0:05 - Introduction to the Parable
3:37 - The Power of Parents
6:07 - Survival Under Threat
8:04 - The Role of External Experiences
9:31 - The Nature of Choices
14:58 - Choices and Consequences
16:10 - The Fork in the Road
18:14 - The Influence of Evil Thoughts
20:25 - The Capacity to Gaslight
22:50 - Finding Positives in Adversity
26:51 - The Impact of Choices on Life
34:02 - Moral Responsibility and Choices
37:23 - Defining Morality Through Choices
38:00 - Expanding Perspectives for Better Choices
39:18 - Conclusion and Reflections
In this lecture, the speaker extensively examines Mark 7:17-23, discussing the complexities of parental authority and the societal implications of criticizing one's parents. The speaker initiates the conversation by referencing the serious biblical injunction against speaking ill of parents, famously stating that such criticism could merit death. This brings about a profound exploration of morality, suggesting that instituting such drastic penalties for mere criticism can be symptomatic of a broader psychological and societal flaw where parents are held in an unquestionable light akin to deities. The speaker argues that this dynamic fosters a toxic environment where children are coerced into silence and compliance, creating a cycle of abuse that perpetuates itself across generations.
Transitioning from biblical adherence to psychological implications, the speaker emphasizes Jesus's teaching that true defilement arises not from external circumstances but from within the human heart. This perspective invites listeners to reconsider how individuals internalize abuse or wrongful treatment. The speaker argues that external evils do not corrupt one's moral fabric; rather, it is the internal choices made in response to these experiences that define one's character. This reinforces the idea that suffering, while undoubtedly painful, need not define a person's identity or morality.
Diving deeper into the theme of personal agency, the speaker reflects on the critical importance of the choices individuals make throughout their lives. Drawing from personal experiences, the speaker discusses how recognizing one's past traumas can either empower or restrict one's choices. Particularly, they identify the detrimental habit of victimhood that many individuals fall into, suggesting that blaming others for one's circumstances undermines personal accountability and hinders emotional growth. Achieving a state of self-forgiveness and understanding one's own role in life choices is presented as essential for healing and personal development.
The lecture further discusses the significance of choice by outlining how crucial decisions in life serve as bifurcations for future paths. The speaker provides vivid examples from their life, illustrating how certain pivotal moments shaped their values, beliefs, and even professional direction. The metaphor of choice is likened to a lightning strike illuminating different paths; if one chooses wisely, they step into the light of personal growth, whereas faltering choices can lead one into a darkness fraught with regret.
With respect to external influences, the speaker highlights the notion that societal norms often dictate perceptions of morality and personal success. They argue that individuals often self-justify their actions through societal acceptance or by employing rationalizations that lead to moral decay. This self-justification process can escalate into more significant moral failings, suggesting that the origins of actions such as theft or adultery stem from the internal dialogue and the choices made, reinforced by unsatisfactory circumstances.
Rejecting the idea that success and moral integrity come easily, the speaker advocates for the necessity of confronting uncomfortable truths and challenges in life. They discuss the importance of continuous self-examination and emotional awareness, stressing that life's difficulties often serve as fertile ground for growth if approached with the right mindset. This sentiment is encapsulated in the speaker's encouragement to pursue knowledge, embrace emotional awareness, and remain open to differing perspectives in order to navigate life's moral complexities effectively.
The lecture concludes with an exhortation to the audience to remain vigilant in their choices, continuously seeking personal growth and new understandings, rather than succumbing to the whims of societal pressures or past traumas. The essence of the message is one of empowerment, urging individuals to take ownership of their narratives, choose wisely in their responses to adversity, and ultimately cultivate a moral compass that prioritizes reflection, growth, and virtue over mere survival or compliance.
[0:00] Well, good morning, everybody. This is Bible verses Mark chapter 7, verse 17.
[0:06] And when he, Jesus, later entered a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, now the parable is to do with honoring thy mother and thy father. So as they refer in the previous chapters to the verse from Moses, or to the commandment from Moses, honor thy mother and thy father, and anyone who speaks ill of thy mother and father, he should be put to death, right? So, a death penalty for criticizing parents. Now, that's way too much power for any human being to handle, that if you are criticized, those who criticize you should be killed. That is a form of absolute megalomaniacal vainglorious psychosis, that is viewing yourself as a god. And putting parents in the positions of vengeful, hateful, evil gods who can command the death of anyone who criticizes them is, it's psychotic. And so they're saying, well, hang on, you've said that parents can be criticized, and in fact should be if they've done wrong. And Moses says that anybody who criticizes parents should be put to death.
