0:00 - Morning Reflections
2:22 - Lost in the Woods
5:14 - Refusal to be Corrected
6:36 - Tipping Point of Corruption
12:48 - Identifying Evil
14:00 - Effects of Historical Culling, Continued
14:00 - Effects of Historical Culling
25:22 - The Pool Incident
29:11 - Society's Moral Teachings
30:08 - The Big Question
37:53 - Following Instructions
41:40 - Society's Moral Rules
47:46 - The Origin Story
52:56 - Accepting Society's Morals
Stefan Molyneux opens the podcast by sharing his moments of morning contemplation and the profound impact of philosophy on his life choices. He dives into the significance of ethical guidance in shaping his moral compass and reflects on the paths his life could have taken without philosophy, emphasizing the crucial role of introspection in guiding one's actions.
Transitioning to the theme of redemption, Molyneux explores the idea of individuals being beyond salvaging and draws parallels to societal desensitization to ethical boundaries in popular culture. By dissecting Quentin Tarantino's artistic expressions devoid of moral constraints, he raises questions about the glorification of evil and its implications on societal values, painting a stark picture of humanity without redemption.
Delving into historical contexts, Molyneux references England's historical practices of purging criminals from society and reflects on the societal norms that instilled a fear of social disapproval, linking individual choices to ancestral survival instincts influenced by societal consequences. He shares personal anecdotes to illustrate the impact of adhering to social norms and ethical boundaries on shaping individual destinies and cultural norms.
Reflecting on his own upbringing, Molyneux shares childhood experiences that instilled universal values of non-violence, property respect, and truthfulness across different schooling environments. He underscores the importance of compliance to avoid negative consequences, highlighting the nuanced approach to conflict resolution and the value of restraint in upholding moral principles.
The speaker continues by juxtaposing societal norms with personal anecdotes, emphasizing the absurdity of violent behaviors in contrast with fundamental values nurtured since childhood. Through introspective recollections, they challenge the notion of societal norms and stress the consistency in moral teachings to foster a cohesive understanding of ethics and behavior, underscoring the enduring impact of early lessons on moral compass and integrity in navigating life's complexities.
In the later segment, the speaker delves into their personal experiences growing up, reflecting on how upbringing shaped their philosophical outlook. They recount instances from their past jobs and childhood lessons on non-violence, respect for property, and adherence to societal rules, emphasizing the importance of upholding universal values for a harmonious society. Through skepticism towards societal norms and a quest for logical reasoning to uphold moral principles, the speaker shares anecdotes on personal relationships and philosophical concepts as tools for introspection and understanding personal motivations.
As the podcast concludes with a glimpse into future segments, the speaker invites listeners to dive into the paths that life might have taken without philosophy, expressing gratitude for their support and engagement.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. Hope you're doing well. So, I do love me that morning time. A time after I wake up, but before I get out of bed, where I get to doze and explore and think and play with my brain. And this morning, I was thinking about the life unlived, the optional, possible, different life. And it's a wild thing, really. And every now and then I get like almost literal bone chills when I think about all the different circumstances that had me leading up to meeting my wife.
[0:44] And how my life would have been different if that had not, any one of those million butterfly effect things had not occurred. And I think about what my life would have been sans philosophie, without philosophy. And it's a pretty chilling and terrifying thing. I mean, my not entirely inconsiderable talents would have been put to use for others. dangerous, malevolent people. My fairly decent youthful good looks and speaking abilities and charisma and so on, and it was in some ways trying to be harnessed by some bad people in the business world, but that was for mere profit, not direct moral corruption.
[1:40] But it is an appalling thing to think of what my life would have been like without philosophy. But I did play that fast forward. You know, you go back to that fork in the road, and you play the fast forward in a different direction, right? Ah, beautiful. Just beautiful, beautiful. I hope, I hope, I hope that you get out into nature, and you enjoy just how beautiful it is, even with the occasional plane noises.
[2:22] Imagine if I was lost in the woods and needed that plane to find me. Too much of a canopy. They could not see me. So I think of the lifeless lived, the life unlived without philosophy.
[2:41] And I really began to feel in my mind towards what would be considered a tipping point. And the tipping point is, when are people unrecoverable to virtue? When can they not regain or retain their integrity? When do they flow over that slow, bloody waterfall of infinite decadence and fall and fall and fall forever? ever. It's a terrifying commentary in J.D. Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye, where he goes to his creepy old half-pedo teacher, and his teacher says, you're the kind of guy who shoots rubber bands in the office, which wasn't too terrifying. Something else, I think, and then there's something about that you're falling and falling.
