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Aug. 5, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:21
2445 Tarot Cards, Astrology and Hierarchy
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Hello, hello, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyne from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Let us open the massive sky shower of fireworks known as the Freedom Main Radio listener mailbag.
If you would like to throw a question my way, release the Kraken and send an email to mailbag at freedomainradio.com.
Somebody asks, if we were somehow able to get a libertarian or voluntary society and government structure tomorrow, Okay, so if it's libertarian, there can be a government structure.
If it's a voluntary or free society, you can't.
But anyway, what would happen to the massive amounts of classified data and secrets our government controls?
Well, if the government is recognized as an evil entity, I imagine that data would be destroyed because it would just be – everybody would look at it as incredibly tainted – I
don't think anybody would really want Want that stuff, but it's hard to say.
And it doesn't matter.
Again, it doesn't matter.
We have to combat evil regardless of what happens after the end of evil.
You can't guess.
Who knows, right?
What is your opinion on the use of instruments such as the tarot and astrology as means of self-reflection?
Well, I hope that nobody's interested in my opinions, because they're just opinions, but...
So people, I guess you lay out your tarot cards and maybe this gives you some insight into things about yourself and so on.
Well, I think that's nonsense.
The tarot and astrology make truth claims that are independent of, and this will provoke you to have self-knowledge, right?
I mean, they make truth claims about piercing the veil of time and knowing what's going to happen in the future and finding your destiny and knowing how the stars influence what's going to happen to you.
I mean, they're insane.
They are deeply anti-rational.
They are deeply mystical.
They come from the primitive infancy of our species and they survive only because of childhood trauma and the desire of the gullible for imaginary control over the future.
There is no truth in any of these things.
It's all...
Been repeatedly disproven and has failed every scientific test that has ever been established.
The amazing Randy has had a million dollars available to anyone who's proven any psychic phenomenon at any time, and nobody's ever collected it.
I mean, evolutionarily, you'd know that if we had the ability to communicate psychically, we would do that instead of talking.
Of course we would, because it would be such an advantage.
Imagine if there's some tribe out there who developed the ability to communicate psychically.
I mean, they'd take over the world because they'd be able to coordinate their warfare or their trade or whatever it was without the hassle of communication, without the noise of communication, without having to yell, "Hey, go left, go right, there's a guy over there in the bushes." They'd just communicate it, they'd be stealth fighters, ultimate ninjas, they'd take over the world.
It would be such an evolutionary advantage that we'd no longer have the capacity to speak at all because it would deal, it would just win out so much overspoken language.
The future hasn't happened yet.
You can make some general predictions.
Socialism is going to fail.
The free market is going to raise living standards in general.
But in terms of individual lives and so on, the future is not written yet.
We have choice in the matter and the idea that it's destiny and so on.
If you want to have self-reflection, go to therapy, keep a journal, analyze your dreams.
I think those are all great things.
Meditate or whatever.
But the idea that cards are going to do it or that you have to go to something that claims predictive power against all reason and evidence doesn't make any sense.
What are your general thoughts on hierarchy?
Do you think non-coercive hierarchies can be ideal?
Well, again, definitions of hierarchy.
If you're just assuming...
A pyramid based upon skill sets, well, yeah, I guess that kind of makes sense, right?
So, if you think of a Queen concert, you know, let's start with something that's eminently important.
So, Queen concert back in the day, right?
You got the, you know, Brian, Roger, the other guys, right?
You got the Freddie and so on, and Deacon, John Deacon.
So, you got the four guys who are the most important.
And they've got to be there for the show to go on.
Maybe you can switch the drummer out with some other blonde guy, or maybe you can switch the bassist out.
But you're certainly going to need Brian May's guitar solo.
You're absolutely going to need Freddie Mercury as the front man.
They're at the top of that hierarchy.
Now, down at the bottom, there's some guy who's pulling lights from the truck to the stage.
Like, he's just lifting lights and pulling.
Now, he can be replaced.
You know, if he trips and falls, then he can be replaced.
