Video: https://dai.ly/k41fxZvvhAef76zTSLB
This conversation explores sadism's origins, tribalism, men's struggles, porn's influence, and the connection between money pursuit and declining parental support. Feedback and more discussion welcome.
Chapters
0:00:00 The Origins and Dysfunction of Sadism
0:03:10 Sadism in Evolution and the Duality of Life
0:06:57 The Natural Balance of Affection and Cruelty in Predators
0:10:26 Human Beings: The Apex Predators with Duality of Kindness and Cruelty
0:12:24 Exploring the Dichotomy of Cruelty and Affection
0:13:03 Siblings' Cruelty and Unity against Outsiders
0:19:32 The Tricky Balance of Aggression and Affection
0:22:49 Affection for Offspring and Cruelty to Others
0:25:47 Sadism as a Central Goal: Motivation and Risks
0:28:16 Enslavement and the Thirst for Cruelty
0:34:29 Sadism as a Tool for Maintaining Control
0:41:24 Cruelty within families and kindness towards outsiders
0:47:58 The reversal of the cruelty-kindness metric in modern families
0:50:48 The Impact of Observation on Behavior
0:52:02 The Relationship Between Power and Cruelty
In this part of the conversation, we delve into the origins and dysfunction of sadism. We highlight how sadism can be seen as dysfunctional when the circumstances under which it arose are no longer applicable. For example, being subservient to authority as a child may have adaptive benefits, but as an adult, relying solely on one person for happiness can lead to obsession and dysfunction. We also explore the concept of tribalism and its relevance to sadism. In smaller tribe situations, individuals can directly evaluate and participate in the common good, whereas in larger conceptual collectives like nation-states, it becomes a tool for exploitation. This highlights the potential problems that arise when abstract and easily manipulable tribalism becomes prevalent.
Moving on, we discuss why sadism exists in humans and how it can go wrong. We draw parallels between the predation and affection seen in animals and our own behavior. It is necessary for predators, including humans, to be capable of aggression towards enemies while having affection for family or group. We give the example of lions as apex predators who exhibit intense aggression towards prey but are gentle and loving with their own kind. We also touch on the importance of understanding gene wars in relation to this discussion.
Continuing the conversation, we analyze the duality of kindness and cruelty observed in various predator species. Predators higher on the food chain, such as lions and wolves, tend to be more affectionate towards their own offspring, as being higher on the food chain requires complex skills like hunting in packs. In contrast, prey species like mice and rabbits focus more on reproduction and do not display the same level of affection and protection towards their offspring. Humans, as apex predators, also exhibit this duality of kindness and cruelty. We are capable of extreme aggression and cruelty, as well as intense affection and love. This duality is symbolized by the angel and the devil on our shoulders, representing our affection for family and our predatory behavior towards everything else.
Additionally, we touch upon the challenges and contradictions men face in balancing aggression in the outside world with emotional availability at home. We suggest that women may be drawn to aggressive or abusive men due to their upbringing and the lack of negotiation skills. We also discuss the importance of understanding power dynamics and how power can turn even the kindest individuals cruel. This understanding is why some people advocate for a stateless society, as power has the potential to corrupt. We recall our own childhood realization of these concepts, influenced by the social programming of National Geographic and their promotion of whale conservation.
Our conversation then takes us to early forms of social programming and the role of pornography. We recall seeing documentaries about mother lions and their offspring and how this triggered thoughts about our own aggressive mother. We note the fascination with the duality of kindness and cruelty seen in animals, such as lions. We discuss how animals are programmed to follow the largest moving object for survival, highlighting the evolutionary necessity for both aggression and affection in predator species. We delve into the complexities women face in choosing a partner who balances aggression with kindness. We also highlight the challenges men face in being expected to be aggressive in the outside world but emotionally available at home. We suggest that women may be drawn to aggressive or abusive men due to their upbringing and the lack of negotiation skills.
As the conversation progresses, we reflect on the historical prevalence of sadism in relation to political, social, military, and economic power. We emphasize how sadism has been pervasive throughout human history, with cruelty being directed towards family members and kindness shown to outsiders. This reversal goes against the evolutionary principles of how things should have evolved. Slavery, for example, played a significant role in promoting and maintaining sadistic power structures. Slave owners derived pleasure from the suffering of their slaves, as it demonstrated their control and superiority. Sadism has also been observed in hazing rituals and military boot camps.
Furthermore, we discuss the concept of universality and how it challenges sadistic power structures. The idea of trading to mutual benefit, rather than engaging in violence and enslavement, forms the basis of universality. However, throughout history, winning battles and enslaving others prevailed as a means to reduce workload and gain power. Slavery allowed the dominant tribe to maintain control and demonstrations of sadism were necessary to manage and control slaves.
We then touch upon the connection between pursuit of money and the decline of support for parents, particularly new mothers. The absence of strong support networks and extended families can lead to overwhelmed parents who are more likely to engage in negative behavior. As parental power increases, so does the potential for cruelty as individuals feel the need to maintain their power through aggression and abuse. Additionally, the combination of sadism and an out-group preference can lead to a disdain for one's own culture and a fascination with other cultures.
In conclusion, we acknowledge that there is much more to explore on the topic of sadism. We invite feedback and counterexamples to further deepen our understanding. We express gratitude for the opportunity to have these discussions and encourage listeners to support the show through donations. Through these conversations, we believe we can gain valuable insights into the world and ourselves.
sadism, dysfunction, tribalism, challenges, aggression, emotional availability, pornography, influence, perception, affection, history, power structures, money, declining support, parents, feedback, discussions
[0:00] All right, so we've done a fair amount of the detailed work on sadism.
