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Aug. 27, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:52
2205 When Does A Man - Or A Society - Become Bad?

An exploration of an essential question.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Mulledy from Freedom Aid Radio.
I got two emails yesterday which encapsulate a number of issues or questions that have come up over the years, so I will try and deal with them succinctly and clearly and concisely.
I will fail, because I am me, but it's good to have something to aim for, just so you know how much you've missed it by.
So, the first goes something like this.
Dear Steph, my grandparents were Christians, and they taught me about sin and hell and Demons and all of this kind of stuff and scared the living craplets out of me when I was a kid.
Are they morally responsible for this?
I mean, I've since learned to understand that these things are not true.
Are they morally responsible?
In other words, were they themselves not subject to a level of propaganda that overwhelmed them and so on?
And this, of course, encapsulates a lot of questions.
I mean, we will also hear...
My parents were better parents than their parents were to them.
And although they were abusive, they were not just doing the best they could, and they themselves had been subject to abuse and so on.
This is a fascinating question.
And my answer to that is that the first thing that we do when we are evaluating someone morally...
I believe, is we do not bring outside ethics into bear to the situation.
We do not bring outside ethics to bear into the situation.
It's the question of somebody who's a slave owner, a slave runner now, is evil, 17th century America, you know, it's tough.
Morality is a kind of technology, and I don't feel very comfortable Bringing outside morality into my evaluation of somebody's moral actions.
I just think that's kind of unfair.
So the first thing that I do when I am looking at somebody morally is to not be a finger-wagging, moral expert, philosophizing condemner.
What I do is I ask myself, or if I'm really lucky, I get to ask the other person, what are the moral rules that this person inflicted upon children?
It can be on adults, but the most clear and convincing case is what are the moral rules that are inflicted on children?
Now, if somebody...
Inflicts.
I mean, inflicts may be a tough way of putting it.
You could say instructs or whatever, but imposes, let's say.
If somebody imposes a moral rule on a child called tell the truth, okay.
I actually think that's a good rule.
I think it's more of an aesthetically preferable action, but let's just call it a moral rule for the sake of simplicity.
So if somebody says to an eight-year-old, you need to tell the truth, I've certainly said this to a three-year-old in the form of my daughter, so I think it's fair to say.
And then, of course, they may have another moral rule that they impose upon a child called have integrity.
They may have another moral rule called do the right thing even if it's difficult, or especially if it's difficult.
They may have another moral rule called think for yourself and don't just follow the crowd.
Or listen to those in authority.
Listen to your teacher.
Listen to somebody whose knowledge and expertise is greater than yours and obey them even if you don't fully understand why.
You know, even if I can't explain to you exactly why you shouldn't have a candy bar for breakfast, you need to listen to me because I have authority in the matter.
So, these are all rules that are imposed upon children.
So, and I might think they're okay rules.
I think they're fine rules.
So that's the first thing I look for, is what are the moral rules that this person is imposing on others, but particularly upon children?
Now the second question that I ask is, does that person follow these same moral rules himself?
And clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly, it is Hypocrisy to the nth degree.
It's infinite hypocrisy.
Hypocrinfinity?
It is hypocrisy to dimension X in every conceivable sphere of human existence to impose moral rules upon children that you wish to evade yourself.
It is...
Morality to the point of vile corruption, if you impose moral rules upon children as the good, and then when those moral rules are imposed upon you, you call that the evil or the wrong or the disrespectful or the bad.
I understand.
This is very, very important to understand.
See, I'm not much of a finger-wagging moralist.
I think it's important to understand.
You don't care about me, I understand that, but just from my perspective, because this could be useful to you.
I am two things, morally, when it comes to society.
I am a listener, and I am a mirror.
And people don't I like that so much.
That's the problem with philosophers, is that we listen deeply to the ethics that are pompously promulgated by society, and then we reflect those ethics back to society.
Of course.
And if people do not like the moral rules being opposed upon them, then we really do need to question the efficacy and virtue of those moral rules.
