Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 7 months ago
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An incendiary WRESTLING WITH THE DEAD speech on the evils of historical morality...

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Transcript
00:00 All right, all right, all right.
00:02 Let's let a full rant flow forward in the deep glory of philosophy.
00:08 This is taking straight aim at one J.S.M.
00:13 John Stuart Mill, who wrote, "To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbor
00:18 as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality."
00:23 To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, constitute the
00:27 ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
00:29 Now, why this provokes such a rant in me, and hopefully this will all make sense to
00:35 you, is because of the following.
00:39 These two pillars of morality, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or as
00:44 it's sometimes put, "Do not do unto others as you would have them not do unto you," has
00:48 been foundational to moral philosophy since its very inception, number one.
00:53 Number two, "Love your neighbor," has also been foundational to philosophy as a whole,
00:59 of course, particularly Christianity onwards.
01:01 Now, no disrespect to my Christian friends, but I'm going to be foundational about this
01:06 from a rational, empirical moral philosophy standpoint, because these are the same ingredients
01:13 used in almost all variations, versions, and flavors of philosophy, moral philosophy, since
01:20 its inception thousands and thousands of years ago.
01:25 Thousands and thousands of years ago, people have been trying to assemble a moral sandwich
01:29 using these two ingredients, and yet the world remains extremely evil.
01:36 These two ingredients, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "Love your
01:39 neighbor," have been the essential core ingredients of all moral systems, at least that claim
01:44 in some aspect of universalism, and yet the world remains malevolent.
01:52 After 5,000 years of moral philosophy, massive debts still enslave the young, war still exists,
02:00 unjust persecution, hierarchies, statism, all still exist.
02:06 Child abuse still exists.
02:08 Child beatings still exist.
02:10 Child genital mutilation still exists and is widespread in the world.
02:16 Moralists have been working on morality, and everybody claims to love virtue, and this
02:22 has, my friends, been going on, lo, these thousands upon thousands of years, and the
02:30 world we see around us lies inflicted upon children, the vast majority of children being
02:38 beaten, a third of parents in America reporting striking their babies before one year of age,
02:49 family structures disintegrating, ethics, virtue, discipline, and self-restraint being
02:55 washed away under a tsunami of debt, children being born into millions of dollars of debt
03:01 and unfunded liabilities.
03:04 This is where we are in the world.
03:08 After thousands of years.
03:10 And still, after thousands of years of moralists, what do we still continuously hear?
03:15 "Oh, but you see, it's due unto others as you would have them do unto you, and, and,
03:20 oh, if we could throw in a little bit of love your neighbor, oh, that's glorious, well,
03:24 why hasn't it worked then?"
03:26 Why hasn't it worked?
03:27 That seems like a rather essential question.
03:30 Wouldn't you think?
03:32 Why hasn't it worked?
03:34 Why do we have the largest and most powerful tyrannical states in the world still flourishing
03:40 and conquering about a third of humanity?
03:44 Why has it not worked?
03:45 Why not?
03:46 It seems to me that if expert cooks were to say, I don't know, let's just create a bit
03:52 of an analogy here, if expert cooks were to say for thousands of years, "Well, whatever
04:00 you make for people to eat, first you must gather, scoop up, mash, and squeeze, and then
04:08 throw into your food a massive pile of horse dung."
04:12 I was a kid, what was the joke?
04:15 Would you rather run a mile, jump a stile, or eat a country pancake?
04:19 Turns out a country pancake was cow dung.
04:24 Paint and switch.
04:25 Definition switcheroo.
04:27 Now of course, if you did have the horse dung as the essence of all cooking school of making
04:33 food, wouldn't it kind of be the case that no matter what you made, no matter what you
04:42 made, it would all taste like shit?
04:47 Why?
04:48 Because it seems that at the center of every recipe is a fistful of cow dung, or horse
04:55 dung, or dung as a whole.
04:56 I'm not sure it matters what kind of dung it is more than the fact that it is in fact
05:01 a dung.
05:03 So when you have John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, 19th century, when you have him jamming together
05:11 these two things that have failed to work for thousands of years, and he is a well-educated
05:17 man, knew all about the history of philosophy, for thousands and thousands of years, these
05:22 two ingredients have failed to produce a moral world.
05:27 Have failed to produce a moral world.
05:32 And he says, "Well, these two things, love your neighbor, do unto others, you put these
05:39 two things together, man, that's the perfect essence of utilitarian morality.
05:46 These two fistfuls of horse dung, you combine them together, that's perfect food, man."
05:52 And the funny thing is, and by funny I mean effed up beyond the capacity of language to
06:00 encapsulate, is John Stuart Mill is a proponent of—what?
06:08 What is he a proponent of?
06:10 We all know this, don't we?
06:12 I mean, I mentioned it right at the beginning, right?
06:14 John Stuart Mill is a proponent of utilitarianism.
06:19 Hmm.
06:21 Utilitarianism.
06:23 Now utilitarianism is the philosophy that you experiment with things to see what works,
06:29 and then you hold on to what works, and you discard what does not work.
06:34 You see, he's pragmatic, he's practical, he's empirical.
06:38 It's all about what works.
06:42 Now this man who devoted his entire muscular mental energies to supporting and promoting
06:48 a philosophy that is specifically dedicated to being relentlessly focused on what works
06:54 and rejecting what does not work has taken these two central moral principles that have
06:58 failed to work and said, "That's the essence of my morality."
07:03 Utilitarianism or practical positive outcomes is based on two principles which have failed
07:09 to work and have done the opposite of working throughout all of human history.
07:13 All of it.
07:15 All of it.
07:16 All of it.
07:18 He has founded his philosophy of practicality on what has been stupendously anti-practical
07:26 throughout human history.
07:27 "Ah, yes, but you see, you see, Mr. Molyneux, there has been some moral progress.
07:33 There has been some moral progress."
07:35 "Yes?
07:37 Have you never heard of a dead cat bounce?"
