Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The Morality of VENGEANCE! Twitter/X Space

Sept. 9, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:42

The Morality of VENGEANCE! Twitter/X Space

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	Hey, good morning, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It is little old me.
	Normal sized human body, slightly larger than your average bear brain.
	And I had a cancellation this morning.
	As you know, I do these call-in shows, either public or private.
	You can book them if you want.
	It is free domain.com.
	Sorry, FDR-url.com slash book or free domain.com slash book.
	And you can book these.
	And I just had a cancellation.
	Somebody had an emergency, so I got a little bit of time.
	And of course, I've missed you all terribly since our last conversation, and I got a very interesting email with a criticism of my theory of ethics.
	And I was going to record it anyway, so I figured, hey, why not?
	Why not throw it on the X?
	And I haven't read it, but somebody said, Dear Steph, I am a longtime listener and supporter.
	Having listened to lots of shows where you explained UPP to doubters, I would like to offer an explanation on why it seems to me that people don't get it.
	Now, I can certainly run through this email and give you my thoughts or rebuttals against this criticism.
	And again, massively appreciate it.
	It is a uh an action of great positivity, benevolence, even I dare say love to criticize what I have written and said.
	I consider it an act of friendship, of benevolence, of kindness, and I really, really do appreciate it.
	I also consider it an act of revelation, you know, because there's there's two ways of sort of people criticize, right?
	So one is uh, Steph, uh, I've got some issues with your theory.
	Here's my rebuttals, blah, blah, blah.
	And that's like a civilized, positive, helpful discussion.
	The other is, you're an F and moron.
	Who but it like you who but an idiot would believe, you know, that kind of uh stupid stuff.
	And the first is interesting.
	The second, in some ways, is even more interesting because people get really annoyed at my theory of ethics.
	They really do.
	They really get annoyed at my proof of secular ethics.
	And I think I understand why.
	First of all, the proof can't be overturned.
	Like, honestly, it's been almost 20 years.
	I've done tons of debates, live presentations, I've had it attacked from just about every angle.
	It's bulletproof.
	You you cannot you cannot overturn it.
	And if it was easy to overturn, people would have done it a long time ago.
	It's very, very intelligent people.
	Take a run at this theory, uh, it stands.
	Now, the question then becomes, why has it not become more widely accepted?
	And it's a great question.
	Uh I have I have pondered this.
	I have pondered the orb of this mystery uh uh over time.
	And people have trouble with UPB because it's deceptively simple.
	And by deceptively simple, I mean, well, it shouldn't really be this easy to prove secular ethics, because then if it's this easy to prove secular ethics, then the answer has the the question then arises, why hasn't A, why hasn't it done been done already?
	And B, why aren't people accepting it?
	And very briefly, very briefly, the the theory goes something like this.
	Morality is universally preferable behavior.
	That's the proposition.
	Now you say, no, it's not.
	Morality is not universally preferable behavior.
	Okay.
	So is honesty a virtue?
	Well, kind of yes, right.
	Honesty has to be a virtue.
	And if I am making a false statement and you correct me, what you're saying is, Steph, you should tell the truth.
	You should not put forward false ideas, and there's a universal standard called integrity, honesty, consistency, rationality, evidence, empiricism, whatever you want to call it, there's a universal standard by which I am gonna correct you, Steph.
	So you should tell things that are true, you should put forward things that are true, not things that are false.
	Which is why I say you cannot criticize universally preferable behavior without using universally preferable behavior.
	Can't do it.
	So if I say morality is UPB and you say no, it's not, then you're saying it is universally preferable behavior that I tell the truth rather than lie, or that I put forward valid arguments rather than invalid arguments.
	So you're using UPB to try and overturn UPB.
	It's just not possible.
	It is literally the same as if I say mail gets directed to the right place, and you reply, no, no, no, no.
	Mail never gets delivered to the right place, but you send it to me in a letter.
	That would be a contradiction, right?
	Everybody wants to jump into the content of the argument as an empiricist as a rationalist, I would say, look at the form of the argument before you look at the content of the argument.
	So if I say mail gets delivered to the right place, and you say you sit down, you write me a letter, and you say, no, Steph, mail never gets delivered to the right place, and you mail that to me, then you are assuming, based upon your actions, you are accepting or relying on the premise that mail gets directed to the right place while telling me mail never gets to the right place.
	You are using a service called the mail that you say never succeeds in order to successfully deliver your message.
	Or if you say to me, Steph, language is meaningless.
	And if you say to me, Steph, language is meaningless, well, what's wrong with that?
	Well, you are using the assumption that language has meaning in order to communicate to me that language is meaningless.
	What's meaningless is if somebody says, unga boonga dingy ding ding dung bung bingum pick bung, right?
	That's meaningless, right?
	But if you say language is meaningless, well, I know what language is, I know what is is it's an equation of two sides of an equation, in this case language and meaninglessness and saying that they're equal.
	So language equals meaninglessness, I know what meaninglessness means, so to speak.
	So if you say to me language is meaningless, the form of your argument is contradicting the content of your argument.
	If you say to me, Steph, you can never trust the evidence of your senses, then you're using my ears, my ears, my hearing, to communicate that hearing is never trustworthy.
	Well, trustworthy compared to what?
	If there was a more trustworthy method of communicating, if we could Vulcan mind meld or something like that, if there was a more accurate way of communicating, you would use that.
	If hearing is the most accurate that we can receive, and you say to me you can never trust your senses, then I can't trust what you're saying.
	If you say to me, if I put forward the argument, people are responsible for the effects of their actions, and you say to me, No, they're not, or that doesn't make any sense, or that's wrong, right?
	Well, you're replying to me.
	So you're saying people are not responsible for the effects of their actions, but I'm going to hold you responsible for the argument you just made, which is an effect of your actions.
	So you cannot correct people, and unless you say, like if if uh if I put forward the proposition that morality is universally preferable behavior, and then you say to me, No, it's not because I had a dream last night, or no, it's not because I don't like the color of the font that you're using, or no, it's not because you're bald.
	I mean, still, no, it's not.
	You're still correcting me, but at least you're not correcting me according to some universal objective standard.
	If I say two and two make four, and you say, no, it doesn't because your accent makes me uncomfortable, I mean, you're still correcting me, but at least it's not according to a universal standard, but that never happens.
	When I say morality is universally preferable behavior, people say, no, it's not because of X, Y, and Z. I say, okay, so you want me to be more honest or to tell the truth or put forward valid arguments that the truth is infinitely preferable to error, honesty is infinitely preferable to falsehood, accuracy is infinitely preferable to inaccuracy, logical validity is infinitely preferable to logical contradiction, right?
	You have these universal standards, and you are simply delivering me the message that I'm wrong according to universal standards, and it's better to be right.
	Right?
	It's infinitely better to be right than wrong according to these universal standards.
	Which is why you cannot overturn UPB.
	I mean, you could, I mean, theoretically, you could secretly have some other standard of mysticism or something like that, but the moment you correct me, right, that's the challenge.
	The moment you correct me, then you are using UPB.
	So UPB is valid, it can't be overturned.
	So if morality is universally preferable behavior, then we need to look at the most common moral statements and say, are they valid or not?
	Thou shall not steal.
	Is that universally preferable behavior?
	Well, let's look at the opposite.
	Thou shalt steal.
	Everybody must steal, want to be steal sorry, everybody must want to steal and be stolen from, because it's preferable behavior, right?
	Things we prefer.
	So everybody must want to steal and be stolen from at all times and under all circumstances.
	Well, that logically immediately self-contradicts, self-detonates.
	It simply cannot be.
	Because stealing is when you don't want someone to take your property.
	But if you want to steal and be stolen from, then the category called stealing disappears.
	If I want you to take my property, you're not stealing from me.
	If you've ever been to a farmer's market, you know they have these little little trays, little broken up bits of cookies, samples, a sample there, right?
	So if it says samples, and you take a little bit of cookie and you eat it, they want you to take that cookie because you're gonna like the cookie and buy cookies.
	It's not theft.
	If they want you to take it, can you imagine?
	If there's a security guard there and somebody in the farmer's market says, calls over the security guard, says, hey, hey, hey, hey, this guy, this guy took a sample I put out.
	Security guard would say, what would he say?
	He'd say, Well, you can't take it if it's a sample.
	I mean, did he hate take the whole tray?
	No.
	He just he took a little bit that you put out for people to take, therefore he's not stealing.
	You want it like you wouldn't it would never work, right?
	If you want people to take your property, it's not stealing, so stealing can never be universally preferable behavior.
	It cannot be enacted universally, it self-contradicts universally.
	It's also why I put in the coma test, which is that morality, if you say it is moral, and and morality is around the use of force, right?
	Because uh violence is a very dangerous thing in human nature.
	The initiation of the use of force is immoral, force and self-defense is morally acceptable, though not morally required.
	You can choose to conform to a thief rather than fighting back or shooting him, but I mean, if it's legal, where you are.
	But morality fundamentally is about not doing things.
	What is freedom of speech?
	Freedom of speech is the government not putting you in jail for exercising your right to free speech.
	It's the government not you have free speech if you're not violently aggressed against by people for speaking out.
	You have property rights when people don't violently or surreptitiously take your property.
	You have the right of bodily integrity if people don't beat you up or stab you or rape you or kill you.
	So morality, first and foremost, is about people not doing stuff.
	Now, there is another aspect of morality.
	I would probably say call it virtue or something like that.
	So, you know, moral courage, integrity, honesty, um, and uh and so on.
	These would be moral virtues.
	But first and and but those would be in personal relationships for the most part.
	What you want from people around you is just not to defraud you, break their contracts, and use violence against you, initiate the use of violence against you.
	So morality, first and foremost, is about not doing things.
	If you can walk down the street and nobody assaults you, rapes you, steals from you, or kills you, and you can walk down perfectly unafraid of people initiating the use of force against you, you live in a pretty good society.
	And that doesn't mean that everybody has to have all of these positive virtues, like uh courage, moral integrity, honesty, and so on.
	I mean, I think those are good, right?
	Peaceful parenting is about parents not doing stuff, right?
	Don't hit your kids, right?
	Don't hit your kids.
	Don't punish your kids, don't use force against your children, don't deny them things because they've displeased you and so on, right?
	It's about not doing things.
	Now, not doing violence generates a bunch of other actions.
	And I'll sort of give you a large historical example about this.
	So not enforcing slavery and serfdom gave rise to the modern world and all of its technological wonders and marvels.
	Not using violence opens up a near infinity of other possibilities on how to interact.
	If you say, well, I'm not gonna steal from people, I'm not gonna steal from people.
	Okay.
	So then how are you gonna get stuff?
	If you don't steal from people, how are you gonna get stuff?
	Well, if you're not gonna steal, they have to give it to you voluntarily.
	Ah, now how are you gonna get people to give you stuff voluntarily?
	Well, you can ask them, right?
	You can you can beg.
	You can say, uh, I just need bus fare to get to Windsor.
	Please help me out.
	I got stuck here through no fault of my own.
	Whatever it is you're going to say, you can beg for sure.
	You can uh work to exchange some kind of value, right?
	You can uh learn to juggle and you can learn to play guitar and sing and you can juggle or busk or whatever it is and ask people to give you money, you can create things, you can trade them, you can go to work, you can get a paycheck, you you you can do things that provide value to other people and ask them to exchange it, either explicitly or implicitly.
	Explicitly is uh I, you know, if somebody says uh I'm a mental health professional, you've got to pay me X amount of dollars per hour, then you sort of agree with that ahead of time, you go and you pay.
	That's explicit.
	Implicit is like what I do, I provide value and I ask people to free domain.com/slash donate to help out philosophy.
	So not stealing, not enforcing slavery, not enforcing serfdom.
