Stefan Molyneux explores the question of why Christianity has seemingly failed to protect Western civilization. He draws an analogy between this failure and broader existential dilemmas, invoking a chain of inquiries similar to asking why an individual might get sick and ultimately die. Molyneux emphasizes that while people often stop at proximate causes, such as sinfulness, the deeper question remains: why did individuals or societies, upon adopting Christianity, not experience the anticipated protection or moral fortitude it promised?
Molyneux posits that when the West embraced Christianity, it effectively entered a covenant of sorts, expecting safety and moral guidance in exchange for faith and devotion to God. However, he questions whether, had the West been able to foresee that Christianity would ultimately fail to safeguard its foundational values, they would have chosen to adopt it in the first place. This inquiry expands into a critical examination of the core tenets of Christianity itself, suggesting that if Christianity posits that humans are innately sinful and ill-equipped to maintain moral order, then it stands at odds with its own efficacy as a societal protector.
The discussion further delves into the metaphor of antibiotics failing to cure an infection while also debilitating the body's immune system, likening this to Christianity's inability to combat the inherent evil within humanity. Molyneux suggests that Christianity, through its teachings of forgiveness and unconditional love, may inadvertently undermine the human instinct to protect oneself against malevolent forces. He raises the question of whether the doctrine promotes a form of moral complacency that could result in societal vulnerability, leading individuals to passively surrender to wrongdoers instead of resisting them.
As he scrutinizes historical contexts—both current and historical instances where Christianity appears to have faltered in its protective role—Molyneux introduces the notion of a 'death thirst' embedded in the faith. He reflects on whether the prospect of eternal paradise and the notion of redemption through suffering might create an expectation that dying for one’s beliefs (particularly when one’s enemies are involved) is virtuous. This leads to an unsettling hypothesis: that the Christian doctrine of loving one’s enemies, while noble in intent, may paradoxically foster a desire for martyrdom over self-preservation.
Molyneux extends his critique by considering how the perception of death as a passage to an eternal reward could reframe the moral implications of fighting against oppression. He draws on historical examples, including the reflection on wartime recruitment during 1914 and the willingness of young men to engage in battle, questioning whether a belief in heavenly rewards contributed to their eagerness. The lecture closes by re-emphasizing the vital inquiry of whether Christianity's ultimate goal—to elevate believers to heaven—is at odds with its capability to instill a robust defense mechanism against real-world adversities.
Engaging with these heavy themes, Molyneux presents a complex and critical exploration of the intersection between faith and societal resilience, challenging listeners to reflect on the implications of religious doctrine in the context of human survival and moral agency. The lecture concludes without providing definitive answers but rather leaves viewers with a deeper understanding of the nuanced and often contradictory nature of faith in the face of cultural decline.
0:04 - The Question of Christianity
0:57 - The Failure to Protect the West
3:01 - Analyzing Root Causes
3:40 - Human Nature and Sin
5:45 - The Limits of Forgiveness
9:16 - The Retreat of Christianity
9:57 - The Dilemma of Self-Sacrifice
13:21 - The Pursuit of Death
16:52 - The Impact of Charlie Kirk
21:02 - The Undertow of Death in Christianity
21:51 - The Slave Morality
31:58 - Heaven Worship and Death
37:41 - The Death-Desiring Aspect
39:23 - The Allure of War
[0:00] All right, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain, freedomain.com/donate to help out the show.
[0:05] Gratefully, humbly, and gratefully accepted, freedomain.com/donate. So, a question I posted today on X. It's really important. And people kind of jump to the conclusions, jump to conclusions about this without providing answers, right? Right. And the question is analogous to why did someone get sick and die? Why did someone get sick and die? See, well, because they failed to resist an infection. Okay, but why did they fail to resist an infection? Oh, because they got heart disease. Okay, but why did they get heart disease? Right. So labeling proximate causes or proximate effects is not labeling root causes. Right? You know, why, and it has to be, why did someone crash the car while he was driving?
[0:55] It's like, well, lots of people drive and don't crash cars and so on, right? So the question was, why did Christianity fail to protect the West? Why has Christianity failed to protect the West?
[1:07] That's a pretty important question, I would say, because that's why the West devoted itself to Christianity. This is why the West said.
[1:21] To Christianity, we will believe in you in return for what?