07:40 The moral progress of the 19th century was hijacked by states to create the endless wars
07:44 of the 20th century.
07:46 The end of direct slavery was found to be impractical for states wanting to gather resources
07:52 and soldiers in order to fight endless imperialistic wars, so direct slavery was transferred to
07:59 tax serfdom.
08:01 They found that they could steal more from you if you got to choose your own job than
08:04 if they chose your job for you.
08:07 Did it work?
08:08 Are we getting more free or are we getting less free?
08:11 The capitalism that produced the technology is now producing these surveillance mechanisms.
08:18 So you'll forgive me if I have some concerns about these twin gods of traditional morality
08:29 do unto others as you would have them do unto you and love your neighbor as being foundational
08:35 to the forward moral progress of the species, because we ain't getting there.
08:41 It ain't imminent.
08:42 In fact, a moral vision of true virtue is receding and disappearing fast over the rear
08:49 view as we race towards an entirely different future than was anticipated.
08:55 Why can these not be questioned?
08:59 Why can that which has failed to work for 5,000 years never be subjected to critical
09:05 scrutiny?
09:06 Why on earth can't we ask basic questions about the efficacy of these two moral absolutes?
09:20 I've been doing it for years.
09:21 I'll encapsulate it here with a couple of new arguments.
09:24 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
09:28 You understand that democracy runs in that everyone who is a sophist can run for office.
09:36 Everyone pretty much can try to run for office.
09:39 And so the sophists and the liars and the panderers and the flatterers and the manipulations
09:43 are saying, "Hey, in lying, pandering, flattery, and manipulation, let's all give it a shot.
09:49 Let's see who's the best at lying to the general population.
09:53 Betcha I'm really good at it."
09:55 So yeah, it's an open field.
09:56 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
09:58 Absolutely.
09:59 Everyone can try to lie.
10:02 And since I'm the best liar, say the politicians or the wannabes, I will win.
10:08 The strongest man in the village says, "Let strength be the test of where the resources
10:14 go."
10:15 Yeah, he's happy to have that be a universal principle.
10:18 He's the strongest man in the village, so he's going to win.
10:20 The best liar, the tallest guy, "Hey, let's let height be the universal, man.
10:25 Let's let height be the..."
10:26 I mean, it kind of is in politics.
10:28 Ever since the advent of television, the taller man wins, not the taller person.
10:33 So yeah, do unto others.
10:35 Yeah, let's universalize it.
10:37 I'm the strongest guy in the village.
10:40 Let's do arm wrestling to figure out who gets the prettiest girl.
10:43 Yeah, I'm totally...
10:44 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
10:47 Whether I challenge you to arm wrestling or you challenge me to arm wrestling is totally
10:50 fine.
10:51 I'm still going to win either way.
10:53 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a way of promoting those with the sleaziest
10:57 skills to the very top of society.
10:59 I mean, we can see this playing out.
11:03 Some groups are willing to use the power of the state to cripple political opponents.
11:07 Some people are above that.
11:08 So it's a race to the bottom, and those at the bottom are very happy to universalize
11:12 the race to the bottom because they already win being down there from birth, it seems
11:16 almost.
11:17 That's their world.
11:20 And they are experts in that world, and they're perfectly happy to universalize those principles
11:27 of lying, bribing, flattery, and manipulation.
11:31 Yes, those who are best at those unholy skills should run things, and they do.
11:36 And that's do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
11:39 In a test of lying, bribery, flattery, and manipulation, you do it to me, I do it to
11:44 you, we both do it to the general population, and we'll see who wins.
11:49 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is you're fighting an honorable man.
11:56 You're going to go into the boxing ring and you're going to fight an honorable man.
12:00 Now you say, "You know, if I cheat, put some formaldehyde in my gloves or whatever, I cheat,
12:09 then I can win.
12:11 I'll win."
12:13 And you say to yourself, "Well, I'm going to give myself permission to cheat."
12:17 If he gives himself permission to cheat, it's going to be more of an even fight, which is
12:22 to say not much of a fight at all.
12:24 If we both put formaldehyde on our gloves, we'll both pass out on the first punch.
12:28 But I'm going to give myself permission to cheat.
12:31 Now, I'm going to make it universal that, you know, I'm not going to obviously proclaim
12:35 this, there's no point in proclaiming cheating, but I'm going to approach this fight with
12:39 the certain knowledge that cheating is the way to go.
12:43 Now you know that he's an honorable fighter who would never dream of cheating.
12:50 So giving yourself permission to cheat benefits you, but not him.
12:56 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
12:59 You pick the most honorable man, you engage in combat with him, you know he's not going
13:03 to cheat, but you cheat, so you win.
13:06 Now of course, you don't want him to cheat against you, I understand all of that, but
13:12 giving yourself permission to cheat is universal.
13:16 In other words, if there were a secret law saying you could cheat, the honorable man
13:22 won't cheat because he's honorable, but you will.
13:26 This is what I mean by a race to the bottom.
13:29 You know, it's like the cuttlefish, some of them display strength and masculinity in order
13:32 to get the female cuttlefish to mate with them, the other ones pretend to be female
13:37 cuttlefish in order to get close to the female cuttlefish in order to mate with them.
13:42 So the little cuttlefish who can shrink his limbs and pretend to be a female and swim
13:48 among the females unmolested by the males, unattacked or driven out by the males, he
13:54 says, "Well, anyone who can pretend to be the female cuttlefish can go and mate with
14:02 the female cuttlefish, knowing that he's the only male small enough to be able to do that.
14:07 But it's a universal, hey, let's open it up.
14:11 Let's open it up."
14:13 Now do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
14:16 I understand people will say, "Yes, but you don't want to be cheated against."
14:22 Right, I get that.
14:24 You want to cheat others, but you don't want them to cheat you.
14:27 I get that.
14:28 So you know what you do?
14:29 You know how you deal with that problem?
14:31 You say to yourself, "Cheating is permitted," and then you wage war against people you know
14:37 are too honorable to cheat.
