Stefan Molyneux joins Ryan McCormick in a deep dive on peaceful parenting, exploring the power dynamics and moral philosophy often overlooked in parent-child relationships. Discussing the shift from physical to verbal abuse, they touch on societal impacts and insufficiencies in positive role models. Stefan challenges beliefs on discipline and addresses the importance of self-reflection for parents to nurture empathy in children. The conversation outlines the pillars of peaceful parenting and emphasizes the transmission of ethical values amidst societal influences. Stefan advocates for peaceful parenting as a solution to societal dysfunctions, critiquing reliance on violence in child-rearing, and underscores the need for secular ethics to uphold universal moral standards. Calling for a shift towards peaceful parenting for societal transformation, Stefan highlights its potential to cultivate harmonious communities grounded in peace and voluntary interactions.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
It's an honor to welcome to our show today an individual whose work I've actually been following for over 10 years.
I found his insights and critical thinking thought process pretty engaging.
I have to say, in watching how he thinks, observing how he comes to conclusions, I have
You've been pretty powerful.
Please welcome to our show, Stefan Molyneux.
Website is freedomain.com.
Stefan, welcome to our show.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
I appreciate the invitation.
Thank you.
When I first met you about two weeks ago,
You're talking about how you have a new book coming out about parenting.
We talked about some things that people do today that are very different.
Can you please share with our audience your perspective on parenting and why peaceful parenting is something that really does have a profound, powerful, positive impact on kids compared to the traditional method of parenting where, I guess, you have to dodge shoes and books and everything else that could be coming your way?
Well, I suppose everyone can get comfortable, because this is my favourite topic in the world, so I will try to keep it brief.
I'll fail, I will absolutely fail, but I will do my best to try and keep it brief.
So, the basic argument is that philosophy is focused on moral philosophy, and moral philosophy is focused in particular on disparities of power.
So we understand that a corrupt cop is worse than a corrupt security guard, a corrupt security guard is worse than a corrupt crossing guard, and a corrupt judge or political official is worse of all because when they become corrupt they have so much power to inflict negative consequences on people.
So, since philosophy is interested in both morality and power disparities, well,
What is the relationship that has the biggest power disparity in the world?
And everyone thinks, I don't know, like a king to a peasant or an ayatollah to a street sweeper or something like that.
That's not the case.
The biggest power disparities in the world occur in the home, in the household, and it is between parents and children.
Children do not choose to be born into a family, they do not choose their parents, and almost always they cannot choose to leave.
Now, when you think of philosophy for, let's say, the pre-Socratic, so 3,000 years, we've had at least, you know, written down 3,000 years of philosophy, it's probably gone on a lot longer than that.
And philosophy focusing on morals and ethics, in particular with disparities of power, philosophers, moral philosophers, have never specifically addressed the family in any kind of detail.
Aristotle touched on it briefly, Ayn Rand touched on it briefly, John Locke was against corporal punishment.
You could say that Rousseau talked quite a bit about it, but then he put his children into a state orphanage that almost certainly killed them, so he was not particularly credible.
So why has there not been a deep philosophical moral analysis of parenting?
It's really quite frustrating, because it's where most of us
Perform our greatest moral instruction.
I mean, I will nag friends occasionally about virtue, but as a parent, what I do is I talk to my daughter about virtue and morality and so on, and this is the case for all parents.
All parents say, this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong.
Now, they do so without the feedback.
of the experts.
They do this without feedback from philosophers, and that's really, really frustrating.
So, when you think of the, you know, multi-thousand year history of philosophy, and the fact that parents desperately need moral guidance because they are morally guiding their children, and since philosophy is really interested in morality, objectivity, and power disparities, the fact that philosophers have not deeply examined
Childhood is virtually incomprehensible, and it's something I've been talking about for close to 20 years in my philosophy show, and I have graduate training in the field of philosophy and my graduate master's thesis on the history of philosophy, so I know a little bit about what I'm talking about, and I'm particularly good at reasoning from first principles, just a complete whiteboard.
And so we have these crazy standards in society where we say, my gosh, it is just absolutely terrible for one adult to hit another.
Boy, you couldn't come up with much worse than, you know, assaulting someone else.
And yet, in most places in the world, hitting children is considered acceptable.
Nobody has ever explained why you hit a child who hits another child saying don't hit children.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
Children have no property rights.
Their property gets confiscated and taken away.
Children are confined to their rooms.
Even in the timeout situation, they're confined to sitting on a stair.
And nobody has ever been able to explain how this is morally justifiable.
Because where you have a bigger power disparity, you normally have the highest moral standards.
In this case, it hasn't really happened.
And society is desperate for good parenting, and we know that because when you look at every popular television series that involves parents and children, the parents are peaceful parents.
They reason, they don't hit, they don't confine, they don't scream insults, they don't intimidate, they don't abuse, they're just nice, reasonable people.
But what was it, family ties?
They even had a talking stick.
Somebody had to hold the stick in order to be heard.
So everyone knows what peaceful parenting is, they're yearning for it, but there has not been a rigorous philosophical justification from the ground up for it.
