0:02 - Opening Thoughts on Family Dynamics
4:38 - The Challenge of Empathy
8:08 - Ethics of Hidden Knowledge
12:30 - The Dilemma of Genetic Awareness
13:40 - Government Overreach in Personal Lives
21:27 - Empathy and Its Exploitation
25:26 - The Balance of Empathy in Society
In this episode, I delve into the complexities of family dynamics, trust, and the pursuit of honesty within relationships. Addressing a poignant question from a listener, I explore the effects of an alleged betrayal involving a fiancé and a cousin. I engage with the idea of maintaining peace within family ties, dissecting the concept of “illusions of peace” versus genuine resolution. By illustrating the consequences of self-censorship, I argue that fostering honest communication is ultimately more constructive than avoiding difficult truths.
As I continue, I reflect on censorship experienced due to challenging societal discussions, sharing my experience of being deplatformed while attempting to present an alternative narrative surrounding the death of George Floyd. I emphasize the futility of silencing differing opinions and the broader repercussions such actions have on societal peace. Rather than fostering harmony, they contribute to a cycle of unresolved tensions that manifest as societal discord.
Moving forward, I question the authenticity of relationships that can only exist beneath the veil of pretense. Drawing stark comparisons, I illustrate that relationships built on dishonesty—especially when influenced by external pressures—are frail and vulnerable. In this context, I challenge listeners to consider the moral implications of staying silent in the face of wrongdoing and whether such compromises truly serve the greater good of the family unit or merely uphold a façade.
Next, I tackle the notion of empathy, particularly how it gets distorted in our social interactions. I discuss the impact of upbringing and emotional trauma on an individual’s ability to empathize, highlighting the challenges faced by those with abusive backgrounds. This lays the groundwork to question whether empathy is an innate trait or a skill that can be nurtured over time. I express concerns about the potential to exploit empathetic tendencies in others, thus emphasizing the need for a balanced emotional outlook in both personal and societal relationships.
Additionally, I touch upon the implications of government policies on personal freedoms and relationships, particularly how such overreach may influence dating apps and personal connections. The episode reiterates my stance on the importance of retaining agency in personal choices and the potential fallout of societal regulations that infringe on individual rights.
Concluding the discussion, I pose critical reflections on the intersection of empathy, honesty, and personal responsibility within the framework of familial and romantic relationships. I call for an awareness of the nuanced dynamics that exist between empathy and manipulation, particularly in a modern society steeped in complex emotional landscapes. By encouraging listeners to examine their perceptions of familial loyalty, relational expectations, and societal ethics, I hope to inspire a deeper understanding of the integrity in one's relationships and the courage to confront uncomfortable truths.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
[0:02] Great questions from the lovely community at freedomain.locals.com. Dear Stef, I got wind that a cousin slept with my then-fiancé. The person who told me is so untrustworthy and is biased, but I can't find the strength to confront my cousin because our parents are old and I feel that this would cause a disturbance of peace in the family. I got wind that a cousin slept with my then-fiancée. The person who told me is so untrustworthy and is biased, but I can't find the strength to confront my cousin. Our parents are old. Okay, so if you want to stay silent to keep the peace.
[0:46] Okay, I mean, it's the illusion of peace, right? It's the illusion of peace. It's like saying, well, if Bob owns a slave, then there's no disturbance in salary negotiations, right? It's keeping the peace, man. He's just keeping the peace. So if you want to stay silent to keep the peace, it's just the illusion of peace. I mean, that's censorship, right? Self-censorship. So the arguments that I was making were causing some emotional difficulties for people in society, right? Arguments that I was making when I was more of a public figure. So I was censored, right? I was deplatformed. And I was deplatformed to, quote, keep the peace, but it doesn't keep the peace.
[1:37] So the video that was processing when YouTube deplatformed me was myself and a white cop and a black cop talking about the arrest of George Floyd and what might have happened other than.
[1:52] The popular narrative. And it was actually a very good conversation, very honorable and great guys to chat with. And that was the video that was processing. So that might have caused some upset for people. And I'll probably never know, but I would imagine that had something to do with the whole deplatforming thing. So when people who had other perspectives on the death of George Floyd was censored, did that bring peace to society? Well, no. No. I mean, you all remember what they ironically referred to as the summer of love, the mostly peaceful protests, right? This was not, it was not peace. It was not peace at all. So if you want to be in, quote, relationships where not upsetting people comes at the expense of your honesty and openness and directness, then these are illusory relationships.
