Video: https://dai.ly/k6c3vsb8hbGICIA3wre
The episode highlights the importance of introducing new arguments in debates to progress, nurturing critical thinking in children, and engaging with the Freedom Local community.
0:00:00 Introduction to Philosophical Paradoxes
0:06:09 Banning Arguments and the Power of Principles
0:13:42 Debating with New Arguments and Winning on Principles
0:25:52 The Paradox of Government as Tyrant Father and Nurturant Mother
0:36:03 Resolving Paradoxes with Universal Principles and UPB
In this episode, we delved into the concept of navigating debates, analyzing how debates often evolve into predetermined back-and-forth exchanges due to individuals sticking to fixed positions. The winning argument is sometimes labeled as hateful or immoral when it challenges established beliefs. The speaker highlighted the strategy of introducing new arguments to keep opponents on their toes and elevate the discourse to principles-based discussions. By shifting the focus from data to principles, a higher level of debate can be achieved. The discussion then transitioned to the education system, exploring how children's negative experiences in school can lead to questioning the values behind institutional power. The speaker emphasized the importance of challenging prevailing paradigms and promoting universal moral principles like the non-aggression principle to effect positive change. The episode concluded with a call to support the show through donations and engage with the community on the Freedom Local platform.
episode, dynamics, debates, entrenched positions, progress, labeling, offensive, arguments, principles-based conversations, critical thinking, donations, community, Freedom Local
[0:00] All right, welcome to Philosophical Paradoxes. This is number four.
This comes out of Napoleon, who wrote, logic will lose you wars, because sometimes the moment demands imaginative maneuvers that work because they are irrational.
Well, that's a very interesting phrase, a very interesting question, right?
So you've seen this boom, people doing, you've seen this meme, people doing these chaotic things, saying never let them know your next move and that's funny and interesting so with regards to logic logic in combat now of course i'm not going to talk about war because i'm a philosopher which means my combat is debate right so with regards to debating with regards to arguing and i'm sure sure this is going to be the case in your life as a whole.
[0:57] Most people, when they debate, they have a fixed set of positions that they go to, which means that it's predictable to figure out what it is they're going to say in a debate.
It's input, output, NPC programming, and they have very predictable positions that they're going to.
In this way, most debate is a series of deterministic statements bouncing back and forth which only convince people who already accept a particular position the way that the cultural wars work or the ideas walk uh was work in the modern world and this has really been the case throughout history but the way that these work is the The winning argument is always defined as hateful and evil, right?
So if you can't win an argument, then what you do is you say that anyone who has the winning argument, everyone who has the clincher, everyone who makes the argument that irrefutably harms your position or undermines your position or destroys your position, that is defined defined as hate speech, that is defined as immoral, as bigoted, and so on.
And that way, you can confidently stride into an argument knowing that all of your arguments are permitted, but the winning argument on the other side is not permitted, right?
[2:24] I mean, I could play against a lot of people, say chess.
[2:29] And if I could convince them that moving the queen or castling is immoral and evil and bad and wrong and cheating and right, if I could convince them that, then I wouldn't really need to work that hard to win chess games because the most powerful piece and a very important defensive move, which is where you move the king king and the castle, you flip their positions in a defensive position on your back line, those two moves, moving the queen and castling, would be inaccessible.
People wouldn't be able to do it.
[3:05] So, attacking the ethics of a position is simply saying you can't answer it, right?
It's not hate speech, it's arguments that people hate because they can't answer them.
Whether the the arguments can be answered in some form or not isn't particularly relevant.
What is relevant is that people believe that the arguments cannot be answered, and therefore they redefine.
I mean, again, sorry, it's so boring, it's so predictable, but it's worth mentioning here, right?
So what they do is they say, well, anybody who holds this position is an extremist, is a heretic, is a blasphemer, is immoral, is evil, is bigoted, is hateful, is phobic. All of that sort of stuff, right?
It is, of course, a confession of impotence, right?
Hatred, in general, is a confession of impotence.