	These generate massive amounts of alternative options.
	If you have a society where children are assigned to marry each other early on, then you're not going to develop much of a romance culture.
	However, if in a voluntary culture, in a free culture, in a free society, men and women are not forced to marry, then men generally will have to woo women and women will have to choose carefully who they marry and have kids because there wouldn't be a coercive welfare state and things like that.
	If you don't use violence, a whole host of other options and possibilities occur.
	Why did we not have a plethora of labor-saving devices prior to the 18th, 19th centuries?
	I mean, the Romans, ancient Romans, they knew about the steam engine, they knew about a whole wide variety of labor-saving devices, but they just never bothered because slavery was their method of getting things done.
	And if you have slaves, you don't invest in labor-saving devices.
	Why?
	It's cheaper to have slaves.
	So when you stop doing evil, great virtues flower in and of themselves.
	If you look at government-run educational systems, 150 years ago, you had a room with a bunch of kids in a grid, and you had a whiteboard, a blackboard, a blackboard, right?
	And now maybe it's switched to a whiteboard, but it's still basically the same configuration, which makes no sense given all the other technology that is advanced.
	So when you stop doing evil, a great good flowers in the absence of evil.
	In the presence of evil, you only have these desperate virtues of speak up and hope you don't get incarcerated, ostracized, or killed.
	Those are sort of desperate virtues.
	And those virtues are really not available to the vast majority, not sort of functionally available to the vast majority of people.
	But in the absence of violence, you get great virtues that can be enacted by the majority of the population.
	So another example would be with peaceful parenting.
	If you can't hit your kids, if you can't scream at your kids, if you can't pick your kids up and jam them down on a stair and forcibly can find them, if you can't send them to their rooms without food, right?
	If you do not use coercion and power to control your children, well then what?
	Well, you still have to interact with them, you still have to teach them, you still have to find some way to have them grow up to be good people.
	So if you don't use violence, coercion, aggression, and power with your children, what then?
	Then you have all the options of negotiation, of encouragement, of incentives, of reasoning, of all of these things open up.
	And they don't open up if you use violence.
	The thief doesn't get a job.
	If the thief decides not to steal or is prevented from stealing, then he's gonna go and get a job.
	Going to be a productive member of society.
	So this is why I have in UPB the coma test.
	The coma test says if you define somebody in a coma as immoral, there's something wrong with your ethical system.
	So if we say it is moral to give to the poor, it is moral to give to the poor.
	So then we say, okay, can this can this be universalized?
	Can everyone give to the poor always, no matter what?
	Well, no.
	Uh it's not possible to achieve.
	Because the richest people give to the poorest people, the poorest people give to the even more poor people, right?
	The poorest of the poor give to themselves, or you know, but but then once you've given to the poor, they're no longer poor, and then they have to give to other poor people, and then you've given too much to the poor person, so now you're poor, and the other poor person has to give it back, and everybody's entire job is just having resources flow around uh that can never rest.
	Right?
	So if I'm the poorest person because I have only $10 and people give me $20, then I now have $30, and then somebody who has uh $20 is now the poorest, so I've got to give them $10, right?
	But then now we are equal, but then there's somebody who has five bucks, so we both have to give them them, but then the person with five bucks has more, so they have to give to the person with ten bucks, like it it it never ends.
	It cannot be resolved.
	It cannot be resolved.
	Now, this doesn't mean that giving to those less fortunate is not a good thing to do.
	It can be.
	It's a very delicate and careful operation to help the poor.
	But saying you must help the poor, you're saying that if you don't help the poor, violence can be used against you, because UPB is about the legitimate use of violence.
	And violence is only to be used in immediate self-defense.
	So if you're to say, well, giving to the poor is UPB, then everybody must do it.
	But you can't do it.
	It's impossible to do it.
	You you can't do it.
	And also you can't do it when you're sleeping.
	Now, when you're sleeping, are you raping anybody?
	Nope.
	Are you stealing?
	Nope.
	Are you murdering?
	Nope.
	Are you assaulting?
	Nope.
	Are you defrauding?
	Nope.
	No, you're just sleeping.
	A guy in a coma can't be evil.
	And if X is the good, the opposite of X must be evil.
	If not raping is the good, then raping must be the evil.
	If not stealing is the good, then stealing must be the evil.
	Or if respecting property rights is the good, then stealing must be the evil.
	And we can use violence against the evil, right?
	So if somebody is uh about to kill you, you can shoot them in most places.
	Or at least morally is justified, right?
	None of this is legal advice, obviously.
	So you can use violence against evildoers.
	So if giving to the poor is UPB, then we can use violence against people who aren't giving to the poor, which means you can go shoot a guy in a coma because he's not giving to the poor.
	Now, shooting a guy in a coma for not giving to the poor, if that doesn't ruffle your moral feathers, then I mean not saying you right.
	If that doesn't ruffle someone's moral moral feathers and give them a general sense that that's not right, because basically you can then go and kill anyone who's sleeping or not giving to the poor, who's uh who's working to get money to give to the poor, well, you're not currently giving to the poor, so I can shoot you, right?
	That's not, I mean, that can't be right.
	There's a certain amount of moral, rational instincts Right.
	And this goes all the way back to Aristotle where he said, look, if you've got a moral theory that justifies clearly evil actions, like things that we all understand are evil, you can't just go shoot a guy in a coma or sleeping or having a nap or working, you can't, because that just be licensed to murder.
	Also, you can't give to the poor as a moral absolute because you have to gather resources in order to give to the poor.
	And the time that you're gathering resources, you're not giving to the poor, which means you're doing the opposite of the good, which means you're evil for getting the resources you need in order to be good.
	And if good requires that you gather resources of some kind, but gathering resources is evil, then you're saying evil can lead to good, uh evil is required for good, but you can also shoot the guy for getting the resources needed to give to the poor, like uh because he's not currently giving to the poor, like none of that makes any sense.
	And and we could sort of go it out in a sort of more logistical manner.
	But also it's asymmetrical, right?
	So if you say, well, you it's i i it's UPB to give to the poor, well, giving to the poor is asymmetrical.
	So if Bob is giving to Sally because Sally is poorer, then Sally is not in the act of giving to the Poor Sally is in the act of receiving.
	And you cannot be both receiving and giving at the same time.
	And therefore it can't be universalized.
	You can respect property rights.
	Everyone can respect property rights all the time.
	It results in no absolute logical contradictions.
	So all of these examples are more I think the best play I mean, the book UPB, I think is really good, but I did do a sort of slightly shorter and slightly more refined version of it, actually considerably shorter in my book, Essential Philosophy, which you can get for free at Essential Philosophy.com.
	So why does UPB bother people so much?
	Well, first of all, once you know what ethics are, you're kind of responsible for spreading them, right?
	If there's a certain cure for an illness, a doctor is morally bound to spread and share that cure, right?
	At least in a free society, not so much in the state of society, right?
	I mean, the cure for, in my view, I've got a whole theory of mental health.
	You can find it at FDR Podcasts.com, just do a search for mental.
	Hopefully the entire podcast series won't show up.
	A theory of mental health.
	The cure for mental discomfort unhappiness, right, is generally philosophy, rationality, morality, and virtue.
	Not necessarily a bunch of sketchy pills.
	But if the way to manage diabetes is insulin, let's say, then you're kind of morally bound to provide it.
	So if the question of morality is answered, then you actually have to go and promote virtue.
	And that can be a hazardous occupation.
	It's the most extreme sport moan to man is the pr promotion of rational virtues.
	Also, if you know virtue, and it's fairly easy to talk about and prove, then you get to find out, and it's a really, really freaking chilling process, like emotionally.
	It's brutal.
	Absolutely.
	It's like demon nails slashing across your ventricles, kind of painful.
	So if you have a fairly simple answer to virtue, virtue is universally preferable behavior, rape, theft assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
	Boom, right?
	Well then you get to find out how many people around you are interested in virtue or are corrupt to the freaking core.
	Ouch jeez.
	Honestly, it is and it's the old question I had when I was uh when I was a kid, and I'm sorry to be using such an unpleasant analogy, but uh when I was a kid, um I would get up in the middle of the night, and I would be thirsty.
	And I would like some cold water, but used to keep some cold water in the fridge.
	Or we had this stuff when I was in Canada, my friends used to call it the funny green stuff.
	My mom got some sort of weird blueberry concentrate that she mixed with water to create a more pleasant drink or something like that, and it was really kind of funky at the aftertaste of like if Satan's ass was a battery and it shattered your mouth, be something like that.
	But anyway, so I would get up in the middle of the night, and I would want to go to the fridge to get a drink.
	And I'd always have the same question.
	Do I turn the light on?
	Now, if you've grown up in apartments, especially, you know, broke people apartments, then you know where I'm going with this.
	If you haven't, I applaud you and I'm thankful that this didn't happen to you.
	But I would grow up when I was growing up, I would get out of bed, and I'd be thirsty as a kid, and I'd want to go into the kitchen, I'd want to get a drink, and the question is always, always was, do I turn on the light?
	Now if I don't turn on the light, I gotta grope my way to the kitchen and you know, uh grope my way to the fridge.
	And I mean once I open the fridge, usually the light would work, I'd get my drink, go back to bed.
	But do I turn on the kitchen light?
	And again, you know where I'm going with this if you grew up in these kinds of apartments, which is what happens if I turn on the light?
	Well, if I turn on the light, I see the roaches, and I don't want to see the roaches, because it's gross.
	I remember once in The apartment we had a stove which had a a clock on glass on the top, and I saw roaches running around inside the oven, like they were in the clock.
	It was horrendous.
	The roach thing was a huge issue.
	I used to I've read, of course, these reports of kids where the roaches crawl in their ears and then the roach antennae are waving on their eardrums causing the most deafening sounds.
	And the roaches were absolutely vile.
	The battle with the roaches was wild.
	And it happened to some degree with immigration because there's just different standards around the world.
	And that was always the question.
	Do I want to see the roaches?
	And generally, I would leave the light off because I didn't want to see the roaches because then I'd get that creepy crawly sensation of disgust and horror.
	And it would be tougher to get back to sleep because you'd picture these roaches following you back to your bed, crawling around you.
	Kafka style.
	And that's the big question in your relationships.
	You're thirsty for the truth, you're thirsty for morals, you're thirsty for boon companions in the ethical journey of your life.
	Do you want to turn on the light?
	Now if you turn on the light and there aren't any roaches, you're a happy camper.
	If you leave off the light, it's harder to get to the fridge.
	You might bark your shin, stub your toe.
	You might step on a roach, because at least if you turn on the lights, the roaches will scatter, but you might step on a roach.
	Then you got goo on your foot and it's vile.
	Do you turn on the light?
	So UPP turns on the light.
	If you've got a fairly simple explanation for ethics, UPP turns on the light, my friends.
	You get to see how many people around you care about virtue, or how many of them are indifferent to it?
	And how many of them actually hate it?
	Now that's not a lot of fun.
	That's not a lot of fun at all.
	I mean I'd a sad it's a sad process, and I I don't envy anyone who goes through it.
	I certainly didn't looking back envy when I went through it.
	But the process is astounding and horrifying.
	When I in my late twenties, early thirties, when I finally began telling the truth to the people around me.
	Because you know I was always raised, oh tell the truth, be honest.
	Truth is a virtue.
	Don't lie, blah blah blah.
	And when I finally began telling the truth to people around me.
	My history, my experiences, the good and bad of what I had gone through as a kid and as a young person, when I finally began telling the truth.
	Quick question.
	Did people like it or did they not like it?
	Did they applaud it or did they resist it?
	Did they praise me or condemn me?
	I think we all know the answer to that.
