Stefan Molyneux begins with a fan’s question about Star Wars. He shares his thoughts on the franchise, particularly his appreciation for The Empire Strikes Back and how stories about lonely young warriors can carry unsettling messages about war and manipulation. From there he moves into the ways such narratives influence young minds and connect to larger ideas around depopulation.
He considers what makes a life well lived and argues that promoting virtue while opposing evil stands at the center of it. The discussion turns to politics and how demography shapes urban culture. He examines the welfare state, the role of empathy in dense populations, and the political tendencies that arise when social structures and personal behaviors mix with guilt and compassion.
Molyneux looks at charity and societal responsibility. He points out how government programs can sometimes block real help and create dependency instead. Genuine care, he suggests, can slide into coercive support that worsens the very problems it aims to fix. He addresses ongoing issues like homelessness in cities and the difficulty of tackling their root causes.
He reflects on mental health and sanity, stressing the need to stay grounded in reality despite outside pressures. Using various analogies, he highlights how resistance and clear limits help build rational thinking. This leads into comments on current events, including COVID-19 and the erosion of public trust in official data.
On Bitcoin and the financial system, Molyneux weighs government policies and their possible effects on new technologies. He sees Bitcoin as a potential safeguard against economic instability and mounting debt, and he expects governments may eventually turn to cryptocurrencies to help stabilize their own finances.
The conversation becomes more personal when he fields questions about family relationships, emotional reactions, and grief. He encourages people to express their true feelings rather than follow what society expects. He also touches on coping with long-term health difficulties and the psychology of facing hardship.
Finally, he speaks about the duty of parents to show their children not only moral behavior but also genuine happiness. He ties reason, virtue, and happiness together, noting that living by these principles creates a healthier setting for the next generation.
0:00:00 - Thoughts on Star Wars
0:01:11 - Cities Turning Blue
0:04:49 - Parents and Public Content
0:07:18 - The Ethics of Debate
0:09:27 - Moral Subjectivism Explained
0:12:40 - Gullibility in Society
0:13:56 - Bitcoin and Government Control
0:15:30 - Navigating Grief
0:18:15 - Long-Term Effects of Cancer
0:20:28 - Parents' Obligations to Live Well
0:22:44 - Closing Thoughts and Donations
[0:00:00] All right, sorry, it took me a little while to get these questions. My apologies. This is from Facebook. In honor of May the 4th, what are your thoughts on Star Wars' favorite, least favorite film and character? I like the second The Empire Strikes Back. I thought was a good, solid storytelling and movie. If you would like to know more about my thoughts on Star Wars, fvrpodcast.com. You can do a search for Star Wars. Very briefly, the story that a lonely, depressed, anxious young man is visited by an older warrior who recruits him for war is a tale that is told by the elites to make young men fall in love with war and not have children. It's a depopulation agenda. Who's trying to have kids in the Star Wars series? Not many people and so on. So, I mean, you could say the same as Star Trek. It's kind of the same thing. So, training young men to respond to the draft in the way that Luke Skywalker responds to Obi-Wan Kenobi is basic imperialism 101. All right. How would you define a life well lived? Promote virtue, fight evil. Why do cities, areas inevitably turn blue once the population reaches a certain point?
[0:01:11] Well, it's not that cities are areas turning blue. It's that.
[0:01:16] What happens is there's a whole system that is put in place to say, there but for the grace of God go I, that that poor homeless guy is just like you, but with some bad luck. And that way you are given empathy. Most homeless people are violent, horrible, corrupt drug addicts who would sell their own grandmother for a hit. And we can sort of talk about child abuse and how they end up that way. But nonetheless, they do end up that way. as a whole, so it is a nasty situation as a whole. Most people who have genuinely spent a life trying to help others understand that there are very few people you can actually help, some people you can give encouragement to, and so on, but there's very few people you can actually help, particularly those who've wrecked their brains through drugs and alcohol, and so on. So what happens is people get told that you have to help the less fortunate by force, right? By force. Charity is like love making. It turns into rape when force is applied. And then what happens is you end up with this welfare state and the help people and all the childless women try to mother all of the, quote, unfortunates.
