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Oct. 5, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:09
2229.5 Guys Like Lenny Will Save Us!
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So if you're a statist, do you ever wonder how you sound to a non-statist?
Like, I get how voluntarists sound to statists.
Eat the poor!
Build roads for the bones of the sick!
Cause the children to be raised in the rank weeds of generic ignorance!
No schooling for those who need it!
Gangs of motorcycle-wielding mohauts.
Mel Gibson impersonators roam the landscape doing what they will at will.
Two guys named Will because they have no free will.
So I know how we sound.
But I'm just curious if you've ever wondered how you sound to an anarchist.
Let me tell you.
I can't speak for all anarchists.
Only all of us except three.
But you know who you are.
But this is how you sound to an anarchist.
Now, let me sort of preface this by saying that if it wasn't for the inventions of angels and devils, statism would be completely unsustainable.
I mean, as a theory, as a thesis, it would fall apart in about eight seconds if it wasn't for the invention of angels and devils.
Because, you see, the world is full of devils, and we need the angels in government to protect us from the devils, who, although they like getting stuff for nothing, they like power, pomp, circumstances, and greedy, malicious usurpers and vampires, the human spirit as a whole, they've never, ever thought of using government.
Never.
It would never occur to them.
Why would they ever think of using government?
And so, the invention of angels and devils, and the idea that devils are very powerful, very scary, very manipulative, very controlling, but so dumb that they never think of taking over the government, they never think of using the government to further their own evil ends.
Well, that's not, you know, okay, it's evil savant.
It's an idiot savant of evil.
We'd sure love something for nothing, but we'd never imagine going into the government.
We sure love using violence to get our way, but we'd never imagine using the biggest blue-robed gang of all, the police, to get what we want.
We love stealing, we love controlling things, we love threatening, but we would never imagine using laws and tariffs and preferential policies and so on to get what we want.
Now, of course, the angels and devils...
It's a false dichotomy.
There's no such thing.
Whatever you say about human nature, you say about everyone, right?
If people are just greedy, want something for nothing, and like to use force to get what they want, then clearly the government is the worst idea conceivable, right?
Because it will attract, as crap deflies, it will attract the greedy and scrupulous and those who want, lordy, lo and behold, something for nothing.
So, the false dichotomy, the idea that you can keep all the devils herded up, packed in, and controlled on the non-state, right, on the citizen side of things, whereas everyone in the government, or the vast majority of people in the government, are going to be just wonderful, stone-faced, dudley-do-right, hunky-dory, perfection, moral statues of benevolence, well, that's not really very credible, right?
But that really is what is perceived of as the essential statist argument, right?
That's the way it has to be.
That's the way it's going to work, you see.
You're going to get all the good people in government and all the bad people are going to be controlled by all the good people in government.
So, let me tell you how you sound to a voluntarist.
Because you may not know, you may not be aware of how you sound or what you look like.
So, I'm going to introduce you to, let's say, a little rhetorical device called Guys Like Lenny.
Guys Like Lenny.
Now, when you're talking about the state, you're talking about human nature.
It's human nature to want something for nothing, and therefore we need a government who's going to control all those who want something for nothing, who is magically not going to be inhabited by people who want something for nothing.
And so, when you're talking about why we need a government, then you're talking about human nature.
The facts of society, the facts of the matter, the facts of whatever people want and how they go about getting it.
There are criminals, so we need a government.
Unless, of course, you define the initiation of force as criminal, in which case the government is the greatest criminal, and you have scarcely solved the problem.
I don't believe my dentist has ever suggested decapitation for a toothache.
But, technically, it would stop the pain.
So let me introduce you to how you sound to your average voluntarist by introducing you to guys like Lenny.
This is...
Without a word of a joke, exactly how you sound to a voluntarist.
Guys like Lenny love to steal your stuff.
So let's put guys like Lenny in control of protecting all of our stuff.
Guys like Lenny really like using force.
To get what they want.
So let's give a monopoly of force to guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny are completely irresponsible with money.
So let's give guys like Lenny the power to type whatever they want into their own bank account.
Guys like Lenny are really trigger-happy and violent.
So let's give armies and no consequences to the misuse of those armies to guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny don't care about the education of children.
