Free Domain Radio - Recently Updated Pages

FDR WIKI

thechuff — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:00:51 CST

Welcome to the Free Domain Radio Wiki, brought to you by the FDR community.
All podcasts are produced by Stefan Molyneux.
http://www.FreedomainRadio.com

The purpose of this wiki is to provide written word transcriptions, summaries, and reviews of Stefan Molyneux's podcasts. Want to help us?

(Before submitting a transcription, please keep in mind that all submitted transcriptions themselves will be reviewed and edited by our Editors in accordance with the Style Guide for Transcribing and Editing used by CastingWords Transcription Services. This is in order to streamline the appearance of the podcast transcripts. Created pages on which new transcriptions are submitted will be subjected to our own conventions (found here) and will be reformatted to fit these standards if they do not upon creation.)

0. Introduction to Freedomain Radio
1. The Stateless Society - An Examination of Alternatives
2. Caging the Devils: The Stateless Society and Violent Crime
3. These Cages Are Only For Beasts
4. Loving the State: Leviathan and Optimism
5. Forget about self-defense...
6. Morality Is Not Easy - Surviving the Cynics
7. The Argument From Morality (or, how we will win!)
8. Proving Libertarian Morality
9. Understanding the Stock Market: Speculation versus Investment
10. Putting a man on the moon - the initial successes of state programs
11. Nagging the State
12. The Imbalance of Power
13. Proof, Disproof and Deities
14. The State and God - Part 1
15. The State and God - Part 2
16. Dealing with Non-Libertarians Part 1
17. Dealing with Non-Libertarians Part 2
18. Health Care Part 1
19. Voodoo Economists
20. The State and Sports
21. They hate us because we're good? (Part 1)
22. They hate us because we're good? (Part 2)
23. Health Care Part 2 - A 'right' to heath care?
24. Health Care Part 3 - A 'right' to heath care?
25. Validating the Senses
26. The Drug Wars Part 1
27. The Drug Wars Part 2
28. The Economics of Spirituality
29. Ten Questions To Ask Religious Friends
30. Why State Violence Always Grows
31. The Billion Dollar Proposition
32. Liberty Under The Lash
33. Arguments Against Morality - and the welfare state
34. Moral Responsibility and Social Security
35. Race and the State (Part 1)
36. Race and the State (Part 2)
37. What is Libertarianism?
38. The Death Cult of Narnia
39. The Economics of Conformity
40. Fleeing Eden
41. Power or Virtue? (A Love Story)
42. Unions (Part 1)
43. Unions (Part 2)
44. Knowledge and Moral Responsibility
45. Random Drives Through Tangent City
46. Voting
47. Emails of the week!
48. Freedom and the Great Depression
49. Artists, Capitalism and Intolerance (Part 1)
50. Artists, Capitalism and Intolerance (Part 2)
51. Welfare and the Argument from Morality
52. War Part 1
53. War Part 2
54. Economic Choices and 9/11
55. Unnatural Spiritualism
56. Emails of the week - and free will!
57. Free Will Part 2
58. Poverty Part 1
59. Poverty Part 2
60. Loving the Lefties
61. The Fallacy of Left and Right
62. Capitalism and Profit - Common Misperceptions
63. War, Profit and the State
64. Roads (Part 1)
65. Roads (Part 2)
66. Evil Doing Overtime at Wal Mart
67. Property Rights
68. Helping the Poor
69. Emails of the Week - Jan 25, 2006
70. How to control a human soul
71. Culture: How to enslave a human soul
72. Bullies and Victims: The aftermath of culture
73. Marriage, Homosexuality and Abortion
74. Chainsaw Surgery: Using the State to Help the Poor
75. The True History of Violence (Part 1)
76. The True History of Violence (Part 2)
77. Scratching Foreign Backs
78. Running to Lions for Safety
79. The Industrial Revolution
80. Advice to the Young at Heart
81. Two Examples of Empirical Religiosity
82. Public Schools (Part 1)
83. Public Schools (Part 2)
84. Public Schools (Part 3 - Vouchers)
85. Public Schools (Part 4 - Alternatives)
86. Top Ten Myths About Libertarianism
87. Cultural Blindness
88. Human Beings - Good or Evil?
89. The State and the Family - Part 1: Babies
90. The State and the Family - Part 2: Toddlers
91. The State and the Family - Part 3: Latency
92. The State and the Family - Part 4: Adolescence
93. Emails of the Week - Feb 9 2005
94. Preventing Tragedy
95. Concepts Part 1: Servant or Master?
96. Concepts Part 2: Here is the master...
97. Concepts Part 3: The Effects
98. Decadence and Empathy
99. Taking Back from the State
100. Social Fictions Part 1
101. Social Fictions Part 2
102. The Libertarian Love Doctor
103. Environmentalism Part 1: Logical Problems
104. Environmentalism Part 2: State Destruction
105. Environmentalism Part 3: Public/Private Greed
106. Solving Headaches with Guillotines
107. Burdens of Proof: Arguments of God and State
108. Stock Swindles
109. But *my* parents were really nice! (Part 1)
110. But *my* parents were really nice! (Part 2)
111. But *my* parents were really nice! (Part 3)
112. But *my* parents were really nice! (Part 4)
114. War and the Fantasy of Protection
113. But *my* parents were really nice! (Part 5: Freedom)
115. The Empty Seas: So long, and thanks for all the fish!
116. Criminals Part 1: Capital Punishment
117. Criminals Part 2: The Police
118. Female Violence (Part 1)
119. Female Violence (Part 2)
120. Socialist Calculations Part 1: Price
121. Socialist Calculations Part 2: Labor, Capital and Goods
122. Am I Too Mean?
123. Harry Browne, RIP
124. Why we forgive socialism (Part 1)
125. Why we forgive socialism (Part 2)
126. Feminism Part 1: The 'Bait and Switch'
127. Feminism Part 2: Divided We Fall
128. Feminism Part 3: Women Need Men
129. Feminism Part 4: A Way Forward...
130. Betraying Children: Dr Phil Punks Out
131. Does Government Decrease Violence?
132. Turning Ashes into Adrenaline
133. Personal Freedom and Responsibility
134. Pens and Swords Part 1: Banksters
135. Pens and Swords Part 2: Parasites
136. Anarchy, Violence and the State
137. Propaganda Part 1: Differences between advertising and indoctrination
138. Propaganda Part 2: Positive versus Negative Economics
139. Saving Children: The Stateless Society and the Protection of the Helpless
140. The Libertarian Love Doctor - Trusting Instincts Part 1
141. The Libertarian Love Doctor - Trusting Instincts Part 2
142. The Matriarchy at War
143. Foreign Aid Part 1
144. Foreign Aid Part 2
145. Do We Need A Standing Army?
146. Response to a military email
147. Subjectivism and the State
148. The 'Ought To' Challenge - Morality does not exist in reality
149. The Costs and Benefits of Irrationality
150. Racism and the Free Market
151. Arguments Against War
152. Gun Control Part 1: Logic
153. Gun Control Part 2: Facts
154. Gun Control Part 3: Crime
155. The Social Contract Part 1: Origins
156. The Social Contract Part 2: Facts
157. The Social Contract Part 3: Logic
158. 10 Arguments for Freedom (Part 1)
159. 10 Arguments for Freedom (Part 2)
160. Corporations
161. Goals and Objectives: The Gun in the Room
162. Goals and Objectives: The Gun in the Room Part 2
163. The Gender Politics of Left and Right
164. Intellectual Property Rights Part 1: Challenges
165. Intellectual Property Rights Part 2: Justice
166. Intellectual Property Rights Part 3: Solutions
167. [Insert Country Name Here] - Love it or leave it!
168. The State and Monopolies
169. Free Thought Radio Intro #1: Current Events: GM and the State
170. Free Thought Radio Intro #2: Current Events: Delay-ed Justice
171. Movie Review: V for Vendetta (AKA The State-rix)
172. 'Love it or leave it' - An Article
173. Can we collaborate with Christians? (Part 1)
174. Can we collaborate with Christians? (Part 2)
175. Immigration Part 1
176. Immigration Part 2: The Predatory Escalation of Immigration Policies
177. Can we collaborate with Christians? (Part 3)
178. Emails of the Week Apr 5 06 - Corporations and Intellectual Property
179. Human Nature
180. Freedom Part 1: Romantic Freedom
181. Freedom Part 2: Romantic Security
182. Freedom Part 3: Siblings
183. Freedom Part 4: Parents (and everything!)
184. Empathy Part 1
185. Empathy Part 2
186. Metaphors as Philosophy
187. Putting the *con* in *text'* - the contexts of Biblical commandments (Part 1)
188. Religious Context Part 2 - Exploring Hell
189. An Invitation to Christians Part 1: Saving Your Soul
190. An Invitation to Christians Part 2: The Paths of Error
191. An Invitation to Christians Part 3: The Economics of Faith
192. Curiosity and Personal Relationships
192.5. Call In Show #2 - April 16 2006
193. Marx and the Labor Theory of Value
194. Marxist Exploitation
195. Economics and Subjective Value
196. Parenting Part 1: Credibility
197. Parenting Part 2: Authority
198. Parenting Part 3: Communication
199. Space Aliens from Luxenburg: A Horror Story
200. The God of Atheists Chapters 1-3 (Note: Explicit Content! Danger! Danger!)
201. Art Part 1: Truth and Lies
202. Art Part 2: Serving the Unholy Trinity
203. Stateless Prisons
204. Art Part 3: Shakespeare
205. FDR Call In Show #3 - April 23, 2006
206. Reasoning with Faith
207. Moral Reciprocity Part 1: Policy
208. Moral Reciprocity Part 2: Blindness
209. Marriage and the State
210. The War Racket
211. Childhood Prisons
212. Business Management Part 1: Value
213. Star Trek and Statism
214. Social Corruption
215. King Kong Review Part 1
216. FDR Call In Show 4: April 30, 2006 - Dealing with Depression (with the lovely wife as featured guest!)
217. State Lies
218. Existing Stateless Economies
219. Radical Skepticism
220. Immigration, History and Genocide
221. Brave Media Warriors!
222. Media Warriors - Live and Die by the Sword
223. Stef Stumbles
224. Movie Review: The Godfather
225. Utilitarianism: The Swiss Army Knife at your Throat (Part 1)
226. Utilitarianism: The Pseudoscience of Subjectivity (Part 2)
227. Call In Show #5, May 7 2006: State Participation
228. The Perils of Politics and Public Education
229. Marilyn Monroe and Sexual Abuse
230. ...And May Nog Have Mercy On Your Gool...
231. Movie Review: Fight Club
232. Justice
233. Honor
234. Contempt
235. Libertarianism for the Young: Freedom for the tweens
236. Corruption
237. The Analytic/Synthetic Dichotomy - How Confusion Serves Power
238. Family Fantasies
239. Global Warming As Metaphor
240. The Greatest Argument Against The State
241. The State, Violence And Crime
242. Reclaiming Masculinity Part 1: Specialization
243. Reclaiming Masculinity Part 2: Ethical Partnerships
244. Sniping at God - A pro-war article and a listener conversation
245. The Arrogance of Fantasies
246. Call In Show 21 May 2006, 4pm EST
247. Questions for Women
248. Hands Across the Slaughter - Anarchists and Libertarians
249. Libertarians, the 'minimal state' and basic logic
250. The Ethics of Bloodlines
251. The Subtle Strength of the True Self
252. Changing a Person's Mind
253. Nuclear Infidelity
254. The Cult of Freedomain Radio
255. Marrying the Muse
256. Blaming the Citizens for the State
257. Physics and the Three Laws of Logic
258. The Subtle Corruption of State Banking
259. Fighting Philosophy
260. Moral Objectivity
261. 'Is' and 'Ought' and Ethics
262. Biological Imperatives
263. Dealing with Passive Aggression (Part 1)
264. Dealing with Passive Aggression (Part 2)
265. Scolding The State
266. My Dinner with Christina and John
267. Call In Show 4 June 2006, 4pm EST: Looks, Values and Free Will
268. Debating Freedom Without Solutions Part 1
269. Debating Freedom Without Solutions Part 2
270. Perfection is the Enemy of Virtue
27e1. Market Anarchism: PLEASE NOTE: THE SHOWS CONTINUE ON A NEW FEED: http://www.freedomainradio.com/Freedomain_Radio_Podcast_1.xml - PLASE UPDATE
272. Freud, Somalia and Cults in General
273. Government Corruption and Reparations
274. One Day in the Life of a Newspaper
275. Enron
276. War and Empathy
277. Locating God
278. Shuck the Poor
279. Violence and Virtue
280. How Do You Know?
281. External Validation
282. United Nations Part 1: Theory
283. United Nations Part 2: Facts
284. Losing Ground Part 1: Facts
285. Losing Ground Part 2: Theory
286. Call In Show June 18 1006 4pm Free Will Part 2
287. Effective Discussions
288. Culture and State Power
289. Why We Hurt The Ones We Love (Part 1)
290. Why We Hurt The Ones We Love (Part 2)
291. The Joy of Failure
292. Freedom Through Debt
293. Social Contracts - International Reciprocity Without Governments
294. Social Contracts - Anarchy, Abortion and Crime
295. How To Change Your Emotions (Part 1)
296. How To Change Your Emotions (Part 2)
297. Aggression Versus Assertion
298. The Aged
299. The Crystal Ball Collapse
300. A Guest Host, and a Taste of my Own Medicine!
301. Price Controls and the Minimum Wage
302. Listener Email: Arguing the Military Option
303. Listener Suggestion: Understanding Jealousy
304. Conversational Bombs
305. Anger or Compassion?
306. The Dollar Democracy
307. A Holey Vision
308. Projecting Torture
309. Call In Show July 2 2006 4pm
310. Family Freedom (From a listener topic)
311. Mother (Part 1) (From a listener email)
312. Girlfriend (Part 2) (From a listener email)
313. Sympathy for the Devils
314. Fudging Free Will
315. Trustbusting: Microsoft Versus The Department Of Justice
316. Bitchy Arguments
317. A Dead Sprint in a Foggy Cage - Escaping Corruption
318. Moral Experimentation
319. Tolerance and Statism
320. Call In Show July 9 2006 4pm EST
321. Scientific Anarchism - Working From The Evidence
322. Getting National Defense Without Attacking Citizens
323. Conflict Resolution Part 1 - Values
324. Conflict Resolution Part 2 - History (Part 3 continues on podcast 341...)
325. Sharia Law Versus The Non Aggression Principle - Anarchy and Crazy Laws
326. The Rise of Evil Part 1: Examples
327. The Rise of Evil Part 2: Theory
328. The Rise of Evil Part 3: Experiments
329. Property Rights On A Desert Island
330. Morality as Dominance Part 1: Examples
331. Morality as Dominance Part 2: Theory
332. Call In Show 16 Jul 2006
333. Morality As Dominance Part 3: Illogic
334. True Versus False Emotions (this one, sadly, is cut off!)
335. True Versus False Selves
336. Fines versus Families
337. Productive Debates (Part 1)
338. Productive Debates (Part 2)
340. How - and why - Some Philosophers Become Popular
341. Conflict Resolution Part 3: Rules
342. Call In Show 23 Jul 2006
343. A Review of Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith' (First Half)
344. The Childhood War of John Stuart Mill
345. Science And Free Will Part 1
346. Science And Free Will Part 2
347. Escaping Your Family Step By Step - Part 1
348. Escaping Your Family Step By Step - Part 2
349. You Are Not Broken
350. Escaping Your Family Step By Step - Part 3
351. Call In Show July 30, 2006 - No Free Will!
352. The Difference Between Anger and Rage
353. False/True Feelings
354. Junkyard Dreams - An Deep Analysis
355. The Marginal Revolution - Smith, Marx and Value
356. You Are Your Own Proof (Part 1)
357. You Are Your Own Proof (Part 2)
358. Stef's Wager
359. Holy Bat-Dream!
360. Call-In Show Aug 6 2006
361. Stabbing the Wallet - Economic Growth and Violence
362. Forget About Offense
363. The Joy of Anger Part 1
364. The Joy of Anger Part 2
365. The Joy of Hatred
366. Unearthing Crimes Part 1 (audio track to a video podcast...)
367. Unearthing Crimes Part 2 (audio track to a video podcast...)
368. Video 5 Living Richly (audio track to a video podcast...)
369. Slaves, Statists And Children - Compliance Part 1
370. Slaves, Statists And Children - Compliance Part 2
371. Loss
372. Sadness
373. A Short Story Analysis
374. Deathbeds
375. Promises and Power
376. Call In Show Aug 20 2006 4pm EST
377. An Introduction to Philosophy Part 1
378. An Introduction to Philosophy Part 2: Metaphysics
379. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 3 Epistemology 1
380. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 3 Epistemology 2
381. Loving the 'Sheeple'
382. Loving the 'Sheeple' - A Follow Up Article
383. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 3 Epistemology 3
384. Chile and Free(r) Markers
385. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 4 Truth 1
386. Call In Show Aug 27 2006 4pm EST
387. Are Relationships Corrupting? (New mike, a few audio problems, sorry!)
388. Family State and Intellectuals
389. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 4 Truth 2
390. Statist Intellectuals Part 1
391. Statist Intellectuals Part 2
392. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 4 Truth 3 Gods
393. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 4 Truth 4 Religions
394. A Public Intellectual
395. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Ethics 1
396. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Ethics 2
397. Call In Show Sep 3 2006
398. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Ethics 3 - Subjective?
399. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Ethics 4 - Definitions
401. Who is to blame? (continued from 391)
402. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Ethics 5
403. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Ethics 6
404. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 6 Politics 1
405. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 6 Politics 2
406. Who Is To Blame Part 3: Parents?
407. Who Is To Blame Part 4: A possible answer...
408. Forgiveness And Responsibility - A Debate
409. Call In Show Sep 10 2006 - 9/11, War, Invasion, Defense and Education
410. An Introduction To Philosophy Part 5 Politics 3
411. My Apologies for Lecturing!
412. Nit Picky City
413. Two Dreams Part 1: The Jesus Bunny
414. Two Dreams Part 2: Ice Flying
415. Emails Of The Week
416. Gas Prices
417. Islamic Offense
418. Part 1: Call In Show Sep 17 2006 4pm EST
418. Part 2: Call In Show Sep 17 2006 4pm EST
419. Reason and Passion Part 1
420. Reason and Passion Part 2
421. Humiliation
422. Maternal Passive Aggression
423. Theory And Practice - Pocket Nukes and Global Warming
424. Reaching Students
425. Anger And Evolution
426. Israel and Power
427. We are all afraid of our parents
428. Sunday Call In Show
429. Masculine Mastery
430. Invisible Snipers And Fighting In Cars
431. Fearing Global Warming
432. Battling Socrates
433. Battling Addictions
434. Maternal Addictions
435. The Argument From Psychology
436. But the government and the church are so nice!
437. Vulnerability
438. St Argoth and the Wingless Dragon
439. Shocked and Appalled at War Crimes?
400. Christina And the Priest
440. Call In Show Sunday Oct 1 2006
441. Stef as Abuser? - A Conversation With Christina
442. Full Disclosure Part 1: Teachers
443. Full Disclosure Part 2: Politicians
444. Anti-Masculinity Part 1
445. Anti-Masculinity Part 2
446. Full Disclosure Part 3: Soldiers (note, official 'potty mouth' podcast!)
447. Full Disclosure Part 4: Cops (note, second official 'potty mouth' podcast!)
448. Empiricism and Nonsense Part 1: Church
449. Empiricism and Nonsense Part 2: State
450. Libertopia
451. Christina's Family Letter Part 1
452. Christina's Family Letter Part 2
453. Call In Show October 8 2006 - Ask A Therapist!
454. Anarchy Is What We Have
455. Philosophy Is Laughter
456. Dream Analysis - The Heart Is An Organ Of Fire
457. Arguments Against Anarchy
458. Ask A Therapist Number 1
459. Bullying Little Girls
460. Call In Show Oct 15 2006 - families, futures, minds and brains!
461. Rulers and Ruled
462. Govt As Cover For Predators
463. Economics and Frustration
464. The End of War
465. Stef The War Hero
466. My Personal Journey to Freedom
467. Moral Empiricism and You...
468. Seeing Through Darkness
469. Ask A Therapist #2
470. The Statism of the Self
471. Sunday Call In Show Oct 21 2006
472. Children: Selfish and Evil? (Part 1)
473. Children: Selfish and Evil? (Part 2)
474. Psychological Defenses (Part 1)
475. Psychological Defenses (Part 2)
476. The Myth of Nice Christians
477. Soldiers Are Not Free
478. Freedom From The Fears of Others
479. Freedom From Lists
480. Proving Alienation - Evidence for Hostility to Truth
481. Sunday Call In Show Oct 29 2006 - Love!
482. Goals and Tension - Stef needs help!
483. Saving Souls From Bears
484. Empathy (a continuation of 483)
485. Gods and Politicians - A response to user posts
486. The Afterlife...
487. Anarchy 101
488. Paralysis in Flames - A Dream Sequence Analysis
489. Moral Idiocy
490. Murderous Railroaders
491. Saving Freedomain Radio
492. Environmental Protection Without the State - Live Speech at a Libertarian Convention
493. Murdering Saddam
494. Call In Show Nov 5 2006 4pm
495. Forget About The Past Part 1
496. Forget About The Past Part 2
497. Intermittent Slavery
498. Morality and Happiness
499. Climbing To Behold the Horror of God
500. The Ballad of Freedomain Radio
501. The Physics of Freedom - Two Essential Principles (originally 500)
502. Agnosticism (Continued on 511)
503. The Optimism of Euphemisms
504. The 'Good' Wife... (With Christina)
505. Ask A Therapst #3
506. Call In Show Sun 13 Nov 4pm - Religion
507. Patriotism Part 1: Reciprocity
508. Patriotism Part 2 - Tautology or Corruption
509. Assaulting Children
510. Put down the gun, then we'll talk...
511. Agnosticism Part 2
512. The Myth of a Robber Baron
513. Stef the Interrupter
514. The History Of Religion Part 1
515. The History Of Religion Part 2
516. The Gun in the Brain - Christina's Dream
517. Emails of the Week
518. Call In Show Nov 19 2006
519. Milton Friedman: Signed, sealed, delivered
520. Freedomain Radio - One Year Old!
521. The Business Cycle Part 1 (video available)
522. The Business Cycle Part 2 (video available)
523. Anarchic Money (video available)
524. Stealing From the Commie Bunny (video available)
525. Poems
526. The Livestock Flees
527. Ask A Therapist Number 4
528. Ask A Therapist Number 4 (Part 2)
529. Call In Show Nov 26 2006 (Sorry, last 20 minutes are cut off...)
530. Anger Management
531. Logical Fallacies Part 1
532. Logical Fallacies Part 2
533. Prostitution Part 1
534. Prostitution Part 2
535. Prostitution Part 3: Stef Concedes...
536. Job Interviewing
537. Board Etiquette
538. State Ownership
539. Call In Show Dec 3 2006 4pm
540. Testing Morality
541. Who Watches the Watchers?
542. Bomb. James Bomb
543. Humility
544. DROs and Self Interest
545. Give 'Em GUNS!
546. Art Part 1
547. Art Part 2
548. Ask A Therapist #5
549. Call In Show Dec 10 2006
550. Car Pollution
551. The Despair of Godlessness
552. Types of Letters
553. Stef's Dishonor
554. Argumentation Ethics
555. Scientific Morality
556. Art Part 3 (Part 4: 559)
557. Testing Ethics
558. Trust and Authority
559. Art Part 4
560. Call In Show Dec 17 2006 4pm
561. SHOW CONTINUES ON NEW FEED Full Disclosure - God
562. Universally Preferable Behavior for Children
563. Restitution and Anarcho-Capitalism
564. Shadow Governments
565. Santa Christ
566. Monkey Sculpture: Greg's Dream
567. Morals, Ethics and Aesthetics
568. Project Management (actually recorded Dec 21 12pm)
569. Ask A Therapist 6: The Dinner Edition
570. Celebrity Interview
571. God's Probing Truth
572. 75 Proofs for God
573. Barriers to Atheism Part 1
575. Dream Analysis: Okinawa, Korea
574. Barriers to Atheism Part 2
576. Evolution
577. Ask a Therapist #7 - Guilt
578. Albert Nock, Libertarian - An Article from 1939
579. Call In Show Dec 31 2006
580. How Religion Spreads
581. Tornado Dreams
582. Debating Amateurs
583. Internet Dependence
584. Jesus Part 1
585. Jesus Part 2
586. Gods and Genes (originally 583, 3 Jan 06 8am)
587. Sunday Call In Show Jan 7 2007 - Mental Health
588. Positive Obligations - An Example
589. Cracking the Family...
590. White Collar Crime and Other News
591. Why there are no private police forces... as yet!
592. A Listener Argues for the Value of FDR
593. "You can't _see_ a prison because you _are_ a prison..."
594. Nate's First Dream: Nothing in the church...
595. Nate's Second Dream: Coming to life...
596. Biology and Sexuality
597. Ask A Therapist 8
598. Call In Show Jan 15 2007
599. Jesus versus Morals
600. Full Disclosure - Mom and Dad
601. Christianity for Slaves and Masters
602. My Gift Part 1
603. My Gift Part 2
604. Agnosticism Part 3 - Walking to India
605. Protecting Investors
606. Coincidence
607. Agnosticism Part 4
608. Agnosticism Part 5
609. Will DROs Become Governments?
610. Ask A Therapist #9
611. Call In Show Jan 21 2007
612. Freedomain Rave-io
613. Political Libertarianism Part 1
614. Political Libertarianism Part 2
615. Coincidence and Love Part 1
616. Coincidence and Love Part 2
617. Futile Words?
618. Surrending Liberty
619. Immigration and Empathy
620. Immigration Part 2
621. Arms
622. Ask A Therapist #10
623. Call In Show Jan 27 2007
624. Nutrition and Morality (Originally recorded Fri 26 Jan 2007, 5pm)
625. Self Protection Part 1 - Theory
626. Self Protection Part 2 - Practice
627. Saving Others Part 1
628. The Die Is Cast
629. The Case for Strong Atheism
630. Farewell, Father
631. Call In Show Feb 4 2007
632. The Magic Gun
633. Creative Writing
634. 'Death Be Not Proud' Compared to 'Farewell, Father'
635. Dream Analysis - The Insecurity Blanket
636. God Versus Atoms
637. Weight (and fat!)
638. Papering Iraq With Your Money
639. Loving A Philosopher (advice for girlfriends/wives)
640. Slugging God
641. Electric Awakenings - A Dream Analysis
642. Mercantilism
643. Sunday Call In Show Feb 11 2007
644. Fertility and the State
645. Heroism
646. Jennyism Part 1
647. Jennyism Part 2
648. Ask A Therapist #11
649. Locked in the trunk of a car...
650. Call In Show Feb 18 2007
651. Doubt
652. Compared to What?
653. Crime and Punishment Part 1: Criminals
654. Crime and Punishment Part 2: Theories
655. Crime and Punishment Part 3: Practice
656. Milking Citizens - Price Controls and State Power
657. Two Listeners Share their Scars
658. Call In Show Sunday Feb 25 2007
659. Politics as Theology
660. Emotional Skepticism
661. Teenage Depression Part 1 Threat
662. Teenage Depression Part 2 Losing Love
663. Unlearning, or - why I do what I do
664. Rights
665. Be Nice! Part 1 - Self Protection
666. Be Nice! Part 2 - Freedom From Others
667. Ask A Therapist #12
668. How the Truth Looks to Others
669. Dr No - Friend or Foe?
670. Molestation
671. Helping Others
672. Minarchism, Libertarianism and Logic
673. Subjectivism
674. You Cannot Be Not Free Because...
675. Strong Atheism - Rebuttals
676. Defoo Communique
677. Call In Show March 11, 2007
678. Everything You Do Is... (video available)
679. Hostility to Rationality
680. The Golden Gun
681. Why Inteligent People 'Fail'
682. Social Metaphysics
683. My father the bird-wrangler - a dream analysis
684. The Etymology of Lying
685. Philosophy and Girlfriends
686. What's Wrong with Believing in God? Part 1
687. What's Wrong with Believing in God? Part 2
688. Ask A Therapist #13
689. Stef's Resentment
690. Call In Show Sun Mar 18 2007
691. DeFOO Part 2
692. Mommy's Letter
693. The Most Unknown Soldier (Video Available)
694. Foo Fighter (Video Available)
695. Mysticism as Scar Tissue Part 1 (Video Available)
696. Mysticism as Scar Tissue Part 2 (Video Available)
697. A Doctoral Depression
698. Ask A Therapist - Mood Swings, Fertility and Charming Brutes
699. Call In Show April 8 2007
700. Can anybody find fault?
701. Digital Guttenburg Part 1
702. Digital Guttenburg Part 2
703. Digital Guttenburg Part 3
704. Self Expression
705. Self Expression Part 2: A response to a youtuber's objections
706. Stef, Society and M and Ms (audio slightly choppy)
707. Speculation in the Free Market
708. Free Riding into Slavery
709. Religion in the media
711. Sunday Call In show Apr 15 2007
710. Ask A Therapist #15: The anatomy of a breakup
712. Sarcasm...
713. The Shootings at Virginia Tech
714. The Shootings at Virginia Tech Part 2 - Causes
715. Zombie Dreams
716. My History with Religion
717. My History with the State
718. Child Predators
719. 'Will Kill' and Self Defense
720. The Hell of Attempting Connection
721. The Blame Throwers
722. The Government Versus the Environment
723. The Government Versus Efficiency
724. Christina's Resistance to Freedomain Radio
725. Call In Show April 22 2007
726. The Inversal of Values Part 1
727. The Inversal of Values Part 2
728. Death by Neglect
729. Your Chidren Do Not Love You...
730. Success and Freedomain Radio Part 1 - Now
731. Success and Freedomain Radio Part 2 - The Future
732. False Self Kills True Self?
733. Why Fight for the Future?
734. Love and fear and women - a listener breaks free!
735. We are not born small...
736. Call In Show Apr 29 2007 4pm EST
737. Hitler and Stalin and Atheism
738. Dr. Phil and the Teachers
739. Freedom for Teenagers...
740. Defooing is Cowardice? - A Rebuttal
741. Religion As Comfort for Evil
742. It Really Matters Where You Point Your Dick...
743. Do Numbers Exist? - Mythology Part 1
744. Social Reality - Mythology Part 2
745. Clarity - Mythology Part 3
746. Sex with the Faithful
747. Call In Show May 6 2007
748. Self Deprecation and Authenticity
749. Universities and the 'Public Good'
750. Can philosophy make you mad?
751. Board Attacks Part 1: Psychology/Morality
752. Board Attacks Part 2: Mythology
753. Two Listener Questions on Family
754. Fleeing Freedom
755. Man, Family and State
756. Ask A Therapist #16
757. Board Attacks Part 3: Principles
758. Sunday Call In Show May 13 2007
759. Board Attacks Part 4: Conclusions
760. Board Attacks Part 5: Anger Puppets
761. Instincts and Anarchy
762. A live conversation with a listener...
763. Agnosticism and Ron Paul
764. Sunday Call In Show, May 20 2007
765. A listener breakthrough...
766. Maternal Suffocation
767. The Muslims are not your enemy
768. Who Is Your Enemy?
769. Ask A Therapist #17 - Sorry, only the first half...
770. Abuse and Restitution
771. The Opposite of Truth
772. Parenting: Time Outs and Universally Preferable Behavior for Children
773. Call In Show Sunday May 27 2007
774. My Son, Klan Reformer - A Political Fable
775. The Ron Paul Debate
776. Proto Sexual Abuse and Freedom
777. Children in Crisis
778. Praxeology and Politics
779. How not to take out your past on Stef
780. How not to take out your past on others
781. Sunday Call In Show June 3 2007
782. Eavesdropping on the Dead - A Dream Analysis
783. Ask A Therapist #18
784. A Personal History of Political Freedom - Video Available
785. Slavery and Statism
786. Family and Statism Part 1
787. Family and Statism Part 2
788. Family and Statism Part 3
789. Family and Statism Part 4
790. Family and Statism Part 5
791. Defoo Firewall - A Dream Analysis
792. Ask A Therapist #19: Polyamorism
793. Statism and Moral Responsibility - An Article (video available)
794. Call In Show June 10 2007
795. FDR - The FAQ
796. Radical Intimacy
797. The Coma Test, and Debating Women - a listener debate
798. Sex and Enlightenment - Two Listener Dilemmas
799. The Argument from Morality and Friendships: A Listener Conversation
800. The Ballad of the Trolls
801. Ask A Therapist to #20
802. Buddhism
803. Hitler and Self Defense
804. Defending Christianity
805. Ask A Therapist #21
806. The Gunner's Dream (note - this podcast refers to a prior podcast that was not published)
807. Sunday Call In Show June 24 2007
808. A Baffling Caper Dream
809. Sympathy for my Father
810. A Mother's Funeral
811. A Father's Funeral
812. A Listener's Criticisms
813. Ask A Therapist #22
814. Ron Paul and Weightlifting
815. Sunday Call In Show July 1 2007 (the sound is not too good, sorry!)
816. Tennis Anyone?
817. Ask a Therapist 23
818. Red South America - A Conversation