[0:02:31] And then you end up with all this generosity and this draws more poor people. And then if you, I mean, most people, they just, they make decisions not according to any principles. But just according to hedonism, right? Like, Europe opened up its borders as a result of hedonism, which is that terrible Turkish father overloaded his kid on a boat because he wanted to get to Canada for free dental care, and the boat sank, and the kid drowned. And then there was this picture of the kid on the beach, and then nobody had any principals or very few people, and the media pumped all of this because the media just wants to destroy white countries. And so then, people made these sentimental feelings. It's all based on feelings and sentiment. This image makes me feel bad. Therefore, we have to do something, and the have to do something is always something against virtue and common sense and rationality and so on. So once you get the homeless in the city, you can't do much with them.
[0:03:37] Therefore, you just keep giving them more money, which draws more and more people. That's why California has such a big homeless population. Now, of course, you can do something. I mean, was it Los Angeles? I think it was totally cleaned up when the premier of China came to visit, which tells you the priorities of the politicians.
[0:03:53] In order to stay sane, we need continual, robust abrasions and interactions with actual reality. Human beings thrive on limitations. Sanity thrives on limitations.
[0:04:07] Rationality thrives on resistance. And so, it's like bustles, right? You've got to have a heavy weight to build a muscle. And when you get money shoveled at you through debt and through the government, the population becomes generally psychotic. I'm not kidding about that. Like, psychotic. Like they don't process reality anymore because the government and the money printing and all of that has given everyone the illusion of infinity and leftists treat money like it's air. Like, why would you want to deprive someone of air? You must hate them. And it's like, there's no balance. There's no either or. There's no, there are these magical solutions with no limitations. I mean, if you ever want to find out if someone's a leftist, just ask them what are the potential downsides of the program they want. And if they say, well, there aren't any, then they're psychotic. All right.
[0:04:49] What's the UPB take on parents of medically complex kids making content around the child's medical well-being? For context, I have a medically complex child after multi-organ failure. I'm sorry to hear that. You can search medical mom, medical parents as examples to see. I don't know if it's right or wrong. Sometimes it's nice to see people go through similar struggles, needles, tubes, multi-surgery scans, etc. Other times I'm uncomfortable with the ad drops or promos. I don't think you can really make the choice to put your kids online. I didn't until Izzy was much older I didn't really make the choice to have her, image online to post pictures of her this is, Just, uh, I don't think you have the right to make that decision for your kids.
[0:05:33] Uh, so I don't, I don't think it's right. You can talk about it. You can write about it. I just don't think you should video about it. Or if you are going to video about it, don't include your kids. Uh, where can we find your old videos? A truth about series that were taken off YouTube. So just go to FDR, Freedomain Radio, FDR podcasts.com and do a search truth about. How bad did it get that you gave up talking politics, my brother and fellow teacher? I can only imagine. Respect for what you taught so many, including me. Don't answer and feel free to delete this comment until we restore this justice we were once used to. Respect. Thank you.
[0:06:09] It was pretty easy to see where things were going, you know, bomb threats, death threats, legal threats, all these kinds of things, right? And of course, you can read Lauren Southerne's book this is not the real life or this is not real life or something like that and you know she had a very very tough time with a whole bunch of systems both in Canada and in Australia and of course was banned from England and and so on so it was very tough and I don't mind a fight.
[0:06:40] If it's a fair fight, right? I'm happy to debate. I'm happy to match wits. I'm happy to, you know, engage in these kinds of things. But if I'm going to fight, I expect people to follow the rules. In other words, if I'm going to be a boxer, I'm not going to get into the boxing ring with someone who's going to drug me beforehand, who's going to call in an airstrike while running for the exit, who's going to bring a gun or a bat. Like, that's just not... Like, I play chess with people who respect the rules of chess. I don't play chess with people who just make up rules.
[0:07:13] So I'm happy to debate, but only when people are willing to follow the rules of debate. I'm not going to insult reason by pretending you can be rational when other people are just violent. All right.
[0:07:25] A question. One of the reasons I wouldn't call into your show is because you ask, what are my wife's virtues? It feels to me that if your wife isn't actively fighting against evil, she lacks virtue, and I can't get that out of my head. Most people are generally good, but not virtuous. But how can you be put on the spot like that? Then you get the inevitable, Hitler was hardworking, etc. So that's not a virtue. That's why I consume your content without donating. I challenge you to make a paywall to see what happens. I don't quite understand that. But I'm not sure why me asking challenging questions is why you don't donate. That's why I consume your content without donating. I mean, honestly, after a certain amount of time, it is just dishonorable to take somebody's hard-earned work and just consume and consume and consume because it costs me money, right? I got to pay for servers. I have employees. I have to obviously make some money myself. I have to pay for equipment. I have cameras, microphones, computers, editing software, and expertise and training. So it's expensive. And honestly, if you just keep consuming my content.
