I've been procrastinating and stuck in the past for 19 years and can't stand the aging process. What can be done?
Was Plato's Republic a political project or a metaphorical work of irony?
Do we have free will or are we all determined, such as sapolsky or harris says we are?
What is morality and is there an absolute and objective morality?
Not philosophy question but I am wondering why you don't regularly chime in on current events? Not as often as before as far as I can tell.
How do we decide on what should be the proper functions of government??
Do you think the NAP is coherent with human nature? Or, conversely, aren't humans (as all animals) aggressive by nature?
Why is it that I can philosophise all day but as soon as someone asks me to do so, mind blank ? Could a topic jog a process for this maybe ?
If we create the world around us with our minds and those signals could easily be messed up how does one fundamentally believe their reality is real or just imagined. If we manifest our reality are we creating our own adversity to overcome.
At what age can a male or female make sexual choices for his or her self?
With all your talent and skills and added value you brought to the world in it's time of need, why of Why did you ever stop producing your "The truth about…" videos??? 😭😭
Please return to what you were Meant to do! The world needs you! 🙏🏻
What are good techniques to introduce such philosophy to people who have gone astray?
I grew up in and live in a pretty leftist area, but there are also a lot of people on the far right who could use philosophy, virtually everyone I know is a statist that doesn't even know the definition of anarchy, much less the underlying principles. The problem I tend to encounter is that people on both sides tend to think that logic and reason that doesn't fit their programming must be on the opposite extreme relative to where they're at.
It seems like anything rational is often opposed strongly by at least one "side", and often both sides.
I was fortunate to be going through some stuff that required me to open my mind to new ideas in order to survive and\or thrive, some would call it the gift of desperation. How does one approach people who aren't even willing to have an open mind?
What the heck are you meant to actually do with Hegelian dialectics? My head hurts.
WHO HAS SOLVED THIS?
The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" (10a)
0:00 - Introduction and Community Questions
3:13 - Procrastination and Mortality
7:40 - The Past and Its Lessons
9:25 - Plato's Republic and Totalitarianism
14:19 - Free Will vs. Determinism
22:37 - The Nature of Morality
26:29 - Philosophy and Current Events
28:25 - Government Functions and Human Nature
31:47 - Philosophy and Personal Growth
46:51 - The Hegelian Dialectic Explained
In this episode, I tackle a series of thought-provoking questions sourced directly from our vibrant community on Facebook. One of the first inquiries revolves around procrastination and the feeling of being stuck in the past for an extended period. I explore the profound connection between procrastination and our perception of time, suggesting that a lack of urgency and awareness of mortality often leads us to squander our days. I draw parallels with immortality, proposing that if we believed we had endless time, we would care little about the present moment's significance. I emphasize the idea that life's brevity is a call to action, urging listeners to seize opportunities for personal growth and achievement right now, dispelling the notion of “later” as the enemy of progress.
As I continue to delve into the implications of focusing too heavily on the past, I explain how memories should serve as lessons rather than burdens. I draw on personal anecdotes, illustrating how childhood experiences—like painful encounters with nettles—can teach us valuable lessons for the future. The essence of my argument is that while pain from the past may linger, it should not keep us from paving a better path ahead. Instead, it should guide us to make smarter choices. Acknowledging our mortality allows us to appreciate our limited time and motivates us to avoid the trap of procrastination.
Following this exploration of procrastination and the past, I pivot to a discussion on Plato's Republic. Here, I argue whether it serves as a political project or merely a metaphorical piece filled with irony. My critique extends to how the Republic presents an early blueprint for totalitarianism—an idea that dissects the symbiotic relationship between control, authority, and collective upbringing. I bring in the intersections between the welfare state and its benefits for people who find themselves unable to thrive in traditional family structures. This section highlights the complexities of human relationships and societal structures, ultimately framing it as a commentary on the fragile nature of personal responsibility and the incentives created by state structures.
The conversation deepens as I address free will and determinism, challenging the assertions made by figures like Sapolsky and Sam Harris. I argue that their take on free will neglects the unique human capacity for reason and error correction, drawing attention to the contradictions in their philosophies. This segment transitions into a critical examination of morality—can there be an absolute, universal morality? I reference my own works, advocating for the idea that moral principles can indeed be found through rational discourse and exploration of universally preferable behaviors.
I take a moment to reflect on my reduced engagement with current events since being deplatformed, explaining why I prefer to focus on philosophical inquiries rather than participate in a discourse that emphasizes power struggles over reasoned dialogue. This is followed by an exploration of the proper functions of government, emphasizing the dangers inherent in human nature when unchecked power is allowed to flourish.
I also reflect on the difficulties of introducing philosophical concepts to those who seem lost or disenchanted. The journey back to philosophical understanding is often fraught with discomfort and requires a strategic approach that respects individual identities while fostering broader societal inquiry. Throughout this episode, together we navigate the intricate web of procrastination, morality, free will, and our collective societal structures, all while encouraging a reflective and critical approach to understanding our existence.
I encourage listeners to examine their own lives, to confront their pasts with the intent to learn, and to actively participate in the grand philosophy of life to influence a brighter future for themselves and those around them.
[0:00] Good morning, good morning. It is Stefan Molyneux from freedomain.com. Some great questions from the community on Facebook. Number one, I've been procrastinating and stuck in the past for 19 years and can't stand the aging process. What can be done?
