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July 15, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:16
The Goddess of Philosophy
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If you have a good conscience, you cannot understand people who have a really bad conscience.
See, for me it was like, yeah, okay, I did some not great things when I was a kid.
You know, again, nothing terrible, but you know, it was not great.
And... So when Virtue came along, I was like, okay, yeah, I shouldn't do these bad things.
I should do the right thing. I should do a better thing.
But, you know, the things that I had done that were wrong, you know, a little shoplifting or whatever, right?
Then it took some quarters from my mom's purse for video games, whatever, right?
I was at some dance and I was half dating some girl and I kissed another girl.
Like, you know, just, I mean, not great stuff, but not like terrible stuff.
And... So when virtue came along, it didn't threaten me, fundamentally.
It was like, thank gosh, right?
I mean, here's what you need to understand.
If you have evil people in your life, your life goes very badly.
If you have evil people in your life, this is something that one of my business partners said to me when I was in my late 20s.
He said, if you have difficult people in your life, your life is difficult.
It's just the way it is. So, I want you to think of something.
Let's take a typical example.
you get kidnapped and held for ransom.
And after two days in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with your kidnappers, you hear sirens, right?
Bye.
Thank you.
How do you feel? Thank goodness the police are coming, right?
They're going to arrest these guys.
I'm going to be free. Thank goodness they found me, right?
So you're Emotion when the law arrives is one of deep gratitude and positivity, right?
How do your kidnappers feel when the sirens get closer and closer and closer?
They panic and become violent.
Now, you're actually in a situation of grave danger, but you're probably going to get killed anyway.
So, it's your really journey chance.
So, you feel some anxiety, but you're like, oh, sirens, thank God.
Oh, man, I'm so happy they found me.
Whereas, of course, your kidnappers, knowing that they're going to go to jail for 20 years, are very unhappy, right?
Of course, yeah, concentration camp, the gays, the Jews, right?
They are... Hugely relieved when the Allies show up and the Nazis are not.
So this analogy is very important.
Very important because I'll tell you why.
Philosophy is the siren.
Philosophy is the law. Philosophy is the peace officers.
Philosophy is the virtue. It is the escape.
Because philosophy is coming along to saying you have the capacity for good and you're evil.
So, being kidnapped in a way, if you have abusive parents, it's kind of like kidnapping because you're not there by choice, right?
You can't get away. So when philosophy shows up, when lady philosophy in her hobnailed boots kicks in the rotting door of your historical prisons, what happens?
You're like, oh, thank God!
Thank reason! Thank virtue!
Philosophy is here!
Freedom! Right?
Right? And what do the evil people feel?
You follow? You feel me?
What do the evil people feel? Horror.
They're appalled. They're frightened.
They're angry. They're enraged.
They're manipulative, right?
Because she's there to save you.
And damn them.
.
Because the crimes they've committed are beyond redemption.
And when people hit that tipping point where the crimes they've committed are beyond redemption.
Yeah, I stole a couple of things when I was in my early teens.
I had no respect for society's rules.
But I've now spent 40 years promoting property, right?
So I feel that that is relatively okay.
I was a little bit of a date-around guy.
Now I promote monogamy and marriage and When the law shows up, philosophy is the moral law, the police are, the physical law.
When the law shows up, the criminals turn on you.
Or they run. The family doesn't run, right?
So they turn on you. People fake outrage and denial when caught.
Yeah, for sure.
Of course, yeah, of course.
So there's a tipping point.
When you can't right the wrongs you've done, I've righted the wrongs I've done.
When you can't right the wrongs you've done, you double down on immorality, right?
You can't undo it.
So you double down. If you can't run, you turn and fight.
So it's really, really important to understand this.
When the moral law kicked in my door, I was relieved.
My rescue had arrived.
I could not understand why everybody else was so angry that the police had come.
Because it comes in a flood, right?
It's like a SWAT team. They're coming in through the windows and the chimneys, right?
The moral law had come.
And this white, wedding, glorious, ferocious lady, the cupids from the future, my novel The Future, She had come with her wings and her sword and her bright blue flaming eyes.
She just came in.
And I ran to her.
I threw myself at her feet.
I was so grateful.
I chained myself to her because where she was was grace and safety and beauty.
And virtue. I ran to her, man.
Other people locked and loaded and opened fire.
Come on, we've all been there, haven't we?
What is an angel to you is a devil to them, and what is a devil to them is an angel to you.
And what is a devil to you is an angel to them.