So let's put a monopoly violent control over children's education into the hands of guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny, they don't care about the poor.
So let's force everyone to give money to guys like Lenny so they can take care of the poor.
Guys like Lenny, they would back over sick people in their driveway if it would get them out of the driveway three seconds faster.
They don't care about sick people.
So let's give a monopoly, a violent, coercive, hierarchical monopoly over the provision of health care at gunpoint to the sick to guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny, they'll never hang on to two cents to rub together to take care of their old age.
They're incapable of planning to take care of their old age.
They just don't think ahead.
They just party in the here and now.
They don't defer things.
They can't defer gratification.
They just want what they want and they want it now.
So you can't expect guys like Lenny to prepare for their old age, to save for their old age.
So, let's give guys like Lenny the capacity to violently take money from everyone to plan for everyone else's old age, too.
Guys like Lenny, let me tell you.
Let me tell you about guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny, they can't get anything organized in their own community.
They can't figure out how to pay for roads or streetlights or lighthouses.
They can't do nothing.
They can't plan anything.
They can't work together.
They can't get anything done.
So let's give guys like Lenny the power to organize everyone's roads and everyone's lighthouses and everyone's currency and everything else that they can get their hands on.
I tell you, you've got to watch out for guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny, I know the type, man.
Guys like Lenny will grab a gun and point it at you.
And you will have to do whatever they want no matter what.
And they don't give a shit about the consequences and they don't care about your feelings.
They just want what they want and they're happy to use violence to get it.
So, to solve the problem, we're going to give all the guns to guys like Lenny.
Guys like Lenny, let me tell you, I've been working with tools like this my whole life.
Guys like Lenny will sell their grandmother down the river for a quick fix in the here and now.
So let's give guys like Lenny unlimited credit to bribe themselves and others right now.
Guys like Lenny will auction off their own kids to gain popularity in the here and now.
So let's give guys like Lenny, who really want to be popular, all the power to sell off everyone's children For the sake of bribing people into liking them in the here and now.
Guys like Lenny never ever keep their word.
Guys like Lenny, you can't trust them as far as you can throw them.
They'll tell you what you want to hear and they'll turn around and they'll screw you.
So, let's give guys like Lenny the chance to make all the promises in the world to anyone they want, back it up, It's the point of a gun, all those promises, and then have no negative consequences for them breaking their word.
Because guys like Lenny can never be trusted to keep their word.
So let's have everyone else pay for their promises and have them have no negative consequences, these guys like Lenny, no negative consequences for breaking their word.
And that's how we're going to get things solved, and that's how we're going to get things done in society.
I mean, you could go on.
I could go on, but it's kind of hard on my voice.
But you get how crazy this is, right?
You understand?
The statist argument is, people can't be trusted, so let's put people in charge of people.
People want something for nothing, so let's put people in charge of an apparatus that can get them something for nothing to control people who are dangerous because they want something for nothing.
People steal, so let's give people a monopoly of theft in order to protect us from stealing.
You understand, if there wasn't this fundamental division between angels and devils, psychologically this is called splitting, and it's a defense mechanism for early trauma, and we could go into it another time, but it's a very powerful defense mechanism.
You know, it's the typical, the Catholic dichotomy, you know.
Women are all whores.
My mother is a saint!
That sort of stuff.
So, this kind of splitting is a fundamental, very powerful defense mechanism, and it comes out of bad parenting.
It comes out of being attached to people who are bad parents, or needing the needing to be attached to people.
This is how primitive and how primal it is.
This is why it's so difficult to overturn, because it's not any kind of rational analysis in any way, shape, or form, right?
It's not any kind of rational analysis.
But this is how mental it is.
And I hope that you understand that it is fundamentally a doctrine of That must be propagated by evil people.
I don't mean everyone who believes it is evil, because virtue is, after all, a form of knowledge, a form of technology.
But it is a doctrine that must be propagated, spread, enthused about, praised by evil people.
And it is only out of a result of childhood trauma that it could be even remotely believable, if that makes any sense.
I just want to tell you more about what I mean.
So, maybe there's a dad, maybe there's more than one, maybe there's a dad out there who basically hits his children because he feels that they need to be tough because the world out there is dangerous.
