Join me in this episode as I reflect on the profound impact of philosophy on my life choices and moral compass. I discuss the importance of introspection in guiding actions and delve into the theme of redemption, exploring societal desensitization to ethical boundaries. Drawing parallels to historical practices and personal anecdotes, I emphasize the influence of societal norms on individual destinies and cultural values. Through introspective recollections, I challenge societal norms, stressing the consistency in moral teachings for a cohesive understanding of ethics. Reflecting on my upbringing, I share childhood experiences that instilled universal values and underscore the enduring impact of early lessons on moral integrity. Don't miss this episode's exploration of personal experiences and philosophical outlook shaped by upbringing, emphasizing the importance of upholding universal values for a harmonious society.
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Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material, as well as targeted AIs for Real-Time Relationships, BitCoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-Ins. Don't miss the private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
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LearningTranscript
00:00Good morning everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain, hope you're doing well.
00:05So I do love me that morning time, the time after I wake up but before I get out of bed,
00:14where I get to doze and explore and think and play with my brain.
00:19And this morning I was thinking about the life unlived, the optional possible different
00:25life.
00:28And it's a wild thing really, every now and then I get like almost literal bone chills
00:35when I think about all the different circumstances that had me leading up to meeting my wife.
00:44And how my life would have been different if that had not any one of those million butterfly
00:50effect things had not occurred.
00:53And I think about what my life would have been sans philosophy, without philosophy.
01:04And it's a pretty chilling and terrifying thing.
01:09I mean my not entirely inconsiderable talents would have been put to use for others, malevolent
01:19people.
01:23My fairly decent youthful good looks and speaking abilities and charisma and so on.
01:30And it was in some ways trying to be harnessed by some bad people in the business world.
01:34But that was for me a profit, not direct moral corruption.
01:39But it is an appalling thing to think of what my life would have been like without philosophy.
01:47But I did play that fast forward.
01:50You know, you go back to that fork in the road and you play the fast forward in a different
01:57direction.
01:58Right?
01:59Ah, beautiful.
02:00Just beautiful, beautiful.
02:02I hope, I hope, I hope that you get out into nature and you enjoy just how beautiful it
02:09is, even with the occasional plane noises.
02:17Imagine if I was lost in the woods and needed that plane to find me.
02:26Too much of a canopy, they could not see me.
02:32So I think of the lifeless lived, the life unlived without philosophy.
02:42And I really began to feel in my mind towards what would be considered a tipping point.
02:51And the tipping point is when are people unrecoverable to virtue?
02:57When can they not regain or retain their integrity?
03:06When do they flow over that slow bloody waterfall of infinite decadence and fall and fall and
03:13fall forever?
03:17It's a terrifying commentary in J.D. Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye, where he goes to his
03:29creepy old half pedo teacher and his teacher says you're the kind of guy who shoots rubber
03:40bands in the office, which wasn't too terrifying.
03:43Something else, I think, and then there's something about that you're falling and falling
03:52and you don't even know that you're falling.
03:55It's a terrifying, terrifying universe, which is a life without standards, without morals.
04:05So what are the steps that make people unrecoverable to virtue?
04:12So this is back to the triage analogy that I've used before.
04:15Hey, look at me, I'm in the forest talking about triage.
04:23Because the trees age, so what are the steps that have people slide towards corruption
04:35that is unrecoverable?
04:37And we need to know that because we need to know when we're giving medicine to the dead.
04:44We need to know when we're giving medicine to the dead so that we don't waste our time.
04:55And there is a sort of manipulative resource transfer that happens when people say, I can
05:05be saved.
05:07I'm sad.
05:09I can be saved.
05:15I mean, I remember an ex-girlfriend, after I broke up with her, she said, so lonely,
05:23so alone.
05:27And I really got a chilling sense of the gulf that her fairly bottomless isolation had opened
05:33up.
05:34Right?
05:35Some of the selfishness that happens with people.
05:37How much that had spiderweb on the arm.
05:40How much that had isolated her.
05:44And the refusal to be corrected is the acceptance of isolation.
05:52Right?
05:54That's really one of the saddest things around.
05:56The people who refuse to be corrected, who refuse to take feedback, who refuse to submit
06:01their angry will to reason and evidence, end up unbelievably isolated.
06:11It's the old, I'm right, and I'm alone.
06:14I'm always right, and I'm alone.
06:16It seems like every time I go into these GD woods, some bug inevitably flies directly
06:21into my ears.
06:22Like, don't you have anything better place?
06:23Don't you have any better place to go?
06:25Not bugs in there.
06:27My brain has been debugged.
06:28There's nothing for you in the old ear.
06:32Right?
06:38So, the corruption.
06:40When is it beyond recovery?
06:42When are people beyond saving?
06:49So, I think of Quentin Tarantino in these areas.
06:57Quentin Tarantino, I consider a massively, I mean, obviously an entertaining guy, has
07:02the kind of creativity that no moral boundaries can generate.
07:07If you have this, if you have no moral boundaries or no desire to do good with your art, then
07:15there's no degree of shock value that you cannot explore, that is barred to you.
07:24You can show whatever ugliness you want.
07:27You can show whatever corruption you want, and you don't have the challenge of showing
07:34good people.
07:35Like, there are no good people in Quentin Tarantino movies.
07:39It is all just a slice of gaudy, manipulative hell.
07:46An endless devil's layer of chocolate cake.
07:52Empty, destructive.
07:56So, he doesn't have any intention of trying to portray virtue, so he can just fall forever
08:01and corrupt the culture as a whole.
08:05And so, yeah, you can have guys slicing off ears.