[1:27] In return for what? Why do we subjugate ourselves to this, you know, obviously Judaic-derived Middle Eastern religion? Why do we do that? Well, we say, I think we say, well, we will subjugate ourselves to you in return for protection, right? Why do we believe in God? Why do we follow Jesus? Well, I mean, there's, you know, the salvation of heaven and the threat of hell. And, you know, I get that there's immediate, you know, happiness and positivity that comes out of believing in Jesus and surrendering yourself to his care and command. But why? For benefits. For benefits. To put it another way, would the West have surrendered itself to Christianity if it had known ahead of time that Christianity was going to fail, right? It's a very important question. If you knew ahead of time that Christianity was going to fail to protect the West, would you have subscribed to Christianity? Because if the West fails sort of foundationally, then you end up with not Christianity. Because, you know, none of the groups that are currently, you know.
[2:52] Gaining demographic advancement and so on in the West, they don't tend to be Christian as a whole. And sometimes they tend to be quite against Christianity.
[3:01] So either secularism or something else or whatever, right? So why has Christianity failed? I think it's fair to say that it has, but why has Christianity failed? It seems important. Now, of course, people will say, and I understand the perspective, right? People will say, hey, well, the reason that Christianity failed is that a man is sinful and bad and, you know, prone to being seduced by the devil and all kinds of stuff, right?
[3:35] And they'll say, well, Christianity has failed because human beings are bad. Okay. Well, that's interesting, but I don't think that people subscribed to Christianity on the general or certain idea or argument that Christianity was going to fail.
[3:54] That wasn't, I won't say the sales pitch because I don't want to diminish that, but that wasn't the general idea, which is, I want to subscribe to a belief that by its very nature means it's going to fail. If the Christian view of humanity or humankind is accurate, then human beings cannot sustain moral actions or behavior, right?
[4:24] Now, if human beings cannot sustain moral actions or behavior, then Christianity is always going to fail because humanity is infected by original sin, is a weak and greedy and tremulous and forgets about the good and pursues the bad and is easily seduced by corruption and so on. Okay. Well, if you have an infection and the doctor offers you a medicine, let's say an antibiotic, the doctor offers you a medicine, and then what happens is, it turns out, that the doctor says, this medicine is going to fail. This medicine is going to make the infection worse, because this medicine assumes that the infection will win. And there is, in fact, no medicine for your infection. Well, if there's no medicine for your infection, why would the doctor prescribe it? Right?
[5:28] It's kind of an important question. So, if Christianity says, human beings are fallen, we're corrupt, we're immoral by nature, we will always lose to sin, then Christianity cannot cure the immorality of humanity.
[5:45] But if Christianity focuses on turn the other cheek, love the enemies, pray for those who persecute you, but it cannot cure humanity of evil in any consistent fashion, then Christianity is a great negative to the survival of a culture. Because Christianity is unable to cure human evil, but it also disables the immune system, so to speak. So, it's like a drug, it's like antibiotics, that not only fail to cure the infection, but also disable your immune system. Because if human beings are innately evil or sinful or whatever, then the only chance that a culture has is to be hostile towards its enemies.
[6:35] If human beings are prone to infections, as we are, we're just being around there in the world, if human beings are prone to infections, then the only chance that human beings have is a very robust immune system that attacks the bacteria and viruses that inevitably infect the human body. So if Christianity says we cannot cure, or Christianity cannot cure the problem of evil, but we will say to people, forgive endlessly, turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, love those who persecute you, do not fight back, surrender, surrender, surrender, then Christianity has the analogous effect of saying the infection cannot be cured, so the best thing to do is to disable the immune system, to disable that which fights back against the infection. Well, that's not good.
[7:32] Mean, I suppose you could say that if you were able to eliminate all possibilities of infections or illness or whatever, then you could say, okay, well, we can disable the immune system. It's just a bunch of overhead. And, you know, let's imagine you live in some perfectly scrubbed environment, perfectly clean environment, where there was no use for the immune system. And the immune system can go kind of nutty with lupus and autoimmune disorders and so on. And so, you know, we can turn off the immune system if there's no infections. If there are infections and you turn off the immune system, well, I mean, that's AIDS, right? I mean, that's acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. So, that's bad. So, if Christianity is unable to prevent or cure infections of evil, but Christianity also denies or diminishes or weakens or undermines the ability of people to aggressively fight back against evil with forgiveness and turn the other cheek and pray for your enemies and love those who persecute you and so on, then Christianity is delivering people up to the wolves.
