Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Aug. 13, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:06:54

What Gives Me Hope! Friday Night Live 12 Aug 2022

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Well, good evening everybody.
	Hope you're doing well. It's the Stefan Bottyhead.
	Welcome to your Friday Night Live!
	And are you ready to have your mind blown?
	Like an expert? Are you ready?
	You know, I don't know how often you get your mind blown by this show.
	I know I get my mind blown by this show on a fairly regular basis.
	Which means certainly several times a week.
	Which is a good schedule for getting blown, I think.
	So, I have...
	I was chatting about this with my daughter today, about how morality leads to materialism, about how morality leads to atheism, about how morality leads to subjectivism and relativism and mammalianism, which is where you just talk about nonsense, stalking space, reciprocal altruism, Alice M. Harris, and don't ever get to moral principles that can last and be universalized.
	So a great revolution of Christianity, of course, was universal morality.
	That was the big thing, the big deal with Christianity.
	He came along and said, stop being so tribal, everyone.
	Let's have universal morals.
	Now, universal morals produces such a great outcome because universal morals involves the end of slavery and the lack of, you know, end to some degree of the subjugation of women and so on.
	Minimal government, equality before the rule of law.
	So once universalism shows its power, universalism in morality leads to universalism in science, right?
	Because science is when you overcome the superstition of the imaginary coincidences of life and you actually start to examine principles of physics without the subjectivism of superstition.
	So, then what happens is, you end up with universal laws.
	And of course, as I think Tom Woods was very kind and keen to instruct me on, a lot of the early scientists were highly religious men.
	Who said that I think the basic idea was something like this.
	Well, of course there are universal, perfect physical laws because God created them.
	And how on earth could God show you who the miracle makers were if they weren't stable laws otherwise?
	I mean, if there were no miracles, you wouldn't know who the divine people were.
	In order for there to be miracles, they have to be a deviation from physical norms, which God has produced.
	They looked deep into the mind of God looking for these physical laws.
	Now, the problem was as the physical laws, as universalism in morals led to a better society which led to universalism in physics, universalism in physics ended up taking away our belief in miracles because every time the universal laws got pushed back, belief in miracles declined to the point where it's something that I read when I was quite young.
	The age of miracles is over, and as science has expanded throughout the universe, miracles become, well, just a little bit harder and harder to come by in any truly reliable fashion.
	So, universals in morals lead to universals in physics.
	Universals in physics lead to skepticism in miracles.
	Skepticism in miracles leads to a disbelief in morality, because morality is sanctioned by miracles.
	Jesus was known as the Son of God because of the wide variety of miracles he performed.
	Not like Smokey Robertson who performed with the miracles, he simply performed miracles.
	It's a whole different kettle of theology.
	So universal morals lead to universalism in physics, leads to science, leads to skepticism of miracles, but skepticism of miracles It means atheism.
	Atheism means no belief in the universality of morals.
	Boom! The university of morals leads to its own self-destruction.
	That's why we need philosophy.
	I just wanted to put that out there as a tiny little summation of something I was chatting about with my daughter today because she was asking how many Christians believe that the Word of God is literal in the Bible and how many believe it's allegorical or metaphorical.
	So, yeah, there's your taste.
	It blew my mind when we were talking about it, and I thought I would...
	You know, an idea can suck and blow at the same time.
	This does both.
	It's an inhalation and an exhalation, and a standing up and spitting in the sink.
	So, that's my wee little intro to get the show off on a kicker.
	Perhaps you, my friends, would like to return the favor by giving me A juicy, deep, powerful, or deeply personal topic to discuss.
	Oh, I will mention, I got an email from someone who put, I think, a five-part video series together criticizing the metaphysics debate that I had.
	What was it last week? With the oddly aggressive foreign-born person.
	Danish? Danish, I guess.
	Now I want a Danish. Anyway, so he sent me an email, and I assumed it was all about critiquing My metaphysics, right?
	Objective reality doesn't exist.
	Other people don't exist. You can't prove anything.
	It's like, okay, well, why are you sending me an email?
	Boy, people get mad when you cut through the sophistry and just point out the blind, blank, empirical evidence of what they themselves are actually doing.
	Boy, people just get mad because the empiricism is the opposite of sophistry.
	Empiricism is beautiful.
	The empiricism of someone's actions is Completely blows apart the sophistry of their language.
	I mean, the guy who I had the debate with got mad because I was yelling.
	Not at him, but about the argument.
	But he's saying, where is objective reality?
	What is it? And I said, it's where you get your food from!
	That's where you get your food from. And he got kind of upset about that.
	You're yelling and so on. It's like, how do you know?
	How do you know I exist? How do you know yelling is bad?
	How do you know I am yelling? How do you know your senses work, right?
	But he was real certain about how bad that was for me to raise my voice, even though he didn't believe in reality that much.
	So, yeah, people do just get kind of mad about this kind of stuff.
	We say, well, based on you sending me an email, of course, you believe in the senses, you believe in objective reality, you believe in self and other, and you believe that there are logical, rational standards that everybody has to comply with and conform with, and I deviated from...
	You just point that stuff out.
	People get really mad. Now, I think it's a healthy kind of anger.
	It's a healthy kind of anger.
	Like, if you get a counterfeit detection machine, the people who make counterfeit bills...
	I mean, assuming that they weren't all counterfeit these days.
	But the people who make counterfeit bills are going to get really mad at you, but it's a healthy kind of anger because they should stop stealing from everyone and they should go do something productive.
	But they don't because we keep enabling them.
	So it's a healthy kind of anger.
	Sophistry is so productive.
	Sophistry is so powerful.
	How do you take down a nuclear-armed power?
	Well, history will forever record how you take it down.
	It's with sophistry. The pen is mightier than sword.
	Magic users. And it's funny, this all goes way all the way back to Dungeons& Dragons.
	So in Dungeons& Dragons, to just simplify it quite considerably, there's a lot of truth in it, which is why I think the game remains popular.
	So in Dungeons& Dragons, you have a fighter and you have a wizard.
	They're called magic users, but anyway, a wizard, right?
	A fighter and a wizard. I mean, there's clerics and paladins and all that, but let's just, a fighter and a wizard.
	Now, a fighter has a sword and a shield and armor and goes in and bashes stuff, and the wizard, he starts off with like a couple of spells, and they were so lame that they added these mini spells called cantrips.
	And I played a magic use of wands.
	Dear Lord, it's just about the most boring thing in the known universe.
	Because you've got a whole three-hour adventure one night, and what do you get?
	Two spells! Ooh!
	Two spells! Wow!
	Okay? Really boring.
	Really boring. It's even more boring than being a thief, because at least a thief can...
	Check for traps and disarm traps and sneak up and stab attacks and stuff like that.
	But being a wizard is really, really boring.
	And you're very much underpowered.
	You start off with four hit points, which is nothing, right?
	The damage can be 1 to 4, 1 to 6, 1 to 8, 1 to 12.
	So one hit and you're dead.
	And plus, you have no armor.
	You can't wear armor because you need the physical dexterity to cast your spells, right?
	So in Dungeons& Dragons, as a wizard, you start off super boring.
	You know, like you literally over a three-hour adventure, at least when I was playing, ooh, I'm going to cast my magic missile and detect invisibility or detect magic, and like that's it.
	That's all you got. Whereas the fighters are in there, you know, bash, bash, bash, like lawnmowers just going down through things.
	I remember fighting a whole bunch of kobolds, which are like really weak creatures, and like just the fight just went.
	It's like you get a hand cramp from rolling so much.
	It's like having a bad hand in Uno or being a teenage boy.
	So, wizards start off really lame, really boring, but boy, gosh, boy, gosh, my boy, as a wizard, when you start getting higher up in levels and higher up in power, see, the power of the fighter goes up linear, right? One, two, three, four, it goes up, but the power of the wizard goes up exponentially.
	Now, this is true in life.
	You think of the tough guys, right?
	The sports athletes, the tough guys in high school, well, you know, some of them go into the military and they get really well trained and learn how to fight and all that, and it's really cool and powerful.
	Whereas the nerds and the wizards and so on, they're just working with language and computer code or propaganda or whatever it is, convincing people.
	And so the jocks start off strong, the nerds start off weak.
	But later on, the jocks are in a woke military where they have to take a vaccine or And the nerds are running the Department of Education and indoctrinating everyone.
	So yeah, it's just kind of true that the language people start off super weak, but end up, in conjunction with the state, with the power of the state, they end up super strong.
	So, I remember that first night at my friend's place.
	First night I played Dungeons& Dragons.
	The orc was the pig-faced...
	Humanoid, and I saw it so vividly in my mind's eye, it was creepy.
	We were playing Caves of Chaos, and we came across an orc encampment, and we decided to encircle and attack them.
	And it squealed, and oh man, so vivid!
	I don't know if that's true for everyone, but man, it came alive in my brain in truly fantastical ways.
	Alright, so this is your show, my friends.
	I am super happy to hear from you.
	So if you have thoughts, comments, questions, issues, disagreements, criticisms, fashion suggestions, home decor suggestions, whatever is on your gorgeous listener mind, I am super happy to hear from you.
	I think you've got to do a request to speak, and I can unmute you, and there you go.
	Bob's your uncle, as they used to say.
	Let me just check here. Ah, yes.
	We do have someone.
	Monsieur l'Adam. It's, of course, Adam gets to go first alphabetically in the Bible and in this show.
	You have to unmute and I'm all yours, brother.
	Hello, can you hear me? Go for it.
	Hi. I wanted to talk to you about something I was reading today and just thinking about.
	I started a new book.
	It's called Kolima Tales by Varlam Shalimov.
	He's considered the counterpart to Solzhenitsyn in documenting what happened in the Soviet Gulags.
	And Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago said in probably the last chapter, he was really talking about the It's called The Soul and the Barbed Wire.
	He really talks about the effect of camp and prison on people more than just describing things.
	And in that chapter, he talked about how him and Shalemov agree on almost everything except one point, which was that in camp, in these virtually Auschwitz-type winter death camps, that people are corrupted.
	by the environment, you know, just irreversibly.
	It's such a horrible, brutal environment where the thief class, the camp guards, all types of immoral people tend to acquire the resources and survive, while the people who want to stick to their conscience and to be moral tend to die off.
	And so you're forced to corrupt yourself In order to survive in a situation like this.
	And both of them agreed on that to an extent.
	Shalimov more so, Solzhenitsyn, said that people who became corrupted in camp, or in prison, but more in camp, were already corrupted before they went to camp.
	So it wasn't that camp corrupted them, it was that camp just brought out the corruption and the immorality in them.
	Shalmov disagreed, saying that no matter how good you were, if you get put in a situation like that, if you wanted to live, you have to become corrupted, and that there was nothing good about the suffering that came with it.
	Solzhenitsyn disagreed and said that the suffering from camp was one of the Most profound and beneficial experiences of his life.
