0:03 - Opening Remarks
1:10 - Emotional Barriers to Truth
8:41 - Defining Good and Evil
13:37 - The Dangers of Subjective Morality
16:44 - Approaching Difficult Conversations
18:33 - The Challenge of Changing Minds
In this lecture, Stefan Molyneux explores the complexities of human psychology and morality, particularly in the context of parenting and the emotional barriers individuals face in acknowledging their wrongdoings. He begins by addressing the challenge of discussing moral issues with those who might be resistant to self-reflection, using the example of parents who spank their children. Molyneux argues that for many individuals, admitting to acts they perceive as immoral can feel like an intense emotional burden, making them less open to considering alternative viewpoints. He emphasizes the importance of assessing the readiness of others to engage in such discussions and outlines a more compassionate approach to addressing these deep-seated issues.
He shares insights from his experiences with call-ins, noting that the majority of his callers are typically those who are suffering from personal turmoil rather than those who are engaged in outright immoral actions. Molyneux illustrates this by describing how many individuals resort to self-medication as a coping mechanism for their unresolved trauma, often stemming from their childhood experiences and the dysfunctional environments they were raised in. This self-medication, while a means of temporary relief, often leads to further complications in adulthood, perpetuating a cycle of avoidance and denial.
The lecture transitions to a broader examination of how societal norms shape our understanding of morality. Molyneux discusses how individuals frequently rationalize their harmful actions by framing them as virtuous. He illustrates this through examples of parents justifying their punitive practices as necessary for the betterment of their children. This phenomenon, he argues, highlights a significant barrier to moral clarity: the tendency of individuals to conflate their interests with what they define as good.
Molyneux introduces a critical distinction between subjective and objective morality, suggesting that the manipulation of moral definitions contributes to societal chaos. He argues that when individuals can define "good" in a way that serves their own interests, it creates a foundation for moral conflict and societal dysfunction. Citing historical examples of superstition and misunderstood science, he posits that objective definitions of morality can serve to dismantle the subjective manipulations that allow individuals to evade accountability for their actions.
In navigating confrontations with those who engage in abusive behaviors, Molyneux advises a more indirect approach. Rather than directly accusing someone of wrongdoing, he proposes that asking them about their personal histories may lead to a greater understanding and the possibility of change. This method aims to disarm the defensive instincts that arise when moral judgments are imposed. By fostering a dialogue about their experiences, the hope is to gently encourage introspection and healing.
The conversation concludes with a sobering reflection on the societal trend toward moral confusion and the difficulty of shifting entrenched beliefs. Molyneux underlines the challenge of addressing deeply ingrained moral misconceptions, likening the defense mechanisms of individuals to an autoimmune disorder that protects harmful behaviors while attacking efforts to promote goodness. He emphasizes the importance of patience and empathy in fostering genuine dialogue about morality, recognizing that real change often requires navigating complex emotional landscapes.
Ultimately, this lecture serves as a nuanced exploration of the intersections between morality, personal history, and societal expectations, providing insights into the ways individuals might begin to dismantle their own barriers to personal growth and moral clarity.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Question from a while ago.
[0:04] Sorry about that. And thank you for your recent questions. I'll get to them soon. Stefan Molyneux, when you talk with people, they might have emotional barriers to hearing some truths. As an example, they spanked their children. So considering spanking being immoral means they need to consider them to be immoral. Is it useful to directly point to this possible painful thing directly? And if it is, I think so, because I believe you did that in your call-ins. How do you determine the other person is potentially ready or open to consider it? What is the best way to break it to them?
[0:41] Well, I don't remember a lot of that happening in call-ins, to be honest. You know, I mean, so I could be wrong about this, but most of the call-ins that I recall are people who are concerned that they are suffering from evil, not so much that they're doing evil. A debate, maybe. I had a debate with Dr. Walter Block about spanking many years ago. A debate, maybe.
[1:10] But I don't think I've had many calls where someone is calling up and saying.
