0:06 - Introduction to Metaphysics
3:33 - Understanding Reality and Psychosis
5:03 - The Role of Epistemology
6:34 - Transitioning to Ethics
8:46 - Engineering and Survival
9:38 - The Marxist Influence on Language
11:17 - Gender Roles and Resource Allocation
16:49 - The Dynamics of Marriage
20:06 - The Concept of Victimhood
26:53 - The Strategies of Resource Acquisition
31:13 - The Perpetuity of the State
37:16 - The Cost of Truth and Survival
39:54 - Conclusion and Call to Action
In today's episode, I delve deep into the intersection of metaphysics and language, addressing listener questions that challenge our perception of reality. My exploration begins with the assertion that Aristotle's metaphysics serves as a descriptive framework, positing that language's primary role is to accurately reflect our sensory experiences. I reflect on the critical distinction between descriptive and prescriptive language, illustrating that metaphysics, as a philosophical discipline, should categorize reality based on evidence gathered through our senses.
Moving forward, I articulate the purpose of metaphysics: to enable all beings with sensory perception to navigate and survive in their environments. I draw parallels between instinctual truth recognition in animals and the necessity for humans to accurately process reality to fulfill basic needs. This sets the stage for a discussion on the nature of psychosis, wherein individuals may fabricate their reality rather than accept sensory input, revealing a divergence in mental health and functionality.
As I transition into the realm of epistemology, I outline its role in distinguishing truth from falsehood. Through our capacity for abstract thought, I highlight how humans have the potential to misconstrue reality, necessitating a disciplined approach to conceptual validation. This forms the bedrock for ethical considerations, where moral frameworks must align with empirical reality and reasoned understanding.
A significant portion of our discussion focuses on the contemporary manipulation of language, particularly within Marxist ideologies seeking to redefine terms and concepts. I argue that this linguistic alteration may serve to detach thought from tangible reality, potentially fostering untruths. Utilizing evolutionary psychology, I examine the implications of gaining resources through coercive redistributive mechanisms, likening this to a childhood strategy of manipulation where perceived victimhood becomes a means of survival.
In drawing upon personal anecdotes and historical analysis, I illustrate how societal structures, particularly those influenced by state intervention, cultivate a perpetual state of childish dependency, hampering personal growth and self-sufficiency. The psychological implications become all too apparent: as individuals lean into the narrative of victimhood, they inadvertently stifle their own agency, fostering an environment where truth-tellers are resisted, and untruths are perpetuated.
Ultimately, I argue that true personal and societal maturation involves acknowledging our responsibilities and rejecting the façade of victimhood. The dialogue draws to a close with a call to action for listeners to reflect on how language shapes our understanding of reality and ultimately influences our capacity for growth. This episode aims not just to dissect complex philosophical concepts but to empower individuals to challenge prevailing narratives and reclaim their agency.
[0:00] All right, good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. Questions from listeners.
[0:06] I agree with Strawson's analysis that Aristotle's metaphysics is descriptive rather than revisionary. In my opinion, if language is used as a tool to describe reality and action in reality, it must be descriptive. Is the current Marxist trend to manipulate language and redefine words, an attempt to decouple thinking from reality to facilitate untruths. Yeah, I mean, so of course, language that is used to describe reality should be descriptive, not prescriptive. If you're going to look at the sun and say, well, the sun is bright, well, that's descriptive. Now, metaphysics is the discipline of philosophy that describes the nature and properties of objective reality.
[0:57] And as a result, it needs to focus and passively derive its descriptions from the evidence of the senses. It is really an attempt to classify the evidence of the senses into principles that can be absorbed and understood as universals, which is why, you know, if you take a step, you don't think that your next step is going to suddenly detach you from gravity and have you flying into the stratosphere. So, from that standpoint, language is a passive tool that categorizes the evidence of the senses.