819. Stefan Interviewed on the Radio - Radiate FM (Wed 4 July 2007, 3pm EST)
820. Saving the Maiden - A Listener Conversation...
821. Iceland, Ireland, Somalia and Mommy
822. Confessions of a Teenage Anarchist - a listener conversation
822. Confessions of a Teenage Anarchist - a listener conversation
823. Sunday Call in Show, July 15, 2007 (missing intro)
824. Ask A Therapist #24
825. Psychologizing
826. Casual Sex
827. The Mythology of High School
828. Evil Girlfriend? - A Listener Conversation
829. Education for the Poor
830. Drinking and Dreaming (respect for women part 1)
831. Respect for Women
832. Drinking and Dreaming Part 2
832.5. The Very First Freedomain Book: On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion
833. Propping Up Father - A Dream Analysis
834. Sunday Call In Show July 29 2007
835. Enlightened Parenting
836. Sex, Love and Money
837. Board Responses: DeFOO Feedback and the Christian Channel
838. Two Dreams, Two Fathers - and Stef!
839. Sunday Call In Show August 12 2007
840. Religion and Proof (audio of a video)
841. Stef's Miracles (audio of a video)
842. Farm Subsidies: Wilt and Stef, Together at last!
843. The Velvet Mirror
844. The Subjugation of Women Part 1: Practice
845. The Subjugation of Women Part 2: Theory
846. Encompassing the Future - A listener conversation
847. Sunday Call In Show Aug 19 2007
848. The Lure of Suicide
849. Ask A Philosopher 1
850. Crushing Shame... (A Listener Conversation)
851. Mothers and Girlfriends (A Listener Conversation)
852. Abandoned Child (A Listener Conversation)
853. Managing Other People's Emotions
854. Ask A Philosopher 2
855. Ask A Philosopher 3
856. The greatest gift...
857. Sunday Call In Show Sep 2 2007 (better quality!)
858. Reason, Passion and Statism
859. Minarchism as Enabling (audio to a video)
860. Life from Death - A Listener Mourns...
861. Sun 9 Sep 2007 Sunday Call In Show
862. Parents Using Children Using Parents - A Listener Conversation
863. Son Versus Nihilists - A Listener Conversation
864. Son Versus Naggers - A Listener Conversation
865. Sunday Call In Show Sep 16 2007
866. Drugs (audio to a video)
867. Dismantling the State
868. Sadism and Empathy - The 'Family Guy' Debate
869. Sunday Call In Show Sep 23 2007
870. Current Events: Iranian President
871. FDR Bidness - An Update
872. Debating and Universally Preferable Behavior
873. Mystic Paralysis - A daughter battles parental superstition
874. Sunday Call In Show - Sep 30 2007
875. The Myths of the World Wars
876. The Myths of World Wars Part 2
877. Ask A Therapist 25 Part 1
878. Ask A Therapist #25 - Part 2
879. Rome, Moscow and Washington...
880. Stef interviewed on Antiwar radio
881. Sunday Call In Show Oct 7 2007
882. Choosing A Career
883. Statism as Self-Manipulation
884. Sunday Call In Show October 14 2007
885. Hope for the future...
886. Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics
887. Fear of the future - a listener conversation
888. Sunday Call In Show Oct 21 2007
889. A review of The God of Atheists
890. It's Miller Time
891. Frustration as Hypocrisy
892. Soctrates, Laws and Family (audio to a video)
893. Socrates: Mystical Hit-Man
894. Sunday Call In Show Oct 28 2007
895. Two Shallow Cuts: A Dream Analysis
896. Fat and Philosophy
897. FOOconomics NOTE: SHOWS CONTINUE ON NEW FEED!
898. How to meet a nice girl...
899. Stef on Writing (An Interview)
900. TO BE ANNOUNCED
901. Stef on FDR (An Interview)
902. Sunday Call In Show Nov 4 2007
903. Darkness Visible - A Listener Analysis
904. DeFOO Part 2 - A Listener Conversation
905. Our Inner Bastard (warning - explicit language)
906. My Secret Life: A Confession
907. Remembrance Day
908. Sunday Call In Show Nov 11 2007
909. Why we are different from our parents
910. Outgrowing the State
911. Unenslaving (A Listener Conversation)
912. Standing in blood (audio to a video)
913. Youth, History and the Future - A Couple Conversation
914. Sunday Call In Show 18 Nov 2007
915. Drugging Children
916. A Statist Handout...
917. UPB, the first review...
918. Just once... no blood... (audio to a video)
919. Utopia
920. What's Next
921. Sunday Call In Show Nov 25 2007
922. Ron Paul: Responses to Criticisms
923. The Ricky Sandwich Part 1: Stef, Ricky and RTR
924. The Ricky Sandwich Part 2: The De-shallowing of Ricky
925. Why are women so unhappy? A modest theory...
926. The Obligations of Doctors
927. Ron Paul and Politics versus Personal Liberty
928. Shooting Down UPB...(a listener conversation)
929. Sunday Call In Show Dec 2 2007
930. The Lure of Nihilism (A listener conversation)
931. Predatory Depression Part 1 (A listener conversation)
932. Predatory Depression Part 2 (A listener conversation)
933. Predatory Depression Part 3: Father - A Listener Conversation
934. Family and Money (A listener conversation)
935. Sunday Call In Show 9 Dec 2007
936. Insomnia - or - War Is Not Done With You...
937. Movie Review: The Freedom Writers
938. Ron Paul Part 4: Infiltrating the Mafia
939. Luke Skywalker, Bonding and Perfectionism (A listener conversation)
940. A Single-Celled Childhood (A listener conversation)
941. Sunday Call In Show Dec 16 2007
942. Abuse, Aggression and Assertion (A listener conversation)
943. Armies and Propaganda (A listener conversation)
944. Jealousy and Freedom (A listener couple conversation)
945. Sunday Call In Show Dec 23 2007
946. Breaking Through Humiliation...
947. The Next Thing (Part 1)
948. The Next Thing (Part 2)
949. Sunday Call In show Dec 30 2007
950. Changing Others - A Conference Call
951. Lifting Bookcases - A Listener Couple Conversation
952. Diving to the Sidewalk - A listener conversation
953. The Anarchist Roundtable #1: Ron Paul
954. Sunday Call In Show Jan 6 2008
955. An Open Letter to Ron Paul Supporters
956. The Next Thing: Part 3 - Freeing Others
957. Overcoming Self Abuse
958. Iraqicide
959. Taking a Contract Out on Taxes
960. Why Libertarianism Fails Part 1 (audio to a video)
961. Why Libertarianism Fails Part 2 (audio to a video)
962. Why Libertarianism Fails Part 3 (audio to a video)
963. Screw the Rules Part 1
964. Screw the Rules Part 2
965. Mike Tyson: Girl Guide (A listener couple conversation)
966. Procrastination...
967. Sunday Call In Show Jan 27 2008
968. Technological Know It All
969. Stef on We the People Radio...
970. New FDR Book - REal Time Relationships: The Logic of Love - A Reading...
971. Consciousness and Evolutionary Ethics - A Listener conversation
972. The Ron Paul Revolution - A Postmortem (and prescription)
973. Your next 20 minutes... (a listener conversation)
974. Foo-Crastination (a listener conversation)
975. I want to be a good father...
976. Sunday Call In Show Feb 10 2008
977. RTR Squared
978. DeFOO Decision (listener convo)
979. Two Kittens, Two Cats (listener convo)
980. Hot Asian Girls Discuss Anarchy (audio to a video)
981. RTR Reader Conference Call (follow up to 977)
982. The Government turns Everyone into a Tool...
983. Sunday Call In Show Feb 17 2008
984. The Philosophy of Career Success
985. Real-Time Relationships: The Second Reading
986. Life Lessons from the Dead (listener convo)
987. Anatomy of a Relationship Part 1: Introduction
988. Anatomy of a Relationship Part 2: Control
989. Anatomy of a Relationship Part 3: Projection
990. Child Left Behind (a listener convo)
991. Helpless (a listener convo)
992. Cultwatch™ - Target: Freedomain Radio
993. Sunday Call In Show Feb 24 2008 - The 'MEcosystem'
994. Role-playing With Mama...
995. Podcast In Reverse Part 1 - The Solution
996. Podcast In Reverse Part 2 - The Problem
997. The Myth of the Free Republic: Early American Gangs and the Myth of Statehood
998. Surrendering to the Whirlwind...
999. Sunday Call In Show March 2 2008
1001. The Government is Not an Answer
1002. Freedom from Politics
1003. Peeling Paint from the Wall - A Listener DeFOO Conversation
1004. From Jail to Jail - A Listener Conversation with an Activist
1005. Sunday Call In Show Mar 9 2008
1006. Late Night *************...
1007. Friends or Virtue?
1008. The Holocaust Dream (A Listener Conversation)
1009. 'God' is really the fear of others...
1010. Mr. Nihilist... (A Listener Conversation)
1011. Space Aliens from Luxembourg: Article Reading
1012. Gossip - A Listener Conference
1013. Sunday Call In Show Mar 16 2008
1014. Succeeding as an Entrepreneur
1015. The Physics of Whoredom: Intellectuals and the State
1016. Helping the Poor: Analyzing a Banana Republic
1017. False Currency, Real Control (The Housing Bubble)
1018. The Ethics Debate
1019. FDR Premium 79: We Are Full of Treasure
1020. Happy Easter Jesus!
1021. Sunday Call In Show Mar 23 2008
1022. Vistaaaa!
1023. God Speaks to Whom? (audio to a video)
1024. Stef's Psych Theories Nutshelled (Listener Convo)
1025. The FOO Infection (Listener Convo)
1026. Anger (Listener Convo)
1027. Every media scare I have ever heard in 3 breaths...
1028. Greg and the Dating... Part 1?
1029. Freedomain Radio: Hanging By A Thread...?
1030. The Prisoner's Conference
1031. Politics Versus Anarchy (audio to a video)
1032. Sunday Call In Show Apr 6 2008
1033. Late Night Conference - Microsoft, Unions, and Debating...
1034. Depression and Infection - A Listener Conversation
1035. The Christian and the Philosopher
1036. God, Family, Bible (audio to a presentation)
1037. Sunday Call In Show Apr 13 2008
1038. Grandiosity: A Listener Convo
1039. Intellectual Entrapment
1040. Proofs for God (audio to a presentation)
1041. Plato Voodoo - A Listener Convo
1042. Job Interview Skills Part 2
1043. Sunday Call In Show April 20 2008
1044. Mr. Nihilist Part 2
1045. The Atheists, the Mormons, and the Baby... (a couple convo)
1046. Philosophy Debating Tips
1047. Anger: The Conference
1048. Sunday Call In Show Apr 27 2008
1049. Deist Muslim Alone
1050. The Atheists, The Mormon, and the Baby Part 2
1051. New FDR Book: 'Everyday Anarchy'
1052. Parent/Child/Stef/Christina In House chat
1053. Friendships - The Conference Call
1054. Sunday Call In Show May 4 2008
1055. In Praise of Personal Attacks...
1056. Everyday Anarchy - The Conference Call Part 1
1057. Nathan and Credibility
1058. Proof of Anarchy
1059. Mr. Nihilist Part Three
1060. Internet Dating Tips
1061. Political Action - One Last Time! :)
1062. The Virtue of Enemies
1063. Sunday Call In Show 11 May 2008
1064. Ethics and Science - The Conference
1065. Everyday Anarchy - The Conference Call Part 2
1066. Everyday Anarchy - The Conference Call Part 3
1067. Train the Trainer vs Political Action
1068. Worshipping Lovers
1069. Sunday Call In Show 18 May 2008
1070. Joy and Defenses
1071. Stef on the NSP Radio Show Apr 21 2008
1072. The Breakup
1073. Fierce Joy versus Depression
1074. James and Beth and Death (couple convo)
1075. Sunday Call In Show May 25 2008
1076. Procrastination and Crushed Ambition (listener convo - video recommended)
1077. Tension (Part 1)
1078. Tension (Part 2)
1079. Guilt (Convo)
1080. The Heart Starves on Myth (Convo)
1081. Sunday Call In show June 1 2008
1082. Choosing a Great Career (Conference)
1083. The Machine of Evil
1084. Authority and Certainty Part 1 (Conference)
1085. Authority and Certainty Part 2 (Conference)
1086. Objectivism and UPB Part 1
1087. Objectivism and UPB Part 2
1088. Sunday Call In show June 15 2008
1089. Challenge, Philosophy and Optimism
1090. Anger and its Aftermath...
1091. Money, Debt and Freedom (Listener Conference)
1092. Stef on the NSP Radio Show
1093. Sunday Call In Show June 22 2008
1094. Philosophical Anxiety - Couple Convo
1095. Kidnapped - Listener Convo
1096. Interviewing for Management Positions - A Video Conference
1097. Blame, Guilt and History - A Convo
1098. Enthusiasm - A Convo
1099. Optimism and History - A Conference
1100. FDR Song - You Gave Your Brain to Freedomain...
1101. Sunday Call In Show July 6 2008
1102. Honesty and Apologies
1103. Religion and Government
1104. Humor as Defense (a conference)
1105. Motivation and Slavery http://youtube.com/watch?v=Cpc-t-Uwv1I
1106. How Honest Are You?
1107. Sunday Call In Show July 13 2008
1108. Nihilism
1109. Sunday Show July 20 2008
1110. Bringing Virtue to Families
1111. Families, Abuse and History
1112. Career, Passion, Dedication
1113. Families, Abuse and History Part 2
1114. Freedom, Desire, Slavery
1115. Sunday Call In Show July 27 2008
1116. Families, Abuse and History Part 3: Incest
1117. How to stay out of the Army
1118. Philanthropy
1119. Falling Asleep from a Nightmare...
1120. Sunday Call In Show Aug 3 2008
1121. Getting on the Beam
1122. The Roots of Male Violence
1123. Sunday Show Aug 11 2008
1124. Attacking Mothers
1125. Attacking Parents - A Conference
1126. The Childhood Origins of World War II and the Holocaust
1127. Sunday Show Aug 17 2008
1128. The Drug of Truth
1129. Life Among the Suited Savages
1130. How to Beat FDR...
1131. If I Blow Myself Up and Become a Martyr, I'll Finally Be Loved - psychohistory.com
1132. Killer Motherland - psychohistory.com
1133. The Psychology and Neurobiology of Violence
1134. Sunday Call In show Aug 24 2008
1135. Burning Marrage - a listener convo
1136. Living in the FOO-GLOO (a couple conversation)
1137. Addicted to Shame - A Listener Convo
1138. Sunday Call In Show Aug 31 2008 - Loneliness
1139. Depth and Creativity - A Listener Convo
1140. UPB - Stefan on the Michael Badnarik Show Part 1
1141. UPB - Stefan on the Michael Badnarik Show Part 2
1142. Nihilism: An Examination - audio to a video: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=RzAOYTOOAQo
1143. Procrastination and The Anarchy of the Self - A Listener Conversation
1144. Sunday Show Sep 7 2008
1145. A MUST LISTEN - Falling Stories - A Dream Analysis
1146. Stef's Baby Dream - A Self Dream Analysis
1147. Brothers in Harms
1148. Starting Your Own Podcast
1149. Inner Critic: The Role-play
1150. Sunday Call In Show Sep 14 2008
1151. Innate Ethics?
1152. Social Anxiety - A Couple Convo
1153. Freedomain Radio - The Boot Camp #1: What Is Debating?
1154. Cave Bombing - Dream Analysis
1155. Hit Men and Victims - Convo
1156. The Empire Strikes Out (audio to a video) - http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XBT052jHnmE
1157. Truth as Fetish
1158. Family, Love, Integrity
1159. Boot Camp #2: The Social Contract (Pro) - audio to a video
1160. Sunday Call In Show Sep 28 08 - The Women's Council
1161. The Seven Stages of Going to War
1162. Kill Bill - The Bailout (audio to video)
1163. Debating Decisions
1164. Stef on the Badnarik Radio Show Part 1
1165. Stef on the Badnarik Radio Show Part 2
1166. ODing on Invisibility - A Listener Convo
1167. Current Events - Is Sarah Palin a Bimbo?
1168. Sunday Call In Show Oct 5 2008
1169. House, MD - A Free Market Analysis of the Financial Crisis (audio to a video)
1170. Empathy and Mothering - Listener Convo
1171. Designing Our Life
1172. Unraveling Relationship Ambivalence (convo)
1173. Current Events Examples
1174. True News 1: The Price of Patriotism - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igWQm3Tv10A
1175. The Philosophy of Forgiveness
1176. True News 2: Government Bailouts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFD4xtFV9cQ
1177. Theories of War and Violence - The Joker and Raskolnikov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTyfkd9nNk
1178. How (not) to Achieve Freedom - E-mail Feedback
1179. Sunday Call In Show Oct 19 2008 - The Parenting Roundtable
1180. True News 3: The Supercharged Stock Market - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF87sMjYlws
1181. True News 4: War Lies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ1dCIO7UfQ
1182. Ethics Reloaded! - Universally Preferable Behavior - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CueDiner6t0
1183. The World as Hurt Child...
1184. The Truth as Psychotic Drug...
1185. Entrepreneurship - The Conference
1186. Sunday Call In Show - October 26, 2008
1187. Sympathy versus Anger
1188. Atheist Aggression Towards Christians? (convo)
1189. True News 5: Voting - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igbBItLemsM
1190. Overcoming Guilt - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOP-ARH-sjo
1191. Ending Self Attacks - A Listener Conversation
1192. Voting Part 2: Understanding Voting - video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oGMEEE11Lc
1193. How To Know When You Are In Love - Conference
1194. Truth, Virtue, Goodness, Guns - A Philosophical Debate - Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKHP5gtnBAE
1195. Sunday Call In Show Nov 2 2008
1196. Green Furry Gods - Agnosticism Debate with Bill Rusch
1197. Aiming at the Headstone
1198. True News 7: The Truth About Voting Part 3 - Yay Obama! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2YsJVF-920
1199. Agnostic Psychology -- A Theory
1201. Agnosticism Examined -- Audio to a Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isk6Tf5JyM4
1202. Why Dream Analysis Works
1203. Sibling Relationships -- A Conference
1204. My Major Contribution to Philosophy
1205. True News 8: Gay Marriage
1206. Movie Review - Religulous
1207. Sunday Show Nov 9 2008 Women's Conference - Women and Philosophy
1208. Remembrance Day 2008 -- video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Auax5rpJPI
1209. Anarchists, Voting and Strategy - A Roundtable
1210. The Guardian Article - Sunday Call In Show Nov 16 2008
1211. Zeitgeist Addendum: The Review - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1JcUBx2dxU
1212. Stef on BBC Radio 2008-11-21
1213. True News 11: Statism is Dead - Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGIgOIFdnMQ
1214. Remembering the Victim...
1215. An FDR Critic Gets His Say... (sequel to FDR1188)
1216. True News 12: Statism is Dead - Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EJ9VyjCsXU
1217. Where You Really Live?
1218. Sunday Call-in Show November 23, 2008 -- UPB!
1219. True News 13: Statism is Dead - Part 3 - The Matrix http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=P772Eb63qIY
1220. Inventing Future Girlfriend — A Listener Conversation
1221. Standing for the Fallen — Guardian
1222. Preparing for THE Conversation With Your Father.
1223. True News 14: Statism is Dead - Part 4 - Free Range Empires - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02rvMwSlAu0
1224. Mother Daughter Thanksgiving — Convo
1225. Sunday Call In Show Nov 30 2008 - Koen Swinkels and Liberating Minds
1226. Freedom Reason, Cults video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljNbT7J5aPY
1227. Vampires and Fathers - the FDR Movie Review: 'Twilight'
1228. Sunday Call-In Show December 7, 2008
1229. Statism is Dead Part 5: Statism and Terrorism - video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG9E67tbtv8
1230. Overeating, Willpower, Addiction, Family - Convo
1231. Globe and Mail Interview, November 20 2008
1232. Sunday Call In Show Dec 13 2008
1233. Free Will, Determinism And Self Knowledge - Part 1
1234. Free Will, Determinism And Self Knowledge - Part 2
1235. Free Will, Determinism And Self Knowledge - Part 3
1236. Sunday Call In Show Dec 21 - Baby and Birth
1237. Free Will, Determinism And Self Knowledge - Part 4
1238. Fatherhood Part 1
1239. The Meaning of Life - Merry Christmas!
1240. Holiday Blues and Interviews
1241. Fatherhood Part Two
1242. Sunday Call-In Show December 28, 2008
1243. The Meaning of Life Part 1 - Meaninglessness
1244. The Meaning of Life Part 2 - Identity as Heroin
1245. The Meaning of Life Part 3 - Integrity as Salvation
1246. Happy New Year from Christina, Isabella and Stef
1247. Sunday Call In Show Jan 4 2009
1248. Fatherhood Part Three
1249. Fearing Therapy - A Listener Conversation (sequel to FDR1230)
1250. The Draining Maze - A Listener Conversation
1251. Sunday Call-In Show Jan 11 2009
1252. Motherhood Part One - Christina
1253. Let's Be Friends - Listener E-Mail
1254. Courage
1255. True News 16 -- Media Accusations Part One
1256. True News 17 -- Media Accusations Part Two - Cult?
1257. Sunday Show Jan 18 2009
1258. Integrity and Self Attack (Convo)
1259. True News 18: Obama's Inauguration - The Antidote
1260. The Trial and Death of Socrates - Part One
1261. The Trial and Death of Socrates - Part Two
1262. The Trial and Death of Socrates - Part Three
1263. The Trial and Death of Socrates - Part Four
1264. The Trial and Death of Socrates - Part Five
1265. The Trial and Death of Socrates - Part Six - Conclusions
1266. Rage and Happiness - A Convo
1267. Sunday Show January 25, 2009 - Parenting!
1268. Change Versus Truth
1270. Somalia
1271. Sympathy for the Heroine
1272. Sunday Call In Show Feb 1 2009
1273. A Theory of Free Will Part 1 (audio to a video series)
1274. A Theory of Free Will Part 2
1275. A Theory of Free Will Part 3
1276. Negotiations and Empathy - A Conversation
1277. Sunday Show February 8, 2009
1278. True News 19: Somalia Part 2
1279. True News 20: God Flip-Flops on Darwin!
1280. Melancholy and Anger - A Listener Conversation
1281. Nagging Goals - A Listener Conversation
1282. The Determinist Debate
1283. Sunday Show feb 15 2009 - Body Issues
1284. True News 21: What To Do About the Coming Depression (audio to a video)
1285. Sunday Show Feb 22 2009
1286. True News 22 - 9/11
1287. Sunday Show March 1, 2009
1288. Determinism, History and Anxiety - Convo
1289. Empathy Part Two - The Conference
1290. Stefan Molyneux: Keynote Speech at the Liberty Forum, March 8 2009
1291. The Liberty Forum, March 8 2009
1292. Conference Call -- Listener Review of Stef's Liberty Forum Speech
1293. The Rise of Corruption Part 1
1294. The Rise of Corruption Part 2
1295. The Rise of Corruption Part 3 - Avoiding Self-Knowledge
1296. The Death of Concepts Part 1
1297. The Death of Concepts Part 2
1298. Death
1299. The Truth Has No Power
1301. Dodging Rules and Control
1302. Sunday Show March 15 2009
1303. True News 23: Protecting Iraqis, and Depositors -- and Bernie Madoff?
1304. True News 24: Jon Stewart, Jim Cramer and the Truth
1305. True News 25: Lessons from the Great Depression
1306. True News 26: AIG, Madoff and Thrown Shoes
1307. True News - Corporations, a video
1308. Parenting Part 4
1309. Vengeance Love and the World - Convo
1310. Virtue, Values, UPB and Ownership - Debate
1311. Virtue, Values, UPB and Ownership - Alex's Review of our debate
1312. Sunday Show Mar 22 2009 - 4 Dreams
1313. Methodology and Difference
1314. True News 27: AIG vs War
1315. True News 28: A Statist Intervention
1316. Back From the Future
1317. Happy Board
1318. Sunday Show March 29 2009
1319. Movie 'Twilight' Review Chat
1320. Bait'n'Switch
1321. YouTube Listener Questions
1322. Sunday Show April 5 2009
1323. True News 29 - Obama, Corruption and Guns
1324. True News 30 - Gitmo
1325. Freedomain Radio: Ethics, Rights and Society - A Debate (video available)
1326. Ambition, Success, Terror, Stagnation - Convo
1327. Debating Tips
1328. Sunday Show April 12 2009
1329. True News 31 - Naughty Libertarianism!
1330. True News 32 - Somali Pirates?
1331. Loving Your Opponent
1332. You Are Because The World Is
1333. Hatred - A Convo - A Must Listen!
1334. Strike The Root Promo
1335. Sunday Show April 19 2009
1336. True News 34 - Gun Control
1337. Depression Part 1
1338. Depression Part 2: Castration
1339. Depression Part 3: War
1340. Sunday Show April 26 2009
1341. True News 35 - Obama and the Torture of Logic
1342. Quit - or Fired? A listener convo
1343. True News 36: Swine Flu!
1344. Sunday Show 3 May 2009
1345. True News 37 - Mainstream Anarchism!
1346. Dissociation - A Listener Conversation
1347. Late Night *****'n'Giggles #2
1348. Fatherhood and War
1349. True News 38 Auto Bailout
1350. Fatherhood and Generations
1351. Political Parties: Republicans
1352. Political Parties: Democrats
1353. Sunday Show May 10 2009
1354. True News 39: The Auto Collapse - Real Causes
1355. Political Parties: The Greens and the State
1356. Freedomain Radio Date Night -- Star Trek -- the Movie Review Conference
1357. Sunday Show May 17 2009
1358. Singularity
1359. Ambivalence and Siblings
1360. Arguments against Philosophy
1361. True News 40: Privatizing the Senate, Nationalizing Industry...
1362. Freedomain Radio in the 17th Century
1363. Izzy Giggles!
1364. Religiosity and Empiricism
1365. Living in the Moment
1366. Sunday Show May 24 2009
1367. Foreign Affairs Demo
1368. Austrian Empiricism
1369. Tricky Trollz!
1370. The Characteristics of Evil Part 1
1371. The Characteristics of Evil Part 2
1372. Austrian Economics Part 2 (from 1368)
1373. New Radio Show - A conversation with Peter Mac
1374. True News 41: Politicians Priests Corruption
1375. True News 42: Morality and Atheism
1376. Thoughts About the 2009 Freedomain Radio Barbecue
1377. The Psychology of Mysticism Part One
1378. Group Convo - Therapy - Freedomain Radio BBQ 2009
1379. Group Convo - Bullying - Freedomain Radio BBQ 2009
1380. Bullying Part Two - The Conversation
1381. Group Convo - Failure - Freedomain Radio BBQ 2009
1382. In Praise of Failure
1383. Sunday Show 7 June 2009
1384. The Psychology of Mysticism Part Two
1385. Rules
1386. Death by Perfectionism
1387. Weight, Depression, Suicide, Happiness
1388. Integrity, Values, Mortality
1389. Tuning Your Resume for a Tough Market
1390. True News 43: Roads, Education, Hypocrisy
1391. Sunday Show 14 June 2009
1392. Depression, Self Attack, Authority - A Masters Thesis
1393. Ambition - a Conversation
1394. Self Attack Through Fog - A Conversation
1395. Failure, Opposition, Desire
1396. Philosophy, Dislike, Opposition
1397. Happiness Part 1
1398. Happiness Part 2
1399. Sunday Show Tuesday 23 Jun 2009
1401. Bad Boys Convo
1402. Physics, Philosophy, Free Will and Relativism
1403. Stef on the Radio June 27 2009 11am
1404. Stef on the Radio June 27 2009 10pm - Family and Statism!
1405. Sunday Show June 27, 2009
1406. True News 44 - Executive Pay Ripoffs?
1407. Self RTR While Dating (A Convo)
1408. True News 45 - Blood, Oil and Human Livestock
1409. Stefan Molyneux: Speech in Philadelphia. July 4 2009
1410. Stefan Molyneux Interviews Jan Helfeld, Libertarian Interviewer of the Political Elite
1411. Sunday Show July 12, 2009
1412. An Elegy for Michael Jackson... (audio to a video)
1413. How Often Am I Good?
1414. Ron Paul Redux - Sacrifice and Examples
1415. Shyness - A Conversation
1416. Sunday Call In Show 19th July 2009
1417. Stefan Molyneux Michael Badnarik Debate, Drexel University, Philadelphia, July 5, 2009
1418. Sunday Call-In Show 26 July 2009
1419. Ego Death?
1420. Shame vs. Guilt
1421. Two Parties, One Insight
1422. True News 46: Healthcare Part One
1423. True News 47: Healthcare Part Two
1424. Freedomain Radio - The Educational Revolution
1425. Freedomain Radio - The Educational Revolution
1426. TrollBait!
1427. Sunday Show August 2 2009
1428. The Agony of Loneliness - A Conversation
1429. New Hampshire Freedom Roundtable
1430. A Philosopher As Parent
1431. True News 48 - Burning Bush
1432. Sunday Show 9 August 2009
1433. Our Achievements Part 1
1434. Our Achievements Part 2
1435. Our Achievements Part 3
1436. Anxiety: A Conversation
1437. Godz and Authorities
1438. Freedomain Radio Sunday Call In Show 16 Aug 2009
1439. True News 49 Deflation Panic!
1440. Sunday Call In Show Aug 23 2009
1441. True News 50: Ten Lost Years
1442. Fiat Money in France Part 1
1443. Fiat Money in France Part 2
1444. Fiat Money in France Part 3
1445. Stefan Molyneux Jan Helfeld Debate - Anarchism versus Minarchism
1446. Post Debate Review - Anarchism versus Minarchism
1447. Post Debate Review Conference Call - Anarchism versus Minarchism
1448. Working for the State
1449. 'Arch' - A Poem
1450. Donation Resistance
1451. Sunday Show 6 Sep 2009
1452. Sunday Show 13 Sep 2009
1453. Freedomain Radio - Stefan Talks to a College Class
1454. RTR@Work
1455. Compliments, a conversation
1456. The Origins of War in Child Abuse - Chapter 7 - Child Abuse, Homicide, and Raids in Tribes
1457. The Origins of War in Child Abuse - Chapter 8 - Infanticide, Child Rape, and War in Early States
1458. Entrepreneurs Roundtable No. 1
1459. Philosophy and Brain Development
1460. Statism and Early Education
1461. Ethics as 'Good for Man'?
1462. Sunday Call In Show September 20, 2009
1463. True News 52 - Anti-Atheism
1464. True News 53 Statist Addictions
1465. Debate with an Objectivist
1466. History is Religion
1467. A Freedomain Radio Class Analysis
1468. School Sucks - Freedomain Radio Interview with Brett Veinotte
1469. Sunday Call in Show Sep 27 2009
1470. Self-Esteem
1471. Preparing for a Job Interview
1472. True News 54 - Olympics, Health, Language
1473. 'District 9' - A Freedomain Radio Movie Review
1474. Freedomain Radio Sunday Show October 4 2009
1475. Chapter 9 - Bipolar Christianity: How Torturing 'Sinful' Children Produced Holy Wars
1476. The Freedomain Radio Interview: Lloyd deMause
1477. True News 55 — Obama, Vanity, Grandiosity,
1478. College Ambivalence — a Conversation
1479. Sunday Show October 11, 2009
1480. Democracy is Minority Rule
1481. The Case Against Spanking
1482. Plain Talk about Spanking
1483. Life Goals - a Conversation
1484. A Theory of Marxism
1485. Capitalism: A Love Story - The Freedomain Radio Review
1486. Sunday Show October 18, 2009
1487. True News 57 - Stop Defending Freedom!
1488. True News 58 - Stop Defending Freedom! Part 2
1489. Money Is You
1490. Stef on the Oracle Radio Network October 23, 2009
1491. Sunday Show Oct 25 2009
1492. The UPBs of Love (convo)
1493. Entrepreneurship and History (convo)
1494. The Market for Philosophy
1495. Projecting Virtue
1496. Sunday Show Nov 1, 2009
1497. The Entrepreneur's Roundtable #2
1498. Liberty Roundtable #1: the State and Education
1499. The Joys of Humility
1501. Lost in History
1502. Death by Enthusiasm - A Conversation
1503. 'Canadian Health Policy Failures' - A Freedomain Radio Interview with Dr. Brett Skinner
1504. Freedomain Radio - Interview with Dr. Mary Ruwart
1505. Sunday Show Nov 8 2009
1506. A Brief History of Ethics
1507. Freedom as Defense Against Tyranny!
1508. Sunday Show 15 Nov 2009
1509. The Motorhome Diaries Interview - Freedomain Radio
1510. Babies, Brains, Nature and Nurture - An Introduction to the Interview with Dr Stuart Shanker
1511. Babies, Brains, Nature and Nurture - The Interview with Dr Stuart Shanker
1512. Troll Spotting - A Conversation
1513. Negotiations - A Role-Play
1514. Sunday Show Nov 22 2009
1515. True News: Global Warming Hack, Illegal Downloading and Unemployment
1516. Global Warming - An Apology and Correction
1517. The Benefits of Therapy - An Interview with Chris Boyce, University of Warwick
1518. True News: The Case Against Climate Change
1519. Freedomain Radio Sunday Show Nov 29 2009
1520. True News: Obama, Afghanistan, and the Graveyard of Empire
1521. Freedomain Radio Interview with Dr. Nathaniel Branden
1522. Sunday Show Dec 6 2009
1523. 'The Philosophical Baby' - Dr. Alison Gopnik - The Freedomain Radio Interview
1524. 'Mapping the Effects of Talk Therapy on the Brain' - Dr. Gabriel Dichter - The Freedomain Radio Interview
1525. True News: Eco-Hypocrisy!
1526. None Left Behind!
1527. Conformists Can't Understand DROs and Anarchism
1528. The Machine of Evil
1529. A Goat Named 'Sparkles' - A Conversation
1530. Life on a Rock - A Listener Conversation
1531. Talking About Anarchism With Atheists
1532. Sunday Show 13 December 2009
1533. Dr. Greg Siegle Interview - Anxiety, Depression, Autism
1534. The Case for College - A Listener Conversation
1535. The Late Starter - A Listener Conversation
1536. Sunday Show 20 December 2009

