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June 20, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:58
MY DAILY WEED HABIT!
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Good morning, everybody!
Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain, and we jump straight into questions from freedomain.locals.com.
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All right.
Where is the best place to send our reviews of the Peaceful Parenting book?
You asked for feedback, but I'm not sure the best place to submit it.
I'm only a few chapters in.
I like the content, but my first impression is, wow, 450 pages.
I think it's too long for general consumption.
If you want many people to finish this book, I suggest cutting it in half or smaller.
Yes.
So yeah, there's a shortened version.
I wanted to write the Bible of Peaceful Parenting.
In other words, I wanted there to be no escape.
So, parenting is something that is one of the easiest things in the world to lie about.
As those of us who've had dysfunctional parents and tried to confront them or talk to them about it, the compulsive lying with regards to parenting is everywhere.
And with something that's so powerful, so important, and so easy to lie about, it was pretty important for me to create a book without an escape clause, without an escape hatch.
So, yep, I had to close off every possible exit path as a whole.
That may be too much for you, but it is designed... See, the Peaceful Parenting book has two audiences as a whole.
The Peaceful Parenting book has as its audience both parents who want to improve, or people who want to be parents who want to improve, so part of the audience for the Peaceful Parenting book is the parents, and part of the audience for the Peaceful Parenting book is the adult children.
So it is not just about improving your parenting, it's about analyzing how you were parented.
I'm not sure if that's clear or whether that's obvious, but I thought I would mention it because it's pretty important.
Now, I've done, of course, thousands of conversations with people about their childhoods and parenting and so on, so I've gathered a really unprecedented amount of information in unraveling people's defenses about their appearance.
And this body of knowledge and experience and analysis and conversation that's in my head has no equal or parallel in human history or across the world.
It's not because, you know, people don't talk to other people about their childhoods, but not from a rigorous moral analytical philosophy standpoint.
So I have gathered a massive amount of information that has no parallel, as I mentioned, about The lies that parents tell children, the lies that adult children tell themselves about their parents, and the lies that the parents tell themselves.
And by lies I mean defenses, so this is not some big moral judgment.
Falsehoods, let's just say falsehoods.
So the Peaceful Parenting book, everybody should read it, because we've all been parented in one form or another.
And the Peaceful Parenting book is a slow, steady closing of the exits so that there's only one corridor that leads to the truth, right?
There's no trap doors, there's no vents you can escape to, there's no doors you can dive behind.
It slowly guides people towards the moral truth of how they were parented and the moral truth of how they parented.
So, yes, it has to be fairly lengthy.
Now, is that for everyone?
Well, it certainly is for the rigorous and detail-oriented among us who want to make sure that we're absolutely certain before passing the most fundamental moral judgments of our lives, which is that of evaluating our own parents, right?
That's something you want to get right.
Because the moral judgments you have about your own parents are going to be the foundation of how you parent, and how your children experience your parenting.
So, obviously, I want to be right.
And part of the piece for parenting was saying, are there any ways out?
Are there any exits?
In the same way that UPB is a fairly lengthy book, because I wanted to... I mean, morals are foundational, and second to parenting, and sometimes even equal to it.
The lives we tell ourselves about virtue are Very deep and very powerful.
So I wanted to make sure there was no exit ramps, no way to get out of UPB.
So the peaceful parenting book is designed for those who want to improve their parenting to get absolute certainty that what they're doing is the right thing.
And that's in terms of moral theory, moral evaluation, practical examples, and the science and biology of trauma.
So there's no escape.
So the fact that the book exists and is lengthy and completely comprehensive, like there's no way to avoid it, there's no way to get out of this.
It is an open and shut case.
So me, I want to be, because this is a kind of prosecution, right?
It's a prosecution of immorality.
So I view these as, these kinds of books, the books that I write, as evidence in a court case.
Just so you understand my mindset, whether you agree with it or not, it's important to know where I'm coming from, or helpful maybe.
So I view this as a prosecution.
And you have to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt, right?
Because I'm really talking about criminal behavior, the physical, emotional, psychological harm, harming of children, right?
It's a criminal.
