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Sept. 24, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:47:53

The Philosophy of the Golden Rule! Freedomain Livestream

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	Well, good evening. Well, it's Friday night, the 23rd of September, 2022.
	And let me tell you this.
	The sun is going down, yea, verily, as we speak.
	Not just in the world as a whole, but the sun is going down on year 55 of my existence.
	And that's a pretty wild thing, let me tell you.
	If you're older, I'm sure you understand what a passage it is.
	And I remember... And if you're younger, it's an unimaginable passage in the future.
	But trust me, time marches on.
	Time moves along.
	Time stops for no man.
	And we're all part of the bicycle chain, the escalator of renewal and life and death and renewal and life and death.
	And yeah, it's here.
	And it's funny because I remember when I was a kid, There were these ads all over the place on TV, Freedom 55, that you could retire at 55.
	The very idea of retiring is a nightmare to me because there is so much work still to be done in the realm of philosophy with you glorious, glorious people.
	So yeah, I will be at 6 p.m.
	tomorrow. And it's funny because I was born on a Saturday at 6 p.m.
	and I will be 56 years old at 6 p.m.
	Tomorrow night, the 24th of September, 2022.
	Pretty wild stuff. And it's a glorious thing getting older, let me tell you.
	It is a glorious, beautiful, wonderful, magical, heaven-sent beauty of an experience to get older.
	Because... Yeah, my little creakier tiny bit.
	Although, you know, I can still do a pretty good hour or more sometimes of racket sports.
	So I'm pretty fit, pretty healthy.
	And, you know, after the old cancer thing of some years back, every single year is an absolute, complete, and total blessing.
	That's the one thing. I'm not glad I had it, but I'm sure glad about the effects, which is to never complain a damn thing about getting older, because no matter what you think about getting older, It sure, sure, sure beats the alternative.
	But enough waxing for me.
	Luke, if you want to unmute, you had a question, comment, issue.
	What is on your mind, my friend?
	Yeah, I wanted to talk about the golden rule.
	He who has the gold makes the rules, or the other one?
	The other one, the biblical one.
	Hit me. Back in your...
	Your show talking about Confucius, you were talking about the Golden Rule and how it can be abused by evildoers to kind of take advantage of people that are immoral.
	And so they would take advantage of them because they would treat others nicely, but they wouldn't reciprocate the niceness by treating them nicely in return.
	So, um... Sorry, could you just break down that criticism of mine?
	I just want to make sure we're on the same page a little more.
	Sure. So you're describing a...
	I think you said a sociopath who has no problem doing evils and, um...
	And say he was a boxer, and he has no problem getting punched or punching others.
	And there was a really nice guy, and the really nice guy who, let's say, I think you were saying he had no arms.
	And so the sociopath, who has no problem entering a boxing match, would...
	Would be following the golden rule to get into a boxing match with this nice guy who had no arms.
	And then he could just beat the other guy up and not break the golden rule.
	Do you follow? Yes, I think that's fairly close.
	Yeah, go ahead. Okay.
	So, I wanted to push back on that a little bit as a Christian myself.
	And I think that's not how the Bible...
	That's not what Jesus meant by the golden rule.
	I think we have to interpret that verse in the context of the rest of the Bible.
	For example, loving your enemies, loving your neighbor as yourself, praying for those who persecute you.
	So what you say your definition of love is the response to virtue if you're virtuous, right?
	I might be missing a word in there.
	But I'd say that's more of a response, well, of course.
	But I think a Christian definition of love would have more to do with an initiation, an actual action, rather than a feeling or an admiration or a response.
	And I might put forward the Christian or the biblical definition of love Would be to do what's best for someone or do what...
	If someone was going to love someone, they would do what they could personally...
	They would do what would benefit the other person the most that they could do.
	Does that make sense? I mean, I certainly understand the argument that you would want to do the best for the other person, but keep going.
	Okay, and so the golden rule would involve loving the other person.
	So if you're going to love the other person, you're not going to let them continue in unrepentant sin.
	And I believe it's Matthew 12 which gives the process of how to deal with a brother who is in unrepentant sin.
	Okay. And so basically, to sum it up in a sentence, you basically defood them from the whole community.
	You ostracize them. That's the biblical process.
	After a few rounds of trying to ask them to repent and show them their sin.
	And if they still don't repent, then you treat them as a Gentile, as it says.
	The medical analogy would be, if your finger gets infected, you try to treat it with antibiotics, but after a certain amount of time, if it's not responding, then you've just got to cut it off, right?
	Right, right. And so it would not be the most loving thing to let someone defraud you over and over or sin against you over and over, but it would be the most loving thing to not enable them, right, to ostracize them.
	That would be under the biblical definition of love, and it would not...
	And so you have to interpret the golden rule within that context, right?
	I would also say, sorry to interrupt, but I've said this with regards to my own mother, that being in the presence of me, this sounds bad, but let me just explain it for a second.
	So me being in her presence brings out the worst in her because she can't resist the temptation to leverage her historical power over me, who, not me personally, but just because I was her child.
	And so removing myself from her environment or removing her from my environment is a way to ensure that she falls prey to less temptation to do wrong, if that makes sense.
	I mean, if you're wealthier than your brother and your brother keeps doing bad things to try and get money to compete with you, then you being in the presence of your brother is kind of simulating the worst in him, not because of what you do, but just because it's some people can't resist the temptation.
	It's right in front of them.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so keep going.
	Yeah, it's great stuff.
	Right, so I think the golden rule...
	So I think...
	The problems that you were having with it is that you were saying the problem is when you create a rule and accept yourself, right?
	And so governments accept themselves from rules.
	Parents accept themselves from rules.
	No, no, sorry. No, that's not my issue with the golden rule.
	I mean, because if you exempt yourself, then you're not following the golden rule.
	So that's not my issue with the golden rule.
	But I can explain more.
	But if there's something else you wanted to make.
	No, no. Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, so one of the challenges that, let's say, a materialist like myself versus a Christian...
	Sorry, that sounds more oppositional than I mean it to be.
	But one of the challenges is that I accept, or I sort of have absorbed the science, and I'm sure you've read about it too, that there's a couple of percentage of the people in the world who have no functioning conscience.
	Now, for a Christian, because the soul is put in there by God, then you can always have access to a conscience.
	You have to pray, you have to reflect, and because the soul can't be stripped from your body, and the soul is the seat of the conscience, there are people who don't seem to have a conscience, but they do have a conscience deep down.
	And tell me if I've sort of misstated the Christian position.
	You mean like mentally handicapped people or babies?
	What do you mean by someone who doesn't have a conscience?
	Well, a sociopath. Okay.
	Yeah, that sounds fair.
	I don't have any objections.
	I mean, so there's a phrase, I believe it's in the book of Romans, where sometimes people sin so much and they shut their conscience so much that it says their consciences are seared, that there's just no coming back.
	Their conscience is...
	Sorry, was the word seared?
	Yes. And so there's no coming back for them, kind of, because they've gone so far...
	They've just shut their conscience off, and there's no coming back.
	I believe it's Romans 1, if you want to look into it.
	Right. Now, the sort of the etiology of the sociopath tends not to be, oh, I've sinned so much.
	It tends to be being on the receiving end of such unbelievably brutal abuse as a child that the conscience fails to develop, right?
	So empathy is... I did a whole interview with Sacha Baron Cohen's cousin or something like this many years ago.
	And empathy is something that requires the coordination of 13 disparate brain systems.
	And there's a certain phase that you need to have mirroring and skin contact, eye contact, and so on.
	And over the course of your development from babyhood to being a toddler.
	And if you don't get that or if you get significant abuse or whatever, and it can be sort of physical damage if your mother was a drug addict or an alcoholic or whatever, but there's a development of empathy that is necessary, or there's certain conditions that are but there's a development of empathy that is necessary, or there's certain conditions that are necessary And if children really don't get that, they don't really end up with empathy.
	Now, from there, they can do some pretty cold and cruel and, I guess we would say, evil things.
	But it's not like we all start off with empathy automatically, but if we sin too much, we end up without empathy.
	I think, at least the way I understand its development, is more like if you experience horrible levels of child abuse or neglect, then you...
	Don't have empathy.
	And as a result, you'll do things which many people would consider cruel.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	So it wouldn't be a punishment for sinning.
	It would be like something else.
	Like under Ceausescu's realm, when abortion was outlawed, there were a lot of babies.
	I think it was over 100,000 babies that were born.
	The mothers didn't want them, and they just dumped them in the state orphanages where they sat in cribs, washing old CDs or, I guess, old VCR tapes of the Lion King sort of over and over again.
	And their physical needs were taken care of.
	They were fed.
	They were warm enough.
	They had enough liquid.
	But they were almost never or very rarely played with.
	And, I mean, most of them ended up with these horrible conditions of lack of empathy.
	And some of them were adopted into France in particular.
	I'm not sure exactly why. And, you know, when they got older, they would, like, torture animals and rage against...
	Step-siblings, and they actually had to create these rage rooms where the kids would sort of stay and just tear everything up, and nobody knew how to fix this sort of thing.
	I think it's not the result of sin.
	If it's the result of sin, it's the result of sin on the part of the caregivers, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense. I'd say what Roman is talking about is a different kind of person.
	It's not the same sociopath.
	Sorry, what do you mean? So let me give you an example for what I was referring to as someone whose conscience is seared.
	So what I believe the text means is that, say there's, at the first time you do a particular sin, for example, promiscuity, sleeping with someone you're not married to.
	The first time, you might feel really guilty about it.
	You might feel like, man, I shouldn't be doing this.
	I don't know. You have all these doubts.
	If you're a Christian, you know the Bible verses.
	Thou shalt not commit adultery.
	You're laid in with guilt, and then you do the sin.
