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Aug. 24, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:16
2779 What is Normal?

Stefan Molyneux answers a listener question on what is "normal."

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Hi everybody, Stefan Moller from Freedom Made Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Interesting question, as always, from listeners.
So the first was, Steph, how would you define normal?
How would you define normal?
An excellent question.
Now, I think we all know that there's two categories to normal.
And the first is the adaptation to empirical reality.
So, if you are having hallucinations, if you believe you're being attacked by bats when you're not, then you do not have a normal reaction, i.e.
inconformity with objective evidence, right?
You are experiencing a subjective hallucination, and that is not in accordance with what is happening in reality.
So there's normal with regards to our accurate processing of external reality through sense data, through reason, and so on.
That's what can be called normal.
Now, most of us can handle that, and it's related to the second aspect of normal, which means adjusted to the social norms.
In other words, if everyone believes that there's a God living in the volcano and you do not, then you are not normal or people will view you as abnormal or strange or bizarre or whatever.
So you have not, quote, successfully adjusted to the prejudices of those around you.
Now, the first has to do with sanity, and the second has to do with conformity.
And conformity and sanity are so often at odds, and we'll sort of unpack that a little bit more.
But there are two uses of the word normal.
all.
Now, there's a reason for this, which is, I think, very important to understand.
You know, in The Matrix, Morpheus talks about people being batteries or energy sources for the robots.
Well, in a very real way, we are resource batteries for the rulers in the world, for our rulers, for those who...
Cheat and lie and exploit us through irrational absolutes.
You know, your country, your God, whatever.
Now, if you're going to own human beings, then you need two things from them.
You need sanity and you need conformity.
So you need sanity in that if you want to be like a warlord or an aristocrat, a king, and you want to take crops from the serfs, then the crops have to be able to accurately enough process reality in order to produce the crops, right?
They can't plant their seeds in water or throw their cows off cliffs or attempt to milk the noses of their dogs or something.
So, in order to be valuable as objects of exploitation, human beings really need to be sane.
This is true if you have slaves.
They need to know where the cotton is, how to pick it, where to put it, and so on.
This is true...
If you have people you tax, and this is true if you strip their resources from them through threat of force, which is taxation, but whether it's through crops or through taxes, you really need people to be sane with regards to empirical reality.
You can't profit from truly crazy people, so they need to be sane.
They need to accurately process empirical data.
You get the idea.
So that is the most important element of preying upon human beings is you need to promote sanity in the material or physical realm.
But you need to provoke insanity in the moral realm.
That is two opposites.
And, you know, philosophy, of course, aims to heal this opposing dichotomy of madness and sanity.
So, let's just talk about being an aristocrat and having a bunch of serfs who have to give you their crops or you'll kill them, throw them in jail or whatever.
So...
In order to get them to give you their crops, they need to believe that your authority over them is legitimate.
Or at least, you can do it by holding a knife to their throats, but that's kind of limited, right?
I mean, you can't be everywhere at once.
They might stab you back, pull a Macbeth.
There may be lots of things that occur that make the direct ownership of human beings Very difficult.
Less profitable, I guess you could say.
Sorry, I wanted to mention one other thing before, which was a factory worker, right?
I mean, a factory worker needs to turn the lathe correctly, needs to operate the machinery correctly, and so on.
I'm not saying a factory worker is equivalent to a surf, right?
In a free market, but you need them to be sane.
So, if you want to run around holding knives to everyone, that's pretty inefficient.
If you want to run around threatening everyone to get them to give you stuff, they can fight back, they can gang up on you, you can't be everywhere at once.
And so, that doesn't work particularly well.
I mean, you can kind of make a grudging go of it, but it's not nearly as efficient as if they genuinely believe, these serfs, that your authority over them is legitimate and that they will be rewarded and it's virtuous to give you Their resources and so on.
And then they're sort of lining up to give you their stuff, right?
Lining up to give you their stuff is a very different level of efficiency, right?
Compared to you having to go and extract it from them and find you back and all that kind of stuff.
Now, in order to get them, get the serfs, get the peasants to give you their stuff, quote, happily or with the belief of a religious reward, obviously you need the priests, right?
And the priests will then say to these people, well, you know, God has placed this guy in charge of you and you must owe him the same allegiance you owe to God and God will reward you with heaven for giving your stuff in the here and now and so on, right?
And that is...
It's a big challenge, right?
It's a big challenge for theologists to make anything even remotely sane in this argument.
Because everyone's supposed to have a soul.
Everyone's equal in the eyes of the Lord and so on.
But then God appoints some guy ruler over you.
It really doesn't make...
It doesn't fundamentally make any sense.
But...
That is called normal with regards to adapting to...
Social beliefs, irrational in general, as they are.
I mean, if it's not irrational, it's called truth or philosophy or science.
It's not called social belief or culture or whatever.
So in this arrangement, the king or the aristocrat says to the priest, you tell my serfs that they have to give me their money you tell my serfs that they have to give me their money and that they'll be rewarded And in return, I will give you a monopoly over the religious beliefs in the neighborhood.
And if anyone dares to oppose or question or is a heretic or anything, then I'll have my soldiers go and kill them.
Or drive them out or whatever.
So, the hierarchy of power is given for an exchange in a monopoly of superstition.
That's the deal.
And when that breaks down, you get religious warfare and all this kind of stuff.
and then you end up with the separation of church and state and so on.
Now, to even get people to believe in a deity means that you have to ask them to deny the reality of their senses.
Thank you.
And this is one of the challenges why we have these two definitions of what is called normal.