[0:17] So, procrastination is immortality. If you had immortality, then you would have precious little concern about how you were spending any individual day. If you had an infinity of money, you would not care about the cost of anything.
[0:39] And, or if you were, I don't know, if you had money printing jerk wads or whatever, then you wouldn't care about the costs of any individual thing, because you could just type whatever you wanted into your own bank account. So the major issue when it comes to procrastination is a lack of sense of time that is passing. Now, I say this with no giant sense of superiority. I've certainly wasted my own share of life and time. But in general, when you're on a limited budget, you spend wisely. And if you're on a limited budget, it, then you prioritize into have to have, nice to have, and so on, right? You have to have food and shelter. It's nice to have maybe a new phone or something like that, right? So prioritization is based upon finite resources and infinity of resources. Well, I mean, air in general, unless you break a scooper tank 200 feet below the ocean, you're not particularly concerned about That way you're getting your next breath from because air and oxygen are, to all intents and purposes, for any individual, infinite. So we don't really worry about those things. So procrastination comes from a stalling of the sense of time.
[2:02] And procrastination is the way that, it's a mechanism by which people are infected with the denial of their own potential. Sorry that was kind of an awkward way of phrasing it let me let me take another run at that so if you waste time you don't achieve your own potential if you don't achieve your own potential then you don't threaten the complacency of those around you you don't threaten the authority of the powers that be when you're deeply and powerfully yourself you can't stand to be ruled so getting you to forget your mortality and waste your time is a way of keeping you inert so that you're happy to be controlled. So you can't stand the aging process because the aging process is reminding you that life is brief. And if you're going to get something done, do it now, not later, not down the road, not maybe someday, but life is short. And we have a very quick snap of time with which to affect the world for the better.
[3:14] Life is short. In other words, the opposite of procrastination is mortality.
[3:22] Procrastination is saying, I have an infinity of days from which to pull. I can get it done later, later, later. And, you know, as the cheesy old song goes, written by the Beatles, covered by Phil Collins, tomorrow never comes. Later, later, later, well, the only thing that's later is a six-foot hole, an endless dirt nap, and us being recycled by worms. That's all that is later. I'll get it done later is effectively the same as, I'll never get it done. Now, we don't want to say to ourselves, I'll never get it done. And there's times where we change our course, right? I want to become a singer. I want to become an actor. Maybe I want to become a painter. And we try these things, and maybe we're not particularly good at them. We don't particularly enjoy them. They're not for us. So we try these things, and then we let them go. And that's totally fine. But when the trying is later, the achievement is never. So you try these things, see if they're for you, see if other people like them, see if you're doing it for the sake of vanity or whether you're doing it for the sake of beauty. Do you do the thing for the thing itself or do you do it for the applause and the money? Well, I think the best thing to do is to do it for the thing itself and if you can monetize it so much the better, but I do philosophy for the thing itself.
[4:45] Which is why the cheers and attacks of the crowd don't have much effect on me. I like the cheers, I prefer them to the attacks, but neither of them have particularly much effect on me because I'm here to concentrate my brain lasers on burning away the crud that obscures the truth from our often distracted minds, myself included, of course.
[5:06] So, if you're stuck in the past, you think that the past has value in and of itself, but the past has no value in and of itself. The past only has value insofar as it secures a better future. So, for instance, if you are a child, when you're a child, we all try this at one time or another. We do something that we are told will hurt us. When I was a kid on a hike in Ireland, I was about four or five years old, everyone told me, don't touch the leaves with these particular shapes because they're nettles and they will sting your hand. And I'm like, okay, let's find out. I've always been an empiricist. so I pinched the leaves and lo and behold it hurt my thumb. Now pain is not about the past because pain can't fix the past. If you pinch a nettle or you touch something that is hot I picked up I remember as a kid picking up a knife on a stove that had been too close to a burner that had been on recently and it burnt my finger. Now why does our body give us pain? Is it because of the past? No, because the past cannot be altered. Our bodies give us pain for the sake of the future. All the pains that are in your past are to do with keeping you safe, or at least safer, in the future. It is a way of conditioning us to not do things that are harmful to us.
[6:23] For some people, though, the pain becomes something they obsess over, which then turns the future into agony rather than protecting yourself. So when I touched the nettle as a four or five-year-old little boy, the lesson in that was not to obsess about how painful the nettle was, but rather to say, I should probably not touch nettles again in the future, and things will be pretty good, or at least they will be nettle pain-free. So, if you're obsessed about the past, which again happens to all of us and I sympathize, what you're not doing is you're recognizing that the past is there to help you in the future. We look back only so we can be safe going forward. If you focus on the pain of the past rather than use its lesson to protect yourself in the future, I think you're missing the purpose of pain. Now, if you remember that you're going to die, and if you remember that you have a strictly finite number of days left. Now, by strictly, I don't mean we know in advance when we're going to die. We're not in the movie crawl, but we do know that it's finite. We don't know when we will die, but we do know that we will die.