Right?
There was a show that they did, I think it was in Africa, Maybe it was South America.
There was a show that they did where Freddie Mercury, he had constant voice problems like Paul Young who couldn't sing for a year, right?
Constant voice problems.
It's a huge strain during rock concerts and they're not trained in the way the opera singers are trained and they can't use their voice in that way.
It's much more growly, much more visceral, much more hard use of the vocal cords.
And as I think Freddie said once when he was starting White Man, which was written by Brian May, it's like, oh man, this is just a killer song for the voice.
It really tickles the old nodules.
So they started doing a song, they did three songs, and he just had to stop the whole concert, which is just a huge mess because he just couldn't go on, right?
So Freddie Mercury loses his voice, a huge deal for the concert.
The guy who's pulling, you know, I got a sore throat, he's like, well, you can still pull all this crap from the truck to the stage or whatever, right?
So there's a hierarchy there in terms of importance and so on, right?
You know, Steve Jobs quits Apple, that's a big deal.
Some delivery truck driver quits Apple, it's not a big deal, right?
So there are hierarchies, without a doubt.
Very, very important.
You know, if Celine Dion doesn't show up, people want their money back.
You know, some third bassoonist doesn't show up, they don't even notice, probably, right?
So, there are hierarchies.
Of course there are.
It's perfectly natural.
I'm trying to climb to the top of the hierarchies of valuable philosophers throughout history, because I'm all kinds of ambitious, right?
So, a non-coercive hierarchy is perfectly natural, absolutely nothing wrong with it.
When I go to the dentist, she's...
I'm in charge of my teeth, and I'm just in charge of doing whatever she says about my teeth, right?
I go to the doctor and so on.
So hierarchy is perfectly valid and perfectly fine.
Nothing wrong with them.
In fact, if you're not in a hierarchy, it means you're not doing any division of labor, you're not having any pyramids of efficiencies, you're not having any specialization, and you're in the Stone Age.
All right.
Even then, we divide it into gatherers.
So, the next.
Next, what are your thoughts about communicating the message of volunteerism and peaceful parenting at the workplace?
I have experimented with the latter somewhat, but have often wondered about the risk it may pose to my employment.
Well, it will pose a significant risk to your employment.
At the very root, at the very root and essence of our identity is our addiction.
An addiction it is to the fantasy that we serve virtue and fight evil.
I mean, this is so fundamental.
It's the foundation of religion.
What happens if you accept Jesus?
Well, you serve virtue and you fight evil.
You fight the devil who's tempting you with all these bad things and you serve virtue.
You serve virtue and you fight evil.
Same thing happens with Judaism.
Same thing happens with Zoroastrianism, where the Manichean view of the good and evil being evenly balanced and Good and evil wins based upon the decisions of humanity, who are this tiny little grain of sand tipping the fulcrum either way.
I mean, this is constant everywhere and always.
When you join the police force, you are serving good, and you are fighting evil or chaos or whatever it is.
When you join the military, when you put a flag out, you are serving virtue of your country, and you're fighting the evils that your country is fighting against.
Write down deep bass...
The most foundational aspect of our personalities is the belief that we are serving virtue and fighting evil, right?
So when you spank your children as a parent, you are serving virtue, creating responsible, disciplined children who know where the limits are, and fighting evil, which is their irresponsibility and chaos and carelessness and lying and whatever it is that they're doing, right?
So everything that we do comes fundamentally down, right?
The shark tooth point at the bottom, upside down, tip of the pyramid, the essence of our personality is the belief that we are always and fundamentally serving virtue.
Look at the left and the right.
We're serving virtue and fighting evil.
We're fighting for the rights of the poor through the welfare state and opposing the evils of the greedy capitalist republicans.
We're fighting for personal responsibility in Jesus and we're against the radical socialism of the leftists and so on.
Always serving good and fighting evil.
That's fundamental.
Now, if you start to bring a redefinition of good and evil that reverses those positions for people, They will feel pretty much the same as if you walked up to them in their sleep and unscrewed their legs and ran off with them.
