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May 17, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:37:53
God, Philosophy and UPB Morality...
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So yes, it is the 15th?
15th of May, 2023.
And I'm back to my freshly shaven, giant thumb status of, yeah, my wife eventually feels like she's...
You're kissing an ostrich egg with a cactus face.
I can't get some long flowing beard.
Stubble looks okay.
The problem is when you're...
Well, I can't shave my head either, right?
Because if you're over 50 and you shave your head and you shave your face, everyone's like, are you okay?
Are you okay? Is everything...
Are you okay? Is anything happening?
Are you okay? All right.
Let's get... A flash stream, you say?
Will you be doing the entire show short-hopless, or are you planning to lift your shirt up and down repeatedly the whole time?
Maybe a little off the shoulder number here.
All right. How do I know when it's time to call it quits in a marriage?
I feel like I'm getting a tremendous amount of...
I'm putting a tremendous amount of effort into it.
She doesn't want to. What is the ethical line as to whether to stay or not?
I would like to fix it.
But if she can't let go of the past and reconnect, then what do you do?
We made promises. She's the first to threaten divorce after days of silence.
Things cool and talk, but it repeats.
Oh, the kids are sick of it too.
Do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Steph.
Hmm. Oh, I was full of advice until the kids part of it.
Man, that's tough. Once the kids are involved.
So, let me put this out to you.
I'll put this out to you guys. In your experience, in your experience, thank you for the tip, in your experience, what percentage of people that you know can change?
Are willing to admit fault?
Are willing to commit to new paths?
Are willing to explore self-knowledge?
Are willing to take responsibility?
What percentage of people can change?
I'll just give you guys, I'll tell you a story about a friend of mine.
I first met him when he was going through a divorce and he was professionally very successful
and a tall good-looking guy, let's call him Mickey, I called him Mickey on the moon because
he was just kind of emotionally distant, very funny, very smart.
He was actually a guy, I remember sitting with him, this is when I had my first professional
job.
I was sitting in a meeting with him and he was just curious and he was asking me questions
about my life and we were chatting and all that and I had this sort of hourly low-rent
boss breathing down your neck kind of mentality and I was like, I don't know man, should we,
maybe we should be getting on with the, like planning the project.
And he's like, man, you take your work so seriously.
And it was like this Protestant elephant just stood up from my chest.
Because nobody had ever said that to me.
You know, for many years, I had this sort of...
If you see Tom Cruise in a really fairly ambling or meandering film, Magnolia, he's just screaming, Do your job!
You know, do your job!
The only thing that matters is how well you do your job!
And you listen to him screaming, God's sake.
It seems like that's not acting.
And... Because I couldn't get fired when I was younger.
I got my first job at 10, started paying all my own bills when I was 15, and I simply could not afford to get fired.
So yeah, I took my work pretty freaking seriously.
I thought, well, geez, my first hourly rate, I think I got paid $2.45 an hour.
And I thought, you know, well, geez, my first job, I was getting paid like $40,000 a year, my first professional job.
And I'm like, that's $20 an hour.
And I took my job at $2.45.
I took that pretty seriously.
And so this has got to be at least...
I mean, this has got to be at least eight times more serious, you know?
And that's like so serious, it's like putting your brain in a vice.
So I just remember him saying, you take your job, man.
You take your job a little too seriously.
And I just...
You know, it's funny.
It just takes one person to give you one idea that can just help lighten you up.
And so that's why I rip my shirt off now.
Alright, but what happened was he was going through a divorce and it was brutal.
Have you ever seen someone flinch when the phone rings?
Because his phone would ring, and his wife had lawyered up, and it was just brutal.
I was just going through this. And I just remember him saying, whatever you do, do not get divorced, man.
Do not get divorced.
And actually, it was his then-girlfriend who saved my butt from the woman I was going to marry, that was the wrong woman, when she said to me, just as a chance comment, you know, I think people who were engaged, shouldn't they be happier?
It's like this acquaintance's girlfriend saved my life!
When friends, immediate family, extended family, I had friendships of 20 years.
No one fucking person was stepping in to save me from this big mess, this big disaster.
And... It was, I mean, that's when it was one of these moments, like a scalding moment.
I call them scalding moments where I was just like, holy crap.
I got people who I've been, this was in my early 30s.
I've been, I had friends since I was 11, since I first came to Canada.
Friends since I was 11. Not one person noted that I was not very happy being engaged.
but a work friends girlfriend mentioned it
yeah I get really angry at my friends and I still feel angry
about it now Like, either they didn't know that it was the wrong decision for me, in which case, what kind of friends are they?
Or they do know it's the wrong decision for me, and out of passive-aggressive bullshit, want-you-to-fail stuff, they were fine with me having this kind of mess.
Thank you. I appreciate that tip.
So... What he said, I said, well, why did you get married?
And he said, well, first of all, it was the first woman who slept with him.
And secondly...
He said, well, I mean, I didn't know at the time.
I didn't get any good advice, which was kind of ironic, because I wasn't getting good advice.
I didn't even get good advice from him.
Although, again, he was like a work friend.
He was just moving from acquaintance to friend, and he wasn't giving me any particularly good advice.
It was just his girlfriend, too.
Anyway, so he said that he went to...
He went to a couples counselor and that couples counselor met with him and his wife for 45 minutes.
And maybe 50 minutes, right?
And then afterwards, this is his side, right?
I obviously wasn't there.
But his story was that the couple's counselor took him aside after talking with his wife for 50 minutes, him and his wife for 50 minutes, and said, your wife, she's not going to change.
She's not going to change. So you either accept her as she is or you get divorced.
But do not be in this with any hope of change.
There's a significant proportion of people with no inner voice.
Nothing's happening in there.
They don't have debates with themselves.
They don't think for themselves in that way.
They don't have Any, sitting in the shower, I should have said this, should I do this, should I argue?
They just, they just don't do it.
What percentage of people, again, I appreciate this rather informal polling, what percentage of people in your life now have the, no, let's do it when you were younger, when it was less chosen, right?
So when you were a kid, what percentage of people in your life had the ability to admit fault?
I'm wrong. I'm sorry.
You're right. I'll do better.
what percentage of people, when you were a kid, had the capacity to admit fault?
We got 25, 7, very specific, 0, 40% as a kid, ultimately 0.
Adults, 1%.
Yeah, even your friends as kids, right?
Very few adults would ever admit fault less than 10%.
Alright, so I've not forgotten about this question about the marriage.
And, sorry, the earlier numbers, 10 to 15%, next to 0, 15, almost no one, 5%.
Very few people open to, willing to change, less than 5%.
percent that's being optimistic. Right.
And we saw this through COVID, right?
And we're seeing this through the Durham report just released.
How many people are willing to admit fault?
How many people are willing to admit fault?
That's a crazy thing, man.
It's a wild thing. I genuinely, deeply, and humbly fail to comprehend the bulk of humanity in this fashion.
I mean, if you want to know One of the deepest and blackest truths about life.
Most people functionally are so addicted to self-righteousness, they would rather die than admit fault.
Most people are so addicted to being quote right, they would rather die than admit fault.
I mean, I remember hearing the story of a friend of mine's girlfriend who was like,
she wanted to go to what was clearly a bad section of town.
He told her she shouldn't go and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But she's like, oh, that's so, you know, whatever, right?
And she went and it was a very, very, very, very bad outcome.
She wouldn't have made a fault.
I've known... Women who've given up a good relationship, who've given up actual love, rather than admit they could be wrong, even about minor things.
A friend of mine broke up with his girlfriend because she would not admit that there was any other way to stack the dishwasher.
I'm not kidding about this.