[8:44] Christianity is saying when you are attacked, unilateral disarmament disarmament and praying for the happiness of those who are killing you is the only just and moral response. I mean, how's that working? Because the one thing that is true, and you can go through the list of countries that used to be Christian and are now no longer Christian, Christianity is on a massive retreat, a massive abandonment, a massive loss.
[9:16] Withdrawal, abandonment, being driven out, killed. Now, if, of course, the true joy and happiness is to be found in the afterlife, and this is honestly, you know, and I hope that, you know, my Christian friends will forgive me for this analysis. I'm not saying it's any kind of final decision or determination, but it is something that is troubling me deeply, especially since it was four weeks ago yesterday, day, I think that Charlie Kirk was murdered, and all of the energy has gone out of that because of Erica Kirk's apology. Not specifically hers, like not her as an individual, but that whole general principle.
[9:58] So, the challenge is that if the happiness and salvation in Christianity, relies upon self-sacrifice or being conquered in the here and now, which is the inevitable result of having no borders and loving your enemies.
[10:19] Then Christianity is going to self-destruct every time. Every time. Now, the self-destruction, though, is fine according to certain ways of looking at Christianity, which are deeply embedded within Christianity. So, let's say that your goal, and again, I'm sorry for the coarse analogies and so on and for the raw thoughts, but it is important, at least for me, to sort of puzzle through this kind of stuff.
[10:52] So if your goal is to provide, you know, Willie Loman style, right? Death of a salesman. So if your goal is to provide insurance money to your children, then death is your path. Death is your friend. Death is how you accomplish that, right? You, I think Willie Loman gets into a car.
[11:14] And crashes his car with the hope that he's worth more dead than alive, and with the hope or idea or goal that his death and the resulting life insurance money will make his family's life better, will make his children better, and so on. So his goal is death, and the achievement of wealth for his children through life insurance, death insurance, is the purpose. So his purpose is to die in order to gain a benefit. If, say, for instance, you have a goal, which is that your highest and most essential goal is to gain a posthumous medal in a war, right, to get some sort of Victoria Cross or some, I'm not sure exactly what medal they give to people who have.
[12:01] Conspicuously sacrificed themselves in the course of victory or defense of a loss or something like that, you know, that sort of masculine urge to sacrifice yourself by sitting on a hill and slowing down the people who are pursuing friends and family and comrades. So if your goal, for whatever reason, is a posthumous metal, I'm so sorry, if your goal is a posthumous metal, because it takes metal, right, M-E-T-T-L-E, to achieve it, and of course the metal is made of metal, so sorry for some cross wires. But if your gold is a posthumous metal, then self-sacrifice for the cause of war is your purpose. Your purpose is to die.
[12:47] Purpose is to die. So you can get that medal or that life insurance after death. Now, if the purpose, as analogous to a posthumous medal or life insurance that goes to your wife and kids, if your purpose is something greater than your life, a reward after death, then death will be what you pursue, right?
[13:15] If you want to achieve a reward after death, then death will be your goal. And I think for me, there's always been this undertow with regards to Christianity, and the undertow is half in love with easeful death, that the reward in Christianity comes after death, but you cannot kill yourself.
[13:43] And if your reward is health, like you have a tumor and it's going to kill you, but if you allow yourself to be put to sleep, you will wake up, hopefully, in a state of health. The tumor has been removed and you're all better. So who would say no to that? I mean, obviously, to somebody who wanted to die, but assuming that you want health and you want to live on, then you will say yes to being put to sleep to wake up in a state of better health. And in the same way, if what's on the other side of death is eternal paradise, then you would, quote, put yourself down in order to wake up in eternal bliss and paradise in the same way that you would put yourself to sleep through anesthetic or be put to sleep through anesthetic in order to gain the reward of eternal paradise and union with God and so on, right?
[14:39] So, that's why there has to be a ban on suicide. So, if there is a yearning for death or the reward of heaven after death in Christianity, then there would be a, and I sort of hate to say suicidal because it's not what I mean, but there would be a self-destructive element to Christianity, which is if you go to heaven in the state of being killed by an enemy whose salvation you are praying for, then what resistance would you have to an enemy? Would you not invite enemies in and pray for their salvation while they destroy you so that you can get to heaven? Because it's not suicide. And this is a foundational concern that I have with Christianity.