	And then the next time, you feel guilt, but then you sleep with another person.
	And then by the time you've slept with dozens of people, you feel no guilt.
	Your conscience is seared.
	You have shut off your conscience, walled it up, and it's dead and gone until, you know, unless...
	In the normal course of things, there's no coming back from it.
	That's what I was referring to by a seared conscience.
	Does that make sense? It does.
	Now, if you have some revelation or if you have a particularly good priest or brother in Christ who's able to reawaken your conscience, it's still there but buried or latent?
	Could that happen?
	Yes, I would say it could happen.
	It's not expected to, but yes, it could.
	Right, okay. Now, and so that's what I mean when I say, so the conscience is there for everyone, but you can sort of blow it up or burn it out or whatever, but it's still there in a latent form.
	And again, my understanding, I'm no psychologist, but my understanding of the literature is that sociopathy occurs when Empathy doesn't develop in a human being.
	And what happens is you simply don't get it and nobody knows how to get it to you later.
	It's sort of like language development, like there's a certain window in language development, sort of the age of four to eight or nine.
	And if you don't get exposed to language, you know, these occasional raised by wolves, you know, kids in the wilderness or whatever, then you just never really learn language properly.
	And so, for me, the question of the golden rule is there are people in this world unburdened by a conscience.
	And we can, like, in the Christian view, it's like, okay, so I accept what you're saying, that you can burn out your conscience, but that's the result of your own sin, or in a sense, the loss of your conscience is punishment for the sin.
	Right? But in the development of the psyche, people don't develop a conscience for things that aren't their fault.
	So, was it Nicholas Cruz or something?
	I was reading an article on him recently, just like his mother was a drug addict and he was abandoned and he was born addicted to drugs and she drank a lot.
	I mean, you could really almost say the kid didn't really have...
	I mean, he had a pretty rough start of it, and how much he could have overcome through willpower and so on, I don't know, and we'll probably never know.
	So, the golden rule, I don't know if you've ever faced down someone who doesn't have a conscience.
	I mean, this is sort of a personal question.
	and you obviously answer or don't answer as you see fit.
	But have you ever had a conflict or faced down someone or been a significant tangle with somebody who seems to lack conscience?
	I don't suppose lacks conscience.
	I've known people who lie over and over, but I think he had a conscience, so I suppose no.
	Right. I've been in a lot of tangles with people who don't have a conscience, and I honestly beat straight up, I feel crippled.
	I feel I'm not only fighting with one hand tied behind my back, I'm blindfolded and my legs are tied together too.
	And they're, you know, full-on ninja.
	They can down-surfer and do anything, right?
	I mean, if you look at the people who oppose me, the idea that I would just sit there and go through thousands of hours of someone's material until I could find that one thing that I could take completely out of context and then spread that as a complete lie in order to destroy a reputation, like this would not occur to me.
	And yet, you know, we know from not just me, but lots of other people, and obviously, although we're back to heroes like Jesus and Socrates themselves, that this is how some people fight.
	They don't care about the truth. They don't care about the facts.
	They only care about winning. And they have no interest in—they don't care about scruples.
	They don't care about, oh, gosh, well, you know, that would be a wrong thing to do.
	Thou shalt not bear false witness or whatever, right?
	And, you know, they will spread lies, they will use violence if necessary, they will just do appalling things.
	And when you are in conflict with people like that, I mean, it's always the question, right?
	Do you adopt the strategies of people you're in conflict with?
	If you're in a boxing match, or let's say that you're in some It's a schoolyard fight, right?
	And ahead of time you say, okay, let's not hit in the face, right?
	And then you do your dust up and it's relatively civilized, but then you start to win and then the other guy starts punching you in the face.
	What do you do? And let's say he's got you kind of pinned down and the only way you're either going to lose or you're going to punch him back in the face.
	So he's broken the rules and what's your response to that?
	So if you've been in conflict with people who don't seem to have a conscience, and I saw this with my own mother when confronting her about the abuses that she'd inflicted upon me as an innocent child.
	I mean, it was really, really chilling.
	It really was like I understand the sort of bone-chilling concept of demonic presence or demonology and so on, because I could see her just doing this calculation.
	What can I get away with?
	What can I fog him on?
	How can I get out of this without losing?
	There was no sense of like, gosh, he's really suffering, or I did something wrong, or maybe I should apologize.
	There was absolutely like zero, zero, zero indications of any conscience.
	Whatsoever. It was simply this calculation of, okay, well, if I admit this much, he can't really get me on that, but then I'm going to have to fog on that.
	It was all just a calculation of victory in the moment, rather than any sense of harm done to another human.
	Now, to give my mother some sympathy and props, I mean, she was She grew up in World War II in Germany, and the entire world was exploding, and her mother was killed in the bombings of Dresden.
	So, I mean, she had it really, really rough growing up.
	So, the golden rule is fine if everyone has a conscience.
	I think it's not only fine, I think it's great, I think it's wonderful.
	And I think this is where Christianity and I have some parting of the ways, whether rightly or wrongly, but for me, there's a couple of percentage, and this is pretty well borne out by science, a couple of percentage of people, they have no conscience.
	And not only do they have no conscience, they don't even really understand what it is.
	They can imitate it a little bit, you know, but that's like a...
	An actor playing a doctor on television isn't actually a doctor.
	He can just pretend to be one, but all the cutting has to be off camera and he could never do an actual operation, right?
	He's just pretending to be one. So they can pretend to have a conscience in a way if that helps get them what they want.
	They can even summon tears of sadness if need be if that helps them get what they want, but they don't have a conscience.
	And it's not because they've sinned.
	It's because they were sinned against and they can't reconnect with it because it's not there.
	It's like saying to someone, well, if I talk to you about somebody who's lost an arm, and you talk to them and say, well, if I talk to you enough about your arm, you can regrow one.
	And, of course, that can't happen, right?
	That can't happen. It's not a psychosomatic issue, right?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I don't think the whole goal of the Golden Rule is to bring the person to faith or convert them or something.
	No, I agree with that. Sorry, I didn't quite get to the end of my point and then it's all yours.
	Oh, I'm sorry. So my point is, if somebody is putting forward the Golden Rule...
	It's like me saying to someone, I know for sure they're never going to hit me in the face, right?
	I get into a fistfight. They're never going to hit me in the face.
	And then I say, let's just do whatever we can to win.
	Now, I know that I'll do anything, bite, scratch, tear, like poke in the eye.
	I'll do anything to win because it doesn't bother me, right?
	According to this formulation, it doesn't bother me.
	Whatever I do. But I know for a fact that it really bothers the other person to break the rules and they would be really squeamish about poking me in the eyes or biting me or whatever, right?
	And so we can do whatever we want.
	I'm not saying that's the golden rule.
	I'm just giving you an example of how a sort of universal rule benefits people without a conscience.
	So if it's a street fight, and I know for a fact the guy is not going to break his rules, But I know that I can break my rules without any conscience.
	Then saying we can do whatever we want puts me completely at the advantage.
	Or to take another example, if the standard thing that was around when I was a kid, I'm sure it's still mostly around, is never hit a girl.
	I don't care what the provocation is, like if you're in the playground or if she's being mean or if she pushes you, you never hit a girl, right?
	And so for a girl to fight then, knowing for sure that the boy's never going to hit her, she can do whatever.
	So if she says, listen, we can do whatever we want, we can hit however we want, then she's at a huge advantage because she can do whatever she wants to the boy and he can't ever hit her back.
	So my concern is that the golden rule, it cripples people with a conscience that And it very much empowers people who don't have a conscience, because the people who have a conscience are self-limiting in what they will do.
	They have empathy, they sympathize, and we've seen this a million times in movies, right?
	Everybody's seen this scene a million times.
	You know, Bob the good guy finally wins over Doug the bad guy.
	Now, Doug, when Doug was in charge, he was about to shoot Bob, right?
	Just kill him, because there's no conscience.
	Just kill, solve the problem, kill him, right?
	But when Doug gets the gun away from Bob, and Doug's the good guy, Bob's the bad guy, then Bob stands over Doug with the gun over him, and Doug laughs at him and says, you're never going to shoot me.
	You're a boy scout. And Bob never does shoot Doug.
	In the movies, right? Or in any story you've ever seen.
	It's almost never the case that that happens.
	And so we can do whatever we want.
	Well, Doug will shoot Bob because Doug doesn't have a conscience.
	Doug has no empathy and Doug just wins.
	It's not even at all costs.
	There's no cost. Because Doug can shoot Bob.
	Bad guy can shoot the good guy without batting an eyelid.
	And there have been studies on this.
	Where you show extraordinarily violent imagery and so on and the sociopath doesn't, the heart rate doesn't go up, there's no sense of discomfort, there's no adrenaline dump, there's nothing.
	It's just like you and I looking at pictures of butterflies and they're watching people getting their heads graphically sawed off and they don't care.
	So let's, we'll fight however we want is something that if it's promoted, hands dug the victory.
	On just about every sense, every conflict that could occur.
	Because bad guy knows for sure, good guy won't go nearly as far as the bad guy will in terms of victory, in terms of winning.
	So for me, I'm like, okay, if we're going to have a discussion, have a debate with the world, lots of people who strongly, strongly disagree with me, right?
	Okay. So for me, the rule is...
	And this is sort of what I grew up with and what I understood as civilized behavior, and I still do accept that as civilized behavior.
	The rule is something like this.
	Okay, if you disagree with me, strongly, vociferously, deeply, wonderful.
	Let's have a debate.
	Let's face each other.
	Let's square each other down.
	Let's bring our facts, our reason, our evidence, our eloquence, whatever it is that we can deploy within the civilized bounds of debate.
	And I was in the debating society when I was vice president of the debating society when I was in university and traveled all over to do these debates.
