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Oct. 2, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:52
Only Take Pride in Virtue!
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Hey everybody, hope you're doing well.
Stephen Molyneux, freedomaine.locals.com, freedomaine.com slash donate.
To help out the show, kind listener, writes, this might require a deeper conversation, but I'll take a stab at my question.
I moved in with my mom when I was 16, coming from a completely valueless slash nihilistic household with my dad.
My mom and stepdad were very hardworking people with a strong value system, but shamed slash mocked me for not being able to easily live up to their standards, like shoving a kindergartner into college and laughing at them for not knowing calculus.
I've always had deep resentment over this and only just now realizing this.
My whole life I just felt mad at my mom but couldn't pinpoint why.
I've been doing a lot of journaling to understand where this resentment comes from.
It was difficult because she and my stepdad are good people and they're also very successful entrepreneurs so I always just felt it was because there was something wrong with me.
I'm not as good as they are, and I can't run a business, and I'm socially awkward.
I've spent too many years with a chip on my shoulder over this.
Basically, I struggle with deep feelings of inadequacy at certain times in my life.
You always recommend we should ask who benefits from me feeling this way.
I'm not sure how my inadequacy is a benefit to them, though I'm not sure who else it would benefit.
Yes, yes, yes.
Tough situation, and of course you weren't prepared for the life of Significant competition when you were raised by these nihilists early on in your life.
So, alright.
I've mentioned this in sort of scattered context before, so I'll give you sort of the concentrated view of it here.
I'm not proud of my kidney.
I'm not proud of my esophagus.
I'm not proud of my inner ear.
I'm not proud of my ocular nerve.
I'm not proud of the fact that I happen to be wrapped in skin.
I'm not proud of the color of my eyes.
I'm not proud of any of these things.
I mean, there are some things, of course, I do take pride in.
The work that I do, the health that I maintain, the virtue that I work and strive to achieve in the world.
I'm proud of all of that. But I don't pride myself on the contents of my nightly dreams.
It's just not a thing.
What do I mean by all of this?
Well, did I make my kidney?
Did I fashion it from raw atoms and teach it to do what it does?
I'm barely even conscious of what it does.
It cleans the blood in some manner.
My liver. All of these things I inherited from evolution.
I'm not proud of being intelligent.
I'm not proud of being creative.
I think, I mean, I certainly do take some pride and happiness in how I've used these inherited and accidental gifts to make the world a better place as best I can, but I'm not proud any more than I'm proud of being, you know, six feet tall or whatever, 190 pounds. So, to take pride In that which you have accidentally inherited is the great temptation of vanity.
To think that you're worth something because you're pretty.
Well, you didn't inherit. You didn't make that.
You didn't fashion that. I'm sure you work to maintain it, but you work to maintain it in particular because you're already pretty.
Or tall. Or let's say you've got really good reflexes and fast-firing muscles and a good coordination and a good balance and you're a very good athlete.
Can you take pride in that?
You can take pride in how much you've worked to advance and hone and perfect your gifts, assuming that they're moral.
We really only can take pride in morality.
We can only take pride in virtue.
We cannot take pride in anything else.
Anything else. I mean, if you think of somebody with really good reflexes, who's really good at shooting, could become a serial killer, could just snipe people, and he's really excellent at it, and he's worked very hard at it, should he be proud of that?
Well, of course not, because he's doing evil.
We can only take pride in our virtue, and we can only be loved for our virtues.
So, when you have a gift, you have one of two choices.
You can use that gift to elevate others, which is a positive social and virtuous thing to do.
Or you can use that gift to feel superior to others and thus push them down.
Which is demonic and vampiric and vainglorious and megalomaniacal.
You can stimulate excellence or you can provoke envy if you have gifts.
My particular approach has been, okay, I happen to have been gifted a fine brain, a very elegant capacity to generate metaphors on the fly, and A certain staunchness of heart to resist the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and so on.
Now I could have used these gifts for good or for ill.
I could use these gifts to make a fortune, to elevate myself above others, to be like that character.
Played by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, you know, to just lord it over others because he's, you know, tall and great looking, you know.
I saw this ad for, it wasn't an ad, it was like a story of like one of Manhattan's best real estate agents, and the guy's gorgeous.
And it's like, yeah, okay. But people are just like, well, you can reproduce that gorgeousness, you know.
Luciano Pavarotti giving me singing lessons isn't going to make me sing like Luciano Pavarotti.
That's guaranteed.
He's born with it. And so on.
And Placido Domingo did end up mentoring rising opera stars.
I don't know if he's still doing it. I'm sure he is if he can.
