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Sept. 30, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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Hello everybody.
I hope you're doing well, Stefan Molini from Free Domain, just stepping through a spider web here.
Hopefully it's not dragging some venomous Australian denizen behind me, so great questions from the fine readers and callers on X. If you would like to subscri subscribe, I would gratefully humbly and deeply appreciate that.
You can go to FDRURAL.com slash locals, or you can go to subscribe.com slash free domain, or you can just go to me on X and subscribe there too.
So let's dive in.
Why do you tend to focus on ethical questions?
The answer is always ultimately God, which philosophy argues is an appeal to authority.
If the authority doesn't just have the truth but is the truth, then what is the issue with appealing to God?
Well I deal with ethical questions because that's the essence of philosophy.
Philosophy is an all discipline, like the philosophy of science, philosophy of math, and so on.
But the one realm that philosophy deals with that no other discipline deals with fundamentally is uh the question of ethics.
So all core philosophy is ethical philosophy.
And so that's why I uh focus on that.
Now why do I say that we need philosophy without appeal to gods or governments?
Well, I want you to imagine we've certainly seen this in the world throughout history.
I want you to imagine the issue or question of science that is dependent upon God or government.
So if we have science that is dependent upon God, then we don't have the scientific method, we simply consult religious texts and or pray for the answer to scientific questions.
And so in the Bible it says the earth is fixed and does not move, and so we would say that of course the earth is a center of the universe and it does not of course go around the sun, and we would have that as our answer.
In other words, we wouldn't have science.
We wouldn't have science.
We would simply have religious texts or prayer, or, of course, a pope-like character or the Pope, who would say, This is what the truth about science is, I have consulted the Bible, I have read the original ancient Aramaic, I have prayed, I have meditated, and the answer has been provided for me, well we wouldn't have science at all.
Now if on the other hand, when it's actually not that much of another hand, it's just another kind of mystery religion, if the government runs science, as the government generally does, right?
The government has usurped science from individuals, and a lot of times people with a s even a scrap of integrity, and the government has now said science is what we say.
Science is what we decree.
The vaccine stops COVID in its tracks, it's safe and effective, and if you question Dr. Fauci, you are questioning science in the same way if you question the ultimate supreme religious leader, you are a heretic, and trust the science.
Of course, all science is based on mistrust of authority.
So if the government runs science, you don't have science.
You just have compromised paid for people who are pretending to do science while pillaging the taxpayer for everything he or she has got.
It's the same thing with the um SSRIs.
Oh, we're correcting a chemical imbalance.
Can you test for that chemical imbalance?
No.
Has it ever been proven?
No.
In fact, it doesn't seem to be much of a relationship between serotonin and depression.
So but it is uh government science, which means that government is largely paying for these treatments, then it gets completely corrupted.
So you can't have government science and still call it science.
You can't have theological science and still call it science.
It has to be voluntary, it has to be private.
It should not be corrupted by either theological or political power.
Now, the big challenge, of course, and this is really foundational to the history of the 20th century, but the big challenge is this.
If morals are based on God, then you can escape morality by disbelieving in God.
You need to let that simmer and cook in your brain quite considerably and quite deeply, because that's a very big issue, and that had a lot to do with the twentieth century.
Science had proven itself much more efficacious in the promotion of human welfare, safety, security, and health than religion ever was.
I mean, no hate on religion, but it's just a basic fact that uh sanitation and better food production, uh, free markets.
These had and technology, these had all contributed almost vastly more to human well-being than religion.
Now, again, we're just talking physical well-being, we can talk about sort of issues of the soul or the spirit.
That's a sort of separate category.
But in terms of just human beings not getting sick and died, uh, secularism, science, medicine, the free market, these all contributed almost infinitely more to human well-being than religion had.
And I'm not saying religion Christianity was completely unrelated to these things, but nonetheless, if you sort of look at that sort of flat line of human well-being over what seems like uh it's sort of been extended now.
You know, this this skull that's been developed in Asia, that's a very old humanity might have not come out of Africa, comes out of Asia, and we seem to be a million years old rather than two hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand, which is sort of what I've heard.
I've even heard as little as a hundred thousand.
None of that really makes any sense to me, you can't get from eight to human in that short a time period, in my view.
So it makes more sense for it to be for it to be longer.
So you look at their sort of human well-being over a couple of hundred thousand years, it's completely flat-lined and horrible and ghastly and wretched and terrible.
You know, half of people dying before the age of five and so on.
And then free markets and modern secular science comes along, and human well-being is enormously improved.
In other words, by rejecting the idea that we can understand the world through revelation and prayer and biblical texts, but saying uh wipe the blank, wipe the slate clean and start from scratch, human lives are immeasurably improved.
That's a very significant issue, and we don't you know you can't just wave it away.
You can't.
So in the nineteenth century, the success of science led to a general skepticism towards the value of religion.
And as a general skepticism towards the value of religion came along, a general skepticism towards virtue, ethics, right?
This is Nietzsche's will to power, this is the class conflict theory of the communists, uh this is uh Darwinian evolution, uh social Darwinian evolution, uh survival of the fittest, uh, eugenics, like all of this stuff was just like, well, if science is so great, and science has improved human society so much, which it did, then the religious ethics fundamentally can't be true.
Or there's no particular reason to believe them.
A superior system of human well-being had come along, which is secular science, free market, and so on.
None of which is foundationally predicated in the Bible, right?
