0:00 - Introduction to Time Travel
10:42 - Philosophy's Influence on Society
12:21 - The Power of Language
24:06 - Accountability in Relationships
24:23 - Evolution and Responsibility
27:49 - Conclusion and Reflection
In this episode, I address several profound questions that provoke thoughtful consideration on the nature of time travel, philosophy, and the societal constructs we navigate. Reflecting on ten years of listener engagement, I express appreciation for the foundational principles many have drawn from my work, noting how those principles lay the groundwork for exploring complex questions about our future.
To dive deeper, I discuss the concept of time travel, explaining the physics behind it and the impossibility of returning to the past. Instead, I focus on how our present and future is shaped by our understanding of time, emphasizing the imaginative capabilities of our minds. Drawing on an amusing anecdote from popular culture, I highlight the philosophical nuances that demonstrate how memory and experience can transform our perceptions of the past. If we were able to navigate time, I ponder the potential impact on our actions and philosophies today, and how this relates to determinism and existential choice.
Moving into the realm of philosophy, I explore its essential role in shaping human societies. I posit that a future worth pursuing hinges on our commitment to reason, discourse, and evidence-based decision-makingófoundational elements for a peaceful existence. By presenting a hypothetical scenario in which I could glimpse a harmonious future shaped by philosophical enlightenment, I elaborate on the paradox of knowledge: such insights could lead to complacency, undermining the struggle for understanding in the present.
In discussing various philosophical influences, I clarify that philosophy should not dictate what to think, but rather how to think. It provides the framework for engaging with complex ideas without hardening them into dogmatic beliefs. Educated critical thinking emerges as not just a necessity for personal development, but as essential for the well-being of society at large. Here, I emphasize that true progress comes from a willingness to challenge established ideas and reevaluate our beliefs in light of reason.
As I navigate through these topics, I address societal misconceptions regarding language and moral accountability. Society often employs euphemisms that obscure the moral implications of our actions, enabling a culture of avoidance and dishonest self-perception. I contend that real progress requires confronting uncomfortable truths, admitting when weíve been misled, and resisting the impulses to evade responsibility through fabricated narratives.
Further along, I examine the dynamics of education and governance in a historical context, critiquing the growth of state influence over personal liberties. I highlight how this control often contradicts the ideals of freedom and individual responsibility. Through this lens, I articulate the importance of returning to a framework that prioritizes personal accountability and rational discourse.
Lastly, I draw attention to the cyclical nature of human behavior ó how the demand for justification for one's failures or misadventures often leads to the supply of misleading philosophies. In a society riddled with sophistry and denial, I conclude that the path forward relies on a collective desire for truth and the willingness to challenge accepted narratives. Authentic connection and understanding can only flourish in an environment where honesty reigns, and where individuals hold themselves accountable for their choices.
In closing, I affirm that the road ahead must be fortified by philosophy and reason, for without these guiding principles, the future risks becoming one that lacks substance and meaning.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Stefan Molyneux for Free Domain. Hope you're doing well. Great, great questions from freedomain.locals.com. I hope you will join the community. So, somebody has asked, after listening to you for a decade, you've done an excellent job of covering most everything I could ever think of. The few things that I might ask, I just use your basic principles and the answer is there. Not my basic principles, but I appreciate the thought. Would love to get on a time machine and see what impacts your ideas will have on the future. Right. I mean, you know, time travel is one of these funny things. Okay, so the only way that you can time travel that we know of, and really, it's the only way, it's only one way. And the only thing you can do is go close to the speed of light, which will slow down time for you. And that's when you decelerate from close to the speed of light, time will have passed farther for everyone else. There's a song by noted astrophysicist and occasional guitar jockey, Brian May from Queen. And the song is called 39, like the number 39. 1939, it's a lovely little folk song about time travel, one of the few in that genre, I think.
[1:06] So you could conceivably go forward in the future. I mean, I guess you can cryogenically freeze yourself and so on, but you can go forward and you can't go back, can't go back. And you can't get into a little thing, like you can't get into a little booth and then time travel. You know, that's just lazy writing for writers who want to break reality. Because the earth is in constant motion you know it's uh i mean not only rotating but it's corkscrewing around the sun which itself is rotating around the galaxy which itself is rushing rushing through space so even if you went um forward in time say uh like where you were you changed whatever time let's say you were able to go back 10 seconds you'd just be hanging in space because the earth would have moved on right so imagine like there's a flea on a ball or like that the b movie right so there's a flea on a ball you grab it and the ball keeps moving right? You find some way to pincer 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. So there isn't the only way that you can do time travel and stay on earth is also to do time travel and massive amounts of.