08:10You can have, you know, plunging heart, plunging hypodermics into hearts.
08:14You can have gunning people down in a room.
08:20You can have accidental shootings of people in a car.
08:23You can have all sorts of absolute trash occurring with no reformation possible.
08:37And he is, I mean, he's a nerdy theater kid made good, right?
08:42And he's also picked for his ability to do what he does, right?
08:46Again, some of the scripts can be interesting and entertaining, but it's all just a bottomless
08:51well of traumatized nihilism seeking to spread.
08:55I mean, like a virus that spreads bruises, particularly on the heart.
09:04So, I remember many years ago I watched the show Alias, and I think he showed up.
09:11Quentin Tarantino showed up as a self-consciously cool evil guy.
09:16You know, that sneer, that snarl, and so on.
09:18And, I mean, sorry, he doesn't have the face or the hair to pull it off.
09:24So, that sort of self-consciously, I'm cool for being bad.
09:30Bad is cool.
09:31Cool, bad.
09:32And this is why you take a woman like Uma Thurman, who is beautiful and lithe and talented
09:42and so on.
09:43And she worked with, of course, Quentin Tarantino on a bunch of movies, Pulp Fiction.
09:48She was the lead in Kill Bill and so on.
09:50I remember she was talking about how frustrating it was post-babyweight to lose the weight
09:54she needed to make the character look cool and perfect.
09:58So, you just take pretty charismatic people and you put them into desperately violent
10:03situations with no redemption, and you call it art.
10:11And it is, you know, fairly repulsive.
10:15And he does, to his vague credit, lift the lid on how miserable people are in this world.
10:22I think of the scene of, well, the sort of semi-pedo, Leon professional, French movie
10:32with the very young Natalie Portman, where Leonardo DiCaprio's character is talking to
10:37the girl and sharing way too much of himself with what, if I remember, was kind of a little
10:44girl.
10:45That's all kind of creepy.
10:46Creepy as get-up, right?
10:47And wasn't it Quentin Tarantino who had a character in one of his movies lick liquid
10:55from Salma Hayek's feet and put himself in that role?
11:01So, it's fairly nasty stuff.
11:07But he does show the misery of the people from time to time.
11:09But it's all cool and hip and everybody's neato and they don't show any self-doubt and
11:16they're all physically attractive and they don't strive for anything better, really.
11:21And all that.
11:24And it's dark and it's ugly and nihilistic and just terrible all around.
11:33Just terrible all around.
11:34Because you don't have the tension of trying to create a good person.
11:40Trying to create a good person, an honest person, a decent person, a person who grows
11:44and changes and fights his insecurities or doubts and emerges as a greater, better person.
11:54And that's just not there.
11:58It's just all evil all the time.
12:02And that's gross.
12:03And of course, you know, it tells you about all the actors, right?
12:05All the actors who get involved in these celluloid shit-stains of nihilism.
12:12They're all actors who are happy to do it.
12:14Well, of course, they know they're going to get accolades and all of that, but this is
12:18probably the corruption of people like Brad Pitt that his son was talking about.
12:25So, what is it that gives people or has people end up in this tipping point?
12:35This tipping point of corruption where everything becomes irredeemable.
12:43What is the tipping point?
12:48Well, as I say, it has to become cool.
12:52And the tipping point is when evil is clearly identified and attacked, ostracized and punished
13:02and all of that, when evil is attacked, then it's on the run, it's on the retreat.
13:11And I think of this time period in human history.
13:16I'm not exactly sure how long it was.
13:18Probably, I would say pretty much everything in England, right?
13:22Post black death until 1914.
13:29So, you know, six, 700 years.
13:32And what happened was the people who were criminals were taken out of society.
13:42They were executed or they were shipped off to Australia or other colonies.
13:49And about 1% of the population was taken out of society every year.
13:59And that has had a big effect on me, obviously, growing up in England and of that stock as a whole,
14:07although I'm half Irish, half German.
14:10So, I mean, I'm not sure how that all factors into it.
14:13But when you have a society that identifies evildoers and takes them out of the reproduction pool, right?
14:25Because there's some element of violence that probably has a genetic basis.
14:30I've talked about this before on the show.
14:32Some of the research indicates.
14:34And who knows what the conclusive proof is, but there's indications.
14:38So, when you're taking out 1% of the most violent people in society,
14:45and whether that's jail for their reproductive years, whether that is shipping them off to Australia,
14:52or whether that is outright execution, or, you know, just ostracism as a whole.
14:58It can be roaming the streets, but if women don't breed with them, then the genes don't spread, right?
15:04Or if it's just the environment, maybe it's all environmental.
15:09But you're still not having people raised by violent people in that kind of environment, right?
15:16So, what that means to me is that those who were not terrified of social norms
15:29didn't make it.
15:31Again, doesn't matter whether it's genes or environment, it's probably a combo of both.
15:36But in England, if you were violent and broke significant laws,
15:43then you would be taken out of society.
15:48And this process where 1% of the most violent men were taken out of society every year
15:55resulted in a society where people are terrified of social disapproval.
16:05I mean, I think this happened in the West as a whole, but the data is more clear for England.
16:10You ended up with people who were terrified of social disapproval.
16:17Like, you know, this common fear of having to get up and speak in front of a crowd.
16:22Well, generally, the reason why people are frightened of that, which makes perfect sense to me,
16:26they're frightened of that because when you would get up and speak in front of a crowd,
16:33it usually or often had to do with defending your innocence against criminal charges,
16:42which often meant genetic or physical death if you failed, right?
16:46So, people would be nervous to get up and speak in front of a crowd
16:51because that would mean that they were being charged with some crime
16:55and they were now kind of fighting for their lives, right?