I mean, thou shalt not steal, for sure, but all societies generally ban stealing, at least from pe on to pee on citizens to citizens and serve to serve, but it is not uh sort of foundational property rights is not written into the Bible.
So the problem is, if you base morality on God, you can escape morality by disbelieving in God.
Now, of course, if you're religious, you will say, well, you don't escape morality.
You simply defer the punishments until uh after you die, right, or maybe being haunted Macbeth style before you die, but you don't eliminate morality or the effects of morality, you simply defer them.
But that's not a proof.
And basically that's just saying you should believe in religious morality, because otherwise you go to hell.
And that's not a moral argument.
That is a argument from consequences, that is simply a threat.
And a threat is not an argument.
In fact, a threat is a confession that you don't have an argument.
I mean, that's why people needed to be threatened over the vaccine, Because they would not release the papers and the data, right?
Didn't have a good argument.
So the issue that you can escape morality by disbelieving in God is so foundational that it drove me to, you know, burn the midnight oil for quite some time to develop a theory of ethics that does not rely upon the commandments of God to get the ought from the ears, in defiance of humor.
So I have that.
Now, the other argument is, well, you get your morals from the government, from the government laws.
But of course, the entire purpose of the Nuremberg trials, the entire purpose of everything that happened second world war afterwards, the horrors of the Holocaust, the horrors of the Holo Demor, and uh all of the various other ethnic cleansings that occurred across the world, is to say uh, you know, natural law is law is a reflection of universal morality, versus uh positive law, which is law is simply whatever is written in the books, and it is not referencing an external morality.
I mean the horrors of the twentieth century was so great that the Nuremberg trials were basically, okay, it was legal, but it was evil, and so we cannot have governments dictating morals, because the law is not an argument.
The law hopefully is an enforcement of an abstract moral argument, but the law itself is simply the threat of negative consequences, it's not an argument, which is not to say that all laws are unjust, but it certainly is not the case that all laws are just.
My God, we know that, without a doubt.
So we cannot rely on the government to consistently produce moral laws, and we cannot give people the out of escaping universal morals by simply ceasing to believe in God.
Which is why my book is entitled Universally Preferable Behavior a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
Rational proof.
Now, you can say that I can escape UPB, universally preferable behavior, by rejecting empiricism, reality, and reason.
Well, sure.
And you can reject science by being psychotic.
But people who are psychotic have no particular credibility when it comes to reality.
I mean, would you take the statements of someone about abstract complex topics seriously if they said I'm literally seeing flying unicorns copulating in front of me right now?
And you know, let's assume that that isn't happening, right?
So if somebody says I uh am seeing dragons uh float through the sky uh above a sea of titanium with elves on their backs that are both elves and elephants simultaneously, if somebody said that, would you take anything that they to said about reality seriously?
No, because they're psychotic, right?
Going through some horrible brain-breaking delusions, right?
Sort of beautiful mind style, right?
I mean, the God wasn't that bad, but and so if people say, well, I reject rationality consistency and and so on, then they're not going to have any particular credibility in society as a whole.
Now, of course people will say, well, it's a higher reality and it's mysticism, but is it deeper truth or platonic blah blah?
But you know, we still have to sort of work on that as a whole.
But in general, you are not offered a speaking position at a scientific conference if you reject the scientific method, if you reject reason and evidence and morality.
Would you take the mathematical pronouncement of anyone who said two and two make five with any seriousness at all?
You'd say, no, well, they clearly have something wrong with their brains, and therefore we don't listen to them.
They would be excluded by saying that two and two make five, not just from mathematical conversations, but from reality as a whole.
So my proof that theft can never be universally preferable behavior, rape theft assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior, has been accepted and admitted by everyone I've debated it with, everyone.
Even the logic professor from a couple of weeks ago said it's unassailable, yeah, of course.
Right?
And I won't go into the proof here, you've probably heard it a million times.
And so, yes, somebody can reject my proof, but only by rejecting logic.
And people who reject logic openly are not listened to in any say in a rational society.
All right.
Do objects in the natural world, asks someone, have an essential quality, or are their attributes constructed in the effort to make sense?
Sure, objects in the natural world have essential qualities.
Now, they do not contain within them well, the sort of Aristotelian argument for essence, like what is the essence of something, right?
So it doesn't create so it doesn't contain within itself any kind of essence, uh sort of a um a tree does not have the definition of tree embedded in its uh leaves and limbs and bark and wood.
So we have a concept in our mind that describes things.
Now, what does it describe?
Now, of course, when people were really really working on the question of concepts, um Aristotle and Plato in particular, uh I mean, Democritus had a theory of atoms, but they didn't have sort of the modern comprehensible theory of atoms and of the elements, right?
And so when we are describing a tree, we are describing consistency in elements and atomic structure.
If I say this is uh metal, and this is water, then water I'm describing H2O.
Metal I'm describing the elements, uh, the atoms and so on that make up the metal, and the atoms that make up metal are very different from the atoms that make up water.
So we have concepts because matter is created by atoms, and atoms are consistent.
A carbon atom is a carbon atom, a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen atom, an oxygen atom is an oxygen atom, and they have consistent properties uh across the universe through all time, and so on.
I mean, the number of neutrons, electrons, protons, uh is the same.
It's the same thing with chemistry, and it's the same thing with uh physics, it's the same thing with uh cells.
Right.
