All Episodes
Previous Next
June 11, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:57
3712 WHAT DO I DO?

The most common question I get is - what do I do? Here is my answer. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I appreciate everyone out there who's been part of this conversation for so long.
And I wanted to distill an answer to the question that I get asked perhaps the most often, which is, what do I do?
I want to change the world.
I want to save the world.
I want to make the world a better place.
What do I do?
I have, of course, an answer, and answers have been scattered, perhaps like seeds on somewhat stony soil, across the thousands of podcasts and videos that I've done.
So I'm going to put it all right here for you.
After this, I'm sorry, you're not going to have any excuses for inaction.
If you want to change the world, you first have to understand what the world is, the social world that you live in.
The social world that you live in is a series of tiny skirmishes that end up with the salvation or damnation of your entire society.
Evil is constantly testing the strength of virtue, the resolution of good people, your resolution, in fact.
Evil is constantly testing, like a prisoner every day, test the chain, test the chain, can I break free, can I break free?
And evil is patient.
As we have seen in the 150 years or so it's taken to undo Western civilization, evil is like a prisoner trying to break out with a nail through brick wall.
You know, every day, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
Evil is patient.
And so, in the thousand, thousand, thousand tiny skirmishes that occur every day in society, the question is, where do you stand?
You may have noticed, really hard not to notice, you may have noticed that when a certain idea comes along, it seems to snowball, it seems to accelerate, it seems to gain momentum, and people seem almost powerless to push back against it, to resist it.
It seems to sweep them up in its momentum and it appears to be irresistible.
That is because everything has been prepared beforehand by the thousand thousand tiny skirmishes that occur.
Throughout the world, across the world, in your world, every single minute of every single day.
When you become alert to this, when you become aware of this, it becomes impossible to miss.
If you think about it and you notice it in your conversations, there are little hints, little positions, little standards, little morals that are put into every single conversation that you have of any import.
I don't necessarily mean the weather or my sports.
I'm talking about whenever there's anything of import that goes in.
There are always people in the conversation who are pushing forward something nasty, something nefarious, something horrible.
And it's up to you to push it back.
Again, evil, to mix up the analogies, evil is like water pushing up against the wall.
It's looking for cracks, it's looking for cracks, it's looking for cracks.
Can it find its way through?
Once it finds its way through, it eats wider and then brings down the wall.
You can think of this in terms of taxation.
Whenever that subject comes up, people will crab and moan, but there'll be one person or more than one person who'll say, well, that's just the price we pay for living in a civilized society.
Or when immigration comes up and you say, well, somebody's going to say, well, we have to help people in need.
Or when the welfare state comes up.
Well, it's better than people starving to death in the streets.
Or government health care.
Well, it's better than people being sick and dying in the streets.
However much we might...
Like, there's always a framing.
Now, these people may be unconscious carriers.
They may be innocent spreaders.
Of socially or socialism transmitted disease.
But nonetheless, they're responsible.
As are you, once you become aware and alert to the tiny, tiny skirmishes that are constantly going on around the world in your life.
In your life.
So in my own particular, when I'm just going around, like I'm not doing this show, I'm not talking to a camera, I'm just going around in my life.
I interact with a lot of people.
And I never let a comment that is incorrect, a feeler, so to speak, for increased government power or a false moral equivalency or a syrupy, saccharine, socialist sentimentality, I never let that go past.
And that's really, really important to understand.
You need to start doing this.
You need to start doing this.
You may not have a particular desire to be sort of front and center in the world, and I don't actually have a desire to do it either.
It's just kind of necessary to help the world.
You may not have a desire to do what I do, but there's so much that you can do that is more powerful than what I can do in your world, in your life.
I can speak to the world, and I'm just, you know, pixels...
On a screen and a voice in someone's ear, but you have the authority to speak in your own social circle among friends and family or acquaintances or just about anyone you meet.
You have the authority that I don't in your social circles.
I may be able to give you ideas, but it is only your personal credibility and authority within your own social circles that can bring these ideas home to people.
So, when people talk about immigration, I will speak very frankly about it.
When I hear about the wage gap between men and women, you push back against it and you say, well, help me understand, help me explain it to me, I don't understand because here's the information that I have.
You push back, you push back, you push back.
These conversations are worth having One-on-one with people who are genuinely deluded, like they think they're doing the right thing, they've just heard all of this stuff from the media or from academia or wherever, they've just lived in an echo chamber, they think they're doing the right thing, they're not, but they think they are, then those people are worthy of benevolent correction in private.
But then there are, of course, the loudmouthed, sandpaper-souled people who are constantly scraping their opinions up against people's raw statist wounds, and those people need to be pushed back initially nicely, but you really do have to stand your ground.