	So people want to live in a fog of pretend ethics, pretend virtues, because they don't actually want to have a clear answer to the question of morality, because that's turning the light on and seeing what's on the counter, what's on the floor, what's behind the glass clock on the stove, what might be running over your foot.
	No like ye, no like yeah Well, listen, I've got this email, I'm happy to go through it.
	Also happy to take your questions, comments about this or any other subject.
	Just uh if you're around, you could raise your hand.
	If you're enjoying the listening, maybe it's enjoying the right word.
	Enjoying is probably not quite the right word, but if you are finding it important to listen, I'm happy to keep going.
	Just give you all a sec here.
	All right, I appreciate that.
	Hero.
	It was one of those great stories that you can't put down at nights.
	If you want to stroke your syllables into my brain, a mute, speak up, I'm all ears.
	Uh hi, can you hear me?
	Yes, sir, go ahead.
	Uh okay, good.
	Um I was wondering, uh well, you were just talking about uh self-defense being justifiable, and uh well, I mean that's obvious, but uh I was wondering what you make of uh I guess the like eye for an eye sort of uh thing.
	Uh yeah, sorry, I'm nervous.
	I'm having a lot of things.
	Yeah, don't worry about it, man.
	No sweat, just chat like we're we're uh sitting in a cafe.
	So yeah, just go ahead.
	I guess I'm wondering uh outside of like an immediate self defense sort of scenario.
	Uh do you think that like I guess retribution?
	Do you think that there's I don't know, do you think that that's ever justified or that there's any inherent value in that sort of thing?
	Well, let's take a scenario.
	And if you have a scenario, I'm happy to hear it.
	I can also cough one up and see if it hits your mindset.
	What do you what do you prefer?
	Uh yeah, you should probably go.
	Okay.
	So let's take perhaps the most visceral and obvious one, which is uh you you have a kid, and your kid gets molested by your neighbor.
	All right?
	I mean, I I think we can certainly say that that's an egregious and immoral assault upon a child.
	Uh, we uh we both agree on that, right?
	Of course.
	Okay.
	Yeah, no, no, since I I I I want to make sure.
	I was like, of course I'm sure, but I I want to I want to double check, because if you're like, no, no, no, I'm I'm Michelle Foucault, right?
	Apparently they can consent, right?
	Okay, I didn't detect a friend Jackson, so I assume we were uh on the same wavelength, but okay.
	So your your daughter gets molested by the neighbor.
	So let's say this happens in a free society.
	Now, this is unlikely to happen in a free society because a free society happens when we peaceful parents, and most people who are child molesters were themselves molested as children.
	That's not an excuse.
	That's simply looking at causality, because there's tons of people who weren't were molested as children who don't become child molesters, so it's um it it seems necessary but not sufficient for the repetition.
	So okay, so your daughter is uh molested by your neighbor.
	Now she's come home, you know, crying and hurts and and all of that.
	And she is no longer in immediate danger, right?
	Yeah.
	So I mean, i if if you see like if if you're at the park and you've got a couple of kids, and then you look up on one of your kids is being assaulted by a stranger, clearly you can grab that stranger, you know, haul him off your kid, you know, like you can use force against that person, because self-defense being a universal right means that you can perform self-defense on behalf of others as well, right?
	That's sort of security guard or police kind of argument.
	So are we fairly in agreement about these general principles?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Now, uh clearly, and when I say clearly, I know that's not an argument, but I think we both agree that we're on the vile molesting neighbor should not escape uh consequences or punishment for his crime.
	Does that make sense?
	Uh well, yeah.
	Okay.
	Sorry, there was a big long pause there.
	Right?
	Because so the question is, can you go over and kill your neighbor for molesting your kid?
	Well, intuitively, I guess uh you know, I want to say that of course that would be, you know, I mean, maybe if not good, at least justifiable or understandable, but I don't know, I'm I'm just not sure.
	No, it and look, it's it's a ch it's a challenging question, and and the law does wrestle with this question quite a bit, right?
	Which is, you know, the the mob justice versus a reasoned process of law.
	So let's say that you go over and you beat up the guy who molested your daughter.
	So that is a challenge because if we look at this in general, you could be wrong.
	And there's a reason why in a court of law, at least in the sort of common law Anglo-Saxon tradition, there are a lot of rules that seem kind of complicated and and so on, like no hearsay, and you've got to be allowed to cross-examine your accusers, and uh there has to be strict chain of custody with with uh evidence, like all of the things that I think most people know if you've sort of watched a couple of courtroom dramas.
	So in c in the court system, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right?
	So I mean civilly in many places is just a the preponderance of evidence, like 51%, but in criminal cases generally it's like 95, 98% proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
	And so I mean I'll just give you a silly example.
	Let's say that your neighbor has a twin, right?
	And you you don't know that the twin is visiting, right?
	And you go over and you kill the guy, but it's the twin, not the guy who molested your brother.
	Or um there's some there's a really skeevy neighbor, and then there's a really honorable neighbor who's like upstanding and and seems like a really, really nice guy.
	And your your kid says, uh, you know, the neighbor molested me and points, but the kid's upset, confused, disoriented, points in the wrong direction, and it happens to be pointing at the skeevy neighbor, right?
	But it turns out it was actually the quote, upstanding neighbor who molested your kid.
	And so you go to the skeevy neighbor and you beat him up, but it wasn't him.
	Right?
	So the that the challenge is that you better be right.
	Now, if uh personally for me, like if I was on some jury and a guy beat up the guy who molested his kid, I wouldn't I wouldn't convict.
	I mean, I wouldn't.
	I mean, maybe you'd give a lecture about, you know, that that could be really dangerous.
	But if it was the right guy, I wouldn't convict, and I don't think many people would.
	Now, if, however, the neighbor went and beat up the wrong guy, now the neighbor's in the wrong, if that makes sense.
	Because you need uh proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Which is why if you see someone assaulting your kid, then you can go because that's you know for certain that's the person, because you're literally seeing it happen.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you can't it can't be the wrong guy, because that's the guy, right?
	So with regards to uh uh punishment, yes, yes, yes, yes, there is punishment for those who do wrong.
	And if and and the punishment generally has to do with reducing the impact of evil behavior on society.
	Right.
	So there's an old saying which was we punish horse thieves so that horses don't get stolen.
	Yeah.
	And it's a big complex topic in in terms of law, so we can just touch on it briefly here because we're we're looking at the principles here, but so uh if somebody is a child molester, they generally should get taken out of society because the and I talk about this in peaceful parenting, like the average child molester has a significant number of victims.
	And so of course you can't fix the wrong, but punishment is not about the past.
	Punishment, punishment is about the future.
	You know, you've heard this on a million different call-in shows, where people say they confront their parents for abusive or neglectful behavior in the past, and the parents say, well, I can't change the past.
	That's what people say, right?
	But uh punishment is about the future.
	You can't undo the molestation of a child, but you sure as Sherlock can prevent the future molestation of children by taking that person out of society.
	The traditional answer has been jail uh or something like that.
	And uh so uh it is about preventing future violations of the non-aggression principle, future evil actions.
	Again, I I don't want to assume that we're on the same page as far as that.
	So if you have any disagreements, I'm certainly happy to hear them.
	Aaron Powell Well, I I think I'd agree with everything that you just laid out, but I was uh I don't know, I I guess my question was more in terms of uh moral principles and not really um you know, not not really uh so much to do with uh practicality.
	I guess like uh Well, but I sorry, that's so I so sorry, go ahead with your question.
	My apologies.
	Oh, well, uh in some sort of hypothetical scenario where someone wrongs you and you know for certain that that is the person.
	And I guess I don't know if if we're just not uh we're not considering like future harm or anything like that.
	I guess I'm I'm wondering if you think there's uh is I guess the impulse to get back at the person for wronging you, like I don't I don't know, like what what's the point?
	Well, no, so and I I understand that, and I understand that to get back, right?
	Now, so let's go to an extreme example and say that the man sees his neighbor molesting his kid and kills him.
	Now, for certain future harm is prevented, right?
	Without a doubt.
	Right.
	Uh, you know, the um the leadin uh medicine will prevent recurrence, right?
	And he has certain knowledge because he's actually seeing it happen.
	So then the question is, would a jury convict a man for killing the man who was molesting his child?
	And the jury would have some potential legitimate complaint saying that is the maximum force that was used, which is to kill someone, but it was not the necessary force required to stop the immediate attack.
	Right.
	So I think that they would say, well, we understand it and and so on, and there may be uh sort of a warning or something like that.
	But I don't think too many juries would would have much of an issue with that, especially if they were parents themselves.
	So in that kind of circumstance, uh excessive force has been used, but and you could certainly criticize perhaps the excessive use of force because you use more force than was necessary to stop the occurrence.
	And but I I doubt in a sort of practical sense, because you know, uh ethical theories do have to have sort of their practical consequences.
	And you can say something is totally wrong until you're blue in the face, but if society would never convict anyone on it, then it doesn't, or would rarely convict someone on it, then it would be um you're kind of shouting into the wind all alone, right?
	So we have to sort of go with so I think I think vengeance can certainly happen.
	Now, in the absence of murder, though, then we have uh another challenge, which is we want to prevent recurrences of crimes as a society.
	And if you just uh if you go and beat up a guy who's molesting your kid, then again, I don't think juries in particular would have an issue with that, but guy's still alive.
	So then what happens then?
	Right?
	Because if you let's say you just you beat some guy up and uh he stays at home for a couple of days, nursing a bloody lip and a black eye, well then what?
	Right?
	Something has to be done to prevent recurrence of a crime that is very highly likely to recur, because as far as I understand it, I don't think anybody knows how to, you know, fix child molesters or or cure pedophilia or so on.
	So then what happens after the guy has uh been beaten up and recovers from it, then the question is, okay, well now what, right?
	So generally the answer has been, well, we we kill the guy, we put him in jail, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, the you, or the guy, I wouldn't put it won't make you and in the example, but the guy who beat up the child molester, let's say the child molester should go to prison for the rest of his life.
	Well, how's the neighbor, how how is the guy whose kid was molested going to achieve that?
	Is he gonna lock him in the basement for the rest of his life?
	Unlikely, right?
	So so then the question is, oh, how how do you work to prevent recurrence of crime?
	Again, murder or killing will certainly do that, but uh it's very rare, it's exce exceedingly rare that people have absolute certainty about who did the crime.
	So let's sort of cast that one aside and say, well, we want to prevent recurrence of this sort of uh horrifying activity, and the way that we would do it is uh keeping the person uh away from society or certainly away from children for some i whatever.
	That's sort of a a technical question about for how long, right?
	So he's gonna have to involve some external party to prevent recurrence because he's not gonna want to be a jailer.
	Does that make sense?
	I'm sorry, could you repeat that last second?
	Yeah, so so the the guy who who beats up the neighbor who molested his kid, he knows because he saw, right?
	Well, he's gonna have to involve some external party to be the jailer, because he doesn't want to be the jailer, right?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, can you imagine you're trying to raise kids with their molester locked in the basement?
	I mean, that's a horror movie.
	That's not a right.
	It's like that's not a thing, right?
	So in a in a free society, uh I've got a whole book about this called practical anarchy, but in a free society, uh you would have uh these dispute resolution organizations, and you'd call them and you'd say, uh, this guy molested uh my my kid,
	and then they would go and establish that this was true beyond a reasonable doubt, some DNA or eyewitness or testimony or video cameras, whatever whatever it would be that they would use to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and then they would take over the punishment of this person, and they would make sure that that person was not part of society for some period of time, could be for the rest of his life, could be something else if there was some recovery mechanism.
	And so that would be that would be taken over.
	And that would both uh uh punish this person and also hope uh work to hope to prevent, and I think they would calibrate it so that it would most likely prevent future recurrence of this crime through deterrence towards other people, right?
