Feb. 25, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:02
The Truth About Animal Love! Listener Questions
Stefan Molyneux tackles listener Joe’s critique of his mysticism stance, calling vague terms like "higher power" sophistry while defending biblical interpretation as a personal framework. The episode dissects how communists redefined capitalism to blame systems for natural behaviors, linking forced workforce policies to declining birth rates by disrupting traditional family roles. It argues animal or infant "love" lacks moral agency—only humans, with potential future rationality, deserve rights against harm—while dismissing accusations of advocating abortion as misguided emotional reactions tied to dopamine-driven attachment. Shared definitions, not undefined language, prevent societal fragmentation and ensure meaningful discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
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Hello, Stefan.
Following your recent, your most recent as of today, FDR podcast 6292, I wanted to hopefully offer you some perspective that may or may not be helpful.
As before, I understand that your time is valuable.
I do think, though, that my perspective linked to IQ and seeing things very differently to you might be of aid.
It's interesting.
You know, I, like everyone, first impressions count for everything.
Some perspective that may or may not be helpful, you know, perspective is fine.
I have no problem with perspective.
What I'm actually looking for, though, is reason and evidence, right?
If I put forward a mathematical equation, you can say, I think I found a flaw in your mathematical equation, or I think I found a more elegant and shorter proof, and so on, that's great.
But if somebody were to say to me, if I put forward a mathematical equation and somebody were to say to me, I think I have a different perspective on it, that's a little confusing.
I'm not, as far as philosophy goes, I'm not really sure what perspective means in this.
I understand that your time is valuable.
Well, I'm not sure what that means either because I'm a philosopher.
I love, love, love philosophy, right?
This is the director of a few good men.
Was it Rob Breiner?
Anyway, I was working with Jack Nicholson, and they were rehearsing the speech at the end, you know, the you can't handle the truth speech.
And Jack Nicholson, they were filming everyone else's, and you don't expect the actor to put, who's not on camera to put their full juice into it.
But he did the full juice every time.
Rob Breiner was like, bro, save something, leave something in the can, leave something ready for the actual performance.
He's like, but Jack Nicholson basically just said, like, I just love acting.
I'm going to do it.
I'm just going to do it full, full tilt every time.
And that for me, I love philosophy.
So if you say, Steph, I don't mean to bother you with philosophical questions because I know your time is valuable.
That's what I do.
It's not a bother to be tasked with philosophical questions.
That's actually a big plus.
So, all right.
So seeing things very different to you might be of aid.
Again, if I say, I love sunsets and you say, I don't like sunsets because it feels like the end of the day.
I prefer sunrises.
Oh, that's fine.
I mean, you're a morning person.
I'm a night person for me.
As the sun sets, my imagination rises.
So these are just different perspectives.
It's not good or bad or right or wrong.
So seeing things very differently from me is fine.
Again, if I put forward a mathematical equation and you say, I see things very differently from you, I'm not sure what that means.
I'm looking for reason and evidence.
All right.
He says, the reason I've added this onto an existing email is just for familiarity because I will mildly use this backdrop for additional thought.
I did talk to you briefly on podcast 6147, but I wanted to offer you my thought process here because it might offer you some insight into your value in a way that you had not considered.
Look, I'm aware that sometimes it takes me a short amount of time to get to the point.
And this is a good reminder for all of us.
Get to the point.
All right.
He said, firstly, what I believe is important background is to my perspective on this entire mysticism thing.
I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful and that has communicated with us.
Certainly a little through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible.
Okay.
So the existence of something higher and more powerful.
So I know it's sophistry.
And I appreciate the email.
I really do.
I'm happy that when people email me, I'm happy to look at these thoughts.
And I'm certainly thrilled that people want my feedback.
So this is nothing negative to this.
So let's look at this sentence.
So the fragment of the sentence.
I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful.
Okay.
I accept that the I do believe.
What does that mean?
Does that mean faith?
Does that mean belief against reason and evidence?
Which is anti-philosophical.
Philosophy is reason and evidence.
So I do believe, I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful.
Okay.
So if someone has listened to me, if someone has listened to all reasonable philosophers who have ever lived, right?
If someone has listened to any kind of philosophy, right?
And they want to propose an argument.
What's the first thing that needs to be done?
What is the first thing?
Come on, we all know this, right?
What is the first thing that needs to be done?
Define your terms.
So if somebody puts a whole bunch of sophisticated, complicated, rich, deep, but certainly debatable words into a sentence without defining any of them, I know I'm in the presence of sophistry.
And sophistry is manipulation, right?
And I'm not saying this is conscious.
And again, I appreciate the conversation, blah, blah, blah.
But let's look at what's really going on here, right?
I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful.
Now, that's sophistry.
And again, I'm not saying it's conscious.
That's manipulation.
Because would I ever say, I do not believe in the existence of anything higher and more powerful than me?
Because if I say, well, no, there's nothing higher or more powerful than me, then that's obviously a statement of vaingloriousness, right?
Of vanity, of narcissism, megalomania.
Well, I, there's nothing more higher or more powerful.
There's nothing higher or more powerful than me, right?
So the existence of something higher and more powerful.
Okay.
What does belief mean?
Do you have reason and evidence or is it just faith?
What do you mean by existence?
What do you mean by existence?
And how, like, the things that we know exist because they accord to reason and evidence.
I'm currently walking on the ground.
I accept that I exist.
My legs exist.
The ground exists.
Gravity exists.
The wind exists.
Like exists because I've got evidence for them, right?
They accord with reason and evidence.
So if you're going to say, I do believe in the existence of something, now what is that thing?
Higher and more powerful, that's sophistry.
Of course, there are things higher and more powerful than me.
Infinite numbers of things, really.
There is the stars are higher than me.
Mount Everest is higher than me.
Gravity is more powerful than me.
Time is more powerful than me.
Nuclear radiation is more powerful than me.
A T130 from Fallout is more powerful than me, right?
A forklift is more powerful than me.
So what does this mean?
Higher and more powerful.
So it's important to note what is not defined.
I do believe, don't know what that means.
Existence, don't know what that means.
Something, very vague word, suboptimal.
Higher and more powerful.
Don't know what that means.
And that has communicated with us.
