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June 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
52:04
Philosophy vs Sex Workers Part 2! Listener Debate
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Yo, yo, this is Stefan Molyneux, just following up in my last show about the OnlyFans question that came in from a listener, which is to say, you should not have, you should not take any pride in that which is genetic.
And there's a couple of extra points that I wanted to mention about this that I think are interesting, and I knew I wasn't quite done, but I couldn't get the arguments.
I actually dreamt about them last night, believe it or not.
So, I wanted to just follow up with a couple of points on that.
If the Bob, Bob was his name, the game we gave him, it's not his real name, I don't know what his real name is, but Bob was saying that you should not be proud of that which is genetic.
And what's interesting, of course, is if we say that, you know, late teens, IQ is 80% genetic, that still gives you 20% to work with.
20% is a lot.
And it's not, I mean, with regards to IQ, it doesn't translate into, you can go 20 points higher or you can go 20 points lower from an average of 100.
It's not that, but it's 5 to 10 points.
It gives you 5 to 10 points either way.
And the interesting thing is that the part of your brain that is subject to environment, that's subject to choice, is interesting.
Let's say, Rather than a sort of 360-degree view of free will.
Let's say that you only have two choices, right?
You only have two choices.
Now, you're stuck in a corridor.
Your friend is being attacked at one end of the corridor, and there's relative safety at the other end of the corridor.
Well, you only have two choices.
You can run towards your friend and give him help, or you can run towards safety and abandon your friend to his danger.
Those are the only two choices.
Now, if you decide to run to your friend and help him in his danger, and you save him, and so on, then that is an act of courage and of virtue.
If you run for safety and abandon your friend to his dismal fate, that is an act of cowardice.
And if you choose the courageous route rather than the cowardly route, sorry, I've been reading some Edgar Rice Burroughs, so...
So, if you then go to your friend and save him, rescue him from the danger, it could be dogs or whatever it is, right?
People.
You rescue him.
Well, that's 100% courage.
Even though you only have two choices in that moment.
The choice that you choose is 100% honorable.
It's not only 20% honorables, let's say you only.
So the virtues that you choose, given that you focus on that which is good, and in fact, in one of the Edgar Rice Burroughs story, the guy says, well, I chose to go and help my friend in his time of danger, and it never occurred to me until hours later that I could have done anything else, which means I'm not particularly heroic because it never even occurs to me to do something other than rush to save.
My friend.
Which is an interesting question.
So, even, let's say, for some reason, you only have 20% choice.
Well, with that 20% choice, if you choose that which is noble and honorable and virtuous, well, that's a great positive, and you are 100% responsible for that which is the good, that which you have chosen.
As the better.
You know, 10% variability either way is pretty good.
That's pretty good.
I mean, if you look at a height of, say, 6 foot, right?
If you look at a height of 6 foot, what is a 10% variability in height?
I think it's seven inches either way, right?
A 10% variability in height means that from six feet, that's pretty wild, right?
So, if the average height of a male is about five foot nine, a 10% variability would imply a range of five foot two to six foot four.
10% lower.
From the average height of 5.9 puts you down to 5.2.
Yeah, 7 inches, right?
A 10% higher would put you at 6 foot 4. So even if we're only, please understand this, even if we're only talking about a 10% variability, then we're talking about the difference between 5 foot 2 and 6 foot 4. Now, I mean, you could have some limitations and all of that kind of stuff.
But that's still really, really important.
So, if you're going to tell me that even if we only have a 10% variability, that it doesn't matter whether someone is 5 '2", whether a man is 5 '2", or 6 '4", I'd say you're crazy.
If philosophy can get you to 6 '4", as opposed to propaganda gets you to 5 '2", would you say, well, it doesn't really matter?
What about women's weight?
And, of course, that's a little bit different because that's chosen to a large degree.
It is not genetic.
Now, of course, my interlocutor would say that nothing is chosen or whatever it is, right?
So, what does that mean?
Well, average woman weighs 154 pounds.
That's roughly the mean for the U.S. woman.
A 10% variability would be the difference between 63 kilograms and 77 kilograms.
In other words, 139 pounds versus 170 pounds, which is 31 pound difference.
It's a 31 pound difference, even if we just look at 10%.
So 10% is a big deal.
Because remember, certainly with regards to IQ, there's really nobody at the extremes, right?
I mean, in the same way with height, say, well, it's a 10% variability.
