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Jan. 2, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
18:41
Twitter thoughts coping and happy new year
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Hello, my lovely friends.
Welcome to 2020.
I hope that you had a wonderful new year and that you are looking forward to a healthy, happy, prosperous, rational, and courageous, and I dare say philosophical, 2020.
So, I wanted to start Twitter Thoughts, probably the worst idea in the world, but I wanted to start Twitter Thoughts with something that is boring.
So just at the beginning of the new year, somebody wrote to me on Twitter and said, at Stefan Molyneux, you are boring.
That is a very, very interesting statement and I'll tell you, there is a huge amount that you can learn from an analysis of this statement about how to avoid conflicts, how to de-escalate conflicts, how to have an identity, how to be rational.
It's all very, very powerful.
So I wrote back to him.
And I said, one of the most essential aspects of philosophy is the distinction between subjective and objective.
For example, you experience me as boring, if what you're saying is true and not just silly trolling.
That is different from being objectively boring, which is hard to prove, right?
So, when somebody says, you are boring, assuming that they're not just trying to manipulate you or hurt you because they're mad at you for some ridiculous reason, right?
Somebody says, you are boring.
What they're actually saying is, I experience you as being boring.
Now, that's a very, very different statement.
You are boring, as opposed to, I experience you as boring.
The distinction between these two things is the distinction between having happy relationships and hellscape nightmares of manipulation and destruction.
So, if I say to you, I experience you as boring, that's an interesting statement, right?
That doesn't mean you are boring, it just means I experience you.
Listen, we can think of tons of things that would be absolutely fascinating, but we would find boring.
So let's say that you don't really understand much about physics or mathematics, and some guy is up there with a whiteboard explaining how Fermat's Last Theorem was solved, or here's how we go faster than light, or here's how we can achieve fusion in a jar.
Well, if you don't understand Then it's going to be boring to you, even though, of course, if you're a physicist or a mathematician, it's jaw-droppingly fascinating, right?
Someone out there is giving a lecture on, hey, we found a cure for cancer, right?
But if you don't speak the language that the person is lecturing in, You will find the lecture boring, although of course if you did, you'd find it, I think, fascinating.
So your subjective experience of boredom is not the same as somebody being boring.
It might be the case that the majority of people might find someone boring, but attempting to attach a subjective experience to an objective fact is catastrophic to reason, to philosophy, to relationships, right?
So for instance, let's say someone says something And it makes you feel angry, then you could say, as a lot of people do, you really pissed me off.
Right?
In other words, you caused my anger.
That is a very, very tough thing to establish on a regular basis.
I mean, I guess it could happen sometimes, but an insult doesn't... I mean, I get insulted all the time.
It doesn't necessarily make me angry.
In fact, it very rarely does.
But Attempting to place the cause of your subjective experience objectively on the actions of others means that you lose control of your state of mind.
So if I got angry every time somebody insulted me or put me down or whatever, I would have no control over my state of mind and I would be out there constantly trying to control other people Because I could not control my own state of mind, right?
I would be reacting, I'd be angry, I'd be frustrated, I'd be mad, I'd be hurt, whatever, right?
So if you can manage your own internal stimuli, in other words, if somebody insults you and it's like it's their issue, it's their problem, they're just being mean or they're petty or whatever it is, right?
Then you have control over your own internal emotional state.
Now, once you have control over your own internal emotional state, you don't need to control others.
This is very, very important.
If other people can push all the buttons in you and you can't help but react to those buttons being pushed, either being happy, angry, sad, jealous, whatever, right?
Fearful.
Then, because your buttons can be pushed by everyone, you have to control other people to have them not push your buttons.
And tyranny comes out of an extreme, an exquisite, a sort of rubbed-skin-on-sunburned-sandpaper-raw openness to other people pushing your buttons.
If other people can push your buttons, you need to control other people.
Now, if someone says something and you feel upset, Then, there's an intervening state, which is your state of mind.
So, nobody can really hurt you if you don't respect them.
That's really important.
Really important.
Now, if someone I love and cares about says, you did something wrong, I will sit there very seriously and listen to what that person has to say.
If someone on the internet says, you're wrong, you're bad, you're this, you're that, but they have no credibility with me, I have no respect for them, so why would I care about what they say?
And the fact that they would, you know, be sort of mean or nasty or contemptuous or whatever simply indicates to me that there's something that I've done that has triggered them.
They don't know or understand that they've been triggered and therefore they're trying to suppress or control or put me down in order to reduce the stimuli that gets them triggered.
And that's why tyranny fundamentally is vulnerability.
Tyranny is vulnerability.
If you're afraid that other people can push your buttons, you feel a desperate desire to control, to manage, to suppress, to de-platform, to silence, to censor, whatever it is, right?