[3:51] And you don't even know that you're falling. It's a terrifying, terrifying universe. Once there's a life without standards, without morals, right? So what are the steps that make people unrecoverable to virtue, right? So this is back to the triage analogy that I've used before. Hey, look at me. I'm in the forest talking about triage. As the trees age. So, what are the steps that have people slide towards corruption that is unrecoverable? And we need to know that because we need to know when we're giving medicine to the dead. We need to know when we're giving medicine to the dead, so that we don't waste our time. And there is a sort of manipulative resource transfer that happens when people say, I can be saved. I'm sad. I can be saved.
[5:14] I mean, I remember an ex-girlfriend, after I broke up with her, she said, so lonely, so alone. And I really got a chilling sense of the gulf that her fairly bottomless isolation had opened up. Right, some of the selfishness that happens with people. How much that had, spider web on the arm, how much that had isolated her. And the refusal to be corrected is the acceptance of isolation, right? That's really one of the saddest things around. The people who refuse to be corrected, who refuse to take feedback, who refuse to submit their angry will to reason and evidence end up unbelievably isolated. led it. It's the old, I'm right, and I'm alone. I'm always right, and I'm alone. It seems like every time I go into these GD woods, some bug inevitably flies directly into my ears. Like, don't you have anything better place? Don't you have any better place to go? No bugs in there. They've all, my brain has been debugged. There's nothing for you in the old ear. But.
[6:37] But so the corruption, when is it beyond recovery? When are people beyond saving? So I think of Quentin Tarantino in these areas. Quentin Tarantino, I consider a massively, I mean, obviously an entertaining guy. That's the kind of creativity that no moral boundaries can generate. If you have this, if you have no moral boundaries or no desire to do good with your art, then there's no degree of shock value that you cannot explore that is barred to you. You can show whatever ugliness you want. You can show whatever corruption you want. And you don't have the challenge of showing good people. There are no good people in Quentin Tarantino movies. It is all just a slice of gaudy, manipulative hell. An endless devil's layer chocolate cake.
[7:51] Sweet, empty, destructive. So he doesn't have any intention of trying to portray virtue, so he can just fall forever and corrupt the culture as a whole. And so, yeah, you can have guys slicing off ears. You can have plunging hypodermics into hearts. You can have gunning people down in a room. You can have accidental shootings of people in a car. You can have all sorts of absolute trash occurring with no reformation possible. And he is a nerdy theater kid made good, right? And he's also picked for his ability. To do what he does, right? And again, some of the scripts can be interesting and entertaining, but it's all just a bottomless well of traumatized nihilism seeking to spread. I mean, like a virus that spreads bruises.
[9:01] Particularly on the heart. So I remember many years ago, I watched the show Alias, and I think, he showed up, Quentin Tarantino showed up as a self-consciously cool, evil guy, you know, that sneer, that snarl, and so on. And I mean, sorry, he doesn't have the face or the hair to to pull it off so that sort of self-consciously i'm cool for being bad bad is cool bad and this is why you take a woman like uh uh uma thurman who is uh a beautiful and lithe and talented and so on and she worked with of course quentin tarantino on a bunch of movies pulp fiction and she was the lead in Kill Bill and so on. I remember she was talking about how frustrating it was post-Baby Wait to lose the weight she needed to make the character look cool and perfect. So you just take pretty charismatic people and you put them into desperately violent situations with no redemption, and you call it art.
[10:11] And it is, you know, fairly repulsive. And he does, to his vague credit, lift the lid on how miserable people are in this world. Look at the scene of, well, the sort of semi-pedo Leon professional French movie with the very young Natalie Portman, where Leonardo DiCaprio's character is talking to the girl and sharing way too much of himself with her. What if i remember was kind of a little girl that's all kind of creepy creepy as get up right and wasn't it uh quentin tarantino who had a character in one of his movies um lick liquid from salma hayek's feet and put himself in that role so yeah it's uh fairly nasty stuff.
[11:07] But he does show the misery of the people from time to time. But it's all cool and hip and everybody's neato and they don't show any self-doubt and they're all physically attractive and they don't strive for anything better, really. And all that. And it's dark and it's ugly and nihilistic and just terrible all around. Just terrible all around. because you don't have the tension of trying to create a good person. Trying to create a good person, an honest person, a decent person, a person who grows and changes and fights his insecurities or doubts and emerges as a great or better person. And that's just not there. It's just all evil all the time. And that's gross. And of course, you know, it tells you about all the actors, right? All the actors who get involved in these.
[12:10] Celluloid shit stains of nihilism. They're all actors who are happy to do it. Well, of course, they know they're going to get accolades and all of that, but this is probably the corruption of people like Brad Pitt that his son was talking about. So, what is it that gives people, or has people end up in this tipping point? This tipping point of corruption where everything becomes irredeemable.
