable, it's solid, it's empirical, it's predictable.
This is the mechanics by which we're talking and listening now.
So objective, empirical, nice-to-you, rational, sensible reality is the first really major system that our minds have to adapt to.
But there's another system.
That we also have to adapt to, which shares tragically few of these characteristics.
Rational, predictable, stable, empirical, sensible.
And that is the social system that we live in, right?
So we have to adapt to material reality, but we also have to adapt to social reality.
You are some guy in, let's pick our cliches, the Deep South in the 1920s, Deep South of the U.S. in the 1920s.
And it begins to crawl into your mind the heretical idea that blacks are equal, that they should be legally equal, that they're full human beings, that they shouldn't be discriminated against, and so on.
Well, I mean, that accords to material objective reality, right?
I mean, of course, they're human beings, we're human beings, color of the skin, who cares, blah, blah, blah.
So empirically, this is supported by reality.
But what happens?
What happens to your social reality, to the social reality that you have to live in, that you have to trade with, that you have to negotiate in, that you have to raise your children in, that you have to find a wife in, that you have to go to church in?
What happens in that reality while the empirical evidence that is in your mind causes untold havoc, ostracism, attack, abuse, violence, rejection throughout your social environment?
Because although the world is rational, a lot of the people who are in it are not.
And not just not rational, they're anti-rational.
You bring reasonable arguments to a significant number of people in the world, certainly a majority.
Well, they do not react overly kindly, as Socrates himself found with his aperitif of hemlock 2,500 years ago.
So, how is this guy going to do, this non-racist in an environment of racism?
Well, he's going to do quite bad.
It's going to be very stressful for him.
What about somebody who's gay in an environment of homophobia?
How's he going to do?
He's going to have to hide things.
He might have to pretend to be straight.
He might, you know, this is the way he is and it's going to be called a sin.
It's going to be called deviant.
It's going to be called an abomination.
So how's he going to fare?
Well, not well, because he is trying to survive and negotiate and reproduce in a society that's not rational.
So what does it mean to be mentally healthy?
Well, of course, to be mentally healthy with regards to reality is to process the evidence of your senses correctly and have a stable and predictable relationship with a stable and predictable physical reality.
To adapt to a social reality is a very different matter because the social realities are delusional for the most part.
I mean, things that people believe in, countries, citizenship, being a citizen, the automatic virtue and necessity of law, the idea that there is such a thing as a government as opposed to just some people with some weapons.
The idea that costumes grant you opposite moral properties.
A green costume reverses the commandment against murder.
A blue costume reverses the commandment against theft.
To believe that costumes reverse morality is the same as believing that if I put on a blue costume, I can fly.
I'm no longer subject to gravity.
I put on a plaid costume.
I can go back through time.
I mean, if somebody believed that, we would consider them crazy.
But everybody believes that if you join the army, the moral rules change.
If you join the police force, the moral rules change.
If you join the IRS, the moral rules have changed.
They've reversed completely.
And that's as crazy as imagining that costumes, if you put on a Superman costume, suddenly you can fly.
But people believe an extraordinary amount of truly crazy stuff.
And this is the world that people who have a healthy relationship to rational reality have to live in.
I mean, we go live in the woods, but everyone who's living in the woods ain't listening to this, so we assume that if you're listening to this, that you're in this sphere.
Now, in a healthy society, The society that you live in would be as stable and rational and predictable, you know, almost exclusively or for the most part.
The society that you lived in would be as rational as the physical world that you live in and there would not be a conflict there.
If you grew up the adherent of a particular religion and you began to have doubts about that religion, well, obviously you should be able to have those doubts, have rational conversations and gather evidence and, you know, Help people around you gain a deeper or greater understanding of theology or philosophy or whatever your approach is going to be.
But to be mentally healthy means, of course, that we have to have a relationship to reality that is stable, predictable and rational and empirical.
But what is our relationship to society if we are sane and rational but society is crazy and irrational?
Can we truly be mentally healthy while interacting with an irrational society?
Well, I don't think we can be.
That's why, what is the clear definition of mental health?
Well, the clear definition of mental health is something that will occur, I believe, if we thinkers and communicators are successful, I hope.
The true definition of what is mentally healthy is going to occur in the future when society has swung round or been pulled round or been clawed round or been bullied round to reason to thinking rationally to overcoming prejudices to overcoming historical delusions to overcoming culture and until we can achieve a sane
society Being sane is going to be stressful.