So, I'll give an example.
Let's call this granddad Bob.
And so, if I was sitting down with Bob, I have actually had these conversations, but if I was sitting down with Bob, I would say, so Bob, when I was a child, you taught me about Jesus and the saints and the apostles and heaven and hell and prayer, redemption, sin, the resurrection...
And that I was stained with original sin and all this kind of stuff.
Yes, I did, will say Bob the Grandparent.
Well...
You taught me these things as if they were indisputably true.
Indisputably true.
And that they were the only...
Theology, that was true.
In fact, you didn't teach me about any other theologies at all.
Like, I didn't know, for instance, that Yahweh and Jesus and St.
Francis and St.
John and all this, that these were one of 10,000 gods that people worshipped across the world.
You know, I feel that that was kind of withholding some significant information from me, because you taught me that this was the only god But that's not actually true.
There are 10,000 other gods that people worship, but you said this is the only god.
Now, I know what you meant was this is the only god that is real, but you didn't tell me that that's what everyone else would say, too, about their 10,000 gods.
Or, if it's polytheistic, some combination of gods.
I felt that was kind of withholding some very important information.
And the reason I'm bringing this up, Bob, Grandpa, is because when I was a kid, you got really upset with me when I, as you called it, lied by omission.
In other words, it wasn't a direct lie, but I withheld information that was very important.
And this caused you to not get even close to the full picture of the situation when I did that.
So, you know, when you'd heard that so-and-so was shoplifting and I said, oh my goodness, that's terrible.
I can't believe he shoplifted and so on.
And you later found out that I had actually been standing guard at the shop to make sure that he wasn't seen.
You got really angry at me and I said, but I didn't tell you a lie because you never asked me if I was there or if I was involved.
And you said, but that's a lie by omission.
That's the withholding of information that is very important to me.
And that is a lie by omission and that is a sin.
So in matters as important as heaven and hell and infinity and eternity and salvation and damnation and so on, I feel quite strongly, in fact I know, that you withheld an enormous amount of information about religion when you taught me as a child.
And this is just the beginning.
So another thing that you did, dear granddad of mine, is when I was younger and I would get mad at someone, you'd say, I don't know, quoting some guy with no hair on TV, you'd say, doesn't matter how thin you slice a pancake or how thin you make a pancake.
Still got two sides.
And you'd say, there are two sides to every story.
And you gotta understand the other person's side to things.
That's what's called being mature, being responsible, and not flying off the handle.
And lo and behold, when I got older, I found that there is like 20% of the population doesn't believe in God at all.
You never told me about them.
You never told me about them, and you also never told me what their side of the story was.
So, remember when Jeremy borrowed my bike and brought it back broken and you said that I should forgive, that I should understand, that I should look at things from his side of things, you know, that his parents were poor and if we asked him to fix him it would be really humiliating and difficult and painful for him and so on.
So, you really wanted me to see both sides of the story.
And yet, when it came to this very, very important issue About religion and God and salvation and hell and all that.
Not only did you lie by omission by withholding absolutely crucial and important facts.
You didn't tell me about other sects within Christianity.
You didn't tell me about the mistranslations from the Greek that the Virgin Mary was not actually a virgin.
They just used the word for young woman and mistranslated it or made some mistake about it.
You didn't tell me These very, very important things, essential things.
And you also didn't provide to me the arguments from the other side, from the atheist side, or at least the agnostic side.
And this was a big problem.
It's not just that you withheld this information, and it's not just you didn't give me the critical arguments about this information.
I mean, I could kind of live with that.
It's just that when I did that, on much, much less important things, it is less important whether my bike was broken than it is whether there's a God and whether there's a heaven and a hell and who goes there.
It is less important when my friend stole a candy bar than issues of religiosity and my eternal soul.
So when I did...
What you did, but about far less important stuff, I got in serious trouble.
And there was no pulling any punches.
There was no hesitation about the degree to which I had done wrong and must make restitution and must do the right thing and should never do it again and so on.
