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Dec. 24, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
50:18
Jesus, Socrates, Christmas and Morality!
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Yes, yes, yes, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain, of course.
Just having everybody.
Hope you're doing well. Just having a little chat here.
It's Christmas Eve. I hope you guys are having a wonderful time.
I am sorry, of course, for all of those of you who are alone, isolated, nervous, scared, or you have family members who are nervous, scared of COVID. And it is a solitary beast.
You know, it turns out the Grinch wears a red hat.
And I just wanted to, you know, touch base with everyone.
I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to share.
Just touch base with everyone about...
How you doing? And you can let me know, of course, in the chat.
I wanted to talk, so the meaning, the spirit of Christmas, always a very interesting thought and concept.
Now, one of the things that I remember when I was little was going to church, I was in the church choir, and I didn't mind church that much.
Because church, where I went to church, and my mother, not religious, my father was an atheist for most of his life until later on.
In his life, a pattern that I often wonder whether I shall repeat or not.
But what I always liked about church was it was the most philosophical place that you could go to.
Because in church, the whole world, the hurly-burly, the...
Mobius strip accelerationist rapidity with which we claw our way through the busy days of our lives.
Church was where everything stopped for a little while and you got to listen to something more important than the everyday.
I suppose I'm taking you to church here on Christmas Eve because For those of you who aren't religious, who don't believe in God or accept the divinity of Christ or whoever, where do you go where you stop and think about the world?
Right? Where do you stop?
How do you do it?
Where you put everything on hold?
Because, I mean, in a way, we kind of rush from screen to screen to screen.
I mean, I say this looking at a camera, but I wanted to talk to you about this while you're watching this on the screen.
We do rush a little bit from screen to screen, from stimulation to stimulation.
Where do you stop and pause and think about the larger perspectives of your life, the more important, more deep, more meaningful, larger shape of your life?
Because, you know, doesn't it feel sometimes like life, especially modern world, right?
You've got this pinball just bouncing around off these bumpers.
And it's pretty, it's pretty crazy.
And to have a pause, to have a stop.
One of the reasons I love doing these shows is it gives me the opportunity to have a pause and think more deeply about life.
Now my daughter is old enough now that we can start to have, you know, really good conversations about life.
And I've always had those with friends and family.
But over Christmas, when I was a kid, There was presents, of course, and I cared about that.
There was once, if I remember rightly, in my childhood, before I came to Canada, which was Snowmageddon in 1977.
I feel like we're starting an Eminem rap here.
Snowmageddon in 1977.
But once there was snow at Christmas, just a little light frosting, like the baker in the sky just had a spill in the back when he was doing his gingerbread house of the gods.
But I do remember going to church, being in church, and hearing about morality.
Because, yeah, there were presents, there was family, there was food, and there were these weird cakes, which were kind of like half bricks, which had, I don't know what they call, Christmas pound cakes or something like that, which had the weird cut-up fruit inside, like weird cherries and all that.
But they would put coins into the cake, and the kid who bit into the coin, or had the coin in his piece, would get to keep the coin, which was kind of cool.
But what was talked about in church was morality, was virtue, was truth, was goodness, and you just don't get a lot of that from the really secular side of things.
Secular side of things, morality generally tends to devolve into leftist cults, you know, where there's no There's no limit to the accumulation of power that those who control the moral narrative can accumulate in the leftist sense.
Now, of course, in the conservative, in the Christian sense, there is a limit to the power with which you can hijack moral absolutes, which is that they come from God and they're written down and you can negotiate or, you know, there's not a whole lot of interpretation in thou shalt not steal or thou shalt not kill, at least in the personal sense.
So there's a limit on how much you can hijack a moral narrative.
On the leftist secular side, There really doesn't seem to be any limit on how much you can hijack the moral narrative and I think that's one of the problems that God is not just the source of morality for most people in the world but God is also a limit on how much moral arguments can be hijacked and that's why the people who want to gain power over you through the deployment of moral arguments they don't like Christianity because Christianity puts a cap or a lid on the amount of interpretation you can put on So,
I just wanted to...
Yeah, fruitcakes, that's what it's called, right?
Merry Christmas, Steph. Hope you and your family are doing well.
We are, and thank you very much.
I hope you guys are doing well as well.
I should really get glasses to sit on my face well, but every now and then you sit on your glasses and it's...
Right? It's just the way it goes.
I didn't even need glasses until I was in my 40s.
Anyway, I should be lucky about all of that.
So, I wanted to take you on a bit of a moral journey and help you sort of understand, at least from my perspective, Why Christmas, why it's so important to me, why I think it should be important to the world.
