What to Feed Your CONSCIENCE!

  • 3 months ago
"Moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and enforcement. When a new moral framework is conceived, it has to overthrow an existing moral framework, and if the adherents of the old framework aren't happy to be labelled as evil or lacking morally, they will fight the new framework tooth and nail. Does this mean that introducing a new moral framework requires a compromise on some issues in order for it to even have the chance of being widely adopted?

"This is like a presidential candidate compromising some of his stances on particular issues in order to be more acceptable to the public. Or as you’ve once said, ‘Are there any public philosophers who aren’t fighting one evil while appeasing another one?’ Even with the abolition of slavery, the racial discrimination continued through state power.

"I understand that philosophy is more for the future than the present. I'm just curious how a philosophical movement survives the test of time when it relies on people in order for it to get to the future. We only see the successful religions for example, but we don't see all the religions that failed to gain traction, and a part of me wonders if there is more to morality than providing a rational proof, especially since the means of transmission is social.

"I understand you haven't stopped at a rational proof either, and have applied it to many facates such parenting, relationships, psychology and history. I also struggle to consider what could be compromised on here without losing something essential about UPB and NAP which is their universality. But at the same time, I have doubts about the future success of these ideas when faced with the seeming momentum of social norms and institutional forces.

"Is no compromise the answer? Or is my ambivalence warranted?"

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Transcript
00:00Well, well, well, hi everybody, Stéphane Molyneux.
00:04Great questions.
00:05We're having a mellow afternoon and we're going to dig into some core philosophy here.
00:13Thank you, of course, to all of the great community questions at freedomain.locals.com.
00:17If you'd like to help out the show, it would be most appreciated.
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00:37All right, here's the first question.
00:43Moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and
00:47enforcement.
00:54Back to the philosophy nerds right up front.
00:56Moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and
01:00enforcement.
01:03All right, you sneaky, sneaky people.
01:11So this is somebody who, and we're all tempted by this, I try to resist the temptation, occasionally
01:18I succeed.
01:20So what is a package deal, right?
01:22So it's like, okay, I'm going to take this incredibly complex argument and I'm going
01:27to just barrel it through as if it ain't no thing, as if it's completely self-evident.
01:33It's like, okay, given the two and two make four, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
01:37So moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and
01:41enforcement.
01:42Okay, what's your definition of moral?
01:46What's your definition of a framework?
01:48What's your definition of intrinsically?
01:51What's your definition of social and acceptance and enforcement?
01:55You have just rolled a massive package of incredibly complicated or sophisticated or
02:02detailed philosophical issues and rolled them all into one and jammed it through as if it's
02:10completely self-evident, to which I say, slow your roll, sailor.
02:15How about you loop me up and buy me a drink before we go to that extremity of aggression?
02:23So what does that mean?
02:24Moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and
02:28enforcement.
02:31And what does intrinsically mean here?
02:34So is it true that people need to believe in a morality in order to enforce that morality?
02:41Yeah, I think that's true.
02:43I think that's certainly true.
02:45They rely on social acceptance and enforcement.
02:51So the greatest gift that thinkers can give to humanity is consistency, consistency.
03:05I am the least revolutionary philosopher in history because I'm not inventing any radical
03:14new perspectives or morals or approaches or anything like that.
03:17I'm not inventing new gods.
03:19I'm not saying that we shouldn't use reason.
03:21I'm not saying that we shouldn't debate.
03:24I'm the least revolutionary philosopher in history, while of course being the most radical
03:29philosopher in history in many ways because I'm just doing this radical little thing called
03:35consistency.
03:37You know, there are these little posters, everything I need to know about life I learned
03:42in kindergarten.
03:43Well, everything I need to learn about morality was taught to me when I was very little.
03:50Use your words, not your fists.
03:52Don't take what isn't yours.
03:53Keep your promises.
03:54Tell the truth.
03:55This is all what was taught to me.
04:00The most radical revolution in philosophy is mere consistency.
04:04Now, this happens in the realm of physics and everything, right?
04:07So when it was believed that the world was the center of the universe and the stars were
04:11little pinpricks in the colander of the sky and so on, you know, it seemed to make sense.
04:17And people say, well, you know, you take an apple, you let go of it, it drops to the ground.
04:21And all that, you know, people like Copernicus and Tchaikovsky and Newton to some degree,
04:26all they said was, okay, like that apple dropping, what if that's universal?