[7:40] So once you realize that you have a bleeding out amount of money you will spend it wisely because you don't get to take it with you all the time you waste does not get added to your life at the end of it in fact it can be subtracted from it if it makes you stressed and unhappy which can harm your health so procrastinating and stuck in the past for 19 years well you've missed some kind of essential lesson about safety and security. And you do have to remember that if you want to achieve anything great in your life, the odds that anyone in your past is going to be able to come along are very, very low. Some people, I guess, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, they were friends in high school, and they were both able to build successful movie careers. Good for them. Although they turned from good writers to fairly brain-dead action heroes. Thump, thump, drive, drive, climb, climb, shoot, shoot. Wow, that's so much better than Good Will Hunting. Well done, boys. But they were both able to come along.
[8:46] But most people, if you want to achieve something great, And the great doesn't have to be some big world-spanning thing, but it can be just having a great marriage. Let's say you have a wonderful relationship with a great spouse. How many people are going to come along for that journey? And I don't mean visit you from time to time, but enjoy and appreciate the quality and happiness of your relationship. Well, not many. So, procrastination could just be, I have potential, but my potential will be scalding to the narrow-minded people around me, and so I'm just going to stay down here in the low-rent district rather than achieve something great.
[9:25] So, yeah, remember you're going to die, and remember that all achievement comes at the cost of the comfort of the complacent around you. Nothing really can do about that, either accept it or don't. All right. Was Plato's Republic a political project or a metaphorical work of irony? So, Plato's Republic is one of the earliest known blueprints for totalitarianism, where the people in charge lie to everyone, families are raised in common, there's no private property, and it is a brutal combination of the worst aspects of communism, fascism, and eugenics. So, it is neither a political project or a metaphorical work of irony. So.
[10:09] If you look at politics without thinking of mating strategies, you're missing, I think, a lot of the point. So, for instance, if you look at the welfare state without thinking of it as a mating strategy, I think you're missing the point. So, women who have a child outside of wedlock in the past were heavily criticized and sometimes ostracized because children were a huge cost. Right? Children cost $100,000 or $200,000 or more, perhaps, to raise in sort of modern fiat currency standards. Probably be twice that by this time next week. And so who pays that price? Who pays the cost of raising children? Well, what are men investing in when they provide resources to their family? Well, they are investing in their own genetics. And so a man does not want to raise another man's child. In general, certainly, it's not evolutionarily productive to pour massive amounts of time, effort, and energy. 90% of a married father's paycheck goes to supporting his wife and children in a generally free society. And so the welfare state is a way of ensuring that single mothers still have access to relationships.
[11:29] Because single mothers do not say, I need you to give me, you know, let's say they have two kids, I need you to give me a couple of hundred thousand dollars because that would be a huge net negative and most men would rather spend that money on their own children. But the welfare state is taking away that cost so that single mothers still have access to relationships, because the costs are offloaded to taxpayers as a whole, or in other words, the less responsible, are subsidized at the expense of the more responsible. And of course, as we know, whatever you tax diminishes, whatever you subsidize, you get more of. So Plato's Republic, where families, children are raised in common, which of course has the, and they wouldn't even know their parents. I've got a whole four-hour examination of Plato. You can find it at fdrpodcast.com.
[12:23] Fdrpodcast.com, it's a really great search engine for this kind of stuff. So, why is it that people would even be tempted or drawn to living in a collectivist, syphilitic hellhole of all living together and sleeping together in common and not even know who their own children were? Of course, Plato was infinitely, almost infinitely prior to DNA and being able to figure out who was whose father. So why would people be drawn to that? Why would they want that? Well, they would be drawn to that and they would want that because...
[13:04] They are low-quality people that cannot summon pair bonding from quality people. And so, when they say we want to dissolve the family, what people are saying is, I cannot get a quality pair bonding with a quality person, so I am instead going to just have indiscriminate sex and hope and pray that my genes somehow get transferred that way. So it is a dangling of reproductive success to lower quality people, to people who don't have the virtues to get a great pair bond with a quality person. Person so saying you can reproduce without responsibility is saying to the people who can't summon a lifelong pair bond with a quality man or woman husband or wife father or mother well you are not willing to manifest the kind of virtues to get you a lifelong pair bonding so we'll just stick you in a giant vat of squirmy flesh and you can reproduce that way so it is a dangling for amoral or immoral people to have kids. So, all right.
[14:19] Do we have free will or are we all determined, such as Sapolsky and Sam Harris says we are?
[14:26] Well, the people who argue against free will are asking you to change your mind about free will. It is such a ridiculously obvious obvious, anti-rational position, that it takes a certain amount of insecurity, which I understand. I mean, these guys are, I guess, fairly imposing intellectual figures. But for someone to say, I want you to change your mind about whether you can change your mind, and I want you to change your mind to the position that you can't change your mind, and here's all the reason and evidence as to why you can't change your mind. Well, they're saying that you're a television set, right? A television set cannot change its own mind. A television set, it talks, right? People sounds come out of it, and it also these days has inputs in that you can ask it to search for various things and so on. So it has ears, it has sound, and it has human faces and so on. So it's saying that people are the same as a television set. Now, If someone like Sapolsky or Harris were to argue with a television set, in other words, if they were to have a debate with a television set, people would say, well, that's crazy, and they would never do that in a million years. They only ever debate with rational or at least open-to-reason human beings. They don't debate with lions. They don't debate with psychopaths. They don't debate with robots. They don't debate with televisions.
[15:49] They debate with human beings who claim to be open to reason and evidence.