[2:51] In other words, if a relationship can only be sustained by you lying, it's not a relationship. It's a pretense. Honestly, I mean, to take an extreme example, it's like a guy kidnapping a woman, you know, locking her in his basement and saying, hey, a woman is living with me. I got a girlfriend. She's living with me now. She's moved in. I mean, we wouldn't call that any kind of real relationship. We would call that kidnapping and imprisonment.
[3:26] So I don't know how a relationship where you self-erase can be considered a relationship. That's just a mark of subjugation. If you say, well, I can't speak about what I think and feel because other people will be upset, then you're saying that the least mature, least wise, least self-controlled, least disciplined people run the entire family situation. Is that where you want to be? Is that where you want to be?
[3:58] So, all right. Do you want to be in this kind of situation? Let's say you meet some great woman. I think you're a man. Let's, right, let's, oh, fiance, yeah. So let's say you meet some great woman, and this is the dilemma you give to her. Well, the cousin slept with my fiance, but the person who told me is a liar and untrustworthy, and I don't know if I should say anything. I mean, who's going to want to get involved from the outside without your history with these people? Who's going to want to get involved in this kind of situation? Who? Who's going to want to get involved in this kind of deliverance-style family trailer park trashy chaos?
[4:38] See, this is an empathy thing, and we'll get to empathy in a sec, this is an empathy thing. You have a history with your family. They have a value to you because of your history. And I'm not going to argue that they don't or that you're wrong. Of course, you do have a history. And there is value in that history, right? Shared memories, shared experiences, shared lives. There is value in that history. I'm not going to pretend that there isn't. I'm not going to say you're wrong. I mean, there's value in the history that my family of origin and I share. So you have to wrestle with and deal with that value and that history but only because you were born into that situation environment right that's only because of that now somebody coming in from the outside has no history or value with your family of origin somebody coming in from the outside has no history or value with your family of origin they have no investment they have no sentimentality. So how are they going to view your family situation?
[5:46] So this is what I say when I say to people, let's say you met your mother at a dinner party. You didn't know her. She was just some woman, right? You met your mother at a dinner party. Would you want to hang out with her for the rest of your life? Would you want to pursue a relationship, a friendship, a mentorship, like was she wise and helpful and virtuous and wonderful and funny and whatever, the positive attributes that would be enough for you to pursue that, right? And the reason I say that is you need to empathize with people outside of your family about what your family looks like because that's, in fact, what happens when you meet someone you might marry. You meet someone you might marry. You're saying, come into my family with no value based on shared history. Judge my family without the involuntary value of involuntary shared history. And so if you can't look at your family without adding the virtues and values of a shared history, which are real, if you can't look at your family objectively, then you can't look at your family the way a potential husband or wife will look at your family. That is not a good idea. It's not a good idea. I mean, I remember in my 20s, I was dating a woman who had an abusive father and...
[7:14] He was unrepentant. And she was going for lunch with him. And she said, do you want to come along? And I said, well, hell no. I don't have the history. I don't have the shared history. He's just someone who hurt someone as a child that I care about as an adult. I don't have any, there's no, what incentive? Like if you were to say to me, do you want to go for lunch with some random child abuser? I'd be like, well, of course not, right? But he's my father. It's like, yes, but he's not my father. I don't have the history. and I never went for lunch. And I did kind of disagree with her going for lunch, but, you know, again, I don't tell people what to do. I'm a free will guy. And when you have some persuasion skills, it's kind of important to even be more of a dedicated free will guy. So why would any quality person want to get involved in this trash, right? Not you, just this family mess.
[8:09] Dear Steph, is it moral to hold on to socially damaging information? I do genealogical studies and always come across spicy details about political figures, but I feel that this will just dumb down even more the political discourse in my country.
[8:23] I'm not sure why you would be in pursuit of information that you'd want to keep hidden. That seems odd to me. I've worked for years on a cure for XYZ disease, right? So if you're not going to release any of the information, I'm not sure why you'd bother studying it. All right. Dear Steph, I asked this question before on locals. What do you think of all the focus on the breast cancer causing BRCA genes? Do you think parents should engage in IVF or abstinence, I guess, in order to avoid passing on a gene which drastically increases the risk of cancer? I'm curious to hear your thoughts as a cancer survivor yourself. I would presume you would appreciate being born, but now that I'm aware I might have the gene one parent has it, I feel somewhat obligated to get tested and do IVF for my next child if I do have the gene.