17:01So, the crowd is a predator, a moral crowd is a predator to evildoers, right?
17:08So, they didn't want, people didn't want to go through that
17:12so they'd be frightened of public speaking.
17:14That's usually what it has to do with.
17:17So, you end up, of course, if you look at the UK, right,
17:24you end up in the situation where the only people who survived this mass culling
17:30of social non-conformists or evildoers, right?
17:33I mean, I know there was overlaps, I'm not saying it's 100%,
17:36but a lot of what was done was done with violent people,
17:40murderers, rapists, home invaders, and so on, right?
17:44They all would be killed or deported or something like that, right?
17:47Or they'd flee, right?
17:49They would flee to the colonies or something like that, right?
17:52So, you end up in a society where people are terrified of breaking social norms
18:02because there's a ruthless infliction of punishment
18:07on those who do break social norms.
18:10And a lot of those social norms are just,
18:12some of them, of course, are unjust, but if you look at this culling,
18:19in a sense, that went on for, I mean, more than half a millennia, right?
18:24More than 500 years, probably, to one degree or another.
18:28You were looking at who survives that culling,
18:31people who are terrified of breaking social norms.
18:34Now, I remember, of course, I was a minor shoplifter in my early teens,
18:39and at one point, I just, I remember standing in front of a sunglasses rack
18:47in Eaton's in the Dom Mills Mall way back in the day,
18:51and thinking, I really want sunglasses.
18:54Of course, I didn't have any money, and I didn't respect any of society's rules
18:57because society didn't protect me, so why would I protect society?
19:01I felt in a state of nature.
19:03I mean, I didn't articulate at all this, but looking back,
19:05that's what was going on.
19:08And I remember looking at the sunglasses rack,
19:13looking around, this was long before cameras and all of that,
19:17and thinking, well, I could take the sunglasses.
19:21But I felt this fear, right?
19:24This fear of that.
19:28And I think that was because my ancestors who,
19:33like my ancestors didn't take the sunglasses,
19:36which is why I exist, but the people who did take the sunglasses,
19:40so to speak, did not survive, did not survive to reproduce,
19:44at least within England, for various reasons.
19:46Again, it could be deportation, could be killing,
19:50could be long-term imprisonment, could be the self-deportation
19:52of fleeing somewhere else.
19:56So, that fear is what survives the culling,
20:04or the fear is the only way you survive the culling.
20:06Don't steal, right?
20:09Because the only people who survived were the people who didn't steal.
20:14Now, I'm not talking about the morals of any of this,
20:17I'm just talking about the sequence, right?
20:19What happens?
20:23So, people who didn't feel fear staring at the sunglasses rack
20:31didn't survive, didn't make it.
20:35And so, it's funny, you know, there are a lot of people who think
20:39I'm an iconoclast, a rebel, an outlaw, an extremist,
20:46or whatever nonsense they come up with.
20:48None of that, of course, is even remotely true.
20:51I'm, in many ways, the most ridiculous conformist that is there.
21:00This is just a minor tangent, it's just a by-the-by,
21:03I just find it kind of funny when people think I'm out there,
21:06or whatever it is.
21:07No, no, it's the most banal conformist stuff that I do, in many ways.
21:13Because nothing I talk about, people disagree with, fundamentally.
21:18All I did was I took the ethics I was taught as a child,
21:21and said, oh, okay, what if I take these ethics seriously?
21:25Right?
21:27I mean, what do I argue for?
21:32I argue for a respect for property rights, which I was taught as a child.
21:37Don't take, don't steal, don't grab, right?
21:40And don't use violence to get what you want.
21:43Instead, negotiate rationally.
21:49It really is the most banal, and this shows you
21:54just how crazy society is.
21:56That when you take what society says is the good,
21:59and it's universal and consistent, right?
22:01They didn't say, well, you can't push other kids and take their lunch money,
22:05you can't push them down and take their lunch money on Mondays and Wednesdays,
22:08but you can Thursdays, and Fridays, and Tuesdays, I guess.
22:16Nobody said that to me.
22:17Nobody said, well, at this school you can't be a bully,
22:20but at that school you can.
22:21Nobody said that inside the classroom, inside the school,
22:26you can't take other kids' stuff, but when you get to the playground,
22:31all bets are off and it's a free-for-all, right?
22:36I was taught that respect for persons and property,
22:42don't use violence, respect property, I was taught that these were universal.
22:48And I had, of course, I mean, I went to a variety of schools when I was a kid.
22:53I went to kindergarten near my aunt's house where I was staying
22:59because my mother was being hospitalized with depression and anxiety
23:02or whatever she was going through.
23:04I went to kindergarten there, I went to public school elsewhere,
23:08then I went to boarding school, and then I went to another public school,
23:12and then I took entrance exams to go to Scotland,
23:16and then I was out in Africa, and then I came to Canada.
23:21So I went to a wide variety of schools in a wide variety of countries,
23:25continents, hemispheres, and every school told me the same thing.
23:31Don't use force, don't use violence, and respect property.
23:37That's not yours, don't take it.
23:40I remember when I was at boarding school, I lost a pen,
23:42and they reported that a pen had been found,
23:45and I went to the headmasters and said,
23:49I lost a pen, the headmaster held up this beautiful gold pen,
23:52and I said, well, that's a lovely pen, but it's not mine, it's not mine.
23:57So I remember the headmaster being quite surprised and saying,
24:02well, that's very decent of you, and I'm like, but it's not mine.
24:06So I shouldn't take other people's property,
24:10even if it's kind of half-willingly handed over,
24:12because they're offering you a pen because you say you lost one,
24:17and I did lose one, and they found one.