If we just take this sort of IQ thing and apply it to height, a 20% variability translates to about a 10% higher level possibility, very roughly, right?
But in general.
But with IQ, remember, we're not playing with people with an IQ of 10 versus people with an IQ of 300, right?
There's nobody at those extremes in sort of any practical sense.
So the variability is really important.
Same thing with height.
A 10% variability takes you from 5 '2 to 6 '4 because the variability is wider given that there aren't any people who are 6 inches tall, right?
Or, you know, 16 feet tall, right?
So the variability is really, really important and that's why I have talked about IQ, but I focus on free will and better moral decisions.
Somebody who makes a courageous moral decision when He or she can do anything, right?
I mean, let's say that me talking about some controversial topics was reasonably brave, right?
Well, I wasn't stuck in a corridor with only two choices.
I could have talked about anything or nothing at all.
I could have quit to pursue a career as a mime in Queensland.
I could have decided to hike the Arctic.
I could have done anything or I could have talked about any topic whatsoever.
I could have just done tech reviews and movie reviews.
And so on.
But I chose that.
So that's, I think if you can do anything and you choose something courageous, then your choice of courage is 100% yours.
And if you choose something, even if you have only two choices, running away to safety in a corridor or running towards helping your friend, then you are still 100% responsible for the virtue and value of your choices.
So, 10% variability.
I mean, think of the difference in your portfolio if you make 10% a year versus if you lose 10% a year.
They say, ah, well, it's only a small amount of variability.
That is...
Let's say you have 500.
If you gain or lose 10% as a whole, what happens, right?
A 10% variability in a $500,000 stock portfolio, that is a huge amount of losses or gains over time, right?
So this is amazing when you think about it.
Like if somebody said, oh, yeah, well, I mean, you can...
So we're going to do the stocks over 10 years, meaning or losing 10% a year.
Well, that's a big deal.
What happens over time?
And we're not going to deal with variability or anything like that.
Now, I think that the AI has got, I mean, we're going off AI here, right?
Maybe that seems wrong, maybe not.
So let's just say you've got 10 years and we've got a 10% variability.
So if you lose 10% a year, then your $500,000 turns into $174,339.22, which is a 65%, over 65% Down over 10 years.
So you lose almost $175,000, like you go down to almost $175,000 from $500,000.
However, if you gain 10% a year from $500,000, then after 10 years, you have almost 160% total return and you gain almost $1.3 million.
$175,000 or $174,339.
Versus 1.296 million, 1.3, so $174,000 versus $1.3 million, which is a difference of $1,122,532 and a penny.
So, come on, man.
Don't tell me that even if we're just looking, that we take 20% genetic variability, 80% of your IQ is genetic, but you've got 20% to work with, which translates into a 10% gain or loss.
If we look at that, but for height, it's 5 '2 versus 6 '4.
If we look at that as a stock portfolio over 10 years of a 10% higher low, if you lose, you go from half a million dollars to $174,000.
If you're losing 10% a year, if you're gaining 10% a year, you go from half a million dollars to almost $1.3 million.
So there's a spread here.
If we're only working with 10%, if we're only working with 10%, 5 '2 versus 6 '4, 130 pounds versus 170 pounds, give or take.
And we're talking about 174,000 versus 1.3 million, a difference of $1.122 million.
So it's a huge difference is when I talk about Free will, morality, virtue, and so on.
It's a huge, huge difference over time in particular, right?
So, small differences add up to massive changes.
I mean, if you're 5 '2", and you dislike being that short as a man, if you're 5 '2", what would it be worth to you to be 6 '4"?
Well, we know exactly what it would be worth if you had 10% losses on half a million versus 10% gains.
It would be over 1.1 million dollars difference.
Rather than being down to 170, you'd be up to almost 1.3 million.
That's a huge difference.
So this is why I focus on these things.
And the last thing I'll say before I get to the next questions is...
Now, let's say that I just had a bad work ethic and was doing shoddy work and so on, but because my work ethic is largely genetic, I should not be corrected or shamed for it.
Now, I'm not saying he's necessarily shaming me, but he's sort of demanding that I put in these corrections and so on, and there's a sort of an implicit hypocrisy.
She can't really take pride in her breast size, which is 100% genetic in terms of a normal body weight, right?
So a woman of a normal body weight will end up with different size breasts, you know, A, B, C, D, or whatever a cup, and that's genetic.