[9:11] Well, let's look at, I think this was the case with the celebrity, the actress Angelina Jolie, that she had this gene and she got a double mastectomy because I think her own mother had died in her 50s of breast cancer. She didn't say, I wish I'd never been born and throw herself off a cliff. I mean, I think it's important and good to get, you know, I'm half and half about this stuff. This is just a personal opinion. So this has nothing to do with philosophy. It's just a personal opinion.
[9:40] You know, because, I mean, this is from the old show, Kroll, there's a cyclops who knows the day of his death. And so there are these tests you can take, I think, that here's your chances of getting dementia, and here's your chances of this. And I don't know, man. I mean, for me, this is a certain quality of life issue, which is if I know, oh, I have an increased chance of dementia, then every time I get older and forget something, I'll be like, oh no, right? Is there sort of an interference in the quality of life issue? In other words, is there a kind of blissful ignorance in not knowing these things? Now, of course, if this is a very dangerous gene and so on, then that's a different matter, right? But I, for one, quite enjoy the blissful ignorance about things in the future, health issues. I quite enjoy that blissful ignorance and I can't imagine myself getting tested for anything because, I mean, let's say that I have some gene that increases the risk or some gene set increases the risk of dementia.
[10:42] Well, why would I want to know that ahead of time? It's going to happen either way. I might as well not know that ahead of time and rather than being concerned about it ahead of time. So again, I'm not saying this is just my personal opinion. It's not medical advice, right? It's just my particular opinion to this kind of information. I guess everyone has differences, but if you have these.
[11:04] Genes that is going to increase, significantly increase the risk of breast cancer, then I think it's important to know if it's very dire and it's important to let your kids know and so on. As to whether or not you should do IVF or, I mean, that's a personal decision, obviously, right? I mean, I love the fact that my daughter is a blend of my wife and I. So you'll get some, I guess some safety advantages if you do IVF, but there may be some slightly less bonding. I don't know. I mean, so everything in life is a trade-off, and this is not a foundationally moral decision because it's not the initiation of the use of force to have a kid. So I would say that it's something for you to, sorry, I hate to say it's something for you to figure out, but it's not a specifically moral decision. And most people would rather be alive and take the risk of cancer, and certainly I would be, most people would rather be alive and take the risk of cancer than not be alive at all. And we know that because when, you know, when you're a kid, the big C, right, big C, right, when there's a kid, when you're a kid and you first learn about disease and death and cancer and so on, you know, you don't just jump off a bridge where you're like, okay, well, disease is a risk of life and it's worth it. And we know that because most people go through diseases rather than kill themselves. So, all right.
[12:31] Oh, do you believe it is government overreach for the government? Yes. Do you believe it is government overreach for the government? Yes. To practice eugenics by effectively taking control of dating apps. For example, the Australian government recently introduced a voluntary industry code for dating app companies to take action against people accused of domestic violence or online-enabled harm, thus limiting their experience on dating apps. Whilst an argument could be made that those who have actually committed domestic violence should be banned from such platforms what's crazy and tyrannical is firstly one how loose the definition of domestic violence or online enabled harm is these days an accusation can just be made against a user blah blah blah yeah i mean the weaponization of female accusations is about as long and grim and ugly a topic as can be conceived of but yeah i mean punishment without due process is a problem. And sure, I mean, they want to... So the most, I mean, you also, the most freedom-loving people will be the ones who get most harmed by this, right? Right, the most freedom-loving people, in general, white males, will be the ones most harmed by this. And yeah, it is very much trying to have an effect on the birth rate, I assume.
[13:41] Do you think that empathy, even to a limited degree, is something reserved for a limited set of people? "'Well, I don't know what you mean by reserved for.'.
[13:52] So from what I understand, somebody who is brutally treated both in utero and as a baby has a pretty tough time trying to develop empathy. Empathy is 13 coordinated areas of the brain, requires mirror neurons, and there's a physical basis to empathy, right? If you look at people who are true psychopaths or sociopaths, their brains work differently. And i mean that's not necessarily brains work differently is not an argument for genetics necessarily i guess before gps london cabbies had crazy overdeveloped or strongly developed, spatial reasoning centers in their brain because london england evolved it is not laid out in any kind of grid pattern like say toronto or new york it just kind of evolved from like medieval towns and hamlets and so on. So it's a real mess. So their brains work differently. But that's not genetics. That's just training and practice. It's the same thing with musical dexterity is something I don't particularly have. But somebody who's an expert violinist or guitarist is going to have that in spades.