[1:26] So his disciples ask him about the parable and he said to them, are you so lacking in understanding as well? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the person from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated. Thereby he declared all foods clean. And he was saying, that which comes out of the person, that is what defiles the person. For from within, out of the hearts of people come the evil thoughts, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, murders, acts of adultery, deeds of greed, wickedness, deceit, indecent behavior, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the person. So, this is obviously an update of the old Socratic argument that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil. So, whatever goes into the person from outside cannot defile him. So, if you are abused, you are not corrupted. If you are lied about, you are not corrupted. If you are attacked, if you are beaten up, you are not corrupted, because those things come from outside.
[2:50] Because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated. Now, that's a clever way of putting it, right? In other words, it doesn't go into your heart, it doesn't go into your conscience. That which is done unto you is to the shame of others, not to your shame. And of course, this is something that I've been talking about for decades with people in call-in shows, right? Which is to say, the fact that evil was done to you as a child, I understand that you needed to believe it was your fault in order to survive the situation. In other words, an abusive parent harms a child saying that the child is bad and wrong, and thus justifying the harm by saying it is corrective or disciplined or it's provoked or, you know, sort of by the other person, right?
[3:37] And it's, Jimmy, it's really crazy that we, in a court of law, if a woman wears revealing clothing, we don't consider that justification for rape, and rightly so. We don't blame the victim. But in the culture as a whole, we're not doing nearly enough work to help children stop feeling guilty. So as a child, you had to agree with your parents that you were bad in order to survive the situation.
[4:04] Because if you have a parent so immoral and irrational, that your parent is attacking you, you know, verbally or physically or, God forbid, sexually, or neglecting you based upon a negative characteristic of yours, then if you disagree with that causality and you say, you don't hit me because I'm bad, you hit me because you're bad, you risk death. I mean, let's be frank about this. You risk death. Now, you can say yes, but, you know, really only a few thousand, say in America, only a few thousand kids get killed a year. But we're talking about our evolution, right? we're talking about our evolution. And this is what he's talking about with regards to parents, that if you criticize your parent, you will be put to death.
[4:54] Anyone who even speaks, anyone who morally criticizes your parents should be put to death. That is the death penalty for questioning parental morality. And that was the tradition, of course, that Jesus came out of. And that, of course, is a tradition that is, well, let's just say it's not going to exactly promote moral development. And it turns parents into totalitarians, right? He criticized Stalin, you could get thrown in a prison camp. So, as a child, you have to agree with your parents that you are bad, and they are punishing you for your badness, and that they are good. That is how you survive. And throughout most of our evolution, if parents were severely displeased with a child, the child had, let's just say, a somewhat lower chance of survival. I mean, sometimes this is what I talked about in my tour in Australia many moons ago, which is like 40% of children were killed, sometimes by holding them down and pouring sand in their mouth, like a variety of things, right?
[6:08] So you end up with hyperconformity under threat of death, which is why there's very little progress in certain communities, right?
[6:17] So, you have to agree with your parents' assessment that you are bad and they are righteously punishing you rather than they are corrupt and child abusers. And it really doesn't have anything to do with you. It's their own rage and corruption and cruelty and viciousness and possibly sadism and violence and all that.
[6:37] So, what he's saying here, I think, what Jesus is saying here, whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him. And this is jesus is i mean there's so many things that jesus brought to the fore that were fairly unprecedented and one is an absolute sympathy for children so whatever goes into the person from outside cannot defile him because it does not go into his heart but into his stomach and is eliminated and that's very interesting it doesn't go into his heart the heart being of course a seat of conscience and emotion back in the day but into his stomach and is eliminated, and so he's also saying that the corruption that comes into you from outside the evil that comes into you from outside the immorality that is inflicted on you from outside is actually a source of nutrition and i've actually kind of found that to be true as a whole i would not be nearly as good a parent if my mother had not been as bad a parent and my father too if my.