And these are the conflicts that you can get involved in.
You don't have to be mean.
You don't have to attack people.
You don't have to yell at people.
You certainly shouldn't use horrible language to destroy people or anything like that.
In your personal life.
But this is what needs to be done, because when a new idea comes along, it is Looking for the sort of prior greasing of acceptance.
And that is really, really important to understand.
Because we have this idea that corruption is sort of out there somewhere.
Out there in the world.
In places of high power.
In the high towers of political discourse.
In the media.
In academia and so on.
We think that corruption is out there.
But it's not.
It's not.
Corruption.
Is inside the walls.
The corruption that we see manifest in politics, the decadence and degeneracy we see manifested in popular culture, is not something that is just imposed, it's just like an invader that comes into your house.
It's like that old story of the vampire.
You know, the vampire can't come into your home unless you invite it.
Sure, the vampire is evil and nasty.
But nonetheless, there is a magical moat around your house that keeps you safe from the vampire unless the vampire can convince you to invite him in.
And it's the same thing with corruption, with national debt, with inflation, with fiat currency, with increased government power, with free speech.
Well, there ought to be limits on free speech.
Say, fools and useful idiots and sometimes malevolent people around you.
And I don't necessarily mean it in your family.
It could be somebody cutting your hair.
It could be any number of things.
People will just spout off stuff.
Maybe they're malevolent or maybe they're misled.
It's hard to tell.
And in a sense, it doesn't really matter.
You start pushing back against it.
And you have to push back against that stuff.
Evil will use idiots as carriers for its venom.
And the corruption that happens, listen, do you know women in your life who've had kids out of wedlock and are very keen on government benefits?
Okay, well, you may have to have a conversation with them, or at least if it comes up.
If they play the victim, right?
Oh, a guy just, he turned out and it's like, ah, you can push back against it.
Do people say, we need to bring in more and more people from the third world?
Well, okay, 700 million people on the move.
Should we bring them all in?
Like, where's the limit?
Where's the rationality?
Because here's the thing, corruption...
Fundamentally is triggered or caused by two things that we're thirsty for that we don't actually want to earn.
By two things that we're thirsty for that we don't actually want to earn.
The first thing that we're thirsty for that we don't actually want to earn Is money.
Is money.
And this occurs in the welfare state.
This occurs for people taking government contracts.
This occurs in the military-industrial complex.
It's just people who want stuff that's unearned.
And this can be either direct monetary benefits, or it can be immaterial benefits, like you have...
Time off in the summer if you're a teacher, right?
If you're a teacher in a government school, you get a couple of months off in the summer.
If you're in academics, it's even longer.
Or you have job security, or you have massive benefits because you work for the government and so on.
That's all a form of corruption.
I can get you something you don't have to earn.
I can get you something for free.
You don't have to work for a living.
You just have to vote for a living.
See the danger here?
See the challenge?
You have to push back.
And people say, well I deserve time off in the summer.
Because I work hard, you know, the teacher...
Just ask questions.
Why?
Why doesn't...
I mean, do you think you're the only group that works hard?
Why don't other people get two months off in the summer?
Do you think that's fair?
Do you think other people should be forced to pay for it?
Do you think other people should be forced to subsidize it?
Do you think it's right?
That students are forced to consume your services and then parents who may not even agree with anything that you're teaching their children are forced to send your salary to you and forced to...
I mean, is this right?
Is this fair?
You understand, you can be very active in your life, but it comes down to the stands that you make in your life every day.
Is it annoying to others?
Well, sure.
But less so, at least you can justify it as being less so, I think fairly so, if they're the ones who keep initiating the conversations, if other people keep making comments that are just wrong or ignorant or hateful even.
Well, if they're bringing it up and you're pushing back, people may be annoyed, but you can point out, well, you brought up the topics.
You brought up this comment.
You made this comment.
If you want me to stop pushing back, stop saying things that are wrong.
Stop saying things that are false.
Now, that is something you can do.
People say, well, it's uncomfortable.
Well, it's difficult.
Well, it's going to be intrusive.
Well, it's going to be annoying to people.
Okay, but that's, of course, what nasty elements in the world want you to think.
Lay down.
Lay aside.
Step aside.
Let us expand.
Let us rule.
Let us control.
Do not stand in our way.
Do not be inconvenient to our plans.
Do not have courage.
Do not push back.
Do not fight.
Don't be annoying.
Okay, well, I mean, it all is a question of looking back through history and looking at what you're asked to do or what virtue asks you to do in the fight for freedom and civilization versus, say, what your ancestors had to do.