I've heard this a million times, right?
If you cuddle your kids, you don't teach them what's what, you don't toughen them up, the world will eat them alive.
This is an insane doctrine, right?
I need to hit my child because the world outside is dangerous.
But it's not the world outside who's hitting your child, it's you who's hitting your child.
It's the world inside the house that is dangerous, not the world outside the house.
Empirically, factually, statistically, it is the world inside the house that is dangerous, not the world outside.
So that's quite an important thing to understand.
But it's basically the same thing as the state.
Ooh, look, there are all these dangerous people out there that I need to protect you from.
Well, wait a minute.
This protection of yours is the only violence that I'm experiencing on a daily basis, and therefore your protection, your sort of cries of the world's really dangerous out there, lots of dangerous people out there, which is why I need to ring you with cops, take half your money and throw you in jail for having innocent bits of vegetation in your pocket.
Well, that seems like a bit of a specious argument, right?
I'm tough on you because the world's going to be tougher on you.
It's like, well, no, actually, you're the one who's tough on me.
I don't know about this world thing you're talking about, but you are tough or brutal or violent, and that's really my concern.
And how is this possible?
I mean, you understand, when you use the guys like Lenny argument, it's so mad.
I mean, so clearly insane.
The question is, how does it come about and why is it so prevalent?
Well, it comes about, like all entrenched, embedded irrationalities, particularly of the most destructive kind in society, it comes about as a result of child abuse.
And the child abuse that occurs is mistreatment on behalf of, let's pick on the moms, I know, it's always the moms, but let's just pick on the moms as the ones who are home the most.
So, what happens is, you are...
Abused by a parent, and the abuse always takes the same form.
It's ugly, violent, destructive behavior towards the child, defended and justified by moral self-righteousness on the part of the mother.
The child is abused as the mother justifies and defends her actions by claiming a moral defense.
A moral defense.
But this is essential to understanding why we have this weird, bizarre hydra-headed beast called the state that continually attacks its citizens and yet is called necessary for peace.
So, the mother...
Screams at the child, the mother hits the child, the mother neglects, abandons, ignores, abuses the child, and claims that this is morally correct, morally necessary, and brought on by the child, and it's for the child's own good.
If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, right?
The child doesn't listen and therefore the verbal abuse is justified.
The child is doing something dangerous and it's not the fault of the parent for putting the child in a situation where that child can do something dangerous, but rather it is the child's fault for doing something dangerous and therefore the mother must strike him in order to train him to not do things that are dangerous.
It's morally justified, it's morally necessary, and it's for the good of the child.
It's to keep the child safe, it's to keep the child happy, it's to keep the child secure, it's to keep the child loved, that the child must be abused.
I mean, already this is crazy, you understand, this is already crazy.
So, what happens to the child?
Well, the child knows when something is unjust from a very, very early age.
Children can do statistical reasoning from 7 to 8 months and onwards.
They get moral reasoning after 14 months.
They can do advanced moral reasoning at 2 to 3 years.
So they understand UPB violations very early on.
My daughter got it before the age of 2, and it wasn't like I was training her in it.
Just universalization is the key to the human mind.
And so the child knows that he's being treated unjustly by the mother.
And the child hates the mother's injustice.
The child is very angry at the hypocrisy.
The child is enraged at the moral pompousness and the outright and obvious violations.
The child loses respect for the parent, and losing respect for the parent is the most tragic loss in any child's life.
Because it now means that you have to be ruled by fear because you can't be influenced by love.
The loss of respect for the parent is the most catastrophic thing in a young child's mind.
And this really comes out in the caustic cynicism of teenagers.
So, the child now realizes that he's being ruled by a bully.
But he also realizes that if he begins to puncture the parental defense of self-righteous morality, that attacks will only escalate.
Because if he's mistreated by the parent and he removes the moral defense for the parent's actions, then the parent is revealed to himself or herself as an abuser, and that is intolerable.
That feels like self-attack.
Like, once you've done harm, particularly to a child, and you haven't, you know, righted it right away and made vows and apologized and got the treatment, got the help, right?
If you, over repeatedly, over many years, done harm to a child, then if the child brings a universal moral standard to the parent, the parent's defense of moral legitimacy collapses and they're revealed as just another criminal bully abuser of children.
