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Jan. 31, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:41
3579 The Ugly Truth About Hollywood
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Hi, everybody.
This is Evan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I need to ask you something.
Please, please, forget about everything else I have done.
Forget about all of my material and productions for the past 10 years.
It all comes down to this.
This alone matters.
This alone must be shared.
This alone must be understood.
Don't you know it?
Don't you feel it?
A terrible storm is coming.
This is a storm being summoned by the words of the vicious and of the ignorant, of the hateful and the horrifying.
It is a strange kind of time storm.
A storm that will throw us back through history.
That's if we're lucky.
If we're unlucky, this storm will throw us back through history to pre-history, perhaps even to the history before we were here as a species.
This is the storm.
I've seen it.
You've seen it.
You know, I watch Hollywood award ceremonies where a supposed artist screams and bellows out for punching people in the face for political disagreements and the entire horde, the audience of Botoxed brain zombies leaps to their feet in an unholy and unearthly howl of rampant bloodlust approval.
I watch intelligent people call rioters protesters when these black-clad rock-pounders are merely the enforcement fist of a gimme-gimme set of government dependents.
I watch this culture define whoever they disagree with as a Nazi and then say, oh yeah, you could use violence against Nazis because that's what Indiana Jones did.
They say, you're a fascist and we can smash fascists in the face.
What is a fascist?
If you ask these people, they have no clue.
The reality is, they call someone a fascist after they have decided to punch that person in the face or sucker punch him in the side of the head, bursting his eardrum.
The demons of political violence are being summoned from the black hearts of the inarticulate, the enraged, the helpless, the dependent, the frustrated, and the evil.
If you justify using violence against those who disagree with you, not in self-defense, but in the attack on those whose beliefs you find objectionable, you do understand, don't you?
When you do this, you are weakening and possibly breaking the bolt of self-restraint among your supposed enemies as well as your allies.
You know that, right?
There is this tragedy of human nature.
There's this glorious endorphin rush in the promise and release of first violence.
This is the seduction of violence.
It promises to silence your enemies and solve your anxieties, but it doesn't.
Of course it doesn't.
You summon the demon of violence, thinking it will serve only you, but it won't.
It needs to be summoned by the black magic of hateful words, but once summoned, the demon serves only itself.
It may attack those you perceive to be your enemies first, but it lays waste to everyone soon enough.
The demon can destroy for a thousand years before mankind has finally had enough and the demon is tamed and captured and bottled once more through the power of philosophy.
You cannot say we should punch disagreeable men in the face, and it's always men, isn't it, or rather white men, to be specific, and confine that principle to only your own side, your own team, your own gang.
Will you object if you are giving a peaceful speech and you are punched in the face?
How can you?
Immanuel Kant said, Act as if the principle of your action becomes a universal rule for all mankind.
Because that's how it happens.
That's how it grows.
That's how what you do spreads.
The demon does not discriminate.
Use violence against those you disagree with.
You think of heroically punching Nazis.
Some evil lunatic in Quebec approaches a mosque with an AK-47.
He has learned your lesson.
You loosed the demon and the demon took him.
The demon of violence thrives in the absence of values.
Life must find a way to its objective.
If it cannot use words, it will use swords.
Societies have to make decisions.
If we can't reason with each other, we will claw each other.
The call for violence in the realm of ideas, of speech, of disagreements, of arguments is a confession of spiritual emptiness, of a mere Nietzschean will to power, of a desire to dominate through vicious will rather than collaborate and learn through shared reasoning.
This is the cycle of violence, the inevitable falsehoods that fertilize the demon seed.
When the left first advanced their own agenda, they were met with violence quite often.
Now that they largely control the culture, any opposition to the left is increasingly met with violence.
I've been a public intellectual for ten years and studied philosophy for decades before that.
I have repeatedly said, and I repeat again now, In the absence of a willingness to subjugate will to reason and evidence, violence will continue to escalate.
If we refuse to behave like rational human beings, we let slip the dogs of our feral natures and they gather and howl and chase and tear down the civilization built by our betters.
