All Episodes
Previous Next
March 3, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
58:04
2923 Needs and Intimacy: Avoiding Relationship Landmines

A strikingly important look at the relationship between needs and the possibility for intimacy in relationships.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Question from a listener.
How do I know if a person is trustworthy?
How do I get with a friend to the point where we become close enough that close intimacy is possible?
How do I get the courage to tell my friends anything?
How do I develop a peer-to-peer mutually beneficial relationship instead of a therapy-like one-sided relationship?
Great, great question.
And this, my friends, is the philosophy of trust.
Well, the first thing to mention here is that this is not rigorous, black and white, absolutist, philosophical positioning.
I mean, and the reason, as I mentioned in a podcast recently, the reason for that is that absolutism is around the initiation of force, which very few people will contemplate in their lifetimes or be tempted by.
So...
For most of us, the challenges of philosophy are more to do with things like honesty, authenticity, vulnerability, and moral courage in the face of potential rejection or ostracism or verbal attack or other things which do not fall into the category of explicit violence-based good and evil.
This is not to say that these more nuanced...
More gray area discussions are, in a sense, the most important realm of philosophy.
Because it's stuff you can do something about.
Stuff you can really...
Like, I don't think I've ever convinced anyone to not hire a hitman or something like that.
I just don't think that those kinds of people would necessarily be into this show.
But I have, of course, put out arguments about how to achieve virtue in our own lives in a sustainable and actionable way.
So it's not that these, you know, it sounds like, oh, these are less important and so on.
But the only reason that the prevalence of violence is so high in the world as a whole, why violence is so prevalent, is because it can be offloaded to the state.
Now, as long as it's profitable, highly profitable, to offload violence to the state, then it's like a free lottery ticket with no victims to most people.
And trying to convince people not to cash in a free lottery ticket with no victims is sort of pointless.
Don't you know it's going to blunt your work ethic?
You should go back to your job I mean, not that that would be a moron, but whatever argument you'd make, right?
And so as long as there's a state, then the distance that the state places between the initiation of force and the profits of violence is so great that asking people to act in a morally decisive and virtuous manner People respond to incentives, not principles for the most part.
And this principle is so abstract and so countered by years of propaganda and the generalized belief system of the state and so on that...
I mean, it's like...
It's like going to some company high up in the military industrial complex and saying, you know, you shouldn't take government contracts because of Hamina, Hamina, Hamina.
And they'll be like, well, I can't do it.
Do you want to throw 20,000 people out of work?
So as long as there's a state arguing for a generalized reduction of violence or a non-interpersonal reduction in violence, A reduction in structural violence is not going to happen,
and the only way to reduce the size and power of the state is to focus on a reduction in interpersonal coercion, thus producing people who will see the horror of the state, which remains...
Obscure to most people because of their own experiences with hierarchical violence within families and schools and churches and so on, among siblings and between parents and child and so on.
So this is the actionable stuff that leads to an effect on the unactionable stuff.
The state, as I mentioned before, is the shadow cast by the family for the most part.
That which occurs in the government almost always occurs in the family.
First and foremost in the family is what is required for the state.
Hierarchy and aggression within the family is required for hierarchy and aggression within the society, particularly the state.
And since we cannot directly affect the state, we must affect that which affects the state.
I can't go in and make the elements on my oven warmer.
I can only turn the knob that warms them.
So this is the actionable stuff that frees the world.
And you can check out my video, The Sunset of the State, for more on this.
Or podcast, of course.
So, the philosophy of trust.
And the listener is asking about intimacy.
Now, intimacy to me is a relationship where honesty is not tied up with anxiety.
You can be honest about your thoughts and feelings without the fear that people are going to slowly back away from you, eyes wide, shocked, dialing the thought police.
Where you can be honest without fear, there you have intimacy.
Now, what is the opposite of intimacy?
If we're going to say, how do we How do we exercise trust?
Which habits must we exercise in order to trust someone enough to achieve intimacy?
Well, we need to know what the opposite of intimacy is because that helps us guide ourselves.
I mean, if you want to go north and you know the opposite of north is south, you know what south is.
At least you have two ways.
It's a double verification.
North is that way, and the opposite of north is that way, so that way for sure is north.
Now, the opposite of intimacy is not distance.
The opposite of communication is not a lack of communication, simply because non-intimacy and a lack of communication is pretty much the norm for all humanity.
I mean, what, six or seven billion people in the world The vast, vast majority of whom I have no contact with whatsoever.
I mean, does that mean I am alienated from humanity?
Well, no.
The opposite of Free trade is not non-trading, because then, since every time you exercise in a trade and times when you're sleeping or whatever, you are not engaged in trade with the vast majority of humanity, that does not mean that you're doing the opposite of free trade most of the time, or that almost all humanity, except in the moment that they're trading, is doing the opposite of free trade.