This is part six, where I'm going to talk about why it arose, why the wiring is there, and how it goes wrong.
Sadism can only be thought of as a dysfunction if the circumstances through which it arose no longer apply.
Does that make sense? Like something's dysfunctional. I mean, I'm not talking moral here.
I'm just talking dysfunctional. So something is dysfunctional only if the circumstances that cause it to arise no longer apply, right?
So if you are subservient to those in authority as a child, that can have positive adaptive benefits. It's sort of why it developed.
However, subservience to authority alone when you are an adult is probably adaptive, right? right?
So, being reliant upon one person, say, for your survival is appropriate as a baby, but then believing that only one person can ever make you happy over the course of your life can be, can make you kind of obsessive as an adult, the one-itis thing, only she can blah blah blah, right?
So, a tribalism is necessary for survival in the primitive era, primitive eras of our species.
[1:22] A tribalism has a significant problems now because tribalism is largely abstract and conceptual and therefore very open to manipulation so if you live in a tribe of 60 or 70 or 80 other people those are sort of very real ties you can evaluate everyone and the sense of tribalism is empirical however if your tribe is like a whole country or a continent or a giant religion or something then you don't know know everyone, and your immediate empirical tribalism gets moved to an abstraction that's very easy to manipulate, and therefore your tribalism is very easy to manipulate, and therefore you're very easy to manipulate.
[2:06] The common good, right? The common good, if you're in a tribe of 70 people, the common good is fairly easy to understand, and you can evaluate it.
However, the common good for an entire country, well, first of all, doesn't exist, because it's not something you can evaluate.
Secondly, it's easy to manipulate, but because it ties into your tribal feelings of wanting to sacrifice for the larger good, but you can't evaluate it because it's not a tribe that's empirical.
It's a conceptual thing, and concepts are easy to manipulate, and people whose direct empiricism has been translated into conceptual abstraction are very easy to manipulate and control.
Again, in a tribe of 70 people, you can directly evaluate the common good because you're part of it and you're involved in it and it's evident to you and you have experience of everyone.
[2:55] And you can have a say. Whereas when a political leader of 300 million people country tells you about the common good, it's just manipulation.
It's nothing you can directly experience or have an effect on or evaluate or anything like that.
[3:10] So if somebody suggests sacrifice to you in a smaller tribal situation, you may very well do it.
But if somebody suggests sacrifice to you for a large conceptual thing or conceptual idea like a nation-state, then it's just about exploiting you.
So tribalism is good in terms of evolution when you can directly anticipate experience and it's empirical right in front of you and you have knowledge and you have the authority of being part of a small group.
So tribalism has evolutionary advantages, for you as an individual when we're evolving, But when you get to the nation state or to other sort of large conceptual collectivist abstractions, it just gets you indebted, enslaved, killed, like on a fairly regular basis, as we can sort of see from the 20th century.
[4:08] The question is, what evolutionary advantages did sadism have over the course of our evolution that we even have such a capacity?
I mean, animals generally aren't particularly sadistic.
I mean, obviously they eat under animals, that's not sadistic.
And they are, I mean, occasionally mice will play with, sorry, cats will play with mice, but that's not really sadistic.
That's just practicing or maybe being bored or something like that but as far as sort of this torture goes that's that's a different matter so a why would we develop it and b why would it go so wrong right why would it go so wrong and and the reason that sadism goes wrong.
[4:56] In general is that we would expect let's look at look at animals like mammals as a whole right so So how do they do their thing?
Well, they do their thing by being violent to prey or violence in defense of their own.
So they are loving to their offspring and cruel to other animals.
I mean, loving and cruel, I know these sort of vaguely moral terms, but let's just say they take pleasure in violence towards other animals, and they take pleasure in kindness towards their own offspring.
So this is the inevitable duality of life, right?
That you have to be capable of aggression, and aggression doesn't necessarily mean violence, right?
But you have to be capable of aggression towards your enemies, and you have to have great affection for your family, for your tribe, for your group, your gathering, we'll just say family, although it could be more than that.
I mean, it is, of course, a common phenomenon to look at lions as they rip the throat out of a zebra or pile on a giraffe or even try and take down an elephant, that they are, I mean, obviously, as apex predators, incredibly aggressive.
[6:22] When I think of, you know, if I want some meat chewing the neck out of a running cow, I mean, it's vaguely incomprehensible, right?
So they have to be capable of, you know, what in a human being would be psychotic levels of aggression, right?
And yet, the lions, the lionesses are cute and cuddly with each other, and they're cute and cuddly with their offspring and they're sort of very tender and gentle with their offspring.
So this duality, which is common to all predators.
[6:57] Is intense aggression to prey, intense affection for offspring or the family.
That's sort of natural. Now, what's also interesting, and we know this from the RK stuff that I did in the past, the truth of that, like the gene wars, G-E-N-E wars.
You should check that out if you haven't already. It's sort of a foundational aspect of what we talk about here.
But the gene wars presentation is pretty important.
[7:26] Because in general, the higher on the food chain the predator is, particularly for mammals, But the higher on the food chain the predator is, the more affection the predator has for its own offspring.
So lions are very affectionate with their offspring. Wolves are very affectionate with their offspring.
And the prey species, like the mice, the rabbits in particular, right, they just have a bunch of kids and barely do anything with them, right?