[7:40] Community and society had not been so corrupt when I was growing up. I would in no way, shape or form have such a great community around me now. So when he says it goes into your stomach and it's eliminated, he's saying that it can actually be a source of nutrition and strength for you. It does not go into your heart, but into your stomach and becomes a source of strength.
[8:04] I would not be as strong and resolute in my pursuit and spreading of virtue if I had not been so mistreated as a child. And the mistreating, and that's always been the interesting thing to me, is that the mistreating that occurred to me, sorry, it's a very bad way of putting it, the degree as a child that I was mistreated, which is also a very bad way of putting it, Let me reboot and try this again. I was mistreated as a child, not in isolation, but in a thin-walled community, right? I could hear my neighbors, they could hear me, and I was in a community, I was in an extended family, and I was in, let's see, I was in, I went to kindergarten away from home. I think my mother was depressed and in hospital for some time, so I went to kindergarten away from home.
[8:55] And then I went to primary school, and then I went to boarding school, then I went back to primary school, and then I went to primary school. I went to upper school in Canada, primary school in Canada. And so, I just went to a wide variety of schools, went to three different universities, and now I've been sort of public as a victim of some pretty severe child abuse for decades. And there's some, I mean, other than from you lovely listeners, which I really, really appreciate, uh, there's been no sympathy in general. There has either been no sympathy or only condemnation.
[9:32] And of course, like if you sort of look at the media, they will find every excuse for a criminal, but for me, there is only condemnation. There isn't any, well, you know, we think he's gone too far, but if you look at his childhood, it's easy to see where this might've come from, you know, something like that, right? That is not, uh, that is not what, what happens, right? So, so the child abusers do not operate in isolation. My mother did not abuse me. That's not the entire equation. That's only a part of the equation. My mother abused me because society allowed it and enabled it. And my mother abused me, I would assume unconsciously, on the very deep understanding.
[10:21] That if I were to speak out about it, I would be condemned and the world would side with her. So that deep knowledge of how society would... And she's entirely right. She understood the world way better than I did, way earlier than I did. That's to give her her kudos and her props, so to speak. My mother deeply understood the nature of the world much, much better than I did. And... In that the world in general seems to flow along the lines of the old Moses injunction, which is the commandment that any who criticize parents must be put to death, right? Well, we've had some progress in the last couple thousand years. I'm not put to death.
[11:05] So he says, Jesus says, that which comes out of the person, that is what defiles the person, right? So that which comes out of the person. So, it is, in general, my belief that, with some exceptions, like people who've just been completely, like, raised by wolves, locked in cellars, like, completely, their brains have been just completely broken by, but that's very rare in society as a whole. But it is my belief that everyone faces a fork in the road.
[11:38] Everyone faces a fork in the road and makes good or bad had choices which tends to define the rest of their lives. I mean, I can certainly think of instances in my life where I have had to make a decision. I remember after I read The Psychology of Self-Esteem, I made a conscious decision to start accepting my feelings rather than pushing them away. And through that, I gained considerable empathy and sensitivity. And that was a decision. I remember that very clearly. Something happened that disappointed me. I felt disappointment. I pushed it away and then I was like no no let me feel like according to Nathaniel Brandon it's healthy to feel your emotions so let me feel these emotions and that was in my teens and I, then I think developed a fair amount of emotional sensitivity and awareness, out of that decision but that's a choice right that's a choice and of course I was recommending this book to all my friends and they made a choice to read it or not a friend of mine recommended Ayn Rand I made the choice to read it or not that's.
[12:36] Can all think of these things. You know, somebody who treated me badly as a child once told me when I confronted that person that that person had woken up every day vowing to treat me better, and had consistently not done that. So those are choices. Those are choices. Even with my mother, when I confronted her, I could see in her eyes this calculation. What can I get away with? What do I have to admit? Now, of course, by the time I confronted my mother, gosh, by the time I confronted my mother, she was in her late 50s, so it's probably far too late. But I know, as I've talked about before, when my mother beat me up, because there was a ring, I left a cup with water on a dresser. And she was really mad about that. And she sort of beat me up. And then later she came into my room, I was pretending to sleep and also pretending to be uneven in my breathing to sort of signal my distress. And she held my hand and pressed her forehead to my hand. And I know she felt terrible about what she'd done. And those are the moments where people can vow to do better or not. They can, I mean, she felt regret, she felt sadness, she felt sorrow. And she had that that choice. And unfortunately, for whatever reason, right, he, in Schindler's List.
