All Episodes
Previous Next
April 22, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
58:15
How I Forgave My Mother
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So, gosh, where do I even start?
I know, I had this all prepared in my head, and then I'm like, oh, maybe there's a better way to explain it.
All right, so I will start, and you guys just let me know if this comprehends things as a whole.
All right, so here's how I have been able to forgive my mother.
It's a very interesting process.
I refused to forgive my mother because I wanted to remain close to her.
It was an attempt to maintain a connection, and that's why I wouldn't forgive her.
And this took a fair amount of brain-meltingly vicious introspection to uproot.
So I hope this makes some sense when I explain it.
When I was thinking of my mother...
I didn't forgive her because I had a bad childhood, but I've been able to be a peaceful parent.
And I think in some ways my bad childhood turned me into a great parent.
So what I did was I looked at myself, right?
And I said, well, my God, I've been able to become a better person though I had a bad childhood.
Why was my mother not able to become a better person while she had a bad childhood?
And then, you know, that Pac-Man image, you know, that I'm a fact muncher.
I just absorb facts and try and process them as best I can.
And so I asked myself a pretty bone-chilling question.
And I said, okay, Mr.
Reason and Evidence. Okay, Mr.
Empiricism. I'm sorry if I'm going to get emotional.
I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry if I get emotional.
Okay, Mr. Empiricism.
What evidence? What evidence do you have?
That your mother was capable of making choices.
Forget your free will arguments, forget your abstractions, you know, just work straight from the evidence.
What evidence do you actually have that your mother Was capable of making choices.
And again, I can attach this ghostly free will thing to her, but that's like inserting the soul into the body and saying that you've answered something.
Philosophically, you haven't. Theologically, maybe, yes, but philosophically, you haven't.
What evidence do I have that she was capable of making a choice at all?
And the answer came back to me right away.
Flatline. None. None.
There's no evidence. There's no evidence that my mother is capable of making choices.
And I say this, and this probably happened because her birthday just passed, and she's like 82.
And 84?
Something she's in her 80s. And man, she's still 100% committed to the things that...
She still believed when she was younger.
100% committed. And what it's cost her is everything.
It's cost her her relationship with me.
She never was able to hold on to a boyfriend.
Her friends were either violent or absent or left her.
She's 100% committed to these crazy beliefs she has.
And it doesn't matter what they are at the moment.
She's 100% committed to those crazy beliefs in the entirety of the time that I've known her.
54 years now.
What evidence do I have?
Physical, tangible evidence do I have?
That she's able to make a choice.
Now, I can drill back through the tunnel of time, and I can say...
Well, but theoretically, when she was in the womb, and theoretically, when she was born, and theoretically, when she was younger, she had some choice, and she didn't make choices.
She let the defenses take over, and then she became a hide of bright armor that completely extinguished the candle of her being, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, but that's before me.
That's even more theoretical.
And I'll never know the facts about any of that, because the only person who could tell me the facts would be my mother, who doesn't tell the truth.
That's completely inaccessible to me.
That's not even like, oh, well, if I find the Rosetta Stone, I can get the ancient Aramaic and then I can get to the hieroglyphics from the Egyptians.
It's completely inaccessible to me.
The theoretical time before I was around where my mother was able to make choices, that is absolutely, completely and totally theoretical to me.
It doesn't exist in any practical...
It certainly doesn't exist empirically because I can't...
There's no time machine drone I can go back and even if I could, I couldn't read her mind.
What evidence... Do I have that she has free will?
She can make a choice.
None. None.
Now, why did I want to believe that she could make better choices?
Because if she can't make better choices, I can forgive her.
In the same way, I mean, it's almost like forgiveness doesn't even exist as a category.
Like a puppy can't make better choices, so you don't have to forgive the puppy for peeing on the floor.
A baby can't make better choices, so you forgive the baby for peeing in your eye.
You know, like Patrick Swayze, he's going to be a fireman style, right?
If she can't make better choices, then she's in the category of a toddler.
And you don't think of forgiving a toddler.
You don't think of forgiving a robot.
Because a robot can't make choices.
A toddler can't really make choices.
A baby can't make choices.
So it would be wrong to be angry at someone who can't make choices.
It's, in a strange way, and this is what I said at the beginning, it's because I wanted to stay close to her that I stayed it's because I wanted to stay close to her that I stayed angry Because if I can make better choices and my mother can make better choices, then we are similar.
We're in the same category of people who can make choices.
Does it make sense? Yes.
We were family.
Let me know if this doesn't make any sense at all because it's really tough to communicate this stuff without going astray.