To me, all calls for the silence of others.
is a confession of a rank immaturity and inability to control stimuli.
So, I mean, if you're an addict, let's say you're an alcoholic, the presence of alcohol, like, I mean, Keith Moon was going to a party in the 70s for the release of Buddy Holly's, the movie on Buddy Holly, and Paul McCartney was throwing it, and he'd been sober a Keith Moon was the famous octopus-armed drummer for The Who back in the 70s.
And he'd been sober for six months because he'd had ten years of terrible alcoholism, but he felt he was going to be boring.
He was a legendary prankster and would get naked on a regular basis and so on.
But he felt it would be terribly boring if he showed up sober.
So he ended up doing some cocaine, taking a couple of drinks, but he was also on this medication to control alcoholism, to control his desire for alcohol.
He ended up overdosing on that and dying overnight.
So he couldn't be at a party without the stimulus of addictive substances, cocaine, alcohol, about ever being there, and therefore he would be succumbing in.
So if you are an addict, then what you need to do is not be in an environment where you are being triggered to pursue the alcoholic or the addictive behavior, right?
So this idea like Sam Malone, what is it from Cheers that he's an alcoholic, but he works at a bar, very, very unlikely, and of course, very, very unwise, right?
So if you can't control your own addiction, then what you need to do is you need to control your environment so that you're not around the stimuli of whatever is going to trigger your addiction.
And listen, that's a sensible thing to do, for sure, and there's nothing wrong with staying safe and reducing.
So it's one thing to say, well, I'm an alcoholic, so I don't want to go to bars.
It's another thing to say, well, I'm an alcoholic, therefore alcohol should be outlawed.
That's a whole different thing.
Situation that way you turn your vulnerability into tyranny and if you lift the mask of Tyranny you will always find vulnerability look at the leader of North Korea, right?
I mean, he obviously doesn't think he's at all popular Otherwise he'd have elections or whatever.
He he knows that he's not and he knows that he's hated and feared and this is why he controls People so, wants to control people so desperately.
So every time you see this impulse for tyranny, lift it and you will see a terrible and terrifying vulnerability and a lack of ability to distinguish between subjective and objective.
That's why I'm saying it's so, so important.
Like if you're a jealous woman and you say to your husband or your boyfriend, you act in ways that make me jealous or you cause my jealousy.
That is a failure to distinguish between subjective and objective.
And that's really, really important.
And then people will say, yes, but he does flirt with women and this and that and the other.
It's like, sure, sure he does.
So either your boyfriend is flirty like crazy or he's not flirty like crazy.
It doesn't matter, either way, you're still responsible for the feelings of being jealous, right?
If he is not flirting, but you feel jealous, then it's your sexual paranoia, maybe he's much higher in sexual market value, maybe you feel down about yourself, you've gained weight, you're unattractive, or whatever it is, right?
So, if he's not being super flirty with other women, you're responsible for your feelings of jealousy.
If your boyfriend is being super flirty with other women, you're equally responsible for your feelings of jealousy.
Why?
Because you chose a super flirty boyfriend.
It doesn't matter if he's flirty or not.
You're still 100% responsible for your feelings of jealousy.
Now, if you've said to your boyfriend, I don't want you to be flirty with other women.
It bothers me, which I can totally understand.
Either he stops the behavior, in which case your feelings should change, or he doesn't stop the behavior, in which case you are voluntarily choosing to have a man who's super flirty in your life.
As your boyfriend, you're still 100% responsible for your resulting feelings.
It's a hard thing.
This kind of self-ownership is a really, really hard thing for people to understand, right?
And listen, so there's sort of three situations, right?
So you can have a subjective response to a subjective phenomenon.
So for instance, when somebody says, Steph, you're boring, boredom being a subjective response to a subjective interpretation of how interesting someone else is.
That's double layer subjectivity, right?
Next, you can have a subjective response to an objective phenomenon, such as if you're walking through a dark room and you bark your leg, you hit your shin on a table or whatever, that hurts, right?
And so there's an objective which is you hit your leg into a chair in a dark room, and then there's a subjective response called your physical pain.
And then there's an objective response to an objective stimuli, such as you get a sunburn from the sun, or whatever it is, right?
So knowing these different layers, these different levels is really, really important.
Listen, you can think of a situation even where barking your leg on a table would give you enormous relief.
I'll give you a silly example.
Let's say you get kidnapped, you get driven for an hour, you're put in some place with unfamiliar smells and yelling people or whatever, you'd be terrified, right?
And then let's say you're driven for another hour and you don't know where you are and you're dumped into a dark room, you're blindfolded or whatever, you can't get the blindfold off, you can't find any lights, you're groping around.
And you bang your leg on a table and you realize it's your table in your own home.
At least you've been returned to your own home and you're now alone.