[1:32] Now, then, of course, the question is, what is the purpose of metaphysics? And, of course, all creatures with sense organs process metaphysics, though, of course, not in a conceptual way. Lions have to know the difference between a tree that they can climb and a zebra that they can eat. Right so there is life requires the accurate processing of objective reality because objective reality is where you get your food and your shelter and your water and your reproduction and so on right so all creatures with sense organs have to process in a sense metaphysics though obviously of course not at a conceptual level.
[2:11] So, you do want your metaphysics to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, because that's another way in which you know the difference between somebody whose mind is working properly and somebody whose mind is working badly. So, somebody who's going through psychosis is going through a situation, I mean, in certain elements of psychosis, they're going through a situation where the brain is not describing reality, but rather manufacturing reality. It's the same thing if you are taking drugs then you have a problem if the drugs overwhelm your, sense data and you are seeing things down there you're having a trip or they call it a trip could be a bad trip with demons or a good trip with angels or whatever but you have you're having a trip and you are manufacturing sense data you know the sort of you put on dark side of the moon and you can see the music streaming along through the air, but music is audio, not visual. And so you are manufacturing your own sense stimuli, which is not where you want to be in life. These are the people who, you know, think they've sprouted wings, they think they can fly, they jump off the edges of buildings and so on, and they are manufacturing their own stimuli, and that's a mark of a fairly significant psychological disorder.
[3:33] Schizophrenics can hallucinate, they can hear voices, and so on. So, one of the marks between a good mental health or good mental functioning and bad mental health or bad mental functioning is whether your metaphysics are passive or active. Are you passively receiving sense data or are you actively creating sense data through some sort of brain disorder that substitutes visions manufactured from within the mind for sense data coming in passively through the organs of the senses. Now, of course, the purpose of nature to be commanded must be obeyed. The purpose of having a rational and empirical metaphysics is to be able to manipulate reality to your own advantage. Simple example would be you're hiking along in the woods and it's really raining badly and you.
[4:28] Now, let's assume the cave is empty or there's some sort of overhang you can see. Then you can go and take shelter from the rain in the cave. So you've kept yourself dry by taking shelter, by accurately identifying what it is that you are looking at, which is a cave. If you are hungry, you're a lion, you want to chase the zebra, as I mentioned before, not the tree. So the purpose, of course, of accurately identifying things in reality is to be able to act and manipulate those things in reality to further your chances of survival, of flourishing, of reproduction.
[5:03] So it goes from metaphysic, which all animals practice at an instinctual level, to epistemology. Epistemology, of course, is a study of that which determines truth from falsehood.
[5:17] And animals, in general, don't really have the ability to deny the evidence of their senses.
[5:23] So their sense of what is true and false is at an instinctual level. Whereas human beings, of course, we have the ability to abstract, to conceptualize. And because we have the ability to abstract and conceptualize, we have the ability to get things wrong. I mean, the duck-billed platypus and sort of the edge case scenario for being a mammal, right? It has hair, it gives birth to eggs, though, and it is warm-blooded. It's, you know, it's an edge case, right? So we can get things wrong. I mean, not that, but it's an edge case, right? So we can have edge cases. So because human beings can abstract or conceptualize from sense data, we can universalize, we have concepts. Because we have all of that, we have the capacity to get things wrong, which is why we need the discipline of epistemology. That which conforms to reason and evidence is the valid and true. That which is contradicted by reason and evidence is the invalid or false. And we need that discipline. Now, once we have that discipline of rational epistemology, then we can work towards ethics.
[6:35] So it is in metaphysics that we get the sort of three laws of logic and that that which is contradictory cannot be valid. It is through that then that we get... So metaphysics is the is statement.
[6:50] Metaphysics is is and epistemology is if then. If it conforms to reason and evidence, then it is true and valid. And ethics is should, is ought. So is, if then, is ought. is, this is the nature of reality. We've got epistemology, which is if sense data and concepts conform to reason and evidence, they are valid and true. And then we have.
