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Dec. 9, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:32
Does Virtue Exist?
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All right.
Hi, everybody.
Seventh Mollino from Free Demand.
So this is a little chitty chatty about morals.
This is sort of an introduction to the concept of UPP, rational secular ethics.
Not so much the proof for it, which I've done many times before.
You can get the free book at freedomain.com slash books, but really when people say, do morals exist?
And that's an interesting question, of course, because the question is, what exists and what does not.
Now, if you say, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.
You have a brother named Bob.
Well, does brother exist?
Your brother, the guy, he does exist as a human being.
And certainly you share genes and so on, right?
But does your brother as a relationship exist?
Does the relationship exist?
So I meet my wife.
I met my wife almost 25 years ago.
We got married 24 years ago.
And we have a vow that binds us, right?
So we are husband and wife.
We are married.
Does the marriage exist?
Well, no, it doesn't exist because we're not bound together.
If we were Siamese twins, then we would share a bunch of organs.
If we were chained together, the chain together would join us together.
But does something called a marriage exist?
No, what exists are the vows.
There are certainly legal documents and so on.
But the marriage as a relationship does not exist.
Ah, this is my boyfriend.
This is my girlfriend.
Well, you are introducing them as Bob, your brother, Joe, your boyfriend, Sally, your girlfriend.
So what you're doing is saying, this is my boyfriend, if you're a woman, right?
This is my boyfriend.
So Bob, or Joe, the boyfriend, he exists.
Physical, tangible reality.
But does the boyfriend part of him exist?
In other words, when he says, I am your boyfriend, does anything change about him?
I mean, hopefully his commitment and so on, but nothing physically changes about it.
There is no gravitational force binding my wife and I together.
You say, I have a brother.
It's a description of a relationship, although there may be no relationship.
If he's adopted, or you're both adopted, you say, this is my brother, but you have no genetic relationship in the same way that you would if you were brothers from the same mother and father.
Right?
Physics do not change when you go from one country to another.
There are imaginary lines with different rules that are written down and enforced.
The rules don't exist.
Laws do not exist in human society in the same way that the laws of nature exist.
Or, to put it another way, do the laws of nature exist?
Let's go even one step further.
Let's step right off the edge of this cliff of derangement and get to the real facts of the matter.
So the laws of a country do not exist in the same way that the laws of nature exist.
The laws of nature existed long before there were people.
They will exist long after there are people, should that ever come to pass.
And they exist whether people believe in them or not.
They cannot be overturned by a revolution, right?
The revolution can say we are replacing the laws of England with the laws of America in 1776.
So you can have a revolution and you can change the laws.
They were no longer paying taxes to England.
We're now paying taxes to the people in Washington.
But you can't have a revolution and say we are no longer subject to the laws of physics.
In England, we are now going to design our own laws of physics.
In America, we have broken away from England.
Therefore, fire does not burn and ice is no longer cold, right?
Now that we have left England, we can control the weather with our nipples.
I mean, come on, we've all tried, right?
So the laws of nature, of physics and evolution and so on, the laws of nature are not subject to human will.
The laws of society are.
Relationships do not exist in reality as tangible things, right?
When you say the magical words, I take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife, I take this husband to be my lawfully I take this man to be my lawfully wedded husband, no shimmering force detectable on a spectrometer rises from the book or the priest's hand and binds you together in some physical way.
When a piece of debris floats through the solar system and then gets captured, gets captured by the sun's gravitational force and ends up joining in orbit somewhere, that is now part of the solar system because it is subject to universal and objective forces like gravitation.
So when people say, do ethics exist?
What they're asking is, do rules exist?
Now, clearly, rules of virtue, rules of ethics, rules of morality do not exist in the same way that rules of physics do.
And what's interesting is that rules of physics don't exist either.
But that doesn't mean that they're subjective.
So gravity is something you can only see the effects of.
You cannot hold gravity.
You cannot trap gravity.
You cannot paint on gravity.
Gravity is simply mass attracts mass.
So the interesting thing is that we as human beings exist only because of things that don't exist, which is the laws of physics.
We describe the attraction of matter to matter and call it gravity, but it does not exist as a thing, as an object.
It is a relationship.
The speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, what is it, 300,000 kilometers per second or something like that?
The speed of light is absolute.
You can't put up a sign, like when you're driving, to say we're going from 40 kilometers to 50 to 70 to 90, back to 70, right?
That doesn't work that way.
But the speed of light does not exist.
Light travels as fast as it travels, so fast that even when I was a kid and I first read about this stuff, of course, I tried my very best to turn the light off and close my eyes and hope to see the room half in light and half in darkness, because I didn't understand the 30 frames a second that the human eye has and so on, right?