	And Shalemov disagreed, saying that it was good for nothing, that it was suffering for the sake of suffering and it was corruption to no end, to no good end.
	And when I was thinking about this, I thought of what you have said before about parenting and about just general relationships in general, more domestic ones.
	Where you deny the idea that, say, some sort of money issue in the family is responsible for the parents to start having disagreements, to stop behaving kindly towards one another, to stop being good, and also stop being good towards the kids.
	So basically that some sort of problem in the household It gives people an excuse to be bad.
	It's not that the problem causes them to be bad.
	It's just that it gives them cover to be bad.
	And to me, that was kind of like what Solzhenitsyn and Shalmok were arguing about just on a broader level.
	And I was wondering what you think about all that.
	Yeah, it's a great question.
	But, you know, it being your show, is there some thoughts that you wanted to share about that?
	Well, my take on it, I do understand where Solzhenitsyn is coming from, where he is saying that he knew people who didn't corrupt themselves to any extreme extent.
	You have to do some things to survive in that sort of environment.
	But they didn't become scoundrels, they didn't become uh part of the thief class and they still survived their time with their conscience intact and he even described some people who um who flourished in a way in camp physically and mentally through i don't know through the power of their will and i've heard of other people write about that in the german histories um so i can see where he's coming from but i also can't understand how how um he can say that at the same time as You know,
	you're kind of faced with the whole Darwinian problem where the best of the best people morally, typically the religious, very religious people, the Christians, all died, right?
	So you had this sort of artificial selection during this Soviet era where the best and the most moral people were killed off because they didn't conform to the immoral standards Of the time.
	So I think that's more where Shalom is coming from, where you can be good and you can try to keep your conscience, but while you're under torture and while you're being starved and being worked to death, I don't know how you can do that without either dying or going over to the dark side, so to speak. And it's just a very interesting thing for me to think about because I've I've read a lot about this now.
	Jordan Peterson introduced me to the Soviet Union as a whole and then I started reading these books and I got kind of captivated by them just because I thought to myself, how would I react in a situation like that?
	And I can't really see myself in a situation where I would be able to undergo these sorts of pressures and not fall to a much lower level just in order to try to live.
	I think that's the case with most people, but some people didn't and they were mostly shot.
	So I think it's a really interesting topic and I think it does relate to parenting because people will say poverty induces theft or a crime.
	But I'm pretty sure that's not true.
	Well, that's actually empirically disproven.
	I had an expert, I think Dr.
	Kevin Beaver, on my show years ago, it's empirically disproven.
	What happens is crime increases and then the neighbourhood becomes poor.
	The cause and effect is very clear.
	But of course everyone likes it.
	It's part of the shakedown to say, well, poverty causes crime because then you give money to people so they're not poor through the power of the state and then it's like you've committed a crime in order to reduce crime.
	Like the crime of income redistribution has been performed and it's just a shakedown.
	And basically it's like, give us money or we'll commit crimes.
	And it's like, okay, but if they've shaken you down and they blackmailed you into giving them money, so to speak, or threatened you with sort of neighborhood terrorism in order to give them money, then they've already succeeded in their objective committing crime.
	You can't possibly give crime to people under threat of reducing – you can't give money to people under threat of reducing crime because that itself is a crime, that entire threat.
	So, yeah, but go ahead.
	Thank you.
	Right, yes. I think I have seen you talk on that interview.
	Also, I've heard that there's a Gini coefficient, I think that's the name, where poverty and crime are not related.
	There's a very strong correlation between someone's poverty and then the other person's degree of wealth above that other person.
	So there's the factor of envy in there.
	I think that Crime is quite tied to that.
	It's called the genie coefficient.
	I haven't read about it in a while, but anyhow, I just thought that this whole idea of the benefits of suffering, in terms of the moral benefits, versus the Shalom's point of what's the point, it's just suffering for the sake of it, does tie into a whole bunch of things, like the whole idea, or the whole Christian story, really.
	And also into the more practical part of parenting and living your own life, because I see so often, and I've seen in my life lots, like my parents, they've run into some sort of external issue, like money problems, or I don't know, like the car gets dinged, or something happens.
	I've seen this with other people too, and people will say, that external event set them off.
	Oh, it set me off and I was having a bad day and then this happened and it just made me blow up.
	But to me, that does seem like an excuse, just an excuse to reveal your true colors and to be a bit of a bully and an abuser and just have a go at someone.
	Well, you see this in movies all the time too, particularly with moms.
	Which is where the day just gets worse and worse, and eventually the mom just loses it.
	This is also the case in the Tom Wolfe novel, A Man in Full.
	A guy is just having a terrible day, a terrible day, a terrible day, then he just ends up attacking someone.
	It's like, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back theory.
	You know, that you have no control over the stimuli.
	It's just you can handle a certain amount of negative things, but one more negative thing happens and you just lose it!
	And it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you believe in that, then you just give yourself permission to lose it, and lo and behold, it happens.
	Yes, it seems like people, when they make sorts of claims, are removing free will from themselves, right?
	It seems like they're just putting themselves in this box, in this equation, saying that, well, if this happens, then this happens.
	It's inevitable that I act like this, and it's always a bad thing, right?
	They always act poorly. And, you know, I just see that all the time, and it's just kind of tied into what I was talking about before, where you get put in a bad environment.
	You know, the worst environment you can think of is like a Soviet Gule.
	You get put in that environment, and lo and behold, you become bad.
	Part of that is necessity, but Solzhenitsyn, I think, he's more on...
	I think he would be more on your side of things and thinking about these things.
	His point is that that's not necessarily what happens.
	It's not the environment that turns you bad.
	It's you that choose to conform to these standards that other people are having.
	It is a conscious choice.
	I'll be in that situation.
	It's the ultimate choice.
	Was this other fellow a Christian as well?
	I don't know. I just...
	Can you just have a quick look?
	If you don't mind, I'm not at a keyboard here.
	If you could just have a quick look, just because it's rather important to the sort of response that I'm formulating, and I don't want to make a guess.
	I'm going to guess he's not, but I'm happy to hear otherwise.
	He's an atheist. Yeah, yeah, that was my expectation.
	Right. So for a Christian, there's virtue and suffering.
	For the atheist, it's just suffering, right?
	Yes. I would have bet 50 to 1 that he was an atheist, or at least not a Christian.
	Yeah. Why do you think that he would...
	Well, first, I guess you agree more with Solzhenitsyn, and I think you tend to as well.
	Well, I try not to agree or not agree with particular positions or agree with particular people.
	I mean, we can have a conversation.
	And the reason I do that is not out of any fastidiousness, but because I find that if I don't say I overlap with this person, I tend to come up with more original arguments, if that makes sense.
	Yes, that makes sense. I appreciate that.
	Right. But sorry, you were about to...
	Let's say that I did, right?
	So I sort of interrupted you there.
	So please, go ahead and finish your point.
	Well, I guess if I could just reformulate the question...
	Do you think that in such an extreme situation there is truth in the idea that there's no real point in suffering through all of that?
	You know, 10, 15 years of slave labor in negative 40 degree weather, starvation rations, what is the point?
	I guess that would be the question.
	But you'd have to define what you mean by point, right?
	You know, point is one of these, like, meaning.
	Point is one of these emotionally charged words that when you start to unpack, it tends to fall apart in your hands.
	Like, it looks like a big thing, like cotton candy, but you put it in your mouth, it just turns into nothing, right?
	So what do you mean by point here?
	And I don't mean that to sound aggressive, like, what the hell do you mean by point?
	I'm genuinely curious. What do you mean by the point?
	The point of enduring...
	All of that just awful, awful suffering.
	No, no, no. The point of the suffering.
	Hang on. The point of enduring.
	I mean, the first thing was the point of the suffering.
	Sorry, hang on. The first thing was the point of the suffering.
	The second thing was the enduring part, and I don't want to conflate those two.
	So, let me try again.
	What would be the purpose of trying to, of consciously making your life in that sort of Which is already extremely hard.
	Even harder by sticking to your morals.
	By sticking to the beliefs that you hold about morality rather than abandoning them and making your lot much easier and also hugely increasing your chance of survival.
	because that's already such a corrupt, immoral environment.
	What would be the purpose of making, consciously making your situation worse just so that you can claim that you have upheld your morals?
	Right.
	I mean this is not an abstract question for me, right?
	Obviously, there's no Gulag, at least not yet, but...
	I mean, if I had disavowed certain contentious arguments or data or evidences or perspectives that I put forward, you know, I mean, life could have gone a tiny bit easier for me.
	So, yeah, I mean, I do really understand the question.
	Of course, nothing at the level of these guys, but it's not totally abstract to me, if that makes sense.
	I'm sure you've had similar things in your life.
	Right, yes. Right.
	Okay, so now what you've done is you've replaced the word point with the word purpose, which I don't find particularly clarifying.
	So, again, I'm happy to hear.
	And the reason is that I want to make sure that I'm answering the question.
	And point and purpose, again, it's like meaning.
	It's the question, what is the purpose of holding on to your morality when letting go of your morality would reduce your suffering?
	I suppose, yeah, that would be the question.
	Yeah. In such a situation, why would you value your morality more than your physical well-being?
	Especially if it means living.
	Right. Because that's the whole point of morality.
	The whole point of morality, like the whole point of nutrition, is to eat stuff you don't want to eat and not eat stuff you do want to eat.
	That's the whole point of nutrition.
	And so the whole point of morality is...
	To know why it's important to accept the discomfort rather than give up on your values.
	That's the entire purpose.
	So saying, why would you choose to take suffering rather than renounce your values is like saying, well, in the science of nutrition, why would you ever not eat something you want to eat or eat something you don't want to eat?
	Because that's the whole point of nutrition.
	That's the whole point of morality.
	I mean, the whole point of morality is assholes are going to make you suffer for being honest.
	Because honesty is the fundamental counter to immorality, to evil.
	So, of course, evildoers are going to make you suffer for being moral, in the same way your body is going to make you suffer for If you diet and exercise, because your body wants to sit around and eat bonbons or whatever your favorite, my carrot cake, whatever your favorite food is, right?
	So, you know, it's going to a physical trainer, a nutritionist, and saying, well, why on earth would you exercise when you don't want to?
	Why on earth would you not eat when you're hungry?
	And it's like, because that's the whole discipline.
	Now, so, of course you're going to suffer for being moral.
	Now, Christians understand that very deeply, and I would argue a little too deeply at times, because, of course, as you know, the story of Jesus is that Jesus universalized morality, opposed tribalism, and then ended up getting nailed to the cross and dying a horrible, painful three-day death on Calvary.
	And so, the idea that Virtue leads to suffering is baked right into the origins of Christianity.
	And as a Christian friend of mine once said, one of the great glories and tragedies of Christianity is we're actually at our best when we're being persecuted.
	So the sacrifice in Christianity is, well, Satan runs the world.
	Satan runs the world.
