Video: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/k11DDQvV1DA8CFAx5Z6
Shownotes
0:00 Introduction
3:05 Revelation of Japanese War Crimes
7:58 Impact of Historical Atrocities
14:17 Reflection on Innocence in War
17:57 Exploration of Maternal Influence
21:08 Analysis of Moral Responsibility
30:11 Exploring Virtue and Responsibility
31:57 Determinism in Parenting
34:57 The Role of Mothers in Determinism
37:35 The Duality of Determinism and Free Will
39:30 Recognizing Moral Contradictions
41:23 The Influence of Environment on Free Will
43:31 The Root of Evil: Duality of Blame
47:36 The Schizophrenic Nature of Moral Responsibility
49:06 Uniting Humanity with Universal Rules
52:38 Contradictions in Communism
53:45 Racial Division and Moral Responsibility
55:10 The Spread of Evil through Determinism
55:42 Justifying Destruction through Determinism
57:26 Closing Thoughts and Contributions
Today, I delved into a deep exploration of assigning moral responsibility and understanding the origins of aggression and evil. I questioned the biases that influence our perceptions of different groups, especially during times of conflict. Throughout the conversation with our guests, we unpacked the dynamics of environmental factors and personal agency in shaping individual behaviors. We also highlighted the significant role of parenting in influencing societal norms and individual choices. By examining how certain groups are depicted and excused based on preconceived notions, we revealed patterns of selective outrage and moral relativism. Our discussion challenged the dichotomy of deterministic or free will based on affiliations, shedding light on how historical narratives shape our views of morality and responsibility. Engaging with callers, we explored examples from history and psychology to illustrate the tendency to assign infinite free will to allies and pure determinism to enemies. This mindset can rationalize harm towards perceived enemies while pardoning the actions of allies. Callers shared their perspectives, adding depth to our conversation by discussing how viewing individuals as irredeemable based on past choices can justify their destruction. As the dialogue wrapped up, I expressed appreciation for the valuable insights contributed by our audience members, emphasizing the importance of continuing discussions on these complex topics. Our conversation provided a nuanced examination of the interplay between personal agency, societal structures, and moral judgments, offering a deep exploration of human behavior and responsibility in today's world.
Stefan:
[0:00] All right, well, yes, good evening, everybody. Just had a couple of minutes free.
It was, actually, I had a call-in show scheduled for tonight, but it was not to be.
There was a time zone confusion, so no worries, no worries.
Have you been following the questions?
I guess Tucker Carlson was on Joe Rogan, and they were talking about the bombing of Japan, the nuclear bombing of Japan, of course, at the end of the Second World War.
And there was a phrase that rankled at me, and I wanted to share some thoughts about it and get your thoughts about that.
But of course, if there's anything that's on your mind first, let me not be rude and invite you in to do, just listen to a monologue.
If there's anything that you guys have questions, comments or issues about i'm certainly happy to engage and chat and we can talk about whatever, is on your mind if you have you just need to i think you need to unmute if you just don't get a pause for a second or two in case there's anybody who wants to, uh bring up any questions or comments so.
Caller:
[1:11] On the uh the bombing and the japan stuff uh you know i looked into that a little bit and uh i've got i've got some if you want some supplement uh back up thoughts and things like that later on when you get into the topic, I'm happy to jump on.
Stefan:
[1:26] All right. Sounds good.
So, the issue for me is I always have a great deal of trouble with the word innocent.
Hey, it's a great Harlequin song from the 80s, but I have a great deal of trouble with the word innocent.
The moment there's some words that are just like propaganda landmines.
So, for instance, innocent is one, folks is another, hardworking is another, just honest, hardworking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, every time somebody's the victim of a crime, they were like the greatest person in the known universe and all of that.
And the innocent is always interesting to me.
Always interesting to me. Because in talking about Japan in the 1940s, we also have to talk about the Japanese war crimes. war crimes.
Stefan:
[2:25] They are almost unbelievable.
I don't know if you guys have followed this up, but it is just appalling.
The Japanese atrocities of World War II included cannibalism, the slaughter and starvation of prisoners of war, rape, enforced forced prostitution, the murder of non-combatants, and biological warfare experiments on civilians and prisoners of war.
Stefan:
[3:06] So, there's a book called Hidden Horrors, Japanese War Crimes in World War II.
Here's the abstract for you.
The author describes how desperate Japanese soldiers consumed the flesh of their own comrades killed in fighting, as well as that of Australians, Pakistanis, and Indians. He also traces the fate of 65 shipwrecked Australian nurses and British soldiers who were shot or stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers.
32 other nurses who landed on another island were captured and sent to Sumatra to become prostitutes for Japanese soldiers.
The author recounts how thousands of Australian and British prisoners of war died in the infamous Sandikin camp in the Borneo jungle in 1945.
Those who survived were forced to endure a tortuous 160-mile march in which anyone who dropped out of line was immediately shot.
Individual atrocities are explored in their broader social, psychological, and institutional context. Japanese behavior during World War II is examined, and they might still go on.
