LANGUAGE IS FOR LYING

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 5 months ago
I explore the historical development of language, suggesting its creation was to foster loyalty to abstract ideals and replace physical strength. I use language to uncover truths and address its misuse for manipulation. Emphasizing clear communication and moral principles, I criticize convoluted philosophies and advocate for accessible discourse. Language's role in inciting conflicts and power dynamics is discussed, highlighting its potential for control. I promote philosophical transparency and empowerment through language to combat manipulation and encourage critical thinking for societal benefit. Promoting truth and clarity in philosophical discourse is key to enriching dialogue and fostering ethical behavior.

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Transcript
00:00 Good morning everybody, hope you're doing well. So one thing you see in the media
00:05 of course is this constant "let's you and him fight" and I think it's really
00:12 important to understand just the two major reasons that language was
00:18 developed. So the two major reasons that language was developed was one, to
00:24 instill loyalty in an ideal, not in people, and two, to work as a substitute
00:34 for physical strength and martial excellence. This is why
00:40 we have language. We have language to obscure and provoke, not to clarify and
00:49 reveal. And so when I take language, as philosophers should, and use it to
00:56 clarify and reveal, I am attempting to wrestle in a sense a weapon from an
01:02 enemy. So it's really not hard to be clear in terms of language. It's not hard
01:09 to tell the truth and most of what I say is in many ways ridiculously obvious. I
01:17 mean wouldn't you say that? If it's wrong to hit adults, then it should be
01:21 wrong to hit children. That when you blame people for their failings, you are
01:28 accepting that both you and they have self-ownership and free will and that
01:34 morality exists. That rape, theft, assault and murder can never be universally
01:38 preferable behavior because to try and make say, and by any of those in the
01:43 category, universally preferable behavior, it erases the categories, therefore
01:46 can't be valid. I mean things are pretty obvious, right? Pretty
01:52 easy. That you cannot have opposite moral requirements for the same species.
02:00 You can't say that all non-red-headed people must refrain from murder, but
02:08 all red-headed people must murder. That would be crazy, right? So looking
02:14 for consistency and universality in morality, which is what is always claimed
02:17 with morality, well it's all blindingly obvious. So then the question is if it's
02:23 all blindingly obvious and can be explained as I have, I've explained
02:29 morality to my daughter when she was three, four and five years old and you
02:33 know she's smarter than your average bear but not to the point where she can
02:38 process things at four that adults can't possibly process. So it's sort of the
02:44 great mystery of philosophy, right? Which is what philosophers say or what
02:52 philosophers should say is blindingly obvious and I can't tell you the
02:56 bottomless wells of acidic contempt I have in my heart for philosophers who
03:02 have all of these weird brain-twisting polysyllabic explanations of things that
03:08 don't exist and don't matter. "Oh, you see, but the word spirit doth take a
03:13 particular nation or state by its shorts and move it forward according to the
03:18 polynomial preferences of an abstract realm called the new aminal." Yeah, great.