	And that's how you do things.
	And so I poured all of my energy.
	Into becoming a really good debater, having a good command of the facts, having a good grasp of analogies and metaphors and similes to really make my point, knowing how to inject humor, knowing how to stride around confidently and make my case, right?
	I poured all my energy into that.
	Now, did I lose credibility and be deplatformed because I was a bad debater?
	No. That's not what happened.
	People just, I mean, to my view, just mostly made up stuff and took stuff out of context and smeared me without engaging, right?
	Now, that's not a fair fight.
	I mean, it's literally like you're going to step into a boxing ring and you put concentrated NyQuil into the other guy's energy drink and he's just half-punched drunk, staggering around, dazed.
	That's not a fair fight because you're not following the rules, right?
	So this is like a very personal experience for me.
	Let's have a debate. Let's have the facts, let's have the reason, let's have the evidence, right?
	But that's not how the world works.
	I mean, it used to work more that way, but it sure as hell doesn't work that way now.
	Now, it's not a fair fight.
	Now, it's like you put all of this work into training because you're going into a judo competition and And somebody just sneaks into your house the night before the competition and breaks your arms.
	What the hell was the point of all that training?
	I mean, if that's the way it's going to play, if that's the way things are going to play, then I don't want to play it, right?
	So this is a sort of very real and vivid thing for me.
	It's the golden rule. We can do whatever we want to win.
	Well, I'm not going to do the things that other people will do.
	Because I have perhaps a superabundance of empathy or sympathy or conscience.
	Conscience for me is very fierce.
	And a lot of what I've had to do in this life, I've had to do to avoid pissing off my conscience.
	Sorry to get a little linguistically graphic.
	But my conscience is a great friend and an implacable enemy.
	And it's what... Socrates, I mean, Jesus was perfect, didn't have to worry quite so much about the conscience, but Socrates referred to it as his demon, right?
	The demon, so to speak, or the angel of the devil on his shoulder.
	And if he did something that was wrong, his conscience would rebuke him terribly.
	And I have this fiend.
	I mean, I shouldn't say it's an angel.
	I get it. But it feels like a fiend sometimes, like all good conscience.
	All good consciences feel like a devil when they are angry or upset or you have violated the universality of the rule that you claim to love and worship.
	And so I have this, well, I don't want to win that way.
	I'm not going to win a judo competition anymore.
	I'm not going to win that. I'm not going to play that way.
	So if you're in this kind of competition and the world or the soul of the world is at stake and you've got people who are willing to lie and cheat and you yourself are not willing to lie and cheat, then you lose.
	So again, the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
	So the people who don't feel at all bad About lying and cheating and stealing and threatening and slandering and killing or wounding or whatever.
	Those people are like, oh yeah, I'm totally happy to have that be the rule.
	Yeah, have them do unto others as you would, because you know they're never going to do it to you.
	Because they have a conscience and you don't.
	You know they're never going to do to you what you're willing and able to do to them.
	And so that golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, yeah.
	My concern is that if that's the principle, it's fine if everyone has a conscience.
	But we know for a simple scientific fact that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world with no conscience.
	And the golden rule simply hands victory to them, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I guess a couple questions.
	So if the golden rule, it's basically having empathy, putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
	It is a conscience.
	It is... And so what do you...
	Well, hang on, sorry. No, the golden rule is not a conscience.
	I'm saying that if people don't have a conscience, the golden rule does way more harm than good and hands victory to the enemy of reason, virtue, and truth.
	So I wouldn't say that empathy and the golden rule are one and the same.
	Okay, yeah, good. Thank you for the distinction.
	I agree. So I guess my question is, what is...
	What is the alternative? Ditching virtue?
	No, no, no!
	Not at all! No, God, no!
	No, because then you lose even more!
	Exactly! What do you mean by win and lose?
	Well, because here's the thing. So people who are moral or people who have empathy, they impose rules upon themselves.
	And the people who lack empathy We'll do whatever it takes to win.
	They no more think that lying is cheating than a tiger thinks that hiding in the grass is cheating.
	The tiger is, look, I'll do whatever it takes to fill my belly, because if I don't fill my belly, I'm going to die.
	And if I die, that's it for my entire line, and dying is the worst thing, and it's really uncomfortable.
	So I'm going to Do whatever it takes to get my meal.
	I think we can both agree that in the animal kingdom, that's how it works, right?
	I mean, the hyenas don't sit there and say, well, you know, this animal's kind of wounded.
	That's not really fair, right?
	And the hunting dogs, like the pack animals, like the wolves, or the lions, I guess, too, they don't sit there and say, well, we've got this animal surrounded.
	We've got all these teeth and these claws, right?
	And, you know, it's just a zebra and it's a baby zebra at that.
	So we got six lions at the height of their power all surrounding this baby zebra.
	The baby zebra has no real teeth.
	It's got no claws. It's only got hooves.
	It's not fair, right?
	They don't have a sense of fair at all when it comes to winning.
	So there are people who have this lack of empathy.
	And who don't think that there's any such thing as cheating in this sort of predator mindset.
	Whatever gets you the win is fine.
	And you've heard this phrase.
	I'm sure you've heard this phrase.
	I don't think it's quite as popular now as it used to be, but it should be.
	You've heard the phrase, all's fair in love and war.
	All's fair in love and war.
	And this is something that Winston Churchill said about the supposedly civilized nations in the First World War, that the only thing they decided not to avail themselves of was torture and cannibalism, but only because those were of doubtful utility.
	So moral people, good people, people with a conscience will self-limit their behavior.
	And you've seen this, I'm sure, when you play sports, particularly if you play sports one-on-one, like tennis or something like that.
	That if you're just in a pickup game, I've had this, I've been on both sides of this equation, right?
	So if you're playing a pickup game of tennis, you're in some round robin of tennis, then you will play against someone who's much better than you.
	Much better. They could, like, win straight.
	Like, you wouldn't even get a point.
	And there are some people who will just pound that ball and do their skim and they're just like, they just want to get the game.
	They know they're going to win. They just want to get it over as quickly as possible.
	They have no concern about your feelings.
	It's a lion and a baby zebra situation, right?
	The lion doesn't sit there and say, okay, I'll give you a head start because you're little.
	He's just like, go and eat, right?
	And I've been in the situation where I'm significantly better than my opponent, right?
	And because I have a conscience and because I'm a nice person and care about the other person's feelings, I will adjust my play.
	I will adjust my play down so that the other person isn't humiliated, is interested in playing the game.
	And we see this too with mice.
	So the adult mice will play, fight or play with the baby mice.
	And if the adult mice don't let the baby mice win at least 30% of the time, then the baby mice don't want to play.
	Because then you're not learning stuff, you're just getting discouraged, right?
	And so naturally, when I am being a nice tennis player to somebody who's got much less skill than me, I'm going to make some mistakes.
	Thanks.
	Yes.
	So maybe I'll let them, you know, get to 15-40.
	I'm 40 and they're 15. And then maybe I'll let them get to 30-40 or whatever, so it doesn't feel too bad if I win.
	But then, you know, every now and then there are unforced errors and maybe I'll just end up losing.
	Right? You know, I just...
	A bad two serves, you know, a spin that goes awry, and, you know, they win, right?
	So they get to deuce, they get to their advantage, and then they win.
	So when I'm nicer and don't want to just...
	Pound the other person into the ground.
	I play racquet sports with my daughter, and she's 13, and she's a girl, and she's not bad.
	She's got good instincts and all of that, but obviously I have to adjust my playing so that she doesn't just sit there and say, well, this is sort of boring and annoying because I'm just not able to win any points, and so you want to be sort of more encouraging that way.
	So because I'm a nice person who's thinking about the feelings of the other person, then I will sometimes lose.
	In the same way that if you're a lion and you say to the baby zebra, okay, I'll give you 30 seconds, right?
	Well, then, under some circumstances, the baby zebra gets away and the lion loses his meal.
	Whereas if the lion is just like, I don't care that you're a baby zebra, in fact, I'm happy that you're a baby zebra because it means your meat is younger and more tender and you've no chance of getting away, right?
	So if you don't play fair, you win.
	If you don't play fair, you win.
	The analogy I used some years ago on the show was if you're playing soccer and you pass to the other team but they only pass to themselves, you're going to lose.
	If you sometimes pass to the other team or even occasionally just pass to the other team and they only pass to themselves, then they win and you lose.
	So I agree with you, we can't just give up on morality, because if we give up on morality, then we don't have any weapon against those with no conscience.
	But the golden rule is not sufficient to keep those people from winning.
	Because their golden rule, if the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, That's like the lion saying to the baby zebra, hey man, whoever eats whoever wins.
	That's you and I get into a fight.
	And hey, if you win, that's fine.
	I'm a full-grown 600-pound male lion, and you're an 80-pound baby zebra.
	You have no claws, you have no teeth to speak of, you have no particular muscles, and you're trained to run, not fight.
	Best thing you can do is throw a weak kick In reverse, as you try to run away.
	So, if the lion says to the baby zebra, hey, golden rule, man.
	Whoever wins, wins.
	Well, he's only doing that because he knows that the baby zebra can't fight back in the way that the lion fights.
	And so, people with no conscience saying, oh, golden rule time, man.
	Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
	He's not burdened by a conscience.
	He's not burdened by a sense of fairness or a need for honesty.
	So he wins.
	Now, of course, baby with the bathwater time, you can't just throw out morality, even though one of the weapons that the sociopaths use against the virtuous is to manipulate them through...
	An understanding of virtue and the basic understanding of virtue the sociopath has is that most people have it and he doesn't.
	Right? So you always hear this thing like, oh, you know, government schools are not very good.
	Well, but you do want the children to be educated, right?
