• 3 months ago
In this episode, I explore key questions about time travel, philosophy, and societal constructs after a decade of listener engagement. I discuss the physics of time travel, emphasizing the impossibility of returning to the past and how our understanding of time shapes our present and future.
I examine the critical role of philosophy in society, arguing that a promising future depends on our commitment to reasoned discourse and critical thinking. I also address societal misconceptions about language and moral responsibility, advocating for confronting uncomfortable truths to foster genuine progress.
Critiquing the growing influence of government over personal freedoms, I emphasize the importance of personal accountability and rational dialogue. Conclusively, I call for a future grounded in philosophy and reason to ensure depth and meaning in our lives.

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Transcript
00:00Good morning everybody, Stefan Molyneux for Free Domain. Hope you're doing well.
00:04Great, great questions from freedomain.locals.com. I hope you will join the community.
00:08So, somebody has asked,
00:12after listening to you for a decade, you've done an excellent job of covering most everything I could ever think of.
00:16The few things that I might ask,
00:20I just use your basic principles and the answer is there. Not my basic principles, but I appreciate
00:24the thought. Would love to get on a time machine and see what impacts your ideas will have on the future.
00:28Right. I mean, you know, time travel is one of these funny things.
00:32Okay, so the only way that you can time travel that we know of, and really
00:36it's only one way, and the only thing you can do is go close to the speed
00:40of light, which will slow down time for you, and thus when you decelerate from
00:44close to the speed of light, time will have passed farther for everyone else.
00:48There's a song by noted astrophysicist and occasional guitar jockey
00:52Brian May from Queen, and the song is called 39.
00:56In fact, the number is 39. It's a lovely little
01:00folk song about time travel. One of the few
01:04in that genre, I think. So, you could conceivably go
01:08forward in the future. I mean, I guess you can cryogenically freeze yourself and
01:12so on, but you can go forward and you can't go back.
01:16And you can't get into a little thing, like you can't get into a little booth and then time travel.
01:20You know, that's just lazy writing for writers who want
01:24to break reality. Because the earth is in constant motion,
01:28it's not only rotating, but it's corkscrewing around the sun, which itself is rotating
01:32around the galaxy, which itself is rushing through space. So, even if you went
01:36forward in time, say,
01:40where you were, you changed whatever time, let's say you were able to go back 10 seconds, you'd just
01:44be hanging in space, because the earth would have moved on. So, imagine
01:48there's a flea on a ball, or like the bee movie,
01:52so there's a flea on a ball, you grab it and the ball keeps moving, right? You find some way to
01:56pincer it and then you let go of it, well, it's off the ball, it's just hanging in space, because the ball has moved on.
02:00So, the only way that you can do time travel and stay on earth is
02:04also to do time travel and massive amounts of
02:08actual travel, right? Because the earth would be,
02:12even in a pretty short amount of time, the earth would be millions and millions
02:16of miles away from where you started, because it would have just moved on and you're hanging there in your little
02:20TARDIS or whatever. So, it's all engaging and fun
02:24nonsense. It is a metaphor for imagination. In imagination,
02:28we can picture the future, in imagination we can go and revisit the past, although the
02:32past is not a documentary, the past is a work of creative
02:36fiction, and it doesn't mean it doesn't have true things in it, but if
02:40you've ever been back someplace,
02:44you know that your memories of it are different from what it actually was.
02:48If you've ever discussed past events with people, their
02:52perspective is different from yours. I remember
02:56there was a quote in a television show that I remember
03:00finding very, very funny, and then I re-watched
03:04that television show many years later, and the quote was similar, but not
03:08the same as what I remembered.
03:12So, as far as time travel goes, I've written a whole novel about this, not time
03:16travel, but it's called The Future, and it's about the effects of philosophy,
03:20which gets to the next question in a sec, the effects of philosophy in the long run.
03:24I wouldn't want to go forward in time, and especially if you could come back, even if that
03:28were theoretically possible, I wouldn't want to go forward in time and come back because that would be a kind of determinism.