Because the people who like us for the products that we can create for them, right?
The ruling classes, right?
The people who tax us and farm us and use us as their resource livestocks.
They like us to have a tangible and rational relationship to reality.
Because we need to show up to work.
We need to know where work is.
We need to know what a clock is.
We need to know how to turn the key on our car.
We need to know how to gas up our cars or get on our bikes.
So they like us to have a relationship with reality that is rational and objective.
But they do not like us to have a relationship with them that is rational and objective.
Because when you see the ruling class is just as people and you strip them of their imaginary authority, of their Mentally, right?
Of their laws, of their government, of their countries, of their nationalism, of their patriotism, of their whatever they've taught you that's just not true.
Well, then there is no ruling class.
So to be productive, we have to be rational vis-a-vis reality.
But to be farmed, to be owned, we have to be irrational with regards to the hierarchy in society.
So reason equals virtue equals happiness, absolutely.
If you are sane in a sane society, then you are healthy, mentally healthy.
If you are sane in an insane society, I think that's a good thing to be, being crazy in a crazy society.
But you are going to have problems of fitting in, and you are going to have problems of conformity, and you are going to need to be a little bit guarded and a little bit concerned.
So we'll talk about this more after the break.
Want to hear your thoughts?
1-800-313-9443.
This is Stefan Molyneux for the Corbett Report.
All right, everybody.
Hope you're doing very well.
It is Stefan Molyneux for the Corbett Report.
And please feel free to call in any topic that you like.
I am going to ramble until we get a caller.
So if you'd like to interrupt me, please do.
At 1-800-313-9443.
9443.
And talk to the fabulous Mike, the producer, Kohler.
So, we're talking about mental health.
A statistic that really surprised me was one in four American women were on antidepressants last year.
One in four American women were on antidepressants last year.
It really is quite astounding how much stress And anxiety there is in the world at the moment.
And obviously it has a lot to do with the immediate economic problems slash catastrophes slash end times from the book of revelations of Austrian economics that is going on throughout the West.
Certainly throughout North America, throughout the...
What seems to be a fairly close to imminent breakup of the Eurozone.
So there's a lot of stress that's going on there.
And I think that we are, all of us, you know, like it or not, we're strapped into a system that is very rapidly unraveling, that is very rapidly not only becoming unsustainable, because it's always been unsustainable, but it is...
A system that is obviously unsustainable.
Like there's a difference between a plane's wing shaking and like, whoa, that's kind of a lot of turbulence.
Looking down and seeing that the plane's wing has fallen off.
And I think that's sort of where we're, in certain places in Europe, over 50%.
I mean, massively unsustainable public sector budgets.
Declining educational standards and increasing body mass indexes and all that.
And so we are in a situation where the insanity of our system, which, I mean, it's almost an insult.
In fact, it is an insult to the word system to call what we have a system.
I mean, it's an inherited clusterfrag mess that has snowballed down from the Stone Age to the present.
This idea that we give a small group of people all the guns in the world.
And then they make the world a better place out of the goodness of their hearts that is something unsustainable.
And you see this only in the absence of any analysis that has any intelligence to it.
I mean, just look at, read through.
I did a bunch of article readings today on the Eurozone crisis.
And it was all descriptions of, well, here's how they're going to cover the bank runs.
And here's how much Germany spent on East Germany to integrate it.
Why won't they spend more on Greece?
Or they said, well, this is what's going to happen if Greece leaves the Euro and so on.
Not one single question, not one single iota of a brain cell being focused on the essential question, which is why are all of the Western democracies in debt?
Can we ask that question, since that is what we're actually facing as a challenge to our very societies, to our very civilization.
Why are they all in debt?
Well, they're all in debt because to get into power you have to promise people something for nothing.
Because to buy votes, you have to give people something for nothing, and the only way to do that is through borrowing.
And the only way to sustain a system that is based upon bribery is to thieve from the unborn.
And the bill is coming due.
This is how crazy the society is.
It's so crazy that we can't even talk about how crazy it is.
Now we've got...
A caller, so let's shift our gears to the brains of the outfit.
Lark from Texas, you have a comment or question?
How are you, Stefan?
I'm very well.
How are you doing, my friend?
Well, I just want to touch on a few words and banning them back and forth with you for a moment.
The words are conformity, sustainability, democracy.
I got the first one.
What was the second one?
