In this episode, I explore the connections between love, virtue, and emotional experiences. I discuss whether true love can extend to pets, arguing that moral virtue is essential. I analyze the literary trope of orphans, showing how it allows authors to address resilience and redemption without familial complexities.
I also tackle unequal friendships, emphasizing the need to recognize and address exploitative dynamics for healthier relationships. Sharing insights from my entrepreneurial journey, I stress the importance of family support during transitions.
In romantic contexts, I highlight red flags in potential partners and the value of personal growth and mutual respect. I conclude with reflections on loyalty, inspired by Samwise from "The Lord of the Rings," encouraging listeners to pursue genuine connections based on shared commitment and emotional health.
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
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I also tackle unequal friendships, emphasizing the need to recognize and address exploitative dynamics for healthier relationships. Sharing insights from my entrepreneurial journey, I stress the importance of family support during transitions.
In romantic contexts, I highlight red flags in potential partners and the value of personal growth and mutual respect. I conclude with reflections on loyalty, inspired by Samwise from "The Lord of the Rings," encouraging listeners to pursue genuine connections based on shared commitment and emotional health.
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Morning, morning everybody. Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain. Hey, pinch-punch first day
00:05of the month. It is the first of September, not the month that you wake me up but it ends.
00:13But we have one question and some old questions. I actually found them. So, I don't think I've
00:22answered them before and I wanted to make sure that I at least got around to answering
00:26them once, if not twice. Somebody writes, if love is our involuntary response to virtue
00:31and protecting slash defending is considered virtuous, would that mean that we can love
00:36our pets and they can love us if we're of great moral character? I believe, not prove,
00:42that animals understand our intentions, behaviors to feel safe with us and we'll feel safe when
00:46they fiercely defend us. No. So, if protecting and defending is considered virtuous, then
00:53we must fall in rabid passionate love, romantic love perhaps, with our own immune system
00:59or a brick wall or a roof or other things that shelter us. We then must love our airbags
01:07and marry them after they deploy in a car accident. No, protecting and defending is
01:13not virtuous. Animals are following pre-programmed patterns without reference to higher moral
01:18ideals. Don't get me wrong. I love animals. I really do. And I love pets. I grew up with
01:27hamsters and mice and the relatives of mine in Ireland had a wonderful cock espanol named
01:34Brandy. I could never understand why she had no tail. But, and I remember when I was in
01:39Africa as a teenager, there were dogs so keen on having their hair brushed that back when
01:47I would pick up a brush to brush my hair as a teenager, they would jump on me because
01:50they thought I would brush them. Absolutely delightful creatures, but the dogs are instinctual
01:56animals. They have no language skills, of course. They cannot compare proposed actions
02:01to ideal standards. They do not have morality. And sure, yeah, dogs will behave better in
02:07general and so on when they're well-treated, although not always. And that is a reflection
02:15on the quality of the owner, but they are loving the positive experience. They do not
02:20love the morals of the owner. They just love the fact that the owner is kind, pets them,
02:26and gives the food and so on, right? So they do not practice morality. And if love is our
02:32involuntary response to virtue, virtue is our capacity. Well, free will is our capacity
02:38to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and those ideal standards are virtues, and
02:43those who consistently choose virtue are virtuous. Since dogs cannot compare proposed actions
02:48to ideal standards, they cannot be virtuous, and therefore they cannot be loved. I mean,
02:52you can have affection from them and all of that. Sure. All right. All right. Excuse me.
03:05Question. Why is it that in pretty much all famous novels with child characters, the children
03:12are written as orphans? Well, that's interesting. So one of the reasons why writers like to
03:21write about children as orphans is that most suffering for children in life, if they are
03:29abused, most suffering is going to come from their family. Writers do not like to write
03:34about that too much. Or if they do write about it, the people who abuse the children have
03:40to have lots of excuses and so on, right? Like, well, the male left, the man left,
03:47and the mom is stressed, or she has some debilitating drug addiction or something. Writing genuinely
03:52evil characters is very, very hard for most writers. So they want to put a child in peril.
04:00And of course, for a child to be in peril, if the child is an orphan, the child is automatically
04:06in more peril because most people would get some kind of security from their families,
04:11right? I mean, I understand I just said that the families are dangerous, but you wouldn't
04:18get all of a twist if all of a twist had a family. Even if the family was bad, all of
04:23a twist would still not be out wandering the streets and so on, right? So that's one is
04:28that they don't want to deal, they want to put children in danger, and orphans are easier
04:33to put in danger. A second is they don't want to write about the dangers that come
04:36from within the family. And the third is it's just easier. I mean, I remember when I was
04:44writing my novel, The Present, there's a scene with like 20 characters. That's brutally tough
04:49to write. It's brutally tough to write to keep all the characters straight. They all
04:53have a distinct voice. They all have their own perspectives and approaches. You have
04:58to know who's speaking. It has to be clear. And it's a brutally difficult scene to write.