Don't know how you're talking about communication.
He says, certainly a little through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible.
Certainly a little through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible.
So I would, I mean, I'm in absolute adjective vague land.
Now, I get that we're talking about mysticism, but if mysticism is to be more than subjective, passionate opinion, it needs to have some definitions.
And this person says, well, this creator, this God, I mean, certainly this creator, this God, has communicated a little through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible.
That's wild.
What a statement.
What an absolutely wild statement.
What does this mean?
What mean?
What mean?
I mean, if this person has a methodology of truly knowing what communication from God in the Bible is valid and what communication through God in the Bible is not valid, that is a truly wild statement.
Because it means that this person has an objective methodology for determining what in the Bible is accurate and what in the Bible is not accurate.
Because let's say that this creator or this something that this person believes in has communicated accurately in 10% of the Bible, and then 90% is outside the Bible.
This means that this person has a way of differentiating what is accurate and handed to mankind by God in the Bible and what is not accurately conveyed by God in the Bible.
What an absolutely wild statement.
It means that this person is more accurate than the Bible.
Everyone in the Bible thought that God was communicating to him.
But this person says, no, no, I know what is accurate in the Bible, what is not accurate in the Bible, and I can also accurately know what is communicated by God outside the Bible and what is accurate or inaccurate in that.
I mean, what an amazing statement.
And no definitions, no methodology whatsoever.
So it's really, really important to have empathy for the person that you're writing to, the person that you're communicating with, right?
You really, really have to have empathy.
I always try to think, as best I can, what is on the receiving end of my, like what it's like to be on the receiving end of my communication.
And I've, you know, I've become a bit more gentle and a bit softer over the years, as can be sort of imagined, you mellow out a little bit as time goes forward, hopefully not in a cucky passive way.
But what is it like to be on the receiving end of this communication?
Because there's no definition and there are absolutely staggering claims that this person knows God's mind so well and knows the Bible so well that he can accurately differentiate what is valid and invalid in the Bible and what is communicated by God outside the biblical context.
Now, this is a knowledge claim that is truly staggering because, as I said, people in the Bible believe that God is talking to them and he says, no, no, no, I know when God is talking to people, even if they believe he is, I know when he's not, and so on.
That's a wild statement of epistemology, right?
This sort of study of the nature of knowledge.
And there's been no definitions.
And why would I accept any of these statements as true or valid or anything other than a truly narcissistic and chaotic rambling?
I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is what it is.
He goes on to say, there is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up.
There is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up.
So the challenge with that is he's speaking to a rational philosopher, perhaps the most rational and empirically minded philosopher that at least the world as a whole has had much interaction with.
And so he knows my standard of proof.
He's talked to me before.
He's listened to my shows before, and he's completely ignoring them and just going on an adjective-late, an adjective-heavy ramble fest.
And he says there is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up.
I have no idea what that means.
And when somebody is talking to me and I have no idea what they mean, and it's not just some message out of the blue, but somebody who I've talked to before who's listened to the show before, it means that they don't know that I don't know what they're talking about, which means they cannot put themselves in my shoes.
They cannot speak to me according to the clear and obvious standards of proof and accuracy that I have put out for over 20 years into the world.
It means that they lack empathy for me, and they really do enjoy watching the clickety clack of their own typing.
It's nothing to do with me.
This is somebody just blurping because they're not sitting there saying, well, Steph, well, what are Steph's standards of proof?
What are Steph's standards of rationality?
How should I best communicate with Steph to get my ideas across in an effective way?
They're just like, no, no, no.
There's a human design chart to back this up.
He goes on to say.
So I do believe the new age at its core has some good concepts.
But I also believe that there is a huge and incredibly powerful toxic element of the new age.
There is a mix of non-complete understanding and such.
For this reason, see now, that's not a reason.
Some good concepts.
What is a good concept?
I have no idea.
Huge and incredibly powerful toxic element of the new age.
That's just an argument, like an ad hominem.
There's just toxic elements.
What does that mean?
There is a mix of non-complete understanding and such.
For this reason, I do think that your perspective and that many who have similar perspectives is valuable.
Well, thank you.
In that keeping things to objective reality.
To change said toxicity, there is more to this understanding, but I think that explains the core of my thoughts.
No, it doesn't explain anything.
So there are good elements in mysticism.
There are bad elements in mysticism.
And empiricists can be helpful in keeping the bad elements of mysticism at bay.
No idea what any of that means in practical terms.
There was a saying when I was a kid, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
In other words, how does this translate to something reality, right?
In reality.
People that are truly inclined to the spiritual stuff, I look at, will find it.
But people that don't really commit and use the bare minimum of it to justify, but people that don't really commit and use the bare minimum of it to justify madness.
It is good that it is challenged.
It is similar in some ways if you imagine a society that has innovators and Socrates following philosophers.
The innovators want to do innovating, and the Socrates people want nothing to exist or be real or whatever.
Even though philosophy as a discipline is extremely useful and powerful, some of those innovators might be best served in discussing it as the ravings of lunatics and just getting on with innovating.
So I want to describe the dream I had that stopped me from talking further about mysticism.
Language as Connection00:04:13
I fully acknowledge none of this makes sense since I have no following.
What?
I don't know what that means.
You can make sense if you have no following.
But it still might offer an interesting perspective.
It is, of course, not likely that if I offered a genuine challenge to your view on that, that evildoers would pick it up and run with it.
But apparently the dreams thought it was a suitable fear to highlight.
So I went with it.
And, you know, this to me is very heartbreaking.
Honestly, it's very sad to me.
This is waves of sadness in the soul of my being.
Because this is a human being, and again, I'm sorry to be blunt, but it is important.
Bro, if you're listening to this, if you ever do listen to this, you don't know how to connect with people.
You use a lot of language that is extremely opaque, that is very baffling, and that gives no evidence or clear passage to thoughts that we can share in.
And honestly, it's selfish and it's intrusive.
And I say this because I want you to be able to connect with people in the world, in life.
I really, really want you to be able to connect with people, which means if you want to connect with people, you really, really have to.
You must speak in terms that they can clearly understand.
Otherwise, people just nod.
They hear a whole bunch of syllables and then they move on because there's no one to connect with.