24:20So everywhere I went, I was told the same things.
24:26Don't use violence, don't push, don't hit, don't thump, don't trip,
24:31don't use violence.
24:33I mean, I remember when a friend of mine and I were bored in gym class,
24:39and to have a 13 or 14-year-old boy bored in gym class
24:43is a special kind of bad teaching, and it's not an easy thing to do.
24:48But we were getting some stupid lecture, as we always did,
24:51about safety and care and blah, blah, blah.
24:54And my friend and I were wrestling by the side of the pool a little bit,
24:58and he was trying to push me in.
25:02I was trying to push him in.
25:07And I was caught and given another lecture,
25:13and the gym teacher said,
25:19Did you push him in the pool?
25:21And I said, Well, kind of.
25:23And the reason I said kind of was because
25:27someone's going to have a field day over the future
25:30comparing these stories and noting tiny discrepancies,
25:32or maybe not so tiny discrepancies,
25:34but the moral of the story is what counts.
25:37So, the gym teacher said, Did you push him into the pool?
25:46And I said, Kind of, or a little bit,
25:49and the reason being that we were both trying to push each other into the pool.
25:53I just happened to win, right?
25:55We were both trying to push each other into the pool.
25:57I just happened to be the one who won that particular battle, right?
26:01So, then the gym teacher snapped at me when I said, A little bit.
26:07Did you push your friend into the pool?
26:09And I said, A little bit.
26:10And the gym teacher got very angry or impatient or, you know,
26:14vaguely contemptuous and said, A little bit.
26:17That's like, You pushed him a little bit.
26:18That's like being a little bit pregnant.
26:20It's like being kind of pregnant.
26:21It's binary.
26:22Well, he didn't say it's binary, but that was sort of the...
26:24So, there was no ambiguity and ambivalence.
26:27It wasn't like, well, we were bored and we were both trying to push each other into the pool.
26:30I just happened to win that time.
26:32So, I didn't just push him into the pool, right?
26:35But there was no ambivalence.
26:36There was no complexity.
26:38There was no, well, I didn't just randomly push him into the pool.
26:41We were bored and wrestling with each other.
26:44So, I got in trouble, you see.
26:47I got in trouble for wrestling with a boy and pushing him into the pool.
26:57See, that's, you see, how much violence was frowned upon.
27:02Oh, my gosh.
27:03It's just so terrible.
27:05I mean, you were sitting by a pool and you pushed a boy into the water.
27:13In other words, he got wet.
27:20My God, the boy is traumatized from dampness, right?
27:25So, and of course, I mean, you know, now looking back so many years, decades really later,
27:31we understand that teachers are very sensitive about being boring,
27:36and they'll get angry at you if you're bored.
27:40If you're not listening, if you're bored, they consider it disrespectful.
27:44So, I got in trouble.
27:46See, violence was so frowned upon that I got in trouble for pushing a boy
27:53from a seated position with his feet in the water to actually being in the water.
27:59And it was in the shallow end too, so he literally could stand.
28:02So, at a swimming pool where we're all in bathing suits and we're about to swim,
28:07I got in trouble because I got a guy wet, say, five or ten minutes before he was supposed to get wet.
28:18See, that's how just terrible it was to even use a hint of violence,
28:29even though I wasn't violent.
28:30We were just wrestling.
28:31It was just fun.
28:32So, I wasn't violent.
28:34I did no harm to the boy.
28:36He was going to get wet anyway.
28:38We were in bathing suits.
28:39His feet and knees, up to his knees, were already in the water.
28:43He was already kicking back and forth.
28:45But, you see, it was just so terrible what I did that I got in trouble.
28:51That's how bad things were.
28:54That's how bad things were to use any kind of violence.
28:58You got to tell the truth, don't use violence, and respect people's property.
29:05Respect people's property.
29:07That's what I was told.
29:11So, I'm not doing anything even remotely radical.
29:17That's what's so funny to me.
29:19Literally, it is hilarious to me that people think that I'm doing anything even remotely controversial or radical.
29:25All I'm doing is I'm saying to society,
29:30you told me this was the good, so I'm going to accept that this is the good.
29:35You told me what was moral.
29:37I'm not even trolling.
29:39I'm not saying anything.
29:41I'm simply giving the facts of the situation.
29:44All I'm doing is society told me what was moral.
29:50Don't use violence.
29:52Self-defense might be okay because, you know, I was also told that self-defense was valid, right?
29:56Because if you'd get into a fight, and I've never gotten into a fistfight.
30:00I've gotten into a lot of... I've gotten into a couple of wrestling fights and so on.
30:05But I've never gotten into a fistfight.
30:09But I was told that self-defense is okay.
30:14It's fine because the big question when there would be a fight, and we always heard this, right?
30:20A big question would be who started it, right?
30:25And the reason that you were asked who started it is because it's fine if it's self-defense.
30:31If some other kid comes up and pushes you or starts shoving you and you push and shove back, that's fine, right?
30:36So don't initiate violence.
30:38Respect people's property.
30:40And these values are absolute and universal.
30:42And they're so important that even if you get...
30:45Even if you wrestle with a boy and get him wet five minutes before he's supposed to get wet,
30:48that's really bad and you're going to get in trouble.
30:50That's how bad any kind of...
30:54Even play-fighting is bad.
30:58Even play-fighting by a pool.
31:01When you wrestle someone into the shallow end and they can stand and they're wet.
31:06Wrestling. Even play-wrestling.
31:09Man, that's absolutely unacceptable.
31:13So I was told respect property.
31:16I was told don't initiate force.