[12:48] Well, as I say, it has to become cool. And the tipping point is when evil is clearly identified and attacked. And ostracized and punished and all of that. When evil is attacked, then it's on the run, it's on the retreat. And I think of this time period in human history. I'm not exactly sure how long it was. Probably, I would say, pretty much everything in England, post-Black Death until 1914. So, you know, six, seven hundred years. And what happened was the people who were criminals were taken out of society. They were executed or they were shipped off to Australia or other colonies. And about 1% of the population was taken out of society every year.
[14:00] And that has had a big effect on me, obviously, growing up in England and of that stock as a whole, although I'm half Irish, half German. So, I mean, I'm not sure how that all factors into it. But when you have a society that identifies evildoers and takes them out of the reproduction pool, right? Because there's some element of violence that probably has a genetic basis. I've talked about this before on the show. Some of the research indicates. Who knows what the conclusive proof is, but there's indications. So, when you're taking out 1% of the most violent people in society, and whether that's jail for their reproductive years, whether that is shipping them off to Australia, or whether that is outright execution, or, you know, just ostracism as a whole. And it can be roaming the streets, but if women don't breed with them, then the genes don't spread, right? Or if it's just the environment, maybe it's all environmental, but you're still not having people raised by violent people in that kind of environment, right? So what that means to me is that those who were not terrified of social norms.
[15:29] Didn't make it. Again, doesn't matter whether it's genes or environments, probably a combo of both. But in England, if you were violent and broke significant laws.
[15:44] Then you would be taken out of society. And this process where 1% of the most violent men were taken out of society every year resulted in a society where people are terrified of social disapproval. I mean, I think this happened in the West as a whole, but the data is more clear for England. You ended up with people who were terrified of social disapproval. Like, you know, this common fear of having to get up and speak in front of a crowd. Well, generally, the reason why people are frightened of that, which makes perfect sense to me, they're frightened of that because when you would get up and speak in front of a crowd, it usually or often had to do with defending your innocence against criminal charges, which often meant genetic or physical death if you failed, right? So people would be nervous to get up and speak in front of a crowd because that would mean that they were being charged with some crime and they were now kind of fighting for their lives. So the crowd is a predator. A moral crowd is a predator to evildoers. So they didn't want...
[17:10] People didn't want to go through that so they'd be frightened of public speaking. That's usually what it has to do with.
[17:19] So, you end up, of course, if you look at the UK, right, you end up in a situation where the only people who survived this mass culling of social nonconformists or evildoers, right? I mean, I know there was overlaps. I'm not saying it's 100%. But a lot of what was done was done with violent people, murderers, rapists, home invaders, and so on, right? They'll all be killed or deported or something like that, right? Or they'd flee. They would flee to the colonies or something like that, right? So you end up in a society where people are terrified of breaking social norms, because there's a ruthless infliction of punishment on those who do break social norms.
[18:10] And a lot of those social norms are just. Some of them, of course, are unjust. Just but if you look at this this culling in a sense that went on for i mean more than half a millennia right more than 500 years probably to one degree or another you were looking at who who survives that culling people who are terrified of breaking social norms now i remember of course I was a minor shoplifter in my early teens, and at one point I just, I remember standing in front of a sunglasses rack in Eaton's in the Don Mills Mall way back in the day, and thinking, I really want sunglasses. glasses. Of course, I didn't have any money, and I didn't respect any of society's rules, because society didn't protect me, so why would I protect society? I felt in a state of nature. I mean, I didn't articulate it all this, but looking back, that's what was going on.
[19:08] And I remember looking at the sunglasses rack, looking around, this was long before cameras and all of that, and thinking, well, I could take the sunglasses. But I felt this fear, right? This fear of that. And I think that was because my ancestors who, like, my ancestors didn't take the sunglasses, which is why I exist. But my the people who did take the sunglasses so to speak did not survive did not survive to reproduce at least within england for various reasons again could be deportation could be, killing could be long-term imprisonment could be the self-deportation of fleeing somewhere else, so that fear is what survives the culling or the fear is the only way you survive the culling Don't steal, right? Because the only people who survived were the people who didn't steal. Now, I'm not talking about the morals of any of this. I'm just talking about the sequence, right? What happens?
[20:24] So people who didn't feel fear staring at the sunglasses rack didn't survive, didn't make it. And so, it's funny, you know, there are a lot of people who think I'm an iconoclast, a rebel, an outlaw, an extremist, or whatever nonsense they come up with. None of that, of course, is even remotely true.
[20:54] I'm, in many ways, the most ridiculous conformist that is there. This is just a minor tangent. It's just a by-the-by. I just find it kind of funny when people think I'm out there, or whatever it is. No, no, it's the most banal, conformist stuff that I do, in many ways. Right? Because nothing I talk about, people disagree with, fundamentally. All I did was I took the ethics I was taught as a child, and said, oh, okay, what if I take these ethics seriously? Right? I mean, what do I argue for? I argue for a respect for property rights, which I was taught as a child. Don't take, don't steal, don't grab, right? And don't use violence to get what you want. Instead, negotiate rationally.
