In this episode, I examine family dynamics, trust, and the need for honesty, addressing a listener's question about betrayal involving a fiancé and a cousin. I discuss the difference between superficial peace and genuine resolution, highlighting how open communication is vital. Personal experiences with censorship illustrate the dangers of silencing differing opinions and the impact on societal harmony.
I question the authenticity of relationships built on pretense and explore the ethical responsibility to confront wrongdoing. Additionally, I delve into the complexities of empathy, trauma, and personal freedoms, advocating for agency in interpersonal choices. Ultimately, I encourage listeners to confront uncomfortable truths to foster deeper, more meaningful connections.
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, 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!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
I question the authenticity of relationships built on pretense and explore the ethical responsibility to confront wrongdoing. Additionally, I delve into the complexities of empathy, trauma, and personal freedoms, advocating for agency in interpersonal choices. Ultimately, I encourage listeners to confront uncomfortable truths to foster deeper, more meaningful connections.
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, 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!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Good morning everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain. Great questions from the
00:04lovely community at freedomain.locals.com. Dear Seth, I got wind that a
00:14cousin slept with my then-fiancé. The person who told me is so untrustworthy
00:19and is biased but I can't find the strength to confront my cousin because
00:23our parents are old and I feel that this would cause a disturbance of peace in
00:27the family. I got wind that a cousin slept with my then-fiancé. The person
00:33who told me is so untrustworthy and is biased but I can't find the strength to
00:37confront my cousin. Our parents are old. Okay, so if you want to stay silent to
00:45keep the peace, okay, I mean it's the illusion of peace, right? It's the
00:50illusion of peace. It's like saying, well, if Bob owns a slave then there's no
00:57disturbance in salary negotiations, right? It's keeping the peace, man. He's
01:02just keeping the peace. So if you want to stay silent to keep the peace, it's just
01:09the illusion of peace. I mean that's censorship, right? Self-censorship. So the
01:15arguments that I was making were causing some emotional difficulties for people
01:20in society, right? Arguments that I was making when I was more of a public
01:25figure. So I was censored, right? I was I was deplatformed and I was
01:31deplatformed to quote keep the peace but it doesn't keep the peace. So the
01:38video that was processing when YouTube deplatformed me was myself and a white
01:44cop and a black cop talking about the arrest of George Floyd and what might
01:50have happened other than the popular narrative and it was actually a very
01:56good conversation, very honorable and great guys to chat with and that was the
02:01video that was processing. So that might have caused some upset for people and
02:06I'll probably never know but I would imagine that had something to do with
02:10the whole deplatforming thing. So when people who had other perspectives on the
02:16death of George Floyd were censored, did that bring peace to society? Well no, no.
02:23I mean you all remember what they ironically referred to as the summer of
02:27love, the mostly peaceful protests, right? This was not, it was not peace. It was not
02:33peace at all. So if you want to be in quote relationships where not upsetting
02:41people comes at the expense of your honesty and openness and directness then
02:47these are illusory relationships. In other words if a relationship can only
02:53be sustained by you lying, it's not a relationship. It's a it's a pretense.
03:01Honestly I mean to take an extreme example it's like a guy kidnapping a
03:07woman, you know locking her in his basement and saying a woman has, hey a
03:14woman is living with me. I got a girlfriend she's living with me. Now
03:18she's moved in. I mean we wouldn't call that any kind of real relationship. We
03:23would call that kidnapping and imprisonment. So I don't know how a
03:28relationship where you self-erase can be considered a relationship. That's just a
03:32mark of subjugation. If you say well I can't speak about what I think and feel
03:38because other people will be upset, then you're saying that the least mature,
03:45least wise, least self-controlled, least disciplined people run the entire family
03:51situation. Is that where you want to be? Is that where you want to be?
03:57So all right. Do you want to be in this kind of situation? Let's say you meet
04:03some great woman. I think you're a man. Let's say you meet
04:08some great woman and this is the dilemma you give to her. Well the cousin slept
04:12with my fiancee but the person who told me is a liar and untrustworthy
04:17and I don't know if I should say anything. I mean who's gonna want to get
04:20involved like from the outside without your history with these people? Who's
04:26gonna want to get involved in this kind of situation? Who? Who's gonna want to get
04:31involved in this kind of deliverance style family trailer park trashy chaos?