The material side of Christmas is fine, you know, the presence of the food and all of that.
But I'll tell you what Christmas really means to me deep down.
And whether you believe in the divinity of Jesus or not, let's simply talk about Jesus as one of the supreme, if not the supreme moral innovators in human history.
That Is without a doubt.
Whether you think he was divine or not, the moral arguments that he put forward were staggeringly philosophical in many ways.
Not in their methodology, but in their application.
And I'll tell you why in just a second.
But if you think of the two major moral figures in Western history, I mean, in terms of the secular, non-secular or the religious slash philosophical, we have Jesus and we have Socrates.
And Socrates, of course, developed the Socratic method where somebody puts forward a proposition and you check that proposition for contradictions or inconsistencies so that that proposition...
can be refined to get to the truth which is a valuable slice and dice for figuring out moral truths but or figuring out truths as a whole but Socrates again we don't know directly because he didn't write anything down we only have interpretations through Plato a couple other writers and to a much smaller degree Aristotle but Socrates a did not get to the non-aggression principle did not get to respect for property rights Plato,
his morality was completely hideous, like absolutely repulsive and revolting to the point where the government takes over your reproduction and throws you basically in a vat with your relatives so that your children could easily be produced through incest and I mean just a complete moral monster, totalitarian in a way that Pol Pot could only dream about.
And Aristotle, of course, defended slavery, and neither of them, of course, took on the state.
In fact, and this is an argument I made many years ago in the show, one of the last curses that Socrates gave to humanity was to obey the state, right?
So one of the reasons why we know about Socrates, particularly his last days, is it's not just through Plato, who was a wonderful writer.
One of the great shames of history is that Aristotle's writings were destroyed, and Aristotle was considered to be a Plato, but we don't have Aristotle's writings.
We have his student notes. So this is why it's easier to get into Plato.
But what Plato puts forward in the trial and death of Socrates is that Socrates, when he was offered the chance to escape from the unjust punishment of death, That was put on him by the Athenian court under the drive of Miletus.
Socrates was supposed to have said something like, no, I'm not going to run.
I accepted the protection of the laws when I was part of the city.
If those laws have turned against me, I'm not going to repudiate my father, my previous allegiance to the city, to Athens, in order to escape the laws.
If I took the protection of the laws, if the laws happened to have turned against me, I'm not going to turn against those laws and dishonor my former allegiance by fleeing from injustice.
Now, Plato and Aristotle didn't take the same approach when Aristotle was in danger of getting arrested.
He fled Athens, saying he was not going to allow philosophy to be sinned against twice by the mob.
So whether or not Socrates said that at the end, we don't know for sure.
But what we do know is that Plato gave one of the great arguments for obedience to the state even in the cause of injustice that has been central to Western philosophy and Western history.
And I believe in general that he was so angry at the people who voted to kill him that he gave as his farewell curse obedience to the state.
And that obedience to the state has been the cause of a immense amount of suffering.
You always have to beware the vengeance of women and philosophers.
And the vengeance of women can only take you so far.
The vengeance of philosophers can go over thousands of years.
So Socrates' commandment to obey the state no matter what has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, without a doubt, over the years.
And that's what happens when the mob Kills a philosopher unjustly, or curses a philosopher unjustly, the philosopher will get his revenge, unless he has a great degree of self-knowledge, and the revenge of Socrates to the unjust murder of him by the mob.
was to praise obedience to the state which has killed hundreds of millions of people throughout the course of human history.
I don't want to repeat that mistake, obviously, even though I am a man far more sinned against than sinning and the lies of the mob and or the lies believed by the mob put forward by sophists about me are considerable and dangerous.
But I do want to talk a little bit about this sort of moral innovation.
I won't go into the depths of it.
The depths of it basically for Jesus was that he took in-group preference, which was a morality of cultural, racial, and genetic proximity.
The closer you are racially, the closer you are genetically, the closer you are from a tribal standpoint, the more you will have those in-group preferences.
And He took that in-group preference and made the morals no longer what is good for my tribe, what is good for my genetic proximate companions, and he made it into what is good absolute and universally, which was the extraordinary power of Christianity, fairly unique in the entire history of the world.
And I just wanted to mention that the The universality of Christianity did give rise to many, many foundational elements of Western culture, the end of slavery, inclusion of the rights of minorities, and inclusion of the rights of women, this universality.
Originally, the commandment was Jewish, right?