14:39 They have too much self-respect to cheat.
14:42 They have too much virtue to cheat.
14:45 So cheat they will not.
14:48 In other words, you're the small cuttlefish and you say, "Hey man, anyone who can make
14:52 themselves look like a female cuttlefish, yeah, you're good to go, man.
14:55 Go in, knowing that the other male cuttlefish are too big to do that, so they can't compete
14:59 with him.
15:00 It's universal.
15:02 It's universal.
15:03 It's asymmetrical because one person has standards and the other person doesn't in the fight."
15:09 The one person says, "Well, I would never cheat.
15:12 That would be ignoble and disgraceful and dishonorable.
15:15 I would never stoop myself to that level to cheat.
15:18 My God, that would be monstrous and terrible."
15:20 Right, right, right, right.
15:22 Now the guy who will cheat though, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
15:28 Yeah, everyone can cheat, but I know you won't because you're honorable.
15:33 Now I'll mouth words of honor, of course.
15:35 I'll mouth words of, "Oh yes, no, it's very, very important that we act honorably and don't
15:39 cheat."
15:40 You'll make all of these sounds.
15:41 That's part of the camouflage.
15:42 In the same way, the male cuttlefish will squeeze himself small to get past the males
15:45 and go mingle with the females and inseminate them that way.
15:49 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
15:54 It tilts the playing field and the resources to those with the lowest standards because
16:00 if you won't cheat, but other people will, you'll generally lose.
16:05 If you have too much pride, too much self-respect, or you're too stupid to cheat, and that is
16:12 sometimes the case, you won't cheat.
16:16 I mean this is cancel culture 101, right?
16:19 In cancel culture, people say, "Well, I won't address someone's arguments.
16:26 I'll just smash their reputation until people recoil from them and call them evil.
16:33 I'll lie about people.
16:34 I'll misrepresent them.
16:35 I'll cherry pick stuff.
16:36 I'll take stuff out of context.
16:37 I'll twist their language to make them look as monstrous as possible."
16:41 They cheat.
16:43 They cheat in debate, right?
16:44 It's a cheat.
16:45 It's cheating.
16:46 So they say, "Well, the way that conflicts are going to be resolved in society is reputational
16:56 destruction.
16:58 We are going to lie about people and get them banned from the public sphere, knowing that
17:05 people who value the truth would find that repugnant to their natures."
17:12 See how this works?
17:13 "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
17:17 So I won't answer your arguments.
17:20 I will simply pursue reputational destruction and get you banned," say people, right?
17:27 Knowing that the true philosophers would find the falsehood of lying about people in order
17:35 to promote reputational destruction would be abhorrent to their natures.
17:41 Do unto others as you would—hey, let's all use reputational destruction, say these weasel
17:46 bags knowing that the honorable people would never stoop to reputational destruction.
17:51 See how this works?
17:52 "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
17:55 It means the guy willing to put formaldehyde or chloroform on his boxing gloves—I think
18:01 it should be chloroform, whatever knocks people out, chloroform—so the guy willing to put
18:05 chloroform on his boxing gloves is the guy who wins.
18:10 The guy who would never dream of putting chloroform on his boxing gloves is the guy who loses.
18:14 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is promoted.
18:18 Why?
18:19 Why was it promoted?
18:21 Because it gives the most strength and power to the least moral people.
18:26 A politician who lies gets elected.
18:30 A politician who tells the truth does not get elected.
18:36 Somebody who brings facts, reason, and evidence to complex social problems is deplatformed.
18:43 Somebody who does not, who lies, and speaks to the prejudices inculcated by propaganda
18:49 and indoctrination to the minds of the many is promoted and praised.
18:54 Ah, that's all.
18:57 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you tilts the playing field, it seems, irreversibly,
19:05 to the least moral among us.
19:09 Don't cheat.
19:10 Well, you wouldn't want to be cheated on.
19:12 Right, exactly, exactly.
19:15 The cheater does not want to be cheated on, of course.
19:18 So he targets somebody who has too much honor and integrity to cheat.
19:24 I mean, honestly, it's like somebody saying to a guy in a wheelchair, "Well, we're going
19:32 to resolve our conflicts by how quickly we can climb stairs."
19:37 Hey, it's universal, man.
19:40 Now he's probably not going to go to Usain Bolt with that proposition, so when it comes
19:46 to conflict, he is going to choose someone who simply would be unwilling to do what he
19:51 is willing to do.
19:53 To win the boxing match, he picks a guy who's got honor and nobility and would not cheat,
19:59 and then he cheats.
20:00 Puts the chloroform on his boxing gloves, or I don't know, whatever else you do, right?
20:06 And then he wins.
20:08 Do unto others is targeting the moral and rewarding the corrupt and amoral.
20:15 You follow?
20:16 That's why it doesn't work.
20:17 This is why the more people apply do unto others as you would have them do unto you,
20:21 the worse society gets.
20:24 The enemies of Jesus were willing to have him crucified.
20:27 Jesus himself would not do that.
20:30 I'm sure I don't need to repeat this, but yes, do unto others as you would have them
20:35 do unto you promotes those with the lowest standards because they have the widest scope
20:45 of action.
20:46 I don't know if you play chess, right?
20:48 Or checkers, it works the same way.
20:50 So with chess, the bishop can only move diagonally, the rook or castle can only move vertically
20:59 and horizontally, straight up or left or right or backwards.
21:03 But the queen can do both, right?
21:06 It can go north, north, east, north, north, east, east, and so on.
21:11 It can go straight up, straight back, straight side, or diagonal.
21:17 So the queen is just about the most valuable player because it has the widest scope of
21:22 action.
21:23 It can go in any straight line as far as possible to take whatever it wants.
21:30 So the queen has the widest scope of action and the pawn, what can the pawn do?
21:34 It can go two spaces at the beginning, it can go forward if it's unopposed, it can take
21:38 diagonally and if it gets to the end, it gets another piece, right?