[21:49] It really is the most banal, and this shows you just how crazy society is, that when you take what society says is the good, and it's universal and consistent, right? They didn't say, well, you can't push other kids and take their lunch money. You can't push them down and take their lunch money on Mondays and Wednesdays, but you can Thursdays and Fridays and Tuesdays, I guess. Nobody said that to me. Nobody said, well, at this school, you can't be a bully, but at that school, you can. Nobody said that inside the classroom, inside the school, you can't take other kids' stuff, but when you get to the playground, all bets are off and it's a free-for-all. Right?
[22:37] I was taught that respect for persons and property, don't use violence, respect property, I was taught that these were universal. And I had, of course, I mean, I went to a variety of schools when I was a kid. I went to kindergarten near my aunt's house where I was staying because my mother was being hospitalized with depression and anxiety or whatever she was going through. I went to kindergarten there. I went to public school elsewhere. Then I went to boarding school. And then I went to another public school. And then I took entrance exams to go to Scotland. and then I was out in Africa and then I came to Canada. So I went to a wide variety of schools in a wide variety of countries, continents, hemispheres. And every school told me the same thing. Don't use force, don't use violence.
[23:36] And respect property. That's not yours, don't take it. I remember when I was at boarding school, I lost a pen and they reported that a pen had been found and I went to the headmasters and said, I lost a pen. The headmaster held up this beautiful gold pen and I said, well, that's a lovely pen, but it's not mine. It's not mine. So I remember the headmaster being quite surprised and saying, well, that's very decent of you. And I'm like, but it's not me. So I shouldn't take other people's property, even if it's kind of half-willingly handed over because.
[24:16] They're offering you a pen because you say you lost one, and I did lose one, and they found one. So everywhere I went, I was told the same things. Don't use violence. Don't push, don't hit. Don't thump. Don't trip. Don't use violence. I mean, I remember when a friend of mine and I were bored in gym class, and to have a 13 or 14-year-old boy bored in gym class is a special kind of bad teaching. It's not an easy thing to do. But we were getting some stupid lecture, as we always did, about safety and care and blah, blah, blah. And my friend and I were wrestling by the side of the pool a little bit, and he was trying to push me in. I was trying to push him in. And I was caught and given another lecture. And the gym teacher, I smelled of tobacco, right? The gym teacher said, did you push him in the pool? And I said, well, kind of.
[25:23] And the reason I said kind of was because, someone's going to have a field day over the future comparing these stories and noting tiny discrepancies, or maybe not so tiny discrepancies, but the moral of the story is what counts. so.
[25:42] The gym teacher said did you push him into the pool and I said kind of or a little bit and the reason being that we were both trying to push each other into the pool I just happened to win right we're both trying to push each other into the pool I just happened to be the one who won that particular battle right so then the gym teacher snapped at me when I I said, a little bit. Did you push your friend into the pool? And I said, a little bit. And the gym teacher got very angry or impatient or, you know, vaguely contemptuous and said, a little bit. That's like, you pushed him a little bit. That's like being a little bit pregnant.
[26:20] It's like being kind of pregnant. It's binary. Well, he didn't say it's binary, but that was sort of the, so there was no ambiguity and ambivalence. It wasn't like, well, we were bored and we were both trying to push each other into the pool. I just happened to win that time. So I didn't just push him into the pool right but there was no ambivalence there was no complexity there was no well i didn't just randomly push him into the pool we were bored and wrestling with each other so uh i was i got in trouble you see i got in trouble for um wrestling with the boy and pushing him into the pool see See, that's, you see, how much violence was frowned upon. Oh my gosh, it's just so terrible. I mean, you were sitting by a pool and you pushed a boy into the water.
[27:14] In other words, he got wet.
[27:20] My God, the boy is traumatized from dampness, right? So, and of course, I mean, you know, now looking back so many years, decades really later, we understand that teachers are very sensitive about being boring, and they'll get angry at you if you're bored. If you're not listening if you're bored they consider it disrespectful so i got in trouble see violence was so frowned upon that i got in trouble for pushing a boy from a seated position with his feet in the water to actually being in the water and it was in the shallow end too so he literally could stand so at a swimming pool where we're all in bathing suits and we're about out to swim i got in trouble because i got a guy wet say five or ten minutes before he was supposed to get wet see that's you see that's how just terrible it was to be to even using a use a hint of violence even though i wasn't violent we were just wrestling it was just fun so i wasn't violent.
[28:34] I did no harm to the boy he was going to get wet anyway we were in bathing suits his feet and knees up to his knees were already in the water he was always already kicking back and forth but you see it was just so terrible what I did that I got in trouble that's how bad things were that's how bad things were to use any kind of violence you got to tell the truth don't use violence and respect people's property, respect people's property that's what I was told.