[14:00] The Nazi commander, right, is talked into mercy and then just decides, changes his mind, right?
[14:08] People make choices. There are choices for morality. People are not wired for evil or wired for virtue there are choices that you make in morality and i've been around people when they've had these shocks in life some big shock happens in life and i remember being out for an evening of karaoke with a friend and he just stopped singing halfway through because he realized something terrible about his life and we talked about it and so on and i recommended therapy and he just he never went i've been recommending therapy forever and ever i'm in so, they don't go. That's a choice. So, if you make those choices, you choose the rest of your life.
[14:54] Choices are not permanent, of course, as we know, right?
[14:59] So, choices, the problem with choices is if you make a bad choice, tends to harden, or hard choices tend, they're like concrete, you can pour them, and then they harden. And I'm trying to think, I'm trying to think if I have, I don't think I've seen someone who's made a bad choice for, I'm trying to think what the time frame is. People who've made bad choices, I obviously don't check in with them daily, but I'm trying to think of anyone who's made a bad choice who has later significantly reversed it. And by later, I mean sort of weeks or months or years later. And I can't think of any, right? These choices are like, it's now or never.
[15:44] It's now or never. It's now or never. And people keep messing around with these choices like they think they're just going to keep getting them. Oh, later, you know, or whatever. Like somebody looks in the mirror and says, oh my God, I've gained weight. And they're like, eh, whatever. I'll stop working out later or whatever, and they just kind of forget about it and move on. Well, that's your choice. And the choice is probably not going to come back, at least not with the same level of intensity.
[16:11] Choice is not a lifelong privilege. Choice is a lightning strike that illuminates a landscape and gives you a fork in the road. And if you take the right fork, the lightning turns to sunlight. And if you take the wrong fork, it's darkness forever. It seems that way. I mean, I'm not saying there's only one choice in life. I'm not saying there's only one choice in life. What I am saying is that choices are rare. And people who choose badly don't un-choose later. They don't criticize that. Because when you choose badly, when you choose badly, all of your other choices are determined by that choice. So if you make the choice to continue to be cruel, then you can't marry a kind person you can't be in business with kind people you can't have kind friends.
[17:04] You make the choice to diminish your potential to not pursue your potential, then you cannot be around people who have high goals and high potentials. You are stuck around people who are losers because you've made the choice to not fulfill your potential. And therefore, it's too painful to be around people who are aiming to fulfill their potential. I mean, my friend who was a good singer and guitarist would play these tears for fear songs. And I, I remember saying to him that there's no magical difference between these guys and you. They just keep trying. I mean, there are no gods. I'm just someone who kept trying. And I get that there's intelligence and I get all of that stuff as well. But intelligence doesn't do squat for you if you don't keep trying. In fact, it becomes like a curse or a negative if you don't keep trying. I mean, I flamed out of very many different disciplines and approaches, and someone, I just keep trying. If you don't give up, you're ahead of 99% of the population. If you don't give up, you're only competing with 1% of the population.
[18:15] So that which comes out of the person, that is what defiles the person. The choices. The choices. So he's got a lists lists are really great i hate to sort of say but lists are really really great i've always sort of thought in shakespeare the list of flowers is so sensual and vivid that's really great so what does he say from for from within out of the hearts of people come the evil thoughts the evil thoughts so what are evil thoughts well of course there is no, health for censorship in the mind. However, there are certain disciplines, mental disciplines, that really help with the pursuit of virtue and the avoidance of vice, mental habits. So, one mental habit is to not blame others for your own choices. That's just a mental habit and a mental discipline. To not blame others for your own choices is really, really an important one. I chose to continue seeing, let's say, my mother. I chose to continue. So, blaming my mother for my choice to continue to see her really doesn't make any sense at all. It's my choice. I chose to get engaged to a woman who would not have been the right partner for me. That was my choice.
[19:42] The evil thoughts are playing the victim regarding your own choices, that is to strip yourself of free will. Because if you blame others for your choices, then you are passive and acted upon. And if you are passive and acted upon, then you get relief from the self-recrimination at having made a bad choice, but you lose authority and power over your life as a whole. So, evil thoughts are to blame others for your choices, thefts, murders, acts of adultery, sorry, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, murders, acts of adultery, deeds of greed, wickedness, deceit, indecent behavior, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.