She would not admit that there was any other possible way to stack the dishwasher.
It had to be just like this.
Rather than admit that she was at fault, not just for, here's how you have to stack the dishwasher, but for being so unbelievably petty and vicious and intolerant and mean...
That she wouldn't even say it doesn't matter, like it's not an important thing.
You have this, like some people in your life, they've got these weird explosive speed bumps in their head.
For my mom, it was like if you left the toothpaste cap off the toothpaste tube.
Well, I mean, she had like a bazillion of these things, right?
That if, or you don't take care of your things, man, or, you know, like people that just have these weird, weird corners, and you meet people, and a lot of people have these, you meet people, and what happens is you're kind of tracking along, and you just hit some weird, weird thing. I mean, I remember dating a girl.
I can't honestly even remember how it happened, but she was, oh, she was Armenian, Armenian girl.
And I suppose that the Armenian culture is hyper-macho or whatever, right?
And in the British culture, especially in the upper-class British culture, and I went to boarding school.
I was sort of trained in the upper-class stuff early on in life.
You can, you know...
You can be not manly, right?
I mean, you can make jokes about that stuff.
You know, this is Monty Python dressing up as women for comic effect and so on.
It's just not. Like, you don't have this hyper-masculine stuff that you have to do at all times, no matter what.
You know, you could just... And I just remember, I made some joke and...
She was literally bothered for like a week that I had made some joke in a high-pitched...
I honestly couldn't for the life of me remember what it was.
I couldn't put like, what does it mean?
What does this mean about you as a man?
It means I'm British and I know how to have a good time.
Somebody writes, here lies the body of William J., who died maintaining his right of way.
He was right, dead right, as he sped along.
But he's just as dead as if he were wrong.
Yeah, like most people will honestly...
And once I realized this, you know, I just dropped certain topics, right?
Because it's just like, okay, people would rather be dead than admit fault.
I don't know why. I don't know why people are like this.
I mean, I was punished for admitting fault as a kid, so I don't know why people are like this.
If you have any theories or thoughts...
Like, can people admit that they're right about X, Y, or Z topic?
Like, I mean, just take one that's not quite as controversial, right?
So, central banking.
Central banking is government control of currency and interest rates.
And it destroys entire civilizations and has, on a regular heartbeat basis, every 200 to 300 years, all throughout human history.
And people, rather than say that there may be problems with letting government control the fundamental unit of value in society, that power corrupts and power over money is even greater than power over the military, because power over the military is driven by power over money.
So, I mean, if you look at the whole pandemic and its response, it was driven by government money.
All of it was driven by government money.
The development of the vaccines, the stay-at-home money, the subsidies, the bribes, the rewards to hospitals, the control of the data, all of it was driven and funded and herded by government money.
There is no pandemic response.
There is only the inevitable shadows cast by central control.
But people would rather fall off the edge of historical heartbeat empire decline than just admit that they were wrong about even something like that, which is so blindingly obvious and not even particularly politically volatile.
So, yeah, people, you have to sort of...
I mean, I remember also being in a relationship, and I have to admire the girl's frankness for this, because I used to, when I was younger, I used to feel this odd anxiety.
It's not odd, but I'd feel this weird anxiety when you'd start sliding into somebody's crazy pit.
Have you ever had that experience where you start debating or arguing with someone, and you just hit one of these landmine speed bumps, or you start sinking into this quicksand of crazy, and And they are having some sort of existential panic about the topic but won't admit it.
And you can see them just digging in and they will do anything and they will fight to the death to maintain their position.
And I remember being in a relationship with a woman who would do this sometimes, a pretty nice woman, but she just had these fairly unmappable landmines of stuff.
And I remember saying, like, man, in these areas, like, you really can't admit fault.
And she's like, and I never will.
If you want to be with me, I'm never wrong about these things.
That's just the way it has to be.
And I said, well, yeah, I mean, the key phrase being if, right?
So I broke up with her because I'm not going to be in that situation where it wasn't even so much me as, you know, if I want to have kids, I'm not going to.
I'm not going to let my kids see me bow down to the gods of crazy town.
No, thank you. So when it's time to call it quits in a marriage, A, I can't possibly tell you that.
But B, one of the most foundational questions that I asked in my relationships was, okay, how do you know if you're in the wrong?
How do you know if you're in the wrong?
How do you know if you're in the wrong?
What standards do you apply to know that you're in error?
How do you know? For me, I mean, you guys all know, if it's anti-rational, irrational, contradicts reason and evidence, then I'm wrong.
Then I'm wrong. And I don't really have that much ego invested in things.
And, like, it's funny, you know, and there's a kind of trick that people pull, right?
Is that... You know, like with UPB, right?
I put the arguments for UPB forward like 15 years ago.
More, really. You know, wrote books, articles, presentations, and so on.
And then people still get it wrong.
And after 15 years, it's annoying, right?
And then people say, oh, see how triggered he gets?
See how defensive he gets? It's like, no, you're just an idiot who's lazy.
And you're in way over your depth, right?
Which is true for a lot of people, right?
So... It's a key question to ask people in your life.
Now, of course, you have to have a good answer for it yourself.
How do you know if you're wrong? If you get a thousand-yard stare, somebody doesn't have an answer, you're in danger.
You're in danger, my friend.
You're like that kid on the bus, that Simpson's kid on the bus.
I'm in danger. Yeah, you're in danger.
If somebody doesn't have a standard, like what's the standard higher than your own will?
What's the standard higher than your ego?
What's the standard higher than your own godforsaken monkey pride?
Oh, I can't be wrong.
Oh, I am the standard of reality.
Oh, I can't be incorrect.
Are you just in a will to power or are you in a truth-based relationship?
Because somebody who can't admit they were wrong will erase you from their mind and their heart like that.
It's really chilling. We've all experienced it at one time or another.
Somebody who can't admit...
Let's go a little bit with the trend here.
A woman who can't admit that she's wrong will erase you from her heart and mind like you would not believe.
You are utterly disposable because she's in the grip of a kind of demon.
And humility is the greatest enemy of demonology.
Humility where you say, I... I and correct are not the synonym.
My identity is separate from being correct.
My identity is separate from domination.
My identity is separate from winning.
Because if your identity is to be correct, to be right, to be winning, you have to erase other people.
Because you're not always going to be right.
I'm not always going to be right, of course, right?
And you have to have something that you guide yourself by other than monkey brain of dopamine pleasure through domination.
So if you're in a, quote, relationship with someone where they can't, where she can't admit that she's wrong, you're not in a relationship with that person.
You are in a subjugated slave relationship to their vanity.
You are there to deliver the package called victory to her trembling and empty heart.
If you don't have a relationship with the guy who delivers your Amazon package, you just drop off the package and off you go, right?
And you're just there to deliver victory to her.
You're there to subjugate.
You're there to be a prop to her vanity.
You're not there as a person.
You're there as a fucking prop.
So, with your wife, I don't know what you should or shouldn't do.
I mean, there's no one who can tell you that.
But I will say that a really foundational question to ask of the people in your life and yourself.
You are, of course, one of the people in your life.
Okay, by what standard am I wrong?
How do I know if I'm wrong?
Scientists can answer that, or at least they used to before they became state-sucking court toadies for propping up tax narratives.
Some mathematicians have that.
How do I know? How do I know if I'm wrong?
By what standard am I provably wrong that I will accept?
Have you ever been in those relationships where the person denies reality so foundationally that you genuinely have a strong urge to record the conversations and literally play them back?
Like they'll say, you're just a jerk, right?
And literally, a minute or two later, you'll say, well, you just called me a jerk.
No, I didn't. I didn't mean that.