So much concentration.
My brain is like white hot right now.
I wanted to be my mother's son.
And because I could make better choices to remain close to her, I wanted to believe that she could make better choices.
Therefore, I couldn't forgive her for making worse choices because I wanted to be her son.
I wanted to be in the category of humanity that included her.
Steph?
Somebody says, holy fuck, my brain just went click.
I appreciate you for bringing this up, Saf, but this was on my topic, my list, but it's better to talk about it with someone.
Can I ask and interject real quick, if that's okay?
Now, if my mother and I are fundamentally different, that I can make better choices, but she can't, But the question is why, and I get all of that.
I get all of that, and we'll talk about that.
But if my mother and I are fundamentally different, then I can't rationally be angry at her for making worse choices because she doesn't have a choice about that.
By the time I met her, she was post-free will.
No, the call is muted at the moment.
She's not talking yet. I took my headphones off, so I have to wait.
Wait till I'm done, and then I'm happy to be cross-examined, so just be patient.
By the time I met her, she was a robot.
By the time I met her, she was post-free will.
So here's an analogy, right?
If you have a mother and when you're born, she's 400 pounds, she can't play with you much, right?
She can't go and play baseball.
She can't go into the play center and swing around.
She can't ride with you.
Now, That's just the way she is.
Now, if you're 400 pounds too, you know, the odds that you're going to get down to some kind of healthy weight with your kids and keep it off and stay healthy and not have all this excess skin, right?
So, by the time you meet your mother who's 400 pounds, she's post-playing.
She's post-able to play with you.
She can't play with you much.
I mean, let's just say playing means sort of energetic monkey bar of stuff, right?
Can you blame her for From the time you knew her for not playing with you because she's already 400 pounds.
Now, you can say, well, she had a responsibility in the past.
She became 400 pounds.
I get all of that.
I really do. I really do.
And I'll get to that.
But can you blame her for not playing with you when she's 400 pounds?
No. Not from when you knew her forward.
Does that make sense? From when you knew her forward, she's not responsible for not playing with you because she's 400 pounds and she can't play with you.
She'll injure herself. She'll kill her joints.
She'll break a leg. She'll break the equipment.
She can't play with you.
So from the time you know her and she's 400 pounds, you can't be mad at her.
From the empirical time you know her forward, you can't be mad at her for not playing with you because she can't play with you.
Ah, but before she could play with you and she made the choice...
Okay, what if we go even further back?
Right down the tunnel of time.
What if we go even further back and you find out that your mother had a mother who was 500 pounds and who force-fed her awful food and wouldn't let her out of the house, wouldn't let her exercise, and that your mother was bloated and obese As a child.
As a baby. Okay?
Is your mother responsible for being 400 pounds if she's overfed, like a veal fattening pen, and confined as a child?
And she weighs less than her mother.
Her mother was 500 pounds, she's only 400 pounds.
And she was, you know what happens, like you get obese as a child, you've got the fat cells.
You can't ever lose the fat cells.
All you can do is shrink them, right? Unless you get lipo or something, right?
So you can't eliminate the fat cells.
You can only grow or shrink them.
Your mother was force-fed as a child.
She grew up and she weighs less than her mother but still not low enough of weight to be able to play with you.
Is she responsible for not playing with you?
When she was force-fed as a child and is doing better than her own mother was.
Yeah, 400 is an improvement.
You're right. Aha!
So then we go back one further generation.
We say, yes, but her mother force-fed her.
Ah, but her mother was 500 pounds.
Her mother's mother was 600 pounds.
You see how this goes?
You see how this goes?
Now, with my mother...
You say, ah, well... And there's limitations to the weight analogy.
It's just a way that it clarifies in my brain, right?
So, with this analogy...
Say, ah, but was my mother force-fed food when she was a kid?
No, no, but, but my mother was force-fed trauma as a child.
My mother was force-fed trauma as a child, just as I was, although her trauma was worse, because I had an insane household in a relatively sane world.
She had a household of unknown composition in an insane world where bombs were raining down from the sky and people were getting blown to bits.
And she had to do something hellish with a Russian tank commander so he would not blow up the entire village where she was hiding.
My mother was force-fed trauma in the way that you as a child could be force-fed food.
And maybe there's trauma going back in my parents' generation.
My father was force-fed trauma, no, not in the same way.
I don't know the trauma that my father was force-fed, because my father was too young to be of military service in the Second World War, and he was not in a country that was bombed directly, because he grew up in Ireland.
Southern Ireland was neutral in the Second World War.