So the reason for that of course is that the higher you are on the food chain the more complex, your food gathering is therefore the more bond and training and and play and protection and so on right that which is more complex in nature takes longer to develop and predator species are generally quite complex in terms of their intelligence their social organization their their hunting coordination, all this kind of stuff.
Hunting in packs is quite complex and requires a strong social bond and a lot of practice and a lot of training.
Whereas, of course, for a rabbit to eat grass, well, they just have to be hungry and eat stuff and hope they don't get eaten themselves.
So in the reproductive strategy called being a predator, you have to have great cruelty for your prey.
[8:50] Like psychotic levels of aggression ripping the throat out of your prey, and you also need to have intense affection and protection for your own offspring.
And the more cruelty you have, in other words, the higher you are on the food chain, the more apex-y a predator you are, the higher you are on the food chain, the more psychotic aggression you need because you need to take down bigger animals, you need to take down baby animals, like baby giraffe or baby zebras or whatever.
[9:27] So the higher you are in the food chain, the more aggression and affection you need. Both of them get turned up.
The more love and cruelty you need.
And again, I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but I hope you sort of will understand that, right?
And we even see this in the sea mammals, which hunt in packs of killer whales, whales, orcas, and dolphins and so on.
Fairly significant affection for their offspring and great coordination and, quote, cruelty again, quote, cruelty for their prey.
[10:05] So, we are the apex predators.
What does that mean? So, the higher you go up on the food chain, the more cruelty and kindness, the more violence and love you need.
Which is why, you understand, we're the apex predators.
[10:26] So, this is why human beings have the capacity for genocidal wars and stirring love poems.
Right we we sort of veer between because we have great capacities for kindness and cruelty we veer between in a sense pathological altruism and pathological cruelty a self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of others right i mean this is what i mean lions have to sacrifice others in order to keep alive and they also have to sacrifice their own immediate interest for the sake of their their offspring.
[10:59] So this is why. People, oh, this duality.
And this is often characterized, at least it was when I was younger, it was characterized by the angel and the devil on the shoulder, right?
The angel on one shoulder, the devil is on the other shoulder.
And the angel and the devil are both telling you, go my way, go my way, go my way, right?
So that angel and the devil, and it is projected into the universe as a whole as the angel and the devil.
And the angel is our affection for our family, and our devil is our predation upon absolutely everything else.
I mean, there's nothing that human beings won't pray on.
I mean, when you think about it, it is wild.
I mean, we prey on trees, right?
We cut them down for lumber and firewood and clear them for our agriculture.
We prey on mice because we drive mice out of their homes in order to plant our crops.
We prey on the ground and we strip it of nutrients in order to get our vegetables.
We prey, of course, on livestock.
There's nothing that we won't prey on. Touch it.
And eat it or exploit it or drive it off or like, there's nothing.
So we have, of course, this almost bottomless capacity for cruelty.
[12:24] Can't get to be an apex predator without expanding your capacity for cruelty and affection.
Cruelty and affection. And of course, when you think of what happens in divorce, right?
What happens in divorce is people go from great love to great hatred.
They go from you're the most perfect person in the world to I will destroy your life from start to end, from top to bottom, from from the alpha to the omega.
And people say, it's like a flip gets, it's like a switch gets flipped. She was so nice.
She was lovey-dovey. And.
[13:03] Housemate blues. So, people have a tough time understanding this.
And you see this with siblings, right? So, siblings are incredibly cruel, nasty, and vicious to each other and then go play.
Males can poke vicious fun at each other and then band together against a common foe and and women do this too right so sort of the sibling joke is the siblings are like beating each other up at the moment someone says something mean about the sibling they both unite against the outsider, and you understand one of the reasons why i'm an advocate for the stateless society is a deep deep understanding of our capacity for cruelty gets activated by power.
So somebody can seem, you know, very nice, and they may be very nice, and they may be very thoughtful, but they get power, and the switch gets flipped from kindness to cruelty.
I mean, I think a lot of people go into politics with the intention of doing good, and power makes us cruel, right?
[14:06] Mean, I remember thinking about all of this stuff. Again, I don't mean to sound overly precocious, but I promise you it's true.
I remember thinking about all this stuff when I was a kid.
One of the things that my father bought my family, because of course he was in Africa, right?
One of the things my father bought my family was a subscription to National Geographic.
Now, National Geographic was popular enough back in the 70s.
I think it stopped publishing recently, But it was popular enough in the 70s, and so many people had it or got it, that it was a massive tool of social programming.
National Geographic was a massive, massive tool for social programming.
So, of course, we don't have to go into detail about it, but I remember when there was a push to save the whales, which is a fine thing, but they included in the National Geographic a little flat plastic insert that you could put on your record player and you would hear whale sounds, whale songs, and so on.
[15:20] So yeah it was a lot of a lot of social programming and it was of course an early uh an early uh pornography delivery system because there were topless women amazonian women rainforest women or whatever topless women which was interesting and again i think sort of a tool of social programming but nonetheless so i but of course i remember it in national geographic and and you would watch these documentaries and so on.
And I remember seeing these documentaries, and one of the documentaries was a mother lion reaching down, and it looked like she was going to eat her offspring.
And I'm sure you've seen this. Cats do this too, right? They pick up their kittens by the nape of the neck and take them from one place to another.
And of course, because I had a very aggressive and violent mother, I saw the female, like the mother, lion reaching down, opening her mouth.
And I'm like, oh my God, I was going to bite the head off. And of course you think, well, there's some calories, but of course it's way more calories to produce than you get by consuming it.