[7:22] Ought. If a moral theory is universally preferable behavior, conforms to universally preferable behavior, then we ought to follow it. Then it is valid and true. So I'm going to sort of very quick, a very sort of quick route through it. Now, another way of looking at it, if we look at sort of the physical disciplines, then we would say that metaphysics is sense data, metaphysics as the experience. The philosophy of the metaphysics is the coordination between concepts, that accurately organize and predict the sense data. So we have a sense data as metaphysics, then epistemology would be physics, which is determining truth and falsehood, or the science, scientific disciplines as a whole. And I suppose there's a layer, I'm not sure what we would call it. For me, it's always sense data, physics, engineering. You need shelter. you accurately process the world around you. You build your shelter in order to gather materials and build a shelter in order to get the shelter. So sense data would be accurately perceiving the world around you. And metaphysics, epistemology would be, is this a suitable material for building a shelter? And then, of course, the purpose of all of that is to actually build a shelter, right? To actually build a shelter.
[8:46] Not sure where I would put the engineering part of that. So I might have to bookmark that in my brain. I mean, it is really the purpose of the metaphysics and the epistemology is to alter things, right? I mean, the lion has to correctly perceive the zebra, the lion has to pursue the zebra, and the purpose of pursuing and killing the zebra is to eat the zebra and therefore survive as the lion. And of course, the lions that most correctly and accurately perceive the zebras and most accurately and correctly are able to chase and kill the zebras are the lions that survive the best.
[9:22] Except, of course, if the lions get too efficient, in other words, if the zebras are unable to flee the lions, then the lions eat all the zebras, overpopulate, and then die off because they have no more prey. So it's one of these sort of esoteric balances that needs to happen in nature as a whole.
[9:38] So I will bookmark that and get back to that. It's an interesting question. Is the current Marxist trend, says a listener, to manipulate language and redefine words. Is the current Marxist trend to manipulate language and redefine words an attempt to decouple thinking from reality to facilitate untruths?
[9:56] Well, there are those who get their sustenance primarily from reality. And then there are those who get their sustenance primarily from others. I mean, in the sort of objectivist or Ayn Rand formulation, this is all the second-handers, right? Social metaphysicians around truth, right? They don't ask what is true. They ask what do people believe is true. Now, the model of gaining resources from others generally follows the pattern of women and children. This is not to equate women and children. I'm just saying that, and of course, there are many women who are very independent and get their resources directed from reality. But as a whole, and for the sustainability of the species, you know, with a 2.1, at least 2.1 birth rate, then what women do is they raise the children. And of course, the having and raising of children requires significant amounts of extra calories. I mean, just growing the baby requires extra calories. Breastfeeding requires extra calories. There was a fairly tragicomic Desperate Housewives show from many years ago where there was a woman who.
[11:18] Breastfeeding her child because it cut down. Her calorie expenditures went up, so it kept her weight low. So having and raising kids is very calorie intensive for women. And so it is generally the men who have to produce the excess calories that are consumed by women and children. So a man on his own might only need 2,500 calories a day. A man with a wife and kids might need to produce 10,000 or more calories a day for the wife and kids. Now, again, the kids, you know, starting from a fairly early age historically, would produce their own calories, and women would raise chickens and do some hunter-gatherer burying stuff. So they would be producing some of their own calories, but in general, it would be the sort of physical labor that the man would have to do and the meat that he would have to gather and so on, and the protection he would have to provide to other marauding or predatory men would be pretty significant. So the way that women and children would generally get their calories would be through the excess labor of the men.
[12:33] Now, of course, there's two ways that you can get resources from other human beings. One is to provide a positive and the other is to withhold a negative right so if there's some restaurant you really like to go to they provide a good meal at a good price you go and you order food from that restaurant and you eat and they're providing a positive it's win-win right if there's some guy who jumps you in an alley and puts a knife to your ribs and says give me a wallet then he is gaining resources from you by not by the provision of a positive but by the withholding of a negative. In other words, if you, I mean, the general idea is that if you give the guy your wallet, he's not going to stab you or kill you or wound you or maim you, right? Or to put it another way, you're going to lose your wallet either way. You can either lose your wallet with a lower chance of a hole in your side, or you can lose your wallet with a higher chance of a hole in your side, but you're going to lose your wallet either way.