[15:54] So they're saying because human beings are composed of atoms and atoms don't have free will everything that is composed of atoms does not have free will or nothing composed of atoms has free will since atoms don't have free will and all atoms and matter and energy is subject to the laws of physics which brook no exceptions blah blah blah blah okay so they're saying that you are the same as a television you're the same as a a piece of cheese you're the same as a mountain or a rock or a cloud, or the weather, right? The weather is a complex system that can't be predicted in detail, but whose broad patterns are understandable. And it's the same thing with people. You can't predict everyone's next decision in detail, but the madness of crowds follows a fairly predictable path.
[16:36] So the anti-free will people are saying that you are exactly the same as a television set or a ping pong table or a piece of insulation or a network cable, all right? Right? None of those things have free will. They're all composed of atoms. You're composed of atoms. None of your component atoms have any free will, so how can you have free will? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they're saying human beings are the same as everything else, yet they will only ever debate with human beings. That's a contradiction that should make people laugh at them incessantly. It's just an obvious, boring, trashy, completely mind-bogglingly apparent contradiction. Human beings are the same as everything else in the universe, but I will only ever debate with human beings and it would be complete madness to debate with anything that is not a human being.
[17:25] They don't debate with people in comas.
[17:28] So, it's just funny. It's just funny. It is saying that this lizard is the same as every other lizard, but this lizard has properties unique to this lizard and this lizard alone. It's a contradiction.
[17:42] Human beings are the same as everything else, but I will only ever debate with human beings. You can't hold both of those positions in a sane mind. I mean, you just can't. You can't say human beings are the same as everything else, but human beings have amazing singular characteristics, which is why I only debate with human beings and not television sets. So, you know, in a sane, well-educated society, this position would be laughable, and it would be driven from the public sphere with scorn and giggles, right?
[18:15] So, the whole issue of free will is the issue of emergent properties. So, no carbon atom is alive. It's true, no carbon atom possesses the characteristic called life. No carbon atom can move itself. However, if you put enough carbon atoms together in the shape of, say, a house cat, then the house cat is alive. And the house cat can move of its own accord. So this is called emergent properties.
[18:45] We can see this at a purely physical level, but something like a black hole, let's say. So a black hole has an emergent property called a gravity mass so powerful that even light cannot escape its grip, right? So light travels in generally in a straight line, but it bends slightly according to gravity. And with a black hole, it can't even emerge from the gravity well off the black hole. That's an emergent property. An emergent property is something that you do not possess as an individual, but you possess in a collective. No individual, I guess Rambo accepted, is an army, but you get enough people together, you can get an army. No individual is a crowd, yet you get enough of them together, you get a crowd. And so on, right? So we understand that no individual jumping up and down can break a bridge, but you get enough Americans on a bridge jumping up and down, and you can, or sumo wrestlers, which is, I guess, two sides of the same coin, and you can break a bridge, so it's just emergent properties. And the mind has the amazing capability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
[19:47] To compare proposed actions to ideal standards. That is unique to human beings. It's a facet of language and concept formation and so on. So we have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and that is what free will is. We have that choice.
[20:03] It could be the choice in terms of morality. What is the right or good or noble thing to do? We can compare our proposed actions to ideal standards. If you have a value called the non-aggression principle, responsible you can compare a proposed action called initiating the use of force to an ideal standard called the initiation of force is wrong and you can choose your behavior based upon that you can choose your behavior in non-moral standards as well you can say well if i want to lose weight there's an ideal standard called i don't know what is it something like a 500 calorie deficit a day gets you a pound a week weight loss so you have proposed actions eat more or less Yes, ideal standard, lose weight, and you can do that.
[20:47] You have, I want to find out truth about the universe, so I can either go to a mystic or a witch doctor, or I can pursue the rigid and objective and universal discipline called the scientific method. So proposed actions, gain knowledge, ideal standards, scientific method. I want a bridge to stand up. Well, you've got an ideal standard called engineering excellence, excellence which is what you would pursue to make sure the building stands up or the bridge stands up or whatever so we can compare proposed actions to ideal standards and we are unique in that capability certainly on earth and it seems to be in this corner of the universe so yeah we have free will because of course the people who are arguing against free will are saying there's an ideal standard called accepting the truth and you should accept the truth that there is no such thing as free will. Okay, so you should choose what's.
[21:42] Your state of mind based upon the ideal standards of pursuing truth and accepting truth. But if free will is our capability, and I think it is, I argue that it is, if free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, then people arguing against free will are using the mechanics of free will, in order to try to destroy free will, which is a very bizarre it's very bizarre and an otherworldly and unreal thing to do.
[22:15] It is it's hard to even find a reasonable analogy for how nutty this is it's like mailing a letter to someone saying that letters never never get delivered to the right address it's like using language to try and convey the thought that language cannot convey thought it is very very It's like phoning somebody to say that the phone doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a phone. It's very bizarre.
[22:37] What is morality, and is there an absolute and objective morality? Well, for more on this, you can consult my free book that has survived 15 years of fairly aggressive attacks called Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics. I also have a book called Essential Philosophy, which deals with the free will, and it deals with the universe as a simulation hypothesis, and it also deals with morality. You can get that at EssentialPhilosophy.com.
