The Root of All Conflict!

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 2 weeks ago
This lecture examines conflict resolution, asserting that most disputes arise from deception and miscommunication. The speaker emphasizes that honesty is essential for resolving conflicts, highlighting how personal relationships often suffer due to superficial connections. Real-life examples illustrate the consequences of false premises, such as misunderstandings leading to blame and dissatisfaction. The discussion critiques societal norms around love and commitment, advocating for authenticity and virtue as foundational to genuine relationships. The lecture concludes with a call for courageous conversations about truthfulness to foster authentic love and trust.

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Transcript
00:00Hey there, it's Steph, just wanted to give you a couple of more conflict resolution tips,
00:06because, you know, everybody knows how fantastic I am at conflict resolution.
00:09I mean, whoever gets upset with me never happens.
00:12Impossible.
00:13So, really, relationship negotiation, conflict resolution is a commitment to tell the truth.
00:22All conflict is based on falsehood.
00:26And if you tell the truth, then conflict generally evaporates.
00:33So, if you have that as a principle in your life, all conflict is founded on falsehood.
00:40I mean, if you look at religious conflicts, right, that's because they're not using philosophy to
00:44determine the truth.
00:46All conflict is based on falsehood.
00:48If you look at cultural hostilities, well, you see this among religions and ethnicities and
00:58countries and so on, but you don't see that in mathematics and logic and science,
01:03because they have a methodology for resolving disagreements that is objective.
01:09And so, if you understand that when you see a conflict, then you are seeing two people
01:17who are lying.
01:19And I know this sounds harsh, but you're seeing two people who are lying.
01:23Now, we can think of extreme cases where one person is genuinely the victim and the other
01:28person is really predatory.
01:29So, I'm not saying this is 100%.
01:32This is not deductive.
01:34This is inductive.
01:35And the vast majority of conflicts are two people lying.
01:40So, for instance, if a man marries a woman because she's hot, because she's sexy, then
01:47he's lying.
01:48Because he's saying, I love you, when what he's saying is, I lust after your body.
01:54That's what the real thing is.
01:55So, what he lies about is loving her when he, in fact, only lusts after her.
01:58So, this is a relationship that is going to have a lot of conflict because it's founded
02:02on a lie.
02:04If a woman says to a man, I love you, but he's just wealthy and she wants access to
02:09his money, then she is also lying about things.
02:13If someone says, I'm angry because you didn't do the dishes, then that person is lying.
02:22What they are angry at is the feeling of being unloved because the other person doesn't
02:27do the dishes.
02:28So, they've set up a situation where they say, if the man loved me, he would do the
02:31dishes.
02:32He doesn't do the dishes.
02:34Therefore, he doesn't love me.
02:35Therefore, I feel rejected.
02:37Feeling rejected, my defensive reaction to feeling rejected is to be angry.
02:41And instead of being honest about my vulnerability or my mistaken thinking of love for a man
02:48means doing the dishes, she lies.
02:50And she says, it's disrespectful.
02:53You don't do the dishes.
02:54You're lazy.
02:54She's just lying.
02:56Now, she may not even know the truth.
02:58Maybe it's that automatic a process, but all conflict is based on falsehood.
03:02And the best way to reduce tensions is to tell the truth.
03:08Just tell the truth.
03:11But people very rarely do that in relationships.
03:13It's not exactly like an eclipse because it's more rare as a whole.
03:18People are not telling the truth.
03:21And because they're not telling the truth, they end up with no way to resolve disputes.
03:27How do you resolve disputes?
03:28Reason and evidence.
03:30But you can't reason if you're not telling the truth.
03:33And if you're not telling the truth, then the evidence can't help you.
03:38In fact, the evidence will put you in the wrong place.
03:41The evidence will baffle and confuse you.
03:44It will not help you.
03:46So if you look at a business, let's say you've got five products and you want to invest in
03:53the product that is making you the most profit, then you have to look at the data, right?
03:58How much is each product selling and how much profit are we making off each product?
04:05That's your data.
04:08And if you have bad data, right?
04:10So let's say the manager of product A falsifies the data.
04:14So it looks like product A is by far the most profitable product.
04:19Well, then you're going to invest a lot in product A and that manager is going to have
04:25an expanded budget and more hiring authorities and all this kind of stuff, right?
04:29So if you have bad data, you can't make good decisions.
04:34And in a relationship, if people lie to each other, they are giving each other bad data.
04:40Now, because they're giving each other bad data, all the decisions they make based upon
04:48that bad data is wrong.
04:49So for instance, let's take an example that's quite common.
04:53A woman gets a man because she makes herself sexy, right?
04:59She makes herself sexy.
05:01She offers sex very early on.
05:03And so she gets a man and then she kind of half nags, half seduces him into marrying her.
05:10So of course, deep down, she knows that she's living a lie.
05:16The lie is we love each other.
05:17The reality is we were just turned on with each other, right?
05:22That's it.
05:23That's all there is.
05:24So deep down, she doesn't feel that she's lovable for who she is.
05:29And so she has to sex bomb the guy to get him to commit to her.
05:34So then what happens is she gets married and she feels unloved.
05:39And she feels unloved because she used sex to get the guy to commit.
05:44Or it could be that she got pregnant and then used that to trap the guy or whatever it is, right?
05:50So the relationship is based on a falsehood.
05:53The falsehood is that the people love each other.
05:55And the reality is he's got money.
05:58She's got sexiness.
06:00And that's the trade.
06:01So because she feels unloved because of the decisions she made in order to get the guy,
06:07which is to provide sex, not virtue, and then to lie about it all.