Now, of course, a woman can increase her breast size artificially, or she can increase her breast size by gaining weight, but the breast size.
Is genetic.
So, you can't really take pride in that.
100% genetic, yeah.
Like, you can't take pride in height or eye color.
It's 100% genetic.
But whenever you introduce variability, then you also introduce pride and blame.
And if you make a good moral choice, that is 100% your choice.
So, ah, well, but there are, Well, again, I've seen extremely high IQ people be extremely corrupt.
I mean, good heavens, just look at the world of politics.
And in the world of business, there's a huge amount of corruption.
I wrote about this in my novel, The God of Atheists.
So, it's not at all any kind of guarantee.
So, if I am not...
So, for instance, let's say that blue eyes are more attractive than brown eyes for a lot of people, right?
Okay, so if I can't take pride in having blue eyes, which I agree with, then I also can't be blamed if I have brown eyes.
Did you see what I mean?
There's no point telling me to correct.
Having brown eyes, because it's not subject to my free will, and there is no choice component at all.
It's genetic, right?
In the same way, if I can't take pride in being almost six feet tall, which is above the average, which I agree with, I can't take pride in that, and I've never felt particularly tall.
I guess my brother's taller.
So if I can't take pride in being a couple of inches above Then, neither should someone feel shame for being shorter.
Because I did not choose to be the height that I am.
And the shorter man did not choose to be the height that he is.
So, there would be no point in me emailing someone and saying, you have to correct your height.
And so if he's saying, look, Steph, you can't take pride in your work ethic because your work ethic is largely genetic, okay, so let's say I do shoddy work or I do non-conscientious based work and so on and cut corners and I'm hypocritical, change my, well, But that's largely genetic.
So if I can't take any pride in my work ethic, then I can't be chastised or criticized or corrected for my work ethic either.
Because, hey man, it's just genetic.
It would be like trying to Hey, Steph, you should be six foot two, not a shade under six feet.
You should fix that.
I can't.
It's genetic.
So, whereas if you say, well, you have some choice with regards to your conscientiousness and your work ethic, I didn't say it was all genetic.
It's like, okay, then I can take pride in it.
Right?
This woman developed large breasts.
It's so funny, the topic that we talk about, right?
This woman's body developed large breasts with no free will or choice of her own.
In fact, she was embarrassed by it because her father shamed her for it.
So, if that is the major component of her success on OnlyFans, then, well, what can I tell you?
It's not something she was going to be particularly happy about because she didn't choose it, therefore she can't take pride in it.
And that's 100% genetic.
Right?
What was it?
When I was in junior high, you know, there was this chant, we must, we must, we must improve our busts, or something like that.
We must increase our busts, or something like that.
Because, you know, breast size could be like penis size in that, you know, women want larger sometimes, men want larger and so on.
So, it doesn't work, right?
As far as I know, there's no particular way to increase breast size, right?
I mean, this is why women's stuffed Kleenex is down there as far as I understand it.
And Freddie Mercury has a full cabasa sausage when he's performing.
So, if the degree to which my work ethic is genetic is the degree to which I can't be blamed, I can't be chastised.
I can't be corrected because it's genetic.
There's no point telling someone to correct that which is genetic.
It's like saying, Steph, you were born the wrong race.
You should be Inuit.
Okay, well, it's a little bit beyond my control which race I was born as.
It's really not.
Up to me, to be born white was not a choice.
I can't take pride in something I never chose, which is genetic, right?
So that to me is...
And if you're saying, Steph, you can't take pride in your intelligence.
It's like, well, I can't take pride in the genetic components of my intelligence, which is 80%.
Who knows?
I don't know exactly where it gets to as you get older.
I started philosophy in my mid-teens.
So that's when I was probably seven, So the fact that I got into philosophy and stuck with philosophy and even though, I mean, philosophy, I mean, let's be frank, man.
I mean, you've seen it, but you haven't seen the stuff that happened when I was younger.
Philosophy has cost me a huge amount.
Philosophy cost me an acting career.
Philosophy cost me an academic career.
Philosophy ended up having, it was a huge downward drag on my business career.
Philosophy cost me friends, various opportunities, and philosophy got me attacked in the media worldwide and deplatformed.
I mean, you know, I've paid some prices, brothers and sisters.
I really have paid some, and it's got me great benefits.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not a martyr, but it's had a price and I've stuck with it.