[15:07] So the fact that some people's brains show up on scans is different. So for Some people, if you scan them when they're looking, I mean, this is really grossly oversimplified. So, you know, do your own research. But... My understanding of it is that if you show videos of people being tortured, you know, some people's fear and disgust and horror centers light up, and some people's happiness, joy and pleasure centers light up, right? Which would be the difference between somebody with empathy and somebody who's a sadist, I assume, right? I don't think, again, as far as I know, and the moral and philosophical approach has yet to be really tried in my understanding. So, you know, this is not for certain, but I don't think that current psychological expertise has any real luck or success in curing people of sadism or, you know, really cruel mindsets or a real lack of empathy or, you know, what's called borderline. I mean, people will often, you know, there's a sort of criminality that peaks into late teens, early 20s, and then it will diminish over time. For most people, borderlines tend to mellow out a little bit as they age, or they just get burned out, I don't know, something like that.
[16:30] So, as far as I understand it, if there's a lot of early trauma, stress, abuse, and damage to the fetuses and infant and toddler brain and experience, I don't know that there's any particularly well-established way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So I wouldn't say that that's reserved, right? The way that I would view it is if you have, you know, some horrible sadist who cuts off his child's arm and throws it into the ocean and the child survives, you say, well, is clapping reserved for only some people?
[17:08] Well, it's not that it's reserved. It's that if people have their arms cut off as children, they can't clap, right? If some kid is starved to the point where he ends up with a significant physical disability, I don't know, maybe loses his eyesight or something like that, is seeing reserved for something. When you get enough cruelty and torture and trauma, as a kid, it can have significant effects on your brain. And so we want to aim to diminish that as much as possible. I will say, though, that empathy is one of these classical double-edged swords, right? Empathy is really, really, really dangerous because empathy is a strength to the virtuous and a massive vulnerability for the corrupt. In other words, corrupt people, they don't feel virtue themselves, but they know that other people do.
[18:02] So, sort of this is the argument that is made about deportations, right? Well, it could split up families. Well, there's a lot of people in society who are very keen on splitting up families, right? I mean, they were willing to set families against family members under COVID over the vaccine and other things. They are willing to have people arrested for various activities, which in a rational society would not even be crimes. And that certainly separates and splits up families.
[18:36] They advocate for the hyper-feminism, don't need no man, marriage is slavery, divorce your husband, and so on. So they're very, very keen on splitting up families when it suits their agenda. But they also know that people are sentimental and sad about splitting up families when it's phrased that way, right? People live in language, they don't live in reality. It's another reason why governments are very keen to export manufacturing jobs and replace them with HR jobs because the more people work with their hands, the more people work with reality, the more empirical and rational they become and the less susceptible to propaganda they are. If you have a job that doesn't rely on propaganda, in fact, if propaganda harms your job, you're less susceptible to propaganda, which is why, although I didn't like doing manual labor as a kid and as a teen, and in my early 20s, I appreciated the empirical grounding in reality that it all gave me, right?
[19:31] So the people who, oh, don't want to split up families, well, if you call it female empowerment and refusing to submit to the patriarchy, then apparently splitting up families is really good. But if you just say, splitting up families, separating parents and children. And as the guy said, who now, whatever his name is, he's like, well, if you're driving drunk with your family in the car, we take the husband into custody. We separate the family, right? Or when they say, well, undocumented and so on is fine. It doesn't matter if you've broken the law. Okay, well then, what if you don't enforce tax laws, right? Would they be comfortable with that? Well, no. They need the tax laws to get the money to give to people who are not obeying the immigration laws.
[20:18] Terms of splitting up families and so on, it is just, it's pure propaganda term, pure propaganda language. So, because the, you know, it's shameful to split up families, but they would never criticize a woman who leaves a man, right? Just because she's dissatisfied. Dissatisfied is no reason to split up a family, particularly if there are children involved. It's kind of selfish, right? But they would never condemn that because deporting people might cut into the left's voting base, and therefore that's splitting up families, and it's really bad. But women leaving their husbands, the single women also vote for the left, and so that's being empowered and refusing to submit to the evil patriarchy and fighting the revolution called mansplaining or whatever nonsense they come up with, right? So it's just about power, but they know that there's certain terms that trigger people, and so they use those terms. And that's because they understand that other people have sympathy and empathy and sentimentality, but they themselves don't. So just push those buttons, right? It's like the Achilles heel of the person who has empathy is understanding that their empathy will be exploited.