04:33What if everything falls and people's mind got blown, right?
04:40Okay, so if everything falls, then there's the, there's inertia, which keeps something
04:46going in a straight line, there's centrifugal forces, which cause something to, uh, well,
04:53there's, there's, sorry, inertia, which keeps something in a straight line, there's gravity,
04:57which has it fall down or fall towards a larger mass.
05:01And so that's going to result in a stable orbit.
05:03Momentum plus gravity results in a stable orbit.
05:09The centrifugal force or inertia pushes it outwards, gravity pulls it inwards,
05:14it ends up in a stable orbit.
05:15Okay, so we can see a bunch of stuff going around Jupiter.
05:20I think there's really nothing around Venus or Mercury.
05:23There were Deimos and Phobos are the two moons around Mars.
05:27So, but you can see a bunch of moons floating around.
05:31And so then people said, okay, well, if we, if we have a moon and we can see a bunch of
05:39moons all over the place, I don't know what a 27 around Jupiter or what, I don't know,
05:43some crazy number of these days, right?
05:46It's going to hit the wall soon.
05:48So they said, okay, so what if gravity is a constant?
05:53What if everything we see in the sky is a ball?
05:56What if we're a ball?
05:57They're just extending consistency.
05:59That's all.
06:01What if everything falls?
06:02What if we're not the center of the universe?
06:04What if the sun is the center of the solar system?
06:07And what if we're a sphere just like everything else?
06:11And what if everything falls around everything else?
06:13It's just taking the apple falling down, making it consistent, right?
06:17That's the big trick.
06:20Universalizing the local is the job of philosophy and particularly in the realm of morality.
06:28Why do people get so mad at me?
06:30I mean, we could do a whole show, actually a whole series of shows about that.
06:33But one of the reasons why people get so mad at me
06:37is I'm not telling them anything they don't already know, right?
06:42What's my radical philosophy?
06:44Non-aggression principle, respectful property rights.
06:46Ooh, that's just crazy.
06:48Don't use violence, don't initiate the use of force and respect people's persons and property.
06:52Oh my God, how insane, how radical, right?
06:56I'm not saying that sexually abusing hamsters is the way to moral perfection, right?
07:01I mean, that would be a little tough to defend.
07:04Well, impossible for the hamster, but tough logically.
07:09So what I'm doing is the same thing.
07:13What Einstein did in saying, okay, speed of light is constant.
07:16Well, speed of light is constant, right?
07:19What if there's no such thing as the ether, which we can't prove anyway?
07:22Speed of light is constant.
07:23Well, making that the basis gives us an understanding of the universe as a whole.
07:29Saying everything conforms to the same physics as the apple falling from your hand
07:35when you let go of it, everything conforms to that.
07:37It's just universalizing it.
07:38Now, universalizing it gets you, right, nose up against the giant ass of the seat of power.
07:49There's a vivid analogy.
07:50There's a vivid analogy.
07:52Can you almost, you can almost smell that, right?
07:54Sticks to the nasal hairs.
07:55So power is in hypocrisy.
08:01Power is in inconsistency.
08:03Power is in rules for thee, but not for me, right?
08:09I can pass laws against you.
08:11You cannot pass laws against me.
08:13I can take money by force from you.
08:15You cannot take money from force by me.
08:16I can counterfeit.
08:17You can't counterfeit.
08:18I can run into debt based on others.
08:20You can't run into debt based on others.
08:22So power, you understand, is hypocrisy.
08:26Foundational.
08:27Which is why brutal hierarchies are always at war with good philosophers.
08:33Because the hierarchy and the power is the hypocrisy and philosophy erases hypocrisy
08:42or reveals hypocrisy for what it really is, which is power, right?
08:46Why have we developed the capacity for endless self-deluding hypocrisy?
08:52Because that allows us to use power against others and also allows us to survive the use
08:58of power against ourselves.
09:00But once we justify the use of power against ourselves, it tends to be very sticky, right?
09:05It tends not to move.
09:06So yeah, social acceptance, sure.
09:10But when I say all the things that were taught to you in kindergarten are true universally,
09:19people go kind of crazy, right?
09:22People go kind of crazy.
09:23I mean, there were religious institutions the world over that were built on the earth
09:27being the center of the universe, right?
09:30And when the earth was revealed as not the center even of the solar system, let alone
09:37the universe, those power structures took a blow.
09:46Even Darwin's theory of evolution is simply an extension of local principles to universal
09:52standards.