[15:39] If you are cut down by an enemy while in the process of praying for the salvation of that enemy, then you go to heaven.
[15:50] What is the drive or goal or purpose of fighting that hard if you have a certain path to heaven, which is to be destroyed in the plump and prime of your virtue, while praying for the salvation of those who are persecuting you or killing you. If that is an undertow, and again, I'm certainly happy to be corrected, and I'm sure there are corrections, but this is not inaccurate. There are corrections. There are other perspectives. I'm not saying this is monolithic or the only answer, but let's say that you do find, right, it's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die because I don't know what's up there beyond the guy. It's old Sam Cooke song. But if you are, say, depressed, or you find living too hard, or living is unpleasant to you for whatever reason, then wishing to be released from life and get to heaven would be a great goal and desire. But you're not allowed to kill yourself.
[16:52] So you would go into dangerous areas, or you would invite danger into your environment and not fight against it, but pray for those who persecute you. And if you are destroyed by those who persecute you, you are released from this veil of tears, this, valley of the shadow of evil, and you are taken to heaven, where you join Jesus, you commune with God, you sing with the choirs of angels, and everything is bliss.
[17:21] Hmm right now to look at charlie kirk and again i'm aware of the sensitivity of what i'm talking about and again i hope you'll forgive me for this intellectual examination or exploration and this is nothing negative to charlie or erica or anything like that but if we look at charlie Kirk. He was proselytizing and speaking to a lot of sinful people, right, of people in modern leftist secular universities. So he was attempting to preach to the sinners, and he was trying to bring souls to Jesus and convert the godless to Christianity, to a large degree. So, when Charlie was executed, while in the full flower of his Christian virtues, did Charlie Kirk not go directly to heaven? Was he not released from this veil of tears and taken up.
[18:25] To heaven, where he lives, in the arms and bosoms of the greatest good possible for the rest of eternity. Well, yes, yes, if I understand Christianity to this degree, Charlie Kirk was a very moral and virtuous man. And, of course, he was not a preacher in this way, but he never, where appropriate, failed to mention his worship of God, his love of Jesus, his love of Christianity, his desire for salvation, and his desire to save the souls. He even went into the semi-hellscape of the whatever podcast and tried to save the sex workers and so on, right? So, Charlie Kirk was doing God's work and he was slain.
[19:15] And when someone sends you in the full flower of your virtue directly to heaven, have they not done you good? And again, I know it's uncomfortable, and again, I'm happy to be corrected, but this is my understanding. Loving those who persecute you has something to do with they release you from temptation, the devil, the sins of the flesh, the pollution of the physical, all the corruption of the secular directly to heaven. There's a terrifyingly powerful scene in Hamlet, of course, where Hamlet is considering murdering Claudius, and Claudius is praying.
[20:00] Says, I can do it. Ah, but if I do it right now, his soul flies directly to heaven, and I have done him a service that he would pay me for, because I am going to kill him while he's communing with God, and therefore he goes straight to heaven. He said, he would hire me to do this. This is something he would pay me to do. It's not vengeance. But the idea, of course, that Hamlet would be doing Claudius a favor by killing him when he is in the midst of praying is important. He's doing, this is higher in ransom, right? He's doing Claudius a favor by killing him and sending him straight to heaven. Now, of course, the irony is that Claudius says, no, I'm not connecting with God. Nothing's happening. Nothing's good. So, theoretically, Hamlet could have killed him and he wouldn't have gone to heaven, blah, blah, blah. But that is a challenge. Is there an undertow half in love with easeful death? Is there an undertow.
[21:03] Of anticipation of bliss, self-destruction in Christianity? Yes. Yes, there is. Not all of Christianity, of course, and there are counterexamples. I get all of that. But the counterexamples tend to go from Christianity to more Old Testament eye-for-an-eye stuff. I mean, this is, and again, I know it's harsh. I'm just quoting Nietzsche's focus on Christianity as a slave religion or a slave morality. So, the slave religion or the slave morality is that the slave has no power in the world. He has no authority, no choice, no independence, no justice, no recourse to justice, no capacity for vengeance.
[21:48] And the slave, what does the slave do with that? Well, the slave dreams that being subjugated in the here and now grants you ultimate power in the hereafter, right? That, yes, yes, it's true. I understand. It's true that the slave owner runs my life and orders me around and hits and beats me at will and prevents me from having a family and so on, buys and sells me, and I'm barely more than a object to him. But the idea that he who is last becomes first, right, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And this is a time, of course, when being rich meant exploiting for the most part.