What your ancestors had to do was extraordinary and I think for those of us who say oh it's kind of tough or it's kind of annoying or yeah let's go back and spend one day doing what our ancestors had to do to secure civilization I think then we would say I think I can handle just a little bit of social annoyance compared to what others had to do if The blood,
sweat, tears and toil that our ancestors expended in order to hand to us our freedoms, such as they remain, if we cannot honor that sacrifice with mere social discomfort, then we do not deserve the freedoms we have inherited, and certainly we will not keep them.
So, I said there were two things.
That we want, that are unearned, that can be provided by state power.
At number one, of course, is money.
At number two is moral self-satisfaction, which is the feeling that I'm doing good because I support things that other people have to pay for, or at least that I don't have to pay for directly with my own time, effort, energy, and money.
So I can say, I think the refugees should, I think the migrants should, I think the immigration should do X, Y, or Z. You can feel good, I suppose, about what you're suggesting in the world, but it's not costing you directly.
You could say, ah, well, you know, there's increased taxes and so on, but there really isn't, because the money is borrowed, or the money is diverted from other things, or old-age pension funds are raided, or who knows what.
But it's not like...
The government says, you know, I want you to sign here with your name and address if you want more immigration from the third world, and if that's the case, we'll be housing them at your place.
I mean, that's not...
It's very easy to say that in the abstract.
And the state then delivers to you the moral self-satisfaction of thinking that you're doing the right thing, you're doing a good thing, and it costs you nothing directly in the moment.
It costs you nothing.
We want to feel good and we want to have resources.
The government will provide us resources and the government will provide us the nicotine, heroin, drip, drip of virtue signaling, of moral self-righteousness without us having to pay for it, without us having to do the uncomfortable work of going out and doing things in the world that might be risky or unpleasant or expensive for us.
It's the same thing with welfare.
I think the poor should be helped.
Great.
Great.
Get off your ass, get off your couch, get off your computer chair, and go out and help the poor.
Go be a big brother to some poor kid.
Go get to know a poor family.
Go bring them food.
Go teach them virtue.
Go, go, go.
You see, I just...
I want to feel like I'm helping people, so I support the welfare state, but I don't actually want the difficult job of actually going out and helping people.
You see how this works?
We want to feel good.
And we want resources.
And those two are often in conflict with each other.
Like, if we want to go and do good and actually help poor people, it's going to cost us resources.
It's going to cost us time, effort, energy, money, and so on.
Right?
This tipping point, this balance.
The more you help people, the more it costs you time, effort, energy, and money.
But, you see, the government gives you the magic sauce of, quote, helping people without it costing you time, effort, energy, and money.
You get to keep your money, you get to keep your time, and you get to have the feeling of helping people.
Now, of course, the fact that it's not actually helping people...
You know, when you talk about the welfare state, as I do, I talk against the welfare state, it's toxic and family-destroying and soul-degrading aspects, as well as its, you know, horrible economic inefficiencies, the fact that it traps the poor in the roach motel of government welfare programs...
When I talk against the welfare state, people react, it seems, irrationally.
Right?
They get really upset, really angry.
And now all they say, oh, we just want the port of Star.
That's not what it's about.
The population as a whole has become addicted.
Literally, I believe, physically addicted to the endorphins of virtue signaling.
Now, if you...
Say to them, government welfare is immoral and hurting the poor.
Then what you're doing is you're taking away the feeling of smug self-satisfaction and virtue signaling, which is a great pleasure for them.
You are taking the drug away, a feeling that they're doing good, without actually having to do good.
You understand?
And so that feeling, you are taking away a drug that they've become addicted to.
That's difficult for people.
Coming clean, coming sober, out of the narcoleptic haze of status dependence, virtue signaling, is very hard for people.
And this is why the longer it lasts, like any addiction, the longer it lasts, the harder it is to pull back.
So these little conversations are so important, are so important to have.
On many levels.
It publicly pushes back against bad ideas, bad principles, and maybe bad motives as well.
Other people then won't feel as alone.
Won't feel as alone.
Only 8% or 9% of Canadians here in Canada want more immigration.
But all they see, all they hear, more immigration, more immigration.
If you point out some facts and push back, they won't feel as alone.
They will gain strength in knowing that there's someone else out there who has words for the unease they feel.
That's important.
It will give them strength to have their own conversations with people.
Most people are pursuing immediate benefit With no particular thought to long-term consequences.
And they've been trained that way and it's tragic and it's not our natural state, but they've been trained that way.
Look for short-term immediate benefit regardless of consequences.