09:53For, I mean, if you ever want to sort of blow the mind of your kids, you go online and you
10:01search for, like, what did corn look like originally?
10:05I mean, you go and see these weird, weird dogs, like they're shih tzus and so on, face
10:13mushed and they can't breathe, right?
10:15What's this great meme?
10:17Like an ancient cat, you know, 10,000 years ago talking to a modern cat and the ancient
10:23cat says, ah, yes, humans are still our slaves.
10:25You know, the guy comes home and the cat's meow, meow, meow.
10:28And the cat is basically saying, open the cupboard, you effing can opener.
10:35So that's what the cat's saying.
10:37And the ancient wolf is saying to the modern dog, is trying to talk to the modern dog.
10:41The modern dog is like, the ancient wolf is like, what the eff is that?
10:45What is that?
10:47What is it?
10:49The wolf 10,000 years ago is like, okay, there's some humans over there with a campfire.
10:53They're offering me some food.
10:54Let's give it a shot.
10:55What could go wrong?
10:56And then there's some 10,000 years later, there's some flat faced dog wheezing his way
11:02in some old lady, kid substitute, fluffy costume.
11:07And it's like, oh God, what's happened?
11:09So animal husbandry, selective breeding for the sake of utility has been known since ancient
11:19times, right?
11:19People have spliced together crops to get better crops.
11:24They've selected the most flavorful and ripe crops.
11:28They've split apples into a wide variety of species of different kinds of apples.
11:34And so selectively breeding, right?
11:36I mean, wolves were selectively bred for tens of thousands of years so that they retained
11:43what's called neoteny.
11:44Neoteny is when you retain childlike characteristics into adulthood, right?
11:48So women in particular with high pitched voices, shorter stature, they don't lose their hair
11:53and so on.
11:54So women retain physical characteristics of childhood into adulthood and that's called
11:59neoteny.
12:00And dogs are just wolves bred so that the puppies don't evolve into adult dogs, for
12:08the most part, right?
12:08Dogs are just wolf puppies that never grow up.
12:14So animal husbandry, selective breeding.
12:16There's a Russian breeder, which I thought was quite fascinating.
12:20He separated foxes into two groups and one group, he simply bred the most aggressive
12:27foxes with the most aggressive foxes.
12:30And the other group, he bred the least aggressive foxes with the least aggressive foxes.
12:35And within a couple of generations, and it was only a few generations, he had crazy aggressive
12:41foxes and crazy passive and friendly foxes.
12:46And it was pretty wild.
12:48So human beings have seen evolution consistently and of course the fact that civilization has
12:57evolved as a kind of IQ evolution and so on.
13:00And so saying that they're precious and creatures change over time, you simply take that
13:07principle and you extend it and expand it forever, right?
13:11But that runs up against a particular kind of power, right?
13:14The power that says, give me money because God created all of our lives and I have a
13:19special access to God and he'll give you heaven and hell.
13:22Well, evolution, as does the heliocentric model of the solar system, takes God out of
13:32the equation, which sometimes means less, fewer tithes flowing to the religious authorities
13:39around the world.
13:40So when philosophers take localized examples and universalize them, right?
13:47They unravel the hypocrisy.
13:50We unravel the hypocrisy that is the foundation of power because virtue is hypocrisy, right?
13:59In all pre-UPB formulations, virtue is hypocrisy because it's always rules for thee but not
14:06for me.
14:06It's rules that are claimed to be universal that require the opposite of those rules to
14:12enforce, right?
14:13So they say, well, you see, this is the sort of social contract theory, right?
14:17Which I've talked about before.
14:19So philosophers have said, so you have a right to property, right?
14:24And property is a good right to have.
14:27And so in order to enforce your right to property, what you need is a social agency that violates
14:38property rights in order to protect your property.
14:40So you have to submit yourself to an agency that can violate your property rights, pretty
14:44much it will, in order to protect your property.
14:49That is a little tough.
14:50Well, you see, society needs a third party to judge disputes between people because people
14:56can't agree on how to resolve all their disputes.
14:59And there are people who are corrupt and there are people who will cheat you and lie to you
15:02and so on.
15:04And so you need someone to judge you or some group to judge you and that's called the
15:10law and the judges and the legal system, the prosecutors and so on.
15:16Because people are corrupt and will lie and cheat.
15:18It's like, okay, so what happens if the legal system is corrupt and lies and cheats?