31:18I was told don't initiate force. I was told self-defense is okay.
31:22But it's better to walk away if you can.
31:25But if you're cornered, self-defense is okay.
31:29Wow. I believe this path has gone the way of the dodo.
31:36Things are quite high, these grasses.
31:40Just goes to show you, man.
31:42It's been a while since I've come this way.
31:45Look at that. We have some weeds as high as I am.
31:51Hey, man. Hi, weed. Shaggy.
31:58So this is what I was told.
32:02Don't use force. Respect people's property.
32:05And these rules are absolute and universal.
32:08Because they were the same everywhere I went.
32:11And I was always told they were absolute and universal.
32:16And we all know this, right?
32:19If you were told don't use violence, don't grab, don't take, don't hit, right?
32:25I think I'll survive this walk, but let's give it a 50-50 chance.
32:30But if you were told in the morning don't grab other kids' toys,
32:36and then in the afternoon you grabbed another kid's toys,
32:39and you said, hey, man.
32:42The teacher says, hey, I told you don't grab other kids' toys.
32:46Don't take other kids' toys, right?
32:49And if you were to say, well, no, that was this morning.
32:53Now it's the afternoon.
32:54They would have said, don't be ridiculous. It's a rule.
32:58It's not just in the mornings, right? It's a rule.
33:02So I was told all of this stuff with no hesitation, no doubt.
33:10Don't use violence. Don't take people's stuff.
33:13Self-defense is okay, but avoid the fight if you can.
33:18Okay.
33:22So I listened.
33:24I don't know why people don't listen as a whole, but I did listen.
33:29So this is the funny thing about society,
33:33and this is why society in its current form is not sustainable,
33:38because hypocrisy is not sustainable.
33:42So when I'm told no force respect property rights,
33:47and then I talk about the universality of property rights
33:52and the non-aggression principle,
33:54if I'm told that,
33:59and I say, I'm told no force, no taking stuff, no using violence,
34:04self-defense is okay, better to get away if you can.
34:06When I'm told all of that, no force, no theft,
34:13and it's all universal, so what do I do?
34:17Well, I accept that.
34:23I accept that.
34:25I accept that I was told the truth.
34:28Oh, and also I was told, of course, that hurting children was terrible.
34:33I mean, I remember there was this, of course, much later,
34:36but there was a movie called Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger,
34:41and there's a child abuser, and Arnold Schwarzenegger beats the crap out of him.
34:47So a child abuser is stone evil,
34:52and it's fine to beat the living crap out of them
34:54without any proof other than the kid's word,
34:57and nobody got upset at that movie, right?
35:00Nobody was like, but that was horribly unjust, right?
35:03That didn't happen.
35:05Let's go this way.
35:07That wasn't a thing. That didn't happen.
35:09Wait, oh, no, it's up here further a little bit.
35:12So child abuse is bad. Child abuse is evil.
35:23And, wait, somewhere there's a path.
35:28Don't make me go back the way I came.
35:30Uh, whoa.
35:35Wow, this is really overgrown.
35:39That is like Mirkwood in there.
35:42I'm sorry if you're just listening to the audio,
35:44but that's what happens if you don't, if you don't watch.
35:48All right, so that's, is that unpossible, impossible?
35:55Wow, this is crazy, man.
35:59I swear there used to be a path in here.
36:04Oh, that's not going to work.
36:06Those are those really pokey pine-needle branches,
36:08which will, will scratch your eyes out,
36:10like Blanche DuBois. Blanche DuBois.
36:15The Whitewood, all right.
36:17Sorry for this minor journey here.
36:22Oh, oh, I think we found it.
36:26Yes, I think we have.
36:28Yes, yes, yes. All right, look at that.
36:31We found it.
36:33All right.
36:35There we go.
36:37So, it's the least radical stuff that you could think of,
36:42because I'm simply taking every single thing
36:45that every adult and teacher ever told me,
36:50every authority figure, from priest to headmaster
36:54to parents to friends' parents to headmasters
36:58to TV to every single person told me,
37:03tell the truth, no violence, and respect property.
37:08And these things are universal and absolute.
37:10They're all over the world.
37:11They're universal and they're absolute.
37:15Force is so bad, you can't even wrestle with a boy by a pool
37:20and get him slightly wet a few minutes before he's supposed to get in the pool.
37:24That's how absolutely unacceptable violence is.
37:31So, you know, my big problem, what's caused so much controversy in the world,
37:37is I listened.
37:39You could say fool that I was.
37:41I'm very earnest, right?
37:42I'm like, oh, okay, so if this is what I'm supposed to do,
37:45then this is what I'm supposed to do.
37:48And this was also conditioned, of course, by my work, right?
37:53So when you have to work, and I did really have to work from very early on
37:57because we were broke, right?
38:00So when you have to work, then you have to listen to instructions
38:05and you have to do things the right way, right?
38:08So when I got my job at the age of 10 painting plaques
38:12for Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee in the summer of 1977,
38:20I was given the paints, I was given the paintbrushes,
38:28and I was given a template, of course, which said,
38:33here's how you paint this.
38:35You can't just make up your own colors, right?
38:37The flag's got to be correct, the lion's got to be correct,
38:39and I still see it very vividly in my head.
38:41Almost a half a century later, I was told this is what you had to do.
38:45So you had to follow instructions.
38:46You couldn't alter, you couldn't change.
38:48When I bought model airplanes, my favorite, of course,
38:51the Hawker Hurricane, because it could take a lot of damage
38:54and still keep going, just like me.
38:57When I was, you had to follow the instructions, right?
39:01You were given, here's how to assemble it, and so on,
39:03and you had to follow the instructions.