The Jewish commandment was, thou shalt not kill Jews, and Jesus took it from thou shalt not kill Jews to thou shalt not kill in a universal standpoint, which took it from tribalism to Universalism which is as close as theology is ever going to get to true philosophy and universalism is the foundation of ethics that's why my free book on ethics universally preferable behavior is available at freedomain.com forward slash books get it for free it's a good christmas read you can also get a shorter version of it at essentialphilosophy.com another free book that you can have a look at that will give you an introduction and a proof for secular ethics philosophical ethics outside of The enforcement of the state and outside of the commandments of religion,
a truly philosophical proof of ethics, the first in history, to my knowledge, that really succeeds and bans rape, theft, assault and murder, respects property rights and justifies self-defense.
All of the goodies that you would expect from a rational system of ethics.
So if we look at Jesus as a bridge between Primitive in-group tribalism and the universal morality of philosophy in that he used his perhaps God-given charisma and talents in order to take philosophy and to take morality out of in-group preference and universalize it then We can see,
of course, why he was so attacked and so punished, right?
And obviously this is personal to me since I am attacked and punished on a regular basis.
And the question is why? Just making arguments, just putting forward reason and evidence.
Why would there be such hostility?
Well, I'll tell you why.
And, you know, you may be experiencing this over the holidays with family if you bring up reason and evidence.
So, you know, probably is an important thing for you to know as well.
But just before I dip into that, let me do a little wee bit of housekeeping.
A wee bit of housekeeping. And let's see if we can't get...
Can we hand these things out?
Let's see. It's a different page.
It's a whole new page.
Alright, let's see here. And we'll get to this in a sec.
Sorry, this is for the people in the future.
Sorry about this. A little bit of a dip into the housekeeping side of things.
But I did want to hand out some...
Why is that page different?
Why? Why? Why?
Why is this page so different?
Let's see. Okay, I won't bother about it too much if we can't find it.
I just won't. Okay, let's not worry about it right now.
We'll get it later. So, why?
Now, morality, the morality that people believe is the differentiation between self-love and self-hatred.
So self-love, I've defined love, and I stick by this definition.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
It's our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
You can't will love any more than you can will health.
Health is our involuntary response to good health habits if we're already healthy, right?
Or if we're on our way there, right?
You can't say, I identify as somebody thin if you're overweight.
You have to change your behavior in order to lose the weight.
And so, in a sense, our weight is our involuntary response to our eating and exercise habits.
So love is our involuntary response to virtue.
Now, sophists will teach you that you should love or must love or should train yourself into loving.
A philosopher will say, love is not subject to your will.
You can will virtue, you can will moral discernment, you can will judgment, but you cannot will love.
Love is an involuntary response to virtue, if you're virtuous.
On the other hand, if you're evil, then hatred is your involuntary response to virtue.
And if you are virtuous, then hatred may be, or fear or caution at least, would be your involuntary response to evil.
So, Jesus, Socrates, a lot of scientists in the later Middle Ages and so on, and myself to a much smaller degree, of course, attacked and vilified.
Why? Well, because People wish to think well of themselves, and the way that they do that is one of two ways.
Either they struggle to achieve virtue against the wishes or preferences of the mob, or what they do is they say that the mob Is correct.
And conformity with the mob is conformity with virtue.
And so, you know, the way to get along is to go along, right?
There's a go along with the mob, they grab their pitchforks, they grab their torches, and they go along with the mob, and they hunt down whoever the mob hates and fears and disapproves of.
And that's how people...
feel good about themselves and you can see this in the sort of woke mob attacks right there trying to feel good about themselves and unfortunately they've been programmed by sophists to pursue self-love through conformity to the prejudices and violence of the mob.
Now if someone comes along and says following the mob is usually a bad idea if you're with the mob you're almost certainly heading in the wrong direction And you cannot, you cannot surrender your moral conscience to others.
Now, Christianity says this, of course, that you cannot surrender your moral conscience to others, that you are responsible for the pursuit of virtue in your relationship to God.
And this is why a lot of people who fight against power tend to come from a Christian background, because their relationship to virtue is through God, not through conformity.
And because they don't fear death as much as most secular people do, they're willing to take risks that most secular people really wouldn't.
So, Those, and this is the vast majority of people, have said that what culture defines as virtue, what the mob defines as virtue, is in fact virtue, and if I obey the mob, then I am obeying virtue.
And that's how they feel good about themselves.
That's where they get that pompous, carrot-ing, troll-based self-righteousness that gives them that dopamine thrill of being good people when they are in fact being, well, quite the opposite of good people.
Now, when a moralist comes along, And says, conformity with the mob is a bad idea, and your moral conscience can't be surrendered to the judgment of others.