15:23See, you say there's a problem and then you create a group of angels immune to that problem,
15:28still calling them human beings, and then you say you've solved the problem.
15:32Which makes about as much sense to women as saying, or men too for that matter, saying,
15:39well, you really have to make sure that you have a system that protects you from rape.
15:46And the way that you do that is you create a group of people in society who can rape
15:50you at will, and that's how you protect yourself from rape.
15:53Like none of that would make any sense, right?
15:57In order to gain protection from the problem of murder, you need to create a group of people
16:04in society who can murder you at will, which is something like the draft in a way, right?
16:10So that hypocrisy, right?
16:13And you're not allowed to notice this, right?
16:16Because if you notice it, then it's a problem, right?
16:21Because then you, I mean, you shall live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.
16:26And that really is just, boing, eyes open time, right?
16:31So moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and
16:35enforcement.
16:35Okay, so again, that's a total word salad, but I think the questions that it raises are
16:40interesting.
16:41And just in general, I know everybody wants to rush to their big question, but I was always
16:47taught as a kid, and it's just another one of these things that's kind of important.
16:51I was always taught as a kid, well, two things.
16:54Respect property, don't use force, and all you do is take that and universalize it, right?
16:59And that runs you into the hypocrisy of power.
17:01And power has its say in all of that, as we know.
17:06But the other thing I was told is that haste makes waste, right?
17:09Don't rush.
17:10Haste makes waste.
17:12There's a business idea where the old bull and the young bull are at the top of the hill,
17:16and there's a bunch of cows at the bottom.
17:19And the young bull says, let's run down and have sex with a cow.
17:23And the older bull says, no, no, no, no, let's walk down slowly and have sex with all the
17:28cows, right?
17:29I mean, it's one of these not very useful, apocryphal stories in the business world.
17:34And so haste makes waste.
17:36And so you need to build your case to have credibility, right?
17:43There's a reason why it's hundreds of pages for peaceful parenting, and it's hundreds
17:47of pages for UPB, and it's hundreds of pages for RTR, and it's hundreds of pages for essential
17:51philosophy, and my other books, and so on.
17:55You need to build your case, right?
17:59So again, I don't know what you mean by moral.
18:01I don't know what you mean by frameworks.
18:02Intrinsically is really, really a tough word.
18:04You're talking about Aristotelian essence or based upon the concept definition.
18:08I don't know.
18:09I don't even know what you mean by social.
18:11Social enforcement.
18:13And also you blend together acceptance and enforcement.
18:15They rely on social acceptance and enforcement.
18:18No, moral frameworks do not rely on enforcement in a truly free society.
18:26Because in a truly free society, the power is ostracism, right?
18:35You understand the irony that I've been advocating ostracism and being kicked out of economic
18:41frameworks as a way of enforcing social rules.
18:46I've been talking about that for decades, and then I got deplatformed.
18:51I don't particularly mind being the proof of my own theory.
18:56Deplatforming is a great argument for a truly free society.
19:00So, all right.
19:02So, social acceptance and enforcement.
19:05If you mean by enforcement, the initiation of the use of force, then that's immoral.
19:09If you mean by enforcement, self-defense, that's another matter.
19:13Still the use of violence, but justified if you're talking about enforcement through ostracism
19:18that has no violence involved.
19:20So again, I don't know what you're talking about.
19:25And if I don't know what you're talking about, as a rational guy, it's an important principle
19:31here.
19:31If I don't know what you're talking about, I assume that you, you my friend, do not know
19:36what you're talking about.
19:37And you're trying to pull one over on me by rushing through a whole bunch of complex stuff
19:41as if it's completely self-evident.
19:43So, you understand that's an appeal to insecurity, right?
19:46Right.
19:48That's an appeal.
19:49So, if you rush forward with highly complex stuff, I mean, look, this one sentence could
19:55be an entire book, right?
19:57This one sentence could be an entire book and needs to be.
20:01Mathematical proofs, I mean, look at Fermat's last theorem, right?
20:03Mathematical proofs can be enormously complex and lengthy.
20:07So, when you rush forward as if things are self-evident, I assume you're trying to pull
20:16one over on me.
20:18And you are.
20:20And again, I'm not saying it's conscious and I appreciate this as an example, and I'm not
20:23saying you have any negative or malevolent intent, of course, but I'm just saying, you
20:30know, have a little foreplay before you screw me, you know?