So he was using his gifts to try and elevate others.
But we have a kind of...
I mean, we have a very feminized culture as a whole.
And one of the things that's happened is the accidental gifts are turned into superior values.
If you happen to be pretty, if you happen to have a great figure and so on, great hair, then you post and you get likes and thirst and so on.
And you are transferring and lowering values.
The amount of happiness in the world, right?
If you transfer and lower the amount of happiness in the world, it's like a thief, really.
Like a thief transfers a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or a million dollars worth of value from his victims to himself.
Now, I guess he's happier to have that money, but the unhappiness he's inflicted on his victims is greater...than the happiness he receives from getting the money.
So there's a net reduction in happiness.
You know, like when the government prints a bunch of money and spends it, there's a certain stimulation of the economy in the short run, but there's a drag on the economy through inflation and money dilution in the long run, and the economic loss is less.
Someone who's really angry beats someone else up, Maybe they feel better for beating that person up, but the other person could be injured for months.
And so, it's a net negative to the world.
Now, your parents, step-parents, they have...
Sorry, it was your...
Let me just double-check this.
I think it was mother and stepfather.
Let me just double-check that.
I moved in with my...
Yeah, mother and stepfather. So, they are ambitious, intelligent, competent, and so on.
And when you have kids, you have to recognize, if you're reasonable and want to be a good parent, you have to recognize that your children are going to be different than you, obviously different from you.
My daughter does share some of my characteristics, but she has other characteristics that we don't share, really.
Or we share to such a differing degree, they might as well be different characteristics.
I did a lot of drawing and art when I was younger, but not nearly as much as my daughter, and I didn't end up as skilled.
I did flip book animation, like where you get the corner of a book and you draw a little, whatever, spaceship, and it's flying, and you flip animation.
And I wrote little scripts for my friends and I to read about space operas and space dramas.
And partly because of the technology and partly because of her skill set and interest.
My daughter just does fantastic animation.
She writes scripts, get her friends to read them, does great animations that are really funny.
And like 16 minute movies, she's done an hour long movie that was animated, an hour and a half long movie.
It's just amazing stuff to me.
It's more than I would have done.
So there's lots of differences.
She is... We just did this in a show last night.
She's interested in history if it's explained well, but she doesn't pursue history on its own.
And, you know, although she's not far off from the age when I first began reading philosophy, I'm not expecting her to, you know, crack Aristotle or Plato or Rand or anything.
I'm not expecting her to crack that.
That's going to be her life, her preferences.
She's different. So, If you think that your particular skills and abilities that are amoral, and being an entrepreneur is not a moral activity.
It's economically positive, but it's not a moral activity.
You say, oh, well, I'm doing good in the community.
I'm giving people jobs.
I'm this, I'm that, and the other. Yeah, I get that.
I get that, but I mean, the army gives people jobs.
You say, oh, well, no, but I'm not taking the money by forcing all of that.
It's not bad.
It's not good. It's just productivity.
It's just productivity.
Being an engineer is morally neutral because you could use it for good or you could use it for evil.
So being an entrepreneur is not a morally good thing to do.
It's a fine thing to do. I have no problem with it.
I mean, I've been an entrepreneur for like close on 30 years now.
And if you are an entrepreneur who, you know, you encourage people and you bring them along and you mentor them and you teach them good business ethics, then that's a good thing that you're doing.
But the entrepreneur, qua entrepreneur, in relation to itself, is not a virtuous activity.
It is simply an activity of productivity.
Is it virtuous to grow crops?
Nope. It's a good thing to do.
It's fine to do, but it's not innately virtuous.
So, In the realm of entrepreneurship, what they've done is they've said, I assume your mother and your stepfather, what they've done is they've said, I am of value because I'm an entrepreneur.
Now, of course, you are of economic value.
If you're a successful entrepreneur, you are of economic value, no question.
But are you of moral value because you're an entrepreneur?
And the answer is no.
It's not a moral value to be an entrepreneur.
Can you be a successful entrepreneur and a relatively bad person?
Absolutely you can. Absolutely.
Ah yes, but I'm not doing any fraud.
That's great, so you're not doing evil, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing good.
So what happened is, I assume, your mother and stepfather were skilled entrepreneurs Made money, were successful, hired people, got a lot of deference, got a lot of people who want to spend time with them, or sell things to them, or work for them, or maybe invest with them, so they get a lot of demand coming their way.
And then people think, because there's demand coming my way, that means I have value, and that means I'm worth something, and that means I'm good.
It's a vanity project.