21:43 One of the taken pieces could be resurrected.
21:46 But the pawn is very limited, which is why you sacrifice your pawn to save your queen,
21:50 you don't sacrifice your queen to save your pawn.
21:53 Or if you're not familiar with chess but you play checkers, you know that when you get
21:57 one of your checker pieces to the other end, it becomes a king checker, you get a second
22:01 one stacked on and now it can go all over the place, right?
22:04 So in chess, in checkers, the pieces with the greatest choice of movements are the most
22:11 valuable.
22:12 The pieces with the greatest choice of movements are the most valuable.
22:18 I guess with the knight being the most valuable because it can jump.
22:23 So those unconstrained by virtue have the greatest scope of choice in what they're going
22:32 to do.
22:33 I, or other sort of moral decent people, would not stoop to lying about people to destroy
22:42 their reputations rather than answer their arguments.
22:45 So we are constrained in what we will do by a wide variety of mechanisms.
22:53 People know that about virtuous people.
22:57 There's an instinct for this among the corrupt.
23:00 People know that.
23:01 They know what the virtuous person will or will not do.
23:05 And this is the typical hero versus rake in 18th and 19th century novels.
23:12 On the one hand, you have the guy who's charming, but he lies.
23:15 On the other hand, you have the guy who's stiff, but tells the truth.
23:20 And it's always the battle between the guy who's charming and lies.
23:24 You can think of Pride and Prejudice as the classic example of this, right?
23:28 So you've got the one young man who's like charming and a great conversationalist, but
23:33 he's a liar and a cheat.
23:35 And then you've got Darcy who's stiff and awkward, but tells the truth.
23:39 So Darcy won't lie.
23:42 The other guy will.
23:44 So the other guy has more options in terms of how he interacts with Elizabeth Bennet.
23:49 You can see this all over the place in literature.
23:53 All over the place in literature.
23:54 I mean, this is the Terminator 2, right?
23:57 You have the old style Schwarzenegger Terminator and then the new liquid disco guy who can
24:02 become anything he wants.
24:04 So the new Terminator can morph into anything he wants.
24:10 Whereas the old Terminator just looks like himself.
24:13 The new Terminator has far more options.
24:16 So "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is like the queen in chess saying
24:22 to the pawn, "Well, we should be able to move wherever we want within the rules of chess."
24:30 And the pawn says, "Well, I'm extremely constrained, but you can go anywhere."
24:35 And this is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a race to the bottom
24:39 that is achieved with extraordinary rapidity, especially when coercive redistributive powers
24:46 and statism and money printing and so on is all involved, because it decays standards
24:51 and punishes those who have moral constraints.
24:57 So think of two businessmen, right?
25:02 Think of two businessmen.
25:04 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
25:08 And one of them is moral, understands Austrian economics, and doesn't want newly minted currency
25:17 because it's immoral.
25:19 It's unfair, you're getting the money when it's fresh and new and full value and so on,
25:24 right?
25:25 So you have some libertarian businessman who won't take a government contract for libertarian
25:30 reasons.
25:32 And then you have another businessman who will absolutely, I mean, if the Fed gives
25:36 him a million dollars worth of fresh notes, he's all over that like white on rice.
25:41 And you have the non-libertarian businessman who will take any and all government contracts,
25:46 right?
25:47 So you have the libertarian guy, won't take government contracts, won't take Fed money.
25:52 And then you have the non-libertarian guy, will take Fed money, will take both public
25:56 and private contracts.
25:58 Who is going to win in the race for business success?
26:03 Obviously, the person who has more choices.
26:06 The person who won't take government contracts, won't take government money, will lose to
26:10 the guy who will take government money and will take government contracts.
26:15 And this is not a theoretical thing.
26:16 I've had lots of questions over the years from people who are into libertarianism, who
26:20 have these very constraints.
26:24 Somebody who won't take government money will generally have fewer children if they're poor
26:29 than people who will just be happy to get on welfare and food stamps and social security
26:36 and subsidized housing, right?
26:39 They can just have more kids.
26:41 So do unto others as you would have them do unto you is creating a scenario where those
26:48 without honor win against those who have honor, because those without honor are willing to
26:56 lie.
26:58 And this is one of the big complaints, of course, in the manosphere that women are susceptible
27:04 to male falsehoods and therefore the man who won't lie is at a significant disadvantage
27:10 relative to the man who will lie.
27:12 This is also the case with women.
27:17 Women will look in great frustration at other women who dress scantily and have lots of
27:22 makeup on because they wouldn't be willing to do that.
27:27 They have too much self-respect.
27:29 They don't want to sexualize and objectify themselves, so they'll dress modestly and
27:33 they'll use little if any makeup.
27:35 And then they look at the women who use massive amounts of makeup and have their breast meat
27:40 half hanging out like schooner sails flapping in an infinite hormonal breeze.
27:46 And they feel frustration and despair because the men are going to gravitate to the women
27:50 with lower standards.
27:52 How can I compete with the people with lower standards than I have?
27:59 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
28:03 "Yes," says the man with strong legs to the man in the wheelchair.
28:06 "The stair climbing is how we will decide this difference."
28:10 And then, of course, if you can get a law passed, to take the analogy one step further,
28:14 if you can get a law passed that says stair climbing is how you deal with it, then the
28:19 people with strong legs or who can climb at all will always beat the people in the wheelchairs.
28:24 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you gives infinitely more moves to the person
28:31 with far lower standards.
28:34 Think about resumes and getting jobs.
28:38 I remember many years ago when I worked for a major Canadian corporation having lunch
28:44 and joking around with the head of manufacturing.
28:48 And we were joking about resumes where he'd be like, somebody asks you, it's like, "Yeah,
28:52 I've been around that.
28:53 Yeah, I've had some, I'm familiar with that or I have some familiarity with that."
28:57 And then he's just like, "Yeah," and just read up on it for the week before, right?
29:01 You just lie or misrepresent or whatever.