	Like I think sometimes about uh I'm sure you know about this, I'm sure most people do.
	I'll touch on it very briefly in case you don't.
	Uh the fine people hoax, right?
	So the fine people hoax was when uh there was a uh a bunch of protests in Charlottesville about uh I think it was civil war statues and someone, and uh Trump uh said uh but regarding this debate, there are fine people on both sides, of course.
	I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis, they should be given them totally, but there are good people, there are fine people on both sides of the debate.
	And uh this actually became the basis for Joe Biden's entire campaign, which was that Donald Trump referred to neo-Nazis as very fine people, right?
	And it was a it was a lie.
	It was a hoax.
	And uh it was one of these wild lies and hoaxes that you could be disproved in about 20 seconds by just beaming the video to people on their phones.
	Like people could have turned over this lie in 20 seconds, 30 seconds or whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	And so why was this promulgated?
	Well, of course, it was to rouse the leftist hysteria base and all that kind of stuff.
	But I think most foundationally, it was to say to people, you can't say anything that we won't lie about.
	And everyone who's a public communicator saw the fine people hoax and saw not just how people would lie about what you say, but people wouldn't care what you said, and they would simply go with the lies and whip themselves into complete manic frothing hysteria over things that weren't even true.
	I mean, I've experienced this myself with people, you know, just outright lying about things that I've said and and so on, right?
	And so that that issue that uh people can just take you out of context and blow things out of proportion and uh lie about you, and other people won't even bother to check.
	Uh I mean, that's uh that's a real shot across the bows against anyone who communicates about anything publicly that you always have to be concerned about being taken out of context.
	And everybody who's a public communicator, who's not a total leftist, has this algorithm running in their brain at all times, which is okay, can can my next sentence be chopped up to be the opposite?
	Right?
	So uh there are people in the men's rights movement who've written parodies of feminism, right?
	So taking feminist statements and replacing men with women as so showing how unjust it is, and people have republished those statements without pointing out that this is a reversal to point out a hypocrisy with regard that they're taking feminist articles and replacing the word men with women, they say, oh, this is what these people actually believe about women, right?
	So irony, comedy, humor, um reversals, uh uh uh all of these things uh are taken consciously and wildly out of context.
	And everybody who's a communicator knows that uh anything can be snipped out of anything you say, people won't care about the truth, and this kind of wild hysteria can ensue.
	So um my my apologies, I can't exactly remember why I got on that topic, but I'm sure it will come back to me in a second.
	But you need an external agent to be able to punish, because you need people who are specialized in knowing what valid punishment is.
	And you also need people who are specialized in being able to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Because if you do wrong, if you go and beat someone up and it turns out it's the wrong person or something like that, then you're now liable.
	And now you've got a kid who was traumatized and is now further traumatized by punishments being applied against the father or the mother or whoever, most likely the father.
	So with regards to self-defense and retribution, I think if you do retribution and you don't kill the guy, then you have the problem of how to prevent further recurrences of the crime.
	And that is a specialized topic that should be left and turned over to experts.
	The proving of the crime and the appropriate punishment of the crime.
	Certainly in a free society, there would be institutions or organizations, uh companies, there wouldn't be corporations because there'd be no such thing.
	But there'd be companies that would specialize in exactly that.
	And who would remove the liability from you?
	So with regards to vengeance, I mean, I think we would all understand a passionate attack upon someone, but it would have to be an egregious provocation, right?
	I mean, if if some kid stole your garden gnome, like your little porcelain garden gnome or whatever it is, you can't go and beat up that kid or shoot that kid.
	I mean, that would that would be crazy, right?
	So as far as vengeance goes, we can understand people who use violence to prevent an immediate crime or to stop an immediate crime and process.
	We can understand that.
	If they use excessive force, that's a delicate situation that would have to be resolved in some procedural way.
	Right.
	So using force in self-defense is valid.
	And that's the moral principle.
	And because uh using force in self-defense is valid, the degree of force under what circumstances that's procedural.
	So it's the difference between physics and engineering.
	So morality will give you the framework.
	Yes, it's justified to use violence in self-defense.
	It's like, but what if it's this and what if it's that?
	And there's all these edge cases, but that's what courts are for.
	That's what whatever procedure would be to establish the truth and the punishment.
	Now, you can use force after somebody has committed a crime in order to confine them.
	But this is the general principle of of prison.
	Now, the way that I talk about it is social ostracism, like you have to submit to a punishment, or nobody's going to do any kind of business with you.
	They won't let you walk on their sidewalks, they won't deliver electricity, they won't sell you food, they won't rent you any place.
	So then you either have to leave the society or submit to some sort of punishment that's going to restore your economic participation possibilities, right?
	So this is general way.
	So we want to use as little force as possible while preventing future recurrences of crime.
	So I think in general, most people, I mean, I'm certainly just about everybody, would much rather turn a criminal over to some sort of authority, some sort of external mechanism that will validate it, take away the liability, and deal with the question of punishment.
	So if somebody uses significant force, maybe even we could say an excess of force in the punishment of a crime that they know for certain has occurred because they've witnessed it, they've seen it.
	And it seems unlikely that that person would be convicted of anything really, really bad.
	But the use of force in response to the initiation of force is valid, the use of force, or at least ostracism, which is not force exactly, to keep people from continuing to commit their crimes, whether that's incarceration, Whether that's ostracism and then they just can't be part of that society, they can't be anywhere in that society.
	Like in a free society, everything's privately owned.
	You can't set foot anywhere without people's permission.
	And if people don't give you that permission and you step foot in that society, then you're trespassing and you can be expelled, and if you keep doing it, right, the punishments will escalate.
	So as far as sort of vengeance goes, it is fine to use force to prevent crimes, it's fine to use forced to stop crimes in the moment.
	An excess of force when combined with a massive excess of provocation, such as the molestation example, would I think be understandable to most uh people, and uh not only would that person not get a uh uh any sort of punishment, they might in fact be uh given a couple of attaboys on the way out.
	But in general, people would not want to take the liability and the difficulty of long-term punishment in their own hands and would turn it over to some external agency, both to prove that the crime had happened, to prove that this person committed the crime and to take over the punishment.
	Most people, if they've had a criminal in their lives, just want to get them as far away as possible, not lock them in their own basement.
	So I think that it's it certainly is a bit of a gray area.
	You know, at what point can you use force, how much force can you use?
	But those are questions for courts and lawyers and judges, not moral philosophers who will simply say that forced used to prevent crimes is valid, force used to prevent crimes in progress is valid, and force used in the long-term punishment of crimes is valid.
	How that plays out, whether it's private or institutional, to what degree all of that is is shaken out by society as a whole and is not you know, if I say murder is wrong, and then someone gives me an edge case and says, well, is this wrong?
	It's like, I don't know.
	That would be for the courts to decide.
	Murder is wrong.
	Whether this particular instance of something is murder, that's not for the moral philosopher to decide, right?
	That is for the courts and the lawyers and whatever it would be in a free society, or I guess even in our society, would be for them to decide.
	So uh the use of force in the prevention of crimes, the use of force in the punishment, long-term punishment of crimes is valid.
	Whether it's enacted by an individual or a public uh institution, is less important than the principle, but we would want to make it as accurate and efficient as possible.
	In other words, we wouldn't want to commit more wrongs in the pursuit and punishment of crimes by identifying people or an excess of punishment, you know, like I mean, you wouldn't have in a free society, you wouldn't have that sort of punishment of cutting the hand off a thief or whatever it is, um, because that would be um to disable that person economically in perpetuity, and so on, right?
	So uh uh think of the principles when it comes to philosophy, when you start talking about the examples, that is a matter of law, not philosophy, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	Um I guess you'd say uh punishment or retribution would be uh justified as long as uh there's a I guess a practical use for it.
	Practical use for punishment?
	Yeah, like you know, like it would uh prevent future harm or you know, um something that's currently happening in the moment.
	Well, there are ways, yeah.
	There are ways to determine whether somebody is likely to re-offend.
	First of all, habitual criminals are almost certain to re-offend.
	Yeah.
	So a recidivism rates can be 80% plus uh even for the average sort of criminal population, but child molesters are highly likely to re-offend uh and people who are and you can do brain scans to kind of figure this stuff out, you know, whether they're psychopaths or sociopaths or something like that.
	They just simply don't have empathy, usually because of a brutal childhood.
	Usually there's some genetic predisposition plus a brutalized childhood, but they have grown up without empathy, without uh any sense of morality or they're not social animals, they're singular isolated predators.
	And so they're very highly likely to re-offend.
	So the the way that I would do it in a free Society, and I think a lot of people would feel the same way.
	Tell me if if you would, is that if an in if somebody says, like somebody runs uh I don't know, prison ink or something like that.
	So somebody says, This person is going to be released.
	Now, if that person goes out and re-offends, then the person who released them would also be punished, if that makes sense.
	So they would have an incentive to make sure that recidivism was very, very, very unlikely.
	Now, how they would do that, I don't know.
	And you'd need some counterbalance, because otherwise you'd just keep, I don't know, shoplifters in prison forever, right?
	Because, you know, they'd say, well, they could re-offend, right?
	So there would have to be, but but that would have to be keeping people in prison is very expensive.
	So people would find a sweet spot wherein you wouldn't keep people in prison in ev forever because it would be too expensive, and people don't want to pay those kinds of protection rates to the organizations.
	But at the same time, crime is very expensive.
	And if uh let's say there's uh uh somebody who signs off, oh, this murderer is fine.
	Uh they can be released into society, they're good to go, and then that person goes out and kills someone, then the person who released them would face liabilities.
	They would have to.
	Because they would be causal in the resulting harm, in the same way that if some guy has a dog and he says, Oh, this dog is totally safe around kids.
	I mean, it's it did bite five kids last year, but it's fine now.
	If that dog goes out and bites another kid, then that guy is liable, because he released his his animal around around kids, right?
	So all of these sorts of incentives would need to be uh figured out and and calibrated and so on.
	But uh I think we we can see, of course, uh, you know, this this poor Ukrainian woman who was murdered on public transit.
	Uh the the fellow uh the black guy who killed her had been arrested, what, 15, 16 times and and and released.
	Well, yeah, I think I think the people who release them would be should be liable because they are contributing to to harm.
	So as far as incentives go, these would all be worked out in the free market.
	There's a sweet spot where you're not keeping it people in jail too long and you're not releasing them too soon.
	And there's a lot of research that needs to be done about that, and there's a lot of incentives that need to be put in place to make sure the best decisions possible are made, which is not to say that all decisions would be perfect, because that's an impossible standard.
	But you certainly would want uh people who contribute to crime by releasing criminals who commit crimes to be liable, but also you wouldn't want people kept in jail forever for relatively minor uh situations, uh, which the general society wouldn't want either, because they could be subject to that, and it would be uh too expensive, and people generally work for what is most efficient.
	So an excess of crime is too expensive and harmful, an excess of incarceration is too expensive, and so I don't know what the sweet spot is, because the research really hasn't been done, although it probably could or should be, but for reasons of political correctness, as we all know, that kind of research is pretty tough to do, but in a free society, people would care more about safety than political correctness, and uh I think the research would be done if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	But it does make sense.
	All right.
	Well, thanks very much.
	I appreciate your question.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	Uh no, it was uh nice to talk to you.
	I'm uh you know, I'm a big fan.
	Um I kind of do I do want to ask uh what which of your novels do you think I should read first?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's um Do you have any particular writers or genres that you have preferred in the past?
	Um not particularly.
	I would say fiction.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I would say probably the most accessible one would be my novel called The Present, which is um basically the decay of society because it won't tell the truth.