So if you look at a tree, a tree is composed of particular cells, and those cells themselves are composed of particular atoms, and both the atoms in a very consistent way and the cells in a much more a much less but still very consistent way, have stable and predictable properties.
The atom can't die, but the cells can die, the atoms can't mutate, but the cells can mutate, you know, this sort of thing.
So we have concepts because matter has universal stable and consistent properties based upon uh atoms.
So the high the the most abstract concepts are based upon the consistency of uh atomic structure and behavior.
All right.
You mentioned on recent episodes how no prior philosopher discussed childhood parenting and childhood trauma, and that's what prompted your book Peace for Parenting.
Why do you think it's the case?
Well I think I think it's because of the sort of vast and significant separation between males and females in the past.
So I remember uh many years ago, uh before the show really, before I started my show, I was chatting with my wife about tyranny and evil and philosophy and so on, and she said, yeah, and but it all starts with the family.
Supernova, right?
And I think um my wife's uh training and knowledge and experience in these areas is uh very very powerful to me.
And, you know, it kind of hit me like a thunderbolt, and I began to sort of work on these kinds of theories about explaining tyranny through early childhood experiences.
I myself, of course, went through therapy uh for two years, three hours a week, and eight to ten to twelve hours a week in journaling, so a lot of digging into self-knowledge and so on.
So I think the separation between the male and the female worlds had the women deal with early childhood and the men deal out there in the world, uh men would uh often get more authority over more interaction and authority over the kids when the kids hit late latency,
sort of nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and so on, but by then uh whatever's happened in the sort of first couple of years of life is embedded in the personality, and it's just like, well, this is just who the person is or how the person is, as opposed to seeing who they could have been in the absence of trauma.
So I think there was a lot of separation between males and females, and men did not take usually a huge amount of uh time to take care of infants and see what happened.
So there was the female world of females, babies and toddlers, there was a male world, and the the two were quite separate in many ways.
And so I think also you needed to have a good conscience, like you need to have a this is very sort of underappreciated uh uh uh uh fact that you have to have a good conscience in order to have an objective moral examination of ideas, arguments, good, evil in the world.
And so having never harmed a child, in fact, generally being very positive to children, especially my work in daycare, but also within my family, but having never harmed a child, I could examine issues of child abuse and negative actions against children and and non-aggression principle, and because I've never hit a child, I'm never hit anyone.
I've never hit a child, I've never punished a child in that kind of way, and so on.
So I think having a good conscience uh helps, but also you you just need to be there for those uh early years.
And uh my wife's uh particular graduate degree training was in early childhood education and so on.
So I think that her prompt in that direction was very helpful.
All right, would UPB apply, uh, this is another question, of course, sorry, would UPB apply to an alien race of sentient intelligent beings, or could their evolution have driven them towards a value system that would be completely incompatible with the human value system?
Uh no.
I don't th I don't think so.
Because all life starts with violence, and restraining violence according to virtues and values is the essential task of morality and therefore civilization.
So UPB's values are applicable to all creatures able to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, conceptually, right?
And so what what do we say to kids, right?
We say, well, how would you like it if someone did that to you?
Right?
So that's taking some sort of personal experience and try to universalize it and so on, but then we ask them what is right and what is wrong.
Well, stealing is wrong.
That's a uniquely human concept.
In nature, stealing is de rigueur, it's how a lot of creatures get their resources.
So all life evolves out of uh violence, aggression, deception, and so on.
And at some point we say, is this right or wrong?
Is this good or bad, moral or immoral, good or evil, and uh it will be the same UPB is the same all over.
I mean, it's sort of like saying would would a different race of creatures somewhere uh else in the universe have different mathematical principles?
Uh no.
Would they be dealing with different properties and behaviors of matter and energy?
Uh no, those are universal across the universe.
So the non-aggression principle is a defiance of the immediate value of violence and the acquisition of resources.
And so they would have evolved out of violence and deception, and then at some point they would have to say that violence and deception are immoral from a ethical standpoint, and UPP would apply universally there, so uh I don't think that there'd be any system of ethics that would be any different anywhere in the universe.
Alright, you said it is my firm belief that illness often follows a lengthy period of feeling useless.
Having a purpose, especially a moral purpose keeps you healthy.
Could you explain the physiology behind that first statement?
I mostly agree with the second.
Now, again, none of this is medical advice.
Uh this is just my amateur thoughts on the subject, of course.
But in life, uh stress is the Aristotelian me, right?
If you have a stress-free life, then your brain generally tends to invent problems and you feel useless.
If you have an overly stressful life, then that can cause you to become ill as well.
And some examples for this would be that the data can be mixed in some areas, but there does seem to be a significant increase in the risks of sort of heart disease and and stroke and other forms of serious illnesses, a forty percent rise in the first short fairly short period after a person retires.
Now, of course, you could say, well, he's retiring because of health issues, but that's been controlled for to some degree.
So uh retirement leading to uh illness is kind of known about that.
And from an evolutionary standpoint, let's say we have tribe A and tribe B. And from an evolutionary standpoint, tribe A has uh people who don't contribute anything.
And through some genetic work, the people who don't contribute anything get sick and die.
Tribe B has a bunch of people who don't contribute anything who just keep on living and living.
So which tribe is going to grow more?
Again, we're not talking right or wrong, we're just talking about sort of uh these uh raw Darwinian realities or absolutes.
So if you have a tribe where the people who don't really contribute anything just live on and on, and then you have a tribe where through genetic quirks people who don't contribute anything die off, then clearly the tribe which has people who die off, again, not through violence, but just through illness.