29:04 Now somebody who's perfectly honest and says, "I don't have any experience with that," will
29:09 they do better or worse relative to someone who's willing to fudge or misrepresent or
29:15 say that they have experience with something they don't have experience with?
29:17 Well, you'll lose.
29:18 You tell the truth, you lose.
29:19 You tell the truth, you lose.
29:21 You don't cheat.
29:22 You lose with people who will cheat.
29:24 Now dealing with this issue has been a foundational question, if not the foundational question
29:30 of society since its very inception.
29:33 What do we do, A, with the drunken sailor and B, what do we do with people who cheat?
29:40 What do we do with people who cheat?
29:42 Does, I mean, let's say prior to DNA testing, if a woman got pregnant, she had sex with
29:51 a rich guy and a poor guy and she got pregnant, and let's say they're both the same race or
29:55 whatever, so woman has sex with rich guy and poor guy, she gets pregnant, who is she going
30:00 to say is the father?
30:01 The rich guy, and she's going to say that she's certain, right?
30:05 So then it was like no sex before marriage because then you know, right?
30:09 You're supposed to know who the father is, right?
30:11 To avoid this kind of thing.
30:14 The man who cheats on an exam is probably going to do better than somebody who studies
30:20 honorably or they're probably going to do equally as well.
30:24 And since there are significant financial rewards for getting good results on tests,
30:31 good marks on tests, well, the person who cheats is counterfeiting their skill set,
30:39 right?
30:40 A woman who gets a nose job is falsifying her genetics.
30:45 There's a story, probably apocryphal, of the man in China who sued his bride because he
30:51 thought she was very pretty, but what happened?
30:55 Well, what happened was he had kids with her and the kids were butt ugly and then it turned
31:02 out he found out that she had been what?
31:06 She'd had plastic surgery.
31:08 So he lied.
31:09 One of the reasons we find attractive women attractive is that they will produce for us
31:13 attractive children who are likely to do better in life.
31:16 Having an ugly child is tough because they don't get asked to the dance, they don't get
31:20 as many friendships, you know, whatever, fair or not, it's just the way it is, right?
31:24 Fair is a word for children and Halloween candy, not adults with resources.
31:29 No fair, who cares?
31:32 So yeah, a woman who has a nose job is lying about her genetics.
31:38 It's a form of fraud.
31:39 Now, of course, the woman who does not get a nose job, how does she do relative to the
31:46 woman who gets a nose job, right?
31:49 So let's say a woman has too much pride to get a nose job.
31:52 Like, no, I'm not going to attack myself in that way.
31:55 I'm not going to put myself down in that way.
31:57 I'm not going to say that in order to get a man I have to have a nose job.
32:00 That would be humiliating and that would be beneath my dignity as one of God's green creatures,
32:08 right?
32:09 Okay, maybe if she's green she might want to get that looked at, but you know what I
32:12 mean.
32:13 So she says, now, the woman who knows that her competitor won't get a nose job, well,
32:18 she'll get a nose job.
32:19 And then she'll say, well, yeah, everyone who wants to get a nose job should get a nose
32:22 job knowing that the other woman won't get a nose job.
32:25 So she wins often or enough for it to make a difference.
32:29 Now, I get it.
32:30 There are some men who are like, "Ew, nose job.
32:32 No, forget that.
32:33 I don't want it."
32:34 Right, whatever, right?
32:35 But there's enough women who win with a nose job to make a nose job super valuable, right?
32:41 Valuable enough to go through.
32:42 And you know, my mother went through one and they're pretty, pretty horrible.
32:45 They're pretty, pretty, pretty bruising and so on, right?
32:49 You've been beaten up by the great golden gloved god of vanity to the point where you
32:54 look like a raccoon or Annie Lennox singing under pressure.
33:00 So you understand, do unto others as you would have them do unto you gives clear advantage
33:05 to those with lower standards because their scope of action is much wider.
33:08 Okay, I think we've got that one.
33:10 Now, the other one, love your neighbor as yourself.
33:14 Love your neighbor as yourself.
33:19 Right, so we understand the golden rule makes society worse over time unless there are massive
33:25 punishments in place, right, to harm those who try to game the system or cheat the system
33:32 or whatever.
33:33 If there are those massive punishments, then maybe, just maybe.
33:36 But I mean, those things certainly don't really exist anymore.
33:38 In fact, quite the opposite is true.
33:41 So enough with do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
33:46 That's a slippery slope.
33:48 That's almost vertical.
33:49 What about love your neighbor as yourself or love thy neighbor, how did he put it?
33:57 To do as one would be done by and to love one's neighbor as oneself constitutes the
34:04 ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
34:09 To love one's neighbor as oneself.
34:13 Well, that is lowest common denominator again.
34:18 Now, moral excellence is the highest of all virtues.
34:22 I mean, I know that's almost tautological, so obviously I'll go a little more than just
34:26 say that.
34:27 But moral excellence is not automatic.
34:30 Moral excellence has to arrive out of the necessary and good bottomless selfishness
34:36 of early childhood, right?
34:38 Early childhood, you don't love others as much as yourself.
34:42 You're not really capable of the concept of love.
34:45 You're not really capable of virtues and so on.
34:48 But you are selfish, right?
34:51 We're born selfish and we should be, right?
34:53 Because the baby does not care if the mother needs sleep, right?
34:58 You know, like if you're married, right, and you've got to get up early and your wife is
35:03 sleeping, you get up quietly, right?
35:07 You get up quietly, you get up nicely, and you try not to wake your partner.
35:11 You know, it's just basic sensitivity 101 of living with another human being.
35:17 Because that's kind.
35:18 You don't want to wake up your partner.
35:20 You want them to be able to get their sleep.
35:21 My wife is very kind this way.
35:23 She will actually put her morning stuff in another room if she has to get up early so
35:26 that she doesn't wake me.
35:27 Because she knows what a tyrant I am when I'm not sleep deprived.
35:30 No, she's just very nice that way.
