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Dec. 24, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:41
Submitting to a Universal Moral Standard
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So, to have an ego is to say that I'm right for existing.
To have humility is to say, I want to be right according to a universal standard.
So the fact that I submit virtue to a universal moral standard, the fact that I submit the metaphysics, the study of reality, to a universal rational standard, epistemology, how do we know what is true and what is false, that is a universal moral standard.
If you can transfer it to someone else, it's not ego.
And so, pursuing truth and virtue and therefore being able to achieve love.
You can't love or be loved if you don't know what is true and you don't do what is virtuous.
So, the very opposite of having an ego is to submit yourself to a larger universal moral standard.
That is absolute.
That is not optional.
It's not like, well, you know, I in general submit myself to a standard.
As long as it's not too inconvenient and so on.
It's not optional.
It's not sometimes.
I mean, if someone has given me An empirical, rational argument against what it is that I'm saying, I will submit.
And I'm not submitting to that person.
It's not an ego thing, right?
Dominance and submission is what less mature personalities believe, just as I was more inclined to when I was younger.
But I submit to the truth, which is called having integrity, right?
And having integrity is very, very important.
Not just because it's a nice thing to have integrity as a whole, but as I say, self-respect and love is only possible if you have integrity, because you can't love someone who's untrustworthy, and integrity means that your behavior is predictable, right?
Integrity means your behavior is predictable.
And so, If your behavior can be predicted and your behavior is virtuous, then people can trust you enough to love you.
So, with the people in my life, if I do something that's not ideal and they say, that wasn't ideal, and here's sort of why, I'm like, you know, you're right, I'm really, really sorry about that, and so on, right?
So, that one of the problems with being in a public square, which of course, you know, I'm much less of now than I was, I'm still there, but one of the problems with being in the public square is people keep confusing you for them.
And they don't say, gee, Steph, I mean, if I was in your shoes, my ego would be wounded, I'd be bitter, angry, I'd rage quit, and so on.
They don't say, if I were in your shoes, this is how I would feel, which is to say that they're differentiating that they're not me.
But they say, Steph does feel this way.
Steph is experiencing this, right?
I mean, when people say, oh, you know, he's just a manipulator or, like, cultish and kind of stuff, it's like, because if they had some authority or influence over people, that's how they would use that power, whereas I don't use that power.
I never tell people what to do and simply try to remind them of universal principles and some important and essential moral truths.
But what they're saying is, well, if I had the kind of authority that Steph has, I would use it to a terrible end.
They don't say, well, I'm glad I don't have Steph's influence because I would use it for a malevolent end.
They just say, no, Steph does this, right?
Like they don't, there's no self and there's no other distinction.
And I mean, I mean, I'm pushing 60 years of age, right?
So I get to say, oh, it's so tiresome, you know, Asterian style, right?
Oh, it's so tiresome.
My bad.
But it is tiresome.
It is tiring.
Not tiring, like physically tiring.
It's just boring.
It's boring when people just imagine that you are them with no understanding of that.
Because really, I mean, how are you going to talk people out of that in any reasonable time frame?
I mean, that's such a leap from...
Disco, internal, mirrorball, solipsism, or...
It's not quite narcissism, but...
When you don't understand that you and other people are different, and it comes from childhood, right?
It's hard to get people to cross that bridge.
It's hard to get people to really differentiate between self and other and to stop projecting, particularly, onto public figures.
And what it comes from is usually...
Let's say you have a mother who is short-tempered, right?
She's irritated, she's stressed, or whatever it is.
And then you're kind of, you know, loud and banging drums as a little boy.
And your mother says, you're being irritating, right?
Not, I have a susceptibility to irritation, or I'm feeling irritable at the moment.
She says, the mother says, That my escalating bad temper is the direct result of your behavior.
Not, you're irritating me, but you are irritating.
So she takes her irritation and embeds it in the child and then criticizes the child based on that.
And, you know, woe betide, you tell a mother or a father who does that kind of stuff, no, I'm not irritating, you're just short-tempered.
I mean, because then it just escalates.
So you kind of have to go along with it.
So there's a whole lot of, you know, trauma and upset at the root of a failure to differentiate between self and other.
And, honestly, when you have people around you, and, you know, I won't say I'm blessed, because I certainly have some blessings, but we've all earned it through pretty hard self-work.
But I'm really, I mean, I'm surrounded.
The people in my life are so far removed from the general rabble and projecting horde that, you know, once you've Once you've listened to 1962 Moscow Pavarotti,
it's kind of tough to go back to Johnny Rotten and Sid Fisch, so to speak, because my daily life is elevated and wonderful conversations and self-ownership, responsibility, and easy, productive, positive things.
But then going back to this very primitive kind of situation, I mean, how would you feel if you woke up and had to start at grade 2 again?
Like, it just wouldn't be that much fun.
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