The fact that you're wanted Doesn't mean that you're virtuous.
The fact that Amaranth or whatever that woman's name is who shoved her booty in a camera and said, you know, PS5 or me?
Everyone voted for the PS5. So she's wanted.
There's lots of women and, of course, some men out there on the Internet who are very much wanted by...
Others, they desired, and so on.
And, you know, when I was in the business world, I was constantly having people wanting to sell me things and take me out for lunch, and people wanted jobs.
So I was in the position to provide value to others, and therefore they courted me.
Does that mean that I'm morally good?
It does not. In fact, it's a great temptation to substitute being wanted for being good, being needed for being good, having economic value for having moral virtues.
Very tempting. Very tempting.
So, your mother and stepfather took their innate abilities, and I'm not saying that they shouldn't be at all proud for anything they did as an entrepreneur.
But we all know that we need particular innate abilities to be an entrepreneur.
People can take some pride, I suppose, in the work ethic that has them be top athletes, but you need a certain amount of innate characteristics to just be those top athletes, right?
I mean, there are some people who train to be runners for years, and there are other people who stumble into it, so to speak, and within a couple of months are outstripping just about everybody else in the field.
So you can't be proud of innate characteristics.
Obviously, it's very, very sort of key and obvious thing.
So what they did was they said, to be a successful entrepreneur is to be worth something.
And if you're not a successful entrepreneur, you're worthless.
And then this turns into humiliation, undermining verbal abuse.
And it's the inevitable consequence, very sadly, of thinking that because you have economic value, that makes you a good person, that makes you a worthwhile person, that makes you an excellent person, and that is the peak of human value, is economic value.
And therefore, if you, as the child or the stepchild, if you don't have the same innate skills or drive or abilities or interests or whatever, if you happen to be introverted, which is not We're not very commonly associated with success as an entrepreneur.
There's nothing wrong with being introverted.
Perfectly fine state of mind.
A lot of wonderful, great things have come out of the minds of people who are introverts.
So they say, well, I'm gregarious.
I'm outgoing. I'm confident.
I talk to people. I make jokes.
I this, I that. And that's being a good, confident, healthy person.
You're shy and therefore you're deficient because you don't possess the amoral characteristics that I have translated as making me worth something in the world and making my skills then become the template of what all human beings are worth in the world.
You understand? So the fact that I happen to be good at X, Y, and Z, I then...
One, two, or the vainglorious part of me wants to say, X, Y, and Z defines value for all human beings.
So I happen to be outgoing and friendly, and I love chatting with people.
If I had a child who was more shy and retiring, it would be tempting, of course, to think, well...
I am happy and chatty and go out and work with people in the world and enjoy conversations with people.
There's something wrong with my child because then I say the fact that I happen to be outgoing and gregarious is good and if my child is introverted and somewhat withdrawn, socially shy, that's bad.
So I'm comparing my child's amoral personality qualities to my amoral personality qualities and saying she is deficient because she's not like me.
Rather than saying, tell me about your experience, there's nothing wrong with you being an introvert.
The fact that I'm gregarious and chatty doesn't make me a better person.
At all. It's just how I am.
It's how I enjoy going through the world.
It's sort of the foundation of what it is I do in the world.
It's part of how I deliver virtues, but there are very many introverts and socially awkward or shy people who can provide massive moral value To the world.
They can write. They can record in the privacy of their own home and they don't have to go out and give speeches and press the flash or like I've gone to speeches where like 500 people are milling around wanting to chat and give me a hug, which is like a wonderful thing.
They wouldn't feel comfortable with that.
So what? There's lots of other things that they can do to promote virtue.
But in the same way, people who are more sensitive to high stimulus, people who are a little bit more overwhelmed by high stimulus, what they do, you can sort of think of the typical example of the sort of shy mom who has a couple of really loud and boisterous sons, and she's like, you're too loud, you're making too much
noise, this is terrible.
And it's like, no, they're just more rambunctious and outgoing or whatever.
And you tend to be more sensitive. And again, it's amoral.
You have to find a way to value character, amoral characteristics that are different from
you. We're all part of the jigsaw puzzle of humanity. Extroverts have their place.
Introverts have their place.
Gregarious people have their place. Shy people have their place.
We're all just part of the jigsaw.
Asking society, you can't create a coherent picture of a jigsaw puzzle if every piece is the same shape.
Everything has to be a different shape.
It's how we evolve. We also fit together and do different things.
There is some work in society that needs to be done in solitary, and therefore we have introverts.
And there are some work in society that requires followers, so we tend to have people who fall more into that category.