[1:20] I want to know if I'm doing evil or that I'm doing evil. Usually, if people have been doing corrupt things like, you know, significant promiscuity or, you know, they've been doing a lot of drugs or they've been wasting their potential, you know, somewhat negative corrupt-y style things, but not obviously outright evil, then they usually call me because they're in a state of exhaustion or tiredness, burned-outedness with regards to their corruption. They're at the end of a particular road and looking for something better. And usually they've been self-medicating because they have been the victims of evil. They've been self-medicating, they're tired of that self-medication, and they want a different or better path. So that is usually what is happening.
[2:13] With the call-ins. They're enervated. It sounds like energized, but it's the opposite, right? They're burned out from their avoidance of their victimization. They're burned out from their avoidance of the evils that they've suffered. I mean, if you're stuck in a torture chamber and somebody offers you morphine, well, you'll take it, right? If you have to have an operation, obviously, you'll take the anesthetic. If you have to have a tooth drilled, most people will take the Novocaine. So when you're in a situation where pain is unavoidable, you might as well self-medicate. Otherwise, it just kind of feels masochistic. I mean, for many people trapped in really corrupt and dysfunctional families, self-medication is the most positive action that can be taken. Now, of course, the habits of self-medication tend to continue into adulthood. But that, of course, is because when you evolved in a bad family, evolutionarily speaking, it's because your bad family was in an anti-rational, corrupt, cult-like tribe, and you couldn't escape that. So, you might as well just keep self-medicating, right?
[3:36] The native addictions, sorry, the indigenous populations around the world, most of their addictions to drugs and alcohol is simply to self-medicate because their physical survival requires a sacrifice of their true self, their authentic thoughts, their skepticism, their criticisms, and so on. I mean, in many ways, COVID vaccines were, I mean, psychologically speaking, obviously, just as my own amateur opinion, they were a drug that was taken, to avoid the discomfort of disagreeing with the crowd, the mob, the family, the friends, those in authority, those in charge of the media, and so on. They were actually, you weren't so much medicating against COVID as you were against the anxiety of thinking for yourself, for a lot of people anyway.
[4:31] So I don't have many people, like I've had people who've called in over the years who've said, I was a terrible troll against you, and I put you down, I insulted you, I lied about you, and I feel really bad about it. And those can be interesting conversations. What I don't have, at least to my memory, I'm sure there's been one or two, but what I don't usually have, let's say, is people calling in and saying, Steph, I currently hate you and I think you're a terrible guy and have this terrible habit of spreading lies about you or riling people up against you and help me stop while I'm in the middle of that. I mean, afterwards, when the chaos, the smoke and all of that clears, that's when I'll hear from people, but not usually when when they're in the throes of it. So I don't usually have conversations with people who are saying in the example that's provided, I don't usually have conversations with people who are saying.
[5:37] I'm currently beating my children, and I really feel compelled to do it, and I desperately want to stop. I mean, I would welcome those conversations. And there are some, I mean, there are some, right? People say, I'm yelling at my kids, I want to stop, and so on, right? But not usually, I'm beating my kids with a wooden spoon or a ladle or a belt or something. those are very rare.
[6:05] People who say, I lose my temper with my kids, I yell at my kids, I don't want to do that. That's happened for sure. And so the reason I'm talking about all of this, of course, is people who are doing evil don't ask for help because they don't believe they're doing evil. You know, a surgeon who's cutting out tumors and appendices, the appendix for somebody with appendicitis or who's doing other, you know, positive and helpful things. It doesn't call up someone and say, I have this, I have this terrible habit of stabbing people, right? I mean, they, they, because they, they're doing good. They're, they're helping people. They're curing people, or at least trying to.
[6:50] I mean, this is old, it's an old movie with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis. Feed me Seymour. And Steve Martin says, you know, while I was a cruel kid. I liked hurting animals. So my mother said, you know, my parents said, well, go be a dentist because then you get to hurt people and get paid. But I mean, most dentists aren't calling up and saying, you know, well, I just, I enjoy scraping people's teeth and drilling into people's teeth and, and, and all of that and putting needles into their gums. You know, if somebody, if you said to a psychologist that, and they didn't think you were a dentist, they'd say, well, geez, you got a real problem with sadism there. But then if you say, well, I'm a dentist, it's like, well, then you're actually kind of helping people, right? Assuming you're doing dentistry sort of correctly. So the people who are doing evil think that they're doing good. So they don't really call for help. So in a debate, yes, I will call someone immoral and corrupt and so on. And that's valid, but that's for the audience to see, not for the person themselves to look in the mirror and say, gee, he's right. I am immoral or whatever it is, right?