[22:32] The Industrial Revolution or free market capitalism. So, the idea that the degree to which I am subjugated and destroyed in the here and now is the degree to which God loves me after death. He who is first shall become last. He who is last shall become first. The humble, the meek, shall inherit the earth, but not their mineral rights and mineral rights, as the old joke goes. So the meek shall inherit the earth. If you are a slave, you will rule after death. Now, we've all had, especially when we're kids, we've all had the fantasies of vengeance against those who torment and persecute us. I remember as I was like five or six years old, and there was this kid who was mean to me in the playground, and I would have fantasies of like whapping him front and back, like lifting his legs over my head and whapping him front and back on the ground.
[23:33] Oh, and maybe that's that cold eye that I had in the attic with my cousin when I was very little, maybe three, listening to the song Power to All Our Friends by Cliff Richard, this cold eye. And the cold eye is the seduction of, if you are sick and in pain, and you can be put to sleep and wake up glowing and healthy, would you not do that? And, of course, the answer is yes. Yes, of course. If you have some horrible infection in your teeth, then you will be put to sleep, you will take laughing gas, you will take.
[24:19] You will do whatever is necessary in order to wake with a pain-free mouth. And life being a sickness that death cures you off and puts you to a perfectly blissful, happy state. Again, if you were in chronic pain and one short operation would give you glowing health and ensure that you were pain-free for the rest of your existence, people would take that. I mean, they do every day, right? Thousands and thousands of people are put under for the sake of operations to make them healthy. So why wouldn't you do that?
[24:56] Love those who persecute you. If you are a slave and you hate being a slave and you are subjugated and controlled and bullied and humiliated and beaten and like your every day is just kind of a waking torture. If you are a slave and you get to paradise, if your slave owner kills you, why wouldn't you provoke the slave owner, why wouldn't you provoke your master into releasing you from servitude by killing you and sending you to heaven? So, love those who persecute you is the same as love the doctor who cures you of an illness. The pain of death is short, the bliss of paradise is eternal. Is there a self-destructive element within Christianity? A lack of willingness to fight to free oneself from evil, because if evildoers destroy you, you go straight to heaven.
[26:06] What is there to curse in a way? What is there to curse at the murderer who killed Charlie Kirk if the murderer who killed Charlie Kirk sent him straight to heaven, and there was no chance for him to relapse or to become amoral or immoral or give up on Christianity or anything like that? It is the medicine that not only fails to ward off the infection, but also disables your immune system, which is going to cause you to die. It's going to cause you to die. So how could you avoid this as a Christian? It's tough. It's honestly, you could say, well, you know, but I want to claim more souls for Jesus and so on. Okay, I get that. And Christianity is, of course, a very big religion. I get that.
[27:00] You are overrun or persecuted, and you love your enemies, and you die, you go to heaven. There's just no way of avoiding that as a conclusion. So, if you say, I'm in terrible pain, there's an illness that will cure me forever, render me not only pain-free, but happy forever, and then somebody says, oh, I'm so sorry, you can't get that operation for another 18 months, right you're in some socialized medicine hellhole right you can't i'm sorry man you can't get that operation for another 18 months would you not be incredibly frustrated angry and disappointed but what are you talking about i have to go through another 18 months of pain of agony before i can get this amazing cure that has me not only pain-free but full of happiness and all kinds of good, wonderful, juicy stuff. Well, isn't that living longer rather than dying sooner?
[28:01] You've got a cure. You've got a cure called death, a cure for unhappiness, a cure for sin. Again, assuming that you are loving your enemies and you are being a good Christian and you are praying for those who persecute you and you are forgiving everyone who does you wrong and so on, then death is an improvement, isn't it? If you are being a good Christian, to taste of death while in the full fruit and flower of your Christian virtue is to get to heaven for sure, rather than perhaps backslide or perhaps be taken in sin while you're sinning or to perhaps be tempted by secular values or something, or something.
[28:51] Plane that is going down and you have no parachute, you would rather jump from the plane over water than over a city, right? Or over land. Now, if you jump over deep water, there's a possibility that you might survive. If you jump over land, you will die, right? Now, if you are a Christian and you are in the full fruit and flower of your virtues.