It's not part of England, right?
It couldn't be summoned up like the Empire.
I don't know what happened to my father, and I've been thinking about this too, not only was it my mother's birthday a couple of days ago, but it's almost the anniversary of my father's death last year.
I don't know what caused him to have such terrible mental health.
I don't know. He went to boarding school.
But so did I. Anyway, don't know.
Again, I try to avoid the voids of things that can only be theoretical.
My definition of free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, right?
Telling the truth is good.
Should I tell the truth in this situation?
Yes, because telling the truth is good, so you can compare your proposed actions to ideal standards.
That's your choice. That's your free will.
Did my mother have ideal standards?
No. She was not religious.
She never went to church. She was not philosophical.
She did not have ideal standards that I know of.
And here's where this shit will really blow your minds, people.
Here's where this shit will completely blow your minds.
As it has been doing mine over the last day or two.
Okay. If...
And I made this argument like 15 years ago.
I believe it even more solidly now.
It's not proof. I'm just saying I believe in it even more solidly now.
If free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, who do you know who has ideal standards?
Who do you know who has moral absolutes that they must surrender to?
Because we have the hedonism and we have the ideal.
We have the Actual, and we have the proposed.
What would Jesus do versus what would Darwin do?
What does the mammal in us want?
What does the philosopher or the god in us want?
Now, there used to be these ideal standards of Christianity or even patriotism or whatever it is.
So who do you know who has a standard that is ideal and absolute that they are willing to surrender their behavior to to compare proposed actions to?
Integrity, virtue, honor, courage, honesty, universally preferable behavior.
UPB is free will.
See, it all fits together.
If you don't have UPB, universally preferable behavior, you can take that theologically, you can take that philosophically, if you don't have universally preferable behavior, you don't have free will, because you have no standard by which to compare proposed actions to, therefore you have nothing to choose other than various states of hedonism.
Ah, well, I have a choice to smoke or to not smoke.
Okay, so smoking, pleasurable in the here and now.
Cost down the road. Not smoking, beneficial down the road.
Difficult in the here and now. Okay, but you're choosing between various states of hedonism.
It's not a moral choice, fundamentally.
It's not an ideal standard.
It's like, well, I don't want to have lung cancer later, so I'll stop smoking now.
Oh, I don't like the way it smells. It's too expensive, but it's negative, blah, blah, blah, right?
My mother had no ideal standards by which to compare her behavior.
So she had no free will.
Now, why did she have no ideal standards?
Because she couldn't believe in...
You know, the Second World War killed Christianity more than any other single thing.
First World War was the left hook.
The Second World War was the right hook.
Because how could my mother believe in God when she couldn't find anything of her own mother after the Dresden bombing other than A clasp from her purse in a ruined building.
They couldn't even find a piece of the body.
The bombing was so bad.
The fire was so bad.
She was melted into ashes and poured into the stratosphere of non-existence, my grandmother.
How is my mother going to believe in God when her entire childhood was run by devils?
It's not going to happen.
I mean, practically, you can say, well, she should, or human beings are fallible, but practically, it's not going to happen.
So she had no higher standards.
Okay.
So she went for hedonism.
She went for the hedonism of men are attracted to me because I'm beautiful, and I'm witty, and she was, and I'm intelligent, and she was, and I'm literate because she was.
So she was a catch and men pursued her and she got to pick and choose and then she hit 40, couldn't get out of bed because she realized that the gig was up, the game was done.
So, who was responsible for my father, sorry, who was responsible for my mother having no higher standards and therefore no free will?
Is it the Germans? Is it Hitler?
Is it the communists that Hitler was a response to?
Is it... Again, the causality trails off into vapor.
Was it possible for her to have higher standards?
I relentlessly oppose empty theoreticals.
It's like saying, is it possible that everything we know is a complete lie and we're a brain in a tank being manipulated by a demon, Descartes style, right?
A Cartesian style, right? I relentlessly oppose useless theoreticals.
Theoreticals. Was it possible for my mother to have a manifest better behavior?
Now the answer to that is, again, back to the empiricism.
Did she ever beat me?
In front of a policeman or a teacher or relatives or a priest or anything.
Well, no, she didn't. She was always relentlessly fun and positive and a very peppy.
She was a peaceful parent in public.
Triple P. Peaceful parent in public.
So then you would say, ah, so she did have higher standards.
And I use this and I've talked about this myself.
So she did have higher standards because she could suppress her bad behavior when there were negative consequences.
Therefore, she had higher standards.
She knew how to behave better, blah, blah, blah, right?