So, yeah, I mean, you can look into a wild set of things. Of course, there was always...
Stefan:
[4:15] The rape of Nanking and the regular invasions of China to Chinese mainland by Japan.
The death rate for prisoners of war when you were captured by the Japanese or you surrendered to the Japanese was about 30% versus less than 5% anywhere else.
And it is truly, truly astonishing.
The Empire of Japan, I mean, up there with the Aztecs and the Mayans, some of the most evil regimes ever to have existed.
I mean, indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, destruction of entire cities, torture, countless women dragged into sexual slavery, and so on.
And here's some abstracts from our history. Over the conquest of East Asia, the Japanese army forced around 200,000 women into the ranks of comfort women.
These women mainly came from China, Korea, and the Philippines.
Stefan:
[5:19] There's a Filipino comfort woman who reported being raped 10 times a day, and Japan has yet to even officially apologize to them.
There was an uproar in Japan when South Korea erected statues to honor the what are called comfort women, which is rape slaves.
During the rape of Nanking, the Japanese massacred as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians within a month in a single day.
Japanese soldiers paraded around with babies skewered on their bayonets like kebabs.
Two Japanese officers held a friendly competition to see who could behead 100 people the fastest.
And when the score was 105 to 106 and no one knew who got to 100 first, they went again to 150.
Civilians were buried alive en masse. Prisoners were used as live bayonet practice, screaming as the final moments of their life was used for the Japanese to sadistically torment.
Tens of thousands of women were raped, most of whom were executed afterwards.
They dragged entire Chinese families into public squares and forced fathers on their daughters and sons on their mothers for the amusement of Japanese troops.
Stefan:
[6:22] The Imperial Japanese Army ran Unit 731, a state-of-the-art biological and chemical warfare research facility in Manchuria, where Japanese researchers performed human experimentation on a large scale using Chinese civilians as the majority of their test subjects.
Living humans were dissected alive, usually without anesthesia.
Subjects had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss and pain tolerance.
These limbs were sometimes reattached to the opposite sides of the body.
Subjects had their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed.
Subjects were gotten pregnant via rape, then infected with diseases to see the effect on their baby.
Subjects were forced into the cold to research frostbite and then had their frozen limbs chopped off.
Subjects were placed in pressure chambers until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets.
There's a rumor, who knows, right? where supposedly the Japanese placed a woman and her baby in a room, then heated up the floor to see if she'd step on her own baby.
Stefan:
[7:28] Back in 1995, an anonymous Japanese medical assistant who worked in Unit 731 sat down for an interview with the New York Times and described one such live dissection.
Quote, The fellow knew that it was over for him, so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down.
But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming.
I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony.
He made this unimaginable sound. He was screaming so horribly.
Stefan:
[7:58] But finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.
Stefan:
[8:12] It's brutal to look at this stuff, and it's one of the things that happens.
I sort of write about This is my novel, The Present.
Well, really, The Future, but In the Future is a better place to read it.
But when people are too comfortable, they lose track of evil.
They lose track of how unbelievably unholy and satanic human beings can be.
Now, of course, the Allies were very much aware of the Japanese war crimes, and they were as murderous and as genocidal in many ways as the worst of the Nazis, the worst of the communists, the worst of the fascists, the worst of the various totalitarian regimes.
Dreams, where the power lost over other human beings grows to such an extent that the world becomes a literal hell on earth.
Stefan:
[9:12] The brutality of the Nazis marching into Russia in the 1940s, in the Second World War, was matched by the brutality of the Russians when they marched into Germany from the East, of course, occupying East Germany and raping and killing in their path.
Stefan:
[9:38] Now, one of the things, of course, that happened is that Japan became a fairly significant economic powerhouse and then the Western countries wanted to get Japan to buy their bonds and so on and lend to their governments and so all of these crimes were covered up.
The crimes of the Nazis very much kept alive and the crimes of the Japanese very much buried.
And of course both countries and cultures became extremely meek after this heart of darkness was, exposed to the world and in australia they still remember of course the fact that they would tie the australian prisoners of war in concentric rings around, a biological weapon and then release the biological weapon in the center and then track how it affected the prisoners.
Did this have much to do with the war effort? No, no, not really.
It was a plaything for bottomless sadism.
Stefan:
[10:45] So that's important to remember. So when people talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, look, I'm always going to have sympathy for the children because the children are not there by choice and the children don't have any particular chance to change their environmental circumstances.
But when I look at the actions of the Japanese, and listen, I understand there are some there, who absolutely hated what they were doing, but were trapped in hell itself, and they were shot if they didn't torture.
But there's a lot of sadism going on, There was a lot of brutality, and there was no particular outcry in Japan about these things.
And again, I understand.
I mean, lots of things you can talk about. There was a censorship, and if you stepped out of line, there was brutality against you, and so on.
But the culture doesn't come out of nowhere.
Where does it come from?