So I spent since last summer...
Researching and writing peaceful parenting and it's divided into three parts.
There's the theory which is what rights do children objectively have and what morality should infuse and inform the parent-child relationship.
That's number one.
Number two is it's fine to have the theory but what about the practice?
How do you deal with this parenting scenario and this parenting scenario and I have a
Coached, I don't even know how many parents over the last 20 years who call in with parenting questions, so I've just about heard it all, and I've got good solutions for all of that.
And then there's the proof, right?
So there's the theory which is the rational proof, there's the practice which is how to implement it, and then there's the biological, psychological,
and scientific truth.
Proof for why peaceful parenting is important.
What happens if you're not a peaceful parent?
What happens to your child's brain?
What happens to their medulla?
What happens to their neofrontal cortex?
What happens to their risks of drug abuse and criminality and promiscuity and smoking and
I don't know.
I wanted to make an absolutely airtight case.
So the theory is solid, here's how to do it, and if you have any doubts as to why, the proof of the negative effects of harming children is irrefutable.
So I needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
I needed to have a criminal standard of proof, in a sense, because I am accusing immorality.
You know, it's hard to say people are immoral before they know, but I'm accusing people of some immorality that's significant, and if they continue to hurt and abuse their children, even with this knowledge, then they go from people who are ignorant to people who are actively evil.
So, it's a criminal case I'm making, it has to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not a civil case, which is just a preponderance of evidence.
So, the work is out for donors at freedomain.com, and I'm allowing people to share it as much as they want.
We've got the book, we've got, I've finished the audiobook.
And there's also an AI interface, so you can ask questions of the peaceful parenting philosophy.
That's not just the book, but many other things that I've written and talked about with regards to peaceful parenting.
So, it's a multi-language resource, 70 plus languages that people can ask and answer questions in.
So, I'm very close to
Revealing this to the whole world, so far it's just for donors, although they've shared it with a lot of people who found it very helpful.
And I just want it to be a seminal work that changes the course of human history.
Nothing too ambitious, you understand?
Nothing too crazy.
But that really is the goal, so that's the general overview of what I've been up to.
Well, I love that you are putting this out and that you're taking a look at parenting from a philosophical perspective, because it hasn't been done before long overdue.
When I talked to some parents today, I said, well, you know, years ago, you know, when kids were getting kids, I guess the kids were more, they say that, well, kids were more respectful years ago.
And today they're not respectful.
And today they get trophies for everything.
And I think they're trying to tie in the fact that
that kids were hit or kids were given tough love that somehow has made them more well-adjusted for adults.
From your perspective, when you look at your peaceful parenting, how can children grasp the lessons of being respectful, grasp the lessons of being resilient, and also, you know, have a sense of self-worth for overcoming tribulations
By the way of a peaceful parent compared to a parent who just thinks, well, you know, if I yell at them, they're going to adapt and they're going to just, they're just going to adapt and become stronger that particular way.
That's a great question and I do hear this objection and people do of course say, oh kids are so coddled these days and they don't have any toughness and so on, but as a society in general we've switched from physical abuse to verbal abuse and in many ways that's even worse.
Physical abuse is, you know, you get your bruises and it's painful and it's unpleasant but you heal and you move on and it's kind of clearly wrong, you know, for parents to beat up on their kids.
But verbal abuse is really, really insidious.
It kind of gets into your brain like a worm and kind of works away at the base of your personality.
And these days, of course, if you look at what's going on in the educational system, there's all of the end of the world.
Global warming is going to drown us all.
Apocalypse, which takes away children's happiness.
There is, particularly for Christians, there is a hatred of their history, there is, oh, all of your ancestors were colonizers and evil and you stole the land and you're just terrible human beings, and there's that whole level of things.
There's a lot of racial animosity that's being taught in the world, particularly towards white people.
So what's happened is, and of course the men, the boys, the boys in the school are considered very toxic and negative and well boys aren't just like girls and therefore they're broken and need to be fixed and drugged and there's all of this impatience, we have no fathers in the home, I mean how on earth is a boy supposed to grow to be a man easily or at least with not too much difficulty without a father in the home?
We have kept men away from
Little kids in government schools because or in daycares and I worked in a daycare for many years.
I was the only guy of course and So we have taken male role models away and a lot of kids from like boys from single-mother households They don't even meet any adult authority figure until they're in like grade 7 or grade 8 like they're 12 13 14 years old and
So I think we've really messed with what helps kids grow the most.
And of course we say to the little girls, well you see there's this giant evil patriarchy that runs the world and it's just out to get you and everybody hates you and all the men just want to pay you less and this is all nonsense and it's incredibly destructive.
So you've taken away, I mean when I was a kid you got caned in school, like you actually would get caned when I was in boarding school.
So that's all gone, and that's for the betterment, but unfortunately it's been replaced by some really, really toxic verbal abuse that is causing a lot of despair, and drugging, like straight-up drugging of kids without a huge amount of scientific proof.
I don't know, giving next-door-to-speed drugs to kids because they can't concentrate in the most boring environment known to man doesn't seem to be particularly beneficial.