The opposite of free trade is theft, fraud.
That is the opposite of free trade.
Not a non-involvement in the moment of trading with someone.
So, the opposite of a moral virtue, and this is back to the coma test, which you can find in my free book, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, at freedomainradio.com slash free.
The opposite of The opposite of a moral action cannot be passivity.
The opposite of a moral action must be an immoral action, and an immoral action cannot be something that is passive.
I mean, that's almost tautological, because I say action, which means you're doing something, and passive means you're not doing something.
But a sleeping man cannot be evil.
So the opposite of a moral action must itself be an action.
It cannot be an inaction.
So the opposite of...
Sorry, let me explicate this a little bit more.
So, to respect property rights is to not be engaged in the positive action of theft, or if you count the body as property, which I do, theft, assault, rape, murder, or fraud.
And therefore, a sleeping man, who cannot, by definition, be engaged in these actions, cannot be immoral.
Does this mean that he is positively moral?
I don't think that we would say that a man in a coma is positively moral.
He's certainly not engaged in immoral actions.
Is he positively moral?
Well, morality is sort of like nutrition.
You know, a nutritionist talking who could send messages back and forth in a bottle to a man on a desert island.
If the man on the desert island says, I only have coconuts to eat, then the nutritionist would not be altogether helpful in saying to the man that what you really, really need to do is to broaden your diet and have it include profiteroles and...
Oh gosh, I don't know.
Ostrich eggs and the dew that falls off snapdragons and so on.
Because there's no opportunity or possibility for that man to follow the dietary advice when he only has coconuts to eat.
In the same way, Someone must have the choice and ability to commit and perform an immoral act, and we assume the motive to perform an immoral act, and must resist that immoral act in order to become virtuous, at least in a passive sense.
There's passive virtue, which is I'm not violating anyone else's rights, and then there's active virtue in that I am also convincing other people not to violate other people's rights, which is the difference between eating well and being A published or public nutritionist.
To eat well yourself is great.
It does not add to the health of other people, but it's fine.
But if you are a nutritionist, then you are also trying to convince other people to eat well.
And that's an aspect of a virtue that I haven't explored.
I've explored it once or twice on the show, but there is active evil There cannot be passive evil.
There is active good, or active virtue, which requires that you are tempted by immorality to some degree.
A man who is both allergic to and finds the taste of meat repulsive can scarcely claim that it is a difficult virtue for him to remain a vegetarian.
There must be some sort of temptation to the opposite of the value you're espousing in order for you to require virtue to exercise that virtue.
To exercise willpower indicates that you have a drive or preference to not or do the opposite of what the willpower is exercising you to do.
A man who quits smoking or who has quit smoking can claim it's difficult and a good thing to do and so on.
But a man who grows up in, I don't know, Scotland in the 12th century could scarcely parade around and claim that he's a very virtuous guy for quitting smoking because he never had access to cigarettes.
That was the revenge of the North American natives on the whites with the smallpox blankets.
I think by headcount they've done better.
So the opposite Of a moral action cannot be passivity.
The opposite of honesty is not refraining from communicating.
The opposite of honesty is to directly or indirectly mislead someone to lie, to defraud, to falsify.
Because then you are engaged in an action which is required for something to be wrong.
Because I am not communicating with the vast majority of mankind.
I still have yet to get to the Bob Marley refrain of, I'm playing for mankind.
So, what is the opposite of intimacy?
Well, the opposite of intimacy cannot be non-communication, with one exception.
I'm going to argue in this Important, but not short conversation.
I'm going to argue that the opposite of intimacy, since intimacy requires honesty, the opposite of intimacy is lying, is falsehood, is misleading.
But that doesn't really add much to it, like the opposite of honesty is lying because it doesn't really give motive or why and so on, right?
I mean, the best nutritionists are one who say, well, if you don't eat this, but eat this, this is, like, if you don't eat A, but eat B, A is bad for you, B will satisfy you as much and is good for you, right?
So, you know, it's like getting people off heroin is a good idea to deploy, as far as I understand it, some methadone.
Find a substitute that helps people get off the addiction and also to prevent, which is why I talk about the role of child abuse in The development of addiction.
To prevent addiction is better than to cure it, and the most effective cures tend to be the best, obviously.
Again, that's almost a tautology.
So we have to answer not just, well, the opposite of intimacy is lying, but what drives the lying.
So the real opposite of Intimacy is the four-letter word need.
Need.
I used this analogy before.
I will deploy it again because I'm an environmentalist who's very much into recycling.
If you're a heroin addict, you have no money.
And you see your dealer and you're just jonesing and dying for a hit of heroin.