Well, when I think of these cities, if the moment people start to say, innocent civilians, I think of, I'm not saying this is some big objective moral argument, I'm just telling you my particular perspective, maybe we can develop it into that, but what I think of is I think of sadism factories.
Stefan:
[12:12] Like a breeding nest of sociopathy and cruelty.
Now, the Japanese men, obviously, part of the equation, no question, a central part of the equation.
But the Japanese are fairly ferocious workers in some sort of what I've read about.
Another time we'll talk about, Jared did some great research into the childhood of Japan, but we'll talk about that another time.
So I sort of want to get your thoughts on this as a whole, but, the Japanese men would have been away a lot in the rural areas of course rice farming is very labor intensive and so they'd be gone a lot of times during the day working on that in the cities, there was this sort of ferocious work ethic that the Japanese have this death by overwork karoshi is well known in the modern phenomena but it stretches back into Japanese history.
And the men would be gone a lot, farming or working in the various fields that they worked in.
Stefan:
[13:21] So, in many ways, obviously not completely, but in many ways, the primary child raisers, the primary child minders, were the mothers, were the women.
Now, if you have women producing this conveyor belt of human monsters, what does the concept of innocence really mean in that circumstance?
Are they purely innocent?
And I find that a very deep and interesting question.
Stefan:
[14:17] So, if you look at the cities that were bombed, and I mean, nobody ever wants these sorts of situations to occur in human history, in human life.
But when people say, and it's an indication to me, in a way, of how limited, I just say this observationally, I don't mean this with any bitterness, but how limited our project of peaceful parenting has fallen upon the world, where everybody gets sentimental about all of the innocent, civilians, in these cities.
And they say, ah, but it was also terrible what happened to them.
Of course it was terrible what happened to them, but these things don't come out of nowhere.
Stefan:
[15:12] The civilian bombing, if the civilian cities are full of mothers who have raised their children, and in particular their boys, so viciously, so brutally, so violently, so coldly, that they produce a culture that produces the soldiers and the leadership that acts in this way for centuries.
Because, of course, the end of the Empire was the end of the Second World War.
I know the Emperor remained, which we've talked about before, but the end of the Empire, functionally.
Stefan:
[15:54] Was the end of the Second World War.
Are there innocent civilians in a culture?
And again, not talking about the kids, never talking about the kids.
Are there innocent women in a culture where the women are so violent, brutal, and cold, that they produce these exquisite sadists by the millions?
Are they innocent? It's a funny thing because it just seems to be that the abstraction is like, well, the soldiers, these incredibly cruel and violent soldiers and the military and the leadership, that it all came out of nowhere.
Like some Greek god, these soldiers just sprung fully formed into adulthood.
With no history, no childhood, no mothers, no upbringing.
Now, maybe there was a bunch of teachers. Maybe the teachers were all male.
I don't know much about the history of Japanese schooling.
But if the teachers were male, then the teachers were brutal.
And the teachers also were birthed of the mothers and raised earlier, right?
Stefan:
[17:21] So, it is really quite astounding to me that this is never talked about.
And maybe it is, obviously. I just haven't seen it.
I have not seen it where people say, Well, you know, these women had produced these incredibly violent, sadistic and brutal soldiers and the culture and all of that.
The vanity and the coldness and hostility towards all other cultures and races was just astonishing.
Stefan:
[17:58] There's lots of studies that seem like a lot of maternal incest is going on, in Japan from sort of early to mid, probably going back a long way.
Maternal incest is quite common, and it's just wild.
And maternal incest is sort of well known to produce massive sadism in the personality.
Infanticide was quite big in child raising in Japan.
Stefan:
[18:38] And it's... It's just wild that nothing seems to be talked about with regards to where does the sadism come from, that the family is the furnace of the sadist.
Stefan:
[18:59] And it's funny because in war, you are much better off to aim at the source of production than the output of production.
So you are better off in the long run to bomb the factory where the tanks are built rather than fighting the tanks after they're built and they're out armed, right?
There's a sort of famous story, it's a real story, there's even photographs, a famous story that the Germans spent months building a fake airbase to distract the British from the real airbase, and it was full of wooden hangars and wooden planes and so on, and the British had been watching this for quite some time, and did not interfere with it because they wanted the resources and labor diverted.
And eventually, after the Germans had completed the pretend wooden airbase, the British dropped one wooden bomb.
We know, right? So, you want to bomb the source of production.
And if the women are raising such brutal soldiers, I mean, obviously, if you can bomb the training school for the pilots, it's better than shooting the pilots down after they're in the air and well-armed.
Stefan:
[20:23] So there's no... Like, this idea that there are just these perfectly sweet and innocent...
Civilians, and the soldiers that are so cruel, just come out of nowhere.
So, and it doesn't seem like anyone's, I mean, of course, you can think about this in various different places around the world, but it is surprising to me that this is just never, I mean, this is sort of in the realm of psychohistory and the origins of war and child Child Abuse, the book that I read many years ago, as an audiobook for Lloyd DeMoss, it's just not discussed.