Like, a couple of live streams ago, a guy was saying, well, Steph, your parents did a lot to keep you alive.
Don't you owe them? And if you don't help them out in their old age, that's unjust, right?
And literally someone said, no, no, no, he's using the third person to you.
And I said, no, no, no, the third person you could be something like, isn't it unjust for one to do this, right?
One is like a rough third person you.
And, oh, well, I guess he was just using the third person you incorrectly.
Like when somebody says, you are X, and you say, no, that's not right.
And it's like, well, no, I didn't mean you.
It's like, so you used the word you repeatedly, but didn't mean me.
Yeah. Like, that's how hard it is for some people to admit that they're wrong.
They'll just literally make up an entire parallel language, right?
Or there's the other big one, of course.
Well, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean to, huh, right?
And I didn't mean to is a huge red flag.
Huge red flag. Alright, let me just get to your comments.
People with false virtue fall back on helplessness when confronted.
Interesting. Yes, sir.
Addicted to self-righteousness.
No ears for how easy it is to say I was mistaken.
Oh, isn't it just such a relief?
I mean, yeah, if you're wrong, I get, I mean, I understand the pride.
Like, I understand the vanity.
Of course, I understand the vanity.
I understand it's not a huge amount of fun to say I was wrong.
Okay, but I, but so what, right?
So what? It's not a huge amount of fun to brush your teeth either, but it's probably a good idea to do it.
Mmm, if you can't admit fault, you can't grow.
Well, it's worse than that. If you can't admit fault, you'll crush others.
Because you are a god to yourself.
You are a god.
You are your own idol.
You worship yourself when you should be obeying reality.
You have become a god to yourself, which is to say, a devil.
Right? I mean, Satan, literally, foundationally, basisism, rebellion, are not admitting fault.
Satan can't win, but he fights anyway.
He can't admit fault. And in the X number of rotations around Saul since Satan ran his rebellion, has he ever admitted he was wrong, admitted he was fault?
Nope. Double down, dig in, double down, dig in, double down, dig in.
Somebody says, this is actually a beautiful thing about Catholicism.
We are all born imperfect.
I'm going to have to push back a little bit on the old.
That's a beautiful thing that we're all born sinful.
It's like, no, my baby was not sinful.
My baby was not born sinful.
And I don't think that the Catholicism...
Catholicism has taken hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from the government to push migration, right?
And whatever you want to call it, right?
There are some questions about that, right?
People are afraid that if they admit fault, they would be vulnerable to attack.
Social media has made it infinitely worse.
Well, I don't know about that.
Because there is some appeasement of the mob for sure.
I mean, when horrifying stuff arose about Joe Rogan and he did this apology thing.
I mean, yeah, if you bow down and you scrape and you apologize, you can get let off the hook for some things.
The mob reserves its genuine hatred for people they can't bully.
So if you're a bully, then your entire sense of self and worth and value and identity and existence is based upon domination.
And if you come across someone...
Who won't be dominated.
It threatens your entire existence.
It threatens your entire sense of self.
It threatens your...
I mean, everything. Every conceivable thing.
Which is why the escalations tend to go just wild on people.
Possible reasons. Fear of being viewed as weak.
Fear of admitting they were misled and fell for lies.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, hit me with this.
If you're still around people who were Covidians, right?
I mean... Have they admitted that they were wrong about anything, even when it's perfectly clear?
I mean, the latest data out is that, I think it was Pfizer, that the life that was saved through the vaccination were lost to heart issues.
There was no net gain in survival.
I mean...
Anyone around you?
you? What percentage of people around you who were wrong have admitted they were wrong
in this truly foundational moral test?
Oh, no comedians around me!
That's fair.
I guess you're in the States.
Yeah, people who also frame your response are very dangerous as well.
People who frame your response.
You know, the pics where it didn't happen people or if you don't respond, you're admitting you're wrong.
No, I'm just not engaging with someone who's crazy.
Somebody says, I get that feeling all the time with people outside my family
and I feel it just thinking about discussing about most important topics.
Yeah. Admitting fault is releasing part of the small shred of goodness they believe they possess.
It's so vulnerable to objectivity and once in question opens them up to other false virtues to be dismantled.
That's a good point, yeah, if I'm wrong about this.
And also there is this is a fallacy of sunk cost, right?
I mean, particularly as people get older.
If somebody has not developed the habit of admitting fault by the time they're 25 or 30, like I'm a big one for looking at the end of brain development, right?
So the end of brain development is early 20s for women and mid-20s for men.
Then you're not totally set in stone, but your habits and your personality are almost immutable.
Almost immutable. And I say almost just because somebody can come up with some narrative or maybe even some fact that you could believe.
But yeah, it's almost immutable.
Almost immutable. And what I say is it's functionally immutable.
It's functionally immutable.
Like, maybe I grow a full head of hair tomorrow, right?
Maybe I was missing something or all my hair follicles just wake up and I grow a full head of hair tomorrow, right?
Have there been instances of that happening throughout human history?
I'm sure there have been. I'm sure they have been.
Do I check my scalp every morning for new growth?
Only intellectually, right?
No. No. So, whatever...
Now, if somebody's in the habit, like they admit fault and they're open to change and they grow and they think and all of that, Then, yeah, they'll just keep doing that.
They're not going to stop doing that, right?
I mean, you tune in, I assume, and it's nice to see everyone here.
But you tune in because you assume that I'm going to have something of value to offer, something of...
I'm going to try and stop repeating myself all the time.
Something of value to offer that is consistent with what I've done in the past, right?
And so, you don't expect me to be wildly different.
And that's why marriage works, right?
When I say I love my wife, I'm like, hope you're not the opposite tomorrow.
Hope you don't turn into a woke witch tomorrow, right?
So, when you see people, you know, how tall is someone going to be when they're 10?
You don't know. But how tall are they going to be when they're 20?
Well, you know. Now, you can think of weird exceptions like Robert Walpole or Andre the Giant.
They got some pituitary issue. They keep growing.
But, you know, like that's one in 10 million people.
So, again, functionally in terms, right?
So, you don't know how tall someone's going to be when they're born.
You have some guesses. And, you know...
I remember when I came to Canada, so 11, 12, 13, such a wide divergence.
You know, I remember there was these kids from Lebanon, like they were 12 and they had hair on the backs of their knuckles.
I mean, it's just wild, right?
And I was not a particularly big kid.
I'm a little over, I mean, I'm just under a shade under six feet, so I'm taller than average.
But, you know, it took a while for that growth spurt to kick in.
So you just don't know. But When you see someone, let's say, who's 20, are you expecting them to grow anymore?
Well, the answer is no. And it's the same thing.
You take people as they are.
When their brains have finished developing, early 20s for girls, mid-20s for boys, when their brains have finished developing, don't expect any big changes.
Now, again, if they have committed to change, you will continue to get changes, right?
What I'm saying is, it doesn't mean that after 25, nobody changes.
What I'm saying is that The trajectories don't change.
If somebody is not changing and doesn't admit that they're wrong, don't expect something to radically change in the brain after it's finished its development as a whole.
Any more than you expect a growth spurt from somebody who's 22.
Again, You could think of some freaky examples and so on.
But we have to work the averages here, right?
We have to work the averages. You don't jump out of a plane with no parachute because once in a million that's no problem, right?
You just land on some ridiculously lucky place, right?
All right. Thank you for the tips.
I certainly appreciate it.
And if it's been a while since you contributed, I would be most gratefully appreciated.
And, of course, if you like all of the new Truth Abounds, I would...
I very much appreciate that because they're relatively expensive to produce.
The truth about...
It's a researcher and a very fine fellow I work with.
And you know what?