People who die off, if they're not contributing anything, release resources to other people who are contributing things.
I mean, I'm sure you've heard about the Inuits, formerly known as the Eskimos, that they will take their uh significant elderly, people who are too old and roomy and half blind and right, and they will put them on a little ice flow and just sort of push them off into the coals, right, so that they'll join their ancestors and so on.
And they do that because to provide resources, you know, and I'm talking when resources are very scarce and and hard hard to win, providing resources to those who can't provide any value in return is negative for the long-term survival of a tribe in a state of scarcity in a state of nature, particularly where it's very hard to get get resources.
So if you have that as a sort of absolute, then we would expect that the tribes that succeed are the tribes where the useless uh don't last as long as the useful.
And again, I'm not talking good or right, good or uh bad, right or wrong, just talking about sort of brutal Darwinian stuff.
So uh human beings who aim for a stress-free life are rarely happy.
They feel that their life has no meaning, you know, just what was it, uh Sandman used to say, you know, uh you can just uh retire and and spend your time on the beach uh taking pictures of lady boys or something like that.
He used to say this sort of many years ago.
And, you know, sitting on the beach taking Polaroids at people, kind of gross, creepy and weird, but it's not much of a life.
And uh there is a sort of depression or a feeling of uselessness.
I mean, and just evolutionarily speaking, we would expect that people who are useless would feel some prompt to start becoming useful, because again, an excess of people who aren't providing for creating anything in society leads to a expenditure of resources with no future, right?
So uh let's sort of take an example that there's somebody who kind of lies about and uh doesn't hunt and doesn't take care of anything or anyone doesn't go get berries, doesn't ward off predators, doesn't build fences, it just doesn't just lazers around all day.
And then you also have a pregnant woman.
Now a pregnant woman isn't also hunting and doing all these like late stage pregnancy.
So let's say that you only have one unit of food per day.
Right.
Enough to keep someone doing okay, but uh and you can only give food to either the guy who's lying around doing nothing and isn't doesn't have any kids and doesn't hunt and doesn't fish and doesn't right contribute, doesn't build, just like lying around doing nothing, you can give it to him, or you can give the food to the pregnant woman.
What is best for the survival and flourishing of your tribe?
Well, it's not to give food to the guy who's not doing anything, it is to give food to the pregnant woman.
So human beings in general do not feel good at a life of uh self-indulgence and not really doing much of anything.
And the reason being is that if there was uh an evolutionary quirk that gave people a great sense of contentment and happiness and not doing anything, they would overburden their tribe's resources and their tribe would collapse and fail.
So, you know, whether you like it or not, it doesn't really matter.
But you will be happy when you produce things of value, and if you're a male in particular, you feel happy when you produce excess value, because males are designed to turn over 90% of the value that they provide to a wife and children.
That's how we're designed, and that's how we evolved.
And those who didn't feel that way didn't last, or didn't the tribes didn't last, or the individuals didn't last.
And so we're just not happy when we're selfish.
And of course, some people will say, but I'm happy when I'm selfish, yeah, for sure.
But that's very much the exception, and certainly not for the long run, in general.
And I'm old enough now, you know, again, I'm gonna claim the age card, sixtieth year and all, that I've seen this sound like sixty urinal, sixtieth year and all.
So a demoralized was the term from the other day by the Yuri Bezmanov, thank you, for the person who saved me from that missing.
So you want to have A purpose in order to be happy.
You need to pr produce and provide excess resources in order to be happy.
You need to have a social group in order to be happy, and you need to do things for others in order to be happy.
That's just how our uh our happiness systems have evolved.
And again, there may be people who are the exception, for sure, but they're not part of the general conversation about the general general humanity, right?
So I think that if we feel useless, and the most the people I've known who've been the most useless in life, and again, I'm not this not scientific, but whatever, right?
But the people who feel the most useless who don't really contribute anything, who don't produce anything and so on, uh, they tend to be kind of self-destructive, if not downright negative towards their own long-term survival, to put it mildly, they tend to take excessive risks.
They tend to be kind of depressed, they tend to be and especially as they age, right?
So you need a purpose because that's how we've evolved, and that general you don't want too little stress, because that makes you seek out self-destructive stimuli.
You don't want too much stress, because that also causes health problems.
So I hope that makes sense.
All right.
Some butter says ultimately the left right divide is equality versus freedom.
Both are necessary for a society to function.
What would be the best form of government to enact?
A sensible balance between the two.
Uh there is no sensible balance.
Uh you can go to my books, uh everyday anarchy and practical anarchy.
So the basic thesis of everyday anarchy is that we are surrounded by voluntary conf contracts that are unenforceable all the time.
And if you look at influence peddling in the state, influence peddling, bribery and so on, is uh illegal in most systems, certainly Western systems.
You can't just give a bunch of money to a politician and get him to enact a law.
I mean, that's illegal, right?
It's a bribery.
So uh influence pedaling is illegal, but we all know that influence peddling is how the system works.
And so the government runs on contracts that can't be enforced by the government, which is how I know we don't need the government to enforce contracts.
So it's sort of an argument, everyday anarchy that we see this happening all over the place all the time.
We say, well, we've got to have a government to enforce contracts, it's like but the government runs on contracts that not only can it not enforce, but it would be illegal to try to enforce.
So that's how we know we know.
