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April 8, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:41
2659 The Deadly Superstition of Human Rights - Freedomain Radio Listener Mailbag
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Once more, we dip our delicate cup into the effervescent kaleidoscopic river of listener questions and pull out a few.
If you would like to ask questions of me, you can email mailbag at freedomainradio.com.
First question.
My first question pertains to rights, as it is commonly understood in the phrase Bill of Rights.
I know you have stated before that we do not have rights, that we have properties like arms or eyebrows.
Is this simplification omission or something else?
Well, I hope it's correct.
We do not have rights.
We have a spleen.
I do have an eyebrow, too.
But we do not possess rights.
They do not attach to us.
They aren't part of our spinal fluid.
They aren't gravity wells that we have around us.
We do not possess them.
Rights are something made up by governments To make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.
The right to protection from coercion cannot possibly be founded in the government because the government relies for its funding on the initiation of the use of force against you in the extraction of taxes or go to jail.
So you cannot get protection.
From an agency whose very definition is the right to violate that protection to get paid, right?
And so the protection you get from government is directly the same as the protection that you get from The Mafia, right?
So if you have a store, some guy with a shiny suit and greasy hair is going to come by and he's going to say, give me $1,000 a month or something might happen to your store or your kneecaps might accidentally be shattered by something.
And you pay them to make them go away.
And now, what is true is that they will also keep other criminal elements away from you because you are their profit center.
You are their livestock.
So governments keep other governments away, not because they care about you, but because they don't want to lose you as a profit source.
All wars are fought over tax systems.
This is why a country without a government can't be invaded.
Why would you?
It's like you can't invade a wilderness.
You can go and, I guess, make a farm.
But if you go and take over a farm, you already have cows, a distribution system, a milking system, a storage system.
You have hay, barns.
Everything's all set up for you to profit from it.
So you don't have rights.
But the government will pretend that you do.
So that you can buy something from the government and feel like you're getting something in exchange other than not going to jail.
So this is very important.
It's exactly the same in the Catholic Church.
They invent this thing called sin.
And then they inflict sin on you, if you believe the propaganda.
And in return for lifting this imaginary voodoo curse of sin, they will take your money and then will release you from the...
Magic, voodoo, bad, curse spell that they have put upon you in the first place.
So, no.
I think we do have properties, right?
We are rational animals.
We are mammals.
All of these things are true.
They're not stuck to us.
Like, there's no mammal word stuck to me anywhere.
It's just a categorization.
We do have properties as human beings, and I do believe in universal objective rational morality.
I've made the case for that many times in this show.
I won't do it again here.
But no, I mean, there's no such thing as rights.
Rights usually are the demand to get something through force, you know, like have a right to an education, which means I'm going to convince the government to go and send people in blue costumes to shoot anyone who doesn't give me money.
To go to school, or I have a right to contraception, says Sandra Fluke.
Okay, so that means that people will go to jail if people don't pay for her pills, her birth control pills.
So rights, it's imaginary fiction set up by the government to make you feel like you're getting Something vaguely equal in the social contract.
And they are used by people who want to pretend that they're not going to use violence to get what they want.
I have a right to this.
So whenever anybody says rights, use one hand to cup your genitals and the other hand to protect your wallet.
My second question has to do with the existence of God, God, God, God.
I have heard your invisible pink unicorn on the dark side of the moon argument.
It's quite well encapsulated.
And that holds a lot of water with me.
Mmmmm.
The philosophy doesn't care whether you're a camel.
The philosophy doesn't care how much water you can hold.
It doesn't care whether you've been to the washroom lately.
It doesn't care whether you're bloated or waterlogged or have just chugged a two-liter Pepsi and a Mentos and farting explosive diarrhea at your ass.
An argument is valid or not.
Well, I tend to be convinced by this argument, or I'm on this side of this argument, or this argument holds water with me, or this argument seems convincing to me, and it's like...
You know, try that in math class.
Two and two before, it holds a lot of water with me.
Alright, he does not subscribe to a church.