	Satan's in charge of this fleshly mortal realm.
	If you try to do any good, you will anger both Satan, his devils, and all the people who've sold their souls.
	Virtue provokes rage among the corrupted.
	Beauty can provoke rage among the ugly.
	I mean, this is the blue-haired overweight revolt against beauty, right?
	So, if you say, why would you suffer?
	Because that's the whole discipline.
	It says you're going to suffer.
	Now, the question is, why would you even choose that discipline?
	Of course, if you say, well, why would you make your body suffer?
	By not eating! That's right, because you never see a fat 80-year-old.
	Because I want to be healthy, I want to live a long time, I enjoy life, I want to be flexible, I want to be able to exercise, I want to do all of these wonderful things, so I'm going to lose weight.
	The purpose is health and mobility and flexibility and longevity, all these kinds of good things.
	Ah, well, why would you exercise?
	Why would you exercise? Well, because I want to be strong and I also, you know, I felt very passionate the other day when I was saying, I refuse to be old and weak.
	I simply refuse to be old and weak.
	So I will do, what was that?
	I've got a little tracker, right?
	And I do about eight hours of exercise a week.
	Now, I combine it with other things.
	I don't just sort of sit there and exercise, like I'll chat with friends, I'll play a game with friends or my family or something like that, like Catan or something like that.
	So, you know, it's not just dead space for me, or at the very least, I'll listen to music or a podcast or something like that.
	So, it's not just like dead time, but yeah, I mean, and, you know, one of the reasons when I got cancer that I recovered well and have been cancer-free, at least according to the medical professionals, is because I had a good So I never look at exercise as time-wasting because exercise is probably one of the main reasons why I survive cancer relatively easily.
	So there's a purpose, of course, to exercise and eating well, to lose weight, to stay strong, very solid health benefits.
	Now, I think the paradox, and I don't want to paraphrase you, so tell me if I'm astray here, I think the paradox you're saying is the goal of philosophy is happiness Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	But in general, in the modern society and in many societies, both across the world and throughout history, most if not all, reason equals virtue equals persecution equals death.
	So if the purpose of philosophy is happiness and the methodology of philosophy is virtue, but virtue leads to unhappiness because you get persecuted Then doesn't philosophy just short-circuit?
	It's like saying, well, the purpose of nutrition is to have a healthy weight.
	But if you pursue nutrition, they cut your head off.
	So you end up with no weight and no life.
	And so you can't achieve a healthy weight if you pursue nutrition because the persecution gets you killed or, you know, whatever it is, right?
	So if reason equals virtue equals happiness in theory, but reason equals virtue equals persecution equals death or some significant problem in your life, then how on earth could you possibly achieve happiness?
	Which is supposed to be the goal of philosophy.
	How could you possibly achieve happiness by pursuing virtue?
	The best you can achieve is a grudging survival based upon a hypocrisy you dare not name.
	This sort of split in mind.
	That is required when you say, well, I have to not be virtuous in order to survive, but I don't really want to look at that too closely because I have all these theories of virtue and blah blah blah.
	Is that something close or is that in the vicinity of what we're talking about?
	Yes, I think you summed it up quite well.
	Okay, good. Half the time I'm given these great answers to questions that people are like, well, that's a great answer, but it's not particularly related to my question, so I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page.
	Are you a Christian yourself?
	I'm agnostic.
	I was raised more or less atheist, but not overtly or anything.
	Right, okay. So...
	Of course, for Christians, Christians answer, reason equals virtue equals persecution equals death.
	Logos, I guess, would be the more correct term with regards to Jesus.
	I don't know what your knowledge is of Christian theology, but do you know how Christians solve this paradox that virtue is supposed to make you happy, but virtue gets you persecuted?
	Well, isn't it that they believe in the immortal soul and that your earthly existence is inconsequential relative to the benefits that you will achieve in the afterlife or whatever they...
	Yeah, you go to heaven. You go to heaven.
	Right, you go to heaven.
	So it's sort of like nutrition and exercise is supposed to give you a great body.
	And if you get killed for it, you get a great body in heaven, and therefore nutrition and exercise gives you a great body either way.
	Either you don't get persecuted and you end up with a great body, or you get persecuted and killed and you get a great body in heaven.
	Either way, you get a great body.
	I'm sorry to my Christian friends.
	I'm absolutely, totally sorry for diminishing some of the very powerful aspects of Christian theology into diet and exercise, but I have a lot of non-Christians who listen, and I need to do a wee bit of that.
	Slater-Hand translation, if that makes sense.
	So yeah, for Christians, reason equals virtue equals happiness, yes.
	So if you live in a relatively virtuous society, then reason equals virtue equals happiness is going to be fine for you, right?
	But if you live in a corrupt society, reason equals virtue equals happiness, but the happiness instead of being before death is after death.
	So either way, either way you get to be happy.
	Is that in accordance with your understanding?
	Yes, that's right.
	Now, the atheists have a big problem, which is why I was guessing the other guy was atheist, right?
	The atheists have a big problem.
	No afterlife, no soul.
	Where the hell is the payoff of virtue?
	What do you get out of being virtuous?
	There's no payoff after death.
	And the persecution that you experience is not rescued, usually, By knowledge afterwards, right?
	So Jesus experienced persecution, was considered a criminal, and was given the most horrendous death penalty that can be imagined, or one of the most.
	But his reputation was rescued, in particular because of, you know, the old coming back from the dead thing, which is a bit of a checkmark in the divinity part, or in the divinity column.
	So Jesus is like, well, my reputation is rescued.
	In other words, is it worth sacrificing Your reputation in the moment is, again, not an abstract question for me.
	Is it worth sacrificing your reputation in the moment for a greater reputation later?
	Look at Socrates. He sacrificed his reputation in the moment but gained a hugely improved reputation later, if that makes sense.
	Now, of course, for a Christian, the sacrifice of your reputation for the sake of heaven is a no-brainer.
	And it's explicitly talked about in the Bible, right?
	That you've got to be right with God.
	Being popular ain't the way to go.
	In fact, being popular is almost certainly going to lead you in the exact wrong direction.
	So, of course, you would sacrifice your reputation amongst the mere mortals in a world run by Satan in order to get into heaven as a no-brainer, right?
	Not easy, but it's a no-brainer.
	For atheists, though, I mean, Joseph McCarthy is sort of a big example that occasionally circles my brain like a shark, right?
	The senator from Wisconsin, I've got a whole presentation of truth about McCarthy.
	You still see people talking about the witch hunts of McCarthyism, and it was crazy, and he saw communists everywhere, and he imagined...
	No, no, the guy was right.
	And it's not even an opinion.
	He said, this person is a communist, this person is a communist, this person is a communist, this person is a communist.
	And then when the Soviet cables were declassified in the 90s under the Venona Project, yes!
	The Soviet government was sending messages to this person and they were sending messages back about how to corrupt and undermine America.
	There's no question that the man was more right than he knew.
	And yet, has his reputation been rescued in the way that Jesus' was, in the way that Socrates' was?
	Well, no. Maybe that has to wait for another cycle of history for that reckoning to occur.
	So, yeah, why would you hold on to integrity when it brings suffering and death when there's no prize after you're dead and very little guarantee that your reputation will ever be restored?
	Because, you know, it's kind of a chilling thing.
	I think we've all experienced this over the last couple of years, me for a little bit longer than a couple of years, but I think definitely most people have had a sense of this over the last couple of years.
	Like, did anybody else find it kind of chilling how everyone was like, oh, yeah, we can totally hate the unvaccinated.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll divide society into two.
	Vaccinated, good, unvaccinated, selfish, bad, evil.
	Oh, yeah, they can have that right stripped from them.
	Oh, yeah, right now the CDC is saying you can't really...
	Don't stop differentiating between vaccinated and unvaccinated.
	This is in the U.S. I think this just came out this week.
	After all the lessons of history of how disastrous it is, To be given permission to hate a group.
	Be told who to hate and just line up, grab your pitchforks and your torches and just chase them into the woods.
	That's... Oh, here's who to hate.
	Oh, great. Yeah, sign me up.
	I'm in. I hate that guy.
	Oh, it's terrible. I can't believe those people, right?
	They're so bad, right?
	So... And even though...
	I mean... When the people who said about the vaccine, nothing I'm saying here is controversial, by the way.
	This is all admitted, right?
	So when people were told, oh, 100% guarantee you take the vaccine, you will neither catch nor share nor spread the illness.
	Well, that's not true. And again, this is nothing controversial.
	This may have been controversial a year ago, maybe even six months ago, but this is all openly admitted now.
	Is there a movement afoot?
	To resurrect the reputations of the skeptics.
	No. When people were told, well, you have to take the vaccine because otherwise you'll catch it and spread it, therefore you can't, if we're firing you, are people saying, oh my God, you've got to come back with back pay because we were wrong and you were right.
	I mean, I've talked about this before, but there are even questions about whether it actually reduces symptoms.
	So people have gone through this process of being absolutely vilified and hated by the majority in society, having their rights stripped away and people cheering it on.
	I mean, I would go sometimes and look at the comments about the unvaccinated.
	I mean, it's chilling shit, man.
	It's chilling stuff. Now, the skeptics about the fact that the vaccine would prevent infection and transmission, those skeptics have been proven right.
	Is there any big movement afoot in society to resurrect the reputation of the vaccine skeptics?
	And this is a genuine question.
	I don't know if you've heard of anything.
	anything.
	I haven't seen much in that way.
	I haven't.
	Not at all.
	Yeah, everybody's just skating on.
	Oh, the science changed and the CDC changed with it.
	What are you talking about? You know, they're still following it correctly.
	It's people just trying to cover.
	I mean, if I accuse someone of being wrong and bad, and then it turns out they were right, what do I owe them?
	An apology.
	A giant freaking apology.
	And then I need to look deep into my heart.
	I look deep into my heart and say, why did I do that?
	What am I susceptible to?
	Because the great question of the herd instinct and totalitarianism has been answered by the vast majority of the population over the last couple of years.
	Oh, yeah, you all would have lined up and gone right along.
	Everyone lined up and gone right along.
	No question. Everybody has to look in the mirror and say, oh, yeah, think of all these terrible dictatorships throughout history and think, oh, my God, how could the population have gone along with it?
	Well, again, not to the same degree, but the same principle.
	Yeah, you were just taught how to hate people and taught who was bad and you were good and you liked the pride of being good and you liked the vengeance that came from an out group that you could attack and denigrate and so on.
	And it's like, okay, so now you know.
	But, of course, people won't give an apology because they don't want to look in the mirror and say, wow, I could have been one of the endless horde of pretty bad people in history.
	That turns on a minority they're told to hate.
	People don't want to go through that process, right?
	That's a tough, that's a dark midnight of the soul process.
	So, yeah, the resurrection of reputation, well, it happens automatically in Christianity. - Really?
	The resuscitation of the reputation, the rescue of the reputation happens automatically after you're dead.
