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July 4, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:42
2737 Disappointment with the World

Stefan Molyneux discusses the reasons why many feel disappointment with the world.

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So a good friend of mine asked me to do a show on disappointment with the world.
It's a fine, fine topic.
Those of us who have even a few shreds of ideals clinging to the talons with which we claw through the tunnel of culture to the future have good reason, good cause to be disappointed with the world.
And there are Important reasons why this disappointment occurs.
Understanding these reasons is essential to really changing the future.
So, I'm going to tell you a secret.
Big StephBot has a secret.
Yes, I do.
I have a secret and it is about the most tragic of the secrets of the world.
It is one of the most closely guarded, heavily defended, well fortified, surrounded by the motes of self-congratulation, pompous delusion and moral self-righteousness.
Let me tell you the secret of the world.
Why the world is the way it is.
Why the world is so resistant to changing to anything remotely approaching reason and evidence, particularly in the realm of ethics.
Let me tell you the secret.
Lean in, lean forward, lean closer.
This secret can only be whispered.
No one has any principles.
Did you catch that?
Let me say it again.
No one has any principles.
Do you understand?
Let's unpack the greatest secret of the world together.
I would say it shall be an enticing and enlightening journey.
And it's one of these moments where I don't know, like when I was, I don't know, 42, 43 or whatever, I needed some weak reading glasses, you know, just generally, I never needed any glasses.
And things were getting a tad blurry, and I thought, oh, I'm just tired.
Whatever, right?
So I went to the optometrist, and I don't know if you've ever gone, but you look through these little portholes.
It looks like a submarine periscope.
And they click things, and you're like, yeah, I think I can read that.
And then click, boing, the letters jump out at you, and everything becomes clear.
Well, this is one of these click-boing moments, a CB moment, where the world will become shockingly clear very quickly.
Nobody has any principles.
Oh, shoot!
I forgot to whisper it.
Nobody has any principles.
John, Jacob, Jingleheimer Schmidt.
And this is really important to understand.
Now, when I say nobody has any principles, I don't mean nobody is nice.
There are very nice people in the world.
People who will help you change a tire.
People who will mow your lawn if you're sick.
Lots of people will do.
People who will bring you food if you're under the weather.
There are lots of nice people in the world.
But not because they're principled, but because they were raised in that kind of way.
Nobody says, well, I chose to speak English out of my principles.
It was a principled decision.
I surveyed all the languages shortly after I was born and I thought, you know what?
That African clicking language or Urdu or ancient Gaelic, not so much of value to me.
So, I think I will choose English.
It seems to be the international language of commerce, and it was a principled decision for me to learn English.
No, of course not.
It wasn't a principled decision.
It was just where you happened to be born.
And if you happen to be born into a family, which is nice, then you will very likely grow up being quite nice.
If you grow up in a family that is quite cruel, you will likely grow up Being quite cruel.
So, but these are not principles of decisions.
These are just the footprint of history on the forehead of the tender mind.
There are lots of nice people in the world, but they're not nice because they're principled.
They're nice because that's just the language they were taught.
Nobody surveys religion and says, I'm going to choose Zoroastrianism or Jainism or Protestantism or whatever.
These are not principled decisions.
These are merely exposure effects to whatever environment you happen to grow up in.
So, when I say the people are unprincipled, I don't mean that they're unscrupulous and predatory and all that.
No!
Not at all.
When I say people are unprincipled, I mean that they have no principles.
Once you understand this, the world will jump into a very clear focus very quickly, and a lot of the confusion that you have about your relationships will become very clear.
So let me give you an example of what I mean.
And if you've had any conversations with people about real freedom, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
So people will say stuff like, society has an obligation to help the poor.
And they say this because, well, they're nice.
Right?
It's a nice thing to say.
Helping the poor is a nice thing to do.
do, it's a nice thing to say.