Oh my!
Sustainability.
Do you just want my thoughts on these words?
Well, don't you think it's rather a meme that's being put out by those who perhaps control big media, control the intelligence community, all the governments, control the money?
Is it healthy for us to repeat these kinds of memes?
I mean, I always thought that you actually were a proponent for anarchism.
So why would we want to, just curious, rather like that word conformity?
Well, conformity is not a bad word.
I mean, I like to conform to the right side of the road when I'm driving, because oncoming traffic leaves quite a dent in my forehead.
Talking about in social situations.
Yeah, look, I conform to standard usage of words, I conform to grammar, I conform to the language that someone is speaking, so conformity is fine, I think, in these instances.
It's not a bad word innately.
Where the word becomes problematic, I would argue, is when it becomes conformity to ethics that are not understood.
To ethics that are inflicted and imposed through social aggression, through bullying, through threats of ostracism.
Be good or you're going to hell.
Be good or you're going to jail.
Why?
Because we say so.
And that is a very, very dangerous situation to be in.
Because that sows the ground for totalitarianism.
And we have a population now that claims it does good, that claims it wants to do good, wants to help the poor, wants to educate the young, wants to sucker the old, and they don't know how it's being achieved.
And we will talk about more of this on the other side of the break.
Stay on the line if you like.
Thank you so much for calling in.
I'm Stefan Molyu for the Corbett Report.
We will be right back.
Oh, yeah.
It's time to get our philosophy funk on, brothers and sisters, and everyone in between.
I hope you're doing very well.
This is Stefan Molyneux for the Corbett Report.
We're talking about mental health, and we were just talking about conformity, which I think is important.
I think what most people mean when they use the word conformity is somebody who goes along with the crowd for fear of negative consequences.
And that's something that is really what is meant by ethics and what has always been meant by ethics throughout history.
I believe that as a species, as human beings with depth and passion and power and soul in us, that we want to be good.
We care about being good.
We want to be good.
Virtue is in the heartfelt, compass-driven yearning of almost everyone in the world.
But we don't know what goodness is.
After 2500 years of philosophy, we still don't know what goodness is.
Now, I mean, I've taken my stabs at it.
You can tell me, of course, if you find them successful.
There's free books on my website at freedomainradio.com about ethics.
But for the most part, people don't know what goodness is and why we should be good.
And in the absence of that knowledge, what rushes in to fill something that is necessary but confusing is aggression, is a threat.
I don't think anybody much likes aggression, especially as society is so in shape today.
Frankly, I think there's some huge problems when it comes to ethics as it's postulated by the humanists, especially as they consider those words science of morality.
How it has formed a foundational basis.
For instance, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Court of Justice at the Hague, I think there's a huge problem in that.
People that have no conception of the value of something like the Golden Rule outside of the theological context.
In fact, these people Are decidedly against the idea of equality, let's remember, because who are we talking about?
We're talking about people that feel like they have a divine right to rule, that are at the top of this pyramid scheme, as it were.
And then, too, you know, we have a huge problem with socialism.
The idea that our children can be brainwashed in a public school system The idea that our science can be bastardized by those learned, in terms of opinion-making only, who are really quite biased, and they're bought and paid for after all.
And we're talking about all kinds of social scientists included.
Yeah, no, and I think to further up your point, almost all that is meant by rights at the moment is rights to other people's stuff.
I mean, the concept of communism and socialism and all of the attendant evils that inevitably follow those systems, one faster, one slightly slower, is that all the rights are, you know, I have a right to an education, I have a right to To healthcare.
I have a right to...
I have a right to...
All of these things are things to be provided by other people, and if you have a right for them, then you have a right to force them to give it to you.
Then education becomes something that is your human birthright, and therefore somebody must be forced to give it to you, because it's a debt that they owe you just because you're alive.
Well, let me ask you this, Stefan.
Don't you think that public school teachers today in Canada, in America especially, countries we may be familiar with more so than others, Are people not parasites?
Yes or no?
Well, certainly...
No, let me answer it.
I mean, I hate to give you there's two ways to answer, but there is.
So, from a sort of technical, economic standpoint, yes, of course.
No question.
They are not teaching...
The young very well, if at all.
In fact, I think that they're constantly misleading and mis-teaching them.
But they themselves are products of propaganda and they themselves are the objects of endless praise and, you know, the noble heroes who self-sacrifice themselves to train our wayward young in the righteous ways of a good culture and so on.