	So you're vilified for being good in the hellscape known as the social world of Satan in the Christian theology.
	But man, the moment you're dead, your reputation is entirely restored because God welcomes you with open arms into the kingdom of heaven.
	And St. Peter goes down the list of largely check-marked boxes.
	And boy, if I had an even more theologically literate audience, they'd see how much of this is going on in my novel, The Future, which you should definitely check out if you haven't.
	So for atheists, what is the point of pain, right?
	For people who are trying to lose weight, the point of hunger is to lose weight.
	Now, maybe they'll make it, maybe they won't, but they understand that's the process.
	For people who are exercising discomfort and stiffness and soreness and all that after the fact, yes, that is absolutely what's going to happen, and that's the price you pay for developing muscles and becoming stronger, right?
	But for the atheist, what is the point of suffering?
	And again, I know I'm just circling this around.
	I just want to make sure we're right on the nose.
	So what do you think of this formulation of the question?
	I think that it's quite clear how you put it.
	I would ask, though, what would you say about somebody like me, who's agnostic?
	What would you say about...
	I mean, what would UPB have to say on the matter?
	Because with Christianity, or with, I guess, any of the other religions, which believe in the immortal soul, and the potential afterlife, and God...
	What's the replacement for that if you don't have a religious framework of morals, if you have a secular framework of morals?
	Well, there isn't one.
	Because agnostic doesn't mean a moral God who rewards you for being virtuous, though you are punished and attacked in the world that is.
	I mean, there's a reason why you have to have heaven to bribe people in a sense, And again, I apologize for the cross language, but to reward.
	You could say to reward people for being good, you need heaven.
	Because, you know, sometimes it kind of sucks being good in the world, right?
	And if you're a pain person, Pleasure, principle, person.
	Boy, that's a lot of Ps, right?
	If you're a pain, pleasure, principle, person, with no reward of heaven, why would you be good?
	This is why one of the most fundamental attacks on virtue is an attack upon Christianity, which I participated in, which I regret, but...
	At least I provided a rational secular alternative.
	Now, the rational secular alternative doesn't answer the pain-pleasure principle, which is if evildoers can inflict pain on you, they can get you to obey them, unless you get to heaven by disobeying them, in which case you'll give up the pain they can inflict on you in the here and now in order to secure the rewards of heaven, right?
	And we know this.
	Again, back to the vaccine as a sort of contemporaneous example.
	There are many public health officials throughout the world who openly said, oh, yeah, no, we need to restrict people's rights so that they'll take the vaccine.
	So they just inflicted suffering to the point where you'll just do what they want, right?
	Now, of course, for Christians, I think they look at the vaccine and they say, that's Kind of messing with God's plan a little bit down there in the depths, so maybe not so much, right?
	So, I mean, look, I know that I'm sort of dancing around the topic here, which I just really want to make sure that we delineate it clearly because it is a very, very powerful question because it's a question of why be good when all it causes is suffering.
	So, is it going to bring you happiness?
	Well, for a lot of people who've been good, It causes them enormous suffering.
	I mean, Solzhenitsyn, I guess, would be one.
	His atheist friend would be another.
	Enormous suffering. There's a fellow whose name escapes me, who 100 or 200 years ago, I think 150 or 200 years ago, he kind of noticed that when students would go from examining cadavers to treating pregnant women, that the pregnant women very often got sick.
	And so he said, you know, why don't we try washing our hands after we deal with the diseased dead bodies before we go and treat the pregnant women?
	So he managed to convince the people in his hospital, the students in particular, to wash their hands.
	And, of course, the level of infections that were being created within the pregnant women population went down massively, as you can imagine, right?
	So he did some real good here.
	And do you know what happened to him?
	Yes. I think this is Ignaz Semmelweis.
	He was put in a mental institution.
	Yeah, he was attacked.
	His reputation was destroyed.
	I think his license was pulled.
	And he ended up being thrown in a mental institution.
	Now, mental institution back in the day was as close to hell as you could possibly imagine.
	And I don't know if you know this.
	Do you know how he died? I don't.
	So the general theory is that there was an abusive orderly in the mental institution who beat him so badly that he died of the injuries.
	Jesus. Well, Jesus being right, right?
	So this guy, over his revelation, has literally saved countless millions of lives.
	And his reward was not statues and prizes and eternal thanks and wow, what a wonderful...
	No. His prize was attack, vilification, destruction of his career.
	His wife left him.
	He ended up locked in a mental institution which was hell itself and apparently was beaten to death by an abusive attendant.
	Yay, goodness! Now, if he had known the outcome, would he have done it?
	Tough call. Now, if he's Christian, I assume he was, I wouldn't say it's a no-brainer, but the exhortation would be, well, yeah, you've got to do good, though the sky's full.
	In fact, to expect punishment for virtue is foundational to Christianity.
	So, and I don't honestly know why he was so vilified.
	Now, other things I can understand, like the speech I've given before, so I'll keep it really brief here, about Sigmund Freud.
	Sigmund Freud uncovered vast swaths of pedophilia and sexual abuse among the upper class in Vienna, Austria, back in the day.
	Because there were all these women with these incredibly wild psychosomatic symptoms or psychological distress symptoms.
	And just about every time he would ask them about their childhood, they say, oh, yeah, I was repeatedly raped by my father, by my uncle, by my brothers, by whatever.
	Right.
	And so he started to publish this.
	Now, the people who commit these kinds of crimes against children.
	They're not too happy about that.
	So his license was threatened and then he basically backed down, which I think was a disaster.
	though, again, I can understand the pressure he was under.
	He had six kids and needed an income.
	So his income was threatened, his livelihood was threatened, and he basically said, oh yeah, they're just making it up.
	It's just a fantasy. It's the Oedipal complex.
	The Electra complex.
	It's all made up. So, yeah, that was his reward for uncovering significant crimes.
	And of course, we all know the threats.
	Now, whether you think they're right or wrong, it's still a straight-up threat, right, that doctors have had for Hydroxychloroquine for ivermectin and other things, zinc, vitamin D, and so on, that, according to some, has had helpful results and so on, and those kinds of threats go on.
	So, yeah, trying to do good in the world.
	It's pretty punishing.
	Now, of course, the one thing that happens is that it's the state, right?
	Who punished Socrates? The state.
	Who punished Jesus?
	The state. Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
	Who punished this fellow who figured out, wash your hands after you're touching diseased corpses before you go treat pregnant women?
	Well, it was a state licensing board.
	Who was it who was going to punish Sigmund Freud for exposing pedophilia?
	Well, state licensing boards.
	This is the government, right? Who punishes the doctors who have a belief that there are treatments for COVID-19 that should have occurred today?
	Before, people went to hospital.
	Some claim, and I can't evaluate these things, of course, right?
	Some claim 90-95% efficacy of life-saving and so on, right?
	Or at least not having the disease go nuts on you.
	Well, threats.
	But through what? Through state licensing boards and all of that.
	So the thing that is necessary to punish the virtuous is the state.
	I mean, not only the state, obviously, but in general, the mechanism that people run to to punish the virtuous is the state.
	So if you're a statist and an atheist, which is most atheists, of course, present company accepted, I assume, but if you're a statist and an atheist, then I can completely assume that you would not see the suffering as worth it at all.
	Do you know why? Well, you gain nothing from that perspective.
	Well, you gain nothing from that perspective, but it's also never going to end.
	Right? Because if the state is going to be continually used to punish virtuous people, right?
	And if you are a statist, then you believe that the state is a virtuous, necessary, integral part of society.
	That without the state, you get hell on earth, the war of all against all, right?
	All this stuff that's talked about, right?
	So, if you believe the state is necessary and the state is always going to be there to punish the virtuous, why on earth would you suffer for the truth?
	Because you accept That a coercive institution that will always be deployed to punish the virtuous will always be and is necessarily going to be central to society.
	In other words, the virtuous will never escape their punishment.
	Ever. Because the state will always be available to punish the virtuous.
	Because you have to have a state.
	And the state is always used to punish the virtuous.
	At least it's a fundamental mechanism by which it's done.
	And therefore, the punishment will never end.
	You will never get to a heaven wherein the virtuous will not be punished because there will always be a state which evil actors will deploy to punish the virtuous.
	Does that make sense? Yes, that does make sense, for sure.
	So, I mean, if we look at COVID-19...
	I mean, alternative stateless society.
	Well, you know, if the people are right about the Wuhan Biolab or whatever, you wouldn't even have these wretched diseases without the state.
	But in a free society, the cheapest, most efficient, most effective methodology for dealing with the illness would be the one front and center.
	Because you can't just make up money, you can't compel people to do things, you can't take away their rights if they don't because there's no state, right?
	So all of the explorations of repurposed drugs, which are perfectly legal to do, right?
	It's called prescribing off-label.
	I'm sure everybody knows all this stuff, right?
	But all of the repurposed drugs would be...
	And if they had worked, then it would be way cheaper and all of that, right?
	And hospitals wouldn't be paid $13,000 or $30,000 on a positive COVID result or ventilation or whatever, right?
	Because that's not how things would play.
	So if you are a statist and an atheist...
	You instinctively get deep down I believe this very strongly it's not a proof I'm just saying I believe it that there will never be a cessation to the punishment of the virtuous.
	Now if there will never be a cessation to the punishment of the virtuous why would you accept any punishment for being virtuous?
	It's never going to end.
	It's like voluntarily exposing yourself to a sunburn so that nobody will ever get a sunburn again.
	It doesn't work that way. It's like a woman waxing her bikini line with a certain belief that all the hair will grow, like thinking it will never, like that will at least get rid of her hair for a while, and then the hair grows back 10 seconds later.
	Well, nobody's going to bother waxing because it's, you know, Kelly Clarkson kinds of painful, right?
	And I say that because of the cry out in 30-year-old virgin, but...
	So why would you suffer to be virtuous if you're a statist, knowing, as you do deep down, that the state will always be available to punish the virtuous?
	So your sacrifice is for nothing.
	It's a net negative.
	Now, if you're a voluntarist and you know that the punishment of the virtuous is largely achieved through the power of the state, if you can envision a society without the state at its center, a voluntary peaceful society, then you say, my sacrifice means that the punishment of the virtue has an end point.
	If there's no state that evil actors can hijack to punish the virtuous, then the sacrifice is worth it.
	Because there is a heaven.
	It's not a heaven that I will live to see.
	But it is a heaven that I can see through my imagination, which is one of the things why I keep...
	Chiding people to go read my novel, The Future.
	It is about that heaven and how it works and what it looks like.
	It is the ultimate white pill.
	If I were a statist, I would not have sacrificed my career, reach, and reputation for the sake of telling the truth, which is another reason why if you get rid of God, you get rid of honesty. Because then it becomes a pain-pleasure calculation.
	And they simply will escalate the pain that's inflicted until you give way.
	Now, of course, in the Christian paradigm, nobody can inflict as much pain as going to hell, so it doesn't really matter.