So we only exist because of gravity, right?
Because without gravity, there would be no planet, right?
There would be no sun.
There would be no, was it a fusion reactor?
There would be none of that.
None of that stuff.
There would be no aggregation of matter into the form of a planet.
There would be no sunlight.
There would be no gravity.
There would be nothing to hold the atmosphere here.
You get it, right?
So gravity doesn't exist, but it's why we're here.
There would be no such thing as life without gravity.
Because there'd be no heat.
There'd be no planet.
There'd be no atmosphere.
So we only exist because something of something that doesn't exist, namely gravity.
Now, obviously, when I say something doesn't exist, I don't mean that there's no such thing as gravity.
There is, but it doesn't exist in that sort of tap it and measure it in terms of you can't put a ruler along its length.
You can see the effects of gravity.
You cannot see gravity itself.
Gravity does not exist in the way that a rock and a tree exists or a carbon atom or a cloud.
Gravity is a relationship.
It does not exist in and of itself as a tangible thing.
It is real, but it doesn't exist in a tangible fashion.
So we only exist because gravity, which does not exist, exerts its universal, absolute, unnegotiable way with matter.
If you look at that which gives us meaning in our lives, it is our relationships.
Our friends, our family, in particular, husband, wife, children, extended family.
Those are the things which give life meaning.
Love is the greatest form of happiness, and love requires that we act virtuously towards those who are virtuous or those, if we're parents, that we have control over when they're young.
So what's interesting is that life only exists because of something that is not tangible, gravity.
And life only has meaning because of something else that doesn't exist, which is affection.
And marriage is one of the greatest sources of happiness or misery, if it's good or bad.
But marriage doesn't exist either.
It is a relationship that is not even like gravity.
It is a commitment.
You say, we are married.
We have become one flesh, you know, as the Bible would say.
But it doesn't exist.
If you look around at the things that don't exist, it's wild.
If you just look at atoms and space as a human being, it's almost incomprehensible.
Let's look at another word, value.
Value.
Well, it doesn't exist.
I'm sorry, it just doesn't.
Ah, well, food is valuable to a starving man.
Well, no, no, not if he's trying to kill himself.
Not if he's got anorexia.
Not if he's on a hunger strike.
Value is subjective.
How much would you pay for a bottle of water if you're dying of thirst in the desert?
Anything and everything that you own you would do, right?
In fact, we can say of people long dead, they were brothers.
Now, when a person is born, Bob, right, Bob is born, he has his atoms, he has his cells, he has his body, he has his being.
Now, what changes in Bob's body?
Let's say Bob is four years old and his parents give birth to a girl.
He has now become, from being an only child, he has now become a brother.
What has changed about his atomic structure, his cellular structure?
Well, nothing.
I mean, his mind will be changed and shaped, and so on.
He might get some bruises if he's play fighting and whatever, and that's an accident.
Bob does not change his atomic or cellular structure the moment that his sister emerges into the world.
He is now a brother.
He has a sister.
His sister is born who already has a brother.
But neither of their atoms are changed.
When I say to my wife, I'm your husband now, and she says to me, I'm your wife now, nothing has changed about our atomic structure.
Nothing has changed about ourselves.
So when people say, morals don't exist, it's a little confusing to me because gravity doesn't, quote, exist in a tangible way.
Gravity is a relationship.
Marriage doesn't exist in a tangible way.
Marriage is a relationship.
Siblings, the sibling, each sibling exists.
The sibling relationship is a relationship.
If you have a boy and a girl, and the girl sadly dies, the boy is now an only child.
He said, I had a sister.
Say, are you a brother?
I am not a brother.
I was a brother.
I am now not a brother.
So let's say the four-year-old, the sister is born.
I'm sorry to use such a grim example, but it does clarify.
So you've got your four-year-old.
His sister is born.
He is given the sobriquet of, sorry, I almost got that word out of my mouth in the right way, sobriqué, of brother.
And let's say then, tragically, his sister dies.
Now he is no longer a brother.
Let's say, again, I'm sorry to use the example.
Let's say that his sister is born and due to some tragic accident, his sister dies five minutes after she is born.
Well, he is a brother for five minutes.
He has a sister.
And then five minutes later, he goes from not being a brother or, you know, whenever you count the brother thing as starting conception or whatever, right?
So he is a brother until his sister dies.
Now he is no longer a brother.
He may be again if his parents have more children, but he's no longer a brother.
So if we say he's a brother when the sister comes out, the sister dies five minutes later.
So he's a brother for five minutes.
Well, what has changed in his atomic structure or his cellular structure or anything physical about him?
What has changed in any foundational way?
Now, you can say, of course, well, he's four.
He understands what it is to have a sister.
His neurons have rearranged themselves.