[4:04] And if you are trapped, if you are ground down, if you are dependent either on pleasing someone in power or lying, which is usually two sides of the same coin, then you will be full of hatred because you're you're impotent that the i mean people dependent on government power will be hateful towards those who seek to limit government power of course right because government power is how they either survive their own bad decisions or gain massive amounts of status and control over others which is a dopamine-based addiction which human beings have which all pretty much all apes have so they will uh they will hate you now can Can they answer you?
Eh, not really, not really. So what they'll do is they'll say that your arguments are motivated by hatred when, in fact, it is their hatred of your arguments that is motivated by hatred, right?
Their whole motivation is hatred, but they, you know, confession through projection, the usual suspects.
So with regards to arguments, the winning position is not allowed, and therefore it's not really a debate.
[5:18] The winning position is not allowed. The winning argument is not allowed, and therefore it's not really a debate.
I mean, if you were a good chess player, would you participate in a tournament, where anyone who castled or moved his queen would have their bank accounts taken away or would be driven out of polite society or would have their income and reputation destroyed?
Would you? Like, that's not chess. Like, you just...
I wouldn't... I'm not a super great chess player. I play okay, Okay, but I wouldn't participate in any tournament where the winning moves or the essential moves to win resulted in, you know, reputational attacks and economic harm.
Like, no, we either play chess or we're not playing chess.
I don't know what this freaky thing is, right? And that's sort of a free speech argument.
[6:09] The arguments, the data, the perspectives that are banned are the ones that cannot be answered. it.
And that, I mean, that's obvious, right? We understand that.
Now, of course, it doesn't mean that every banned argument is a good argument.
Please understand that. I'm not trying to say that. I'm not trying to say that every banned argument is a good argument, because you wouldn't want to make it too obvious.
So you would ban some genuinely repulsive and horrible arguments, and then you would also ban fact-based, rational, and data-reviewed arguments, right? Right.
You'd want to ban the horrible people as well as the reasonable people so that it wouldn't be too obvious.
So I'm not trying to say all banned arguments are true, but within the banned arguments, there are arguments that are very strong for which there is no answer.
And because there is no answer, they must be banned.
I think we we all understand that. that. So for me, with debates, we would imagine, or what I do when I'm debating someone, back in the days when I used to debate people, what I would do is, of course, review all of their arguments.
Right? I would spend hours and hours and hours reviewing other people's arguments, coming up with kind of arguments, making notes, and so on.
And then, you know, most times what would happen is they would trot out those arguments, and I would be ready with the rebuttals.
[7:36] Now, that's not a good move if you are a debater.
I mean, if you're studying somebody else's chess game and they keep playing the same kind of way, then you can find out counter moves and you can win against them, right? I understand that.
[7:49] So what I would do, and I actually would sit with the community sometimes, I would come up with new arguments, either new arguments based on principle or new arguments based on new data and so on.
And that way, people, if they did study my old arguments, they would prepare to attack in a place where I wasn't, which is good, right?
I mean, you always want your enemy to attack you where you are the strongest, right?
And run away from where you are the weakest, right? So certainly, new arguments, new perspectives, new approaches, these would all be essential in this.
So you'd say, well, he has all these arguments.
We assume that He put forward his best arguments in the past, so I'm going to study his old arguments, and I'm going to find a way to counter those old arguments, and then I'm going to attack them and win, and what would happen is I would make new arguments, particularly if I went first, right?
So if I come up with new arguments against, say, socialism or something like that, then what happens is the person is forced to think on the fly.
They can't NPC it. To me, the best debates are the ones where people are both engaged in the moment on the fly.
[9:14] Because that way you can see who's really intelligent, who can really process real-time information in the moment, and that's the highest form of intellectual engagement.
Otherwise, it's just a bunch of NPC talking points flying back and forth across each other.
So for me, I've always found it kind of delightful if I make a whole series of arguments that I've never made before.
Well, first of all, it shows creativity and understanding of principles.