04:37See this is an empathy thing and we'll get to empathy in a sec. This is an
04:41empathy thing. You have a history with your family. They have a value to you
04:47because of your history and I'm not gonna argue that they don't or that
04:51you're wrong. Of course you do have a history and there is value in that
04:57history. Shared memories, shared experiences, shared lives. There is
05:02value in that history. I'm not gonna pretend that there isn't. I'm not gonna
05:05say you're wrong. I mean there's value in the history that my family of origin
05:10and I share. So you have to wrestle with and deal with that value and that
05:16history but only because you were born into that situation environment right?
05:22That's only because of that. Now somebody coming in from the outside has no
05:30history or value with your family of origin. Somebody coming in from the
05:35outside has no history or value with your family of origin. They have no
05:39investment. They have no sentimentality. So how are they going to view your
05:44family situation? So this is what I say when I say to people and let's say you
05:51met your mother at a dinner party. You didn't know her. She was just some woman.
05:54Right? You met your mother at a dinner party. Would you want to hang out
06:00with her for the rest of your life? Would you want to pursue a relationship, a
06:03friendship, a mentorship? Like was she wise and helpful and virtuous and
06:06wonderful and funny and whatever the positive attributes that would be
06:10enough for you to pursue that? Right? And the reason I say that is you need to
06:14empathize with people outside of your family about what your family looks like
06:18because that's in fact what happens when you meet someone you might marry. You
06:24meet someone you might marry. You're saying come into my family with no value
06:30based on shared history. Judge my family without the involuntary value of
06:38involuntary shared history. And so if you can't look at your family without
06:44adding the virtues and values of a shared history, which are real, if you
06:51can't look at your family objectively then you can't look at your family the
06:55way a potential husband or wife will look at your family. That is not a good
07:02idea. It's not a good idea. I mean I remember in my twenties I was dating a
07:08woman who had an abusive father and he was unrepentant and she was going for
07:17lunch with him and she said do you want to come along? And I said well hell no. I
07:21don't have the history. I don't have the shared history. He's just someone who
07:25hurt someone as a child that I care about as an adult. I don't have any
07:31what incentive? Like if you were to say to me do you want to go for lunch with
07:35some random child abuser? I'd be like well of course not right? But he's my
07:41father. It's like yes but he's not my father. I don't have the history and I
07:45never went for lunch. And I did kind of disagree with her going for lunch but
07:50you know again I don't tell people what to do. I'm a free will guy and when you
07:55have some persuasion skills it's kind of important to even be more of a dedicated
07:59free will guy. So why would any quality person want to get involved in this
08:05trash right? Not you. Just this family mess. Dear Steph, is it moral to hold on
08:12to socially damaging information? I do genealogical I do genealogical studies
08:16and always come across spicy details about political figures but I feel that
08:19this will just dumb down even more the political discourse in my country. I'm
08:23not sure why you would be in pursuit of information that you'd want to keep
08:26hidden. That seems odd to me. I've worked for years on a cure for XYZ disease right?
08:32So if you're not going to release any of the information I'm not sure why you'd
08:36bother studying it. All right. Dear Steph, I asked this question before on Locals.
08:41What do you think of all the focus on the breast cancer causing BRCA genes? Do
08:47you think parents should engage in IVF or abstinence I guess in order to
08:52avoid passing on a gene which drastically increases the risk of cancer?