	Not the sociopath doesn't care about that.
	I mean, if the sociopath cared about that, it wouldn't be a sociopath, right?
	But he knows that other people care about it and it's a good phrase to get people to back down From trying to privatize government education.
	I mean, we see this, you know, all the time.
	I don't have to go over, you know, the welfare state.
	Don't you care about the poor, privatized healthcare?
	Don't you care about the sick, right?
	Now, the people without a conscience, they don't care about the sick, the old, the weak, the hungry.
	They don't care about those people. But they know you care about it, and they know that if they use these phrases, then you'll back down.
	From trying to restrict the power of the sociopath by privatizing things.
	Once it's in the public sphere, crazy, cruel people invariably or inevitably take it over.
	They don't want to lose their power.
	So no, I agree with you completely that the solution is not to get rid of morality, but here's the thing, right?
	And I'm an empiricist, and I'll shut up in a second and turn the conversation back to you, I promise, right?
	But here's the thing. So I'm an empiricist, right?
	So we've had the golden rule...
	As long as there has been conceptual thought, we've had the golden rule, right?
	This is why I start off with Buddhism, go to Confucianism, and so on, right?
	So as long as we've had ethics, we've had the golden rule.
	Now, look around the world and tell me if you think the good guys are winning or the bad guys are winning.
	Thousands of years! Thousands and thousands!
	I bet you if we went back to pre-recorded history in some magical time machine, they'd be talking about the golden rule.
	But certainly as long as there's been philosophy, as long as there's been morality, as long as we've had conceptual thought, there's been a golden rule.
	So let's say 10,000 years, right?
	10,000 years we've had the golden rule.
	Now, over those 10,000 years that we've had the golden rule, How well and how sustained...
	How well do the good guys win and how sustainable are their victories?
	That's empiricism. You say, I've got a cure for evil.
	I've got a cure for immorality.
	It's called the golden rule. Okay, let's look over the last 10,000 years.
	Let's look across the world right now.
	Who's winning? Good guys or the bad guys?
	So if there's this thing called the golden rule that's supposed to be the solution to immorality...
	And it has never worked in any sustainable manner.
	I mean, it works individually.
	It works at a personal level, of course, right?
	I mean, for people with empathy to say treat other people as you would have them treat you, I think that's fine.
	At a social level. At a political level.
	At a public level.
	At a countrywide level.
	At a collectivist level.
	Has it worked? Has it worked?
	I mean, look at science over the last couple of hundred years, completely revolution as a scientific method works.
	I mean, it works in a morally neutral way, right?
	It can produce nuclear power and nuclear weapons, right?
	So it works in a morally neutral way, but it sure as heck works.
	So that's just a couple of hundred years once people got the right answer about science through Francis Bacon and others.
	Once people got the right idea through science, the right understanding of the scientific method, boom, completely reshaped the world in just a couple of hundred years.
	And really the only progress, the most important progress has happened over the last 100, 150 years.
	Before that was just kind of a gathering momentum stuff.
	So we've got a couple of hundred years that the scientific method completely revolutionized the planet.
	And we've got 10,000 years of the golden rule, and the good guys are still losing.
	Still losing, which means there's got to be something wrong with the golden rule.
	If you've got a medicine for immorality called the golden rule, but immorality keeps winning, something's got to be wrong with your medicine.
	Something's got to be wrong with your medicine.
	Aren't you tired of this?
	Of the good guys losing and the bad guys going from triumph to triumph and the best thing the good guys do is just slow down things just for a little bit once in a while?
	Aren't you kind of tired of it?
	Of the good guys fighting with one hand tied behind their backs and constantly ending up up against the wall or fleeing or being buried?
	I got a little tired of it.
	And when I get tired enough of something, I start with a blank slate.
	So, I'm happy to hear evidence of the contrary, and here's where I'll be quiet now.
	I'm happy to hear evidence of the contrary, but when you've got 10,000 years of a fundamental moral rule doing almost nothing to protect the moral from the immoral, I have questions.
	Right. So, I... I have a few thoughts.
	For one, I think the golden rule, it doesn't preclude self-defense.
	I think it's within self-defense in your example of a street fight.
	If someone starts punching you in the face, using the golden rule, I would say if I broke the rules of a street fight and I started punching someone in the face, I would be fine with someone else breaking the rule and punching me in the face.
	So it doesn't break the golden rule in that way.
	Do you follow? Does that make sense to you?
	Yes, I can certainly understand how the golden rule would give you the right to self-defense.
	In other words, what's the reaction if somebody else breaks the golden rule?
	Well, then you don't need the golden rule anymore.
	Because you wouldn't want to hit someone in the face, but if someone's hitting you in the face, then you're breaking the golden rule by hitting them back.
	Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
	So now you're saying, okay, we have to abandon the golden rule.
	If the other person abandons the golden rule, then it's just a fight to the death or it's a fight of willpower and pain tolerance or whatever it is.
	But I have to no longer do to the other person What I would have them do unto me.
	I now have to throw aside the golden rule.
	Yeah, but that's not what I'm saying.
	I'm saying it doesn't break the golden rule to punch him in the face.
	Because if I were in his shoes, I would be...
	If the other guy is punching me in the face, if I were the other guy, it would be perfectly fair in my eyes to get punched back in the face.
	Right? So it doesn't break the golden rule.
	No, no, no. I don't agree with you, and that doesn't mean I'm right.
	I'm just saying my initial sort of gut sense is to not agree with you.
	That's not an argument, so I'll see if I can unpack it a little bit, right?
	So, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
	He wants to be able to punch you in the face.
	He doesn't want you to punch him in the face, right?
	Right. Okay.
	So... You have an asymmetry here.
	So you're following the golden rule because you're not punching him in the face, but he's not following the golden rule because he's punching you in the face without wanting you to punch him in the face, right?
	Right. So he wants you to follow the rule that he doesn't want to follow, right?
	Right. So now, in response to him not following the rules, you now don't follow the rules.
	Right. But I don't see how that's following the golden rule.
	Again, I'm happy to hear, but...
	Sure. So, the way I would want to be treated is I would want...
	I would want to play fair unless someone isn't playing fair.
	That's how I want someone to treat me.
	If I was being toxic, I would want people to cut me out of their life.
	I would want people to ostracize me so I would wake up.
	But we're not talking ostracism here.
	We're talking about self-defense.
	So let's go back to the punching, right?
	So I'm the bad guy, right?
	You're the good guy. We get into a fistfight for some imaginary noble cause, whatever we can think of something, right?
	And we got a rule that says no punching in the face, right?
	But I'm losing, so I punch you in the face.
	So I've broken the rule.
	Now, because I've broken the rule, you don't have to respect the rule anymore.
	Yeah. So I have lowered you or changed you into the position where formerly you respected the rules and now you don't respect the rules because I haven't, right?
	And I'm still trying to – and maybe I'm just not following.
	I mean you have – maybe everyone else is nodding and I'm just like, oh, right?
	But explain it to me like I'm five years old.
	If I break the rules and then you break – and then you don't have to follow the rules anymore, how's that following the golden rule?
	So I suppose you could say the rule that I would want someone to follow is the rule exists as long as we're following it.
	Well, no, but hang on, hang on.
	But that's creating a separate rule.
	Let's get back to the golden rule.
	Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
	So I, you know, you won't hit me Because I'm not hitting you.
	But we both respect the rules, right?
	So if we're both respecting the rules, I can see that golden rule thing.
	But let's say I break the rule. Then how is it the golden rule to punch me back in the face?
	I feel like we're talking in circles a little bit.
	No, that sometimes is what people say when they don't have a good answer.
	I'll take another run at it.
	Yeah, please do. And this is tough stuff, so let's be patient, right?
	I mean, this is a foundational moral question of the universe, so it's not easy to solve this stuff.
	So the... How I would want someone to treat me is to play fair, right?
	I would want someone to treat me that way.
	I would want someone to not punch me in the face.
	I also would want someone to not play fair if I'm not playing fair.
	I would want someone to reciprocate that.
	No, you wouldn't! The whole point of cheating is that the other person continues to play by the rules.
	Otherwise, it's not cheating, really.
	I mean, if you're playing chess and you cheat and you're caught, right?
	There was some guy, he's got a graphic, there was some guy in a chess tournament who was using some sort of anal vibrator to receive messages about the game.
	And he was caught. I don't even want to know how he was caught.
	I have no interest in knowing how he was caught.
	But the fact that he was caught meant he lost because he was disqualified, right?
	Right. So the whole point of cheating is you don't get caught.
	Right. Or, to put it another way, if we're in the fight and we know, don't hit the face, right?
	And then I give you a roundhouse to the head that knocks you right out, then I've won, right?
	Now, you could say, ah, but you've lost in the eyes of the world.
	It's like, no, no, but I've won. Because you can't hit me back in the face because you're knocked out, right?
	So, the reciprocity thing is like, well, if I'm going to cheat, I would really want someone...
	To lower themselves to my level and to cheat as well.
	It's like, no, no, because that wouldn't, right?
	Because the whole point of cheating is it's asymmetrical.
	In other words, there's only really value in cheating if the other person doesn't cheat.
	I mean, the only point of having the Federal Reserve is the government also prosecutes counterfeiters, right?
	I mean, the whole point of having that rule is that other people can't follow it, that you can create your own money at will.
	The whole point of taxation is other people can't do it.
	I suppose the...
	The biblical answer to what do you do with people that don't play fair?
	So you have a church.
	You have one guy that is sinning somehow.
	He's abusing people or shouting, verbally abusing people.
	And so the church goes through the process, says, hey, dude, you've got to stop.
	He doesn't stop. All right, now we ostracize him, right?
	And so that is... I guess the point I was trying to bring up is the golden rule is a verse in the context of the Bible, right?