And here's, by the way, what virtue actually is.
Virtue is honesty, virtue is integrity, virtue is moral courage, and virtue is the defense of self-ownership, property rights, and the non-aggression principle, universalized.
The non-aggression principle, universalized.
So not only do you get these vague Hallmark card abstractions of like, well, you should be honest and courageous and, you know, that's the positive adjective checklist.
It's not an actual plan for action.
It's like having a business plan saying we should open up new markets and succeed within them, sell products to happy customers and make money.
It's like, yeah, okay, that's all taken for granted, right?
It doesn't really give you any insights about how to actually do these things.
But when people try to get you to be morally courageous, And they give you specifics.
You know, so the standard for the mob is to say, well, to be morally courageous is to fight racism.
And we're going to use racism as a target paint on people we disagree with, and that's how you're going to attack them.
And it's like Memento, like that movie that goes backwards in time where a guy thinks he ends up being controlled by someone else to be doing evil.
Sorry, it's an old movie, I think we can survive a spoiler or two now, right?
And so, when a moralist comes along and says, here's morality, and If you're following the mob and you are simply attacking whoever the mob points at, you're more of a Terminator robot than a moral human being, but because you are still a moral human being, you're not in the amoral state of a robot that's been programmed, you're actually an evildoer.
Now that's pretty rough.
If you go to a group that has the claims as its, quote, morality in group tribal preferences, and you say, that's not morality, that's tribalism, and morality is universal, then you threaten the perceived virtue of that tribal group.
And given that identity politics plus tribalism is all over the place now, if you say, well, truth and morality is universal, tribal preferences, surrendering yourself to the will of the mob and becoming an attack dog for bad people is not just amoral, it's actively immoral, then what happens is you are...
Taking someone's self-love and threatening them with self-loathing.
You are taking that which makes them feel good about themselves.
I'm with the woke mob. I'm going to attack who they point at and feel like a virtuous person.
You are taking that positive self-regard that they're experiencing and you are switching it over to potential self-hatred.
That's harsh. You know, it's one thing, you know, there's an old line from the original Tom Cruise vehicle, Risky Business, where the guy says, in a recession, don't ever F with another man's income or livelihood.
Okay, well, in human life, if you redefine morality to the point where those who feel virtuous now feel immoral, they go from self-love to self-hatred.
And who are they going to blame for that?
Right? Who are they going to blame for a redefinition?
A virtue, or a correct definition of virtue, that turns them from good people into bad people.
Well, they are going to get mad at the person who redefines morality so that they don't feel good about themselves anymore, they now feel bad about themselves, and you've taken away their dopamine drug of conformity.
Ooh, again, you know, it's a landmine and a half to go through this kind of situation, to go from A drug that makes people feel good, that they feel good about, right?
So there's a drug that makes you feel good, I don't know, like cocaine or whatever.
But you don't feel good about it.
You don't sit there and say, yay, I'm addicted to cocaine.
Or yay, I'm addicted to gambling or promiscuity or drinking or smoking.
So there are drugs that make you feel good, but you're not happy about them.
Morality is a drug.
False morality is a drug that...
Makes you feel good, and you feel good about the drug, because you feel like you're being a moral person.
So you're not just redefining the person into self-loathing, you're redefining morality, what they perceive as morality, into immorality.
So it's a double whammy.
If you take away A man's cocaine.
He's a cocaine addict.
You take away his cocaine, he's definitely unhappy and angry that you've taken away his cocaine, but at least he recognizes that it's good for him not to have cocaine at some level.
This is like rehab does, right?
You can't have the drug in rehab.
But morality is a whole different animal because you're not just taking away a moral definition.
You're not just taking away people's dopamine.
You're taking away their entire relationship with morality.
And that's pretty rough too.
And here's the thing as well, right?
It's a huge red pill to challenge people's conception that following the mob and being low rent, low IQ attack dogs on whoever the leaders of the mob point at, to be a lynch, to be a digital lyncher, right?
That's really tough too because there's almost no bigger red pill than if you're part of the attack mob and you suddenly wake up and you get red pilled about reality, truth, virtue and all of that.
Then what happens is If somebody, you know, in general popular culture is kind of hated like me, and then people say, oh wow, you know, he's actually not that bad a guy.
In fact, there's a lot of that I agree with him.
He makes good arguments and what they're saying about him isn't true.
That's a really terrifying moment for people.
That is a matrix-busting moment for people because then they're going to say, well, wait a second.
If somebody can be so unfairly maligned and hated, Who's doing it?