And the unfettered internet stuff, you know, children are now getting exposed to hardcore pornography at the age of 10 and up, and some even earlier.
So, we've got a lot of messes, and saying, well, it's just less spanking is
Not the answer, because the spanking is absolutely bad.
I mean, I did interviews with Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff probably close to, I don't know, 14 or 15 years ago, and she did a meta-analysis, which is a sort of overarching umbrella analysis of all of the studies to do with spanking, and
With maybe only one or two possibly neutral exceptions out of the dozens and dozens of studies that she did, that she reviewed on spanking, they were all negative.
They all produced negative behavior.
You get short-term compliance and long-term resistance and hostility because it breaks the bond.
And of course we wouldn't say, well, you know, my wife, she brought the dinner to the table and it was just cold and it wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I hit her.
Like, we would never, if your wife does something wrong, even if your wife does something, quote, bad, like she totals the car or she has an affair, you still don't get to hit her, right?
So we say for adults, well, that's unthinkable.
But then,
And really that's only because the wife can leave and the kids can't.
So people can't really handle power very well and so without morality power tends to be pretty abusive.
And, you know, think of governments without court systems or bills of rights or constitutions, they tend to be pretty bad.
And parents without moral guidance tend to be just exercising power.
And the kids can't leave, and they are helpless, and they are dependent, and that seems to summon the beast in a lot of people.
So, yeah, I wouldn't say the spanking is the big variable, because kids are going through so much propaganda and self-hating verbal abuse that I think that's pretty much the key as to why kids are kind of messed up these days.
I concur with that.
Thank you for your answer.
And I, when everything happened with COVID, I was so just disgusted to see how children were abused and how parents pushed on their irrational fear on their children.
And it just, it just made me absolutely sick.
And when it comes to maturity, you know, every person goes through their life, they have shadow aspects of who they are.
If a parent has not engaged with their shadow self, tried to heal it, do they naturally pass on those qualities, that struggle to their children subconsciously through their mannerisms?
Is that something else that the child will have to take on as a tribulation in addition to a parent who is not yet fully matured to adulthood?
That's deep, brother.
That's very deep.
I like it.
So, we're talking about sort of the Jungian shadow self.
I mean, very few people are more dangerous than those who deny their capacity for evil.
And we all have the capacity to be mean and nasty and petty and vicious and so on.
And the problem is, if you deny your own capacity for evil, then all immorality in your relationships must come from others.
It must!
It must come from others.
So, if you say, well, you know, I as a parent can't do wrong, then if your children are acting badly, it has to be 100% on them.
And the case I make in the book is a very rational and patient case.
And the book is, you know, it's quite stern, but it's not too ferocious.
The first couple of drafts were when I decided to shave down those edges and douse some of the flames.
But if my daughter is acting badly,
The first place I need to look is myself.
I mean, if I'm teaching her how to speak, and she's getting the words wrong, do I just yell at her?
Like, no, I'm teaching her how to speak, I'm teaching her how to read.
And so if she's getting things wrong...
It's on the teacher, not on the student.
The teacher has to be self-critical first and foremost before blaming the student.
So, if you say, well, I can never do any wrong, then when bad things happen or negative things happen or problematic things happen in your relationship with your kids, you're just going to come down on them like a
I don't know.
It's pretty easy to get and teaching empathy to children is very important because empathy is like 12 or 13 complex parts of the brain all wired up to get the mirror neurons so you can feel how other people feel.
And I actually had this question yesterday in a show.
Somebody was like, well, I was at the
I was in the park with my daughter and she really, really wanted to get on the swing, but there was another kid on the swing.
And so she's like, Dad, get that kid off the swing and I want to have the swing and I want to do the swing, right?
And like, how do you handle that?
And I actually had that situation with my daughter when she was very little.
And so you say, well, okay, let's be patient and let's wait and so on, right?
And she's like, no, no, no, I really want the swing.
I really want the swing.
It's like, well, you know, just give her a chance.
And anyway, so I went to play with her elsewhere, right?
And then eventually, of course, the kid got off the swing, and my daughter got off the swing.
And I said, now, if another kid came along and wanted the swing, what would you say?
She said, no, it's mine!
It's like, ah, you see?
So that's what the girl who had the swing before you was feeling as well, right?
So her need
Switched from wanting the swing, wanting the other girl to give up the swing, to when she was in the swing now, she didn't want to give up the swing.
And so understanding that sort of basic connection when you are saying, I want the swing, well, the other person, the other kid doesn't want to give up the swing.
And then when you get in the swing, you become that other kid who doesn't want to give up the swing.
So that's just a basic empathy and teaching kids how to negotiate and to see things from somebody else's
point of view, or when my daughter would want candy, she comes by that honestly, I have a ferocious sweet tooth, so when my daughter would want candy, she'd say, oh, I really, really want this candy, and I'd be like, yeah man, me too.
Oh, I could eat this whole row, like Pac-Man, I could eat this whole row, and the second row too.
And I tell you, I could tear the whole bag of candy, I could eat it on the drive home,
And still want more.