Our current scientific understanding has it that the universe began at a very dense, very energetic, grapefruit-sized object that may or may not collapse back on itself or get sucked into another dimension through black holes or quantum tunnel to a new vacuum state at a moment's notice or simply freeze someday in the distant future.
There's a lot of uncertainty there.
But does it beg the question of a prime mover?
A prime mover, for those who don't know, is the universe exists.
Something which did not itself have to come into existence must have caused the universe to come into existence.
Reductio ad absurdum and reductio ad infinitum.
Arguments are frowned upon in the philosophical arena, if I'm not mistaken.
See, again, frowned upon.
I'm afraid we have a relativist here or somebody who believes that truth is a form of flavor or a tuneful jazz or some sort of aesthetic flower arrangement or color preference.
Ooh, I like that argument.
That argument rubs me the wrong way.
Well, arguments are neither good nor bad masseuses.
Isn't our current scientific understanding pointing toward just such an absurd infinite universal model?
I'm reminded of a scene from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the existence of God is logically proven and God disappears in a puff of smoke because his requirement for the faith of believers is circumvented by said proof.
What is your take on the existence of a prime mover?
Or is there simply uncertainty that may or may not be borne out by scientific investigation some day?
That is one of the longest-winded questions I've ever heard of, and I am not known for my short wind, either in these podcasts or after a fruity Indian meal.
So, it's the God of the gaps, right?
So, wherever we don't have knowledge, people say, ooh, God, right?
Where did the world come from?
Ah, I don't know.
God?
Which is a pseudo-answer, and terrible.
I mean, the concept of deities has retarded The human pursuit of knowledge more than any other single agency, including the state.
The worst thing is not a wrong answer.
The worst thing is a wrong answer that everyone thinks is right or an answer that creates an invested class that precludes further investigation.
So once you start believing in gods, you create a priest class, and once you have a priest class, then scientific examiners tend to get killed with rocks, with open heart surgery of Incan pillar magic, and with some toasty barbecued scientific advocacy.
So you don't answer anything by saying deity, god, prime mover, or anything like that.
You do not say anything.
You do not say anything of any value whatsoever.
You would be better to say nothing rather than say a deity because we don't know what it is.
We can't comprehend the idea.
Consciousness without matter, life without birth or death, all knowledge, all powerful.
Of course, these two things are contradictory.
If you are all-knowing, you know what's going to happen tomorrow because you're all-knowing.
If you know what's going to happen tomorrow, you must be powerless to change what is going to happen tomorrow.
The moment you can change what is going to happen tomorrow, in other words, you are all-powerful, you cannot be all-knowing.
To know everything is to know what you're going to do in the future, which means you can't change it without invalidating that knowledge.
So, the concept of a deity is a self-contradictory clusterfrag of confusion, profitability, exploitation, and profitable delusion, which is a huge retardation.
I don't know what caused the universe.
I don't know.
I don't care in particular.
I think it would be interesting to know what does that matter in terms of the moral crusades that we good men and women have before us at the moment?
Does knowing that there was something that created the universe or not, or something existed before the universe or not, what on earth could that possibly matter?
I mean, spanking is still wrong.
Taxation is still wrong.
Universally preferable behavior deals with rape, theft, assault, and murder.
Equally, whether the universe was punted as a field goal by a nine-headed witch, it doesn't matter.
But wherever we don't know something, people stuff God into it.
Where did people come from?
Well, originally we didn't know.
Now, through evolution, we kind of know.
God breathed life into clay.
Yeah, that's an answer.
Play-Doh came alive.
That's my answer.
Give me some money.
And we don't know.
People say, well, where did the moon come from?
Well, what makes the tides go?
Well, originally it was Poseidon or Neptune doing their thing, right?
And now we know that the tides are pulled back and forth by the moon and so on.
So now God has to go somewhere else.
Wherever there's some gap in human knowledge or where human knowledge is at its end point, right over that horizon, people put a deity.
Now it's right before the beginning of the universe.
We don't know.
I'm comfortable with saying, I don't know.
I'm not comfortable with saying, therefore Yahweh.
I mean, therefore, consciousness without matter, life without birth, and so on.
I mean, it just, I don't know.
We don't know.
I don't know.
I don't frankly care.