31. The Billion Dollar Proposition

thechuff — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:56:44 CST

"Exploring the limits of free will - or, are irrational people responsible for their irrationality?"

Summary:

Can Christians in the absence of the rationality required, be held accountable for their moral actions? To what degree can we expect rationality from people who may not have our intellectual abilities?

It makes sense to look at whether or not there is choice involved when looking at diseases. The billion dollar proposition is a way of testing for the existence of free will. If you approached an alcoholic and told him “I’ll give you a billion dollars if you give up the drink for 20 minutes”, and they’ll be overjoyed with this proposition. If you approached a cancer patient and said “I’ll give you a billion dollars if you get rid of cancer”, they would most likely be outraged at you. If behaviour will change, given the right incentives, then we know we’re dealing with free will.

When a person doesn’t claim to be epistemologically and scientifically correct, then while that person may not be able to really be argued with, at least they accept that they their ideas are corrupt or untrue. On the other hand, when a person claims verifiability and adherence to the scientific method, this person has ‘stepped into the arena’ so to speak. Voluntarily coming into the arena means your propositions will be subjected to question.

When people make statements such as “God exists” or “The Bible is true”, which are not about subjective opinion, these people have stepped into the arena. These people cannot now complain if skeptics want to check their propositions in order to apply the scientific method.

There’s a difference between knowing something and not wanting to know something. Once you are no longer in a state where you can’t know, this puts responsibility on you to not actively evade knowing. This means that it must be argued that Christians are incapable of knowing, rather than actively not knowing. Let’s say you offered a Christian a billion dollars for studying atheism, or perhaps show their children atheism for a week. If they did take it, this would obviously indicate that there is some choice in the matter, and that there is some kind of active evasion of the truth.

Christians are not neutral in this. They’re not saying they have some personal opinion that unicorns exist, and that it’s a personal quirk. They are saying that they have an absolute and universal moral truth. They know about the power of morality and of universal truth, because that’s what they use! So obviously it can’t be held that they are just stupid and don’t know what they’re doing. Arguing this is like picking up a gun in a bar fight and then saying you didn’t know what the gun could do. They know exactly what they’re doing in trying to convert children while they’re young, and in wrapping up their beliefs and conflating these with the truth.

It is important to understand the power of universals, and how bad things get when we get them wrong for eg. Communism and the millions of people who died because of it. It is for this reason that universal morals/truths need to be treated with great caution.

Transcript:
(transcribed correctly by Chris Huff)

Good afternoon, everybody. It is 5:17 PM, because precision is so important,
on December 29, 2005, and I hope that you're all having a wonderful break, and, unlike one of my loyal listeners who has written to tell me that he is spending today grading exams from his students, which he considers to be a terribly dull task, and given most of the people I went to school with, I can understand why. I hope that you're having more fun than he is.

So I've had two interesting emails that are I think rich enough to talk about. One of them is from a writer who I quite admire who asks wonderful questions, and the other is from a writer who I don't admire quite as much, but whose email contains enough instructive errors that I think it's worth having a go at.

To solve this, I'm going to introduce something that I call the “billion dollar proposition.”

So let's jump right into it. From the person who I really enjoy receiving e-mails from, but until I talk to him directly, I won't reveal his or her name.

He wrote to me, and this is what sort of provoked my last podcast about Christianity and moral responsibility, and he has written to me and after saying some very nice things, says, "Regarding your answer that Christians are guilty of a crime sans intent, because they have not, in a society where information is readily and freely available, taken the opportunity to question their beliefs, instead choosing to pass those beliefs along without rigorous examination.

I believe you are right on an intellectual level, and that proclaiming an absolute should require an artful examination of one's position. To people who think, this much is second nature.

But does the requirement of intellectual rigor not mandate a level of skill and rationality to those who, almost by definition, lack that requisite rationality? Which takes us back to the original question of intent.

Can Christians, in the absence of the rationality required to philosophically examine one's own position, be held accountable for a kind of moral criminal negligence if they fail at this high a cognitive task?”

And, of course, this is a wonderful question and cuts right to the heart of moral responsibility and, to some degree, our feelings of fellowship towards our fellow thinkers or pseudo-thinkers. So I'll tell you what I think of in terms of free will, and you can let me know what you think, and I certainly look forward to your responses: Free will is something that you know, you can go mad trying to understand, and analyze, and identify, but I think that we all understand it in our gut.

And of course I always do find it enjoyable when people try to argue me out of believing in free will. In other words, they are attempting to change my mind about my ability to change my mind, which is [laughs] I think, quite funny, and just as sort of example, and I'm not saying that this gentleman is making that claim, but it's just the kind of example of the foolishness that people get into when they simply refuse to begin reasoning from basics and build their intellectual structures up from a firm foundation of rationality and empiricism, and they just start, as Ayn Rand used to call it, “philosophizing in midstream.” So they'll just pick up stuff, and start going with it, with no reference to reality or empiricism.

But I call it the "billion dollar proposition", and I think it might be helpful to you to understand what it is and what it means, and see if it's helpful to you in understanding this question of free will.

It used to be the million dollar proposition, but of course, the government has been in control of the money supply for quite some time now, and so it is no longer a million dollar proposition, but inflation has tacked on a few, well, I guess, three zeros?

So the million dollar proposition is simply this:

Let's take something which is often referred to as a disease, which is alcoholism.

And let's take another thing which is referred to as a disease, which is cancer.

Now, to me, one of the things that will help differentiate what is actually a disease and what is not is the question of choice.

So let's say that you have a nice tidy, shiny pile of dollar bills, stacked in a small square in the center of a room that add up to $1 billion. OK, so maybe it's not
a small square, and maybe it's a large room. But you have $1 billion, and somebody comes to your house, and during the course of a dinner conversation, (let’s say you just have a sheet of tarpaulin over this), and they say that, "I'm an alcoholic. I have a disease. I can't control it, or it is very hard to control, or it’s impossible to control", or whatever, right? Well I think that's fine.

Then you say to them, “Well, I'll tell you what. If you don't have a drink for the next 20 minutes, I will give you this nice, shiny pile of a billion dollars. You can take it in sacks out to your car, and drive home.”

Now of course the supposed alcoholic's eyes will light up at that proposition. Much like the cigarette of a smoker will not light up if you make the same claim to a smoker and you say, "If you don't smoke for the next 20 minutes, then I will give you $1 billion." So their eyes will light up with greed, and they'll be very excited and look forward to spending all that lovely money.

Now, the length of time is unimportant. I mean, it could be two days, it could be a month, whatever length of time is valid for you or for them is what you can propose, right? And their eyes will light up, and they will by far think that they're getting the best part of the bargain, because if the incentive is $1 billion, they can not perform that action for that period of time.

And yet, if you have somebody come over to your house, who has bone marrow cancer, something horrible, something like stage IV lung cancer, or something that they just don't have more than a month or two or three to live, and you say to them, “I will give you $1 billion, if you don't have cancer for the next 20 minutes.” I very much doubt that their eyes will light up with greed. In fact, their eyes will light up, probably with either rage or pity for your moral foolishness.

So I think that the billion dollar proposition is a very important way of helping to understand where people have choices and where they don't. And you can take a number of approaches to the moral choices that people make, and you can help to understand where they do have choices and where they don't have choices.

So let's have a look at some other examples that will help clarify this, I think.

So, you know, for instance, if you say to somebody who has schizophrenia that “I'm going to pay you $1 billion if you don't hear voices for a day.” And then, let's just say you could magically test the auditory hallucination part of his brain. Well, you're not going to have any luck, right? If you pay someone, if you offer to pay someone a billion dollars to not have the symptoms of a neurological or biochemical mental illness for a day, they're not going to have any luck taking you up on your offer. Their eyes aren't going to light up with greed, and think that they've got the better of you.

But if you look at something like infidelity, you know, people say, “Oh, you know, well it just happened.I didn't have a choice. I haven't had sex with my wife in six months, and I was lonely, and I was on the road, and I was drunk,” and so on. Well, they say, well basically, “it just happened.” “The events unfolded to a particular position where I had no choice but to do what I did,” or “choice wasn't really an element” and so on.

But of course if you say to that person: “I will give you $1 billion not to sleep with this woman at this conference somewhere, then they will probably take you up on it. They will miraculously find the willpower to do the right thing or to at least not do such an egregiously wrong thing.

And that's another way of looking at it, you know, just the billion dollar proposition is a way of testing for the existence of free will.

Not all of us enjoy our jobs, but most people will go to work so that they can have something to eat at the end of the day.So they do that because there's an incentive for them to go to work, and they're responding to that incentive.

It's a very important criteria to apply to the choices that people say that they can make or they cannot make, which is to look at the billion dollar proposition and see if their behavior would change given the right incentives. And if it would change given the right incentives, then you know you're dealing with an issue of free will.

So, there's another aspect wherein this is, I think, very helpful when it comes for people to understand their families.

Now I'm aware that my own family was probably worse than most, though, of course, there are many families out there that were even worse than mine, and I'm talking about my family of origin of course, not the blissful cloud nine that I inhabit with my wife. But one of the things that my brother and I argued about, to some degree in the past, was our different sort of moral evaluations of our mother. Our father to some degree as well, but that's another story. But, our mother, who was a violent and abusive woman.

He claims that she was doing the best she could, she was a single mother, I should understand it, I haven't been in that situation, I don't have children yet, and so on. Those are all arguments that I can understand and appreciate, but what I said to him was, well I took two approaches at trying to unravel this moral question.

And don't worry, I will eventually get back to this email that I started with, but this is all sort of the [laughs] deep background to the portrait which I'm going to paint. It’s all part of a larger process, I promise you.

So my response to my brother's statements that my mother did the best that she could, this is all she knew, and this is how she was treated, and so on, was twofold:

One is that I said, (This is back when it was a “million dollar proposition”): “Well, if my mother had been paid $1 million not to beat us, say, for two days straight, then would she have been able to do that? Would she have been able to pull that off?” Of course she could have, right? Although she was evil, she was not somebody who was mentally ill to the point where she could not process incentives or cause-and-effect.

So his argument that this was the best that she could do was not particularly compelling to me. I mean, if she had developed some sort of biological ailment, and she had become schizophrenic, or, say, she had some sort of chemical imbalance that caused extreme mood swings or something, then the billion dollar proposition wouldn't have meant anything to her, because she would've been unable to control her symptoms. If I feed you eight glasses of water and pay you $1 billion not to pee for a week, you're probably not going to be able to pull it off, right? That’s things which you don't have any control over, and everybody understands what the difference is between those.

So that was the first argument that I had in response to this moral question of the culpability of parents for abuses that they perpetrate on their children.

The second was, did she do it in public?

That's a very important question to ask when you're dealing with moral issues. This particularly unpleasant one is around children, because it's something that is so unequivocally bad. To perform violent actions against your children for the sake of blind, petty, immature rage, I think we’re all going to chalk on the dark side of the moral fence and not have a lot of ambiguity about.

And so my question to my brother, which I think is is also helpful when it comes to differentiating parental responsibility, or moral responsibility in general is, she never did it in public. When we were out at the mall, she would never haul off and clap us over the head. When people were over visiting for dinner, she didn't drag us from the room and pummel us. When the Mormons would drop by with their books and literature and all that, she didn't scream at us and throw stuff at us.

So, without a doubt, my mother was perfectly capable of restraining her impulses. It's just that when she knew that she could get away with it, i.e., when it was just us, then she felt perfectly free to vent for whatever evil pleasure that gave her. But she was absolutely and without a doubt, completely and totally able to control her impulses.

And the reason that I know that is because, of course, my brother and I grew up into adulthood, and nobody knew about the abuse. So there were people who came in and out of the house, relatives of my father who left when I was very young. None of these people knew about the abuse.

Now, that's not accidental. That's not the result of somebody who is taking a sort of random and deranged approach to life. One of the criteria for knowing whether somebody has committed a crime, in other words, they had a moral knowledge of what it is they were doing, versus somebody who just acted randomly because they're crazy, is, Did they try to hide it?

If I go and kill someone and then I bury the body in some remote location and I wash my hands I washed my car and all of this kind of stuff, and I make sure I have an alibi and so on, well, I'm not crazy.

If I go and start beating up someone right in front of a cop, then I probably am crazy, [laughs] because I'm not able to process the consequences of my actions. But the moment that I try to hide something, then I am, in fact, morally responsible. And through my act of hiding it, I have also revealed that I am perfectly capable of changing my behavior.

And I remember pointing out to my brother that my mother could be in a full out, conniption, crazy rage, and the phone would ring, and she'd go from this shrieking, deranged harpy to somebody who would pick up the phone and say, [mockingly] “Hello?” just in case it was her boyfriend on the line. So, without a doubt, my mother could change her behavior. She wasn't subject to that kind of irrational, uncontrollable rage.

And so, to return to my good friend's letter about “To what degree can we expect rationality from people who may not have our intellectual abilities,” I think I can, much that I’m not a big fan of sports metaphors, I think one may be appropriate here.

Let's say that this gentleman is perhaps arguing to some degree that you and I are professional tennis players, and we've been practicing for 20 years, and our skills are honed to a razor edge, and we can bullet the ball from the back corner of the net anywhere that we want to with a ferocious spin. And is it really fair for us, then, to say to people who are amateurs, “Look, you should be as good at this as we are,” and judge them as being inferior for not being as good at philosophy, or truth, or rationality, as we are, both through a combination of natural talent and longtime practice.

I think that is a very interesting question, and I think that's at the heart of what this gentleman is talking about.

Are we who have the ability to be rational and to work syllogistically and who have perhaps a more pragmatic or empirical streak to our natures, are we just lording it over other people, calling them bad and wrong because they don't happen to have this particular talent? Similar to the “cool kids” in high school who come from families who have lots of money and they've got cool hair and cool clothes they’re good-looking or whatever. And so these kids run the high school socially, but they didn’t earn any of this, it just happens to be a particular set of circumstances and physiologies that they were born with. So what right do they have to say, “We’re the kings of creation and you weasels should serve us,” or whatever?

So we obviously don't want to be in that position, where our natural talents or rationalities and our naturally pragmatic natures turn us into pompous know-it-alls who can lord it over everyone else for being irrational.

But that's not the case here, and those of you who've heard my podcasts before shouldn't be surprised at any note of absolutism in my voice. But it's absolutely not the case, and I’ll explain why that is.

First of all, if somebody is an astrologer, we don't call them a scientist. So, if an astrologer says to me, “You know, I’ve got this great scam going. I put all this numerology crap together and insecure lunatics pay me for this random number mucking-about and think that they’re getting some sort of a deal for their money. And I’m going to tell the future and tell them how many kids they’re going to have and what their names are going to be,” and all this kind of stuff.

Then I say, “Well, I think it's an immoral scam that you pulling, but I'm not going to argue with you epistemologically. I’m not going to argue with you and say that you're wrong in the source of your knowledge because you know you're scamming people, and you choose to scam people. And you’re not trying to tell me that numerology or astrology or whatever is real.

So, you’re not a friend, you’re definitely an enemy, but you are not an epistemologically or metaphysically corrupt enemy. And you're not going to teach your children that astrology or numerology is true. You’re just going to say, ‘Hey, if you’re feeling ethically loosey-goosey, and you want a fairly easy source of income, this might be a way to go.’”

However, the moment that an astrologer, or a psychic, or tarot card reader, or any of these idiots, the moment that they say that “What we do is scientific,” that “What we do is true,” that “What we do is verifiable.”

Well then, my friends, they have stepped into the arena. We didn't drag them in there, those of us who know something about how to differentiate truth from falsehood. We didn't drag them, kicking and screaming, and throw them into the lion’s den. They themselves have voluntarily come into the arena wherein their propositions are subject to verification and examination. Nobody forced them to. It’s their own choice, but they’ve decided to come into the arena.

So, many moons ago I had a girlfriend who told me that she was psychic. I mean, I’m not going to count how many moons ago [laughs], but let’s just say it was quite a few. And even back then I was fairly skeptical of all of this stuff.

And I said to her, “Wow, that’s great! I mean, that’s fantastic!” and I got really excited. And she obviously got a little alarmed by my level of excitement.
And she said, “Why? Why is that so great?”
And I said, “Well, I mean, you’re rich!”
She said, “What?”
I said, “You’re rich!”
She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And I said, “Well, the amazing Randy, who is not a porn star, but in fact, a magician, has had, I think for about 30 years now, $1 million US in the bank which he has volunteered to hand over to anyone who can prove that they’re psychic. And you don't have to be perfectly psychic. You don’t have to pick 100% of random cards, predict them correctly. Even if you get 5% over random distribution over a long enough testing time, he will hand you a check for $1 million! I can finally realize my dream of being a kept man, you can be my sugar mama. This is going to be beautiful! Let’s go down and pick up the check.”

And of course I got “the stare.”

“It's not to be used for gain.” [laughs] You know, that kind of stuff. But, I didn’t care. If she said to me, “Well, you know, I think I might be psychic, but I don't have any proof...” And that’s like me saying I had a dream about an elephant last night. Well, OK? Who’s to prove me right and who's to prove me wrong?

Now, if I say, “Everybody had a dream about an elephant last night,” that’s a whole different thing. And epistemologically it’s similar to saying, “I like ham.” That's not an empirically verifiable statement. Actually, that might be empirically verifiable, because you could hook up the electrodes to the pleasure center of the brain and see if they fired off when you had a nice piece of ham. But let’s just say it’s not.

“I like ham” is one statement. “Ham comes from pigs” is another statement.

“I like ham” is nice. “I like this view.” “I prefer wearing track pants to Speedos.” [laughs] Lots of things that you can say that are just base preferences and nobody's going to haul you into the arena of truth and falsehood and rationally examine you because it’s unverifiable and it's unprovable (and it doesn't matter, [laughs] fundamentally. I mean, who’s going to take the time, right?).

So if I’m lying about liking ham, who cares? [takes a sip] Maybe my pigs... Anyway.

So the moment somebody comes out with a statement, which is something like “God exists,” “Jesus Christ died for our sins,” “the Bible is absolute truth,” “pray to Allah five times a day, facing Mecca,” or whatever, “this is the absolute morality: that Heaven exists, that Hell exists, that the saints exist, that miracles exist.” You know, all of this stuff. “That leprechauns exist,” whatever you want to say.

The moment you start making statements which are not about subjective opinion, but rather objective reality, well then, my friend, you have stepped into the arena.

And you have absolutely no cause for complaint if people come along and say to you, “That's very interesting. Let's have a look at your proposition and see if it's true, or see if it's false.”

You don't see scientists getting all up in arms because some magazine requires a peer review of their findings. It would be inconceivable for a scientist to say, “I've found fusion in a jar, and no, you can't test for it.” [laughs] That’s not even a scientist, that’s just some lunatic in a lab coat!

So I think that's an important thing to realize when you start talking to religious people, or socialists, or communists, or collectivists, or mystics, or all of these people. To the degree to which they say, “Ah, you know, it’s kind of my opinion. I like fooling around with tarot cards, but I’m certainly not going to claim there’s any truth in it.” We might say that there could be more productive uses for their time, but who cares? I like video games, and it’s not like that gives me a PhD.

But the moment that they start to say that something is true, well, then, they have said something quite different. They have said something which is absolutely open to rational examination.