It's a morally criminal.
So I'm making a case.
I'm making a case against what I view as criminal behavior.
I mean, certainly the way that I was raised was in a criminal fashion in ways I've talked about and ways I haven't talked about.
So I view this as a prosecution statement.
And the burden of proof in a lot of philosophy is a civil standard, right?
The preponderance of evidence, 51%, right?
But when you're talking about evil, when you're talking about immorality, when you're talking about criminal matters, then the burden of proof has to be beyond a reasonable doubt.
So that's like 95%.
Now, there are times, of course, in a criminal prosecution when you have proved your case 100%.
Now, that's rare, because most people for whom there's 100% proof against them, they cop a plea, right?
They take a plea bargain.
So, for me, I need smoking gun video evidence of the crime.
Right, so if somebody says, I didn't rob that convenience store, And they go to trial and you produce video evidence, indisputable video evidence, like it's clearly them, they've got a particular tattoo, they were in the neighborhood, you've got their location data from their cell phone that places them there, you've got the video evidence, you've got them stealing something, driving away.
So, that's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
That's 100% proof.
Right?
That's 100% proof.
And then if you have them on tape confessing to the theft to someone else, and it's indisputably them, right, the voice analysis, like, oh, you have them on video, somebody secretly, like, whatever standard you have in your mind that you can make up where it's like, okay, it's 100% proof.
It's 100% proof.
Okay.
So then when you send the guy to prison or whatever punishment he gets, you have no doubt that it was him.
So, when I'm making a moral case, philosophically, I can't do preponderance of evidence, that's not right, that's not fair, because that just appeals to prejudice, particularly in such a volatile and defended structure as corrupt parenting.
I can't have 95% proof, I need 100% proof.
I need to absorb and accept every possible objection and address it irrefutably.
So that's my approach, and that's why this book exists.
This book exists so that nobody has any excuses anymore.
That's why I make it free.
Or, you know, when it's gone through its sort of final sort of feedback and so on, right?
So this book exists and will be free so that no one has any excuses.
There's a free book.
You can listen to the audio book.
You can read through it in about 10 hours.
Or maybe less, depends on how fast you read.
The audiobook is over 20 hours, but I'm reading at a sort of very measured pace.
But reading, in your mind, is much faster than listening to an audiobook.
So, you can read through it in, you know, depending on your processing, sort of 8 to 12 hours, right?
8 to 12 hours.
People go to school for 4 years.
You go to, you know, public school, government school for 12 years.
People put that much effort into watching a season and a half of some show.
So, 8 to 12 hours.
And it's free.
So that means there's no excuse.
Now, of course, people can say, well, I've never heard of it, this and that.
I get all of that, but...
It's as accessible as I can make it to have written it in an easy-to-understand, easy-to-digest format, making it free, and putting it out publicly, and putting it out on eBook, and putting it out on audiobook, having the peaceful parenting AI.
That's as accessible as I can possibly make it.
Now, of course, some people will say, oh, yes, but your reputation is so bad, people didn't want to read it.
But that's not on me, that's on other people.
Who have said things about me that are not true, and the reputational issue is on them, not on me, right?
That's not my responsibility, right?
So, I completely understand where you're coming from for some people.
It is too long, I get that.
But my question is, given that it is the most important topic After ethics, right?
I mean, how you're parented is the most important topic.
And you're saying, well, you know, boy, that's a long book.
But the other thing, too, is, of course, you can, if you accept, like, if you've seen the Bomb of the Brain stuff before and you accept the physiological effects of child abuse, then you don't have to read, like, a third of the book, right?
Because a third of the book is about the biological proof of what happens to your body and your mind when you're abused as a child, so you can skip all of that.
If you're convinced by the moral arguments, Right?
If you're convinced by the moral arguments, which are like the first third, then you don't need to read the last part.
So if you're convinced, like let's say that you're anti-slavery, right?
Which we all should be of course, right?
So you're anti-slavery, and if you accept the moral argument about ending slavery, then you don't need to read the detailed science of what slavery does to the human mind and body, because you've already accepted the case, so you don't need to read that part, right?
