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June 16, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:54
Go Forth and Multiply!
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All right, good morning everybody.
Questions from freedomain.locals.com.
Somebody says, Hi again, I have a fun question.
That is tongue in cheek.
In your book, The Art of the Argument, on page 108, last paragraph, it talks about activity in the female brain that generally differs from the male brain, specifically the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the right amygdala.
I'm summarizing that men tend to be more analytical than thinking and women are more emotional.
If we are wired differently, and of course there are always exceptions, should we, as a society, go back to more traditional roles in society?
Like more men in politics, arenas of science, etc., and women being teachers and nurturing professionals, since we are literally wired differently.
Right.
So, my only prescription is no violence.
I don't have any prescription other than thou shalt not.
I don't have a prescription for society.
I don't have a goal for society.
I don't have an ought for society.
All I have is ought not.
Thou shalt not initiate force against thy fellow man and woman and in particular child.
It's all I got.
It's all I have.
As far as how society should be constituted?
Don't know.
And don't care.
And don't care.
I refuse to submit to the narcissism of micromanaging billions and billions of people.
The only way that you can tell someone what they must do rather than what they must not do, the only way that you can even consider telling someone what he must do, is if you dehumanize him completely and replace him as a meat puppet populated only by your own bottomless vanity.
I'm not talking about you, I'm just talking about the general mindset.
You must do this.
Women ought to do that.
Men should do this.
I don't care.
I don't want to care.
It doesn't matter to me.
What matters to me is people get out of my face with their guns.
That's what matters to me.
That's what is of concern to me.
What they do when they're not baying for the initiation of force against me I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't want people robbing my house.
I don't want people robbing anyone's houses.
I don't want people robbing anyone at all.
What they do when they're not robbing?
Could care less.
It's not my job, it's not possible, it's not reality-based, it's not preferable, and it will drive you insane to micromanage other people.
So who gets micromanaged, right?
Look in society, right?
Look at what's happening when we talk about micromanaging.
And so, again, I'm not putting you in this category specifically, but when you say, should we return to more traditional blah blah blah...
I don't particularly care about tradition.
I think it's got some interesting and valuable things to offer but I don't particularly care about tradition for the obvious and simple reason that in tradition women and men and in particular children were regularly abused.
Let's just talk about traditional methods of child raising involve beating children.
So, as far as tradition goes, no, thanks, not a fan.
Not a fan, because all that really matters to me is the rights of children, because if we don't secure the protection of children, nothing else in society is ever going to work.
If you start building a road in the wrong direction, it's actually worse if it's built better because you've wasted more time, energy, effort and resources in going in the wrong direction.
So if we can't get childhood right, we can't get anything right.
Which is why I focus on childhood from, I think, the second or third show I ever did.
If we can't get childhood right, we can't get anything right.
So, who is micromanaged in society?
If you've been a stay-at-home parent, and I've had the great blessing of being a stay-at-home parent, who's micromanaged in society?
Toddlers.
Babies aren't exactly micromanaged because they can't move of their own accord, right?
They certainly can't walk around until a year plus of age.
They can't crawl, really.
So who is micromanaged?
Older babies, toddlers, young children.
A people who are massively cognitively limited.
Right?
And that's right, we should do that, right?
Toddlers are death magnets, particularly boys.
So soon as they run from room to room looking to either destroy something or put themselves in danger.
Now, that wasn't me particularly as a boy, but I was saving up my capacity to do damage for delusions, societal delusions, as I grew up.
Who do we micromanage?
We micromanage toddlers.
And we don't grant toddlers free will, independence, rights, adulthood, moral responsibility, and so on, right?
At least, not much.
So, the dream of having people in society do what you want them to do, rather than simply refrain from doing evil, The idea in society of having people do what you want them to do should be returned to a more traditional this that or the other is a feminine fantasy.
Micromanaging and this kind of tyranny come about because of a feminine impulses combined with, of course, politics.
So when the male mind gets combined with politics, you get tyranny through militarism.
When the female mind gets involved in politics, you get tyranny through welfare.
Focusing on the welfare of others.
You should do this.
You must do that.
You can't do this It's bad to do that.
Don't say this like you get tyranny through welfare and I'm you know kind of tired of tyranny as a whole and so I Don't I don't want it The tyranny of toddlerhood is not good in society because it prevents people from growing up.
So, what I want is for people to be free.
And that means free of coercion.
And that means with the opportunity to grow into genuine functioning adults.
Now, what do I predict will happen when people are free?
Well, everybody wants freedom, and freedom from consequences, and you can't have both, right?