And I can't square this circle where you said to me, Don't lie by omission.
Always look at the other side.
Think critically.
Get the facts.
And yet, you withheld all of this from me.
That feels incredibly manipulative to me.
Now, I mean, I want to give you the chance to respond and all that, but there's something else, right?
So, when I did my little bit of teenage drinking and so on, you said to me...
Listen, you can't just go along with the crowd.
If everybody was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it?
You've got to think for yourself.
You've got to resist the pull of the crowd.
You've got to not go along with the majority.
Well, of course, now I actually do have to go along with the majority, and that's considered a good thing because we're a democracy, but let's just put that aside for the moment.
Because when it came to religion, I mean, you grew up...
As a Pentecostal, and you're in the Pentecostal church, and lo and behold, you taught me Pentecostalism.
And you understand that if you'd grown up as a Muslim, you would have been a Muslim, and you taught your kids Muslim.
How is that not going with the majority?
How is that not just following the herd?
How is that not avoiding thinking for yourself and just going with the general ideas around uncritically?
And you understand, me having a couple of drinks when I was 17 is not nearly as serious as telling children that they're going to burn in hell for disobeying Jesus or you or whatever, right?
So, you see, this is very troubling to me.
For actions that were completely insignificant relative to your teachings, I was condemned.
But your teachings violated all the rules that you imposed upon me about far more serious issues, so I really, really need to understand.
How, oh how, oh how, did you get to impose and inflict strict, stern, and punishable moral rules on me when I was eight?
But in your entire set of religious instruction to me, you violated all of these rules egregiously.
Now, I'm not going to sort of pretend to be the grandpa and give the response.
The important thing is this, is the speech.
Now, my opinion again, I don't believe that we can judge someone, even for knowledge that they should have clearly known when they were So the granddad imposed all these moral rules on the kid, and the imposition of these moral rules was itself a violation of all these moral rules.
And that's a big problem.
But I'm actually even willing to go to forgiveness of that in the past.
I'm personally, you know, I'm willing to go that way.
And maybe the person just never thought about it.
Maybe the person never considered it in that light.
Maybe this is all just, oh my God, I can't imagine why I never noticed that, but whatever.
So let's say that the response of the granddad is basically...
Holy crap, on an unholy stick.
I never thought of it that way.
You're right.
I withheld information from you.
You're right.
I did not give you the counter evidence.
You're right.
I punished you for going along with the crowd, but I kind of went along with the crowd as well.
I can't believe that.
That's astounding.
I'm shocked.
I'm appalled.
I'm apologetic.
This may not all come at once, right?
This may take a couple of days or a couple of weeks, but That, to me, would be an amazing response and would have such an amount of noble integrity to it that I would find it hard to continue having problems with somebody like that because that would be just amazing, right?
I mean, so, for me, the moral judgment...
Is suspended about the past and is even suspended about the present.
But when the moral judgment, for me, when the hammer comes down about a moral judgment, is if the person is aware of the moral criticisms, is aware of the moral hypocrisies, and refuses to acknowledge the truth,
refuses to Accepts the valid criticism and gets offended, gets upset, gets angry, blames, avoids, spreads slander, you know, whatever.
That to me, to me, that is unforgivable.
I can forgive 30 years ago.
I can forgive even the hypocrisy in the moment with the shock of truth coming to someone.
But If that person cannot rationally overturn the criticisms, but will not respond to them according to the values.
So even when somebody knows the truth, if they continue to be hypocritical and bullying and manipulative and ostracizing and corrupt, then they're corrupt.
Because they can no longer claim ignorance.
They can no longer claim that they were doing the best that they could because now they have the information.
Now they have the information.
So, here's a metaphor, just so it's clear.
A man who is using counterfeit money can claim that he did not know that it was counterfeit.
You understand?
But when you prove to that man that the currency is counterfeit, but he still continues to use it, he is now a thief.
You show the man, look, here's the counterfeit detection machine.
Rise up here.
You can see these little laser-etched words, counterfeit, that show up in this light.