Now, when you then point out to these fine people that coercion is immoral, violence is immoral, And the methodology by which the poor are supposedly helped in the modern world is through the coercive power of taxation and redistribution, with the majority of the money going to middle class and upper middle class bureaucrats and a small amount of it dribbling down just enough to keep the poor dependent upon the welfare state and buy votes from here to eternity. with the majority of the money going to middle class you
Even if you don't go into the latter analysis, which I think is perfectly valid, they will say, society has an obligation to help the poor because it's a nice thing to say, it's a nice sentiment.
And then you say, well, should we use violence to do that?
Well, no.
But the system that you approve of at the moment, or at least our current system, uses the violence of taxation, the theft of debt, and the regressive taxation of the inflation of the money supply in order to, quote, help the poor.
Now, if they have principles, they will at least stumble.
They will stall.
They will slow down.
When anybody with any integrity is hit by a contradiction, they stumble.
Those who smoothly glide over contradictions are generally insane and usually on the dark side of the good and evil divide.
But people who are hit with contradictions, who stutter, who stall, even if they sort of willfully override those contradictions, people who are hit with contradictions, who have no problem with those contradictions, well, those are some pretty scary people, right?
And the people who stall and stutter with contradictions Are the people who have at least a vague principle called non-contradiction.
One of the three basic laws of logic, right?
So, in my three decades worth of debating with people, and you can see this in any of the number of debates, dozens of debates I've had with people over the years, in this conversation, people are not Surprised by,
are not troubled by, do not stall or stutter or change their mind or admit fault when they are provided information or arguments contrary to their facts or logic.
Jake DiLiberto, I pointed out, he pointed out that, oh no, I pointed out, sorry, I pointed out that The CIA, despite billions of dollars worth of funding, had no idea about 9-11 and did not at all predict the fall of the Soviet Empire, had no idea it was going to occur.
So what fucking use are they?
And he said, no, they did predict this, and then I found a bunch of articles and read them out on the show, read one of them out on the show, saying that they didn't.
Didn't change his opinion, didn't stall him, didn't slow him down.
Tom Willicott, a lawyer who I debated about free societies with, he said that insurance companies regularly deny claims.
I pointed out that Medicare has a far higher rate of denying claims.
It's one to two percent for private insurance companies and six percent or seven percent for Medicare, Medicaid.
And this didn't change his argument or position about the virtue of the state at all.
It just doesn't matter, right?
This is what I mean.
We say people have no principles.
They have no principles with which to guide their actions.
And once you understand that, then you will understand that just about everyone is lying to themselves almost all the time.
And when you understand that, then it's easier to not be as disappointed in the world.
The world is anti-philosophical.
Please understand this.
The world is anti-philosophical.
And as a result of that, the world is careening around from reaction to bullying to special interest groups to media attacks to syrupy, self-congratulatory, sentimental worship of generally the inconsequential.
But the world is careening around like a pinball bumping off the bouncers in a tabletop game.
Have you ever played air hockey, you know, that little disc?
It flies around when you hit it.
Well, people are the little disc.
They bounce around.
There are principles to not having principles, right?
And the world follows the principles called, here's what happens when you don't have principles.
And if you understand that, then the world makes a lot more sense.
So people don't have any principles.
And yet, admitting that they have no principles is absolutely unbearable for them.
These are the two facts that you need to understand about the world so that it makes sense to you, or makes sense at all.
A. People have no principles.
B. They will never admit that they have no principles.
The human desire for positive self-regard is one of the most fundamental addictions of a broken species.
When you have no principles, then you elevate The circumstances of your history and the personality that produced the whim of the moment, the desire to gain approval from dangerous people and the desire to screw people who are harmless to you for the sake of appeasing the brutal people.
I mean, this is all that people do.
They walk into any situation and they immediately assess who is the most powerful, who is the most dangerous, who is the least powerful, who is the least dangerous.
They align themselves with the most powerful and they screw the helpless.
I mean, just look at the media and its relationship to say public sector unions or the poor or whatever.
The media side with whoever has the most power, those in government, and they screw the poor, those who have no power.