I mean, if if the government runs on unenforceable contracts, then we know that we don't need the government to enforce contracts, there are other better mechanics to do that, so.
Alright.
So check that out.
Could exile be a legitimate nonviolent extension of shunning when an individual persistently breaks a social contract?
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah, and I talk about this uh in my novel The Future, freedom.com slash books.
Check it out.
The uh Louis Staten.
So yeah, exile is the way to go, for sure.
If all property is privately owned in a stateless society, then if nobody wants anybody to be on their property, they can't be on anyone's property and they can be kicked out of the society.
All right.
Uh so yes, very good.
A proposition, says someone.
Hard determinism is true.
Our belief in agency is the veil that separates from a non-dual, quote, enlightened understanding and perception of reality.
Well, but philosophical contradictions need to be resolved.
So this is sort of the noble lie that uh Plato talks about in the Republic, which is uh you make up this society of gold, silver, and bronze people, and it's not true, but it's a noble lie that's necessary for the functioning of society.
Uh no, there's no nobility in lying.
So if we have no choice, if we are just flesh and atom robots grinding down the train tracks of inevitability, then that that is a fact.
But uh I I will never know that fact, and you will never know that fact.
Because anybody who discovers that fact would never bother arguing with anyone.
So let's say that somebody has discovered that this is true, well, you and I will never hear of it, because to accept that something is true means that there's no point debating anything.
And so you don't debate with the TV, right?
You don't debate with your computer, you don't debate with a robot, you don't debate with the microwave, because they are mechanistic devices.
So if you accept that a human being is indistinguishable from a television set, a television set has inputs, you can talk to it, it has output, sound and video.
And so if you accept that human human beings are just the same as a television set, then you would know more debate with human being than you would with a television set.
I mean, most of us have this sort of theory that when we're very young that the carriages in the television set are sort of real and alive and and you could maybe talk to them or you know something like that.
And of course you can see people in uh in movie theaters if somebody's going down a dark alley, like no no no, turn back right.
I mean they're just kind of joking for the most part, but we sort of outgrow that stuff and we realize that it doesn't matter what we say to the character in the movie, a movie's already been shot ending is assured, right?
So we can't say that human beings are exactly the same as everything else in the universe.
But I'm only going to debate with human beings, because to debate with and to try and change the mind of anything else would be insane.
There's no point trying to talk a raspberry bush into putting forth strawberries, but I will try and change someone's mind, right?
So the moment you debate with someone you're accepting that they're fundamentally different from everything else in the universe, therefore you can't say that hard determinism applies to them as well.
So we'll never know.
All right.
I mean, I know, because when people debate with me.
So Ideas, somebody else writes, ideas of the supernatural rule out the possibility of materialism since they one should be inexplicable in observed nature, and two are irreducible in quality, and three cannot be created ex nihilo.
Either we experience the supernatural or our mind is part immaterial.
So supernatural uh just means contradictory.
That's it's all it means.
And contradictory entities cannot exist as per reality, as per Aristotle's laws of physics, as per sense data and reason and evidence and science, right?
Contradictory a square circle cannot exist.
Contradictory entities cannot exist.
You cannot have consciousness without matter.
It's like saying there's a shadow but nothing to block the light.
So you cannot have consciousness without matter.
Consciousness is an effect of the material mind.
Uh the mind is an effect of the brain.
In other words, consciousness is an effect of the physical brain.
So saying that there's immaterial consciousness is simply saying that there's a shadow with now without anything blocking the light, or there's a square circle, it's like, no, no, there isn't.
Uh there's just not.
There's just not.
So I'm sorry, there's just not.
It's like, well, no, it's a self-contradictory entity.
Like if I say square circles can't exist and you say prove it, I'd be like, I don't know what to say.
Square circles are self-contradictory entities.
And therefore, consciousness without matter is a contradictory entity.
So a supernatural simply means effect without cause, self-contradiction, uh, and these things are invalid and can be dismissed.
Do you have any thoughts on Taoism?
Uh yeah, I've uh talked about this kind of stuff in my history of philosopher series, which for this weekend FDR sorry, FDR URL.com slash gift.
All right.
Somebody says I was pushed into marriage at eighteen by the Baptist couple that, quote, adopt adopted me in high school.
They were so afraid I'd embarrass them by having premarital sex or something, but they also wanted me to be college educated before having kids.
We didn't make it through college together, and I was divorced and devastated at twenty-one when they, quote, disowned me.
I'm sorry about that, by the way.
I went on to graduate, got a great job, and proved to everybody, as if that matters, that I was a success, regardless of being raised in the underworld.
Fast forward to turning thirty, biological clock.
Fear of missing out, all my friends having babies.
I married the guy the next guy that seemed to have it together, and I ended up a single mom of two for the next fourteen years.
Wow.
All this sounds so degenerate and it's hard to admit.
But I'm married to a quote, good man now that my kids love, and I think it's being been good for them to have a quote dad finally, even though I did everything wrong.
My philosophical question is, after making so many mistakes, can I be useful can it can I be useful now to help others not make the same mistakes, or should I just shut up forever?
I'm very sorry about all of that for sure.
It's very sad and tragic, and you have my deepest sympathies.
But yeah, I mean be honest about your mistakes.
I've been honest about the things that I've done wrong in my life and have tried to help people avoid the mistakes that were imminent to me, so yes, for sure, you should talk about these things.
Alright, somebody writes, if God wants us not to do something, but gave us free will to disobey, was it always his plan for man to dissent?