When someone brings you an argument and you respond with snarkiness and sarcasm, you awaken the demon.
When someone brings you an argument and you respond with abuse, you call the demon.
When someone brings you an argument and you respond with rage, you summon the demon.
When someone brings you an argument and you respond with violence, you are the demon.
We have very few values left in the West these days other than a lazy tolerance and a growing will to power.
Now, this will to power It's restrained at the moment not by philosophy or self-control, but by the fading shields of ancient values, unpowered for generations, that are barely able to hold back the red tide of screams and fists.
And it's not hard to figure out why we are where we are.
Maybe hard to avert where we're going, but it's not hard to figure out why we are where we are.
See, 150 years ago, give or take, we turned over the education of our children to the state.
Now, as more and more cultures came to the West, values, moral values, had to be progressively stripped from the education of the young.
I mean, cultures are not wildly differentiated by an ability to learn math or spelling or science, but they are differentiated by dedication to core moral values.
When cultures which define those core moral values differently send their children to the same school, are forced to send their children to the same school, what happens to the teachings of any core moral values?
Any moral values you teach will offend some group in the classroom, And the least rational group will tend to be upset and object the most, so what do you do?
Okay, there are lots of options, but I know, and you know, what was done to solve this problem.
Well, you stop teaching values.
You stop teaching morality.
You stop teaching truth.
Because truth, philosophy and its methodology is offensive to some.
The purpose of culture is the reproduction of morality in the minds of the young.
Surrender moral education and you betray everything.
Everything that was fought for and achieved by your ancestors.
By now, these days in the West, we can't teach any rational moral values because we will upset children's parents.
But we still have to make decisions as societies in the absence of moral values, of reason, of evidence.
What are we left with?
The golden hearts of our hard-won histories were torn from us.
To appease teachers' unions and testy parents and spineless politicians, And in return, we were offered the empty hedonism of the moment, the empty material pursuit of stimulating our nerve endings.
Incautious heroism that defined our culture was replaced with Frightened sentimentality.
Oh, look, someone said!
Let us destroy property rights to save them.
Nature abhors a vacuum, but the demon requires it to enter us, to control us, to replace the ashes of our values with to replace the ashes of our values with the bloody alchemy of fear and fists.
Thank you.
Our churches have turned on us.
They take hundreds of millions of dollars from Western governments for various social and migrant programs.
They are owned by the state.
They do not reflect the will of God or the desire of their congregations.
Our universities have turned on us.
They take hundreds of millions of dollars from Western governments to praise the state and damn freedom.
They are owned by the state.
They do not reflect the legacy that gave them birth and continues to support their crumbling credibility.
Our news organizations have turned on us.
They need the state for access, politicians to talk to them, so they surrender their integrity to the false narratives of these power-hungry politicians.
They no longer seek to inform, if they ever did, but now seek only to control.
If an event fits their narrative, it is escalated.
If it doesn't, it vanishes, into the memory hole, 1984 style.
And here, and perhaps most importantly, our artists have turned on us too.
70% of Hollywood revenues come from outside the United States.
They are the true globalists, the Hollywood people, since they must appeal to a global audience which has turned the entire world into a government-controlled classroom where no values can ever be held in ascendancy.
Hey, want to create a film praising the free market?
Ooh, no.
See, that will offend many countries and cultures around the world and will rouse the ire of the domestic leftists in academia and the media.
So, no, no, no, maybe not so much.
Let's put that on the back burner.
Maybe later.
Maybe later.
Ooh, want to create a film praising Christianity?
Good luck finding a worldwide audience with that!
And without the worldwide audience, the 40% slide in major studio profits over the past few years will only accelerate.
You know, it's mad.
A single episode of a TV show can cost about 3 million American dollars to make.
Why?
Why?
Because there's massive unions and no one can do anyone else's job and everyone's protected by state power.
This drives up costs enormously.
So, yeah, good luck making a movie fundamentally criticizing state power or union power.