35:32 And I, of course, reciprocate as much as possible.
35:35 If I happen to get up early, then I sometimes could take five minutes to try and get out
35:40 of the room.
35:41 Because she's a light sleeper in the morning, so I'm like, "Yeah, I'm slowly extracting
35:44 myself."
35:45 It's like a cat burglar, but just trying to get out of the room without making noise,
35:49 right?
35:50 So, but babies are not like that.
35:52 Babies just cry when they're hungry and all of that.
35:54 And they, right, they're very selfish.
35:56 And I mean, it's the wrong word to use, but they're self-oriented and they don't love
36:01 their mothers as they love themselves or whatever.
36:03 They only have their own needs.
36:05 And yes, I guess evolutionarily, of course, they are serving their mother's needs by crying
36:10 because the mothers want to be able to make sure that they provide their baby's needs
36:13 and so on.
36:14 I get all of that, but we start off selfish.
36:16 That's just a basic fact, right?
36:18 Now, then we have to be wooed into a kind of reciprocity.
36:22 Because reciprocity is a form of self-service that is extended through time, right?
36:31 So reciprocity is a form of self-service that is extended through time.
36:36 So I mean, it's partly out of love that we treat our spouses well, but there's also a
36:45 practicality to it as well.
36:47 So you get married to someone who understands that sacrifice in the moment for the sake
36:52 of a future good is a positive, right?
36:55 So if I go to exercise, often I don't particularly want to exercise in the moment, but I will
37:01 do it so that my future self is happier.
37:06 And that's important, right?
37:08 You want to serve your future self, right?
37:11 So it's around extending your more immediate selfishness to a good in the future.
37:18 I care about my future self, so I will eat well, and I will exercise and maintain my
37:26 health and go to the dentist, right?
37:27 So future me doesn't get fat, sick, toothache, whatever, right?
37:33 So we start with a selfishness, and then we begin to extend our "selfishness" to the pleasure
37:46 of others.
37:47 We begin to take pleasure in other people's happiness, and this happens very early on
37:51 in life.
37:52 I mean, my daughter was feeding me back, "Oh, I like this food.
37:56 You should try it," right?
37:57 She was doing that, I don't know, eight months of age or something like that.
38:00 She understood that she enjoys eating, I enjoy eating, I should try what she's eating because
38:05 it makes her happy, so she'll want to make me happy.
38:07 So we just extend our sense of happiness from our own needs to include the needs of others.
38:14 Now babies don't do that, and they never should, and they never will because they won't survive,
38:18 because if they don't eat for a certain amount of time, they could just die, right?
38:21 Or dehydrate or get really sick or whatever.
38:23 So they cry when they're hungry, and they don't care about anyone else's feelings, and
38:26 that's just right.
38:27 And then we begin to expand our sense of care, our sense of happiness to include other people's
38:35 happiness, right?
38:36 I am happy when my family is happy, and it's pretty tough to be happy if your family's
38:41 unhappy because it means usually there's something you need to do to fix the problem or the issue.
38:46 So we grow from selfishness to not exactly selflessness, but we grow from selfishness
38:55 to include the happiness of others.
38:59 Now not all of us do that, of course.
39:01 Some of us stay in a very infantile state for a variety of reasons of trauma and I assume
39:06 choice and maybe there's some predilection there somewhere deep down in the bowels of
39:10 being, I don't know, but we certainly don't all grow into loving and gentle and reciprocal
39:19 and wise and affectionate people.
39:23 Now the pursuit of moral growth, of moral excellence, is a tricky, dangerous and uncertain
39:31 journey, fraught with often great blowback and betrayal.
39:35 Because you are nice to other people and sometimes they will just strip your resources bare,
39:42 you're generous towards other people and they're just not generous back.
39:47 I had a friend, I helped him move three times, I helped him move three times and then I needed
39:54 his help when I needed to move and he just was busy, just couldn't quite see his way
40:00 clear.
40:01 He had some, I don't know, he had a party to go to or something like.
40:04 Okay, so I mean this is not some massive pillaging, it's not like Vikings and Irish peasant women,
40:09 but it definitely is not reciprocal.
40:11 So you're generous and then you see if it comes back and sometimes it does and those
40:15 relationships tend to grow and sometimes it doesn't and those relationships tend to diminish.
40:21 So moral excellence, the pursuit of virtue, is not about generosity, it's about reciprocity
40:29 because we can only spread virtue by rewarding the virtuous and punishing the corrupt.
40:36 You don't spread virtue by punishing the virtuous and rewarding the corrupt.
40:43 So you have to reward the virtuous and punish the corrupt, otherwise it's just a kind of
40:49 masochism and you're furthering the corruption in the world as a whole.
40:56 So if I've had people in my life I've been very financially generous with and then they
41:03 have not reciprocated in any way, in fact, the only answer is more, more, more, right?
41:10 They just keep wanting to take.
41:12 You've trained them into being takers rather than encouraged them into reciprocity.
41:17 So you stop doing that, right?
41:18 Of course you do.
41:20 And you stop doing that for a wide variety of reasons.
41:23 One is that it's not reciprocal and that's not just, it's not fair, it's not right, and
41:29 you're putting yourself in a subservient position which is bad for the self-esteem and bad for
41:32 the self-respect.
41:33 Also, of course, if you care about people you don't subsidize their bad habits.
41:39 So if they're takers then you don't keep giving to them because that's just subsidizing their
41:42 bad habits.
41:44 It's not at all an act of affection.
41:47 Like if you've got somebody who's got a gambling habit, let's say they just need money because
41:51 they're just down on their luck, some friend, and then you give them some money and then
41:55 they just keep asking for more and more and you start to become hesitant and then somebody
41:59 else tells you, "Oh no, they have a terrible gambling addiction.
42:01 They're just blowing all your money on the slot machines."
42:03 Well you would be upset about that and you would not give them more money because giving
42:06 them more money would be feeding their addiction which would be bad for them, right?