No! False. A mistake.
An error. Because I wanted to be close to her.
I wanted her and I to be the same.
Because I could do better.
I assumed she could do better.
Therefore, I was angry at her. Therefore, I couldn't forgive her.
Right? Because we can't have, as a standard for people, that which can also be attained by animals.
Right? Right? And everybody's seen, I mean, if you have kids, they like watching these funny videos, right?
Perfectly cut screams and stuff like that, or scare cams or whatever, right?
And in it, you see a dog is going for a treat, and the owner turns around, the dog pulls back, right?
And the dog's going for the treat, the owner turns around, the dog pulls back, right?
All seen it. The dog doesn't have a higher standard called I shouldn't steal.
The dog just doesn't want to get caught, right?
The dog just doesn't want to get caught.
Um... If you're a shoplifter and you're about to steal something and then you just notice right up there, there's a camera.
Right up there, there's a camera and the light's blinking among a star, right?
And you're like, oh, okay, I'm not going to steal.
Is that because you've suddenly discovered property rights and thou shalt not steal?
No, you don't want to get caught.
It's not a higher standard.
It's not a moral standard. It's just I don't want to suffer negative consequences.
For what I do, like how you train a puppy, right?
Poop outside. Negative consequences, right?
So sure, my mother was aware that she would get in trouble if she beat us in public, so she didn't beat us in public.
But not because she could do better or had higher standards any more than the thief is a better person because there's a camera blinking and he doesn't want to get caught.
It's like saying a bank robber is a paragon of virtue because he goes in with a balaclava on, right, for a face mask, right?
So, sure, she was able to restrain her behavior, but that's not a characteristic specific to human beings.
That's how you train, positively and negatively, anything from a dolphin to a dog to a monkey, you name it, right?
I can't have as a moral consideration that which is attainable by other mammals, right?
So ask yourself, I don't want to make this about you because I know this is, I mean, normally I say I don't want to make this about me, but I want to make this about you because look at the people in your life.
What practical evidence do you have that they're capable of making choices?
Moral choices. I mean, do they choose between a red and a blue car?
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
It's not a moral choice, right? What evidence?
Specific and practical evidence.
Now, what evidence could that be?
Well, there could be evidence where, you know, my mother could say, oh, I was listening to some of your shows.
I really get it. I'm so sorry.
Let's go to therapy. Here's what I did wrong.
These she could, right? I mean, it's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen. Waiting for that to happen is why I couldn't forgive her.
Waiting for that to happen... Or expecting that could happen or imagining that there was a possibility of that happening.
My mother no more has free will than I can speak any Japanese outside of a stick song.
Now, that's painful because she and I are human to NPC. Human to robot.
Self-actualized free will to defensive automaton.
She's let go of nothing. So she has this belief that the doctors poisoned her and that's why she abused her children and that's her defense mechanism to explain why she did such wrong and why she's not at fault and all of that.
It's another way to plea for sympathy from her victims and it's all this big self-manipulation.
Now, she came up with this thesis when I was maybe 14 or 15 years old.
Coincidentally, she came up with this thesis when I became too big and began fighting back against her aggression, her violence towards me.
And without us to bully, she then started bullying people.
She launched lawsuits and all of that kind of stuff.
So that is 40 years ago, more than 40 years ago.
I think I was maybe 13, so about 40 years ago.
She used to leave messages.
I had a number just for people I didn't want to talk to, right?
And so she would leave messages there, and the messages would still be the same.
You know, the court case is just about to finish.
There's going to be a lot of money coming your way, and I want to share it with you, and we've been vindicated, and all of this verbal diarrhea, this logorrhea, right?
So, 40 years straight, she's got the same explanation as to what happened with her life, which is that she was poisoned by doctors and she's a victim and I should have sympathy for her and we're all in this together and blah, blah, blah, right?
So, she's committed, man.
40 years, what evidence do I have that she's able to make any choices?
No. She gets a gap between perception and reality.
And she then fills it up with a defense, and she's really committed to this defense, man.
I mean, she believed that, you know, a car would backfire.
She'd think people were shooting at her.
She slept with a big bread knife under her pillow because she was afraid of being attacked.
She really committed to this, and she's not changed or wavered in that commitment for over 40 years.
Now, what evidence do I have that she's able to make any choices, or is just dominated by these defenses, dominated by these explanations?
And I mean, Superman as a toddler can lift a car, but no human can.
So the forgiveness to me...
The forgiveness to me is almost like...
And again, I'm going to blow your mind with this as well.
So, forgiveness is something that we provide to equals.