Why are they doing it?
And who's really in charge?
Again, if people follow the mob, they can feel virtuous as long as they define the mob and its brutal attacks as virtue.
But if morality shows not only that following the mob is immoral, not only that the mob is immoral, but those in charge of the mob are the most immoral.
That is brutal for people.
That is a step too far for most people.
It throws them from feeling chest-thumpingly successful, good, virtuous, woke, noble, fighting evil, fighting Nazis.
It takes them from that to a catastrophic midnight of the soul depression and anxiety where, as the Bible says, scales have fallen from their eyes.
And if the people they're taught to hate, in some cases, are actually the good guys, then their entire relationship with society reverses itself.
That's a terrifying...
I mean, you guys have gone through this, I'm sure, I know I have, where you're just like, oh my gosh, the world is not what I thought it was.
Oh my...
The world is not what I thought it was.
And the world isn't just a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right of what I thought it was.
The world is actually the complete opposite, not only of what I thought it was, but what it says it is.
Now, it's one thing if, let's say you get into a car, someone you barely know, and they're supposed to take you to some party, right?
And they start going the wrong direction, right?
And you say, hey man, you're going the wrong direction.
And they say, no, I'm going the right direction.
And you say, look, pull out your phone and just check the map and you'll see what I mean, right?
And he pulls out his phone, checks the map.
Oh, look, you know what?
I am going in the wrong direction, man.
I'm so sorry. Let's turn this around.
I didn't think it cost us too much time.
So he's making a mistake.
He believes he's in the right.
He's making a mistake. Now, what if you're in the same situation and you say to the guy, hey, we're heading in the wrong direction, man.
He's like, no, no, no, this is the right direction.
And you're like, just pull out your phone and check.
You'll see. He's like, I don't need to pull out the phone, man.
We're going in the right direction. And then you say, well, you know what?
I'll pull out of my phone. And then he grabs your phone and he throws it outside the car, throws it out the car.
Well, now you're kind of screwed, right?
Now you're probably in a life or death situation, right?
Most likely. So it's one thing if people are making honest mistakes.
It's another thing if they know the truth but are desperately acting to suppress it and avoid it.
That's when you're in significant danger, right?
And, you know, so back in the day, because this is a long time ago now, 12, 13 years, I put out podcasts about if you're an adult and you're a victim of relentless parental abuse, you don't have to spend time with them.
You can choose to or not, but you're under no fundamental moral obligation to spend time with people who abuse you.
I think you should talk to your parents.
I think you should try and work it out and you should go to therapy and all of that, but you don't actually have a moral obligation to shred your soul with constant exposure to the cheese-grating verbal abuse of nasty and vicious people.
I was, of course, raised my whole life with the argument that you should not spend time with abusive people.
I mean, this was the feminist argument, right?
That if you're in an abusive marriage, if you're in an abusive relationship, then you should get out.
You should get out. And shelters were set up, and laws were set up, and sometimes overly favorable laws were set up.
So, you know. And, of course, society says, oh, well, we care about the children, we love the children, children are everything, children are the future, blah, blah, blah, right?
And then, of course, when some of my listeners began, eventually, usually, I mean, to all my knowledge, with the advice of therapists who are also helping them get out of abusive relationships, then, you know, newspapers and magazines and websites, they came down very hard on me and called me a cult leader and stuff like that, where I'm telling people to get out of abusive relationships, but I'm the cult leader, because apparently telling people that they have to stay in abusive relationships is not...
Furthering the cult of the family or the cult of the abusive family and you probably know the story doesn't really matter so long ago now but that was a real wake-up call for me which is that in a conflict between an adult victim of child abuse and the actual abuser society although it claims that abuse is absolutely wrong and says that it cares about children We'll side with the abuser.
Society reporters, the mainstream, will side with the abuser and will attempt to destroy the life of people giving adult victims of child abuse moral support and clarity.
It will also attempt to destroy the lives of people who try to separate from abusive relationships.
Like, that was a, I mean, that was one of the bigger wake-up calls.
I've had a whole bunch of them over the course of the show, but it's one of the bigger ones, which is, well, People say, abuse is bad.
You shouldn't stay in abusive relationships.
We care about children. Children are victims.
Children are innocent. And then, but of course, if you, and that's what they say, but they don't say that because they believe it.
They say that to cover up what they actually do, which is in a conflict between an adult victim of child abuse and an actual historical abuser, society will almost Inevitably and invariably side with the abusers and of course I then realized that's why the abuse continues because the abusers can count on that fact of that situation.