[29:28] Well, if you are taken in the full fruit and flower of your virtues, then you go straight to heaven. And again, there's no possibility of backsliding. So you would want it sooner rather than later, and you would want it when you are at your most devout. So you'd want to maintain your devotion and to be as Christian as possible. And if death comes to you, particularly from your enemies, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished, as Hamlet, again, very powerfully says. So when I ask the question, why has Christianity failed to protect the West? I think the answer is that the purpose of Christianity is not to protect the West. The purpose of Christianity is to get your soul to heaven and the best way to get your soul to heaven is to be persecuted to be killed while praying for your enemies.
[30:25] There is a certain amount, and I won't say death worship because that's not giving full credit to the fruit and flower of the theology, but there is a certain amount, I mean, not a certain amount, there is a direct proportion of heaven worship in Christianity, of course, right? I mean, there's Jesus worship, but Jesus, of course, offers you bliss and perpetual joy in heaven.
[30:50] So, heaven is after death. So, I won't say death worship because that's like someone saying, I worship the operation that cures me. It's like, no, you want the health that comes after the operation. So, it's not death worship, but it is heaven worship. And the most secure path to heaven is to be killed while praying for your enemies. So, it's not death worship, but it is desirous of death. In the same way that if you have a painful condition, arthritis or something, there's some operation that's going to cure you forever and fill you full of well-being not just an absence of illness but a presence of robust and happy health do you worship the operation? No, but you desire the operation greatly and deeply if you have that operation scheduled for next week and then you find out it can't happen for 18 months you would be bitterly frustrated, upset and disappointed and angry, it's not death worship but it is desiring of death, as the necessary portal through which you gain bliss forever. Why has Christianity been unable to protect the West?
[31:59] Because the purpose of Christianity is not to protect the West, but to deliver its adherence to heaven, which has in it a thirst for death or a desire for death, that is baked into the entire theology.
[32:17] Sooner rather than later. And if you forgive your enemies, you get to heaven. If you fight your enemies, you might not. Will you argue with the doctor who's curing you of chronic pain and delivering you to robust health for the rest of your existence? You will not fight with that doctor. You will not fight with that doctor. Now, if you believe, like, let's take this combination, right? So, you cannot kill yourself, but what's after life is bliss, but you cannot kill yourself. Well, there are people who are suicidal, but won't kill themselves. So, what do they do? Well, what they do is they consistently put themselves in extremely hazardous situations, right? There's an old story from Carl Gustav Jung, the psychologist, who said that he had a patient, and I'm probably butchering it here, but I get the essence right. He had a patient who was a rock climber, a mountain climber. And the patient kept going to Jung and saying, look, I'm having these dreams and I'm climbing up and up and up into the very clouds and into the very skies. And Jung said, you have a death wish. You have a death wish. And, you know, again, it's Jung's reporting, so who knows, right? But the story is that the guy ended up dying on a mountain.
[33:37] And I had a friend when I was younger, who, you know, physically bullied his mother, threw his mother up against the wall, threatened her, was violent, and was cruel. I mean, it's not my proudest friendship in the world, but we had some fun times for sure. But this is the guy who, you know, had these, he played hockey, had these big hockey gloves, and we would be out dirt biking in the cold. The winter, like, I don't know, November or whatever, my hands would be like frozen white claws and I'd say, man, let me just wear your gloves for a few minutes. I'd say, well, why didn't you bring yours? You know, it's just kind of, and this is the guy who I talked about, who.
[34:14] He was biking behind me and there was a big rock on the sidewalk and I swerved and we got into this crazy fight where he said, you cut me off. And I said, you were tailgating. Like I had to swerve because there was a big rock on the sidewalk. I didn't want to run into the rock and spill. so I had to swerve and he almost crashed into me and he said you cut me off and I said you were tailgating you were following too close behind and although he was bigger than me and although he was a little scary this is the guy who would get so angry he would throw his bike all around and so on and uh I uh I just I was just like you know screw it I'm not I'm not folding anymore like I'm not I'm just not going to appease and he went just completely insane and uh that was the end of our friendship. He did try and revive the friendship later, but I had no interest. I just, when I'm done, I'm done. So he...