A kick from the old horse.
You're going to go up and engage in conversation with your heroin dealer and pretend to be his friend and pretend to be curious and pretend that you're not just engaged in the conversation because you really need a hit and you have no money.
You're going to try and wheedle and cajole and manipulate and all that.
The drug out of your dealer.
And people do this, of course, with members of the opposite sex that they want to have sex with.
They go up and pretend to be interested and listen and wheedle and so on.
Maneuver.
Manipulate.
Because to the drug addict, the dealer is a mechanism by which the addict can satisfy his need.
The The dealer is an object, like you push a button to get something out of a vending machine.
The dealer is an object, a conduit, a chute through which the addict can get his drug.
Not a person in and of himself.
And this is an old trope in...
Philosophical circles, which is the goal of not using people as objects to serve your needs, but interacting with them as ends in themselves, not as means to your ends, but as ends in themselves.
And so when you have need, you must almost inevitably become false, because the drug addict can scarcely go up to the drug dealer and say, I'm going to pretend to be your friend, so you'll give me drugs because I have no money and I need a hit.
The drug addict could go up and say, is there any jobs you need done or anything that, you know, back rub, foot rub, anything, right?
I need some drug.
But he has to pretend to be treating the drug dealer as an end himself, right, within the drug dealer's self.
He cannot honestly say, I wish to manipulate you by pretending to be friendly in order to get drugs.
I think in Pineapple Express, there's a moment where Seth Rogen talks about the awkward chitchat that you engage in with a drug dealer.
Because, you know, there's a whole culture of, you know, dude and friendliness and relaxedness and superiority and so on around some drug cultures.
So you have to pretend it's not, you know, I don't have to engage in idle chit-chat with a pharmacist.
I can if I want.
But this sort of feeling that...
Your friends with money, rather than its financial transaction, is something that seems to occur.
What do I know?
Never bought drugs from anyone, but this is what I hear from apparently a fairly reputable source.
So where you have need, you cannot have honesty.
And where you have need, you must...
I'm going to use absolutes, though.
I can think of exceptions, just so I don't have to keep saying almost invariably or mostly or whatever.
Just understand that, yes, you can imagine exceptions to this, but it does not break the general trend.
The degree of need that you have for something someone else has is the degree to which You must manipulate because being honest about your need will generally not get you what you want.
So, a woman, let's just say a woman so I can use the pronouns more easily.
A woman goes up to a male drug dealer who wants drugs.
Then, you know, maybe she offers him a blowjob for drugs.
And she doesn't want to give him a blowjob because she loves him.
She wants to give him a blowjob because the blowjob is the means, it's the crank by which she levers out the drugs.
So she's using him as a mechanism by which to achieve the high of the drug, and he's using her as a mechanism by which to achieve the high of an orgasm.
And if she goes up to him and says...
I can't stand being without this drug.
I hate you even more.
I find you revolting and disgusting, but I'm full of such self-hatred, self-loathing and self-contempt that I'm willing to perform this vile act, vile because of my hatred for you, this vile act with you, in order to get a drug.
That is how far down I have been cast by my addiction.
Or, you know, I'm going to pretend to like you.
You can walk up and say, well, I'm going to pretend to like you and ask about your day, though secretly I'm crawling with ants inside, dying to get my hands on this drug, which you have and I can't afford to buy.
And so, I'm going to just pretend to like you.
I'm just going to pretend that I have any interest in you as a person rather than loathing for you as a person.
I'm just going to hang around.
But the only thing I want is a drug.
I don't care about you at all.
In fact, the only caring I have for you is hatred because I am actually humiliated by having to pretend that I like you to get this drug.
Is that likely to get...
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe he's full of self-contempt as well and the blowjob from...
The hate job is turned on to him.
I don't know.
What do I know?
But...
Certainly, if you say, well, I'm only going to pretend to be your friend so that you will give me things...
It's not likely to get you what you want.
So you have to falsify in order to get what you want.
If you walk up to a woman in a bar with the vile joke that says, Why do women have vaginas?
So men will talk to them.
Now, I find you contemptible.
I'm playing a role here, everyone.
I find you contemptible as a gender.
But I would really like to use your vagina.
You are attached to it, so I need your...
Conscious assent, but I really have no respect for the gender at all.
I mean, is that likely to get you what you want?
No.
No, which is why falsification, the pretense of interest, and so on, is going on.
So the opposite of intimacy is need, because need turns individuals into utilities to provide what you want.
And that kind of stuff is...
It's so destructive of pseudo-relationships.
And it's required when you wish to gain something without an exchange of value.
When I go to the pharmacist and buy some aspirin, I don't need to pretend interest in his family because the value I'm providing is the money to pay for the aspirin.