Physicists kind of piss me off because they've always got their fucking pale hands in my goddamn wallet and stealing from my child's future and indebting her.
You know, go be a fucking engineer, you lazy, pasty bastards.
Go do something useful that people want to buy.
Stop running to the goddamn government and getting them to spray bullets at everyone who doesn't want to fund your pocket-protection-women-repelling nerdy dweebiness.
Go get a real job, I want to say to most of these people.
Stop fucking around with the essence of who gives a crap and go make me a fucking iPhone.
Do something that the market wants.
Don't be this...
God-awful cliche, like you're out of some terrible sitcom.
I mean, it's terrible.
There's all these big bang theory people.
They don't actually have to deal with any customers.
They don't actually have to build something where there's a market.
They don't have to risk the kind of rejection that comes from selling something to a marketplace.
I mean, you guys are worse than academics.
Stop screwing around with photon colliders.
I don't give a shit about quarks.
Go make me something that's going to make me a goddamn sandwich.
And stop running to the government to scrape money out of my child's brain for the rest of their goddamn lives because you want to play with big electric toys.
So, let's see here.
I say, you can blame people for their choices in choosing Walmart versus the mom and pop stores.
You know, okay, this is Walmart versus the mom and pop stores.
Yeah, yeah, I know Walmart uses the state.
I'm sorry.
The government is there and people support the government.
And if you are in charge of a corporation, you have a legal and fiduciary responsibility.
To make maximum returns on the investments of the stockholders.
If you don't do that, you can be fired and or go to jail.
So that's the job you take on to maximize returns for your shareholders and other investors and of course you want to keep the jobs of your employees and the sweat and labor of everyone who's worked to build the organization.
So, people say, well, Walmart strides in like some Terminator or some Transformer bot and, you know, smashes these little mom-and-pop shops and probably grinds these kindly old Santa Claus and Mrs.
Santa Claus retailers into some sort of jelly, which I'm sure they ship very efficiently to people in the third world.
But...
When you say, I think that there should be mom-and-pop stores and not Walmart stores, getting focused on Walmart versus mom-and-pop shops is ridiculous.
It's the choices of the people that you need to address.
You can go and make the case to people, and you should say, well, you should spend 25% more to go a mom-and-pop store because of X, Y, and Z. And some people will.
I was just at the airport coming back from the Bitcoin conference I gave a speech at, and there was a big vending machine full of $3 Dasani bottles right next to a drinking fountain for free.
I mean, so people will buy stupid shit when there's a free equivalent right next to it that tastes pretty much the same.
But what can I say?
You can make that case.
So then he says, therein lies the crux of the issue.
You can't blame people, and you should blame people, because after all, we are all trying to find truth in our distorted reality.
Distorted reality is not a valid philosophical phrase.
If it's real, it's not distorted.
Like when you see something accurate and true in reality, it's not distorted.
If it's distorted, it's not reality.
So...
Stefan, you know as well as anyone...
Ooh...
I'm already annoyed.
You know as well as anyone, and you know it, that the reason people choose Walmart is because they know no better.
They choose certain technologies because they are not awake to reality and damage that a certain reality can cause.
This is the challenge of awakening.
Is it not?
They don't know any better?
Are you stupid?
I'm sorry, I have to ask that question.
People choose Walmart because they don't know any better.
So people can't compare two numbers and say the number at Walmart is lower than the number at the mom and pop shop for the same item.
They don't know any better.
People don't say, well, if I go to Walmart, I drive once to one place with free parking I do my grocery shopping, shopping for electronics, I shop for my car stuff, I pick up a couple of entry rug carpets, I can get a lawnmower, I can go through my whole list of everything, get some jewelry, magazines, candy, you name it, right?
So, you're saying people don't know or can't understand that if they drive one place that has everything they need, And then drive home, rather than driving to mom and pop shops, which will be about 10 trips for a complex list of items, that they don't know that.
I mean, nobody ever talks about Walmart for its efficiency or its environmental friendliness, right?
People drive a lot less when they can just go to Walmart.
The other thing that's true about Walmart is you just know.
That they have the lowest prices, which is great because you don't have to shop around.