Language is how we connect with people.
And we can only connect with people in shared definitions.
Please, please understand this.
You can only connect with people when you share definitions.
If you think of something as simple as, I went to the store.
If you say in English, I went to the store to someone who doesn't speak English, they won't know what you're saying.
You can't share your thoughts with someone because they don't understand, right, what you're saying because they don't understand the definitions of words in English or how they sound, right?
If you've ever watched a foreign movie, you usually have a choice, at least with more recent foreign movies.
You can have really bad voice actors or you can have the original actors and read the subtitles.
If I remember going to see the movie Highlander many, many years ago, I bought a month-long pass on Air Canada to travel anywhere in Quebec and Ontario and flew around.
This is when I had a month off from my job up north, and I went with a friend and we flew around.
We went to Ottawa.
We went to Quebec City.
We went to Montreal and I think Thunder Bay.
And we just tootled around and had a month of travel, which was really great fun.
And I can't exactly remember why, but we ended up watching the movie Highlander in French.
And of course, there were no subtitles.
There was no technology for that back in the day in movies, in theaters.
And I had some vague idea what was going on, but not really, right?
I went there for the Queen soundtrack as well.
So you can only share your thoughts with people who share your definitions.
If you can imagine teaching a child in a truly cruel, if not downright sadistic manner, if you could imagine teaching a child the wrong words for everything, that child would be completely isolated because nobody would be able to understand what was going on.
There's a famous story, at least within my family, from when I was a kid, that I spent about a year with my own language.
And it was only my brother who could translate my language.
I would say, ah, eh, ah eh.
And my brother would say, oh, he wants an, Steph wants an egg, right?
And so I had my own language that only my brother could understand, and he had to translate.
And this went on for about a year, if I remember.
Not that I remember directly rightly.
I remember vaguely, ah, eh, ah, eh.
But children go through this.
I can't remember the name of it, but they go through a phase of kind of made-up words for things.
My wife, somewhere in our drawer, has a list of my daughter's made-up words for things.
Bidibo was spider and so on.
And she, my daughter's name, of course, is Isabella, and she referred to herself as Ibiya Ibia for a while.
I think that's how I think my wife has my daughter's number on Ibia.
It's how it shows up.
Made-Up Words Phase00:13:01
So you can only connect with people when you share definitions.
If you don't define your terms with people, you cannot connect with them.
All you're doing is making a bunch of bleating sounds that they may vaguely like, they may vaguely not like, but you can't connect.
People without definitions are fog banks.
And you can't hug or connect with a fog bank.
So be precise in your definitions because that's the only way that you can overcome isolation.
And you may have arguments about the definitions and this, that, and the other, but you absolutely need to have shared definitions if you are to connect with other human beings at all.
We are social animals and social translates to shared definitions.
I'll give you an example.
I'm sure you get it, but just to be extra clear.
So if you have the word fair, fairness, what is fair, F-A-I-R.
If you have the word fair, and that to you means equality of opportunity, equal treatment under the law, that's fair.
And somebody else has the word fair, which is equality of outcome, that it's fair that everyone ends up with about the same income, then that's the difference between freedom and tyranny, between capitalism and totalitarianism.
And one of the ways that society is fragmented is people shatter shared definitions.
Shared definitions is culture.
Culture is when you share the definitions of things.
And one of the ways that society is fragmented and destroyed, I mean, people can't even decide what the words male and female mean anymore.
And this is sort of the relentless.
The people who want to promote totalitarianism always work to shatter definitions.
And so if you want to connect with people, if you want to love and be loved, you must share definitions.
My wife and I have very similar definitions of the word love.
And if you don't share the definition of the word love with someone you claim to love, right, let's say that for you, love means, you know, tenderhearted, emotionally connected support or whatever it is.
And then to the other person, love means yelling at you and challenging you to become your very best self.
Then, you know, she's going to view you as goopy and you're going to view her as abusive.
You don't share the same definitions.
And so define your terms means can we connect as people?
Can we share in the same reality?
Because we communicate our thoughts and feelings through words.
And if we don't share definitions with other people that they agree with, right, then we can't connect with them.
We are isolated.
And when we are isolated, we then don't have to work to share definitions.
We can just say stuff.
But people don't understand us because I don't understand what this guy's talking about.
It doesn't mean anything to me because he hasn't gone through the process of making sure that we agree on definitions.
And if you can't agree on definitions, you can't be close to anyone.
You are tragically, fundamentally isolated.
So when people say, I want to define my terms, they're saying, I want a meeting of the minds.
I want a shared mental space that we can both inhabit and communicate back and forth with each other.
If people just go on, you know, highly complex and highly contentious and debatable terms like existence without defining anything or proof, without defining anything, I know that they have no habit of connecting with others and they have not gone through the rigorous process of other people caring enough about them to ask them to define their terms.
If somebody says, I don't know what you're talking about, what they're saying is, I cannot catch the ball that you think you're throwing.
We can't play catch and throw if you're only miming throwing a ball or you're throwing a log or you're kicking a stone that clatters along the ground.
Like we need to have the same definitions.
And people who just ramble and say stuff with no consideration for whether the other person understands them, which is because we've talked before, this guy's listening to my show a lot.
He knows.
I need definitions.
Not because I'm a bully, but because we can't connect in any other way than shared definitions.
It means that this person has not gone through the process of people caring about enough to say, I don't know what you're talking about.
Which means he's either surrounded by people who don't care about him or he's completely isolated.
And this is why his social connection and communication skills are so bad.
And I say this because obviously you have the capacity to improve and actually connect with people.
He says, my argument on mysticism would be as follows.
This is not something I'm committed to or care about, but it is what I was thinking.
It is now the story in something else I want to express.
Firstly, your original statement is that mysticism is the gateway to mental illness.
Yep, absolutely guaranteed.
Firstly, of course, I wrote to you on the definition of mysticism, which I would use my own after having defined it due to the problems with yours that I highlighted.
I would further refine that now by defining a primary and secondary faith.
But anyway, per your argument, I would say if mysticism is a gateway to mental illness, then that would assume it would not be, it would not in general be used to solve mental illness.
I would further refine the use of symbolic things to reach understandings, such as tarot cards, by asking, why do we dream?