08:56I'm curious to hear your thoughts as a cancer survivor yourself. I would presume
08:59you would appreciate being born but now that I'm aware I might have the gene one
09:04parent has it I feel somewhat obligated to get tested and do IVF for my next
09:08child if I do have the gene. Well let's look at I think I think this was the
09:14case with the celebrity the actress Angelina Jolie that she had this gene
09:20and she got a double mastectomy because I think her own mother had died in her
09:24fifties of breast cancer. She didn't say I wish I'd never been born and throw
09:29herself off a cliff. I mean I think it's important and good to get you know I'm
09:33I'm half and half about this stuff. This is just a personal opinion so this has
09:37nothing to do with philosophy. It's just a personal opinion. You know because I
09:42mean this is from the old show Kroll. There's a cyclops who knows the day of
09:48his death and so there are these tests you can take I think that here's
09:53your chances of getting dementia and here's your chances of this is and I
09:57don't know man I mean for me this is a certain quality of life issue which is
10:03if I know oh I have an increased chance of of dementia then you know every time
10:10I get older and forget something I'll be like oh no right is there sort of an
10:14interference in the quality of life issue in other words is there a kind of
10:16blissful ignorance and not knowing these things. Now of course if this is a very
10:20dangerous gene and and so on then that's a different matter right but I for one
10:26quite enjoyed the blissful ignorance about things in the future health issues
10:30and I quite enjoy that blissful ignorance and I can't imagine myself
10:33getting tested for anything because I mean let's say that that I have some
10:38gene that increases the risk or some gene set increases the risk of dementia
10:41well why would I want to know that ahead of time it's gonna happen either way I
10:45might as well not know that ahead of time and rather than being concerned
10:49about it ahead of time so again I'm not saying this is my personal opinion it's
10:52not medical advice right it's just my particular opinion to this kind of
10:56information I guess everyone has differences but if you have these genes
11:04that is going to increase significantly increase the risk of breast cancer then
11:08I think it's important to know if it's very dire and it's important to let your
11:13kids know and so on as to whether or not you should do IVF or I mean that
11:19that's a personal decision obviously right I mean I love the fact that my
11:23daughter is a blend of my wife and I so you'll get some I guess some safety
11:28advantages if you do IVF but there may be some slightly less bonding I don't I
11:35mean so everything in life is a trade-off and this is not a foundationally
11:39moral decision because it's not the initiation of the use of force to have a
11:43kid so I would say that it's something for you to sorry I hate to say it's
11:49something for you to figure out but it's not a specifically moral decision and
11:53most people would rather be alive and take the risk of cancer certainly I
11:59would be most people would rather be alive and take the risk of cancer then
12:03not be alive at all and we know that because when you know when you're a kid
12:06the big C right big C right when there's a kid when you when you're a kid and you
12:10first learn about disease and death and cancer and so on you know you don't just
12:15jump off a bridge for you like okay well disease is a risk of life and it's
12:20worth it and we know that because most people go through diseases rather than
12:24kill themselves so all right oh do you believe it is government overreach for
12:33the government yes do you believe it is government overreach for the government
12:37yes to practice eugenics by effectively taking control of dating apps for
12:42example the Australian government recently introduced a voluntary industry
12:45code for dating app companies to take action against people accused of
12:48domestic violence or online enabled harm thus limiting their experience on dating
12:51apps whilst an argument could be made that those who have actually committed
12:54domestic violence should be banned from such platforms what's crazy and
12:58tyrannical is firstly one how loose the definition of domestic violence or
13:01online enabled harm is these days an accusation can just be made against a
13:05user blah blah blah yeah I mean the weaponization of female accusations is
13:12about as long and grim and ugly a topic as can be conceived of but yeah I mean
13:18punishment without due process is is a problem and sure I mean they want to so
13:25the most I mean you also the most freedom-loving people will be the ones
13:28who get most harmed by this right right the most freedom-loving people in
13:33general white males will be the ones most harmed by this and yeah it is it is
13:38very very much trying to have an effect on the birthrate I assume do you think
13:41that empathy even to a limited degree is something reserved for a limited set of
13:45people well I don't know what you mean by reserved for so from what I understand
13:56somebody who is brutally treated both in utero and as a baby has a pretty tough
14:03time trying to develop empathy empathy is so 13 coordinated areas of the brain
14:10requires mirror neurons and like there's a physical basis to empathy right I mean
14:14if you look at people who are like true psychopaths or sociopaths you know their
14:19brains work differently and I mean that's not necessarily brains work
14:24differently is not an argument for genetics necessarily I guess before GPS
14:29London cabbies had crazy overdeveloped or strongly developed spatial reasoning
14:36centers in their brain because London England evolved it is not laid out in
14:43any kind of grid pattern like say Toronto or New York it just kind of
14:46evolved from like medieval towns and hamlets and so on so it's a real it's a
14:50real mess so their brains work differently but that's not genetics
14:55that's just training and practice is the same thing with you know musical
14:59dexterity is something I don't particularly have but you know somebody