You can have freedom, or you can have freedom from consequences, but the two are diametrically opposed.
So, will society, in a free society, will women generally return to raising, nurturing, breastfeeding young children?
Yeah, because that's what's best for children.
Will there be women who make mistakes, who have children out of wedlock and so on?
Yeah, sure, it'll happen.
And the cost of that will accrue to their parents, as used to be the case.
So, I think that will happen overall, since it tends to be what's better for children, but you can't have morality if you shield people from negative consequences.
Because you can't have morality without cost.
And of course, every individual wants to be rescued from their bad mistakes, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, like, everybody who goes and gambles and ends up $10,000 in debt to a casino once would love for someone to swoop in and pay off that $10,000.
Sure, I understand that.
Every individual wants to avoid the consequences of their own bad decisions.
However, for society as a whole, if we rescue people from the consequences of their own bad decisions, well, everybody becomes amoral and society falls apart, right?
I mean, this is of course a ridiculous biological analogy, but no individual rabbit wants to get chased away from the best patch of grass.
Some predator comes along and chases them away.
But, if no rabbits are ever chased away from the best grass, then the rabbits eat up all the best grass, and then the next best grass, and then all the rabbits end up starving to death, right?
So, this is one of the tensions, right?
One of the things that politics subverts.
No individual wants to suffer the results of bad decisions, of his or her own bad decisions, but if, as a society, we force everyone to rescue those who've made bad decisions, Then society as a whole becomes amoral.
Why bother being good if you can use force to make other people pay for your bad decisions?
So think of a gambler who's given an infinite credit card.
And we kind of know this to some degree from what happens with lottery winners, right?
So, imagine a gambler who's given an infinite credit card.
Well, the gambler is not going to suffer any negative consequences for running up his gambling debts.
He's going to Avoid negative feedback, pain, anxiety, worry, stress, having to sell his car, whatever, right?
So he just gambles more and more and more, which transfers more and more money from the productive elements of the economy to the unproductive elements of the economy, and it's pretty much a disaster for everyone.
So rather than his economy, his personal economy collapsing, and thus he reforms and hopefully makes better decisions, instead of his economy collapsing, the entire economy collapses.
So yeah, I mean, and of course women have an instinct to rescue people from the consequences of bad decisions.
Of course they do.
Because, you know, they evolved to deal with babies and toddlers.
And you don't let toddlers learn through harsh experience.
Oh yeah, fall down those stairs, you won't do that again.
You don't because it's too risky and too dangerous.
And it's unfair to expect toddlers new to the planet to know the consequences of bad decisions.
My brother and I contemplated using blankets as parachutes and jumping off high buildings.
Of course, we tested it with things, found it didn't work, and therefore we didn't do it.
But that's not the kind of thing where you'd let the kid learn from experience, right?
Because they were gonna die, or break legs, or some terrible thing, right?
And, of course, remember, when we evolved, injuries were often fatal, right?
I mean, if you break your legs as a kid, throughout most of our evolution, there's no doctors, there's no balts, there's no casts, right?
It's really bad.
So women have an instinct to prevent people from making bad decisions or to rescue them from the consequences of their own bad decisions because they're evolved to deal with babies and toddlers.
For the most part, and that is their instinct.
So if people present themselves to women as helpless victims of circumstance, women are often, they get sort of a strong impulse to, oh, that's so sad.
People make mistakes and they want to rescue.
Now, of course, using other people's resources, right, using other people's resources, that seems to be quite common.
And then when it's debt-based resources, it's like magic, summon money to do all of this.
And again, there's no complaint against women.
I'm completely thrilled and find it wonderful and beautiful that women care about little people, right?
I really do.
I think that's why we're all here.
We wouldn't be here otherwise.
But you combine it with politics, right?
And that's a very bad scene, right?
Because then you have to treat people as toddlers forever.
Right now, women take care of toddlers and then vote to have people never grow up.
Growing up is when you stop blaming people and circumstances for your choices.
Blame is just excuse, spelled differently.
And I just can't get around to dehumanizing people by treating grown adults as toddlers.
So I would say focus a little bit less on how things will be constituted in freedom, in a state of freedom, and instead focus more on how we get to a state of freedom.
Alright, many young people at my work say someone has no interest in having children, even though they are completely capable of doing so.
Even people in their late 20s and early 30s say they don't want kids.
All the reasons are for selfish reasons, such as children are too expensive, or they just want to enjoy life, or that waking up all night is too much stress for them to take care of an infant, is not having children on purpose, even if completely capable of doing so, immoral.