[2:07] Actual travel, right? Because the earth would be, even in a pretty short amount of time, the earth would be millions and millions of miles away from where you started because it would have just moved on and you're hanging there in your little TARDIS or whatever. So it's all engaging and fun nonsense. It is a metaphor for imagination. In imagination, we can picture the future. In imagination, we can go and revisit the past, although the past is not a documentary the past is a work of creative fiction and doesn't mean it doesn't have true things in it but if you've ever been back someplace you know that your memories of it are different from what it actually was and uh if you've ever discussed past events with people their perspective is different from yours and um i i remember uh there was a uh a quote in a a television show that I remember finding very, very funny.
[3:02] And then I rewatched that television show many years later, and the quote was similar, but not the same as what I remembered. So as far as time travel goes, I've written a whole novel about this, not time travel, but it's called The Future, and it's about the effects of philosophy, which gets to the next question in a sec, the effects of philosophy in the long run. I wouldn't want to go forward in time. And especially if you could come back, even if that were theoretically possible. I wouldn't want to go forward in time and come back because that would be a kind of determinism, right? This is sort of the butterfly effect from Ray Bradbury, you know, that you change things in the future by changing things in the past. So if you were to go into the future, let's say I went in the future and I found that philosophy had won, right? Because, I mean, the only way we have a future is with philosophy. There's no other future for humanity that really is worth living in without philosophy. We either accept reason, evidence, discourse, logic, negotiation, or the world descends into a hellfest of OCD surveillance and endless digital currency control. I mean, that's the only choice. The only future that we have that is worth living is based on peace and reason and negotiation and peaceful parenting. So let's say that I went forward in time and I found that the philosophical arguments that I put forward had been adopted and society was peaceful and free.
[4:26] Well, when I came back, I'd be like, oh my goodness, I don't have to fight so hard. And then that would change things, right? So it wouldn't really work. And you know this in your life, right?
[4:36] It's the paradox of the past. It's the paradox of concern. The paradox of concern is this. So after an immensely tumultuous life with wonderful ups and downs, I have arrived at a place, and this is not the end, I've still got another couple of decades to go, but I've arrived at a place that is so peaceful and wonderful and beautiful and moving to me and full of love and connection and fun.
[5:04] And joy that I look back and say, gee, you know, a lot of the concerns of the past, you know, didn't turn out to be that real. But yeah, so you say, oh, gee, I shouldn't have been concerned about things as much about things in the past. But of course, everybody knows the reality is that one of the reasons why my life did end up so great or so well is that I was concerned about things of the past, right? So you get to a good place.
[5:35] It's kind of like, if you're a smoker, like I'm worried about getting sick from smoking. And then you, you, you step out your cigarettes and you, you throw out your pack and you find a way to quit smoking. Good for you. Good for you. And then you don't get sick and you say, gee, I guess I was, I was worried for nothing. And it's like, no, no, no. But the reason, the reason that you didn't get sick is because you're worried about smoking to the point where you quit. So your concern, concern brings peace and then the great danger is that peace thinks that all prior concerns were meaningless right so i mean this is happening in society as a whole right the freedom has brought wealth and wealth says that freedom is a luxury that is uh unimportant relative to equality right so inequality brings wealth in that the capital has to be allocated to the people most able to increase it not allocated but earned and used by and then we end up with so much wealth that we look for equality of outcome, which destroys the source of wealth by removing capital from the most productive people. It'd be like saying every extra has to speak a line in the leading man's role. It's like we just destroy the movie, right? So, yeah, I don't, the idea of going forward or going back, or let's say that I go forward and the world is a hellscape of surveillance and control and totalitarianism and all that 1984 stuff.
[6:56] Then I would come back and would be full of despair and would not produce as much good work. And that wouldn't be right either. So, no, I wouldn't want to have a time machine. I know, as certainly as I know that I'm sitting here talking to you, I absolutely know for a fact there is no future of any moral worth without philosophy. I mean, we've tried violence, obviously, for most of our history, prehistory. We've tried manipulation, we've tried propaganda We've tried programming, we've tried Even religion, we've tried Mysticism, we've tried collectivism We've tried coercion of every Shape and hue The one thing we haven't tried, Is sweet, sweet reason The one thing we have not tried As a society, as parents, as people As.