If you take on something uncomfortable, if you bring a discomforting truth to the world and you stand firm in the face of the drug addicts as you claw away their drug of choice or at least attempt to reduce its prevalence in their bloodstream, It shows other people that there's courage in the world and that they can stand up and also shows that you can stand up and remain standing up.
You're not going to...
There's no airstrike.
There's no MOAB that lands on your forehead.
You can stand up for what you believe in.
Other people will see that and see that you're still standing tomorrow and still standing the day after and you have a good life.
And so this catastrophization that occurs, oh, if I stand up for what I believe in, it's going to be all over for me.
You can show people that this is not the case.
And when you show people that the consequences of integrity are not nearly as dire as they think, they go from cautious to coward if they don't act.
And you don't have to do this directly.
This just happens indirectly.
So, when you start to be aware of what society really is, which is a thousand little skirmishes that add up To resistance or acceleration of various ideas.
That's all it is.
It's all it is.
In its essence.
I mean, there's a lot of frou-frou that we go on, and nice frou-frou it is, but this is the essence of where society heads.
It's winds attempting to blow ships, and ships do have some choice.
You can steer into a wind.
It's called tacking.
But right now, it's the wind from the left.
It's starting to push back from the non-left.
It's the wind from the left that is determining where society is heading.
And it's not a big, giant invitation to disaster that is necessary in your life.
It is the little pushbacks.
It is the little questions.
It doesn't have to be horribly confrontational.
It doesn't have to be, you know, throwing plates, Greek wedding style.
It can be a little gentle.
And, you know, as you get used to it, ease more and more into it.
But every time you let something that is false and wrong, morally wrong, every time you let that stand, evil, whether conscious or unconscious, evil takes a little bit, Of a step forward.
And you, inevitably, take a little bit of a step back.
Every time you allow something that is moral to pass by in conversation, and you don't say, whoa, hang on a sec.
Let's back up a little here.
Let me sort of understand what you're saying here.
Every time you do that, you weaken the resolve of everyone around you.
You strengthen the resolve of those, you know, pushy busybodies who are sort of icebreakers for the coming supertankers of immorality.
And you make yourself weaker every time you compromise.
It's like not going to the gym.
Every time you don't go to the gym, you get weaker.
Every time you back down, every time you say, well, for the sake of immediate social comfort...
I'm not going to bring it up this time.
I'm not going to push, oh, everybody knows that person.
Like, every time you do that, you strengthen evil and you weaken yourself.
And you make the ship turn a little bit more towards the edge of the cliff, where it inevitably goes and will go throughout history.
Now, in the past, we really haven't had that much chance to push back against these, you know, increasing...
Tsitsi flies or mosquitoes of advancing immorality.
Now we have the internet.
The information is available.
You can ship people off the resources if you want.
You can educate yourself in a way that was tough to near impossible to actually impossible in the past.
So we do have pushback mechanisms around the decay of society.
We have pushback mechanisms now that were not available in the past.
Which means that you're out of excuses.
This is what I mean to say when you understand this.
What happens in society?
How evil advances?
You know, there's an old saying about bankruptcy.
A rich guy went bankrupt and somebody said, how did you have so much money?
How did you go bankrupt?
You know what he said?
Very slowly and then very quickly.
When it gets to the tipping point, when evil has laid enough greasy tracks that it can advance unopposed, when it is weakened, as it constantly tries to do, weaken, weaken, weaken by saying irrational things, by saying wrong things, by saying immoral things, and then pretending it's a joke and pretending it's laughter, all that manipulation that happens.
Hey, man, I just said I wanted to help some people from the third world.
Why are you becoming so hot, right?
A little advance, and then if confronted, there's cowardly manipulation and there's projection and you're crazy.
All of that.
But you see, it's up to you.
I can't do it.
A general can't fight the war.
You understand?
I can give you some tools, some weapons, some facts, some logic, some arguments, some encouragement, some enthusiasm, some hopefully an example of somebody who stands up and is still standing.
But I can't do it.
And you have the same desire that I do and that the people who want the welfare state and the people who have unlimited open borders and so on, you have the same desire that everyone else has, which is a desire for the feeling that you're doing good.
That's a great feeling, isn't it?
A desire for the feeling that you're doing good without the difficulty, the enormous difficulty, at least at first, of actually doing good.
You want the same thing that everyone else wants, that I want.
That I want.
Which is the feeling of doing good without the risk of doing good.
You know, bad people want to go out and get resources for free.
Or without having to work for them in the free market.
So, in the past, they'd have to become thieves.
But you see, you go break into someone's house.
They could have dogs.
Right?
They could have security cameras.
They could be armed.
It's dangerous.
It's unpleasant.
What if you're a mugger?