So how does this bear on my good friends’ letter? Well,he is saying to some degree, that “Yes, Christians, a lot of them don't spend a lot of time trying to question their own faith, or figure out what's true and what's false, and therefore, maybe we can let them off the hook, because they’re intellectually weak, they don’t know what they’re saying,” this that and the other.

Well, the final thing that I will say about that, and why I think that that's not a proposition that we should act on, is that there is a very large difference between not knowing something and not wanting to know something.

Let's say that you're a smoker in 1948. So you really enjoy having your pack a day. And you have no clue that it's bad for you.

They used to paint, I think it was like, women in the 1920s after radium was discovered used to paint radium on their teeth so that they would glow when they went to nightclubs, because nobody had any clue that it was so dangerous. And of course these people just completely wrecked physically within 10 or 15 years. But if you don't know something, fair enough.

So you’re a smoker, and you don't know that smoking is bad for you. And then, I think it was in the early 50s that the Surgeon General came out with the first fairly conclusive evidence that smoking caused emphysema, lung cancer, heart defects, heart problems, and so on. Now, to be a smoker prior to there being any evidence that smoking is bad for you (and smoking isn’t the best example, because of course you have trouble climbing a flight of stairs if you smoke a pack a day for 20 years, but let's just say that we you know you didn't have any idea that smoking was bad for you), then, you can to some degree be forgiven for not knowing that. Then, if you get lung cancer or whatever, people are going to say, “Well, that's a shame, I didn't know either, I have sympathy.”

However, if you then find out that the Surgeon General has released a report about the health effects of smoking, and you stare at your pack of cigarettes — so round, so firm, so fully packed — and you look at that and you say, “Oh, man, I love smoking. Oh, it’s so good. I bet you it’s not that bad. I bet you it’s going to say that, you know, it’s going to give you a toothache, maybe.” And you just refuse to read anything about it. Well now, you are in a whole different category, morally.

So you now no longer are in a state where you can't know, and there is no way to know, and so on. And if you keep hearing people talk about it, and you start to hear, “Ooh, lung cancer, ooh man, that can’t be good.”And your friends start quitting, and your kids are bugging you to quit, and then celebrities that you know die from lung cancer (like Humphrey Bogart I think died of lung cancer). These sort of things start to put the responsibility on you.

So, it's one thing if you don't know. But it's another thing completely if you resist knowing. If you actively evade knowing, then you are morally responsible for the consequences of that, and that's really what I want to focus on.

And this gentleman's argument, I think, is that they're incapable of knowing. That Christians are incapable of being rational. And he has some arguments, which I've talked about before, like, “Their community will disown them,” and “People will be upset” and so on.

But of course, all we have to do is go back to the billion dollar argument. So if you go to the Christian and you say, “I will give you $1 billion if you read this article on atheism and teach it to your children for a week, and after that you get $1 billion.” Well, they’d probably do it. Because they’d say, “Well, OK, I can fix the evil atheism that my children might have for that week, and I can use the billion dollars to further the good works of the church, and pay the legal bills of the priests,” or whatever.

Just offer them the billion dollar proposition and see if they would go for it, in which case they are perfectly capable of exploring alternatives to their viewpoint. So they’re capable of exploring alternatives to their viewpoint, they just choose not to. And they are absolutely morally responsible for that choice.

Now of course, you may say, “Well you know, you offer the billion dollar proposition to a Christian to have his kids study atheism for a week, they’re just going to go through the motions. They’re going to have their kids repeat it like some sort empty formula, and every night they’re going to whisper to their children that it's not true, it’s not true, it’s not true.”

And that’s fine. My issue isn't whether or not they going to do it wholeheartedly. It's not like if you offer the guy to quit smoking for two days a billion dollars, that he's going to do it and enjoy it. He’s still going to want his cigarettes, that doesn't matter.

The question is, Can they do it, or can they not do it? As I mentioned before, if you try and pay someone $1 billion to not have cancer for two days, by golly, they’re just have cancer for two days. And if you pay someone $1 billion to live to be 200 years old, then, odds are, they’re not going to be able to cash in.

So all I’m talking about is, Is it possible for them to do it, or is it not possible for them to do it? Don’t worry about whether or not it works. It’s not, I don’t think, intellectually honest to say, “Well, we’re so far superior to these people that they can't conceivably look at alternate viewpoints, and so on.”

So to return to the sports metaphor, let’s say that we're the ace tennis players. We’re not dragging amateurs on the court and beating them and thinking that we’re just the kings of all creation. The more appropriate metaphor is to say that, “We are good and experienced tennis players,” and people come onto the court and say to us, “You guys don't know anything about tennis. We are the best tennis players, we are the only good tennis players. And you guys don't know anything about tennis whatsoever.”

Now, I don’t know about you. I think that the truth is worth fighting for, and so if I was a very good tennis player, and somebody came onto the court and just basically said “You’re a bad tennis player, you don’t know what you're talking about. I’m the only good tennis player and I can beat you without even opening one eye.” Well, a part of me would say, “All right, saddle up, pilgrim. Let’s take this for a spin and let’s see what happens.”

Because it's very important to understand that when you're talking to irrational people (religious people, collectivists, socialists, and so on), they’re not neutral here. They're making a claim that they possess universal and absolute metaphysical,epistemological, ethical, political, and moral truth. They’re not saying, “I happen to believe in leprechauns, and I know it's a personal quirk, but that's my thing.”

They are saying that they have an absolute, universal truth about everything.

Nobody's forcing them to make that statement. Nobody put a gun to their head. I mean, OK, they get bullied a lot as they’re kids, but you know, a lot of us do, and we don't all end up you crazed epistemological mystics.

So the moment that people come into our life and say things like, “Everybody has a right to healthcare.”

(And if you're at all interested in my response to that,there’s a couple of podcasts here. I also have an article on LewRockwell.com.)

“Everyone has a right to healthcare,” you know, “The government must redistribute money to help the poor,” “Old people need our pensions, and therefore we have to pay them,” “God exists,” “You should be patriotic,” “Support your troops...” As soon as people come in and start saying things like that, they have stepped into the arena of verifiable truth.

They’re making universal claims, much like a scientist, and therefore, they absolutely have to subject their claims to the verification and examination of others.

And that's, I think, the part that bothers me the most about these sorts of people.

Let's just talk about Christians. (I mean, I don’t want to pick on Christians because they’re just one group of these people, but I don’t want to have to keep rhyming off a list whenever I’m talking about these people. Let’s just talk about Christians for now.)

So, the reason that I know that Christians know exactly what they're doing and are not dumb, and are not crazy, and are not irrational in the sort of pursuit of their goal, is that they know about the power of morality. They know about the power of universal truth. They know about the value of moral prescriptions and ethical absolutes, because that's what they use. Somebody who's in a bar fight can't pick up a gun and use it, and then say, “I had no idea that the gun was so powerful,” because they've picked it up, and they're using it in an extremity.

So obviously they know that that's the most powerful thing.

Similarly, Christians grab kids by the neck when they're very young and shake all of this terror of an “all-seeing God who knows everything” and the “guilt of original sin” and the guilt of “Christ died for your sins” (man, what a claustrophobic argument that is), and that “Christ cries when you do a bad thing,” and “an angel loses its wings if you masturbate,” or whatever nonsense that they come up with, and “God loves you,” and “the Church is this,” and, “you’ve got to get into Heaven,” and “do this...”

They know about the power of universal morality, because that's what they inflict upon children.

They know about the power of absolute truth, because they say that God is love, and that absolute truth is what God is, and that you have to have allegiance to what is true, and what is right, and what is good.

They know all about the power of morality. Don't underestimate them, and for God's sake, don't look upon them as misguided fools. They know exactly what they're doing.

So, to me, the argument that, “Well, they're just not so bright, and they just have a tough time examining things, and they just cannot--”

Don't be fooled for a moment, they know exactly what they're doing.

There is no way that something this universally, politically, and economically powerful lasted 2000 years just because people are dumb, or just because they're misguided.

They cut right to the core of what it is that human beings live for, which is truth, integrity, and morality.

Now, they wrap it into this insane, deranged “faith towards the invisible” and “give us your money” and “baptize your children,” and “we own all the significant events in your life” and “come to church” and “give us a percentage of your income...” They wrap it up in all of that crap, but right down in the heart of it, in the really important core of it, they know exactly what they're doing, and I would argue that Christians and religious people as a whole and socialists know far more about morality and the power of morality than libertarians do.

Because, my friends, they are beating us hands down.

So I, for one, don't sit on a pedestal and say, “I'm the only smart guy around, and these guys are all idiots,” because, they’re kind of running the world.

So it's kind of hard for me to say “Gee, [laughs] if only they were as smart as me, then maybe they'd be powerless and completely in the minority as well.”

My friends, wake up to the facts of the situation, which is that irrational people and corrupt people run the world!

And that's not an accident.

That's not because they're dumb, and they don't know what they're doing.It’s universal.

It’s constant throughout history. Crazy people run everything!

We’ve got a guy in the US who is going off and killing 130,000 people (so far!) because God told him to. And you’ve got all these other people thinking, “Yeah, that’s a good idea!”

I think that's wonderful! If he thinks God told him to, then I guess we've got some genocidal guy in the sky, who’s given Commandments that are kind of moral.

You know, we've got people voluntarily submitting to send 50% of their money or more to the central political authorities so the government can use it as collateral to borrow money, which is going to completely destroy the economies that they hope their children will grow up in. We pay money to the government so the government can hire the police and troops to take money from us. It’s ridiculous!

It’s one thing to be domesticated. It’s another thing to wander into the farmer and put your own neck in the noose and stand by while you get milked into oblivion.

So, I would say that the temptation to underestimate how much or how deeply irrational, or mystical, or socialistic people understand morality and the power of morality, I think is to completely miss it. And it would never, in a million years, explain how they've won. If we’re so smart, why do we always lose?

And so I guess I would say that I start with a fair amount of humility that way, and a fair amount of trying to work from the facts of reality, which is,they kick our butts every time, over and over, and that's why I'm so focused on the argument from morality, and so focused on helping people who are interested in freedom and spreading truth in understanding that if you don't take the argument from morality, if you don't use that, there's no point getting into the arena at all. You’re not even in the arena, you're just wasting time somewhere. You’re like in a bathroom stall, yelling at some graffiti.

You're not actually out there fighting anything good.

And the last thing that I’ll say is not only to to my friend who wrote in, but to everyone out there who has mystical, socialistic, right-wing, left-wing, religious people, crazy, cultural, irrational people in their lives.

Well, I would say that all you need to do is test your theory.

So, if you believe that Christians say (again, to pick on Christians) let’s just say that you think that Christians are just not so bright, and uninformed, and they can’t do any better intellectually. I think that's certainly a worthwhile theory, but there's no point having that theory and sitting on it.

So what you want to do is you want to pick some disposable friendship, some friendship that, if it goes away, you’re not going to get fired and end up living in the gutter. So you go and pick some friend of yours whose of this persuasion, let’s say.

And you sit him down and you say, “My friend, I would like to talk to you about your beliefs.” And you begin to question this person based on the argument from morality, and you ask how universally consistent rules could be drawn out from this. And you start to talk about the 10 questions that I suggested last time that you can ask religious people.

If your theory is correct, that they're just not too bright, and they’ve just never been exposed to these things, and so on, then they’re going to be really curious.

Like I have never been exposed to Chinese opera. But if somebody sits me down and says, “Ah, you’ve got to listen to this stuff, it’s great!” Assuming that I’m not late for work, I'm going to sit down and I’m going to be curious, and I’m going to say, “That's really interesting. Tell me more about it? Where did it come from? How does it work? What are the plots?” It sounds very alien to my ears.

Maybe that person would know something about how the chords that we find pleasing is a cultural thing, and so on. And I’d learn a lot because I've never been exposed to Chinese opera, I don’t know much about it.

What I'm saying is, go to your friends [sarcastically] and expose yourself.

Go to your friends and talk to them about this stuff. And if you're right, that they're just not so bright, or never had the information, or don't have the capacity, then they won't be offended, they won't be upset, they won’t be angry at you at all.

If a physicist sits down and tries to explain some brain-bending calculus to me, I’m not going to be offended. I’m going to say, “Listen, I’ll follow you as far as I can, but this really isn't my thing.” [laughs] “I mean, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I don’t know that I'm going to be able to follow it. But hey, I'm always interested in learning new stuff, and maybe this will be helpful to me.”

So that's what people who don't have knowledge of a particular field do when someone comes to talk to them about it. Or, they'll be open and curious like, “Wow, I've never thought of that before,” or “Hey, that’s really interesting.”

So that's the way that you would prove this theory that Christians either aren’t that bright, or haven't been exposed to the ideas, or whatever.

So good luck. You’re going to go out there, and I can tell you exactly what is going to happen.

You are going to face, initially, a kind of benevolent and smug condescension.

[mimicking Christian] “Oh, you poor sinner,” you know, “Jesus Christ has told me to be kind to the blind. And I'm going to sit here, and I’m going to listen. And I’m going to lead you to the light.” And you’re going to get all of this, “Huh, well I can certainly understand that from your perspective, that you might have some problems with the beauty and the infinity of Jesus Christ.” And you’re going to get all of this stuff. Good luck, it’s a little tough to stomach. You might need an insulin shot or two, but best of luck.

And if you continue to be persistent, then you’re going to eventually reach a point where the Christian is just going to say, “Stop. I will not listen to anymore of this. I will not listen to anymore of this.” At some point, you will hit that.

And the reason that you will hit that is because people who are irrational know that they’re irrational.

People who are schizophrenic, even often know that their schizophrenic, they just can't help it.

But people who irrational abso-positively-lutely know that they are irrational. And they also know that they’re hypocritical, because if you claim an absolute, and somebody comes along and points out to you that you're incorrect, you should fall on your knees and thank them.

If somebody comes along to me and proves to me that there is a God, I will fall on my knees and thank them, because the last thing I want to do is to operate in error. If somebody comes along and proves to me that there's no such thing as morality, fantastic! I’ll take to a wild life of crime or something. [laughs]

I mean, the last thing I want to do is to live in error. So if somebody comes along and is able to correct me, thank you! I really appreciate that. I appreciate the questions that I get. I mean, except for the snarky ones. I was going to read another guy's email but I don't want to just now, because I’ve already gone on long enough. But if somebody is genuinely trying to help me to understand something that I don't know or have made a mistake on, what a wonderful thing to do for another human being!

If my doctor says, “If you continue to eat this much chocolate, you're going to die next week.”

Thank you, my physician, I mean, what more could you ask for from other human being than to help you to correct erroneous thinking?

It's very hard to think straight because we’re all taught such nonsense from day one.

So, I believe that there are absolutes. I believe that there are universal absolutes, and I’ve been working for 20 years to prove that there are. And I think I've made some good progress. If not, perhaps, magically or miraculously, clinch the case.

So I do believe in universal absolutes, and I work very hard to make sure that I know what I'm talking about.

I worked on this stuff for 20 years before I published anything.

So, I take the responsibility of striving for as much accuracy, honesty and integrity as possible, because I am fully aware of the power of universals, and the power of universal morality.

If you make a mistake, millions of people die. If you make a mistake, say, on a little thing called “communism,” well, 50 million people, 40 million people die. Families are destroyed, civilizations are destroyed, people live and die in Gulags, they’re enslaved, they starve, they kill, they murder, they rape.

It is an orgiastic nightmare of violent horror when people get universals wrong.

So universals need to be treated like radioactive substances. You have to be so, so, so careful, because they are so, so powerful.

When someone comes along and says, “I know the universal truth and its name is God,” then you absolutely have to examine them, and if they have any interest in truth whatsoever, they will thank you for every flaw that you point out in their theory.

If, however, they are a spiritual robber, if they are somebody who is using the power of universals for personal gain, for profit, for gaining the false respect of their children, for fitting into their community, for looking good on Sundays, then they’re scum. They're absolute scum. And the only way to know for sure if they’re scum or not is to start to question them.

And if you start to point out the flaws in their thinking, and they get hostile, I'm sorry. This is not my decision, this is not my judgment. This is just the fact. That people who use universals without taking care to ensure that what they say is true are unleashing the demons of hell in the world.

Look at the 20th century. 70 million people murdered by governments, all in the name of absolutes. All in the name of universal morality.

You don't mess around with this stuff. You have to be so careful. You have to be absolutely rigorous.

It's worse than atomic warfare. Thousands of times more people have died for the sake of absolutes than for the sake of nuclear weapons, and if some guy was waiting around some nuclear bazooka at your body, you’d probably tackle him to the ground. Well that's what I'm talking about.

You have to call these people on their errors, and if they continue to persist in their errors, they are the most dangerous people in the world.

People with false absolutes will get you killed.

And that’s actually not part of my Christmas message, but we’ll sign off for today. I hope this has been helpful.

I do have another very interesting email that I think could spark a lot of interesting discussion, which I will try to get to tomorrow. So have yourselves a great day/evening, and I will talk to you soon.

190. An invitation to Christians Part 2: The Paths of Error

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:54:45 CST

"A few crossed Biblical wires"

Summary:

Summary here.

Transcript:
(transcribed by Chris Huff)

Good afternoon, everybody, I hope you're doing well. It's Stef. It is 4:30 on 13 April 2006, and we've had some requests for a historical evaluation of Jesus, and I think that ties very well into what it is we'll be chatting about on the way home tonight, so I thought it might be worth having a look at some of these contradictions. And I will post a link to this on the Freedomainradio board, so if you want to have a look at this source, feel free to.

Now I'll just give you a note about the source. This comes from a Muslim source, and of course the Muslim is not so keen on the whole Jesus being the son of God thing. They're fine with him being a prophet, but not the whole son of God. So this is where they're coming from. They've spent some considerable amount of energy trying to figure out the contradictions in the New Testament or those relating to Jesus, so I thought I would mention these just so people are a bit more familiar with them...

[Stef proceeds to read straight from the following websites for about 20 minutes: What Did Jesus Really Say? (§2.2, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4)]

[He takes a short break then continues his paraphrastic reading (§2.2, Page 5, §2.4) of the same source, as well as parallels between pagan religions and Christianity and parallels between Jesus and Horus from ReligiousTolerance.org (Part 1, Part 2).] for fifteen more minutes.]

Feel free to look this stuff up, it's very interesting to realize just how much Jesus has in common with prior man-gods or deities.

To me, to be perfectly frank, (and we'll talk about this a little bit more as I drive home) when you say that, "Well, Horus is silly, but Jesus exists," it's exactly the same to me as saying "Well, Batman is silly, and the Green Hornet is silly, but Superman: now, he exists." And I have pillaged that line from somebody on the extra DVD of "The God Who Wasn't There," which is an interesting documentary.

But to say that this god is original or this god has some sort of hold or uniqueness... it's exactly the same. Everywhere you look, you see these man-gods with exactly the same characteristics or approximately the same. Since some of this stuff wasn't written down until 900 years after the death of somebody that there's little if any historical evidence for, obviously means.. I mean we can't even figure out what started World War I with all the documentary evidence. There's still lots of disagreement about Iraq, which is happening right now.

And this is with all of the modern technology that we have. To imagine that anything of any truth could survive nine centuries, or at least a few centuries, before being written down is silly. And to think that a religion can simply come along without incorporating the main aspects of a prior religion doesn't make any sense. So if you have trouble believing in the divinity of Horus, you can now understand my perspective about Jesus.

In fact, it's even less believable, because if you believe in Jesus, but not in Horus, you at least accept that a god can exist. If you don't believe in any of this nonsense, then the two are indistinguishable. So your feelings about Horus and Zeus and so on, times about 10 million, are my feelings about Jesus and this sort of stuff.

So I hope that makes some sense, at least where my skepticism comes from. So we will chat about this a little bit more in the car. Hopefully you will tune in to part three. Thanks.

189. An Invitation to Christians Part 1: Saving Your Soul

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:51:29 CST

"Okay, so God exists -- how should we best worship him?"

Summary:

Assuming the existence of God and Creation to prove that he can work within the paradigm, Mr. Molyneux invites his Christian listeners to escape the tendency that is common among religious people of giving in to someone else's narrative for their lives, instead insisting that one's life, one's individual, God-given soul is one's own. He says that his major problem with organized religion is that it is anti-individuality, and recommends a better way to worship God: being yourself.

Transcript:
(transcribed by Chris Huff)

Good morning, everybody, it's Stef. I hope you're doing well. it is 8:38 in the morning on 13 April, 2006, and I'm going to have a chat to those Christians who have made it through this far. Congratulations to you. I appreciate and hugely respect the intellectual challenge of listening through to these podcasts and I can't tell you how impressed I am that you have made it this far and I am going to do my last bit of reasoning, or storytelling and reasoning, which is designed to free you from what I think is a pretty grievous error, and what I think is not good for your soul. And so I am going to take on the issue of Jesus and his relationship to you, and I'm going to take it on, fully accepting the existence of a deity. So here we put on the acceptance of God just so you understand that I can work within the paradigm, and also so that I can try appealing to your sense of spirituality and see how that might be used, or how we might use your sense of spirituality, to free you from what I consider to be a pretty grave error.

So I would like to talk about the issue of -- we're not going to talk about the evils of the Old Testament or the New Testament, we're simply going to talk about Jesus in particular, and how I think we might be able to try and come to some sort of resolution that might help free you to pursue your spirituality in a way that is uncluttered by other people's storytelling.

The major issue that I have with the Bible is not that it makes people pray. It's not that it makes people believe in God. It's not that it contains grave evils. It's not any of those things. The major, major, major problem that I have with the Bible -- and the Koran and all of the holy texts in the world -- is that it is anti-individuality.

And I'm going to use the word "soul" here, as I generally do, to mean the totality of consciousness and feelings and emotions and instincts and reasons and memories and dreams and all of that. And the major problem that I have with organized religion is that obviously there is political difficulties and all that and moral difficulties and all that. But the major problem I have with it -- the thing that I think causes all of those other problems in the real world -- is the wholesale destruction and undermining of individuality. Of individuality. I think that is a really -- it's the worst crime, in a way, for me, because there is a certain amount of life that is specifically individual.

I mean, the moral aspects of life are relatively unimportant in so far as I am never going to walk past a drowning man who needs my help; at least [laughs] I'd lay good money that that's never going to happen. And I'm never going to steal, I'm never going to kill, I'm never going to rape, like these things, as far as universal morality goes, I am never going to have to deal with. And so, because I don't recognize the existence of positive obligations in the field of morality -- morality is simply leaving people alone [laughs] -- and I don't view that as a very significant or even a minorly significant part of my life at all. So morality is a small topic that is only enlargened by the amount of false morality that is in in the world. So morality is, in a free society, a tiny and insignificant topic.

And so, the reason that I have so many problems with religion -- organized religion -- far more than I do with something like spirituality. Now, "spirituality" is a complex term, which I'm not going to try to define all the way here, but I'm going to say that for the moment I'm going to accept the definition of "spirituality" as the belief that we have been created by a higher power, and so on. That's fine. I'm willing to accept that for the purpose of this podcast, because I think that it's going to at least give you a sense of why my hostility towards religion is not due to purely historological or hagiographical or purely rational or moral terms, because it's not. And of course I haven't been clear about that at all, but I thought it would be worth being clear about it, so that people can understand my problem with it. Well, not [laughs] not that you care about my problem with it, but I can talk about a problem which might be helpful to others.

So the vast majority of life is concerned with what some psychologists, and Jung in particular has called "individuation." Now, individuation is a complex topic, I'll just touch on that here. But basically, individuation is becoming who you are, or being who you are, in your original state. In the state that you were before society got its curly and hooked, nailed hands or claws on you and began to shape you into what society wanted. And by that I can be even more specific and less abstract, and talk about how your parents and your siblings and your extended family and your school and your priest molded you into a beast of burden to service their needs. Who were you before that? Who were you before all of that enormous amount of pressure, whether it was manipulative through withdrawal or emotional punishment or physically violent or emotionally abusive like being told about hell and so on... Who were you in your original state? because who you were has very little to do with morality.

Morality is generally what we talk about to try and restrain those who have been broken from spilling over into violence. And so in a free society, morality is going to be almost a nonexistent topic because it just won't be an issue. We'll talk about morality about as much as we talk about the genealogy of Zeus. There will be a few people who study it because it's interesting, but the majority of people won't even give it a second thought because it won't be a presence in their life. Or a problem in their life.

And so, the idea of individuation is the idea that you have an original soul -- an original soul do and an original nature and an original personality that you are born with that people attempt to break and squeeze and compress and twist and tear and shape into something that is of service to them. So parents who look at children as inconvenient or parents who get impatient because their children just don't obey are destroying or at least undermining, twisting the original self, the soul, into something that is going to be more convenient to them. So you can look at the pretty stereotypical examples and I think get some useful stuff out of it so if you have the prototypical and I mean I can't tell you [laughs] the level of cliché is just ridiculous but let's do it anyway. You have the prototypical sports dad, who has the prototypical sensitive, poetic son, who will not accept that son for who he is and attempts -- with every curl of the lip and every scornful glance and with every contemptuous sneer completely communicates to this child that the soul that that child possesses which the child is not in control of generating -- I mean it's like saying how tall you're going to be is under your control. Well, to a small degree it is, like "Are you going to eat?" kind of thing, but one's personality is not really under one's control; it is something that is imprinted. Now, personality is not anything to do with morality so I'm not talking about evil people have no control over themselves, but personality we do not have control over. Who we are we do not have control over. All we can do is suppress it or not. We can change our natures period I could not change into some guy who liked watching, I don't know, Aussie rules rugga (1) for six hours on a Sunday and never pick up a book and I couldn't change into that kind of person. I can pretend to be that kind of person, but it would be a living, crawling agony to live through bad kind of life because it would not be in concordance with my nature, which is to watch, of course, only three hours of Aussie rules rugga on a Sunday. Four? Ugh, it would be abhorrent. I can't even tell you.

So, your nature is something you can't control. You really, really can't. all you can do is you can say, "I am going to suppress my nature." And the way that you suppress your nature or you're forced to suppress your nature is always with the argument from morality. So if you take the sports dad, what he is communicating to his son is that his son is not a real man and that a real man is better, and that he's a fairy, or he's a queer, or he's effeminate, or he's bad or wrong in some manner, and -- don't underestimate the level of impatience that these kinds of narcissistic and broken people have with the natural flowering and development of the human personality in its unviolated state. In its un-coerced and un-manipulated state. I mean in the sense, most if not all -- I say "all..." -- almost all modern parents and certainly educators are evil sculptors, where the idea of the sculptures is that you -- you know, you take the block of wood, as somebody famously said to Socrates, when he said, "How can you create such a beautiful lion?" And he says, "well, all I do is take a block of wood and chip away anything that doesn't look like a lion." [laugs] But this is a different kind of sculpture because this is more like you are taking a beautiful lion and chipping away into all that is left is a fine dust that you can just do whatever you want with. Or it's like you're taking a tree that is beautiful and strong and you're cutting it up into little bits of sawdust so that you can use in your butcher shop. Ooh, there's a metaphor that works on more than one level. Ooh, isn't that nice!

So you are born with an original personality which is the source of your joy. Right, joy is living with integrity to morality, of course, but we only need to talk about that because of the degree of evil sculpting that has gone on with our own personalities. But joy is living in accordance with and in the trajectory of your natural, true self. Your original self. And we know that there is an original self. We absolutely know that because children have distinct personalities from day one, and I know this very well from working in a daycare for a couple of years with some pretty young kids, and also I grew up with nieces, and so on. So I mean I know that children have distinct personalities from day one. And also because when you force people to not be who they are, they remain unhappy specifically and exactly for the duration that they are not who they are.

So we know that, for instance, somebody gave me a metaphor on the board -- which I appreciate because it lets me not talk about the poor Chinese women who had their feet bound -- but there is this tribe that causes necks to be elongated by stacking hoops from the shoulders to the neck, and they end up with these ridiculously elongated necks. And we know that there is an original neck that is in pain because, of course, two things occur.

One is that they are in an enormous amount of incredible, unbelievable pain while there entire cartilage and spinal structure is being stretched to create these new necks. That's number one. And number two -- this is a metaphor that works beautifully with regards to religion, so thanks again to the poster -- the second of fact is that they can no longer exist without these hoops supporting their heads, because their necks no longer have the ability to support their heads in the absence of those props so they become entirely dependent upon these hoops to maintain their neck structure.

And we know that because if those hoops are taken away, they feel great pain, their heads flop over to one side, they have to hold their own heads up like a headless horseman. And so we know that there is a neck that has been deviated from, because there is enormous pain in elongating it. And we know that the purpose of a neck is to be functional, and hold the head up, and swivel it around and so on. And receive hickeys, if I remember rightly. And this is not what is occurring with the existing neck so we know that there has been a strong deviation from the original neck.

Now, there is no possibility of returning to the original neck anymore for these people, any more than there is a possibility of uncurling the feet for the Chinese women -- I knew I had to get it in at least once, so. [laughs] I'm in a metaphorical transition phase, it's going to take a little bit to let the old one go [laughs] and take on the new one.