Forgiveness is a currency that circulates among people with the capacity for honor.
Forgiveness is a category of respect we give to people who actually have free will.
To this I would say people who accept UPB and Christians.
Sorry, that's it, man.
That's it. Because there's only two universal standards.
There's Christian theology and UPB. And the fact that I was raised a Christian and came up with UPB is not coincidental.
So, forgiveness or lack of forgiveness is appropriate only to people who have moral standards.
To everyone else, there is forbearance, indulgence, avoidance, But the category of forgiveness does not apply to people without free will.
You don't forgive someone for peeing on your hand if they're in a coma.
There's no category called forgiveness because they don't have any free will in that situation.
You don't forgive a baby for waking you up the third time overnight.
Category makes no sense.
I have withdrawn forgiveness as a coin in the fiat currency of determinism.
Forgiveness is appropriate to people who can make choices.
Forgiveness is an inappropriate construct for people who cannot make choices.
I don't have any evidence that my mother is capable of making choices.
I have every evidence that she's not capable of making choices.
And when I first bought, you know, one of these, I think the Roomba, I only used it a couple of times.
I was just kind of curious. I bought the Roomba.
The Roomba went around and unfortunately it went under, it went by a couch where there was a set of headphones and it sucked the headphones up and I had to disassemble the whole damn thing to get my headphones out, right?
Now, am I mad at that?
Am I mad at the Roomba for sucking up my headphones and wrecking them?
No. I'm mad at myself, I suppose, for leaving the headphones out or whatever.
I forgot about them.
You know, everyone has this thing, if we're watching a show, I like to lie on the ground.
I do leg exercises and sit-ups and stuff like that.
And I left my glasses down and I stepped on my glasses.
It's like, ah, am I mad at the glasses for being in the wrong place?
No, I left them there, right? So the inanimate objects, the objects without free will, they're not in the category of forgiveness.
I don't have to forgive the Roomba.
I'm sorry, this sounds kind of weird, right?
But it's true. I don't have to forgive the Roomba.
And how is my mother...
Distinguishable from the moist robot of defensive determinism.
How does the category of forgiveness apply to people who can't make better choices?
And again, I can theorize all the way I want about the causality and the dominoes and maybe back and further, right?
But that... Has no emotional or philosophical content because it's all theory with no evidence.
It's all imagination.
My mother, in a very real and practical sense, did not do me wrong.
She was, through no fault of her own that I know of, again, I could theorize before I was born, doesn't really mean anything.
Nobody's going to tell me the truth about anything that happened back then.
The people who abused her in the war, the communists and the Nazis, they're all dead.
I won't get the truth out of her.
And nobody else was there that I know of.
So she certainly, obviously, it doesn't even bear repeating that she's in no way responsible for the war or Nazism or communism or totalitarianism or the bombing of Dresden or the Thousand Plane Raids or Churchill's murderousness to the German population.
She in no way is responsible.
So through no fault of her own, she was traumatized beyond free will, which can happen.
People can certainly get traumatized beyond free will.
And I think if you're kind of rapidly honest, and I've been really thinking about myself and asking people around me over the last couple of days, who do you know who has free will?
And not just like in some philosophical definition sense, but in a practical sense.
Who do you know who's genuinely taken self-ownership, apologized, improved, listened to reason, listened to evidence, changed their mind for the better according to some standard that is not mere willpower or a will to power?
Who do you know who is human?
I mean, or superhuman, if the definition of human is to not have free will, which statistically and democratically appears to be the case.
Who do you know who has manifested choice?
Not who has choice in the theoretical.
Who do you know who has manifested free will?
It's a pretty chilling question, frankly.
It's a pretty chilling question.
And one of the ways that you know whether somebody manifests free will is do they make excuses for themselves?
Excuses are promises of repetition.
Whatever behavior people excuse, they will simply repeat.
And Jordan Peterson knows damn well that benzodiazepines are highly addictive.
Does he go through the enormously fruitful and deep exercise of saying, okay, what was I doing and why?
No, just the doctor prescribed it and I took him.
So I have gained...
And it's funny because I wasn't like, oh, I'm so angry at my mom or anything like that.
But there certainly is...
It's a pretty wrenching and mind-blowing and blinding perspective or visioning perspective.
But it comes at a cost, right?
As I said earlier, that mental dysfunction is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
So it comes at a cost. And the cost is that...
My mother and I are as different as two human beings can be.
And maybe, just maybe, she was able to shield me from enough trauma that she delivered free will to me.