[13:31] Now, these provisions are positive versus it's a win-win versus win-lose shows up in the marital scenario in a variety of ways the typical is you know i mean the win-win is your your wife loves you you love your wife you're happy to provide she's great she's funny she's warm she's affectionate runs a great household raises her kids in a beautiful way and you know happy to provide all that kind of stuff right so that's that's the provision of the positive, Now, that is, I don't know, Todd, guess what percentage of marriages that is? But I don't think it's the overwhelming majority. So then the question is, what is the provision? What is the withholding of the negative? Well, the withholding of the negative is the sort of, you know, the sort of caustic, twisted, complaints, the nagging, the withholding of affection, the slamming of the cupboard doors, the slamming down of food on the table, the discontent, all of that sort of stuff. So in that situation or scenario, the woman is inflicting a negative. And men can do this too. We're just talking about some typical marriage configuration throughout her evolution.
[14:43] So in general, some women gain their resources through the provision of positives. And some women gain their resources through withholding of the negatives, the threatening or punishing, right? And I'm going to get mad at you. I'm not going to have any affection towards you. I'm going to nag you until you do what I want. And these tend to be standoffs. The negative, negative tend to be standoffs. So a typical example would be the woman whose husband won't get a job, right? He's lazy. He just doesn't do what he needs to do to provide for the family. So of course, you know, she encourages him, but then maybe she finds out that that encouragement doesn't really motivate him. So then she just needs to i mean it's sort of an instinctual thing right i'm not saying it's a man's fault it's just kind of how these things play out but what she's going to do is she's going to start making it uncomfortable for him to be home she's going to in a sense drive him out of the house so that he can go and get some resources from reality she's going to drive him out of the house and make it less and less comfortable for him to be home so that he goes out and does something.
[15:52] I mean, I remember hearing the story of a sales manager when I was in the business world who would say to his salespeople, what are you doing here? Just don't be here. I mean, go to a donut shop, go to a sit in your car in the parking lot, just don't be here. Because if you're here, I know you're not outselling a product. So just don't be here. And he just wanted people to get out of the office and go do their sales thing. So if there's a man, sort of this cliche about marriage, right? This sort of cliche about marriage is that nothing bothers a wife more than seeing a husband sitting on a couch.
[16:29] Well, there's two ways that you can look at a man, you know, half dozing on a couch. You know, obviously, if he's been working two days straight, then he needs to rest, right? He needs to rest. If, on the other hand, he's not been doing much of anything all week, then he's not resting. He's lazy.
[16:50] So, it's a different language, right? It's a different language. Now, appealing to the moral conscience and egalitarianism of others in order to get your resources is a sort of tried-and-true younger sibling strategy. Older siblings tend to be kind of grabby, and they certainly do have the capacity to gain and keep extra resources, because they're bigger and stronger, faster, more dominant. So, for younger siblings to appeal to authority in the, ah, no fair, no fair, that is instinctual. And so they have to appeal to the egalitarian impulses, almost always if they're a mother, given that, you know, when you had, you know, four, six, eight kids, the woman was home managing the children and making sure that her investment was spread equally, which means resources had to be distributed aggressively, let's say.
[17:50] So, for the younger sibling, a meritocracy is not good. It is not good for a younger sibling to rely upon a meritocracy. Because in a meritocracy, there's such inequality between the capacities, let's say you've got a kid who's 10, and you've got a kid who's 2. Well, the 2-year-old cannot rely on a meritocracy. The 2-year-old can only survive on Thank you.