So, if your farmer, serf or slave denies the evidence of his senses, he doesn't plant food, you can't get anything from him, he doesn't eat, he doesn't hide from bears, he doesn't, right, tries to hug fire, I mean, he's mad and you can't get anything profitable from him other than perhaps killing and eating him.
Which is not a strong investment-based predation scenario.
So you have to get him to process reality, but then the priest has to get him to believe unreality.
And these two aspects of the mind need to be kept separate.
Right?
If the farmer applies religious fantasy to his farming, he ends up with no crops.
You know, I'll sit around, God will provide, and that, right?
He gets no crops, and therefore it's not profitable.
But if he applies sensual or sense-based sanity to religion and the aristocracy, then the power of those two destructive hierarchies vanishes.
And he's like, well, you're a guy just like me, and there's no God who puts you in charge, there's no reward after heaven that you can show me, and so on, right?
So this is why what is called in 1984 Doublethink.
It's so foundational to the human psyche and why the human psyche is so distorted and mad really at the moment and why there's such a split between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind and why the unconscious mind is considered both wondrous and demonic and all that.
There's huge differences.
So getting these two definitions of normal straight in your head is really, really important.
So to take a more contemporaneous example, you know, nationalism, of course, is my country and so on.
And nationalism makes no sense for a variety of reasons, of course.
In the same way that the worship of a deity makes no sense for a variety of reasons, any particular deity.
Because the question with a deity, as with...
A country or a government is, do I worship this deity because this deity is good, or do I worship this deity because this deity is powerful?
And it is the same reality with governments.
Do I have allegiance to my government because my government is moral, or do I have allegiance to my government because my government has the power to throw me in jail or reward me or whatever?
And this is a very fascinating dichotomy.
And I've done a podcast called Power or Virtue, a Love Story, pretty early on in the course of the show.
You can look at that for more information.
Another way of looking at it is, do I cheer on my sports team Because they just happen to be geographically closer to me, or because they are the very best at what they do, and I'm cheering on their excellence.
Well, most people, of course, munch all this stuff up together in this big giant frappe of madness in their brains.
If you worship God because God is good, then you're actually worshiping virtue, of which God is a manifestation.
But then, of course, you need a consistent definition of good, which you have proven that God conforms the most to, in order to know that God is the best, that God is good.
God cannot be good because he is powerful, because that simply might make right.
It's like saying that the guy who can beat you up the most is the most virtuous, or the person with the strongest army is the most virtuous, or stuff like that.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
We clearly understand that when it comes to processing Moral questions in the real world, right?
Whoever wins is the most virtuous.
If Hitler had won, obviously there's some truth in that.
The victors write the stories and always proclaim themselves the most virtuous, but it's not something that we can rationally really get behind, right?
Might makes right.
And so, if we worship our government because our government is...
The most aggressive or the most powerful or whatever, then we are simply worshipping might.
And then if another government comes along that's more powerful or if our government loses power or whatever, then that doesn't work.
Also, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
So, if you say, well, I'm going to give my money to my government because they are the strongest, then they are the strongest because you have decided to give money.
I mean, if you said, well, I don't believe my government is the best or the strongest, I'm not going to give them my money, then they wouldn't have the money to buy the arms and the police and the military or whatever, the prisons, to be strong.
If your sports team is simply geographical proximity, then you basically have to become narcissistic in order to cheer geographical accidents, right?
Because when you want your team to win and it's only geography, then it's rational to understand that the other supporters of the other team want their team to win and, you know, it's no better, no worse, right?
And so it's hard to get behind.
My team has to win if you're at all rational, right?
I understand.
And so that's if you're worshipping geographical proximity.
If you're worshipping, well, my team is the best...
Then eventually, of course, your team is not going to be the best, just as every government falls and is replaced by some other government.
In terms of strength, right?
The British government used to rule third of the world, and now it doesn't.
Roman Empire, Assyrian Emperor, Austro-Hungarian Empire, you name it, right?
And so there is allegiance to geography and there is allegiance to power, but that must in general be reframed as an allegiance to virtue.
My country is the best, my team is the best, my government is the best.
But this makes no sense, right?
The best is a universal statement, particularly with ethics.
Right, so particularly with ethics, if you're going to say, my government is the best, then you must have a universal system of ethics.
You must have compared all governments, and you must have concluded that your government is the best.
And not just now, but throughout history.
And of course, how many nationalists have done that?
Well, virtually none.
And none accurately or successfully.
USA, number one, right?
It doesn't make any sense.
And this duality of accurately processing sense data while at the same time being irrationally and artificially wedded to an irrational Ethical system that universally, but locally and only geographically, promotes a universal virtue called the immediate practical or tangible benefits of your rulers.
Right?
Makes no sense.
Makes no sense at all.
You can't possibly process it.
So this is what is meant by normal.
Now, it's a deeply shameful thing to realize that you have been lied to and you have been propagandized and you've been told that X is the good when X turns out to be that which benefits your rulers and enslaves you further out of your own desire for virtue.
Evil people alone generally recognize the true power of virtue.
Because they know how much people want to be good.
And if you can define the good as that which serves the rulers, then you will be in the enviable material, though unenviable moral position of being able to exploit people who will voluntarily hand over their goodies because it is, quote, virtuous for them to do so.
And this is a really important thing to understand.
So when it comes to normal and it comes to processing, this thing called normal, I think it's really essential to get the degree to which normal means correct processing of reality, sense data, and the subjugation to social delusion.
That is something that is really, really important to understand.
I hope this has helped you clarify that to some degree.
It is, of course, as usual, fdrurl.com slash donate to help out the show.
Thank you so much for listening.
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