So, you know, they're stuck in the matrix.
Yeah, technically they are the receivers of money that is stolen, that is counterfeited and harmful to the kids.
But from the inside, you know, they're trying to do the right thing.
There are a lot of good people who are trying to do the right thing.
It's simply that I don't blame the teachers.
It's hard to find who to blame, but if I throw my dart most accurately, I think it's the philosophers and the intellectuals who are the most to blame.
It is the philosophers and the intellectuals who must most clearly and most assiduously delineate right from wrong, truth from falsehood, good from evil in society.
Do you feel that allopathic physicians and licensed attorneys are more than racketeers and organized criminals?
Yes or no?
Well, again, see, this is the problem.
There's the view from outside and from inside the matrix.
A guy who's a hitman will probably, I don't know, I've never spoken to a hitman, but imagine a guy who's a hitman isn't going to tell you that he's doing a charity.
He's going to tell you, yeah, I whack people for a living.
You got a problem with that?
And I say, no, I don't have a problem with it.
So he knows what he's doing is wrong, he knows what he's doing is bad, he knows what he's doing is illegal, and that's what he's doing.
But the people who are in the categories that you're describing genuinely feel That they're doing good things, that they're keeping peace order in society together and educating the young and, you know, taking care of the sick and so on.
So, it's tough.
The opposition is doing nothing but drugging our people.
They're poisoning our people with vaccinations.
Attorneys are running a criminal racket in a system that's called justice.
And they're frankly robbing people They're putting nonviolent offenders in a prison population for which many of these same jerks are getting kickbacks because it is a for-profit system.
It's little more than human trafficking stuff.
I certainly agree with you that where there are those conflicts of interest, there is a bottomless pit of scumbaggery going on.
So there's the problem.
It's not socialism.
Socialism is gangsterism.
Do you agree?
Yes, I do agree with that.
Do you also agree that communitarianism is the current vogue form of socialism?
No, democracy is the current form of socialism.
Well, democracy is a fraud, is it not?
Yeah, of course it's a fraud.
No question.
Jackie Patrou, SweetLiberty.org, I think she's very correct.
She said it's the closest thing that we have to despotism, as anyone can imagine.
In fact, it's very close to being communism.
Well, listen, I want to make sure that I stay on the original topic, because we're kind of going off on a whole bunch of different directions.
So, listen, I really do appreciate your call.
I think we're in a lot of agreements.
I don't think I go with you on the vaccination thing, but for the other things, I think we're in...
A lot of agreement.
And yeah, I mean, socialism and a modern democracy mob rule, it's all about the initiation of force.
It's all about the short-term gain and the long-term pain of the unborn.
And so I think we're in good agreement with that.
But I do want to make sure I sort of get back to the end topics, and thank you so much for your call.
It was very enjoyable to have a chat.
So the question, I think, so we'll go back to sort of the mental health thing.
Let's, you know, all of these things which we talk about, and they're disturbing, and they're difficult to process because we have to continue to live in a society where people believe a lot of things that are not true and can be frightened and aggressive when the falseness of what they put forward is Is explained to them.
And that's a difficult situation to be in.
So I'll give you some of the tips that I have come to understand that has helped me.
I just got a nice YouTube comment on a video I did with Tom Woods the other day where somebody said, you know, he's always smiling.
And it's true.
I mean, I do consider myself a very happy person.
I don't think I'm idiot happy.
At least I hope I'm not idiot happy.
But there are a couple of things that are for me to maintain a pretty sunny disposition, I think in the face of some significant challenges in the world.
And the first thing I think is to recognize that in the vast majority, like I'm not, this is not, I'm going to say absolutes here, but this isn't for everyone.
I just don't want to keep saying almost everyone.
So when you debate with people, facts don't matter.
I used to think, I used to think that facts really, really mattered.
I went and studied everything and learned everything and memorized stuff and wrote essays and books and facts are really going to matter.
And after 30 years, well, it wasn't quite 30 years, after a couple of decades of thinking that facts matter, I have actually just come to accept that facts don't matter in the world.
Because for people to be able to process facts, they need to be able to think.
And if people...
Have been propagandized and brainwashed out of thinking, then the Muslim in a sense has been taken away from them.
Their soul is gone.
Their soul has been dried up, irradiated, outsourced, downsized, and shot into deep space.
And they have lost their soul.