[29:11] So, I'm not doing anything even remotely radical. I mean, that's what's so funny to me. I mean, literally, it is hilarious to me that people think that I'm doing anything even remotely controversial or radical. All I'm doing is I'm saying to society, you told me this was the good, so I'm going to accept that this is the good. You told me what was moral. I'm not even trolling. I'm not saying anything. I'm simply giving the facts of the situation. All I'm doing is society told me what was moral. Don't use violence. Self-defense might be okay because, you know, I was also told that self-defense was valid, right? Because if you'd get into a fight, and I've never gotten into a fist fight, I've gotten into a lot of, I've gotten into a couple of wrestling fights and and so on but i've never gotten into a fist fight.
[30:08] But i was told that self-defense is okay it's fine because the big question when there would be a fight and we always heard this right a big question would be who started it right and the reason that you were asked who started it is because it's fine if it's self-defense If some other kid comes up and pushes you or starts shoving you and you push and shove back, that's fine, right? So don't initiate violence. Respect people's property. And these values are absolute and universal. And they're so important that even if you wrestle with a boy and get him wet five minutes before he's supposed to get wet, that's really bad and you're going to get in trouble. That's how bad any kind of, even play fighting, is bad. Even play fighting by a pool when you wrestle someone into a shallow end they can stand and they're wet wrestling, even play wrestling man, that's absolutely unacceptable.
[31:13] So I was told respect property I was told don't initiate force I was told self-defense is okay, but it's better to walk away if you can but if you're cornered, self-defense is okay, Wow, I believe this path has gone the way of the dodo. Things are quite high, these grasses. Just goes to show you, man, it's been a while since I've come this way. Look at that, we have some weeds as high as I am. Hey man, hi weed. Shaggy.
[31:58] So this is what I was told. Don't use force. Respect people's property. And these rules are absolute and universal. Because they were the same everywhere I went. And I was always told they were absolute and universal. Right? Because if, and we all know this, right? If you were told don't use violence, don't grab, don't take, don't hit, right? I think I'll survive this walk, but let's give it a 50-50 chance. But if you were told in the morning, don't grab other kids' toys, and then in the afternoon you grabbed another kid's toys, and you were told, you said, hey, man, the teacher says, hey, I told you, don't grab other kids' toys. Don't take other kids' toys, right? And if you were to say, well, no, that was this morning. now it's the afternoon. They would have said, don't be ridiculous. It's a rule. It's not just in the mornings, right? It's a rule. So I was told all of this stuff with no hesitation, no doubt. Don't use violence. Don't take people's stuff. Self-defense is okay, but avoid the fight if you can. Okay.
[33:21] So I listened. I don't know why people don't listen as a whole, but I did listen. So this is the funny thing about society. And this is why society in its current form is not sustainable. Because hypocrisy is not sustainable. So when I'm told no force respect property rights, and then I talk about the universality of property rights and the non-aggression principle, if I'm told that.
[33:59] And I'm told, no force, no taking stuff, no using violence, self-defense is okay, better to get away if you can. When I'm told all of that, no force, no theft, and it's all universal, so what do I do? Well, I accept that. I accept that. I accept that I was told the truth. Oh, and also I was told, of course, that hurting children was terrible. I mean, I remember there was this, of course, much later, but there was a movie called Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And there's a child abuser, and Arnold Schwarzenegger beats the crap out of him. So a child abuser is a stone evil. And it's fine to beat the living crap out of them without any proof other than the kid's word. and nobody got upset at that movie, right? Nobody was like, but that was horribly unjust, right? That didn't happen. Let's go this way. That wasn't a thing. That didn't happen. Oh, no, it's up here further a little bit. So, child abuse is bad. Child abuse is evil.
[35:25] And... But, wait, somewhere, there's a path. Don't make me go back the way I came. Uh, whoa. Wow, this is really overgrown. That is like Mirkwood in there. Sorry if you're just listening to the audio. But that's what happens if you don't, if you don't watch. All right, so that's, is that impossible? Impossible? Wow, this is crazy, man. I swear there used to be a path in here.
[36:04] Oh, that's not going to work. Those are those really pokey pine needle branches which will scratch your eyes out like Blanche DuBois. Blanche DuBois. The Whitewood. All right, I got it. Sorry for this minor journey here. Oh, oh. I think we found it. Yes, I think we have. Yes, yes, yes. All right, look at that. We found it. All right. There we go so it's the least radical stuff that you could think of because I'm simply taking every single thing, that every adult and teacher ever told me every authority figure from priest to headmaster to parents to friends parents to headmasters to TV to every single person told me, tell the truth truth, no violence, and respect property, and these things are universal and absolute. They're all over the world. They're universal and they're absolute. Force is so bad you can't even wrestle with a boy by a pool and get him slightly wet a few minutes before he's supposed to get in the pool. That's how absolutely unacceptable violence is.