I will give you guys a wee bonus.
I actually have an interview. Excuse me.
I've recorded an interview, but I have not released this yet.
And it was with the incomparable and truly delightful...
I really feel like...
Yeah, Naomi Brockwell.
Naomi Brockwell. Let me just...
I'll throw this in.
You guys can watch it after this.
It's a very good interview.
She's really great. But yeah, it's not out yet, but you can watch that.
Alright. Thank you for dropping by and thank you for the tips.
Let's see here. How was your mother's day?
Oh, it was very nice.
My wife, she's got a ridiculously green thumb.
She's fantastic with plants.
I don't know if it's husband guests but I walk by they tend to wilt but she's fantastic with plants and she has a particular favorite plant so my daughter and I went out to get her one of those plants and we gave that to her and you know obviously big hugs and told her how wonderful she is and a backbone of the family and the greatest mother on the planet as far as I'm concerned and We did that.
We went for a walk to one of my daughter's favorite spots, which my wife also enjoys.
We went to, I have a sort of low rent fetish for farmers markets, because I like buying local and all of that.
So we went to a farmers market.
And I strolled around and sampled some wares and had a little snack or two.
And then we met up with some friends for dinner and had a really, really great conversation.
And my daughter has devised a sort of live version of Among Us, which I played with their kids, which was really fun.
It always ends up with me running down the hallway going...
Which makes the youngest kids particularly hysterical, which was a lot of fun.
All right. So it was a very nice day.
Thank you. I hope you guys had a nice day as well.
Let's see here. Oh, yeah. To avoid getting sucked into an irrational debate with my dad, I hung up the phone.
He leaves a voicemail saying, if I don't call back, that means I'm in passive agreement.
Yes, that's right. I'm going to actually put by the standards by which I'm going to control you.
And if you don't call me back, you're admitting that I'm right.
It's like... I'll let you have...
Don't let me interrupt your conversation with yourself, right?
I have that very much with people, at least when I was younger.
It's like, yeah, you're having a fine time having this chat without me.
I'm not going to interrupt your conversation with yourself.
You think you're having a conversation with me.
You're just talking with yourself.
I don't want to interrupt.
I don't want to be rude. All right, so let's see here.
Oh, regarding COVID, my sister just doesn't talk about it anymore, like it never happened.
Yeah, I don't think that's healthy.
Honestly, I don't want to run into one's relationship, but I don't think it's healthy when someone was really wrong about something.
I mean, this was really, really wrong.
Really wrong, because everybody's compliance endangered everyone else, right?
And so, I don't know.
What do you mean, like, it never happened?
This was a giant...
It was the biggest moral test of modern times.
Without a doubt, the biggest moral test of modern times.
And to just let it blow past, not circle back?
I mean, I guess you say, well, she's going to be too triggered.
She's going to be too upset. It's like, no, no.
I mean, if you're going to let your life be run by other people being triggered, then you are just binding yourself down into slaves of obsequence.
What's the point? All right.
Oh, the Botox guy is back.
Yeah, yeah. Botox my scalp.
I'll have your hair back.
Honestly, my hair is like Twitter.
It was fun at the time, but I don't need it now.
And honestly, it's real nice to just be able to...
Like, I'd have to keep it this short.
I like not having to do anything to do a video.
I like not do anything with my hair.
All right. You can never contort yourself enough to manage someone else's feelings.
People who expect you to are not your friends, nor do they have your best interests at heart.
People who do that to you abuse you.
When my ex called me fat, told me to lose weight and change color, literally physical calls contorting myself to the image he wanted, I'd love to change color?
You mean get a tan or lose a tan?
That's pretty wild. I mean, look, people do have to have the right to ask for changes from you, right?
I mean, I think that's fine.
I mean if you are... if you gained weight doesn't your partner have the right to say
I'm not happy that you've gained weight and I'd really appreciate it if you could lose it?
Hey Steph, I was wondering if you heard of Jordan Peterson's new university and if you had an interest in teaching it?
In it?
Um...
Hang on, let me hold my breath waiting for Jordan Peterson to call.
No, I think I will not end up teaching at Jordan Peterson's new university.
Your public discussion of what is needed to save the world is not permitted.
And it's not permitted because people get hysterical about it.
And I don't...
I accept that.
I just accept that as a fact.
I just accept that as a fact.
And people would rather be right than survive.
And that's just not at a personal level.
That's like at a societal level these days.
People just don't want to talk about certain topics.
They just freak out about it.
It's like, okay, well... If somebody is a hardcore drinker, right, like David Bowie in the 70s had this cocaine addiction that was horrendous, and the guy dropped below 100 pounds.
He lived on pepper's milk and cocaine, according to his own story.
And then in order to get over...
Of course, I would imagine he had massive amounts of guilt because he was...
having quote sexual relations with some extremely young girls and it was just I mean the 70s was one of the most vile decades in the history of the world but Where was I going with the David Bowie thing?
I'm afraid I took one more step to the right and I can't remember where I was going to the left.
Well, every six months it happens.
David Bowie, weight loss.
Oh yeah, sorry, thank you.
So then David Bowie, in order to get over his abuse of cocaine, which was going to kill him, he can't even remember making the album Station to Station.
And David Bowie's songs are real brain viruses.
I never really liked his singing voice in Merry Christmas to Mr.
Lawrence when he says he can't sing. I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of with you on that.
And he had a really freaky space alien look, particularly in the 70s.
In the thin white, Duke was a little better, and then the Let's Dance was all preppy phase.
But his songs, I remember when I was a kid, when Ashes to Ashes came out, and it's a very surreal and bizarre song, and it's a very surreal and bizarre mindset.
Young Americans is more fun.
I did that at karaoke a couple times.
But... He got over his cocaine addiction, or he switched it to another addiction, which was alcohol.
and I assume that that had something to do with him dying of liver cancer in his 60s.
And a lot of his family was mentally ill as well, David Bowie's.
I mean, I think his brother was schizophrenic and died in his 40s in an insane asylum.
Let's see here. Yes, but from what it seems, says someone, Jordan Peterson's university seems to be based on truth and integrity and also bringing the cost of a degree significantly down.
Your philosophy has been so helpful and influential to me.
I was very curious to see if you were interested in that platform.
Okay, listen. I mean, I'm happy to do this.
So you can write a well-crafted email to Dr.
Peterson and And you can say, oh, you did a couple of interviews with this guy and, you know, he's got a lot of really powerful and valuable stuff to say.
And, you know, and then if any of his people reach out to me, I would be happy to chat with them.
So you can, you know, and appreciate that.
And this is not like, fine, you do it, right?
Genuinely, if you want me to do something that I'm skeptical of, that doesn't mean I'm...
Right. It doesn't mean that I'm right.
What I'm saying is I don't feel that it's a valuable use of my time, but if you feel that it's a possibility that I'm not pursuing and I'm wrong about that, just pursue it on my behalf, right?
And, you know, when people come to me and say, oh, yeah, no, I've been talking with so-and-so.
They'd love to chat with you. Okay.
I mean, that's certainly a possibility.
All right. So, I don't want to bypass any of your questions or comments because it's a live stream I want to be.
I want to be here for you.
But I do, I've had some interesting thoughts lately.
I mean, hopefully not just lately, but I've had some interesting thoughts which I'm happy to share with you.
But I don't want to bypass if you have big questions that you want to ask because this is a live stream and I can do the other ones as a solo.
But I do like solo shows in a live stream too because getting the feedback is also quite heady.
But it's a bit mind-blowing.
But I'm happy to chat about it or I'm very happy to take your questions.
Let's just give a pause here and see what people want.
When don't you have interesting thoughts?