However, the original self always remains. The true self always remains, because it's -- you can redirect that energy, but you simply can't eliminate the true self. It is neurological in nature, it is the configuration of your brain. It's how your neurons are fitted together. And you can divert, and you can bypass, but you cannot restructure your entire mind.

So that true self is there and the true self is -- and I'm going to use this term, "narrative," slightly loosely, so don't worry about it if it freaks you out, I know -- I have a good idea of what I'm talking about but I don't want to go on too many explanatory tangents because I actually want to get to the topic, believe it or not! -- The true self is also what generates and substantiates and flushes out the narrative that is your life. Like your life's purpose. People always say, "Well, what is the purpose of life?" Well, the purpose of life is what is revealed to you by your true self. The purpose of life is what is revealed to you by your natural soul. The purpose of your life. I mean, it's obvious to me what the purpose of my life is, and that's what came out of my true soul. And I did not have a purpose to my life, and I did not have any particular power in my life or satisfaction or joy in my life when I was rejecting my true self for the sake of conforming with others.

Now, God gave you this soul. God gave you this self. It is innate to your very biological and spiritual structure. And God gave you this soul so that you could achieve what it is that you're supposed to achieve! If we're using this religious approach, or the spiritual approach -- I don't know if that's because God has a plan for you or whether God's plan for every one is that they enjoy themselves, but God likes the variety of having different selves. And also the enjoyment that people get is partly out of interacting with people who have different selves, or different true souls.

Now since the new self exists -- cannot be extinguished, cannot be altered, can only be repressed, and is the author of the narrative that is your life, and is the theme of the narrative is your life, and is the moral of the narrative that is your life and -- if you take on somebody else's narrative, you always do that at the expense of your soul. You always do that at the expense of your spiritual joy. You are not broken. You do not have original sin. It would be unbelievably unjust to inherit the sin of another human being, and God is just, according to the spiritual approach. God is just. And so if you are told all of these things that cannot be just, as I talked about last night, it cannot be coming from a just and good God. It must be coming from somewhere else.

Now, God gives you a soul with particular preferences, with particular configurations, with particular goals, with particular ideas, with a kind of narrative. And you can accept that, or you can reject it. It doesn't mean that you're a slave to anything. I mean, if you have a body that is lean and quick, and you like playing tennis, are you a slave then, if you end up playing tennis? Of course not! you can decide that playing tennis and evil and not play tennis. And, if you're unhappy. You're perfectly free to do whatever you want, but you have particular configurations and preferences and abilities that are innate to you. And even those are the mere tip of the iceberg. They are like one snowflake on the top of an enormous iceberg when it comes to your entire abilities and your entire preferences and the depths of your natural soul, which can do enormously powerful and wonderful and surprising and amazing things. If you let it!

Because we do have the ability to reject our true self. That is the free will that we have. We have the ability. And the most fundamental way that we reject our true self and thus disown our power and create misery, alienation and emptiness within our life -- the main reason, the main way, the main circumstance under which that happens is that we accept somebody else's narrative as the organizing principle of our life. We accept somebody else's narrative as the better than our own natural self. As more ourselves than we are!

That, to me, is the major problem that I have with religion, with patriotism, with racism, with all of the things that we are fighting tooth, nail and syllogism, and have been for the past couple of months. Your true self is yours. And taking on somebody else's story about how you should live kills your soul. It destroys that which is God-given, innate, and beautiful and joyful within you. And any narrative that you take on that is not your own, that is not thought through by yourself, that is not reasoned by yourself -- and we apply a lot of reason to the "Thou-shalt-nots", and they are incredibly irrelevant in a free society. And we want to get to a free society so it's worth spending time on them now. But who you should be, how you should spend the sum of your days, what are your priorities, what are your abilities, what brings you joy? All of that you learn by exploring your true self.

Now, the moment that you accept a narrative that is absolute, universal, and completely moral, the argument from morality, which is the core of the true self, right, which is consistency and objectivity -- It's there to help us survive, right? It's not there to help us run off cliffs into the arms of angels -- the argument from morality then takes over and the true self -- like watching a baseball player club himself into unconsciousness with his own baseball bat -- the true self takes the argument from morality that is injected with a false narrative, or somebody else's narrative, even if it's not false for somebody else, it definitely is false for you, because not generated spontaneously from your own nature. Then the true self will automatically use the argument from morality. That's just inevitable. The true self will then take that false narrative from somebody else, and immediately suppress itself. Which is a desperately sad, hollow, empty and terrible thing.

And that is the major problem that I have with it. This narrative of Christ or of Mohammed or of the ancient rabbinical excellencies -- I don't know what it's called in Judaism -- They're not your stories. They're not your stories! They're not your true self. They're not your soul! They're not what God gave your unique self before. God did not give every human being a unique self in order to have that person be coming out like a cookie-cutter stamp of Jesus every time. That's not the purpose of why God gave us different selves! God gave us different selves so that we can be happy being unique really are.

That's why God created more than one person! Because if he just wanted everybody to be like Jesus, he would just create Jesus and that's it, but he didn't! He creates lots of people, everyone of us who has different souls, different aspirations, different goals, different ideas. And it's not the purpose of happiness, or of spiritual fulfillment, or of joy, or of worship of the deity that created you -- it is not the fulfillment of that to take somebody else's narrative and jam it over your own soul and suppress and compress your own soul into simply doing what somebody else tells you the narrative is that is correct to do. What a spaghetti sentence that was, sorry.

It's not right to do what other people tell you to do. It's not the purpose of your soul. It's not the purpose of your spiritual nature to do what somebody else tells you to do. Your narrative is your own and you should not inflict -- when I talked about Christianity or religious instruction being child abuse, this is what I was talking about, that you do not immediately and ghastily inflict a narrative on a child that completely overpowers and swamps his own capacity to be himself. He will spend the rest of his life now like the women with the enormous necks. He will spend the rest of his life and tea and broken and undermined and now completely dependent upon the supporting structures of the initial narrative.

Because it certainly is clear that the narrative of Jesus is a narrative. There is no possibility whatsoever that the narrative of Jesus is historical fact. I mean, unless you really are right on the edges of fundamentalist belief, there is simply no possibility that everything that occurs in the Bible that is related to Jesus is an absolute historical fact, partly because, even at the most basic level, it contradicts itself. So if I say that Queen Elizabeth was born in 1522 and Queen Elizabeth was born in 1524, then I don't think that it's possible that my historical narrative can be considered perfectly accurate. I at least have to resolve those issues. And I'll talk a little bit more about other issues in Jesus's life that are not just illogical or counterfactual but also not moral, at the basic level.

Then, what I want to do is to free you from what I consider to be a pretty evil narrative, a pretty Satanic narrative, that if there was a God and the Devil, this narrative which forces everyone to be the same, in a manner which can never be consistent, can never be achieved, and is of questionable morality to begin with, but that everybody has to be that way... Well, surely that's what the devil does to undo the work of God! Surely that the Devil's approach to undoing the beauty of the individual soul: is to force into this restrictive, contradictory little cookie-cutter and take like 1% of the human soul and say that this is exactly how you have to be and, you know, anything you do that is different is wrong.

And I'm not talking, again, about helping the poor and things like that. That's perfectly fine. if that's the nature to do, that's what you should do and that's perfectly wonderful. Other people create jobs. Other people do other things. But if you want to do that, that's perfectly wonderful. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about obedience to a narrative which is not natural, which is not derived from your own nature or validated by your own reason. God gave you your personality. God gave you your reason. God gave you your capacity to think and to be yourself. And if you reject God's gift's and end up in this cookie-cutter world of devilish conformity to a false, contradictory, and immoral ideal, you are undoing God's work. You are not doing what God wants you to do, which is to not want -- sorry. Oh, that was so close to being a homerun. [laughs]

You are not doing what God wants you to do, and what God wants you to do is to be true to yourself, because your self is what God gave you! Why would God give you this gift of a true self, and of an original soul, and of an individual nature, never to be replicated in Creation by anybody else, and then say, "I want you to act like somebody else's narrative about some guy that people claim had something to do with me." That would be ...not rational. And obviously and we don't want to worship a God that is not rational, because that would be worshiping the devil, and God gives you reason, and so on.

But the whole idea behind individuation is that God gave you this perfect, unique, wonderful, beautiful soul and you should not squeeze it into the tiny little box of somebody else's narrative. That you should be fully yourself, and that you should fully flower into your own individuality. And you should fully grow into who you are, and who God gave you the seeds to grow into, into who God gave you the nature to be. Not to some fantastical, contradictory, strange, bizarre, amoral at best narrative that has come down from tale-telling and mistranslations over thousands of years -- the existence of the original man can never be determined, and there's significant questions around it. Even if he did exist, we really can't tell anything about him based on any narratives that have come down -- and that God gives you rationality and a stable universe. God created a universe that is stable. There are no miracles, thank God [laughs] so to speak. God gave us a universe that is stable. You get the sense is better accurate. He gave us rationality to interpret it. This idea that we are going to believe that the stable universe that God created that obviously he wanted to create -- he didn't create highly variable gravity, and trees that pop in and out of existence, and elephants that turn into birds and back again [laughs] and giraffes that can fly. He didn't create any of those sorts of things. He didn't give human beings psychic powers. he didn't give us any evidence of ghosts and goblins and he didn't create leprechauns. Everything that is in the universe that is created by God is fully stable and fully rational. So God wants you to exercise your reason and he wants you to understand evidence of your senses. He wouldn't have created us that way otherwise!

Now, everything that's in the Bible and everything to do with Jesus contradicts all of that. Contradicts all of the nature of reality that God has created. Contradicts rationality. People don't walk on water, people don't create entire banquets of one set of loads and fishes. People don't come back from the dead. These are not tests of faith. These are tests of credulity. And I think that people are failing them. And they're tests of spirituality.

God created a stable, rational universe, and created stable, rational senses, and gives us a stable, rational mind, and we throw it away in pursuit of ridiculous and contradictory narratives that have nothing to do with what God has given us in our life. Which is stability and rationality. Right? God doesn't let people walk on water. [laughs] Right? God doesn't let people come back from the dead! That's not how reality was set up by the good old fella.

And so the idea that to worship God we should believe that all of God's rules around physics and reality and rationality should be violated, could be violated, and that it's moral to violate them is absolutely against what God has given us. Absolutely anti-God.

And there's lots of examples, I'll touch on some more of them this afternoon, but I think it's so important to understand that when you receive a narrative, a spiritual narrative that is in direct contradiction to both your abilities, to the nature of reality, to the facts of your senses, that is not something that is there to help you be yourself. That is not something that is there to praise or worship the Divine Creator of the universe, because everything to do with things like Jesus completely violates every single rule that God has created for the known universe! So how can that be considered -- in any way, shape, or form -- worship?

If my father says to me, when I'm 14 years old, "your curfew, young man, it's 10 PM." And I come home at midnight. And he says, "what are you doing?" And I say, "I am praising and respecting your wishes. I am praising and respecting the rules. I am praising and respecting you." Then my father can legitimately say, "Huh-wha?! What are you talking about? I told you to come in by 10, and you come in at midnight. How on earth is that worshiping me and respecting the rules?" And I said, "some guy told me that the way to worship and respect your rules is to do the opposite." [laughs] It's like, "I don't care what that guy told you! new rules are pretty clear! 10 PM. Get home. Midnight? I don't care if someone tells you that that's the way they interpret obeying my rules." Right?

So the rules of reality, the rules of physics are pretty clear! The rules of morality are pretty clear! And so if somebody else tells you that the best way to worship God, who created a stable universe, is to believe in a completely contradictory universe where matter has no particular properties and can be changed at will, well, that's not really the way to worship a divine creator of the universe! That, in fact, is rejecting everything that the divine creator has created! And if somebody -- [laughs] -- If the divine creator creates rules, which the argument from morality simply support -- which is something like, [laughs] "Don't do unto others as you would have them," I don't know, "Don't kill, don't steal, don't rape," whatever -- then believing a narrative which tells you to do the exact opposite -- to kill unbelievers, to strike down the money changers, to stone women to death -- any narrative which tells you to do the complete opposite is not worshiping God! Like your father says, "Don't steal." and you say, "Well, no! See, somebody else told me that stealing was really good, and that you'd like it." It's like, "No, but that's not what I told you." [laughs] Right?

So the idea that there is a Bible, and the idea that there is a Jesus or something that somebody else is telling you, "This is how to worship God," and it's completely inconsistent with your experience of God's reality, and simple moral rules that make perfect sense and that, when practiced, make people happy, well, it would seem to me that that's not worshiping God. Taking on somebody else's narrative. swallowing somebody else's stories, all of which directly contradict your sensual experience of God's universe, is not the way to worship God. It's not the way to be spiritual. It's not the way, even if you do want to believe in a God, it's certainly not the way to worship anything that God created. And most importantly, it completely undermines and destroys -- not permanently, but every moment you do it you continue to destroy it -- it destroys your true self, which is your God-given birthright and something that you should treasure and nurture, because it is the source of all joy and creativity and happiness and love. And you don't have as much control over it as you might think. Thank you so much for listening.

(1) - Australian rules football.

191. An Invitation to Christians Part 3: The Economics of Faith

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:50:52 CST

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thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:14:52 CST

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885. Hope for the future...

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:38:01 CST

"A speech to raise your hopes"

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Good morning, everybody; hope you’re doing well. It’s Stef, just taking an hour or so off from the reading of the audio book of Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, which I am most pleased with. It's hard to read, though. It’s hard to get the cadence right in these very dense and somewhat technical (on occasion) philosophical paragraphs. So it’s quite an exciting challenge from that standpoint. It takes forever, sometimes, to record a page—[you] put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, and it’s all over; start again! But I’m quite pleased with the recording quality of this new mic, so I hope that you will like it if you grab the audiobook, which should be out in a day or two.

So, I wanted to talk today—there has been a minor ripple in the FDR ecosphere of people who feel a certain amount of despair or despondency about the future of the world, and I wanted to do my best to give you a lift in that regard. Now, I mean everybody knows who’s listened this far, that I focus (try to focus) on helping you to spend your energies on things that you can control, not on things that you cannot control, because trying to control that which you cannot control is not only a form of adult enslavement, but sadly, is all too often an echo of our childhoods — if we had parents who weren’t the best, let’s say — wherein we would try to control their behavior and feel overwhelmed by the power that they had over us. So as we talked about before, the power disparity that we had as children between ourselves and our parents is far greater, far greater than the power disparity that occurs between us as citizens and our friendly, neighborhood State as adults.

The interesting thing is that if you feel overwhelmed by the power of the State, of religion, and of the corruption of those in power—if you feel overwhelmed by that, and maybe it’s accurate, maybe it’s valid, maybe it’s true, but I would take as my approach—the first thing I would do is make sure that I’m not mistaking the world for myself. As I’ve talked about before, the fundamental problem that thinkers have, particularly sensitive thinkers, which most of us in this conversation are, that we can think of course, but we also have a good deal of emotional sensitivity or empathy, which is good, I think—it’s necessary to be a competent and effective ethicist—but we have this problem, we all have this problem, which is trying to figure out whether or not we are thinking about the world or thinking about ourselves. The fundamental projection that I’ve always talked about is that people take the power disparity and supposed virtue; the real, really corrupt corruption—terrible sentence, let me start again, sorry.

People take the supposed virtue but actual corruption of the parents and to some degree that of the teachers, that they experienced when they were children, and they then project that onto the State, and onto God. Psychologically, this is called splitting. You can see this, take the Italian stereotype, and apologies to my fine Italian listeners, but we have other stereotypes from time to time. But to take the Italian stereotype, the Italian man has this sometimes called a Madonna-***** complex [background noise]. Ooh, we have some low-flying planes today, sorry.

In this Madonna-***** complex, what happens is that he’s raised by his mother, who is outwardly pious, but secretly angry. All conformity brings anger; breeds anger. Once you’re conscious of that anger, you can change your level of conformity based on that anger. That which does not hurt us, we do not change - which is why people who don’t want to change studiously avoid genuine feelings, through drugs, or through conformity, through cults… through whatever. So, the mom is outwardly pious and compliant, but secretly angry. Why? Because she is oppressed by her ideologies: the cult of culture, the cult of the family, the cult of the nation-state, the cult of religion in particular. What happens is if the son expresses any criticism of the mother, she becomes haughty and withdraws, and tortures him through the threat of neglect, which to a child is equivalent to the threat of murder to an adult. I mean, people say “There are abandonment issues,” or “I have abandonment issues” as if that is not totally valid in terms of how the original relationship goes. I mean, if I was being hunted down by the mafia, I wouldn’t go to a therapist and say, “I have ‘being murdered’ issues.” I mean, no! I don’t have ‘being-murdered issues’, I’m afraid of being murdered!

It’s the same thing with abandonment. Abandonment to a child is a death sentence, and the threat of it is the equivalent of taking a knife to the throat of an adult, but actually closer to imprisonment, plus doing that because the child can't leave. So, in this way, we can understand the son criticizes the mother, the mother threatens him because of her own murderous anger, which is a result of her own conformity and lack of authenticity; her enslavement. We either feel the pain of enslavement and free ourselves, or fight the pain the pain of enslavement by attacking and enslaving others. That’s on the board, that’s on my inbox, that’s in the world, that’s everywhere. And so, what happens is, the child grows up with a hatred of its mother but with a need for avid compliance, which is based on fear of attack.

I mean, nobody just wakes up and says, hey, I’m going to give up all my genuine thoughts and feelings and comply with others because it’s fun. I mean nobody really says that and gives up their stuff voluntarily and happily. So, the son conforms to the mother and then as he grows up, what happens to his hostility towards the woman that bullied him to bullying him into conformity towards her own narcissistic fantasies? Well, it doesn’t go away. As I’ve mentioned before, taking heroin for two things, not eliminating the rot, it just eliminates the symptom, which makes the rot worse. Well, then you get this thing called the splitting. And the splitting engenders perfectionism or high standards or irrational standards which can’t be met. Right, that’s the idealization of corruption is the possibility of perfection. So, if I’m really mad at the world, but I’m a chicken-**** basically about expressing it, about being honest and open with myself. If I really hate people, but I’m never allowed to express it and I have this template of “high standards” that are really abusive for what I do, if I hate the world, if I hate the peole in the world, is that I set up the standard that becomes impossible for people to meet, and then I attack them with disquietment or with angry with some aggressive or passive aggression mechanism. So, you see this stuff, again it takes a silly and exaggerated, perhaps, example; you have the mafia guys who say, “My mother is a saint!” And they get totally touchy and prickly and angry about anybody who would criticize their mother, and then they treat their wives like ****. This is the idealization—idealization is always the drawing back of the bowstring before the attack. It’s the undoing the safety of the revolver — that's idealization.

And so, all of the hostility they feel towards their own mothers is then displaced towards all other women who they treat like ****. And they say, “I am just fine treating you like **** because you do not rise to the standard of perfection that my mother has.” And this is all very complicated, but the mother’s anger is thus played out through the son against other women, because women are, to a large degree, if not to the majority, are enslaved not by men, but by other women. Just ask a woman in your life to speak honestly about whose opinion, whose negative opinion she fears more, men or women. And it will be women’s. So the son and his rage against other women becomes part of the mother’s executionary mechanism—part of her attack, a core part of her attack, on the world. So she just becomes sweet and passive aggressive.

261. 'Is' and 'Ought' and Ethics

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:22:00 CST

"Anyone who argues with ethics agrees with ethics."

Summary:

Summary here.

Transcript:
(transcribed by Ellis Wyatt and Chris Huff)

Good morning, all. I hope you're doing well. Pinch, punch, it's the first day of the month. It is June 1, 2006, 8:32 in the morning. I'm going to be podcasting for just a short while this morning because I'm going to a conference which is only a few minutes from my house, so we'll make this quick. [gasps] Oh my God, I can feel the stress, the pressure already! Oh my God, I'd better keep it short! OK.. Just breathe. All right. We can do this. We can keep it short. I'll just have to go faster!

There was a post on the board this morning based on my discussion yesterday on this argument for the existence of preferred behavior and to some degree, universal preferred behavior. And so, a long time poster and a very very smart fellow said “Aha! I’ve got it!” and another very smart fellow said “Well wait a minute, aren’t you getting an ought from an is?”

And for those who don’t know the conundrum of that problem very briefly, it's that there is nothing in the world that says you “ought” to do something based on what “is”.

So the fact that a human being needs food to live in no way commands or demands that a human being has to eat food to live.

So that’s something that’s important. And this is the big difference that I have with the Objectivist approach to ethics. In the Objectivist approach, life is the highest value and everything that serves life is good. Rationality serves life and therefore is the highest value. But unfortunately there are lots of people who don’t want to live, and lots of people who choose a value higher than life.

For example, there are people who get conscripted, they could run off and live in the woods, but they don’t. They choose to go and wage war, and so it’s hard to understand what could be possibly meant by that idea that “life is the highest value” to those people. There are people who kill themselves, there are people who voluntarily put themselves in risky situations. There are people who take large amounts of drugs and die from that, there are anorexics, there are bulimics, and there are people who engage in sexually risky behavior, there’s just millions. Michael Hutchens, the singer from INXS died because he was trying to do that asphyxiation orgasm thing. Sorry, if you're under 16 and listening to this, just go ask your parents.

Anyway, so there’s lots of people who treat their life as the highest value so to me, it's logically impossible to say that life is the highest value.

However, my approach to solving this problem is that, my argument is not that preferred behavior absolutely and inevitably exists independently of human thoughts, human consciousness, and human choice. There is no objective existence of universally preferred human behavior, but there is endless evidence for universally preferred human behavior.

So that’s of course how we get a lot of truth in life, is through inference, through evidence and not through directly looking at gravity and knowing that my butt is sitting in my nice cushy car seat and I’m not about to float off. We can’t directly look at something and say “Ahh, gravity waves”, but we know that it exists because of its effect. That is something that is sort of the way that I’m saying we don’t look at ethical rules directly and look at atoms of ethical rules. There aren’t atoms of gravity, so and isn’t it nice for me to use the scientific method that isn’t about rocks falling? Isn’t that just lovely?

But there is no atom of morality or universally preferred behavior, but we know that UPB exists because just about everyone is alive. In the same way that we know man is a rational animal because people are alive and use reason to a much larger degree than any other species and not always, actually rarely to a perfect degree. I won't put myself in that category...

Now there are of course people who are completely irrational, people who are deranged, people who are insane and so on. But that doesn’t particularly matter, because we mentioned before, it's biological accuracy that we need for ethics, not the ethics of physics, because of free will, environment, mutation and mental illness.

So if you destroy your brain with PCPs then you are not somebody who can be rational anymore, but that doesn’t mean that man is not a rational animal.

You could be born without a frontal lobe and have the intelligence of a chimp, but that does not mean man is an irrational animal, it just means that biology is messy and not as tidy as physics. But it doesn’t mean that general categories don’t exist or don’t work.

So I’m not saying that there is an “ought” that is automatically derived from an “is”.

Human beings desire to live is optional, our desire to live is fairly programmed and takes a lot of harm to become self-destructive. But our desire to live is kind of innate to us and what I am saying though is that everyone that you’re arguing with has unconditionally accepted UPB, even if we just say that that UPB is getting out of bed in the morning and having something to eat and then having something to drink. You know, a scotch.

So there’s just no conceivable way that any human being could possibly, remotely argue that UPB — well you could just start with preferred behavior, but of course it is universal, because our need for oxygen is not up to us. It’s up to good ol’ mother nature.

So there’s no conceivable way that a human being could argue against preferred behavior. Because both by being alive and arguing with you, they are accepting preferred behavior.

Now, by arguing with you they are also saying that there is universally preferred behavior or at least preferred behavior that exists independently of your consciousness. This is also pretty important, so somebody says to you “Oh, there’s no such thing as morality," the amount of packaged dealing, as Rand used to call it, that is embedded into that concept is really quite astounding!

Because they’re saying that a standard of truth exists independently of your consciousness, and hopefully you would think independently of their consciousness too, because otherwise what they’d be saying is “You should believe what I believe for no reason. You should just change your mind and believe what I believe because I’m saying it." Well nobody says that, what they’re saying is, “There’s no such thing as universal morality” and what they’re doing by that, is they’re saying that objectively, there is no such thing as universal morality. Or that there is no such thing as ethics, fine. But then they’re saying that there’s a standard of truth that exists independently of consciousness, which should be pursued. That you should stop believing in ethics.

But if there’s a standard of truth that exists independently of consciousness, that is preferred, then it's Universal Preferred Behavior!

So there’s no logical, possible, conceivable way that any human being alive who opens his/her mouth to flap it at you that you should be a nihilist or that UPB does not exist. There is no way that a human being can open his mouth and tell you that, without coating himself in the most ghastly kind of contradiction imaginable. And this is true of so much of the debates that we’re having.

So you know, as I mentioned in the article that was on Lew Rockwell yesterday, called “Life Without a Government, it's closer than you think” it’s absolutely the same as a panting man telling you that human beings do not require oxygen. It’s like “But you’re panting!”. It’s just funny, I mean it is, it's one of these like “You’re kidding right?”.

If you’re telling me that morality is completely subjective, but if you're telling me that morality is completely subjective, then you're absolutely breaking the rule! Because obviously I believe morality is objective and universal, so the problem exists that if you’re telling me morality is not objective and universal, then you’re not saying it's subjective. Because you’re saying that my subjective belief that it IS universal, is incorrect! So it’s kind of like they’re not being serious, they’re kind of joking. There’s no way you could ever take that seriously in any way shape or form!

It’s like somebody saying to you that money has no value whatsoever, and in the same breath asking you to lend $5000 to them, because they have to pay rent. I mean the level of disconnect is just jaw-dropping, really, it’s just jaw dropping.

The fact that nobody notices this kind of stuff is just completely obvious, it’s just propaganda, it’s just because we’re all raised with this complete naughty ridiculous mess of thought that baffles everybody and gets us to not notice the most obvious and ridiculous contradictions, and to get all confused by them.

And I was confused by them for like 20 years too, so it’s just that once you get it, it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

So just back to this question of “ought” from an “is:" yeah, absolutely you cannot derive an "ought" from and "is," and there is nothing in material reality that forces anyone to do anything. Every choice has consequences; I don’t have to eat, right? That’s my choice, but if I don’t eat, I can’t choose to live. That’s not my choice.

So there are things which we can choose, and things which we cannot choose. We can choose our options and our behavior, but we cannot choose the consequences of that behavior. I can’t choose to cut my arm off and be a great juggler or a knitter. I can’t choose to cut my arm off and then want to go and applaud my favorite musical act. These are things that can't occur.

So there is no "ought" from an "is," but there always iron consequences, so there is no violation of the rule that you can’t derive an "ought" from an "is," but there is no capacity that anyone can open their mouth to argue against UPB without displaying UPB.

They’re breathing! Right, if they’re breathing, they’re displaying UPB. There’s simply no way around this issue.

I mean if they’re taking in a breath to talk to you, to change your mind about UPB, then they’re breathing in, which everybody prefers to do if they want to talk. It's a little tough to talk when you've run out of air. There’s just no way in God’s green acre [laughs] that any human being can take a breath in, activate their vocal chords, phrase the words so that they come out “There is no such thing as ethics," rather than “heofhaoiecakjflkda” or something equally coherent.

So they’re preferring to breathe, they’re preferring to talk, they’re preferring to shape their sentence into something grammatically correct and understandable and so how could they conceivably say that there’s no such thing as preferred behavior, when they’ve just displayed about a thousand instances of preferred behavior that is universal. Because they don’t just try and make up their own language, with their own hand slaps and signals and belly slaps and nipple tweaks that communicates exactly what they’re saying. They’re using language, which is to the degree of those who speak it and to a biological degree, universal.

So if they say there’s no such thing as ethics, you don’t interpret that as “Go bring coal to Newcastle."

So that’s just something to understand and appreciate that anybody who says “ethics don’t exist” is kind of joking, It’s like a test, they’re yelling at you that human beings have no capacity to process sound. OR they’re telling you that language is incomprehensible USING language. It’s just not serious.

Since I’ve gotten this and spoken with people I can’t take this as a serious proposition, it's sleight of hand, it's propaganda. They’re asking you to disbelieve everything that is totally obvious in the interaction. And the last thing, the way I'll put it is it’s exactly like somebody comes up to you and says “I don’t exist; I need you to believe that I don’t exist." Well if you’re noticing them talking, then obviously they exist. So it's just one of these kinds of situations.

So I just think that’s important to understand, that people aren’t really being serious when they argue against ethics. It’s just incomprehensible.

So anyway I’ve gotta find my conference. Oh my goodness, it's a 15-minutes podcast! I hope you’re doing well, have yourselves a great day, and please come by and donate I’d appreciate that as well. www.freedomainradio.com just click on the donate button, and thanks so much for listening.