	And so we interpret it within the context and the ideas of all the other verses in the Bible.
	And so it's not the end-all, be-all, everything.
	We also follow these other principles, and we interpret this principle through those principles.
	Right, but do you understand that if...
	If you and I are playing chess, and you feel wracked with guilt if you cheat, and I feel perfectly fine if I cheat, then I'm perfectly willing to have a rule that says, you can cheat if you want to, because I know you're not going to.
	And that gives me a huge advantage.
	Sure. And then in this metaphor, the Christian would say, I'm not playing chess with you anymore.
	Right. But of course, I wouldn't actually say that.
	Right. I'm sorry. I know I just said I would say that and I heard that silliness because then, of course, if I say I'm going to cheat a chess, you would say I'm not going to play.
	No, I would say we should both respect the rules knowing that you will because of your conscience, but I don't have to and I'll cheat if I can get away with it because I don't have a conscience.
	It won't bother me to cheat at all.
	Sure, and it's like, you know, for whatever reason, we're street fighting, if it's Fight Club or something, and, you know, if you punch me in the face, I'm not going to fight you anymore, you know?
	If you're breaking my rules, you know, I'm not going to do this.
	I'm not going to play. Right.
	And this is one of the reasons why the exploitation needs to be compelled through the force of law, or there has to be a new victim, right?
	I mean, if you just con someone, you can't go back and con them next week, because A, they've got no money, and B, they're suspicious of you, right?
	So yeah, you need fresh meat, right?
	You need new victims, so to speak, who don't know all of this.
	It's not really a biblical principle to be naive to con men, to always trust them.
	It's a wise thing to be suspicious of people you don't know very well that are trying to sell you something, right?
	Right. Now, of course, in the secular materialistic world, there is no punishment for people without a conscience who break the rules.
	So if I break the rules, and I don't...
	If I break my own moral rules, or rules that I believe are just and wise and virtuous, you know, if I... I don't know, if I have an affair, right?
	I promised my wife monogamy and all of that.
	If I have an affair, right? Well, I'm going to feel terrible.
	Awful. Horrible. So the good people, the people who have a conscience...
	The conscience punishes them for deviation from immorality.
	Now, in the Christian universe, and again, I apologize for oversimplifying and please set me straight on any aspects of doctrine I go awry on, but if you don't follow the rules and you burn out your conscience and you no longer feel bad about it, well, you don't get to go to heaven, right?
	And in some versions, you go to hell.
	So there is a punishment for the people who don't punish themselves.
	And in fact, if you don't punish yourself, the punishment's even worse because it means that you've really burned out your conscience and done a whole truckload of terrible things.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	Now, in the secular world, if people don't suffer for immorality, they have no conscience, any more than a lion feels guilty for eating the baby zebra who has no chance to run away.
	The lion is delighted.
	The lion is thrilled because if the lion goes after an adult zebra, the adult zebra can kick the lion in the face, break its jaw, you know, just wreck it completely.
	It could pull a muscle, you know, who knows what, right?
	So the lion is completely delighted at an unfair fight, at exploiting the lion's advantages when the baby zebra has no chance to survive.
	That's the best day ever for the lion, and the zebras know this, which is why they try and form a circle around the calves or whatever, right?
	So in the secular world...
	The challenge is, people who do not suffer for immorality, what do you do?
	They're never going to learn.
	In fact, not only do they not suffer for immorality, they're delighted in an immoral situation.
	You know, somebody who rips someone else off is delighted when someone else is arrested and goes to jail.
	For what they themselves did, right?
	They say Bob is a con man and then Doug gets arrested for what Bob did and goes to jail.
	How does Bob feel if he has no conscience?
	Well, he's delighted.
	Now, if you think of, you know, Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, there's a thief who was going to prison because of what Jean Valjean did.
	So there's a thief who's mistaken for Jean Valjean.
	Jean Valjean is going to go to free and he sings this whole song.
	They think that man is me.
	I knew him at a glance.
	And he's got this whole song.
	How can I save his hide?
	Can I right this wrong when I have come so far and struggled for so long?
	He's tortured.
	Victor Hugo called the master of human tears.
	He's tortured by the idea that someone's going to go to prison for what he himself did.
	And he strides forward and he says, And so, Jeffrey, you see it's true, this man bears no more guilt than you.
	Who am I? I'm Jean Valjean.
	Right? There's this whole thing where he just steps forward because he'd feel wretched.
	And religion is mentioned explicitly in the song.
	I gave my soul to God, I know.
	I made that bargain long ago.
	He gave me hope when hope was gone.
	He gave me strength to carry on.
	Right? So... Because he's a Christian, he will not let an innocent man go to prison instead of himself.
	Even though, even though Jean Valjean was put in prison because he stole a loaf of bread.
	Well, that's why he initially went to prison.
	He stayed there for 20 years because he kept trying to escape.
	So even though Jean Valjean has built a new life, I am the master of hundreds of workers.
	They all look to me. How can I abandon them?
	How will they live if I am not free?
	So he's got all these people who rely on him, although they feed their kids with the wages he pays, and he was unjustly imprisoned, and he still steps forward when being unjustly persecuted by Javert and says, I'm Jean Valjean.
	I will not run. Now, if Jean Valjean did not have a conscience, was not a Christian conscience, How would he feel if somebody else was mistaken for him and was going to prison in his place?
	Overjoyed. Giddy and gleeful beyond measure.
	Now, in the Christian universe, and I don't mean that in any disrespectful manner, in the Christian worldview, in the Christian theology, if you let someone else go to prison for something you did, I mean, you're kind of going to hell, right?
	Tell me if I'm off on that.
	If you don't repent.
	Unless you repent, right.
	But of course, if you only repent out of fear of going to hell, but not because you really genuinely understood that you did something wrong, I would assume that the repentance might be considered a little sketchy by the big guy upstairs.
	So, in the Christian universe, the man...
	Who is overjoyed when an injustice is done that frees him from consequences of his own actions.
	He's overjoyed, he's thrilled, couldn't be happier, and will never wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, never wake up 3 o'clock in the morning picturing the guy in a jail cell for the next 20 years because of a case of mistaken identity.
	He will never think of that person again.
	He will never cross his mind again.
	In fact, if he ever does think of that person, it will only be with a thank God it was him and not me.
	What a lucky break that was for me that this guy got mistaken for me and got thrown in prison instead of me.
	So in the secular world, it's the big question of secular morality, if people don't punish themselves through their conscience for the evils that they've done, Then the only thing that you could maybe do anything to control their behavior is to threaten them with jail, negative consequences, whatever it's going to be, right?
	But of course... I mean, that works if you have a largely non-criminal population as criminality has risen in the last 50 to 75 years.
	I mean, the system is completely overwhelmed, which is why only 2% of people go to trial and everyone else has to plea out because there's way too many criminals and all that, right?
	And of course, we can see this in many of the cities in America and other places.
	People who, either through child abuse or ideology or whatever, they have no functional conscience anymore.
	And no particular blowback from the justice system.
	No staying in jail, going to jail.
	I mean, there's... Was it Detroit?
	There's like... I don't even remember.
	It was a huge number of murders.
	They basically just had to give up on them because it's been too long.
	The witnesses are dead or have moved away or have gone incognito or vanished off the grid.
	Just can't solve it, right?
	Can't solve it. So...
	I love the Christian worldview because it takes a burden from me as a moralist to say, hey, I'll do my best.
	I'll work to spread morality and so on.
	But for people who escape the net of morality, they won't escape the net of God, right?
	Because knows all, sees all.
	They're going to hell or at least not going to heaven, which I suppose would be not too dissimilar given the bliss that awaits people in heaven.
	But as a secular moralist, I've got a problem.
	It's a huge problem.
	And my answer to that is universally preferable behavior, but I just want to explicate the problem as a whole.
	If people don't feel bad for doing bad things, what do you do?
	Well, you can try and punish them, I suppose, but it's going to be pretty tough to punish them unless you have some awesome overarching power.
	Because they'll be willing to do things to escape punishment that you won't be willing to do to inflict punishment.
	You know, you'd never take a hostage to capture them, but they'll take a hostage to get away.
	So, the answer, of course, yeah, not to give up on morality.
	That just returns us back to a state of the animals.
	Worse than the animals, because the animals at least don't have the capacity for morality in the way that we do.
	So, it makes us worse than animals.
	It's... It makes us the devils.
	To give up on morality makes us the devils.
	But I don't see that the golden rule...
	And so, last thing I'll say, and then I'll turn it back to you.
	So, the big question I always had, even as a kid I had this question, okay, because you'd see this story the whole time, right?
	That the good guy is being beaten up by the bad guy, the bad guy's about to shoot him, and the good guy grabs the gun and turns it on the bad guy.
	And the bad guy sneers at him, ah, you're never going to kill me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I think there was one exception, which was Lethal Weapon with the South African guy.
	But that's, you know, just a whole South African thing.
	So, I kept asking myself, why is it the same story?
	What are they trying to do with this story?
	Why is it the same story?
	What are they trying to achieve?
	Why are they constantly saying to the good guys, you're helpless in the face of the bad guys?
	You won't do what the bad guys will do to win.
	And there's a scene in my new novel, The Future.
	I just put the whole audiobook together.
	It's over 23 hours long.
	It's quite a meaty tome.
	But in the future, how do you deal with the immoral?
	When ostracism is not an option, right?
	I wanted to throw the most difficult things possible at a free society and come up with credible answers, right?
	And it's a scene with David and Roman and Attica.
	And I'll just leave it there.
	You can sort of see how I work through this issue.
	But why is it that it's always the same in every movie?
	Where the bad guy ends up taunting the good guy who won't do what the bad guy is willing to do in order to win.
	And I think that's bad guys saying, oh yeah, you can't.