How do you get anything done? Yes.
It's the constant brain eruption that I'm trying to wrangle or manage.
It's like trying to get somewhere with a horse on cocaine or charging randomly.
Is Rachel accepted by the tribe at the end of your novel, The Present?
It seemed like the outcome was meant to be self-evident, but I wasn't sure enough of Oliver's character for that.
All right. Um...
I can do this without spoilers.
I can do this without spoilers. Okay, so, and I went back and forth on the ending of that.
This is my new novel. I went back and forth about the ending of that book.
I can't even tell you how many times.
In fact, my original plan was to write two endings, French Lieutenant's Woman style, was to write two endings.
But here's what I want from that ending, whether it's right or wrong.
Time will tell. I mean, that's not really an objective answer to that.
So, what I don't want is for someone to do something heroic and brave and noble and fantastic and magnificent, right?
And then you get all of the payoff from that and you're complete with it.
I wanted in this book to write something because it was so contemporaneous.
I wanted to write something where...
You would feel the urge to pursue heroism in your own life, and if I complete it in the book, right, then...
It's over. It's done.
I fed you the full meal and therefore...
Nobody goes hunting right after they've had a full meal, right?
Whereas if I tease you and stimulate your appetite and then say, you know, there's great food out there, then you'll go hunting, right?
So that's sort of one of the things.
I didn't want it to be complete because I think complete is cheating you from pursuing it yourself.
That's number one. Number two, Rachel...
What happens to her in the house after she escapes the beasts?
What happens to her in the house?
The revelation that she has.
We pursue our goals with the idea that the pursuit is only of value if we win, if we achieve what we want.
I mean, here's a silly example, right?
So, a week or two ago, I went to an arcade with my daughter.
Now, at 14 and a half, she's starting to age out of that stuff a little bit.
And I'm trying to grab these last childhood things before they fade out, right?
But... She likes the claw machine, right?
Now, the claw machine is fun.
Because it fails, right?
And I think these things are pretty rigged, right?
They adjust over the course of the day to make sure they don't run out of stuff and people don't win too much or too little.
And so, you know, she wants to get it and I want her to get it and I want to get stuff and so on, right?
But the purpose of the claw machine is not getting the toy.
The purpose of the claw machine is to enjoy the process, right?
You're not paying for the toy because if you're paying for the toy...
You just, you know, these things, you get a bunch of points, you get a bunch of crappy toys or whatever.
The toys don't go anywhere, right?
I mean, generally, right? You don't really play with them much.
So, the purpose is, and, you know, we were talking about this, you know, that you do it because you want to win, and I get that, but the purpose is the process.
You've got to have goals, but if you reserve your happiness to the achievement of goals, you'll spend most of your life unhappy.
Remember this. If you reserve your happiness for the achievement of your goals, you will spend most of your life unhappy.
Because the thrill of victory lasts like 15 minutes.
At best. At best.
And you all know this.
That dopamine evens out.
Right? Think of the last time you got some fantastic news.
How long were you happy for?
How long were you happy for?
I would say, you know, an hour or two maybe.
Maybe even a day. Maybe even two days.
And you pop back to normal, right?
You just pop back to normal.
So... You know, you go up buildings, you go down in subways, but generally you're at street level, right?
I mean, not where you live, right?
So, with Rachel...
Everything she does throughout the novel is to serve her ego, to serve her vanity, to rope other people into envying her.
And that's very clear in the book.
I mean, that's the very opening of the book.
Rachel is a vampiric that she wants to be lusted after, she wants to be admired, she wants to dominate, she wants to serve her ego, she wants other people to be slaves to her ego.
And everyone who interacts with Rachel, only one of them can be happy at a time.
And you can see this very clearly when she's talking with her sister.
That if her sister is happy, Rachel is unhappy.
And again, that's right at the beginning, right?
And if Rachel is happy, her sister is unhappy, it's win-lose.
Rachel is a win-lose, win-lose person.
And given that she's in a win-lose mindset, the only way that she can have any happiness is to...
And the same thing is true of her boyfriend, right, who finally admits that he didn't travel because he liked new places.
He traveled because he liked people to admire and lust after him.
So they are vampiric.
they absorb, they take other people's happiness in order to prop up their own satisfactions.
Oliver won't have any of that.
you Oliver will not ever lose to feed Rachel's ego.
And Oliver is the first guy in her life Who actually tells her the truth and asks her real questions, which she does not know how to handle.
So when Oliver asks her to tell something honest that's important, she freaks out.
Because if he wants something from her and he wins and gets something, that means she's lost and she's unhappy.
The idea that truth can elevate both people is incomprehensible to her.
But as you know, over the course of the novel...
That changes. And it changes in the most brutal ways possible.
And then she's finally...
Okay, there's a tiny spoiler here.
Okay, fairly not tiny.
You can skip over this next couple of minutes if you haven't read the book.
So, this finally comes to the climax when she's trying to get...
To where Oliver is.
And she's in a predator-prey relationship.
She's hunted by dogs.
Now, if the dogs win, she loses.
If the dogs win, she loses.
And the reason why this works for me thematically is that the whole time she's been in a predator-prey
relationship, that she's preying on other people's insecurities and weaknesses and lusts
for her and all of that in order to feed her own ego in this sort of very sad and vanity-based
way.
Thank you.
And how does she survive the dogs?
She climbs up and she puts herself in a crucifix position on the ceiling with the support beams in the convenience store.
She literally is saved by the cross.
I told you it was my love letter to Christianity.
Rachel is saved by the cross.
And the cross is the idea that it has to be win-win for society to survive.
Things have to be win-win for society to survive.
So the reason, another reason why the book doesn't end with Rachel quote winning is that would be to return to her paradigm that the only happiness is when you win and the only way you win is at other people's expense and therefore there's only a small and diminishing amount of happiness and you have to punch people in the face and take it from them and then someone's going to punch you and take it from you and then you elbow them and kick them in the shins and take it back and it's squalling and squabbling and fighting over a diminishing store of happiness.
like animals with a diminishing food source just fighting and attacking each other.
And she comes to this revelation.
...
When she's in the house, after she escapes the dogs, what does she do?
It's very subtle.
It's not very subtle. She joins with eternity.
She literally smashes the clock.
So there's this clock that keeps startling her.
This cuckoo clock that keeps startling her in the house.
And she's so full of rage at one point because it startled her for the second or third time.
She literally marches down, rips it off the wall and smashes it.
She smashes time.
She joins with the eternal.
She destroys time.
Because when you join with the eternal, things can be win-win.
Because you're not dealing with a finite resource anymore.
Do you admire me or do I admire you?
Are you superior to me or am I superior to you?
Well, that's just monkey hierarchy, right?
Where are you on the hierarchy chain?
When you join with the eternal, there's no limit of resources.
When I tell the truth, it doesn't steal the truth from you.
When I'm virtuous, it doesn't steal virtue from you.
When I light your candle, my candle doesn't go out.
When I enlighten you, my world doesn't get darker.
In fact, my world gets brighter.
It's win-win. Why? Because we're partaking of universality and eternity.
Because we're partaking of truth and reason and virtue and courage.
These are not finite resources.
Now, who pursues who?
Who lusts after who? Who's better than who?
Who's more important than who?
Who gets more likes? Who gets more clicks?
Who gets more whatever?
That's finite. But when we participate in eternity and infinity, which is truth, reason, virtue, when have you ever lost by convincing someone else of the truth?
Does that take the truth from you?
Nope. So she smashes time, she smashes the temporal, she smashes the limits.
And when she does that, She has a revelation.
It doesn't matter if he loves me.
It doesn't matter if I make it.
It matters only that I'm trying.