And so, instead of saying, well, you're not going to get any candy, but you shouldn't have that feeling, it's like, yeah!
Me too!
I love candy as well!
And that way you're sharing in her desire, you're saying it's perfectly natural, and you're also modeling not getting the candy.
So, this is all very helpful and useful stuff to parent with, and kids don't want stuff as much as they want to feel heard and understood and recognized.
And if you, you know, empathize with what your kids want, you know, my daughter would want a particular stuffed animal, and instead of saying,
You've got so many stuffed animals, why do you need another one?
Stop being so greedy, it's ridiculous.
Look at your shelf, it's full of stuffed animals."
We're like, yeah, it is really cute.
I like this one and this one.
I would take home the whole armful of them.
And after we had those conversations, we'd just kind of leave and she'd forget about wanting it because her feeling, her desire had been recognized and empathized with and I had shared my own thoughts.
And feelings about it, and that tends to be a lot more productive.
So, yeah, you can teach kids a lot about ethics.
Like, kids lie.
All kids lie.
We all experiment with lying.
That's a perfectly natural thing.
I mean, lying is 90% of nature, right?
They're all just hiding and sliming and laying their eggs and stealing stuff.
And so, my daughter would lie when she was little, and I would say,
Well, I make promises to you, right?
Like if I say, I promise after I'm finished lunch, we'll go to the park, right?
And how would you like it if I said that and you look forward to the park?
And then afterwards I just said, now it's just lying.
We're not going to the park.
Oh, I'd be so upset.
I'd be mad.
I was like, yeah, absolutely.
Because when I make a promise, you feel good.
And then if you can't trust my promises, then you feel bad, right?
And so it's the same for me, right?
We're both people.
I mean, I'm older, I'm not a different species.
And so if you don't want me,
To lie to you, you know, it's kind of important not to lie to me as well because I feel as bad when you lie to me as you would feel if I lied to you.
And so just these sort of basic things to reciprocity and negotiation and helping kids understand the other person's point of view.
I mean, I hate to say it's not that complicated, but it's really not.
I mean, it's really not.
What to me is really hard is yelling and hitting and slamming them down on the stairs and it's like, that seems like a lot of work as opposed to just, yeah, I understand your feelings and I share them and, you know, and then you're teaching kids that feelings don't have to translate into action.
And they get this stuff very, very quickly.
And it's not just my daughter.
I mean, I've been around a bunch of kids over the course of my life, relatives and friends and so on.
I've had a number of conversations, a large number of conversations about this kind of stuff with kids, and it doesn't really matter where they come from, and it doesn't really matter what their circumstances are.
Kids all get it right away, and it doesn't have to be repeated too often.
They get it.
You know, if my daughter were to keep lying, it'd be like, okay, so we just don't tell the truth.
Now you can't trust anything, because I'm not going to keep telling the truth if you keep lying, right?
Because I'm not going to have higher standards than you.
And I know that sounds kind of aggressive, but it's just a fact, right?
I mean, if I order something online and they send it to me, I'll pay for it.
But if they don't send it to me, I won't pay for it.
Right?
So, it has to be reciprocal.
And you're saying, well, I'm not going to tell the truth if you think it's fine to lie.
Now, she didn't really go that far, but it's, you know, something that you can say so that they can understand then what it's like to be on the receiving end of a lie.
And that basic empathy of do unto others as you would have them do unto you is not that hard to teach.
You just don't teach it by screaming and hitting.
Don't teach anything other than fear and compliance.
Let's appreciate your answer and what you said about that you can do it without violence and also the fact that I guess kids at 18 months already have apathy.
And if we're looking at children right now,
Talking about a moral code, is there one particular principle that a person should adhere to where all the good foundations can come from with their decisions?
I'll give you one thing that I do with my child is I always try to adhere to the principle of unconditional love.
So whether I'm happy or sad or just
I'm pleased with my child.
I always want to keep in mind unconditional love.
Like, you know, am I showing unconditional love?
Does he have to behave a certain way?
Am I going to accept him for who he is, whether he has a variety of emotions?
And I try to say the answer is no.
I want to love him no matter what, no matter who he is.
So that's just how I go about things.
But is there any foundational principle that parents can look to and say, look, if I accept this one principle,
All the other decisions that I make, because I accept this one principle, will more than likely be done in a peaceful manner.
I will most likely be on the right path, and not on a path of violence, and not on a path of emotional destruction for my child.
Right, that's a great question.
I mean, there are sort of three general principles, and they're mostly interrelated.
The first is what's called the non-aggression principle, so don't initiate the use of force.
So, if your kid is hitting you, you can use force to restrain the child, like a sort of, quote, self-defense thing, right?
Again, your child shouldn't be hitting you unless they've been exposed to violence in some fashion or another, but let's say they do.
So, don't initiate the use of force.
You can use mild force to protect yourself with kids, but you don't initiate the use of force.
That's called the non-aggression principle.
That's number one.
Number two is tell the truth.
Tell the truth, so be honest.
You have to model what your children... Whatever you expect your children to do morally, you have to model to them consistently first.