But of course she would gently pick up her offspring and carry it away from danger or carry it to where she wanted it to go and so on. Right.
And so you see this, these lion jaws, which, you know, regularly rip the throats out of of baby zebras, and instead they're gently picking up and carting off to safety.
[16:44] Their offspring. And that duality was really fascinating to me.
And you see this all over the place on social media.
It is the woman who raised the lion returns after 10 years and the lion, of course, bounds up.
And of course, it looks like an attack thing, right?
It's an attack that's going to rip her head off. But of course, the lion bounds into her arms and hugs her and and so on, right?
And of course, you know, lions eat people, right? And so this is something where people are quite fascinated by this duality of kindness and cruelty.
The lion you didn't raise will rip your throat out.
The lion you did raise will hug you.
And that is, you know, and I remember, of course, when my daughter first got into ducks and we'd get these ducks that would trail us everywhere and so on.
And I said, you know, it's nice to think of this as a faction, Right? It is. It's nice to think of this as, oh, they love us, blah, blah, blah.
But it's programming, right? They're programmed to follow the largest moving thing in the vicinity, right?
They're programmed to follow that because that's how they stay alive, right? And you see ducks with the orange balloons, they'll follow an orange balloon.
[18:00] So as you become a predator species, you have to develop both aggression and you have to develop love and affection for your own offspring so that you can train them on the complexities of your predation, how to hunt in packs, how to coordinate.
And so the knowledge transfer of the predator species is almost infinitely greater than the knowledge transfer of the prey species which is why the prey species are simply programmed by hunger thirst and a sex drive right that's all that happens with the prey species hunger thirst and sex drive and so they don't need that much affection for their offspring so aggression and and affection evolve simultaneously.
[18:49] And, of course, women are constantly having to do this dance, right?
Women have to do this very complex evaluation when it comes to who they choose to marry.
Who do they choose to marry? Well, they want to choose a man, of course, who is aggressive, because aggression means apex predator.
It means he's going to dominate over other men. He's going to win resources.
He's not going to back down. He's not going to be a cog in the machine.
So they want a guy who is aggressive, if not downright cruel, to outsiders, but lovey-dovey, soft, and kind of half-feminine at home.
[19:32] And that's a tricky thing. That is a very, very tricky balance to try and get a hold of.
Aggression to outsiders, affection at home.
And so the women want to dial up the aggression because that's going to get them the most resources and provide the most security, right?
This is the challenge that women face, that they want security for their children, which means an aggressive male.
But if the male is too aggressive, then their children are endangered because their children get beaten up or the man gets killed by some other man who he aggresses against or the man gets injured in some pointless fight or the man gets locked up or ostracized or punished or, you know, he gets his hands cut off because he stole.
So women want more aggression, but not too much aggression.
So women are turned on by aggression.
[20:30] But they also want great attachment, which is why, again, Fifty Shades of Grey, the Christian Grey is very aggressive, very cold-eyed, very abusive in a way.
But he's also got a great attachment to this woman and so on, right?
Because, you know, you heard this in the Barbie movie, you know?
It was all about, oh, women, we face so many contradictions.
Women, we face so many contradictions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on. Who cares?
Who cares? And the reason I say who cares is that who cares about the male?
The men's contradictions, the contradictions that men live with.
I mean, you don't think we have any contradictions that we need to live with?
You don't think we have any challenges that way?
You don't think men are supposed to be aggressive in the outside world and yet emotionally available at home?
We're supposed to be, what, aggressive and dominant in the outside world but submissive to the woman at home?
We're supposed to be hyper-masculine in the outside world but half a girlfriend at home?
Come on. Now, I'm not saying that it's impossible, but when women are drawn towards aggressive or abusive men, I mean, there's real reasons for that.
There's real reasons for that.
[21:44] Another reason why, of course, women are drawn to aggressive or abusive men is because they don't know how to negotiate because they were raised by aggressive and abusive parents, and therefore they need an aggressive child so that they can aggress against the child so that they don't end up having to negotiate with the child because they don't know how to do that.
In the same way that a woman is unlikely to adopt a child who speaks a completely different language from her, so negotiation is a language, aggression dominance is a language.
So, sadism, the ability to enjoy cruelty, is essential to the survival of every and any person.
[22:30] And to a smaller degree, prey species. I mean, in a sense, for a prey species to run away is cruel to the predator species because the predator species is hungry, right?
So the predator species has to deny his prey life and the prey species has to deny the predator species life by running away, right?
[22:49] So affection for offspring, cruelty to others is foundational to all predator species.
We're the apex predators, therefore we have the greatest capacity for cruelty and kindness.
And power stimulates cruelty, which is why you can't have power.
People can't have power. They can't handle power.
Because it turns you into the apex, apex, apex predator, which means that you will be hyper-loyal to those on the inside, your own particular tribe, and hyper-hostile and exploitive to others.
You'll just view them as pawns to be served up on your infinite platter of consumption.
So we're there. I don't want to be overly repetitive here because we're not right at the core as yet. We're getting there. We're getting there.
Look at me being over-repetitive. Isn't it kind of sadistic?
So now we kind of get to the core. So why has sadism arisen?
So sadism is enjoying hurting others.
Now, that's different from a...
[23:53] Lion eating a zebra. Now, for the lion to eat the zebra, I'm sure the lion enjoys the hunt.
I'm sure the lion takes satisfaction in chewing the neck out of the zebra.
And of course, the lion enjoys eating the meat and so on, right?