20:33I'm not saying it's got to be a whole wall of flowers and a whole tray of chocolates,
20:38but, you know, maybe open a door or two before you tell me my shoes are untied and grab the
20:43Vaseline.
20:44So, then you go on to say, when a new moral framework is conceived, it has to overthrow
20:51an existing moral framework.
20:56So, again, when a new moral framework is conceived, I don't know what you mean by moral
21:03or framework.
21:04I mean, obviously, we could say UPB or moral theory.
21:07What do you mean by conceived?
21:09Moral frameworks are not conceived.
21:16Unless you're using moral to be a descriptor of what people claim to be moral and not what
21:22is actually moral.
21:23A lot of people will claim things to be moral that are not moral.
21:26A lot of people will claim that it's moral to beat your children, circumcise your children,
21:31your sons.
21:32A lot of people will claim that something is moral when it's not moral.
21:36So, I don't know if you mean a moral framework like just what people claim is moral or a
21:41moral framework that's actually moral, in which case a true moral framework, a valid
21:45moral framework, is not conceived but proved.
21:47I didn't conceive of UPB.
21:49I proved UPB.
21:50So, again, I'm not sure what you mean.
21:52It has to overthrow an existing moral framework.
21:56Why?
21:56Why does it have to do that?
21:58Why does a new moral framework have to overthrow an existing moral framework?
22:02There have been tons of moral frameworks that have been conceived that have never gone anywhere.
22:09So, we haven't really heard of them.
22:11Now, if you were going to say when a new moral framework is conceived, it has to overthrow
22:16an existing moral framework in order to succeed or whatever it is, and you go on to say, and
22:22if the adherents of the old framework aren't happy to be labeled as evil or lacking morality,
22:25they will fight the new framework tooth and nail.
22:28Does this mean that introducing a new moral framework requires a compromise on some issues
22:32in order for it to even have the chance of being widely adopted?
22:39Well, of course, you absolutely need compromises in the promulgation of a new moral framework.
22:47And we're just going to assume that new moral framework refers to UPB here, right?
22:51So, yeah, of course.
22:53Absolutely.
22:54UPB, of course, defines a lot of things as immoral, but UPB also says that until something
23:01is proven to people, they exist in a state of nature with regards to morality.
23:06So, even though they may have an instinct for the kind of hypocrisy that is occurring
23:11in the existing moral corruption framework, they are in a relative state of nature regarding
23:18the new morality.
23:19So, it's going to take a while for them to be proven and so forth.
23:22So, it's going to take a while for them to be proven and so on.
23:24Like, if I were to say, I don't know, everything that's funded on debt is immoral, which,
23:31you know, it is, right?
23:32Everything funded on government debt is immoral because it's exploiting the next generation
23:36for the greed of the present, right?
23:39We understand that.
23:40So, if I were to say that everything that is funded on intergenerational debt is immoral,
23:49then, would I then have to say everything that has arisen out of government spending
23:58that has not been paid for is immoral?
23:59Well, that's the internet, that's TCPIP, that's the whole framework, that's the
24:04World Wide Web, so I wouldn't be able to use it, right?
24:06So, yeah, of course, you have to make some, I mean, the roads, you know, I did a presentation
24:12at a university many years ago about how the US interstate highway system came about under
24:22Eisenhower.
24:22It's still being paid off, right?
24:24It's still being paid off.
24:25In fact, England only recently ended up finishing off paying for ending slavery because nothing
24:32says, let's all be virtuous, than an entire society and culture ending slavery worldwide
24:37and being blamed for slavery forever and ever.
24:40Forever and ever, amen.
24:42People, they don't know what they're doing.
24:43So, yeah, of course, there is a compromise, right?
24:50There is a compromise.
24:55So, yeah, I mean, but that's saying that, you know, saying that, like, let's say you
25:04have a new theory of physics that you want to teach to students, you're going to have
25:07to find some way, I mean, prior to the internet, right?
25:11Really, you'd have to find some way to get access to the students.
25:15Let's say it's a university level.
25:16You'd have to find some way to get access to the students.
25:19You'd have to be invited in.
25:20Yeah, there would have to be some compromises.
25:23So, all right, he goes on to say, this is like a presidential candidate compromising
25:27some of his stances on particular issues in order to be more acceptable to the public.
25:31Or as you've once said, are there any public philosophers who aren't fighting one evil
25:35while appeasing another one?
25:37Even with the abolition of slavery, the racial discrimination continued through state power.
25:44I understand that philosophy is more for the future than the present.