I've never particularly crossed my mind to not stick with it, so I'm not even going to say that that's particularly heroic.
I mean, I spent my childhood having to kowtow and bow down to anti-rational forces in the part of parents and culture and so on.
I'm not going to do that when I have any possibility of not doing it, right?
So, there's no point correcting people for that which is genetic.
That would be irrational.
It's like saying to someone, you have the wrong eye color, you need to fix it.
So, if my intelligence and my conscientiousness and my work ethic and all of that is genetic, Okay, I can't take pride in it, blah, blah, blah, sure.
But then I can't be blamed or corrected for it either.
And that's the contradiction, right?
He's saying, he's not saying you are 90% not responsible for making this bad argument because your intelligence and your work ethic is genetic.
He's not saying that.
He's saying I'm 100% responsible for making a bad argument.
I need to correct it.
I need to fix it.
I need to not be hypocritical.
I need to put out a correction on the podcast.
I'm 100% responsible for making a bad argument.
Okay.
Let's say I did make a bad argument, and let's say I am 100% responsible for making a bad argument.
Okay?
Then I'm 100% responsible for making a good argument, and therefore I can take some goddamn pride in that.
But this stripping people of pride through genetics is repulsive.
This is why I got irritated.
It turns my stomach.
If you make good choices, particularly if you come from a bad background, and yeah, maybe I help people make better choices.
So what?
Other people helped me make better choices, too.
I could sort of go through the list.
I've done it before, but I got, you know, I read thousands of books written by people that helped me make better choices.
I went to therapy, and a therapist helped me make better choices, and so on, right?
So I just think it's repulsive when people say, well, you can't take pride in something, but you're 100% responsible for doing something wrong.
It's like, nope.
No, that's close to abusive.
And this is what bothers me about this kind of determinism, right?
Is that even if we say, well, you know, of course, you know, we talked about a 15 to 30% variability in work ethic.
Okay, that's 70 to 85% that I can take pride in.
And each good decision I take 100% pride in.
And I don't really think of these genetics much at all, because I'm focused on doing maximum good for society, which means...
Because nobody knows where that line is, so always take more responsibility.
Let's say that you are, I don't know, I mean, let's say that you are only 75% responsible for your decisions.
But you don't know that, and you don't know where the 75% lies, so just take 100%, and that'll give you maximum control.
And I personally believe that we are in reality and in practicality We are at 100% responsibility.
This is the old joke from Monty Python.
The criminal gets caught and he says, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame.
And the policeman says, agreed, we'll be charging them too.
Well, that's not what happens.
And it's certainly not how I've been treated.
Like, you know, in sort of media attacks on me, nobody says, well, you know, he was raised by a mentally ill mother and his father was absent and also had mental health challenges.
So let's cut the guy some slack for some, I got 0% environmental excuses in the eyes of the media.
I mean, there was not one person who ever interviewed me who said, well, it seems to me you're making some bad decisions, but man, you had it rough as a child.
Holy crap.
That's terrible, right?
And, you know, violence and madness and poverty and dysfunction in every corner.
And so, you know, you had it rough as a kid, so, you know.
I'm just curious about all of that.
I think it was nothing like that.
I was just 100% willed, with no background, no history, no excuses.
I mean, and that's what, for the most part, certainly with adults, we don't charge them with a crime and then charge their parents if the child was raised badly.
Nope.
The way that the law works, the way that media attacks work, the way that all of this stuff goes, is 100% responsibility.
And so, that's the way that people work.
That's the way society works.
That's the way the law works.
That's the way the media works.
So, yeah.
I aim for 100%.
I mean, I look for causality in my childhood, but I aim for 100% responsibility.
I know that I don't have 100% responsibility in my life, that there are factors beyond my control, but I aim for 100%, right?
If you find a bunch of gold in a field, right?
And let's say, well, I could probably only recover about 75% of it.
Some of it's going to be really hard to define.
Some of it's, you know, whatever, sinking into the ground.
That's whatever you can make up.
So I'm only going to get 75%.
Okay, so let's look at, and let's say that it is, in fact, you can only recover 75% of it, right?
Let's say the jewelry spilled from a truck into a field with soft earth, and it's raining like crazy.
And some of it is just going to sink and be hard, if not impossible, to find, right?
It's turning into quicksand.
So let's say that you can only get 75% of the jewelry, okay?
So if you go in saying, well, I can only get 75%, right?
You've got two people going in, right?