If you want your children to learn the language, you don't invent a different word for tree every time you point at a tree, because then they're not going to learn language.
So you need to consistently model the behavior that you want in your children, and they'll pick it up as surely as a shadow blocks the light from a statue.
So, tell the truth, don't initiate the use of force, and respect property.
And teaching children to respect property is really, really important.
You don't grab toys from other kids, right?
Because you obviously don't like it when people grab your toys, and so don't, you know, give kids stuff, it's their stuff.
And non-violence, of course, in your interactions is another form of property rights.
Like, you don't use violence, you don't steal, you don't control, because when you intimidate a child, or you threaten a child, or you hit a child, you're, in a sense, taking over that child's body.
You're not allowing them to have self-ownership.
So yeah, tell the truth, don't initiate force, and respect property.
I mean, it's the same thing we have in adult society, right?
Don't initiate force means don't assault.
Tell the truth, particularly in important moral matters, has to do with thou shalt not bear false witness from Christianity.
And of course, you know, in a court thou shalt tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
And we generally have a
Respect for honesty in society and respect property, don't steal.
So it's the same thing, don't initiate force, don't take people's property and tell the truth.
These are things that are good in society and they're good with parenting as well.
Now the issue of unconditional love I think is really really interesting.
So I think what you're doing with your son is really really good for within the family but
We're good to go!
skills within your son to do with out in the world.
Now, of course, he's 14 years away from being an adult, so, you know, but over time he's gonna have to go out into a world where nobody really cares about his needs at all.
I mean, outside of friends and family, right?
He's going to go out there and he's going to want to get a job.
And, you know, I need a job is not enough for somebody to give you a job.
Like, you have to have mutual benefit.
He's going to want to ask a girl out and his desire to have her go out with him is not any kind of demand that she actually do it, right?
So, he's going to have to figure out how to negotiate with people.
Who aren't you and aren't bathing him in unconditional love.
So the unconditional love is great for within the family, gives him a good foundation, but he is also, and I'm not saying you're not teaching him this, but over time he's going to need to learn the kind of empathy and negotiation skills to look for win-win situations where there's no
I think.
And it's wonderful for when they're young and it's very powerful within the family, but you are also going to have to build skills over time for him to go out into the cold, harsh world where people... he's just another face of the crowd and he's got to provide some real value outside of the unconditional love stuff that's for within the family, if that makes sense.
I definitely wanna work on it.
And one thing I'm gonna... I'd say I'm challenged with him is that you'd mention, okay, well, you teach children don't steal, don't initiate violence, don't, you know, property rights.
And then you look at what is the foundation of government?
Government violates all those principles.
It steals, it kills, you know, property rights.
And why does it happen?
You don't give it consent.
It's some magic that it happens.
So I'm wondering, just looking at that alone, raising your child in a society where this benevolent being called the ruling class exists,
How can you teach your children good moral values while you have, at the same time, this overbearing, nefarious institute hovering over and trying to intrude all aspects of their lives?
Not only that, but you have various people in society, groups in societies, are always infringing upon you.
I mean, one of the worst things I had experienced
Doing the whole thing with COVID is I was walking in stores with him.
I did not have the mask on.
Everyone else did.
We were like the people that were doing our own thing.
And most of society kind of went along with all this stuff.
So I guess this is a two-part question is how do you parent successfully
When you have people that are willing to infringe upon you through government, and how do you parent successfully if large segments of the population do not carry the same moral values that you do or don't hesitate for a second to infringe upon you and your family?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Do you remember how old you were?
I remember where I was when I first found out about the national debt.
Do you remember that at all from when you were a kid?
No, I think I was 16.
And at that time, it was kind of nothing.
It was like, you know, it's heading towards 500 million.
Whoa!
Something really low number, a billion or something.
Yeah, I remember, it's not a competition, but I think I was probably maybe 12 or 13, and a friend of my brother's was telling me about the national debt.
And I was like, wait, what?
I'm born into...
I think back then it was like $100,000 of debt.
If you count the national debt plus the unfunded liabilities, which in the States is I think closing on $200 trillion, plus the, you know, is it $40 trillion now or whatever it is, the national debt.
So, I remember learning about that, and it's like, wait, but society claims to really care about its children, so if society really claims, like, the whole point of this whole school system, the whole point of everything, oh, we just love our children, the children are our future, and children are everything to us, and it's like, okay, so if that's true, then why would there be a national debt?
Like, I can't say that I claim to love my child while secretly taking out endless credit cards in her name and racking up, you know, $100,000 in debt which she's going to be buried with when she turns 18.
Like, you would not call that good parenting from an individual.
And philosophy, of course, recognizes only individuals, that there are individuals making that choice.
So, I remember saying to this friend of my brother's, and I said, well, why doesn't someone run for office to get rid of the national debt?
Because that's not good for the kids, and everybody says they care about their kids, and I see people, you know, they take their kids to the doctors, they take their kids to the dentist, they seem to be upset if their kids are doing badly in school, so they really do care about their kids.