	It doesn't work that way. Right?
	So why is it worth it?
	Well, you know, there's an old saying that says, society functions best when fathers plant trees whose shade they will never enjoy.
	Of course there's a torch that we have to pass forward through the generations.
	Of course we have to plan for a better world that we're not going to live in.
	My daughter is probably not going to live in it.
	My grandchildren probably not.
	You know, I got 500 years between now and the future.
	I don't know, just an even number.
	Could be less, could be more.
	I do remember reading some book that claimed that the party in 1984 ruled for 9,000 years.
	That's kind of the stakes. I mean, that's just a made-up number, but it really stuck with me.
	Even the 70 years of Soviet communism was 60 million dead, 70 million dead.
	I can't remember the exact number, but it was a No, a bit less I assume because it was even worse in China with a shorter time span.
	But Chinese are very efficient. So, to me, it's worth it because there will be an end point to the suffering inflicted upon the virtuous.
	And not just there will be an end point, but the virtuous finally will achieve their just reward.
	Finally, after 150,000 years, the virtuous will achieve their reward.
	Which is not just that the suffering will end, but the suffering will be displaced.
	Right now, the evildoers are rewarded and good men die like dogs.
	In the future, in a free society the virtuous are rewarded and the evil doers are punished and not through any willpower of a political elite but through the natural aggregation of free decisions in a moral sphere so not only will we stop going to hell we truth tell us through the power of the state not only will we stop going to hell We get to actually live in heaven.
	And the unrepentant evildoers are the ones who go to hell.
	Which again, is a central theme in my new book.
	And I just got to remind you, freedomain.locals.com Please God, go.
	Listen to the book. It'll cost you a couple of bucks.
	It's unbelievably worth it.
	So for me it's worth it.
	For me it's worth it. Because I see an end point.
	That the suffering of the virtuous that has been going on for 150,000 years...
	The suffering of the virtuous can end.
	And not only can the suffering end, but it can be transformed into joy and happiness and pleasure.
	The future is a story of a society where the good guys finally win and keep winning.
	It's worth it because there's an end point.
	There is a cessation.
	Of brutality, of abuse, of war, of enslavement.
	It can all end.
	Now, a Christian doesn't believe that it can end because Satan is immortal.
	I mean, maybe he believes, sorry, let me rephrase that.
	Until Jesus returns, the suffering of the virtuous cannot end because that is the nature of man's fallen state.
	And a world ruled by the devil.
	The suffering of the virtuous can never end until Jesus returns.
	Well, I am not waiting for that.
	I'm not hoping for that. I'm not praying for that.
	I prefer a bit more of a delineated end point.
	A society that truly devotes itself In action, indeed, to the protection of children as it does in the language, oh, we care about the children, we love the children, the children of the future, blah, blah, blah.
	A society that actually devotes itself to the protection and peaceful raising of children as depicted in my novel The Future.
	Well, that society, that's worth sacrificing for.
	Is it worth sacrificing for A society where your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren would be just as punished for virtue and honesty and truth as you are?
	No! The conception of a voluntary society is so radical and so revolutionary and changes one's motivations so much that one can see why it is constantly slandered and attacked in the mainstream.
	It is To our society, the equivalent for atheists of the second coming, for Christians.
	Second coming, the evildoers are punished and the virtuous are rewarded finally in this life, in this world.
	The virtuous are rewarded finally in this life, in this world.
	They don't have to wait till death for their reward.
	Well, it's the same thing with a voluntary society.
	If you have prevention rather than white-knuckled, jaw-clenched, continual cure, if you have prevention, so much the better.
	If you have diet and exercise rather than daily insulin injections, so much the better.
	If you have don't smoke rather than carve out a cancerous lung, so much the better.
	And if all honesty and virtue does, Is generate another generation of people who get to be honest and virtuous and themselves persecuted and punished and often killed.
	What's the point? It's just a Groundhog Day event of suffering.
	Yeah, give up and go along.
	But that's assuming the state remains at the center of society forever.
	And that's a violation of the non-aggression principle and the property rights and of UPB. So when Solzhenitsyn said the suffering Has a purpose?
	Yes. The suffering sanctifies the satanic flesh that holds a trembling soul from its bow arc to heaven.
	It has a purpose.
	It burns away. It has a purpose like dieting has a purpose.
	It has a purpose like exercise has a purpose.
	Why would you put up with the suffering and diet of exercise?
	Well, so you're healthier and live longer and are happier.
	Why would you put up with the suffering of telling the truth?
	Because if you tell enough truth, not just a little, not just a lot, but almost all of it, if you tell enough truth, the suffering of the truth tellers is replaced by reward forever and ever.
	Amen. Amen. And the triumph of the evildoers is replaced by suffering and rejection and ostracism forever and ever.
	Amen. And this does not require any change in human nature at all.
	It requires for us to actually discover human nature for the first time.
	We're born in zoos, we're raised in zoos, we're punished in zoos, we're caged, we're catastrophized, we're controlled, we're coerced.
	There's no such thing as human nature in the here and now.
	Biologists don't study animals in zoos Or factory farms and think they've learned anything about the true nature of the wild animal?
	No. Human nature has yet to be discovered because it has yet to be liberated from coercion.
	Now you could say, ah, but it's human nature to be coercive, blah blah blah blah blah, except it's not.
	The cost-benefit calculation for coercion is so slanted by the power of the state when you can get a billion dollars by lying or pretending to be a victim Of course it rewards that kind of corruption, but that doesn't happen when people voluntarily control their own resources and you have to ask and provide a case and make a case for the benefit of what you're doing.
	And it is human nature to be free of coercion.
	We are animals, we are tribal to some degree, we are hierarchical to some degree, But society couldn't function if it was human nature to be violent.
	We never would have a society. We'd be living in Elden Ring where everybody tries to kill you all the time.
	Nature red in tooth and claw.
	That's not nature.
	And of course we also know from my work in the Bomb and the Brain series, which you can definitely check out.
	Go to freedomain.com and click on Featured Interviews or go to bombandthebrain.com.
	You can see all the interviews around that.
	That it's violence that begets violence and peace begets peace.
	We know that from human nature.
	Children who are raised peacefully are not violent.
	Children who are raised violently are usually violent.
	Not human nature. It's human nature to adapt to our environment, to adapt.
	We're the most adaptable species on the planet.
	That's why we can live on the equator and the North Pole if we want to.
	The most adaptable species on the planet.
	Our nature is only to be adaptable, which means we can adapt even better to peace than we can to coercion.
	And of course, if it was human nature to be coercive, they wouldn't need to lie about the state all the time and say how it was all for our benefit and we need it and we'd be worse without it.
	You wouldn't need 12 years straight of government propaganda telling you how necessary the government was if it was somehow natural to humanity.
	It's worth it if there's an end point.
	Nobody who's given a week to live spends that time dieting and exercising and visiting the dentist.
	Nobody. Because they will not live to see the benefits.
	But even if you don't live to see the benefits, it's worth doing out of empathy for the future.
	The freedoms that we have now, the freedom to have this kind of conversation, the relative property rights, we still enjoy the relative justice system that is still around.
	Still better than the Soviet one, right?
	Which was checkmark 10 years, right?
	So the peace, the relative peace and security we have now is the result of Of tens of millions of mostly men who did not live to see the society that we have.
	The fruits of their labors which they did not live to see, we enjoy.
	My ancestor, best friends with John Locke, chased all around Ireland by the king's men where he could have been captured, beheaded.
	Exiled. God knows an exile was half a death sentence anyway because it wasn't like those voyages were A plus primo survival land.
	So the benefits that I and you and everyone listening to this have accrued have largely accrued from people who did not live to see the societies that they wanted.
	The founders were significantly against slavery.
	How many of them lived to see the end of slavery?
	Well, none. But it happened.
	So if the freedoms I enjoy are because people made sacrifices to hand me something they never got to see themselves, why on earth wouldn't I make the same sacrifices out of empathy for the future to help bring about a society I will not live to see?
	That's like saying, I so enjoy inheriting all of this lovely money, but I'm going to spend it all and make sure the next generation gets none.
	That would be an act of sublime selfishness.
	And if I enjoy the freedoms, relative freedoms that we have now, given to me by men who sacrifice without seeing it, why on earth wouldn't I do the same if there's an end point?
	If there's an end point. Without voluntarism, there's no end point.
	With voluntarism there is, and that's why it's worth doing.
	Does that give you at least my answer to the question?
	Yes, it does. That was a really great answer.
	And The future, the book you wrote, I think paints that picture really well.
	And what you just said there, to me, it seems like you've just painted a sort of, you've almost provided a framework to make, even if you're not necessarily a Christian or you don't believe in God, It almost gives somebody a framework to make themselves part of something larger than themselves, if that makes sense. Well, we are larger than ourselves, whether we like it or not, because we all partake in universals.
	You and I can think to the edge of the solar system.
	Is that larger than us?
	Yes! Absolutely!
	I don't care how much cheesecake you eat, that's larger than you.
	When we hold numbers in our minds, we are holding eternity and absolutism and infinity in our minds.
	Three is three forever, throughout space and time forever, from the beginning of the universe until the end of time or in a perpetuity and eternity.
	So we are all part of something infinitely larger than ourselves, which are called concepts, ideas, arguments, truths, reason, facts, evidence, whatever you want to call it.
	But the concepts that we are able to generate and retain in our minds are universal and eternal.
	They're not just true today and false tomorrow because if they are then they're not principles.
	So we're all enmeshed and inbounded and absorbed and permeated by infinity and eternity.
	2 plus 2 is 4 is true everywhere in the universe for all time.
	A baby Knowing that a ball that rolls under a couch is still there, when they get object constancy, boom, they have just participated in eternity and infinity.
	It's all weaving through us, you know, like that cheesy old line about the force.
	It surrounds us, it permeates us, whatever it is, right?
	Well, he's not talking about the force, he's talking about concepts, truth, validity, reason.
	So you are, as a human being...
	Both permeated by and generated from universals.
	Why does our life operate?
	Because of universals. Because acid universally dissolves food.
	Because the stomach and the intestines universally absorb nutrients from food that fuel our body.
	Because our lungs work. Because oxygen has its properties and CO2 has its properties.
	And nitrogen has its properties.
	And calories have their properties.
	And protein have their properties.
	It's all universal. The only reason there is life is because of universals.
	And I think the dim conception of that is God.
	That life is generated by a universal.
	It is. The principles of physics, biology, all are why we're here.
	Hell, we wouldn't even be here if we couldn't stick to the ground through gravity.
	It's universal. So we are the product of and almost entirely inhabited by universals.
	This relativism and subjectivism is a weird little cancerous growth that's just occurred over the last little while.
	But we are founded on and alive because of universals and nothing else.
	Well, and horniness from our parents, hopefully.