You are saved. The glowing, folding white wings curl around you and lift you out of hell.
You are saved. And they just open fire.
Do they care if they hit you? Nope.
They've seen their enemy. They've seen the Gabriel, the Galadriel.
They've seen their enemy. And what you do, of course, is you say to the angel, you say to the goddess, you say to the moral law, please, please, please, please turn around.
Please go and save them.
Please turn around. Please, I'm begging you, turn around, save them.
They know not what they do.
Use your wings to block the bullets.
Do whatever you have to do.
Please turn around and save them.
Save them. And what does the moral law say in return?
What does the moral law say as she lifts you out of hell, flying somehow though her white wings are folded around your broken heart?
What does the moral law say when you beg her to return and save those you grew up with?
She says, without anger, but with deep knowledge, And it tears you in two, tore me in two.
She says, if I turn around, we both die.
That when you want to return, it's not your desire, it's their desire so they can kill you.
That's why you want to turn around.
It's not because of me. It's not because of virtue.
It's not because of the moral law.
It's not because of salvation or safety.
You want to turn around so they get a better fucking shot at you and me.
That's why I feel... You're right Tim.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
you Thank you.
You can't go back, you can only go down in flames in hell.
The desire to save the damned is so the damned can curse you.
The desire to turn back is the suicidal motor impulse that's implanted in you should you get away.
Because The demons among us, the devils among us, the evil among us, always want to kill the witness, don't they?
Oh, the angel who rescued this man, this woman.
Bring him back to us.
You see, you came because you sniffed his hope in the cottage, in the dungeon.
You sniffed his hope and you walked through walls to gather him up and capture him.
The scent, the silver scent of that hope.
You slithered through the cracks to lift him out because of his hope.
His hope drew you to him to save him.
He hoped so much.
That you manifested. You found him.
That was a smoke signal that drew you across the plains, across the deserts.
His hope. Now, his hope for virtue summoned you You corrosive goddess of philosophy, his hope summoned you.
Now, let's use his hope, not for salvation, his own, not for his own salvation.
Let's use his hope to bring him back.
Hey man, you saved yourself.
I bet you can save me too.
And your kindness becomes...
your crosshairs. You know like this used to be, I don't know if it's a still a thing now, but it's like
oh someone's car's broken down, it's a bad rainstorm and you stop to help them and they
kidnap you, they rob you.
Everybody has to summon the goddess with their own hope.
You cannot transfer that.
You can transfer the beauty of the goddess.
You can transfer the glory of virtue.
You can transfer the integrity and nobility of integrity.
You can show people how beautiful the goddess is, but you cannot bring the goddess to them.
then they will just lure you in to strike.
The goddess can only follow the scent of each soul's hope.
It's the only thing she can track by.
It's the only thing she can track by.
She only senses. She does not see.
The goddess can only follow the silver trail of hope to rescue and rescue and rescue.
You cannot order the goddess.
You cannot bring the goddess. She does not take your commandments.
She's not something you fly like an airplane.
She does not follow your will.
The only thing she follows, the only thing that draws her is hope.
If you can inspire hope in people, a hope for something better, a hope for virtue, hope for escape, hope for joy, hope for love, hope for virtue.
If you can inspire that hope in them, she sees it.
Like a volcano on the horizon.
She sees it. And she will go.
And she will. Offer salvation.
But you cannot push her.
You cannot control her.
You can't make her do anything.
Because the people became evil by thinking the virtue was something they could control.
If you can't surrender to it, you can't achieve it.
You can provoke hope in others.
Hopefully you can stimulate hope in others.
You can be an example of hope to others.
And if they genuinely hope and wish to escape the dungeon, she will kick in the door and she will take them through the roof.
She will take them up and out.
But no man alive can make her go where there is no hope.
Because she will not insult those who hope by saving those who condemn.
I mean, I of course desperately wished that I could save the others.
Because, you know, I thought, I thought...
I thought I was surrounded by prisoners, you know, in the cell, right?
I thought I was surrounded by prisoners.
I could hear the voices. I could see them at times.
And I thought, I can't leave the other prisoners behind.
If I've got a way out, I have to get them out.
But what the Goddess said to me, was really chilling.
What the goddess said to me was they're not prisoners.
They imitate being prisoners.
They sound like prisoners. They'll try and get you to confide in them like fellow prisoners, but they're not prisoners.
They were never your prisoners.
I can save prisoners who know they're prisoners.
I can save prisoners who hope to get out.