[0:08:33] After a certain amount of time, without helping out the show. It's just kind of, it's extremely dishonorable. It's extremely dishonorable. Because you're also getting your time back because I don't do ads, right? And you're relying on other people to support what you find valuable. So it's kind of funny how you consume my content without donating, and then you're concerned that I might question your wife's ethics. How about we look at your ethics, bro, instead of your wife's. Said of your wife's. Do you still think that Americans should have voted Trump?
[0:09:03] When did I ever say Americans should have voted Trump? I think that Trump was a positive figure in the political landscape because he exposed both the callerness and shallowness and falseness of the media. And also, it was just fascinating to see his, you know, giant ego, which has its strengths and weaknesses, go crashing into the fragile fantasy land of contemporary politics. So, I would like to, I've never told anyone how to vote.
[0:09:27] I would like to hear your thoughts about moral subjectivism and what kind of person would be drawn to the idea that moral rules can be formed from a subject's opinion. Well, opinions. Well, there's no such thing as moral subjectivism. If it's subjective, it's not moral. That's like saying subjectivist physics. It's like, well, no, if it's subjective, it's not physics. And if it's physics, it's not subjective. So if people say morals can be whatever you want them to be, that's like saying the rules of physics can be whatever you want them to be. Or the rules of numbers or the rules of chess can be whatever you want them to be. So it's a basic sort of sanity test that if somebody says that which is universal, objective and enforceable, which is like morals, at least in a geographical region, most people accept that, that which is universal, acceptable and enforceable.
[0:10:14] And enforceable, sorry, acceptable, not quite right, that which is universal and enforceable, right, universally preferable behavior, that that's just completely subjective, then they're saying that that which is subjective is subjective. And that's just not, it doesn't stand a statement that makes any sense. It's just, well, it's a dodge that people use when they have a bad conscience. And the bad conscience says, you did wrong. And how did they react to their conscience saying, you did wrong? How did they deal with their conscience saying, you did wrong, because our conscience is going to say that from time to time. You did wrong, or you hurt someone, and you did something unjust, or you were false when you really had a responsibility to be honest or truthful, and you weaseled out of something that you really should have stood up for. And it happens. Our conscience is supposed to guide us. And how do we deal with our conscience? Well, either we listen to our conscience, in which case we retain some integrity, and it doesn't mean we become the slave to our conscience. Our conscience can generally make mistakes. But this is why people react so strongly against UPB. When cornered, it's because UPB represents the conscience. The conscience is that which takes your moral statements and universalizes them. That's all it does.
[0:11:21] In the same way that if you're a baseball player, the next time a ball comes flying towards you, you don't say, well, what the hell is that? What am I supposed to do? Because you've universalized all of the physics and skills and abilities from a billion balls or a million balls that you've caught and so on. And so UPB just takes the moral rules that you, inflict on others and believe to be true and applies them against you. And when people get uneasy, they can either listen to their conscience and hopefully improve, or they can just say, oh, everything's subjective, nothing is true, blah, blah, blah. And that's their way of hoping to escape their conscience, but it just drives their conscience underground and wrecks their life.
[0:12:01] Ah, Stef, according to UPB, why is respecting property rights morally good? Is it because it is opposite of theft which UPB proves is morally evil? I feel like I'm missing something from UPB even though I did read the book and have been listening to it for years. Well, can theft ever be universally preferable behavior? Which means, can everyone want to steal and be stolen from at all times? Well, no, because if you want to be stolen from, it's not theft, so theft can never be universally preferable behavior. Hey, Stef, do you have round-the-clock personal protection. I hope you have got that given recent events. I will not talk about my security and so on, right?
[0:12:37] Okay, and this is from Locals, freedomain.locals.com. Why are so many people so gullible? Because it's easier to be told what to do than think for yourself. And whenever you are told what to do, you will find a ready-made group of people who agree with you and accept you out of relief because misery loves company and thinking for yourself brings a lot of hostility.