Why does our subconscious communicate in such a way?
I would answer this by saying, what is the alternative?
The alternative being that without the subtlety and indirectness, the subconscious would communicate more like a dictator, even giving the information without veil would have this effect.
So again, I can sort of work really hard to try and puzzle out what this guy is saying, but I don't want to impose my guesses at his meanings on his meanings.
But because he refuses to define his terms, even though he knows that that's an absolute requirement of any kind of philosophical conversation, I have to guess what he means.
Now, it is, this is why I say it's kind of selfish.
Why should I have to guess what you mean?
Why can't you write in a clear fashion so that I know what you mean?
Because you're putting out a bunch of words that's vague, because vague meaning I could sort of guess at in there.
But why should I do the work to try and figure out what you're talking about?
It's selfish.
It's like there was an old Sanford and Son show, I think it was in the 70s or something like that.
And the son was moving a big heavy cylinder or propane tank or something like that.
And his father was holding a little spatula or something like that.
And the son gave his father, who was kind of lazy, an exasperated look, like, why am I doing all the heavy lifting and you're just carrying some stupid spatula?
And that's what it's like having these conversations without definitions.
Why do I have to do all the heavy lifting of trying to puzzle what it is that you're talking about?
And why don't you know that you're completely obscure?
It's selfish.
You're just saying stuff.
And the funny thing is, he says at the beginning, I know your time is valuable.
Okay.
So if my time is valuable, define your terms.
If you accept that my time is valuable, then you need to define your terms so that I don't have to waste time trying to puzzle out what it is that you're trying to say.
Even, so he goes on to say, even giving the information without veil would have this effect, since once we know the right thing to do, we have more responsibility and consequences than before we know that.
So now he's saying, after making these claims that he knows what is and is not valid in the Bible, and now he's saying that mysticism has something to do with dreams.
Mysticism has nothing to do with dreams.
Dreams are an empirical function of consciousness.
Now, they're only empirical to the person who is experiencing the dream.
I had a dream about an elephant last night.
I can't prove it to you, but I mean, I know that I had a dream about an elephant last night.
So dreams are empirical to the individual.
Now, if he's trying to tell me, Steph, you know, there can be some value in dreams, then he's probably missed the dozens and dozens of times. over the last 20 years where I have worked very hard, in, I might add, a very skilled fashion, to unpack people's dreams.
I mean, you just have to go to FDRpodcast.com, do a search for dream, and you will find dozens and dozens of dream analyses.
I've talked about the power of the unconscious.
I've talked about the power of dreams.
So if he's telling me, Steph, mysticism has value because dreams have value, then he's putting dreams into the realm of mysticism, which they're not.
They are empirical experiences to the individual.
Everybody knows that when you go to sleep, at some point over the course of the night, you are going to have some vivid dreams.
I clearly, if I view mysticism as a gateway to mental illness, which it is, and then he says dreams are a form of mysticism, then it wouldn't make any sense that I would do all these dream analyses without telling people that dreams being mysticism are a gateway to mental illness.
In fact, I view dreams as being a gateway to mental health, one of them, anyway.
So none of this makes any sense.
He says, so what does this sound like?
This sounds like schizophrenia.
I would then talk about how a possible theory for it is that if the problem gets too serious, if the subconscious mind is screaming too loudly, it busts through the conscious-subconscious barrier too loudly, and that's where this comes from.
This is roughly what I think happened with my schizophrenic break.
Some of my ideas come indirectly from the psychologist Eleanor Greenberg, who talks about how dreams help low-level schizophrenics.
And again, my great sympathy for your schizophrenia.
And one of the ways that I believe you could try and alleviate some of the effects of schizophrenia would be to insist upon shared definitions in conversations.
He goes on to say, this would then correlate schizophrenia and that kind of non-objective symbolic understandings more than with the symptom of other problems than with it being the cause.
I would also define mainstream faith-based Christianity as mysticism, as per my earlier example.
Now, of course, if I say, like, let's just run through this as a whole, and, you know, again, great sympathy for the schizophrenia, but I do believe that philosophy has something to say about mental illness.
I'm not saying schizophrenia in particular, maybe it's got an organic basis or whatever.
But if you're saying, Steph, you're wrong that mysticism is a gateway to mental illness and you are a mystic with a mental illness, that's not a solid argument, right?
All right.
So it talks about Ukraine.
He says, so now I get to the point.
Like I said, and strongly believe, it is unlikely evildoers would take such a reasoning as this and run with it to dent your power.
But the dreams still responded like this was the case.
The dream I had, and do not like to tell others my dreams, I prefer to interpret, but I'm making an exception here.
I was about to make a few YouTube videos on this, but I had a dream with Pearl Davis being aggressively tortured.
She has mentioned a few times over the years how she has been sued and things.
It was a pretty shocking dream.
It felt kind of real.
But what I think it could mean is that your platform and output in this kind of social war was significantly impacting people like Pearl by pushing back on intensely female and active toxicity we are currently witnessing.
Taking us back to the point on mysticism and the Socrates philosopher's analogy, I realize you might not interpret it the same way.
Like you might believe that all individuals and our dreams are parts of ourselves along a family systems therapy line.
But I also just wanted to provide that feedback in case it does provide some perspective or help in some way.
Best wishes.
Joe.
And listen, man, again, I appreciate the email and I'm certainly sorry for the stuff that you're suffering.
If I were in your shoes, what I would do is I would work very hard to rigorously define my terms so that you can meet people in actual reality.
It's a tough thing to do.
Propaganda aims to divide people and divide cultures and societies by redefining words so that the younger generation and the older generation cannot communicate.
Propaganda's Divide00:04:06
And that means that the elder generation has no wisdom to pass to the younger generation because everything has been redefined.
This is part of New Speak in 1984, right?
The destruction of words, the redefinition of words, the destruction of the ability to communicate and connect through shared concepts.
So if you look at the word capitalism, which simply means property rights and free trade, the non-initiation of the use of force for voluntary and peaceful transactions, if you look at something like capitalism, that's what it means.
But the communists, of course, have redefined capitalism to mean whatever I don't like about my life is the fault of capitalism.
It's capitalism's fault that I have to produce in order to consume.
It's not the fault of nature or reality or biology.