He doesn't need to pretend interest in my family because the value that I'm providing Sorry, the value that he's providing is the aspirin for my money.
Now, it doesn't mean, again, we can't be interested in each other's family, but it's not required.
I mean, while waiting for a script a month or two ago, I heard about a fascinating trip that the pharmacist took to Australia.
I was actually very interested.
But...
Where there is an exchange of value, there is not manipulation.
Manipulation occurs when there is no exchange of value, but you wish to pretend to be exchanging of value.
You wish to pretend to...
You know, in a ghastly sense, the blowjob for drugs falls in the category of an actual exchange of value.
However...
Anyway...
But...
If you have a great need for someone, you cannot be intimate with them because it's not a need for someone, but a need for something that person provides you that is not a positive benefit but the avoidance of a negative, right?
I mean, I really need my wife and the things that she brings to my life are wonderful.
The same thing with my daughter and my friends.
It is not the avoidance of a negative that is the root of my need for the people in my life.
In other words, if I really need a good grade in a class and I decide to mirror and amplify the professor's opinions, In order to get a good grade in that class, which is tragically common.
It's almost the norm.
I mean, any decent professor should mark people down who clearly are sucking up, but that's generally not what happens, because power corrupts.
And if I then suck up to the professor to get a good grade, I mean, it's partly to get a good grade, but it's also partly, of course, to avoid the negative of a bad grade, which might not get me into grad school or something like that.
That's an important thing to understand.
Now, if you can't stand being alone, if you can't stand, like you hate being alone, horrifying, awful, terrible, panic attacks, cutting, whatever, some suicidal thoughts, whatever, you can't stand being alone, then you're going to grab onto and grab at people To avoid the horror of being alone.
And you're relieved, of course, when you're with people, but the fundamental drive that you have is to avoid the negative experience of being alone.
And that means that you cannot be honest or intimate with people.
I need People around me because I can't stand being alone.
I hate being alone.
I'm terrified of being alone.
I'm terrified of what I'll do if I'm alone.
Well, obviously, I think clearly that's the opposite of intimacy because that's just using people to avoid the horror of your own experience of yourself in isolation.
That cannot be intimacy.
And I've seen some pretty horrifying examples of that.
Not in my own circle, of course, but elsewhere in the world.
Just horrifying things.
And so, if you have a need for someone because you wish to avoid a negative, well, then you cannot be intimate because you're going to be manipulative.
If you have a need for someone Prior to them providing value to you, then your need is most likely with the goal of getting them to provide that value to you.
I mean, to take a, I don't know, maybe this is too abstract an example, but to tie it into the earlier drug dealer example, if the woman and the drug dealer regularly chat and, you know, she lends him money and he lends her drugs and they achieve this mutual blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then they take pleasure in each other's company blah, then they take pleasure in each other's company because of the past provision of value and the past buildup of trust.
And so I'm not saying it's likely, but, you know, this is sort of a scenario that contrasts with the earlier one.
So if the person is, if you're only interacting with the person because of the value they will provide to you in the future, whether near or far, then that's manipulative.
But if you're interacting with a person because of the past provision of value, well, that's trust and intimacy and affection and what a friendship and so on that has been built up.
So the provision of value must be prior to the, quote, need or the preference, right?
And the preference for the person should ideally be, again, my free book, Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
You can love someone so much that you need them.
I mean, I need my wife.
I need my wife.
But that's the result of 13 years of built-up admiration, respect, and virtue on her part.
So, I'm sorry to use the word need.
I'm going to use the word preference for after value is provided and use the word need for before value is provided.
So, preference occurs after there is a build-up of positive and virtuous interactions between two people, and the preference can be so strong that it's indistinguishable from need and so on, but need is when the value is in the future and the interaction between two people is only based upon one or both people trying to get value from other people in the future, from each other.
So, the typical example is the rich old guy and the gold digger.
The rich old guy wants sex and the gold digger wants money.
But these are futures.
They're only interacting with each other because of future.
Because of the future.
And you can't have trust in that situation because the future is uncertain.
And the end is always near.
The old guy might be faking his money.
He might lose his money.
He might cut her out of the will.
He might have her sign a prenup.
She might get nothing.
Which is better than what happened to A.N. Smith, if I remember rightly.
The woman might marry the old guy in a wheelchair and not give him any sex and not want to spend any time with him and go off partying with her young friends.
So, all of these things...
It might change, and of course often do.
So where it's not the person's character, but rather it is something the person can provide that they can cease to provide at any time, then you can't have trust in the relationship.
I mean, the woman who wants the drugs might spend an hour chatting with the drug dealer.
He might like, oh, here, have a sample, and then holds it out to her, and then snatches it back and says, just kidding, right?