03:32This is sort of the butterfly effect from Ray Bradbury, that
03:36you change things in the future by changing things in the past. So, if you
03:40were to go into the future, let's say I went into the future and I found
03:44that philosophy had won, right? Because, I mean, the only way we have a future
03:48is with philosophy. There's no other future for humanity that really is worth
03:52living in without philosophy. We either accept
03:56reason, evidence, discourse, logic, negotiation,
04:00or the world descends into a hell-fest of OCD surveillance
04:04and endless digital currency
04:08control. I mean, that's the only choice. The only future that we have
04:12that is worth living is based on peace and reason and negotiation
04:16and peaceful parenting. So, let's say that I went forward in time and I
04:20found that the philosophical arguments that I put forward had been adopted
04:24and society was peaceful and free. Well, when I came back,
04:28I'd be like, oh, thank goodness, I don't have to fight so hard. And then that would change
04:32things, right? So, it wouldn't really work. And you know this in your life, right?
04:36It's the paradox of the past. It's the paradox of concern.
04:40The paradox of concern is this. So, after
04:44an immensely tumultuous life with wonderful ups and downs,
04:48I have arrived at a place, and this is not the end, I've still got another
04:52couple of decades to go, but I've arrived at a place that is so peaceful
04:56and wonderful and beautiful and moving to me and
05:00full of love and connection and fun
05:04and joy that I look back and say,
05:08gee, a lot of the concerns of the past didn't turn out
05:12to be that real.
05:16So, you say, oh, gee, I shouldn't have been concerned as much about things in the
05:20past. But, of course, everybody knows the reality is that one of the reasons
05:24why my life did end up so great, so well, is
05:28that I was concerned about things of the past.
05:32So, you get to a good place.
05:36It's kind of like, if you're a smoker, like, I'm worried about getting sick
05:40from smoking, and then you stub out your cigarettes and you throw out your pack
05:44and you find a way to quit smoking. Good for you. Good for you. And then
05:48you don't get sick and you say, gee, I guess I was worried for nothing. And it's like, no, no, no,
05:52but the reason that you didn't get sick is because you're worried about smoking to the point
05:56where you quit. So, your concern, concern brings peace, and then the great danger
06:00is that peace thinks that all prior concerns were meaningless, right?
06:04So, I mean, this is happening in society as a whole, right? The freedom has brought wealth
06:08and wealth says that freedom is a luxury that is
06:12unimportant relative to equality, right?
06:16So, inequality brings wealth in that the capital has to be allocated to the people
06:20most able to increase it. Not allocated, but earned and used by.
06:24And then we end up with so much wealth that we look for
06:28equality of outcome, which destroys the source of wealth by removing capital from
06:32the most productive people. It'd be like saying every extra has to speak a line
06:36in the leading man's role. It's like we just destroy the movie, right?
06:40So, the idea of going forward or going back, or let's say that
06:44I go forward and the world is a hellscape of
06:48surveillance and control and totalitarianism
06:52and all that 1984 stuff.
06:56Then I would come back and would be full of despair and would
07:00not produce as much good work. And that wouldn't be right either.
07:04So, no, I wouldn't want to have a time machine. I know
07:08as certainly as I know that I'm sitting here talking
07:12to you, I absolutely know for a fact there is no
07:16future of any moral worth without philosophy.
07:20I mean, we've tried violence, obviously, for most of our
07:24history, prehistory. We've tried manipulation. We've tried propaganda.
07:28We've tried programming. We've tried even religion. We've tried
07:32mysticism. We've tried collectivism. We've tried coercion of every
07:36shape and hue. The one thing we haven't tried is
07:40sweet, sweet reason. That's the one thing we have not tried as a society,
07:44as parents, as people, as
07:48countries. The one thing we have not tried is actually reasoning with people
07:52and letting facts, reason, and evidence sway us.
07:56Because it's facts or the fist, right?
08:00It's reason or violence. And those of us
08:04who can think view violence, other than, you know, extremities of
08:08self-defense, which are very rare, with a peculiar horror. And so
08:12there is no future without philosophy, which is why I have worked so
08:16hard for lo these 42, I'll be
08:2058 this month, so lo these almost 43 years since I got into
08:24philosophy in my mid-teens, I have worked so hard
08:28to bring reason, evidence,
08:32logic, and debate to the world.