It is the fault of capitalism.
Capitalism then becomes an evil scapegoat for anything you don't like about your life.
Anything negative that happens, it's the fault of capitalism and so on, right?
So if society as a whole in a state of a free market finds young women in particular a little bit less economically valuable on average than young men in particular for reasons of testosterone, of energy, of focus, of hormonal stability, and the fact that if society values young men, which it has to be forced to do, if society values young men and young women economically the same, and in fact,
young women have now been pushed to the forefront of economic value through a variety of government programs and quotas and requirements, then you kill the birth rate.
Because when young women are at the most fertile, they're doing five foot four in an attitude and sneaky links and right.
They're doing all of this chanting nonsense in social media and not being very economically productive and not producing children.
So getting women into the workforce is an act of asymmetric warfare.
It's fifth generation or maybe even sixth generation warfare, which is to lower the birth rate through bribing women with forced paychecks, right?
So in a free market, if women are economically less valued, especially when they're young, because young women, when they can't make a lot of money, generally tend to get married and have children as their biggest source of their stability.
But if the government artificially raises their value through force and threats, then a young woman will go into the workforce.
But if in a state of freedom, people are less likely to hire young women who are going to have a series of babies and be unavailable to work, as opposed to young men, right?
When a woman has a baby and is a good mother, her economic productivity goes way down in the marketplace, in sort of the job environment.
Whereas when a young man has a wife and children, his productivity goes through the roof.
Two big jumps in male income, number one, when he gets married, number two, when he becomes a father.
And fatherhood is a way of taming some of the wild excesses of masculinity because when men become fathers, their testosterone drops and they're less likely to be kind of psychoaggressive criminals or other destructive mindsets.
So if in order for the culture and civilization to survive, women have to have children, and the fact that women have children makes them economically less valuable when they're young, that is a biological fact.
But of course, what happens is people say, no, no, that's capitalism.
Capitalism undervalues women.
Capitalism is sexist, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
So, and this is why there's a, what was it, Millennial Woes on X has a sort of famous tweet where he says, it's remarkable how much the left pretends not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible.
And they just, yeah, they just pretend not to understand things.
And so you can have conversations with people who use words entirely differently.
The fragmentation or balkanization of society is to do with different definitions.
Defining Love and Virtue00:03:38
So if I were in your shoes, what I would do is, you know, grip my teeth, sit down and work out from first principles everything I know and believe, define it, and then share those definitions with others.
Right.
So the word controlling, right, in male-female discourse, if the man doesn't want his girlfriend to go to the club and twerk in the laps of other men, and then he's controlling.
He has some standards, he has some preferences, and so on, right?
Whereas if the woman doesn't want to have her boyfriend to have any close ex-girlfriends as friends, right, it's not controlling.
No.
Anyway.
So, you know, Joe, a huge sympathies.
I really, really care about you connecting with people.
And the way to do that is to be disciplined, put yourself in the other person's shoes and make sure that you share definitions so you can get close to people and be less isolated.
All right.
So somebody says, somebody else wrote and says, it has been some years since I listened to your last podcast, why animals can't love.
At that point, I quit mulling you.
It has occurred and reoccurred to me that you continue to make consciousness or choice the mandatory when it comes to capacity to love.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Again, we are looking at definitions.
Does love mean to be attached?
Nope.
Nope.
Ducklings, we've raised some ducks in the Mollingu family, of course.
So ducklings will follow me.
And it's super cute.
You know, you're walking along the lawn and there's this little line of ducklings behind you scrambling over the grass to follow you.
That is an attachment.
Do they love me?
Nope.
And so that kind of attachment, that is biologically driven, hormonal, oxytocin, whatever is going on in the little ducklings, little pea-sized brains, they just programmed to follow the largest thing that they see when they come out of the egg.
And in fact, I remember as a kid seeing an experiment where they got ducklings to follow a large orange balloon.
Do they love the large orange balloon?
No, it's just programming.
It's just programming.
If you've been around ducks or swans or other kind of fowls, they sit on their eggs and they will gently turn over their eggs and it looks very affectionate and it looks very loving.
And they will sit there and be dehydrated and they'll only go to get water once or twice a day and they appear to be very devoted.
And of course, we project all of this love and affection and caring, but it's not.
It's just biological programming.
Not to say it isn't cute.
It's cute.
But we wouldn't want to say that the adults have a moral virtue-based love of their offspring.
It's like, no, it's just their genes have programmed them to take care of their own offspring because any genes that didn't program them to take care of their offspring died off.
So, of course, animals, birds have an instinct to stand up and turn over their eggs to make sure that they get, I guess, equal sunlight or equal warmth or something like that, right?
And they have the urge to sit on their eggs to protect them from predators, to keep them warm and so on, right?
Okay.
But that's not love.
That's just biological evolutionary programming.
So in terms of love, what I talk about it in terms of human love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Babies Can't Evaluate Moral Character00:13:03
If I say, I love cheesecake, well, what's the old, it's an old joke?
I love cheesecake.
Well, why don't you marry it then, right?
So we get that that's kind of a joke, right?
When I say, I love cheesecake, I'm not evaluating the moral qualities of cheesecake and preferring it to that evil carrot cake, because of course it is carrot cake that is the most virtuous dessert.
So when I say animals don't have the capacity to love, I'm saying that animals do not have the capacity to process the moral qualities of a caregiver outside of their own experience.
So if you think of a serial killer who's nice to his dog, well, if you think of a serial killer who's nice to his dog, his dog will have no problem with the owner being a serial killer.
The dog might even playfully help the serial killer dig holes, right?
Like the ghoul in full house is not a particularly good person, even refers to himself as a bad person, but he's got this dog called dog meat that's quite loyal.
Hitler liked dogs.
Dogs had no problem with Hitler and blah, blah, blah, right?
So dogs don't have the capacity to evaluate somebody's moral character outside of their own direct experience.
Of course, if a man is cruel to his dog, we would call him a bad person, and I would, for sure, it's a bad person, be cruel to animals.
If a man is cruel to his dog, then the dog will not like the man, but that's only because the dog is experiencing something negative, right?
And so dogs do not have the capacity to evaluate positive or negative qualities outside of their own direct experience.