Well, so genuine free will uh means that you don't interfere, and God does interfere by giving rules and having miracles and his son come and getting crucified and so on.
So a genuine free will would be to not uh have God come down and intervene and interfere, right?
I mean you can't say To a rat in a maze, you can go wherever you want, then make the rat really hungry and put smelly cheese at one end of the rat desperately wants to get, right?
Because then you're interfering.
You can say, well, you can go wherever you want, but here's the cheese, right?
Or you say you can't say, you can go wherever you want, but I'm going to open and close various gates, right?
That's not really really free will.
The issue, of course, with free will and God is that God is all knowing.
And because God is all knowing, God knows what we're doing tomorrow.
God knows what we're doing five years now, ten years from now, fifty years from now, God knows exactly what we're doing down to the last atomic detail.
And if you know in advance what people are going to do, do they have free will?
Now, you you can say, well, God is outside of time, but just removing standards doesn't solve the problem, right?
I can't say two and two makes five, and then if you say no it doesn't say no, no, no, this is outside of math.
It's like all knowledge, omniscience means knowing everything past, present, and future.
So that's the big issue.
All right.
Are hedonistic people truly happy, or is the happiness theory they they seem to feel just an illusion?
Well, hedonistic people are happy in the short run.
I mean, if you I don't know, inject heroin in between your toes, uh then you are happy uh in in the short run, for sure.
If you have a challenging educational path ahead of you to get what you want, but instead you win the lottery and don't have to do any of that, you feel a certain amount amount of relief, right?
And and so on.
So hedonistic people are happier in the short run.
And I'm not like I'm not like hedonism is always bad.
Hedonism is when you do things for the pleasure of doing them.
And and that's fine.
I I like that feeling after I work out.
It's hedonistic.
I like the muscle burn, I'll I like the feeling after I work out.
So there's a certain amount of hedonism and a certain amount of moralizing that we have to do in life.
If we're just ascetic and moral and and self-sacrificial, then we're usually too miserable to be able to sell morality to anyone, so to speak, and you do need to be able to to um get other people to believe what you believe, and you can do that to some degree with reason and evidence, but to a large degree it also needs to be you have to have the kind of life that people might actually want to have, right?
I mean, if you're a personal trainer, you've got to have uh muscles and abs, and that will give you credibility, right?
So uh hedonism is fine, it's just not a foundational principle for your whole life.
You can't just do whatever you feel like doing and expect to be happy, because we have to live according to our nature, and our nature gives us a reason and morals and the capacity to defer gratification, and that is the essence of humanity.
I don't think there are too many creatures that would succeed the marshmallow test, like take one marshmallow now, or I'll give you two in fifteen minutes, right?
So human beings have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards to defer gratification and to seek the greater good rather than simply the material physical sensual pleasures in the moment.
And again, it's nothing wrong with physical material sensual pleasures.
I'm not an ascetic, but it should not be the foundational purpose of your life.
Uh question, how do you get a philosophy graduate off your porch?
Well, you thank him for the pizza.
That's very funny.
Uh somebody writes, if the Communist Control Act of fifth nineteen fifty-four, fifty USC eight four one to eight four four, declares that communism is both a political conspiracy and a clear and present danger, then where does the li where does the line fall between protecting liberty and destroying it in the name of protection?
Well uh communism generally or malevolent ideologies worm their way into existing power structures and use them against you.
I mean, would you take a gun out if you knew for certain that the criminal who was unarmed was going to wrestle it from you and use it against you?
Uh no, right, because then your gun would be a danger.
And generally the protectionistic devices that we put in place to keep us safe are taken over by the worst people among us and used against us, and so on.
So you you simply have to keep advocating for more and more freedom, and with more and more freedom you get fewer and fewer avenues for tyrants to take you over.
Uh why does the education system persist, despite how fast everyone outside of it is learning things?
Oh, because it's shielded by uh state power.
The epigenetic question, does the experience of past generations translate into the lived experience?
Uh yes, so significant trauma changes genetics, and so the trauma is transmitted to the children both in terms of the environment and in terms of the genetics.
Which is why trauma against people is so bad, you're sort of rewiring their genetics to some degree, right?
If energy is the foundation of all reality, if you look deep enough, all matter can be expressed as energy, and energy is a quasi-metaphysical concept that operates within physical contextual framing and parameters, does that imply that energy is a metaphysical concept, and thus all of physical reality is a branch of metaphysics?
I'm not sure what you mean by energy is a quasi metaphysical concept.
No.
Concepts exist in the human mind, not out there in reality, right?
You can look at a bunch of trees and say that's a forest.
The concept forest exists within your mind.
It does not move like a ghost or spider web uniting all the trees in some exterior fashion.
I'm not a platonist, I'm actually anti-platonism.
Concepts exist only in the mind, and the accuracy of concepts is determined by the validity of the relationship between the concept and that which it describes.
So if you say a forest is a group of trees, and then you say, but it also includes uh a cloud, fog, and a moose, well then you have incorrectly.
Uh put things together.
If you look at a herd of caribou, and you say that's a forest, you say, Well, the forest is defined as a collection of trees, that's caribou, so you're incorrect, right?
And you wouldn't say that's a herd of trees, call it a forest, right?
Herd a herd moves, a forest does not.
So except outside of McBeth.
So energy is not something sorry, energy is something that exists in the universe, and we have the concept energy which exists in our mind.