But if I make a whole range of arguments that I've never made before with new data and new supporting syllogisms, then it's interesting to see that thousand-yard stare of the person who says, oh, now I have to think on the fly, as opposed to, I have done the research, now I have to think, right?
I've done the research, now I have to think. I mean, just about anyone who's reasonably competent can win a tennis game if they can slow down time, right?
And preparation ahead of time is like slowing down time. so you hear an argument if you could hit a pause button like in time if somebody makes an argument you could hit a pause button and then you could go and do all the research then you would respond back to that person with all the research when you'd hit sort of resume right taking somebody makes a case or a point you take an hour you go do the research then you hit resume and you look fantastically prepared well that's what making the same arguments over and over looks like people People have all the time in the world to prepare.
[10:38] And so what happens is, if you are making new arguments, it would be rational to use successful arguments from the past, in a sense, right?
Certainly less effort, and you have picked, and you've picked or cherry-picked your best arguments.
[10:54] So that would be rational, to reuse your most efficient and effective arguments.
But to come up with entirely new arguments changes the tenor of the debate.
Because if you make new arguments, people who have done the research on your old arguments are stalled because they are prepared for something you're not doing.
It's sort of like the difference between improv and a pre-written play.
[11:21] If you're doing improv, everybody knows you're doing stuff on the fly and all of that, and it's going to be chaotic and sometimes funny, but there's not going to be any particular structure or story arc.
But if you are doing a play and then somebody starts improv-ing in the middle of the play, you have it.
Like there's a stall, there's a reboot, there's a what are we doing here?
And this does sometimes happen, of course, if people forget their lines and so on.
Right so what happens is if you do the quote irrational according to napoleon and you don't use reuse any effective arguments right so you know general study each other oh napoleon does this and it's like well if you're going to come up with new strategies then people don't know your next move now then in debates of course it's a little different than when you have all of the giant mechanic mechanics of warfare but what happens then is you make the new arguments people People, if they've done research, they're unprepared for the new arguments and they don't have data and therefore they have to argue principle.
Now, arguing principle is a much higher order debate structure than arguing data.
I mean, boy, you know, especially after COVID and some of the global warming stuff and so on, particularly the recent trial, I think that people are starting to have some, you know, fairly reasonable and rational skepticism over the data, right? The data. data.
[12:42] So what happens is people, if they don't have the data rebuttals, they have to argue principles. Arguing principles is a much higher order form.
And arguing principles means that the most consistent person will always win.
I mean, whether he wins in the mind of the audience is not particularly relevant, at least in terms of the technical aspects of winning.
But the person who is arguing principles is going to win.
[13:07] It's going to win logically, the more consistent system person.
So getting people out of data and getting them into principles means that you have to keep changing your arguments.
Change your arguments, then their data is irrelevant because the new arguments that you're making are not dependent on the data that they believe rebuts the old arguments we were making, the previous arguments, right?
Sorry if this is too technical, but I mean, to me, I've obviously thought a lot about debates and debating and wrote a whole book called The Art of the Argument and so on, right?
[13:37] So when you switch arguments, then don't have the data prepared, which means you're drawing them into the realm.
[13:43] The only thing that they can argue is principles.
And UPB is the most consistent set of principles, and self-ownership is the most consistent principle, and the non-aggression principle, and property rights, and so on. These are all universal principles.
So the only way you can get people into the realm of principles is to create new arguments so that their data rebuttals to your old arguments aren't valid.
And then they get this thousand-yard stare because all of their preparation has gone to nothing.
All of their preparation has gone to nothing. You're switching them from a script to improv. Improv.
You're switching them from a script to improv. It also makes them kind of jumpy, because if they've done the work to study your previous debates, they will quickly realize that you're always coming up with new arguments for your, like, I'm always coming up with new arguments for my positions.
[14:32] I mean, an example of this is when I was debating the two communists, and I did ask for permission to swear at the beginning of the debate, and then I said that they're the worst effing communists known to man because i as a small i i came from the proletariat i came from the lower classes and fought my way to the top of the intellectual sphere and then giant multinational corporations worked hard to take me down and the communists sided with the giant multinational capitalist corporations against the heroic proletariat worker i mean which is is funny.