[20:25] All these evil things come from within and defile the person. So, we human beings have a superpower and a weakness, which is we can talk ourselves, into and out of anything. Seriously, our capacity to gaslight ourselves and to talk yourself in and out of anything is foundational. This is the Hamlet injunction or the Hamlet statement, there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
[20:53] And of course, in life, there have been things, and I'm sure you've had a million of these yourself, but in life, in my life, there have been things that have been, I have perceived as really bad at the time. And in hindsight, and later on, they turned out to have been wonderful and helpful.
[21:16] Every woman I dated where the relationship did not work out, ended up with me being married to my wonderful wife for, you know, 23 years. almost a quarter century. And we've had a wonderful time because we've had so much time together because we don't work outside the home. So because we don't work outside the home, we have all day together. So we've had, you know, most people get two to three hours a day together, especially if they're parenting, most married, but we get, you know, 16 hours a day together. So we've been married approximately 150 years, right? When things didn't work out for me in the business world, and I just couldn't really stomach it anymore, well, I started podcasting, which was much better. So all the things that didn't work out led to the life that I have, that I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change a thing about my friends, my wife, my daughter, my career. I wouldn't change a thing.
[22:35] All the things that didn't work out led me to a life that is, for me at least, as close to perfect as can be achieved. And so, we have this capacity to gaslight ourselves or to change our mind about things.
[22:51] And so now, when something, quote, bad happens, I don't know. I don't know if it's good or bad, because I don't know how it's going to play out in the long run. So our capacity to gaslight ourselves or to as the old example goes right the world looks flat but it is in fact a sphere and we know that even though it really doesn't make any sense and i remember of course like most kids when i saw a map i saw a globe and i saw australia of course everyone's like why don't they fall off you know that kind of stuff right so it is counterintuitive it is counterintuitive that when you start to approach the speed of light all of the energy that you apply into going faster gets converted into mass and time slows down to the point where you end up with a queen song, right? So, we have the capacity to change our mind about things in extremely counterintuitive ways, which is the basis of science.
[23:44] It is also the basis of the free market. It is counterintuitive, as sort of Adam Smith's invisible hand goes, it is counterintuitive that everyone's pursuit of material self-interest leads to socially beneficial outcomes. That, in a sense, greed or material self-interest leads to socially beneficial outcomes. That is counterintuitive. It is counterintuitive that giving huge amounts of money and resources to the poor does not make them wealthy, but in fact, tends to trap them in poverty. That is counterintuitive. It is, according to our senses, the sun and the moon are the same size.
[24:30] Not in reality, right? So, the fact that we can deny the evidence of our senses and the fact that we can talk ourself into just about anything is very powerful. And it has a great deal of power with regards to our perspectives in life.
[24:50] So, as you probably knew, or maybe you don't, I had a cancer in the past, and as a result of that, I have to wear big old hats when I'm out in the sun, because I had radiation treatment on my neck, and so I have to keep the sun away from my neck. So, what I can say is, oh my gosh, it was so terrible that I had cancer, and you know, obviously it wasn't great, but I can also say, well, but that probably has meant that I'm not going to get skin cancer, because I wear these big old hats certainly around sort of my face and a neck and all that kind of stuff, right? So, there's a plus. You can look at the negatives, or you can look at the pluses, right?
[25:29] The fact that I did not succeed as a novelist was beneficial in that the world does not need another novelist, the world needs a moral philosopher. And my abilities as a moral philosopher are greater than my abilities as a novelist although I think I'm a pretty good novelist but my abilities as a moral philosopher are greater so that's too so the fact that I didn't get what I want is better for the world as a whole in other words me wanting success as an artist was selfish in a way in that it's not what's best for the world and if the world went to hell in a handbasket because I had focused All my success as a novelist.
[26:21] I would feel bad if I had not done the moral philosophy stuff, which can do a lot to save the world, at least in the long run. If I had gotten what I wanted when I was younger as a playwright, director, and actor, I would have been severely constrained in what I could produce because of government grants, leftist bias, and so on. And I would not have the freedom to speak as I'm speaking now. If I had become an academic, right?