05:04And I probably failed to write that for like a week before screwing my courage to the sticking
05:09place and getting it down. So when you write an orphan, you have child in danger, and other
05:17characters who are both good and bad who aren't direct family, so it's less emotionally charged.
05:22And you have less complexities. You know, it's one of the things that I look at when
05:26I'm trying to figure out good art or bad art is you look at the characters and you
05:30say, do they have a family? I mean, we all have families, right? We all have families
05:36of origin for sure. So when you look at these characters, do they have families? Can you
05:43imagine that they have difficulties with their mother? Can you imagine that they have a favorite
05:48uncle? Can you imagine that at some point in their life, they are going to have to go
05:57to some family gathering they don't want to or some other family gathering they do want
06:00to? Does their cousin ever call? Do they have a relationship with siblings? Are they embedded
06:06in some kind of family structure, which most people are. And when characters in shows have
06:15no family, then I put them in the general level of character development of a pornography
06:21actress. So, all right. Dear Steph, please elaborate on the duty of close friends in
06:27regards to your personal happiness. My consideration of the subject is derived from your narrative
06:32describing the dissolution of your first engagement from a relationship of seven years. My circumstance
06:37was similar in duration to what was and is an amazing person, yet nevertheless amicably
06:41divorced a few years later, totaling 13. The inquiry surrounds a friend of 20 plus
06:46years whose marriage I was thanked for helping preserve after potential infidelity by his
06:50wife only a few years earlier, and was later dubbed godparent of their subsequent child
06:54who nevertheless, in reference to my divorce, didn't have a single question regarding it
06:58until over a year and a half later after distancing herself. Okay, I got lost. Sorry. All right.
07:04A friend of 20 plus years, I was thankful it preserved the marriage of their subsequent
07:09child, who nevertheless, oh, so it's the friend, not the wife or the child. This is confusing,
07:18right? Who nevertheless, in reference to my divorce, didn't have a single question regarding
07:21it until over a year and a half later after distancing myself, nor mentioned her name,
07:26and was the same friend I consulted as to whether I should marry after expressing doubts
07:30regarding compatibility despite our genuine affection. While I don't know if we should
07:34have married or divorced, and to be fair, believe him to be an otherwise decent person
07:38who wouldn't know either, what concerns me, however, is having people in my life who appear
07:43to lack equal or any concern about important decisions in my life and their outcomes. Wherefore,
07:51it's an unusual word, but I appreciate it, it would be helpful if you could describe
07:55what philosophical standards underpinned your decision to eventually dissociate with those
07:58you described as indifferent to your happiness. Okay, so let me make sure I understand this
08:03correctly. So you helped preserve your friend's marriage, and he didn't ask you anything
08:12about your divorce. So that's a hierarchy. So the hierarchy is the slave cares about
08:19the moods of his boss, of the slave owner, and the slave owner does not care about the
08:25moods of the slave. The boss cares less about the happiness of the employee than the employee
08:37cares about the happiness of the boss, right? Because if the employee is unhappy but productive,
08:45the boss is fine. If the boss is unhappy, then he might fire based on bad temper or
08:50something like that. So this is a hierarchical relationship. And when you pour effort into
08:56other people, and they don't pour effort back into you, those people are exercising a hierarchy,
09:02they are exercising dominance. Now we can say it's unconscious, we can say it's instinctive,
09:07we can say they don't mean it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because resource
09:11transfers occur or don't occur, whether or not there's some deep hidden incentive or
09:20motive. And if you've been in a relationship with someone for 20 years, first of all, have
09:25you fought the hierarchy? Have you say, I deserve as much consideration as you? Have
09:29you said to this person, it bothers me that I help with your relationship and you don't
09:34help with my relationship? I mean, I remember when a friend of mine had a baby, I spent
09:39all weekend at his place cleaning, making sure the place was spotless. And I just, at
09:47the end of it, I just remember biking home and I was like, that's never gonna happen
09:50the other way. I'll be lucky to get a card. So that's just hierarchy. People get a great
09:55deal of pleasure exploiting others. And now, again, is it exploitation if it's voluntary?