	And uh it's pretty dramatic, it's pretty exciting, and uh it's it's sort of wrapped uh it's got a tasty nuggety core of men's rights, which I don't think has ever been fictionalized before.
	So if you start off with my novel, The Present, uh, I think, and you know, just see if you like my style and my methodology of characterization and plot and story development and so on, uh the audiobook is is pretty good, of course.
	I am a trained actor, so you know I know a little bit about about that kind of stuff.
	But yeah, I would say start off with the present.
	Um if people like historical fiction, then uh either my novel's just poor or almost would be good.
	Uh if you like more of a comedic novel, then my novel, The God of Atheists is good.
	And if you like more science fiction than my novel, the future uh is good.
	And um for if you're a donor, you can get the first chapter of my new novel called Dissolution, uh, which is uh I'm just going through the second edits at the moment and should be done in a month or two.
	But I appreciate you bringing those up because uh that was uh my my first goal was not to be yammering philosophy head but artist guy.
	And uh uh I'm afraid the world called me in a slightly different direction.
	So I appreciate the question, and uh you're certainly welcome to call back any time.
	Thank you for great, great topic.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Have a have a nice day, Stan.
	You're welcome, you too.
	All right, so if there's anybody else who has a question, comment?
	The cue is open.
	All right, so let's just finish off with this dude.
	Uh he says, Dear Steph, his name is Mike.
	Dear Steph, I'm a longtime listener and supporter, having listened to lots of shows where you explain UPB to doubter.
	I would like to offer an observation on why it seems to me that people don't get it.
	UPB, he says, starts from the proposition that morals are universal and then proves that rape, theft, assault, and murder cannot be moral because they cannot be universalized.
	The logic of the cannot be universalized part of the argument is unassailable.
	The problem is that the doubters don't accept that morals are universal.
	So no amount of proof at step two will ever persuade them.
	You made the case for why morals must be universal very well in your debate with rationality rules, though he kept refusing to accept the conclusion despite accepting the premises.
	Yeah, yeah, Stephen, what was it?
	I can't remember Steam and Woodard or something like that.
	But I mean, it's funny because he says rationality rules, which means reason is supreme, which means people must be rational or they're wrong.
	So it's pretty wild for me when he rationality rules is just another phrase for UPBs.
	So the fact that a guy who runs a channel called Rationality Rules denies UPP is wild.
	Okay, so anyway, to go on, Mike then says perhaps you could experiment with shifting the focus more onto step one with callers and see whether that makes it easier for them to agree with step two.
	Uh, sure, okay.
	He says, on a different topic, I have a counter argument to UPB, which I've not been able to resolve for myself, and which I have not heard you discuss.
	I would very much enjoy it if you would consider and respond.
	The steps are.
	One, rape, theft, assault, and murder cannot be universalized because the definitions of the offenses contain the requirement the acts must be without the other person's consent.
	Fair.
	Two, governments can create new criminal offenses as they see fit, including offenses which include a consent requirement.
	An example would be it is a crime to stand within six feet of another person unmasked unless that person consents.
	Three, the logic of that offense seems to me to be the same as rape, theft, assault, and murder, in that the offense cannot be universalized.
	If I wanted you to approach me without a mask, then you would not be committing a mar the masked crime.
	Four, if the logic of the masked crime is the same as rape, etc., then that seems to pose a problem, because approaching someone without wearing a mask does not intuitively seem to have a moral component.
	It is only the fact that it has been designated as a crime that then creates a definition against which UPB compliance can be checked and failed.
	If step four is right, and a non-moral act, which is criminalized, has to be categorized as non-UPP compliant, then is UPB actually testing for universal universality, but not testing for morality.
	I hope you read this, and even if you do not answer, I'm still very grateful for all the wisdom and entertainment you have given for so long.
	I like the fact that he throws it entertainment, because I tried to do that as well.
	Kind regards, Mike.
	Last name, last name is like his actual last name, because that would be a weird coincidence.
	All right.
	So it is a crime to stand within six feet of another person unmasked unless that person consents.
	So it is UPB.
	So it and I just want to make sure I formulate this in a sort of UPB way.
	So it is UPB to not stand within six feet of another person unmasked unless that person consents.
	Well, um distance has something to do with UPB, right?
	So uh if if a guy is using a knife to cut up his carrots with another guy standing in the room, that's not UPB violation.
	If, however, the knife ends up inside the body of the mother with a blade ends up inside the body, then that's a a bit of an over it's uh it's a violation of bodily autonomy, and it is uh the knife's a little too close given that it's hidden the guy's spleen or something like that, right?
	It's the same thing with rape.
	Uh the penis uh or the vagina is supposed to stay a civilized distance away without consent if it invades the person, right?
	So bodily autonomy requires that the other person respect your radius.
	And the radius in general is your skin or that which is going to harm.
	Like you can you can scream into someone's ear and it can permanently damage their hearing, and you haven't physically invaded their body except with sound waves and so on.
	So it would be that which harms you.
	So if there is harm from your proximity, right?
	So again, screaming in someone's ear damage their ears, uh hearing permanently can give them, you know, of course, hearing loss, tinnitus, and and all other sorts of of problems.
	So you're not physically invading their space in terms of stabbing or or choking them or something like that, but you are and it's the same thing.
	If somebody were to release a virus, a deadly virus six feet away from you, then that would be assault, right?
	Because that is performing an action that really harms the other person.
	Now if you have a deadly virus, and let's say that we'll we'll talk about, I don't know, an N95 or some mask that genuinely works.
	I I really didn't think cloth masks did much.
	In fact, I think that they uh often spread to illness by giving people a false sense of security.
	But let's say that there's uh an excellent mask uh and let's say that you have a deadly disease and you're out in society for some reason, then if you take off that mask and you breathe out your deadly virus, then you are assaulting people in the same way that if you release a bioweapon in their vicinity, you are assaulting people, right?
	I mean, if you take some bioweapon, you release it in the crowd and you know, a hundred people get sick and die, then that is mass murder, obviously, right?
	It's a bioweapon, right?
	And human beings can be bioweapons as well.
	Uh if you have um, if you have a a deadly disease or a dangerous disease that is skin to skin contact and and you go around touching people all the time, that is a form of assault because you're knowingly harming them and you don't have to, right?
	So it wouldn't be it is a crime to stand within six feet of another person unmasked unless that person consents.
	That's not the issue.
	It is a crime to perform actions which harm others.
	And the action could be uh being out and breathing out deadly viruses.
	Now, uh people could say, does that mean that uh if you have a cold and you go out and you sneeze uh on a bus, are you guilty of assault?
	I mean, it's funny because colds and flus, it's kind of like society is is um it's a little bit like boxing.
	Like there's just a certain amount of stuff that you're gonna have to deal with in society because you know, people are gonna be sick, and sometimes they're sick before they even have symptoms and they're spreading viruses, and and sometimes they have to go out for whatever their kid is it needs medicine, they kind of have to go out and and so on, and they should take precautions and so on.
	But there is just a certain amount of you're gonna mingle with other people's viruses just being uh being around in life.
	Um of course a cold is not exactly a deadly disease or anything like that.
	So there's a certain amount of just stuff that we have to accept.
	Now, it is a crime to stand within six feet of another person unmasked unless that person consents.
	Well, it matters whether or not you have a deadly disease, right?
	And whether you wearing that mask is going to prevent that other person from getting the deadly disease, and if there's no other alternative, but you can't have a society wherein people can't be within six feet of each other without permission, unmasked.
	Like you can't have a society that way, because there'll be people who can't wear masks and uh or you know, have other health issues, uh oxygen issues, or perhaps they've got very painful eczema or something like that, and they can't wear the mask, but you can't have a you can't have a crowd, you can't have people on buses, you can't have people on subways, or airplanes or or anything like that, or even crowded um uh highways or or freeways.
	Uh, you can't have people on trains, you can't like you you just can't have people in malls.
	Like You simply couldn't have a society that works.
	Now, that's not a perfect answer or example.
	But you also can't get consent.
	So you can get consent for specific actions, right?
	So sexuality requires consent, right?
	Taking another person's property requires their consent.
	That's consent for a specific action towards a specific person.
	Generalized consent is a problem for things that are not harmful.
	That can't be universalized.
	So let's say we take off the mask requirement.
	And the mask requirement is not the mask itself, but are you a bioweapon because you have a deadly virus that the mask can prevent, right?
	I think it would be more like if you have a deadly disease that you know of and you have terrible symptoms, and you go out into a crowd coughing and touching people and so on, then that would be a kind of assault.
	For sure.
	I would definitely accept that.
	It doesn't matter whether you open the bioweapon in a vial or you cough the bioweapon from your lungs, the mechanism of delivery would be similar, right?
	So that is um uh that is assault.
	And this is back to I I remember I uh uh I it was a comedian who got uh who I think he gave a woman her piece and she sued him for that because he didn't tell her and so on, and right.
	So that to me, if if you have an STD and you don't tell someone and you transmit that STD, that to me would be a form of assault as well.
	So the question would be can so i if it's the mask, it's it's the bioweapon thing, and I would accept that as assault.
	But um if it's everyone, uh then that's that's an issue because it can't be universalized.
	All right, let's do one more quick call.
	John Gravity, John G. Or John Intelligence, John G. If you would like to let me know what's on your mind, I will let you know what's uh on mine.
	Hi, I'm just clicking the unmute.
	I know you always remind us, but can you hear me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay, hopefully this is just a quick uh short snapper.
	Could you tell us a little bit more or help us understand the risks or the downside potential of using ostracism?
	Okay.
	Uh tell me what you mean by ostracism.
	I mean generally it means refusing to interact with someone.
	But are you talking about ostracism at a personal level for value differences, or are you talking about ostracism at a societal level for crimes?
	Okay, well, great clarification, and I'm not even sure.
	So let me try and kind of put it out there, and maybe you can help me identify.
	So uh first of all, also apologize for uh the nervousness, your first time talking to you.
	No worries at all.
	I appreciate you pushing through it.
	So what I mean is we we know the benefits of using ostracism.
	I think you've talked about it at a couple different points.
	And what I'm worried about is the aspects of ostracism that could um succumb to like a group dynamic.
	So let's say one person decides to ostracize somebody.
	And let's just say in our example, they're wrong.
	But they get a whole group of people banding together, choosing to go, oh yeah, I'm gonna ostracize whoever this person is.
	And again, in this example, it's it's incorrect.
	So we've used the power of ostracism.
	Well, that's actually my life, right?
	So this is not a theoretical example for me, but go on.
	No, perfect.
	So so what do you think on that?
	And I mean, in the example, then when a person's receiving that, very hard to get out of, or you know, it's a very bad feeling.
	So some thoughts or some clarification to to help me think about those.
	Sure.
	Okay, so let's say that someone in your extended family says you're a terrible guy, you did X, Y, and Z, and it's not true.
	And then they convince a whole bunch of other people to not talk to you.
	I mean, that's very difficult, and and it is certainly harmful.
	But of course, people have the right to not associate with you.
	Of course, we can like freedom of association, uh forced association is a violation of freedom of association, people have the right to not interact with you, but it's based on lies, right?
	Now, if there's material harm for this lie, then you could take legal action against that person in a free society.
	So to take an example, if you run a Restaurant and the restaurateur across the street lies and uh says to everyone that uh they found rat droppings in in in your soup and that's false and you lose a million dollars, then you would go and sue that person for uh material damage based upon a falsehood.
	Does that do you sort of agree with that?
	Because I know that's not the entirety of the libertarian position, but that's certainly my position.
	But now what do you think of that?
	If somebody lies about you and causes you material harm or damage, then you could seek restitution.
	Yeah, I think that's very real.
	I I think in like, for example, my case, I would never do that, right?