In other words, 600 pounds, 500 pounds, 400 pounds, generation, 300 pounds, 200 pounds, normal weight.
And maybe the trauma in my family, maybe you need Four or less to be able to develop free will.
And maybe it was generationally, right?
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six.
My mother was five. Gave me four, which liberated me from the machinery.
which gave me the capacity to develop free will.
will.
Maybe she couldn't make it to the shore, but she gave me enough momentum that I could get to the shore when she drowned in history.
Maybe she couldn't save me from herself, but she was able to save me from myself. but she was able to save me from myself.
Maybe I had just little enough trauma that when philosophy came, I could create a cathedral of free will through an appeal to universal standards, through reason and evidence.
You're right.
People are saying, yeah, that's the NPC meme, right?
The NPC meme, right?
Oh, well, you know, adverse reactions to the vaccine is a very, very small number of people.
Therefore, we should take the vaccine.
Well, but the people who die from COVID are a very small number of people, so we don't need the vaccine.
Right? Just an NPC meme, right?
How many people are free?
And maybe going back dozens of generations...
Have you ever had to start a fire in the woods on your own?
You get a tinder, a flint, or maybe you get the sticks going and you keep doing it and you keep doing it and then you get the flame.
So maybe there's just been a slow step down, a slippery slope down of trauma to the point where free will ignites in me and I can spread it to the world.
Maybe I could achieve normal weight because each generation was 10% lighter than the previous one.
Thank you.
All these perspectives that arise out of a brutal and fundamental commitment to empiricism.
How do you know? My mother could have made better choices.
How do you know? Aren't you putting a ghost in the machine where there's no evidence of a ghost in the machine?
Aren't you ascribing free will because you have it to someone who's shown no evidence of it whatsoever and doesn't even have the methodology that you, i.e., I defined the methodology for free will 15 years ago?
The ability to compare proposed actions to a universal or higher standard.
I really should have listened to myself.
I really should have. Because I... Defined and created the exact methodology that excuses my mother.
She did not have access to, did not internalize, and could not manifest any allegiance to a higher or universal standard.
By my own definition of free will, my mother could not have had free will.
Okay.
By my own definition of free will, my mother could not have had free will.
Now, my father became a Christian later on in his life, so I can't explain why he never manifested free will to me.
I have no evidence.
And maybe this is to do with also research in the Chauvin trial where...
Remember I was saying earlier, proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's not a civil case. This is a criminal case.
It's a criminal case. My mother was a criminal.
She was a violent, child-abusing criminal.
So I need to convict her because she has the defense of insanity.
So to convict her...
I need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that she had free will.
Well, that's what you need in a court case.
You need proof beyond reasonable doubt that somebody at least has free will, otherwise they're insane, right?
They go somewhere else.
They don't go to prison.
Yeah, people say, but you acted differently depending on whether you were in private or public.
Absolutely. Doesn't mean she has free will.
Because dogs will do that too.
Pets will do that. Whether you come in the room and they look at you guiltily or they stop what they're doing because you come in the room.
It's not a human characteristic.
It's not a fundamental philosophical characteristic at all.
That's just self-preservation.
You know, that's like saying, well, a rabbit changes course when being hunted by a wolf.
It's not free will. It's just trying to dodge the wolf, right?
It's not a moral thing. You can't forgive people who don't have free will because they're not in the category of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a gift or a prize reserved for those.
Ah, something just struck me too.
That by holding her responsible for something she could not have chosen and did not choose, I have actually acted...
In other words, if you get mad at a toddler for eating too much candy or for peeing their bed or whatever, you're actually an unjust yourself.
You're unjust yourself. So as far as me judging my mother as morally deficient, when there was no evidence that she could make moral choices at all, I've actually been cruel to a toddler.
I shouldn't laugh because it's not funny, but it's a little funny.
It's as funny as me defining free will in a way that excludes my mother from having free will while still remaining angry at her for her bad choices.
I've been more unjust, especially because I had the definition and didn't apply it fundamentally.
I mean, I didn't have the insight, right?
But I have been unjust in providing a moral category to my mother.
Said moral category requires free will and there's no evidence my mother has it.
That's not fair. That's not just.
That's not right. So, sorry, Mom.
She'll never hear this, but I'm sorry.
I was wrong. I was wrong to blame you for something that, even by my own philosophy, you couldn't control.
I have gotten angry at an epileptic for knocking over my drink.
I've gotten angry at gravity because I fell.
So then the real question is not forgiveness of her, but forgiveness of myself for an error and a pretty substantial error.
I'm not beating myself up.
You continue to think and learn as you grow.