[18:20] Coercive redistribution, where if the older kids are just grabbing food, that the mother has to take the food from the older kids, even against their strenuous complaints, and give it to the younger kids. So the younger sibling has to raise holy hell through language, cry and complain. If the elder sibling is getting excess resources, as the elder sibling, and again, I'm talking about this, you know, the absence of chivalric or familial or sibling love, you know, where you, you know here here a little little girl you can have some of my food because i love you i mean that certainly is present in families but let's just say you need to have a plan b if that's not present and the plan b is to say from each according to their ability to each according to their need right this is why the statement from communism is is so powerful because it It strikes right at the heart and right at the core of our family situations as we grow. From each according to their ability, right? In hierarchy, we have the father, the mother, the older siblings, from each according to their ability to each according to their need. That rings true for us because it is how we evolve. It is how families work. It's how human beings have survived.
[19:38] And in general, it has also come about because, I mean, there are certainly some societies where child sacrifice is pretty common. But if you've ever seen those videos, like storks will do this. If there's a runt of the litter, then the mother stork will sometimes just pick that runt of the litter up and drop it off the edge of the nest. So it basically falls to its death or it's going to get eaten. Probably, right?
[20:06] So gaining resources through others is foundational to our survival it is in general of course a child situation but given that i mean it's a it's it's anyone's guess as to how many people truly and deeply grow up over the course of their lives it is anybody's guess but i don't think it's I don't think it's very high in terms of people who actually grow up and accept sort of the full responsibility of adulthood. I don't think it's very many.
[20:40] And getting your resources through language, through the infliction of negatives or the provision of positives, right? So if you look at mothers, say, and they're dealing with older kids, they can say, it's really nice for you to share with your little sister. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. That's very kind. And she gives him that big hugs and kisses. So she's positively reinforcing him voluntarily transferring his resources. He's got a little extra food, giving it to his younger sister, right? So that's sort of a positive reinforcement of that behavior. Or she can say, you know, stop being a selfish jerk and give some of your extra bread to your sister. Or I'm going to punish you. I'm going to be cold to you. I'm going to criticize you. I'm going to, whatever, withdraw affection. Sorry, cold to you, withdraw affection, same thing. But that's how, is it encouraged to share or is a lack of sharing punished aggressively? That's the question, right? Now, if the older sibling's lack of sharing is prey, is punished.
[21:57] You've got more bread than you can eat. For heaven's sakes, give a piece to your younger sister, you selfish little kid or whatever, right? Probably harsher than that, but I don't like that language even in a theoretical. Well, then the resources are resentfully handed over. Fine, have the extra piece of bread, right? And a sort of scenario is set up wherein conflict between the siblings is going to escalate, right? And that's, you know, the smirk, right?
[22:28] The, let's say that it could be boy or girl, but it's just a bit easier to have boy-girl in this scenario. Let's say the little girl is not getting enough complaints of the mother of the mother forces the older boy, the older brother to give her resources, and then she smirks, right? And then you end up with this sort of win-lose. And of course, in the hierarchy of siblings, equality of opportunity in a free market sense is a complete disaster because the older kids get excess resources, the younger kids get deficient resources, and the family loses out as a whole. Because if the younger siblings don't get enough resources to survive, to thrive, to resist disease, to, you know, not starve to death, then all of the parental investment in the having and raising of kids goes out the window, is squandered, is lost. And of course, it's a big negative emotional experience for the parents, of course, right? So, forced redistribution is essential for the survival of younger siblings. Now, we can say it's not that the parent, you know, forcibly grabs the piece of bread from the older siblings and gives it to the younger siblings, but if that is what is necessary, then that is what has to occur.
[23:45] The parents will start with encouragement, like you should share with your sister. But if the older sibling does not share with the sister, then the parent just has to take, just has to take the food and give it to the sister. Or, you know, to put it in my usual formulation, those parents who didn't do that, fewer of their offspring survived. So, in general, the father and the elder siblings, usually male in this situation, are the ones wrestling resources directly from reality. The younger siblings and the females are the ones who are gaining their resources through others, not directly through reality, but through language, through complaints. I mean, if we go all the way back to infancy, a newborn baby. Newborn baby is hungry, newborn baby cries in order to get the mother to provide her milk, right? So that's gaining resources through complaining.