10:03That's a gray area for sure, right? Let's just say people get a great deal of pleasure
10:08out of having other people do things for them, right? They really do. And I understand
10:13why, because it shows that you're higher on the hierarchy. To have other people labor
10:17for you when you don't have to labor for them is greatly, greatly pleasurable. Now, people
10:22with a conscience, they feel bad about this after a while and they don't like it and they
10:27feel like, oh, things have become kind of unbalanced and all of that. And they make
10:35sure that they reciprocate. But there's a lot of people who get a great deal of pleasure
10:38out of you investing into them when they don't have to invest into you. It's just a base
10:42of the brain dopamine thing. It's, you know, the bonobo monkeys going higher on the hierarchy,
10:48getting more dopamine and so on. It's just, it's an addiction. And they don't get the
10:52dopamine if they help you. They get the dopamine if you help them and they don't have to help
10:57you, but they don't get the dopamine if they help you and they want their dopamine, so
11:03they don't help you. So, indifferent to your happiness? Well, oh gosh. I mean, yeah, there
11:16have been a couple of instances where I got this. When I was about 20, I got really heavily
11:26invested in an ex-girlfriend and was thinking about her night and day and all of that. And
11:32yeah, my friends would just, on the tape player, they would play that old song that
11:38used to, that Jeannie Becker had some show about fashion. You're my obsession. You're
11:44my obsession. And they would play that and sort of make jokes about it and no particular
11:49care when I was going through a significant period of insomnia. There's no particular
11:54care or thought or anything like that. And indifferent to my happiness? Yeah. Do people
12:02care how you're doing? Do people care whether you're happy or not? If you're unhappy, do
12:08they sit down with you and take, you know, people have a lot of leisure time these days.
12:12They really do. I mean, look at video games, look at Netflix, look at movies. People have
12:18a lot of free time these days. And do they apply any of that free time to finding out
12:23how you're doing, to helping you out if you're unhappy? And if you've helped out other people
12:28and they don't help you out back, it's exploitive. And you're participating in that exploitation.
12:32But it just means that you grew up in a household where your resources, time, attention, and
12:41emotional support was demanded and never reciprocated. So you're just trained to do that. You're
12:45trained to serve. You're trained to be a slave. Like parents who demand that children serve
12:48them are raising slaves. And at some point, you have to break out of that. I think if
12:53you want to be happy, right? All right. Any advice for an employee who's transitioning
13:03from to entrepreneurship while supporting a wife and two kids? Well, entrepreneurship
13:09is I mean, you there's a certain amount of you can work smarter, but entrepreneurship,
13:16you win just by working harder. You just win by working harder. You know, when I was an
13:22entrepreneur in the software field, I did kind of half create the category of software
13:28that we were selling in. But as it became more and more popular, other big companies
13:32like Microsoft and IBM came in with their own offerings in the space. So how can I possibly
13:36compete against them? Well, I just worked harder. And I was more innovative. And I poured
13:45on the charisma. And I was great fun to work with. And prices were reasonable. And we were
13:52the extra distance. And so you just have to work harder. It's tough to do when you're
13:57supporting a wife and two kids, but and have a have a conversation with your family. Make
14:01sure they're on board. Make sure that they agree with you that you're gonna have to spend
14:04more time working and less time around the family. Do you have a favorite character from
14:08Lord of the Rings books, films? If so, what do you find particularly compelling about
14:11this individual? Yeah, I think I mean, I think like a lot of people, my favorite character
14:15is Samwise. That level of loyalty and dedication is something that I aspire to, in my relationships.
14:25And there's something that I hugely respect where you can just really, really focus on
14:30that, which is good for the other person. And of course, there was a selfish motive
14:35as well in that Samwise was preserving his capacity to have 19,000 kids with Rosie. Because
14:42of course, if the ring hadn't been destroyed, if Thorin had gotten the ring, then it would
14:46have been tragic for the entire Middle Earth. But so he was serving his own needs as well.
14:53But just that level of loyalty to just be there for someone, it's just so incredibly
14:59powerful and deeply moving to me. And I, you know, I mean, of course, I'm not at all close
15:05to my only brother. And I think that level of loyalty that they had was very moving to
15:11me. When I read it, I read it half in tears at the first and second and third time that
15:17I read it because life is just so much simpler when you find a value and a virtue and dedicate
15:22yourself to it. I mean, I'm 42 years into philosophy, and I have more thirst and desire
15:28for it than ever. And I'm 22 years into my relationship with my wife, and I love her
15:36more than ever. And I didn't start with the ungrinchiest heart in the known planet. And
15:42feeling my heart swell over the decades has been really one of the greatest joys of my
15:48life. All right, hi Steph, I've fallen for a woman who's incapable of loving and or feels
15:53herself to be unlovable. We have a history of three years of friendship, closeness and
15:57memories and even casual sexual intimacy during the first year that we stopped because the
16:01sex was making the relationship too toxic. After this, the friendship and closeness gradually
16:05developed into a very close relationship. Anyway, I'm hurting a lot and I feel like
16:09a victim of a broken person as I open my heart to her and it's met with coldness and no communication.