08:36I don't know what else I could have done. I'm obviously,
08:40I review this, like, literally on a daily basis. What else could I do? What else could I have done
08:44better? I'm very self-critical that way because the purpose
08:48of my mind is to serve the peace and reason of the future.
08:52And I really come up short.
08:56What else could I or should I have done?
09:00You want to go close enough to the truth in society
09:04to stimulate change and thought in people, but not so
09:08far that you are destroyed in one form or another.
09:12So I think I edge-skated pretty well. But yeah,
09:16there's no future, really. There's no future that's worth living without reason
09:20and philosophy. Alright, somebody says, did Plato's philosophy lead us to the current
09:24state of the West and should it be rejected entirely or should such be laid
09:28at the feet of Hegel? Uh, no. No.
09:32Philosophers can't tell you what to think. You can be influenced by philosophers,
09:36but no philosopher who is a philosopher will tell you what to think.
09:40Philosophers are there to teach you how to think, not tell you what to think.
09:44To teach you the methodology, not conclusions. As science
09:48is a methodology, it is not a set of violently stapled to your
09:52forehead conclusions. Now, human beings like to harden their
09:56thoughts into absolute conclusions and reject any methodology that might overturn
10:00those conclusions. As the old saying goes, science advances
10:04one grave at a time. People are hardened into the old ways of thinking
10:08and sometimes you just have to wait for pig-headed people in
10:12authority and power to move on to their great reward
10:16peacefully and reasonably in order to have new thoughts come out.
10:20And you can see this with the intergenerational changes. Things that the boomers wouldn't
10:24conceive of, Gen X is willing to consider and
10:28the millennials are willing to embrace and
10:32the Gen A is fully embracing. So, it just takes time.
10:36It's sad, but people's refusal to think is the source of all
10:40evil, really, and corruption in the world.
10:44It is not that
10:48it's one philosopher or another philosopher.
10:52Philosophers write books. People consume them.
10:56There is a market for philosophical ideas
11:00and the market is not defined by the philosophers in the same way that every writer wants
11:04to be a bestseller, but it is determined by the market.
11:08And so, the question is not why are Hegel's ideas
11:12or, and I've got a whole history of philosophers here if you want to go more
11:16into this, you can get that by subscribing at freedomain.locals.com
11:20It's an amazing series, a 24-part series on the history of philosophy.
11:24So, it's not that these philosophers have determined
11:28what people think. It is that there is a demand
11:32for these philosophers and their ideas.
11:36The only thing that is required for the salvation of your conscience
11:40is that you simply refuse to
11:44avoid thinking. That's all.
11:48The beginning of wisdom, as the saying goes, is to call things by their proper names.
11:52Violence spreads in society because we refuse to call it violence.
11:56I mean, look at the national debt. The national debt is the
12:00enslavement of the next generation to foreign banksters.
12:04It is a theft. It is the initiation
12:08of the use of force by enslaving the unborn
12:12for the sake of the greed of the present. It's something that's only possible through the
12:16state. It would never be possible through private corporations,
12:20private concerns, private entities. Not that I'm a big fan of corporations which are a
12:24semi-fascistic creation by state powers to allow
12:28rich people to get away with corruption, for the most part.
12:32But
12:36when we don't call violence violence, when we call it
12:40child abuse, hitting children, belting children, and we call that
12:44discipline and parenting and all of the euphemisms for what is just a naked display
12:48of the force of the fist. That's all it is. When we call
12:52coercive redistribution, charity or welfare,
12:56we simply don't call things by their proper names. And we do that
13:00because we are corrupted first by language and then, and only
13:04then, by violence. And we are corrupted by the language
13:08that refuses to call coercion coercion.
13:12And so we are greedy
13:16to avoid
13:20the scalding, conscience-arousing
13:24clarity of accurate language. And so
13:28we obfuscate. We're a sophist to ourselves. And so because
13:32we want to lie to ourselves, out of greed, out of corruption, and we're
13:36all, I'm not outside of this, I mean we all have to fight for clarity.