So this basic reality that when you begin to wake people up as to how society really works they will fight you tooth and nail because the way that you keep people Addicted to the abusive relationship called lies and sophistry in modern society is you train them that obedience to the sophists who control the blind mob is virtue.
Integrity, thinking for yourself, questioning, pursuing the truth, that Is immoral.
That is evil going against the popular narrative is immoral and it's evil.
And there, of course, you have to give a particular and peculiar kind of certainty to people and you have to say, well, we know the truth about morality so deeply and so powerfully that We can use violence and destroy the lives of people who go against us, who question, who pursue other paths, who have other data or have actual data or facts that go against the narrative.
That kind of certainty is really addictive.
We are a very complex creature, humanity.
That's why I keep doing this show, because we're so fascinating and complex.
One of our complexities is that we have a desperate need for certainty.
But we progress the fastest when we doubt.
Let me say that again, because we all know this deep down.
We have a desperate need for certainty, but we progress morally, materially, economically, spiritually, civilizationally.
We have a desperate need for certainty, but we progress the most when we doubt.
I mean, to take a silly example, right?
It's not silly now, but it wasn't silly back in the day.
You couldn't circumnavigate the globe.
You couldn't sail across the globe if you thought it was flat, because you'd always end up in the wrong place.
So we have a desperate desire for certainty about where we are in the cosmos, what the shape of the Earth is, particularly when we're religious.
But when we doubt our perception of the world, that's when we make the most progress as a species.
So we are desperate for certainty, but we progress the most when we doubt.
And everything should be doubted.
This is an old Ben Franklin quote, I think, you know, call before the tribunal of reason every opinion, every fact, every piece of data that you possess and submit it to reason.
An evidence, of course.
Science, when it was certain about the nature of the universe, didn't progress.
When scientists began to doubt the Earth-centered cosmology of the universe, well, we began to progress, right?
And that kind of doubt...
You see, every...
Every piece of political power that rests upon us, that has its feet upon our throat, rests upon a particular moral certainty that is almost always false.
Almost always false.
That rests on a particular cosmology or scientific view that again is often almost always completely false.
So when you start asking questions, when you start doubting the morality of the mob and the sophists who control it, Then you are threatening people's certainty.
And their certainty has become their identity.
Their certainty has become their identity.
Because once you get people to do evil in the name of good, you own them from a language standpoint.
Because if you've gotten people to do evil in the name of good, to attack people who are asking questions, to repeat Falsehoods that are destructive to the stability of their society.
When you get people to do evil in the name of good, you own them because their identity has become wound up with their sense of their own virtue.
And if that sense of their own virtue is challenged, then I hate this use, the word everything is an existential crisis and existential is one of these words that just gets used like a $2 shine on a $10 shine on a $2 pair of shoes.
But in this case, There.
Identity is fundamentally, it takes a blow at the base, and that's really terrifying for people.
It feels like a form of zombification or soul murder.
People feel like you are reaching in and disassembling who they are as human beings.
They have no idea what they are on the other side of that.
The other thing, too, is that when you form your moral identity based upon the lies of sophists and joining in the evil actions of the mob, Then your relationships are very powerful.
And because we are, and the sophists know this, right?
Because we are tribal animals.
We're dogs, not cats.
We need a tribe. We need community.
What they do is they say, we're going to join you and your tribe together in the pursuit of virtue, right?
We're going to join you and your tribe together in the pursuit of virtue.
Now, it is in fact a mob that's in pursuit of injustice and immorality.
But what happens is, If you say, my friends like me, my family loves me, then if the you includes questions, includes challenges to social orthodoxies, if the you is restless and curious, as I am, right?
I'm restless and curious.
I always want to know more, and I'm always willing to doubt everything that I accept and believe.
So if, now make it personal to me, if I say, my friends and my family love me, Then they should also love me, not despite, but in part because I am curious, restless, and I question things, right?
So that's really interesting.
So if you say, I'm loved because of who I am, then that love should not be withdrawn when you are acting honestly and authentically.
I mean, if you start to fake everything and you start to, you know, bullshit everyone and lie about everything, okay, then people are gonna start over time to withdraw that because you're lying, right?
But if you're authentically yourself and have authentic questions and authentic curiosity, then if you believe that you're loved for who you are, Then you should not at all be afraid to begin to express doubts about orthodoxies, to question, to bring alternate data and facts and truths to social gatherings, to family gatherings, because they love you, you see, for who you are.
And if who you are is restless in questioning, they should love your questions just because they love you.
But everyone knows, deep down, that's usually not at all what happens.