The guy might know jujitsu.
Or cry, oh my god, they might know things.
They might be armed.
They might have friends just around the corner.
It's risky.
Everybody wants stuff for free.
In an amoral context, it's risky.
Going to take stuff from people is risky.
Get the government to do it for you.
Go tax them and give me a check.
Takes the risk out, right?
So as you watch this, as you watch what I do and what other people do, There is the great temptation to think that reading the diet book is the same as losing weight.
You have a thirst, as we all do, to believe that reading about exercise is the same as exercising.
It's not.
Watching these videos is not the same as being good.
Watching me debate people, take on people, bring unpalatable or difficult truths to an unwilling world at times.
Watching me do that, while hopefully enjoyable, and I would love your support to continue doing it, I think it's important.
Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Please, please, help out, help out, help out.
It's very necessary, more now than ever.
Watching me, not the same as being good.
Watching me is not the same as being good.
Watching videos, reading books, consuming material is not the same as being good.
Now, it's important.
It's necessary but not sufficient.
You know, if you're going to go on a diet, you should read something about dieting or consult with an expert or whatever, right?
But that's the great temptation.
You want to feel good by watching what I do in the same way that people want to feel good about helping the poor by approving of the welfare state.
And I'm here to tell you, that's not what this is about.
And more than 10 years ago, I started this conversation.
Freedom in Radio.
The logic of personal and political liberty.
Personal, personal, personal.
It's all about your relationships.
You must enlist yourself in the cause of the future.
You understand?
You cannot outsource saving the world.
It can't be me.
It can't be anyone I've talked to.
It can't be anyone you've ever seen or read about or consumed.
It can't be any author or blogger or vlogger or anyone like that.
It cannot be any individual or group of individuals.
It has to be you.
It's a call to action.
It's a call to do something.
I will tell you this as well.
You think you know happiness.
You think you do.
You think you know joy.
You think you know self-satisfaction.
You think you know pride.
But you don't.
Yet, I would say.
And again, if you're out there having these conversations, fantastic.
Thank you.
But if you're still in the process of becoming who you could be, if you're on the road, if you're on the fence, if you're in front of the screen rather than in front of people, you don't know yet.
The drug of feeling like you're doing good without actually having taken the risk of doing good, it's very dissatisfying after a while.
And you always have to come back for more.
You always have to come back for more.
In fact, it's easy to become addicted to watching people be virtuous, watching people act, watching people do good.
It's easy to become addicted to that as a way of not doing good in your own life, as a way of not having these difficult conversations in your own life.
To become a spectator is often because you just don't want to get on the field.
I want to watch.
I want to learn.
Still watching.
Still learning.
I'm just about to, right?
Slowly backing away.
You will get a brief sense of satisfaction from watching people be good in the world, and then that satisfaction will fade.
And you'll have to come back for more, which means that you'll be more inactive because you're spending more time consuming virtue rather than becoming virtuous, acting on virtue in your life.
The more you watch other people be courageous, the more your own cowardice, the more your own courage saps away.
And please understand, I say this, having done this myself, in my life.
I'm not trying to tell you from any exalted position of moral perfection, and it's still a temptation to be every day.
But I will tell you this.
If you've been watching Virtue, and that makes you thrilled and excited, if you've been watching Virtue, you have a wonderful treat in store for you.
A wonderful treat in store for you, my friends.
And that amazing treat is the true joy that is as bright to the false relief of watching Virtue as the sun is to the moon.
The true joy of moral action awaits you.
I envy that.
I envy that.
That transition from watching to doing.
That transition from spectator to player.
That transition from fear to action.
From slipperiness to traction.
From receiving to transmitting, from listening to speaking, that transition still lies ahead of you.
I think of all the beautiful music my daughter has yet to hear I envy her, the newness of the glory she will experience.
And when I look out across you, my truly beloved audience, when I look at you and I think of the joys that you are going to experience, the true, meaty, deep, magical satisfaction Of manifesting virtue in the world.
You will look back at the pale, almost hysterical, addictive, petty happiness that you get from observing virtue.
You will look upon that and say, why did I eat those scraps when before me was this glorious buffet?
That excitement, that joy is ahead of you.
I've tasted it for many years.
I've lived it for many years.
It is yours to take.
There is an old saying, the brave die only once.
The cowards die a thousand times.
If you understand that, and you understand that what I'm offering you, what I know is there for you to step into, what I know of the life that you could have, of pride and a magnificent sense of accomplishment and purpose and virtue, you will understand that it is not death.
That you have to face.
It is a glorious life.
You get to live.
I envy you that life.
Step forward, my friends.
▲
Export Selection