13:40So because we want to lie to ourselves
13:44that market summons sophistry. It summons
13:48people who will lie to us. So, I mean, one
13:52example would be, you know, a woman who has
13:56unprotected sex with a terrible guy and gets
14:00pregnant, keeps the baby. She has
14:04a great desire to say, I'm a victim. Right? It's one of
14:08many, many countenances. We could do this for men as well, right? So we have
14:12this woman is going to have a great desire to call herself a victim, to blame
14:16only the man. And that's both for reasons of conscience and reasons of
14:20quote self-esteem, but also because if she can portray herself as a victim, people will have
14:24sympathy for her and give her resources and give her money and give her housing and give her
14:28like free healthcare, education, dental care for her kids, all that kind of stuff.
14:32So, lying
14:36to ourselves can be a great way of gaining resources
14:40or just keeping our conscience at bay. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault.
14:44I didn't do it. I was a victim. He lied to me. He didn't write...
14:48So you want all of the rights and benefits of adulthood, but you want
14:52all of the excuses and sophistry of childhood. And it's not really sophistry to
14:56say children aren't responsible. I mean, certainly toddlers aren't. I mean, they're just born where they're born
15:00and trying to survive how they survive. So the first market
15:04for falsehood is people's thirst
15:08to lie to themselves, not be held accountable. And because people have the
15:12option to lie to themselves, they do bad things.
15:16Would the single mother become a single mother if she knew she would gain no resources and sympathy
15:20for that, but we'd be held accountable? Well, no.
15:24So evil is not just justified ex post facto.
15:28It's justified before the fact, right? It's justified before the fact.
15:32So because people know that they will lie to themselves and that
15:36other people will lie to them, they do bad things.
15:40And then when they do bad things or irresponsible things or things that harm children in particular,
15:44well then they have a giant market for people to come
15:48and lie to them as well. So they want to lie to themselves. They're searching for justifications. A lot of
15:52intellectuals will provide that. And then they also
15:56have other people lie to them because most of
16:00society as we stand is this massive
16:04interwoven thread of everyone lying to each other about virtue, about
16:08truth, about reason, about violence, about responsibility,
16:12right? I mean, we inflict endless responsibility
16:16on children and provide irresponsible adults endless resources and excuses.
16:20It's really, really sad. It's really sad.
16:24At least when I was a kid, I don't know what it is now, but if you didn't study for the test, man,
16:28you just got an F. If you weren't there for the test, man, you didn't have a doctor's note,
16:32man, you just got an F. Even at the age of 8 or 10 or
16:3612, you just got marked down. And if you got marked down enough, they could take a year from your
16:40life by having you repeat a grade. Kids in the single
16:44digits were infinitely responsible even though, I mean, I could barely study at home. Things were so
16:48violent and loud and chaotic and confused. And I was hungry.
16:52So, as a kid,
16:56even though you're in no control of your environment, you're held 100% accountable.
17:00But as adults, even though you are in complete control of your environment
17:04and vagina, you are given endless excuses and
17:08you can never fail. It's really, it's just absolutely appalling. If we could hold
17:12adults to 50% of the standards we hold 9-year-olds to, the world would be an infinitely
17:16better place. So, people want to lie to themselves.
17:20They know they will lie to themselves. They know that other people will lie to them. They know that the media
17:24will lie to them. They know that a lot of the churches will lie to them.
17:28They know that the government will certainly lie to them. The schools will lie to them.
17:32So, because they know that they will never be held accountable, because
17:36they'll lie to themselves and everybody will reinforce that lie and everybody will give them sympathy
17:40as if they're victims when they are, in fact, moral agents,
17:44all of this corruption spreads. And so, I look at
17:48most philosophers, not all of course, but I look at most philosophers throughout history as
17:52being in hot demand because people want to
17:56lie to themselves, but they don't want to obviously lie to themselves, so they have to
18:00conform with some highly elevated philosopher who gives them
18:04endless excuses for who they are
18:08and what they've done. The demand for excuses
18:12drives the supply of lies. The supply of lies also drives
18:16I mean, it's a bit of like supply creates its own demand, right? Nobody knew that they really needed
18:20an iPad until there were iPads, right? So, it is a circular
18:24economy. People know that they're going to get excuses
18:28for the bad things they do, so they do bad things, which requires them to be lied to
18:32about causality and their own responsibility. And so,
18:36the supply of lies creates the bad behavior, which in turn creates the demand for lies,
18:40which increases the supply of lies. I mean,
18:44the American educational system was about 150 years ago taken over by the government
18:48because people in America were concerned that a lot of non-Protestants
18:52in particular, the Irish and Italians, were coming into the
18:56country and that they were going to lose the sort of Protestant nature of the
19:00country because they were setting up separate educational systems.