[24:41] And of course, the baby will very quickly attempt or work with the parents to produce happiness for both by, you know, giggling and laughing and so on when the parent is doing something that is delightful to the baby. So you end up reinforcing positive behavior and solving problems through complaints, right? I'm hungry, I'm going to cry till I get my food. I'm happy. I'm going to laugh and chortle so that my parent keeps doing what I want. Now, of course, what matters when you use language to acquire resources is that you actually get the resources. And the younger you are, the shorter your time frame to get those resources. In other words, the less you care about the long-term effects of gaining resources. A man who's single can choose not to eat.
[25:33] You know, he'll be a little hungry. And a man, you know, there are these guys, you see them all over social media doing these like multi-day fasts or whatever, right? So, you know, men can, especially if you've got a little extra weight, you can, there was a Scottish guy who went for a long time without eating, just taking supplements because he wanted to lose weight. So, if you're an adult, then you can choose not to eat. But you can't choose, I mean, you can't put your baby on a fast, is going to die, right? Babies need food every couple of hours. So for younger siblings and for mothers in particular, you need the calories to produce the milk, the breastfeed your babies, and so on, right? So your timeframe for getting resources is shorter, right? Lots of men have had to, you see these people in sort of tropical countries, they're skinny as rails and they're hunting, right? They don't have a lot of access. Fat, so they have to hunt when they're hungry, and they have to push their bodies forward, even when their bodies don't have much nutrition at all to live on.
[26:42] So the lower you are on the hierarchy of getting resources from others rather than from reality directly, the shorter your time frame and the more intense your complaints tend to be.
[26:54] Babies cry until they get what they want. Most older kids have a little bit more pride, but will still work to get their resources. So then, of course, one of the big challenges.
[27:05] Is every advantage in this analysis can be faked, can be fraudulent. So, of course, if you have a 10-year-old boy and his two-year-old little sister, it's not her fault that she can't get resources as effectively as the 10-year-old boy. Born later, right? Not her fault. She's 20% of his age, right? So we don't blame people, like morally, rationally, we don't blame people for things that aren't their fault. So one of the ways in which people get resources is they create the impression or provide the simulacrum that things aren't their fault. So, I mean, you've heard this probably a million times in call-in shows, somebody says, well, my mother was a victim of my father. And I say, you know, the same thing, which is a reasonably attractive woman. She probably had, you know, five to 10 to 15 guys who'd be willing to date her. She chose to date your father. She chose to get engaged to him, get married to him, to give him children, to stay with him. This is not a victim. This is not a victim.
[28:16] Because if you can convince people that the misfortunes in your life are not your fault, then their desire to provide you resources tends to increase i mean it's a single mom phenomenon right so if you can pretend to be a victim people's desire to give you resources tends to go up considerably now all of this of course should be going back and forth in the interplay, in the free market like in a stateless voluntary society all of these interplays would be interesting and complex and would be subject to free will, moral evaluation, and choice. The problem, of course, is that the youngest, this is the two-year-old girl, always has the option of going to complain to her mother about not getting resources.
[29:01] She almost has that option. And, I mean, maybe not when she's 20, but certainly when she's very little, she's going to go to her mom and she says, I'm hungry. Mom's going to say, okay, well, you 10-year-old kid, give her some bread. And if you're not going to do it voluntarily, I'm just going to punish you and make you because the two-year-old has to survive. So you always have that option, of course, of running to the parent when you're little. Now, because of the coercive power of the state to redistribute, to manufacture and redistribute resources, well, to fake, to money print, to borrow. So because of the capacity of the state to redistribute resources you always have a mommy or a daddy to run to in order to get resources and in order to get resources you have to pretend to be a victim now of course there are some people who are victims and so on but it's a it's a very sort of interesting question is that other other in fact adult victims.