I can save prisoners who are desperate to get out because I can scent that hope like a silver thread across the sky.
And nothing, nothing will stop me when I'm on the track of that scent.
Nothing. So what were they when she told me?
Oh, all these people around me when I'm in prison, all these people around me.
Gotta save them.
What were they? What did she tell me they were?
.
First she asked me a question.
She said, did you see any jailers?
Just out of curiosity, in your cell, those decades, did you see any jailers?
And I said no. I didn't see any jailers.
And she said, yeah, you did.
You just thought they were prisoners.
You can break a prisoner out of jail.
You can't break a jailer out of jail.
Because he's there for the prisoners.
the people you thought were your fellow prisoners were in fact your jailers
the people who you thought were your allies We're your guards.
That's why they can't come.
You can't ask me to rescue you from the people I'm rescuing you from.
You can't ask me to rescue the people that I'm rescuing you from.
You follow? I'm rescuing you from the guards and you want me to turn back and save the guards?
Are you crazy if you save the guards?
You're back in prison.
Then I'm just carrying your cell, not you out of the cell.
I'm carrying the cell, the guards, the prison.
We just put it somewhere else.
You're right back where you fucking started.
You can't get out of prison if everyone in the prison comes with you because you get the guards too!
Radiate hope, show hope.
Show progress. Show the way out.
But don't go back for anyone.
Here's what happens. The law, the moral law, the goddess, she followed you and broke you out because she could smell your hope.
You go back to rescue the guards.
You go back to rescue the oppressors.
You go back to rescue the evil.
You go back.
What happens to your hope when you try to beg people to come out?
What happens to your hope?
It dies in your chest.
It dies in your heart.
And then She can't find you anymore.
She can't get to where you are.
She's going to go to somebody else with hope and rescue them.
You go back to rescue the evil.
Your hope dies.
You can't be tracked.
The moral law cannot find you.
And you are there forever and fucking ever.
Amen from hell.
Hit me with a why if you follow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
.
Don't turn back. Anybody who cares to break free will ask you how you did it and you'll tell them.
But no circle back. Circling back.
Circling back is like going back to that crazy ex-girlfriend one more time.
Oh, we had sex one more time.
Oh, she got pregnant.
She's not going to keep the kid.
20 years of baby jail.
My life is ruined. Go back to help is go back to nothing.
And they're asking you to return to a state of very early childhood when you could not have any hope because salvation, adulthood, independence, freedom was too far away.
They're asking you to return that far.
Follow the goddess to the heaven we can inhabit.
The people you leave behind who are in fact the jailers most times only want you to return
so they can take your hope out of your heart like an Aztec child ritual and crush it in
their fists.
And then you are lost and the moral law will never find you and salvation will never return
and you will be down there.
Thank you.
You adjoin them. And you will spend the rest of your life trying to forget that short burst of glorious, God-given freedom that you had.
From the rescue of the goddess of the moral law, you will spend the rest of your life pretending that never happened.
It was a weird dream.
It was a cult. It was immoral.
I went crazy. You'll kill your hope.
You can't be tracked. You live and die.
there in the pit don't turn back
they just want another shot at you All right. I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop here because I have pushed upon the kindness of the guy with the call-in show for too long.
So I will move on to that.
I hope that this story helps you.
If you appreciate my storytelling abilities and my analogy abilities, then I hope that you will check out my novels.
You can go to almostnovel.com.
You can go to justpoornovel.com.
You can go to fdrurl.com slash tgoa for my novels.
And of course... You can go to the future and the present.
You can find those at freedomain.locals.com.
We're actually going to do a new book page this weekend.
The glorious James has agreed, and I appreciate that enormously.
So we're getting a new book page this weekend, so all my books will be way easier to find because having all these mouthfuls of letters is not super helpful.
If you find this helpful, if you could tip me, I would, of course, really appreciate that.
I can't even tell you how much brain sweat and emotions I expend in these stories and monologues, so if you find this helpful, if you could help me out, I would appreciate a tip, of course.
I know your donor is here, but if...
You are listening to this later, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
I would really, really, really appreciate that.
So have yourselves a wonderful afternoon.
I'm not going to do a show tonight, I'm afraid.
I have something else.
So I will try and talk with you guys on the weekend.
I really, really appreciate you being here for this conversation and I appreciate more than I can say the honor and distinct privilege of talking to the world in this way through your support.
freedomain.com slash donate.
Take care everyone. Love you guys.
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