Bob and Doug.
Bob says, let's say Bob and Susan do a he-she thing, right?
So Bob says, hey, man, I can only get 75%.
Of the jewelry.
And Susan says, I bet I can get 100% of the jewelry.
In fact, there might be jewelry here that was just dropped by accident.
Maybe I can get 105%.
Who is going to come back with more jewelry?
Bob, who tells himself he can only get 75% of the jewelry, or Susan, who says I can get 105% of the jewelry.
Who's going to come back with more jewelry?
Even if we accept that both of them are at 75%.
Well, Almost certainly, Susan's going to come back with more jewelry, because she's not putting a limit on herself.
She's going to get real close to that 75%, whereas Bob might only get 50, 60, 70%.
And those little differences, over time in particular, as we talked about with the portfolio, add up to a lot.
1.1 plus million dollar difference over 10 years.
So aim for 100%, and even if it's only 75%, aim for 100%, and you'll end up with more And this is just a one-time thing, right?
As we saw over 10 years, just a 10% variability is the difference between being almost broke and a millionaire.
You can do that over 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years.
That's something else.
Let's say you become a moral agent at the age of 20 and you live to 85. Let's say you become a moral agent.
At the age of 20 and you live to 85, right?
Okay, so that's 65 years, right?
So let's say you got your half million dollars and you're looking at 10% gain or 10% loss over 65 years, right?
What is the difference?
What is the difference?
Well, it's not small.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, so what is the result?
Even if we're just looking, 80% genetic, 10% variability.
This is in your portfolio, gaining or losing, 10% over 65 years.
Well, your half a million over 65 years of losing 10% a year is worth $633.39.
Your half a million turns into an iPad with DAX.
$633.39, you lose 99.873% of your money.
Ooh, what do you think the high end is of that, right?
Of making 10% better choices or making 10% of your half million dollars over 65 years until you're 85, right?
average lifespan, 65 years of being a moral agent.
So the difference is between $633.39 to about $278.6 million.
Come on.
For a $500,000 stock portfolio, gaining 10% per year over 65 years, the value grows to $278.6 million, a 55,619% return.
Losing 10% per year, it drops to $633 and change.
So, come on.
Come on.
It's almost a $280 million difference from being pissed for a...
Close to $300 million versus $600.
And that's why I say aim for 100% responsibility.
You'll end up with more jewelry.
Even if we accept 80% genetics, working on that 10% variability has compounding value.
When you make good decisions, you are more likely to make good decisions again in the future because you have the reinforcement of making good decisions.
The fact that I hit the public square and sphere after having suffered and benefited from philosophy for 20 years meant that I was no stranger to making good decisions based upon reason and evidence.
So, I guess that went on a little longer than I was thinking, but I just wanted to point that out.
So, for instance, I was talking about a larger variability turned out to be smaller, but I was conscientious and looked that up.
So, yeah.
Aim for 100%.
Forget the genetics.
Just aim for 100% responsibility in anything that you have any part of responsibility for.
And things will be much better off as a whole in your life.
And that's what I want for you.
I want you to get, quote, hundreds of millions of dollars rather than end up without a part to piss in because you're down to 600 bucks and you have a lifetime of bitterness, loss, and regret.
All right.
So let's move on to another question.
On the most solemn of all subjects, death, writes a listener.
My grandmother is slowly fading away with Parkinson's.
Following a change to her main drug, treating the disease, she began rapidly declining.
She's reached the point where there is no pleasure to life at all.
I've had other family members fade away ever slowly.
It's been tragic to watch.
Her decline is death without dignity.
It appears to me that in the West, Death is forestalled with medicine to prolong the life at all costs, primarily for profit motive.
Has our relationship to death changed in your lifetime?
It's a delicate and sensitive issue.
Because there is a part of us that does not want to put a price on human life.
I get that.
And I deeply sympathize with that.
That having been said, we do put prices on human life all the time.
We put a price on human life all the time.
So, for instance, if we lowered the maximum speed that cars were allowed to drive to 10 kilometers an hour, we would save probably 35,000 lives a year in the U.S., which is the death toll of car accidents, and of course a lot of maiming and injury and so on.
There wouldn't be much maiming and injury if cars were only going 10 miles an hour.
So, why don't we do that?
Well, because there would be other costs.
I mean, food would take forever to deliver, the price would be very high, and ambulances couldn't travel fast, and so on, and the criminals would drive faster.