19:04And so, they were concerned about fragmentation within American society. And so,
19:08because they were concerned about that, it was easier to sell, and
19:12of course, the teachers wanted it because they couldn't get fired, and the students didn't really
19:16understand it, and the parents didn't fight hard enough for the liberty. And so,
19:20the educational system in America, the government educational system, was
19:24brought in to maintain and affirm Protestant American values
19:28against the sort of wave of Catholicism and other belief systems.
19:32And then, of course, it didn't take very long
19:36before people are like, oh, there's a giant lever that controls the minds of hundreds of millions of
19:40children. I guess I'll grab that and use it to not affirm American
19:44values, but to destroy American values. I mean, whatever you create through
19:48violence will always end up achieving the opposite of its stated goal.
19:52Absolutely the case. You know, if a guy kidnaps John Fowles, the collector, right? A guy
19:56kidnaps a woman because he wants her to fall in love with him, she ends up immediately hates and
20:00loathes him. Whatever you try to achieve through violence will
20:04only achieve the opposite of its stated goals, right?
20:08I mean, it's the deal with the devil, right? The devil tempts you with something
20:12that is going to provide you the unearned, and you think it's going to
20:16make you happy. And then you sell your soul to the devil, you're happy for a short amount
20:20of time, then your happiness decays, and the last third of your life is pure horror waiting
20:24to go to hell. And then eternity of hell, right?
20:28And that's an analogy
20:32for whenever you try to achieve the unearned, right? Like influence
20:36over the minds of children through government schools rather than through actually communicating
20:40and teaching children. And of course, parents who beat their children
20:44as almost all parents did back then had a tough time transferring their
20:48values because the children didn't like being beaten, of course, right?
20:52So that's another reason why government schools were attempting.
20:56And so, yeah, it's funny how parents think that turning your
21:00children over to be educated by
21:04the state is going to be good in the long run for
21:08the ideas of liberty. I mean, how can you really advocate for
21:12freedom when you say that it's essential that children be educated
21:16through coercive redistribution and state controls?
21:20It's not a good and easy argument to make. So I don't blame the
21:24philosophers. The blame rests in the heart of every individual.
21:30It's not that a particular ideology has taken over the minds of the people.
21:34It's that people want it. And they want a lot of syllables to cover up their
21:38naked greed for the unearned, right?
21:42All predators camouflage, and the human predators camouflage through language,
21:46through the redefinition of language. I said this in a show last night. It's one of the reasons why people
21:50don't know synonyms anymore. Synonyms exist because language is constantly being colonized
21:54by coercive sophists, and you need new words, right?
21:58Freedom, right? Freedom used to be freedom
22:02from coercion. Now it means freedom from consequences.
22:06Equality used to mean equality of opportunity. Now it means equality of outcome. So these words
22:10are constantly being hijacked by sophists, so you need the constant invention of new words
22:14because, in the same way, you need to always bring
22:18new products to the market because the products get
22:22bought, in a sense, by people. And so you constantly
22:26need to replenish things because they get consumed, and language gets consumed
22:30by sophists, and so you need new words to communicate arguments
22:34because people are so baffled by the redefinition of words.
22:38So it's one of the reasons they don't teach you much language
22:42comprehension or synonyms in school anymore. I mean, I got a thesaurus in junior
22:46high. I don't think that's really a thing anymore because governments want to use as few
22:50words as possible, and sophists want you to use as few words as possible so they can take over
22:54those words and redefine.