And to transmit the joy, to change the joy from the achievement to the effort is to maximize all potential for happiness in your life.
You follow? If you train for ten years to get a gold medal and then you're happy for two days after you get the gold medal, you've just spent ten years being unhappy for two days of happiness.
And the degree to which you say, I'm only happy in my training if I get the gold, well, you're just giving up.
All potential you have for sustainable happiness, if you're looking at the achievement.
I had to let go of millions of people to keep speaking the truth.
I mean, I know where off I speak.
I had to let go of millions of people in order to speak the truth.
What was the option?
I gotta hang on to the people.
Thank you.
So I will lie. I have to hang on to my platform.
I have to hang on to Twitter and I have to hang on to YouTube and I have to hang on to wherever.
I have to hang on to that.
I can't let that go. So the only way I can maintain the relationships with my audience is to not tell them the truth, the important truth, the truth that matters, the truth that can save.
That's an unholy bargain.
I can only hang on to the relationships in my life if I lie.
This is why your sister who's denying that COVID ever happened is not healthy.
It's not a relationship.
You're participating in a lie.
And you can't have a relationship with people you lie to.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, I have my own thoughts and I'm starting to flesh out a sequel to the present.
I have my own thoughts.
But it doesn't matter whether Oliver loves her and they get married and they have kids.
Because if she places her happiness upon the achievement of all of his acceptance,
then she's saying that a goal which fades is my only chance for happiness,
rather than a process that continues.
A goal that fades is my only chance for happiness, rather than a process that continues.
I'm doing philosophy after 40 years, and I am still learning new things.
I'm still coming up with new ideas.
I still have amazing new conversations.
You guys can hear them. Philosophy to me is not, wow, you know, I finally solved the problem of secular ethics.
It's been the holy grail of philosophy for thousands of years.
Well, that's it. I'm done, man.
I can rest content with it. I mean, what an achievement.
And I can rest content for the rest of my life.
No? No.
Because the happiness is not...
I mean, that's the ultimate gold medal of philosophy is the explication of secular ethics.
How do you get the ought from the is?
How do you get virtue without gods or governments?
How do you get goodness without faith?
I'm done with that, by the way.
Right, if she says the whole point of this struggle was to get Oliver, okay, she's got Oliver, the discontent
will return.
You You
.
And that's why I didn't give that ending, that it's the process of her...
I mean, at the beginning of the book, she's in full display, full sexual mating display.
Getting attention, wanting to be lusted after, wanting to dominate.
She's impatient and rude with the waiter.
She's dominant, dominating and rude to her sister.
And she just, you know...
She's a jerk.
She's a real jerk. And at the end of it...
And she survives on the...
She survives on the admiration and lust of others.
And she smashes up her whole life.
She smashes up her whole life for the sake of escaping.
If the only way you can get out of your prison is, in a sense, to roll a grenade at the walls and hope you survive, at some point you'd be really tempted to do that, and that's what she did.
Is the present available to download as an audio file like your other books?
I'm having trouble finding the link, if so.
It is for donors. It is for donors, and I will...
I will give you that. I will give you that.
Yeah, it's available as an audiobook.
Let me get that for you. Just for dropping by today.
It's a great audiobook, I think.
There you go.
There you go. Somebody says...
I would be happy to sign a letter for the Jordan Peterson University to advocate Steph at anything.
I would be indignant that he hasn't reached out in support to the deplatforming.
No, I'm not particularly surprised at that.
I'm not particularly surprised at that.
I'm pleasantly surprised how much I like the character Ben in the present.
I love the book so far.
I'm on chapter 19. Yes, Ben is a great pivotal character.
And Ben and his father and his mother literally gave me goosebumps later on in the book.
Because sometimes you plan, but you have to allow a certain amount of spontaneity in your writing, at least for me.
And some of the stuff that came up between Ian and Cassie with Ben in the backseat of the car when they're fleeing just literally gave me goosebumps.
That was just amazing to me.
Thanks for the insight, Steph. It is an amazing book.
The win-lose mentality ties in very well with Lewis Staten.
Yeah, Lewis Dayton is from my novel The Future.
That's an interesting analogy.
When I read that part of the book, when Rachel did that, I related too much.
I related so much in my own way.
I couldn't go on with my life.
I was a ticking time bomb. Yeah, self-sabotage is survival at times.
Like when you are inhabited by demons, you've got to drink the holy water and half drown just to get them out, right?
Sometimes to survive.
Gosh, I wrote this when I was 17.
To be resurrected, you must first bury yourself.
How many people make it back out of the ground, right?
But, I mean, what is your option, right?
When you're so lied to by society as a whole, my God.
I mean, it really feels like death to come to life.
All right, let me get to your last questions or comments or issues or problems
And appreciate your tips If there's anything else you would like to drop in the coin jar, so to speak, before the end of the show, I would appreciate that very much.
Does your mug say, no coffee, no workie?
Yes. No coffee is supposed to be no workie.
No, just kidding. No coffee, no workie, yeah.
That is wonderful, yeah.
It's really what my brain demands.
You want some thoughts? Gonna need some caffeine.
What did you want to discuss earlier?
Well, hit me. I'm happy to share my thoughts or I can save that for another time if people have dinner time for some.
Hit me with a Y if you want. I can talk about it.
Yes. Okay. All right.
What the hell have I been doing?
What have I been doing, lo these many moons?
I've been thinking a lot about religion lately.
And... The people over the last 500 years, a lot of them of course heavily Christian, fundamentalist Christian as we would call them now, and they believed that God made a rational universe and the capacity of the human senses and the human mind to process and gravitate towards reason, towards empirical, universal, conceptual understanding.
And they said, look, if we take the scientific method to study nature, we're not driving God away.
We're not dismissing or denigrating God.
we are honoring and worshipping God by exploring the reason behind his creation.
God made a rational universe, he gave us rational capacities and a thirst for reason, therefore
taking our God-given drive and abilities and applying it to a God-created universe is not
exactly impious.
In fact, it is the very essence of worship to truly understand the glory of God's creation
And to do that, given that God made the universe mathematically, made it objective, he made it stable, he divided the elements, he created the powers and the strong and weak forces and gravity and electromagnetism, and you've got the inverse square law, the second law of thermodynamics, and like all of the things that were available to be discovered.
That mathematics is mapping the mind of God, that physics is mapping the hands and the work shop of God.
It is not impious to use God-given reason to understand the rationality of God's creation.
It's not impious.
But, but, to do that, you have to push aside the superstition of miracles.
I mean the true miracles of Jesus weren't the loaves and the fishes, weren't walking on water, weren't the healing of the sick.
The true miracles of Jesus was the transformation of ethics from tribal in-group preference to universal moral commandments.
That's the miracle.
That it's not genetic proximity, reciprocal evolutionary altruism.
That it is a universal moral standards that apply to Jew and non-Jew, Christian and non-Christian alike.
The miracles were the myths used to transmit those ethics.
Why were miracles necessary to transmit those ethics?
Because... Because they didn't have proof.
So, in order to pursue a truly deep and powerful understanding of God's universe, you had to pass aside, you had to step over, you had to expel.
Exercise. Exercise.
The circus sideshows of miracles that were used to transmit to the masses that which was essential but could not be proven.
Here's a silly example. When I was a kid, I was told that if I didn't brush my teeth at night, sugar fairies would dance on my teeth and would crack the enamel.
So I brush my teeth. I mean, there were no sugar fairies dancing on my teeth at night, but I brush my teeth.
In a primitive state of mind, you need miracles in order to transmit knowledge to the immature and the credulous.
And the more immature and credulous the society, the more miracles you need, which is why everyone's so addicted to superhero movies and magical video games and so on.