06:13So because she feels unloved, she then blames her dissatisfaction on the man.
06:21You are not making me feel loved.
06:22You're not doing enough.
06:24You're not bringing me flowers.
06:26We need a date night.
06:28You need to spend more time with me.
06:29You need to care more about me.
06:31The reason I feel unloved is because you are not speaking my love language,
06:35because I'm from Venus and you're from Mars and all this nonsense.
06:39And this is all just in this huge industries around all of this, of course, right?
06:43But all of this is just pure nonsense.
06:46If you get a guy because you gave him sex, you will not feel loved.
06:51And you will be very unhappy because the relationship is based on lying.
06:56And the lying is not the having sex part is not the lying.
06:59It's pretending that there's a big love involved when it's just about sexual access.
07:04So that conflict where the woman feels unloved, she then blames on the man.
07:10Well, if you did dishes and if you you're never home and then you get this vicious cycle where
07:14because she's blaming the man for something that was her own choice, he made his own choices too.
07:20But she's blaming the man.
07:22I don't feel loved.
07:23I don't feel like I'm getting affection.
07:26I don't feel like I don't feel taken care of.
07:28I don't feel treasured and so on.
07:30So she wants the fruits of virtue, which is love.
07:33Love is the fruit of virtue.
07:35So she wants the fruits of virtue, but she doesn't want to be actually virtuous, which I understand.
07:40People want the fruits of dieting without actually having to diet.
07:43People want the fruits of exercise without actually exercising.
07:45I get that.
07:46People want the effects, not the cause.
07:47That's natural.
07:49So the whole relationship is based on a wild series of falsehoods.
07:53We love each other.
07:54Nope.
07:54It's just lust and money.
07:56You're wonderful.
07:57Nope.
07:57You're just sexually available and sexy.
07:59We're married to, we are a union of two hearts.
08:02We are one flesh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
08:04And it's all a lie.
08:06And then the dissatisfaction that comes from living a lie.
08:09Well, the two partners blame each other.
08:11They blame each other.
08:13And the security the woman was looking for turns into the insecurity of never feeling loved.
08:18And it turns into a long-term slow burn anxiety slash panic attack because
08:25she put forward sexual access as the means of getting the guy.
08:31And the guy just gets wealthier and, you know, hopefully reasonably attractive,
08:35stays reasonably attractive as he ages.
08:37So then she has this slow burn insecurity.
08:41She got the guy through sexual access.
08:43And then what happens?
08:44Well, there are other younger women coming along who will offer the same sexual access.
08:50So she can't compete.
08:51So she has this desperation to look young, to stay young.
08:55She has this panic about some younger woman coming along and providing sexual access.
09:00I mean, if sexual access is what you're providing, I mean, there's younger models
09:04coming out every day, right?
09:07There's the Leonardo DiCaprio model, right?
09:10And there's younger women coming out along every day who will give sexual
09:14access and be more attractive, right?
09:15So a virtue is not replaceable.
09:18Virtue in an individual is not replaceable.
09:21Virtue and emotional compatibility is not replaceable.
09:26My wife doesn't worry about some younger woman coming along, right?
09:28I don't worry about some wealthy guy coming along,
09:31once we are united on virtue, on grounds of virtue.
09:34So because the relationship is founded on a falsehood that they love each other,
09:40where it's just money and lust, the relationship is going to be constantly
09:45dissatisfying because living a lie shafts at the conscience.
09:50And as a result, there's going to be endless amounts of conflict because the only thing
09:55that can solve the problems in the marriage would be to reforge the marriage in the image
09:59of virtue, to say, okay, we started off wrong, but let's both work to be virtuous.
10:04And that way we can end up in a great place.
10:06But people don't want to do that.
10:08People will do anything, anything, rather than just commit themselves to honesty and
10:14virtue, because to be honest in a marriage that is claimed to be based on love and virtue,
10:19but which is actually based on lust and resources.
10:22To be honest about that would be to break the marriage.
10:25Marriage vows would all have proven to be false and all of that.
10:29And it would take time.
10:30I think it could be done.
10:32I think it could be done, but it's very rare.
10:35And people usually don't even know what the problem is, right?
10:37Because we've drifted so far from conversations about practical virtues.
10:42It's all, you know, virtue signaling and this and the other.
10:45So we've drifted so far from practical virtues that the idea that marital dissatisfaction is
10:53based upon lying and falsehood and living a lie is so far from us that we don't even
11:00really think about it as an option, right?
11:02I mean, the therapists will just say, oh, we just need to be honest.
11:06And it's like, well, that's not really the problem.
11:09The problem is honesty might disrupt or decay the entire marriage, right?
11:13And of course, if you are in a relationship, which is only a relationship with falsehoods,
11:19then the problem is that if you start telling the truth and being virtuous,
11:22it doesn't just disrupt your marital relationship.
11:25It disrupts all of your relationships because everyone around you was totally fine with you
11:31getting married and raised glasses and cheered about you getting married when it was not a
11:37relationship based on virtue, love, and trust, which means that they themselves have relationships
11:42not based on virtue, love, and trust.
11:43And you are in trash planet.
11:44You're in manipulative trash planet.
11:48And that's a very, very tough quagmire to get out of.
11:52Very, very tough quagmire to get out of.
11:54And very few make it.
11:56And mostly people just keep going down and down and down.
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12:00Hope this helps.
12:02Thank you so much for your time and support.
12:05Lots of love from up here.
12:05I'll talk to you soon.
12:06Bye.