But the forgiveness then probably needs to go more to myself for castigating someone for a moral failing when there's no evidence that they have any moral choice.
I have been railing at a toddler who, you know, confusingly was much bigger than me and gave birth to me.
But I have been railing against a toddler, which by my own philosophy, it's unjust to do.
Who's cutting onions?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's not fair to yourself.
No, listen. See, I can judge myself as being deficient morally without self-attacking because I don't have a standard of perfection.
I have a standard of growth, right?
So, to me, if I had had this insight and kept it to myself and continued, like you can't know before you know, right?
So if I'd had this insight or these series of mind-blowing insights and kept them to myself and continued to describe my history of my mother in the same terms as before, and I may fall into that again because it's an old habit, but you can't know before you know, right? So I don't castigate myself.
I don't self-attack myself.
For something that I was genuinely unaware of and was not studiously avoiding becoming aware of.
And what she did was wrong, but she herself was not evil.
And Comes out of Jesus, right?
Comes out of the Easter show.
Because I couldn't stop thinking about what he says on the cross.
What is for you, I guess, remember?
Remember? Do you remember what he says as he's dying?
Torture to death. He says, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
They don't know what they're doing.
They have no choice.
They're obeying power, they're obeying convenience, they're obeying force, they're obeying pilot.
They know not what they do would be the modern synonym for they have no free will.
Right?
And so Jesus is saying that they are in a situation of pre-free will.
in the same way when we're babies and we're toddlers, we're in a situation of pre-free will.
My mother has remained and my father died in a situation of pre-free will, as far as I know, certainly with regards to my mother I know, with my father I can theorize.
But that statement has just been rolling around in my brain like a boulder in a bucket.
They know not what they do.
Because Pilate said, based upon the pressure of the Jewish leaders, Pilate said, go crucify Jesus.
So they're like, okay, we'll go crucify Jesus.
Now, then he said, well, we'll set one of them free.
And they said, ah, I set Barabbas the thief free.
So they went and they, they're machines, right?
They're the centurions, right?
They're just NPCs, right?
And if Pilot had come down and said, we've changed our mind, cut Jesus down, they would have cut Jesus down.
They know not what they do.
do?
They're just moving around the pinball of power, like those little silver balls of my youth.
It means you stop waiting.
Isn't forgiveness about closure that you stop waiting?
There's a great film, Shadowlands.
You should watch it about a guy who's just waiting for his mother to, in a sense, be better.
Wait, I just blanked out.
What did I just say?
Ha!
Just before that. I wanted to follow that thought, but I lost it.
that I can't rewind myself.
Shadowlands, I think it's called.
Somebody said, I think you had a podcast with Sernovich where he said, maybe your mom didn't have the ability to make the right choice.
Well, and I don't recall that.
I certainly don't disbelieve you, but the reality is that because I relentlessly oppose empty theoreticals, and I'm not saying that that wasn't empty theoretical, but I relentlessly oppose empty theoreticals, so maybe your mom didn't have a better question for me, and it's not Mike's fault, but a better question for me is give me the evidence that your mom could make better choices.
What is the empirical evidence, right?
Oh yes, thank you, thank you.
So forgiveness is closure, right?
Forgiveness is when you stop waiting.
So as long as I can, I mistook my mother for myself, my capacity for choice with my mother's capacity for choice.
As long as I projected my own capacity for free will onto my mother or my father or my brother or whoever, right?
as long as I projected my own capacity for growth and change onto those around me, I was forever waiting, in a sense, for those apologies to come in, for that redemption to come in, for that change to come in, for that healing to come in.
Right?
You wait, you wait, you wait, you wait, you wait, you wait, you wait.
And it's not just family members...
I mean, there are friends, there are others who've done me wrong.
And again, I want to seem like I'm some big victim.
I've done people wrong as well. I've tried my best to make amends and apologize where that has occurred.
But if I sort of understand that I'm waiting for an apology from a robot, you can stop waiting and that releases energies for other things, if that makes sense.
I mean, it's not just family.
The people who de-platform me, do they have a choice?
Do they have ideal standards called free speech and honesty?
No, they don't. They don't have those as moral standards.
Because the whole point of post-modernism is to reduce us down to amoral pain avoiders and pleasure seekers.
And it's clearly easier for them to de-platform me than to stand up for a principle.
And because they don't value the principle, there's nothing to pull them in that direction.
They have no free will.
They have no free will.
The only person in my engagement with Twitter and YouTube and other places, the only person in those equations who had free will, was me, I think.
Habits start off as cobwebs and turn into chains.