Or the only reason that they will ever elevate a group that is fundamentally powerless or currently powerless to any kind of elevated station is because they want something from that group, right?
So the Democrats are currently trying to get amnesty for illegal immigrants or people who've moved without the permission of sociopaths.
And, of course, the only reason that they're doing that is that they know that they will get votes.
The Hispanic community is very pro-state.
And so they're trying to enfranchise a voting bloc that will vote Democrat.
It's not because they care about illegal immigrants, it's because they want their votes, right?
Democrats generally can't win with whites, right?
And they can't win with native-born Americans, so they have to...
They can't win with free whites, right?
They generally tend to go for public sector unions and minorities and so on, right?
So, there are no principles involved in this whatsoever.
And, I mean, I'm not sure that the libertarian community is exactly immune from this problem.
It's taken years and struggles to get libertarians to even begin thinking about whether, say, spanking violates the non-aggression principle, which should be number one on the list of things to look at as a community, because these are things we can actually do, right?
Spanking is not self-defense violation.
It's a violation of the non-aggression principle and it is the most prevalent violence in society.
90% of parents hitting their children.
It is the most prevalent violence in society.
And as I've argued for years, there are massive effects on The future, on the future development of personality and so on, negative effects from spanking, which I've also argued for years and had experts on the show to discuss.
So, one of the most destructive and certainly the most prevalent form of violence in society should be the first concern of any group interested in In reducing the amount of violence in society because you can't change foreign aid or the Federal Reserve policy or anything like that.
But no, they like to waste their time mucking about with politics rather than focus on reducing the most prevalent form of violence in the world, which is the hitting of children.
Which you can actually convince people to stop, and which of course is going to allow a generation to be raised without trauma, or at least with less trauma, and to be raised more peaceful, with more of a capacity to process rational arguments, less defensive, less avoidant, smarter by three to five IQ points, and certainly you need to be a little smarter than your average bear to process, say, Austrian economic arguments for the efficiency and virtue of the free market.
So, you know, if you were a space alien coming down with no knowledge of the world, and, you know, of course, you're only going to become a space alien who travels to other worlds if that's a free market.
In other words, if children are treated well, not raised in coercive situations, and thus become used to coercive solutions to problems, i.e.
the state, you'd touch down and say, well, who's the group who's most interested in the non-aggression principle?
Oh, those would be libertarians.
Well, what is the most prevalent violence in the world?
Hitting children.
Well, the group that is most interested in the non-aggression principle must certainly be opposed to the most prevalent violence in society and that violence which makes almost all other violence possible.
No, they don't talk about it.
Why?
Because they have no principles.
Because people as a whole have no principles.
If you were truly interested in opposing and ending, not just opposing violence in some self-congratulatory audit-the-fed kind of bullshit way, but if you were actually focused on reducing violence in society, you would look for the most prevalent violence in society that was under people's greatest control.
Hitting children.
Easy peasy, nice and easy.
That's what you should be focusing on.
And if the most prevalent violence that is the most under the control of the individual is never touched on in libertarian circles, then you know that it's not to do with actually promoting the non-aggression principle in effective ways that people can act upon.
But it's about something else, which we can talk about another time.
And this is not to beg on libertarians, love libertarians, for the most part.
Atlas Shrugged, pound for pound, the biggest paperweight to hold down the state you could imagine, never ever talks about how to raise children.
Never ever talks about spanking.
Because what's really important in terms of the portrayal of an elimination of violence in society is Dr.
Robert Stadler's death ray and some imaginary device that converts the static in air into power.
You see, that's where you've really got to focus on things.
Not the everyday, as a science fiction, death rays from above.
That's what you focus on.
Not the most prevalent violence in the world What percentage of people rape, assault adults, murder, steal?
Very few.
Certainly in sort of libertarian circles and in the circles in which libertarians talk, very few.
A couple of points, maybe.
But 90% of parents will hit their children.
It's the most universal, consistent, destructive violation of the non-aggression principle.