There are other things in society where you need leaders to organize, so some people tend to fall into that category.
It's a wonderful mosaic and jigsaw puzzle, and we should be very happy about it all, because that's part of the infinite variety and excellence and joy of humanity.
And I remember being around a couple of babies when I was younger, and I distinctly remember one of them, same house, same environment, like not even that far apart, both females.
One of them, you switch on the vacuum cleaner, she crawls over to find out what it is.
She's very curious about it. The other one, you switch on the vacuum cleaner, she sort of cries out, covers her hands with her ears, and tries to burrow away under the furniture.
Same stimuli, wildly different response.
Is one better than the other? Nope.
One is not better than the other.
Like being startled by a vacuum cleaner versus being curious about it.
Well, one is more confident.
It's like, come on. One is more courageous.
No, they're not. They're just experiencing different levels of stimuli.
And that's baked and wired into their brain.
I mean, this is at a couple of, like, I don't know, six months of age or something like this.
It's wired into their brain. And maybe you can work a little bit here and there with this stuff and sort of blunt some of the edges or shave some of the edges off.
But you are who you are.
And you've really got to work, to a large degree, with, I mean, there's some moldable stuff around the edges, but the fundamental machinery of your brain is certainly by the age of five.
It's pretty fixed. And I remember going back to my high school reunion many years ago.
I didn't even plan to go.
I was just visiting a friend, and there was, hey, there's a reunion tonight, because he lives by the school still.
And we went in, and everybody was the same.
And everybody who went up, like, oh, you're still the same.
You're still chatty and funny and curious, and everybody was still the same.
They certainly don't change in their fundamental personality characteristics that much.
So... What's happened is they have defined, I think, I don't know, obviously, but this is my guess.
They've defined their accidental drives, desires, characteristics, and abilities as human excellence, human good.
And therefore, since you don't, and almost no children do, since you don't share these characteristics, you're deficient.
You're bad. You're wrong. There's something wrong with you.
This is like, why don't you do what I do?
Why aren't you the same as me? It's vanity.
And it's a kind of narcissism to think that the only...
Human quality are accidental qualities like yours.
Accidental qualities like yours.
I mean, obviously when we understand that, if a father is 6'3", and he happens to give birth to a son who's 5'7", and he marks that child for just being short and being ridiculous and so on.
That would be obviously very cruel.
And the same thing is almost all personality characteristics are influenced by genetics.
And again, we can work with stuff for sure and all of that, but not infinitely.
And so what happens is there's sort of a twofold.
One is that people view their accidental characteristics as direct value.
That's one thing. But then the other thing, what they do, is they say that the personality characteristics often derived from accidental characteristics Are earned and transferable.
So, obviously, I mean, I made fun of this many years ago, The Secret, right?
There was this book out, I don't even know, decades ago, called The Secret.
Just ask the universe for things.
Ask the universe for things, and the universe will provide, and so on.
Your expectations will shape what comes to you.
And when you looked at all the people who were following this, they were all super pretty people.
And it's like, so for a woman to say, I just put desires, I just say what I want, and the universe provides things for me.
It's like, no, that's a mating ritual where the man provides resources to the woman in an attempt to date, sleep with, or marry her.
So, somebody who's really tall, great head of hair, like a man, really tall, great of hair, really good looking, he's got a really pleasant voice, strong jaw, whatever it is.
Okay, well, he's going to be received positively by most people, right?
You all know the meme, which is the really good-looking guy goes up to chat with the woman at work, and she laughs and is happy, and then the paunchy, ugly, bald guy goes up to chat to the woman at work, and she calls HR because it's harassment.
I mean, it's a little bit of a joke, but there's some real truth in it.
So you're tall, square-jawed, lean, good-looking, you know, nice voice and all of that.
Then you're going to end up being more successful.
As a whole. I mean, height increases income.
Good looks increase income.
So because people receive you positively, you gain a lot of confidence.
Of course you do. Because people are receiving you positively.
So then what you do is you look at someone who has less confidence because people aren't receiving them as positively because they're shorter or as a kid they were overfed or under-exercised and so they became plump or tubby or whatever it is or they went through a phase of bad acne in their teens and maybe into their 20s like even back knee and stuff like that.
So they, you know, just had shyness.
They had a lack of confidence.
Maybe they had a really nasal voice or something.
Like, just whatever, right? It could be any number of things.
Maybe they got one squint eye and one lazy eye or I don't know, whatever.
You go crazy, thick eyebrows, whatever.
So then the person who's sort of really tall, good-looking and so on develops a certain sense of confidence.