You know, when you shop for a car, you go nuts trying to figure out what the right price is, because you don't buy it every day or whatever, right?
When I shop for a piece of electronics, I mean, I go genuinely insane trying to find the best deal.
I will go and look for online coupons anytime I see a coupon code, and if I save a nickel, I am thrilled because I am extremely, extremely cheap.
But...
They know it's better and easier and more efficient for them.
Fewer driving trips.
And not having to go for lower prices.
When I was in the business world, I had a long and very interesting lunch with a guy who was selling to Walmart.
And he said, there are these rows of rooms of people who are pitching to Walmart because it's such a huge opportunity to sell stuff.
And he said, you wouldn't believe how much they grind you on prices.
Can it be cheaper?
Can it be less?
You know, the Walmart is like the anti-Fed machine.
In that the Fed is constantly driving up inflation, Walmart's prices have been calculated to have lowered inflation by one percentage point.
In the US alone, that's a huge deal for people on fixed incomes.
So Walmart is great for the poor.
It's great for people who don't have a lot of gas money.
It's cheap to ship a lot of stuff to one store than a whole bunch of different stuff to 10 different stores.
It's very environmentally efficient and effective and conservation-y to drive to one store rather than drive to 10 different stores and so on.
So I don't think people are so stupid that they can't Figure out their own best interests.
I think you're obviously ideological and not intelligent because you can't understand that.
You think they just don't know any better.
You may disagree with their choices, but they are making rational calculations.
I mean, if they're not, then they shouldn't even be allowed to drive, right?
Does not paying someone for their work count as an initiation of force?
Would it be unreasonable for the payee to hire a debt collection service, assuming the payee has not used a trusted third party, or if there are trusted third parties, to forcibly recompense the debt?
Hmm.
Sorry, I thought you said does not pay for someone for their work count is an initiation of force.
Sure.
It's theft.
Theft of time, right?
It's theft of time.
It is contract, right?
So if I grab you, lock you in my basement, and I say, I'm only going to let you out after you have scrubbed the floor of my basement, then I let you out eight hours later.
That's kidnapping and forcible confinement, right?
Now, if I say, I'm going to pay you $100 to do that, and then you go and do it, and...
I then don't pay you.
It's exactly the same, fundamentally.
It's a form of ex post facto kidnapping and incarceration because you have performed certain services for me and you've only done those things on the expectation of payment.
If I don't pay you, then I have effectively kidnapped you through fraud for the time that I've had you in the basement.
So yeah, it is absolutely an initiation of force.
Do you believe that technology is a means for social justice?
I don't even know what social justice is.
We've got these great words like justice.
The moment people put other words on top of that, then you just know they're talking about the opposite of whatever justice is.
Justice is a rational recognition of truth in relationships.
If somebody is honorable, then you owe them honor, and giving them honor is justice.
If somebody is contemptible, then you owe them contempt, and giving them contempt is justice.
When someone says social justice, it's like saying structural violence.
It's like, well, we know what violence is.
It's the initiation of the use of force.
Structural violence is stuff people don't like being blamed on capitalism.
So, for instance, if fusion or solar was developed, there would be no more need to discuss climate change because the free market would allow for the cheaper power to rule the day.
Is this line of thinking flawed in any way?
It's not really a line of thinking.
There's no need to discuss climate change even now.
At all.
There is something called white cloud seeding, which is where governments around the world would cough up $100 million, and they would have a bunch of ships that would suck up salt water and spray it into the air, and the salt water would join with the clouds and would reflect light away back into space, which would completely counter even the worst-case aspects of Global warming.
So global warming, this is a well-validated, well-established, perfectly scientifically correct solution for even the worst-case scenario of global warming.
And so why do people not talk about this?
Why don't you know about this?
You can just read it in Bjorn Lomborg's book, Cool It.
It's $100 million.
It's dirt cheap.
I mean, they've spent...
Billions, hundreds of billions of dollars on global warming, there's a hundred million dollar solution which would be, I don't know, like 50 cents for every person who had a reasonable income on the planet.
Well, why don't you hear about this stuff?
