Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - 2621 An Introduction to Evil
Aired: 2014-02-21
Duration: 15:07


=== Defining Evil (01:43) ===

[00:00:01]  So I'm talking to Mike, operations manager for Freedom Aid Radio, and I said, you know, I don't think I've ever done a show on evil.
[00:00:10]  He's like, no, that can't be right.
[00:00:12]  You must have done a show on evil.
[00:00:14]  You are a philosopher.
[00:00:16]  Really?
[00:00:17]  2,600, 2,700 shows, not one show directly on evil.
[00:00:20]  I really don't think I have.
[00:00:22]  I think I've referenced it, but I don't believe I have defined it clearly, and I think we could well argue that As a philosopher, it might be a good idea.
[00:00:33]  So, let's do it.
[00:00:35]  Let's do that show on evil.
[00:00:40]  So, the first thing to understand about evil is that evil must have some knowledge of virtue.
[00:00:53]  I know we should be defining evil at the beginning, but this is how it's going to work.
[00:00:56]  It really will work this way.
[00:00:57]  Trust me.
[00:00:59]  And hopefully I will prove that trust.
[00:01:00]  Otherwise, never trust me again.
[00:01:04]  Evil must know something about virtue for it to be evil, right?
[00:01:11]  Therefore, evil requires knowledge.
[00:01:15]  Now, this solves the problem, which is, or a problem, which is why is a lion not evil when it eats you?
[00:01:20]  you.
[00:01:20]  Well, because the lion doesn't know anything about self-ownership, property rights, non-aggression principle, all that kind of good stuff.
[00:01:26]  Right?
[00:01:28]  So, evil requires knowledge.
[00:01:34]  A virtue.
[00:01:37]  So, So, if we have that established as a principle, then, of course, we have to define what virtue is, and then we have to define what evil is.

=== Virtue and the Mugger's Dilemma (13:22) ===

[00:01:44]  So, virtue, universally preferable behavior.
[00:01:46]  For more on that, see my free book at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
[00:01:55]  So, It has to be something that is a universally preferable behavior for it to be virtuous.
[00:02:03]  I like jazz, subjective, beyond time, aesthetic preference, but don't murder is objectively and universally preferable behavior for reasons that I go into in the books.
[00:02:17]  I'm like, chapter one.
[00:02:20]  So, that's what virtue is.
[00:02:25]  Evil is using universally preferable behavior to violate universally preferable behavior.
[00:02:42]  It is using desires to achieve its opposite.
[00:02:48]  It is forcing people to choose between a hierarchy of values that is lose-lose where the best they can hope for is the lesser of a series of evils.
[00:02:58]  So to take an example, I'm a mugger.
[00:03:05]  I'm not a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?
[00:03:08]  I am a mugger.
[00:03:12]  So I slide up to you in an alley, put a gun to your ribs and say, give me your wallet.
[00:03:20]  Well, why is this evil?
[00:03:23]  I mean, UPB has got its own answers, but I'll just talk about some of the ways we can get there anyway.
[00:03:31]  There's a phenomenon called death by cop where a suicidal person will provoke the cops into shooting him.
[00:03:37]  I guess or occasionally her.
[00:03:38]  I think it's mostly a him.
[00:03:40]  In which case the person wants to be shot.
[00:03:42]  Now, if there's someone on his way to death by cop, They want someone to shoot them and the mugger says, give me your wallet or I'll shoot you.
[00:03:49]  Then the guy will not give the wallet, will taunt the mugger, will attempt to provoke the mugger into shooting him.
[00:03:53]  That's not what the mugger wants.
[00:03:55]  The mugger doesn't want to murder.
[00:03:56]  The mugger wants the wallet.
[00:04:00]  Right?
[00:04:01]  If the mugger wanted to murder, he would shoot you from a distance, right?
[00:04:05]  Poison your soup or whatever.
[00:04:06]  He doesn't want to murder.
[00:04:07]  He wants the money.
[00:04:10]  So the mugger...
[00:04:13]  Is a mugger because he believes that people will choose life over property.
[00:04:19]  But given the choice, they would not want to choose between the two.
[00:04:27]  Right?
[00:04:27]  So, if the mugger was standing on a subway grate and the subway grate gave way and the mugger vanished and didn't hurt you, you would be relieved, right?
[00:04:37]  Because you would then not be in the situation where you have to choose your money or your life.