[15:08] I mean, it's a little dark, of course, but it just shows that they don't have principles.
They're only interested in power, right? Since I'm anti-communist, it doesn't matter that I'm a proletariat.
Since the giant multinational corporations were against the anti-communist, they side with the giant multinational corporations.
It just shows that they only want power, not anything to do with principles.
Any communist worth his salt would side with the proletariat against the giant multinational corporations, of course, right?
So it just shows that and i had not made that argument before directly to communists so yes absolutely it would be rational and you can sort of hear people sliding into these arguments that you know they've made a million times before and they're very sort of comfortable with it and kind of comes out easily from their tongue and so on and i just don't i don't think that's effective i think it's good to go rationally conserves energy conserves time to go with arguments that of work before, but it just keeps you in the realm of data because they can just throw data.
[16:09] At your position and try to, you know, data is impossible to rebut in real time.
[16:17] Rebutting data is is the work of i mean gosh it is the work of hundreds so dozens or hundreds of hours to sort of dig into the source figure out the methodology so rebutting data can't be done in real time which is why if you keep switching arguments you end up in this wonderful situation where people's data rebuttals aren't relevant and therefore they have to argue on principles and then you win because you have the most consistent principles now so you win on two two levels. I said you win technically.
Winning technically and winning with the audience are two different things, right? I mean, the movie Rocky is a guy who lost the fight but won the audience, right?
Winning both the debate and the audience is the best. It's the best.
[17:03] Winning the audience but losing the debate technically is only important if you're looking at short-term goals.
If you're looking at long-term goals like multi-decade or multi-century influence over the the world then winning the debate but losing the audience gains you future respect winning the audience but losing the debate means that you gain influence in in the moment like it now in the time that you live but you lose influence in the future socrates obviously lost the debate about about his virtues with Miletus in the sort of famous trial and death of Socrates, he lost the audience but won the debate and therefore had great influence in the future.
Jesus lost his life but won the debate in many ways and Galileo was imprisoned and, according to popular myth, lost the debate but won the future.
[18:05] Tends to come around later in your life, if you even live to see it at all, which is, I mean, obviously Socrates didn't need the Jesus, although given that the acceptance of Jesus as immortal means that he did end up seeing it, or even knew it was going to happen, probably gave him some courage and strength on Calvary.
I would rather win the debate on technicals and lose the audience.
I would rather get booed and be right, because philosophy is about the long term.
Philosophy is willing to risk the harm of the present for the virtue of the future.
Philosophy is the longest and particularly moral philosophy which is really the whole point of philosophy, philosophy is the longest deferral of gratification scenario known to man I mean I remember reading about he was a novelist a comic novelist I think from the 50s and he wrote a comic novel couldn't get it published, and he thought it was great nobody would touch it and I think he ended up killing himself out of despair largely out of despair for his literary ambitions exhibitions, and then his novel was found, it ended up being published, and it was a great, success, and people recognized the brilliance of it, and so on, right?
I mean, obviously, he lost his life, or took his life, and he won the future.
[19:18] So, for me, winning the debate on technicals, well, you know you're right, even if you're booed, like, you just know that you're right winning the debate on technicals and winning the audience is the ideal now if you come up with new arguments for everything what happens is the audience generally has not been taught to thought to think in terms of principles well not only and this is going to tie into the next paradox not only have has the audience not been taught to think in terms of principles thinking in terms of principles is incredibly painful for the audience right that's a very important thing to remember.
Thinking, in principles, is extraordinarily painful.