So if you're talking about chemically bonded, automatic, instinctual, genetically evolved attachment, that's not love.
And babies cannot love you because babies cannot evaluate your moral character outside of their direct experience of you.
I mean, if you're nice to your children, but you cheat everyone in business, at some point when your children get older, they will understand that you cheat everyone in business and they will lose respect for you, even though you're nice to them.
If you have high integrity at work, but are mean to your children, right, they will evaluate you immediately based upon your negative, their negative exposure to your bad behavior, your hostile or abusive behavior.
They won't care that you have high integrity at work.
And children, teenagers in particular, are famously keen at figuring out, it's like an instinct, the moral hypocrisies of their parents.
And they do this in part to distance themselves from parental authority so that they can become masters in their own lives in their own homes over time.
So babies cannot process your moral character outside of their direct experiences of you.
If you are a serial killer, but you are playful and peppy with your baby, it's this terrifying scene in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil.
I think Michael Palin plays a torturer who's nice to his children.
And of course, we've seen that if we've had abusive parents, we can see them being super nice to us in public and then mean to us in private.
And that's because they're managing other people's perceptions and further isolating us because other people says, oh, you know, your parents, your mom and dad are great, right?
It means that you're cut off from support.
So babies cannot evaluate your moral character.
They are chemically, biochemically bonded.
Doesn't mean that they're not super cute.
It doesn't mean that you, I mean, you love your babies from an attachment standpoint.
You morally love them and admire them as they grow into adults who make good decisions and are moral and have strength and character and integrity and so on.
So that is the process and people don't like it.
I understand because people want to believe that they're loved by their pets because they can't be loved by adults.
And this writer, the person who wrote me this message, is in that category.
Again, I'm going to be blunt.
So why would you rage quit me?
Because you disagree with an argument.
I quit mulling you.
So you're volatile.
You're volatile.
You're emotionally reactive.
You're aggressive.
You're hostile.
So people can't love you because I disagree with you.
I disagree with you.
I have good reasons for disagreeing with you.
Of course, right?
But because I disagree with you, you get very aggressive and rage quit and get, you know, pretty nasty, right?
So you can't be loved by adults because a moral woman would not want to be around that kind of behavior.
So you have to make a substitute with animals.
But because you have to substitute with animals, you are taken out of the equation of adult love.
Like we all know this, the woman who's alone and weird, and she's got a lot of cats, right?
There's a cat lady, the older cat lady.
Okay.
Well, why is that such a common stereotype?
Well, because she believes that the cats love her.
She gets her dopamine and sense of affection from cats.
But because she loves her cats, she never reforms her behavior so she can actually be loved morally by an adult human being, right?
Anyway, so he goes on to say, you continue to make consciousness or choice the mandatory when it comes to capacity to love.
And again, he has, I've defined, I've defined my term of love.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Positive response, obviously, right?
So I've defined love.
Has he defined love?
Nope.
It's just emotional reaction.
He says, this thinking backs exactly into a contradiction.
We know that infants have neither consciousness nor choice, yet any parent knows the infant loves.
Toddlers are compelled to love, but they love nonetheless.
Teenagers, etc.
Not only compelled to love, but can be.
Of course, mulling you would say, but that's not real love.
But some of it is.
The child still wants to love the parent even when virtue, lack, seeks to negate.
Some part of that child still does love.
So wants to love.
So, I mean, what is this?
Is this an argument?
Any parent knows the infant loves?
No.
The infant is positively bonded to the parent for reasons of survival.
doesn't make it super cute, doesn't make it a wonderful and beautiful, it doesn't make it not a wonderful and beautiful experience, it is.
It is.
It is.
You know, your child looking up for you, smiling, but they smile because you act in a positive manner towards them.
So in a sense, they're sensing your immediate virtues with regards to them.
So if you are, you know, positive and friendly and play with your child and smile and take delight in the child's presence and feed them and clean them and you're a good parent, then your child reacts in a positive way towards you.
Is the child evaluating your virtues?
No.
The child is instinctively responding to treatment that makes the child happy.
The baby in particular, right?
Now, I remember as a toddler being very frustrated with family members who acted in mean, callous, violent, or brutal or neglectful ways.
I was experiencing negative emotions as a result of bad behavior, but I was not morally evaluating that bad behavior.
Because if the characteristic is shared by animals, it cannot be human love.
We need a different word for the ducklings and mature adult moral love and respect.
We need a different, we can't use the same word for both because it's not the same circumstance or situation.
I did not earn the ducklings' attachment to me through my moral excellence.
They didn't admire me ethically and therefore chose to follow me.
They are chemically bonded.
We just need a different word.
Can't use the same word for both things at all.
And so love is moral love.
It's an admiration for virtue, consistency, integrity.
So any parent knows the infant loves.
Well, does the infant judge?
No.
The infant only judges, and this is an instinctual process, the infant only judges positive or negative experiences with the person.
Now, of course, some of those positive experiences may flow from virtue, but an evil man can be nice to a baby and the baby will love the evil man.
An evil man may be perfectly nice to his own dog and the dog will have great affection for, say affection rather than love in the previous instance, great affection for the evil man.
Can't judge outside of his own experience.
Of course, Molly, you would say, but that's not real love.
Now, that's sophistry, right?
That's not sophistry.
Sorry, that is sophistry.
Because he's not giving my definition.
So making it saying, I'm saying, oh, he's saying that I'm just moving the goalposts, right?
I just move in the goalposts.
Of course, children love.
Oh, that's not real love, right?
That's a straw man that I'm moving the goalpost, right?
No, I have a very clear definition.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're not virtuous.
And if somebody wants to engage with me in the realm of love and doesn't even say how my definition is invalid, then they are not negotiating in good faith.
If I put out clear definitions and a person doesn't engage in my clear definitions, then sophistry is what is occurring.
All right.
I always believed that your false philosophy on animals and love conditions backed directly into the right, even obligation to abort children.
What the heck does that mean?
False philosophy on animals and love conditions.
Yeah, so again, if you want to disapprove me on love, no problem.
Just work with my definition and show how it is wrong.
Now, certainly, if you're talking about love, you have to be talking about human love, right?
Because to love, to honor, to obey, mutual respect and virtues, nobody expects a woman to love a man who beats her, right?