	I know that the option would be there, but unless the material damage was so large to make it worth it, I think that you know what I'm kind of thinking about, and again, I'm I'm not fully clear on my question, which you know, I appreciate you helping me through it.
	I'm more worried about like the feeling of thinking, oh, all those people dislike me, right?
	That that real, you know, that that kind of that pain that you can get from ostracism.
	Sure.
	And it's a real pain, yeah.
	Yeah.
	But let's go with this example.
	This is really I mean, you're the example, uh, you're the analogy king.
	So let's let's keep rolling.
	So we have the option of taking a legal recourse, perfect.
	Okay.
	Now let's say that there is a form of suffering that is not legal, but the mental anguish is very real.
	So let's say that uh someone tells your teenager something absolutely terrible about you, and your teenager for whatever reason accepts or believes this, which causes a great deal of strain in your relationship with your teenager, um, well, it's not material damage, but it certainly has done some um some pretty real damage to your family and your authority as a father and and so on, right?
	So um I I would consider that that could be possible.
	Uh if if um someone says to your wife, like let's say they go to great lengths, right?
	Uh and they they fabricate evidence and so on, and they go to your wife and they say, uh, your husband has cheated on you, and here's the proof, right?
	Now, let's say that um your wife is upset and comes to talk to you, and you you you say you didn't do it, but of course you don't have proof that you didn't do it, and the other person is giving them tons of fabricated proof that you did do it, and so on.
	I mean, it could take quite some time to resolve those issues.
	Can we sort of agree on that scenario is pretty bad, right?
	Yeah, I'm with you on this one.
	Right.
	So if that person, even if they haven't produced any direct material damage, I mean, they still cost you a lot of peace in your marriage, they've cost you a lot of love, probably cost you a lot of sex.
	You know, that they certainly cost you some uh significant benefits and pleasures in life.
	And to me, that would also be uh actionable.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I can't wait to hear when you take this.
	Right.
	So in general, though, you should have relationships with people in your life that if they hear something bad about you, you know, it's entirely potential, it's entirely possible that my wife has occasionally heard some bad things about me, right?
	And in fact, a lot of the um attacks upon me uh in a way are attacks upon my relationships, uh, and so on, right?
	So if people uh hear bad things about me or you, what would you prefer that they do?
	Aaron Ross Powell Well, 100%.
	And I'm kicking myself for not saying that, you know, in the teenager example with peaceful parenting, you probably have a strength of connection and you have, you know, uh uh a history where that person is going to do what I would prefer, come to me immediately, directly, point blank, lay it out.
	I heard this, uh, tell me more.
	Right.
	Right.
	So you would want people, let's say it's extended family, right?
	So uh somebody says uh let's say your name is is uh Albert, right?
	So uh somebody says, I saw Albert beating up a hobo yesterday, right?
	And and let's say they've gone as far as like fabricating pictures or something like that, or fabricating video, putting your face on or whatever it is, right?
	Or or let's say they um uh uh uh Albert and let's say they go really far in their um fabrication and they Albert uh you know did a lot of gay porn in his youth or Something like that, or or straight porn or whatever kind of porn, right?
	And they they graft your head onto whoever, right?
	And and they sort of go to significant lengths.
	Well, of course, you would want people to come to you and to say, what?
	This doesn't seem like you.
	Now, so there's two scenarios, one in which he's fabricated evidence, and the other in which he simply makes the assertion, right?
	Now, if he's fabricated evidence, that to me would be actionable.
	Agree.
	But I mean, honestly, how am I how am I supposed to prove uh how how is how is Albert supposed to prove he never did porn?
	And and that's that shows so much effort on that other side that you're clearly that's malicious, and clearly that's not accidental.
	And that's not, well, this is what I heard, like you've actually worked to fabricate it.
	And of course, if you've worked to fabricate it, that's a confession that you know it's false.
	Oh wow, yeah, exactly.
	Right?
	Because the fabrication is the falseness.
	Whereas if you just, oh, I heard this, it seemed kind of crazy, then you know, you're not saying it's true, whatever, but yeah.
	So the f the reason why the fabrication would be actionable is because you absolutely know that it's false, because you have to fabricate the evidence.
	But if if some somebody in Albert's family hears that Albert did porn when he was younger or strangled a hobo or whatever it is, they'd go and they'd say, Well, that's not true, is it?
	I mean, that it's kind of crazy, right?
	And then Albert has the chance to say, no, of course I've never done porn.
	I never strangled a hobo.
	What's the next thing that Albert's gonna say?
	Or ask.
	Where's the proof?
	No.
	You hear a vicious rumor about you.
	What's your first question?
	Well, who said it?
	There you go.
	That's exactly right.
	Who who told you, right?
	So let's say it's Uncle Bob.
	So what do you do next?
	Uncle Bob is is spreading these rumors.
	What do you do next?
	Talk to Bob.
	You go to Uncle Bob, right?
	And in fact, what I would do is I would get all the family together and confront Uncle Bob in front of everyone.
	There it is.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So then I would say, or Albert would say to Uncle Bob, why uh why do you believe this stuff?
	Well, I heard it from so and so, right?
	It's like, okay.
	So then I would say to Uncle Bob, or sorry, I keep inserting myself, Albert should say to Uncle Bob, this is not a confession that I strangled a hope.
	But Albert would say to Uncle Bob, why did you say this?
	Well, I heard it from whoever, right?
	And then what would the next question be to Uncle Bob from Albert?
	Do you believe it?
	Or why did you repeat it?
	Yes.
	I think, and that those are good questions, and you may be right.
	My instinct, which is not, of course, the correct one, but just what I would do is I would say, well, why didn't you ask me whether it was true?
	Why didn't you come to me?
	Yeah, that's better, for sure.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Is it irresponsible to spread rumors without checking if they're true?
	Well, that's what I love about your answer, because yeah, when we take Bob into that situation and we bring in the you know people impacted, right, or the people in the circle, in this case the family, we say, you know, in front of everybody, why did you repeat that?
	You know, what what happened here, you know, you didn't fact-check you didn't, or did you, or you know, what what else happened?
	And then that puts Bob in front of the group, and it actually puts a cost to doing what he did.
	And that's Well, and then and then what you do is you say to the family, all of whom are uh all of whom who are assembled.
	My God, that weird sentence, why can't I not get it out?
	You have assembled the whole family and you say to them, so Bob, unfortunately, is a dangerous guy.
	Now, in this case, it's this vicious rumor that Bob spread about me without even talking to me.
	Tomorrow it could be you or you or you or you.
	So what are we going to do about this as a family?
	Right on.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Now, honestly, maybe Bob has a maybe Uncle Bob has a brain tumor.
	Like maybe Uncle Bob ha had a head injury, or he had concussion, or maybe he's in the early stages of dementia, or Alzheimer's, like maybe there's some reason that we could have some sympathy for as to why he would.
	But but clearly, in the absence of an thing like that.
	Clearly for Uncle Bob to spread these vicious rumors without even talking to the person is an incredibly destructive act.
	Yeah, right.
	And there's no reason not to apply the same approach to any other example.
	So we did the family, but let's say it was at work, right?
	Okay, so talk to, you know, uh Sue, Sue.
	Uh here's what you said.
	It's not true, and I'm I'm telling you that in front of everybody, or whatever the the case was.
	Uh what made you repeat the story, you know, uh let's dig a little bit deeper.
	And again, so now the social pressure actually goes the other way, and everybody could hopefully self-res reflect and go, wow, you know, next time I'm about to say something, I'm gonna double check, I'm gonna fact check, or I'm not gonna say anything.
	Well, it's funny you should use the word sue for the for the woman, because that could actually be what results.
	So let's say Sue and HR uh spreads a rumor that you've been stealing from customers.
	Well, then you would sit down with Sue and you would say, um it's the what's the proof, right?
	And and that was your earlier earlier question, right?
	Which is now uh assuming that she was the origin, right?
	So she's the Uncle Bob and this and I'll just sit down with Sue and say, well, you you've accused me of of a serious crime.
	Uh what is the proof?
	And if she says, well, I just heard it from so and so, or a customer complaint, then you would get you would call the customer up and you'd get them on the line.
	Like it's the the best, you know, the best disinfectant is is sunlight, right?
	So you you just simply get all of the you know, the the sleazy midnight greasy tongued whisperers into the same room and watch them squirm.
	Because these these kinds of assholes love to operate from the shadows.
	They love to do these whisper campaigns and you know, this this absolutely shitty stuff that people do.
	It's cowardly, it's bullying, it's it's reprehensible, it's vile.
	And this is the kind of stuff that uh men used to police with duels.
	Like not I'm not kidding, right?
	Like if if you if you spread a rumor that some guy had cheated on his wife and he hadn't, then it would be like me, pistols at dawn, man.
	Like you didn't do that shit.
	Yeah, fists, right?
	I mean, something like that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, men, men don't gossip because you get you get beaten up and no other man is is gonna give a shit about.
	In fact, they probably cheer on the guy who beat you up.
	But women it's a different, right?
	Women don't use force, they use words in general, right?
	Men put the S in front of words uh in terms of combat.
	But yeah, you just you pull these uh, you know, these greasy uh shitbirds out of their layers and you just hold them up to the light.
	And you say, you say it to my face, why didn't you ask me?
	Why didn't you talk to me?
	What are you trying to do, right?
	Well, and so then you're the honest one who's being direct, and they're the dishonest one spreading vicious rumors for which they have no proof.
	So Sue in HR who accused you of uh stealing from the clients, uh almost certainly you would have received some material damage from that.
	And so you would simply sue her uh or or charge her in some manner to to get restitution, uh she would get fired uh uh immediately if she didn't have proof.
	And the reason that she would get fired immediately is because if you are a business owner and you are in possession of certain knowledge of wrongdoing and you don't fire the person, then you as the employer are personally liable for all future wrongdoings of that cust uh of that employee, if that makes sense.
	100% sense.
	And you know, let me give you the real takeaway that I just uh I'm so happy about today.
	And like it or not, right or wrong, part of my question was rooted in that fear of the group thinking a certain way, right?
	Again, whether correct or not, you know that you've got that feeling of, oh, all these people dislike me or whatever.
	But we've really, or you've really addressed it by taking this approach where you do the uh in you know, investigation with the other people having that visibility, and there's so much uh advantage to that.
	So I I'm just yeah, I'm a little bit loud.
	Thank you so much.
	Well, and it's how it's how I've operated for my whole life.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've you've seen a number of times uh people saying, Steph, you're wrong.
	You're an idiot.
	You're this I'm like, hey man, let's let's let's get on the horn and debate it.
	Let's let's pull it out into the open, right?
	Absolutely.
	But uh, But again, a little weakness on my part is that little, or not, it's not a little fear, it's that fear of feeling like people dislike me.
	And where it's so different with you, yes, I've seen it, but you handle that dislike like it's nothing, right?
	You've got the shield, and it just most of it appears to bounce away, which is amazing.
	Well, I mean, uh uh, first of all, I know it's not me that they dislike.
	I mean, they don't even know me for the most part, right?
	They just dislike what I'm saying, and that's uh on them, not me.
	So but there is one other possibility, which I think it's worth examining, which is probably at the core of what alarms you the most, and forgive me if I've gone too far in that, which is you uh get together with your family, and they all agree with slimy Uncle Bob.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, we we accept that it's true.
	Uh we we side with Bob.
	How dare you try to confront him when you're the you know, porn actor hobo strangler, or whatever it is, right?
	And they all side with Uncle Bob.
	Well, when you ask Uncle Bob, he doesn't even tell you what the specific thing is.
	They just give vague things like, oh, you know, things you did or didn't do, like, wow, what does that mean?
	You know what you did, right?
	You know, all of this slimy, yes, stuff, right?