03:23 Can humanity get anything that can help you? I don't know, parent
03:29 children? Because that's where morality starts, right? Morality starts with the
03:32 parent-child relationship. So can philosophers do anything that serves
03:37 parents? Anything? Anything at all? "No, but you see, what's really
03:43 important is the question of whether we live as a brain in a tank
03:48 controlled by a demon for unknown purposes, for unknown causes, in unknown
03:52 ways, using unknown methodologies and that's the most important thing." Yeah,
03:57 okay. Can you imagine? Imagine as a kid taking one of these
04:01 ridiculous philosophical mumbo-jumbo word salads and saying, "Well, it's
04:07 true, mama, that I did steal from your purse, but really what is truth
04:12 and reality anyway? Do I even have free will? And maybe it's all
04:17 predetermined and maybe we're all just brains in a tank controlled by a
04:22 demon." You fail the test, right, at school and you say, "Yes, but you see, in an
04:29 alternate realm, according to the world spirit, it's entirely possible I did
04:33 pass that test, so you can't fail me, really." They laugh at you, just as I and
04:38 any sane person laughs at these supposed philosophers who serve the powers that
04:42 be by obfuscating every polysyllable known to man to the point where human
04:46 beings can't think their way out of a paper bag. Or, to put it another way, only
04:52 those philosophers that pulled all of this polysyllabic obscuring nonsense
04:56 were the ones chosen to represent philosophy, you see. And this, of course,
05:01 makes philosophy so difficult. I mean, there are so many famously obscure
05:08 philosophers with contradictory passages all over the place. This makes philosophy
05:12 so impossible that it becomes worse than useless for the general population, and
05:20 philosophers should serve the general population. I mean, shouldn't we? Isn't
05:27 that why we don't toil with labor for our daily bread? Is we provide a valuable
05:32 service for moral clarity to the general population? That's why I have always
05:38 focused on, you know, I don't take grants, I don't take subsidies, I don't take cash
05:44 offerings that could conceivably obscure the clarity of my purpose, even when
05:50 they've been offered, and they have been, because I want to face with utility the
05:55 general population, you, dear listener, and provide value to you. Because if I'm
06:01 not providing value to you, I'm providing value to those who have their boots on
06:08 your neck, which I will not do. So, yeah, purpose of language is to have you loyal
06:16 not to an individual, but to a principle, to a country, to democracy, to the
06:23 king, to whatever, like whatever outlives the individual which another
06:28 individual can step into and inhabit, right? I'm loyal to the crown, because the
06:33 crown never ages. The crown can be moved from one head to another, and language
06:39 was invented to bypass the natural problem that violent bullies have when
06:45 they rule others, which is that the violent bullies get older and weaker, and
06:49 the others they bully get taller and stronger. And if might makes right, those
06:55 who impose might will be cast out or slaughtered in their old age, right?
07:01 Throughout most of human history, the Alpha Hominid gets old, and then they're
07:08 too old to defend their power, and they get attacked back. And so language is
07:14 there to create an abstract and an ideal so that the aging of the individual in a
07:20 power structure does not directly weaken that power structure, or to put it another
07:25 way, the power structure is based on eternal language, not on failing and
07:30 fading muscles. So that's the purpose. One purpose of language is that.
07:36 Now, the other purpose of language, of course, is to act as a substitute for
07:42 muscle and martial prowess. So if there's a weak guy, right, let's take our
07:49 eponymous Bob and Doug. Bob and Doug are two big, ferocious, powerful warriors, and
07:54 they are oppressing, let's say, let's give him a name,
07:59 Socrates, right? So Bob and Doug, big, powerful, meaty, manly Alpha warriors, you
08:05 know, six foot three, 240 pounds of pure muscle, and they've had massive amounts
08:10 of experience in fighting. And they are both oppressing Socrates. Or, let's say
08:16 they're not even oppressing Socrates, but they're getting all the cool chicks, and
08:19 so Socrates wants to eliminate one or both of them. So what does he do? Well, he
08:24 can't fight them. He can't fight them. So what does he do? Well, he gets them to
08:29 fight each other. And then, maybe he just offs the wounded one. So he starts
08:35 spreading rumors. He starts fighting with language. He starts using language as a
08:42 way of hijacking the muscles he does not possess in order to attack both people
08:49 who are oppressing him. Right? So either Bob or Doug or both end up instigating
08:56 fights against each other, pushing at each other, and shoving at each other. And
09:00 then there's a duel, right? And, you know, back in the day, the duel was just like
09:04 punching or throwing rocks or smacking each other with implements, sticks or
09:09 whatever. Then one would probably get killed, and one would get wounded. Now, the
09:16 wounded guy is not particularly attractive, and he might not get better.