And what they do is they say, I am 100% responsible for my confidence.
My confidence is a virtue. I'm 100% responsible for it.
I work hard at public speaking.
I work hard at debating. But, I mean, to be honest, the answers just pop into my head.
A lot of times.
Like, the analogies pop into my head.
The right way to guide a listener call-in is really instinctual.
And it's been that way from the very beginning.
And so my brain is pushing up to me these paths.
My brain is pushing up to me these analogies.
And so can I claim personal virtues for things that pop up in my head?
No. Any more than if some really terrible, mean thoughts popped up to my head that I'm a bad person.
It's like, no, it's just the way your brain operates.
For me, at least it's just these constant geisters of kicking things up.
I'm even feeling my way to some degree.
I had some ideas about what to talk about, but I'm feeling my way through this particular message and what it is I want to communicate.
And people say, ah, yes, but you've been doing it for so long that you're well practiced and you should take pride in the practice.
It's like, yeah, kind of.
I mean, I hope I've gotten better over the years, but...
I sort of started out this way.
If you listen to sort of the early call-ins, it wasn't like they're radically different or I was stumbling all over myself and didn't have a clue what to ask.
So people say, well, you're good at it now because you've been doing it for 40 years.
And it's like, no, I've been doing it for 40 years because I was good at it to begin with.
Has it changed over time?
Yeah, absolutely. But if I look at an opera singer with a 40-year career, I don't say, well, he's a really good opera singer because he's been doing it for 40 years.
It's like, no, he's been doing it for 40 years because he had a great voice, and he certainly had an even better voice when he was younger because your voice ages out, particularly the high notes, as you get older.
So somebody who is really confident because they're really good-looking Then thinks that their confidence, which is provided to them by others based on their looks, they then believe that their confidence is a virtue that they can transfer to anyone.
I mean, obviously, when you think about it clearly, it's shockingly arrogant, pathetic, exploitive, and it's revolting.
It's disgusting. I mean, I don't mean to be overly harsh about this, but it's really disgusting.
In my health, in my intelligence, in my creativity, in the fact that I happen to have a reasonably pleasant sounding voice, even that sort of minor British accent thing, I'm lucky.
I didn't earn it. It just happened to me.
I was born with it. And so the humility of recognizing that the gifts you're given you did not earn means that they're not for you alone.
Like the gifts that I have, the gifts that you have, and everybody has their gifts, they're not for you alone because you didn't earn them alone.
The love I have with my wife, yes, that's a monopoly.
That's a monogamy, right?
Because we have both worked hard to be great people and love and be good-humored and get through life's challenges and so on with grace and positivity.
I admire her unbelievably.
The things that you've inherited, they're not for you.
They're for the good of the world. They're for the good of humanity.
If you happen to be really intelligent, try and use your intelligence to do good for humanity.
If you happen to be very interested in entrepreneurship, you've got a very hard work ethic, ability to concentrate, maybe some high testosterone, and maybe you're good looking, so people want to invest in you or spend time with you or listen to you or whatever.
Fantastic. You know, good. It's not like there's a bad thing.
These are all wonderful things. They're positive things.
So figure out how you can use your accidental gifts to make the world a better place.
What you don't do, and this is why I get really mad at this kind of stuff, what you don't do Let's take your accidental gifts and then think that that makes you a fundamentally better person.
That your accidental gifts are the definition of what it means to be of quality and have value and be good.
And then anybody who doesn't have that and your kids won't.
Your kids will have abilities you don't have and you will have abilities your kids don't have.
And to say that your kids are deficient because they have different abilities from you.
It's terrible. It's narcissistic.
It's saying, well, I am the definition of all that is good and right, and anybody who deviates from that is terrible.
I mean, that's just awful. It's wretched.
And it's taking your gifts and using them for purposes of vanity and exploitation.
And also it means that you can't love or be loved.
Because to love, somebody needs to be different from you, and narcissists can't love because either someone is, quote, exactly the same as them, in which case they view them as competitive, or they're different from them in which they view them as inferior.
So you just seal yourself off from love.
And to have a child who says, I feel wretchedly ground down because I have different abilities from my parents, that's, I mean, honestly, that's just about the biggest failure that I can think of.
My heart breaks for your experience as a child.
Don't take it seriously. I know it's hard.
I know it's hard. But these were kind of jerky people who were exploiting their accidental gifts to make themselves feel better, to make you feel worse.
And I can't even imagine what they did in the entrepreneurial world, but I imagine it wasn't particularly good.
Thanks everyone so much. Freedomain.com slash donate if you'd like to help out the show.
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