June 28, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:13
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| Plus, he's a really good actor. | |
| So, he's just somebody you want to watch. | |
| You know, if you've ever gone to see a play, you know, there's usually someone you can't take your eye off for whatever reason. | |
| They just have that magnetism, and nobody can really explain it, and everybody wants it. | |
| So, when it comes to the blank slate, sure, I fill people up with you, you have free will, you can make choices. | |
| I don't believe that genetics determine morality. | |
| I think that is something that is more like culture. | |
| We can choose to be better. | |
| We can choose to be more honest, we can choose to be more courageous, we can choose to do more good in the world. | |
| Yeah, so it seems like it seems like the way you're overcoming the idea of the blank slate is because of that free will element, right? | |
| So like, yeah, you can look at it from the perspective of like, say, like a Marxist is going to look at like historical materialism and material relations. | |
| That's really what's forming all of how your outcomes are coming in. | |
| But it's like, yeah, but wait a second. | |
| You can choose to do otherwise at any given moment. | |
| You can initiate the thought that gets you from one place that you may be in into another. | |
| It's particularly philosophy that actually kind of equips you with being able to flex that free will muscle, right? | |
| Well, and it's also, I don't know if you've, my brother and I used to have these talks when we were very little. | |
| You know, what would you do with a million pounds? | |
| You know, we grew up in England, right? | |
| And everyone has this belief that if you just have a lot of money, you're happy. | |
| And so that's kind of a child's view, right? | |
| Reason equals virtue equals happiness. | |
| In order to be happy, you have to be virtuous. | |
| And in order to be virtuous, you have to be rational to make sure you're not contradicting yourself and doing evil inadvertently. | |
| So it is virtue that brings happiness. | |
| And virtue may bring money, but that's somewhat coincidental or incidental. | |
| And so by focusing on free will and moral philosophy, I'm hopefully giving people the greatest good in life, which is virtue, which leads to love, which leads to integrity, which leads to happiness. | |
| And so it is a child's perspective to say, well, the rich people are always happy. | |
| And it's like, no, there are lots of miserable rich people. | |
| And there are lots of people who don't have money, who are really happy. | |
| And most people over the course of their lives go in and out of money, you know, like that old song, we're in and we're out of the money. | |
| And there have been times when I've been broke. | |
| There have been times when I've made some money. | |
| And I wouldn't say that foundationally one is better than the other. | |
| I mean, one has more choices, but also more responsibilities. | |
| And one has more leisure, but less money. | |
| And so it's all just a trade-off. | |
| And so by focusing on free will and virtue, I aim to deliver to people the greatest good in life, which is moral excellence, which is the only way to fall in love and to stay in love and to have a clean conscience, which is the greatest gift, to feel like you've done good in the world. | |
| But as far as explaining economic differences, differences in influence and so on, the blank slate leads people to rage and resentment. | |
| And it leads, I'm not kidding to this, it leads to massive slaughters of tens or hundreds of millions of human beings. | |
| And I did a documentary on Hong Kong coincidentally right before COVID. | |
| So I had a lot of early information on COVID. | |
| And in that documentary, I sort of talk about this problem of envy, right? | |
| So if you have decided to not work as hard in your life and you, you know, you like playing cards and you like having naps and it's fine. | |
| There's no issue and no problem with that. | |
| But you're just not going to make as much money as the guy who gets up at dawn and reads and learns and studies and practices and just works really, really hard. | |
| So what happens is later, the guy who's worked harder can have his money taken away and given to you. | |
| But the leisure that you had in the past can't be taken and given to the guy because it's all in the past, right? | |
| The money is, because it's stored up, it's available for transfer in the present. | |
| So what happens is there are always sophists who come along where there are economic disparities and they come along and they say, hey man, you know why that rich guy on the hill has the big house, all the land and the beautiful wife and all of the silk clothing and all of the money and influence? | |
| You know why he has that? | |
| Because he stole from your father and his father and he's a thief and an exploiter and we should drag him out and stick him on a spike and take his land. | |
| Right. | |
| And it's pretty hard to resist that if you're a resentful guy who's upset about the rich guy having worked harder. | |
| And, you know, maybe it's not like all wealth is legitimately earned. | |
| Of course not. | |
| There is central banking, but in general, that's kind of the way it works. | |
| And so the problem is the blank slate theory comes out of a desire to just steal stuff. | |
| And if you point out that, you know, this guy has high IQ, this guy is incredibly hardworking. | |
| He's incredibly conscientious. | |
| And his wealth has actually helped the community because by produced by, he's a fantastic farmer, which is why he can bid more for the land, which means that more food gets produced, which means the price of food goes down. | |
| So you're wealthier because of his excellence. | |
| Well, resentful people who've made bad mistakes in their life always want someone to come along and tell them it wasn't their fault and I'll go get your money back for you. | |
| And the blank slate theory is designed to serve that kind of predation and exploitation, both from the relatively less successful and the people who want to rule them through resentment, through socialist power, if that makes sense. | |
| Absolutely bitch in response. | |
| Yeah, I'm picking up what you're putting down and I really like. | |
| So most of the time, whenever I ask this question, I'm like my fellow philosophy bro types. | |
| It's normally just the normal, traditional approaches at it. | |
| I like the idea of swapping out the idea of the blank slate for the emphasis on the free will and the emphasis on the focus of, no, there are different options that you can choose, primarily reason, virtue, and just ethics. | |
| I love it. | |
| So I think you answered my question wonderfully. | |
| Well, thanks, man. | |
| Good friend Techno Barbarian is back. | |
| I assume that he's having trouble getting his Twitter spaces activated with his giant club with a nail through it. | |
| TB, are you? |
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