[7:47] Countries, the one thing we have not tried Is actually reasoning With people and letting facts Reason and evidence sway us because it's facts or the fist right it's reason or violence and, those of us who can think view violence other than you know extremities of self-defense which are very rare with a peculiar horror and so there is no future without philosophy which is why i have worked so hard for lo these 42 i'll be 58 this month so lo these almost 43 years since i I got into philosophy in my mid-teens, I have worked so hard to bring reason, evidence, logic, and debate to the world. I don't know what else I could have done. I'm obviously, I review this, like literally on a daily basis. What else could I do? What else could I have done better? I'm very self-critical that way because the purpose of my mind is to serve the peace and reason of the future. And I really come up short. What else could I or should I have done?
[9:00] You want to go close enough to the truth in society to stimulate change and thought in people, but not so far that you are destroyed in one form or another. So I think I educated pretty well. But yeah, there's no future, really. There's no future that's worth living without reason and philosophy. All right, somebody says, Did Plato's philosophy lead us to the current state of the West, and should it be rejected entirely, or should such be laid at the feet of Hegel? No. No. Philosophers can't tell you what to think. You can be influenced by philosophers, but no philosopher who is a philosopher will tell you what to think.
[9:40] Philosophers are there to teach you how to think, not tell you what to think. To teach you the methodology, not conclusions. Science is a methodology. It is not a set of violently stapled to your foreheads conclusions. Now, human beings like to harden their thoughts into absolute conclusions and reject any methodology that might overturn those conclusions. As the old saying goes, science advances one grave at a time, right? That people are hardened into the old ways of thinking and sometimes you just have to wait for pig-headed people in authority and power to move on to their great reward, peacefully and reasonably, in order to have new thoughts come out. And you can see this with the intergenerational changes, things that the boomers wouldn't conceive of, Gen X is willing to consider, and the millennials are willing to embrace, and the Gen A is fully embracing. So it just takes time. It's sad, but people's refusal to think is the source of all evil, really, and corruption in the world.
[10:43] So it is not that...
[10:49] It's one philosopher or another philosopher. Philosophers write books. People consume them. There is a market for philosophical ideas. And the market is not defined by the philosophers in the same way that every writer wants to be a bestseller, but it is determined by the market. And so the question is not why are Hegel's ideas or, and I've got a whole history of philosophers here. If you want to go more into this, You can get that by subscribing at freedomain.locals.com. It's an amazing series. It's a 24-part series on the history of philosophy. So it's not that these philosophers have determined what people think. It is that there is a demand for these philosophers and their ideas. The only thing that is required for the salvation of your conscience is that you simply refuse to avoid thinking. That's all. That's all. The beginning of wisdom, as the saying goes, is to call things by their proper names. Violence spreads in society because we refuse to call it violence.
[11:56] I mean, look at the national debt. The national debt is the enslavement of the next generation to foreign banksters. It is a theft. It is the initiation of the use of force by enslaving the unborn, for the sake of the greed in the present. It's something that's only possible through the state. It would never be possible through private corporations, private concerns, private entities.
[12:21] Not that I'm a big fan of corporations, which are a semi-fascistic creation by state powers to allow rich people to get away with corruption, for the most part.
[12:36] When we don't call violence violence, when we call it child abuse, hitting children, belting children, and we call that discipline and parenting and all of the euphemisms for what is just a naked display of the force of the fist. That's all it is. When we call, I don't know, coercive redistribution, charity or welfare, we simply don't call things by their proper names. We do that because we are corrupted first by language and then, and only then, by violence. And we are corrupted by the language that refuses to call coercion, coercion.
[13:13] And so we are greedy to avoid the scalding, conscience-arousing clarity of accurate language. And so we obfuscate. We are sophists to ourselves. And so because we want to lie to ourselves out of greed, out of corruption, And we're all, I mean, I'm not outside of this. I mean, we all have to fight for clarity, right? So because we want to lie to ourselves, that market summons sophistry. It summons people who will lie to us, right? Right. So, I mean, one example would be, you know, a woman who has unprotected sex with a terrible guy and gets pregnant, keeps the baby. She has a great desire to say, I'm a victim. Right. It's one of many, many countenances. We could do this for men as well. Right. So we have this woman is going to have a great desire to call herself a victim, to blame only the man. And that's both for reasons of conscience and reasons of, quote, self-esteem, but also because if she can portray herself as a victim, people will have sympathy for her and give her resources and give her money and give her housing and give her, like, free health care, education, dental care for her kids, all that kind of stuff, right? So...
[14:35] Lying to ourselves can be a great way of gaining resources or just keeping our conscience at bay. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault, right? I didn't do it. I was a victim. He lied to me. He didn't write.