	Don't lower yourself to our level.
	Don't become like us.
	If you pull that trigger, you'll be just like he is.
	I think that's all a bunch of propaganda to continue to emasculate and weaken.
	The good guys in the world.
	And I think that's why this keeps happening.
	It's not like the people in charge of media are always so fine, upstanding, immoral, or whatever.
	But the answer is not to give up on morality at all, but to try and find a way to define morality that doesn't give the get-out-of-jail-free card or the victory card, the trump card, so to speak, of the golden rule, Which empowers those without a conscience and kind of cripples those with a conscience, if that makes sense. Yeah, so you're using the language of winning and losing, and I suppose my question is, what does that mean?
	Did you lose if multiple centuries from now, UPB is widely accepted, but you got deplatformed?
	Did you lose because they were willing to deplatform you?
	Your people weren't willing to platform them?
	Was that a loss? Well, and that is a very good philosophical question.
	And it comes back to the long-term versus the short-term.
	Of course, for Christians, it's the long-term and the reuniting with the Holy Spirit and Jesus and God that counts.
	And the sufferings of this world are as nothing to the glories of the world to come.
	No, I would not say...
	I have certainly lost reach, platform, audience, income, effect.
	I have absolutely lost.
	Now, is that loss necessary for winning in the future?
	Yeah, probably. It's very hard to win in the future if you're not willing to take a lot of punishment in the here and now.
	I mean, to take a silly sports analogy, you can't be an Olympian athlete if you're never willing to get sore in your training.
	If you're not willing to take some suffering in the here and now, you can't win in the future.
	I agree with you, but there certainly are people who lose.
	I mean, I have a particular set of gifts that allow me to win in the future at the expense of the present, or hopefully.
	This gives me the best chance of winning in the future, and therefore, I think humanity is the best chance of a moral world to live in, a free and peaceful world to live in.
	But I think of, you know, the average peasant when...
	The Nazis took over, or the fascists took over, or the communists took over, the ideologues, the extremists.
	I think of the Holodomor, where 10 million Ukrainians were starved to death.
	You know, it's kind of hard to look at that as a victory for them.
	I wouldn't want to take my particular gifts, abilities, and timeframes and put that onto the average person.
	I think that they did lose.
	And it was not a loss that guaranteed victory in the future because you can see what's happened to the credibility of the ideology that drove them into the ground.
	It seems to have only gained over the years.
	So, yeah, it's pretty hard to argue for a big win for some.
	Now, of course, in the Christian worldview, they went to heaven and their tormentors went to hell and so on.
	But for a secularist...
	That's not a consolation prize that can be accepted.
	It's almost like the golden rule would be more palatable to Christians because often it gets them to God quicker, if that makes any sense.
	But for the secularists, that's not really a metric that can be used, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I suppose, you know, if you consider two scenarios, one where Christians are in the majority, and so you say you have a town, and most people are Christian, or almost everyone, and then you have one sociopath.
	If it's clear he's doing immoral things, well, the answer is we're not just going to enable him, we're going to ostracize him, right?
	And then the other scenario is the Christians are in the minority, they're being persecuted, and what do you do as someone who's persecuted?
	Well, it's not the same, right?
	Sorry, can you just explain that last bit again?
	I just want to make sure I follow. Sure, sure.
	So you're... So say you're in a country where it's only 1% Christian.
	And, you know, we can say we're under persecution of the Roman Empire or something.
	And so the Romans are rounding up the Christians.
	I don't think the answer is to, like, start an insurrection or a revolution or a...
	The answer is not always to fight back.
	The wisest answer might be to flee, right?
	So if they're willing to use torture and killing people and coliseums and whatever it is, flee.
	You don't have to sit there and take it.
	I'm not going to disagree with that.
	I mean... The two phrases, a hero tastes of death, but once a coward dies a thousand times.
	I think that's from Shakespeare or something like that.
	But there's two others that were very important to me when I was growing up.
	Number one, discretion is the better part of valor.
	Like have a rational analysis of whether you can win and don't just bravely rush in, right?
	Fools rush in where angels fear to tread is the second one.
	I guess there's three.
	And the third is he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
	And so absolutely.
	Well, yeah, I was talking about this earlier today.
	When faced with an overwhelming force and no chance of victory, then you fight like, I don't know, in Burn Notice.
	Something I remember watching many years ago where the spy is trapped in a bank with a bank robbery gang.
	And he fights like a spy.
	He, quote, cheats, he misdirects, he claims, he manufactures accidents.
	He's just like this. He doesn't just rush in and start punching people or shooting people.
	He's like, fight like a spy, which means you fight to win.
	There's no rules, right?
	And because he's in the cause of virtue, I think we can at least understand where he's coming from, from that standpoint.
	So, yes, I agree, for sure.
	And the general flight of the virtuous across the world has been going on since there were virtuous people.
	You know, that you set up some place, and then your freedoms are restricted, and tyranny begins to encroach, and you flee, and you flee, and we, you know, we're...
	Arguably, the virtuous people are the wandering tribe of the planet, right?
	And so, yeah, but I mean, at some point, it would be nice not to have to keep running, if that makes sense.
	And again, I agree with you, turning and fighting, yeah, resurrection, violence, I've always counseled against violence in this way.
	So yes, that is not good, and that's why we have to accept losses in the here and now, so that we can get philosophical and moral victories in the future.
	And I mean, if that's not the story of Christianity, then I don't understand Christianity at all.
	Right. But yeah, so that's my major issue is that empirically the golden rule has not solved the problem of immorality.
	And of course my hope and goal is that UPB over time will, but it's going to take a while.
	It's going to take a while for sure.
	If I had one last thought, I would say the golden rule is...
	When I say that we try to interpret it in the context of the rest of the Bible, I mean it's not an absolute rule.
	If someone is trying to rob me, he's sticking me up, he's trying to take my wallet, clearly what he wants...
	If I was going to follow the golden rule, I would say, okay, here's my wallet.
	He clearly wants my wallet, so I'll just give it to him.
	But that's not the Christian answer.
	The Christian answer, it might be to defend yourself.
	It might be to flee.
	Whatever it is. Anyways, my point is you're not obligated to follow the golden rule and just give up and give everything away.
	Does that make sense? Well, I mean, this is one of I mean,
	at least the way that I understand it and the way that I practice it is you can't find a thing and its opposite in the same body of work.
	In the same way, you can't find a worship of God and the advocacy of atheism in the Bible, right?
	You can't find the thing and its opposite in the same text because that's called a contradiction, and philosophy demands that you try to resolve that contradiction.
	And if you can't resolve that contradiction, well, then you're not doing well.
	In philosophy.
	And that's actually what the principle I'm referring to is directly kind of dealing with.
	So if you have a pattern throughout scripture that it's one way, and then you have this one verse or two verses that seem to say the opposite, Well, to follow, to interpret those verses within the context of the Bible, we would know that they can't mean the opposite and that there must be some other way to interpret it, right? It would be more of a paradox at first than a contradiction.
	But see, that's not a luxury that philosophers can have, right?
	I mean, so if I have peaceful parenting, non-initiation of force, and then I also say, beat your kids...
	Right? That's a contradiction.
	And that really can't be allowed to stand in thought, right?
	I can't say, well, it's up to you to resolve this paradox according to some higher principle.
	I don't get that.
	Whether that's a gift or a curse, I'm not exactly sure.
	Because I obviously, as a mere mortal, I'm not infallible, right?
	So if people believed that I was infallible, then they'd say, well, look, Steph, here he says treat children peacefully, and here he says hit them, but he can't be wrong.
	He's infallible. So it's up to us to find a way to resolve this.
	As a mere flesh-based mortal, I don't have that.
	I've got to have that consistency from the ground up.
	Yeah, well, I mean, as Christians, we do have the luxury of knowing the Bible is the Word of God, and we can trust every word.
	So yeah, the problem must not be...
	I guess you could say we assume...
	That it's not a contradiction, because it can't be, because God doesn't contradict himself.
	We just have to understand... Well, no, God is all-powerful.
	If you say God can't contradict himself, then you've just taken away the power of God, right?
	I guess if you define all-powerful as capable of evil, I would say...
	I would not define it that way.
	I'd say he's only capable of good, and in that sense, he's all-powerful.
	He can do anything good.
	Right. Then the question is, as is an old question, is that if somebody is incapable of doing evil, can we really call them virtuous?
	I mean, a dead man is incapable of doing evil, but we would not call him virtuous either.
	But I'm sure these are topics for another time.
	And I do, listen, I do respect enormously the fact that the struggle, I mean, I'm working through, I just finished working through the medieval philosophers in my sort of history of philosophers series.
	So the struggle to reconcile what seems to be contradictory in theology or in the pronouncements of Jesus or God or the apostles and so on, there's a lot of creativity and fertility that's gone into that process.
	And Some wonderful art, of course, and beauty that has come out of it.
	But as a philosopher, I can't possibly...
	I mean, it would be ridiculous and vainglorious and unbelievably arrogant for me to say, look, everything I say is correct.
	If it seems like a contradiction to you, that's because you don't understand it deeply enough.
	Then I'd be a French existentialist or something like that, which is, you know...
	It's pedophilia masquerading as philosophy or something like that because they all wanted to lower the age of consent, it seems.
	So, yeah, I don't have that luxury.
	I've really got to just keep working away on it.
	Like, you know, physicists don't get to say, well, these are mysteries we can't penetrate.
	They'll just say, well, we don't know yet, but we're working on it and all that.
	Or a scientist doesn't get to say, well, my hypothesis says that gases both expand and contract when heated.
	And if that looks like a contradiction to you, that's up to you to resolve, because I can't be wrong.
	I mean, that's just not something that mere mortals can do.