And for a human being to look down and realize that their soul is gone is a truly horrifying thing, and most people will do almost anything to avoid that experience of soullessness.
So when somebody has been robbed of the capacity to think, By religion, by statism, by propaganda, by family, by whoever.
Then they don't want to see that fact.
And so for this person, reason and evidence, they don't matter.
It doesn't matter.
People who've served evil, people who've served evil, for them, facts won't matter.
And they will do anything to avoid the facts of the situation.
So for people who've been, you know, have served the state, you say, taxation is force.
Pfft!
Doesn't matter.
The facts, the reason, the arguments, the evidence, the simplicity and elegance of the argument doesn't matter.
Because if it's true that taxation is force and they have spent their life serving and praising the state, then they have spent their life in the service and praise of evil and people do not want to even imagine that that is how they have spent the precious coins of their finite days serving the darkest devils of the human landscape.
It's not why people want to wake up and say, well, pumped a little more brimstone in the air today.
Serve the devils of the world nicely.
People don't want to believe that.
So when people have done wrong, when people have a bad conscience, when people have had their minds truly broken through propaganda, through drugs, through...
Ignorance through avoidance, then facts don't matter.
People will just make up any garbage they want to push your arguments away, and that is a significant number of people in the world.
I'm just telling you this is my experience, maybe it's different where you live, but this is on 30 years of activism.
Facts don't matter.
Once you get that in most conversations that you have with people, facts don't matter, it's really relaxing.
It's really, really relaxing.
You can stop having to try and fire facts at people hoping to get them to change their course.
You can put forward a few simple moral aphorisms or arguments.
You know, the initiation of force is wrong.
A respect for property rights is essential, is moral.
Self-ownership is essential.
Property rights begin with the self and extend outward.
We are responsible for that which we do, for that which we create, whether it is a crime or a cottage.
We own it.
Just throw a few basic moral arguments out.
And if people, you know, short circuit and do that poltergeist or exorcist all the way head round rotation and start spitting venom at your ice axe, well, then you can take a step away.
Right?
You can very quickly find out whether somebody is capable of reason and evidence.
Taxation is forced.
Now, they may never have heard that argument before, but if they are capable of reasoning and accepting evidence, then they'll say, taxation is forced.
What a strange thought.
I've never heard that before.
That's somebody who doesn't take the cheap out of pretending to be offended by a simple argument, an obvious example.
But you have to be efficient.
You have to be efficient to get drawn into long, endless debates with people who twist meanings and change definitions.
You're just running around the mulberry bush into the Hades slash hell.
Of wasted time to know progress and you end up with the heavy leaden weight of despair about humanity in the future.
Yea, like an elephant verily sitting upon thy chest.
And don't do that.
This is how you stay sane in an insane world.
You shoot up your flares of reason and evidence and see who responds.
Right?
You know, the reason and evidence, clear thought, philosophy is a very powerful light.
And we all know what happens to People who go among primitive tribes with a very bright light, they often will get attacked as demon carriers or whatever.
But, you know, shoot the flares up, whether it's on the internet or among friends and family, shoot the flares up of reason and evidence and see who responds.
You don't have to go around chasing people to change the world.
That will exhaust you.
And there's a lot in the world, a lot of people in the world who are dedicated to making virtue look futile, to making education and knowledge and wisdom, particularly self-knowledge, Look futile.
And they do that by inviting people who have knowledge and wisdom into a debate and then frustrating and annoying them to the point where it's like, oh, now I'm just really frustrated and upset and my virtue and my knowledge and my wisdom has led me to be frustrated and upset.
And then they could say, look, this is the guy who claims to have so much knowledge and wisdom.
He's really frustrated and upset.
That's what this supposed knowledge and wisdom gets you.
Well, don't fall into that trap.
You know, you can be Marilyn Monroe in her prime, maybe not now, in her prime, and wait for a call or two.
You don't have to go, you know, if you are beautiful, you can wait to be approached.
And the beauty of the soul, the beauty of the human mind, when it is bathed and scented with reason and evidence, is a glorious thing.
It is a wet, convoluted sunrise over the human landscape.
Convoluted, not in thinking, but in The folds of the brain.
Anyway, that metaphor kind of got away from me.
It happens sometimes.
That's right.
We'll send out some people to get it back.
But, you know, play hard to get.
Be happy.
Be wise.
Be knowledgeable.
And wait to see who comes to you.
