May 17, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
04:23
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| Time | Text |
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| You mention in the book, one of the most amazing stories in all of literature is the Emperor's New Clothes. | |
| What are the main takeaways from the Emperor's New Clothes? | |
| This, well, usually a children's film, you say there are a lot of implications for adult life as well. | |
| What are the main lessons we can learn and apply to our life in relationships? | |
| Yeah, it's funny. | |
| I remember at the age of six, I was sent, my parents split up when I was a baby, and my father... | |
| My late father, he died a couple of years ago, but my father was a geologist in Africa. | |
| So I flew from London to Johannesburg, which is a crazy long flight, and I actually had that on loop. | |
| I think he gave me a headset, and there was a little loop that you could listen to stories. | |
| This is before they had movies on planes. | |
| And I just remember listening to it over and over, just completely fascinated, completely fascinated. | |
| So The Empress New Clothes is a great story, just very briefly for those who don't know it. | |
| They have a vainglorious king who loves looking pretty, like we all do, I guess. | |
| And you get a bunch of con men, a couple of con men come to the capital and say, you know, we're going to make you the most amazing robes. | |
| We're going to make you the most amazing outfit. | |
| It's going to be beautiful and iridescent and colorful and magical. | |
| But it has a special kind of weird property, which is that everyone who's not competent at their job can't see the clothing, can't see it. | |
| So everyone who's incompetent, everybody who does not deserve their position, who has not earned it, who's faking it, they can't even see the cloth. | |
| And then they pull out, of course, this imaginary cloth that's not really there, and they say, oh, what do you think of these colors? | |
| And, of course, the king believes that... | |
| If he's not competent for his position, he can't see the cloth, but he doesn't want to admit that, right? | |
| So the king, oh, magnificent! | |
| Oh, beautiful! | |
| Oh, iridescent! | |
| Oh, the colors are so shimmery! | |
| And of course, then the con men say to the whole court, what do you guys think? | |
| What do you think of this cloth? | |
| We're going to make the beautiful robes for the king, a beautiful outfit. | |
| And of course... | |
| Everyone thinks that everyone else can see the cloth. | |
| Nobody wants to admit that they don't deserve their position, so everyone, of course, is, oh, magnificent, oh, lovely, marvelous, Cogsworth, and Beauty and the Beast, oh, magnificent. | |
| And so, anyway, long story short, the king gets a whole outfit made of this non-existent cloth, and everyone, of course, is just strolling around butt-naked. | |
| Basically, maybe he's got a pair of shoes and a glove. | |
| And everyone, of course, is admiring the clothes. | |
| And then he goes out of the palace and he's going down the street and in the horse and he's butt naked. | |
| And, of course, everybody knows that if you're not worthy of your position, you can't see the cloth. | |
| Nobody wants to say anything. | |
| And then eventually there's a little boy. | |
| No, I'm not sure the age is specified. | |
| I assume it's five or six. | |
| Why is the king naked? | |
| And because he doesn't really know anything about the propaganda, he doesn't really, you can't be worthy or not worthy of your position when you're that little because you're that little. | |
| Right? | |
| So, that's the sort of story as a whole. | |
| And then, everyone kind of figured it out, and the spell is broken, and the king is embarrassed, and all of that. | |
| And I think that the con men have made off with all the money he paid them for this imaginary cloth. | |
| So, the reason why that story is amazing is it reminds us that We have a lot of shared delusions in society. | |
| Those of us who are sort of outside the matrix, and especially those of us who kind of circle back and try and get people to wake up, step up, wake up to reality, it's tough, man. | |
| There's a lot of shared delusions in society. | |
| And the process by which... | |
| This conveyor belt of unpropagandized souls is coming into society on a regular basis, right? | |
| Every newborn baby's cry summons the propagandists to start their devilish work of rewiring the human brain in the image of delusions that serve those in power rather than reality that serves the conscience of those living in the truth. | |
| So, the fact that it's a kid who says, well, why is the king naked? | |
| Why has the king got no clothes on? | |
| That can't be fun for the horse. |
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