	But of course, as the Word of God is divinely, or as the Bible is the Word of God, divinely inspired and set down by mortals, it can't be wrong.
	So yeah, I just, that's not something, don't get me wrong, there's times when it would be nice, because this consistency thing could be quite a lot of work and create quite a lot of controversy.
	But yeah, it's not a luxury that I can really grab a hold of.
	Listen, thank you very much.
	A very great conversation.
	I really, really enjoy and appreciate these kinds of conversations.
	If there's one thing I do love to talk about, it be the ethics.
	It be the ethics. So yeah, thanks.
	You're welcome back anytime. I really do appreciate your time today.
	It was a great, great pleasure to chat.
	Thanks, Stefan. I'll keep praying for you.
	I appreciate that, too.
	That's a wonderful sentiment, and Lord knows I'm at that phase in philosophy where I'm not going to reject any help that comes my way, so I really do appreciate the very kind thought.
	Thank you very much. Happy early birthday.
	Oh, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that as well.
	All right, so thanks to Luke.
	If you have any other questions or issues or problems or criticisms, I am beyond thrilled to hear them, and you just need to raise your hand, and I will unmute.
	I'll just give a pause here to give people a chance to shake off the theology and go where we want.
	Hello, Juan! I'm sure I'm pronouncing that somewhat correctly.
	Let me just unmute you here, and you can unmute yourself, and I'm all ears, my friend.
	No, I just wanted to say that thank you so much for everything you've done.
	My father actually passed away when I was 11.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much. I'm all yours.
	Yes, go ahead, Sean.
	Are you with me, brother? Shan!
	Sorry, Shan. I'm Shan the Sheep.
	Sean, I just unmuted you.
	Yes, go ahead. Oh, thank you.
	Hi. Hello. No, I don't really have much to say.
	I just wanted to say I've been a listener for a long time and I appreciate the stuff that you talk about.
	Yeah. Sorry.
	I don't really know what to say other than I'm appreciative and philosophy is an exercise and I appreciate the exercise and getting help.
	Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
	It's very kind to hear.
	I do love... And it's funny, you know, because it's not even like, oh, that makes me so special.
	It's just I'm so thrilled that philosophy is of value to people because I... I'll just do a little thing here on that, and if you want to speak, if you want to question, criticize, whatever's on your mind, I'm more than happy to hear, but while we're just waiting for people to kick into that, just raise your hand if you want.
	So, when I was growing up, I did read quite a bit when I was younger.
	I had access to a pretty good library.
	And we'll just go in and chew through stuff as, you know, curious youths want to do.
	And I do remember reading about scholasticism, and I've been talking about this, of course, in my History of Philosopher series, which you can get at fridobain.locals.com.
	And scholasticism or the idea that reason is as removed from daily life as physics is from engineering— That a physicist may understand the elemental building blocks of matter, but what effect does that have on his life?
	And I do remember reading about philosophy and reading about philosophers when I was very young, and being constantly miffed, annoyed, frustrated, curious.
	Why, oh why, when there was an emergency in the world, and just about all emergencies seemed to have a moral dimension, where was the In case of emergency, break glass for the red telephone line directly to a moral philosopher.
	Because, you know, the news would be on and they'd bring all these experts on.
	There's a crisis in the sewers.
	Hey, let's bring on an expert on the sewers crisis.
	There's a crisis in the Middle East. Let's bring on an expert on the crisis.
	And yet, not once did I ever see a philosopher on there.
	Not once! Did I ever see a philosopher on there?
	And I thought, oh that means either philosophy is bullshit or philosophers are terrible.
	And I didn't For a moment, imagine and never have for a moment, imagine that philosophy is bullshit.
	So that really could only mean that philosophers are terrible insofar as they don't have anything of value to say to the average person to help them live their life.
	And they're never brought on as experts in the realm of morality or conflict or anything essential in that way.
	So... I hope that I have done a little bit to restore some of the value of philosophy to people, and comments like that really help me believe that I have been able to do that with your help and participation.
	So, Dana, let's get to you, my friend.
	What is on your mind?
	It seems like I have to do twice, allowed to speak, in order for it to work.
	But yeah, if you want to unmute, I'm all ears.
	Hi, Stefan. I just wanted to ask you a quick question, which was, what's your greatest birthday memory?
	My greatest birthday memory.
	Okay, I guess I'll break the fourth wall and mention that I have a brother.
	And when I was very young, I guess I was probably about five, he decided to decorate the whole apartment that we were all living in.
	And he hung banners, and he put pictures on the wall, and it was really lovely.
	He handmade all of these signs about my birthday.
	It really was a lovely moment in my childhood.
	My brother and I do not get along, to put it mildly, but back then there was this moment where...
	You ever have this thing where...
	It's like a really cloudy day.
	It's just like a big white monochrome ping pong ball all over the sky.
	It's just nothing but clouds.
	And you don't expect to see any sunshine that day.
	And maybe you're walking along or you're driving along.
	And then, like you're on the cover of a Mormon Tabernacle Choir album, a beam of light just comes down and hits you right where you stand.
	It doesn't happen very often.
	But it does happen, and it's a beautiful thing.
	And I remember that day, through a fairly grim Bataan death march of a childhood, I remember that day, and I vividly remember coming home with my mother and seeing all of these decorations.
	And we actually had a very nice party on my fourth or fifth birthday.
	I had a great time with friends.
	I still remember the games that we played, pin the tail on the donkey and so on.
	I still remember that. It's a wonderful time.
	And that memory and the memory, my mother had a friend whose husband was a pilot.
	And boy, you know, pilots were very high status and high owners.
	And they were supremely rich to the point where even in England, they had a pool in their backyard, which was covered over.
	In that sort of semi-circular, semi-clear, corrugated plastic stuff.
	And I remember we would go and visit these friends of my mother's.
	And I would stay there.
	I remember reading some book about the Israeli Air Force, a novel about the Israeli Air Force, which I should not have been reading at that age.
	I was maybe seven or eight.
	And it was about fighter pilots.
	And one of them ended up getting melted to death in his plane with horribly vivid descriptions.
	If anybody remembers that book, please let me know at some point.
	And I remember that was the backyard wherein I first captured tadpoles, which I think is a rite of passage for every kid.
	My daughter was into them for many years.
	I caught tadpoles, and I remember I think her son came back from boarding school.
	He was a little older than me, and I was reading.
	Believe it or not, again, I'm seven or eight years old, and I'm reading...
	The book called Alive about this crash.
	I think it was in the Andes where the people had to end up eating each other.
	I mean, the stuff I was just lying around.
	There's no filter. There was no childproofing for anything when I was a kid.
	Just stuff lying around. Pick up whatever you want.
	Read whatever you want. And some of it obviously may have been a little bit ahead of my time, but I think it helped me grow up perhaps too fast, but certainly faster than it would have otherwise been.
	But I... Remember, one, again, I think it was that same year, four, maybe five, probably closer to four, and it was the greatest party I'd ever been to.
	And it may, in fact, be the greatest party I've ever been to.
	Because for a child, you imagine, there's an old Calvin and Hobbes about this, like, hey, I wonder what my parents do.
	When they finally put me to bed and, you know, they're up doing their adult things and, of course, the parents have passed out on the couch watching TV or whatever, right?
	But, of course, when you're a kid, when you get the first time, I'm sure you all remember this, the first time you got to stay up really late.
	Probably it was New Year's Eve and that was the case for me here.
	And it was New Year's Eve.
	It probably was a decade.
	The reason I... It was 1970, probably.
	Because it was a... I mean, this was a huge blowout.
	And it was at this huge, expensive house where the pilot and my mom's friend lived.
	And she actually came to visit us many years later in Canada as well.
	But... I still remember her name.
	It's so funny. Probably long dead now, but...
	That night...
	1970. I was not...
	My brother, I think, was already in boarding school, and I was to follow two years later.
	But that night, 1970, it was the greatest party that could be conceived of.
	It was just one of these planets-aligned, absolutely unfettered, great times.
	I remember dancing in that spastic toddler way.
	I remember... Delicious drinks, fantastic food.
	I remember joyful people dancing, shouting.
	I remember a riotous game of charades, and I remember the countdown.
	And I had a handful of streamers, you know, those little roll-up streamers that you get.
	And there was some guy with a giant-ass handlebar mustache, and he was handing me all of these streamers, and he said, Kid, when it gets to one, throw all the streamers over the crowd.
	And I was standing on a chair, and I remember it was kind of a wobbly chair, like a sort of loose barstool chair.
	And come midnight, I successfully launched all of these streamers right over the crowd.
	Everybody was cheering and kissing, and the music was pounding, and it was just a glorious, glorious night.
	I don't even remember where my mother was.
	Of course, she was in the party, and I'm sure having a blast.
	But I just remember that night, even now, more than a half century later, I just remember that night.
	And I remember thinking, God, why can't it always be like this?
	And I didn't mean like a big revelry party every night.
	I just meant that sense of positivity, that sense of happiness, that sense of enthusiasm, that sense of optimism.
	What's that line from the George Michael song?
	Now everybody's talking about this new decade.
	Like you say the magic numbers, then just say goodbye to the stupid mistakes you made.
	My memory served me far too well.
	And there is, don't you get that sense of the new decade?
	There's a new possibility, a new turning over of a leaf, a starting again, a starting fresh, a blank page.
	So that was one of my...
	Favorite. If not my favorite.
	Now, no, no, it sounds kind of sad.
	Hey, remember that party 50 years ago?
	Best party of my life, but...
	Ah, that birthday party when I was four or five, and that New Year's Eve when I was four.
	But that was some glorious stuff.
	Does that answer your question at all?
	I don't know how much detail to go into, but...
	Yes, indeed, and thanks for sharing that wonderful memory, and...