What happens is people say, I love you, I care about you, And then if you start to bring up questions that are a challenge for them, they will reject, attack and escalate against you.
In other words, they don't love you for who you are in terms of being a restless and questioning person.
They love you for the reinforcing of their sense of pompous virtue in genuine pursuit of evil.
And that's really tough for people.
It's not just your relationship with morality.
It's not just your addiction to dopamine.
It's not just your view of society and who runs it.
It's all of your relationships are then called into question.
I mean, that certainly happened to me.
Like all of your relationships are then called into question.
And what lasts?
What? What lasts?
What survives that sky pillar of fire?
That occurs. I mean, how many people were at the Last Supper?
How many people? Jesus preached to tens of thousands of people.
How many made it through to the Last Supper and one betrayed anyway?
And the answer is not many.
And that desert where you no longer get the dopamine addiction fix from tribal conformity, to where you begin to take deep pleasure in the truth, I mean, That's a big-ass desert, man.
I don't know where you guys are in that situation.
I keep thinking I've reached the final destination and then, nope, there's more desert to cross and more places to go.
It doesn't end. It doesn't end.
And it's not because I'm fighting against everything that is.
I'm still in pursuit of knowledge and truth.
But it doesn't end.
And you have to kind of take your dopamine on the go.
And what happens, of course, is that if you turn against tribal standards indoctrinated by sophists, then you find out that people only care about your service to their delusions.
They don't actually care about you.
Again, there's exceptions. It's kind of an exception to this, but people, you'll find out quite quickly how much people care about you for real and how much they only care about how well you serve their addiction, right?
It's kind of like if you have a friend who's a drug addict, right?
If you have a friend who's a drug addict and let's say you were a drug addict with him and then you quit, you'll quickly find out whether he cares about you or he cares about whether you can get him the drug.
Like if you're, heaven forbid, if you were ever a drug dealer and everyone comes over and they love you and they care about you and then you're like, you know what, I'm not going to do drugs and I'm not going to deal drugs anymore.
I mean, there's a song about it and nobody loves you when you're down and out, right?
Eric Clapton did it and Sam Cooke did it and you know, it's a great song, right?
What happens when you don't give people what they think they want, but instead are authentic and true to your restlessness and curiosity about the world?
Will you be loved? Will you be respected?
Will people be curious about you?
Will they care about you still?
I mean, I had friends and family.
This is a personal story, but it's Christmas.
Let's be personal, right? So I had friends and family Many years ago, decades ago now, I came like this close to marrying entirely the wrong woman.
I just was this close to marrying the wrong woman.
I had proposed. I had the ring.
I paid for the ring. Man, that was a tough thing to return.
They didn't want to do that, let me tell you.
But it would have been a disaster for me.
And for her too, I think.
It would have been a disaster.
Now, In hindsight, it was all completely obvious, completely clear.
But I had friends and family around at the time.
And they did not say anything about problems in the relationship.
And they did not say anything to help protect me from what would have been a terrible decision.
What was it, Long John Baldry, I think it was, who helped to talk Elton John out of marrying the wrong person, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, that song?
So that's just some other damn musician.
That's not even friends and family you've known for decades who claim to love you.
They were all letting me sleepwalk off a cliff into an endless fall to An increasing fire.
Now, there's sort of two possibilities, right?
There's only really only two possibilities in that kind of situation.
You think back to mistakes that you've made in your life, and I talk about this with people who call in and, oh, I got married to the wrong person.
It's okay, where was your friends and family?
Did they care? Did they notice?
Did they give you feedback?
Did they whatever, right? Now, occasionally people were like, oh, yeah, they all told me, but I didn't listen.
Okay, well, that's interesting, and that's not what I'm talking about in particular here, but Only two possibilities in that kind of situation.
The first possibility, of course, is that they have no idea what's good for me.
No idea. They don't have a clue.
They've known me for decades, but they don't have a clue what's good for me, what's going to work for me, or what's going to fail for me.
In which case, they don't know me at all.
They don't know me at all. The second possibility, which is really creepy, but a distinct possibility, if not downright probability, the second possibility is they know exactly what's bad for me, and they're encouraging me to do it.
Because they're addicts maybe, right?
Like an addict who quits drinking, the other addict friends are going to be like, oh, have one, oh, loosen up, oh, you're fine, oh, we're all going to cut back, oh, it's not a big deal, oh, don't be so uptight.
They're going to encourage the ex-alcoholic to have a drink because they're addicts still and they don't want to see someone succeed.
Either they don't know me, in which case they're letting me sleepwalk into disaster, or they do know me and they're encouraging me to sleepwalk into disaster.