15:03who's an expert violinist or guitarist is going to have that in spades so the
15:09fact that some people's brains show up on scans is as different right so for
15:14some people if you scan them when they're looking I mean that this is
15:19really grossly oversimplified so you know do your own research but my
15:24understanding of it is that if you show videos of people being tortured you know
15:29some people's fear and disgust and horror centers light up and some people's
15:34happiness joy and pleasure centers light up right which would be the difference
15:39between somebody with empathy and somebody who's a sadist I assume right I
15:42don't think again as far as I know and the moral and philosophical approach has
15:49yet to be really tried in my understanding so you know this is not
15:53nothing for certain but as far as I don't think that current psychological
15:58expertise has any real luck or success in curing people of sadism or you know
16:07really cruel mindsets or a real lack of empathy or you know what's called
16:14borderline I mean people will often you know there's a sort of criminality that
16:17peaks in sort of late teens early 20s and then it will diminish over time for
16:23most people borderlines tend to mellow out a little bit as they age or they
16:26just get burned out I don't know something like that so as far as I
16:31understand it if there's a lot of early trauma stress abuse and damage to the
16:40fetuses and infant and toddler brain and experience I don't know that there's any
16:46particularly well-established way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again so I
16:51wouldn't say that that's reserved right the way that I would view it is if you
16:56have you know some horrible sadist who who cuts off his child's arm and throws
17:00it into the ocean and the child survives you say well is clapping reserved for
17:06only some people well it's not that it's reserved it's that if people have their
17:12arms cut off as children they can't clap right if some kid is starved to the
17:18point where he ends up with a significant physical disability I don't
17:21maybe loses his eyesight or something like that is is seeing reserved for
17:25sign up when you get enough cruelty and torture and trauma as a kid it can have
17:30significant effects on your brain and so we want to aim to diminish that as much
17:34as possible I will say though that empathy is one of these classical
17:38double-edged swords right empathy is really really really dangerous because
17:45empathy is a strength to the virtuous and a massive vulnerability for the
17:53corrupt in other words corrupt people they don't feel virtue themselves but
17:59they know that other people do right so sort of this is the argument that is
18:05made about deportations right well it could split up families well these
18:12there's a lot of people in society who are very keen on splitting up families
18:17right I mean they they were willing to set families against family members
18:20under covert over the vaccine and and other things they are willing to have
18:25people arrested for various you know activities which in a rational society
18:31would not even be crimes and that certainly separates and splits up
18:35families they advocate for you know the hyper feminism don't need no man
18:41marriage is slavery divorce your husband and so on so that you know the
18:46very very keen on splitting up families when it suits their agenda but they also
18:50know that people are sentimental and sad about splitting up families when it's
18:55phrased that way right people live in language they don't live in reality it's
18:59another reason why governments are very keen to export manufacturing jobs and
19:02replace them with HR jobs because the more people work with their hands the
19:07more people work with reality the more empirical than rational they become and
19:11the less susceptible to propaganda they are if you have a job that doesn't rely
19:14on propaganda in fact if propaganda harms your job you're less susceptible
19:17to propaganda which is why although I didn't like doing manual labor as a kid
19:21and as a teen and in my early 20s I appreciated the empirical grounding in
19:28reality that it all gave me right so the people who oh don't want to split up
19:36families well if you call it female empowerment and refusing to submit to
19:39the patriarchy then apparently splitting up families is really good
19:42but if you just say splitting up families separating parents and children
19:47and as the guy said who now whatever his name is he's like well if you if you
19:52driving drunk with your family in the car we take the husband into custody we
19:57separate the family right or when they say well undocumented and
20:02someone is fine it doesn't matter if you broker the law okay well then what if
20:07you don't enforce tax laws right would they be comfortable with that well no
20:11they need the tax laws to get the money to give to people who are not obeying
20:15the immigration laws so in terms of splitting up families and someone it is
20:20just it's pure propaganda term pure propaganda language so because the you
20:25know it's shameful to split up families but they would never criticize a woman
20:29who leaves a man right just because she's dissatisfied dissatisfied is no
20:34reason to split up a family particularly if there are children
20:37involved it's kind of selfish right but they would never condemn that because
20:42deporting people might cut into the left's voting base and therefore that's
20:47splitting up families and it's really bad but women leaving their husbands the
20:52single women also vote for the left and so that's being empowered and now
20:57refusing to submit to the evil patriarchy and fighting the revolution
21:01called mansplaining or whatever nonsense they come up with right so it's
21:04just about power but they know that there's certain terms that trigger
21:08people and so they use those terms and that's because they understand that
21:12other people have sympathy and empathy and sentimentality but they themselves
21:15don't so just push those buttons right it's like the Achilles heel of the
21:22person who has empathy is understanding that their empathy will be exploited in