[19:58] A variety of reasons we'll talk about in the next paradox so you you know you can't you know that you can't teach the audience to the audience of a debate you can't teach the audience principles, for two reasons one it takes a while to talk through the metaphysics and epistemology to ethics of principles number one and number two people when you start pushing them towards principles they feel like you're pushing them into a volcano well it's probably even slower it's a slower death you're pushing them into a cave with fire ants and covering them in honey like it's just going to be a long agonizing horrible future so people recoil from thinking in terms of principles and of course in general people get mad at the person who tells them the truth not all the people who lied to them before right that's to understand i mean we don't really need to spend much time on this people get mad at the person who tells them the truth rather than the people who told them all the lies so the only way you can win the crowd or the audience in terms of the debate is to be funnier obviously more witty and to appear more intelligent intelligent, to appear more intelligent.
[21:23] The only way to appear more intelligent is to not repeat prior arguments, because you want to generate in your opponents in order to win over the mob.
Obviously, some jokes are important, some good humor, some confidence, some eye contact, some smiles, but you don't want to make it too funny, because the only things worth debating tend to be very serious.
So a couple of jokes. Like leaving the jokes a little bit, but don't make it too funny, right?
So the way that you make the opponents your opponents, the way that you make them appear less intelligent or reveal the less intelligence that they may have is don't use prior arguments, thereby forcing them to think on the fly, right?
And if they have done all this prep based upon your prior arguments, you bring new arguments to the table, they have to evaluate the new arguments in real time.
They can't rely on pre-programmed responses, and they can't rely on their notes, and they can't rely on the data they've researched.
[22:28] So it gives them the thousand-yard stare that makes them look less intelligent.
And then they'll usually resort to ad hominems, and if you take those with good grace, then you look more confident, they look more petty.
Or what they do is they respond to points that you've never even made, right?
I mean, if the script requires you to say, I love you, and the woman says, I love you, too, and the man in says, I hate dolphins, and the woman then says, I love you too, then clearly the woman is not listening.
And she's just doing a pre-programmed NPC response, so to speak.
[23:08] And that makes her look out of touch. It makes her look disconnected.
And then you can, of course, say, and rightly so, I have, say, well, you know, all of these points, I guess, are somewhat interesting, but this is supposed to be a debate, debate and in a debate, you're supposed to listen to the points that I put forward, the arguments I put forward and rebut them.
You know, it feels odd to have to explain basic debating procedures to somebody who's not 10 years old, but this is how debates work.
I make a point and you rebut the point. You make a point, I rebut the point.
That's, you know, how it works, right?
I mean, it's like tennis. I serve the ball, you hit the ball back, you serve the ball, I hit the ball back, right?
That's what we're supposed to be doing, right? When you hit the ball towards me, I'm not supposed to be setting up a chess set.
It's kind of weird, right? Why would you need to explain that to someone who claims to know how to play tennis, right? Don't set up a chess board.
You're supposed to hit the ball back. I'm supposed to hit your ball back.
[24:01] So either you get a thousand-yard stare and they just sort of mumble and they're outflanked by creativity, or, of course, what they do is they go back to their pre-programmed script, right?
They go back to their pre-programmed script and now they are not responding to what you're saying and therefore they look detached disconnected out of sequence out of sync they just seem strange and and people get that at an instinctive level and you by arguing principles appear more intelligent than they who are not arguing principles but arguing disconnected data or disconnected arguments that have nothing to do with what you're saying because otherwise it's like this is supposed to be a debate not to to people taking sequence at giving disconnected speeches, right?
So I'm supposed to make a point, you're supposed to rebut it, make your own points, I rebut them as best I can, but you're giving a speech which has nothing to do with what I said.
So you should have told me that you don't know what a debate is, right? That would have been very helpful.
[25:06] It's kind of implicit, right? If I say, let's go for drinks at the local bar and you show up in a scuba suit and you say, well, this is what drinking is, isn't it?
It'd be like, well, I guess I kind of assumed that when I said, let's go for drinks at the local bar, you'd know what that meant.
I mean, I guess you don't. And when I say, let's have a debate, you're not supposed to give a separate speech completely disconnected to anything that I was saying.
So it's just a, I mean, it's not sophistry because it's genuine.
Of course, if somebody is really, really smart And there, of course, are really, really smart people on the left.