It was not a repudiation of God to study God's creations according to the reason that God grants us.
Not a repudiation. It is a form of worship.
But This is something that rang through my head over and over again when I first heard it when I was quite young.
That the age of miracles is over.
The age of miracles is over because the age of science has arrived.
So in order to study the universe from the standpoint of physics and mathematics and absolutes, you have to push aside the circus show of miracles.
And you have to assume a stable universe with stable laws, stable properties, stable senses, stable reasoning to figure it out.
And you only get the modern world with the scientific method and you only get the scientific method if you push aside the circus show of miracles and recognize that you are studying God's creation with God-given reason and God-forged senses.
Does that make sense so far?
This is not the big thought.
This is not the big thought.
I'm not... whether the miracles of Christ did happen or didn't happen, let's just put
that aside for the moment.
Bye.
And I'm sorry, I know it's an important topic and so on, right?
Now, when you will the pursuit of reason and evidence— And cast aside exceptions, which is really what the scientific method does, right? You will, with adamant and passion and power, you will the pursuit and capture of the truth without exceptions.
So, what have I been doing?
What the heck have I been doing?
I think I know.
I think I know. I hope I know.
I think I know. The way that the early scientists were to the physical universe, I have been to the moral universe.
I honestly cannot think of a single moral rule that I've extracted from UPB that goes
against the Christianity I was raised with.
The scientists who pursue knowledge of God's creation have achieved incredible powers,
truths, valid conjectures, hypotheses, observations and conclusions about the natural world.
It's true, it's valid, it's right.
Science is the most successful cognitive mindset that has ever existed, ever.
In terms of productivity, it's capitalism, but science, this is what is blown away.
A lot of theology and caused a lot of theology to retreat back to ethics.
We say, look, science is, and I'm not talking this modern abortion of science, but science as a human mindset has absolutely transformed the world in the last couple of hundred years.
Like, at levels that could never have been conceived ahead of time.
Inconceivable levels of alteration of change.
I mean, just look at the 20th century alone.
It took 50, 60 years to go from the first human-powered flight to going to the moon
and back, right?
So I believe that I have been pursuing a mission.
Thank you.
A rational understanding of morality in the same way that the scientists were pursuing a rational understanding of the physical universe.
And what if...
Go with me here.
If you like. What if...
By...
Providing and communicating the rational underpinnings of universal morality, I'm actually closer to the mind of God than even the physicist got in the understanding of atoms and gravity and time, Relativity. Evolution.
There is reason in the universe that was hidden by superstition about the universe.
What if superstition comes from the devil and reason comes from God?
There is superstition in the realm of morality.
Morality is the last place where superstition still resides.
The superstition of the will of the people, the superstition of the collective, the superstition of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number, the superstition of faith even that we must believe in things we cannot prove.
But why would God give us a rational universe and the thirst for reason and rational senses And then say, it is a sin to pursue the reason I gave you to understand the reason of the universe I created.
which is essentially rational.
I mean this would be like a park ranger giving you a clear map to the most beautiful vista
and then calling you evil for pursuing it, walking the path.
.
.
What if it is the most profound act of faith to say, as the early scientists did, God's creations cannot be the opposite of reason.
God's creations cannot be the opposite of reason.
That our God is a rational God.
And we've seen how successful that has been in the realm of science, right?
Where is the only place that we can travel in the mind to discover the reason behind
God's creations that we have not gone?
It's morality.
Now the atheists have done all of this nonsense about reciprocal altruism and in-group preferences and...
That's just describing an evolutionarily useful trend, not an absolute crystalline proof of that which is.
What if the morality that God gives us is as explicable and understandable and comprehensible as as the physical universe that God gave us and what if the superstition of miracles and commandments rather than understanding what if that miracle has kept us from the truth?
So what if I'm in pursuit of the rationality of morality as the early scientists and still a few current scientists are in pursuit of the rationality of the world?
And what if? What if my entire pursuit is an act of fundamental worship?
It's a very strange thought for me.
I can't shake it. I'm not saying it's proven.
I'm just saying I can't shake it.
It doesn't mean I'm right or anything like that.
What if is a most profound and abject form of kneeling before The foundation of belief that morality is as rational as the universe and that the thirst for reason in a rational universe and the pursuit of rational understanding of a rational universe is not impiety to the ethics I was taught as a child, the churches I attended as a child.
Why would God reserve mysticism and mere faith for the most important of his creations, which is not the physical universe, but morality?
Why would the fall of a sparrow be scientific, but the nature of goodness be anti-rational?
It doesn't make any sense at all.
Why would the orbit of the Earth around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth, why would that be perfectly rational?
But morality could have no comprehensible reason behind it.
Morality is the purpose of creation.
The purpose of creation is not the Lego set of orbits.
The purpose of creation is The increase of virtue in creation.
And so if the increase of virtue is the purpose of creation, not the mechanics of how matter and energy interact, if the purpose of creation is the accumulation of virtue in a rational universe, then why would virtue be irrational?
Why would virtue require commandments and faith?
The atom does not obey God's every finger flick, right?
The earth does not circle the sun because it loves the sun or is knocked around by an infinite set of pool cues from ghostly arms.
It is the nature of matter and energy that it behaves in this way, we can say, by creation.
Why would the movements of matter and energy and the interactions of matter and energy be perfectly rational?
Which is the stage for the moral play of the universe.
Why would the stage be rational and the play be insane?
Why would the things be objective and empirical and universal, but the purpose be anti-rational
and incomprehensible?
It's like saying the car runs on reason, but all destinations run on madness.
.
The fuel is all reason but the destination is superstition.
And if the destination is morality and this is the part that might blow your mind if this hasn't already The early scientists had to be atheists with regards to matter in order to map the mind of God through science.
I know, it's a mouthful and a headful.
The early scientists had to be atheists with regards to matter.
And this is what Galileo or Copernicus said when the priest, when he showed the model of the solar system, and the priest said, where is God?
And the astronomers said, I have not found God to be necessary in this.
You have to be an atheist with regards to matter to birth science in the modern context, which is the most successful mental construct ever in the history of humanity, in the history of the universe as far as we know.
Now, I had to be an atheist with regards to morality in order to map the rational roots of ethics.
A refusal to bow to superstition in the realm of the material gives us modern science, which is why we're alive and why we're talking, most of us.
Well, certainly most of us are alive and why we're having this conversation at all with
modern science and its rational application in the empirical sense called engineering.
The more you are an atheist with regards to the content, the closer you get to the universal
your explorations.
Because superstition says the answer can't be found, don't go any further.
Curiosity says I don't accept those limitations.
I don't accept that there's a place where I'm not going to go.
Except sin, except lies, except with regards to virtue.
If I had faith, I wouldn't have UPB. And the ramifications of UPB are still centuries in the future.
That's why I wrote a book 500 years in the future.
The ramifications of UPB are still centuries in the future.
Because too much power in this world resides upon the manipulation of ethics, and UPB takes away that manipulation by proving secular ethics, rational ethics.
UPB takes away the greatest club of power, which is the redefinition of ethics, with the pretense of universality, but it actually just benefits those in power to win-lose.
Oh, you've got to obey the common good.
The common good happens to be whatever the rulers want, right?
Need, thirst for in their sin.
So I had to be an atheist.
Like, the early scientists had to be an atheist with regards to matter in order to fully approach the mind of God's creation, the rules of God's creation.
Maybe I had to be an atheist with regards to ethics in order to fully approach matter.
the rationality of God's virtues I'm just telling you my thoughts
I am not trying to give you syllogistical proof.
Thanks, Steph.
