Oct. 19, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
13:57
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| A great question from listeners as always. | |
| This one is, what is wisdom? | |
| Is it knowledge combined with moral clarity? | |
| What is wisdom? Well, I suppose 18 years into the philosophy project we should probably define wisdom. | |
| It seems like a wise thing to do and you wouldn't want to rush these things. | |
| So you wait until the show is old enough to vote and then you define wisdom. | |
| Now, Of course, these are my thoughts on the subject. | |
| It's not a final answer and subject to your review, revision. | |
| It's a work in progress. | |
| So, what is wisdom? | |
| Succinctly, for once in my life, succinctly I would say that virtue is knowing what to do, and wisdom is knowing when to do it. | |
| Virtue is knowing what to do, wisdom is knowing when to do it. | |
| I said in my novel, Just Poor, the truth is not a sword to be drawn at all costs. | |
| So, yes, virtue is good, honesty is a virtue. | |
| Does that mean... | |
| That you should constantly tell everyone everything about yourself. | |
| Right, somebody says, oh, how much do you make? | |
| Well, you don't really want to share that information, do you? | |
| I mean, obviously your family knows, your wife, your husband and all that. | |
| How much money do you make? Well, you know, that's kind of private and all of that. | |
| So you say, well, honesty is a virtue, so I should tell them. | |
| How much I make? No. | |
| Because if you just say that virtue tells you what to do, then you're just programmed by virtue and you don't have any free will. | |
| So if you say, well, honesty is virtue, so if somebody says, how much do you make? | |
| And we're talking about some stranger, not, you know, maybe a close friend you share this information with if it's important or whatever, right? | |
| But Some stranger at dinner party says, oh, tell me exactly how much you make and how much you paid in taxes and, you know, what's in your savings account and, you know, what are your investments, whatever. | |
| I mean, it's like, okay, see, well, honesty is a virtue, so I'm going to tell the truth. | |
| No. It's not wise. | |
| You don't know this person. | |
| Why would they want to know these private details about your life? | |
| So... What does it mean to be honest in that situation? | |
| Well if you say that honesty is a virtue then you have to say well I have to tell this person everything because I wouldn't want to lie. | |
| So that would be being programmed by virtue and that would mean to have precious little if any free will left over for yourself because you become a Philosophy robot, a philosophot, a philbot, you're just programmed by UPB or by virtue, and you don't have any choice of free will or judgment or wisdom in the matter. | |
| So when people ask you for facts, you are not programmed to provide them those facts. | |
| Now, what will be honest, and if honesty is a virtue, if somebody says, tell me every detail about your finances, some stranger or relative stranger says, tell me every detail about your finances, and you are kind of shocked and like, what the what, right? This is why RTR is important. | |
| See, UPB and RTR are very important. | |
| UPB would say that honesty is aesthetically preferable actions, but RTR says be honest about your emotions. | |
| so when somebody says tell me every detail about some relative stranger says tell me every detail about your finances and you're kind of shocked and like what the why I don't want to do that oh RTR says well be honest about your feelings and your feelings are that's a I feel kind of unsettled like the weird question and I'm not going to tell you like why would you ask me that you don't even know me that's a bizarre thing right so you're being honest right If somebody wants you to do something, or if somebody wants you to tell a truth that you don't want to tell them, the most honest thing you can say is not give them the truth, but say, I don't want to tell you. | |
| See, that's respecting the honesty of your feelings, and that's where wisdom becomes important. | |
| Look, we all know, we all know very deep down, it's a pretty dangerous world out there, and there's lots of people who would use information against you. | |
| So, learning to keep your mouth shut is pretty important. | |
| You know, if you've come into some coin and you start flashing it around, that's inviting danger. | |
| into your life. I mean, it's funny, you know, even having a very attractive girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife can also invite trouble into your life, as people resent and get mad and undermine. | |
| I mean, there are a lot of kind of unstable and amoral, if not downright immoral, people out there. | |
| And wisdom is knowing not what to do, but when to do it. | |
| So yes, honesty is a virtue. | |
| And when should you be honest? | |
| Ah, see, that's the challenge. | |
| And about what should you be honest? | |
| Because if you say honesty is a virtue, I mean, if you, let's take a silly example, right? | |
| So if you had constipation for a couple of days, and then you finally had a good bowel movement, and right after that, You had a business meeting. | |
| Would you walk into the business meeting and people say, how are you doing? | |
| You say, oh man, I'm so much better. | |
| I didn't crap for four days and I just let it all go this morning. | |
| And I didn't wash my hands. | |
| Let's say that's honest, right? | |
| So are you fulfilling the virtue called honesty? | |
| Yeah, but... | |
| You are not fulfilling the virtue called wisdom, which is, what impression does it give to other people that you have zero filter? | |
| and no sense of what is appropriate and this would be bad in a business situation in particular because business situations being in business means holding secrets right I mean if you're a manager you know what everyone makes they don't know what each other makes and you have to keep salaries a secret from other people I mean assuming that that's not you make some businesses they post everything but You have to keep salary secret from other people. | |
| People come to you as a manager in business with problems, with other employees and so on, right? | |
| And you have to keep your counsel. | |
| There's a presumption of privacy in conversations you have with employees, so you don't go splurging around at some company receipt. | |
| Oh, so-and-so said this about this person and this person said this. | |
| Is that being honest? | |
| Yes, it is. You are telling the truth. | |