22:58So people want the unearned
23:02and they desire the unearned and then
23:06the unearned is used against them.
23:10You want freedom from consequences by
23:14selling your soul to the devil to get massive things for free that you didn't earn
23:18and then you lose your soul and you regret your choice. I mean, Europe is going through
23:22all of that with the welfare state right now.
23:26The responsibility for the state of the world
23:30is not Hegel's, it is not Locke's, it is not
23:34Rousseau's, it is not Schopenhauer's, it is not Nietzsche, it is not
23:38Bertrand Russell, it is certainly not Plato, not Aristotle, not Socrates.
23:42The responsibility for the state of the world is the
23:46avoidance of the truth that is the great temptation in the
23:50heart of every individual, you, me, everyone. We all
23:54thirst to avoid the truth because
23:58we don't want to face the bad things we've done and we want
24:02to escape the consequences of our own bad decisions.
24:06So the woman who has a child outside of wedlock and the man runs away
24:10wants to escape the consequences
24:14of her own bad decision in who
24:18she chose to have a child with.
24:22I mean, the idea that we could have developed
24:26our giant brains, which require 20 to 25 years
24:30of nurturing to grow, the idea that we could have developed our giant brains if women
24:34couldn't pick out responsible men throughout the course of human evolution
24:38is so laughable I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to say.
24:42Women have an incredible instinct to pick out responsible men who'll
24:46stick around because if they couldn't we never would have evolved beyond apedom.
24:50So, I mean, the giant brains we have
24:54to justify our own decisions are the result of the fact that women chose
24:58responsible men to have children with throughout almost all of human evolution.
25:02So the idea that women say, well, I didn't know and I was fooled and I had no idea
25:06and it's like saying that it's like a man
25:10literally to me it comes across like a man dating a 60-year-old woman and
25:14saying, well, I had no idea she couldn't give me children. I had no idea she was beyond
25:18menopause or I had no idea that she was infertile. I mean, that's just bizarre.
25:22Well, no, we are highly attuned to figuring out
25:26who's fertile because if men couldn't figure out who's fertile, we couldn't have
25:30children. I mean, it's just funny, right? It's just funny stuff that people say.
25:34So, the only free will that we really
25:38have is the free will to think and concentrate and be honest with
25:42ourselves and society degrades and collapses precisely and
25:46exactly to the degree that people are willing to lie to themselves and lie to others.
25:50And, you know, we see this, right? I mean,
25:54we see this everywhere, all over the place, all the time.
25:58People just lying to themselves, people propping each other up. Oh, no, you look great
26:02when somebody's overweight and people saying just the most
26:06you're a victim when it clearly is the result of choice and agency
26:10and if people aren't willing
26:14to tell the truth to themselves, how are they going to listen to reason from other people, right?
26:18One of the consequences of avoiding telling the truth to yourself
26:22is your greed for being lied to by others, which means that you can never
26:26connect with anyone. You can never gain a real community. You can never gain actual support. You can never gain
26:30intimacy or trust or love. It's just a hell of a price to pay.
26:34I don't know why people want to pay that price. I don't know why people want to pay that price. Maybe they don't even
26:38see what it is. Well, of course they do, right, deep down. You know that if you're lying to people and people are
26:42lying to you, you can't have love. Love cannot be based on lies
26:46because lies are an avoidance of the truth.
26:50If you never know truth, then you never know love. It's a great line
26:54from the Black Eyed Peas. It's very true, right?
26:58If people don't want to tell the truth because they can't face their own conscience
27:02and they don't want to take responsibility for the bad things they've done,
27:06philosophy cannot impact that other than to
27:10map the decline. That's all. So, yeah, I don't
27:14blame philosophers and I work as hard as I do and as
27:18concentrated as I do and as riskily as I have done
27:22for sure because without reason there is no future
27:26for the
27:30mind. Anyone can lie to themselves.
27:34It takes nothing to lie to yourself. It seems
27:38to take just about everything to tell the truth to yourself and to others
27:42but the consequence of failing to do that is a life that
27:46you don't need to die to get to hell. You'll live it every day.
27:50Freedomain.com. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.