[26:51] If I had gone to do my PhD, become a professor or something like that, then I would be severely constrained in what I could talk about and would not have been able to do the kind of good that I have done. And of course, even if you are a professor, it doesn't really matter if you're saying things that goes against the grain of the propaganda infused masses. It doesn't really matter that you're a professor and have a PhD because there's tons of people who are professors and have PhDs who are saying things that the masses find abhorrent, and the fact that they are professors and have PhDs doesn't change the emotional reactivity. So, the gaslighting aspect of things, or the.
[27:39] Things that are not obvious or not empirical in sort of the human perspective, is where the evil thoughts tend to germinate and grow. So, for instance, if you are a man, and let's say you have not been romantic or attentive to your wife, and let's say that you have been pouring all your effort into work and money, and then let's say at work there's some woman who really starts coming on to you, well, the affair doesn't happen out of nowhere. The affair happens because you talk yourself into it. And how do you talk yourself into it? Well, what you do is you say, well, my wife is deficient. My wife hasn't been paying me enough attention. My wife is not very romantic. My wife doesn't make me feel wanted, my wife has let her appearance go, maybe we've got some kids or whatever, and I deserve some fun, and what's the point of all the success if I can't enjoy myself? And then, maybe you even, in a sort of negative or awkward way, try to revive things with your wife, but it doesn't work very well, and because you're now attracted to another woman, and you're not telling your wife, or dealing with it and putting it aside, you start to become more and more distant from her, which makes your romantic life even worse.
[29:04] And this other woman is, you know, you're putting it in the realm of possibility, which means the sort of mental tendrils of justification start to wrap around it.
[29:15] And it is a series of justifications that end up with you having the affair. So the evil thoughts are that which you slowly start gaslighting yourself and talking yourself into accepting the affair. And then everything that happens with your wife further justifies you having the affair.
[29:44] If your wife is unhappy about something, you say, oh, that woman is never happy and that's why I'm attracted to this other woman. She's driving me into the arms of another woman, so to speak. It's unbearable to be here. And then you start crabbing and picking at her and make the relationship worse. And all of that is because you want to have the justification for the affair. And then you put yourself into situations where you're working late and you're putting yourself in situations, you go on a business trip, the woman is around, and you sit in a hot tub with her, like you put yourself in situations where these kinds of things can occur, or are more likely to occur, right? As opposed to, you know, if you find yourself attracted to another woman in your marriage, then you've got to avoid that other woman like the plague, and work at improving your marriage.
[30:37] Otherwise, you're just going to end up talking yourself into a kind of disaster. And then if your affair is discovered you blame your wife for your choices i mean you made a vow, and you broke your vow you made a vow and you broke your vow it's really that simple and you led yourself step by step down this garden path so that's not good and And this kind of gaslighting is, I think, what Jesus is referring to with regards to these evil thoughts, right? Come the evil thoughts first, and then the acts of sexual immorality, thefts, murders, acts of adultery, and so on, right? So, I didn't have much respect for property rights when I was in my early teens, And that was because I felt no loyalty to the social contract because society was...
[31:38] Participating with my mother in the endless abuses inflicted upon me as a child. So why would I care? Now, I was aware, and you know, that this was not going to go in a particularly good direction in the long run, so I stopped, and all of that, but yeah, I just didn't, and so I would justify, I didn't sort of consciously, but I was just like, well, society is just a bunch of liars, and, you know, they say they care about children, but they don't. So you can justify that, right?
[32:14] Slander, pride. Slander is very interesting because slander is something that is quite a lot talked about in the Bible. There are even particular commandments like don't lie about others. A slander is a very important sin, and a very deep and destructive sin, because slander is fairly untraceable. The supposed source of the slander, that person will simply say they heard it from someone else, or they read it somewhere, or something like that. So, it is a crime which is very hard to pinpoint, and it's very hard to fight back. So, yes, slander is a big issue, and it is something that used to be like, don't gossip, don't repeat these salacious things, and so on, and it is reputational damage that used to be cured by dueling, right? So, men would not engage in gossip because if they repeated something false about someone, that person could challenge them to a duel, blow their eyeballs out at dawn.