[14:48] So you want all of the rights and benefits of adulthood, but you want all of the excuses and sophistry of childhood. And it's not really sophistry to say children aren't responsible. I mean, certainly toddlers aren't. I mean, they're just born where they're born and trying to survive how they survive. Life so the first market for falsehood is people's thirst to lie to themselves not be held accountable and because people have the option to lie to themselves they do bad things right if would the single mother become a single mother if she knew she would gain no resources and sympathy for that but we'd be held accountable well no so evil is not just justified ex post facto it's justified before the fact right it's justified before the fact so because people know that they will lie to themselves and that other people will lie to them they do bad things and then when they do bad things or irresponsible things or things that harm children in particular well then they have a giant market for people to come and lie to them as well so they want to lie to themselves they're searching for justifications a lot of intellectuals will provide that and then they also um have other Other people lie to them because most of society as we stand is this massive interwoven thread of everyone lying to each other about virtue, about truth, about reason, about violence, about responsibility, right?
[16:13] I mean, we inflict endless responsibility on children and provide irresponsible adults endless resources and excuses. It's really, really sad. It's really sad. You know, if you don't, at least when I was a kid, I don't know what it is now, but if you didn't study for the test, man, you just got an F. If you weren't there for the test, man, you didn't have a doctor's note, man, you just got an F. Even at the age of 8 or 10 or 12, you just got marked down. If you got marked down enough, they could take a year from your life by having you repeat a grade. right? Kids in the single digits were infinitely responsible, even though, I mean, I could barely study at home. Things were so violent and loud and chaotic and confused. And I was hungry.
[16:54] So as a kid, even though you're in no control of your environment, you're held 100% accountable. But as adults, even though you are in complete control of your environment and vagina, you are given endless excuses and you can never fail. It's really, it's just absolutely appalling. If we could hold adults to 50% of the standards we hold nine-year-olds to, the world would be an infinitely better place. So people want to lie to themselves. They know they will lie to themselves. They know that other people will lie to them. They know that the media will lie to them. They know that a lot of the churches will lie to them. They know that the government will certainly lie to them. The schools will lie to them. So because they know that they will never be held accountable, because they'll lie to themselves, and everybody will reinforce enforce that lie and everybody will give them sympathy as if they're victims when they are in fact moral agents um all of this corruption spreads and so i look at most philosophers not all of course but i look at most philosophers throughout history as being in hot demand because people want to lie to themselves but they don't want to obviously lie to themselves so they have to conform with some highly elevated philosopher who gives them endless excuses for who they are and what they've done.
[18:09] The demand for excuses drives the supply of lies. The supply of lies also drives, I mean, it's a bit of like supply creates its own demand, right? Nobody knew that they really needed an iPad until there were iPads, right? So it is a circular economy.
[18:25] People know that they're going to get excuses for the bad things they do. So they do bad things, which requires them to be lied to about causality and their own responsibility. And so the supply of lies creates the bad behavior, which in turn creates the demand for lies. which increases the supply of lies. I mean, the American educational system was about 150 years ago taken over by the government because people in America were concerned that a lot of non-Protestants, in particular the Irish and Italians, were coming into the country and that they were going to lose the sort of Protestant nature of the country because they were setting up separate educational systems. And so they were concerned about fragmentation within American society. And so So because they were concerned about that, it was easier to sell, and of course the teachers wanted it because they couldn't get fired, and the students didn't really understand it, and the parents didn't fight hard enough for the liberty. And so the educational system in America, the government educational system, was brought in to maintain and affirm Protestant American values against the sort of wave of Catholicism and other belief systems.
[19:33] And then, of course, it didn't take very long before people are like, oh, there's a giant lever that controls the minds of hundreds of millions of children. I guess I'll grab that and use it to not affirm American values, but to destroy American values. Whatever you create through violence will always end up achieving the opposite of its stated goal. Absolutely the case. You know, if a guy kidnaps John Fowles, the collector, right? A guy kidnaps a woman because he wants her to fall in love with him. She ends up immediately hates and loathes him. whatever you try to achieve through violence will only achieve the opposite of its stated goals right like i mean it's the deal with the devil right the devil tempts you with something that is going to provide you the unearned and you think it's going to make you happy and then you sell your soul to the devil you're happy for a short amount of time then your happiness decays and the end of the last third of your life is pure horror waiting to go to hell and then eternity of hell right so.
[20:30] And that's an analogy for whenever you try to achieve the unearned, right? Like influence over the minds of children through government schools rather than through actually communicating and teaching children. And of course, parents who beat their children, as almost all parents did back then, had a tough time transferring their values because the children didn't like being beaten, of course, right? So that's another reason why government schools were attempting. And so, yeah, it's funny how parents think that turning your children over to be educated by the state is going to be good in the long run for the ideas of liberty. I mean, how can you really advocate for freedom when you say that it's essential that children be educated through coercive redistribution and state controls? That's not a good and easy argument to make. So, I don't blame the philosophers. The blame rests in the heart of every individual.