And I get all of that for sure.
For sure.
But neuron rearrangement or neuron beliefs don't define everything.
You could be an only child and dream that you have a sister.
And during that time of dreaming, you believe that you have a sister.
Your neurons fully accept that you have a sister.
You wake up and you don't have a sister.
And, right?
So I'm not saying there's zero shame.
Of course, there's change, right?
I mean, I'm a very different person because of who I married.
My wife is a very different person.
We're both better people because of who we married.
So I get all of that.
But nothing foundational has changed in his cells.
We don't say, let's say, when somebody learns a new skill, we don't say they've become a different person.
I mean, Bob, since you learned French, I don't know what to call you.
Black Jacques Shalak.
I don't know, right?
So it's the same person, right?
Bob now knows French, but he's still Bob, right?
So when people say, well, but morality doesn't exist, it's a little incomprehensible.
And of course, I'm not saying people are like this who say that as a whole, but it's kind of sociopathic in a way.
Again, I know that's harsh, right?
But I'll tell you sort of why I think that.
Like, if you're a husband and you're on a business trip and you sleep with some woman and you cheat on your wife and so on, right?
And your wife finds out about it, right?
Some indication, right?
Your wife founds out about it and you say, Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I mean, why are you mad at me?
Our marriage doesn't exist.
It's not a thing.
Would that be an answer?
Like, wouldn't that be something that only a very weird person would say?
Can you imagine that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I cheated on you.
I guess technically I cheated on you.
But our marriage doesn't, I mean, our marriage doesn't exist.
Where does our marriage exist?
It's not a thing.
It's not an object.
I can't paint it.
Can't move it.
Don't put it in a box and ship it to wherever we're going.
I mean, the rings exist.
I get that.
There's pieces of ink on paper.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But our marriage doesn't exist.
So I'm not cheating on anything because the marriage isn't real.
It doesn't exist.
It's not valid.
Not real.
Like, wouldn't that be strange?
Family is a concept that describes people both biologically related and unrelated.
The unrelated, hopefully, being the parents and the related being the children.
Is a family a family if no one is related?
Sure.
Husband and wife is a family.
Husband and wife and two adopted kids from two different parents.
That's a family.
So a family is a description, but family doesn't exist.
You can't take a family portrait with no people in the portrait.
Say, well, no, I just, I want a picture of the family, but I don't want any people in it.
I just want a picture of the idea of like it doesn't exist.
Your country doesn't exist as a thing.
I mean, there are buildings, there are costumes, there are weaponry.
I get all of that.
But it doesn't exist in the same way a tree, a rock, a cloud, a carbon atom exists.
So when people say, well, something doesn't exist, therefore it's not valid.
It's not real.
It's not true.
It's not important.
Like, I don't understand it.
I don't fundamentally understand it because gravity doesn't exist.
It's why we're here.
Love doesn't, quote, exist as a thing, right?
Family doesn't exist as a thing.
Marriages don't exist.
Friendship.
Oh, here's Bob.
He's my friend.
And then Bob moves away and you sort of lose touch with him and he's no longer your friend.
But, you know, you and Bob have not become different people.
You haven't mutated into different life forms.
You haven't become lizards or anything like that.
But the friendship has gone.
You're still you and Bob is still Bob.
You just no longer have this description of a relationship called friendship.
So everything that we do that has meaning, that gives us joy, that gives us connection, that gives us comfort is based on things that don't exist.
And saying, well, but morality doesn't exist.
I mean, could you imagine in some, you know, the sort of aforementioned horrible tragedy where the family loses a child.
A family loses a child.
One of the worst things that can happen, right?
So the family dies, a child dies.
And then would you say, well, but, you know, you go to the funeral, you give a speech and you say, I mean, look, it doesn't mean anything because there's no such thing as the category child.
There's no such thing as the category family.
They don't exist.
So, I mean, there's no meaning to it.
It's not real.
It's not valid.
It's not valuable.
The category doesn't exist.
We should only value things that exist.
Would that make any sense at all?
Even if there was no biological relationship, this was the child that you had for five minutes after you adopted and then it died, he or she died.
I mean, that would be terrible.
So it's a very cold and alien view of the universe.
I'll be honest, I mean, just being straight up, right?
If I, if someone, I can't even say myself, if someone were to cheat on their wife, as I said, saying, well, marriage doesn't exist.
Show me where marriage exists.
Show me.
Show me where marriage exists.
It's not a thing.
It's not tangible.
I can't touch it.
Right?
People would look at you like, what is wrong with you?
Like, there's something very weird and alien and cold and kind of sociopathic about that.
Numbers don't exist.
Logic doesn't exist.
The scientific method doesn't exist.