[35:13] Was unhappy. And he did things that were extremely dangerous. Like he would ride his, he would cross railway bridges when the trains were coming. He would bike off walls. He just did crazy. And he ended up dying in a motorcycle crash when he was, I think, 19 or 20. And I just was happy to be reading the paper. It was reported and so on. And yeah, it was terrible. But this was a guy who had this thanatos, right? Eros is the life force, thanatos is the death wish. So if you're not allowed to kill yourself, and this is directly analogous to sort of the Willie Loman situation, right? Where to get life insurance, he has to die, but he can't kill himself. So he has to do dangerous things until he dies, but he can't kill himself. Because if he kills himself, the insurance company won't pay out because it's supposed to be for accidents or happenstance, not that which is directly willed.
[36:19] This happens with guys who get into a lot of fights. You know, there's a death wish there. This happens to women who have a violent boyfriend and keep nagging and provoking him. There's a terrifying scene. It's just about everything is terrifying in Quentin Tarantino movies. I think it's in Jackie Brown, where there's this woman who is taunting, I don't know the name of the character, but he's played by Robert De Niro, he's got a mustache, and they're in a parking lot. Oh, can you not find the car? Lewis, Lewis, you can't find the car? A real man would be able to find the car? Lewis, she's just really provoking and taunting him, and he's got a temper, and he's got a gun, and he's a psycho.
[37:04] And he says to her, don't talk. Shut up. Stop saying things. Stop talking. I'm telling you, I'm warning you, stop talking. Oh, really? Lewis? You don't want me to talk? Lewis? Right? And she just continues to taunt him and then he just shoots her. So that's a death wish. Right? When you are taunting a psycho with a gun who's threatening to kill you, you have a death wish. You want to die. Or someone wants you dead or whatever it is, right? it? Someone in your head. So that's my concern. Why has Christianity failed to protect the West? Because by failing to protect
[37:36] the West, perhaps, some Christians, many Christians, go to heaven. It's the sort of question about why didn't the Tsar deal with the Communists?
[37:51] In 1916-1917, Trotsky and Lenin and co. Let's say that there's a possibility, and it wasn't more than a possibility for anybody who knows anything about communists. They are a bloodthirsty lot who are never satisfied with the amount of killing that they can perform.
[38:07] So why was decisive action not taken, which could have been done? I mean, he was a czar, he had his own police force, he had control of the military. Why wouldn't he just pull a Pinochet and, you know, toss them from the 1917 equivalent of helicopters or whatever, right? The question is why? Half in love with ease for death. So again, this is brutal. And again, I apologize for anything and everything that I get wrong. And I understand the sensitivity, but I have to be robust in my intellectual explorations because the stakes are so enormously freaking high for this kind of stuff. But was there an unconscious belief, maybe conscious, but an unconscious belief, that the Christians who were killed by the communists would go to heaven? And it's not 70 million murdered, which would be the secular view, but it's 70 million souls delivered to God, assuming that they prayed for those who were killing them. That is an important question. Is there a death-desiring aspect, as death is the portal to heaven, aspect of certain strains, not all, right? I know there's muscular Christianity, there was expansionist Christianity, and so on. But is there a death thirst in Christianity?
[39:23] Now, if there is a death thirst in Christianity, this would explain why.
[39:33] Why is it that in 1914, the Christian young men of just about any country were hungry to go and fight battles? Even after they saw the stalemate of the front and knew that the war was a slog, to put it mildly, why were they still volunteering? Why were they so hungry to go and fight? Perhaps it had to do with that the Gatling Gung ledicillin is the best way to cure you of the disease called life and deliver you to the paradise of heaven. I mean, the promise of paradise is a potent force for combat. I mean, we know this from Valhalla and other religions and so on. So, maybe that's part of the issue. And listen, obviously, I apologize for where I've gone astray. I am deeply sensitive to the volatility of what I'm talking about, and I'm desirous of being corrected, but I do have to explore these things from a robust curiosity standpoint. And I remember as a kid, I remember as a kid worshiping war out of Christianity, onward Christian soldiers marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus marching as before, there was a strong thirst for glory and death in battle. Now, again, that's not particularly Christianity and so on, but I had a very strong sense when I was a kid that if I died in battle, I would be carried straight up to the bliss of paradise and eternity in the arms of Jesus.
[41:01] That's not inconsiderable in the motives of Christians. Why don't they fight? Because they are being cured of a disease called life and being delivered to the eternal bliss of heaven on the condition that rather than fight back, they pray for those who persecute them, and that is the danger. Freedomain.com/donate. If you find these thoughts helpful, I look forward to your feedback. Lots of love, my friends. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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