Stefan:
[21:09] Not discussed, not talked about. And I know what's interesting about this, this is the last point I made, and I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on this.
This is the last point I want to make.
Stefan:
[21:22] So, what happens, of course, when you point out, how violent these mothers must have been to produce incredibly psychotic and evil soldiers and a chain of command and so on. And some of this stuff was recreational, for sure.
I mean, you weren't forced to do this stuff. This was something that was accepted, and these people weren't shunned, necessarily.
They weren't court-martialed in the army for gratuitous, sort of endless-my-lifestyle massacres.
But what I can sort of hear this chant in my head, and it goes something like this, well, but Stef, don't you know that these mothers were trapped in a system of patriarchy, and they had so much propaganda, and they raised as they themselves were raised, and dominoes, dominoes, dominoes.
All you hear is dominoes, dominoes, dominoes. Well, you've got to think about it, they didn't have access to the kind of information that we have in the modern world, and they just were raised the way that they were raised, and they were in this patriarchy. So it's just environment, right?
Environment.
Stefan:
[22:35] Well, okay, but what about other big evil groups in the world? Do they always get?
Well, but environment, environment, environment, well, no.
And what troubles me is this Schrodinger's moral responsibility. ability.
So if it's a group that you feel some sympathy for, then you dial up all of the environmental factors and answers and you take away the moral free will of the individuals.
Stefan:
[23:11] And you explain away the, quote, evils based upon environmental factors. This is the trick.
It's a trick that's ancient, but it's really, really been refined and intensified in the modern world.
So if it's a group you like, you feel some sympathy for, then you say, oh, but, you know, look at all these environmental factors, right?
Oh, this person's a criminal. and all, well, but they grew up in a poor society and they were badly educated and they had no father and this, this, this, this, this, and this, and all these environmental factors, factors, factors that explain away everything, but only for that get-out-of-jail-free card is only reserved for the people you sympathize with or like or need in some context, right?
Stefan:
[24:00] I mean, there weren't quite the same Nuremberg trials, there hasn't been quite the same humiliation on the national scale.
You know, when I was a kid, when my German cousins would come to visit in England, not one of them was allowed to touch a toy gun.
Stefan:
[24:19] And of course, everybody still makes jokes about the Germans and their aggression and the cycle of history and what's fundamentally wrong with the German character and the Germans.
Okay, I get that, I get that. But you don't hear that stuff about the Japanese.
As much, I mean, occasionally here and there, but not really.
The Japanese are considered, oh, very nice and very polite and very civilized and very peaceful.
And I get all of that. I get all of that.
Stefan:
[24:52] But why? Why the change?
Because if you like someone, this is more true on the left, although it happens on the right as well.
Well, if you like someone or feel some sympathy towards some person or nation or group, then you explain away their immorality.
If it's a group that you like, then you explain away the evils that they do with reference to environmental factors.
But if it's a group or nation or individual that you don't like, then they are just causelessly evil. Their evil is summoned out of nowhere.
There's no environmental factors that can explain it.
And the person has just out of an infinite 360 degree set of perfectly even opportunities chosen the path of evil with no external mitigating factors.
Caller:
[25:53] Step, why do they like one group? That's the part that I'm that I'm not getting, Like, why would they choose to like one group? I mean, I think it's obvious why they wouldn't like the other, right?
The aggressive group or the currently aggressive group, but the parent.
Stefan:
[26:20] Sorry, the parent?
Caller:
[26:22] Yeah. Why is it they choose that group?
Stefan:
[26:27] Well, it changes, though. It changes. So it changes.
I mean, obviously, the Japanese were considered monstrous after Pearl Harbor and even before Pearl Harbor with the blockade of Japan, which, you know, arguably is one of the causes of Pearl Harbor.
So they viewed the Japanese as horrendous and malevolent in the 1930s, in the 1940s, and then it changed.
So, it really depends on a wide variety of economic and geopolitical factors.
And so, the why changes from epoch to epoch, from era to era, from need to need.
It has a lot to do with profit and domination and dominance.
Stefan:
[27:24] But, the fact that you have this duality is really important.
I actually was kind of thinking about this with regards to sort of the, you know, the crazy stuff that's said about me online, sort of Wikipedia page and so on.
Nobody says, well, you know, obviously, Stef's going to grow up with this hatred of totalitarianism because his family was hunted by the Nazis and by the communists.
So the German Nazis hunted my family during the war and at the close of the war my family was hunted by the Russian Communists, they don't well you know both his parents have mental illness so he's obviously had some challenges that way with regards to fighting his way to sanity so I don't get any, causality and it's really it's a wild phenomenon to see like when you see this Who gets defended?
Who gets excused? Who gets the dominoes?
Of historical determinism, whose free will gets diminished, and who is held to have infinite free will, no matter what. Sorry, go ahead.
Caller:
[28:40] Is it whoever has false virtues that are similar to ones that you have experienced?
Stefan:
[28:54] Why does the...
Caller:
[28:55] Meaning, civil or just...
Stefan:
[28:56] No, sorry, help me understand. I think this is a pretty big idea.