And those who are most dedicated to expanding the non-aggression principle, speak of it not!
Right?
Which means it's about something else other than a rational analysis of where we should best put our efforts as a community.
The most prevalent, the most under people's control.
It's a no-brainer.
It's a no-brainer.
But people don't have principles.
I've been reading Reason.com off and on for years.
Never see them mention parenting.
Never see them mention spanking.
I mean, you can read the most obtuse articles about Lord knows what.
Should nannies be certified by the nanny state?
Gosh, you wouldn't believe how free market principles have improved San Francisco's streetcar industry.
Look at all the cool stuff that's happening in Detroit.
There are buses with Wi-Fi on them that you text them to come and get you.
Yeah.
That's the important stuff.
That's the important stuff.
Well, it's a fun read, but it's got nothing to do.
So, again, this is not...
I mean, I'm just sort of pointing this out.
That...
There's no principles.
People don't start, I don't know if they're just sort of going on prior momentum, but again, I'm used to entrepreneurial stuff where you consistently wipe the blackboard clean.
The whiteboard, I guess, these days.
You consistently wipe the whiteboard clean and start as if you knew nothing.
That's essential because the market is always changing and yesterday's assumptions are today's bear traps.
So I'm just used to wiping things off with a blank slate and starting from scratch.
That was my decade-and-a-half-long career as an entrepreneur.
And so, for me, when I sort of became interested in actually really promoting freedom, then it wasn't that hard.
Okay, well, I'm really into the non-aggression principle.
What's the most prevalent violence in society?
Easy.
Spanking.
Is spanking a violation of the non-aggression principle?
Well, not that hard to argue.
I've got an article out there that argues for it.
What is the violence that is under people's control the most?
In other words, if I'm going to spend my precious life, energy and treasure and days promoting the non-aggression principle, I want to do it in a way that people can act upon.
Otherwise, I'm writing a book of what elves should eat to lose weight or how to become a buff leprechaun.
It may be full of principles, but they're meaningless and abstract and nonsensical, fantastical and impossible.
So, what's the most prevalent violence?
What's the most violence that's under most people's control?
It would be the most prevalent, right, obviously.
And that's what you focus on.
At least that's a big part of what you focus on.
So, not that hard, but again, if you have a principle called promoting the non-aggression principle, you'd look for the most prevalent violence, the one that's under the most people's control, and you'd focus on that.
Easy peasy, nice and easy, lots of simplicity in that pie.
But people don't have principles.
They do what moves them, they do what appeals to them, they do what motivates them at an emotional level, usually without ever asking why it motivates them.
And they call that virtue.
They call that virtue.
And they call that a principle.
I believe in the non-aggression principle, so you must promote anti-spanking.
What?
What would that have to do with anything?
Right?
I mean, it's funny because it's so sad.
It's so sad.
And it's so predictable.
People literally get shocked and appalled at my focus on the most prevalent violence that is under the most people's greatest control.
They can't, for the life of them, understand why on earth I would focus my efforts on actually helping people to reduce the most prevalent violence that is under their greatest control.
They can't possibly imagine it.
Are there lots of libertarian articles on things like circumcision?
Well, is circumcision a violation of the non-aggression principle?
Of course it is.
It's not self-defense and it's healthy tissue that is being removed.
And people are like, why on earth would somebody interested in promoting the non-aggression principle, why would that person make a video about circumcision?
It makes no sense.
Other than the fact that it's one of the most common violences done against babies.
It's the most common violence done against babies in the world.
Every 47 seconds, another boy is generally mutilated for life.
Is it under people's control?
Of course it is.
Of course it is.
Is it incredibly prevalent?
Of course it is.
Millions of little boys are genitally mutilated every year.
Can it be controlled?
Can it be reduced?
Of course it can.
Will it have an enormous positive effect on the world as a whole?
Of course it will.
Is it an intelligent and principled application of energies towards reducing violations of the non-aggression principle?
Of course it is.
But because people have no principles, they just view it as weird.