On the other hand, if you say, well, yeah, there are moral arguments against slavery, but boy, you know, some people might say, crazy people might say, but it has a good effect, right?
So some people might say, well, look, I understand that you've got some moral arguments against banking, but it has a good effect, right?
It's necessary.
I mean, some people might say, well, you know, dieting can make you feel weak, but it's necessary to lose weight if you're severely overweight.
It's important.
So, for those people who say, I can't argue the morals, but consequentialism, well, I need to address that, and that's why the part is in about the science and all of that about what happens to children who are abused.
So, I find this interesting as well.
You're a few chapters in, you say, I like the content.
Wow, 450 pages.
I don't want to be the guy who doesn't accept criticism.
I accept that it's too long for some people, which is why there's going to be a shortened version.
I accept that, and I appreciate that.
But I just wonder, you know, this is the first deep and powerful moral examination of parenting and childhood in the history of philosophy.
And it unravels how significantly dysfunctional, a significant number of households are.
And I know that it's powerful because, you know, I get these messages from people about, you know, can't sleep, weeping, you know, like, I know this is powerful stuff.
And you seem to me, you seem to me to be a little bit dissociated from the contents of the book.
Yeah, I like it!
Okay, but what were your parents like?
How did they fit into this category of the analysis of morality and immorality?
Right?
So, I appreciate where you're coming from.
My concern would be... I could be right, could be wrong.
My concern would be, okay, but how did the contents of this book affect your childhood, how you were parented, your education, and all of that?
And does it not seem that when you have a really scalding, burning light shone on upon the original sin corruption of so many of our lives?
I like it.
It's, you know, I just find that pretty wild and that's interesting.
So he goes on to say, You are great with analogies, but I think there are too many, at least in the first few chapters.
The purple's analogy isn't great to me.
I don't think it's captivating to the audience.
Keep up the analogies where they are strong, but cut ones that aren't captivating, thanks for your work.
So, when I'm looking for feedback, just so you know, right?
I give you feedback on your feedback.
When I'm looking for feedback in the book, I'm looking for something like, you make a logical error here.
You know, there's a contradiction between this section and some other section in your book, right?
So that's what I'm kind of looking for is where there are contradictions or something that's illogical or something that doesn't mesh together from a rational standpoint.
All of that kind of stuff, right?
All of that kind of stuff.
That is sort of what I'm looking for.
You know, I don't like a particular analogy or a particular analogy doesn't move me.
I mean, that's fine to say.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with saying that.
The problem that I have with that, though, is when you extend an analogy that you don't like to people as a whole, right?
So, the Purples analogy isn't great to me.
I don't think it's captivating to the audience.
So, how would you know the audience as a whole?
So, if you say, well, the analogy about the purples isn't great for me, okay, that's interesting feedback and I appreciate that.
But then when you say, I don't think it's captivating for the audience as a whole, then what you're doing is you're saying, my experience is everyone's experience, or my experience is the majority of people's experience, which is not at all valid.
I mean, it's just not at all a valid thing, right?
If I say I didn't like This particular paragraph in a book, therefore people as a whole don't like it, therefore it's bad, that's not a rational response, right?
I mean, it's fine for me to say to me, I didn't like this analogy.
It would be helpful to know why, like what's wrong with the analogy, but If you can say, well, the analogy doesn't match the example because of this and this and this, that's helpful.
But you say, I don't like it, therefore nobody likes it, therefore it's bad.
And that's not a rational objection, right?
It's like saying, I didn't like this particular font, therefore nobody likes this font, therefore the font is bad.
Right?
That's not close to rational, right?
And so, the other thing too, when you say, keep up the analogies where they are strong, but cut ones that aren't captivating.
I'm sorry, it took me to laugh.
But that is not helpful advice.
That's not helpful feedback.
Now, if you were to say, well, you have this analogy, but it doesn't capture the essence of the moral argument you're making because of X, Y, and Z, that's helpful.
Then I can adjust the analogy to further capture in more detail what it is that I'm trying to talk about.