[8:02] So, the people who think that they're doing good, and this is the parent who the child is being disrespectful, the child is not listening, the child is willful, and you have to break their spirit so that they don't become criminals and brought to, you know, some sort of perhaps religious epiphany or something like that. So, those parents think that they're doing good. They think that they are dentists causing pain for the good of health. They think that they are surgeons causing pain for the good of health.
[8:33] Surgeon does not get charged with stabbing someone. A dentist does not get charged with assault, even though he may cause you considerable pain.
[8:42] So, they believe that they're doing good. Now, how do you change that? Well, of course, evil that calls itself good inoculates itself against genuine morality by calling genuine morality evil. Let me say this again. Evil inoculates itself against good because evil says that good is evil. So if you say to a parent who's very aggressive with his child, violent with his child or abusive with his child, if you say that's immoral, then the parent will say some variation of, well, it's my kid. This is the right way to do it. I was raised. I turned out well. You coddle your kids. They're going to turn into terrible people, soy boys, you know, strictness in the pursuit of discipline is a virtue. And, you know, if I'm a coach and I'm telling a kid that he needs to train harder, the kid's going to be upset, but that's how you win the gold. Like, he's just going to say that you're trying to turn me into a bad parent by telling me to not be aggressive with my child.
[9:48] We see this all over the place. Social media is everybody trying to define what they're doing as good. So, the people who want, let's say, USAID to be cut, they say, well, we're saving money, we're saving the republic, America's going to go bankrupt, blah-de-blah-de-blah, they do all of this stuff. Whereas the people who want the USAID spending to continue say, we're saving lives, and people are going to die, and so it's good, right? So, that's all that people are doing, is they're attempting to define the good as what is usually materially beneficial for them, or emotionally. Let's just say beneficial. I'm thinking materially like Doge, but we can talk beneficial emotionally like bad parenting, right? So people just say, what I like or what is good for me or what I want or what feels good is the good. And the most fundamental thing.
[10:50] Conflicts in society are all about the definitions of morality, which is why UPB, UPB takes away subjective definitions of morality, which takes away the most foundational manipulation within society, which is what is the good, right? If the good is objectively defined, right, then you can't manipulate people with it. And that's all that happens in society. It's just an absolute madhouse, this absolute chaotic madhouse of people redefining the good as that which magically serves their own material interests. So, the analogy would be if someone is a witch doctor, some local superstition-based charlatan, and the witch doctor says, give me money, I'll do a dance, and that will bring the rain. That will bring the rain. Well, as soon as you understand that the physics of rain is not dependent upon the leg shaking of a con man, the con man loses his power. So objective definitions destroy subjective manipulations.
[11:59] Nobody anymore pays people to do rain dances. But in the past, before they understood the physics of these things, they did pay people to do rain dances. If you believe that you are infected with a curse called sin, and you have to pay somebody to remove that curse called sin, then you can. You will end up probably paying that person, right? But once you understand that your conscience is yours to solve or assuage through apologies, restitution, and promises of non-repetition, then your salvation, so to speak, is in your own hands, and you don't need to pay somebody for a magic spell to drive the badness from your brain.
[12:43] The same thing with objective morality. When you have objective morality, then you take away the ability for people to define a morality as that which benefits their own interests, makes them feel good, or has them avoid feeling bad. Hedonism masquerading as objective morality is really the greatest curse of the world, always has been, and hopefully won't always be in the future. But a man who wants to hit his children, because he's angry and possessed of the brutality of his own parents, probably, a man who wants to hit his children defines hitting children as good. A man who wants power over others says that the only way that people can be helped is by other people surrendering their power to him. And he calls it benevolence and kindness. So people who want a lot of money from USAID define USAID as doing good and them doing good and so on. So it's all just hedonism.
[13:37] It's just hedonism masquerading as virtue. But when you objectively define virtue, you take away the manipulative control of morality from the witch doctors of self-interest pretending to be moralists.