203. Stateless Prisons

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:15:22 CST

"Containing Danger without Enslaving Citizens"

Summary:

Summary goes here.

Transcript:
(copied over from the FDR blog post)

One of the great challenges of anarchistic philosophy is the challenge of prisons, or the physical restraint of violent criminals. I have dealt with this topic once before, but I am still receiving numerous requests for clarifications on how a stateless society might deal with violent criminals. So - let us examine the punitive mechanisms that might exist in the absence of a coercive state system.

Firstly, we can assume that in the absence of a state, private protection agencies (called here DROs, for Dispute Resolution Organizations) will necessarily band together to deny the advantages of a modern economic life to those individuals who egregiously harm their fellow citizens. Such necessities as bank accounts, credit, transportation, lodging, food and so on, can all be withheld from those who have been proven to have committed violent crimes. Also, in a stateless society, since there is no such thing as ‘public’ property, violent criminals would have a tough time getting anywhere, since roads, parks, forests and so on would all be owned privately. Anybody providing aid or comfort to a person convicted of a violent crime would face a withdrawal of services and protections from their own DRO, and so would avoid giving such help.

However, this solution alone has not been sufficient for some people, who still feel that sociopathic and violent criminals need to be physically restrained or imprisoned for society to be safe.

First of all, before tackling this issue, I would like to point out that if the problem of violent sociopaths is very extensive, then surely any moral justifications for the existence of a state become that much more untenable. If society literally swarms with evil people, then those evil people will surely overwhelm the state, the police, and the military, and prey upon legally disarmed citizens to their hearts content. If, however, there are very few evil people, then we surely do not need a state to protect us from such a tiny problem. In other words, if there are a lot of evil people, we cannot have a state - and if there are few evil people, then we do not need a state.

However, let us imagine what happens to a rapist in a stateless society. All general DRO contracts will include ‘rape protection’, since DROs will want to avoid incurring the medical, psychological and income costs of a rape for one of their own customers. Part of ‘rape protection’ will be the provision of significant financial restitution to a rape victim. (Women who can’t afford ‘rape protection’ will be subsidized by charities - or lawyers will represent them pro bono in return for a cut of the restitution.)

If a woman gets raped, she then applies to her DRO for restitution. The DRO then finds her rapist - using the most advanced forensic techniques available - and sends an agent to knock on his door.

“Good morning, sir,” the agent will say. “You have been charged with rape, and I'm here to inform you of your options. We wish to make this process as painless and non-intrusive as possible for you, and so will schedule a trial at the time of your earliest convenience. If you do not attend this trial, or testify falsely, or attempt to flee, we shall apply significant sanctions against you, which are outlined in your existing DRO contract. Our agreement with your bank allows us to freeze your assets - except for basic living and legal expenses - the moment that you are charged with a violent crime. We also have agreements with airlines, road, bus and train companies to prevent you from leaving town until this matter is resolved.

“You can represent yourself in this trial, choose from one of our lawyers, or we will pay for any lawyer you prefer, at standard rates. Also, as per our existing contract, we are to be allowed access to your home for purposes of investigation. You are free to deny us this access, of course, but then we shall assume that you are guilty of the crime, and will apply all the sanctions allowed to us by contract.

“If you are found to be innocent of this crime, we will pay you the sum of twenty thousand dollars, to be funded by the woman who has charged you with rape. We will also offer free psychological counseling for you, in order to help you avoid such accusers in the future.”

The trial will commence, and will return a verdict in due course.

If the man is found guilty, he will receive another visit from his DRO representative.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the agent will say. “You have been found guilty of rape, and I'm here to inform you of your punishment. We have a reciprocal agreement with your bank, which has now closed down your accounts, and transferred the money to us. We will be deducting double the costs of our investigation and trial from your funds, and will also be transferring half a million dollars to the woman you have raped. We also have reciprocal agreements with the companies that provide water and electricity to your house, and those will now be cut off. Furthermore, no gas station will sell you gasoline, and no train station, airline or bus company will sell you a ticket. We have made arrangements with all of the local grocery stores to deny you service, either in person or online. If you set foot on the street outside your house, which is owned privately, you will be physically removed for trespassing.

“Of course, you have the right to appeal this sentence, and if you successfully appeal, we would transfer our costs to the woman who has accused you of rape, and pay you well for the inconvenience we have caused you. If, however, your appeal fails, all additional costs will be added to your debt.

“I can tell you openly that if you choose to stay in your house, you will be unable to survive very long. You will run out food and water very quickly. You can attempt to escape your own house, of course, leaving all of your possessions, and try to make it to some wilderness area. If you do successfully escape, be aware that you are now entered into a central registry, and no reputable DRO will ever represent you. Furthermore, all DROs which have reciprocal agreements with us - which is the vast majority of them - will withdraw services from their own customers if those customers provide you with any goods or services. You will never be able to open a bank account, use centralized currency, carry a credit card, own a car, buy gas, use a road, use any other form of transportation - and gaining food, water and lodging will be a constant nightmare for you. You will spend your entire life running, hiding and begging, and will never find peace, solace or comfort in any place.

“However, there is an option. If you come with me, we will take you to a place of work for a period of five years. During that time, you will be working for us in a capacity which will be determined by your skills. If you do not have any viable skills, we will train you. Your wages will go to us, and we will deduct the costs of your incarceration, as well as any of the costs I outlined above which are not covered by your existing funds. A small amount of your wages will be set aside to help get you started after your release.

“During your stay with us, we will help you, because we do not want to have to go through all of this again with you in the future. You will take courses on ethics. You will take courses on anger management. You will take psychological counseling. You will emerge from your incarceration a far better person. And when you do emerge, all of your full rights will be restored, and you will be able to fully participate once more in the economic and social life of society.

“You have a choice now, and I want you to understand the full ramifications of that choice. If you come with me now, this is the best offer that I can give you. If you decide to stay in your house, and later change your mind, the penalties will be far greater. If you escape, and later change your mind, the penalties will be far greater still. In our experience, 99.99% of people who either run or stay end up changing their minds, and end up that much worse off. The remaining 0.01? Oh, they commit suicide.

“The choice is now yours. Do the right thing. Do the wise thing. Come with me now.”

Can we really imagine that anyone would choose to stay in their own house and die of thirst, unable to even flush their toilet? Can we imagine that anyone would choose a life of perpetual running and hiding and begging? Even if the rapist had no interest in becoming a better person, surely the cost/benefit of the options outlined above would convince him!

There will always be a small number of truly evil or insane people within society. There are far, far better ways of dealing with them than our existing system of dehumanizing, brutal and destructive state gulags, which generally serve only to expand their criminal skills and contacts. Also, it is important to remember that the existing state prisons have barely any evil or insane people in them! The vast majority of those in jail are nonviolent offenders, enslaved and in chains because they used recreational drugs, or gambled, or went to a prostitute, or didn't pay all their taxes, or other such innocuous nonsense – or turned to crime because state ‘vice’ prohibitions made crime so profitable!

Our choice, then, is between a system which removes the tiny minority of evil people from society, rehabilitates them if possible, and makes them work productively to support their own confinement - or a state system which spends most of its time and energies enslaving innocent people, while letting the evil and insane roam free.

1100. FDR Song - You Gave Your Brain to Freedomain...

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:35:08 CST

"Another in a lengthening list of real singers I should apologize to..."

Summary:

Stefan sings somewhat of a story song in the style of a lounge singer.

Transcript:
(transcribed by Chris Huff)

(Spoken Intro)

Man, you used to think for yourself, you know that? We used to rap, we used to have these great conversations—and now, what? This Freedomain Radio, with that guy—what is he, like, ninety years old? Are those liver spots on his forehead? I can't tell. Anyway, look, I just wanted to let you know that this Freedomain thing, this cult thing, this don't-think-for-yourself thing, I'm tellin' ya, it's gotta go.

I mean, who is this guy? I don't see the government checking his work! How are we supposed to know? Listen...

(Song)

You once had thoughts of your own,
Seems that was far too hard.
You reasoned on your own
Brain like a pound of lard
It was far too great a strain
Just using your own brain
So you're logging on
To the FDR website.

You gave your brain to Freedomain
Now all your thoughts seem bald and gay
Your accent slides towards British
To doubt you are skittish
The next podcast will fill your ears,
Calm your fears

You say I'm lost in Freedomain,
Yet reasoning has set me free.
When I listen to thoughts from first principles
The golden sun of Truth is me!

442. Full DIsclosure Part 1: Teachers

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:30:14 CST

Summary:

In this podcast, Mr. Molyneux plays the devil's advocate as an irrational, abusive teacher who incessantly talks down to the cell-phone-obsessed, hair-combing girls in the front and the freedom-loving libertarian boys in the back. He addresses a hypothetical 10th grade public school classroom of 16 year olds after the passage of a New Hampshire law that slipped through a "sleepy legislature" wherein all teachers are required to provide disclaimers, or disclosure statements, about their conflict of interest in speaking ill of the unions (in which they are forced to join) and their employer (the government). After a sarcastic monologue where Mr. Molyneux reads the requirements of the full disclosure law and comments on them from the perspective of a bitter, anti-Iraq War, pro-monopolistic State schoolteacher, he opens the forum to a question answer session in which he takes imaginary questions from that naughty little imaginary libertarian in the back of the room. After being called out as a hypocrite for calling FOX News biased while teaching history with an agenda, the defiant students are forced to read Canadian novels and do calculus homework.

Transcript:

Transcript here.

443. Full Disclosure Part 2: Politicians

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:29:50 CST

Summary:

Mr. Molyneux introduces himself as John Q. Politician, a presidential candidate. The scenario is similar to the first episode in the series; a law has just been passed requiring all politicians to disclose all motives for running for elected office, with perjurers subjected to the penalty of the cost of the libel investigation. While all other candidates dropped out, this particular politician decided to stay in the game, for reasons we can only assume are completely stupid or wonderfully altruistic. Mr. John Q. Politician covers topics ranging from the petty nature of the media to the secret value of a political job and the shadow government.
Transcript:

Transcript here.

541. Who Watches the Watchers?

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:04:25 CST

"The balance of power..."

Summary:

If you say that a potential for corruption and abuse occurs in every human interaction, then you are faced with the rather challenging problem of setting up a society that eliminates this kind of abuse.

Under the current situation: The government takes resources from people, and every time it does this, it continually needs to pay off more and more people. The more power it gets, the more power it needs. Part of this death spiral problem occurs where money is taken from citizens and paid to people who are willing to use force on behalf of the government to collect even more resources. In this sense, the solution needs to create a scenario where people who commit violence are made to bear the full cost of this, unlike the current situation where some people are being paid to commit violence.

Market anarchists recognize the capability of humans to harm each other, and by recognizing this fundamental corruptibility; anarchists posit that competing self-interest is the best way to solve this problem. When there is a dispute between people, they have to defer this decision to a third party. The third party should have no direct financial stake and its self interest should lie in the eradication of bias, which is the solution that the DRO model brings to the problem of corruption.

Who will watch the watchers under the DRO model? The answer is those who are paid for their objectivity and whose self-interest is the abdication of specific self-interest. Under the state solution, the bias is not eliminated because the state has universal power and does not face repercussions for its actions.

Transcript:

Transcript here.

669. Dr No - Friend or Foe?

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:02:28 CST

"Congressman Ron Paul and the future of freedom"

Summary:

Summary here.

Transcript:
(transcribed by David Bradley)

Good afternoon everybody, hope you’re doing well. It is Stef, it is just past 6:00, March 05, 2007. The question of the afternoon, wisely and interestingly posed on the boards this afternoon today, is this: Doctor No, friend or foe? Doctor Ron Paul, Republican of Texas and a proto-libertarian: friend or foe of freedom? Fascinating question.

I’m going to take a shot at it, and of course I can’t prove it, I’m just going with my thoughts here. I’ll try and start with a metaphor and see if it works for you. What I’d like to do is talk metaphorically. This is nothing to do with Ron Paul the individual, I’m sure he’s a fine, upstanding member of the citizenry. He walks his dog, bathes his cat, he’s a fine, upstanding member of the local chamber of commerce, or whatever he does outside of politics. This has nothing to do with Ron Paul the individual. This is just the principle of participating in this kind of statism, and whether or not it is beneficial or negative toward people’s perceptions of and abilities to achieve or work towards freedom. Nothing about Ron Paul, I’m sure he’s a nice enough fellow, but let’s have a look and see logically, or at least metaphorically, whether what he’s doing is productive or not.

Let’s start with a metaphor, and you can let me know what you think. You and I are in cages, and we’re outdoors. If you’ve watched Lost, they lock these guys up in a cage out in the jungle. So you’re in a cage and I’m in a cage, and we’re pretty hungry. We’re not getting fed much. You say to me one night, you whisper, “Hey, Stef!” And I say, “What?” You say, “Hey, I’m so thin here” – and you pinch the little non-rolls on your belly and you say – “I think I’m so thin by now, I think I can squeeze through these bars. It’s gonna hurt like hell, and I might crack a rib, but I think I can squeeze through these bars. Then I can try and get some help, I can try and waylay the guard and get the keys, I can do a whole bunch of things. I’m getting thin, but I’m getting kinda weak. I haven’t had much to eat, and I’m getting really hungry. So I’m kinda weak, and I’m kinda thin, but I think, I’m pretty sure, that I’m thin enough now that I can squeeze through these bars. It’s gonna hurt like hell, but I think I can do it.”

And I say, “Y’know, I gotta tell you, I think that’s a really bad idea. I know, for a fact, that we’re gonna be freed. So here’s the problem with what you’re suggesting – you can do with you want, but in maybe two, 2.5 days, someone’s going to come along. I know it. I mean, I know it for real, I got a message that someone’s gonna come along and is gonna unlock us. So if I were you, I would not go through the painful, difficult, rib-cracking exercise of squeezing my way out of the bars of my own cage; I would do what I would consider the logical thing, and I would just wait for help to arrive. Not only are you going to crack your ribs and this and that, but you are going to get enormously punished if you are caught and you are found out. Let’s say you even get away, and what’s gonna happen? You’re going to be stuck in the jungle, you’re going to be weak. And the guy who’s coming is gonna free us, and he’s gonna give us food, and water, and we’re gonna get a chance to build our strength up. He’s going to get us medical care, take care of our teeth, and all this and that. Help’s on the way, so there’s really no need to try and do this horrible breakout scenario that Houdini would probably have some difficulty with. So I would not do it.”

Obviously you’d question me – “How do you know help is coming?” Because if help IS coming in a day or two, then it really doesn’t make any sense to try and break out of the prison. If help is coming, why would you bother trying to break out of the prison, and go through the risk of getting shot, and cracking your ribs, and being stuck in the jungle with these wild beasts – I think you get the idea. It really wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to take that approach and try to get out if you think that food is coming, that help is coming, that freedom is coming.

So a day or two pass, we’re still not getting fed, and you’re getting weaker and weaker. You’re like, “Hey, Stef, I gotta tell you. I’m getting really weak here. I got a feeling, I’m seized by this feverous panic. It’s now or never. I’ve got to go. If I’m going to go, I’ve got to go now. I’m a little thinner, I don’t think I’m gonna crack my ribs. But another day or two without food, I’m just not going to have the strength to do what I need to do. I’m going to be too weak. And then, if your guy doesn’t come to help, what the hell am I gonna do? If I’m too weak to help myself, what the hell am I gonna do? So are you SURE your guy is coming? Are you SURE your guy is coming to save me? If he’s not, I’m going on my own. Even if there’s a chance that he’s not coming, even if there’s a decent chance that he’s not coming, then I’m going, because I can’t risk it. I’m getting too weak. Right now, I can make it, get some mango, feed my strength, get some water. But if I keep waiting, I’m just not gonna have the strength to get through the bars.”

And I say, “It’s for sure that help is coming. This is the approach. Someone’s coming tomorrow. I’m not asking you to wait for days. You’ve got to trust me. I’m doing this for your own good. Help is on its way. This is going to work. Things are gonna get better. This guy’s coming to help, so there’s zero point, it’s totally counterproductive, for you to try and get through these bars, maybe get shot. And now that you’re weaker, you’re going to be even more at risk in the jungle for getting eaten or whatever. So now that you’re even weaker, given that a day has passed and you’re even weaker, it’s even more of a bad idea to try and get out through the bars and into the jungle.”

So you, of course, question me very closely. “Are you SURE that this guy is coming? This is it, do or die.”

Anyway, long story short (believe it or not), I convince you that this guy is coming. So you don’t decide to leave. You decide to stick it out and wait for help to come, for help to arrive. And, of course, the next day, still no food, you’re weaker. The next day, still no food, you’re weaker. Then, of course, no help has come, and you’re too weak to escape. And you say to me, “Well, what the hell was that?! Now I’m gonna die, no one is going to come, and even if they do come it’s going to be too late. So what the hell am I supposed to do now? I just don’t have the strength to leave. I don’t have the strength to do it anymore. So what was the point of that?”

Basically, I could say to you, “The problem, you see, is that you assumed I was a prisoner. You assumed that I was a prisoner, and that kept you in your cage. Your assumption, that I was a fellow prisoner with your best interests at heart, kept you in your cage as surely as if it had been impossible for you to squeeze through the bars and make it on your own.”

So how would I be indistinguishable from a jailer? How would I, in the creation of hope, in the defusing of potentially saving action, in the counseling of inertia and patience and “wait for salvation,” how am I different, fundamentally, from a jailer? How an I different from a lock? How am I different from having you bound and gagged and in a straightjacket? How is the effect of my counseling patience and resignation and waiting for help, how is that different from being a jailor?

Logically, it’s not. Logically, a very effective way of keeping people in jail is not to worry so much about the security, but to have people in jail, and pay them to be there, to counsel obedience. This is part of religion as well, and all that kind of stuff. So now that you know the truth, and I can tell you the truth, you’re too weak to do anything about it. Now I can tell you the truth. If I’m sadistic, then I keep you enslaved through words until you are enslaved through reality through my words, and then I can tell you the truth. This is the false self thing. Once you’re too weak to escape, then you learn the truth. That’s why bad people’s old age tends to be so embittering to them.

This, I think, is an important thing to understand about libertarianism. Now I love libertarianism in a way, I really do. I have a great deal of respect for the stepping stone that was both Objectivism and libertarianism for me. But not only have they failed catastrophically – I mean, not even close to their stated objectives, not even a little bit close. I mean, they haven’t even gotten close to reducing the size of the growth of government. Complete and total disasters. And since we are supposed to be scientific and rational in our thinking here, I think it would behoove us to examine why these experiments failed so completely and utterly.

I would also wonder, and not to a small degree, whether or not part of the failure that has accrued to the libertarian movement is not, in fact, due to the libertarian movement. In other words, if we must slip through the bars of the cage in order to escape, and if that is a painful and difficult process, and we have to do it when we are already in want; i.e. already hungry and made thin through starvation, but not so hungry that we lack the energy, so we can’t be fully content unless we free ourselves from the corruption of the world. Otherwise, if we were fully content, we would not feel the corruption of the world. But we cannot wait until what hits us is nihilism and misery, because that will not help us free ourselves from the world, because then we don’t believe that it’s possible to free ourselves from the world. So the people who counsel waiting, the people who counsel cynicism, the people who counsel working in the system, the people who counsel the benevolence of people like Ron Paul: in my view, it’s possible, and of course metaphor is not proof, it’s just a way of looking at it, of starting to approach the problem, I think, in my heart of hearts, that libertarianism has been a complete disaster for the freedom movement.

I think it has been a complete disaster because it’s not philosophical in nature; it’s political in nature. And because it’s political in nature, it talks about economics, and it talks about the argument from effect, and it talks about the Founding Fathers, and it talks about the Republic and the Constitution and things like that. All of which is the purest nonsense when it comes to true freedom. It’s not about a piece of paper, it’s not about history, it’s not about politics, it is simply getting rid of the gun in the room. That is personal freedom in a political context, relative to politics. Personal freedom, as far as defooing and getting bad people out of your life, that’s all separate. In terms of politics, the libertarian movement has been a complete disaster. I’m not saying it’s causal, but it certainly is coincidental that the rise of libertarianism coincided with the rise of the growth of the power of the state in its really hyperaccelerated, asymptotic kind of manner that occurred in the mid-60s through to the present time. So the past 30 or 40 years have seen both the expansion of libertarianism and a simultaneous massive expansion in the size and power of the state. I’m not saying it’s causal, I don’t know enough about it to know whether or not it’s causal, but it certainly is correlated: these two things happened at the same time. Now was the state growing and therefore you could have a libertarian expansion because the power of the state was so great and blah blah blah, or was it that libertarianism was counseling people to wait and to hope and was providing a large amount of positive language that politicians could speak that lulled people into false sense of security? “I don’t need to achieve freedom, I don’t need to fight for freedom, because Ronald Reagan says the government is the problem, and not the solution. I don’t need to fight for freedom, I don’t need to squeeze out through the bars, because Bill Clinton is promising to end welfare as we know it. I don’t need to fight for freedom, I don’t need to crack my ribs squeezing through the bars of the cage because, now that the Soviet Union has fallen, the Cold War is over, and government will shrink of it’s own accord,” and so on, and so on, and so on.

I wonder, and not to a small degree, whether or not libertarianism is the “prisoner” in the next cage whispering for us to work within the system, whispering to us that help is coming, whispering to us that voting will set us free, whispering to us that reformation is possible, whispering to us that we can shrink this beast of government, whispering to us that we can compromise with violence and walk away without blood. And I don’t believe that it’s true. I don’t believe that it’s true, and empirically, it is absolutely not true. Empirically, in terms of what libertarianism has achieved, it is absolutely not true. And the “why” is interesting, and we can go into that perhaps another time, but when you look at people like Ron Paul, the basics of what you see is people who are telling you that help is coming. Ron Paul is obviously in Congress because – well, actually, I shouldn’t say; I have absolutely no idea what Ron Paul’s actual motives are. His words and his speeches obviously have something to do with the belief or at least the appearance of the belief that he can use his power to shrink government, that he can use the violence that his office gives him access to to oppose the violence that 430-odd other people’s offices gives them access to. And I just don’t think that it seems to be working.

I also think that having Ron Paul in office is a very good thing for the state. If the Ku Klux Klan wishes to hide its bigotry, then it lets two black men in. Then the Ku Klux Klan can say, with a nod and a wink, “See, we’re not about bigotry.” And Ron Paul is, of course, safely embedded in the power structure of the Republican Party. There’s a lot of eye-rolling and a lot of embarrassed silences when Ron Paul makes his speeches, because it has nothing to do with what everyone else is there for, which is to rape and pillage the body politic, to point the guns at everyone they can point their guns at. That’s what everyone else is there for, so Ron Paul talking about this, that, and the other, is quaint, and foolish, and he might as well be dressed up as Mark Twain and spouting Olde English as far as relevance to what’s going on occurs.

But what DOES Ron Paul do, in his essence, is he says that the system can be saved. He says that violence can be saved from itself, that violence can be used to fight violence, because the taxes that fund his office, the taxes that fund his salary and his initiatives and so on are all coerced through violence. The legislation that he opposes continues to roll past his minor opposition, which does nothing. It continues to roll along and do all the violence and attack all the innocent that it needs to attack in order to enrich the fat and politically connected. And he’s doing nothing to stop it.

This is the gambit that libertarianism is taking, which I, obviously, am not comfortable with. I really don’t like these odds, but this is the risk, the gamble that libertarianism is taking. Everything that you do in life has opportunity costs. If I do a podcast, I can’t listen to an audiobook. If I listen to an audiobook, I can’t do a podcast. If I pick my nose, I can’t do a videocast – well, I can, but it’d be gross. So everything we do in life has opportunity costs.

Now libertarians of the political persuasion, whether they’re statists or minarchists or whatever, they are pouring all of their energies into reforming the state, but they’re not willing to go to a stateless society. They’re not willing to oppose violence on principle. They’re just willing to oppose certain kinds of violence in excess in practice against their grain. “Shoot my neighbor in the kneecap, not both of us in the chest” is not a rallying cry towards freedom and liberation and independence and joy and peace and the beauty of virtue. “Shoot the guy down the street in the toe” is not much of a step forward. So all of the energy that people put into libertarian circles, into trying to run for office, into raising money, into getting ballot access laws and so on all tucked away and squared off. All the energy that people are putting into volunteering for Ron Paul’s campaign or whatever other campaign is going on, or moving to New Hampshire and all of this, all of that massive amount of energy, millions of person-years invested into the libertarian movement, into other kinds of movements.

What has it cost the world? If they’re wrong, if the state can never be reformed into something civilized, then attempting to reform it is deadly. You are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Libertarianism, at its core, as is minarchism, as is statism, at its core, is saying, “Violence can be used better than it’s being used right now. Give me the gun!” they say. “Give ME the gun! I’ll do it right! Those people who have the gun, they’re doing it wrong. You give ME the gun, I’ll do it right. We just need the right finger on the trigger, and we just need to grab the gun and point it at the right people, and everything will be great. Give ME the gun!” they say. “Gimmee gimmee gimmee! I want the gun!” Well . . . how’s that working? If you say that the gun can be used for good, then you are absolving the gun. You are more than absolving the gun, you’re praising the gun, the gun in the room, the state.

If you’re saying that the gun can be used for good, that a monopoly of violence can be used for good, and that virtue is impossible without the gun, that peace and pacifism and property and virtue is impossible without the gun – “Just give ME the gun and I’ll make it all right, I’ll make it great” – well it’s the first and final temptation of power. This is the constant hurly burly turnover of those who want THE GUN. “Give me the gun and I’ll make it great!” What if there was no gun? “Oh, no no no. There’s got to be a gun. There’s got to be a gun, we’ve just got to get it away from the people who have it now so WE can have the gun. So WE can use it. WE can have the ******* gun!” Why does there have to be a gun? Why is there always, always, always a gun? Well, of course, we’ve talked about that before, I’m sure we’ll talk about it again, and there’s a lively debate going on about that on the boards at the moment.

And really, that’s the fundamental answer that anarcho-capitalism provides. There’s no need for a gun. In fact, a gun is always evil. (I’m not talking about a private gun, I’m talking about a public gun. I’m talking about a state, and an army, and police force, and law courts. I’m talking about that stuff. All the apparatus of hegemonic power.) So libertarians are like, “Give Ron Paul the gun! Give ol’ Ronnie the gun! He’ll know what to do! He’ll save us, with the gun! We love the gun, we just want Ron to have it! Give Ron the gun. Not Newt – Ron! Once Ron’s hand curls over that holster, once his finger curls over that trigger – my God, it will be perfect. It will be just great! Give Harry Browne the gun! Give someone the gun who knows how to use it. Things will be – muah! Lov-er-ly!”

I don’t think it’s true. I think that the pursuit of trying to find the right person to give the gun to, the philosopher king of the Republic – trying to find the right person to give the gun to is not only a fool’s quest, but it says that the gun can be used for good. “Don’t worry, someone is coming, you don’t need to get out of the cage.” If you’re waiting at a bus stop, keep getting a phone call from the bus driver saying, “I’ll be there in five minutes, three minutes, two minutes, one minute.” Are you going to walk? Of course not. You’re going to freeze to death. By the time your toes are frozen, you can’t walk and you die. “Someone’s coming! Someone can use this gun! Someone can make this gun good! Someone can make this violence virtuous. Someone, some savior immune to drowning in blood, some godlike man who can wield the power of violence over millions of people and flourish, and be virtuous, and bring about a new Jerusalem, a new Renaissance, a new Enlightenment. Just give the gun to the right person, and the gun becomes golden.”

And still we dream, and still we wait, and still we believe, and still we hope, and still we have faith, and still we work, and still we vote, and still we donate, and still we move, and still we join the Free State Project, and still we phone into talk radio shows to talk about smaller government, and still we hope and we pray and we dream for this square circle of a good gun. Still we say, over and over, “Less gun is a better gun, but no gun is a terrible gun. Less violence is better violence, but no violence is bad violence.” Over and over and over, still, we stay orbiting this deadly sun. We can’t break out. And what is worse: to not know that violence is wrong, or to know that violence is wrong and approve of it? Who’s more corrupt? An out-and-out big welfare-warfare statist, who just says that the government is great, and everything it does is right, and taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society, and blah blah blah, never even comprehends, can’t even grasp on a conscious level that government is violence. Isn’t there an admirable amount of integrity, no matter how weird, in all of that? Sure, at least to me. But the libertarian who says that taxation is evil, and government is wrong, and welfare is wrong, and warfare state is wrong: they get it. They get it, that violence is wrong, violence is evil, the nonaggression principle and so on.

Who is more corrupt: the person who says slavery is moral, or the person who says, “Slavery is evil so we should just have a little less of it. Or we should have different slave owners. Or the slaves should be only slaves on weekends. Or the slaves should be slaves, but they should get to own a certain amount of property. Or that slaves should be slaves, but raping them is still wrong”? Who is more corrupt? I have an opinion, I’m not saying I’m proving it but I have an opinion. This is the challenge that I have with libertarianism, and of course with Objectivism even more so than libertarianism. Objectivism went further in so many ways.