And so do not mistake the concept for the thing itself.
Uh does intrinsic or objective value exist?
Well, again, intrinsic, objective, and value are all concepts within the mind.
They do not exist except as ideas within the mind.
They do not exist out there.
So uh no.
No, just because something doesn't exist out there in the universe doesn't mean that everything is therefore subjective and part of a whim-based thing.
So if you say two coconuts and two coconuts make four coconuts, two and two make four, doesn't exist out there in the world.
There's no number two, you put the two coconuts together and their atomic structure changes to mirror the number two.
Uh no, uh, there's still two individual coconuts.
But two and two make four is not subjective.
It doesn't exist, like the math equation doesn't exist out there in the world.
Right?
Equals M C squared, but carved into the nature of things is not the equation E equals M C squared.
It's simply an accurate description of the relationship between matter and energy.
So the fact that things don't exist out there in the world doesn't mean that they're subjective, but no, intrinsic objective value.
Like if I if I'm dying of thirst, then a bottle of water has great value to me.
But the value doesn't exist in the water.
It exists in my mind and in my body and my yearning and my preferences.
If I've just had three bottles of water, another bottle of water has very little value to me.
I in fact it's probably a negative value.
I don't want to carry it, I don't want to have it, I don't want to buy it, right?
I've just had three bottles of water, I'm fine.
I'm not thirsty anymore.
So the bottle that I yearn for because I'm about to die of thirst, and the bottle that I don't want because I just had three bottles of water, that can be exactly the same bottle, right?
So there's no yearning or non-yearning in the bottle.
It's all in the mind and the preferences and the physiology.
So no, it doesn't exist in the object in which we which we desire.
If it can be proven that we live in a simulation, how should we act?
But it and I go over this in my book Essential Philosophy, Essential Philosophy.com, it's free, uh so you can't it can't be proven that we live in a simulation.
Uh and and stop at that crap.
Like honestly, stop at that crap.
Oh, it's a simulation matrix, blah blah blah.
Uh you are uh you are spreading a kind of mental illness, right?
Because if you tempt people into thinking that they live in a simulation, then that's very dangerous of their sense of reality, and uh evil people don't believe that.
They they will take over.
All right, tangential tangential to recent discussions, how about a classic?
What is justice?
What is revenge?
Uh so uh justice is restoring a wrong to a state of equilibrium, right?
So justice is if somebody steals a hundred dollars from you, they give you a hundred dollars back, at bare minimum, right?
That's restoring things to a state of relative equilibrium and um revenge.
So justice is restoring a wrong to a right that is just good enough.
Right?
So you don't want the restorative value to be hugely greater, right?
Like if somebody steals a hundred dollars from you, and then you say, well, the restitution of that is for you to give them a million dollars, then people will beg others to steal a hundred dollars from them, so you get the rest to get the uh the restitution of a million dollars, right?
So you want it to be just good enough that you're okay.
You're not glad that it happened, you're not sad that it happened, it's fine, it's okay.
It's even Stephen, right?
So that's justice.
Well revenge is simply attacking back those who attack you.
So somebody says I'm stuck in the fact that there is no evidence of God slash gods, but the idea that at some point matter just came into existence out of nothing is also equally unbelievable for me.
And and that's fine.
That's an idle thought to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon perhaps, but doesn't matter.
Honestly, it doesn't matter, I get it.
But it doesn't matter because the purpose of morality is virtue.
Ethical behavior, uh morality.
And so where existence came from is immaterial to the fact that we must be uh pursuing good and thwarting evil in the present.
And where the universe came from fifteen billion years ago, whether it was a big bang or something else entirely, whether it expands and contracts, is absolutely immaterial to the good that you need to do in your life.
And don't be distracted by, well, you know, I I can't really go out and be good and and promote virtue and thwart evildoers until I know where existence came from fifteen billion years ago.
That's you know this is this is all abstract ideas planted in your mind by evildoers so that they can do their nasty work unmolested.
I mean if if you were dying of cancer, would you want your doctor to give you a cure for cancer or to say, well I really can't focus on the c on giving you the cure for cancer even if I have one, like some let's some pill the cures of cancer in some magic at work.
Right?
So you we say just give me the cure for cancer.
It's like, well no, but I don't really know where matter and energy came from and fifteen billion years ago and you'd be like, can you just please God don't dither away worrying about what happened fifteen billion years ago and don't give me the cure for cancer, right?
So all right is man inherently evil?
How is the society kept together with that absolute chaos if man is inherently evil, is it a knowledge of a base morality within us as human beings, how do we know good from evil?
Good from evil so evil is when you use the principles of virtue to undermine harm and destroy good people.
Right?
So if when you lie to other people, it's a noble lie, it's helpful propaganda, it's not even really a lie, and so on and it's it's good and you deny, right?
So you're saying lying is either not lying or it's good or it's necessary or people need it, and noble lie.
But then when someone lies to you they're just an evil, filthy pathological liar who needs to be harmed and destroyed.
Right?
So if when you're in power you persecute your political enemies and then you lose power and then your political enemies come after you and you say well that's just unjust and wrong and horrible and evil and unconstitutional and tyranny and it's like well then you're evil because you are using your power to benefit your friends and harm your enemies as political power tends to be used, but when other people do that they're just evil and wrong and it's unconstitutional and so on, right?
So that's using the principles of virtue in order to harm, thwart and destroy people who are trying to do some good.
Alright.