But when you say, keep up the analogies where they're strong, but ones that aren't captivating, and I didn't quite get this one, so clearly it's bad for everyone, that's not very helpful.
And of course, somebody replied to him, said, I think the purples analogy is really useful, especially for any normies that decide to pick up the book.
So, I have a particular view of criticisms of the book, or feedback on the book, and a lot of people have said how much they like the analogy of the purples.
And of course, you know, when you read the book, you'll know.
People really like the analogy of the purples.
And so, when you say, I don't like the analogy of the purples, and therefore, nobody does, and therefore, it's not captivating, you know, I don't know.
Strong analogies, ones that aren't captivating, it doesn't help.
And it certainly goes against, I mean, you're the only person so far, and that's fine, I mean, doesn't mean you're wrong, but you're the only person so far who has disliked the analogy of the purples.
So when you say, I don't like it, therefore, I don't think it's captivating to the audience, You are mistaking your own subjective experience for the subjective experience of everyone, which is contradicted by all the people who've written to me who said, I really love the analogy of the purples.
So, it's a little hard to know what to do with that in a productive sense.
I certainly can't change the analogy because one person out of, you know, however many people have written to me, one person doesn't find a particular analogy captivating.
Obviously I can't change it.
Certainly if the majority, like everyone else, thinks it's great, obviously I can't change that.
So I appreciate the feedback, but just in general for people, if you want to give me feedback, and I certainly do appreciate feedback and I like feedback, please try and give me feedback that talks about rational inconsistencies or here's where the analogy doesn't work because of X, Y, and Z or contradictions or something like that.
So, that would be helpful, but saying, I didn't like X, therefore nobody likes X, therefore X is bad.
Or saying things like, it's sort of like saying, going to a CEO of a big corporation and saying, try to Try to produce the goods and services that make money and try not to put a lot of time, effort and energy into those products or services that lose money.
It's like, well, yeah, okay, but that's not particularly helpful.
All right.
So somebody says, I'm curious what peaceful leaning parenting methods you might have investigated or reviewed when working on your book or forming your parenting philosophy.
EDE Parenting with Love and Logic, Grace-Based Parenting, Trust-Based Relational Interventions, and so on.
Thanks for your work on this, I appreciate that.
I did, of course, talk to somebody from a particular parenting approach, sort of many years ago on the show, but I don't think I've read, I just, I really can't, I really can't get much value out of most parenting books.
Because they talk about what happens in the home, but not what happens in society.
They talk with great sentimentality about parents' love for children without looking at the counter-evidence.
They don't talk about national debts.
They don't talk about the hellscape of government schools.
So, for me, a lot of parenting stuff is not particularly helpful, because it's not broad-based or philosophical.
All right.
Here we go.
Hey Steph, advice for someone who's 28, still living with parents and not much dating experience in adulthood, no post-secondary education, have mostly been working as service tech and industrial type jobs, making about $23,000 to $26,000 in Canada at best, but I feel like I have more potential, but I keep procrastinating and have a daily weed habit.
So I'll tell you this.
So there's two ways to stop a bad habit.
One is you dig down deep into the roots of what's going on in your mind and figure out what trauma or upset or problem the bad habit is covering up, right?
That's one way that you would deal with a bad habit.
You get down to the root, you deal with the root and then the habit, the bad habit or the self-hypnotizing habit generally fades away.
That's one way.
The other way is to stop the bad habit and see what emotions arise.
You see what I mean?
You stop the bad habit and you see what emotions arise afterwards, right?
So, for weed in particular, because weed is self-numbing, it's really tough to get to the root of what's going on and why the weed addiction is occurring, right?
I mean, so there's a general rule among many therapists, which is, let's say that you're a drinker, well, you can't show up to therapy drunk.
Right?
Because you can't deal with a coping mechanism where the coping mechanism is currently active.
So, I mean, maybe you can figure out what's at the root of your weed addiction while smoking weed.
I consider that unlikely.
So, you're just going to have to quit weed and figure out who's drugging you.
Right?
So, we don't take drugs, we are drugged.
In general.
That's my approach to addiction.
We don't take drugs, we are drugged.