I mean, come on!
Come on!
Just ask yourself about what I talk about.
Is it a violation of the non-aggression principle?
Well, yeah.
Is it prevalent?
Well, yeah.
Is it under people's control?
Well, yeah.
We must have voluntarism to improve the post office, to improve state services of various kinds.
Because when you are in an enforced or coercive or involuntary relationship, Then there is a loss of quality and a generation of inefficiency.
And then I say, well, we need to privatize the family and remind people that adult relationships are voluntary.
People are like, what are you talking about?
But there's no way to improve the quality of parenting without making adult, child and parent relationships without reminding people of the basic reality and the legal fact and the philosophical fact and the moral fact that it's completely voluntary.
You don't have to see abusive parents if you can't repair the relationship.
And people are like, well, what on earth would that conceivably have to do with libertarianism?
And yet, if a woman is being beaten by her husband and she leaves the relationship, well, she is promoting and living by the non-aggression principle.
Thou shalt not aggress against me.
Thou shalt not use violence against me.
Removing yourself from a violent situation It's entirely in line with libertarian principles.
I mean, if you are drafted into an unjust war and then you claim conscientious objector status because you do not want to be in a violent situation to commit or to receive violence, would libertarians say, well, that's incomprehensible.
What on earth would that have to do with libertarian principles?
Of course not.
They would say, what a hero.
You know, he's disengaging himself from a violent situation and therefore he's reducing the prevalence of violence in the world.
And a woman who leaves an abusive husband, well, yeah, he's initiating the use of force against her.
She is removing herself from that situation.
And therefore that's a reduction in the prevalence of violence in the world.
Yay!
To say to adults who may want to disengage from brutal or abusive parents, well, suddenly this has nothing to do with anything.
How could this have anything to do with libertarianism?
And of course, which is to say that the effects of violence should not be consequential to people, right?
If you aggress against a child, if you abuse or neglect a child for 20 years, and then the child just has to see you anyway, well, what libertarians are saying is that we should get rid of any negative consequences for violence.
So there should never be any laws or sanctions against it, and a woman who's raped must still date her rapist.
And if she chooses not to, that's terrible.
Well, come on.
If you're abused by parents, For 20 years, and you can't reform the relationship, they won't go into therapy with you, they can't, right?
Then, of course, you should be free to leave if you choose.
And I would actually argue that staying would be pretty destructive to your mental health, to your happiness.
And it breaks the cycle of violence, because parents who are abusive will probably also be abusive to grandchildren.
And yet, you know, when I put these principles forward, you can see libertarians' heads doing this slow rotation, like, they're coming from the TV. Actionable arguments relative to diminishing violations of the non-aggression principle are coming from the TV. The call is coming from inside the house.
Oh my god, stuff we could actually do, stuff that's confrontational, stuff that's actionable.
Because people don't have principles, right?
Libertarians are to spanking as the general population is to the argument that taxation is force.
But with much less excuse because libertarians promote the non-aggression principle at all times.
But you bring anti-spanking of the voluntary family to libertarians and they react exactly the same way As bringing the argument that taxation is forced to your average person in the general population.
Because people don't have any principles, right?
They're just localized structures, but they're not principles.
They don't have the principles, right?
Now, somebody who has real principles, and when I say nobody has principles, I mean, we understand a few people who do, but When you bring an argument to someone that is valid but shocking, then we hope that when we say taxation is forced to people, they'll go, oh my goodness, I never really thought of it that way.
And then we'll have some arguments, but it's so obvious that taxation is forced that they'll go, wow, I never thought about it that way, but you know what?
You make a very compelling point.
I always hate compelling because it sounds like it's something you sell or whatever.
Your argument has nice tits.
But...
You'd hope that they'd say, well, you know, and they'd think about it and come back and say, well, what about this?
And, you know, and eventually, hopefully within a week or a month or so, they're like, wow, that really is something.
I can't disagree with it, and therefore I'm going to have to change my opinion and perspective on a whole bunch of things.