[21:30] It's not that a particular ideology has taken over the minds of the people. It's that people want it. And they want a lot of syllables to cover up their naked greed for the unearned. Right? All predators camouflage, and the human predators camouflage through language, through the redefinition of language. I said this in a show last night. It's one of the reasons why people don't know synonyms anymore. Synonyms exist because language is constantly being colonized by coercive sophists, and you need new words, right? Freedom, right? Freedom used to be freedom from coercion. Now it means freedom from consequences. Equality used to mean equality of opportunity. Now it means equality of outcome. So these words are constantly being hijacked by sophists. So you need the constant invention of new words because in the same way you need to always bring new products to the market because the products get bought in a sense by people. And so you constantly need to replenish things because they get consumed, and language gets consumed by Sophists, and so you need new words to communicate arguments because people are so baffled by the redefinition of words. So it's one of the reasons they don't teach you much language comprehension or synonyms in school anymore. I mean, I got a thesaurus in junior high. I don't think that's really a thing anymore because governments want to use as few words as possible, and Sophists want you to use as few words as possible so they can take over those words and redefine, right?
[22:59] So people want the unearned and they desire the unearned and then the unearned is used against them right you you want freedom from consequences but the soul by selling your soul to the devil to get massive things for free that you didn't earn and then you lose your soul and you regret your choice i mean europe is going through all of that with the welfare state right now right, so the responsibility for the state of the world is not hegel's it is not lux it is not rousseau's it is not schopenhauer's it is not nietzsche it is not bertrand russell it is certainly not plato not aristotle not socrates the the responsibility for the state of the world is the avoidance of the truth that is the great temptation in the heart of every individual you me everyone we We all thirst to avoid the truth because we don't want to face the bad things we've done and we want to escape the consequences of our own bad decisions.
[24:06] So the woman who has a child outside of wedlock and the man runs away wants to escape the consequences of her own bad decision in who she chose to have a child with.
[24:23] I mean, the idea that we could have developed our giant brains, which require 20 to 25 years of nurturing to grow, the idea that we could have developed our giant brains if women couldn't pick out responsible men throughout the course of human evolution is so laughable, I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to say. Women have an incredible instinct to pick out responsible men who'll stick around, because if they couldn't, we never would have evolved beyond apedom. So, I mean, the giant brains we have to justify our own decisions are the result of the fact that women chose responsible men to have children with throughout almost all of human evolution. So the idea that women say, well, I didn't know, and I was fooled, and I had no idea, and it's like saying that it's like a man. Literally, to me, it comes across like a man dating a 60-year-old woman and saying, well, I had no idea she couldn't give me children. I had no idea she was beyond menopause, or I had no idea that she was infertile. I mean, that's just bizarre. Well, no, we are highly attuned to figuring out who's fertile, because if men couldn't figure out who's fertile, we couldn't have children. I mean, it's just funny, right? It's just funny stuff that people say.
[25:35] So the only free will that we really have is the free will to think and concentrate and be honest with ourselves. And society degrades and collapses precisely and exactly to the degree that people are willing to lie to themselves and lie to others and you know we we see this right i mean we see this everywhere all over the place all the time people just lying to themselves people propping each other up oh no you look great when somebody's overweight and, people saying um just the most you're a victim when it clearly it's the result of choice is an agency.
[26:10] And if people aren't willing to tell the truth to themselves, how are they going to listen to reason from other people, right? One of the consequences of avoiding telling the truth to yourself is your greed for being lied to by others, which means that you can never connect with anyone. You can never gain a real community. You can never gain actual support. You can never gain intimacy or trust or love. It's just a hell of a price to pay. I 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 see what it is. Well, of course they do, right? Deep down, you know that if you're lying to people and people are lying to you, you can't have love. Love cannot be based on lies because lies are an avoidance of the truth. If you never know truth, then you never know love. It's a great line from the Black Eyed Peas. It's very true, right? So, if people don't want to tell the truth because they can't face their own conscience and they don't want to take responsibility for the bad things they've done.
[27:05] Philosophy cannot impact that other than to map the decline. That's all. So, yeah, I don't blame philosophers, and I work as hard as I do and as concentrated as I do and as riskily as I have done for sure, because without reason there is no future for the mind. Anyone can lie to themselves. selves. It takes nothing to lie to yourself. It seems to take just about everything to tell the truth to yourself and to others. But the consequence of failing to do that is a life that you don't need to die to get to hell. You'll live it every day.
[27:50] Freedomain.com slash donate. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
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