Well it's not, obviously not having children is not the initiation of the use of force and let's use, we'll sort of sidely, we'll sidestep the abortion question just for the moment and say that you are simply preventing insemination or not having sex or something like that.
Okay so I mean that's not the initiation of the use of force.
If you have a family wealth that was accumulated by bitterly hard work over ten generations and you decide to blow that family wealth on completely useless garbage and stupid investments and vanity consumption and travel and so on, right?
Is that the initiation of the use of force?
No.
No, it's not.
You are simply destroying, through vanity and foolishness, the wealth generated over many generations by extremely diligent and hard-working ancestors.
But it's not the initiation of the use of force.
You can't go to jail, obviously, for wasting money.
It's your money.
You can spend it stupidly as much as you want.
So, it's not the initiation of the use of force.
It is, however, A kind of spiritual theft.
Right.
So, let's say that for ten generations, mostly the men in your family have worked incredibly hard, made massive sacrifices to accumulate five million dollars for your family.
Now, you come along and blow it all on Lego sets and travel and Maseratis and like just useless stuff and you destroy the fortune.
Okay?
So the reason that's a kind of theft is because your forefathers only worked to generate that money on the belief that subsequent generations would nurture, protect and grow that money.
Like, why would you, like, let's say five generations ago, some guy's getting up before dawn and working 12 to 14 hours a day and foregoing all pleasures in order to start generating this income, in order, like, if he had a time machine he could look forward, in order for you to blow it on useless crap, well, he wouldn't bother.
Why would you bother generating an income just for some shallow vapid idiot to blow it five or ten generations down the line?
So you only have this income on the tacit assumption that you won't be stupid and blow it on garbage.
Because again, if your ancestors knew that you were going to blow it on garbage, they
wouldn't bother accumulating this money at all.
So you only have this money, the assumption that you're going to, I mean, obviously enjoy
some parts of it and, you know, spend some interest on something that's pleasurable.
I mean, they don't want, like your ancestors didn't accumulate this five million dollars
so that you could never enjoy it and have to work 14 hours a day down a mine or whatever.
I mean, they're fine with you enjoying the money, but not to the point where you destroy, right?
I mean, maybe they're fine with you taking that $500,000 Sorry, the five million dollars, investing it at 10%, living off 200,000 and adding 300,000 a year to the principal.
I mean, just some simple math.
I'm sure it's more complicated, taxes and so on.
But, you know, they're fine with that.
Yeah, yeah, enjoy the money for sure.
But don't blow it.
Don't waste it.
Now, of course, it's the same thing with life.
The amount of struggle over the last four billion years to provide you with life.
I'm talking not to you, the writer, but to the people who are not reproducing when they can.
The amount of struggle it took was only undertaken on the deal that the bloodline would continue, right?
So your ancestors who buried three wives who died in childbirth went through all of that pain and anguish and sorrow, not so that you could, you know, whack off to anime, spill your seed, and kill the bloodline.
That's not what they did it for, right?
So you only have life because your ancestors have made a deal with the future that you will continue life.
Your ancestors had to struggle infinitely more to preserve and raise the bloodline than you have to.
Right?
They didn't have labor-saving devices.
They didn't have antibiotics.
They didn't have surgery.
They didn't have the neck.
They didn't have any of these things.
They had to have a lot of children because a lot of children died.
They had to bury a lot of little bodies.
You don't have to really do that.
They had women die in childbirth.
You don't really have to worry about that.
So they had children in a much harsher time on the fundamental assumption that their descendants wouldn't blow it, wouldn't waste it, wouldn't destroy it, wouldn't refuse to procreate.
Why?
Out of shallow stupid hedonism?
But you see, if you're alive to not have kids because you just want to enjoy your life, you're only alive because your ancestors didn't do that.
So it's a form of hypocrisy, right?
Because you want to enjoy your life, right?
You want to have fun, you want to travel, you want to play games, you want to do laser tag, I don't know, whatever people do when they don't have kids decade after decade after decade.
So you're only alive Because your ancestors assumed you'd continue the bloodline.
If they knew, let's say three ancestors back, they knew you were going to blow the bloodline and not continue, they wouldn't bother.
So you wouldn't be alive.
Think of a baton race, you know?
If you've got, you know, four people around a track who all have to pass the baton and run, right?
If, like, nobody's gonna bother running if they know that you, as the third runner, aren't gonna run.
Like, you wouldn't be on the team, nobody would bother training, because you couldn't win.
Right?
So you're only on the baton team.
The baton team only exists because you're expected to grab the baton and run like hell.