[23:05] So, yes, there is a universal and objective morality, and it is absolute. And it validates property rights, the non-aggression principle, self-defense, and it also validates that rape, theft, assault, and murder are all immoral. And it has to do with that there is such a thing as universally preferable behavior, and you can't argue against that without using it. Because if you say there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, and you should stop believing in that, you're saying that it's universally preferable behavior to believe in the truth that there is no such thing as universally preferable behavior, which again is a performative contradiction, it's a self-detonating argument, it is laughably wrong.
[23:46] Wrong in in the utterance you don't need any external standard right so the objective morality is that since there is such a thing as universally preferable behavior then all behavior that is claimed to be universally preferable must be both universal and preferable so what i mean by that is if you say that stealing is universally preferable behavior then you're saying that to be stolen from and to steal are universally preferable behaviors.
[24:18] Now, this faces the problem that if you propose a positive action as moral, such as stealing, what about people who are asleep? What about people who are going to the bathroom? What about people who are in a coma, right? They can't be stealing and being stolen from, they immoral, right? Because if stealing is the moral, then the opposite of stealing, which is respecting property rights, must be the immoral. and therefore people who are doing nothing are immoral, which offends basic sensibilities. I call it the coma test, right? Can somebody in a coma be evil? Well, no. So, if you also say that stealing from people and being stolen from is universally preferable behavior, then the problem is that everybody must want to steal and be stolen from in order to be moral. However, if you want to be stolen from, if you want somebody to take your property away, then you're not being stolen from and therefore the entire concept self detonates. If I want someone to take my property away I'm not being stolen from. So for instance we own ourselves and we own the contents of our bodies. However if you have a tumor and you want the doctor to remove the tumor he's not stealing from you in the way that somebody who drugs you and takes your kidney against your will is stealing from you. If you put a couch on the sidewalk but the sign says, take me please, and someone takes it from you, they're not stealing from you because you want them to take your property.
[25:41] So, stealing as a concept can only exist if it's asymmetrical. In other words, you want to take my property, I don't want you to take my property. But if I don't want you to take my property, then stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior.
[25:54] Because stealing is wanting to steal and be stolen from. If it's universally preferable behavior, it's wanting to steal and be stolen from everyone all the time, no matter what. Fails the coma test and also fails the basic test of logic that stealing has to be asymmetrical, right? In the same way that rape is asymmetrical in that the rapist wants sexual activity, but his victim most emphatically does not. Therefore, it cannot be universalized. Rape as a concept only exists when one person wants a sexual activity and the other person very desperately does not, and that's what makes it evil. Therefore, rape can never be universally preferable behavior, and it goes on and on.
[26:30] So yes, there is an absolute and objective morality. Alright, not a philosophical question, but I'm wondering why you don't regularly chime in on current events, not as often as before, as far as I can tell. Well...
[26:43] When I was deplatformed, I guess it was a little over four years ago, then I recognized that debate was not tolerated within society. And when debate is not tolerated within society, it just becomes propaganda and power and bullying and aggression and lies and slander and all kinds of stuff. But I don't play chess with people who don't respect the rules of chess, right? I mean, it's the old thing, like, why would you play chess with a pigeon? It just walks all over the board, poops on it, pecks the pieces over, and then thinks it's won. So I engage in a conversation with the world called reason and evidence. I make rational arguments. I provide evidence and sources. I interview subject matter experts, as I've done hundreds of times, hundreds of times over the course of my show. So I do the game, the civilized game, the game of civilization called reason and evidence. And when society is no longer interested in reason and evidence, but instead is inciting violence and using power and lies and slander and not addressing arguments, well, I take my ball and I go home. I'm happy to play baseball or basketball or soccer with people who want to play that game. but would you play soccer if when you scored a goal the opposing team beat you up.
[28:10] Or cut the brakes in your car, or, I don't know, spread rumors that you were some terrible evil person. Well, no, that's not the game called soccer. That's a whole other game. So I'm not going to disrespect reason and evidence by participating in conversations that have nothing to do with that.
[28:26] How do we decide on what should be the proper functions of a government? Well, we should recognize that human beings cannot handle power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolutely. Human beings cannot handle power, and therefore we should work to recognize the value of the non-aggression principle as widely as possible in society. Do you think the non-aggression principle is coherent with human nature, or conversely, aren't humans, as all animals, aggressive by nature? No. We don't know what human nature is because we raise children with violence and lies. The vast majority of parents use violence against their children either in the form of direct hittings or beatings verbal abuse which is a form of violence against children because the personality is being formed but they have no choice to leave and we indoctrinate them in schools we program them through the media so we don't know what human nature is because human nature is so distorted by lies and violence that it's like trying to study a an animal in a say, a really bad zoo, like a zoo where their animal is too confined, it doesn't get enough food and no mating opportunities, and say, well, I've learned something really, really.
[29:36] Important about the nature of the bear because I saw the bear in a traveling circus where it was beaten and chained and forced to dance. Well, no, you've learned about how trauma affects a bear, but you haven't learned anything about the nature of the bear, because for the nature of the bear to be revealed, you You would have to study the nature of the animal, not in a confined, tortuous state, right? So, are human beings aggressive by nature? That's like saying that human beings speak Japanese by nature. Well, if you raise them in Japan and you expose them to only Japanese, then they will grow up speaking Japanese. If you raise children according to violence and lies, then you will say, well, you know, people are just kind of violent and they lie a lot. And it's like, well, it's just the language you're teaching them when you're growing up. Now, I'm not a blank slate guy that says that you can turn a child into anything. I mean, there are certain constraints of our nature for sure.