But it's not sadism exactly.
It's not sadism because the chasing of the zebra, the killing of the zebra, the eating of the zebra is serving a distinct biological need.
It's serving a distinct biological need. And therefore, it is adaptive to survival, and therefore, it is not cruelty to the zebra, that is the major motivator of the lion.
I mean, of course, it has to enjoy the hunting because that programs it to do the hunting. It has to enjoy, I assume, the killing, the eating, and so on.
[24:48] But the motivator is eating the motivator is not the pain of the zebra right so if you're in a running race in the olympics and you want the gold medal you have to want to beat the other people but beating the other people isn't your primary motivation your primary motivation is to get the gold right if there's a race and you win ten thousand dollars if you win the race of course you want to win and when you pull ahead of the other people you feel good and you're happy that you won and they lost but the primary motivator is not just to make the other people feel bad your primary motivator is the ten thousand dollars now if you get the ten thousand dollars of course the other people feel bad no question of that but that's not your primary motivator it's a side effect but with sadism the primary motivator is the negative experiences of others it's the pain the horror, the humiliation, right? That is your primary motivation.
[25:47] A sadist will torture someone without any direct material benefit.
And the sadist may, in fact, torture someone to his risk or danger.
I mean, he may abuse his girlfriend, which could land him in jail.
He may either mentally or physically torture his wife, and then she divorces him, and it takes his stuff, right?
And his kids, especially if you can prove the cruelty.
So people take significant risks now of course you could say lions take risks every time they hunt and they do they could pull a muscle they could fall they could get kicked by the zebra hoof in the face and break their jaw or get their jaw broken but but they have to do that to survive you don't have to be sadistic to survive but a lion has to kill and eat prey in order to survive, so what's going on here how does sadism go from a side benefit to a central goal.
[26:47] Well because of this and remember this is how we evolved right it's really only been the last couple of hundred years that we've escaped this so for human beings the primary prey prey for the apex predators is human beings.
Now, that's fairly unique in the animal kingdom, that you enslave your own species and that marks you as the apex predator.
We're starting to see it now, right? Starting to see all this click into view.
[27:22] Lions don't enslave other lions and force those other lions to hunt for them and take half their kills as taxation, right?
This is all back to the story of your enslavement. Human beings, primary prey, is other human beings, for the apex predators.
And so we have a thirst for cruelty towards human beings because if we can dominate other human beings through cruelty, we gain access to a portion, of those human beings' productivity.
If we can enslave others, then, I mean, for 99.99% of human history and evolution, the only labor-saving devices for you were enslaved human beings.
[28:16] So, I mean, lions, hyenas will fight each other, but they don't enslave each other.
[28:22] If you think of a human being, a man, right, a bunch of males in tribal war, they will, of course, turn off their empathy and activate their cruelty in order to fight and win, right?
Because they, like, you know, these aren't moral combats. They're combats over territory and superstition and whatever, right? And women.
So, you know, deep down, and you have to reject this reality, You know for a fact that deep down, the guy on the other side of the field is just like you.
He's just like you. You want to win. He wants to win. It's like in sports, which is not, sports are not moral combats.
And so the guys in the red shirts know that the guys in the blue shirts are just like them, but they have to pretend that they're the opposite the enemy.
They have to take pleasure in harming their interests because that's part of the matrix of victory.
And the purpose is victory. so I get it, it's not sadistic but you have to turn off, universality in order to activate irrational in-group preferences, from a philosophical standard, the in-group preferences are irrational because it's not like one is morally better than the other or morally more honest or has a greater grasp of reality or more virtues so from an evolutionary standpoint, in-group preferences make sense.
[29:44] It's a war of all tribal genetics against all tribal genetics But from a philosophical standpoint, there's no justification.
[29:52] It's a description of evolution and biology and genetic imperatives.
It's not a description of universality.
And this is why universality is so hard.
Because universality is, we should trade to mutual benefit, not kill and enslave each other.
Or not try to kill and enslave each other.
So, philosophy, property rights and non-aggression principle says, as, we shouldn't fight each other, we should specialize in trade.
I'm better at something, you're better at something, we should specialize in trade.
That's universality. And that is, in fact, better for humanity as a whole, but in this sort of brutal slugfest of our evolution, win-win was not something much thought of.
And of course, prior to the advent of labor-saving devices, the only way, in general, to do less work was to enslave others.
So if you're in a battle, battle, normally the battle is an afternoon, you fight like crazy, you win or you lose.
Now, the difference being, of course, that among human beings, the battle is only the beginning of the domination, because if you win against the other tribe, you enslave them.
I mean, you can see this all over the place in the world, right?
Slavery is a universal phenomenon, right? You enslave them because that's the only labor-saving devices you have access to, is others, is the labor of others.
[31:18] So you have to turn off your empathy and invoke your cruelty in order to fight the battle.
But then, after you win the battle, you then have to turn off your empathy in perpetuity regarding your victims, because now you have to enslave them, or now you do enslave them.
Which means that you can't return to a state of empathy at least in your society as a whole right so in the let's say there's a non-enslavement scenario let's say that you some people are invading your area and you drive them off and they run away you can't enslave them they run away right so you activate your cruelty for the battle and then the threat is gone and therefore you can can reactivate your sensitivity, your empathy, your tribal loyalties, your affections, and so on, right?
[32:13] Because it's gone, right? The danger is gone, right? Your fight or flight goes away, and therefore you can reactivate your empathy, right?
[32:22] But it's a different situation completely when you attack a tribe in order to enslave them.