And if you say ahead of time, hey, you know, you give me that baton, just gonna stare at it and gonna stand around and pick my nose, right?
They'll be like, okay, well then you can't be on the team.
So it is a kind of hypocrisy.
You're only alive because your ancestors wanted to continue their line and given that you're not continuing your line, you are betraying your ancestors.
You are betraying your ancestors and it's completely hypocritical that you were given this great gift of life that you enjoy so much and won't pay it forward at all!
It's lazy, it's contemptible and it's immature.
Life is a great gift and you should pay it forward as much as you can.
You know, within financial limits, within... although you of course have financial opportunities for way more children than your ancestors had.
So it is a contemptible pillaging, in the same way a fortune that's been amassed through incredible hard work over generations, the idiot who comes along and blows it, is contemptible, and is betraying his ancestors because his ancestors only worked to amass that fortune on the assumption that idiots wouldn't come along and blow it, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered.
I mean, your ancestors in gathering this money gave up on essential things and they didn't do that so you could blow their money on frivolous things.
They didn't give up toys for their children so you could buy wildly expensive Lego sets in your 30s.
It's shameful.
It's contemptible.
And we should have some respect for those who came before us and the legacy that they have provided.
So, I mean, of course, they're psyoped, and it's a devilish thing, which is to say, it's a very, very boring thing that happens.
The devil says, oh, hey, man, you should just really focus on, you know, current pleasures.
Current pleasures, they're what count, they're what matter.
You know, you have a baby, man.
You gotta get up at night, and you have a baby, and you won't be able to travel quite as easily, and you have a baby, and you won't have quite as much money to spend on yourself, man, and that's really bad.
And... it doesn't.
Of course, the devil doesn't talk about all of the incredible wonders that you're giving up, which is watching your mind emerge from the primordial ooze of babyhood to become a fully-flowered and brilliant and creative and intelligent personality.
Doesn't talk about any of that.
Doesn't talk about the love.
Doesn't talk about the connection with life.
Doesn't talk about the pride and honor of having a raising life and contributing moral and virtuous and wonderful people to the narrative structure of society.
It doesn't talk about any of that.
It doesn't talk about, of course, the comfort in your old age.
It doesn't talk about the beauty of that kind of connection.
It doesn't talk about how you'll love your wife and husband all the more after watching them be better great parents and so on.
It doesn't talk about any of that.
It's just like, well, you'll have to get up at night, right?
But that's just short-term hedonism.
And it is, of course, trying to turn you into an animal.
Right?
Like we train animals based on immediate positive and negative feedback, right?
Positive and negative consequences.
Right?
Good dog, here's a treat.
Bad dog, I'm giving you a scolding, right?
So, it's trying to reduce you to the status of an animal who makes decisions based only on short-term positive and negative consequences.
And then of course, you know, the devil offers you all of this pleasure by having you focus only on short-term costs and never long-term gains.
And then by the time it's too old... This is part of the sadism, right?
Of this mindset.
And then by the time it's too old for you to have children, you will be filled with regret.
And now I understand that there's an entire industry that is growing up for the childless women to have them avoid or not experience this regret.
Oh, it's fine.
Everybody has a different path in life.
You don't have to have children.
You're here to be more than a broodmare.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, there's a whole industry that is designed to eliminate people's massive regret at terrible decisions.
Like not having children, if you can.
And that's there not for the women who can't have children because they're too old, or the men who can't have children because they're too old.
That's not there for them, right?
That's there for the next generation, so the next generation is also lulled into this, you know, every choice is okay, every path is fine, it's gonna be good, don't be down on yourself, everybody has a different journey, blah blah blah, like all of this slow-drip, narcoleptic bullshit that has people not face the disasters of their lives.
It's there not to drug those who've made terrible mistakes, but to drug those who can still make good mistakes into making terrible mistakes.
So, this is why you won't see any fictional older women who truly regret not having children, and who are alone.
No, it's all nonsense.
Empowerment and sensitive lover descends from the skies to take care of the should-have-been-grandmother's sexual needs.
All mad, diabolical nonsense.
So, yeah, I mean, to say to the people, oh, so you really enjoy your life.
Oh yes, I love my life.
Okay, so you only have your life because your parents raised you, so why won't you pay that gift forward?
Why won't you give the gift of life to others so they can enjoy it?
It's kind of selfish, isn't it?
To just consume life that's been growing for four billion years, to just consume life without paying it forward.
Isn't that kind of selfish?
Well, my parents want me to be happy.
It's like, I get that.