[30:31] But I'm not sure how you would see human nature at the moment. I mean, if you were to study slaves throughout history and you were to say you studied only slaves, would you say that, well, people do manual labor, are kind of demotivated, they're kind of depressed, they're kind of aggressive, and so on? Well, you would be studying people in a state of slavery. You would not be studying the human nature of labor in a state of freedom. So, don't study animals in a zoo and think you're being a biologist in the wild. Human beings are contorted by propaganda and violence in their upbringing. But I can give you, if you want, and you can say human beings are aggressive by nature, okay, let's say that's true. I can certainly grant you that, because if the argument is fallacious, we can grant all the premises but one. And well actually we can run all the premises and let's say human beings are aggressive by nature okay so if human beings are aggressive by nature what is it that's going to limit their aggression well it is blowback or consequences so if you give say people control over a nation's entire currency, right if you make counterfeiting legal for a political elite so to speak then will that power or be abused? Well, certainly.
[31:48] Because what is it that's going to prevent people from counterfeiting? Well, it's going to be blowback. People are going to get mad at them. If they hand out their fake money to stores, the stores are going to get upset with them and are going to not want to associate with them. They're going to get a bad reputation and maybe there'll be blowback. Maybe there'll be, you know, people will want the fraudulently obtained items back. And if the counterfeiters who say, I don't know, they buy a car with the counterfeit money, then the car dealership comes and says, give me the car back, and may even use force to take that car back, well, that's going to be negative effects for counterfeiting, which is going to limit aggression, right? If you want to go and steal from someone, then you face, in a free society, you face the very real possibility, in fact, probability, that they'll be armed and capable of defending or may have some mechanism by which they would disable.
[32:45] You stole right so maybe they have a an app in their phone that if you steal their car and it gets a certain distance away from the car it won't operate as well or will coast to a stop or something like that right so they also have some ways of of either using aggression to prevent you from stealing or to punish you from stealing or to disable what you've stolen and so on right, so if you say human beings are naturally aggressive then we cannot give them massive amounts of political power by which they can exert their aggression in a consequence-free manner. That's only going to make it worse. All right.
[33:19] Why is it that I can philosophize all day, but as soon as someone asks me to do so, my mind goes blank? Could a topic jog a process for this, maybe? Well, I can tell you this from direct personal experience of many decades. I started getting into philosophy over 40 years ago in my mid-teens, and I'm now in my mid to late 50s. So philosophizing on your own is great fun it is powerful wonderful thrilling exciting, cool neat gives you goosebumps and brain prickles and all kinds of exciting, stuff gives you endorphin and dopamine and all kinds of happy joy joy juices that make the brain go we so philosophizing on your own is a blast philosophizing in society is just about the most extremes brought known to man. Philosophizing in your mind is great fun. Philosophizing in society is very dangerous, as just about every rational thinker over the course of human history.
[34:18] Has found out, to their joy, peril, danger, horror, and sometimes torture and death. It's one thing to speak reason within your own mind. It's quite another thing to speak reason out there in the world, where the majority of prophets these days come from lying, falsifying propagandizing and coercing. So your brain is just trying to save your ass. Shut down the thinking, cause it'd be dangerous. All right. If we create the world around us with our minds and those signals could easily be messed up, how does one fundamentally believe that reality is real and not just, or just imagined? If we are manifesting our reality, are we creating our own adversity to overcome?
[34:59] Are not manifesting your own reality life is not a simulation you're not creating things in your own mind and this is just arkham's razor right that the simplest explanation is usually the best so if you keep this argument brief essentialphilosophy.com you can get more of this of course so we exist in a universe of things we did not create right i'm looking at things around ground where I'm walking, and I did not create them, right? I did not create my workout gloves. I did not create this box that the pickleball set came in, right? I did not create this little adapter that goes from USB-C to 3.5 millimeter headphones. I didn't create these things. They exist, but I did not create them. So, of course, the rational explanation is they came from somebody else, other people. I'm creating this podcast, not you, and therefore, the new ideas that you you get from this podcast are coming from outside your mind and from inside my mind. Inside my mind are things that I did not create, such as the words that I'm using to convey the meaning that I'm striving to communicate. I did not create the English language, but I'm utilizing it to give you better ideas and arguments than pretty much anywhere else that you can get in my not-so-humble opinion.
[36:17] So, given that there are things in your mind that did not come from your mind, they must have come from other people's minds. If you look all around you, you see the frozen shapes of thought manifested in objects and ideas, shapes and things, arguments and avoidances, all created by other minds. So the simplest explanation is that you live in a universe that is objective, populated by other minds with various objectives, right? You've got the objective universe and minds with objectives. People who lie to you want to exploit you, people who tell you the truth want to liberate you, and that's the basic polarity of human existence.