25:46I'm just curious how a philosophical movement survives the test of time when it relies on
25:50people in order for it to get to the future.
25:53We only see the successful religions, for example, but we don't see all the religions
25:57that fail to gain traction.
25:59And a part of me wonders if there is more to morality than providing a rational proof,
26:05especially since the means of transmission is social.
26:11I understand you haven't stopped at a rational proof either and have applied it to many facets
26:17such as parenting, relationship, psychology, and history.
26:19I also struggle to consider what could be compromised on here without losing something
26:23essential about UPP and NAP, which is the...
26:28Oh, Lord.
26:29But at the same time, I have doubts about the future success of these ideas when faced
26:34with seeing the momentum of social norms and institutional forces.
26:38It is no compromise, the answer, or is my ambivalence warranted?
26:44Oh, Lord.
26:49Look, I don't mean to be rude, sorry.
26:50But I mean, honestly, I'm pushing 60, right?
26:54I mean, 58 this year, right?
26:56I mean, I don't mean to be rude, but God, man, what a load of...
27:01What a load of ookie-cookie.
27:05This is the big moral issue in your life, is it?
27:09Is the long-term effects of compromises of other people in a new moral framework?
27:17Come on, man, that's the big thing there.
27:18Well, I have dolved every other issue.
27:21Nobody, no children in my vicinity or neighborhood are being maltreated.
27:26I've talked to everyone about UPB and peaceful parenting and a free society and voluntarism
27:32and everybody, like, I've pushed all of this forward and blah, blah, blah.
27:35And so the only thing that's left for me, since I have done absolutely everything in
27:39my environment and under my control to push forward truth, virtue, reason, and evidence
27:43and morality, the only thing that's left is to figure out what are the effects of various
27:48abstract compromises going to be on this philosophical system over the next few hundred years?
27:53Oh, my God.
27:55Man, I know a dodge when I hear it.
27:58I know a dodge when I hear it.
28:00Yeah.
28:05I mean, you literally refer to me having difficult conversations with people about philosophy
28:10over the last, well, really, it's been 40 years, but publicly, close to 20 years.
28:16So you literally have this example.
28:17And what are you doing?
28:19Yes, but what percentage of compromise could possibly be necessary to fully advance the
28:24cause over the next half a millennia?
28:26Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
28:30Oh, my God.
28:32You know we're in a fucking plague, right?
28:36You know we're in a plague.
28:40And people are dying.
28:45And people are dying.
28:46And people are abusing children and abusing each other.
28:52And being thrown into the bottomless pit of dysfunction and neglect.
29:00They're getting addicted to drugs.
29:01They're turning like rabbit wolves on their fellow citizens.
29:04We saw that under COVID.
29:06So you know that we are currently in a plague.
29:15Now, you don't have to lift a finger to help in the time of this plague, though, sorry,
29:23by now, you and everyone who's listening to this, you have the cure.
29:28And the cure is to expose the moral hypocrisies and encourage those around us to be moral.
29:36At whatever level of personal effect we can have.
29:39Maybe not at work, because that's not what you're paid for.
29:41We can have maybe, maybe not at work, because that's not what you're paid for at work,
29:44but certainly at a personal level.
29:48That's the cure.
29:49And that cure is available to all of us.
29:51You don't have to be eloquent.
29:52You don't have to be a public persona.
29:54You don't have to write books, although that wouldn't hurt.
29:57But you can talk to people about reason, virtue, truth, honesty, evidence, and morality.
30:05You can spread UPB.
30:06You can spread peaceful parenting.
30:07You can spread voluntarism.
30:08You can spread the non-aggression principle.
30:10You can spread the respect for property rights among the people you know,
30:17the people you meet, friends, family, acquaintances, and so on.
30:25You can post about it online.
30:27You can reply to people.
30:28You can incrementally push forward the acceptance of true virtue,
30:34where if you want now, you don't have to do any of that, of course, right?
30:37I think it's wise to do it.
30:40Will it stop what's coming?
30:43Probably not.
30:44Does it lay a foundation for the future?
30:47Yes.
30:47Is it breadcrumbs to a free society?
30:50Yes.
30:50And even in the storm of the social world, those breadcrumbs will remain visible.
30:58But you do it not because you have certainty of victory.
31:03You do it because it's true.
31:06And if the only morals that were ever advanced would be those with a certainty of victory,
31:10we would have zero fucking moral progress whatsoever in the world,
31:17throughout history, in perpetuity.