42:11 Even if you're angry and so on, right?
42:12 I mean if you really hated the guy you'd give him a lot of money and then, I don't know,
42:16 you'd get beaten up at the back of a casino for a failure to pay or something like that,
42:20 right?
42:21 I mean if my friend who didn't help me move, if I just kept doing things for him and being
42:29 nice to him and so on and he just kept taking, then every time I did something for him and
42:36 he was not reciprocal at any time, I would be taking away resources from other friends
42:41 I have who were reciprocal and thus I would be punishing them by not giving them resources
42:45 but rather rewarding somebody who was selfish by giving them resources, him resources.
42:50 So it's just terrible all around, right?
42:55 So to care about other people means encouraging and modeling good habits and discouraging
43:04 bad habits, right?
43:06 We all understand that, right?
43:07 If we have a friend who smokes, we would want to discourage him out of care for his health.
43:13 We would want to discourage him from smoking, right?
43:16 So moral excellence is a challenging journey.
43:19 It's really essential and there's a lot of blowback and it requires a lot of pretty careful
43:24 judgment and thinking through things quite a bit and we do that out of our love of virtue,
43:30 right?
43:31 We do that out of our love of virtue.
43:34 How dare a moralist say, how dare a moralist say that what we should love is blank people,
43:43 people, not stalwart virtue?
43:47 How dare a moralist say that we should love people, not virtue?
43:53 How dare a moralist say that we should not love truth, we should only love people.
44:01 We should not love honor or courage or dignity or poise but only bipeds, only flesh, only
44:10 breathing apparatuses with potentially corrupt head noggins.
44:16 How dare a moralist say that we should not love virtue but only flesh.
44:23 Can you imagine?
44:24 Like if someone tells you you have to love a vicious woman just because she's pretty,
44:31 wouldn't you consider that rather crazy?
44:33 I mean you might lust after her or whatever, you might even lie to her I guess.
44:35 I would not recommend it but you might.
44:38 But if somebody were to say you should love the flesh, not the morals, you should love
44:45 the body, not the mind, the morals or the soul, you would consider that horrendous,
44:53 right?
44:54 That would be to objectify the person, right?
44:59 I mean let's say you're a leg man and there's some woman who's just horrible, she's a horrible
45:03 woman, but she's got nice legs and you just lie to her and sleep with her because you
45:07 just want to rub her legs or something like that, right?
45:09 Well that's pretty corrupt because you're just loving the flesh and gaining access to
45:14 the flesh despite the horrendous nature of the person.
45:19 So that would be to have a fetish for flesh, not a love of virtue.
45:24 And this is what it is!
45:26 Love thy neighbors yourself is to have a fetish for flesh, not virtue!
45:30 Oh, he's living next to you, he's breathing, I must love him.
45:35 No!
45:36 No, because if you believe that, then you're in pursuit of moral excellence.
45:42 Moral excellence is to love virtue, not just bipeds, not just the flesh casing of a skeleton
45:49 that walks around and continues to breathe!
45:52 No!
45:54 You are to love virtue!
45:55 And they say, well you love, John Stuart Mill always says, "Oh, you must love moral virtues,
46:00 you see?
46:01 You, moral excellence, you should pursue moral excellence, do unto others and love your neighbor
46:05 as yourself, moral excellence!"
46:07 Fine!
46:08 Then you're telling me to love morality!
46:10 But if you're telling me to love morality, how dare you tell me also, or in a greater
46:16 sense to love those around me!
46:19 It's madness!
46:21 It's beyond madness!
46:23 It's corruption of the highest order!
46:25 No!
46:26 If you want to love virtue, you have to love random people!
46:30 What?
46:31 No!
46:32 If I want moral excellence, I get there by loving virtue.
46:37 And then to say that the pinnacle of moral excellence, the love of virtue, is to love
46:41 random people around you, regardless of their virtues, that is madness!
46:46 Beyond the capacity of language to encapsulate, and I'm struggling even to squeeze into my
46:50 brain how insane this is!
46:54 Love virtue!
46:55 OK, if I love virtue, then I can only love the virtue in people.
47:01 No!
47:02 No!
47:03 "Loving virtue" means loving people regardless of their virtue.
47:11 Do you understand?
47:14 Loving virtue means loving people irrespective of their virtues.
47:20 That's a rank contradiction!
47:21 Isn't it?
47:22 I mean, come on, it's blindingly obvious, right?
47:25 You must love moral excellence, and random people around you who probably don't possess
47:31 any moral excellence whatsoever.
47:32 So I must love moral excellence and flesh as well.
47:39 It's exactly the same as saying, "Be with a woman, love a woman, because of her qualities
47:45 as a moral soul, as a mother, as a companion, as a wife, love her for her moral excellence,
47:53 and love her and all women for their flesh."
47:57 No, no, no, no!
48:00 This is not a school of philosophy.
48:03 This is an invitation to an asylum.
48:06 To an asylum!
48:08 You must pursue moral excellence, and the very height of moral excellence is loving
48:13 people for breathing.
48:15 Wait, wait, wait.
48:16 So I should pursue moral excellence, and that's good, but then I should also love other people
48:23 who not only do not pursue moral excellence, but are actually evil and corrupt?
48:28 Yes!
48:29 Well, wait a minute.
48:30 So I should pursue moral excellence because it's good, but I should also love people who
48:35 are corrupt, because that's good.
48:38 So it's good for me to pursue moral excellence, and it's good for them to be corrupt, and
48:44 these two things are equal.
48:45 I should, say, love your neighbor as yourself.
48:47 Okay, so let's say that I have self-respect because I pursued moral excellence, but then
48:51 I should also respect my neighbor who's completely corrupt.
48:55 What?
48:56 I mean, I don't even know what to say.
48:59 It's like saying you should spend 20 years becoming the best chef in the known galaxy,
49:07 and the purpose of spending 20 years studying night and day to become the best chef in the
49:13 galaxy, the purpose of all of that, you see, is what?