[30:06] You know, the difference between 17 to 18, suddenly you go from 0% to 100% self-ownership. I mean, I get there's residual effects and so on, but are there adult victims who need resources? So let's say somebody gets sick, I say, oh, well, they need resources because they can't work. It's like, well, but why don't they have disability insurance? Why don't they have this kind of stuff, right? In a free market, right? Are there victims, right?
[30:31] Say, oh, well, this person got lung cancer, but they never smoked. So it's just bad luck. It's like well yeah but they need insurance for that kind of stuff and if they didn't buy the insurance are they victims and to me it's you know that's a very interesting question and again talking about a free society a state in the society are there victims in a free society do they do they really exist now so and i think one of the reasons why people don't grow up is because they always have sort of all-powerful state that they can pretend to be a victim with regards to, and they can gain resources through the power of the state. So they don't have to grow up because they have this forever parent that's going to redistribute resources in their direction.
[31:13] So the formulation of the question from the listener is the current Marxist trend to manipulate language and redefine words in an attempt to decouple thinking from reality to facilitate untruths.
[31:24] Well, I view it as a leftover evolutionary strategy from childhood, it. Because when you have the redistributive state, it is very hard to shake the habits of early childhood and pretend to be victims in return for resources. I mean, the two-year-old girl is a victim if she doesn't get enough resources. If her older siblings are taking all the food, she's a genuine victim and the food needs to get to her no matter what. And it's very tough for people to grow up with this forever parent of the state, forever redistributing resources based upon the.
[32:04] Pretense of victimhood. And the strategy of pretending victimhood in order to get resources, that strategy is not going to be wished or willed away by language. You cannot, on a reliable basis, you cannot convince people to give up that which is necessary for their survival. I mean, all the gene sets or all of the mindsets, all of the genetic underpinnings of thinking, all of those mindsets that could be convinced into harming their own reproductive chances did not survive nearly as well. So a woman who's got three kids by three different men saying to her, you're not a victim. I mean, if by pretending to be a victim, she gets resources for her children, you're trying to talk her out of reproductive advantage. And evolutionarily speaking, you just cannot talk people out of reproductive advantage. Now, of course, you can say in society as a whole in the long run well but it's going to be bad for society as a whole in the long run but if you remember earlier i was talking about how you have shorter time frames.
[33:13] The further you are from directly producing your own resources in reality right and a woman with three kids she can't go hunt she can't exactly take them all out into the field and and plant and build fences and handle livestock and like she's got to raise the kids she's got to be there to protect the kids. She's got to carry the kids. They're sweet, right? Babies, in particular, toddlers too.
[33:36] So she just has, and it could be men too, right? We're just talking typical, right? But she has too short a set of timeframes to worry about the long-term impacts, right?
[33:46] So the famous statement from Keynes, right? Well, what about the long run? Well, in the long run, we're all dead. I mean, certainly, if you were to abandon the welfare state and substitute free market charity, the poor would be infinitely better off in the long run because there'd be a path out of poverty.
[34:05] However, the woman who needs to put food on the table today, tomorrow, this week cannot afford that risk. They cannot afford to take that chance. I mean, I remember, I said Harry Brown would say way back in the day that if they privatized education, it'd be solved in about a week or two, maybe a month. You know, people would just start teaching classes in their garage things would just be solved pretty quickly but if we're talking a week or two or a month, well the single moms can't not feed their kids for a week because they're going to die I mean it seems like some single moms might be able to survive but certainly babies right they can't take that risk, in a funny way, those with the least power tend to be the most conservative because they can't.
[34:52] Survive significant changes in the environment, or at least there's that fear, right? Like the people with the most savings can be the most assertive at work. You know, like the old joke about, you know, Bitcoin goes up a certain amount and then your boss asks you to do something and you say, watch your mouth. So those who have the fewest resources tend to be the most conservative in that they're going to cook up the most fuss in any change to existing resource acquisition or distribution. So if you go from the welfare state to charity, the people currently dependent on the welfare state are going to fight tooth and nail to maintain the existing system. They can't afford the risk of transition to a new system. Whereas of course the people who've got a bunch of savings or who have a high earning husband to taking care of them and so on, they can afford those changes. They can afford to take that risk.