I could be wrong. Maybe I've talked about it before, but it was a fairly new idea for me that determinism for your allies and pure moral free will, for your enemies. In other words, you could excuse anything that your allies do with reference to determinism and environmental factors, but anyone you hate, you have to give them perfect free will.
So you have a situation where people People who do immense evil.
Like if you think of the evils that were done to the Japanese boys to turn them into such monsters, that's excusable.
But whatever I say, you know, whatever I'm talking about that people really dislike, that's just absolutely inexcusable.
So if you're trying to figure out the pattern, I mean, I'm trying to sort of understand why does it matter?
Why? Because now we're trying to apply determinism as to why people do this rather than just noting that they do, if that makes sense.
Caller:
[30:11] Well, I think if you bring, just on a scale from, let's just say, less objective virtue, more subjective, more fall, less rigor applied to it.
If you bring an objective or at least a closer to objective standard of virtue, I think that makes sense why they would want to grasp at anything they can and more responsibility is an easy thing to grab.
So they will. It's just like what are the tools they have to, I guess, discredit you or I guess in your case, what are they not going to grab? Right.
They're not going to give you the out. They're not going to try to remove your responsibility.
But in the cases where it's like there may be parallels, at least, with the origins of aggression in parenting, where we don't want to examine that.
So we just put a blanket over it put a blanket of.
Stefan:
[31:33] Moral either way parenting doesn't get brought up if it's causeless 100% free will malevolence then you don't have to discuss parenting the person is just bad right?
Whereas if it's all determinism then you don't have to discuss parenting is that right?
Caller:
[31:52] All determinism you don't have to discuss parenting.
Stefan:
[31:57] You don't have to discuss the role of parenting if someone is just, at least at the last step. Sorry, go ahead.
Caller:
[32:03] Yeah. Right. Right. At least at the last step with the, like, cause there's the obvious evil, but we don't want them to connect the obvious evil to the non-obvious or to the, to the, um.
Caller:
[32:16] Again, it's like, it's like, it's a similar, it's like, it's the cases where it's a similar enough evil that you haven't recognized, that you haven't recognized that you really don't want to recognize.
So you just put the blank. Yeah. You just like put a blanket over it.
This, uh, you know, like, Oh, they just came out of nowhere.
Like it's how we don't talk about, uh, or I get the sense.
I've got the sense that, um, with like school shooters, they don't, they say like, you know, they had normal, uh, normal looking parents and there wasn't anything wrong here.
You know, like this came out of nowhere kind of thing.
Um, um maybe that's not always the case but that seems like i've seen that i've heard that kind of sentiment um around that and maybe some um more like obvious evil like serial killers are like well the their childhood was a mystery it's like so yeah there's like this disconnect there's There's this like forced disconnect.
Caller:
[33:20] And it's, I think it's because it like we can, we can see when, when there are threats to like the false virtues, whatever false virtues that we, that we hold, that we use on a day-to-day basis to justify how we live.
So we like just, we lash out against that.
However we can. And I think that pattern is the one way that we do.
Caller:
[33:48] Keep that kind of keep that under like buried.
Stefan:
[33:55] Yeah, and I think it has a lot to do, of course, with covering up female evil.
Because the raising of babies and toddlers, which is where a lot of the sociopathy would have been implanted, the raising of babies and toddlers would be the responsibility, almost exclusively, of the mothers and the grandmothers and the aunts and so on, right?
So i think if we go to causeless evil or.
Stefan:
[34:29] Historical dominoes right like complete free will with no influence bob just mysteriously chooses to be evil for reasons of his own that he's 100 responsible and there's no external factors that would have caused this or given any excuse or causality.
So 100% total free will out of nowhere, no history, no past,
Stefan:
[34:55] just cautiously choosing evil.
That gets the parents, the mothers, in particular, off the hook.
And of course, if you talk about dominoes, all of these external environmental factors, the patriarchy and so on, right? lack of rights, and the mother's own childhood and all of this, right?
Then it's just a series of dominoes falling over.
And again, in neither circumstance do you ever have to assign moral responsibility, to the mother of the child, right?
Stefan:
[35:32] I mean, if people think my thinking is, you know, weird or bad or distorted or something like that, well, it's not like I've hidden my family's history with significant mental illness, like suicidality and institutionalization and EST and, like, just lots of crazy stuff going on.
So, you know, people could say, well, you know, Stef's got these distorted, strange ideas, But, you know, he was raised, blah, blah, blah, the family history and all of that, a lot of violence, a lot of insanity, and a lot of having to fend for himself from a very early age and all of this sort of stuff, right?
But that's not what happens, right?
It's not what happens with people you don't like. You give them perfect moral free will, and they're for 100% responsible.
They get no environmental explanations whatsoever. But if it's someone you have some sympathy from or need something from, then you'll give them excuses.
And in this way, we can, I think, see something we've probably known for quite some time, that most moral outrage is just politics by another name.
We need Japan to buy our bonds.