[37:31] So, you know, my big problem, what's caused so much controversy in the world, is I listened. You could say fool that I was. I'm like, I'm very earnest, right? I'm like, oh, okay, so if this is what I'm supposed to do, then this is what I'm supposed to do. And this was also conditioned, of course, by my work, right?
[37:53] So when you have to work, and I did really have to work from very early on because we were broke, right? So when you have to work then you have to listen to instructions and you have to do things the right way right so when i got my job at the age of 10 painting plaques for queen elizabeth the second silver jubilee in the summer of 1977 i was given the paints i was given the paint brushes and I was given a template, of course, which said.
[38:33] Here's how you paint this. You can't just make up your own colors, right? The flag's got to be correct. The lion's got to be correct. I can still see it very vividly in my head. Almost a half a century later, I was told this is what you had to do. So you had to follow instructions. You couldn't alter. You couldn't change. When I bought model airplanes, my favorite, of course, the Hawker Hurricane, because it could take a lot of damage and still keep going, just like me. When I was... You had to follow the instructions. Right? You were given, here's how to assemble it, and so on, and you had to follow the instructions. So I did. I followed the instructions. Because, if you didn't, well, things went badly.
[39:16] So, so, When I got a job at a bookstore, I had to, I think I was 11 or so, I had to put the New York Times together. Hey, I was later on the cover. Three times. But when I was 11 or so, I got a job in a bookstore, and I would go in very early on Sunday mornings. I had to take a bus, a subway, and a streetcar to get to my job. I had to get up god-awful early.
[39:49] And I had to put together, assemble the New York Times in a very specific way. It came in parts, right? Ooh, how pretty. It came in parts, and so I had to assemble it in a particular way. And if I got it wrong, I would get in trouble. And if I got in trouble, I would get fired. And if I got fired, well, we'd be a little hungry, because sometimes I would use my earnings to get food. Like, one of the reasons why I worked in restaurants for many years is you get food, and I was hungry. Because, you know, I grew up without enough food, which makes it tough to maintain a healthy weight when you get older, because your urge is constantly to overeat, because that's what I would do. I would go to friends' houses, get to stay for dinner. I remember my mom left me alone at the age of 13 or 14 for like two weeks with $20. Because she was going off trying to bag some guy and get him to marry her. Because she went to Houston, if I remember rightly. This is back when you could put ads in the newspaper. Caught my eye.
[40:54] Put an ad in the newspaper and try and look for someone to marry you. And um then she got back from that trip and she told me all the inappropriate things this guy had done uh because you know that's what you want to hear when you're 13 so uh i was hungry a lot so i had to like it was not an option right it was not a nice to have to have a job it wasn't so i could go see a movie or two or have some walkabout money it was so i could eat so i had to follow instructions.
[41:28] And so, that was my life. So.
[41:40] I honored my mother and my father who gave me all these moral rules. I actually did honor society by accepting society's rules of no violence and no theft. And this is universal everywhere, all the time, no matter what. And there's no excuses, even if you're bored and you get a little kid wet a few minutes before he's supposed to get wet. In a shallow pool where he can stand. That's how unacceptable it is. Okay so i had my suspicions that this was all bullshit of course right i had my suspicions.
[42:20] Um of course this is long before i knew how schools were funded or anything like that but i had my suspicions that this was all manipulative lies and nonsense you know i was told not to use violence and then of course i was caned in boarding school, they don't do that anymore i checked but the violence is bad and i was caned for a non-violent defense right i was caned because i climbed over a wall to get to the ball that had gone over into the garden of the sanatorium which was a little mini hospital for where kids who were ill would be isolated because they couldn't be sent home because their parents were busy right so i did a non-violent thing, and I was punished with violence. I mean, fairly brutal violence, as you can imagine.
[43:14] So, anyway, that's so, property, obviously, and boundaries and whatever it was, rules, super important, right? So you've got to hold people to rules, even to the point of beating a six-year-old who climbed over a wall. That's how essential it is, you see, to obey the rules.
[43:37] Child abuse bad theft bad violence bad universal absolute everywhere all the time no matter what, all right i accept that so that's how i'm going to build my philosophy when i got into philosophy it's like okay that's how non-aggression principle respect for property rights nothing radical about that nothing weird about that nothing unusual about that this is not anything bizarre at all, This is absolute, right? Absolutely uncontroversial. Because all the children are told that, and I was told the laws. The laws that don't use violence and don't steal. Those are the laws. Okay. I accept all of that.