If somebody's really, really smart, then they'll enjoy that, they'll get lively, they'll really dig in, and so on.
But I think I get where Napoleon is coming from, from that standpoint.
[25:52] Point all right so let's get to camille palier liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother right i mean i made this case years ago in my analysis of pink floyd's album the wall which is that hyper feminism combined with the state is communism hyper-humanism hyper-masculinism or hyper-masculism combined with the state is fascism.
[26:26] So one of the i mentioned earlier right we're going to talk about why people are so frightened and why it pains them so much to talk about principles well oh i mean the principles the principles once the government takes over the education of the children it's all lost And this all happened like 150 years ago or more in most of the West.
[26:52] Obviously can be a little bit frustrating to end up in these situations where you're trying to deal with problems that all started many, many, many decades ago.
Like most of the problems in the West were put in place long before I was born.
And that's not a whole lot of fun.
So once the state takes over the education of the children, then what happens is children have to end up bonding with the state because if the state is revealed as, let's just be as nice as possible, if the state is revealed as a morally questionable structure and that's the entity that the parents handed their children over to, it's not the bond with the state that is causing the discomfort, it's the bond with the parents.
It's the bond with the parents. So if you were to hand over your child to a really bad, mean, terrible teacher, just a terrible, terrible person, and you as a kid would say to your parents, parents, they'd say, well, how's your education going?
And you say, well, this guy's horrible. He screams at me.
He's irrational. He marks me down when I'm doing well. And he marks me up when I'm doing badly. He's like the inverse of the truth.
[28:18] And he doesn't let children pee to the point where they end up peeing themselves.
Like if you just say all this terrible stuff, and your parents say, sounds good, go back, right?
It's not the bond with the teacher that's It's fundamentally put into question.
It's the bond with the parents, because it's the parents who are sending you there.
This is one of the great unspoken agonies of the modern world, or really the world of the last 150 years, but in particular the modern world.
One of the greatest unspoken agonies is that children hate school.
[28:50] And assuming that the parents aren't compelled to send their children to school, because lots of places in the West, at least, where you can homeschool, That's the places where you can't.
So I'll reserve this particular one for the places where you can homeschool.
So if the educational system is boring, scary, bullying, irrelevant, pointless, you know, your kids are just barely staying awake and hate being there.
There, well, the parents are sending you there, right?
And this is one of the brilliant things about government education is to question the morals and value of government education is to question the morals and values of your parents who send you to government education.
When I say, oh, I hate school. Well, you know, we all hate school or it'll get better or just work harder or whatever, right?
[29:48] It's very demoralizing for families as a whole when the children hate school and the parents are like, well, deal with it, or it's fine, or it's good, or you're the problem, or like whatever nonsense they come up with to avoid the fact that their children hate school.
If your children hate school, they're bored, they're frustrated, they're frightened, they're bullied, whatever.
If your children hate school, I mean, you should listen to them, right?
You should listen to them. if your children hate a particular food and even could be considered perhaps allergic to that food.
[30:20] Then you should listen to them right i mean if your kid keeps getting sick when you feed him peanut butter you should start feeding him peanut butter and get him tested for peanut butter allergies if it turns out that he has a peanut butter allergy then that's pretty important whereas if you just say well suck it up or it's not that bad or it's fine or your body's just adjusting or whatever and you keep feeding him peanut butter and he keeps getting sick maybe he gets more sick at some point the kid's going to say i'm not entirely sure my parents have my best interest at heart you know it's it's a it's a big problem it's a it's one of the biggest problems really if you say well you know government education is is founded by coercive, redistribution and so on and there's laws to prevent competition and the teachers can't get it fired, really, and all of that, right?
And it's centrally planned, not for the benefits of children, but in general for the benefit of ideologues and so on, right?
If you say all of this stuff, well, the children have a sort of fundamental question about how much society cares about the children.
[31:28] Education is most children's first introduction to society right and of course i mean i remember as i've mentioned before when the teacher was talking about the old age pensions and how we all get our old age pensions i mean the the back row of the class which was people like myself who were smart and skeptical we just laughed at him like literally it was open laughter like like of Of course we're not going to get this stuff, right?