So obviously they don't want to be enslaved anymore.
You don't want to be enslaved, so they don't want to be enslaved.
So you have to turn turn off your empathy circuits and activate cruelty in order to attack and enslave the other tribe.
Now, if you succeed and you enslave them, you can't return to empathy because now you have rebellious, angry, capable of aggression human livestock stock that your entire tribal income and survival now depends upon.
So you can't reactivate your empathy and kindness in any generalized way.
[33:12] Now you have resentful slaves to manage forever and ever.
So now, how do you manage your resentful slaves?
Well, you continually have to to break their spirit. You continually have to break their will, but you can't do it to the point where they have nothing to lose and might as well attack you.
So you have to break their will, you have to break their spirit, you have to oppose any potential rebellions, but not to the point where you're just outright killing everyone because then you kill off your livestock, so to speak, your slaves, and they have so little to lose that they might as well attack and fight back.
[33:53] So now you You have to be continually cruel to your slaves.
You have to continually break their wills. You have to continually be mean and undermine any confidence they have.
And you have to keep your empathy circuits shut off.
So now the only way you can maintain your hold over your slaves is sadism.
[34:19] Sadism is the livestock management system used for maintaining your control over slaves.
[34:29] And slaves were the primary economic engine and survival engine of almost all human history.
So why do we have sadism? Because we own people.
We own and we control people. people.
And of course, we've seen these various rebellions in the West, which these blowbacks are just wild, right?
[34:51] So, when Jesus comes along and says, have empathy, love your enemies, we all are equal, universality is the key, he challenges, fundamentally challenges, the win-lose sadism that maintains almost all the power structures of the ancient world, at least all the ones that I can can think of sadism is taking pleasure in the suffering of others and the only way to maintain a slave population as a slave population is to take pleasure in their suffering to enjoy hurting them now again to be to be rigorous right so earlier i said well the purpose of the runner in the olympics is to get the gold getting the gold means that he harms the interests of others so he has to enjoy harming their interests.
He has to enjoy winning and all of that.
But that's a short-term thing. It's a short race, right? Even an ultra-marathon is only a day or two, right? Or three.
So a regular marathon of 26 and a half miles or whatever it is, is like five hours, six hours, four hours, depending on how fast you run.
[36:00] So it starts and it ends. But when you're a slave-owning population, which is the apex predator of the apex predator, right?
Human beings are apex predators but slave owners are apex predators of the apex predators now you're in a situation of perpetuity you're in a situation of perpetuity so your goal is to maintain control and the best way to maintain control over slaves is to enjoy hurting them to enjoy humiliating them to convince them of your superiority through your capacity for violence to turn them into a prey species by continually undoing and destroying, any confidence or stability or security or safety or predictability in their environment.
Dominance and of course we can see this in sort of traditional depictions of hazing in various frat and groups you can see this of course in the traditional depictions of a boot camp and a screaming sergeant who's breaking down the will of he's gotta he's gotta enjoy hurting the recruits, because they are now drafted.
They are now subject to military discipline.
So sadism evolved in human beings because those who enjoyed hurting others were the most effective slave owners.
[37:27] And remember, slavery was the engine of productivity. The more slaves, the more wealth. The more slaves, the more power. The more slaves, the more soldiers.
Because it's not just about slaves. It's also about the army, conscriptees, right?
Those who enjoy torturing others end up with the most agricultural productivity, the most manufacturing productivity, the most weapons, and the most soldiers.
[37:52] Sadism is the foundation of political, social, military, and economic strength throughout almost all of human history.
Throughout almost all of human history. This makes sense, right?
Now, but sadism has another component.
I don't know, of course, how true this was throughout human history, but it has another component in the modern world, which is, according to this analysis, sadism, like cruelty to your enemies, kindness to your family, right?
Cruelty to your enemies, kindness to your family.
Wow, but the problem is, with modern sadism, I mean, there is, of course, the political, the economic, and so on, right?
But with modern sadism, a lot of times the way it manifests is cruelty to family, kindness to outsiders.
[38:43] It should be the other way around, according to the evolution.
What they call the othering.
The slaves are others, they're not quite human, and therefore you can dominate and abuse them and so on. But your family, you know...
Is that scene from Brazil? Is it Michael Palin plays the guy who tortures and then comes home and hugs his family? family.
Cruelty to others, kindness to family. But for a lot of modern sadists, it's reversed.
And now it's cruelty to family and kindness to others.
I mean, of course, I saw this, and my mother would be very violent towards me, and then somebody would knock at the door, and she'd be all sweetness and sugar, right?
So kindness to outsiders, cruelty to people.
[39:25] Right? It's a reversal of how things should be, how things should have evolved, right?
So how does this come about? Well, the way this comes about is that, in general, most people didn't own slaves, but they could turn their children into serfs.
So most people couldn't save enough resources to take care of themselves in their old age, so they required their children to be their caregivers and to bond with them and to take care of them and all this, that, and the other, right?
[40:01] So, turning children into serfs of the parents was foundational to survival strategies.
And, again, we can talk about the morals of it. That's kind of dull because we're talking about a sort of premoral state of humanity.
Humanity, but there are advantages to having grandparents around for children in terms of resources, in terms of knowledge transfer, and so on, and status, and there really wasn't much of a chance to escape grandparents.
I mean, you live in a small tribe, you live in a small village, there really wasn't much chance to escape grandparents anyway, so you might as well or find some way to do them, to get along with them.