49:16 Well, the purpose of all of that, you see, is to just grab random things from random
49:23 boxes, throw them all together, mix them all up, and serve it in a scoop.
49:27 You should love excellence and randomized shit at the same time.
49:32 You should pursue moral excellence, and you should love yourself because of your pursuit
49:36 of moral excellence, but you should love your neighbors regardless of whether they're good
49:40 or bad.
49:41 Well, what does that mean?
49:43 Love your neighbor as yourself.
49:45 Okay, but loving myself has something to do with the pursuit of moral excellence, does
49:49 it not?
49:50 Should I love myself if I'm evil?
49:53 I would assume no sane person would say that.
49:55 Okay, so I love myself because of my pursuit of moral excellence, but I should also love
49:59 other flesh bags around me because they happen to be breathing and walking around regardless
50:03 of whether they're good, bad, indifference, corrupt, evil, nice, nasty, vicious, kind,
50:08 whatever.
50:09 So I should have high standards for my own morality and no standards for everyone else,
50:14 and I should love these things equally.
50:15 I must love the thing called moral excellence and other people because they're alive.
50:23 I love the highest standards in myself and have no standards for my love for others.
50:28 But if I should love other people as myself, and I should love them just for existing,
50:33 then I should love myself just for existing and should not put one ounce of effort into
50:38 moral improvement because it's difficult and hard and challenging and ugly and there's
50:43 blowback and it's uncomfortable.
50:45 If I should love other people just for existing, then I should love myself just for existing.
50:51 No.
50:52 No, this is a blank check written for other people to cash in at your expense forever
50:56 and ever.
50:57 Amen.
50:58 It is the spread of corruption.
51:00 You do not give people rewards for that which they have not earned.
51:03 Isn't that foundational?
51:05 All these people who say, "Well, love others as you love yourself," right?
51:08 Okay, so you're saying I should give an A+, the A++++ of my love to people who've done
51:20 nothing to earn it.
51:21 Okay.
51:22 So that's a principle, right?
51:24 You give the highest awards to people just for existing.
51:30 So anybody who wants a medical degree, we should just give them a medical degree.
51:34 Everybody who wants to become a lawyer, just give them, because we give the highest awards
51:38 — everybody gets a Nobel Prize, everybody gets a Pulitzer, everybody gets every prize
51:44 because we give the very highest prizes to people whether they've earned it or not.
51:49 So if you say this to a woman, a woman's sexuality is one of her highest prizes and her love.
51:57 So the woman then must give her sexuality and her love to every single man, no matter
52:02 whether he's foul and corrupt and riddled with STDs or whatever it is.
52:06 You've got to give the highest value to everyone, no matter what.
52:08 What?
52:09 But it's not how we — every kid should pass, no matter — get A+++, no matter whether
52:14 they show up to school, no matter whether they set fire to the school, no matter whether
52:17 they're a bully, no matter — it doesn't matter.
52:19 You give them the A++, but that's not how we — that's not how we operate as a society
52:24 at all.
52:25 Not even close, not even a time.
52:27 We do the exact opposite all the time.
52:29 It's such bullshit.
52:32 We do the exact opposite all the time.
52:35 We fail kids, we give them Fs, we cut them from the team if they're not practicing, we
52:42 cut them from the orchestra if they don't practice, if they don't know how to play their
52:46 instruments — I don't know, maybe that's happening less now as egalitarian hyperfeminism
52:51 takes over the status indoctrination camps, but in general, in life as a whole, we get
52:57 rid of people who aren't up to scratch.
53:00 It's not how we run society at all.
53:03 You don't pass your driver's test, you can't legally drive.
53:07 You don't buy insurance, you can't legally drive.
53:10 We don't give the highest outcomes to everyone, no matter what, at all.
53:18 I didn't meet or match society's expectations, and I was yeeted out like the worst-lying
53:24 blue spaceship gumby in among us.
53:27 Gone, baby, gone.
53:30 Bye-bye.
53:31 Right?
53:32 It's the same thing that worked with me, right?
53:35 So what are they talking about?
53:39 Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
53:44 Strive for moral excellence by giving the highest moral approbations to those who have
53:51 no interest in moral excellence.
53:55 Strive to become the greatest surgeon in the world so you can hire people who printed off
54:02 their own medical degrees in their basement and don't know which end of the scalpel to
54:06 hold.
54:07 And, of course, you understand this is all just a corrupt demand for the provision of
54:11 the unearned.
54:13 Love me, though I'm terrible.
54:15 Love me, though I'm a total dirtbag.
54:17 Love me, although I'm corrupt.
54:19 Love me, although I steal from you.
54:21 Well, that is just saying.
54:24 Provide to me the unearned.
54:27 Give to me what I have not earned, just as if I've earned it.
54:32 I don't want the bother of becoming good, but I want you to treat me as most moral,
54:39 no matter what.
54:40 And John Stuart Mill and countless other moralists have just mouthed these gross, olive oil on
54:50 the gum line, ridiculous, slithery sentences without, it seems to me, a single shred of
54:57 thought or reasoning, and saying to those people, "You should pursue moral excellence
55:02 because it's good, and you should love everyone who hasn't pursued moral excellence because
55:07 that's good, so it's completely mental, it's completely destructive, it's completely deranged."
55:11 And, of course, a lot of these moralists taught at universities with very strict entrance
55:16 requirements, and then they're saying, "Well, no, no, no.
55:19 You should have no standards for everyone and anyone."
55:22 It's stomach-turning.
55:23 I'm certainly happy to hear rebuttals to all of this.
55:26 It's a big conversation I'm opening up, and there's ways of interpreting these statements
55:32 that can salvage them, which is, I think, why they've lasted so long, but we'll get
55:36 to that another time.
55:38 So thanks, everyone, so much for listening.
55:40 freedomain.com/donate to help out the show.
55:42 I really, really would appreciate it.
55:44 Lots of love from up here.
55:45 I'll talk to you soon.
55:46 Bye.