[44:23] So, this was all. Absorbed by me. And then when philosophy teaches me logical rigor, syllogisms, reason, evidence, argumentation, I'm like, wow, you know, this is great. I can do this no violence property thing, and I can really work to push that and promulgate that. Now, there's a couple of hiccups in society that I guess people missed, where violence is used and the theft is used. So, you know, I can address those philosophically. And because everyone cares so much about nonviolence and respecting property, I mean, there'll be some pushback and some kickbacks, but people will say, gosh, you're right, you know, we punished you for wrestling with a boy by a pool and for climbing a fence.
[45:15] So we really take these things super seriously. So thank you for providing moral justification and clarity regarding these things that is excellent good job nice noise completely the only controversial thing is that i actually listened right the only controversial thing about anything that i do is i listen to society i accepted what society told me, And I gave more formal logic to all the rules that were imposed upon me very aggressively. That's all. I just proved what society told me was true, which is kind of bizarre when you think about it. I mean, did people who are jugglers, did they lynch Sir Isaac Newton for proving what they instinctively knew about gravity? No. They're like, oh, that's interesting. I guess I already knew that instinctively, but it's nice to see it proven mathematically.
[46:17] But they didn't, you know, the jugglers who rely on momentum and gravity and inertia to ply their trade, those, oh, it's nice. We've got some deer prints here. So, yeah, the jugglers who know gravity intimately, which is how they are jugglers, they don't get mad at physicists who give them mathematical proof for what they instinctively understand. Can you imagine?
[46:45] Madhouse. Can you imagine the International Association of Jugglers physically attacking Sir Isaac Newton for giving mathematical proof for gravity, inertia, motion, centrifugal forces, and so on, right? Wouldn't that be insane? I mean, it would literally be deranged, but that's the world. I have proven, and well, first I advocated for, and then eventually I syllogistically proved, the non-aggression principle and respect for property. All done. UPB. Get it for free. freedomain.com slash books. I can't do better than write it in an interesting and engaging way, read it in my fairly mellifluous and pleasant vaguely British voice, and hand it out for free. I can't do better than that. I can't make it easier. I can't lower the barrier to entry. than that, right? So.
[47:46] What can I say? Why is everyone mad at me? I mean, I understand it. Like, in hindsight, I get it. But I'm just telling you sort of the origin story of how I managed to avoid this kind of corruption. I mean, I was told to tell the truth, right? I was told to tell the truth. Not use violence to respect property, and that's what I've done. I've told the truth. I've advocated for nonviolence, and I've advocated for the respect of property. People know likey. Of course, you know, I've also mentioned this before, so I'll keep it brief now. But of course, I was also told, I was also told, that you should not have abusive people in your life. Right? I was told this, I was continuously told this as a kid, right? You should not, it's good to get abusive people out of your life. Like all these shows and And stories, you know, that this hard done by woman, her husband was not attentive. I mean, even if they're not abusive, even if you're just kind of dissatisfied, right?
[49:00] I can't remember the name, Shirley Valentine or something. There was some movie, this is of course much later, but it followed the same theme as the stuff I saw as a kid. There was some movie about a woman, whose husband was kind of inattentive.
[49:18] And she ended up leaving him and opening up a restaurant in Greece on the Mediterranean. And she was just so much happier. Something about a wall. And you know so even if you're just kind of dissatisfied even if you're not totally fulfilled but especially if he's mean if he's mean i remember and if anybody ever finds this let me know i remember reading a book in my early teens well i've read a bunch of books about this kind of stuff one was called made in heaven settled in court about divorce another one was judy bloom's wifey i read that in junior high school and this was a woman who was discontented There was the movie Jaws, which came out in the 70s, and I read Peter Benchley's book, I think even before the movie came out. And in Peter Benchley's book, the woman has an affair with the marine biologist because she's dissatisfied with her husband. Chief Brody, I think it was. I can't remember. And so, yeah, it was just constant. If you're not happy, you can just go do something else. You don't have to stay in relationships which aren't completely fulfilling. And you certainly shouldn't stay in relationships where people are even mean, let alone beatings and so on. But there's a movie that I saw about a woman who was dating a narcissistic guy, and I remember there was a scene where.
[50:40] She told him to take the garbage out. They lived in an apartment building. She told him to take the garbage out and he grabbed the garbage, but you have to walk down the hall and put it in the chute, and he walked down the hall and back slowly, completely naked.