[0:12:58] Hi, Stef. When I reflect on the COVID times, I personally felt that the response to the virus was totally wrong, and I was beyond skeptical of the COVID charts. I do not believe the government data on cases, etc. However, there was a large cohort of individuals that said there would be massive complications and side effects of taking the COVID charts, and although there are vaccine injuries, to which it's possible that the government could be hiding the data on that as well, all in all, taking the vaccine so far did not result in massive problems as well. With that said, I am wondering about Bitcoin.
[0:13:27] Fractional reserve banking, printing money, and other strategies is a problem. And we see all of the problems like the national debt, etc. But is it possible that somehow, some way, governments will find a way to inhibit the effects of Bitcoin being some kind of financial salvation? Will the government simply put guardrails on the on and off ramps of converting Bitcoin so that they still indirectly control Bitcoin? Is it possible that the government will just continue to play the game of manipulating interest rates so that people will still be able to buy homes,
[0:13:55] even though housing prices may be off the charts. Perhaps the government will use incentives to promote family formation, etc., even though the track record is abysmal so far. But all in all, the government will just continue to intervene and just delay the proposed crash indefinitely. Thoughts? Oh, no. Well, they can't. I mean, they can't do it indefinitely, right? I mean, that which cannot continue mathematically will not continue at some point every single culture throughout history. I mean, look, I don't know. i don't know the future uh i think bitcoin is an absolute lifeboat salvation vessel it's like instead of getting off the titanic into a lifeboat you get off the titanic into a intergalactic star cruiser that can take you all over the universe in perfect comfort so my belief is that governments will not want to crush bitcoin because they will want to accumulate bitcoin and use it to pay off their debt bitcoin is a way of the government having like a gold reserve in a sense that.
[0:14:50] And I don't think many governments have much gold left in the basements. So I think that people in government, governments as a whole, will want Bitcoin because they'll use it to minimize their debt. Was it Bulgaria? If they just hung onto the Bitcoin they'd seized, could have actually paid off their entire national debt by now.
[0:15:05] But politicians will get into Bitcoin as a way of... I mean, politicians, they don't go down with the ship, right? Politicians will get into Bitcoin as a way of saving their own family fortunes from hyperinflation. Hi, Stef. My mom, who I have been estranged from for three years due to emotional neglect I experienced as a child and an adult, passed away recently. I'm struggling feeling anything for her death.
[0:15:27] I found out via a public Facebook post that nobody from my family has contacted me. I'm angry, but don't feel sad. She has passed. What is your advice for navigating these emotions and what I'm going through? So trust your feelings. Trust your feelings. You know, everybody tells you what you should feel. Oh, your mother passed. You must feel so sad.
[0:15:45] Blah, mean, I've gone through a bunch of older relative deaths, and I've.
[0:15:52] Didn't have particularly close relationships to them. I didn't particularly respect them. They didn't protect me or help me as a child. I don't care. I don't care. I'm not going to be sentimental. Like my father died a couple of years ago. I mean, I was a little sad at the time for what I missed, but I'm not going to, and I'm not saying you're doing this, but just for myself, I'm not going to pretend that I should feel something. I'm not going to order my feelings around. I'm receptive to them. I'm open to my feelings. I check in with myself. how am I feeling about my father being dead or I don't know if my mother's dead I think I would find out by now and every now and then I check to see if there's any obituaries for her but because she's in her late 80s now it's amazing really she's lived on cigarettes and Nescafe for decades but I'm not going to tell my emotions what they should or shouldn't do I'm not going to repress them I'm going to listen to them check in with my emotions do we feel anything but you know oh, your father has died. And hey, look, I mean, if I was close to my father and I love my father and so on, you know, I'd feel very sad, of course, right? I mean, if my, you know, when my wife dies, if she dies before me, I will be heartbroken beyond words. And I will miss her every day, every day.
[0:17:03] But I'm not going to miss people who betrayed me. I'm not going to miss people who are cruel to me and so on. And, you know, people have had tons of time. I'm not hard to find. People have had tons of time to figure out how to contact me and apologize or try and repair the relationship, I'm not going to do it. All right.
[0:17:22] Oh, he says, I would be a bit clear around by feelings. I refer to what wider society expects you to feel when a parent passes. I'm just feeling anger and so on, right? Yes. Yeah, it's fine. You can feel anger. You can feel anger at what was missed and what was lost. You can feel anger at the people who didn't even bother to tell you. That's kind of a passive-aggressive engine thing and so on.