21:28other words and it's a sort of mental challenge it's a self-knowledge
21:31challenge which is how do you empathize with people who have no empathy because
21:36if you can't empathize with people who have no empathy you're just going to get
21:40the living shit exploited out of you you're going to get control pushed
21:43around and manipulated right this is sort of the basic rule of treat others
21:48the best you can the first you meet them after that treat them as they treat you
21:51so if you can't empathize with those who have a lack of empathy then your empathy
21:57is going to be used to exploit and bully and control you right I mean my
22:01mother tried pulling this stuff with me right after hitting me a lot as a kid
22:04when I finally I didn't even hit her back but I just pushed back physically
22:10she was just shocked and appalled and how dare you right she was just trying to
22:13reach in through my empathy meter and my self-criticism meter like the hole there
22:19and just try and work the levers of my conscience to control me right so this
22:24is the big problem of course with the West as a whole at the moment is that I
22:31mean women you could say have excessive empathy relative to men I mean it's not
22:36excessive because it's totally appropriate to our evolution we can't be
22:39the most successful species in the known universe and then complain about one
22:43gender or one sex and the other or the other so women have excessive empathy
22:49because men are supposed to restrain that empathy right so when men were in
22:54control of the resources you know whether this is right or wrong doesn't
22:58really matter we're just talking about the evolutionary pressures when men were
23:01in control of the resources then women could have excessive empathy and men
23:06could say no you know so women could say oh this woman who left her family she
23:13needs financial help and there'd be a lot of like women's very strong empathy
23:20sometimes to the point of unwisdom they would have to appeal to the men and the
23:25men would look at it more objectively and say yes or no and again whether it's
23:29right or wrong it's not relevant to this analysis but women could develop excess
23:34empathy because the restraint right women could have the gas on empathy and
23:39they could floor it because the men were the brakes and then men would say
23:43no no I'm not no she brought it on herself I'm not helping her and the
23:47woman would get upset but they would have to sort of abide by that right but
23:51when you have governments and and national debts and unfunded liabilities
23:55then this sort of pathological the empathy goes from something that's
24:00important right men can lack empathy and women can have an excessive empathy and
24:05both need to be resolved in negotiation with each other right I mean if a man's
24:13friend is sick he probably I mean I tell you this myself if a man's friend is
24:17sick he probably has not thought about baking a casserole and going over right
24:22but women will say you need to you know that I'm gonna bake a casserole and
24:27bring it over and the man's like oh yeah you know that is kind of nice good for
24:30you right and so that's good so women have more than an equal amount of
24:36empathy men have a deficiency but together it works because if the man is
24:41deficient in empathy the woman's excessive or excess empathy will warm
24:45things up and if the woman is excessive in her empathy to the point where it
24:51threatens the resources needed for good people to flourish the man will pull it
24:55back so the state and the the state and the lack of restraint over pathological
25:05altruism has made it of course extremely dangerous men as a whole or the less
25:12empathetic can no longer restrain the sort of florid pathological empathy of
25:17the hyper sympathetic and therefore propaganda is has substituted natural
25:24restraint and this conflict which used to be balanced and and very productive
25:30right it used to be balanced and very productive has now become unbalanced to
25:35the point where you know a lot of and not all of course but a lot of female
25:39voters are voting for you know some pretty pretty alarming excessive
25:44empathy things and a lot of the men feeling helpless to restrain some of
25:50these excesses are kind of retreating from the dating market in some fairly
25:53horror fair horror and disgust because they're saying well look if if women
25:56vote for all of this pathological stuff that may end up resulting in a war we're
26:00the ones who are going to get drafted so the women are you know kind of had a
26:03commitment it's not a it's not every man of course but there's a certain
26:06perspective that women are voting to feel good and we're going to end up
26:10paying the price either financially or through some sort of significant
26:14conflicts that we're going to end up being on the front lines of and that's
26:19just this kind of real frustration that's going on and I think that's one
26:23of the reasons why sort of deep down right I mean you've you've seen these
26:27memes right like when it was Trump versus Kamala Harris there were these
26:32memes where you know it was a bunch of men at war like me and the boys fighting
26:38in Thailand because the women wanted to elect a female and that's bitter stuff
26:44and they're also the bitterness of like if World War three has ever threatened
26:47all of the feminists morph into housewives there is a certain amount of
26:51frustration and again I mean the enemy is not males or females right the enemy
26:56is blindness to the coercive nature of our institutions right that's that's the
27:00real enemy and to wake people up to that and then I think everything goes fairly
27:03well after that but that's that's the challenge so I really do appreciate
27:08everyone's interest in care free domain comm slash donate to help out the show
27:12massively deeply and humbly appreciated and join the great community you can use
27:17this URL FDR URL comm slash locals FDR URL comm slash locals you can sign up
27:23for a free month and see if you like it and it's a great community I hope you'll
27:27be a part of it and I look forward to talking to you soon lots of love from up
27:33here my friends I will talk to you soon bye