It's even more foundational to that.
They literally feel like their personalities, their essence, what it is to be human for them, their entire lives, every decision that they've made fundamentally is unplugged from the matrix and revealed to be the opposite of what it is.
You say, well, I'm a good citizen because I'm patriotic and I pay me taxes.
And you say, well, taxes are theft and the country is an imaginary enclosure of zoo-like containment.
Uh, what?
What?
Support the troops means supporting mass murderers overseas.
As Voltaire said, murder is illegal unless you do it in costume and in crowds to the sound of trumpets.
Then it's virtuous and you get a medal and a pension.
This is an age-old reality that everybody's talked about who has any moral sense whatsoever.
So if you start to introduce the truth of morality, the truth of a country, the truth of patriotism, the truth of spanking, the truth of supporting the troops, the truth of taxation, the truth of debt...
Dear people, you are radically disassembling What they call their soul, it is pretty much the same as if you are unplugging them from the matrix or even more fundamentally, lowering their bodies into a dissolving acid while promising to preserve their brains in a little square fish tank of brain-feeding nutrients.
They will literally feel that you are disassembling their personalities.
People have made foundational choices based upon their addiction to the fantasy that they're serving good and fighting evil.
It colors who they...
Associate with the colors who they marry.
It defines what they do for a job.
And by God, if you start to mess around with that, you are fundamentally short-circuiting people and they will react with ferocity.
They will react with passive aggression.
They will react and they will, frankly, excuse my French, they will fuck you up some way or another.
Through ostracism, through undermining, through sabotage, through refused promotions, through harassment, they will, right?
Because you are Asking them to stop serving the illusion of virtue and to start serving the truth of virtue.
And you were saying, when you think you are serving virtue, you are in fact serving evil.
And the evil that you are fighting is oftentimes actually virtue.
That you think you are serving the light, but you are instead a slave to the darkness of humanity.
Right?
That you think you are healing, But you are dismembering.
And this is so fundamental to people's personalities.
Take it on at your peril.
And if you value your job and you don't have alternatives, bring it up as a vague possibility and as a slight nudge and see who's interested.
But for heaven's sakes, if you value your occupation and your income, be exceedingly careful with this stuff.
This is...
You know what it's like?
It's like people are flying airplanes and you have a little dial that dials up and down gravity.
Well, that's not great.
If you're flying a plane and suddenly gravity is three times what it was, so you're going to just crash into a cornfield, right?
And so people build the physics of their airplanes based upon their understanding of the natural laws.
And if you start dialing around with that shit, people are really going to freak out.
I mean, how does an airplane work in zero gravity?
Straight up into space where they explode and die.
So, when you start dialing around and messing around with the physics of people's fantasy addiction to virtue, it is very volatile.
Let's be very clear about that.
Very volatile.
I mean, people get burned at the stake for this stuff.
People get hemlocked for this stuff.
People get unpleasant things written about them in the media for this stuff.
I mean, this is our progress as a species, but it's very volatile stuff, so be careful.
How do you think restraining orders would work in a free society, and how would people keep abusive partners away?
What's the solution?
Well, a free society is all about prevention rather than cure, right?
So when people get abusive partners, again, as I was talking about before, It's important to understand that this is embedded in everybody's social circumstance.
So if you end up going out with someone who's abusive, your friends don't warn you about it, your mom and dad don't warn you about it, your extended family doesn't warn you about it, your co-workers don't warn you about it, nobody warns you about it, at least probably nobody warns you about it.
And so the important thing is, first of all, you see abusive people, and they're very clear once you see them.
Psychologists have written when they talk to women who come out of abusive relationships, and they say, well, one psychologist wrote something like this.
He said, "Well, so I asked these women every single time, if I did not know anything about what happened afterwards, how would I know that your boyfriend was gonna be abusive just when I met him for the first time?" And it's always something, you know, masses of tattoos, you know, his shaved head, oh, wait, no, that's not right.
You know, but he's a history of crime, you know, thuggish nature, verbal abuse the third time on our date.