[36:53] So, you can say, ah, yes, but perhaps, just maybe, all of the things I see around me are created by some external mind, and I'm this, René Descartes made this argument that you use the brain in the tank, wired up, being controlled by some matrix-style external demon, or devil, or angel, or consciousness, or something, there's a big computer program or something. It's like, okay, okay, so let's take that as an argument, okay, so it doesn't solve the problem. There are still things in your mind that are not created by your mind, it must have been created by some external mind. You say, ah, yes, well, but, but, you see, that external mind could be just this demon that's got me wired up in a tank, matrix style, and nothing is real, and okay, well, okay, but then that, let's call it Beelzebub, right, Beelzebub being the external demon that has created the brain in a tank simulation for you, right, the robots in the matrix or whatever. you want to call them. Beelzebub, right? Okay, so Beelzebub has wired you up to a brain in a tank for some purpose of which we know nothing in order to create the simulation for reasons we can't possibly explain. I guess in the Matrix, the idea was that the robots needed human beings as batteries because the nuclear war had wiped out the sun and they were solar-powered robots. Okay, so there's a motive there or whatever, right? Okay.
[38:10] So, Beelzebub, who's put your brain in a tank, does Beelzebub himself live in some external universe that is objective and real? Right.
[38:19] Beelzebub, the external demon, has to live in some universe that is objective and real in order to create the brain in the tank place that you live in or whatever, right? Okay. So, Beelzebub has created a brain in a tank because Beelzebub has a whole bunch of other Beelzebubs around him in an objective universe that's created the science to create your consciousness in a brain in a tank, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so you accept that there are multiple consciousnesses within an objective reality because Beelzebub and his friends have for some reason placed your brain in a simulation or matrix-style tank wired up to a stimuli that you think is external but is not and so on. Okay so you still exist you still accept the existence of rational consciousness in an objective universe that are utilizing things not created within their own minds all the beelzebubs who have to create the brain of the tank situation or the robots in the matrix they all exist within an external universe so you accept that there are rational consciousnesses in an external universe creating things not within their own mind or utilizing things that are not created by their own minds. Okay, so if you already accept that, why do you need the additional layer of a brain in a tank? So the simplest explanation is if you already accept that there's an objective universe with multiple consciousnesses, then that's your life. Putting in a layer of a brain in a tank just says that it exists just one step removed. There's no proof of that step.
[39:49] So the simplest thing to be would to accept that you live in an objective universe with consciousnesses around you that create things that are not you. Okay. All right. At what age can a male or female make sexual choices for his or herself? In a free society, there would be some generally accepted metric as to when a child becomes an adult.
[40:12] And maybe it would be some age like, you know, 18 or 19 or whatever it is. Or maybe it would be the result of some brain scan that showed a particular level of maturity or so on. So you can't tell.
[40:25] Society can't tell at an individual level but needs a semi-objective standard that is going to be utilized. All right. With all your talent and skills and added value you brought to the world in its time of need, why, oh why, did you ever stop producing your The Truth About videos? videos, please return to what you were meant to do. The world needs you. Well, no, the world doesn't need me. And I mean, the world has made that very clear to me, right? So when I was deplatformed, right? So I want you to sort of use this as an analogy to understand why now I'm still I'm producing my truth about videos, but obviously not as many and so on, right? And not really on current events. Some on tech, I did the truth of two, two part series, the truth about AI that was It was very fascinating to me and to others, but I want you to imagine this, right? So the love of your life, the woman of your dreams, lives across the street from you. It's a miracle. The perfect woman for you was placed by the universe or providence in the house directly opposite from you. You love her. You go to see her every day. You bring her flowers. You write her poetry. She does wonderful things for you. She cooks. She writes sonnets, and you all are just looking forward to a life together of joy and bliss and love. Beautiful, wonderful, lovely stuff. Now, then...
[41:45] Something happens, man. Something happens. And this woman, she moves one house over. So instead of going straight across the street, you have to go at a, say, 15 degree angle. And it probably is maybe, just maybe.
[42:02] Another eight or 10 steps that you have to take to get to her house. Now, if you were then to completely forget about this woman, she would completely vanish from your mind. And you were to go years without really thinking about her, and then somebody shows you a picture of her, and you're like, oh yeah, that woman, she was great. Yeah, she used to live right across the street, then she had to move. Would that make any sense? If you were to protest that you loved this woman, she was the most necessary person in the whole universe to you, the sun rose and sat on your adoration for her and so on, but she moved one house over, and then you completely forgot about her, you would understand that nobody would take your protestations of love or affection seriously at all, right? So what happened when I was deplatformed is I moved a website over. I mean, I still had freedomain.com, but I moved a website over. So instead of being on YouTube, I was on Locals, I was on BitChute, I was on a wide variety of other video platforms, I was on DLive, and just Brighteon and Dailymotion. I was just one website over, right? And about 95 to 97% of people who claimed to love me and I was wonderful and so essential for them, when I went one website over, in other words, I was the love of their life, I moved one house over, 95 to 97% of people forgot about me.
[43:30] Know that in most people's minds, this is like, oh, man, he must be so bitter. And I'm like, I mean, it was a bit of a surprise, I suppose. But it was incredibly liberating. And I'm actually far happier now, because I'm doing really core great philosophy, rather than the current events, which was, you know, I mean, quite a roller coaster in many ways, and became increasingly dangerous, as rhetoric against me escalated to, you know, obviously, try to provoke the crazy, dangerous levels. So when you say the world needs me, I think you are not working with correct information. I am in possession, and it's been a really, really fascinating, fascinating, fascinating thing to see. So I'm in possession of information that you're not, which is how many people truly care about what I do philosophically. Now, there are some people who absolutely care about what I do, and I appreciate the question, and maybe you're one of them, and so on. But when you say the world needs you, you don't have the data. I'd say this without any hostility. I'm just giving you the facts, right? You don't have the data that I have. I have the most liberating data in the world.