That's rough, man. That's a rough thing to wake up to.
That is a rough thing to wake up to.
And I had insomnia for a long time.
I ended up in therapy three hours a week for close to two years.
I mean, my gosh. It's really, it's a rough situation, and you know, a lot of us are in that kind of situation, and I know that it wasn't because people didn't talk to me, because the one time that a friend of mine's girlfriend said, oh, you know, you think that people about to get married would be a little happier.
Oh, that's right!
That is a good point!
You make a good point!
And I... It took a week or two, but I was like, hmm, I gotta do it, man.
I gotta break it up. I gotta break it off.
And are people that perceptive anyway?
Sure they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they absolutely are.
You gotta know, you gotta trust that people are incredibly perceptive.
Now, if you doubt people's perception, let's throw out some lemons, show me.
If you doubt people's perceptiveness, got 30 seconds, man.
If you doubt people's perceptiveness, it's pretty easy to test.
All you have to do is bring up some narrative counter to the mainstream media or the general propaganda and see how long it takes for them to get anxious.
That's how perceptive people are.
Let's say that they're anti-Trump or never Trumpers or whatever, right?
And they believe the fine people hoax, right?
So if you say, just say to them, listen, you believe this hoax that Trump said that Nazis were fine people.
Let's bring up the actual, let's bring up the quote and let's sort this out, right?
And see, are they going to be like, yeah, you know, obviously don't want us to be wrong about that.
Let's bring up the quote. Let's check it out, right?
I guarantee you, I absolutely, completely and totally guarantee you, my friends, that they will tense up so tight you could sharpen a pencil in their sphincter right away.
Right away. Everybody knows.
Everybody knows, right?
Everybody knows the truth.
Deep down. Everybody knows.
Just bring up something counter to the narrative.
And they will get tense the moment you start speaking.
That's how perceptive people are.
That's how much they know.
Everybody knows everything.
It's just a matter of acceptance or denial.
So... Shopping a pencil in your sphincter.
Sometimes the...
The little analogy generator.
Actually, most times it gets it pretty bang on.
Sometimes it doesn't work. So listen, I just wanted to drop in and talk to you guys about this a little bit because you may be facing some of these conflicts over Christmas, but I just wanted to come in and sort of mention that.
And thank you, of course, for your interest and your support of Free Domain.
There's a freedomain.com forward slash donate.
Link below if you want to help out.
I appreciate that, but It's been a hell of a year.
And, you know, we few, we happy few who've survived the napalm exfoliant of deplatforming and opposition, we have a lot to be proud of.
We have a lot to be grateful for.
And we have a lot to admire about what it is that we've done, what it is we've survived, and you're here, and we're continuing to have these great conversations which we're laying down As messages to the future, even more so than conversations in the present as I talked about in yesterday's live stream.
So I love you guys so much.
Thank you so much for allowing me and supporting me and continuing these conversations.
Like even if you never donate a penny, it's totally fine.
Just show up and absorb.
Everything that we talk about will spread over time.
Even if you don't mention a word, it just spreads.
It's almost in a way through the ether.
That I know.
From my own experiences and just the way that everyone knows everything no matter what.
So I really do thank you guys.
Please don't forget there are two free books that I think it would be great for you to enjoy over the Christmas break.
One is a modern comedy about the software industry and the music industry.
And you can get that at fdurl.com forward slash TGOA for The God of Atheists.
TGOA. So fdurl.com forward slash TGOA. That's available as an audiobook as well.
And you can also...
Really, my magnum opus.
It's a great, long, powerful novel.
I'm still listening to it as I go to sleep.
I finished the audiobook quite recently.
It's long, but great.
You can get that at fdrurl.com forward slash almost.
You can get a feed. You can put it into your podcatcher or your podcast catcher or whatever.
Really just do me a solid.
Just listen to the first half hour.
I guarantee you'll be hooked.
It's an amazing story that spans many continents and over 20 years of history leading up to the Second World War.
So I hope you will check that out.
And Merry Christmas to everyone.
I hope you have a great time.
Next year will be very interesting.
There'll be lots of positives coming out of next year.
People are going to wake up in a way that they haven't before, and seeing people recognize the limitations of political action has been a really beautiful thing to see, although I get that it's terrifying to people who are then going to have to turn to their relationships to fix the world rather than imagining somebody with a windswept hairdo is going to solve it all for them.
So, lots of love from here.
And I hope you guys are doing well.
And have a great, great break.
I'll be off the air for probably a little bit, but I'll still be around.
So have yourself a great afternoon.
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