If the cops were not allowed to drive faster than that, then criminals would get away, which would be more rape, murder, mayhem, theft, and assault, and so on, right?
So, we do balance these things out.
We say, well, we will take a certain number of deaths from cars traveling at high speed.
Because otherwise, there will be even more deaths from people being unable to get food or unable to afford food and criminals getting away with things and all that kind of stuff, right?
So we do accept this all the time.
It is, of course, the visible versus the invisible, which is a real challenge for people as a whole, right?
So the visible is, well, we're doing everything we can to keep grandma alive.
And she's got a hospital bed.
She's got a whole team of specialists.
She's got nurses.
She's got medicine.
She's got Orderlies.
So we see all of the effort that goes into keeping grandma alive, right?
What we don't see is all of the people who get sicker or die because of all the resources being poured into grandma.
We don't see that.
We don't see that.
So, because grandma is being kept alive, there are fewer resources in the emergency rooms, right?
Fewer doctors, fewer nurses, fewer receptionists.
Because money, time, resources, and manpower in particular is being poured into granny.
Now, because there are fewer resources in the emergency room, then, you know, one of two things generally happens.
Number one, somebody dies waiting to be seen in the ER.
But we don't see that because it's not directly causal.
Or the other thing that happens is somebody who's had to wait in the past, you know, six, eight, 10-12 hours to see someone.
They have chest pains and they're like, oh my god, I've got to work tomorrow.
I can't spend 8 hours in the ER waiting to see someone.
And it's probably nothing, right?
So because they've had a prior experience, just waiting and waiting, like limbo, for the ER resources, they say, oh, it's probably nothing.
They don't go to the ER and they die from a heart attack, right?
At home.
And this isn't even recorded, right?
This could be a secret thought, right?
Or even if he tells it to his wife and, you know, his wife says, yeah, it's probably nothing.
I've got to work tomorrow too.
We've got three kids in the house.
We can't just go to the ER for eight hours, right?
Because the last time we were there was eight hours.
So people die then because of that, but it's not seen.
It's not visible.
Now, if you take resources away from granny, then granny is unsupported, and then I don't really know much about the progression of Parkinson's, but I think it's a one-way street if deterioration, whereas somebody who's got a medical issue that can be saved through the ER, they've got another 30, 40, 50 years to go.
So we have the visible versus the invisible.
The people, if...
Whereas the people who will live, if resources are taken away from granny and put into other areas, the people who will live don't even know that that's why they're living.
This is why we have to leave things to the free market, and this is why we can't make decisions based upon emotions.
We have to make decisions based upon reason and virtue and evidence.
Right?
So, of course, we talked about this, so I talked about this a couple of shows ago, that there is a massive tens of thousands of children are missing from the world because of seat laws, right?
And you've got to have these seats for your children.
So, a few children have been saved, but, what's it, 60,000 or so children have not been born, statistically, right?
Now, the children who die, Because they are not in these car seats and there's a car crash.
Well, there's blood, there's sorrow, there's weeping and wailing mothers, there's funerals, like it's all very vivid and very visible.
Whereas the parents who say, ah, you know, we can't get a whole new car, we've only got room for two car seats, let's just stop at two.
Well, there's no drama there.
There's no blood on the road.
There's no funerals.
There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And of course, I'm not saying this to diminish the death of a child.
one of the worst things can possibly happen.
What I'm saying is that, emotions respond to tragedy, and if you are making decisions emotionally, you are incredibly subject and prey to propaganda, right?
So, with regards to the lockdowns, of course, you would see or you would get these sort of endless reports of people dying from COVID.
They weren't vaccinated and their last fading wish was, I wish I'd been vaccinated.
I can't believe I'm dying.
And they would show all of this sort of devastation and there was sort of Chinese propaganda of people falling over in the streets from COVID-19 and so on.
But what you didn't see was the media didn't say, you know, here's someone dying because they
So, if you're going to make decisions emotionally, then you're just as programmable as a computer because the media will hide from you certain emotional triggers and will show you other emotional triggers.
And this way, This is what happened over COVID.
This has happened in a wide variety of situations, right?
So if the media wants a war, then they'll show you all the evils of the person they want to be attacked, and they will hide all of the death and destruction that comes from the war.
Or they'll show it in a kind of cool, distant, light flash on the horizon kind of way.
So the media will present to you very Vivid emotional triggers.