So, why doesn't someone run for office on the platform of eliminating the national debt?
Now, he was, um, I guess I was 12, he was like, I don't know, 14 or 15, so he didn't really have the answer to that.
But I think we all know, like, even with someone, like, even with a wild card like Trump in the race, nobody talked about the national debt, nobody talks about paying off the national debt, it's not even part of the conversation.
Like, it's just not gonna happen.
Impossible.
I'm sorry?
It's impossible.
Compounding interest.
You can't pay it off.
If they pay it off, the whole thing will collapse.
Well, I think one of the ideas behind Trump was if Trump can liberate the economy to the point where we get massive increases in productivity,
Then maybe we can grow our way out of this thing.
But then COVID came along and wrecked the economy and, you know, 40% of all the US dollars in circulation ever have been printed in the last couple of years.
So, unfortunately, that plan did not quite pan out.
But I just remember that.
I remember thinking like, okay, so how can society both care about its children and sell them off to foreign banksters for
Political profit in the here and now.
Like how is that possible?
And I asked a few adults and you just get this thousand yard stare like, I don't know kid, but there's a great sports ball game on TV so I'm gonna have to move to another room.
And so you just, so I think that there is that basic reality.
The question is, of course, why do people, why are people so enamored of political power?
This is one of the most fundamental questions, and this really, of course, came out with COVID, where you seem to get every turbo Karen known to man, her screaming at everyone about masks and distancing and the social distancing stuff.
It was all made up.
I mean, it just, it was some kid's science fair that was completely unverified at all.
It's all mostly nonsense, but dangerous nonsense.
And so why, why do people, why are they so enamored?
Of political power.
Well, I think it's because we say that violence is required to raise children.
Violence is required.
We certainly say that coercion is required to educate children because, you know, schools are paid for with debt and taxes, which are coercive.
And so we say, well, the raising of children, the education of children, all requires coercion.
So coercion must be a good.
It must be.
It must be the good.
How could it not be?
And so, if people think that childhood requires violence, that the ordered and structural needs of society all have to rest on violence, then when they get older, how are they going to say, well, maybe we can have a society that doesn't rest entirely on violence?
Like, maybe we could?
Because they then would have to say, well, if violence is bad for society, then why would it be good for children?
And that, I think, is really tough.
So, my argument has been, you know, I started the show 19 years ago, my argument has been
That if we raise children peacefully, well first of all, a lot of the dysfunctions that we think we need government for will mostly evaporate.
And I'm not kidding about that.
I know it sounds utopian, but the science is very clear.
So if you raise children peacefully, you get almost no criminality.
Criminals come from abusive households.
You get very little promiscuity.
In fact, girls who are raised peacefully even menstruate later.
They stop menstruating later because their bodies are not preparing for, you know, spray and pray, you know, rabbit-selected battle reproduction.
They actually become more
They become more reasoned and better able to defer gratification sexually.
So promiscuity goes down.
Criminality goes down.
And not by a little bit, like enormously, like 90 plus percent.
And drug abuse, drug addiction goes down, which means criminality also goes down, which means that dysfunction goes down.
And of course, all the people who would have been single mothers and who would have been criminals and would have been drug addicts and so on, they actually work productively in the economy and therefore, you know, our wealth goes up enormously.
And so, a lot of the things that we think we need government for are dysfunctions caused by violence against children.
And so, if we spread peaceful parenting, then at some point the government won't have much to sell us.
Because like, we have to keep you safe!
It's like, from what?
There's almost no criminality.
Well, we have to make sure that the single mothers are taken care of.
It's like, yeah, but if you raise children peacefully, promiscuity and single motherhood goes down.
Enormously.
And you can sort of come up with just about any issue that's going, well, there are all these drug addicts and well, no, no, drug addiction.
Drug addiction is a form of self-medication for people who are miserable as a result of child abuse.
They don't take drugs to feel good, they just take drugs to feel normal.
Like if you have a headache and you take an Advil or an aspirin, you're not trying to get high, you're just trying to
Not have a headache, right?
So if we peacefully parent, then a lot of the boogeymen that the government uses to frighten us into compliance will all evaporate, because it just won't be there.
And then
If you don't have these things around to frighten the population and you don't have all of this instability and danger and so on, then people were like, so what do we, you know, what do we need all this political power for if we don't really need to be protected from anything and people are functioning and wealth is going up?
And of course there will be some people who will still be problematic, but the society will be so wealthy they can easily be taken care of with charity.
So it's not so much how do you
Teach kids about political power is that if you teach kids peacefully, the drive and urge to control others, the fear of the danger of others, will begin to diminish and hopefully we can ease our way out of this paradigm that we need to run just about everything in society on brute force.
Thank you.
And it seems like right now we're in the midst of a peak collectivism, and it's the individualism, individual thoughts and ideas seem to be diminished.
They want to push us aside.
Stephan, I had a question about the impact of having some form of spirituality in your life, how that impacts adults and children, psychologically speaking, how it impacts them.
I had briefly spoke
I touched upon that.
I am a former Catholic, I grew up Catholic, and then I left.