Because the purpose of the climate change debate is to expand government power and enrich scientists and the media.
It has nothing to do with actually solving the problem.
People who get a million dollars a year to study climate change, are they going to push for a solution and then go back to doing something useful like predicting what Kind of whether it's going to be tomorrow for people or be out of a job.
No, their purpose is to alarm people, to continue to be scaremongers.
And they've opened, some of the climate scientists have openly admitted this, that they want to exaggerate to scare people in order to raise the awareness of the issue.
They've openly said they're going to lie about stuff.
The East Anglia emails that were released were all about number jigging and changing things to hide declines when they thought the temperature was going up and it was going down.
Climate is a government program.
Climate change is just a government program.
I don't know if it's true or false.
I don't.
I mean, I don't.
I don't have the expertise.
I think there's enough pro-stuff that I put the anti-stuff out from time to time, trying to provide some sort of balance.
But, yeah, so, I mean, the climate change, if it was a real issue and people really wanted to solve it, then the solution has been available for years.
But nobody ever wants to talk about it because then they'd have to Stop expanding government, stop scaring people into thinking government is necessary, and climate scientists would have to make me a fucking iPhone or something useful.
Anyway, so, yeah, it'd be great.
Cheaper power?
Wonderful.
The problem is that solar, there's clouds, wind, there's no wind, and so the problem is there's just very little that is as efficient at creating energy as gasoline, and so it's a challenge.
Does Steph have any continued reading or books regarding dreams?
Yeah, I mean, Freud's on the analysis of dreams is very good.
Jung is very good on dream analysis, and I would strongly recommend it.
It is the royal road to the unconscious, as Freud said.
Very, very important.
Alright, let's do one more.
Thank you for your listening.
I am writing to ask Stefan about a situation I found myself in and hear his feedback.
Oh, that's a fine, fine audio joke.
This past holiday season, my wife and I took our six-year-old, it says took your six-year-old daughter, no, I think that's our six-year-old daughter, on a winter train ride through the Rocky Mountains.
Oh, how nice.
It was a family-oriented with hot chocolate and cookies for the many kids in attendance.
Yes, nothing better than confined areas and mega sugar bombs.
Next to us was a little girl my daughter's age.
She was with her mother and what seemed like her grandmother.
Of course, my daughter was friendly towards this other girl, and we had fun playing little hide-and-seek, eye-contact type, and other innocent games.
A positive interaction was initiated with a healthy connection with the girl.
Mother apologized for her daughter bothering me.
I thought no such thing and was happy to make a child smile.
The girl seemed eager for this type of happy attention.
Throughout the two-hour train ride, the girl's mother became more and more impatient with the innocent actions of a child enjoying her childhood.
The mother became verbally abusive and physically grabbed the daughter by the scruff, threatening her daughter that she needed to obey or Santa wouldn't come.
That mom was disappointed and the child did not deserve this, quote, gift from the mother and that the mother would not take her on.
Excursions like this again because she didn't obey mom's impossible and crazy expectations.
This continued for most of the train ride while grandma sat passively by unaffected and unconcerned.
The grandmother caused it, I would assume, in her own parenting of the mother.
My heart broke this will be remembered as the winter ride home.
Mom was abusive and mean, and the only happiness was brought by a strange family sitting next to them.
I felt frustrated, unsure of what to do, and sad to see this.
Looking back, I feel I should have defended this little girl.
I did nothing.
How do you think someone that wants to make a change in the world and encourage UPB in this situation could have done?
What would you have done?
Well, Bruce, I'm sorry that happened.
I'm sorry, of course, for the little girl.
It's funny.
It's funny.
I remember when I was younger.
I went to...
I was quite a bit younger.
I went to a birthday party, a kid's birthday party with a kid I knew.
And, you know, I don't want to sound overly generalizing the genders, but it was organized by women, which meant there was nothing for the boys to do, right?
So they were like...
The moms had all got together and said...
Let's have face painting.
Let's have little activity tables where they can do little crafts and stuff like that.
So the boys were just climbing the walls and were bored.
So were some of the girls, to be fair.
I mean, that stuff's boring even for some girls.