09:19 He might die from infection and so on. So, you see, Socrates then can use language
09:26 to destroy, let's just say, 1.5 warriors. And so, language was invented as a
09:34 substitute, as a form of possession, possessing others, of hijacking their
09:41 fight-or-flight mechanism so that they will act as a remote control proxy for
09:47 your own lack of strength and martial courage and martial skill. So, Socrates
09:54 can get Bob and Doug to fight each other, and then Socrates can either off the
10:03 weakened one or let the weakened one die of natural causes after the fight. You
10:08 know, he's got a broken leg, it doesn't heal properly, he gets weak, he gets
10:11 feverish, he gets an infection, or, you know, he just has a limp and can't fight
10:17 and can't hunt and loses his status or stature thereby. Because you see this
10:22 happening all the time. It's the physically weak who set us against each
10:28 other so that they can rule the remains of our strength. This, of course, you
10:34 combine these two, then you get war, right? You combine ideals, loyalty to an
10:40 ideals rather than an individual, because loyalty is based on love. You love your
10:45 country, whereas surrendering to an individual is based on fear, and love
10:51 does not engender hatred, but fear does. If somebody frightens you often enough,
10:55 you will get angry and you will want to harm that person. I mean, you've seen this
11:00 a million times on the internet, jump scares followed by somebody getting
11:04 punched. So, if you can get someone to love an abstraction, which the
11:11 individual inhabiting that abstraction, like the king and the country, you know,
11:18 the king is dead, long live the king, the king is dead, long live the king. You see
11:21 the king is the language-based continuation of the subjugating person.
11:29 I mean, I remember being fascinated by that statement as a little kid.
11:32 The king is dead, long live the king. Because I just heard it in abstract, it's
11:36 like, what does that? It's a paradox. What the heck does that mean? How can the king
11:40 is dead, long live the king? And it wasn't until I saw it enacted out, you know,
11:45 some old king died and they held up the young king, Mustafa style, and the king is
11:49 dead, long live the king. Pretty fascinating. So, language, which gets you
11:55 to love the abstraction called the country or the king, language allows for
12:01 love to thwart a desire for revenge. Whereas, if it's just an individual who
12:08 bullies you and subjugates you, right, you think of that that balled-up fist of the
12:15 great Crispin Glover acting in Back to the Future, that great balled-up fist
12:20 where Biff finally gets punched, right, Biff who oppresses, is it Marty? I can't
12:27 remember, the elder McFly. I wouldn't hurt a McFly. So, you get that balled-up fist
12:32 and that punch which then changes his life, right? So, if you physically bully
12:40 someone, they will desire vengeance against you and you will get old and
12:45 they will generally get taller and stronger and more cunning and have
12:48 allies and so on. So, eventually, you know, Macbeth style, you're just gonna get
12:53 probably killed in your sleep. Somebody's gonna drop a rock on your head when
12:56 you're 65 and can't particularly fight. But, if instead of fearing the fists of
13:03 the individual, you love the abstraction called the kingship or kinghood or the
13:09 crown, right, I mean that's the name of the series on the royal family, it's
13:12 called The Crown. It's not individuals, it's the crown. So, if you love the
13:18 abstraction rather than fear the individual, you're much less likely to
13:22 rebel, which is why the revolution happened in America because they did not
13:27 respect the king and they didn't like King George. He was just a guy who was
13:32 taking stuff away from them. So, let's see if he can, right? So, language is developed
13:40 for two purposes that philosophers, good philosophers, honest philosophers, useful
13:47 philosophers, philosophers who care about truth and virtue and the people, right?
13:52 So, I'm giving the people powerful truths rather than lying to them to
14:00 subjugate them to those with boots on their neck. So, I'm trying to take
14:05 language and use it not to justify abstractions but to say, what have I
14:15 always said? I mean, my very first video was on concept formation and my argument
14:21 was that, I've always said this, right? The concept is imperfectly derived from
14:26 the instance, right? So, the tree matters. The definition of the tree is a shadow
14:31 cast by the tree. It's a slave to the tree. The instance matters. The concept
14:35 must accurately reflect the instance. There are no concepts that can
14:39 contradict the nature of any instance. You can't say, of these 99 trees in this
14:45 little forest, 98 of them are trees and one is the opposite of a tree.
14:51 That's a rank contradiction, obviously, right? Of these 99 trees in this little
14:55 forest, you can't rationally say that 98 of these trees are trees and one of
15:02 these trees is the opposite of a tree. I mean, that would be the actions of a
15:05 crazy person, right? I mean, if you're out in the woods and say, "Oh, lovely trees," and
15:08 some guy says, "Well, yeah, except for this tree, this is the opposite of a tree. This
15:12 is the total, it's a polar opposite of the tree. It has all the opposite
15:16 properties of a tree." It's like, well, then why are you calling it a tree? It looks
15:19 exactly the same as the others. I mean, maybe it's a cake tree. I don't know, right?