And hide from you other ones.
And this way, you are just led to do what they want.
And this is why we must steadfastly avoid these kinds of emotional triggers.
Because you're just going to get programmed with vivid sense data that provokes an emotional response.
and they play you like an organ.
They just, I mean, you just, Most people, and look, I sort of hate to say it, but it seems to be kind of true that women are a little bit more susceptible to this kind of stuff due to their sort of passionate and attached and emotional natures, which is a beautiful and wonderful thing in the family and the children and in the community and so on.
But it means that, I mean, this is the, what opened up Europe borders back in the day was that the Turkish boy drowned on the beach and the Whereas, I think the men were a little bit more like, well, what the hell was this guy doing putting his family on an overloaded boat in the Mediterranean during the storm?
Men were like, man, I can get a ticket.
I can get in trouble with the law if my kid is biking without a helmet.
Or I don't wear a seatbelt, and this guy is loading his family up in a storm on an overloaded boat sailing to get.
So we don't make decisions based upon reason and evidence.
We make decisions based upon programmed emotions from vivid images through the media.
And to stop really making decisions, that's just being triggered, right?
So men usually have to make tougher decisions.
And again, this is not to say that men are better or women are better.
There's just different ways that we've Evolved.
And in particular, this is true of the ice people, right?
They call it the climate people.
If there's not enough food for the winter, then people just have to go hungry.
And the kids will complain and so on, right?
Now, it's the women's job, so to speak, emotionally to make sure that the kids are equally fed, right?
So it's not a meritocracy in terms of strength getting food.
But the younger kids get food.
Even if the older kids are snatching from it, the mother uses forced to redistribute it if she has to and to grab the food back.
The mother uses forced to redistribute resources, which is why women tend to be socialist in practice.
And this is why socialism and forced redistribution of wealth grows when women get the vote, because their instincts to balance things out among children are then taken to society as a whole.
And, you know, the imagery of, oh, here's a big giant office building, a big vertical ice cube tray of And here's a guy living in a cardboard shack at the bottom of the tower.
This is so wrong.
Just take a little bit from the tower, give it to him.
Right, this just gets women going and they want to use the power of the state to redistribute income because that's their instinct, right?
Use force to redistribute resources so that the poor get enough and their youngest children don't starve to death.
Perfectly essential in a family and perfectly destructive with the coercive power of the state.
Whereas, when I was, and this may be a bit more of a male thing, but when I saw those kinds of pictures of, well, here's a guy living in a shack, a cardboard shack at the base of a great office tower, I was like, geez, I don't want to be that guy.
I don't want to be that guy.
I bet he's a warning, right?
He's not someone who needs to be saved.
He's a warning.
And of course, if you've ever spent time trying to genuinely help the poor, The poor are not poor because they lack money.
They are poor because they make bad decisions.
And they are embedded in those bad decisions in terms of who they've married, how they've raised their children, the occupations they've chosen or not chosen, the drugs they've consumed, the drinking.
They are encased, like pan-solar style.
They're encased in these bad decisions.
And getting them to make better decisions usually means that they have to abandon their entire lifestyle, often their family of origin, certainly their friends.
And possibly their marriage and they have to apologize to their children.
Like to make better decisions when someone's old enough to be independent and be helped means that you have to pry them out of this massive giant sepulchre or tomb of bad decisions and everything has to change.
People who are alcoholics are tough to turn into non-alcoholics because they're social circle drinks.
The bar they go to is their primary social engagement place.
They married a woman who knows that they drink.
Their wife might also drink.
They've also got, you know, if they stop drinking, they get these massive regrets about having missed out on so much in life, and especially time and interaction with their children, just that and the other, right?
Like, it's, ugh.
It's trying to get people to make better decisions when they've got decades of bad decisions is very hard.
I mean, it's not impossible because there's free will.
But, I mean, I spent many, many years.
I spent, let's see, from 15 to my early 30s, I spent almost 20 years working very hard to try and get my mother and other people, but primarily my mother, to make better decisions.
Can you please make some better decisions?
Nope.
So even with family bonds, even with my, you know, not insignificant skill at encouraging people and getting people to make better decisions, I spent close to two decades.
Trying to get my mother to make better decisions.
And she didn't.
She didn't.
And so when I started, I was 15. She was in her mid-40s.
But it was not possible.
I mean, she was institutionalized by people who wanted her to make better decisions.