So I got a balloon and I got all the kids together and I said, let's play Keep the Balloon Aloft.
Let's keep the balloon up.
So they poked the balloon up.
And it was so much fun, right?
And then it, I shouldn't say degenerated, it transformed itself into a game of me being, you know, the monster coming at the children, and the children had to throw the balloons at me, and as the balloons hit me, you know, and I would go, oh, monster down!
And then the kids would all jump on me, and then they would basically...
Kill the monster.
And then the monster would come back to life.
They'd all start screaming, grabbing their balloons.
And it was just, it was so much fun.
It was crazy fun.
And of course the boys would just, you know, hey, a monster to fight.
You know, that's what we have these little, this is what we have our testosterone for.
So let's kick it out.
And I was sad, you know?
I mean, the women were...
I don't know.
It was sort of like...
Actually, one of the women was saying, I'm hiring this guy for my next party.
It's like, I'm sorry.
I'm not for sale.
You can buy me at fdurl.com forward slash donate if you like these shows.
But, you know, I don't do parties, man.
I don't do Windows.
I don't do parties.
And...
There was one point, he was just a ball of energy, and you knew he'd been dressed by his mom, you know, because he had that little sweater vest on that nobody outside of the Glee teacher should be wearing, or anyone who's 80 and smells of mothballs and imminent demise.
And this little kid was like...
You know, great, great energy from the little boy.
He just grabbed his balloon and bang, bang, bang, bang me on the head.
And he was very, you know, he was in control of his physicality.
He was like, these kids were like five or four or whatever, right?
It was so much fun.
But this boy was pounding me on the head with this balloon.
You know, he was, I just, he couldn't even breathe.
He was laughing so hard.
Now, of course, I thought this dad, who also had a similar sweater vest on, never a good sign.
Um...
He was like, you're being too rough.
You're being too rough.
And I said, no, he's doing great.
He's fine.
He's fine.
But, you know, the parents were like, ah, children having too much fun.
They would stuff their faces with cake.
Apparently that wasn't a problem.
But actually doing something that was energetic and fun and had them screaming and laughing was not good, right?
And people just moved in to dampen it down.
And...
So there is this fear of genuine excitement on the part of children.
There is a, ooh, keep it damp, keep it quiet, right?
I mean, we kind of grew up as a very caged species, right?
Like you ever notice, sort of by the by, when you start talking about if you're sort of libertarian or anarchist or whatever, you start talking to people about...
Taxation is forced and all that kind of stuff.
And they're like, you know, they won't say anything, right?
They won't say no.
They kind of freeze.
Well, this is natural, right?
Because throughout human history, the king would regularly send out spies to attempt to rustle up treason.
And then...
They would kill you, right?
So, when someone comes up to you and says, hey, you know, I think the government's a real problem, what do you think, right?
Historically, people who said, yeah, terrible, right?
They just get garroted by the local constabulary, right?
So, we have this sort of, you know, we serfs, we free-range serfs, we tax livestock.
We have this defense mechanism, which is, I better not agree with treason.
That people talk to me about.
It will take a long time for me, you know, what's called treason, right?
And so there is this general fear of exuberance, of passion, of moral commitment that runs counter to the powers that be, because often that would be spies, you know, from the local ruler who would be trying to get you to say things against the king so that then they could arrest you for treason and torture you into oblivion.
There is...
And I love chatting with kids.
I like engaging with kids.
I mean, I'm the dad who's always in the play center.
The other parents are almost inevitably on their goddamn phones.
And I'm in there making games and having a great deal of fun.
I do get a, you know, sorry my child is bothering you.
It's like we're playing.
I didn't become a dad so that I could look at my phone in a very loud environment.
I became a dad because you're never too old to have a happy childhood.
And I became a dad to play and to have fun and to enjoy that aspect of parenting.
It's one of the reasons.
But yeah, people are like, I'm sorry that my child is engaging in your enjoyment.
I mean, it's crazy.
It's crazy.
So I am sorry about that.
And it is really tragic the degree to which, as a child, if you have dudley-doo-dud parents, that you do have to try and get your sustenance from other people, right?
Like Blanche Dwight, you rely on the kindness of strangers.