Or even if they're not trying to do some good, they're still operating the same principles that you did.
Man is not inherently evil for sure.
I mean people are generally how they're raised as a whole, right?
So if you're raised with peace and reason and virtue and courage and strength and honesty then that generally it's like saying do people inherently speak English.
It's like well no language morality is a kind of language and you teach it through peaceful parenting.
And so men inherently have a capacity to learn language, what language they learn depends on what language they're exposed to.
And so that's why I focus on peaceful parenting.
What are your thoughts on music and its effect?
Does it have an effect?
For instance, listening to classical music versus hip hop music.
Sure, yeah yeah it does.
I remember uh many years ago uh my brother liked this song uh by Phil Collins.
Uh that's all I think it's called and it goes uh just when I thought it was going all right I found it wrong when I thought I was right it's always a shame.
It's always the same, it's just a shame that's all you can say day I'd say night tell me I'm wrong when I know that I'm right.
And so the opening bit, right?
Just when I thought it was going all right, I found it wrong when I thought it was right.
Okay, it's not a great rhyming scheme.
And that was worming its way into my brain and it was actually kind of eroding my confidence and I literally had to reprogram myself over a period of a couple of weeks and I reversed the lyrics.
Just when I thought it was uh just when I thought it was going all wrong, I've added them right when I thought I was wrong, right?
It's always the same, it's not a shame, that's all.
And I literally had to reprogram my brain, because that repetition of, you know, I mean, Phil Collins has had what, how many marriages, and he couldn't even get his wife to leave his Florida mansion or something like it's just wretched, wretched life, in my view, and drinking and and uh wrecked his back and all that kind of stuff.
So and you can listen to the sort of ferocity of his song um about his uh his divorce.
Uh it's just uh uh a brutal and and uh uh incredible song, uh, you know, full of sort of foundational rage about his uh divorce, and uh it's you can tell everyone I'm a dumb disgraced slander my name all over the place.
I don't care anymore.
So just screaming at the top of his lungs, I don't care anymore, just uh and the drumming is fantastic.
Very powerful stuff, for sure, but it has a really negative effect.
You know, when I was really down as a teen, you know, listening to side three of the wall every night before bed probably wasn't quite the right idea.
But yes, so it does have a big a big effect.
Sense of life stuff and so on is really a powerful and important.
So Alright, almost done.
I appreciate that.
Let's finish it up.
Again, I really appreciate everyone's questions.
Somebody says, the wife sets the tone, my wife sets the tone in our relationship, as she clearly won't adjust her behavior.
Should I let her set the tone and follow suit, so to speak, can you elaborate on the credo that you treat them as they treat you?
Does this apply to my wife?
She won't adjust her behavior.
Well, then you chose somebody that you were going to have to adjust to, and you did that because you had a mother, usually a mother, it could be a father.
Uh you had uh somebody raise you that you had to constantly adjust your behavior to, and you could never expect them to adjust their behavior to you.
So you're simply continuing that pattern, right?
So uh the very sort of brief mechanics of it in the mind is this.
So if your mother is kind of a narcissist and selfish and you constantly have to adapt to her behavior, she never adapts to your be your requests or preferences, then that's a standard she sets up.
Now, if you come across a woman who uh is thoughtful and sensitive and adjusts to your behavior and is reciprocal and kind and all of that, then your mother's very unhappy, because that kind of person will look at your mother and say, Your mother treats you really badly.
She doesn't she's just selfish and expects you to conform to everything she wants, and that's really bad.
And so your mother doesn't want anyone like that around.
And so when you meet someone who treats you as your mother treated you, then it's familiar and you know how to handle it, and you uh your deficiencies and skills of negotiation and assertiveness are not exposed, and your mother's very keen on you marrying someone who's just like her, so her power over you is not threatened and and so on so uh that's the mechanic of it.
So Alright.
I mean, some choices you make remove further choices, right?
So uh how do you strike a balance between accepting others' imperfections versus holding others to a certain standard in business and or personal relationships?
Well, of course, we all have our imperfections, so you're not accepting other people's imperfections, you're asking them also to accept your imperfections.
So there are small imperfections of habits which are fine, uh, but there are moral corruptions that are not fine.
Right?
So if I am uh roaming around the house singing, and it turns out someone is in the house who was napping, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to.
Uh it's not, you know, I don't sort of sit there and sing in their ears when they're trying to you know care anymore.
I don't care anymore.
You don't sort of sit there and I don't do that, of course, but you know, there'll be times when I you know, if if I forget to turn off some electronic device once in a while, and there's a bink and a beep and a burp at night and it wakes up my wife.
I mean, that's you know, but you know, so these sort of imperfections, but I don't sort of I'm not angry at my wife and then uh, you know, play the Soviet anthem oversampled in in full Bluetooth speakers by her bed, because that would be a form of assault in a way, right?
So, yeah, the occasional carelessnesses and thoughtlessnesses and so on or accidents or mistakes, those are all fine, but any sort of persistent batter pattern of negative or destructive behavior is pathological and harmful and corrupt and possibly evil as well.
So um it's fine, people will forget things, people are late from time to time, but if there is corruption that is not even admitted to, then that is something that I would not sustain in a relationship and wouldn't have someone like that in my life over time.
Alright.
I hope that helps Freedom Ain.com slash donate to help out the show, I really do appreciate that.
Thank you for all these great questions.
Sorry for the ones I missed, and lots of love am I here.
I'll talk to you soon.
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