And what that means is that There are people in our life who benefit from us being drugged, and we take our drugs in compliance with them, right?
So, you know, like back in the days of the evil Soviet communist empire, communism was perfect.
If you didn't like communism, clearly you were mentally ill and they would drug the living hell out of you.
And if You are in a school, and you are bored and restless in school.
Well, school is perfect, therefore there's got to be something wrong with you, and so you get drugged.
So, you get drugged so you don't criticize the Soviet regime.
You get drugged so you're easier to manage.
So, you understand that you get drugged for the convenience of others.
So, we don't take drugs.
We are administered drugs.
We are drugged.
So, who's drugging you?
Well, I'm getting the weed, and I get all of that, but to whose benefit does that drugging accrue?
Who benefits from you being drugged?
And that's the person who's drugging you.
So if you had, you know, for instance, if you had bad parents, and you're really upset about how they treated you, then they would rather, often, that you be drugged, than confront them.
Or provoke any sort of bad conscience, right?
So, somebody who's in possession of a moral truth in a corrupt environment is the equivalent to everyone's conscience, right?
You sort of follow?
And if you have bad parents, the way they deal with you is the way they deal with their own conscience.
You are a substitute or an externalization of their own conscience.
So, if their own conscience speaks up within them, they viciously and violently suppress it.
and blame someone else. If you, as their adult child, bring up any problems with their behavior
that might provoke their conscience, they deal with you in the same way that they deal with
their conscience, right? So, you know, I've talked to a lot of people over the years and they say the
similar thing, which is, my father would come home from work and just veg out in front of the TV and
so on, right? So he's using the TV to distract himself from his own conscience.
And people do this with social media, they do this with music.
They can't sit with their own thoughts, they always have to be listening to something, or music, or podcasts, or whatever it is, right?
They can't have an idle moment, because the idle moment is when the conscience surges up, right?
People distract themselves from their own conscience all the time and there's a massive industry of supplying distractions from conscience.
In the past it could be religious obsessions, it could be addiction to reading or writing and so on.
You have a bad conscience so you have to constantly distract yourself from your conscience.
And for people who have a bad conscience, they're always five to ten seconds away from destruction in their own mind, right?
Because it only takes someone wiring up their conscience, right?
So the great dread of people with a bad conscience is that someone external is going to ally with their conscience and they can't Shut that person up.
Right?
So if you have a bad conscience, you can, I'm not saying this is true in your case, but you know, you can use drugs, you can play video games, you can watch endless shows, you can scroll social media, you can get involved in pointless arguments on the internet, and you can feel superior because you possess a little bit more knowledge than other people, and you can do all of these kinds of things that is going to keep you away from your bad conscience.
So, one of the reasons why moral philosophers are so hated is that we rise against people who have a bad conscience.
In other words, our words unravel their avoidance of their own bad conscience.
And this is what deplatforming, in many instances, is all about.
It's that someone is saying something that is provoking a bad conscience within you and you must silence them because your habit has been to silence your bad conscience.
That conscience is an advisor, not a dictator.
Because if it was a dictator, it would remove free will, just order you to do something.
If conscience was a dictator, then you would have no free will, and the reason you have a conscience is because you make choices.
So the conscience can't force you to do something.
But the longer you avoid it, the harsher it is, right?
Like, you know, the more you avoid going to the dentist, usually the worse your dental health is when you finally get there, or your oral health.
The longer you avoid exercise, the harder it is to start exercising.
So the conscience murmurs and whispers, and the conscience, if it is rejected, becomes resentful and aggressive.
And so the more you repress your conscience, the more you're afraid of anybody out in the world speaking the truth.
You understand?
People aren't afraid of me.
They're not afraid of what I have to say.
They're not afraid of the proofs that I have.
I'm just some voice on the internet.
I'm some guy, right?
It has nothing to do with me.
What they are terrified of is my words breaking down the barriers that they've placed between themselves and their own bad conscience.
That's what the fear is.
The arrogant self, the prideful self, wants to out shout the conscience and shut up the conscience.
And the conscience used to have an ally for many people, right?
So for many people the conscience used to have an ally in the form of God, priesthood and heaven and hell.