A lot of parents who had unhappy childhoods themselves that are unprocessed are annoyed by happiness on the part of their children, right?
It's too much, new mommy has a headache, or they get frustrated, they get upset.
And it's terrible.
It's absolutely terrible.
To me, it's a mild form of sadism, which is just to have negative responses to other people's joy, particularly the joy of children.
I don't know.
You know, it is a tough...
It is a tough question what to do when you see children being mistreated in the world.
I have interviewed a number of times, and my intervention generally is along the lines of, I mean, look, if I see someone hitting a kid, yeah, yeah, I'll be like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you don't want to be doing this.
You don't want this to be how you interact with your child.
Like, you don't want to resort to, I'm bigger and can hit, right?
I mean, And then I'll tell a little bit about spanking reduces IQ, increases behavioral problems, reduces social abilities, increases anxiety, increases chances of oppositional defiant disorder.
It's going to make things worse.
I don't know why people think hitting children makes it better to be a parent.
Hitting your spouse doesn't exactly make your marriage improve, but somehow hitting children.
We'll make parenting or family life improve, and it doesn't work.
40% of high school kids are still being spanked if their parents are spankers, and so clearly it doesn't work.
30% of parents, mostly moms, have admitted to hitting their baby in the past month.
30% of mostly moms have admitted to hitting their babies in the past month.
In the past month, and those are just the ones who admit it.
So, if you're hitting your baby all the way through their 10th, 11th, and 12th years, clearly it doesn't work.
And I will say, look, there's options.
You can look at a peaceful parenting, but I'd really recommend making the commitment to not do that.
It's really important.
And my daughter will, of course, say, oh, go talk to the parent.
Sometimes I don't feel like it, but it is the right thing to do.
And even if the parent Doesn't listen.
At least the child heard someone say that.
Of course, there is the chance that the parent will take it out on the child.
I don't know.
You can ask the parent.
You can say, what kind of day are you having?
You know, not everyone who's mean is just me.
I mean, there is a proportion of sociopaths and sadists and nasty people in the world, but some people are just in a rut, in a habit.
Some people have a pounding headache or whatever it is, right?
It still doesn't excuse taking it out on your child, but you can start with some empathy.
You know, oh gosh, what kind of day are you having?
You seem, you know, it seems tough.
And whatever, right?
I mean, in a...
I've offered to, like, when parents seem kind of stressed, I said, you know, I'll...
I have my daughter here.
Like, I'll take and play with them in the playground if you want 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever, right?
And we'll go and do that.
And they can see me around, a guy with a windowless van.
But I would suggest talking to the parents.
Modeling the behavior doesn't seem to work.
Talking to the parents is important.
The number of children that you see being mistreated that will just recede into...
Future criminality and psychological problems and disengaged relationships and empty, unmoving human potentiality is tragic.
To even process the degree to which children every day are being perhaps irrevocably harmed will make you not get out of bed.
It's one of these things that like a conscious dismissal of The amount of horrors going on in the world is something you just need to practice.
You need to practice selective dissociation from the horrors so that you're still able to function and help people where appropriate.
I think it's worth talking about it.
I think it's worth providing a counterexample.
I would have loved to have seen that when I was a kid.
Just anyone, anywhere to provide a counterexample.
I'm sorry that you saw that.
I'm very sorry for what the kid is going through, but you can do a few things to nudge people the right way.
You never know what impact.
People might spit on you now and praise you later.
Lots of people write to me and they say, oh man, Steph, you know, I hated you when I first listened to you.
Everything bugged me, this and that and the other.
And so I stopped, right?
And then...
Years later, I was like, I wonder if that asshole is still doing his videos.
And I went and I saw a video and I was like, bing!
You know, and I got it.
And I'm like, wow, non-aggression principle.
Wow, voluntary family.
Wow, you know, like personal property and self-ownership and moral responsibility.
And it just, you don't know.
You don't know.
Got to be willing to be spit on first in order to be kissed later.
This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Thank you so much for all of your support.
To help out the show, to help out the show grow, have me finish this lovely studio.
FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
Have a fantastic week, everyone.
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