So this is kind of a rollercoaster, right?
She can't trust him.
Because the value that she's trying to get him to provide may be given or may be taken away at any time.
Which is why moodiness is so bad for trust.
But anyway, that's a topic for another time.
Belt into this topic for another time.
So the elimination of need is foundational to intimacy.
And this is why I have, for lo these many years, I have...
This will be the 10th year.
No, next year will be the 10th year.
Anyway, so for these many years I've been recommending therapy and self-knowledge and honesty with yourself about trauma and talking to family members that you have issues with or complaints against and so on.
Because when you deal with your childhood trauma, when you sort of face it and square off against your childhood trauma, if you had it, then what happens is you're no longer afraid of it.
It no longer dominates you.
And because you're no longer afraid of your origins, your roots, and in many ways yourself...
You end up being less manipulative, right?
Self-knowledge and a clear-eyed moral evaluation of your past and a hopefully professionally aided processing of the agonies that result from trauma means that you get some kind of closure.
And closure is certainty, knowledge, inviolate knowledge, and particularly it's emotional certainty.
The pursuit of certainty is the pursuit of closure and the release from the past.
And all of that is essential to being someone who does not need other people because the trauma is so overwhelming that you must just avoid it at all turns and so on.
If you're going up against a dragon, you need other people.
If you're going up against a mouse, well, you need testicles and you pretty much manage that on your own, right?
So, shrinking trauma by accepting it, shrinking anxiety by exploring it.
You know, you think there's something under the bed, you look.
And when you see there's nothing under the bed, you are reassured.
So, The goal of self-knowledge is to reduce need and to replace need with preference.
And the goal of philosophy is to replace irrational need with rational preference.
Now, the needs that you had as a child for security, safety, and love, they weren't irrational at all.
But we have to assume that as an adult you have far greater choice.
Well, we know that as an adult you have infinitely greater choice in your companions than you did as a child.
And so, to replace need with preference is to give you the opportunity to achieve intimacy rather than manipulation based on needs, particularly needs to avoid trauma.
I mean, if you were isolated as a child, you can't stand being alone and you grab onto people or gravitate towards people and that almost always is the lowest.
Low specimens of quality of people because people of quality don't like to be used to know what the difference is.
So if you can't stand being alone because solitude was a horror for you as a child, Then you will end up just needing people and using people and manipulating people and pretending that it's not out of your anxiety avoidance or horror avoidance, but rather out of some positive pursuit, some positive virtue of value.
You distort your whole thinking, you reverse and inverse your whole values and all that kind of stuff.
The heroine Woman's blowjob, addict's blowjob, instead of sexuality being a celebration of life and love and virtue, it becomes an act of enslavement and self-hatred and all that kind of stuff.
You have to invert your values.
Manipulation is the inversion of values.
It is the pretense of honesty, which is more the opposite of honesty than outright lying.
Like if it's raining and you come to me and say it's sunny out, it's sunny out, I know you're not telling the truth.
But if you go to great lengths to deceive me, that's more the opposite of truth than outright lying.
That's what I dislike so much about the government.
It's dishonest immorality.
Now, as to how you go about trying to establish trust with someone, I mean, again, the pursuit of self-knowledge and, you know, good therapy and, you know, the degree to which it can be done on your own, I don't know.
I mean, problems caused by isolation usually can't be solved in isolation, but the pursuit of self-knowledge, I think, is good to have with a great therapist, but, you know, things you can do on your own, journaling and sentence completion exercises and so on.
All of these...
Habits and approaches will have you in a state of diminished need where, you know, if you're starving, you'll eat anything.
If you're not starving, you'll be choosy.
And so need destroys choice.
And choice means that trust cannot be a barrier.
Lack of trust cannot be a barrier.
If you're hungry enough...
You'll eat anything and you'll be like, well, I'm going to die if I don't eat anything, if I don't eat something.
So even if this food isn't that great, even if it might be a little off, I'm going to do it anyway.
At least I get something.
The alternative is even worse, right?
So the greater the need, the less the discrimination.
And a trust, of course, is a form of discrimination.
It's saying, well, I need to find out if I can trust you first.
So the greater the need...
The lower the boundaries, the less the boundaries, the less boundaries there are.
The less skepticism there is, the less evaluation there is.
I mean, if you're full and someone offers you food that you don't like, you won't eat it, but if you're starving, you will.
That need destroys discrimination.
Anything which reduces need will increase your capacity to discriminate and require virtue from people and evaluate them according to ethics and so on.
The first thing you do is eliminate need.
Destroy need, crush need, reduce need, or recognize your neediness, which we all have for the most part.
Crush need.
And then you can choose.
Then you have the capacity for choice.
And once you have that, then you evaluate other people's needs.