	Vigue, yep, continue, sorry.
	Right.
	So so then what's happened is you have uh had the great misfortune to be born into a completely corrupt family, an extended family.
	That they will side with someone who has no proof, making wild accusations with somebody who's honest and direct in the rebuttals.
	And they will side with a liar with no proof over the their entire history of you as an honorable person who tells the truth.
	Oh my god.
	Now, this is not as wild a scenario as we can imagine.
	Of course, most decent families would never side with the liar with no proof over the person with a history of integrity and honesty.
	But I mean, my gosh, I've I've talked to enough people, and you may have even heard these call-in shows.
	I've talked to enough people over the years who've tried to sit down with a family and sort things out, and the family sides with the bad guys.
	Now that's really that's really horrible.
	That's really difficult, that's really painful.
	But it sure beats the alternative of spending the rest of your life around utterly corrupt, immoral people.
	Oh my gosh, right?
	And why would you want the approval or to be liked by a group like that?
	Like what do you think?
	Yeah, so your defense against being disliked is to judge the judges.
	Right.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah.
	Now, this is a relatively new possibility in human society to judge the judgers.
	Like, we did not evolve with this at all, because we evolved in these fairly small localized tribes, right?
	And these fairly small localized tribes, we couldn't escape.
	And we certainly couldn't judge the judgers because they had all power over us.
	But now we can move around, we can start our own lives and so on, because the reason why it's important to find out is your family is corrupt is because if your family is corrupt, and by this I don't mean that they've made moral mistakes, which we all have, or that they've told lies, which we I'd certainly most of us have.
	But they knowingly and consciously side with uh evil and falsehood over truth, curiosity, and integrity.
	The reason why you need to know that is you cannot have a happy life if you're surrounded by corrupt people.
	Because you know moral, like if you're a guy and you're surrounded by these corrupt lying, amoral or evil people, then no moral woman is going to want to marry you.
	Because she's she's she's gonna see it very clearly, and she's not gonna want to spend her, you know, she's not gonna want to spend the next half century or more around corrupt people.
	And she's not gonna want her kids influenced by corrupt people, and she's not gonna want to watch you if she cares about you constantly being harmed by corrupt people, she just won't do it.
	So you will never have a quality woman who loves you, uh, who's moral uh in your life, and you'll just be doomed and condemned to this treadmill of broken skulls betrayal uh for for the rest of eternity uh forever and ever Amen.
	Uh but Steph, if a person doesn't have exposure to that sort of knowledge or your show and you're in your early twenties and you're making that life marriage decision, you know, it can be easy to lock in early, and then you've got that lifetime coming to you of you know somewhat hardship.
	Well, but that's why we tell kids to tell the truth.
	And and I say this with you know the deep humility of somebody Who was not living with great integrity for 10 plus years after I started studying philosophy, but that's why we uh tell kids to tell the truth, right?
	And so, you know, if if you've got a family and you have some issues with them, then you should be honest and tell the truth.
	And everybody knows about the tell the truth thing, because it's kind of hammered into us as kids.
	So um taking that virtue of telling the truth and applying it to family is really important.
	Because if your family attacks you for telling the truth, then they will attack any honest person in your vicinity, which means you have no choice but to marry a liar, which means your life is going to be a hot mess.
	Oh boy.
	Oh, Steph, the insights, they just don't stop.
	Um Well, they'll stop at some point, but only about 20 minutes after I'm buried, hopefully.
	So all right, is there anything else that you wanted to ask?
	I mentioned a great, great topic, and I really do appreciate you guys coming up with great stuff today.
	I have a hundred questions, but I think for this call, that is just a perfect stalking point.
	Um much, much appreciated.
	Thank you.
	Let me plug uh peaceful parenting.
	For teenagers.
	What a wonderful experience.
	Every day is just it's an adventure, it's fun.
	Um yeah.
	Just can't say enough good things.
	Thank you, sir.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you for your peaceful parenting.com get the free book.
	All right, Kale.
	Come on, give me something short.
	Danny DeVito size philosophy, bite-sized philosophy.
	Nuggets of wisdom.
	What's in your mind?
	Okay, this wasn't really much something short, but I did want to run something by you and get your opinion on something that's going on in my family circle.
	Go for it.
	Okay, so on my wife's side of the family, there's a little girl, she's eight years old, and she's in therapy for anxiety.
	And my wife and I are kind of wondering like, how the hell is a little eight-year-old already going to see a therapist for extreme anxiety?
	So I was wondering if I could kind of give you some of the facts, and maybe you could uh provide some insight as to what's going on in her life because we have some suspicions.
	Yeah, go for it.
	Okay.
	Um, number one, she um she spends a lot of great time with her grandparents, and I wouldn't consider them great people by any stretch.
	And we were noticing a pattern with the grandchildren in their lives.
	One of the grandchildren is now 40 years old, and she's a wreck.
	She's in she's been in and out of drug use and hospitalization, um, clearly mentally unstable, just doesn't have her life together.
	The other one of the grandchildren became a lesbian, and it's just pretty much embittered that way.
	And then now with this young girl who's who's eight, like I said, she's suffering from anxiety.
	So we're starting to see a common denominator that there seems to be issues with predominantly female grandchildren uh around the grandparents.
	So um that's the only common denominator that I my wife and I are seeing.
	Sorry, the the older women, the 40-year-old, uh, they're the direct children of the grandparents, is that right?
	Uh yeah, all the women that I've described are, yes, uh grandchildren.
	Okay, got it.
	And that's but then there's also female grandchildren that are having issues as well, other than the eight-year-old that you mentioned, is that right?
	Yes, that's correct.
	So I beg your part of it's not clear.
	So yeah, I'm not sure.
	No, it's fine.
	What I'm describing is three three women of different ages and generations, all have the same grandfather, uh, ages 40, a little bit over 40, and now eight years old.
	So there's a large spread of grandchildren and children.
	Why is the eight-year-old in such proximity with the grandkids?
	Are they being used as a sort of daycare or something like that?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So her parents, um, she comes from a two-parent household.
	Uh both parents work, and at any chance they get, uh, yes, they they ship her off to grandma and grandpa for you know daycare and looking after her pretty frequently.
	And do you know the history of the eight-year-old?
	Was she put in daycare or did she go to grandmother early?
	Did when did the mom go back to work?
	From my understanding, she's never gone to daycare, but yes, she's been with grandma and grandpa consistently since, you know, since birth.
	Like they've been prime they've been almost like secondary caregivers.
	Do you know how much time on an average weekday the parents spend with the eight-year-old?
	Uh I can't say it's much.
	I mean, they're both working parents.
	She's in school.
	Um when I'm when I when I'm encountering around her, she seems very friendly and but she's also just very skittish and shy.
	She she still sleeps with her parents.
	Um without the parents taking her to bed.
	So for example, we went to a family gathering and we're staying up a little bit late past, you know, a child's bedtime just chatting, and she's just on the couch just waiting for the parents to finally, you know, go to bed so she'll go with them.
	She almost seems just kind of terrified to go to sleep on her own.
	So she's still co-sleeping with the parents.
	And is there a significant difference between your parenting philosophy, or I hope what is reasonable parenting philosophy and the parenting of the eight-year-olds?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, certainly.
	I mean, we're worse we've just kind of began having a little bit closer relationship.
	Again, these are the parents in question are on my wife's side of the family.
	It's her uncle's brother and his wife.
	And um I know that I know that they spank.
	I know that they are um they're there, you know, and we're we're we're peaceful parents.
	We don't spank.
	So uh and so now that we just kind of engage with them a little bit more, like I said, we've we've we've we're trying to figure out what the hell's going on with this child.
	I mean, we're we're we see we're we we feel terrible, so we have our suspicions.
	So And uh have you talked, I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have.
	Like this is not any kind of judgment or command, but I'm just curious have you talked to the eight-year-old's parents about maybe improving or changing their parenting style.
	Uh not quite yet, because we're still kind of in this beginning stages of this kind of relationship, kind of meeting them and whatnot.
	Again, if it wasn't for um another family member that that kind of bridges our relationship, we never would hang out with them to begin with.
	It's my wife's aunt is kind of brings them along and we kind of intermingle that way.
	So they seem nice enough.
	We were hoping that, you know, we'd be able to connect with them because they're closer to our age, but we're just kind of at that reconnaissance point of kind of figuring them out.
	And of course, with the spanking, and now with the child having extreme anxiety, of course, these are red flags, so we'd like to do, we'd like to know what what what's going on and maybe yeah, get to a point of how to address this.
	I guess the reason why I'm calling is I have a theory, I'd like to share it with you.
	And then if it if you happen to agree with it or disagree with it, that's fine.
	But if you agree with it, I'd like to get some counsel on how to exactly approach this, because uh you know, you don't get much training on how to approach how to help children who are, you know, could be experiencing some abuse is is what is our is our hypothesis.
	So that that's your general hypothesis.
	Do you think it's abuse or neglect or something else?
	Well, I don't know.
	My wife and I kind of spitballed it together, and you know, we're starting to see, you know, she has extreme anxiety, so I'm wondering where you think that may be coming from to a point where, yeah, they have her in therapy, the co-sleeping, um, you know, and then also the pattern of three grandchildren, all female, all mentally unstable.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Uh so I can tell you my course of action.
	I can't tell you your course of action.
	But I can tell you what I would do, which is obviously not any kind of template of of what you should do.
	Does that do we sort of accept that as a a statement?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	So I would talk to the parents and probe whether they had any issues with their parenting.
	Uh I would say, you know, your kid seems kind of anxious.
	Where do you think that might be coming from?
	I would try and figure out if the kid was being bullied at school or it could be obviously, you know, if if it's a really woke school, maybe she's getting if it's a white kid, she's getting a lot of anti-white narratives and and so on, or maybe being infected with, you know, all men are terrible and patriarchy, and like it could be any, it could be any number of things.
	But I would um I assume that the parents have put the kid in therapy because they can't figure out the source of the anxiety.
	And So I would I would sit with them and say, gee, you know what do you think might be going on or you know, this is uh now.
	If they were uh resistant to change, if they wouldn't accept any possible criticisms or feedback or anything like that, I would mention, you know, the spanking can be kind of tough on kids and there's you know some real data that says it's negative.
	You know, I would be very tentative and not like you evil spanking, whatever, like you know, it's kind of just probe, right?
	You send out your scouts to see if they're open to any kind of rational feedback.
	Uh I would put out those probes and I would do that sooner rather than later.
	And um that's why I sort of asked if you sort of probe that.
	And, you know, again, whether you have or haven't, it's just not particularly material, but this is what I would do.
	And uh if I uh found out that they would not listen to any particular reason, uh then uh I would uh I would not spend any time with them at all anywhere close to the vicinity because I'm not gonna emotionally invest in things I have no power to change.
	I I just can't do it because that takes away from my kids or my kid, right?
	For me to sit there and say, well, I have to fix this other family that is I have no authority, no power, they won't listen to reason, and all I have is reason.
	So I do I I do not, and this is like a very strong-willed thing in me, and I have to be very strict and disciplined with myself.
	You know, like what's going on in the UK.
	I have no power to change what's going on in the UK, so I have to will myself to not care, or at least to not read to not get involved, right?
	So find out uh what I would do is find out if people are open to reason, open to curiosity, open to possible change.
	And if they're not, if all they are is defensive, uh and if, for instance, let's say that they uh prefer making money and being at work to being parents, and they don't see any problem with that, and that's fine, and you know, they don't see any problem with um uh putting putting their daughter with some, as you say, somewhat of questionable grandparents.
	If they have no issues with anything, I don't spend time with people who are causing problems but won't acknowledge them because you're just going on a ride to nowhere.