39:06So I did.
39:07I followed the instructions.
39:09Because if you didn't, well, things went badly.
39:15So when I got a job at a bookstore, I had to, I think I was 11 or so,
39:23I had to put the New York Times together.
39:29Hey, I was later on the cover.
39:30Three times.
39:31But when I was 11 or so, I got a job at a bookstore,
39:36and I would go in very early on Sunday mornings.
39:39I had to take a bus, a subway, and a streetcar to get to my job.
39:45I had to get up god-awful early, and I had to put together,
39:52assemble the New York Times in a very specific way.
39:54It came in parts, right?
39:56How pretty.
39:57It came in parts, and so I had to assemble it in a particular way,
40:00and if I got it wrong, I would get in trouble.
40:03And if I got in trouble, I would get fired.
40:06And if I got fired, well, we'd be a little hungry,
40:10because sometimes I would use my earnings to get food.
40:14Like one of the reasons why I worked in restaurants for many years
40:18is you get food, and I was hungry.
40:22Because, you know, I grew up without enough food,
40:26which makes it tough to maintain a healthy weight when you get older
40:28because your urge is constantly to overeat, because that's what I would do.
40:32I would go to friends' houses, get to stay for dinner.
40:35I remember my mom left me alone at the age of 13 or 14 for like two weeks
40:40with $20, because she was going off trying to bag some guy
40:45and get him to marry her, because she went to Houston, if I remember rightly.
40:49This is back when you could put ads in the newspaper.
40:52Caught my eye.
40:54Put an ad in the newspaper and try and look for someone to marry you.
40:58And then she got back from that trip, and she told me
41:01all the inappropriate things this guy had done.
41:05Because, you know, that's what you want to hear when you're 13.
41:09So, I was hungry.
41:13So I had to, like it was not an option, right?
41:16It was not a nice-to-have to have a job.
41:19It wasn't so I could go see a movie or two or have some walkabout money.
41:23It was so I could eat.
41:25So I had to follow instructions.
41:28And so, that was my life.
41:35So, I honored my mother and my father, who gave me all these moral rules.
41:45I actually did honor society by accepting society's rules of no violence
41:52and no theft.
41:56And this is universal everywhere, all the time, no matter what.
41:59And there's no excuses, even if you're bored and you get a little kid wet
42:03a few minutes before he's supposed to get wet.
42:06In a shallow pool where he can stand.
42:08That's how unacceptable it is.
42:10Okay.
42:11So, I had my suspicions that this was all bullshit, of course.
42:16I had my suspicions.
42:20Of course, this is long before I knew how schools were funded or anything like that.
42:24But I had my suspicions that this was all manipulative lies and nonsense.
42:30You know, I was told not to use violence.
42:33And then, of course, I was caned in boarding school.
42:39They don't do that anymore.
42:41I checked.
42:43But violence is bad.
42:46And I was caned for a non-violent defense.
42:49I was caned because I climbed over a wall to get to the ball that had gone over
42:54into the garden of the sanatorium, which was a little mini-hospital
42:58where kids who were ill would be isolated, because they couldn't be sent home
43:01because their parents were busy.
43:03So, I did a non-violent thing, and I was punished with violence.
43:09I mean, fairly brutal violence, as you can imagine.
43:12So, anyway, property, obviously, and boundaries and whatever it was, rules,
43:19super important, right?
43:21So, you've got to hold people to rules, even to the point of beating a six-year-old
43:26who climbed over a wall.
43:29That's how essential it is, you see, to obey the rules.
43:37Child abuse, bad.
43:38Theft, bad.
43:39Violence, bad.
43:41Universal, absolute.
43:43Everywhere, all the time, no matter what.
43:46All right, I accept that.
43:49So, that's how I'm going to build my philosophy.
43:51When I got into philosophy, it's like, okay, that's how non-aggression principle,
43:54respectful property rights, nothing radical about that, nothing weird about that,
43:58nothing unusual about that.
43:59This is not anything bizarre at all.
44:02This is absolute, right?
44:07Absolutely uncontroversial.
44:11Because all the children are told that, and I was told the laws, right?
44:14The laws that don't use violence and don't steal, right?
44:17Those are the laws.
44:18Okay, I accept all of that.
44:22So, this was all absorbed by me.
44:29And then when philosophy teaches me logical rigor, syllogisms, reason,
44:35evidence, argumentation, I'm like, wow, you know, this is great.
44:40I can do this no-violence property thing, and I can really work to push that
44:48and promulgate that.
44:50Now, there's a couple of hiccups in society that I guess people missed,
44:53where violence is used and theft is used.
44:56So, you know, I can address those philosophically.
44:59And because everyone cares so much about non-violence and respecting property,
45:03I mean, there'll be some pushback and some kickbacks,
45:05but people will say, gosh, you're right, you know,
45:08we punished you for wrestling with a boy by a pool and for climbing a fence.
45:15So, we really take these things super seriously.
45:20So, thank you for providing moral justification and clarity
45:23regarding these things.
45:24That is excellent.
45:25Good job.
45:27Nice.
45:28Nice.
45:29Completely.
45:30The only controversial thing is that I actually listened, right?
45:35The only controversial thing about anything that I do is I listen to society.
45:41I accepted what society told me, and I gave more formal logic
45:49to all the rules that were imposed upon me very aggressively.
45:55That's all.
45:56I just proved what society told me was true,
45:58which is kind of bizarre when you think about it.
46:00I mean, did people who are jugglers, did they lynch Sir Isaac Newton
46:06for proving what they instinctively knew about gravity?
46:10No.