See, once you've dealt with your own needs, then you can actually see need in others, right?
Once you've Right.
If you don't know that chocolate tastes good and you've never heard of chocolate, you see someone eat chocolate, your mouth won't water.
But once you've tasted a lot of chocolate and you like it and it tastes good to you, then when you see someone else eat chocolate, your mouth will water because you know it, right?
So once you know something, you can empathize with it in others.
And so once you've really explored and understood your own needs and faced them down and dealt with them and so on, then you will very, very quickly and easily be able to identify need in others.
And then when you can identify that need in others, you will recognize that where someone is very needy, they cannot be trusted because they will be manipulative.
And...
That is a very essential thing to really grasp.
This is why self-knowledge is self-protection.
So, you won't really need...
Sorry, let me not overuse this poor word.
Experiencing need is identifying need.
Avoidance of your own neediness will be avoidance of the neediness in others.
If you're blind, you can't see whether people are blind.
So from that standpoint, that kind of self-knowledge is really, really important.
And in the absence of that self-knowledge, you simply can't be safe, I believe.
If you don't have a detailed knowledge of your own neediness, then you will simply be susceptible to neediness in others.
If you're avoiding your own neediness, then you will inevitably end up avoiding neediness in others as well.
And you'll never be safe.
From that standpoint.
Now, once you have explored and examined your own neediness, then you will see neediness in others, and you will sympathize, and you might point them in the right direction, but you won't be nearly as easy to manipulate once you have dealt with your own neediness, because neediness is the desire to manipulate, and it's really hard to be manipulated by something we have no desire for.
So now, naturally, of course, we come to the next question, which this is a pointillism at medium distance philosophy, so I hope that you which this is a pointillism at medium distance philosophy, so I hope that you understand this is not going to be any
but how do you figure out who is genuine, who is someone you can trust, who is someone you can Have a relationship with?
Well, I think the first thing to recognize is it's not going to be very common.
It is not going to be very common.
Sometimes it can feel like searching for a fern plant on the moon.
It's not going to be very common.
And that's tough.
That's something to recognize first and foremost.
There's a A whole lot of hay and a whole little needle.
You know, when I was younger, I worked as a gold pen or a prospector and surveyor for a mining company looking for gold.
And on some of the days where I was simply doing a lot of manual labor, it wasn't boring or anything, you get a compass and you got to stake out your claims and stuff and not get lost or eaten by bears or wolves.
But I was thinking about ways in which it's got to be an easier way to find gold.
It's got to be an easier way to find gold than take soil samples and look for where the glaciers might have smeared them down from an original source.
And holy...
I mean, the closest I came up with was some sort of low-flying airplane echolocation radar sedimentary thing, which obviously I have no skill to pursue.
And this sort of finding gold in humanity is a real challenge.
And so recognizing how rare it is is important.
You know, when I was a kid as well, when I was in boarding school, I had a rock.
I was six.
I had a rock that had, obviously it was just a piece of shiny quartz on it, but I was not convinced, but I was like, what if it's a diamond?
And my daughter has a fascination with rocks and, you know, will occasionally find something cool and shiny.
It's a diamond!
And like, well, it's not.
The odds of it being a diamond are incredibly remote.
And...
But, you know, now she gets it.
But when she was...
Everything's a diamond.
You find a piece of glass and quartz.
It's a diamond!
And when you've had that spike and drop of...
Oh, and I just...
I also wanted to mention...
I'm sorry if I sounded a little bit low energy.
In the first part of this conversation, I was going down for my post-cancer check-up, which I do every three months.
And...
I wanted to do a show.
I'm not particularly terrified of it, but it's always good to know your blood work is great and you're in the clear and all that.
If I'm a little more excited now, that's because there's a certain amount of relief that comes with that.
Since I'm talking about honesty and openness, that's the reality.
And recognizing how rare diamonds are really helps you look for them, because if you think that every piece of glass you find on the street is a diamond, you're not going to go digging mile-deep mines with massive amounts of ventilation.
I visited one of those in Africa when I was younger, and those mines are really windy as hell, because they've got to keep the air circulating.
So knowing the rarity of something helps you look for it, and believing that every piece of glass is a diamond on the ground means that you're just not going to look.
You're not going to have the standards of looking for difficult things, or you're going to end up trying to steal, neither of which I recommend in the pursuit of friendship.
So first of all, know how rare it is.
So if you're into this show, into this conversation, it means that you're into reason and evidence.
And that doesn't mean, of course, that everyone you meet has to believe what you believe.
That would be to state that there is an end to knowledge and that all reason and evidence leads to all exactly the same conclusions that we have in this conversation, which is not true.
All of my conclusions could be overturned tomorrow, and I would...