31:21Nothing would be done.
31:24Most businesses fail.
31:25Does that mean we should not try to create new arenas of productivity in the world?
31:31The reason we advance philosophy, reason, empiricism, and virtue
31:40is not because the victory is certain.
31:43It's not.
31:43It's unlikely.
31:44In the short run.
31:45In the long run, it's more likely.
31:47The world tends towards consistency in the same way that, you know,
31:51everyone thinks hodling in crypto is like straight up.
31:54It's like, no, right, we're currently going through a bit of a
31:56bump down in Bitcoin and so on, right?
31:59So it's only when you zoom out, does it look smooth?
32:01It's a whole bunch of ups and downs and craters and peaks, right?
32:11But we advance truth, reason, and morality sometimes,
32:14even at the expense of our pretend relationships.
32:16And you can only have relationships based on virtue.
32:18Everything else is mutual avoidance and exploitation.
32:22So why do we advance morality and virtue?
32:24We advance morality and virtue
32:28to gain better relationships ourselves,
32:29which is really our only chance of surviving social upheaval anyway,
32:32as I write about in my novel, The Future, the present, sorry.
32:35And also, and also the reason we do it,
32:39it's because if we don't do it,
32:41our conscience will turn our life into hell itself.
32:45Like, sorry, if you're interested in what I say, you have a conscience.
32:51Because you have a conscience, like an ancient angry God,
32:55you must bring it sacrifices.
33:02You must bring it sacrifices in the same way that they took stone daggers
33:06and ripped open goats and put them in the same way that they took
33:11stone daggers and ripped open goats to feed to the thunder gods in the past.
33:18You must bring your conscience a regular conveyor belt parade of bloody sacrifices.
33:24And the bloody sacrifices you feed to your conscience are all the lies in you and in me.
33:33All the falsehoods, all the hypocrisies, all the avoidances, all the cowardices,
33:37you must bring them and cut them from neck to groin,
33:44open up their entrails and sacrifice all that is bullshit about you
33:49to the bottomless greed and more,
33:52and furnace breath and volcano crater of your conscience.
33:57Your conscience demands you sacrifice your lies to feed its kindness.
34:03Because if you do not sacrifice your lies to your conscience,
34:09you will sacrifice your truths to your conscience,
34:11in which case it will fuck you up like nobody's business.
34:16You have a God that demands food.
34:21It demands sacrifice.
34:24The God is not you or me or anything.
34:27The God is the conscience, which is our innate capacity for universalization.
34:34What makes us most deeply human is universal abstract concept formation
34:39in the realm of morality, which we cannot escape.
34:41That is called the conscience.
34:43Why do people get so mad at UPB?
34:44Because UPB allies with their conscience and makes them feel bad.
34:49And because they are immature fools, not you, others, because they're immature fools,
34:53they think that because I talk about UPB,
34:55which allies and provokes their conscience and makes them feel bad,
34:58I'm a bad person because I'm hurting their fee-fees.
35:04The God of your conscience demands sacrifice.
35:07You either feed it your lies or the truth.
35:13You either feed it that which is most corrupt about you
35:15or you feed it that which is most honorable about you.
35:19But feed it will.
35:23You either throw it the bodies of your enemies
35:29or you throw it your loved ones.
35:33But feed it will.
35:38Now, what is this?
35:40What is this?
35:43What is this?
35:46This is a lie.
35:47Is it an interesting question?
35:50Yeah, somewhat.
35:51And I have no problem, and maybe you have done all of this, but I doubt it.
35:56I have no problem with a hobby as long as you've done your fucking job, right?
36:05I have no problem with you having a hobby as long as you've done your job.
36:09But if you come to your place of employment where you are supposed to be selling widgets
36:15and you set up your model train set, your boss is going to have a problem.
36:19Your boss, of course, is not me.
36:21It's your conscience.
36:22If you want to dabble in these kinds of questions, fine, but do your job first,
36:28which means spread virtue and talk about virtue with those around you.
36:34Talk about what is truth and real and moral and virtuous with those around you.
36:39Now, we can't do that 24-7, so once you've done that, to some reasonable degree,
36:45I don't know what that is, depends on people.
36:48If you've done that, if you've lived philosophy and talked philosophy
36:52and not bullshitted about philosophy, and I say this with great sympathy
36:56because I bullshitted about philosophy.
37:00For the first 15 years I studied it, it was abstract, interesting, fascinating,
37:06a bunch of wheels spinning in clouds that never had the temerity to touch the actual earth.