46:11They're like, oh, that's interesting.
46:12I guess I already knew that instinctively,
46:13but it's nice to see it proven mathematically.
46:17But they didn't, you know, the jugglers who rely on momentum
46:21and gravity and inertia to ply their trade, those,
46:26oh, it's nice.
46:27We've got some deer prints here.
46:29So, yeah, the jugglers who know gravity intimately,
46:36which is how they are jugglers,
46:38they don't get mad at physicists who give them mathematical proof
46:41for what they instinctively understand.
46:43Can you imagine?
46:45Madhouse.
46:47Can you imagine the International Association of Jugglers
46:50physically attacking Sir Isaac Newton
46:53for giving mathematical proof for gravity, inertia, motion,
46:58centrifugal forces, and so on, right?
47:01Wouldn't that be insane?
47:03I mean, it would literally be deranged, but that's the world.
47:06I have proven, and, well, first I advocated for,
47:12and then eventually I syllogistically proved
47:14the non-aggression principle and respect for property.
47:17All done.
47:18UPP.
47:19Get it for free.
47:22I can't do better than write it in an interesting and engaging way,
47:26read it in my fairly mellifluous and pleasant,
47:29vaguely British voice, and hand it out for free.
47:31I can't do better than that.
47:33I can't make it easier.
47:34I can't lower the barrier to entry than that right now.
47:41So, what can I say?
47:48Why is everyone mad at me?
47:50I mean, I understand it.
47:51Like, in hindsight, I get it, but I'm just telling you
47:53sort of the origin story of how I managed to avoid
47:57this kind of corruption.
48:02I mean, I was told to tell the truth, right?
48:08I was told to tell the truth, not use violence to respect property,
48:12and that's what I've done.
48:13I've told the truth, I've advocated for non-violence,
48:16and I've advocated for the respect of property.
48:20People know likey.
48:22Of course, you know, I've also mentioned this before,
48:24so I'll keep it brief now.
48:25But, of course, I was also told,
48:29I was also told that you should not have abusive people in your life.
48:36Right?
48:37I was told this.
48:38I was continuously told this as a kid, right?
48:41You should not.
48:42It's good to get abusive people out of your life.
48:44Like all these shows and stories, you know,
48:47that this is a hard done-by woman,
48:49her husband was not attentive.
48:54I mean, even if they're not abusive,
48:55even if you're just kind of dissatisfied, right?
49:00You know, I can't remember the name, Shirley Valentine or something.
49:03There was some movie, this of course much later,
49:05but it followed the same theme as the stuff I saw as a kid.
49:08There was some movie about a woman
49:14whose husband was kind of inattentive
49:17and she ended up leaving him
49:21and opening up a restaurant in Greece on the Mediterranean.
49:25And she was just so much happier.
49:27Something about a wall.
49:29And, you know, so even if you're just kind of dissatisfied,
49:31even if you're not totally fulfilled,
49:33but especially if he's mean.
49:36If he's mean.
49:37I remember, and if anybody ever finds this, let me know.
49:40I remember reading a book in my early teens.
49:42Well, I read a bunch of books about this kind of stuff.
49:44One was called Maid in Heaven,
49:46settled in court about divorce.
49:48Another one was Judy Bloom's Wifey.
49:50I read that in junior high school.
49:52And this was a woman who was discontented.
49:55There was the movie Jaws, which came out in the 70s.
49:58And I read Peter Benchley's book,
49:59I think even before the movie came out.
50:01And in Peter Benchley's book,
50:05the woman has an affair with the marine biologist
50:08because she's dissatisfied with her husband.
50:13Chief Brody, I think it was. I can't remember.
50:16And so, yeah, it was just constant.
50:18If you're not happy, you can just go do something else.
50:21You don't have to stay in relationships
50:22which aren't completely fulfilling.
50:24And you certainly shouldn't stay in relationships
50:26where people are even mean, let alone beatings and so on.
50:28But there's a movie that I saw about a woman
50:31who was dating a narcissistic guy.
50:36And I remember there was a scene where
50:40she told him to take the garbage out.
50:42They lived in an apartment building.
50:44She told him to take the garbage out.
50:46And he grabbed the garbage,
50:47which you have to walk down the hall and put it in the chute.
50:49And he walked down the hall and back slowly, completely naked.
50:53So I read a lot of books about how
50:56you've got to get out of bad relationships
50:58and you should never accept even average or bland relationships.
51:02You have a joyful fulfillment out there beyond the bland.
51:06Now I get this is all like anti-family stuff
51:08and programming women to be perpetually dissatisfied
51:10to lower the birth rate.
51:11I get all of that stuff now.
51:13But, you know, when I was a kid,
51:15and of course I was surrounded by women
51:20who had left.
51:22I was surrounded by mothers, right?
51:24These matriarchal manners.
51:25I was surrounded by women who had left relationships,
51:29often that weren't directly abusive.
51:31I didn't hear much about direct abuse.
51:33But what I did hear was I was dissatisfied.
51:37My mother never complained about my father being abusive.
51:42But when she was depressed in hospital after I was born,
51:47he looked out the window in a discontented way
51:50and said I'd rather be fishing.
51:51This was her big, big problem with him.
51:54And, you know, maybe he'd gotten a little bit tired of her histrionics
51:59and maybe he'd gotten a little bit tired of her hypochondria
52:02and, you know, overdramatic half-fainting spells and so on.
52:07I know I did.
52:08So, again, his fault for marrying her and all of that.
52:11But it was not abusive.
52:13She was just—he just didn't like the way she was behaving
52:17and expressed his discontent in a rather inelegant way,
52:20and that was it for the marriage.