Family, love, gravity, these aren't tangible things.
So when people say things which don't exist have no value, what they're telling me is they have no relationships that mean anything to them at all.
Listen, I'm really sad about that.
I think it's very tragic.
But saying things don't exist and therefore have no value or meaning, no relevance, is so strange to me that I can't, I generally can't wrap my head around it.
I mean, computers don't have relationships, right?
And relationships don't exist.
Computers don't have relationships.
So the way that I think people are saying that they exist is in this kind of weird, cold, sociopathic way where all that exists is atoms and space.
I don't know, is that autistic?
Is that, I don't know, sociopathic?
Is that like there's well, you show me where morality exists.
Morality doesn't exist.
But everything that keeps us alive by staying on the planet, everything that keeps us alive and gives life meaning and happiness doesn't exist.
Gravity, relationships, love, family, connection, affection, right?
These things don't exist.
My wife and I are not bound together by the laws of physics, but merely by convention and promises.
It's an odd way, a very odd way of looking at it.
Now, I understand, of course, I really do.
I understand that I have not proven morality by saying this.
But hopefully what I am getting you to understand, and I'm sure you do in general, and if you don't, this talk won't help you.
But I just want to be clear because it's not the people who say things that don't exist have no meaning do not exist in the same kind of mind space that I would understand in any way, shape, or form, or that anyone with any kind of heart or passion or connection or love would understand.
So we can't reach them, but we can reach the people in the middle, right?
There are people who understand that life and everything that gives it meaning, joy, happiness, and purpose is all founded upon things that don't exist.
We understand that.
So saying that something doesn't exist, therefore it has no value and has no meaning, has no objectivity, can't be analyzed and is pointless, is somebody who doesn't know fundamentally what it means to be a connected, happy, and related human being.
I don't know if it's like a robot would look and see atoms in space.
Robots don't have relationships with each other.
You know, some arm machine in a factory, right?
So logic doesn't have meaning, yet we strive to be logical.
Science doesn't have any meaning, yet if we want to say things that are true about the universe, then we need to follow the scientific method.
I mean, if you go to your doctor and you say, oh, I have a tumor, I think I have a tumor.
And he's like, yeah, it's just, it's just atoms, just like you are, right?
I mean, health is just a subjective preference.
I mean, what's healthy, let's say it's cancerous, what's healthy for the tumor is unhealthy for you.
What's healthy for you is unhealthy for the tumor.
So, I mean, I could flip a coin or I have no preference.
Like, that wouldn't make any sense, would it?
Because life is a value and health is a value.
Does health exist objectively?
I mean, you can say, well, you know, your liver failed and blah, blah, blah, right?
Sure.
Health exists as a description and as a preference that is subjective.
Because again, people who kill themselves or who starve themselves are not acting to benefit their health.
So when people say, well, does morality exist?
Show me where morality exists.
Morality isn't objective.
Morality doesn't have any meaning.
It's not factual.
It's not tangible.
It's not material.
It's not real.
I mean, they're expressing a preference that things be real in order for those people to accept things as valid, right?
Morality is not real.
Morality is subjective.
Morality is not valid.
So they're expressing a preference, but their preference doesn't exist either.
Right?
Not in the same way a rock does.
So this is the foundational self-contradiction of this issue: is that people are expressing preferences which don't exist, saying that something has less value because it doesn't exist.
But if they believe that things that don't exist have no value, they will express no preference at all.
No individual atom has morals.
I get that.
No individual atom has a preference.
So the preference does not exist in the same way that a rock and a tree and a carbon atom and a cloud does.
A rock exists, a preference does not.
So they're saying, I prefer that you say things that are true.
I prefer that what you say, Steph or the moralist, that what you say has a relationship to that which is true.
It is better to speak the truth than to lie.
In other words, they are expressing a moral preference that I be accurate and tell the truth and talk about things that are real and valid.
That they have a preference that is not subjective, but universal.
They have a preference that is universal, not an opinion.
They have a preference that is objective, that I speak the truth and not say things that are false.
And then they say, there's no universality and there are no preferences, because that which doesn't exist is invalid.
Well, universality doesn't exist.
There's no universality planet.
So it is a strange mindset.
It really is.
A very strange mindset.
And I hope that this little talk has helped you understand it.
Think about all the things in your life that don't tangibly exist, but give you meaning and purpose and happiness.
And that's not certain proof of anything, but it is certain proof that we can't just say that things that don't exist are not important and don't matter.
Unless we're some cold-blooded sociopath or serial killer, in which case, I think that the important thing is to just try and stay away from those kinds of people.
All right.
Thanks very much.
Freedomaine.com slash denate.
Have yourself.
A lovely, lovely evening, my friends.
I'll talk to you soon.
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