Very much publicize that and strive to correct and figure out where I'd gone astray and where my confirmation biases was and so on.
But the accuracy of my conclusions is completely irrelevant to the validity of the methodology of reason and evidence.
A fraudulent scientist does not overturn but rather reaffirms the validity of the scientific method because how do you know he's fraudulent?
Right?
Because reason and evidence has overturned his conclusions.
There was a social scientist somewhere in Europe who put out these...
I'm never going to get to the topic, just in case you're wondering.
I'm too happy to be focused.
But there was a social scientist in Europe who put these studies out that said if you're exposed to a bunch of words indicating old age, you sort of walk more slowly afterwards.
All of this and his other...
Not all of it.
A lot of it turned out to be pretty much nonsensical and bad data and all that.
But, you know, the myths still persist.
As the old saying goes, the truth is barely getting its shoes tied, but the lie is halfway around the world.
Or a lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is getting its boots on.
You know, we are greedy.
Broken people are greedy for that which lowers standards.
So...
Knowing how rare it is is really, really important.
How many people are passionately devoted to philosophy rather than ideology, to the exploration of truth rather than confirmation bias of pre-existing prejudices?
There's so much of this show that has unbelievably blown my mind.
Blown my mind?
I mean, you listen to the early shows that talk about prior victimization of women and patriarchy.
I mean, there's just so much that has, like, I can't believe it, you know, questioning the automatic value of Opposing culture wars known as diversity.
Early on in my career, I worked on a diversity newsletter for a major corporation and was totally down with it.
There's just so much that has blown my mind in this show that I don't think I can be accused of holding onto a position despite the evidence.
The presentations I do are the presentations that blow my mind.
Because I'm just like, well, I thought that was true.
Turns out it's not.
I mean, there seems to be no end to the domino matrix that gets us to reality from fantasy.
So, it's rare.
How many people are passionately devoted to reason and evidence, right?
I mean, this has been my test for libertarians.
Oh, so if you're into the non-aggression principle, how does that apply to hitting children?
Right.
Well, that's a test of integrity, in that you have to find a way in which it is not the initiation of force to hit children, or you have to say, well, I'm not really into the non-aggression principle, as opposed to just yelling that I'm somehow wrong and retreating back to an analysis of fiat currency.
No, it's an integrity test.
The Pope was recently talking about limits to freedom of speech, and he said, if somebody applies a curse word to my mother, I'm going to hit him.
I'm going to punch him in the head.
Well, there's an integrity test because Jesus said, love your enemies, turn the other cheek.
If a man asks for your cloak, give him your shirt too.
And if he asks you to walk a mile with him, walk two miles with him.
So, you know, this is one of the reasons I have some skepticism towards the value.
The value!
Of religion as a means of enforcing ethics, in that the Pope basically says, well, if somebody insults my mother, I'll clock him, I'll co-clock him in the head, perhaps with some blunt papal instrument.
And it doesn't seem like a whole lot of Christians are saying, dude, somewhat departed from doctrine there.
I'm afraid you can't get away with that because Jesus did, of course, say turn the other cheek.
And when you are talking about clocking someone for an insult, you are deviating from doctrine.
Nobody said anything like that, right?
At least to my knowledge.
Maybe it's been written.
Just nobody said, dude.
Oh, tea cozy head, I'm afraid you have just done the opposite of what Jesus said.
And you have talked about violating the pacifism of Jesus and returning a mere verbal insult with a physical blow.
And you have sinned.
And worse than sinning, you as the head of the church have encouraged other people to sin.
So, it's rare.
It's rare to find people who are willing to submit willpower to doctrine.
Doctrine most often is a cloak for willpower.
I will this and the best way to get it is to invent a doctrine that supports this principle and in general disarms other people who are opposed to me.
So the thief wants to invent the concept of property rights so that people will not steal from him or steal things that he instead wants to steal.
So invent a principle and exclude yourself.
That is the march of what has formerly been called ethics for the most part throughout human history.
It's rare.
I think that I mentioned that.
It's rare.
So just be aware of how rare things are.
Most people, they have a principle, they run up against a personal barrier or a piece of trauma or a here-be-dragons part of their psyche and they simply abandon the principle but remain steadfastly sure that they are sticking with the principle.
So, it's rare.
Now, ways in which you can tell if someone is...
Virtuous.
Is they have an openness, but a reserve.
There was a guy in my high school who was like this, who I later found out was entirely into John Galt, and Howard Rock in particular.
But there's an openness, but a reservedness.
I am open to new information, like a scientist, right?
He's open to new information, but he's skeptical, right?
Which is, you know, to me, kind of exactly how it should be, right?
Open, but skeptical.
Yes, send me your paper by all means, but I'm not going to just say, oh yeah, that's the paper, right?