16:14Of course, this is a lesson I still need to learn from the neglect of my toxic mother
16:18in my early teens and I'm also dealing with this in therapy. But moving on, I've already
16:22found a new circle of friends whom I care about and I'm planning an event where there
16:26will be awesome quality women with high potential for life partner. So my question is, how do
16:31you recognize women who do not have this issue of being unable to love or who feel
16:35that they're not worth loving? I suppose it's about them embracing reason, at least to some
16:40extent trying to do something good in the world and about me being connected to my feelings
16:45to recoil from bad women. Do you have some additional advice? Well, so I mean you're
16:49asking for red flags. So red flags in women are being single into their mid to late twenties.
16:57Red flags in women are tattoos. Red flags in women are strange oddities in appearance,
17:05you know, nose rings, tongue rings, those weird circle things in the ears, excessive
17:10makeup. It is also a red flag in women to have a highly sexualized presentation and
17:17to be overly flirtatious and drop hints of sexual access very, very early on. That's
17:24a way of drugging you in a sense. I mean, you can get roofied by cleavage as much as
17:27by any other drug. And it is, if she's surrounded by dysfunctional people and one of the problems
17:36with being a woman and a man to that degree as well, but women have a shorter runway.
17:42If you're single in your late twenties, mid late twenties, early thirties, if you're single,
17:47then you are likely surrounded by other women who are also single because married women
17:51and married men don't have that much in common with single men and single women. And of course,
17:56if the married men and women are having children, then the life of the singleton is just so
18:00different that there really is very little to say between them. So if she's going to
18:05be surrounded by other single friends, if they are single male friends, then she's friends
18:11on them. And if they are single female friends, they will likely undermine any budding relationship
18:17because single women keep other single women single as a whole, misery loves company. So
18:23if she has a caustic relationship or toxic relationship with any primary family members
18:28such as parents and siblings, it's another massive red flag. And of course, if she has
18:33an extensive sexual history, that's another red flag. If she's heavily in debt, that's
18:37another red flag. If she pursued a useless degree and works not in that field and has
18:44no sense of guilt about taking social resources while providing nothing back in return, if
18:50she took a degree in, I don't know, geography and she doesn't work in the field of archaeology
18:57and she's no sense of like, yeah, okay, I feel pretty bad because I took the space from
19:01someone who could have pursued something in this field and I don't even pursue something
19:04in this field and it costs society a lot of money and I feel kind of bad about that. If
19:10she is working at a job far below her intellectual capacities and with no particular plan for
19:19moving forward and if she... And that's fine. I mean, I was unemployed when I met my wife,
19:24but I was working on two novels and taking a writing course at Canada's most prestigious
19:31writing center. So, if she has no job prospects and no intellectually stimulating hobbies,
19:41if she's like, you know, hiking and concerts and so on, right? But she's not like, yeah,
19:47I've just been rereading The Brothers Karamazov and so on, right? So, if they have a huge
19:57degree of sentimentality, then, you know, if they're overly affectionate to pets and
20:02sentimentalize things, if they have knowledge in a field which is paper thin and they can't
20:09admit it, right? So, if they talk about politics and you ask them some questions and they just
20:13get kind of blank and hostile, a huge red flag, it means that they're faking their way
20:17through life and there's no accessibility to heart when it's ringed by pretend knowledge
20:22that is actually a fiery motive, bottomless ignorance. So, all of these things I would
20:26suggest.
20:27All right. Limerence. Yeah, you know what? I think we've done some of this, right? Yes,
20:35I think. Okay. So, I think some of these we've done. All right. So, I really do appreciate
20:40your time, care, and attention this morning. And yeah, is Gary happy? Is his wife still
20:47amazing? Fascinating. So, yes, I think I did limerence. I remember looking it up in
20:53the past. So, I've probably done a few of these before, but what the heck? I'm sure
20:56there's a few more flavors and bits here and there that are of value. So, thanks everyone
21:01so much. Have yourself a wonderful morning. I'm going to go get ready for my 11 o'clock
21:04show. Lots of love. Take care. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Bye.