Let's cross our fingers and hope something like that happened.
Her doctors wanted her to make better decisions.
Her health was telling her to make better decisions.
Her loneliness was Now, of course, I'm not going to judge the world as a whole by my mother, who was kind of an extreme case, but it's not just that.
Not just her.
So, if there's a guy who's like, I don't know, 50, with a scraggly beard and haunted eyes, and he's living in a cardboard shack at the base of a giant tower, my urge was to avoid his fate, not to step in and save him.
I mean, I remember when I was doing my documentary, Sunset in the Golden State, I was taken by a social worker down to talk to someone who was living on the street, and this was a veteran, and he had a lot of issues, to put it mildly, and can he be helped?
I mean, if you think about taking the average homeless person, let's say, into your house and trying to get them cleaned up and making better decisions, well, this is Jean Valjean.
It's a blank slate idea.
But in Pic de Jean Valjean, he's taken in by a priest after he's released from prison.
He steals some silver.
And then the cops bring him back and the priest says, no, I gave him the silver.
He didn't steal it.
And then he says, go and be a good man.
And it turns out that Jean Valjean, though he was a starving thief and was in prison for decades, becomes this robust, virtuous, tender-hearted, moral.
I mean, it's like expecting him to be an orc.
Like, it's such a fantasy, but it is a very seductive fantasy to believe that moral free will and virtue can survive decades of corrupt and immoral decisions.
That a man can become robust after trauma and unjust imprisonment.
So, there are tough decisions to be made in society.
Now, in a free society, you can't force other people to pay for their health care.
That you want.
So, I mean, there will be insurance, of course.
There will be charity.
There will be help for people who've made bad choices this way.
Somebody, some mom who didn't take out health insurance and so on, and her kid is sick, there'll be charity because the children should not pay for the bad decisions of their elders.
But as a whole, you can't force other people to pay for your bad choices.
Half of Is that worth it?
Is that worth it?
I don't know.
Nobody can make that decision for other people.
But what is true is that in a free society, you cannot take a gun and force other people to pay for healthcare.
Now, of course, I think a free society will be wealthy enough that healthcare can be relatively easily paid for.
Right?
I remember Dr. Robert Long's Great articles about the friendly societies in healthcare that you could get an entire year's worth of healthcare for two or three days' wages back in the day, right?
Before the government came in to help.
So I don't have the answer as to when is the cost-benefit of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on extending somebody's life at the end of it, especially when their mind is gone, and They're sort of a shell of who they used to be.
It's a body with a mostly broken brain.
I don't know the answer to that.
I do know, because that's individual, right?
I do know for sure, though, that you, and I'm not saying you would ever want this, right?
But in a free society, nobody should ever be forced to pay for other people.
So, for instance, it's so corrupt and immoral that some people can't afford medicine for their children.
Because, why?
Because they're being taxed to pay for end-of-life healthcare where there's no particular future.
And, I mean, I do remember when a friend of mine's mother had a terrible aneurysm or stroke or something, and she was in hospital, and they said, look, her brain has got almost no activity, and he had to make the decision to turn off the machinery that was keeping her body alive.
And that's really tough.
Of course, that's really tough.
And this is why men and women need each other, right?
Men need women to help generate more sympathy, and women need men to help generate more practicality.
And, you know, he did make the tough decision to turn off their machinery.
And in my view, again, it's personal, and if you're using your own money, right, it's up to you.
But in my view, he made the right decision.
Because his mother was gone, the body was still going, and if he'd kept her alive, I mean, who knows?
And of course, because her mind was largely gone, there was no way to know if there was any particular suffering that the remnants of her might be experiencing because she couldn't communicate anything and so on.
So, in my view, he made the tough but practical decision to turn off the machines and thus her body went the way of her mind.
So, there's no answer that I would give to people.
I think that if someone is suffering and there's no hope for improvement and the pain can't really be managed and they're near the end of their life anyway, you could make a case, right?
That it's not worth going on.
But again, those are tough decisions.
And of course, we really haven't had to make tough decisions like that for two plus generations because of debt, right?
Just money, money, money, printing money, borrowing money, and so on.
Morality is based upon scarcity.
And fear currency erodes and destroys scarcity, and therefore erodes and destroys morality.
All right, so I'll stop here.
I really do appreciate everyone's time, thoughts, care, and attention.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help out philosophy.
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Lots of love, my friends.
Take care.
Talk to you soon.
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