| And nobody made you sign an NDA. And nobody said, make sure you don't tell anyone about this. | |
| And I'm only going to tell you this if you promise to never tell anyone. | |
| Right? That's just implicit. | |
| That's just implicit. So, of course, the reason I bring up this rather tacky example is nobody's going to want to do business with you. | |
| If you can't keep a secret, if you don't know what's appropriate to say or to not say, because you're going to go and blab details and blab history and everybody assumes, certainly at high-level business meetings, that things are relatively in confidence unless directly specified otherwise, like you're working on a press release or something. | |
| So you're not going to have any luck getting investment if you can't even keep quiet about your bowel movements, then nobody's going to want to do business with you. | |
| So, knowing when not to talk is part of wisdom. | |
| Yeah, there's a virtue called honesty, for sure. | |
| There's wisdom called prudence. | |
| It's important to know, and your feelings are more going to help you navigate this. | |
| Because your feelings put you in the situation of empathy, and empathy puts you in the situation of wisdom. | |
| So, if somebody asks you every detail about your personal finances, then empathy would be, well, would I ever do that to someone? | |
| Well, no. So this person is very unlike me. | |
| They are opposite me. | |
| Right? This empathy thing. | |
| Could I ever imagine going to a dinner party and asking someone for every detail about his or her finances? | |
| Well, no, of course not. It would be incredibly rude and intrusive, right? | |
| So, no. | |
| And so, because someone is doing something that you would never in a million years do, they're kind of the opposite of you. | |
| And if you're virtuous, that means that they're probably immoral. | |
| If somebody's doing the opposite of you, asking about private details, and you're moral, then they're the opposite of you in general, which means by far the great likelihood is that they're immoral, in which case you would not give private information to an immoral person, or a person who's the opposite of you. | |
| And that's how empathy saves you from immorality. | |
| Everyone thinks that empathy is just sort of being nice and cuddly and sweet and accommodating and generous and charitable. | |
| And there is that aspect of it, of course, but empathy is trying to figure out who's like you and who's the opposite of you. | |
| Who's like you, who's neutral, and who's the opposite. | |
| There's a lot of battles in this life and you need to know the allies, you need to know the inert NPCs, and you need to know your enemies. | |
| A lot of battles in life. | |
| So your feelings will give you rapid enough responses that they're useful in real time, right? | |
| Intellect can't really do that as much. | |
| I mean, UPB didn't kind of erupt because somebody was cornering me about my lack of a clear and objective definition of ethics. | |
| That's not where UPB came from. | |
| It came from sort of considered reasoning over time, and the books are considered reasoning over time. | |
| The argument, every anarchy, practical anarchy, untruth, the tyranny of illusion against the gods, essential philosophy. | |
| These were all, you know, carefully planned, thought out, and reasoned ahead of time, like peaceful parenting. | |
| So that's the role of the intellect. | |
| But you can't get that rapidity from the intellect. | |
| You can get that rapidity of evaluation from the emotions. | |
| Which is why it's important to re-own your own emotions and not have emotional responses that are designed to protect you from evildoers. | |
| by conforming to their will you have to reclaim your emotions if you've had a bad childhood and they need to serve you not survival in the face of abuse because your emotions if somebody like at some party presses you about your personal finances your emotions will give you an uneasy feeling like assuming you own your emotions they're for serving you not survival in the face of abusers Your emotions will give you, like, how will your reasons? | |
| How will your reasons? Oh, well, you know, this person's asking and honesty is a virtue and you may be tempted to brag a little if you're doing well or something like that, right? | |
| But your emotions will give you an uneasy feeling, because your emotions will be like, well, why is this person asking me this? | |
| I would never ask someone this, and therefore this person has to be kind of the opposite of me, therefore this person is almost certainly a threat, and therefore giving information to somebody who's immoral is going to go to a bad end. | |
| So your emotions will process it in the blink of an eye. | |
| And this is why I've always talked about respect for the emotions. | |
| Every emotion gets a seat at the table. | |
| There are no bad emotions. | |
| There are only bad actions, potentially. | |
| So, yeah, wisdom is knowing when. | |
| Okay, that truth is a virtue. | |
| Okay, when do you tell the truth? I mean, you don't want to be programmed, right? | |
| You don't want to be just some UPV robot. | |
| You know, the speech that Hamlet gives to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are trying to manipulate him. | |
| Oh, you would play me like a flute from the lowest to the highest register, like I'll just be an inanimate object that you play to get what you want. | |
| That is not a safe position to be in the world. | |
| And in that way, morality will lead you to... | |
| Destruction. Morality without wisdom. | |
| It's a very high potential to lead you to destruction. | |
| You will be naive, right? | |
| Naive is saying, well, I have to follow these moral rules regardless of the environment. | |
| And I've always said morality is relational. | |
| Morality is not absolute. | |
| Morality is relationship, right? | |
| Thou shalt not kill is thou shalt not murder. | |
| If you have to regretfully do someone harm in self-defense, that's not a violation of the non-aggression principle, because the relationship has changed. | |
| The person is aggressing against you, you have the right of self-defense, morally speaking, right? | |
| So, it's really a great question, and I hope it makes sense sort of what I've been up to all these years, but that's what I would say. | |
| Virtue is knowing what to do. | |
| Wisdom is knowing when to do it, in the moment, in real time. | |
| And that requires reclaiming the emotions and accepting your feelings. | |
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