You know, you'd know this stuff very quickly and very early.
So the important thing is, you know, there would be very little of this.
There'd be very few places for abusive people to hide.
And abusive people, of course, themselves are produced by bad childhoods, and society would have a massive amount of investment in preventing people from growing up to be abusive, because abusive people are just so goddamn expensive emotionally, morally, physically, financially for society.
So anyway, and I've talked about how free society helps parents raise peaceful children in other places, so you can have a look at that.
I've got articles about that and podcasts about that.
So how do you think restraining orders would work in a free society and how would people keep abusive partners away?
Well, I don't know.
Again, you're asking me to design a society and its response is 100 or 200.
Years from now.
I have absolutely no idea.
I mean, I can make some guesses about how it would work because, again, everything's privately owned and basically what would happen is the way the societies, I imagine, will work in the future is to participate in an economically complex society means that everyone else has to pretty much want to participate with you.
And so there would be judgments handed down like you have stalked this woman and you can't contact her, you can't come within 100 yards, or we're pulling the plug on all your contracts.
And we're going to inform everybody who deals with you that you're potentially dangerous and that they may be liable.
If you attack this woman in a store, the store owner may be liable if he knew ahead of time that he shouldn't be anywhere near you and he let you both in the store together or whatever.
Who knows, right?
So there would be liabilities for noncompliance and everybody would not want to support people who are violating these restraining orders or whatever.
And therefore, you know, if you continue to harass this woman, you'd suddenly find yourself unable to buy gas, unable to buy food, unable to rent a house, unable to rent taxis, unable to participate in economic society until you reformed your ways.
So that would be my guess.
Okay, why are women so hard to talk to?
No, I'm male.
I try to be very accepting and reasonable and rational, but women seem unable to do anything like that in the discussion.
Maybe my question is really, how do you reason with the unreasonable?
So why are women so hard to talk to?
It's an interesting question.
I mean, the traditional way that the genders have worked is that men work with reality, like objective empirical reality, and women tend to work with relationships.
Why?
Well, because men gather resources to provide to pregnant and breastfeeding women, right?
So for a man's primary method of bringing value to a relationship is to go out there and grow some food or bring down a bison or something, so they work with objective reality.
Whereas women, their major sustenance during their childbearing years is their relationship with whoever's providing them stuff because they're breastfeeding and they're pregnant.
A lot of times they can't go out there and bring down a bison, plus they're 40% less strong in their upper bodies than men and so on.
And so men tend to focus on things like, you know, science and math, objective reality, philosophy, logic, blah-de-blah-de-blah, and tend to focus less on relationships because their historical value has been analyzing and dealing with objective reality.
Whereas women have been focusing on their primary source of sustenance and maintenance of their lives while they're breastfeeding and pregnant and have been focusing on relationships, right?
Having kids means that you need a lot of support.
And so men get together and discuss plans and they tend to get together and just, you know, like sports.
And this is general stereotypical stuff because camaraderie and getting things done, fixing things around, that's how men provided value, dealing with objective reality, altering it to provide value.
To the women and children in their lives, whereas women tend to talk about relationships and analyze relationships and try and figure out how to improve their relationships, because that's their primary lifeline to society.
Now, I think that women's talk about relationships, enormously valuable, a lot that men can learn about it.
I think that men's focus on objective reality and reason and so on has a lot of value to bring to women.
So I think this cross-pollination is really a great idea.
But, you know, we evolved differently.
I don't think our brains are fundamentally different, but we evolved And we've not really changed much of that since the development of industrial civilization or science or even philosophy.
2,500 years is nothing in the evolution of human beings.
So...
I would – if you bring purely sort of male, rational processing of objective reality stuff to women, they may be vaguely interested.
They may, you know, have some stuff to say, but fundamentally it's not where their focus is, right?
But, you know, cross over.
You know, step into her girdle, so to speak, and focus on relationships.
You can learn a lot, and through your focus on relationships, you may learn a lot more about relationships.