37:11I got no traction.
37:13I was wasting time.
37:14Now, I forgive myself for all of this because it wasn't like I was overburdened
37:19with examples of people who actually put philosophy into practice
37:21on any kind of regular or daily basis, so I had to invent those wheels by myself.
37:27For better or for worse, for better as a whole, and I'm not saying nobody ever done it,
37:31I'm just saying that I did not see it and therefore I had to invent it.
37:40I say this with sympathy.
37:41I really do.
37:42I say this with sympathy.
37:43I really do, and I'm giving you the speech I sure wish some philosopher had given me
37:48at the age of 15 or 16.
37:52It would have saved me a lot of pain and waste.
38:04Philosophy is for talking like cookbooks are for eating.
38:09You can't eat the fucking cookbook.
38:12And you can't philosophize by talking.
38:15It's actions.
38:17The actions being, and I know this is like, well, but you're talking to other people.
38:20It's like, but the actions being honesty in your relationships.
38:23That's the action of philosophy is honesty in your relationships
38:26and refusing to compromise on what you know to be right no matter what the situation.
38:41If you don't feed your conscience, your lies,
38:47it will start with your loved ones and end with you.
38:52That you will be the last to go into the furnace.
38:58And unfortunately, and this is where hell comes from.
39:00Hell is the conscience that has been fed the truth.
39:05Hell is the conscience that has been fed the truth.
39:11Because you lose all leverage and credibility in the world.
39:13And you have betrayed that which you know to be true and good for the sake
39:17of that which is convenient and merely social.
39:25If you have done
39:27the maximum that you can reasonably do in the time that you can reasonably allocate
39:35to the spreading of virtue, truth, reason, and evidence,
39:41absolutely.
39:44Indulge in and enjoy these questions.
39:48Absolutely.
39:51Indulge in and enjoy these questions.
39:55If you've done your job,
39:59go play some pickleball.
40:01And if you've done your job and you and I go to play pickleball
40:04and you have some questions about pickleball, fantastic.
40:08Fantastic.
40:09But if you need to work and you need to eat and you need to provide for your family
40:17and your children and you come to me all day talking about pickleball, I'll say,
40:25hey, don't you have a job?
40:28Don't you have a job you have to do?
40:30No, no, no.
40:31I want to talk about the pickleball.
40:32It's like, but your children are hungry and you can't feed them with pickleball.
40:39Do I find the questions interesting?
40:40Yes.
40:41Yes, absolutely.
40:42Can we indulge ourself in these recreations?
40:44Absolutely.
40:46I did 15 minutes of a Twitch video game to warm up for this show.
40:53Nothing wrong with that.
40:53I enjoyed the video game.
40:56But if all I'm doing is video games, I'm missing the point.
41:02And I say this knowing that I'm out on a very thin tree limb of assumptions,
41:06but I'm going to have to go with my instincts here,
41:08reason and instincts and emotions all work together when you get it right and you're in the flow.
41:18The lie that you're feeding your conscience is this is your most important question.
41:23This is the most important thing to answer to save the world.
41:26It's not.
41:28It's recreation.
41:29It's an enjoyable waste of time.
41:32It's time well wasted.
41:33It's time well wasted.
41:37And indulge away if you've done the work in your environment, within your personal relationships.
41:46But I don't think you have.
41:48And that's the con, right?
41:50Remember I said at the beginning, there's a con here and I'm not saying it's conscious.
41:54I'm not accusing you of any malevolence, but that's the con.
41:57The con is, Steph, you want to focus on this.
42:00I want to distract you with this.
42:01Now, what are you distracting me away from?
42:03What's the person bumping into me so you can take my wallet?
42:07What is the hand of the magician that is hiding the actual transfer?
42:15It is that by asking me this question, you are trying to get me to think and my audience to
42:21follow that assumption that this abstract nonsense, which can't be answered in any
42:26particular clear way, which we all have to navigate to some degree instinctually and
42:30it changes for every single person.
42:31What I have fewer compromises to make than somebody who works for the government.
42:35I have fewer compromises to make than somebody who works in an office with an HR department.
42:43So it changes for everyone.
42:47So rather than spread virtue among those you know, you want to pursue an impossible to
42:54define percentage of compromise as if that's the most important thing.
43:00Nice try, my friend.
43:02Nice try.
43:04Go get some lies to feed to the volcano guard and speak more truth.