[00:04:43]  So the mugger is mugging because of the proposition that people will prefer to stay alive rather than lose their wallet.
[00:04:54]  Well, the real choice is it's not your money or your life.
[00:05:01]  It's your money and your life or just your money, right?
[00:05:03]  Because if the mugger shoots you, he's going to grab your wallet anyway, right?
[00:05:08]  For two reasons.
[00:05:08]  One, to get whatever money you have.
[00:05:11]  And secondly, to make the identification of your corpse more difficult.
[00:05:15]  Really smart guys, sand off your fingerprints and remove your dental records.
[00:05:19]  Take away your teeth or whatever.
[00:05:23]  So the mugger knows that you want to live.
[00:05:26]  He also knows that you don't want to give him your wallet.
[00:05:30]  Because if you wanted to give him your wallet, he'd just walk up and say, Oh, listen...
[00:05:35]  Can you give me your wallet?
[00:05:37]  And you'd say, well, I've been waiting.
[00:05:38]  Thanks.
[00:05:38]  I mean, what took you so long?
[00:05:41]  Here you go.
[00:05:43]  So the mugger knows that you want to live and knows that you don't want to give him your wallet.
[00:05:53]  Now, the mugger is willing to threaten you with death in order to get your wallet.
[00:05:57]  In other words, the mugger's preference is at the direct expense of your preference.
[00:06:00]  He wants your wallet and you want your wallet.
[00:06:05]  So he's going to give you the choice of dying and losing your wallet or merely losing your wallet.
[00:06:10]  And then sensible, rational people say, here's my wallet.
[00:06:14]  Enjoy!
[00:06:17]  Now, the robber does not generally go up to squirrels and attempt to force them to reveal where their nuts are.
[00:06:25]  In the ground, because we know where the other ones are.
[00:06:30]  The mugger does not kidnap a bee and demand to know where their honey is.
[00:06:35]  The mugger only attacks people, right?
[00:06:39]  So he recognized...
[00:06:40]  And the mugger, if you were to ask the mugger, are you a person and is your victim a person, he would say yes, of course, right?
[00:06:46]  Which is why he only goes for people.
[00:06:50]  So it is the common humanity.
[00:06:52]  I don't mean like niceness.
[00:06:54]  I just mean that you're both human beings.
[00:06:55]  That is why the interaction is occurring.
[00:06:57]  The mugger is doing what he's doing because...
[00:07:00]  You're both people and therefore you have something to value, a value to steal and so on, right?
[00:07:06]  Don't tend to mug a lot of homeless guys unless you want scabies.
[00:07:11]  And the mugger is perforce saying, again, this is not explicit, but this is the way it works.
[00:07:20]  We are both human beings.
[00:07:23]  We both have desires.
[00:07:26]  My desires should be satisfied and your desires should not be satisfied.
[00:07:33]  Because my desire is for your wallet and your desire is for me not to have your wallet.
[00:07:39]  We are both human beings, but I must profit at your expense.
[00:07:47]  I may use force against you, but you may not use force against me, or I don't want you to use force against me.
[00:07:55]  We're both human beings.
[00:07:58]  I want to use force against you.
[00:08:00]  I do not want you to use force against me.
[00:08:02]  I want your property.
[00:08:04]  You want your property, but I will force you to give me your property.
[00:08:11]  Now, a thief knows the value of property because he wants to keep what he's stolen, right?
[00:08:16]  I mean, who would bother stealing if he knew the moment he stole that things would be stolen from him, right?
[00:08:29]  I mean, it wouldn't happen.
[00:08:32]  All right, so there's an old joke which is Scotsman considered to be cheap in these jokes.
[00:08:40]  I don't know if these jokes are still around.
[00:08:41]  They were around when I was a kid.
[00:08:45]  Englishman and a Scotsman are walking down the street and a guy jumps out with a gun and says, give me all your money.
[00:08:53]  Scotsman turns to the Englishman and says, oh, here's the 20 pounds I owe you.
[00:09:00]  Right?
[00:09:00]  That's funny.
[00:09:02]  Because he's going to lose the money anyway.
[00:09:06]  So he might as well pay off his debt.
[00:09:09]  Does cost him nothing.