And shouldn't part of your happiness be paying life forward and the satisfaction of, I love my life, I have the power to give life, to create life, to nurture life, so I'm going to do that.
Because that's part of the joy of my life.
Or is the joy of your life only in the consumption and not in the paying it forward?
I just say would you would you respect someone who frivolously blew a fortune that had been assembled or gathered by ten generations of incredible labor and hard work and sacrifice and somebody just blew it rather than well I'm accumulating this money so my family has options and resources down the road and will find it easier to raise children and then there's some shallow idiot who comes along who doesn't bother having children and consumes and wastes the money.
Would you be here if your ancestors knew you weren't going to continue the line?
Right?
Would you bother having and raising children if you knew in advance that your perfectly fertile children would choose not to have children themselves?
Well, I would imagine probably not.
So there's kind of fraud involved.
Again, not fraud on the part of the children, but fraud on the part of the adults.
And also, fraud on the part of the parents.
Which is, yeah, you should try to have children.
And being fruitful, going forth and multiplying is a great blessing.
And particularly if you're a good, thoughtful, sensitive person, right?
I mean, I remember having this conversation years ago with a woman who was an ardent environmentalist, really cared about the environment.
And I said, well, you should then have raised a bunch of kids and, you know, get them to accept and understand how important the environment is.
So then you, instead of just you being an environmentalist, you could have five or seven environmentalists all out there.
And of course, they could invent wonderful things to save the environment.
And nope, it's all nonsense, right?
It's all nonsense.
They don't want to grow up.
I mean, I understand that.
I understand that.
It's tempting to stay in a particular phase of life that you're an expert in.
You know, just when you're an expert at grade seven, they put you in grade eight.
Just when you're an expert in your mid-teens, you get your late teens.
Just when you're an expert at childhood, you get puberty.
Just when you're an expert in being a young person, you become middle-aged.
Just when you're an expert at one part of the job, they then move you up to another part of the job, right?
I get that.
And there's a great desire to stay Sure.
repetitive medieval surf-based repetition that doesn't have you constantly
Sure.
challenged with new things. I get that. Sure, sure. I understand. It's a temptation
and like all temptations it should be understood, accepted and ignored.
Understood, accepted and ignored. So I mean the purpose of life is progress.
Unless you're still using carrier pigeons and rotary dial phones, the purpose of life is progress.
And you like it when there's progress, right?
You like it when there's progress in the taste of your food.
You like it when there's progress in medicine that keeps you healthy.
You like it when there's progress In computers and technology that make things easier and better to use, right?
So you like progress and you need progress and if progress is not provided you're annoyed and so you like life too.
I mean you enjoy your life.
I mean, if you don't enjoy your life, it probably has something to do with the fact that you betrayed your ancestors, like if you're voluntarily childless.
And if you do enjoy your life, then you're selfishly withholding the enjoyment of life from those who come after you.
So, yeah, I mean, people, they don't want to grow up, they don't want to be responsible, and they want to stay, out of a lack of confidence, at the expertise that they have, which is being childless.
I get that.
I mean, having a child is a huge responsibility and it changes your life and you feel incompetent for a little while because it's so new.
But I think most foundationally, when people say I don't want to have kids, what they're saying is, my parents were not good.
My parents were not good.
And this is the price, right, of women in the workforce and daycare and all of this fragmentary family stuff where everyone's busy, harried, frustrated, stressed, annoyed, no time for relaxation, no time for fun, no time for connection, no time for endless board games filled with hilarity.
It's nothing.
It's just rush, rush, rush, go, go, go, pay, pay, pay, spend, spend, spend, earn, earn, earn.
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
And so, if your family life wasn't enjoyable because your parents worked all the time, or you were in daycare, or you were raised by strangers, or if you went through an early catastrophe like your grandmother raised you and then she died in your teens, or early twenties, right?
It was way too soon for you to deal with that, because you shouldn't be raised by your grandparents.
The only reason you're raised by your grandparents historically is your parents got killed.
So, if your parents didn't enjoy parenting because they were stupid about it, I mean, the way you enjoy parenting is you spend as much time as possible with your kids.
And you have as much relaxed and enjoyable time as possible with your kids.
That's how you enjoy parenting.
And if your parents were stressed and annoyed and irritated and distracted and all this terrible stuff was going on, Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I get it.
So, your parents made stupid choices about parenting.
So, you learn from those choices and you choose better.
It's not complicated.
Your parents made stupid choices about parenting.
So, you learn from those choices and you make better choices.
You don't, in this case, literally throw the baby out with the bathwater.
All right.
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