You know, if you are the only thin guy in a town of overweight people, you don't have to run around to everyone hoping that And demanding and arguing and thrusting diet books in their hands trying to get them to lose weight.
You can just enjoy being thinner and see who says, hey, that guy can climb some stairs without doubling over.
Hey, that guy can play with his kids much more easily.
Hey, that guy can pick up a tennis racket and run around.
I want me some of that.
And then they will come and ask you and say, hey, you seem to be kind of thin.
How did you do it?
And then maybe you can talk to them.
Just be happy in the world.
And see who's interested in whatever makes you happy.
See who Wants to know how you are happy.
But if you run around chasing the crazies all the time trying to make them sane, well, they ain't gonna get any saner, I guarantee it.
But you are gonna get a whole lot more crazy and that's just one more person down that we need in the front lines to lever this world to a far better sunrise than where it is right now.
So be happy in the world and see who wants to come And see how you got there.
And then share your secrets with people.
And I think that's a way.
It's very powerful to stay sane in a crazy world.
Good evening, everybody.
It's DeFan Molly.
You're in for the Corbett Report.
Hope you're doing well.
This is how to stay sane in an insane world.
My last go on the Corbett Report for a while.
I hope that James had a great vacation.
And I'm sure his regular listeners will look forward to getting back to his show next week.
So...
I'd like to leave you with a thought that I think is really important when it comes to dealing with objections to basic rational arguments that you're putting forward.
You know, the Federal Reserve, hey, counterfeiting is bad for practice and how it becomes morally good for the government.
I mean, these are basic arguments and so on, right?
People seize up, they panic, they're frustrated, they get fearful, they get angry and so on.
Well, I think it's important to remember this falls under something I call the problem of the agent of The agent of the king.
And I will tell you a story, and then I will tell you the moral of the story, just in case you missed it.
It's very obvious, anyway.
The agent of the king.
So, if you were a king, and you wish to reach heretics, and dissenters, and freethinkers, and those who do not fit as squares into the circles of the social hierarchy, what do you do?
Well, these people don't tend to announce themselves.
Certainly, they didn't throughout history, because it was pretty dangerous to announce yourself as skeptical of the power of the king in history, or skeptical of the power of the warrior-priest in history, because that could very good impact in many places in the world.
It will still very likely get you imprisoned or killed.
Just look at some recent events in the Islamic world for this.
I mean, even according to Islamic law, the punishment for apostasy is death for renouncing.
They're your Muslim faith.
So there weren't a lot of people who were advertising that they dissented from the powers that were, or the powers that are in society.
So how do you find these unbelievers, these heretics?
Well, you send out your agents, and your agents attempt to trick people into agreeing with reason and evidence.
So you would send your agents out and your agents would circulate among the towns and villages and farms and your agents would strike up conversations with people and would say, I don't really think that the power of the king is really that legitimate and here's why.
And these people would be very convincing and they would be very eloquent and they would have really good arguments.
And some people...
Would say, yeah, you know, I've heard about that a lot over the years.
I actually think I kind of agree with you.
Clang!
In they go into the shackles, and away they go to the dungeons, and down their head goes rolling the stairs into the basket at the bottom of the guillotine.
The agent of the king is a significant problem.
And I'm not saying anybody thinks you're an agent of the king, but we've kind of developed this as a defense mechanism, as a species, that we will not agree with treason.
We will not agree with rebellion.
Even intellectual, especially intellectual rebellion against that powers that be.
We will not agree with skepticism put forward by people over the morality, let alone the efficacy of the existing hierarchy.
We fear it because of the potential and the historical reality of almost endless entrapment.
The problem of the agent of the king is that anybody who readily agreed with descent to the social order would very quickly find themselves descended into a dungeon.
never to return and certainly never to reproduce.
This meme, this gene, this capacity to agree with heresy among strangers was very quickly, I would argue, weeded out.
In Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, he said, let a thousand flowers bloom, and he wanted everyone to criticize the government, and everyone did, and he found everyone who did and put them away pretty much forever.
This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio saying thank you so much, my friends, for our late night journey together.
I really appreciate your time.
You can check me out if you'd like, Free Domain Radio, at freedomainradio.com.
Thanks, James, for letting me drive your show, hopefully not too far off the cliff.
And thank you so much to Mike for manning the booth.
And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
I'll see you at some point soon.
Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio signing off.
▲
Export Selection