52:23So he wasn't abusive.
52:25He paid the bills.
52:27He was faithful.
52:29But he got discontented with her constantly getting upset
52:33and ending up in hospital, which I can understand.
52:37A man's got a career to run.
52:38He's got bills to pay.
52:39And his wife is in hospital,
52:41so who's taking care of his kids, right?
52:43And it's a problem.
52:44So, again, I mean, it was a mess all around.
52:46I get that.
52:47I understand that.
52:50But that's what I was taught.
52:58And no one ever said that was bad.
52:59Sorry, I just have to do up my shoe here.
53:01Yeah, and nobody ever said that was bad.
53:02Nobody ever said that these women were irresponsible.
53:04It's like, oh, honey, are you dissatisfied?
53:07Is your husband saying something kind of cold?
53:09Okay, well, you should leave him.
53:12That's what I was raised with, right?
53:15I was raised with the voluntary family,
53:17with people who chose each other.
53:19So then when I talk about the voluntary family,
53:21that's how I was raised.
53:23If you're discontented, if it's unsatisfying for you,
53:27if you're criticized in any foundational way,
53:30you know, it's fine to get out and probably good to do so.
53:33Okay.
53:35Now, clearly, relationships you don't choose
53:37should be held to higher standards than relationships you do choose.
53:41Right?
53:42Just as you, if somebody assigns you a career
53:47in some fascistic or communistic manner,
53:49if somebody assigns you a career,
53:53then you have the right to be more discontented with that career
53:57than a career that you voluntarily choose yourself.
54:00Right?
54:01You get that.
54:03So, my sort of history with corruption is
54:08I accepted what society told me.
54:10I accepted not just the moral content, but the moral form.
54:13Not just that violence and theft were bad,
54:16but that they were really bad
54:19to the point where you get beaten for climbing a fence
54:22or you get in significant trouble because
54:24you wrestled with a kid by a pool.
54:26That's how bad it is.
54:27It's absolutely unacceptable.
54:29And I'm like, oh, okay.
54:31Well, I'll accept that.
54:32I'll accept that that's all wrong.
54:34Now, I had my doubts about it,
54:35which is why I kind of got into the shoplifting stuff.
54:37Again, I was not any kind of big thief, like nothing really.
54:40But, until I sort of hit that fear.
54:45Now, if I hadn't had that fear and I hadn't had discovered philosophy,
54:49where would my life have gone?
54:52Right?
54:54I do take, you know,
54:57maybe it's a little bit of a darker aspect of my personality.
55:00I don't know.
55:01But, I do take a kind of pleasure
55:08in holding hypocrites to their word.
55:12I do.
55:14I do, because I think hypocrisy is one of the worst sins of all,
55:18especially moral hypocrisy.
55:20So, I do take some pleasure
55:22in holding moral hypocrites to their word
55:24and watching them squirm a little, right?
55:27This is why, when I debated those communists,
55:30I opened up with,
55:31you guys are defending multinational corporations against me,
55:35a working class hero who got out of poverty
55:39to somewhere near the summit of intellectual achievement across the world.
55:43But, they side with the giant multinational corporation
55:45rather than the working class guy, right?
55:49Because they sided with the deplatformers, right?
55:52And, that's just hypocritical, right?
55:54They don't care about these things at all.
55:58And, it is, maybe it's a kind of vengeance
56:03for the wrongs that were done to me
56:06to say my vengeance is, in part, right?
56:09I mean, I obviously believe in the morals that I'm talking about.
56:11I'm very proud of UPP.
56:13But, maybe, to some degree, it's like,
56:16oh, so this is the good and you're punishing me with it?
56:18Okay.
56:19Let's make it the good and see how you like it.
56:22What if you're subject to the same standards you inflict upon children?
56:28Yeah, there's some meaty muscle down there, right?
56:31What if you are,
56:34people, oh, people in society,
56:36what if you are,
56:38or what if you have,
56:39inflicted upon you
56:41the same morals you inflicted upon me as children?
56:44It's not even turned about as fair play.
56:47You know,
56:48my family was, in part, destroyed
56:51by the acceptance of the voluntary family.
56:53Okay, so let's make the family voluntary.
56:56I was told that
57:00trespassing or violations of property rights
57:02or not following the rules is so bad
57:04that you'll beat
57:06a six-year-old child with a cane.
57:09Or was it a slipper? I can't remember.
57:12It was something.
57:15So, that's how important these things are.
57:18You know, violence is so unacceptable
57:21that even if you wrestle by a pool,
57:22you will be punished.
57:24Okay?
57:25So, those are your rules.
57:28I get it.
57:29Those are your rules.
57:30That's what happens in the world.
57:32These are the morals.
57:34Okay, let's make them real.
57:36Whoa.
57:37I don't want to destroy the poor spider's nest.
57:40I think I can go under, hang on.
57:43Whoa.
57:44Poor thing put so much work into that.
57:47So, I think that had a lot to do with it.
57:52So, I mean, philosophy is vengeance
57:56is an interesting concept.
57:58It doesn't have anything to do
57:59with the truth or falsehood of my arguments,
58:01but maybe something to do
58:03with the psychological motivation
58:05or motivations behind them.
58:08So, of course, I will get next to
58:11what actually happened,
58:13what my life unlived would have become,
58:17possibly or probably,
58:18if I had not discovered philosophy,
58:20because I think that's a very interesting idea
58:22or question or argument.
58:24So, I will get to that next time.
58:27Thank you so much for listening.
58:28Freedomain.com slash donate
58:29to help out the show.
58:30I'd really appreciate it.
58:31Lots of love.
58:32Bye.