Stefan:
[36:54] That's sort of one answer, right? We need Japan to buy our bonds.
We need Japan to buy our goods.
Stefan:
[37:02] So we're not going to talk about those crimes.
But we will talk about the crimes of other countries and cultures, because we don't need things from them, or maybe we're getting reparations from them, or something like that, right?
But it's very much, it's not just selective outrage, it's complete opposite outrage.
You know, I mean, this is sort of an older, gooey thing, graphical user interface thing, where you have these sliders, you know, like if you have the sort of
Stefan:
[37:33] three RGB sliders up and down, right?
And you can move them up and down, more red, more green, more blue.
You can move them up and down individually.
So you think of two of those sliders. To me, the sliders always have to go together.
So if you have determinism versus free will, then it has to be for everyone.
You can't separate the slider. There's determinism or free will. That's it.
And what people do, though, is they say, well, I want two sliders.
I want two separate sliders completely unrelated to each other and it's the slider goes to maximum determinism for those I need or want or like or sympathize with or am indifferent to maybe but I think it's more around sympathy and need.
So they dial up to maximum free will.
Stefan:
[38:20] Sorry, they dial up to maximum determinism. My apologies. They dial up to maximum determinism. They're not responsible. They have all the excuses of determinism.
So there's a dial for my allies and friends maximum determinism and for my enemies and opponents, it's maximum free will.
Now, of course, they're both human beings, and so for the same species, for the same moral entity called human beings, you have both infinite determinism and infinite free will.
You have a level of determinism for your friends or allies that means they're not responsible for anything and can't be judged for anything.
Versus your enemies, who are also human beings, you have maximum free will, so that...
Stefan:
[39:15] They are responsible for everything and get excuses for nothing.
Which is really kind of schizo, if that makes sense. Well, it's completely schizo.
It's very dissociated. And it all sort of surprises me that people don't notice these.
Stefan:
[39:31] It's the story of my life, right? It really surprises me that people don't notice these absolutely blindingly obvious, almost infinite contradictions.
I mean, if you were to say, as a biologist, Well, my definition of mammals is, that the mammals are warm-blooded and also the opposite of warm-blooded.
Stefan:
[39:59] If you were to propose a law in physics that says the law is X and the opposite of X, you know, my law of thermodynamics is that that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred to energy and back, and also that matter can be completely created and destroyed and never transferred to energy and back.
I mean, people would say, well, that's crazy. I don't know exactly what's going on, but it ain't that.
It ain't that. I mean, even in marketing, right? I was a marketing director back in the day.
And if I were to say, I have like a 20-point plan about how we're going to expand market share, If I were to say, here's my 20-point plan about how exactly we should expand our market share.
Stefan:
[40:54] And we have to do this and the complete opposite.
There'd just be this embarrassed silence in the room, right?
What are you talking about?
You have to do X and the opposite of X. Your theory says that what's true is X and the opposite of X.
You have a category that includes X and the opposite of X, and your category isn't rank contradictions.
And yet, it seems like we do this all the time.
Stefan:
[41:24] All the time I mean for the left if it's people they like it's all environment environment environment and if it's people they don't like it's all causes evil no environmental explanations are ever applicable and even to suggest them is to excuse evildoers, it's just wild now I think the Christians are a little better with this because the Christians say that your soul exists independent of your environment and therefore you always have access to free will, because your soul can't fundamentally be buried or destroyed by circumstances.
So I think they get it a little closer to accurate. And of course, you've heard this a million times in the call-in shows.
I'm sort of trying to encapsulate the things that I've learned over the last 18 years.
And one of them, of course, is that whenever I do a role play with parents or people are talking about their parents, if their parents were abusive to them when they were kids, then.
Stefan:
[42:22] These people say.
Stefan:
[42:26] When they're role playing their parents or the parents say well I hit you for a kid when you were a kid because you were bad, and then when you confront the parents when you get to be an adult they say well I didn't really have a choice I was doing the best I could with the circumstances I had and I was hit as a child so what choice did I really have have.
So maybe it comes from this duality that the child who clearly has almost infinitely less free will than the adult, like a five-year-old kid who gets hit or a three-year-old kid who gets hit, has as close to infinitely less free will as an adult than can be imagined, gets 100% blame for his actions.
But the adult who's hitting him gets 0% blame for his actions.
And maybe that's, I mean, to me, this is kind of the root of evil.
It's this duality where you can ascribe your victims 100% free will, and thus hate them for their evil while ascribing yourself 100% free will.
Stefan:
[43:31] 100% determinism that you had no choice, that your actions were dictated by circumstances.
Now, listen, I can get this, and I don't want to say, of course, that all the Japanese soldiers in the 1940s were sadists. Of course not.
Some of them were decent people who were drafted and had a gun put to their heads and hated what they were doing. but, the mothers were not forced to be that abusive to their children, right there was no draft for mother abuse maternal abuse or paternal abuse of course right but given that this level of coldness, does often not always but it tends to produce the kind of personality structures Because I'm aware I'm saying, let's reduce determinism, but if the children are incredibly severely abused in the first couple of years of their life, their chances for sociopathy and psychopathy and sadism get way higher.