I've taken it to the bank.
It's counterfeit.
The ink runs in the rain.
It's counterfeit.
And if the man says, I can't believe that you would try and steal this money from me, it's not counterfeit, and he goes on and continues to spend it, even though he cannot overturn the clear empirical evidence that it is counterfeit, that man is now a thief.
And in fact, that man, now, the thievery goes back to the past.
Do you understand?
This is so important to understand.
I don't attempt to...
Counterfeit other people's currency.
I merely show them that the currency that they're spending is counterfeit.
And in that moment, if they say, oh my god, I'm appalled.
I'm appalled!
I'm shocked.
I'm appalled.
I must go to the shop owners.
I must go and make this right.
I must go, I just, you know, I bought to Hibachi.
I've got to go and tell the guy that I gave him counterfeit money and I've got to go to the cops and I've got to go and buy everything with real money that I spent the counterfeit money on and so on, right?
Well, that's somebody who was innocently using counterfeit money.
Ah, but if the person says, screw you, it's not counterfeit.
Like, just states it, even though the empirical evidence is incontrovertible, that it is.
And if they continue to go on spending that, then they were a counterfeiter probably all the way through.
And they may even have counterfeited that money themselves, himself or herself, and so.
So that's the reality.
It's what somebody does...
In the moment of, and in the short term after, the moment of clarity arrives.
When the hypocrisy is revealed.
Somebody with integrity, somebody with...
Somebody can still claim virtue if when they get the information, they act better, then they can legitimately claim that they acted worse because of a lack of information in the past.
Does that make sense?
I understand, I understand, I understand this.
Now, it might still be a strategy, right?
The guy may still be a counterfeiter, but he's caught and he's going to say, fine, yeah, I've got to go, I've got to do all this good stuff, right?
But still, that's something.
And if they commit to that and they don't use those bills anymore, I mean, the past may remain a little bit foggy, but I think that's a pretty good response.
And I have a good deal of joy and forgiveness and happiness in my heart for people who Forgo and eschew the use of counterfeit money and make restitution and amends to those they robbed through the passing of counterfeit money.
Now, you understand that the issue of the counterfeit money is far kinder than the infliction of morality on...
I mean, it's just stealing material things rather than...
I mean, people who inflict religious instruction upon their children...
are telling them that something is true that they cannot prove is true and they neglect to tell them this very important fact that this is not proven to be true that there's no proof for this and that there are thousands of other gods that people believe in and that this happens to be the god that I was raised in and they make a virtue out of faith which is the maintenance belief of belief to the opposition of evidence To
the opposition of evidence.
And yet when I was a kid, this was not a virtue, the maintenance of belief to the opposition of evidence.
If I reported to my mom that I got an A in every subject and then I brought home a report card and I got C's in every subject and I said, no, I have faith that I have an A, I would be looked at that this was not a virtue, not a virtue to say the least.
I remember having a disagreement when I was playing chess with my brother.
I was maybe four or five years old.
And I made the winning move by having the king move two spaces.
And he said, no, the king only moves one space.
And we looked it up in our trusty Encyclopedia Britannica, and lo and behold, I was wrong.
The king only moves one space.
And if I'd continued to say, no, I have faith that the king moves two spaces and I've still won, I'd be looked at as...
Not overflowing with intellectual integrity, to say the least.
I remember being six and in the backseat with a geologist in a car in Africa, my father driving, we were going to see some mine, and I talked about, you know, we were talking about the generation of electricity, and I talked about, you know, what we need is a plant that runs on electricity that produces electricity.
And I sort of started to describe how it might work and all that.
And I was, you know, not rudely, but, you know, decisively interrupted and said that that's not possible.
Because you use electricity to produce electricity, but with friction and the travel degradation over copper wires, there's no way that you can use less electricity to produce more electricity.
It's impossible, so don't pretend that it can happen.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, that's fair.
I remembered that lesson.
A very, very important lesson.
And I had a number of these instructions when I was a kid about what was possible and what was not.
Fantastic.