[0:17:41] So, how did you and your wife cope with the long-term impacts of cancer? Did you experience side effects from the treatment? I did. I did. Actually, what happened? So, it was a terrible story, really. I had a lump in my throat found by my dentist, and it wasn't going away. So, I had a biopsy, and it was clear. It was just a non-malignant, but then it took over a year to try and get any kind of operation. I ended up basically going to the States to get the operation done. By that time, it had turned cancerous. I had to have cancer treatments, chemotherapy and radiation.
[0:18:15] And the only long-term impact has been that my left ear got kind of fried from the treatments, which gave me some tinnitus and sort of other issues. Nothing too horrible, but it's certainly inconvenient at times. So the long-term impacts, look, I got sick when my daughter was very little. I've gotten to watch her grow up. I have no complaints at all. I have no complaints at all.
[0:18:39] He says, my wife finished ovarian cancer treatments in 2011 and still has side effects, vision and neuropathy. Only a few years ago, thanks to listening to you, was I able to cope with the loss of how ovarian cancer impacted our future. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I would say that my long-term effects have been relatively mild, and of course, I've had no recurrence, and so on. So, I'm really sorry about that. And of course, if it was ovarian cancer, perhaps she got her ovaries removed and that's a very big deal on all of that so, all right uh next question if children model their parents behavior sorry did i answer that one i don't think i did a good job sorry um long-term impacts of cancer uh you know let me sort of dig a little deeper sorry that was a bit of a shallow response my apologies.
[0:19:24] I mean, yeah, the long-term effects are a drag, for sure. And the alternative is what? You're just dead. To celebrate surviving an illness, even with lingering effects, you know, you can be grateful that you lived, or you could be sad at the effects of being sick. I mean, I got a little bit of a whine in my left ear. It's been going on for like 11 years. And again, not the end of the world. It kind of comes and goes a little bit. One never really goes away. But it's the wine of life. It's the wine of being here. I mean, I could very easily not have some minor hearing loss and some tinnitus. Well, not. I guess my ear is down about half, I think, on my left side. But I could have no tinnitus, no hearing loss, but only at the price of not being alive and so on. I mean, was the healthcare system pretty bad to me? Yes, it was. Yes, it was. But at least I had an option to go elsewhere. So, yeah, I think you just have to be happy that you're alive rather than focus on the negative effects of being ill.
[0:20:29] All right. If children model their parents' behavior, do parents have an obligation to live not just a moral life, but a happy life as well? I think so. I think that, you know, reason equals virtue equals happiness is the long-term equation that Socrates, well, Nietzsche kind of interpreted Socrates that way, reason equals virtue equals happiness.
[0:20:46] Rationality should bring some level of happiness. And also, but you have to be relatively open, at least when your kids get older, that there are some concerns and some fear as well. So I think you don't want to give kids the idea that being immoral just makes you unhappy and puts you in constant conflict. To some degree, you have to sell your life, right? I mean, if you're a personal trainer, you have to have the kind of physique that people want.
[0:21:14] I mean, if you're a model, you have to have the kind of face and body that people want. And if I'm going to work to sell virtue, I do kind of have to have a life that people want to some degree. And I have a really great life, thanks to you guys and society and all of that. So I think you have to have a life that they want. And that doesn't mean the life that's where you're always happy. Sometimes you're in battle. Sometimes you're in combat and so on, right? But to enjoy virtue as a whole. question what is the psychology being entertaining on camera or live stream when i see people on live news and on live i often wonder how they do it and what makes the person a natural being on camera, yeah i try to have a conversation as if we're just chatting to some degree it's really hard to get it just that way it's because if you go too naturalistic it's kind of confusing to people, but i think you want to just talk to people like you're talking to people as opposed to having a formal camera voice and this kind of stuff, right? So, just try and be natural as if you're talking to a person. I saw a post recently, says someone, arguing that discipline is built on shame and that devotion is built on love. Oh, that just sounds kind of vaguely clever, but it doesn't really lead anywhere. You need discipline in life anyway. But discipline is built on shame? No, I don't necessarily think so. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
[0:22:32] Anything that summarizes things quite that way is not particularly helpful as a whole. All right.
[0:22:41] I think there's a bunch more, but some very long questions. So I will wait for the next time to do that. And freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. Appreciate it. Lots of love. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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