	So, yes, something larger than ourselves is Everything that we are, everything that we can conceive of, every concept we hold, is infinitely larger than we are.
	It's infinitely larger than we are.
	We are absolutely enmeshed and permeated by absolutes, universals, and eternities.
	And people say, that's God.
	Okay? I think that's a fine way to put it.
	It's an anthropomorphically beautiful way to phrase it.
	Philosophy would say, listen, you're born of and are part of something infinitely larger than yourself, called principles, concepts, and universalities, whether you like it or not, that's just the way things are.
	And you can either honor that and partake of them and participate in them or you can pretend that you've created this tiny little corner of anti-life and anti-science and anti-reason and anti-reality called subjectivism and narcissism and solipsism and all of that.
	And you can say, ah, this is the opposite little opposite land that my 200-pound bulk inhabits and I am not part of the universals and I'm not part of the universe and I'm not part of eternity or infinity.
	Well, that's insane.
	That literally is mental illness.
	To think that you're alive because of the opposite of universal, so to think that your concepts have no requirement for universality if you claim that they're universal.
	Right? I mean, this is a silly thing where racism is so bad, but only white people can be racist.
	It's like, okay, well, you've just created a universal, and then you've created an exception to that universal.
	I mean, I know that's a bit of a parody, but that's how it can play.
	So yeah, something larger than yourself?
	Of course! That's all we are, really.
	I mean, yes, we have our own little personal idiosyncrasies and so on, and that's a little tiny bit of icing on a virtually infinite cake.
	Yes, we have our own little individualities, but you and I are uniting, people listening to this, people in this conversation, we are uniting through language, through concepts, through arguments, through examples, through metaphors, analogies, communication of every syllable and hue and morpheme that can be conceived of.
	And that's where we unite.
	And the ideas that I'm transmitting and your fantastic questions are generating on the fly to some degree is the universals that we can participate in.
	But yeah, we're absolutely bound and created by and permeated by everything that is infinitely larger than ourselves.
	And we can participate in that and we can add to it and we can honor that.
	Or we can be pathetically, myopically selfish, look in the tiniest of mirrors called the individual personality, and take ourself right out of that stream into inconsequential nothingness, which is what awaits those who reject the universal.
	I hope that speech helps at least clarify my position on it.
	Yeah, it does. And I think that...
	Well, I hadn't...
	I've had such a clear view of what you thought about that sort of question or those sorts of questions until now.
	That really helps. I was wondering if I could ask you one more question.
	It's just a quick one. It's more to do with UPB and how to interpret a specific situation.
	Yeah, go for it. You know what I mean?
	I hate to talk UPB, man.
	I hate it every time. No, kidding.
	Go ahead. This is just something also that came from Solzhenitsyn In the Gulag Archipelago, he's talking, and this is I think the third part of the book, he's talking about when they're in the, the political prisoners are in these called special camps, it's all political prisoners, and some, so there's not really any of the criminals anymore.
	And what was going on, and what had been going on forever, up until this point, was that people were informing all the time.
	And since everyone was informing, and you never really knew When you could speak and you had to self-censor all the time, there was no free speech.
	Everyone was completely constrained that way.
	And nothing was ever done up until I think about the early 50s.
	In some of these different camps around the Soviet Union, it all kind of happened around the same time too, oddly enough.
	People started to retaliate against the stool pigeons.
	I think most of the people who began the movement were ex-military men who had been in the war, and they didn't want to put up with what was going on.
	They thought it was a cowardly thing to do, to just let these people inform on their fellow prisoners to reap the rewards of selling out their constituents.
	Sorry to interrupt, but I don't like the word inform.
	Because inform sounds like information.
	It sounds like you're telling something that's true.
	I assume that most of these informings were just lies.
	Yes, I think that was the case.
	In Vietnam, I'm sorry to just jump in for a sec here.
	So in Vietnam, they tried to create this program where they said, oh, if you know somebody who's a Viet Cong spy, you tell us who that person is and we'll take them out.
	Because... The Viet Cong spies and soldiers, they blended in with the population and they used human shields and every dastardly tactic that you could do because they knew they were fighting a Christian nation that would suffer from guilt and all of that.
	So they very quickly found out that When they basically put themselves forward is point at someone and will shoot them, that people who had land disputes, people who thought that their kid wasn't theirs, people who thought that this was the guy who had an affair with their wife, they'd just say, oh yeah, that guy's totally a Viet Cong spy and that guy would get shot.
	So they weren't informing on Viet Cong spies, they were just using the assassination power of the U.S. military to settle scores that had been going on for, I assume, years.
	Quite some time. So Hatfield's a McCoy situation, but with a sort of airstrike capability.
	So the informing, it's usually not a real thing.
	It's just, you know, this guy rejected me, so I'm going to call him a capitalist.
	Or, you know, this woman wouldn't go out with me, so I'm going to say she praised the bourgeoisie in private or whatever, right?
	So I think most of it is just gore-settling.
	And the things that I'm accused of are just not true, not even close to true.
	And I guess that's a mark of my virtue that they have to make up things.
	But yeah, so there is informing.
	I think it's more just betraying.
	But anyway, go on. Oh, yes.
	Thank you. I appreciate the clarification.
	That's a better way to put it because, yes, that's just what happened.
	Nine times out of ten, I think.
	So anyhow, though, so these people would...
	Go to the camp officers and give certain information.
	It might be true, it might not be true.
	Even if they just said some little thing that was seemingly inconsequential, it could be grounds for another five years.
	It's just something so crazy like that or a 1984 sort of thing.
	And what he said started to happen was that people, some of these typically younger military men started to basically make their own knives, gang up And cut the throats of the people who were betraying them.
	Do you mean in the camps?
	Yes, in the camps.
	And they also threatened, when they were put in with the criminals again, they also basically came to an agreement saying, there's more of us than you, and we'll start killing you if you don't leave us alone.
	And they'd never done that before, and so they had this sort of tentative agreement on self-defense grounds.
	But with the informants, the stool pigeons, they started to kill them, and they'd never done that.
	And this was sort of a new thing.
	They've been so cowed for so many years, almost three decades.
	And then this was this brand new movement, and it started to sweep across a lot of these prison camps.
	And this was in the 50s, right?
	Yes, the early 50s, just before Stalin died.
	And do you know why it didn't occur before?
	I do, but I'm just curious if you know.
	I'm not sure why it didn't occur before.
	Oh, because they were soldiers, and the soldiers had been hardened to killing by the Second World War.
	Right. So killing was the solution.
	They were trained killers. They had killed, so that cherry was popped, so to speak.
	So for them to continue killing for a better cause, I assume, than defending communism was probably somewhat easier for them.
	Right. Yes, that makes sense.
	And my question for you with regard to UPV was...
	Is this moral?
	Because it seems to me that in a situation like this, this is more like a preemptive act of self-defense.
	You have this situation where there are these people who are going to make up information about you, who are going to basically threaten your life and your literal well-being with what words they might say about you to this authority figure who is confining you and so in order to save yourself to protect yourself to make your situation better you killed these people and Solzhenitsyn said in his book that you know theoretically it would be nice if they didn't do this without violence if they didn't have to resort to Murdering people in order to achieve a moral end,
	but he made the point quite emphatically that that's all well and good sitting at a warm desk with food and a fire going.
	But in real life, in that situation, that sort of theorizing just wasn't valid for them.
	And when I was thinking about that, it was, well, maybe what they were doing by killing these In form, it's these stool pigeons.
	Is that really murder in sort of first or second degree?
	Is it not more aligned with self-defense?
	I was wondering what you thought about that.
	Are you ready to dislike me now?
	Yeah, go ahead. We were getting along so well.
	And you are a great guy.
	So please don't take this in any particularly harsh way.
	But oh my God.
	So you have...
	Millions of people unjustly incarcerated for thought crimes, right?
	In the gulag, right?
	Oh, in the gulags. I mean, he called it an archipelago because it's like an entire self-contained system of islands.
	So, I can't remember what the population was.
	I think, did it peak at 10 million?
	It was just millions of, mostly men, some women, but millions of Citizens, millions of human beings, captured, tortured, starved, beaten, killed.
	And you want me to apply a UPB analysis to what the prisoners were doing to each other?
	Are you kidding me?
	What the hell? The UPB violation is the gulag!
	Why are you stepping over that?
	I agree with you. I don't care what the prisoners are doing.
	The UPB violation is them being there in the first place.
	That's the UPB violation.
	Because let's say we come to some formulation about the prisoners, we've stepped over the whole reason that they're there in the first place, which is the UPB violation of totalitarianism.
	Why are you poking at the animals rather than looking at the zoo?
	Why are you trying to judge the victims rather than the perpetrators?
	Some people, when they were unjustly imprisoned for 20 years and half starved and half killed and always beaten, some of them turned on each other and some of them betrayed each other because they were starved to death and they were delusional or they were just bad and some people ended up killing them.
	It's like, to try and judge that from a UPB standpoint, to step over the entire point of UPB, which is...
	The structures, the concepts, not the individual actions, the concepts of a totalitarian state, that's the violation of UPB.
	Now, what happens downstream from that massive violation of UPB called totalitarianism is not important.
	It's sort of like this.
	So, you know, I mean, obviously you're well-versed in Russian history, Eastern European history.
	So the Holodomor, right? We won't get into the whole backstory behind it, although it's well worth researching.
	It's the great unsung slaughterhouse of, or unexamined slaughterhouse of the 20th century.
	So Holodomor, right?
	The Russians come in and take all the food to punish the kulaks, to punish the farmers, and also as a consequence of The local party apparatchiks overestimating the crop production and therefore paying in tax virtually the entire crop because they lied about crop production because they themselves didn't want to go to a gulag by accurately estimating it and thus looking a lot lower.
	So you have all of these people who've had all of their food stolen.
	Millions and millions of people, tens of millions of people have had all of their food stolen from them by the state, right?
	And then you're going to say to me, well, you know, can they steal from each other?
	What about cannibalism?
	Can they eat their pets? And it's like, no, no, the UPB is stealing millions, tens of millions of people's food.
	That's the UPB violation.
	What happens after that is relatively inconsequential from a moral standpoint.
	Does this make sense?
	I'm not saying you agree with it, but you at least understand the perspective.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying. The gulag, that's the moral violation.
	That's the UPB violation.
	Now, when you're in a gulag, you're in a state of nature.
	Because you'd never choose to be there at all.
	You're in a state of nature. I don't care what happens.
	I can understand both sides.
	Not wanting to kill, wanting to stay alive by killing the informant.
	But these are trapped, coerced choices, so they're not voluntary.
	It's like, let's say you and I are in an airplane and some evil guy throws us out of the airplane, right?
	And we're going to land in the ocean?
	Now, if you fall from high enough, landing on the water is like landing on concrete, right?
	So you and I, let's say that we both just want to live, which we would, right?
	So you and I, they're thrown out of an airplane and you and I are wrestling.
	And what are we wrestling for?