You also may show her some of the value of – I recently heard you say that negotiation is very important for a free society, and I agree.
It's key to being a decent human being.
I understood that on some unconscious level from an early age, but what other core concepts would you say are key to being a decent human being or universally preferable?
Well, negotiation is important, but prior to negotiation and superior to it, in importance is judgment.
Judgment is very, very important.
Accurate judgment about things in life is really the difference between life and death, and it certainly is the difference between happiness.
And unhappiness, right?
So, you know, if you misjudge how high a wall you can jump from, you kind of break your leg, right?
And so, if you misjudge whether you can outrun a tiger, you get eaten and so on.
So, judgment is really central to life.
Negotiation is subsequent to judgment.
More important than knowing how to negotiate is knowing when to negotiate and when not to negotiate, right?
So, you know, the key example from history is Chamberlain in the 1930s, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, who was later succeeded by Churchill in 1940, I think it was.
He went through all these negotiations with Hitler and he secured peace in our time and so on when he came back from I think it was Munich.
And of course Hitler was just playing him like a fool and constantly trying to negotiate with sociopaths is the way that the world slides into irrevocable war.
And so knowing when you can and can't negotiate is much more important than knowing how to negotiate, I would say, first and foremost.
So knowing how to judge whether somebody is manipulating you or is genuinely interested in negotiating is really, really important, first and foremost, right?
So I'll give you an example.
So the other night, my daughter said that she was hungry, and I did not believe her for a moment because she had a big dinner and all that.
And so I said, well, are you hungry or do you just want to stay up later and food is your excuse?
Yeah, she never wants to go to bed because we're fun, right?
So she doesn't want to go to bed, right?
So if I jumped straight into negotiating what she could or couldn't eat, or not that we really negotiate that, but if that had been, and then I sort of missed about what we're negotiating about or whether this is even important.
And so I said, you know, you can stay up for another 10 minutes.
If you're just doing it to stay up, then if you don't want to eat, you can stay up for another 10 minutes.
She's like, yeah, I'm not that hungry.
I just wanted to stay up, right?
So we actually got to whether we're actually negotiating about food or whether we're negotiating about bedtime or whatever.
So that's important, right?
Knowing what you're actually negotiating about is important.
Knowing whether you can negotiate or not is very important, right?
So if somebody's just like a complete sociopath and they're just playing you, then don't get involved in negotiation.
Don't do that at all.
The signs of how you figure that out, I've got podcasts on how to know whether you're being manipulated or not, so you can refer to those.
But I would say judgment, accurate judgment about Other people's empathy is probably one of the most important skills that you can have.
Should you be honest with people who are evil?
No, of course not.
Honesty is earned, right?
It's like saying, should you exchange something of value for some currency that somebody made up in their basement that's worthless?
Well, of course not.
Because there has to be an equal exchange of value.
And people who are evil and people who are manipulative, people who are sociopaths, people who are liars, they're not giving you anything of value.
They're just manipulating you.
So you don't give value in exchange for nothing, in exchange for emptiness, unless you want to be charitable or whatever, in which case it's not an exchange, but it's a one-way depositing of value to somebody else.
And so...
You don't owe honesty to immoral people.
Honesty is a great virtue, but it has to be earned by honesty on the part of the other people.
Judgment about the appropriateness of virtue to any particular interaction or situation is more important than whether you're virtuous.
If you're virtuous to evil people, you're simply exploited and you're transferring resources from good people to evil people.
That's not a good thing, right?
Oh, the guy who wants to shoot people is asking me if he can borrow some ammo.
Why, here you go, right?
Well, I've just, you know, caused the death of a whole bunch of people through enabling an evil guy, right?
So, knowing whether people are good or evil is more important than being virtuous, because if you are virtuous, or in other words, if you treat evil people as if they're good, you are enabling and reinforcing and, in some cases, really subsidizing and allowing for their behavior to continue.
So, I think that's...
That's important.
And I think I will stop there.
Thank you so much for your questions.
Mailbag at freedomainradio.com.
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