	And you know, it's very sad for the kid.
	But you know, there's tons of sad stuff happening to kids all over the place.
	But but who who are you responsible?
	You're not responsible to the eight-year-old, you're responsible to your kids.
	And it's fine to take things away from your kids if you can achieve good in some other circumstance, but if you can't achieve good in some other circumstance and you and your wife are biting your nails and trying to figure out how to solve things you can't solve, you're just taken away from your kids.
	And that's not to me, I would make a very strong case that that's not responsible as parents.
	As parents, your responsibilities to your own kids, uh that means don't burn the midnight oil and your emotional energies on things you can't do a damn thing about.
	Yeah, no, that makes sense.
	I was just um That's all very good.
	I just feel bad for the child, really bad.
	So yeah, I would I hear what you're saying about not taking it away, not taking it.
	No, but you you gotta uh this is an outgroup thing.
	Uh I I would again uh I would invite you to be really strict with yourself about this.
	That if you caring for a child who's not yours and whose circumstances you cannot improve, if you caring about that child harms your children, you cannot allow it.
	I mean, give you an extreme example, right?
	So there are lots of starving kids all over the world, right?
	Right.
	And if you were to just sit there and watch videos of kids starving and kids dying and not do anything about it, would that make your children happier or less happy?
	Oh, yeah, it'd be make them less happy.
	Right.
	And so if you are involving yourself in something you cannot change that is negative for you and your family, it's not good parenting.
	Good parenting is when you put your kids' happiness and security first and foremost.
	And you do not want to model to your kids that it's really wise to get emotionally wrapped up in things which you cannot possibly change and expend energy and that morality is expending energy in things that you can't possibly affect.
	And again, I'm not saying whether you can or can't affect if I have a conversation with the parents and see if they're open to any kind of feedback.
	But if they're not open to any kind of feedback, I don't engage with people who don't listen.
	Because I also don't want to model for my daughter that it's really wise to get involved in things that you can't fix.
	Because that that would be to communicate that virtue takes as its target things that can't possibly be changed.
	That doesn't make much sense, right?
	Yeah, certainly.
	Um so your your concern for the kid, I mean, I I get it, and I'm I'm not saying it's it's a bad impulse or anything like that.
	And that's why the impulse to help people should have you determine whether they can be helped.
	Right.
	So if if you had some a cousin who was uh an alcoholic, then you might want to help that person because you know you you want to do good where you can do good.
	But when you can't do good, it's almost a sin to waste your energies on people who won't listen.
	So if you've got some cousin who's an alcoholic and you sit down and say, Man, you can't drinking too much and you go through a two-four a week and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they're like, hey, you know, I uh I just know how to have fun, you guys are too uptight, you need to know how to relax and loosen up and have party and right, then they they've got no problem with it.
	You can't change it.
	You can't change anything that people won't acknowledge as a problem.
	I mean, do you do you love your wife?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	Okay, so if somebody came to you and said, marriage is really terrible, you shouldn't be married, it's awful.
	You just get exploited, what would you say?
	I'm gonna say, man, I think you don't have a clue on what you're talking about.
	Right.
	So you're not gonna get divorced because your marriage is not a problem.
	So when something isn't acknowledged as a problem, which I'm glad you have a happy marriage, you love your wife.
	So nobody who complains about it is going to change you and get you divorced because your marriage is not a problem.
	But that's how corrupt people or bad people view their entire lives.
	It's not a problem.
	You cannot get people to fix a problem that they do not acknowledge.
	Right, especially for the sake of my children.
	Well, what about what about navigating it to where you know I set these boundaries where, hey, you know, I want to try to solve this problem.
	I'm not going to let it affect my children by any means.
	No, no, that's not no, it's not an option.
	Because everything you put outside of the family takes away from inside the family.
	So if you say, if you say I'm now invested in trying to help this eight-year-old, that is going to take resources, time, care and attention away from your family.
	Now, I mean, there's times where that happens.
	I mean, philosophy has affected my family, uh, and but I mean, I think it's a good case to to make a better world for my daughter to grow up in and so on.
	And of course, as a man, you probably have to work uh away from your kids in order to provide resources.
	So uh that's fine, but those are things that are necessities.
	This is something that is not a necessity.
	So you can't carve off and say, well, I'm gonna spend time trying to you know, again, talk to the family in my opinion, uh see if they're open to change.
	If they're not open to change, then what are you communicating to your children?
	Well, pick pick a fight you can't win and throw your effort into that.
	Well, that's not I don't think that's a good lesson for the kids.
	I think the good lesson is see if people are open to reason.
	If they're open to reason, reason with them.
	If they're not, don't waste your time.
	Yeah, no, we we I think we can certainly next time we encounter them, we can certainly have a conversation about, you know, open up the curiosity gates and see if they reciprocate.
	Um they'll if you do that and they're not open to change, they'll solve the problem for you because they just won't want to spend time around you.
	Right, yeah.
	I'm I'm absolutely I mean, I told that to my wife.
	If we we were candid and we expressed our concern for their daughter and they don't like it, then yeah, that'll be the end of that.
	It's just it's just it's it's just hard to see, because you know, you you know there's something going on, and I'm uh obviously you can see that I'm suspecting that she's probably being abused by the grandfather.
	I was just would you even recommend anything at all just to try to get that solved or just you know, stay in your lane.
	I mean, without any proof, without any evidence, uh you wouldn't want to be making accusations for which there's no evidence.
	And you know, it it is it is, and I sort of hate to use this generically positive word, my friend, but it is just a matter of discipline.
	If you can do something to help people and you care about those people, it's worth putting some effort into it.
	If what you define as a problem, they define as not a problem, you cannot fix anything.
	And the other thing too is uh if there is some abuse coming from the grandfather, leave it to the professional.
	Because she's in therapy, right?
	Right.
	You know, if if somebody has uh appendicitis, you don't pull out a butter knife, you send them to the ER, right?
	So she's already with a mental health professional.
	Did I lose you?
	Does that make sense?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, maybe this is just me being a cynical because I've done therapy and I don't know how deep they're gonna go into trying to navigate whether she's being victimized.
	But again, that's okay, but it's sorry, but if the professional can't handle it, or the professional can't do it, what can you do?
	Yeah, no, but I I under I I understand what you're saying.
	I I would just hope that you know the parents are are are not blinded by what's going on.
	Maybe they just need to see the the clear, you know, another, you know, just an outsider's opinion on what could be happening, because you know, with these blinders, obviously I'd be accusing their father of a horrific horrific crime.
	So yeah, no, but I I appreciate what you're saying, Steph, about And it's funny because like we were just talking about the rumor thing.
	Um it is not your job to fix I mean, I'm sorry, because this you're an intelligent guy, so I'm sorry to be saying something that's ridiculously obvious, but to to the audience more.
	Like it is not your job to fix the world.
	It is not your job to fix every family.
	I think it's if you care about a family or have a relationship with a family, I think it's your job to provide some wisdom and some good counsel and see if they're receptive.
	If they're not receptive, you have to have the discipline to withdraw.
	And of course it's very sad for the kid.
	It's very sad for the kid, but it's not your kid.
	And you have no authority.
	You have no legal control, you have no authority in the situation whatsoever.
	So you're you're shouting at the clouds to stop raining.
	You have to limit your will to what you can affect.
	It's really, really important.
	You must limit your moral will to what you can affect.
	Otherwise, you end up spinning your wheels, burning up gas, damaging your motor, achieving nothing, and it turns morality into futility, and that's not a lesson you want to have in your heart, and it's certainly not a lesson you want to display for your kids.
	So yeah, I've certainly had uh families I've had some contact with over the years here and there.
	And uh if I've seen issues, I've tried to give good counsel, I've tried to give sort of feedback.
	I spent an entire afternoon with a family once, uh, talking about peaceful parenting and so on.
	And uh if they listen, that's possible.
	If they don't listen, um I just have to grip my teeth, focus on my family, recognize that there are people who are going to suffer in the world.
	I'll do what I can if I have some authority, uh, but if I don't, um I'm I'm gonna just have to I I just have to will myself to withdraw my tentacles of affection to areas where they can actually grab something.
	Yeah, no, well said.
	It's it's it's becoming clear to me what's the right choice, and I appreciate um your input on this.
	So I believe I agree with you.
	I will go ahead and we'll have that um conversation with the folks, hopefully that they show curiosity and interest, and I hope that they do, and if they don't, then you know, I think we I think we can we can live with that.
	Yeah, because uh if you can't contain dysfunction, it spreads to you.
	Right?
	So so it it can f uh dysfunction, corruption, maybe immorality that's uh going on here.
	Either it's diminishing in people around you or it's spreading to you.
	There's nothing stable about this stuff.
	That's why I said when when you said earlier, uh I won't let it affect my family, it's like, well, you don't have that choice.
	Because either they're getting better or you're getting worse.
	There's nothing in between.
	There's no stability, nothing is on pores, nothing is on whole.
	Like the government's either getting bigger or smaller.
	It's not staying exactly the same size, right?
	And uh disease is either spreading or shrinking, right?
	Uh it's usually not staying, you know, maybe some cyst or whatever, it's usually not staying exactly the same size.
	So with regards to corruption, if you can get them to start working on it and it could diminish over time, which I consider highly unlikely, but because the girl's also eight, right?
	Which means that she's a couple of years past personality development, mostly fixed, and she's probably gonna have to deal with this anxiety in one form or another for a good chunk of her life.
	Um because it would take a huge reversal right now and a lot of intervention and massive changes and uh confrontation with the grandparents if they're dysfunctional or there's a problems there or something like that.
	And uh that's a lot of work.
	And if they wanted to do a lot of work on the family, they wouldn't be doing a lot of work at work and not spending much time with their kids, which is why I asked how much time they spend on a weekday with their daughter.
	And, you know, it is it is tough.
	We cannot fix everything in the world.
	We have very little that we can fix.
	And once you've got married and have kids, your absolute responsibility is what's best for them.
	And you have to be pretty ruthless at where you put your care and concern if it subtracts from your family without adding to anyone else's salvation, uh, that's really, really important to avoid.
	Yeah, no, well said.
	And then if they are not receptive at all, yeah, we'll we'll make the we'll make sure that we s uh we end our time with them.
	And I listen, I really do appreciate your compassion for this uh girl.
	And of course it is with uh let me let me know what happens either way.
	You can email me, host H O S T at freedomain.com.
	Let me know how it goes with this convo.
	Of course I keep my fingers and toes crossed that her parents uh listen to reason and maybe get interested in peaceful parenting and spend more time with her and and so on.
	Uh it it's incredibly fleeting how how fast childhood goes uh with with kids.
	I I enjoyed it.
	Of course, uh I love being a parent and so on.
	I enjoyed the early childhood stuff.
	You know, my daughter's almost 17, and uh, you know, she's uh next year, she's uh uh on on the way uh to start her life.
	And uh, you know, boy, I I I I I I never s think, gee, I wish I'd spent more time at work.
	Uh it's just not a thing that happens when you get but it's something you only appreciate when you get older.
	So all right.
	Well, thanks everyone so much for a great, great conversation.
	It's funny, you know, because I've had some quiet spaces, so I was like, oh, I should I could just do this email privately, but um this has uh restored my faith in in uh a great set of questions and comments from you guys.
	I really, really do appreciate it.
	Free domain.com slash donate, free domain.com slash donate to help out the show, to help out philosophy.
	I really do appreciate it.
	Lots of love from up here.
	We will see you Wednesday night for Wednesday Night Live.
	Friday night show is moved to 9.30 p.m. from 7 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.
	Uh I think it's because I have to go beat up a hobo.
	I can't remember.
	I'll have to check my calendar.
	Just kidding.
	Thanks, everyone.

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