She may be attached, she may be terrified to leave, she may, whatever, but nobody expects the woman to love a man who beats her, even though she may be biochemically bonded or attached to him if she's had children or they've been together for a long time.
So false philosophy on animals and love conditions back directly into the right, even obligation to abort children.
So this is another bit of sophistry.
Technically, you abort fetuses because children is all the way up to 17, in which case it would be murder, but whatever, right?
Or 18.
The threadline of your quote philosophy justifies abortion.
Since the infant has no choice or consciousness, he is more animal, less human.
The right still seems elementary.
Okay, so I think that's what, I think I understand what he's saying.
So I'm saying that a child has an attachment at the level of an animal.
We can kill animals, therefore we can kill children.
A child has the bonding capacity of an animal, a pup, maybe even a duckling.
So a baby bonds to parents based upon instinct and genetics.
And therefore, since we can kill animals, we can kill children.
And that's, you know, that's an interesting argument.
That's an interesting argument.
And this is similar to an argument I had many years ago that just popped into my mind recently around mental deficiencies, cognitive deficiencies, what used to be called mongoloid or retarded or something like that.
He said, well, we eat animals that aren't conscious.
Why can't we eat people who are cognitively deficient to the point of being animals?
And my argument was that they're still human and they have the capacity to be cured.
You can't cure a dog of darkness and turn it into a person, but you could potentially sort of flowers for Algernon's style cure a person who has cognitive deficiencies and they're still in the category of a human.
So the argument would be, I think the syllogistical form would be, we can kill all animals, even though they bond only biochemically.
Babies bond biochemically, therefore babies are animals.
Therefore, we can kill them.
I think that's the argument.
Now the challenge, of course, is that babies are going to grow into people with a moral sense.
So saying, well, we can't have social contracts or moral contracts with creatures that have no morality or cannot process morality.
Babies cannot process morality, therefore we are in a state of nature with babies.
But of course, we revile against killing babies and children, even though babies and children can't morally process things very well at an abstract level.
But they're going to grow into that, right?
They're going to grow into that.
Protection Of The Unconscious00:06:58
Somebody who's asleep is not processing things at a moral level.
Somebody who's unconscious is not processing things at a moral level.
Does that mean we can kill them?
No, because they're going to wake up.
And then they're going to be able to consciously process moral arguments and reasoning.
So if somebody is in a state of non-rationality, but will grow into a state of rationality, either actual or potential, then we cannot harm them because just because somebody is not exercising a right in the moment does not mean that that right ceases.
If you remember, there was this couple when there was some riot and a bunch of hoodlums came into their private community and they were out front with guns trying to protect their property.
So they were in the active process of protecting their property.
If I leave my bike out front of my house and somebody takes it and I see them and I grab the bike and try and pull it back, I'm in the active process of protecting my property.
So I'm actively protecting my property rights.
If I just leave my bike out front of my house and somebody takes it, they're still done wrong, even though I'm not actively exercising that right of protection of property.
They've still stolen from me.
So somebody doesn't have to be actively in the process of protecting a right or exercising a right in order to be covered by that right.
A woman who is threatened with violence, but the violence is not actually enacted.
So somebody says, whispers to her, give me a purse or I'll stab you or choke you.
She hands over that purse.
She's not actively in the process of violently defending herself, but she's still being stolen from.
If the guy says, I'm going to strangle you and the woman says no, and then he tries to strangle her and then she stabs him or kills him or fights back or gouges his eyes out, then she's actively in the process of protecting her property rather than just handing it over based on a threat.
But in both situations, evil was done to her, right?
So you don't have to be actively engaged in an aggressive protection of your rights in order to be covered and protected by those rights.
If I'm taking a shower with my bike on the front lawn and somebody takes my bike from the front lawn, I'm not actively engaged in the protection.
I could go to the police after blah, blah, blah, but that person has still done wrong.
So there are passive rights.
This is UPP, right?
There are passive rights that you're protected by even when not violently enforcing them.
And so potential rights are the same as rights.
You have the potential to use force to defend your property, but you're stolen from even if you don't.
Even if you hand something over based on threat or fraud, or even if somebody takes your bike without your knowledge because you're showering, you're not actively engaged in protecting your rights, but you're still covered by those rights.
Potential rights are the same as rights.
You can't kill someone who's asleep because they have no cognitive function that allows them to negotiate and process moral principles because they're going to wake up.
And so they do not currently, somebody who's asleep or unconscious does not currently have the ability to process moral principles or arguments, but they're still covered by morality because they're going to wake up and have that ability.
Just because you're not exercising an ability at the time does not mean you're not covered by a protection of that ability.
Free will, protection from violence and theft and so on.
If an accountant is stealing from Sting, say, which actually happened, if an accountant is stealing with Sting, but Sting doesn't figure it out for some years, the wrong was done when he stole from Sting, not when Sting figured it out.
So Sting is covered by the principle called it's wrong to steal from Sting, even when Sting has no idea he's being stolen from.
Cruelty to animals is wrong, but less wrong than cruelty to children.
You can't kill babies because babies are growing into rational moral consciousness.
They don't possess it as infants any more than somebody who's unconscious possesses it in the time of being unconscious, but they're going to grow into it and therefore they are covered by that potentiality.
You can't kill a guy who's unconscious because he's not a moral actor because he's going to wake up and grow into being a moral and recover the state of being a moral actor.
He is not now but will soon be a moral actor.
Babies are not now, but will soon be moral actors.
So the idea that babies bond like animals do, therefore babies are in the category of animals, therefore you can treat babies like animals is incorrect because it is the same as saying somebody who's unconscious, sleeping or they got a bang on the head or something, somebody who's unconscious is not able to reason, therefore they're like an animal, therefore you can cook and eat them, right?
I mean, we understand that that's just not, we understand instinctively that's not morally valid.
And that's because even though they're not able to exercise a right in present in the same way that if I'm showering and you're stealing my bike, I'm not able to exercise self-protection or protection of my property in the moment, doesn't mean that I'm not covered by that right.
Or my bike is not covered by property rights.