[50:55] So, I read a lot of books about how you've got to get out of bad relationships, and you should never accept even average or bland relationships. You have a joyful fulfillment out there beyond the bland. Now, I get this is all like anti-family stuff, and programming women to be perpetually dissatisfied to lower the birth rate. I get all of that stuff now. But, you know, when I was a kid, and of course, I was surrounded by women who had left. I was surrounded by mothers, right, in these matriarchal manners, I was surrounded by women who had left relationships, often that weren't directly abusive. I didn't hear much about direct abuse. But what I did hear was I was dissatisfied. My mother never complained about my father being abusive. But when she was depressed in hospital after I was born, he looked out the window in a discontented way and said, I'd rather be fishing. This was a big, big problem with him. And, you know, maybe he'd gotten a little bit tired of her histrionics, and maybe he'd gotten a little bit tired of her hypochondria and, you know, overdramatic half-fainting spells and so on. I know I did. So, again, his fault for marrying her and all of that, but it was not abusive. She was just...
[52:16] He just didn't like the way she was behaving and expressed his discontent in a rather inelegant way, and that was it for the marriage. So he wasn't abusive he paid the bills he was faithful, but he got discontented with her constantly getting upset and ending up in hospital which I can understand, man's got a career to run, he's got bills to pay and his wife is in hospital so who's taking care of his kids and it's a problem so again, I mean it was a mess all around I get that, I understand that, but night.
[52:56] That's what I was taught. And no one ever said that was bad. Sorry, I just have to do up my shoe here. Yeah, nobody ever said that was bad. Nobody ever said that these women were irresponsible. It's like, oh, honey, are you dissatisfied? Is your husband saying something kind of cold? Okay, well, you should leave him. That's what I was raised with, right? I was raised with the voluntary family, with people who chose each other. So then when I talk about the voluntary family, that's how I was raised. If you're discontented if it's unsatisfying for you if you're criticized in any foundational way you know it's fine it's fine to get out and probably good to do so okay now clearly relationships you don't choose should be held to higher standards than relationships you do choose, right just as you if somebody assigns you a career in some fascistic or communistic manner If somebody assigns you a career, then you have the right to be more discontented with that career than a career that you voluntarily choose yourself, right? You get that.
[54:04] So my sort of history with corruption is I accepted what society told me. I accepted not just the moral content, but the moral form. not just that violence and theft were bad, but that they were really bad to the point where you get beaten for climbing a fence or you get in significant trouble because you wrestled with a kid by a pool that's how bad it is it's absolutely unacceptable, and I'm like oh okay well that's I'll accept that I'll accept that that's all wrong now I had my doubts about it which is why I kind of got into the shoplifting stuff again I was not any kind of big thief like nothing really but But until I sort of hit that fear. Now, if I hadn't had that fear and I hadn't had discovered philosophy, where would my life have gone?
[54:52] Right? I do take, you know, maybe it's a little bit of a darker aspect of my personality. I don't know. No, but I do take a kind of pleasure in holding hypocrites to their word. I do. I do, because I think hypocrisy is one of the worst sins of all, especially moral hypocrisy. So I do take some pleasure in holding moral hypocrites to their word and watching them squirm a little, right? This is why when I debated those communists, I opened up with, you guys are defending multinational corporations against me, a working class hero who got out of poverty to somewhere near the summit of intellectual achievement across the world. But they side with the giant multinational corporation rather than the working class guy, right? Because they sided with the deplatformers, right? And that's just hypocritical, right? It shows that they don't care about these things at all.
[55:58] And it is, maybe it's a kind of vengeance for the wrongs that were done to me to say my vengeance is in part, right? I mean, I obviously believe in the morals that I'm talking about. I'm very proud of UPB, but maybe to some degree it's like, oh, so this is the good and you're punishing me with it? Okay, let's make it the good and see how you like it. What if you're a subject to the same standards you inflict upon children? Yeah, there's some meaty muscle down there, right? What if you are, people, oh, people in society, what if you are, or what if you have inflicted upon you the same morals you inflicted upon me as children? It's not even turnabout, it's fair play. You know, my family was in part destroyed by the acceptance of the voluntary family. Okay, so let's make the family voluntary. I was told that trespassing or violations of property rights or not following the rules is so bad that you'll beat a six-year-old child with a cane. Or was it a slipper? I can't remember. There's something.
[57:15] So that's how important these things are. You know, violence is so unacceptable that even if you wrestle by a pool, or you will be punished. Okay. So, that, those are your rules. I get it. Those are your rules. That's what happens in the world. These are the morals. Okay, let's make him real. Whoa. I don't want to destroy the poor spider's nest. I don't think I can go under it. Whoa. Poor thing. Put so much work into that. So, I think that had a lot to do with it.
[57:54] So, I mean, philosophy as vengeance is an interesting concept. It doesn't have anything to do with the truth or falsehood of my arguments, but maybe something to do with the psychological motivation, or motivations behind them. So, of course, I will get next to what actually happened, what my life, unlived, would have become, possibly or probably, if I had not discovered philosophy, because I think that's a very interesting, idea or question or argument. So I will get to that next time. Thank you so much for listening. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I'd really appreciate it. Lots of love. Bye.
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