[00:09:14]  Or, you know, an Englishman and an Irishman and a Scotsman are all at the funeral of a Welshman that they respected and loved, and they want to show off, I guess, and the Englishman throws a £10 note into the grave and says, that's for you, for buying drinks in the afterlife or something.
[00:09:32]  The Irishman throws a £50 note in, and the Scotsman throws a £500 cheque in.
[00:09:39]  Cheque's never going to be cash, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:09:45]  The thief respects and recognizes property rights.
[00:09:49]  He wants to keep what he's stolen, but you may not keep what you have legitimately earned.
[00:09:58]  Property rights for the thief, free choice for the thief, profit for the thief.
[00:10:04]  No property rights for you, no choice for you, loss for you.
[00:10:11]  And the thief is only doing it because he knows that people want to live.
[00:10:14]  He's only using a gun because he knows people want to keep their property.
[00:10:19]  And he's only doing it because he wants to keep what he has stolen.
[00:10:23]  So he knows a lot about property rights.
[00:10:28]  He knows a lot about human motivation.
[00:10:30]  He knows a lot about values.
[00:10:34]  He knows a lot about people's desire to not be hurt.
[00:10:39]  That's what he uses to achieve his end.
[00:10:41]  So he knows a lot about truth, universality, virtue, and so on, right?
[00:10:49]  And he uses these facts, this knowledge that he has, in order to violate the principles.
[00:11:01]  He wants to keep the property he can only get by violating property rights.
[00:11:05]  Property rights bad for his victim, very good for him.
[00:11:07]  He's outraged if somebody steals the stolen wallet from him, right?
[00:11:15]  So that is, I think in a nutshell, what evil is.
[00:11:21]  Evil is a deep knowledge of good used to violate that goodness.
[00:11:34]  I mean, if you look at things like, politicians, I mean, they do this all the time.
[00:11:39]  You see it everywhere.
[00:11:42]  People want to help the poor.
[00:11:43]  People want to help the sick.
[00:11:45]  People want to help the old.
[00:11:47]  People want to help the needy.
[00:11:48]  People want to feed the children.
[00:11:50]  They want to educate the ignorant.
[00:11:54]  And a politician will seize upon that yearning and that desire and those endlessly charitable impulses in people.
[00:12:05]  In order to violate their property rights, to use them as collateral, use their children as collateral, print money, counterfeit, bribe.
[00:12:19]  You care about the poor, so I'm going to steal from you and call it welfare.
[00:12:25]  Which doesn't actually end up harping the poor, really.
[00:12:30]  Evil is an acceptance of the general virtue of people, followed by an exploitation of that virtue.
[00:12:40]  You understand, I'm sure.
[00:12:44]  And what evil hates about philosophy, why philosophy remains an underrepresented, underappreciated, undervalued, if not openly marked, power in society.
[00:13:00]  It's because philosophy universalizes the principles that evil already knows about, thus revealing the exploitation of evil people.
[00:13:13]  The government is here to protect your property.
[00:13:15]  Well then, why does the government steal half my property?
[00:13:19]  Because you wanted to.
[00:13:22]  Well, if I wanted to, why does it need to throw me in jail if I don't?
[00:13:26]  That seems like quite an unnecessary overhead.
[00:13:30]  Because the majority wanted to.
[00:13:33]  So is the majority always right?
[00:13:35]  No.
[00:13:38]  The majority was not right in putting Hitler in power.
[00:13:42]  Three men and a woman don't get to rape the woman because they have a vote.
[00:13:46]  There are moral standards independent of the majority.
[00:13:48]  What are they?
[00:13:52]  When you start to push exploiters, sophists, and abusers to define Their virtues and values, society kind of as we know it, pretty much falls apart.
[00:14:05]  And this is why philosophers and sophists really are mortal enemies.
[00:14:11]  Sophists provide the linguistic confusion and artificial dichotomies that evil needs to breed.
[00:14:19]  Artificial dichotomies like state and citizen, police and person, a soldier and others, right?
[00:14:27]  The artificial dichotomies that create the illusion that opposing moral values are good.
[00:14:39]  I hope that helps.
[00:14:40]  Again, for more, you can go to universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics available at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
[00:14:47]  But I think as a brief introduction to evil, I think it's hopefully of some value.
[00:14:53]  Of course, if you do and you still have one thin dime to your name, just kidding, if you can afford it, fdrurl.com forward slash donate.
[00:15:05]  And thank you so much as always for listening and your support.