I just did not agree with a lot of the principles that were in there.
Although I wanted to say that I want to treat people good, I want to express unconditional love whenever possible.
But the paradigm, the values that were in there, I felt that, at least from my perspective, the religion was very, like, a lot of it was fear-based.
Okay, you're not doing this because you're afraid to, because you will go to hell if you do this or that.
And the path that I'm on, the spiritual path I'm on, I mean, I do things because why not?
Why not do something beautiful and why not do it for the sake of doing it?
So, from your perspective, how does spirituality or organized religion have an impact on a child's development as well as adult's development, as well as fostering any kind of sense of community for thousands of nations?
I like the giant questions.
Huge!
Love them!
Love them.
Thank you.
This is my meat and drink.
So, I also grew up as a staunch Christian, and the problem that I saw in society was that if our morals come from God, then you can eliminate morals by not believing in God.
And this is what we're going through in society at the moment.
As science has advanced, God has retreated.
Now, I'm talking about real science, not this pseudo-scientific mystery cult known as government-funded science, like the actual real, genuine science, the scientific method.
And science and the free market have unquestionably provided the greatest benefits to mankind that have ever existed, if you sort of look at the virtual flatline of human progress over the last 200 years, 225 years.
Since the enclosure movement in England in particular in the late 18th century, we've just had this massive explosion of wealth.
Now that did not come from God, that did not come from religion, that did not come from the Bible.
It came from science and the free market and the general engineering and medical advances that came out of the excess wealth and objective methodology that capitalism and science represent.
I think people have said in their hearts, well, religion has been in charge of humanity in one form or another for 150,000 years.
Superstition, spirituality, religion, mysticism has been in charge
And it was only after science and capitalism came along that we really, really progressed.
Now, that has given people a lot of skepticism.
And you can say, of course, that science is the study of the mind of God, and you can say that capitalism is just thou shalt not steal writ large, and I get all of that.
But nonetheless, when religion diminished and science and the free market began to displace it, humanity, by any metric you can think of, did immeasurably better.
And so that made people quite skeptical towards religion.
And then, as their skepticism towards religion grew, their belief in morality
Faded.
Because if morality comes from God you can wave away ethics by no longer believing in God.
I don't like that.
I think as a philosopher it has to be that there's a case for ethics that exists independent of the gulags of the government and the ghosts of God.
There has to be a way of proving morality so that you can't disbelieve in it.
And the Peaceful Parenting book will be free, and I have a free book on ethics called Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
And the argument is, if you don't believe in God, if you want the government to throw guns at everyone who disagrees with it, then you have a challenge in that
The four bans in all rational moral systems, a ban on rape, theft, assault and murder, can be proven from first principles rationally through philosophy.
They are indisputable.
I came up with this theory like 17 or 18 years ago.
I've debated it live, I've debated it online, I've had endless written arguments.
It is absolutely unassailable, the proof for secular ethics.
So, if you say
Be good, but you can only be good if you believe in God, then people have a big incentive to no longer believe in God.
Because then you say, well, I don't believe in hell, I don't believe in divine punishment, and then it becomes, I mean this is what Nietzsche was talking about in the 19th century, it becomes a Darwinian will to power, a war of all against all.
Lying and big lies, propaganda and threats and so on, they all become justified.
We saw this during COVID.
There were so many big lies that are coming out now, finally.
There were so many big lies that were told over the COVID era and
There's no reckoning, there's no guilt, there's no... Because, you know, hey, I lied, and I made a fortune, and I got lots of power, and I frightened people, and so on, so why wouldn't you do that?
If there's no God, then you do what you can get away with.
And in particular, if bad people have control over the major organs of justice in society, then they can get away with anything.
And so we're sort of seeing this play out, that if you don't have God, all is permitted, and the only thing that is bad is not winning.
So if you have to lie to acquire resources, then what's wrong?
There's no problem with lying.
As I mentioned, nature is full of deception.
I mean, camouflage is a form
of deception.
No, I'm not me, I'm the tree, right?
I mean, the chameleons are changing the colours, the form of deception.
The lion pretends to be just the grass, you know, creeping up slowly, and the shark has also its camouflage so you can't see it looking up and you can't see it looking down.
So, deception and falsehood and misdirection and trickery, they're all, I mean, even the rabbit running away from the wolf is like, I'm going this way, just kidding, I'm going this way, just kidding, I'm going this way, right?
It's all misdirection and deception to win
And to lose and we're in that situation now where a lot of people have lost their faith not just in God but in virtue and ethics itself and then ethics just becomes a tool that you use to dominate others with no intention of being virtuous yourself and that's a pretty bad situation for society as a whole so that's been a lot of the work that I've done is to prove ethics beyond
The capacity of anyone to disbelieve unless they want to throw reason and objectivity out the window completely, in which case they're just a rank relativist and subjectivist, in which case they're out of the moral discussion, if that makes sense.
It makes total sense.
And I wonder if this, what we're going through right now is a cycle.
And if you look at other previous societies, what do you think would have been some of the most moral societies throughout history?
What was the foundation for those morals?