If someone is living with chains, you can't judge them the same as someone with cobwebs.
My mother was a robot when I met her and has shown no indication, no indication at all in the 54 years since I've known her. no indication at all in the 54 years since I've I mean, she would even say the same stories over and over and over and over again to justify, to explain to, right?
Here's what happened. Your father did this.
And it was the same thing, the same stories over and over again.
This is a mark of robots, right?
I've always been intensely self-conscious of if I have said a story before, I will say, oh, I said this before.
You heard me say this. Oh, I said this before.
I talked about this. I want people to know because I grew up around so many people who just tell the same damn stories over and over and, oh, don't grow me crazy.
Now I understand, right?
It's broken record, right?
It's like getting mad at a record skipping.
Sorry, Squire, the record's stuck.
Sorry, Squire, the record's stuck.
You don't get mad at that record for being repetitive because it's just stuck in a groove, right?
Sorry.
For those, it happens with CDs, I guess, too, right?
I hate repeating myself.
I will. And I remember with Harry Brown, he used to have the same stories over and over again.
And I had a boss once who used to tell the same stories.
Like, in the same week, he'd tell the same story twice as if it was totally new.
And what do you do? He's your boss, right?
Oh, yeah, you told me. You just keep going, right?
It's a train track at the brain, right?
No free will. No choice.
Fixed way of being. So as long as I was projecting my own capacity for...
Free will and choice onto the world around me, I was frustrated.
Why aren't they doing the right thing?
Because they can't! Because they can't.
Is indifference worse than not forgiving?
You can't ever be indifferent to your parents.
I mean, that's... No, you can't.
I mean, that's, that's, uh, and you don't want to be, even if it was possible because I mean, you're kind of a sociopath, right?
Let's see here.
Holy shit.
Me and my siblings wrote a list of all the phrases and stories we had heard before from my dad.
Oh yeah, no, it's rough, man.
Because when people are repetitive, they're dissociated.
They're just on autopilot, right?
And to be alive in the conversation, like I'm trying, I mean, I'm not telling anything new here, I don't think.
Sorry, I'm not telling anything that I've said before.
This is new flow of consciousness, alive in the moment kind of conversation, right?
But can the people that de-platform you reach a free will state?
A lion will eventually eat you.
Well, but that's the point of this show, right?
The point of this show is not to promulgate morality, but to create morality.
The purpose of what I do, and I've said this before, but the purpose of what I do is not to identify and spread morality, but to create the very conditions wherein morality is possible.
In other words, if you don't have a higher standard by which you can compare proposed actions, you can't have any free will.
And so, for those of you who don't believe in God and Jesus...
Then UPB is your ideal standard, right?
Rape, theft, assault, murder bands, they're in, property rights, respect, self-defense, all the things that UPB validates, that's your higher standard.
Non-aggression principle, that's your higher standard.
So when you give people higher standards, you are actually summoning them to the superhuman state of free will.
You are giving them an entirely new life, an entirely new brain, a brain that is not a mere mammal pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, but the capacity to glory in pursuit of and make sacrifices for the ideal, the good, the virtuous.
Morality is created Through the power of language and the transfer of ideals from one mind to another through the medium of communication.
That's the electric arc that I was talking about before where we bolt ourselves like iron into the fabric of reality.
We arc and the ideal standards, the truth, the virtue, the good, arcs between us when we bolt ourselves to reality through reason and evidence.
We become the electrical transmission lines that bring power to remote locations that allow the desert to bloom, the forest to give way to cities, and the sea to let slip on its skin the speed of and the sea to let slip on its skin the speed Just got in here.
Can someone in chat tell me what's happened so far?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Does this mean you agree with Jesse Lee Peterson about forgiveness?
That's annoying to me. I'm not saying you're annoying.
I'm just saying that's annoying to me.
Because I'm sort of trying to unpack my heart here and you're trying to drag me onto some comparative land and what Jesse Lee Peterson said to me about forgiveness two years ago.
go forget it just try and be in the conversation as it's happening all right I still live with my dad and I feel the need to finish his stories for him because it's so annoying and I'm still mad at him for other stuff Yeah, yeah, listen, you will remember how to be here alive.
We few, we happy few.
So to me, repetition of stories is a cry out from the remnants of the true self to dislodge the avalanche of empty repetition that has buried our capacity to be alive in the moment.
People tell you repeat stories because they want you to interrupt those stories and say, hello, anybody here behind the show?
Anybody here behind the show?
Is there anybody alive in here?
Nobody but us.
▲
Export Selection