Whatever, right?
You're correct!
You know, whatever.
Einstein would still have to submit papers to be refereed, which is why we know he never quite got around to the unified field theory that he burned up his last decade's worth of supremely enhanced brainpower and fruitless pursuit of.
I shouldn't say fruitless.
What do I know?
But he didn't get it, didn't achieve it.
And so, an openness to new information, but a skepticism.
Like, I'm open to all new information.
I'm open to all new arguments because I have a methodology that I only benefit from.
You know, people can send me stuff about how this is faked or that's a false flag, and it's like, okay, well, I'm happy.
I'm open to it.
Because I'm not ideological, I have no fear or hostility of new information.
But I'm skeptical.
You know, the burden of proof is on those making the claims, and the more extraordinary the claims, the higher the burden of proof.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So...
That's important.
Somebody who's open, but skeptical.
You know, happy to chat with you, but not after your approval.
Somebody who does not seek your approval is somebody who's not needy.
And somebody who does not seek your approval is someone you can actually connect with.
Now, the reason you want somebody who's not needy is that neediness is like a sex, climax, and nap situation, right?
It's a peak followed by a valley.
The exercise of virtue is consistent.
If love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous, the exercise of virtue can be fairly consistent.
Whereas if I simply need someone's approval, then the moment I have their approval, I don't want them anymore.
And so my need for them, my preference for them, my desire for them comes and goes, waxes and wanes, based upon whether they're satisfying my needs.
If all I want to do is have sex with that woman, then I'm going to have sex with her, and then I'm going to go home.
I don't need her anymore.
I already have the sex.
If I just let go on one time or whatever.
So that's important, is that if somebody needs your approval, if somebody needs anything from you at any foundational level, you cannot have any stability in the relationship.
And whenever you see instability in a relationship, you are seeing the crashing waves of colliding, manipulating satisfied and unsatisfied needs.
So that's important to understand as well.
Somebody who's open and is willing to hear your case, right?
So let's say you make a case.
I don't know.
Taxation is theft.
A person doesn't have to agree with you at all.
I mean, the fact that they would agree with you would be highly unusual.
And the fact that they agree with you does not mean that they're a virtuous person or a thinker or a philosopher or whatever, right?
So if you, I'm not saying you would, but if you did, or should, but if you did make the argument that some dinner party, taxation is theft, you look for the person who says, well, I've never heard that before.
Tell me more.
Make your case.
I'm fascinated.
What an unusual argument.
I've never experienced that or heard that.
I'm sort of happy to hear.
And somebody who has empathy understands that taxationist theft is a radical argument and unusual and frightening for people in a lot of ways and makes the case slowly and methodically.
Deliberately, I guess you could say.
So that's an important aspect of things as well.
So somebody who's open and curious, you know, war is the result of child abuse.
Well, what a fascinating thesis.
I've never heard that before.
Do tell.
And so on.
Racism may not be as prevalent in society as people think.
Oh, that's interesting.
I've never heard that before.
Do tell me more.
Historically, women have not exactly been oppressed.
Wow, never heard.
So somebody who's open...
And skeptical.
You know, make your case.
I'm happy to hear.
I mean, I hear lots of nutty cases, and some of them turn out to be, well, frankly, not nutty at all, but incredibly useful and helpful.
So I think that openness and that receptivity and somebody who admits when they're wrong, admits when they can't answer an argument, and say, well, I can't answer this argument, I'm not saying it's true or false.
I certainly can't answer it, which means it's at least potentially true.
Let me think about it and get back to you.
And someone who does think about it and gets back to you, well, that's someone you want to have.
Somebody who's curious about your childhood.
Somebody who's knowledgeable about his or her own childhood.
These are also very important things to get a hold of in your relationships around.
Dedication to methodology.
Love is a dedication to the kind of consistent virtue that is required for love to be sustainable and trust to be sustainable.
You don't trust a person.
You trust his or her methodology.
You don't trust the individual.
You don't trust his conclusions.
You don't trust his thoughts.
You trust the methodology because the methodology is consistent and objective.
And consistency and objectivity is the basis of trust.
Trust is knowing that gravity is going to operate tomorrow or when you take your next step or whatever.
The consistency of physical matter is why we trust science and we trust the reality of we don't try and walk on water and we don't try and swim through concrete.
And a methodology is stability.
A methodology is reproducible.
A methodology breeds trust.
And this is why philosophy is such a necessary prerequisite for our capacity to love.
So I hope this helps.
Please let me know what you think.
As always, thank you for your support.
I really hope that these kinds of shows are useful and helpful to people.
Please let me know.
And please, please, please, I open to you my need, my preference.
freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Please help us out.
▲
Export Selection