And given how we've all faced when we make the argument taxation is theft, or whatever, typical libertarian arguments, When we make this argument to people, we're very disappointed when they ignore it or avoid it or pretend it doesn't exist or whatever, right?
Or mock us or attack us or downgrade us or insult us or slander us or whatever, right?
Well, it's pretty terrible.
But then when the libertarian community gets something that's shocking to them, like anti-spanking messages and so on, they pull exactly the same stuff.
Pull exactly the same stuff.
Don't ask about the principles.
Don't ask about the arguments.
Don't ask about the reasoning.
Don't ask for the evidence.
Don't ask for the data.
Just avoid, attack, pretend like it doesn't exist.
And this is not to be overly critical.
I think that the libertarian community has more integrity than most communities.
But...
Nonetheless, it is generally, it's slow to change, right?
But generally, you know, after six or seven years, it generally is slow to change, starting to change a little.
But thanks, Jeff.
Thanks, Jeff.
But it's just an example of how principles don't apply.
Spanking is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
Here are the arguments.
Spanking is something that we can convince people to stop and to change.
Spanking is going to have a huge effect on how the world goes in the future.
Then we should all drop politics and focus on anti-spanking, right?
Well...
Circumcision rewires the baby and the baby's nerves and pain centers and future responses to pain and so on.
And if you have a heightened response to pain, it's hard to process emotional trauma.
If it's hard to process emotional trauma, it's hard to reason, as I've argued in fdrurl.com forward slash bib.
But people will proclaim principles, right?
Which is why it's so confusing to recognize the reality that people don't have principles.
People don't have principles.
They don't have philosophy.
Philosophy is the thing that allows you to wipe the whiteboard clean, right?
That's what philosophy does.
Let's pretend we know nothing.
How should we best spend our energies to achieve the moral goals that we want?
I mean, it's a question I ask myself, like, literally every single day.
Okay, I've got X amount of hours.
How can I spend my time to most valuably promote the principles that I have proven and accept?
Regardless of any other considerations, regardless of social approval, regardless of historical momentum, regardless of accepted wisdom, regardless of popular topics, regardless of attack, regardless of Calumny, regardless of insult, slander, hate sites, you name it, doesn't matter.
Because our philosophy is to have principles.
And everyone you go to and you say, what is the good?
They'll give you answers.
You can say, why is it good?
Anybody who can't answer that question.
It has no principles.
If you don't know why something is good, then all you're doing is going on emotional preference, historical inertia, cultural bias, social approval, you name it.
It has nothing to do with principles.
If you cannot explain your beliefs from first principles, then you have no principles.
You just plant a flag and say, here's where I live.
And the flag is planted where you happen to live already, where your skills and preferences and social approvals are, and that is what you do.
So the number of people who can argue from first principles from a blank whiteboard as to why they believe what they believe, particularly in the realm of virtue, is a tiny handful at best.
So they have no principles.
And you have no principles, therefore you cannot organize things according to any rational or empirical basis.
And therefore you must rely on approval, fear, desire, whim of the moment, culture, religion.
But none of those things have any particular principles.
They may have commandments, they may have absolutes, but those absolutes hang in a void.
Gravity is an absolute, but it's a whole lot different from having a theory of gravity that you can explain from first principles or at least describe the effects of from first principles or from basic math, right?
I mean, the apple fell on Newtons, fell on a whole bunch of other people, but Newton was the one who figured out the principles.
Before that, people could catch balls for sure, and they could sail, and they could build houses, but they had no principles because they didn't understand the math or the calculus of Gravity.
And so, rather than experience the discomfort of realizing, recognizing, and admitting that you do not know why you believe what you believe, rather than that, people say, who I am and what I do and what I think is virtuous.
And they sink like a hippo into mud.
Their entire sense of self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-congratulatory moral pomposity, their entire identity is sunk into those assumptions.
The coincidental is the absolute.
The circumstantial is the rational.
Almost like somebody living near a sports team.