And so, I was also told, of course, you know, not to steal and to think for myself and to not follow the crowd and so on.
And so, I was told that stealing was really bad.
Using violence to get what I want is really bad.
And so therefore, you know, in the full optimism of my youth when I was in my teens, I would go to adults and point out that I was told that theft was wrong.
But sadly, taxation is theft.
And so I viewed it as a lack of information.
Well, you know, these people, they just lacked information.
Very tragic.
Very sad.
You know, there was a plug lying there, right?
The light was turned on.
Oh my God, the lights keep turning the light, but the light's not turning on.
What's the first thing you do?
Check the plug.
And I thought, okay, well the illumination called taxation is theft is not going on in people's minds.
So I just checked the plug.
They just must have not understood that taxation is theft.
You know, it's not a hard argument to make, but people must have just not understood it.
And so I'd say, well, government is the initiation of force.
The initiation of force to take people's property against their will is theft by any definition, and that's what taxation is.
So I thought, okay, well, I just put the plug in the wall, and now the light will come on.
I just sort of make the definition, make the very brief argument, and bingo, bingo, bongo, we're all set.
We're ready to roll.
This idea can fill its boots and hit the road running, and lo and behold, we can, right?
And I remember Leonard Peikoff, after he read, as a very young man, he read Atlas Shrugged, he was like, oh, all regulations will be repealed within the year because it's such a compelling argument.
You see, it's such a compelling argument.
I don't fault him for that, of course.
I was equally optimistic with my powers of rhetoric and my powers of metaphor and my powers of persuasion.
I thought, good heavens, you know?
I and others like me will illuminate the world and we will put this plug into the wall and the light will come on.
But then it took many years to realize and many years of self-criticism.
I'm saying, well, I must be approaching it the wrong way.
I must be explaining it the wrong way.
I guess I need better metaphors.
I guess there's a reason why I'm so good with metaphors.
It's because I've been trying to find the key to get into this lock for three odd decades.
And so you understand that this is what happens.
That people said that stealing is wrong because they didn't like it when children stole.
And because children stealing creates conflicts among adults.
Right?
Kid runs to his mom and says, Jimmy stole my bike!
What's the name of that band in Reality Bites?
Hey, that's my bike!
Jimmy stole my bike!
And so you've got to march over to Jimmy's mom or dad and say he stole the bike and it's uncomfortable.
And so if you do that, then their parents will say, don't steal stuff!
And why do they say that?
Because it's inconvenient, embarrassing, and stressful for parents to go and confront other parents about their kids stealing stuff or their other parents' kids stealing stuff.
So don't steal stuff!
Why?
Because it's uncomfortable for me.
Not because it's a moral rule that is universal, but because it's uncomfortable for parents.
It's also uncomfortable for parents if they accept the argument that taxation is theft.
Because it creates stresses and difficulties in their adult relationships.
With their sister-in-law who's the public school teacher, with their brother who's a tax collector, with whatever, right?
Their astronaut great uncle.
And so, don't steal from other kids because it's uncomfortable for me when you do.
And also, don't tell me that taxation is theft because it's uncomfortable for me when you do.
Understand that discomfort of parents is culture.
That's all it is.
And in religion, it's the same thing.
If you don't come to church, I'm going to be embarrassed.
If you start talking about skepticism about religion to the other children in Sunday school, I'm going to be embarrassed and shamed.
And so you have to do this stuff.
You have to go and do these things and you have to believe these things and you have to say these things because otherwise I'm going to feel uncomfortable.
You understand?
I mean this is all that culture is.
Is the discomfort of parents.
Well, in fact culture is perpetuated through parents avoiding their own discomfort.
And yet that's of course not what parents say to their children.
A kid says, well, it's more comfortable for me if I steal the bike rather than go and have to buy one, earn one and get a paper route and all that.
It's more comfortable.
I like it.
It's easier for me if I just steal the bike.
Well, don't do it just because it's easy.
Sometimes doing the right thing is hard.