15:23 He says, "No, no, no. It is physically identical to all the other trees, but it
15:27 is the opposite of a tree." Like, that would be the actions of a crazy person.
15:31 You take slow steps back from that person and leave him alone in the woods
15:35 with the feminists and the bears. Sorry, reference to current meme to future
15:40 generations of scholars, but that's what philosophers do, right? They say that of
15:46 all the people in this country, everyone is a person. The king is a person, but he
15:50 is imbued with a divine essence that gives him completely
15:55 opposite moral rules. You can't print currency, he can print currency. You can't
16:00 start wars, he can start wars. He can throw you in prison, you can't throw him
16:03 in prison. So he's a human being just like you. He's not a
16:08 space alien, he's not a king made out of cake. I gotta stop with these cake things.
16:12 I'm getting hungry. I haven't had any breakfast yet. It's after 11. So this is
16:16 what the philosophers do. Well, not really philosophers, just propagandists for
16:20 power. They say, "Oh yeah, he's of these 99 trees in the forest, all the
16:27 trees except this one who has the opposite properties of a tree." They say,
16:30 "Well, of all the people in the kingdom, everyone's a person except for the king
16:34 who has the opposite moral properties and requirements and commandments of a
16:37 person." Now, in order to obscure this obvious insanity, and it is
16:44 obvious insanity, they have to create all of these complications. And of course it
16:51 comes out of childhood where parents say, "You must not use force to get what you
16:55 want. I want you to obey, so I'm gonna use force." That obvious contradiction is
16:59 why people believe all of this nonsense about kings and royal power and all of
17:05 this crazy, genuinely crazy stuff. So when you see, and you can see this
17:12 all over in the media, various isms and phobias and people being set
17:16 against each other, this is all propagated by people who are physically
17:21 weak, who are using language as a substitute for the muscles they don't
17:27 possess, the martial courage and martial ability that they don't possess. They
17:30 want us to fight each other so they can rule the remains. And they want the
17:35 strongest people to fight each other so that they can rule over the weakest,
17:41 because they're weak themselves. It's more true of propagandists as a
17:45 whole, but yeah, it's just important. So when I take philosophy and use it to
17:49 clarify and prove, I'm taking a weapon designed to enslave and using it to
17:57 liberate, which is fundamentally confusing to people as are not you guys,
18:01 right? It's fundamentally confusing to people as a whole and makes them quite
18:04 hostile and angry, for reasons we can all, I think, understand and appreciate. So
18:11 yeah, look at this. You see this all over the place on social media, all over the
18:16 place. So those who hate a group and can't fight that group and can't prove
18:22 their case and can't win against them in any open disagreement, whether it's
18:27 martial or debate or whatever. So those who hate a group and wish to reduce
18:33 their numbers don't fight them openly if they can't win. If they can win, they will,
18:37 but when they can't, they won't. And what they do is they simply say that men
18:42 are toxic and women are horrible and you should have nothing to do with each
18:46 other and that way they reduce the birth rate. And well, that's sort of
18:51 preventive war, right? Because in war, you kill the adults and in propaganda, you
18:57 prevent them from being born. And there's a kind of murderousness to both, in my
19:02 view, in sort of long-term effects. So yeah, that's just the way things roll. So
19:08 I'm aware that I am attempting to wrestle an allegorical form of combat
19:14 from those who invented it and who use language to control rather than to
19:21 inform, to lie and destroy rather than inform and create. So it's tough. It's a
19:28 tough situation and this is why, you know, particularly I've done this
19:32 great 22-part History of Philosophers series you can get at freedomain.locals.com
19:36 but it's a wrestle and a half and that's why there's such volatility
19:41 around what it is that I do. So I hope that helps. I hope you have a wonderful
19:45 day. Thank you, of course, for all of your support of the show.
19:48 freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. It's the last day or two where you can get
19:52 all of the peaceful parenting goodies including the AI just for supporting me
19:58 at freedomain.com/donate. Hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much.
20:01 for listening and for allowing this conversation to continue. Lots of love
20:06 from up here. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.