In which case, you'd still be alarmed, but you'd be hugely relieved.
So, if you're just trying to go to the bathroom and you hit your leg, it'll be painful and upsetting, but you can imagine hitting your leg on a table, groping and realizing it's your table, and being hugely relieved thereby.
So, understanding all of this gives you much more control over your own subjective experiences.
Once you have that control, you won't really feel the need to control others.
I have a fair degree of self-mastery when it comes to my own emotions, which is why I'm perfectly fine with a stateless society.
In fact, I think it's ideal.
All right, so that's a very important thing to remember and will bring you an enormous amount of peace.
The Hill has reported U.S.
combat deaths in Afghanistan have reached the highest rate in years.
And I wrote, foreign policy is how the deep state kills off Christians who vote Republican.
It's a very, very important thing to understand that the majority of The people, and it's majority men, who go into the service in America, and a lot of other places, are Southerners, they're Christians, they're often fundamentalists, and I don't mean that in a rigid, but they take their Christianity very, very seriously.
And so wars are a way for the often secular or atheistic or anti-christian power elites to cause the deaths of Christians.
And if you kind of look at all of this stuff you can see it happening that if you look at someone like LBJ or the Democrats as a whole, they got, see, the best way that you get people killed is you get them into a war and then you cripple their ability to fight that war effectively.
And that's, of course, what happened in Vietnam in particular, that you had the war and you had LBJ, like, signing off on every particular little detail about which hill to be taken and you had crazy rules of engagement and you'd So you get people into a war, you put them in harm's way and then you strip them of their capacity to defend themselves and you end up with just this kind of disaster.
Because remember the left, the socialists, the communists and so on, they are often highly sexual but Not into having kids.
So that's a very very important thing to understand and it's hard to understand why the left wants these wars that don't ever end and you can't win and also why they want this mass immigration.
So the birth rate among the left tends to be lower than the Christians and the people on the right who have lots of kids.
And so what happens is the left depopulates itself through sexual addiction but not having children whereas the right tends to replenish and expand its own population base through a love of children and a love of family and so because the left continually depopulates itself through not having kids it needs to import voters or get people on the right killed with sort of endless wars.
Now there is a very fair point to be made about this which is to say Well George Bush started the war in Iraq and he's on the right and so on.
It's like yeah I don't really think so.
I mean what's called the right these days would have been hard left not a generation ago if you look at the policies that the right espouses.
That would have been hard left a generation or two ago and I mean for instance JFK would be considered extreme right now because you know the rule everything drifts to the left unless it's an organization specifically dedicated to fighting the left in which case after the progress is really slowed but not stopped and so that's that's I think kind of fundamental and important to understand.
So I mentioned that on Twitter and what else did we have going on?
on twitter oh yeah this is so tragic i can't even really talk about it much but uh... uh... nineteen so this is a an article from the mirror in in england newspaper of course nearly nineteen thousand children sexually groomed in england in the past year uh... that is I mean, so appalling, I barely even know what to say about it.
This came out just at the end of last year, written by Tom Horton.
The Home Office has said it will, quote, leave no stone unturned, end quote, in its bid to tackle child sexual grooming after it was reported that nearly 19,000 minors in England were exploited in the past year.
Latest figures show a sharp increase in the number of child grooming victims over the last five years, according to The Independent.
Local authorities identified about 18,700 suspected victims in 2018-29, up from 3,305 years ago, the website reported.
And of course, you've got to look at the euphemisms.
It's not child grooming, it's child rape.
and the perpetrators are overwhelmingly Pakistani Muslims.
And in any sane society, this would be put on the balance sheet of mass immigration, of this supposed claims of the wonders of diversity, This would be put front and center.
Now, I know that there are big social plans that people have.
I can't imagine the pluses that are involved with mass immigration that outweigh the minuses of 19,000 Little British girls and boys being molested, abused, raped, handed about, passed about, bought and sold in a grim underworld of human trafficking.
I can't, for the life of me, picture any social benefit which weighs up the plus column to outbalance these kinds of godforsaken numbers.
It is absolutely staggering to me.
I don't know what kind of heartless base-level underworld Dantian sociopath you'd have to be to look at that and say, well, but, you know, I mean, it's like the communists.
The communists who say, you say, well, a hundred million people killed by communism in the 20th century.
A hundred million people killed by communism in the 20th century.
That's like two and a half World War IIs.
And they say, but, like the moment that but comes in, we have completely parted ways.
as as moral entities so when you look at this and without mass immigration these children would almost certainly not have been trafficked and raped and abused and molested in this manner.
And it destroys their capacity to pair bond, it destroys their capacity often to have children, not just physically but emotionally as well.
It is a form of demographic undermining and attack that is absolutely staggering.
So I can't for the life of me picture
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