My sports team is the best.
And these are the ones that I must support, and these are the ones I must win.
That must win.
Well, I was born into a nice family, so being nice and helpful and all of that is the best.
But the moment somebody brings a principle around niceness and so on to me, well, I have to...
The moment it becomes a principle, well, nice can't involve the initiation of force.
Taxation is the initiation of force.
Spanking is the initiation of force.
Circumcision is the initiation of force.
Therefore, you must oppose all of these things because they sure ain't nice.
Right?
There's no principles.
There is only the sinking of a false identity into the perspective that that which comes naturally to me is the good.
And this happens not just with people who are nice, but with people who are mean, right?
In a conversation two Sunday shows ago with a guy.
No, Wednesday show.
The first Wednesday show with a guy.
Dominance is naturally human nature.
Everybody wants to dominate, dominate, dominate.
Well, that's him, right?
But he makes it a principle because that's what comes naturally to him.
He makes it a principle.
Of course he does.
Otherwise, he must work philosophically, as opposed to all the ex post facto justifications that people claim are philosophical, which are not.
They're not philosophical.
So, if you listen to what people say rather than observe what they do and observe their reactions to philosophy, If you only listen to what people say, you will perpetually be disappointed.
Right?
Like, 80% of people on dating sites lie.
And the other 20%, I guess, lie more subtly.
And so, if you only judge people by their most flattering portrait from 10 years ago before they gained weight, then you're going to be disappointed when you meet them.
If you...
If you view the narcissistic portrayal of personal vanity as truth, then you will forever be disappointed in the reality of how people act, right?
And, you know, people obviously say, well, I want to be a good friend and I want to do the right thing and I love to be there to support people who are in need and this and that and the other.
This is...
Not a principle.
It doesn't mean they won't do it.
Now, maybe they will.
But they won't do it because they say they do it.
Everyone's like, oh yeah, you know, we should treat children well and children of the future and so on.
But that's not how they live.
They live by selling off children to appease special interest groups in the here and now, jamming them in shitty schools, hit them, circumcise them, brutalize them, indoctrinate them with various belief systems and superstitions.
Just look at how people...
Live.
And if you look at how people live and what they actually do and you recognize that they don't have any principles, all they have is who I am and where I live and what I do is the good.
And therefore, if I don't do something, it must be the good, right?
So, I want to support people.
Oh, I didn't support this person.
Well, I thought they were fine or they didn't ask in the right way or I didn't know or I did offer vaguely some support at some level at some point and they never took me up on it.
Like, that then becomes the good, right?
I think we should help the poor, and I don't think we should use violence to get what we want.
Well, the way that you propose helping the poor at the moment through the welfare state involves the use of violence.
Well, it's not really violence.
We vote for it, and certainly the poor would be much greater harmed if we had what you call a free society, which is not freedom.
Just redefine.
Redefine, redefine, redefine.
That which I want, that which I'm partial to, that which gains me social approval and avoids social...
This attack is just the good.
It's not principles.
It's like a cork on the ocean saying, hey, I think I'll go this way.
Like it's some decision and just reacting and bouncing off the whims of the moment.
Your male friends may be there for you and may be fun until they get a girlfriend.
And then what happens?
Well, they change.
They then go and pursue that and it screws to you, right?
Your parents may say, don't hit, and then you point out that they hit you throughout the childhood.
Or your parents may say, don't take other people's stuff away.
Don't take other people's property, and then you may point out that they regularly took your property away to punish you.
And so on.
They may say, don't hold down your brother and sit on him because he can't move then, and then, you know, they may confine you in a time out.
I mean, this...
When you point out these contradictions, and they'll just will it and wish it away.
They may say, you have to be prepared for your test, and then you point out to your parents that they weren't prepared for being parents, and they just wish it away, right?
No principles.
Once you understand no principles and admitting that there are no principles is unbearable, you understand why philosophy is so hard to spread, you understand why people act so inconsistently relative to their virtues, you will understand all of this.
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