If you knock someone out and then say while they're unconscious, if you don't say anything to me in the next five seconds, you're giving me permission to stab you and you're filming it all and then the person is unconscious for five seconds and then you stab that person and you say, look, the guy didn't, he agreed that I could stab him because he didn't say, don't stab me in the five seconds.
But you say, well, he was unconscious.
He had no capacity to tell you that.
Therefore, it's not a valid contract, right?
So you are covered by potentiality because it's UPB.
UPB doesn't mean it's universal morality.
It doesn't mean when you're in the immediate process of exercising that right.
It means you're covered by protection from aggression and property violations, no rape, theft, assault, and murder.
You're covered by those even when you're asleep, even when you're unconscious, even when you're a baby, because you don't have to be in the process of being able to actually violate, defend those rights in the moment in order to be covered by those rights.
You just have to be in the category of humanity, which is able to process moral contracts.
The fact that you're disabled by sleep or infancy in the moment doesn't mean that you're not a human being with that capacity.
Or even if you have some sort of mental health challenge, some sort of cognitive deficiency that can be cured, you're still in the category of humanity.
Let me just put this out to people as a whole, like you need to get when your argument is absurd and not blame me, but rather work it out yourself.
So if you think I'm a huge protector of infants, toddlers, and children, so if you think that because I'm saying babies only bond hormonally or chemically and according to their own experience of the caregiver, but not through moral judgment, that they're just like animals and therefore can be killed at will.
So there's something wrong with that argument, right?
There's something wrong with killing children at will.
And if you think that my argument leads to killing children at will, though I'm a great protector of children, you can assume that I've just made some wild contradiction that has been completely unnoticed for 45 years.
Lashing Out Over Animal Affection00:05:46
Or you can say, huh, I wonder how Steph would respond to this rather than jumping the gun and saying, well, Steph, you're advocating for the killing of children by saying that animals can't love.
That's absurd.
Just on the face of it.
And absurdity is, it doesn't mean necessarily that I'm right and you're wrong, but just do a little bit of work because otherwise you're just being triggered.
And I know what's going on.
What's going on is you lack adult love and you are getting your love dopamine fix from the programmed loyalty of animals.
And I'm taking that away from you as saying it's not equivalent to adult moral love, which it's not.
But you're mad at me because you're a kind of, you're a, you're an addict of animal affection.
And I mean that very, very seriously.
And I'm very, very blunt.
And you can tell me if I'm wrong, this by my, this is what I believe to be completely true based upon a lot, a lot, a lot of experience and the reasoning that I put forward, that you are addicted to the dopamine of believing that your animals love you when they are merely attached to you biochemically because they're programmed to be social animals.
Children do this all the time, right?
They think that animals love them.
I remember when I was a kid, I was six, I went to visit friends of my father's in Africa, and there were dogs there that loved having their hair combed the wrong way.
Maybe they had fleas or something in hindsight.
I don't know.
So every time you'd pick up a hairbrush, which back then I did, you'd pick up a hairbrush, they'd come and run and jump on you because they'd think that you're about to brush their coat backwards, which they loved.
You know, my dog is so happy that I'm home.
My dice is thumping his tail.
He's jumping up, and it makes you feel good.
And I'm not saying that's wrong.
There's nothing wrong with that foundationally.
It's nice to have the animals have a positive response to you.
There's nothing wrong with that.
When we raised ducks, the ducklings were very bonded to me when I was when they were very young.
And then when they got older, and especially the males, they'd become territorial and they would hiss at and try and bite me.
Had I changed?
No, but they had gone from viewing me as a source of survival to viewing me as a threat to their reproduction because they're trained to hiss at and bite anything that's larger than them that's in the vicinity, especially something that they grew up with because they're just programmed to drive away males that might reproduce because male ducks reproduce with three to four females.
So he's just keeping his harem and right.
So I get that you come home and it's real nice that your pets are happy to see you.
And that is nice.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
That's a nice experience.
But it's not adult love.
They can't judge you.
They can't evaluate you morally.
And because you're emotionally volatile in the way that if somebody's about to take a hit of heroin and you smack it out of their hand and flush it down the toilet, they're going to get angry at you because you're taking away their drug.
So what I'm saying is that it's nice that your animals like your company.
That's great.
It's not the same as a woman looking at you with the shining eyes of true moral respect and admiration or viewing her in the same way.
So what I'm doing is I'm downgrading your drug and saying it's not adult mature moral love, which it ain't.
That we know for sure.
Now you lashing back and saying, well, Seth, this means you want to kill children.
That is you being angry as an addict that I'm taking away or downgrading the dopamine that you perceive of as love.
It's not love.
Your dogs, your cats, whatever, they're just bonded to you through biochemicals and a positive experience.
And it's nice that you treat your pets well.
We should all treat our pets well.
Absolutely.
It's nice.
And it's fine that you enjoy the company of your pets.
And it's fine that you like that they have a positive response to you.
That's all very nice.
But it's no substitute for adult love.
And that's why you're lashing out because I'm pointing that out, that it represents a deficiency.
And you getting your quote love from animals rather than mature moral adult love is sad.
It is sad.
And it is a real loss.
A woman who doesn't have a family, doesn't have a husband, doesn't have children, grandchildren, who instead pets a bunch of cats is sad.
We know that it's sad.
Oh, and this guy finishes up his coup de grace, his death blow against me.
He said, that's always deeply concerned me.
There something is off-center in your work.
Mean-spirited, resentful, death-loving.
A hint of Crowley, even though 98% of your takes are good.
Make an atheist like yourself proud.
Your constant promise that you'd go down as a philosopher great today and or in 400 years from now shows no evidence.
A hint of Crowley, who's a Satanist, even though 98% of your takes are good.
So this person is lashing out.
Obviously, this is nasty, like it's a nasty set of statements to make to someone.
I don't take it personally because this just it's a guy who's addicted to animal affection, and I'm taking that away by pointing out that it's not the same as adult moral respect and so on, right?
So this is how this person deals with someone who disagrees with him, lashes out and tries to do emotional abuse and emotional wounding and sort of get inside my head and turn me against myself and all of this sort of stuff.
And this is why he has to rely on animal affection because no reasonable or moral human being would put up with any of this kind of mean-spirited, vindictive bullshit for more than about 30 seconds.
So yeah, you should definitely stick with your animals because people are too good for you.