[35:41] So when it comes to pretending to be a victim in order to gain resources from a coercive authority, which is the Younger Sibling 101, when you end up with a perpetuity of that coercive authority, which is the redistributionist state, then you say, well, people are pretending to be victims. It's like, well, sure, sure they are. and so what the tiger pretends to be grass in order to sneak up on its prey there's a trap spider that pretends to be a patch of sand and then grabs whatever beetles come by the camouflage is foundational so how but it's not true and it's like i get all of that but truth bows to survival, truth bows to survival that's the nature of life now if you go completely crazy you're not likely to survive, so there's a happy median, at least for short-term survival. Truth bows to survival. The slave will not rebel if the slave gets to survive. Maybe hopefully reproduce.
[36:48] So we will, certainly in the short run, we will discard the truth for the sake of survival. And saying to people, well, you shouldn't do that, and I get all of that, but that's very sort of anti-evolutionary, right? Because evolutionarily speaking, we had to survive. Those who place truth above survival did not survive. And those who place no value on truth tend not to survive either.
[37:17] So, this is sort of sad. I mean, we all have this tipping point, right? If you've been on a seesaw, you walk up the seesaw, you get to the fulcrum in the middle. We all have this tipping point, which is we say enough truth that we have self-respect. We say enough truth that we can be loved in the world. We say enough truth that we can have a good conscience, but, you know, too much truth and we get driven out and ostracized.
[37:42] An attempt to decouple thinking from reality to facilitate untruths, well, appealing to coercive authority in order to get resources is a foundational survival strategy. And it's hard to ask people to grow up if they're forever being treated as children and given the powers, of children to, well, as children, you're genuinely a victim, but to pretend to be a victim in order to gain resources is foundational to survival. So we can look at it as sort of Marxist analysis, and I get the corruption, I get the immorality and so on, I get all of that. And pretending to be a victim in order to gain resources does corrupt society as a whole. Because your enemy becomes the people that who tell the truth and say, you're not a victim.
[38:26] Your enemies become the truth tellers. And you must maintain the pretense of victimhood to gain resources from the redistributive state. You must maintain that perception of victimhood. And anybody who tries to give you agency and maturity and responsibility becomes your enemy because it threatens the redistribution of resources. And once you have significant portions of the population who survive on falsehood, they will be willing to attack and kill those who tell the truth and say, you're not victims. And that's where the violence comes from. I mean, there's the implicit coercion of the redistribution of resources, taking from each according to their ability to each according to their needs. There's all of that for sure. But then because the victim narrative is so powerful and so, I mean, you're hunting the productive through the predatory camouflage of victimhood. And when the pretense of victimhood is no longer believed, the naked force comes out. In the same way that, you know, the mother will encourage the older brother to give some bread to his younger sister, but if that doesn't work, then she'll just grab it and hand it over.
[39:41] And, you know, the amount of sort of human maturation and growth that is inhibited by this redistributive state that rewards people massively for never growing up and never taking agency, it's really tragic.
[39:55] I mean, the amount of potential that's lost is almost beyond words. So it's a great question, and I really do appreciate your time, care, and attention in these fantastic questions. And freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Really would appreciate that. Freedomain.com slash donate. You can also sign up for a subscription, which is also very helpful and useful. It's a bit more predictable in terms of income and expenditures. You can go to fdrurl.com slash locals or you can go to subscribesar.com slash free domain. Sign up for a subscription and you get all kinds of amazing goodies through that. Hundreds of extra call-in shows and other kinds of shows and Travers on the French Revolution and the History of Philosophers series. Just some great, great stuff. So thank you so much for your time and attention. Tension, love you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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