So in order to keep your children bound to you, you break their spirit, you break their will, and then they will continue to obey you even after you get old and weak. You can't hit them anymore.
You can't dominate them in the same way physically that you used to.
So you then are cruel to family and kind to outsiders.
And that's just a long way from the lions being cruel to outsiders and kind to family.
But again, this is sort of the way the evolution worked, at least I think. This is how it worked.
This sort of makes sense from an evolutionary and I think moral and logical standpoint.
[41:24] Now, one of the reasons, of course, that lions are cruel to zebras and kind to their family is because that's how they grew up.
They grew up seeing their mothers, in particular, be cruel to zebras and kind to them, right?
So they get programmed and they understand, you're cruel to outsiders and kind to your family. That's how things work.
Ah, but how do most people grow up these days, right?
They grow up watching their parents, a lot of people, not everyone, obviously, but it's a lot of people who grow up seeing their parents be cruel to them and kind to outsiders, right?
This is not made up, right? I've had countless call-in shows where somebody says, my father couldn't control his temper, and I'd say, well, did he ever beat you in public?
No. Did he ever beat you when other people were over? No. Did he ever beat you at a parent-child, a teacher, a parent-teacher conference?
Did he ever beat you in front of a security guard or a cop or on an airplane or at an airport, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, of course, right?
So, be perfectly able to control his temper.
So, the fact that strangers are given high moral consideration, but children are often aggressed against, it teaches children that sadism is for the family and kindness is for the outsiders. Right?
[42:37] Is for the children or the family members, and kindness is for the outsiders.
And if you're a, I don't want to be overly cliched, but in general, if you're a younger sibling, you see this with your older sibling all the time.
Particularly if it's a dysfunctional household, you see this with your older sibling all the time.
So what happens? Well, your older sibling is mean to you, and then his friend comes over, and he's a good-natured and happy and and positive, and friendly with his friend.
And if his friends are going somewhere, then he wants to go with his friends, and he doesn't want you to come.
In other words, as strangers, you were kind to strangers and cruel to family.
Kind to strangers and cruel to family.
[43:21] Parents are kind to strangers and cruel to family.
If you grew up with squabbling 101 Bickerton parents, it's the same pattern.
Your parents are cruel to each other but kind to strangers right they'll yell at each other maybe throw things at each other but when people are over for a dinner or you have a dinner party or some other kind of gathering in general they're nice to everyone so when you have these really dysfunctional families then the children are raised with kindness to outsiders cruelty Cruelty to insiders.
And of course, you can see this all over the place in the modern world.
It's really the foundation of a lot of the mindsets of the modern world. Outgroup preferences.
Well, if you're raised with your family and your elder siblings being kind to strangers and cruel to people at home, then you're going to end up worshipping other cultures and hating your own. Right? Kindness to outsiders.
Cruelty to your tribe. And this is not, again, it's not just made up, particularly people on the left. They have...
[44:34] Significantly greater out-group preferences than in-group preferences.
This is, again, this is not made up. You can look at these studies and you can look at these charts and graphs.
It's really quite striking. So people who tend to be conservative tend to have strong in-group preferences and are more skeptical of outsiders.
But people on the left have very strong out-group preferences and are skeptical of insiders, which means that they were raised in situations of abuse where they were treated very badly by their own family family and yet their own family was nice to outsiders what that translates to and if you've been in an abusive household you'll know exactly what i'm talking about and even if you hadn't you'll get it right away which is you're only safe when other people are around right i mean i remember when i was a kid let's get a personal anecdote time here so when i was a kid a i think that they were mormons right so when i was a kid a two young mormon gentlemen knocked on our the the door of our apartment, our flat as we called it, and they came in, and I remember showing them my model airplanes and so on, and my mom made them tea, and we chatted for quite some time, and I felt happy, right?
Because as long as they were there, I was safe, because my mother would be nice when others were around, which means that you are programmed to prefer others to your own own family, because your own family is a source of danger, but when others are around, that danger is relieved.
[46:04] They are your bodyguards in a very dangerous environment, right?
So if you're in a very dangerous environment, you really, really are thankful for your bodyguards, right? Because they keep you safe.
And so you have a positive response to outsiders because outsiders keep you safe.
And I felt sad, you know, when I had a babysitter who let me stay up late and bought me a curly wooly-wooly every time I went over, and she was really nice and all of that, and so I really loved spending time with her, and I, of course, remember one time when I was supposed to spend the evening with her, and instead I had to stay home. I just, like, I wept all night.
I was, like, I don't know, four years old. I just wept all night because she was a positive and my own family was a negative. out-group preferences.
[46:55] And again, we can see this all over the place in the modern world.
These massive out-group preferences which arise out of sadism towards the family and positive out-group.
[47:08] Outsiders. So I hope this sort of unpacks and sort of makes sense of this evolution.
And there's sort of one more point that I wanted to mention here to sort of close this up.
And this may be the end, like I've got many more notes about sadism, but I think that this is the best explanation, one that fits the most facts and the most experience.
So I don't want to go on too long.
What's that thing about, you know, always leave them wanting a little bit more, but I may do more. Let me know, of course, what you think of this.
I'm happy to do more, but I think this kind of encapsulates it well.
It's what Seinfeld said about comedians, like if you do it in an hour 10, people love you.
But if you do an hour 30, they're like, oh my God, when's this guy going to end? And we've all had that in movies, like, oh, there's more?
Especially if it's a scattered movie. Then you're like, oh, this ill-fitting jigsaw just goes on and on and on.