And so the child knows that if they attempt to bring the same moral standards to the parent that the parent is applying to them, in other words, if they ask the parent to live by the moral standards of being inflicted on them, that the parent is going to go mental with rage.
And no child wants to risk that.
We don't know where that's going to stop.
We don't know how that's going to happen.
We don't know if we're going to get injured or killed as a result.
So we don't do that.
This is a story of a A toddler struck by her mother for something or other.
God knows what.
Does it matter?
Struck by her mother and turns to her mother with wide-eyed wonder and says, Mama, somebody hit me.
Can't be my mother.
Once you realize that you're ruled by big, bullying children in the form of your parents, and if this is the case, I understand, I'm not talking about all families, just where this is occurring.
Then you lose respect for them, and they're revealed as very dangerous people because of their vain, petty, unstable vanity.
And also that morality is invented to excuse the harm that they wish to discharge against their children, to level up, to make them feel better by pushing other children down into the mud, by pushing children into the mud.
And so there's this anger, hatred, contempt towards the abusive parent on the part of the child.
But the child cannot act on that, you see.
The child cannot act on that.
Because if the child acts on the hatred, anger, and contempt, then the parent, who has all the power, will simply escalate until the child's will is broken or the child's bones are broken, usually.
And even if that's not true, it's nothing the child is going to risk.
It may be true that you can jump out of a plane without a parachute and land on some sloping hay bale where it was just a wild ride, but nobody really wants to take that chance, right?
So, the defense against the anger towards the parent is the idealization of the parent, right?
And that really is the parent's vanity absorbed into the child's mind.
So the parent's moral self-justifications then end up being internalized into the child's mind as every personality is that we come into any significant contact with.
I mean, you think germs are contagious.
Try personalities.
Much more so.
But the child...
This internalizes the moral self-righteousness of the parent, and in the moral self-righteous universe of the parent, the parent is exalted as morally perfect, as morally great, as morally right.
And this is in particular true of the infallible parent, who can't admit faults, who can't say where he or she has done wrong, who can't apologize, who can't change behavior.
In that mad, solipsistic universe, the parent is always correct, no matter what.
In the same way that God is always virtuous, no matter what God does.
No matter what God's rules are or how much He violates them, God is always morally perfect.
The anger towards God, of course, is split off and discharged into the persons of the devil and sinners who the rage can be acted out against.
Witches, heretics, unbelievers, apostatizers, and so on.
Those who commit apostasy.
I don't know.
Apostatizers?
Probably not a word.
Anyway.
And this is the split.
Injustice against a child creates anger, contempt, rage, a loss of respect, which not only can that not be acted on, it can't even be expressed.
It can't show itself on the face of a child.
It can't be acted on, and in particularly toxic households, it can't even show itself on the face.
It has to be driven deep underground, deep undercover, deep into the unconscious.
And in its place, what the parent demands, what the narcissistic, vain, abusive parent demands is that you worship the parent regardless of the parent's actions, regardless of any contradiction between the morality that's used to punish the child and the violations of that morality on the part of the parent.
Right?
Parents hitting the child, screaming, don't hit.
Child says, what a hypocrite.
You're hitting me.
What happens?
Parent hits harder.
Child can't survive that.
Child won't take that risk.
Child will not do that.
Child is not suicidal, hopefully.
I mean, you understand, I'm not saying that parents will, in general, even abusive parents, kill children for disobedience, but that's not something that the gene pool wants to take a risk with.
Certainly would be the case in the past much more often.
And I think there's, what, five to ten children a day murdered by parents in the U.S.? Anyway, so the narcissistically vain parent is morally perfect in his or her own mind.
And therefore the child must mirror that moral perfection back to the parent.
If the child is snide or snarky or muttering, then the blows are redoubled.
And some children will take that, I understand, but they will take that path, right?
But to point out the moral hypocrisy is explosive and it courts suicidal behavior.
It courts aggression to the point, even if it's accidental, of maiming or death.
And so kids, I'm like, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to do that.
That's crazy.
And so here you see the splitting, which then shows up later as the worship of the state.
Because the worship of the state or the belief that the state is necessary is exactly the same splitting.