And have you ever seen a society kind of be founded on the principle of just pure voluntarism?
Just decided like, okay, you know what, we will not know initiating any violence.
I do wonder if the greatest society is yet to be formed.
I tend to look at societies that have gone through mass tribulations and see what has emerged before that.
And it seems like in the midst of a total period where people are going through a lot of hardship together that they kind of form bonds and maybe they grow stronger society.
I don't know where we are.
I feel like we're in the dark ages right now and it's going to get really bad before something gets better, but it could be wrong.
Or maybe this is the way humanity is kind of devolving and this is what we're going to look at definitely from your perspective.
Do you have hope for the future?
And also, coming back to the question, are there any peaceful societies that you've explored throughout history, and why they were so moral?
Yeah, I mean, the best society is yet to come.
I actually have a whole novel on my website called The Future, which is 500 years from now, what does society look like in the best and ideal case, and it's a description of a purely voluntary society.
So, no, there's been no societies prior
To the modern world and including the modern world that's founded on peace and property rights.
Because, I mean, all societies pretty much prior to a couple of hundred years ago were slave, rape and pillage societies.
So, I mean, 40% of the Roman Empire was straight up slaves.
So that's certainly not a peaceful society and conscription in the Roman Empire was like 20 years and you had very little chance of making it back alive and if you didn't want to be conscripted they'd just kill you.
So that's war slavery.
It's just about the worst, worst of all.
So no, there are no peaceful societies, but if you want to look at a peaceful society, look at your phone book.
Look at your contacts.
I mean, I assume you don't lock people in the basement when you want to hang out with them.
So if you want to look at what a voluntary society looks like, look at your friends, look at those around you who you choose voluntarily to spend time with.
That is, I call it utopia, like Y-O-U, like utopia.
You don't want to kidnap people to have them come to your dinner party.
You don't want to be kidnapped to go to other people's dinner parties.
You want for mutually beneficial interactions and exchanges.
You want peace and voluntarism in your world.
And if somebody, you know, if somebody said, oh man, I just spent a long weekend with Bob for the cottage.
Oh, how did that come about?
Well, he chloroformed me.
He put a
Burlap sack over my head and I woke up chained to the radiator in his cottage.
You'd say, well that's just appalling, like he kidnapped you, for heaven's sakes call the police and get Bob arrested because that's just terrible.
And so we would be absolutely appalled.
Or if somebody said, oh yeah, I just got off the phone with the police because Bob cloned my credit cards and ran up.
$50,000 worth of debt in my name, you'd say, my gosh, that's absolutely appalling!
And yet we have the national debt, right?
So, what you would find appalling in your personal life...
We should find appalling everywhere because people are people and principles are universal and the purpose of reason and evidence and moral philosophy is the same as the purpose of physics.
We don't say that physics is different in Philadelphia as opposed to Kabul as opposed to Minnesota as opposed to the North Pole.
The physics are the same.
It's universal and morals are universal and if you would be appalled
at something in your private life, then we should be appalled about that anywhere in society.
And it doesn't matter what costume people are wearing, and it doesn't matter what titles they give themselves, or whether they're wearing a funny hat like a crown, or a tea kettle, or a tea cozy.
It doesn't matter.
Morals are morals and they're universal.
And so, yeah, I wouldn't say that there have been free societies.
I mean, in the past, even America was founded on, you know, a tax revolt, and then
What was it?
In Pennsylvania, George Washington was riding down... 3%.
Sorry?
Yeah, the whiskey tax, right?
I mean, he was riding down with 10,000 troops to behead anyone who didn't want to pay the whiskey tax and, you know, within 80 years of the founding of America, the Constitution was largely in shreds under Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
So, you know, it's tough.
It's tough.
And it really comes down to, if you grow up with peace,
Then you will expect a society that's peaceful and violence will be jarring to you.
If you grew up with violence, then you're going to expect a society that's violence and peace will be jarring to you, and that is the goal.
Because people have been trying for as long as there have been people to restrain the power of political authority with words.
There's an old, it was a Roman general, I think, he says, stop quoting words to men with swords.
And the idea that we can use pieces of paper and language and words, which there's no magic spell, that we can use that to restrain and contain those sociopaths with bloodlust for endless violence, it's a fantasy.
And so we can't solve the problem of political corruption
With words, right?
So what do we have to do?
Well, we have to raise children peacefully, so that we end up with fewer boogeymen for the politicians to scare us with, and people will look at politics and say, well, boy, that's totally different from my life, and, you know, I'm very appreciative of having peace and reason in my family, therefore we should probably have that in society.
Or at least give it a try, because Lord knows we've tried everything else, and this is where we've ended up.
Stefan Molyneux, I want to thank you so much for being with us today.
I loved your answers and you're sharing a lot of wonderful insight.
Learn more about Stefan by going to freedomain.com and we'll also post links to his site and for his book.
And again, please want to become a patron for his site, we'll post a link there as well.
Stefan, it was an honor to meet you and to talk with you after all these years.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate the conversation.
Thank you for giving me access to your audience and you had some fantastic questions.