[47:58] So I don't want to go on too much about sadism. So if you're raised with parents who are cruel to you but kind to outsiders, then the natural cruelty-kindness metric is reversed from our evolution, where you are kind to family and cruel to outsiders. So why does this happen?
Because in the modern family structure, parents have way too much power.
Way too much power. Way too much power. hour.
So families, of course, have become atomized, which also means isolated.
[48:31] So what I mean by that is the idea that there are no outsiders to your family life is pretty new, right?
So it's not that children were raised in some sort of platonic sense in common or whatever, but you think of a sort of farming community, you think of a small village, you think of a tribe, everybody knows knows each other's business, which puts a limit on the power that parents have, because there's always an observer. There's always an observer.
Somebody's always around, somebody can hear you, somebody can intervene, somebody else has authority, there are older people who are going to tell you not to be too cruel, who are going to, you know, but now we're isolated.
Now, so cruelty is blunted by other people being around, right?
So as you, if you're raised with cruel parents, you know that when other people are around, they're almost always much, much, infinitely nicer, right?
But now we're in a situation where there are no other people around.
Regular or unexpected, a regular or unexpected way, right?
And so the cruelty of parents is no longer blunted by the presence of others because we have these atomized and isolated family structures.
[49:37] And I know this isn't a perfect answer, obviously, this is just part of the answer, because if you have a truly sadistic family as a whole, then they're all gonna, but they're all gonna sort of enjoy the cruelty, but that's pretty rare.
That's pretty rare. You know, when a girl brings her boyfriend over to meet her parents, both the boyfriend and the parents are on their best behavior.
And so, in the past, confronting people who are really cruel to their children would be the job of the extended family, but the extended family has been scattered, and the families are all isolated.
Therefore, because there are fewer others around, the cruelty tends to flourish because it's way too much power. There's no interference from others.
[50:23] I mean, to take a sort of silly example, if you can imagine that your parents knew for sure that there was a live feed being broadcast from their house to somebody who had authority over them, maybe parents, police, child protective services, whatever.
If they knew that there was a feed of a live webcam from their house to an authority figure, would they change their behavior? Of course they would.
[50:48] I'm sure you've seen these videos of a guy in a lineup steals the wallet of the guy ahead of him and then notices that there's a camera, clasps his hands in apologetic prayer, puts the wallet back, and leaves.
Leaves because now he's being observed and therefore his behavior improves so the welfare state and the pursuit of money at the expense of children which is i'll just move to make 20 more money without realizing that that takes you out of an extended family that will probably help improve your parent parenting the pursuit of money the pursuit of of status the pursuit of i don't know self-actualization and also the selfishness of the boomer parents who move away and don't provide a lot of grandparenting services to their children means that there are fewer and fewer repercussions to bad behavior on the part of parents like no grandparents who are like what are you doing stop stop like this is crazy right so there's less aid which means more overwhelming for new mothers we talked about this in a show recently or i talked about this in a show recently so new mothers are more overwhelmed because they're more isolated more overwhelmed parents parents tend to lash out more.
[51:57] And so they get less support, less feedback, less help.
[52:02] Parental power has swelled. And wherever power swells, so also does cruelty swell.
Because evolutionarily speaking, if you get more power, the only way to maintain it is more cruelty, right?
Because if you, let's say you get five slaves through war or you inherit them or whatever, right? So let's say you get five slaves.
Now you have power over people. And the only way to maintain that power over people is to be cruel and therefore the fight or flight mechanism the aggression mechanism goes from a temporary stimuli to a permanent state of being you permanently have to be cruel you permanently have to be cold you permanently have to be aggressive or abusive or you permanently have to humiliate and then you you have to to enjoy it there have to be positive incentives for your cruelty, and therefore it is no longer reactive or dominant or conquering.
It is no longer... It's like the lions, instead of hunting the zebras, they capture the zebras, put them in an electrified fence and prey on them.
They have to... And they know that if the zebras all push together, they can take down the fence and stomp all the lions while they sleep, so they have to break the wills of the zebras so that the zebras stay in the fence, even though though the zebras vastly outnumber the lions.
And although the lions have teeth, the zebras have weight and hooves.
[53:31] So you have to break the will, which means that you have, because human beings own other human beings from most of human history, you have to go from fight or flight to permanent cruelty.
And permanent cruelty is sadism.
And then in the modern world, sadism is combined with an out-group preference because what's modeled to you is cruelty to family and kindness to outsiders.
So you end up hating your own culture and having a fetish for other cultures.
And you also end up being cruel to your own children because you have the power of isolation.
[54:01] I feel that wraps things up on sadism. I could be wrong. There could be more to talk about.
But I hope that this makes sense to you. And, of course, happy to get your feedback and any counter examples I'm happy to take on in a subsequent show.
But I think we've got sadism cornered, tagged, back to tagged, evaluated.
But, of course, I'm perfectly happy to go further if you find it would be helpful, if you think that there's stuff that's missing. Of course, there is, but, you know, really, really important stuff that's missing.
So, of course, thank you so much for the opportunity to do these kinds of talks.
And also freedomain.com slash donate, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Pretty sure this is unique and powerful, and this kind of illumination is life-changing, isn't it? It is life-changing.
Doesn't it help you understand the world in a really fundamental way?
And maybe yourself, too, since we all do have these angels and devils on our shoulders.
So freedomain.com slash donate to help out what it is that we're doing up here.
Thanks, of course, to Jared for some of the research and to you for listening and sharing the ideas and supporting philosophy.
Love you guys. Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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