Stefan:
[44:40] That's observable. You know, whether that's because we don't have good means to fix it yet, I don't know exactly, but it certainly is an observable phenomenon.
And so, the mothers have choice.
Now, of course, the causality, right, the deterministic argument, I hear it in my head constantly, because it's kind of what we grow up with, at least for allies, is to say, well, but the mothers themselves, when they were babies, they were also mistreated.
They were mistreated and...
Stefan:
[45:12] And therefore, they were cruel and cold-hearted, and therefore, when they abused their children, they were just acting out.
Like, you can't say the mothers produced the sadists. Well, the mothers also were produced by sadists all the way back to the dawn of time.
In which case, okay, we can say that there's certainly an argument to be made for that.
But the cost of that argument is you can't condemn anyone.
Right? But, for cost and argument, which is to say, causality is responsible for the pretense of human choices.
It's all dominoes that pretend to be free will.
Well, then you can't go back in time and say, ah, well, the slave owners, like the, what was it, less than 2% of white southerners who owned slaves.
The slave owners were utterly corrupt and evil and immoral. It's like, well, no, they were raised in a situation of slavery.
Their parents were slave owners. Their slavery was legal.
So you can't then judge anyone, particularly in the historical context.
But that's not what happens, right? Where you can whip up guilt.
Stefan:
[46:31] You will apply the free will standard. it.
Where you can't whip up guilt, or it would be negative to your self-interest to whip up guilt, i.e. if you want Japan to support your economy, buy your products, and float you money for your government bonds, then you'll use the determinism argument.
Well, first of all, you won't bring it all. You won't bring any of it up.
But if it is brought up, you will start talking in this half-exhausted, paternally quasi-wise voice about, well, you have to understand the circumstances of the history and what came before and these pressures and those pressures and so on, right?
Stefan:
[47:16] You can't apply that evenly if you want to have enemies. And I think the whole point of all of this is to excuse your allies and attack your enemies.
And in a tiny way, it is a strange reflection or recreation of what the Japanese
Stefan:
[47:35] soldiers, in a way, were doing.
Which was, we good, you bad. everything we do is justified by, our superiority our Japanese-ness our loyalty to the emperor whatever is the case I assume that there was an element a significant element of racial supremacy in the Japanese culture 80 years ago, but you.
Stefan:
[48:05] Are not fully human human.
You are like an animal. I am fully human because I am superior, you're inferior.
And superior and inferior, it's funny, then the person you attack the most is the people you actually consider the most superior because the people you attack the most are the people you say, well, you guys, you have the complete capacity to rise above your history and make an absolute choice and avoid right choice and avoid no excuses no outside influences no determinism no environmental factors you're making a choice and avoid well that's pure free will and so the people that you hate you ascribe pure free will to and the people you wish to excuse you say are helpless, and mere pawns of fate and leaves on the stream of the river of life.
Stefan:
[49:06] And I think it is a way of making self and other. I mean, the whole point of UPB and so on is to unite us all in humanity with one rule.
You don't get two separate dials. You can't dial up free will for one person and dial down free will for another person or another group.
Whatever you dial up, you dial up for everyone.
Whatever you dial down, you dial down for everyone and for yourself as well.
But people want to work these levers like they're just not connected.
And I think that man's humanity to man has to do with these two different levers.
Of responsibility. You know, like so the, I don't know, the Japanese soldier in the 1930s who hates and loathes the Chinese, he's ascribing moral responsibility.
You're evil, you're corrupt, you're negative, you're decadent, you're whatever, right?
He's ascribing moral responsibility to someone for the simple involuntary act of having been born in China.
We're not responsible for where we're born, and of course back then it was pretty hard to leave the country and go elsewhere. Some did, but not many.
Stefan:
[50:13] It's like when I was a kid, and the West Ham United kid was like, yeah, your team sucks. My team rules.
Well, I happen to be born in the neighborhood where Crystal Palace is the team, and you happen to be born in the neighborhood where West Ham United is the team.
You didn't choose that. I didn't choose this. It's kind of pathetic to take pride in accidents, right?
But I think even within the human heart to divide those into those you sympathize for, for being victims of circumstances and those you liberate yourself to hate completely.
Because they are making all these evil choices in a pure void and have no excuse of circumstance.
I think is foundational as to why people end up hating each other so much.
They want to excuse their friends and hate their enemies, which means they have to apply determinism to their friends and choice and avoid infinite free will to their enemies without realizing that they're just completely severing any sanity in their hearts and minds.
So, yeah, that's the general thought I wanted to get across.
If you guys want to tell me what you think, I'd be happy to hear.
Caller:
[51:26] Yeah it's an interesting idea because like usually when i would like like how i normally think about this is like oh we look at them as animals which means we look at them without free will therefore we can attack them but in this case is like we're looking at them all with infinite free will therefore we can attack so kind of like puts that idea inverts that idea which is like never thought of it in that way well.