What do you do when you see the gun? Seeing the gun is the root of libertarianism and Objectivism. You see the gun in the room as violence, it’s monopolistic, hegemonic violence. It’s disarming the taxpayers by pointing guns that you forced the taxpayers to pay for with the money you extort from them because they’re forced, because you can enforce your will over them. You pay the policemen who point guns at the taxpayers who pay the money who let you pay the policemen. That is understood by Objectivists and libertarians. That is understood, that is not argued about, that is not debated, whether government is coercion. They just want different people – maybe fewer people, sure, but different people holding the gun. Fewer people, different people, doesn’t really matter. It’s the size of the gun, it’s who it’s pointed at that’s the problem.

And isn’t it, to some degree, a thwarted power lust? The excluded, those who don’t have power, who try to create a narrative wherein they can grab power? And who takes over that narrative? Well, people like Ronald Reagan, who leans against the Berlin Wall, it falls over, and everyone says he’s the strongest man in history – he pushed over a whole wall. Who takes the narrative? Who takes over the narrative? Who promises the people that government will be restrained? Well, the Republicans, and to some degree the Democrats in certain areas, like defense spending. In welfare, it’s the Republicans.

Who takes over the narrative that the libertarians create? The libertarians say that smaller government is better government. The government that governs least is the government that governs best. Well great! I’ve got a government that governs not at all. There is no government – “well that’s bad. That’s wrong. That’s bad. That, we cannot allow. That, we cannot accept. We can’t have anarchy – ANARCHY, for God’s sake!!!” (as if we don’t.)

The story that government is good if it’s different, government is good if it’s smaller, government is good if it’s focused on XYZ. That narrative, what to people hear? “Government is good if.” “Rape is good if.” “Slavery is good if.”

Well great! So there’s nothing innately evil about rape, you’ve just got to rape less. There’s nothing innately evil about rape, you’ve just got to bring some flowers. Nothing innately evil about rape, just call the girl afterwards, for god’s sake! Spend a little quality time with her later. Nothing innately evil about murder, just put the right costume on, then you get a medal. There’s nothing innately evil about these things, it’s all just circumstantial. It’s all just relative to intention, it’s all relative to the words on the page of the Constitution. It’s all relative. There’s nothing right or wrong in any of this. There’s no evil in violence, it’s just got to be reconfigured!

What do people hear? “There’s no evil in violence. The state is not evil. Violence is not evil. Monopoly of coercive power is not evil.” And ‘round and ‘round the wheel goes. And we never break out of this orbit. Is Ron Paul friend or foe? Well, foe. Not because he’s an evil guy, I don’t know the guy. I’m just talking about the principles of what’s going on. “Violence is good if. If you define it right. If it’s smaller, if it’s lesser, if it’s minimized. Violence is good if.”

Well, violence is not good. Violence is always evil, rape is always evil. There is no “if,” there is no “maybe,” there is no “perhaps,” there is none of that. I hope that this has been helpful, at least in terms of getting my perspective out. Thank you for listening, and I will talk to you soon.

794. Call In Show June 10 2007

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:00:34 CST

"A listener's success, how to really help a friend - and hey, two more annoying Brits!"

Summary:

This podcast deals with many people new to the philosophy. Stef begins the podcast with very little introduction, speaking to a woman new to Freedomain Radio. Stef introduces her to the philosophy, and then Christina speaks for a while about the inevitability of bringing some background to the table as a professional therapist, citing studies. Next, Stef begins to talk about a letter from a listener about dealing with bureaucrats when he receives a call from a gentleman who claims that he was talking and circles and makes several ad hominem attacks. Next, a man from the UK introduces his theory on economics, which involves a mysterious disappearance of money whenever taxes are cut. He steps out from the conversation in order to a do a bit more research and come back later.

The next caller, a man from Sudan, speaks about the difficulties of finding a voice in the third world, and at the problem of faceless organizations like the World Bank and governments. Then the discussion takes an interesting turn, where the caller states that people sometimes need people to force them to do things, right or wrong. He says: "Sometimes there are insane leaders, but at least they are leading." He postulates that this need for leadership may be why societies invent gods, irrespective of whether god really exists or not.

Transcript:

Transcript here.

929. Sunday Call In Show Dec 2 2007

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:58:20 CST

"Having THE conversation with old friends, NOT having THE conversation with old friends - and what happens when your girlfriend doesn't watch your back..."

Summary:

Stef speaks to Tuttle, and others.

Transcript:

Transcript here.

826. Casual Sex

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:55:02 CST

"The junk food of the genitals"

Summary:

Molyneux discounts the idea of casual sex as a biological necessity because masturbation costs far fewer resources and allows you to orgasm. He uses the persistent metaphor of casual sex as junk food; occasional use is OK, but habitual use, like any addiction, is a serious problem. 'Virtuous' casual sex, or casual sex that is less sleazy is quite rare, since women that partake in casual sex and other regular, risky behavior tend to have lower self-esteem. Sex is risky for women because of STDs, failed contraceptive methods, and obsessive or violent men, who tend to be bigger "pound for pound". Casual sex is different for women than it is for men. Women are more "physically vulnerable" during the act of sexual intercourse. Evolutionarily, women are more cautious about sex, because historically, birth control did not effectively exist.

Transcript:
()

Transcript here.

888. Sunday Call In Show October 21 2007

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:49:47 CST

This is just the monologue:

...What it's caused I would sort of say is some problems with people who were you know - I sort of fail to understand the drama of all this, but that could just be me. So there have been people who have been on the boards and I found them to be difficult and destructive and obstructive and toxic in one way or another and distracting and you know screwing up the conversation and retarding the progress and you know that's sort of my perspective and my opinion of what was going on and I think there was good reason. And so I hand out an "unvitation" right? I sort of say to people, "please don't come and post on this board anymore because you're not contributing to the conversation" and it's sort of my job to make sure the conversation moves forward. That's sort of what I'm committed to and I'm not going to let anything stand in that way...People who have left, um, I mean of course people leave of their own accord, it's been a completely voluntary situation. And the board is not Freedomain Radio. the board is not Freedomain Radio. Freedomain Radio is the books and podcasts and the back and forth that goes on sometimes in emails. The board is not Freedomain Radio. It's not even a core part of Freedomain Radio. It's a nice bit of lemon in the icing on the cake.The people who think they've messed that up and they've done something about the conversation fundamentally sort of miss the point. But people who leave get mad. They get mad and they don't call me up and talk to me about it, right? So when I say look there are problems and so on and then people can call me up and then - it's not like I'm hard to get ahold of. I sit in front of the computer 14 hours a day doing philosophy lately because it's been the book plus FDR - regular FDR. But they don't they don't call me up. They just kind of get mad, they go off and they sort of start spreading negative things and have negativity and so on. And so some board, I can't even remember the name of it, some board has gone up with a bunch of people who are no longer part of this conversation here. And I guess they are disliking me and what it is that I do and they're having problems and they feel that I'm, oh, a cult leader - the worst cult leader in the history of the planet, but - I am a cult leader and I am intolerant and I am censorious and you know all this kind of stuff. So I will tell you what I think is really going on and then we can drop it and move on to more pleasant topics. But this is a microcosm of the challenges we face in bringing the truth to the world, so it's worth spending a little bit of time on it. So, when two people end up with a conflict which is not resolvable within the framework of the relationship, then there's one of two possibilities: The first possibility is that one person is acting badly and the other person is acting well. The other possibility is that both people are acting badly. Right? Now, the people who have, who i've banned from the board have acted in a way subsequent to the banning that completely justified you know what it is that I did. Right? Because you know if you and I were to go out on a date...then we would sort of evaluate each other and if at some point we didn't decide that we were attracted to each other then we'd just not - you know, we just wouldn't go out any more. Right? And the mature response to somebody who doesn't want to go out with you is like "well yeah it stings a little but blah blah blah" but you sort of say OK well not to my taste, didn't work out, and then you move on. Right? What you don't do is put up a website and start trashing the person who didn't want to go out with you and calling them a slut and calling them crazy and - right? that's just a really sick response to a non-preference for a relationship. Right? Everybody's free to leave the board, people I'm sure come by and drop their - you know I don't send emails to the people who haven't logged in in 60 days saying "where the hell are you? You're supposed to be part of this community. Act like it." Of course not, right? People can leave. And I can ask them to leave. Right? It's a free and voluntary society and there are no unchosen positive obligations. So when a relationship deteriorates to the point where there's a break, where one person says like "I don't want to spend time with you any more, I don't want you to come to my house, I don't want you to come to my parties," or whatever, the person who's being rejected has to either say "we're both acting badly" or they have to say "I'm acting badly and the other person, Stef, is acting well," or...they say "Stef is acting badly and I am acting well." That's sort of the only three possibilities. We're both acting badly; we'll call him Bob is acting badly, or Stef is acting badly. Now, the people who I've banned have never said - have never called me up and said "Gee, you know, let's talk about it - it's not so bad or I didn't realize I was being so negative or so difficult" or whatever, right? I would have those conversations and I've offered those conversations to people before - I don't offer then now, but I did offer them to many people at the time of these sorts of problems. So here's what happens, is that basically Bob, Bob The Bannee, goes off and is embittered and does not say "I acted badly and Stef acted well." They don't say "we both acted badly." Or if they do then it's just a way of sort of dragging me down, too. They say "I acted really well and Stef acted really badly, Stef's a hypocrite, you know, he says 'oh we've got such an open society' and then he makes up these arbitrary rules and bans people and they get all mad. Mad mad mad at this kind of situation. Now, the problem with that approach, like if you leave a relationship or somebody dumps you, let's say, and you go sailing off into the sunset and you never have any particular contact with that person again, then you can, basically until the day you die, maintain an illusion that you acted well and the other person acted badly. Unfortunately though, if there's a board running and there are podcasts and there are books, then people have a glimpse into my state of mind and where I am as a human being. Now if I am a bad guy, right, because we have this equation, right? Rationality = virtue = happiness. Rationality = virtue = happiness. And it's as old as Socrates - this is nothing that's new or culty, it's the old equation. I think we're just taking it 12 steps further, so to speak. So, if you say "well Stef is a bad guy" then what you're saying is "Stef is irrational or hypocritical" or whatever, right? In which case, Stef is immoral or corrupt in some manner, in which case Stef, by definition, must be unhappy, right? So if you get dumped, then if you say "I acted well, the other person acted badly" then the way that you confirm that diagnosis is, you say "Is the person who dumped me happy or unhappy?" Now if they're happy, you have a problem. Because if you're dumped by a happy person, and reason = virtue = happiness, then you've been dumped by a rational person, which makes you an irrational person, and thus not a particularly good guy. Right? So that's the mythology that's set up. Stef is corrupt, Stef must be unhappy, Stef must, you know - pride goeth before a fall, it's all gone to his head, he's become crazy, the success, and blah blah blah. So the problem is that what happens is...that when I released "On Truth" and particularly when I released "UPB" which was this week, which was simultaneous to this particular flair-up - and I *knew* ahead of time that this book was gong to cause problems - the book is a sheer act of joy for me...

The book is something of course that I am staggeringly proud of, I'm unbelievably happy about - it's been 25 years - quarter century - in the making, and it's certainly the hardest thing that I've ever done. Right, so it is a very large achievement - I'm just beyond thrilled about it all. And I recorded a video and some audio that expressed that joy. And look, to be perfectly frank with everyone here, I have to step up to try to match the size of this book, if this makes any sense, right? The book is huge and although I can be a passionate guy, the passion that I can bring to bear on the conversation is something that the book demands more of than I am normally, you know, in my British tight-ass way, willing to or comfortable with giving. So I have to stretch myself - it's like you have to give birth to the book and then stretch yourself, to use a rather slippery metaphor. And so when I did the reading for the video and the audio of "On Truth" I was very passionate and I was hugely happy and radiant, right? I mean I'm just overjoyed. Sort of nothing can touch me this week. Doesn't matter that people get mad at me - I'm beyond thrilled with the achievement. So if you say "well Stef's irrational and corrupt and therefor he must be unhappy and I'm a good guy and he's a bad guy," and then you see somebody who's achieved something wonderful and is radiantly happy about it, that threatens your mythology that Stef is a bad guy and you are a good guy. Right? Because if reason = virtue = happiness, and somebody has achieved a great act of rationality and is wildly happy, then you can't maintain the fiction that Stef is irrational and weird and culty or whatever. It's not possible to maintain that fiction. So what do you do. Well, the first thing tat you're going to want to do if you get lost - or if this defense mechanism of putting Stef down is threatened, is you're going to want to get other people to reinforce your mythology. Right? People don't go to church on their own. The people who have false corrupt beliefs, they have to cling to each other in the way that scientists and rational philosophers don't. They have to cling, they have to get together, and they have to reinforce each other. Like social alcoholics, they have to get together. And so, when I became sort of - I revealed this great rationality, this great happiness, of my achievements of my last few months of work, then there was a sort of detonation in the mythology of "Stef is a bad guy and we're good guys." Right? the banned people, or whatever. And so what they have to do is they have to get together and pump each other's mythology up, right? In the same way that Christians will cling closer and closer together as science closes in. Right? And they have to get more and more hostile because the mythology is being threatened. So they have to all get together and pump each other up and get mad and get bitter and get hostile and get negative and so on. And their theory is only rescued if I'm unhappy, right? Their theory that I'm corrupt and I'm bad and they're good, right? So they have to be happy and I have to be unhappy. So of course the more happy I am the more irritated they get, the more angry they get, the more they feel that I'm faking it ever more and I'm - you know, this kind of stuff. So they then have to try and bring that happiness down, take it away. Right? And they do that by, you know, trying to grab people form the board, which they used my message system surreptitiously to bring people over to this other forum and crank them up full of anger and they sent them back with, you know, hostile and negative statements, and so on, and I could give a flying fuck. Seriously, even on the worst week it wouldn't bother me that much, but on this week for sure it doesn't matter. I feel sad, particularly when they manipulate and use people who are young and very vulnerable to sort of act out this mythology and this anger. I think that's very sad. In fact I think that's completely horrible. But that's the story in my view, and of course there's some proof, right? In term of the timing and so on, and of course this happened 6 months ago when I went full-time, which is when I sort of kicked up the dedication to philosophy thing quite a bit. Quite a notch. So I think that's sort of an explanation of sort of why it happened at this point and at this moment and why this particular group of people who have been banned, they sort of gather together and it intensified, they intensified their dislike because their mythology that Stef is irrational therefor corrupt therefor unhappy, took a body blow when I am clearly so overjoyed and have produced something that is so rational and I've think quite glorious. So it's one of the reasons why achievement is tough, right? It brings a lot of people who aren't so happy about achievement out of the woodwork, and that's par for the course, right? And fundamentally it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter at all. The board is not core, and the board can always go to invitation only if too many annoying people hang out there. I mean that doesn't matter and I don't want people who are involved in the board to fall down into this trap called, you know, "This is not a time for celebration because we're mad at you," right? "We think it's a cult" or "we think it's a bad thing." And look, for anyone who's listening to this, if you want to come by and call this a cult, we are going to have problems, you and I. We are going to have problems. Alright, this is a very challenging conversation to keep moving forward, it is an essential and I think the most powerful conversation in the world to keep moving forward, and people who come over and start sowing dissent and it's a cult, and so on, cults are very specific entities with very specific characteristics, and we conform to *none* of them. Right? So if you're going to come over and call this a cult, I am going to react to you - I mean unless you found some magical proof, which case let me know and I'll try to make it less culty, right? - but if you come over and just say "wow, you know, it just seems kind of culty," well then you might as well just be calling my wife a whore. Because you're taking something that I treasure and producing a *sick* little ad hominem attack on it. Without reason, without basis, without honor. And I will not give you the resources to do that. You can spread your shit elsewhere, but don't come here and call it a cult unless you can make a damn good case. And then talk to me *like a man.* Don't leave snippy little bitchy emails surreptitiously using my message system to other people. You know I helped a lot of these people, I talked to them one on one, provide a lot of time and energy to try and help them work through some issues, and if they have problems with me, they should have the *balls* to call me up. And not do this petty bitchy grade 6 little crap of whisper campaigns and negativity. Anyway, that's particularly - that's all I really had to say about that unpleasant interlude during - I mean, but relative to what's been achieved this week in this conversation, I mean we've had a real culmination, I think, and I do thank everybody who has positively contributed to this, I mean I would not have been able to do it - I would not be able to do it without your intelligence, without your participation, without your financial generosity, without all of the beautiful things that come my way from this amazing listenership. And I could not have done that - this is a collective achievement and I think that we should all be amazingly proud of - and forgot the board issues, forget the negative people out there, forget those guttersnipes, forget the whiners, forget the complainers, forget them! Forget them. 100 years from now they'll remember this book, they won't remember "oh there were some snippy emails that went back and forth on a message system." Forget that stuff. Throw it aside. That's got to be for us like sunspots on the sun are to the naked eye: it doesn't matter at all, relative to what we as a community have achieved in the production of a rational proof of secular ethics. It's *amazing.* It's incredible. And everybody who's put good thoughts in, everybody, particularly those people who have donated, I just - I can't thank you enough for that gift to be able to do this. For the gift of having an audience. For the gift of having the resources to be able to work on this full-time. I *hope* that i have done you proud in terms of what I've produced, with your help but I just thank you so much for this opportunity. I think that we can be enormously proud of the gift that we've given a hurting world and I just wanted to be very open about my gratitude for that amazing and wonderful opportunity and trust that you give your time, money, and energy to some nutty guy in Canada in hopes that he can pull off something great. And I think that we have. And I think that we should all be enormously proud of that. Alright, so that's it for my emoting.

916. A Statist Handout...

thechuff — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:46:41 CST

"Every argument I've ever had with a statist distilled..."

Summary:

Summary here.

Transcript:
(transcribed by Chris Huff)

A Hand-out for Statists, by Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, available at www.freedomainradio.com. Freedomain Radio is the #1 Philosophy Podcast on the Internet.

In the interest of efficiency, I have decided to distill every argument I have ever had with your average Statist, so that I can hand it out to those who argue that "Government is voluntary," "If I don't like it, I can leave," "Taxation is not violence," etc.

I thought this might be of use to you because life is short.

ME
Tell me, do you think that violence is wrong?

STATIST
Yes, violence is wrong, except in self-defense.

ME
Agreed, except in self-defense. So, tell me, how do you think that problems should be solved if we should not use violence?

STATIST
Well, I think that people should become more active in government and that governments should do A, B, C, X, Y and Z.

ME
But how do you reconcile your objection to violence with your support of government programs, since government programs are paid for through taxation, which is coercive?

STATIST
Huh? What are you talking about? Taxation is not coercive.

ME
Taxation is coercive, since if you do not pay your taxes, you are kidnapped at gunpoint and thrown in jail where if you try to escape, you are shot.

STATIST
But this is a democracy where we choose our own governments.

ME
Being offered a choice between two violent alternatives is not the same as being free to choose. If a store owner gets to choose which mafia gang he pays protection money to, can it be really argued that he is making a free choice? If a woman can choose between two potential husbands, but will be forced to marry one of them, can she be said to be really choosing marriage? People can only freely choose governments if they can have the choice to not choose governments.

STATIST
Well, there is a social contract that binds people to their governments.

ME
There is no such thing as a social contract. Unless they have been granted power of attorney, people cannot justly sign contracts on behalf of others. If one man has the power to unilaterally impose his will on another and call it a contract, then logically a man can steal from a woman and call it charity.

STATIST
But I accept the social contract and so do you if you drive on the roads.

ME
First of all, your choice to honor a contract does not give you the right to force me to honor it. You can choose to buy a house, but you cannot justly force me to pay for it. If you forge my signature, I am not bound to honor the contract and I have never agreed to a social contract of any kind. Secondly, it is true that I use government services, but that is irrelevant to the central moral question of coercion. If a slave accepts a meal from his master, is he condoning slavery?

STATIST
I suppose not, but still you implicitly accept the social contract by continuing to live in a country, as Socrates argued.

ME
Can I justly create a social contract that allows me to rob anyone who lives in my neighborhood and say that if people continue to live in "my" neighborhood, they are expressly consenting to my new social contract?

STATIST
Well, no, but we are talking about governments, not individuals.

ME
Is the government not composed of individuals? Is "The Government" not just a label for a group of individuals who claim the moral right to initiate force against others, a right they define as evil for those they use violence against? If you take away all the individuals who compose "The Government," do you still have a government?

STATIST
I suppose not, but that is besides the point. You say that taxation is coercive, but I have paid taxes my entire life and I have never had a gun pointed at my head.

ME
Sure, and a prisoner is not shot if he does not try to escape. If a slave conforms to his master's wishes because of the threat of violence, the situation is utterly immoral. Does the mafia have to actually burn your shop down for the threat to be violent?

STATIST
No. However, I do not accept the premise that the government uses force to extract taxation from citizens.

ME
All right, is there anything that the government does that you disagree with? Do you agree, for instance, with the invasion of Iraq? (Just keep asking until you find some program that the Statist finds abhorrent)

STATIST
No, I think that the invasion of Iraq was morally wrong.

ME
Why?

STATIST
Because Iraq had done nothing to threaten the United States.

ME
Right, so it is an initiation of force, not self-defense. Now, you do realize that the War in Iraq is possible only because you pay your taxes.

STATIST
To some degree, of course.

ME
If the War in Iraq is morally wrong, but it is only possible because you pay your taxes, and your taxes are not extracted from you through force, then you are voluntarily and enable that which you call evil. Can you explain that to me?

STATIST
I pay my taxes because I am a citizen of this country. If I disagree with the War, then I should run for office and try to stop it.

ME
All right, if you were against child abuse, would you voluntarily fund a group dedicated to abusing children?

STATIST
Of course not!

ME
And if you did claim to be against child abuse, and you voluntarily funded a group dedicated to abusing children, and I said that you should stop doing that, and you replied that you would not, but that if someone did oppose this abusive group, they should try to infiltrate this group, take control of it, and somehow stop it from abusing children, would that make any sense at all?

STATIST
I guess not.

ME
If you were against the War in Iraq but volunteered for it and agreed to fight without a salary and spent your own money to cover all your expenses, do you understand that your position would be utterly incomprehensible? You would claim to be against something and then expend enormous amounts of time, effort, money and resources supporting it!

STATIST
Yes, that would make little sense.

ME
Thus you see that your position that the War in Iraq is a moral evil, but that you are voluntarily funding it through your taxes makes no sense at all. If the War in Iraq is a moral evil but is only enabled through your voluntary funding, then continuing to fund it is to openly admit that it is not a moral evil. If you are forced to fund the War in Iraq, then you can maintain that it is a moral evil because it is the initiation of the use of force. However, the taxation that is also the initiation of the use of force against you must also be a moral evil, because you are forced to fund the initiation of the use of force against others. Thus, either taxation is coercion, or you are the worst form of moral hypocrite by voluntarily supporting that which you call evil. Does that make sense?

STATIST
I can certainly see that position.

ME
Can you find any logical flaws in my position?

STATIST
No, but I still think that you are wrong.

ME
Well, I'm certainly glad that you are listening to this podcast rather than debating me directly, because, as I said at the beginning, life is far too short to waste it arguing with fools.

70. How to control a human soul

thechuff — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:55:29 CST

"The ABC's of totalitarianism - not to be used for evil!"

Summary:

Summary here.

Transcript:
(transcribed by Greg Gauthi)

Good afternoon everybody. It is Wednesday, at about 4:27 on January the 25th. I hope you’re doing well. We are going to chat about a most exciting topic today. Not that they're all not exciting, but this one in particular is juicy to the point almost of being overbearing to one’s intellectual taste buds, to mix metaphors so much that I might as well put my brain on frappé.

So, the topic that I’d like to chat about today is the question of exercising power. How do you exercise power over another human being? How do you corrupt them? How do you take his natural integrity, intelligence, and all the wonder that is the human mind, and turn it against itself and get it to eat itself and get it to be sort of a snake consuming its own tail? How do you wrap people up in neuroses, and how do you make them obedient? How to get them to subjugate themselves to your will without you even having to lift a finger, barely even an eyebrow? And the reason that I want to talk about this is that I’m very interested in starting a cult. No, actually, I think you’ve got to know the weapons of your enemies if you’re going to successfully oppose them. You need to know what they are doing so that you can unravel the damage that historically we’ve all had done to us in this rather messy culture that we live in, so that we can not only begin to reverse the effects of this kind of power structure within our own minds and hearts and souls, but also so that we can help other people unravel the mess that they have become.

I view certain damages that are done early to the mind in life as pretty irrevocable. The mind is not so plastic that you could, say, for instance, be locked in a cupboard for your first twenty years and up as a normal human being. You do experience some particular phases in your brain development which are pretty central and may or may not be reversible, and generally the earlier the experiences the less reversible they are.
Thus I am not saying that we can lickety-split fix ourselves up and be right as rain, but we can at least learn to strengthen where we are weakest. There is always adaptability within the human mind, as we know from seeing people who have terrible brain injuries who find other ways of adapting. So I think that it is well worth having a look at the methodology by which one twists the human mind so that we can to some degree allow ourselves or invite ourselves to become untwisted – which is quite a bit of work, let me tell you! But it is entirely satisfying in its conclusion.

I myself make no claims to be perfectly sane by any stretch of the imagination. I suffered, in a sense, my own intellectual “foot binding” just like everybody else, but what I have done is explored the aches and creaks of my mental joints, to the point where I think I have a pretty good idea or fairly good idea of how a straightening out could occur and what it might look like.

So, let’s start at the very beginning, which is: how do you get people, how do you get children, to detach themselves from two basic things: sensual evidence and simple facts? It really is amazing, when you think about it, how power structures work to do this, and the fantastic success that they have in this area.

So: how do you get children to ignore the evidence of their senses, the evidence of the senses transmitted through the autonomous nerve system which is absolutely outside of our control? We can choose to open our eyes or close them, but we can’t choose, if we open our eyes, not to see – I mean other than pulling a King Lear or, I guess, a Gloucester, gouging out eyes.

We don’t have any control over the actions of our autonomous nerve system in the perception and transmission of external, material reality, or in providing the evidence of external, material reality. So it would seem fairly hard to get children, who love to explore the world, and curl and uncurl their limbs, and figure out object constancy, and figure out how the world works, and so on to stop processing reality. It’s just what children love to do – that’s what a lot of logic games are all about. That’s what a lot of physical games, sports and so on, are all about – exploring the world, controlling one’s body, controlling one’s mind, focusing, and becoming disciplined in a sort of happy way towards the exercise of one’s creative and intellectual powers.

This is a perfectly natural development for children, so how on earth is it so possible and seems so easy to twist children into these obedient neurotic slaves to power, which so many of us end up becoming to one degree or another – not just slaves to power, but infected with this wild Stockholm Syndrome, wherein people end up loving the State? They love religion! They love God! They love all this stuff! It’s more than just, “Well, you know, I was raised this way, and so I guess this is what is considered normal, and what do I know?” I mean, people will go out and have banner-waving, cheering, standing ovations, mad stampede crowd lunacy for the president or for the Pope or for leaders or members of the cultural elite or the political elite or even the economic elite to some degree.

I mean, they are not just hammered down. They are hammered down, reforged, reshaped, recharged, reenergized, and reformed as people who love slavery to the point where they think slavery is freedom! I mean, we live in a 1984 universe, intellectually, and the only reason we don’t live in a 1984 universe physically is because there’s some leftover still from the Enlightenment and from capitalism is which have managed to keep us going to some degree, in a diminishing kind of way. But intellectually, we’re are just… It’s “Spanish Inquisition time” as far as people’s ability to reason goes.
So how is it possible that human beings who are so constructed to love freedom, to love the exercise of ability, to love rationality, to automatically transmit or receive the evidence of the senses, how is it that human beings are so turned against all of this as children?

Well, the first thing that you need to do in order to begin the process of destroying a child’s mind is you to set up categories, empty categories, which are moral absolutes. I know, it’s not exactly in the kindergarten book, but trust me – well don’t trust me, let me reason it out and see if you believe me. This is how it works: You, with great reverence – as the corrupting teacher, or parent, or person with authority – with great reverence, you vividly describe and are enormously passionate about things which the child cannot see.

Of course the first example of this that leaps to mind for most people is God, but that’s just one aspect of these crazy kaleidoscopes of fantasy that children’s brains are squeezed into and cut up on. So, of course, God - people all say: “Let’s have grace, let’s pray, let’s worship.” Of course, Santa Claus is just one thin edge of the wedge in all of this.

So first you speak with enormous reverence and passion about things which the child cannot see. And the child, of course, is baffled. You are playing enormously on the power that you hold over the child – I mean, you hold the power of life and death over this child, there’s simply no way to get around that. That is just the nature of biology: children will cleave to the wishes of their parents above all else, because without the parents there’s no survival, and so, biologically, those children who fought the moral absolutes or commandments of their parents just tended to die off. Parents have absolutely no problem sacrificing children to abstract moral ideals, as we see throughout the history of the world in terms of wars and religious torture and even beatings.