	One parachute, maybe.
	No, there's no parachute. Who falls first?
	Yeah, that's right. We're wrestling so I'm wrestling so that you're under me, and you're wrestling so that I'm under you when we hit the water, right?
	Now, are we going to take our moral examination to you and I wrestling in midair or to the guy who threw us out of the plane?
	Well, yes, for sure the guy throwing you out of the plane.
	You know, it's like all of the Republicans who are like, oh, public school is just indoctrination and it's so terrible and this, that and the other.
	And it's like, so, but you're still sending your kids to public school so that mommy can work Excel into a PowerPoint presentation.
	Thank you.
	Still want homeschool, so don't really care what you're saying about all these things, right?
	So you're stepping over the torture and enslavement, mass incarceration, Of tens of millions of innocent people.
	And you're trying to unravel UPB complications from people already trapped in a state of coercion that is the result of a UPB violation called the USSR. You've got to step back And stop trying to examine the ethics of people trapped in a coercive situation and look at who put them there and what put them there.
	That's what we've got to focus on.
	Not the victims and the infighting among the victims, but the entire structure that put them there.
	That makes sense.
	I definitely agree with you that there's certainly an order of priorities.
	But doesn't what you're saying somewhat take away from the responsibility of people already under duress?
	No, no, but philosophy is about prevention, not cure.
	Philosophy is about preventing dictatorships from coming into being.
	Once dictatorships are already in Philosophy doesn't have much to say.
	I'll give you a sort of analogy, right?
	It's very brief. A nutritionist tells you what to eat, but that assumes you have a choice.
	Now, is there a lot of nutritional advice given to prisoners in prison?
	No. Well, why not?
	The principles of nutrition still exist.
	Why wouldn't you give prisoners advice on what to eat? - Well, I don't know.
	What's the point? Well, they have no choice about what they eat, right?
	You just get your prison slop.
	Now, again, I know you can get things from the infirmary or whatever you call it, the little tuck shop we used to call it in boarding school.
	But in general, there's no point giving nutrition and nutritional advice and information to prisoners who can't choose what they eat.
	That would be kind of cruel, right?
	To say, well, you know, you probably should mix up a little bit more protein with your carbs when he's getting in a gulag, you know, potato soup with cockroaches, right?
	So, do you see where I'm coming from?
	Nutrition is for when people have a choice.
	Nutrition is not for when people have no choice.
	Now, the people who were in the gulag, they didn't want to be there.
	How do we know that? Barbed wire, electric fences...
	And guns and sniper towers, right?
	They didn't want to be there. So giving them moral quandaries, moral questions, moral choices in a situation that's already taken all their choices from them or almost all their choices from them.
	The only nutritional advice you could possibly give to a prisoner is eat or don't eat, not what to eat.
	That's the only thing. It's binary. So Giving a moral evaluation to people already in a state of crippling coercion is like trying to give nutritional advice to prisoners who have no control over their diet.
	I don't care to morally evaluate people in a state of coercion.
	I care to morally evaluate that they're in a state of coercion But once they're in a state of coercion, the moral evaluation can only focus on the fact that they're being coerced and not the choices that they are forced to make in a state of coercion.
	I wouldn't morally judge you for trying to put me on the bottom of falling out of a plane into the ocean.
	I hope that people wouldn't objectively evaluate me.
	It's like, no, the moral problem is the person who tossed us out of the plane.
	Assuming we weren't communists and he wasn't Pinochet, I mean, to make a joke, right?
	So taking a moral analysis to people who were in a state of coercion is to confuse lovemaking with rape.
	To somewhat counter that, Yeah, yeah, go for it. If you're...
	So Solzhenitsyn also talked lots about the arrests, when people were arrested for no reason, interrogated, and ideally you confessed whatever they wanted to confess to and get it over with as quickly as possible because it's inevitable.
	And that's all quite understandable that just trying to withstand torture was pretty pointless.
	You're going to go anyways.
	You weren't going to achieve anything.
	You know, anything apart from what you might otherwise believe in a religious sense.
	But then the big problem arises in that most of the time it's not just you that you have to worry about.
	It's everyone you know.
	And so you're in this state of torture.
	You're being tortured. You're confined.
	You're, you know, having all these horrible things done to you.
	You're starved. You're sleepless.
	And now these people who are You know, violating UPP or doing these horrible things to you don't just want to hurt you and put you in prison, but they want to put your family, your kids, everyone you know, your friends away too.
	And so isn't there a pretty big dilemma there where if you're already in this state of confinement and abuse, that if you don't really have any moral responsibility because you're You know, you've had these people put you in this position.
	Doesn't that ultimately lead to a situation where everything just gets much, much worse because Now you're going to make it easier for yourself.
	You're going to inform on everyone.
	You're going to lie. You're going to do everything you can and even drag as many people along with you.
	And a lot of people did that. You're going to lie?
	Sorry. I'm still trying to...
	Okay, listen. We've got to go back to your parents here because there's something kind of odd about this kind of moral thinking.
	And again, I'm sorry if I'm wrong.
	And I'm just telling you sort of my instincts.
	Okay? So you're looking at...
	You're focusing on...
	Morally judging people who are being tortured, and you're doing that more than you're doing the torturer, right?
	Well, no, no.
	To be clear, I totally agree with you which comes first, which is the priority, which is essential to talk about, to negate the whole fact that there is somebody being tortured, that that's the ultimate evil.
	But, you know, these things actually do happen and are happening around the world even today, and there is...
	The strong case to make that the people who are under duress and being tortured also have, you know, they do have a responsibility to some degree to try to act in a way that doesn't drag other people along with it, to try to put somewhat of a stop to the whole process.
	Do you see where I'm coming from a little bit?
	What do you mean put a stop to the whole process?
	Do you think it was people not complying with torture that ended the Soviet Union?
	Well, that was, to a degree, that was Solzhenitsyn's, not necessarily that particular, but that was one of his conclusions, that it was individual acts of resistance against the system that really put sand in the gears, years and that if everyone had the courage of just a few people that he knew that the whole system would have collapsed much earlier.
	Well, I think that we could have a long conversation about the reasons for the fall of the Soviet I wouldn't put non-compliance with torture as central to that.
	Because that's saying that, wow, you know, those Russians were totally brave at not complying with torture, but those Chinese people who still have a Communist Party, adult chickens, which is not the case, right?
	Chinese people, I mean, I saw this in Hong Kong, extraordinarily brave.
	So as far as the...
	Because then everyone who's had a dictatorship that's lasted for any length of time is, what, somewhat morally culpable because they didn't resist as much as the Russians did?
	I don't know. I mean, I'm not...
	I'm just... I find the question quite perplexing.
	This is kind of what he came...
	This is kind of his conclusion.
	And he said, also, quite emphatically, that he's not judging people who...
	Didn't stand up at all.
	Because they were, like you say, in a state of confinement.
	They had really no choice in the matter.
	They had already been aggressed against.
	There was little they could do. But his point, which really stuck out to me, was that the people who did stand up and who did, you know, lots of them died for it, did make quite an impact.
	How do you know they made quite an impact?
	I'm not saying they didn't. I'm just curious how you know, because that's a big statement to make, right?
	Because you understand that if you don't confess, they'll just falsify your confession.
	They'll just drug you and move your hand to sign the confession, right?
	I mean, it's not like there's some big moral rule where they say, well, you know, he didn't actually confess, so I guess we're not going to go after any of his family.
	If they want to get your family, they just fake it, right?
	Yes, and that is what happened.
	So the non-compliance didn't protect your family because they'll just fake it?
	I mean, they prefer it if you confess, but if not, they'll just get it out of you or fake it out of you or whatever, right?
	Yes, that's true.
	Maybe one example would be, and I just want to be clear, this isn't my conclusion in particular.
	I'm just trying to understand what Solzhenitsyn was saying about the whole thing.
	I'm trying to understand it better.
	I guess one example would be with the show trials they had in the 30s and the late 20s.
	A lot of them didn't work at all as planned and apparently a lot of people even in the newspapers could tell that it was a show trial and it discredited the legal system quite a bit because some people wouldn't go along with saying the words they wanted them to say And then they had to call up the trial and do it again and then so on and so forth.
	Or some people would do it in a way that was so wooden and broken that clearly they'd been tortured.
	Right. And then some people wouldn't be part of it at all and they died under torture and this really discredited the whole show trial.
	So this was in the 1950s?
	This was more in the 30s and the 20s.
	Okay, so we've got another half century to go, and you're saying that some people not complying in the 1920s and the 1930s brought 50 years later the whole system down?
	That's a pretty lengthy thread you've got running there, brother.
	Not so much that their actions had much to do with the fall of the Union, but that...
	Those individuals did make a very small impact in the immediate time around them.
	I know it's a big statement, but if more people had acted with that sort of mentality, I'd refuse to comply that the whole system might have collapsed earlier.
	I'm still curious why you're blaming the victims, in a sense.
	Now, I know you say you're not blaming, but you're saying there's moral responsibility, so you are holding them accountable in some manner.
	Okay.
	How were your parents with you when you were growing up?
	They were – I've actually talked to you, by the way.
	I did do a call-in with you.
	I did a call-in. You know the really long one you recently posted?
	It was my girlfriend and I. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, yeah, yeah. Saving my girlfriend from her family, right?
	Right. Okay. Okay.
	So, jumping over the abuse of those in authority to focus on the choices of the victims is not a totally unknown phenomenon to you.
	Yes.
	And I'm just saying that I'm curious, why you are focusing your emotional efforts on trying to untangle the brutalized and coerced choices of victims rather than just roundly condemn the victimizers.
	Listen, we could go all the way back if you want and say, okay, well, why did the Soviet Union come about?
	Well, the Soviet Union came about because Americans let the government take over the school system in the 1860s, right?
	Americans let the government take over the school system.
	The kids ended up bonding with the state and being far more statists and lost their skepticism of state power to a large degree.
	Okay, so because they lost their skepticism of state power, it was easier for the government to bamboozle them into entering World War I. Now because America entered World War I, the Germans funded Lenin to go through Finland to Russia To start a revolution to take Russia out of the war.
	So the reason that they were gulags is because Americans didn't resist the government takeover of the educational system.
	I mean, you can certainly make a case for that causality.
	Can you prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt?
	No, but we're talking civil, not criminal here, right?
	So I'm just not sure where you would...
	Stop. And of course, Solzhenitsyn mused about this as well, where he said, you know, when they'd come for you in the middle of the night, how come nobody just hit them with bricks or, you know, like, why did people just comply and all of that?
	So Solzhenitsyn himself, looking and questioning the victims and saying, how could we let this happen?
	But it will always happen.
	That's why I'm a voluntarist.
	It will always happen.
	It's like saying, well, boy, why was there 150,000 years of human slavery?
	Why didn't the slave just rise up and revolt and this and that and the other?
	It's because the state enforces slavery and the state generally wins and the state generally becomes more corrupt.