[33:29] And in general, what women would gossip about would not impact the male world that much. If the men are out hunting or at war, female gossip about men doesn't really have much impact. But now that women, of course, have so much power, some real and some artificial in the world, the slander becomes much more dangerous. So, yeah, all these evil things come from within and defile the person. So it's the choices that you make.
[34:02] Now, again, somebody who's locked in a basement or raised by wolves, there's such an extreme that we wouldn't really hold that person morally responsible for...
[34:15] Particularly humane mindsets. But in the vast, vast, vast majority of people, there are these forks in the road. Lightning or sunlight. Lightning to darkness, lightning to sunlight. There are these forks in the road. And when my mother that night, 50 years ago, when she held my hand, pressed her forehead to my hand, and I'm sure in her heart vowed to do better, that was a fork in the road. And she could have, you know, the next day, she could have gone to the library and got some books on better parenting and different ways to approach things. And she could have done all of that. But she chose, she chose not to. And then, of course, many years later, it seems like she had no choice. Sure. Sure. But if you choose not to quit smoking, then many years later you can't run a marathon I get that but you can't run a marathon because you chose not to quit smoking.
[35:17] On, it seems like people don't have a choice. But that's because they made a bad choice before and committed to it. Was it possible for my mother in her late 50s to develop empathy and kindness and to apologize? I don't think so. I don't think it was possible for her anymore. But that doesn't mean it was never possible for her.
[35:39] So it seems inevitable or almost like physics, like no free will later on in life, but that's because of a particular choice that was made years or decades before that has never been revisited and has been further committed to. And as I say, it's very hard to turn back once you start going down the wrong road, because you're given a choice, right? If after I read The Psychology of Self-Esteem, which happened because I listened to a friend about reading The Fountainhead, then I shrugged, and then I started going through all of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Brandon's work. And I made that choice. Now, if I had said, ah, forget it, my feelings are inconvenient, I'm just going to push them away, then my whole life would have been completely different. And it would have felt inevitable, right? If I had made that choice, it would have felt inevitable. And of course, being annoyed or angry at the educational systems who never taught you anything about how to deal with your emotions or like anything, self-knowledge or anything like that, boy, they'll spend a lot of time teaching you about the opposite angle theorem and the triangle, inequality relation. I mean, my God, all that time on useless junk, which you never use again. It was the last time I needed to calculate the area of a rhomboid, but they won't teach you anything about wisdom or self-knowledge. So I had to get it from a book.
[37:01] But all of that stuff gave me that choice. And making those choices has led me to having the life that I have, that I love. And again, I thank you all for helping me with that, making it possible, listening, supporting freedomain.com. And I really do thank you all for that.
[37:23] So, what is done unto you does not define your morals, but the choices that you make from within. And be very alert and aware and pursue, like get access to new information. Read people you disagree with read things that go against the grain I mean you've seen me do article reviews with regards to articles that I seriously disagree with read the opposite arguments don't live in an echo chamber don't live in a reinforcement bubble.
[37:56] And through that, you get access to a lot of information.
[38:00] And through having access to a lot of information and perspectives, you widen your capacity for choice. And when those choices come along, and it may happen at three o'clock in the morning, one big choice came along to me when I had spent five hours sitting in a hammock after I climbed the fence of a resort.
[38:25] In Guatemala and lay in a hammock for five hours. No, it was Mexico. Sorry, not Guatemala. It was on the trip where I went to Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. But it was in Mexico because the woman I was traveling with wanted to go and see Chichen Itza and I'd already seen it. So I didn't go. So I just climbed the fence and went into a resort, lay there for five hours and a blinding truth came to me about personal relationships, which has never been undone since. Put yourself in like meditate, honestly meditate. Get massages if you have to. You know, I was saying this to somebody the other day that, you know, if you're single and you don't have any hugs or touches, for heaven's sakes, go get some massages, go get some aromatherapy, go get something where people are giving you that human touch. Because if you don't get any touch, if you don't get any sort of skin-to-skin contact, things can get very strange in the mind.
[39:18] So I think this is what this all means. I'm really curious what you think about all of this. And I really do appreciate, again, as I said before, your support and interest in it, in what I'm doing. I really do appreciate that we will stand the test of time, if that I have no doubt. And all who have helped me, I think, will take great pride over the course of their lives for all the good we will bring to the world over time. It's not yet, but over time. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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