When people talk about human nature, they're talking about their parents, for the most part.
I mean, unless they've had a lot of self-knowledge work and so on, therapy and stuff.
But if you have a parent who's abusive and morally vain, which generally tend to be two sides of the same coin, then you have a problem because you can't talk about human nature.
Because you can't describe your parents accurately in your own mind.
Because the moral perfection and the abuse are entirely contradictory and must be kept at entirely separate corners in the mind of the child and so often of the adult.
Yes, I was spanked, but I deserved it.
Well, that's exactly right.
This is exactly in conformity with the splitting that occurs with abusive parents.
And, yeah, I mean, it could be other teachers, preachers, whoever, aunts, uncles, grandparents, but for just sake of simplicity and commonality, we'll stick to the parents.
So you can't describe your parents accurately.
There's part of you that is really angry and hates them for the abuse if they perpetrated it on you, and there's part of you, that part that they demanded that you fulfill, that must praise them as morally perfect.
And so you really can't say anything about human nature.
You can't say anything about human nature in this situation.
Because if your parents abuse you and they're justified, then it's not abuse, of course.
If your parents punish you and they're justified, it's morally good to punish you, then you do not share the same human nature as your parents.
Because they're doing good by hitting you, and you're doing bad by disobeying them.
And so there's nothing clear that you can say.
Is it human nature to be morally perfect?
Well, I wasn't morally perfect because I was punished, and therefore it can't be human nature to be morally perfect.
Is it human nature to treat others badly, which is what my parents accused me of doing of and punished me for doing of as a child?
Well, if it's human nature to treat people badly, then my parents, who are human beings, treated other people badly.
And therefore, therefore, right?
So you can't.
You can't say anything once you've been traumatized and abused and have internalized and extrapolated the moral defense of the parents.
You can't look at anything clearly anymore.
Because every way that you try to apply consistent reasoning causes an immense amount of emotional agony and instability, horror, pain, rage, fear, self-attack, shame...
Spitting in the morally perfect sun that hit you.
I mean, you understand.
You can't think.
You just get static.
You get confused.
And so when you grow up and you look in society, you have this splitting.
Morally perfect and very dangerous.
Morally perfect and very dangerous.
My parents were morally perfect and very dangerous.
The very dangerous is unconscious.
The morally perfect is more conscious.
And so what happens when you go into society?
Well, you have the same split.
Government is morally perfect.
Citizens are dangerous.
Government is morally perfect.
Citizens are dangerous.
Citizens are dangerous.
Governments are morally perfect.
And this is why people can say this.
Obviously, completely irrational statements.
Like, people are dangerous, so we need governments who are made of people to protect us from the dangerous people.
Society is a result of...
When I say the state is an effect of the family, I'm not kidding.
Society and its confusion regarding statism and power is entirely the result of morally inconsistent, self-aggrandizing, hypocritical, abusive, child-raising techniques.
Because people are so fundamentally split when it comes to an evaluation of their own parents...
They are able to only survive a relationship with their parents by assuming that their parents are morally perfect and being unconscious of the abuse and the anger that has resulted.
And this is why, when they look at society, They need a container for the evil that they've experienced, for the abuse that they've experienced.
They need some place to put that.
That's why the ancient religions always had to have a devil.
Because you need a place that you can put your anger at the priest and at God and at your parents for teaching all this stuff.
So you put that.
That goes into the devil.
In the same way, statism needs its devils, too.
It's just its devils tend to be horizontal, slave-on-slave, violent fears.
Fears of violence.
So, the state is the parent.
The state is morally perfect.
And if there's imperfections in society, it is a result of the citizens.
We need the state because the citizens are bad in the same way that you need to be hit by morally perfect parents because you were bad.
And this is why the state never allows you to grow up.
Because fundamentally, if you're treated that way and continue to be treated by that way, by parents...
Then you're not allowed to grow up either because maturity is universality.
Maturity is philosophy.
Maturity is consistency.
Maturity is having a worldview that is not a bunch of randomly sparking up freeform attack matrix of Defendobots trying to shield you from the pain of your past by elevating the moral perfection of your elders.
And so you really can't grow up until you universalize, and these are all of the things in the way.
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