Mind isn't blown too wide, cleaning up my car as I listen.
Let me get to your thoughts here.
Maybe atheism with regards to ethics is the closest we can get to the mind of God regarding
virtue.
But needing miracles to transmit universal morality doesn't necessitate that they be myths, does it?
Well, there's an unfairness with miracles.
There's an unfairness with miracles.
If you don't mind me dipping from the universal to the mildly petty.
So the people who see Jesus can see him walk on water and everyone else, good luck.
That's mildly annoying.
Sorry to say it's mildly annoying because if I saw a guy walking on water, I'd be like, yeah, I'm there, man.
I'm there. G.K. Chesterton said, someone says, that God left just enough evidence of himself so that those who seek him can find him, but not too much, so as to compel those who didn't seek him to find him.
Interesting. Are we more responsible morally when we are achieving better understanding of the rationality of morality, or we are all equal in terms of the moral responsibility?
Well, morality creates free will.
Knowledge creates free will.
You don't have the choice to fly if there aren't any planes, right?
So the reason why people love and hate the moralist is the moralist is the one who can provide you the path to virtue and happiness.
But the moralist, by defining virtue, also defines and gives you responsibility for immorality.
I mean, before any automated delivery systems, you had to mail things or walk knowledge over to use the Pony Express,
right?
Now, if somebody did that, you'd say, why don't you just email me?
That's really inefficient, right?
So efficiency changes as technology changes.
What's possible is Expands our choices.
I remember talking to someone back in the day who was in the business world who said, oh man, I hated the facts because we used to be able to say you dropped it in the mail and you'd buy yourself a day or two.
Now they say just facts. I get that, right?
So the moralist, by pointing out rational virtues, creates the path to happiness and the path to, well, he opens up the road to heaven and to hell.
At the same time. And the people who choose the road to heaven love the moralist and the people who fall to hell hate the moralist because they think that the moralist has created their descent and the moralist has simply pointed out that they are descending and And they should probably change, right? Like if you have an instrumentation on your plane and, you know, like you can get really messed up in a plane.
Really, you can get completely messed up in a plane if you're flying instruments only.
Like you can be half doing an Immelman, you won't have any idea.
And learning how to trust your instruments is foundational to not pulling in JFK Jr.
and crashing into Chesapeake Bay or wherever he crashed, right?
So if you're descending, the moralist gives you the artificial horizon and says, man, you're going down.
And people, they hate that.
But they feel some relief.
If they choose to change, they're very grateful and very happy.
If it's either too late or they're too proud to change then they hate the moralist
God likes us God's like to have us participate in his work.
If he told us all the answers directly, we couldn't participate.
If God proves himself to you or leaves empirical proof for you to discover, can you have faith?
Well, of course, except Adam and Eve had direct evidence of God, as did Moses, as did the followers of Jesus had direct evidence of the divinity of Jesus, so...
That's one of the challenges I've always had.
Someone says, it makes sense you'd have to be an atheist before determining morality of God, since otherwise you wouldn't go into it with a clean slate.
And instead, your preconceived notions would bias your investigation and likely not end up with UPB. That's right.
I had to be an atheist.
Oh, somebody says he crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.
Nowhere near Maryland. Okay, thanks.
Yeah, I had to drop faith to get UPB. I couldn't have.
Because this is something I talked about with Dennis Prager years ago, right?
I mean, I had to drop faith to get UPB. But UPB, I feel like ridiculously close to the mind of the God of my youth.
I know this. I understand it's nuts.
I get that. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
I know that there are atheists out there rolling their eyes, and I completely sympathize with that.
I understand that. I'm not disagreeing with any of that.
But my experience has been that being an atheist with regards to morality has brought me the closest I could possibly be to the mind of the God of my youth.
That is my direct experience.
It's not obviously a philosophical proof.
I'm fully aware of that.
I'm just telling you my experience.
That atheism regarding God's morality has brought me the closest I've ever been to the concept of the God of my youth.
And just as I think the people who gave up, who became atheists with regards to material reality felt that they were close to the mind of God, that they were literally mapping the mind of God by being atheists with regards to matter and energy.
And I feel...
And this book, because we were just talking about this book, The Present, which is my love letter to Christianity, I mean, this book had a massive impact on me.
Like, I've never felt more emotional writing a book.
This book just had a wild impact on me.
Because... I don't want to use atheism as a mechanism for denying a genuine emotional experience, right?
I don't want to use that and say, well, I can't have that emotional experience because I'm an atheist and therefore...
That's just a form of emotional suppression.
I am having this emotional experience.
I am having this.
And the way that I characterize it is I feel close...
I feel like I've come full circle and I've come incredibly close if not inside the mind of the God of my youth but with understanding, with knowledge, with reason in the same way that many of the people who map the mind of God as they saw it through science felt closer to God through science than through faith or through mysticism.
I have such a profound respect for the emotional life that I'm not going to use atheists and say you can't feel this and you can't talk about it No, I mean, I always want to be honest with you guys, and this is what I'm feeling.
And part of it came before the book, part of it came through the book, and part of it has come through thinking about these things since the book.
So, yeah, that's where my mind and my heart is at.
These are not philosophical proofs.
I fully and completely understand that.
reminds me of Aristotle, he called theology the study of beings greater than man
the abandonment of the temporal, the abandonment of the immediate, the abandonment of the mammal
the abandonment of the animal, the abandonment of win-lose is the closest that I have come to re-experiencing the
religiosity of my Childhood.
Somebody says, what if the writers of the Bible knew a lot of what you do but didn't have the terminology to describe it like we can today?
So they had to put it in ancient terms.
Yes. I think there's some real truth in that.
I don't know of anybody who's offended by the fact that the universe is rational.
In fact, I think they view it as a tribute to God, that we have a rational understanding of a rational universe.
I think they view that as, okay, there's a watchmaker, right?
He wouldn't just make some random nightmare universe.
And what if, and I think it is, what if the morality, what if morality is as understandable and explicable as matter and energy?
And the only way you can get there is to not believe in the superstition of the thing.
Could you become a physicist if you believed that the universe was miracle-based, whim-based, subjective, and superstition-based?
I don't think you can. You have to put aside that and say, God is reason.
The products of God must be rational.
I'm going to study God by studying reason and evidence.
Morality has always been the most important thing to me.
I mean, I remember when I was six years old, I lost a pen, and I went to the headmaster and said, I lost a pen, and he put out this beautiful gold pen, is this it?
And I said, nope. I loved that pen.
I loved pens when I was little.
I remember when I had a job and I was 13 years old at a hardware store and I was the one given all the cash to go and deposit in the bank.
I was always the one, always chosen.
With the full acknowledgement that I've been far from perfect morally over the course of
my life.
but it's always been a very important thing for me it's almost like God says stop looking at me and look at my
works Thanks.
Find me through my works, not through obscuring me with superstition.
Regard my works to find me.
I mean, that's kind of true, isn't it?
If we want to understand Dickens, we read Dickens.
We can't commune with Dickens.
We can understand something about Dickens or Shakespeare or whoever by reading their works.
Maybe you find the thing itself by looking at the works.
like you find the truth about nature through empiricism.
And again, it's not a philosophical conversation.
I understand that.
I'm telling you my experiences at the moment, which is not proof of anything other than these are my experiences.
Alright, I thank everyone for dropping by today.
I really, really do appreciate it and love to get your thoughts on this.
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I really, really do appreciate it.
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Thank you everyone so much for dropping by today.
Oh, it was such a great pleasure to chat.
Sorry it's been a little while, but I'm hard at work, I promise you.
So have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful afternoon and evening.
Lots of love from here. I'll talk to you soon.
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