[21:27] In other words, and it's a sort of mental challenge. It's a self-knowledge challenge, which is how do you empathize with people who have no empathy? Because if you can't empathize with people who have no empathy, you're just going to get the living shit exploited out of you. You're going to get controlled, pushed around and manipulated.
[21:45] This is sort of the basic rule of treat others the best you can. The first you meet them after that, treat them as they treat you. So if you can't empathize with those who have a lack of empathy, then your empathy is going to be used to exploit and bully and control you. I mean, my mother tried pulling this stuff with me after hitting me a lot as a kid when I finally, I didn't even hit her back, but I just pushed back. Physically, she was just shocked and appalled, and how dare you, right? She was just trying to reach in through my empathy meter and my self-criticism meter, like the hole there, and just try and work the levers of my conscience to control me, right? So this is the big problem, of course, with the West as a whole at the moment, is that, I mean, women, you could say, have excessive empathy relative to men. I mean, it's not excessive because it's totally appropriate to our evolution. We can't be the most successful species in the known universe and then complain about one gender or one sex and the other or the other. So women have excessive empathy because men are supposed to restrain that empathy.
[22:53] So when men were in control of the resources, whether this is right or wrong doesn't really matter. We're just talking about the evolutionary pressures. When men were in control of the resources, then women could have excessive empathy and men could say no. So women could say, oh, this woman who left her family, she needs financial help. And there'd be a lot of women's very strong empathy, sometimes to the point of unwisdom, they would have to appeal to the men, and the men would look at it more objectively and say, yes or no. And again, whether it's right or wrong is not relevant to this analysis, but women could develop excess empathy because the restraint, right? Women could have the gas on empathy, and they could floor it because the men were the brakes. And then men would say, no, no, I'm not, no, she brought it on herself, I'm not helping her. And the women would get upset, but they would have to sort of abide by that, right? But when you have governments and national debts and unfunded liabilities, then the sort of pathological, the empathy goes from something that's important, right? Men can lack empathy and women can have an excess of empathy and both need to be resolved in negotiation with each other.
[24:10] I mean, if a man's friend is sick, he probably, I mean, I tell you this myself, if a man's friend is sick, he probably has not thought about baking a casserole and going over, right? But women will say, you need to, you know, I'm going to bake a casserole and bring it over. And the man's like, oh yeah, you know, that is kind of nice. Yeah, good for you, right? And so that's good.
[24:33] So women have more than an equal amount of empathy. men have a deficiency, but together it works. Because if the man is deficient in empathy, the woman's excessive or excess empathy will warm things up. And if the woman is excessive in her empathy to the point where it threatens the resources needed for good people to flourish, the man will pull it back.
[24:56] So the state and the lack of restraint over pathological altruism has made it, of course, extremely dangerous. Men as a whole, or the less empathetic, can no longer restrain the sort of florid, pathological empathy of the hyper-sympathetic, and therefore propaganda has substituted natural restraint.
[25:26] And this conflict, which used to be balanced and very productive, right? It used to be balanced and very productive, has now become unbalanced, to the point where a lot of, and not all of course, but a lot of female voters are voting for some pretty alarming, excessive empathy things, and a lot of the men, feeling helpless to restrain some of these excesses, are kind of retreating from the dating market in some fairly horror, fair horror and disgust, because they're saying, well look, if women vote for all of this pathological stuff that may end up resulting in a war, we're the ones who are going to get drafted, so the women are kind of out of control. I mean, it's not a It's not every man, of course, but there's a certain perspective that.
[26:08] Are voting to feel good and we're going to end up paying the price either financially or through, some sort of significant conflict that we're going to end up being on the front lines of and, there's just this kind of real frustration uh that's going on and i think that's one of the reasons why sort of deep down right i mean you've you've seen these memes right like when it was trump versus kamala harris there were these memes where you know it was a bunch of men at war like me and the boys fighting in Thailand because the women wanted to elect a female. And that's bitter stuff. And also the bitterness of like, if World War III has ever threatened all of the feminists morph into housewives, there is a certain amount of frustration. And again, I mean, the enemy is not males or females, right? The enemy is blindness to the coercive nature of our institutions, right? That's the real enemy to wake people up to that. and then I think everything goes fairly well after that. But that's the challenge. So I really do appreciate everyone's interest and care. FreeDomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Massively, deeply, and humbly appreciated and join the great community. You can use this URL, FDRURL.com slash locals. FDRURL.com slash locals. You can sign up for a free month and see if you like it. And it's a great community. I hope you'll be a part of it. And I look forward to talking to you soon. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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