The government-controlled and run unions drive up the costs.
This drives studios to need overseas audience money, which dilutes values and promotes the demon of violence as the solution to all conflicts.
Feel like creating a film praising Western values?
Yeah, good luck.
Get ready to lose money and be called imperialistic, racist, sexist, misogynistic, and unemployed.
Ooh, I know.
Maybe you want to create a talk-heavy film with great and detailed dialogue about important issues.
Yeah, good luck selling that in foreign markets.
No, no, no, no.
See, comic book adaptations, that's the way to go, right?
Boom!
Fly!
Crash!
Bang!
Smash!
Yell!
Scream!
Explode!
Woohoo!
I know there's no life after death because Shakespeare would rise back from the dead and choke the life out of studio executives if there were.
See, I mean, it's a truism, like all art, all great art requires conflict.
And in the absence of reason, of negotiation, or the surrender to evidence, conflict is either abandoned, which is kind of boring, or in art escalates to violence.
You're being programmed to accept and love violence.
Making a movie or writing a book which reveals the direct relationship between reason and peace will offend and often enrage the anti-rational cultures around the world and in our own backyards.
See, you have been repeatedly programmed, not just in video games which are bigger than movies, but you've been repeatedly programmed to view violence as the only solution to essential conflicts.
I mean, think back.
Have you ever seen your heroes give speeches which rouse the indolent masses to inspired rationality?
This used to happen in art and academia and not even that long ago.
Man for all seasons, Atlas Shrugged, you name it.
No, no, no, no.
These days, what do you see?
Magic followed by violence.
Superhero powers and the shattering of cities because that is the recipe and the bloody dish combined.
Magic represents magical thinking or the fantasy that we can substitute rage for reason and drag our enemies to some imagined paradise.
That is the promise and the lure of the demon.
Let go your reason and fuel your feelings.
For your sentiments are your only authentic self.
Reason is sophistry.
Reason is useless.
Reason is only talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
And now is the time for action.
Now is the time for decisiveness.
Now the stakes are so high and the enemy so close that the brutalities of language and hammers is all we have left.
Don't think.
Don't speak.
Don't reason.
Act.
Act from the nihilistic void left behind after your high priests hollowed out your humanity.
Act.
Act in a mob.
Act with hate in your heart and self-righteousness in your empty heads.
Do not stop.
Do not self-reflect.
Do not reason.
Do not submit to evidence.
Will the world you want, says the demon.
And you are mine.
Values are camouflage for your real motives, whispers the demon.
in.
Preach tolerance and smash those who disagree with you.
Preach anti-racism and hate on white people.
Preach anti-sexism and hate men.
Preach open-mindedness, then ally yourselves with the least open-minded cultures you can find.
Preach peace, not because you want peace, but because you wish your enemies to disarm while you plot and prepare for war.
When everyone agrees with your emptiness, promises the demon, you will be at peace.
But in reality, the only peace the demon will provide is a six-foot dark stare at damp earth.
Now, the tide may be turning.
I have fought for many years against this demon, and against you, if you have swallowed whole his bitter promises.
And I implore you, please join me.
I do not believe that we can return to superstition, to mere culture, which is so often the pretense that merely local values are somehow universal, If I thought we could, I would urge that, just as I would urge you to take shelter in a cave during a hurricane, not that you live there forever.
But I don't think we can return.
We have lost even the blind certainty of our ancient culture, and we are losing every day to those who believe in the certainty of theirs.
To win, we must march together towards philosophy.
There is no other play.
There is no other move.
Perhaps it is a Hail Mary, but it is the only one we have.
Learn to think.
Surrender your will to reason and evidence.
Take the decaying pores in our dying economies to educate yourself about how to use your actual brain, your higher brain, all that makes you essentially human, more than a blind animal programmed by false history to destroy the future.
You have a superpower called thought.
Reason versus the demon.
That is all that is left.
Please, my friends, while you still have a choice, choose philosophy.
This is our last stand.
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