	This is kind of Roman speech from the future, my book.
	So it will always happen.
	The point for me is to have a society where people don't end up having to make these terrible choices.
	Is it morally okay to eat your dead child if you're starving to death?
	Well, how about we have a system where people don't end up facing that choice?
	It's the Sophie's Choice question.
	Which kid do you choose? Well, how about we have a system where you don't have to make those choices?
	Now, you focusing on people coerced into a blood-stained corner Trying to figure out whether it's kill or be killed.
	Do you kill the informant or not?
	Do you eat the child who died?
	You're focusing on those moral issues and I'm trying to shift your perspective to say prevention is better than cure.
	And you're trying to say how to be moral in an immoral situation.
	And I'm saying how about we have a moral situation where you don't have to make those choices.
	I understand. I don't disagree at all with that.
	All that I would add, just to clarify why I guess I'm interested with this, is because, well, it happened.
	And it does continue to happen in places like North Korea.
	And I guess, like you said, philosophy is about prevention.
	And I am a voluntarist, particularly because of listening to you, I think.
	And I really appreciate what you're saying here.
	But what I guess interests me also is...
	Not just prevention, but getting out of the situation too.
	In North Korea, it's basically 1984 right there, right now.
	I guess it just interests me.
	How can they get out of that situation?
	I get that you're not going to jump to a volunteerist society right away, but you could maybe ease into something more like China has or Cambodia or something like that.
	Not that that's optimal, but It's better than what they have.
	And that's just what I'm kind of interested in.
	How do you go from a horrible place to a little bit less bad?
	Because you can't just go right to a volunteer society right away, right?
	Like you said, it takes time.
	And I'm interested, I guess...
	Well, but that's the peaceful parenting argument, right?
	That's the peaceful parenting argument, that we promote peaceful parenting, and we raise children who are not...
	Ground down by and used to and speak the language of coercion and that spreads throughout society and you don't need as much of a state when you have fewer criminals.
	You have fewer criminals when you have peaceful parents and you have people who are less obedient to authority automatically and are more skeptical and curious about the nature and purpose of authority.
	That's the goal.
	Now, how does that work in North Korea?
	No idea. I have no idea.
	And I can't...
	What, am I going to go preach peaceful parenting in North Korea?
	I don't think so. And it's really terrible what's happening, obviously, beyond terrible.
	It's the largest open-air human slave camp in the entire world.
	It's terrible what's happening in North Korea.
	So you work to affect what you can in the best and most positive way that you can.
	How are they going to get out of it?
	I don't know. I mean, we can look historically and we'd say, of course, well, socialist economies don't work in the long run, right?
	There's no efficient price allocation and no efficient capital allocation and so they just decay and fall apart and so on and I think that was mostly what had to do with the fall of the Soviet Union was simply the lack of productivity in the So how do they get out?
	Well, I mean, either the system collapses, as it did in the Soviet Union, And, you know, other of the satellite countries, East Germany and so on.
	Either the system collapses and there just has to be something new, or I don't want to put any onus upon the citizens, the victims, right?
	I mean, they live in a terrifying situation there.
	I mean, you look at South Korea, you look at North Korea, it's heaven and hell as far as those societies go.
	And I don't want to sit there and say, well, boy, if they'd only resisted more, if only they'd pushed back more and so on.
	Because also by now, I mean, the entire emotional state of the country has been corrupted, right?
	People have lived in fear for so long.
	People have lived in rage for so long.
	People have, you know, one of the ways that people are held down, you know this, I'm sure, but just to remind other people, one of the ways that people are really held down is you make them do terrible things and then they feel guilty about it.
	And this is why I'm, in a sense, fighting you so hard on this You know, Sophie's choice.
	So she had to choose a child, right?
	To survive. And then she was so guilty about that.
	There was death, suicidality.
	Well, I mean, all that. Was it William Styron?
	All of his suicides in his book.
	He wrote a book called Darkness Visible about his own crushing depression.
	And I would sit there with the woman, Meryl Streep's character, and I would say it's unbelievably awful what you went through and you have no moral responsibility for it whatsoever.
	The moral responsibility... Are on the guards forcing you to make this choice.
	That I focus on that UPB violation.
	What you do to survive a universal UPB violation, I don't care about.
	If the whole region is starving because the Russians took all of your military for their army, I don't care if you steal a loaf of bread to survive.
	I don't care if you hoard food from your neighbors.
	I don't care if you refuse to be charitable.
	That's not important to me.
	What matters is that your entire food supply was stolen from you at gunpoint.
	What you do after that is not of moral consequence and I would neither praise people for doing the quote right thing nor condemn people for doing the quote wrong thing because they're in a state of nature at that point.
	It's almost in a sense like getting mad at lions for eating the weakest gazelles.
	Like, come on, give them a chance.
	That's not sporting. That's not fair.
	No, they're just hungry. You strip people down to that animal state because of massive UPB violations.
	I would say it's almost an insult to give the moral responsibility in a situation that no sane human being would ever choose to be a part of or have anything to do with whatsoever.
	No parent wants a gun put in their face and asked to choose a child to live or die.
	So my concern, again, whether it's right or wrong, I don't know.
	I have a sense. But my concern is that You are, in a sense, complying with the dictates of power by stepping over the moral and UPB violations of the rulers and focusing on the extremities that the victims have to perform in order to survive, or not survive. Whether you choose to let the informant inform on you and get yourself tortured and killed, or another 10-year sentence or whatever, or whether you choose to kill that guy.
	I mean, the whole situation is entirely immoral, and that's what I would focus on.
	What people do when they have the guns pointed at them is much less important to me than the fact that the guns are pointed at them.
	Right.
	I do agree with you there for sure.
	Would you accept the idea, though, that from the Christian point of view, what you do when the guns point at you would still matter?
	Because... Well, it isn't every action...
	No, but I can't...
	Sorry to interrupt. I can't give anyone heaven.
	So it does matter because you've got a heaven choice.
	You've got a heaven possibility, right?
	Yes. But as an atheist, I can't offer anybody a ticket to ride that way.
	So... You can be free...
	In the Christian paradigm, from a prison by dying.
	But you can't be free in the atheist paradigm from a prison by dying.
	You can be better off in the Christian tradition or the Christian belief system by dying for your beliefs in a prison.
	Now, from an atheist standpoint, you know, there is that it's better to live on your feet It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
	I get all of that, and that's a fair amount of noise that people make about all that, and there's a few people who will take that approach, but the vast majority of people don't, which is why institutional coercion works so well, because we're mammals and we want to survive to reproduce and this, that, and the other, and I get all of that, and I'm not going to say that that's particularly terrible, but what happens where the gun is pointed is...
	So unimportant to me relative to the fact that someone's pointing a gun.
	You say, ah, well, does it matter?
	It's like, but what matters more?
	How someone reacts to a gun pointed at them or the fact that someone's unjustly pointing a gun at someone?
	I mean, if somebody, like, should you fight a mugger or should you give him your wallet?
	Well, if you fight him, then you're reducing the value of him being a Mugger and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, no, I care that the mugger has a gun and it's pointing it at you to take your property.
	What you do as a result of that, it's a strange focus to me that you would focus on what someone does with a gun in their face and what the right thing to do is with a gun in your face.
	kind of jumping over the fact that someone's putting a gun in someone else's face.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	I see where you're coming from.
	Thank you.
	I'm going to consider why I'm so interested in that.
	Yeah, because the best way to not have these moral quandaries come up is to keep the gun out of people's faces, and we do that through promotion of the non-aggression principle and UPB and peaceful parenting, all those kinds of things, right?
	Prevention is infinitely better than cure.
	When I was a kid, right? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
	So I would say that we're still in an environment where we can speak truth and keep people away from these kinds of decisions.
	I mean, we may not have forever to do that, but I think we've got a fair good old time to do that, right?
	So that's where I would focus on.
	And drawing people's attention to the moral quandaries faced by people in a Soviet gulag, I think is saying that Morality is something that is unimportant to the present because we're not in Soviet gulags.
	We don't face those kinds of choices at the moment.
	And I think by focusing people's moral energies on that, you're kind of depleting them from the moral enthusiasm they need to promote something like peaceful parenting by saying, well, the real purpose of morality is decisions people had to make in Vladivostok in 1952.
	Like, no, no, no, that...
	The purpose of morality is how you can promote virtue in the here and now.
	And these ethics of emergencies, right?
	So it's called the ethics of emergencies, right?
	Someone's hanging from a flagpole.
	Can they kick in a window and invade somebody's property to survive?
	Ethics of emergencies. Well, it's saying that morality is most importantly focused on whether you're hanging from a flagpole or not.
	No. Morality is will you tell the truth and take some scorn and rejection for the sake of promoting Peace and virtue and non-aggression in the here and now, right now.
	Not Vladivostok in 1952, not Moscow in 1928, not Ukraine in 1933, but right here, right now, tomorrow, today, tonight, now.
	And by dragging people to these wild circumstances that I agree happened Countless times throughout history are happening countless times across the world right now, but it's not where people in the West are living yet, and hopefully never if we have anything to say about it, those of us who promote peace and reason.
	But I think you're taking people's attention away from a moral objective they can actually achieve, which is the promotion of virtue in the here and now, and getting them to think that morality is about whether you kill an informant in 1952 in Vladivostok.
	You understand? You're leading people away from Their power as moralists and their choice to promote virtue in the here and now by saying, well, there are these impossible to answer situations from 60 years ago.
	Let's focus on those.
	It's a distraction and it's enervating.
	It de-energizes people by pulling them away from their lives and what they can do to promote virtue in the here and now.
	And I'm concerned that you're dragging people to a wasteland rather than having them plant their crops where they live.
	Well, thank you very much for the talk, Stefan.
	I really appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thank you for, I mean, it's great to chat with you again.
	I'm awfully sorry if I don't immediately recognize voices.
	I have done thousands of these, and it's not that every single one is super important, so I'm really, really sorry for that.
	I certainly recognize it now.
	Maybe you were using a different mic.
	No, I've just given myself an excuse there.
	So, listen, it's really great to chat with you again, and I'm glad that we had that call, and at some point, not right now, but at some point, you can Drop me a line or give me a shout.
	Let me know how things are going. And I know that the entire community was behind you guys and massive sympathies and props to everyone there.
	And thank you again for everyone for listening tonight.
	A great pleasure to have these conversations.
	My God, they're amazing.
	And thank you so much to this listener tonight for just some truly scintillating and great and deep questions that I think hopefully brought out the best in both of us.
	Have yourselves a wonderful evening.
	I will speak to you for sure, 11 a.m.
	on Sunday, particularly for my European friends, my British friends, fredomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	Free books. You've got almostnovel.com.
	You've got justpoornovel.com.
	You've got fdrurl.com slash tgoa, fredomain.com slash donate.
	Thanks, everyone. Lots of love from Apaya.

▲