	I wish you many more birthdays and a very happy birthday.
	Thanks, Steph. Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that. That's very kind.
	And I certainly wish the same for myself.
	Who knows what the future is going to bring.
	And now, of course, from a sort of world stage, I'm not a participant but an observer.
	As I've ditched politics many years ago now, and I'm an observer.
	And that's really a fascinating and interesting place to be.
	Now I'm in the... In the mindset where the theories that I put forward in the last 16 years, I'm seeing whether they're true or false, valid or invalid.
	I remember back in April, I think it was March or April of 2020, the pandemic was just starting out in terms of really getting rolling.
	And this was, of course, long before, so six months or whatever it was, more than six months, eight months, maybe before the vaccines came out.
	And I remember standing in my backyard having a very passionate speech about how the effects of the lockdowns were going to be far worse than the effects of the virus in the long run.
	Preventing people from access to regular health care, preventing people from going outside, preventing people from Socializing that the loneliness, the isolation, the suicidality, the drug addiction, the dysfunction, you know, because there's no calculations.
	I mean, imagine that you're some kid with a highly abusive parent at home and you can't even get the relief of going to school anymore.
	Your parents working from home, you're stuck at home with them, and it's just a life of terror.
	I mean, there was a great relief for me in going to school.
	Woo! Out of the claws of the...
	Which, so to speak, right?
	And, yeah, I just remember saying that it seemed to me without a doubt that the effects of the lockdowns was going to be much worse than the effects of the virus and that the lockdowns were going to be counterproductive.
	And, you know, see that play out.
	It's really, really fascinating.
	All right. Okay, Marcelo.
	You are free to speak, my friend.
	Just unmute and I'm all yours. Yeah, okay.
	So when you said that due to the lockdown, you...
	Got stuck with your parents and stuff.
	That's what happened to me.
	And I actually thought it was a really positive thing because it really showed me the true horror I was living in.
	And they gave me the incentive to actually try and work to leave that environment that I just didn't have before.
	Not that I support the lockdown or anything, but that ended up being a positive thing to me.
	Well, I think that's great. Sorry, I shouldn't say that I think that's great.
	I'm sorry that that was the circumstances.
	I'm glad that you got the best you could out of.
	It's different if you're six or seven or eight or ten, right?
	And you've got a decade or more to go before you can get out, right?
	So that's the difference.
	I mean, the fact that the vividness of your difficult situation was impressed upon you and it spurred you to get out of a toxic environment, I mean, that's not a good situation, but...
	It's making the best of a bad situation, but I was more thinking about the kids who are much younger who just can't get away.
	Or they have abusive brothers, right?
	Yeah, they have abusive siblings and the siblings are all stuck at home and all of that.
	I mean, these calculations are...
	I mean, gosh, the idea that we would put the happiness of children as a central or core calculation of the value of society, right?
	I mean, it's always like, oh, civilization is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members.
	And that's all, I don't know, single moms and prisoners and so on.
	It's like, no, no, no, it's children.
	Yeah. It's children. If we can't focus on what's best for children, we have no right to call ourselves a civilization at all.
	In fact, we're scarcely better than the Aztecs and their child sacrifice.
	And that almost is literally coming true these days.
	So I appreciate your feedback.
	And again, I'm sorry for your situation.
	And I'm glad that you made the best of it.
	That is as noble a thing as we can sometimes achieve in many situations and circumstances.
	All right. I can take one more question.
	I have the time.
	I have the inclination.
	I have the battery.
	So if you have any other questions or comments or issues...
	So what's on your nightstand?
	What are you reading right now? Okay, so what am I reading at the moment?
	I'm reading a book that Dr.
	Peter McCullough co-wrote with a...
	I think he was a true crime author.
	I think it's called The Courage to Face COVID or something like that.
	I'm reading that at the moment, and my daughter and I, we just started to crack Dante's Inferno.
	And, last but not least, of course, I'm reading, or rereading, in some cases, a lot of philosophy.
	Next up, I have Thomas Hobbes in the History of Philosophers.
	After Francis Bacon comes Thomas Hobbes, and Hobbes is a great beast of a philosopher to wrap your head around to synthesize and to explain, because I'm talking about their philosophy and also its relationship.
	To good philosophy and at least a philosophy that's been liberated from the gatekeepers with the internet.
	So that's the stuff that I'm reading at the moment.
	And, you know, to not sound too elevated, I do have a minor addiction to celebrity gossip.
	So I will occasionally crack one of those.
	I won't say trashy because, you know, I'm not going to sit there and say that my tastes are trashy.
	But, you know, when you grow up with people, you're always curious how they turn out.
	And sometimes that's friends and sometimes that's Family, and sometimes that's celebrities.
	So I'm always kind of curious how people's lives are going who were celebrities when I was younger, and we can't help but look up to them as semi-deities at some point.
	So yeah, I will occasionally flip through one of those magazines and play Who Wore It Best with My Daughter, or Dress Review.
	So yeah, that's the stuff that I'm reading at the moment.
	And you? Okay, so I just started Oliver Stone's Chasing the Light, and I haven't made much progress.
	It's called what? Chasing the Light by Oliver Stone.
	And what's it about?
	I mean, I know he's done a bunch of documentaries lately.
	Is that his autobiography or something else?
	Yes. Yep. It's his autobiography.
	Okay. And I think I'm just into the third chapter, but he goes over a lot of his youth and the politics of his parents and all of that.
	What was his childhood like as a whole?
	So he grew up in New York.
	His family was fairly wealthy.
	I think his dad was pretty conservative, and I don't think he had a very good relationship with his father.
	So he kind of rebelled, and that explains a lot of his politics, I suppose.
	But yeah, I haven't made much progress.
	What I've read is interesting, though.
	Yeah, so that's mainly what I've just started.
	And then I just reread Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, and I want to buy the Summerillion, because I heard that's good.
	Although, from what I hear, the new Rings of Power show has absolutely butchered what they have rights to.
	Oh, yeah, I can't even watch that to critique it.
	I don't even want to give him a hate watch for you.
	Like, I'm sorry, that's just not...
	And the Silmarillion is interesting, but it's not a story so much as it is a mythology.
	It's sort of like reading an overview of Greek mythology rather than the actual stories with characters and plots and all that.
	So it's been a long time.
	But yeah, I'm sort of trying to lure my daughter into Lord of the Rings.
	She tried to... But she finds the language a bit too archaic at the moment, which I can kind of understand.
	I mean, I grew up with people who spoke like that, so it wasn't such a foreign language to me, but what would be more to her, the English of the 1930s, coming on for a century ago, right?
	So, yeah, it's interesting.
	It's interesting. Yeah, I mean, you can never really get harmed by rereading Lord of the Rings.
	That's such an incredible story and such incredible detail and such an incredible depth of world.
	I just remember thinking that...
	It's so... Most stories are a flash in the moment.
	This is part of a much larger narrative arc, and that's what gives it such resonance.
	I mean, if you have a story about World War II, you kind of need to talk about what's going on in the world or what led up to it.
	I mean, that's one of the things that I tried to do in my novel Almost, which you can get for free at almostnovel.com.
	Is to give a sense that the people are in a larger world with its own history, and the time slice that you see is like the arc of a pendulum in a much larger clock.
	And he captured that, I think, better than any other writer I've ever seen, even those who are dealing with...
	A non-fantasy setting.
	That he created a sense that this is part of a larger story arc that gives it real heft and momentum, as opposed to the story starts when the story starts and the story ends when the story ends.
	You know, like they rode off happily into the sunset and lived happily forever after.
	That's at the end of the story or a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
	It's the beginning of the story, but he just got this immense sense of A small window into a much larger story, and that's just incredible how he was able to do that, and of course he started Lord of the Rings, or he started the whole world because he loved languages and wanted to create Elvish and Dwarven and the other languages that are in there,
	but yes, and of course I do think it's hard to imagine, it's hard for me to imagine Lord of the Rings being written at any other time than in the depths and despairs of the Second World War.
	Because that was a time when it really looked like that was it for humanity, at least for civilization.
	And I think that level of despair...
	And, you know, I've sort of mentioned that the ring is sophistry because it doesn't have much power except how it can influence the minds of others.
	It's not like a lightning bolt shooter.
	It's something that goes in and corrupts and serves sovereign...
	It subverts...
	Sovereign Minds to Its Own Ends, which is the sophist.
	And I've got a whole, I think, a great show with Dr.
	Duke Pastor about Lord of the Rings.
	You can find that at fdrpodcast.com.
	I was very sort of pleased with that show.
	He's, of course, got wonderful insights as a professor of English literature about Lord of the Rings.
	So that was great. Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that sharing.
	So, okay. Look at that.
	We've done almost two hours.
	So I am going to close things off for the night.
	Thank you guys so much for these just wonderful conversations.
	I genuinely also want to put a shout out to the lovely and wonderful Christian listeners who have gentled and mellowed my soul considerably from my former much more punchy, contentious, and sometimes downright obnoxious bent.
	And so I really appreciate the bending of my fractious mind to a gentle and more wise and curious approach to these matters.
	And thank you so much for leading the way in that way.
	It is one of the greatest lessons that I've learned outside of my family.
	And your patience and kindness with me has had an enormous effect upon me.
	And your courage and generosity and stick with it-ness for the excluded wisdom of the world has been a great inspiration for me.
	And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kindness in this area.
	And it has taught me more about morality than most other things in this lifestyle.
	So thank you again so much for that and I will see you, I guess, in a year.
	In terms of the number ticking up.
	Have yourselves a lovely, lovely evening.
	I will talk to you guys on the weekend, in particular for my European listeners.
	We'll try and do a show during the day.
	And lots of love from up here.
	Take care, my friends. Thank you again so much.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate.

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