So the conscience had an external ally that allowed people to more easily follow their own conscience.
Where does the conscience lie in the secular Darwinian worldview?
Well, it's a form of weakness in many ways, right?
Which is why you have so many movies where the cool guys have no conscience, right?
The cool James Bond victory guys have no real conscience, and conscience is always portrayed as kind of a weakness, because in the secular world view, a conscience is a weakness.
Animals don't have a conscience.
The modern world, moving away from Christianity, in the West at least, has substituted the will to power for a conscience, which was predicted by Nietzsche over 150 years ago and so on.
The will to power is Darwinian and a conscience is an impediment.
to reproductive success.
So if you think of the guy who's, you know, thoughtful and sensitive towards the feelings of women, he's less likely to have sex in many situations than the guy who's, you know, arrogant and haughty and domineering and willing to lie and so on.
And so a conscience is then a negative in the will-to-power world.
And again, you can think of millions of movies where this has really been put forward, right?
It's always the case where, I mean, you've seen this scene a million times, right?
This is programming, literal programming.
So, you've seen this scene a million times, the good guy finally has the bad guy down and is holding a gun over him.
And the good guy decides to let the bad guy live.
And what happens?
Well, the bad guy grabs a gun or has a hidden weapon.
And then the good guy turns around and shoots the bad guy.
Look out!
So what is that programming you?
It's programming you that having a conscience, that having any mercy is just going to get you killed.
And that when you have dominance over the bad guy, you just kill the bad guy, right?
Because the bad guy is going to keep trying to kill you and blah, blah, blah, right?
So a conscience is a bad thing.
And in the television show or the streaming show, Fallout, the all-American cowboy guy has the bad guy down and is going to shoot him.
And he's like, no, I don't want to shoot him.
This is not my way.
And the Indian director guy is like, no, no, no, you're a new cowboy.
You know, you shoot and you kill and all of that, right?
So then that is the old Americana to the new Americana, that is.
The Conscience to the Will to Power.
Now, moving from the Conscience to the Will to Power doesn't eliminate the Conscience, right?
It's a sort of demonic-driven hedonism.
The Will to Power is just hedonism, right?
It's just... Will to Power sounds cooler than hedonism.
A Conscience is when you go against what you want to do for the sake of what is right.
But if there is no such thing as right, then biological hedonism becomes the order of the day.
Right, so you're angry at the bad guy, you want to kill the bad guy, your conscience says, well, no, for whatever reason, right?
I mean, could be good reasons for it.
And the will to power is like, well, kill him.
You've won.
Eliminate him.
Because otherwise he's just going to come back and trouble you and be a problem and so on, right?
So, it's training people to not have mercy, so that when the powers that be designate enemies, people will not have mercy, right?
You're training people out of mercy, continually, with modern media.
So, with regards to your weed habit, I would say that You have to figure out who's drugging you which is another way of saying who benefits because you're using weed and in general weed silences you which means that you as the conscience of the family are now drugged in the same way that the bad people in your family if there are bad people in your family
They drug themselves with self-righteousness, they drug themselves with compliance, they drug themselves with media, they drug themselves with music, they drug themselves with drinking, they drug themselves with sex, they drug themselves, right?
It's all just staying away from your conscience, right?
You know that old saying, what's an in excess album?
Welcome to wherever you are, or no matter where you go, there you are, which means you can't escape your conscience.
All you can do is drug it.
So I would imagine that you're the truth teller in the family, you're the holder of family secrets, you're the one who realizes bad things have happened, and your parents want you drugged, and you comply with your parents and drug yourself so that you don't displease your parents by provoking their bad conscience by telling them the truth about your history.
A possibility.
Of course, call in at freedomain.com.
Don't call in when you're stoned, of course, but call in at freedomain.com.
We can talk about this further and see if this Has any applicability.
So I hope this helps.
Thank you so much.
I will do the codependence thing, but I have a bunch of stuff to do today.
Maybe I'll get to it later today, but I will do the codependence thing for the person who's asked for it.
I appreciate your support.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Really, really would appreciate that.
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