And everybody has all these stories in society where whatever is hard is exalted and the hero who struggles against all obstacles is exalted and so on.
But then, when it comes to a child thinking for himself or herself, well, that creates discomfort among the parents and discomfort among the adults, and therefore it must be sanctioned.
It must be punished.
It must be opposed.
This is something that I've mentioned a couple of times.
Michelle Reed, this school supervisor, said, We're saying that the reason that public schools are so bad is that children's interests are being sacrificed to maintain pseudo-peace among adults.
It's uncomfortable to take on the teachers' unions for politicians and for parents and so on.
And it's uncomfortable to even talk about the reality of the violence-embedded educational system.
It's uncomfortable, and therefore we don't do it.
And then we're going to tell the children, do the right thing.
Because if we were to instruct our children...
On the empiricism of our own moral choices, we would have no credibility.
Right, so the parents who reject the taxation as theft, or the parents who do not give the full facts about religion to their children, what is the empirical instruction that is being provided to their children?
Understand, this is why people have such trouble with universally preferable behavior.
The Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, a free book available at freedommaderadio.com forward slash free.
Because the bringing of empirical evidence, the bringing of universal rationality to ethics creates massive conflicts with most of those who formerly held authority over you.
Do you understand?
Do you understand?
We're programmed not to do this.
We're programmed to feel guilty and feel bad about universal ethics that are inflicted upon us.
But we're also programmed to feel intense anxiety, almost suicidality, if we attempt to listen deeply and reflect those ethics back on those who had authority over us.
Ethics, you understand, it's a one-way street.
It goes from power to victim.
It goes from those who have power to those who have no power, primarily from adults to children, parents to children, teachers to children, priests to children.
If the children attempt to turn back and reflect the universality of the ethics that are inflicted upon them upon those in authority, well, rage, ostracism, and I mean, throughout history, generally murder would result.
And this is why it's so difficult to emotionally process UPP.
We are programmed biologically, I believe, to resist and avoid universality because ethics are presented as universal from those in power to their victims to create infinite self-attack among the victims.
I have violated this universal moral rule.
I'm a bad person.
And in order to become a good person, I must get the approval of someone in power and therefore I am their slave.
I have sinned.
I must get forgiveness through confession.
This keeps you on the merry-go-round of being a slave to somebody in power.
But for the victims, for the slaves, to take over morality, to universalize morality back to those in power, is to eliminate all of these unjust predations.
Of organized religiosity and statism and all this sort of stuff.
And slaves got killed for that kind of stuff.
I mean, continually and consistently children.
Infanticide was very common throughout history.
Children who created significant discomfort among their elders would just be killed.
So, we don't like to create discomfort among our elders because that gets you, historically, I mean, throughout most of prehistory, for sure, they'll just get you killed.
Why do you think human society, which is capable of unbelievable change in an even tinier relative state of freedom, why do you think that didn't change for tens of thousands of years?
Because any change agents would get killed.
Anybody who questioned or criticized or challenged the dominant myths of the tribe would just get killed.
So people didn't do it, and that's why there was such stagnation for so long.
Look at the last 200 years, how much of human society has changed just with a little whiff and a little breath of freedom.
Why didn't it change for so long?
Because challenging the dominant myths just got you killed.
I mean, there's a reason why human sacrifice is so common.
There's a reason why the Hunger Games are so popular right now.
And the more people who profit from that myth, the more dangerous it is for the young to challenge it.
So...
When it comes to morality, just listen deeply and hold the mirror back.
Now, you don't have to do any of that, of course.
You can just, you know, sweep it under the rug and continue on your merry way.
But if you are looking for, I think, a reasonable and the most conceivably kind moral evaluation that's possible, then I think you do have to take that approach.
Which is to take the ethics that were inflicted upon you as a child and reflect them back to those who inflicted them on you with far higher, almost infinitely higher, moral standards of behavior.
We have to have almost infinitely higher moral standards of behavior for a 30-year-old than we do for a 5-year-old, for a 40-year-old versus an 8-year-old.
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