[31:55] So what happens is kids go to school, they're bored, they're frightened, they're bullied, they're programmed, they're propagandized and so on, and they make their complaints, right?
And of course, they're not particularly expecting the teachers to listen to their complaints.
But then they go home and they complain to their parents. And their parents don't listen, their parents send them back, their parents don't particularly care, their parents don't sympathize.
And then right that that's the real foundational challenge right and of course you have to maintain your bond with your parents and you have to believe that your parents care about you, and so if your parents aren't sympathetic with you then you generally will make up a situation which says well my parents are displeased with me because i'm being bad so i'll just change my behavior to being good so that my parents will be pleased with me and then that doesn't solve all things.
And so you just keep making up more and more behaviors that you have to change in order to have your parents like you or have sympathy with you or be positive.
And it's the same thing, right? I mean, if you question or rebel against the teachers, they humiliate and punish you.
And then you say, well, okay, I'll conform and then the teachers will like me and so on. And maybe I'll have a better experience at school.
And I mean, you're punished less usually if you.
[33:15] You know that you've abandoned your integrity, your honesty, your true self, your virtue, your skepticism, your brain, your mind, your soul.
You've just surrendered, dissolved yourself into the general goop of conformity, which gives you relief from immediate pain, but gives you existential crises when you get later on in life, which is who am I in, right?
Do I have any integrity? Do I have any virtue? And so on, right?
So, yeah, it's really, it's really tough. It's really tough.
And of course, I mean, what does institutional power always do?
Always do. It's It's the same deal, always, which is institutional power says, give me power and I'll only use it against your enemies, right?
This is what institutional power always does. Give me power and I'll only use it against your enemies.
Give me power and I'll only use it against the bad guys, right?
And that's the deal, right? And of course, that's what institutional power is always going to say.
I'll keep you safe from the bad guys. Give me power and I'll keep you safe from the bad guys. It's lonely, all that power alone.
And then you know what happens, and I've been writing about this for like, I don't know, 18 years, right?
Which is, they say, based upon your fear and your hatred and your vengeance, you say, okay, fine, take the power, but use it against the bad guys.
Yeah, cross your fingers, right? Won't tell a lie.
[34:33] And then the institution takes the power, and then we'll use it a little bit against your enemy so you don't demand the power back immediately or want it reduced. used.
And then, of course, what happens is the bad guys say, oh, there's an institution that has a lot of power. I guess we'll join that institution.
And then the bad guys join the institution that rises to the top, and then that power is used against you and your friends. It's always the same.
Again, I got sort of tired of going over this stuff, but it's been a while, so it's probably worth mentioning again.
And so it's always the same deal.
You give me power, and I'll only ever use it against your enemies.
Oh, that sounds good. I'm scared. I'm nervous, and I can't think of have another solution right now and i was raised in structural powers and so on so i mean the educational system in america in particular was instituted because there were a lot of catholics coming in and we're gonna we're gonna use the power to stay to maintain our protestant values right and well we can all see how that played out as a whole it's not not too complicated to figure that one out right now that how that played out i don't really need to go over that in any detail I'm sure.
[35:38] So yeah, defines it as a tyrant father, but expects it to behave as a nurtured mother, right?
The tyrant father is this power will only be used to punish my enemies and benefit my virtues, to punish the immoral and to benefit the moral.
But of course, power attracts the corrupt and there's no way to prevent that from occurring.
[36:04] It is a paradox. And the paradox is all of these paradoxes are resolved with UPB and all of the philosophical principles I've been talking about that are universal.
And of course, people have been so corrupted by contradiction that the universal appears to be a foreign country that is impossible.
But it's not. It's not at all. And I hope that you will continue to work to bring the non-aggression principle to your friends, to your families, UPB, property rights, self-ownership, free will, all of that good juicy moral stuff.
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Freedomain.com slash donate. Take care. Lots of love. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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