Stefan:
[51:52] Yeah i mean certainly people who hate me me, I've never seen anyone write about me who says, well, but if you look at them, they grew up in extreme poverty and violence and mental illness and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Of course, some of thinking is distorted, blah, blah, blah.
If that's what they would argue, right? I've never seen any of that.
I'm just like this causelessly evil guy who made a choice in a void to be bad and I get no circumstances.
But literally some murderer, they'll say, yes, but he was abused as a child and he grew up poor. You know what I mean? Like, it's wild to see this, in the kind of clarity that I'm striving to give it here. Absolutely wild.
Stefan:
[52:35] To see this.
Stefan:
[52:38] That, I mean, this is all over the place in communism, right?
Because in communism, they say, well, your consciousness is dictated by your relationship to the means of production.
But the bourgeois are totally evil and we should kill them. And it's like, what?
How can you have this scientific determinism that the bourgeois are not responsible, the capitalist class is not responsible for the contents of their minds because they just happen to be born into a control of the means of production.
And so, how can we hate them? We can't hate them.
Now, we love the proletariat because they're victims and they're completely, their consciousness is completely determined by the relationship with the means of production.
So they have no choice and no opportunities and so on.
They're deterministic. But the kulaks, the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, they're all, you know, stone evil.
The landlords, they're all stone evil and should be killed.
And it's like, so one group gets choice and avoid absolute infinite free will based upon their relationship to the means of production, but another group is purely victimized and deterministic based upon their relationship to the means of production, if that makes sense.
Stefan:
[53:46] That happens at a racial level too. Say, well, this racial group is a pure victim of circumstance, but this racial group is just causally evil.
And it's just like, the same thing happened, of course, in Rwanda.
Stefan:
[53:57] Between the Hutsis and the Tutsis or something like that.
Hutsus and the Tutsis, where they our side is just magnificent and great and your side is malevolent and evil and whenever your side is harming us, you know, we are pure victims of circumstance but you have infinite free will and therefore are just massively evil and can be just like, this duality is, I really think, is the source of a lot of violence and hatred.
And, you know, the mother who says, And you've, you know, heard this in a million different ways. The mother who says, oh, you kids are driving me crazy.
I hit you because you're bad. You, as a kid, have choice and avoid infinite free will, and you choose bad.
And therefore, I am forced to hit you.
I mean, it's wild. I think this duality of free will for your allies, including what you want to, sorry, determinism for your allies and what you want to do, and free will for your enemies and those you wish to harm, I think it's really foundational to the growth and spread of evil.
Caller:
[55:10] Right. I'd like to add to that. I'd say, yeah, in terms of me studying my enemies, in terms of studying their causes, yes, they had all this free will, but then it led to this now determinism of them not being redeemable.
They cannot now be redeemed, therefore we must attack them, therefore we must destroy them.
Now the enemies, in this deterministic state, because their previous choices let them like it's like oh i ate so much of this i smoke so much now i don't
Caller:
[55:39] have the free will to get rid of my lung cancer right so.
Stefan:
[55:42] Oh that's interesting if i understand what you're saying you're saying that if someone is making that complete choice in a void, with no causality no determinism no environmental factors then they're just evil and will continue to choose evil and therefore they can be legitimately destroyed is that right yeah Yeah, like deplatforming or whatever, right? Okay, that's interesting.
That's a great point. Yeah, well done, I say.
Caller:
[56:11] Because if they're redeemable, there's that little sense of like, hey, maybe we shouldn't, like there's a Christian redemption, right? Maybe we should destroy them, right? Right.
Stefan:
[56:19] And of course, the environmental argument has a lot to do with resource transfer.
So if you say, I'm a criminal because I'm poor in a state of society, right?
If you say, well, I'm a criminal because I'm poor, then it is in a sense a demand to get resources from the state so you won't be a criminal.
In other words, to get your resources by another form of coercion, right?
So if you can convince people that you are a victim, then you have no free will to choose better.
And the only thing that people can do is give you money and cross their fingers.
But then, of course, you're rewarding people for making claims of helplessness.
Stefan:
[57:05] And because the source of their income remains corrupt, government transfer, they haven't achieved any virtues, and the badness will probably continue or escalate.
I'm afraid my voice is not doing fantastically as you can hear.
I'm just on the tail end of a cold and I'm derasping fairly rapidly,
Stefan:
[57:22] but is there anything that anybody else wanted to add as we close things off?
I'm certainly happy to hear.
All right. Well, listen, thanks again so much. I'll keep this in the donut section because I probably need to work on it a little bit more, but I wanted to flesh out the idea with some brilliant feedback and what better place to go than y'all. all.
So again, massive thanks and appreciation for your support of the show.
Hey, look at that, you don't get a donation pitch because you're donors already.
So thanks a million everyone so much. And I will certainly talk to you Wednesday night for Wednesday Night Live.
And I really do appreciate you dropping by tonight and for all of your great support. I think we're doing fantastic stuff here.
And lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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