[44:38] Which is that people who claimed to think that I was very important and very useful and very helpful and so on, those people who claim to, quote, love what I do or love philosophy in the way that I practice it, when I moved one website over, they just forgot about me completely. And I say this again I know it's kind of incomprehensible he must be really bitter that his audience abandoned him it's like no no no I'm thrilled I'm thrilled again it was a bit of a transition and so on but I'm thrilled.
[45:09] Because if people can forget about you, you don't risk your life for them, right? So, just so you know. What are good techniques to introduce such philosophy to people who have gone astray?
[45:22] Well, unfortunately, to bring people to philosophy is like trying to bring them to physical health. So, if there's some overweight smoker, then to bring them to health, you have to denormalize them being fat and smoking. And they're going to go through massive amounts of unhappiness in the process of quitting smoking and losing weight. And so philosophy, when people have been led astray, philosophy comes first as a significant agony in their lives. It's very, very painful to realize you've been lied to, to realize that you have been only pretending to be good, which has served evil, and that the actual achievement of virtue is going to cause massive amounts of conflict and hostility and pain in your personal relationships. You could be married to the wrong person. You could be embedded in a family that's corrupt. You could have friends who are decadent and waitstrolls and so on. So, I don't know, man. I mean, maybe what you can do is if you have people who are pursuing unhealthy lifestyles, right? They don't exercise. They don't eat well. They don't get enough sunlight. They don't, you know, they smoke or drink to excess and so on, which, you know, in drinking is pretty much any drink and in smoking is pretty much any cigarette in my humble and obviously amateur opinion. So you have people who are pursuing unhealthy lifestyles oh well, can you convince them to do something that is better for their health? right? Well, if you can get people to do things that are better for their health which is uncontroversial.
[46:52] Somebody who's fat, if they lose weight, people are almost universally like, hey, good for you, or well done, and, you know, they get lots of praise and positivity, it's better for their health, you know, they deal with the discomfort of perhaps hunger and so on, but they get better mobility, their clothes fit better, and their joints hurt less, and their back hurts less, and they can climb stairs, and so they have a generally positive experience pretty quickly, whereas the happiness that philosophy can engender can take considerably longer to manifest although it tends to be absolutely beautiful when you get it but see if people are open to change for the better that is socially approved of but talking about virtue is a very, very volatile thing alright, I think we've had a good chitty chat let me just see if there's anything else What the heck are you meant to do, actually do with Hegelian dialectic? My head hurts. Yeah, well, of course, the Hegelian dialectic is thesis, antithesis, synthesis, right? So the thesis is capitalism. The antithesis is communism. The synthesis is semi-socialist democracy.
[48:04] And you're supposed to laugh at it. Honestly, you're just supposed to laugh at it. I mean, okay, so we're talking about the use of violence in society because it's about politics, right? the use of coercion. So I would ask someone, okay, so a woman does not want to be raped. A man wants to rape her because he's an evil son of a gun, right? So a woman does not want to be raped. A man wants to rape her. So the thesis is, don't rape me. The antithesis is, I want to. And what is the synthesis?
[48:34] What is the compromise there? If I say, I don't want you to, I'm a diabetic, and I don't want you to steal all my insulin, right? If I'm a diabetic, I don't want you to steal all my insulin because it's going to really risk my health and life. And you say, well, no, I do want to steal all the insulin. Okay, well, what's the synthesis? Just steal half? What does that mean? What is the compromise? I don't want you to poison me. You want to poison me. That's a thesis and an antithesis. What is the synthesis? Half poison me? I mean, it is just a way of giving people an excuse to compromise with evil doers. And it is promoted because it serves that end, of course, right? Who has solved this? Oh, yeah, who has solved the Euthyphro dilemma? So, in Plato's dialogue, Euthyphro, Socrates asks this basic question.
[49:24] Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? which goes to the question of the Ten Commandments. Are the Ten Commandments virtuous because God loves them and says that they're right? In other words, are they only virtuous because God says so? Or does God love the Ten Commandments because they are virtuous and God loves virtue? Now, if we say that that which God commands is virtuous is only virtuous because God commands it, then we're saying that virtue has no rational or objective definition and virtue is just whatever the most powerful person says it is, which is pretty bad in the human context, right? It's the difference between a positive law and natural law, right? So positive law says that the good is the legal and natural law says that the good is independent of the law and the law has to serve that which is the good. So there is no good answer to this question. So if we say god commands us to be virtuous because god loves virtue that is independent of god's will then we should study that virtue rather than god's commandments if we say that.
[50:33] God's commandments are virtuous because god is all powerful and commanded then we're saying that the good is defined by those in power and that is very very bad for human society and leads to all kinds of terrible awful concentration camps and holocausts and holodomors and all kinds of terrible stuff so the answer of course is to work to define morality objectively and rationally as i have striven and succeeded in over the past close to 20 years so thank you so much for listening i really do appreciate these great questions keep them coming on facebook you can find me at freedomain.locals.com you can join that community and there's a great community also at subscribe.com free domain lots of love from up here i'll talk to you soon bye.
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