[13:48] And so that's a tough transition. It's a tough transition for people. That's the biggest, you're trying to take away the biggest power, which is the sophistry definition of self-interest as, quote, morality, right? So in general, I don't talk to people doing direct evil. I have, I mean, of course, I've talked about this before. I have at times over the course of my life confronted parents in public who are being very aggressive with their children.
[14:16] And there's always a little bit of a shock because, of course, nobody really does that. And people can get away with just about anything, even in public, except being aggressive towards women. Then all these heroes will step in because, you know, they want to show the woman that they'll be nicer to them than this nasty man so that they can be with the woman instead but people will step in if a woman is being aggressed against but not and maybe it's more common now but they won't step in if someone's being aggressive towards a child at least certainly if not when i was young.
[14:46] Doesn't happen. I've not seen it other than what I've done in public. I've never seen somebody be aggressive with a child and somebody step in other than myself and a few people that I know to intervene. So, I wouldn't confront someone in general in the act of doing evil. What I would do, let's say that I, for some reason, I was stuck in a relationship in some way, stuck in a relationship with somebody who was abusing children, is I would not confront it directly and say, you're doing evil, because then that just provokes the defense and aggression, right? The defense of, I'm doing good, you counseling me to do evil is actually the real evil, and I'm doing good, right? I mean, it would be like if I said to a surgeon, you should not operate on this person dying of appendicitis, the surgeon would say, so you just want this patient to die? Like, what's the matter with you? Like, you're crazy. This is, that'd be murder. I can help the patient. I'm going to help the patient. To not help the patient is to have the patient die. So you just, once they've defined it that way, and that would be, of course, a pretty good definition, but once people have defined things that way, you can't say anything to them.
[15:54] I mean, you can't, that demoralization is when good has become evil and evil has become good, because then you can't reach people. So what I would do instead is, you know, ask about their history, their childhood, what their relationship with their parents is like, and I would approach it more indirectly. Because when people have the good is evil and evil is good hardwired definitions, like they're baked into the brain, you can't change those definitions any more than you can convince a benevolent surgeon to let someone die of appendicitis or, you know, the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver to let somebody just choke to death in their food because they're enjoying their piece of cheesecake. They're just not going to do that, right? They're just not going to do this. Like, it would be like trying to talk a lifeguard, even if he's off duty from rushing in to save a drowning child. Like, they would look at you like, what's the matter with you? Like, why would you want me to do such a terrible thing?
[16:44] When people have defined the good as evil and evil as the good, you can't confront those definitions because you just shift it into the category of evil. And the person then just escalates their defenses against you. I sort of think of it in the mind as the equivalent of an autoimmune disorder. Autoimmune disorders to some degree are when the immune system attacks healthy cells and not dangerous or foreign cells. And the autoimmune disorder of good is evil and evil is good means that evil is protected and good is attacked. And that is the default position of society, is to defend evil and attack the good. And I don't need, certainly after the last half decade, you don't need me to tell you that. That's pretty blindingly clear and obvious with this kind of stuff.
[17:26] So what you have to do is, or at least what I would do, is bypass all of that and try to figure out where the thinking comes from. Right? So if somebody says, hitting children is good, then if you try to say hitting children is bad they'll just put you in the category of bad and dismiss you effortlessly like it will happen but if you say oh what was your childhood like oh your father hit you oh gosh what was that like and show the little bit of sympathy and so on then there's a possibility of beginning to loosen some of these bolts holding these false definitions in places you know patience and curiosity and and so on i think that's the way but the problem is of course, I mean, at some point, you are going to hit that defense, right? At some point, you are going to hit that defense, where the more sympathy you show towards them as a child, the more, it's like possession, right? Like the devil fights to keep his own. And once the devil has wormed his way into a soul, trying to dislodge the devil will bring counterattacks. The devil does not give up souls without a ferocious battle. And most times the devil wins.
[18:34] It's something I said, oh gosh, was it 2015, 2016, or something like that? A Night for Freedom, that's a decade ago almost. I said, you know, the problem is that they're making crazy people far quicker than we can make sane people. Because whatever educational system you allow to be controlled by a coercive entity will eventually be used to produce evildoers and to corrupt the young. So I hope that helps. And let me know if there's anything else I can do to answer that question, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Really do appreciate that, my friends. Have yourselves a wonderful, beautiful, charming day. Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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