That child is going to inevitably cleave to the will of the parent – and so what you do, if you use are this evil, corrupting parent, is that you will – wild-eyed, or calmly, or passionately, but with some kind of reverence – talk about things that aren’t there, as if it’s perfectly natural, that you would talk about these things that don’t exist.

You basically say that there’s an invisible apple on the table – and this would be your basic approach to wrecking a child’s mind very early on in life.

The child knows apples, and he knows oranges, and he’s getting the hang of that stuff. So he’s maybe two years old, two-and-a-half years old – maybe if he’s bright eighteen months – so he’s getting the hang of material reality, and how to describe things, and categorize things, and understand them.

So what you do, to start to undermine the child’s sense of competency in the physical realm, in the realm of the senses, is you all sit down to dinner – and there is nothing on the table.

Then you, with great solemnity, reach over and pick up an “invisible apple.” You pick up this invisible apple, along with the whole family, and with great solemnity you all take a bite out of this invisible apple, and you say, “That is the best apple I have ever tasted in my life. It tastes like all the sugar and chocolate and glucose and fructose and caramel you can dream of all piled together. It’s a mouth orgasm that I just can’t even speak about!”

And everybody agrees. This is “The Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome.”

Everybody agrees, and then everybody mimes, and so on.

The child, of course, is completely bewildered – let’s say is the youngest child. The youngest child is just completely baffled – he can’t for the life of him understand what on earth is going on. Everything has kind of made sense so far. Every sort of concept or abstraction that he are building on based on the evidence of his senses kind of makes sense.

In the beginning, when you’re playing with a little baby, you roll a ball that they can see. You roll it under a blanket and they just lose interest, because they think it’s ceased to exist. At some point – a couple of months, six months, seven months, eight months – they begin to develop object constancy, where they go, “Ahah! The ball that has rolled under the blanket has not ceased to exist, it is simply under the blanket!” And then they pull the blanket off the ball and continue to play with it, if that’s what they want.

Every abstraction that the child has built up on – that letters mean things on the page that mean objects that are transmitted through the senses, and there’s a correlation between concepts and instances – all of the amazing and fantastic developments of neuron complexity and brain complexity that is going on in a child’s mind for the first couple of years – it all sort of comes to complete shuddering halt during this imaginary fruit eating dinner table conversation, because everything that he’s eaten before has substance, and tastes, and he can see it, and everybody else can see it, and now the whole family, everybody around the table is “eating” something and he can’t see it.

So then you think, as a child, “Well, maybe everyone else can see it!” So you reach out to where everybody seems to be taking the fruit from, and you can’t feel anything! Well what you gonna do? I mean, it’s a bizarre and deranged situation!

There was a play that was put on in the 1930s, I think it was – “Gaslight” – where a man was trying to drive his wife insane, so he just rearranged things within the house. He would put a picture up and they would all comment on how lovely the picture was, and then he’d take the picture down off and she would then say, “Well, where did the picture go?” And he’d say, “What picture?” And she’d say, “Well, the picture we were talking about.” And he’d say, “Well, we were never talking about a picture, what you mean?” He would be completely baffled, and he’d continue to do this over and over again and, of course, completely messing with her sense of reality.

This kind of behaviour at the dinner table is just so astoundingly corrupting and destructive of the child’s mind.

The child’s first reaction is horror and fear, because one of two things is occurring. Either he’s lost the ability to process essential sensual information – which, to living organism, is a death sentence – and a murderously horrible death sentence, because it’s going to be a slow, horrible death. You either can’t figure out what to eat, or you try to eat a pinecone or you can’t hear the lion coming, or you try to drink water and it turns out to be blood or urine, and it just becomes a horrible death sentence if you lose the ability to process essential sensual information - that’s just a terrible thing to happen! There’s almost no worse fate to an organism other than simply a quick death.

So, either the child has lost the ability to process sensual information, or the child has the ability to process essential information and his entire family is lying to him about a very essential fact.

Those are two absolutely, unbelievably terrible options for a child, a young child, to face. “Either I’ve lost the ability for my brain to work effectively with reality, and therefore I’m going to face a life of incredible struggle, danger, and death, and it’s going to be very short life at that, too. Either that has happened, or my family is lying to me in such a fundamentally destructive way that I would actually prefer it if they just beat me across the head with a stick!”

At least you feel that, it doesn’t interfere with your ability to process reality, it doesn’t make you doubt your senses, it doesn’t make you believe in things that aren’t true, it’s just like, “Ow, that hurts,” and you take cover or go for shelter or whatever, but this is much worse! This is worse than a direct assault on the body – which at least reaffirms the evidence of the senses in a brutal kind of manner. This is a direct assault on one’s capacity to trust one’s own senses and one’s own mind to perceive reality!

We can’t survive without a successful or accurate perception of reality at the material level. So it’s a death sentence that the family is passing upon this young mind that is opening to all the wonders of the physical world when they are miming and saying, “Mmmm, that tastes wonderful,” and everyone’s pretending that that they’re eating, and if they’re not eating and they’re lying, it’s unbelievably destructive! It’s the worst kind of abuse, to tell a child that his entire brain has ceased to function correctly!

So the child is placed in an absolutely impossible situation – and if you want to look at the foundation of all the corruption of power that exists within the material world, within human society – everything from a cop pulling you over when you’re going 1km an hour over the speed limit and giving you a big fine because he’s got to meet his quota, all the way to the deaths of millions in the gulags – you can trace it right back, all the way back, to this one core central moment, when the child is faced with people he has to trust, creating a situation where he either has to hate them for their direct assault upon his capacity to understand the world and to live within it – because they’re lying to him – or he has to look within himself and say that he is insane and deranged, and reality no longer makes any sense, and that as an organism he is not going to survive.

Every single aspect of human corruption, and human evil, and human madness, and human hatred, and human fear that is existential in nature, goes directly back to this fork in the road that every child faces when he are in a society, when he is in a family that pretends to believe in things that are not sensual, not rational, not provable, not logical, not true.

Even more horribly, the child also recognizes that his parents and his siblings have no problem doing this to him! How is this going to affect his capacity to love them, and to love himself, and to love the world, and to love the society he’s in if people are perfectly willing to do this to him. In fact, they want to do it to him! They’re not even being forced to it, they’re not even indifferent. It’s a staged show, because every human being that comes into society who is not insane by nature is capable of blowing this nonsensical, irrational, crazy scheme right out of the water, and thus must be inoculated against empirical reality, truth and reason, from the very beginning. Everybody recognizes the risk that is involved in this, and everybody recognizes the danger of somebody breaking through this sick ice and actually finding out the truth about the nonsense that people call truth and reality, socially. So every child goes through this horrible fork in the road where they’re told things that directly contradict the evidence of logic and their senses – which they need, which they must rely on in order to survive as an organism, which they are passionate about, and enjoy the exercise of and development of. This direct assault on one’s identity as a species, as an animal, as a rational creature…

Every child faces this fork in the road, and the destruction and corruption that is everywhere in society flows directly out of this particular fork in a way that we will talk about a little bit further as we go along.

Let’s continue with the steps to destroy a child’s mind. So – there’s this child at the dinner table, and everyone is very seriously telling this child that there is this invisible apple to eat and that they are eating it and it tastes goooood!
What is the child to do?

There is this unbelievable fork in the road, where he either has to hate those who are attacking him in such a fundamentally destructive manner, or he has to doubt his own sanity and capacity to survive as an organism, as a life, as a human being. It is this fork in the road that triggers the true destruction of what a psychologist might call the “true self,” or our honest self, or our integrity, or what I might just call our actual personality, our real personality.

Our bodies have a natural growth to them. We’re going to grow, going to get to a certain amount of height, a certain amount of the average weight. But if we’re put in these horrible contortion machines, then we’re going to end up with an unnatural body, which is all we’ve got to work with. It’s like the foot binding metaphor I’ve used before, that if you’re like these Chinese women in the 19th Century and you have your feet bound for a number of years, you end up with these horrible little curled-under stumps – and that’s what you have to work with. There’s no “original foot” for you to get back to, but there is an “original foot” that you could have had if they had not been bound.

That’s sort of how I feel about the personality structure of a human being, that we’re sort of warped by these insane experiences, but we can get back to something a lot healthier, and that’s the purpose of my conversations with the segments of the world who enjoy this conversation.

The fundamental break that occurs, is a reality break, or a break in belonging, or break in attachment, that occurs at this “dinner table from hell.” The problem that the child is facing is, the statement that sort of scrolls across our minds at these moments. (And I don’t know if you can remember yours. I can sort of remember the after effects of mine. I don’t remember the one directly, but I remember very shortly thereafter. I can mention later if it comes back to my mind.) The statement that is going to scroll across the child’s mind when he or she is at this dinner table is, “I am now doomed to live in an asylum.” And that asylum is called “the world.” That asylum is called “my family.” That asylum is called “those who are close to me.” That asylum is called “society” or “normalcy” or however you want to put it. The basic statement is that, “I am now condemned to live in an asylum.”

That terrible statement encompasses both the options that the child is really facing. The first option is that those around him or her are trying to harm the child and undermine the child’s capacity to have any kind of trust in those who claim to care about him,” and that is, as you know, a horrible thing to contemplate or face.

That is one aspect that is going to occur.

The second aspect that is that people are lovingly and actually seeing these apples, but that the child, is in no way capable of perceiving them, and is therefore fundamentally flawed, dangerous, and sort of mentally ill as a living organism, as a human being.

So the asylum that the child is now facing is that he lives in a world of insanity, and either he is sane but those around him are telling him or pretending to him that he is insane – which means that the asylum is composed of those around him – or, the asylum is actually that everyone else around him is sane, and that he’s the only member of this asylum.

However, the asylum is absolutely there – the asylum is either his own mind or everyone around him. This is the break in belonging that occurs for a child when people around him tell him that things are there and exist and are real that he can clearly and plainly see are not there, don’t exist, and are not real.

Now, of course, the question becomes: “Why does he of often believe that it is him? Why doesn’t he just believe that it’s everyone else around him who is just messing with his head, and just take that approach to the problem of being lied to?”

Well, that is a perfectly valid and logical response, and we’ll get back to that in a second, but first I would like to deal with the problem of virtue.

The problem that power has is not with other people who want power, but rather with people who are moral.

Morality is the opposite of power. Morality is the opposite of dominance. Morality is the opposite of subjugation, or exploitation, because morality is all about finding what is common and true in the world – common to all human beings and true empirically and also biologically – and therefore it’s not about subjugation, because it is creating one rule for everyone, and the only way that you can have subjugation or exploitation is if you create different rules for different people.

Thus the real threat that power structures face is not from those who would wrest that power structure away from them, because they can be beaten or even if they can’t be beaten, the vast majority of those who benefit from a power structure are not those at the top, but those in the hazy middle – you know, the money changers, the legislators in the background, the middle managers and so on.

This sort of bureaucratic parasitical power structure feasts on subjugation and is deathly afraid of morality, because if morality is applied to the situation, the whole gig is up. That’s why they focus so much on owning morality in these power structures.
So who they really have to worry about are those concerned with goodness, who are concerned with morality and righteousness, with brightness and logical consistency.

So – how does this invisible apple eating madness contest, how does it deal with the problem of somebody saying, “You know, you guys are just immoral! You’re trying to harm me, you’re trying to exercise power or control over me!”?

(I mean, obviously that would be highly unusual for a child to say – in fact, I think it would be fairly unprecedented for child to say that, but you never know, they might, as they get into their teenage years or so on…)

So those who are keen on destructive and exploitive power structures, those people are deathly afraid of the moral man, the moral woman, the person who logically points out the inconsistencies in what they’re doing, and the hypocrisy, and the immorality. So what they have to do, the gradient that they have to mix in, is that only bad people can’t see the apple.

Seeing the apple is thus always portrayed as synonymous with virtue.

Thus – if you say to this child, “Mmmm, mmm, mmm! That invisible apple tastes fantastic!” well you’re not going to get a lot of allegiance from the child because the invisible apple doesn’t exist, so it’s not going taste good to them. So why on earth would they involve themselves in this charade?

Well, of course, what you do is say: “Only a only a good little boy or a good little girl can see this apple!”

Again, we’re back to “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” which is fantastic – one of the most amazing stories in all of literature, in my view, and entirely unappreciated by those who study politics, because it is politics. I mean, it’s exactly what politics is – and religion, for that matter, and nationalism, and racism, and sexism, and all of the “isms” that so corrupt our natural and common humanity and interconnectedness.

So you say that only a good little boy can see the apple – and the more good you are, the better the apple tastes!

This, of course, is the false dichotomy that is used to trap those children who have a natural inclination towards logical consistency or morality, which is the people that they are most concerned about or afraid of. So the elders say, “Only good little boys can see the apple!”

So, of course, you’re faced with another choice, but now you have a moral element.

You’re not faced with either “I’m insane or they’re insane – either I’m unable to survive or they are trying to kill my mental development.” Now you have an additional element layered into the sickness – or in this case the inculcation of an illness in another – it sort of follows the same pattern as a viral invasion in your body would.

Now you have an additional layer, which is: this lie only enslaves you if you want to be good.

What if you don’t care about being good? We’ll get to that in a second – but if you do care about being good, if you have that sort of empathetic sensitivity and moral nature, it’s sort of innate within you (and I’m not saying this is by any means the majority of people, but it certainly does exist), then you’re going to be very interested in being a good person.

This moral lie also raises the stakes of questioning those who are “totally sure” that there is an apple there and maybe you just can’t see it. You could at least stay at the level of sensual error, an error in the senses or in interpretation of the senses, so maybe they really can see the apple, but if I tell them that they’re wrong, I’m telling them that their sense apparatus is faulty, or their conclusions are faulty, or maybe they’ve been struck with some sort of ailment that they are not aware of that is affecting their vision or their ability to process physical or visual stimuli.

The child obviously isn’t going to say it in that sort of manner, but that’s still a thought that can occur in the mind of a child, how can something “exist” that patently does not exist? They can still trust their senses, and then they can say, “You people who are telling me that this thing exists, you’re obviously not doing very well in terms of your ability to process things, because it quite obviously doesn’t.”

The wonderfully invasive and horrible thing that happens when you begin to say, “Only good boys can see the invisible apple,” is you now raise the stakes for that boy to contradict you. If you’re the evil, corrupting parent, you’ve now raised the stakes for the boy to contradict you, because now you’ve said that only immoral people cannot see the apple.

Thus if you’re the child, you’re then faced with this choice: you then either say, “I’m an immoral boy and I can’t see the apple,” which is sort of surrendering the premise and giving up something even more important, in a sense, than sensual competence (or the ability to process information correctly), which is your moral nature, your goodness.

I would rather be blind than evil, so let’s just say that it would be pretty catastrophic for anybody interested in or with a natural bend towards morality, empathy, and an ethical approach to things to label themselves as evil because they can’t see the apple.

So then, if you don’t want to label yourself as evil – and you can’t approach the parent who is telling you that the apple exists from the standpoint of error, because the parent has said, “Only evil boys can’t see the apple, evil people cannot see the apple. Good people can see the apple” – you are truly stuck.

If you say, “Dad,” or “Mom – I don’t think that you can see the apple because there is no apple there!” – you’re automatically calling them evil, and you’re not going to have a whole lot of luck when you are a child calling your parents evil.

That’s why they layer in this moral dimension. They raise the stakes to the point where if you say you can’t see the apple, then you are evil, but if you say that the apple doesn’t exist and “you guys are trying to screw with my head,” then because the parents have layered in the moral dimension, they cannot withdraw from the position. They have now used the argument from morality – and once you take the argument from morality out of its scabbard, it’s a sword that you just can’t sheath again. It’s out there, and it’s just a fact. You simply cannot withdraw from that; you lose all parental authority.

So that is a pretty important aspect to what happens in this particular realm. You can’t call those who are telling you all this corrupting, immoral nonsense evil, because they simply won’t accept it. And of course, even as a child, the horror of what is occurring at this moment is so hard to understand. It is just so hard to understand and to process this kind of unbelievable destruction of your identity and complete rejection and repudiation of your mental development and crippling blow to your self esteem. I mean, this is the root of neuroses and religious fanaticism and people who grow up to become dictatorial or bullying or overly subservient, this is where the root of all of this starts from.

So if they can get the person who is moral, who’s interested in morality, or the child who is sort of good by nature, wants to please, wants to be a good person, then, by getting the person to believe that if they can’t see the invisible apple they’re bad, well then you torture them and you set them up with this lifelong quest to see an invisible apple which they just frickin’ well can’t do! You’ve put them into this mode of a dog chasing its own tail for the rest of its life and that person is then going to pose absolutely zero threat to the power structures that exist in the world, because he’s going to be so consumed with his own inability to see this invisible apple that he’s not going to raise any sort of basic or sensible questions to those in power.

So that’s how you defuse the moral kid.

There’s another kind of kid who doesn’t necessarily – let’s just theoretically call that person “the older brother” – that person does not have the same amount of natural empathy, probably because that person is now complicit in the destruction of their younger siblings’ minds, and so they have a lot more aggression and a lot more natural dominance built into their personalities. (Whether that’s innate, or based on the fact that they’re an older sibling, I don’t know, but it does seem to follow that pattern; I mean, the birth order is pretty important. Of course there are exceptions, but that’s fine, I can live with exceptions. As long as there’s a general trend that can be identified, that’s good enough for me.)

So this naturally aggressive person becomes, in this moment, when this occurs to him or when he’s inflicting it on someone else, this person becomes cynical.

And that’s perfectly fine for those in power.

If you’re chasing your own tail and wondering why you can’t be a better person and see this magical, invisible apple that everyone else can see, you’re no threat. You’re going to work, you’re going to pay your taxes, you’re obedient, and you’re always like, “Oh, what else can I do to become a better person? I really wanna be a better person!” Blah blah blah.” You’re just running around chasing your own tail, you’re no threat to anybody in power because you’re just sort of a complying weenie.

If, however, you are a more aggressive person, then you’re going to look right through that invisible apple and say, “Everyone’s a jerk, there’s no such thing as goodness, everything’s just about power and control.”

But you can’t use the argument from morality, because you’ve given up your values, you’ve given up the idea that there’s such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil, and you’re just saying, “Yeah, well, this is what they tell you just to control you.”

(I wanted to mention this point earlier but it escaped my mind, one of the ways that you would test the theory of the fact that a lie that is told to children that is not moral in nature can be withdrawn, but a lie that is told to children that is moral in nature or is presented as moral in nature, that it cannot be withdrawn, you would obviously contrast something like Christianity – which is a lie told to children that is moral in nature, or thought to be moral in nature, or fantasized to be moral in nature – versus the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and so on – which are lies told to children that are not moral in nature – whether parents end up withdrawing this and sort of “Hah hah,” but you don’t get this with religion, because religion is presented as moral in nature, therefore it can no longer be withdrawn from the discussion, because then you’ve portrayed yourself as an unbelievable, destructive hypocrite, which parents generally aren’t that keen on doing, because they want to continue to pillage their children’s time and attention for the remainder of their natural born lives.)

So if you do have this more aggressive style of personality, then when you’re faced with this terrible choice at the dining table, which is to believe that you are insane or other people are bad or trying to control you, then what you do is: you say, “Well I don’t care about the moral argument, that just as nonsense, because I don’t believe in morality, I don’t believe in right or wrong, everyone’s just trying to mess with me!”

So then you become sort of pugilistic and aggressive, and you’re mad, and you’re angry, and you’re cynical, and you’re nihilistic.

Again, you’re absolutely zero threat to those in power. I mean, you can rail if you want, you can fight the cops, you can get mad at them, you can yell epithets at them and so on, you can throw rocks at the police cars – zero threat to those in power. I mean, just absolutely no threat. You might as well just be spitting in the wind and hoping to bring down a cloud with your thoughts.

This is sort of the duality that occurs, and this is somewhat dependant, perhaps, on what occurs, perhaps on birth order, on personality type, the way that in which it’s applied.

You could just have jerky parents who are overbearing… “orifices,” let’s say, to keep my iTunes rating… Those parents are sort of going to yell at you and bully at you and drag you around, and that may produce somebody who’s more aggressive.

And then you have the other type of parent, generally it’s more associated with the feminine, who’s sort of soft and gentle and just sort of disappointed if you don’t see the apple and wants you so desperately to be a good person and guilts and manipulates you and so on – and that is the type of person who’s going to be more of the compliant woman or man through that kind of emotional problem…

Once you have created this invisible category of virtue that is not associated with any logic, is not associated with anything material or anything verifiable, or anything rational, or available through the senses, once you’ve created this incredible imaginary category of virtue, and you have forced your child to have to kowtow to that concept – well, you’re set! I mean, you’re absolutely set!

This child, who grows into an adult, is going to be completely compliant for the rest of his or her natural life. You have won the battle. You have completely realigned their reality processing to not have any concern with things like facts, except as sort of a lesser kind of way, like “I’ve got a drive and put my signal on, and I’ve gotta get groceries and I’ve got to eat when I get hungry and wash when I’m dirty.” I mean they’ll deal with it at that sort of basic level, but when it comes to anything to do with the virtue, they have no interest in fact. In fact (haha), facts are a direct threat to them, because they have now had to swallow this whole lie and base their whole attachments on their family and their basis of their identity and, if they’re moral in nature, the root of their morals on a falsehood!

So any time you start bringing up facts, these people are going to get angry, or petty, or pouty, or withdrawn – they’re going to use some negative emotion to try and coat and repel anyone who gets close to talking about the truth with these people.

This is what Noam Chomsky calls the “narrative.” (I mean, he’s a crazy lefty, but he’s got some good points!)

The “narrative” is the story that people are told about the moral history or the nature of their country, good versus bad, us versus them. The British are great, the Germans are evil, we have nothing in common except right after the war, then we’re going to give money to the Germans . . . . I mean people just make this stuff up all the time – 90% of the e-mails I get is people just making up stuff and thinking that it’s got something to do with reality.

But when you start bringing facts to bear on these people, they start getting hostile in one form or another, either passive-aggressive or otherwise aggressive – and that’s because once they had to swallow this madness of the invisible apple, what relationship to facts could their ethical reasoning ever have in the future?

It simply can’t exist.

Once you believe that something that is invisible is the center of morality, and the center of truth and right and all that is good in the world, what possible reference could you have to facts about ethics in the future? Or about anything, for that matter? About the existence of things? You’re going to be drawn toward emotionally compelling stories, you’re going to be drawn toward emotional bullying, and you’re going to be drawn towards just making other people feel guilty for not believing you, or being aggressive and basically saying, “Well if you believe this or that you’re a bad person.” But you’re not going have any reference to a single fact, or a single statistic, other than those that are made up by people with a like-minded view.

But you’re not going to have any reference to any facts. You’re going to have instantaneous answers that you make up on the spot based on prior prejudices. How could it be otherwise? You’ve already accepted as the core of your reality processing that invisible things exist and have supreme value and ultimate moral authority. How on earth are you going to process anything from even a remotely reality-based or empirically-based or fact-based standpoint ever again? Well, you can’t!

And that’s fantastic for the people in power, because if you can’t track anything to do with material reality, if you can’t track anything to do with facts, if you can’t apply logic and empiricism to something like morality, you’re completely helpless. You are a lamb in a slaughterhouse when it comes to being abused by power, by those in power, by those willing to use violence to achieve their ends.

You’re absolutely without defenses in this realm. You can groan, and you can grumble you can roll your eyes, and you can write in your blog that you’re mad at things and so on. But it really doesn’t matter: you’re fundamentally, absolutely, and completely helpless, because how are you going to question the morality of those in power with reference to logic and facts and our common humanity, when at the very beginning of things, you swallowed this invisible apple and called it tasty? Your reality processing and your logical processing and your central processing is completely wrecked. You might as well drive a car off a cliff and then try and win a race with it. It’s just wrecked, it’s smoking, it’s wheels have fallen off! I mean, it can be repaired, of course, but it takes a lot of work, and the first thing you have to do is recognize that it’s broken.

You’ve got to recognize that your mind is kind of broken, your mind is kind of damaged. What they call “the norm” is an asylum, what they call the norm is mentally ill. What they call the norm is people who believe in things like a government. Government doesn’t exist! There is no such thing as the State! There’s people with guns, and there’s people who obey them. That’s it. There’s no such thing as the State, no such thing as countries, no such thing as gods, or demons. It’s all just such a complete nonsense. Even gender exists in reality. You have biological differences that you can categorize. But nations don’t exist in reality. Culture doesn’t exist in reality.

Culture is just – and I’ll do another podcast on this – culture is just the scar tissue of the child abuse of the invisible apple. I mean, why do Americans believe different things than French children? Why does everyone love their own country and love their own culture? Because of child abuse! Because that’s what they’re told, they’re told all these false things!

My wife is told, “Oh, the Greeks are the best, we gave the world this and that and the other,” and the Italian kids, “Oh, Italians are best,” the British: “Oh, the British are the best.” It’s all just nonsense. You’re filling your children up with complete idiocy and falsehoods and telling them that it’s all “morality” and self esteem based. It’s complete child abuse. All culture that is not based on this simple observable facts of reality is just scar tissue that grows over being lied to as children. But we can deal with that another time.

I think it’s very important to understand the number of things that you’re told as a child that don’t have any kind of reality, that you are told to be loyal to, that you are told to believe in, that you are told to infuse with some sort of moral energy – they’re all complete falsehoods. And the wonderful thing about it is that concepts have no voice. This is the sort of nail in the coffin as far as obeying things like this state and politicians and priests and the military. If “the country” is virtue – my country right or wrong – if the country is virtue, if the country doesn’t exist, then the country obviously can’t tell you what to do. If God is goodness, but God doesn’t exist, then God cannot tell you what to do. So who gets to tell you what to do? Well, the person who claims to represent this fantasy abstract. So it’s how one human being bypasses another human being’s legitimate anger of being bullied and told what to do.

The priest doesn’t say, “Give me your money because my name is Bob and I want your money.” The priest says, “Give God your money, because God wants you to give him your money, because God says ‘help the poor.’” It’s not, “Obey me,” its, “Obey this abstract entity that I made up – because only I know what it wants!”

I mean it is ridiculous! It is absolutely insane! These things don’t exist – and because they don’t exist, they can’t voice anything, and so the people who make them up and get you to believe in them say that you have to obey: “Oh not me. It’s not me. It’s for the good of the country. The country. Your country needs you!” No! Roosevelt needs you! People who profit from the war need you to go and get killed. Your country does not need you because countries don’t exist! God is not telling you to do anything, the priest is telling you to do things! Crazy lunatic monks 5,000 years dead are telling you to do things! There’s no such thing as God, or country, or state. They can’t tell you to do anything because they don’t exist! It’s like trying to get paid with the idea of money – it doesn’t exist! It’s a mere conceptual tag that is imperfectly derived from physical instances – and in the case of country, it’s not even derived from anything. It’s a line in a map in somebody’s head. Your country doesn’t need you – countries don’t have needs because countries don’t exist!

And that’s how they bypass your natural resentment at being told what to do, and it’s time that we got that natural resentment back. Your country doesn’t “need” you – George Bush needs you to go shoot people, or he wants you to. If you reframe that a little bit more accurately in your head, you’ll just see why I say it’s so insane.

George Bush says “I want you to go shoot that guy,” you’re gonna be like, “Well who the hell are you?” But you drape him in all this pomp and circumstance and he is the President of the United States. Well “President” doesn’t exist, it’s just a weird little conceptual label for a political fantasy. The “United States” doesn’t exist, “Iraq” doesn’t exist. There’s desert and there’s people, there’s no such thing as Iraq, no such thing as the United States, they simply don’t exist. A tree exists; the concept of tree, or the abstract notion of a forest, does not exist. A tree exists, a forest does not exist. A forest is an aggregate, it’s a collection, it does not exist.

But if they can get you to believe that these things do exist, then they can say, “Your country needs you to do this, God needs you to do that, your father needs you to do the other!” Tell you what: “father” does not exist. There’s a guy who had sex with your mother whose name is Bob who’s telling you what to do. “Your father, your mother.” I mean, in order to speak sensibly about Christina’s family, we had to start referring to them by their Christian names. You can’t refer to these things in any kind of abstract way that makes sense. “Father” is a category, it doesn’t exist. It’s like “forest.” It applies to more than one person, therefore it doesn’t exist.

“You listen to your father.” “You listen to Bob.” Which one sounds more compelling? If you obey a category, you feel like you’re obeying something larger than the person who inhabits it. “I’m obeying a priest, I’m not obeying Ralph.” Because if you say that you’re obeying Ralph, you kind of feel like a slave, right? But if you say, “I’m obeying the will of God,” you feel a smug kind of virtue creeping over you and fogging up your head. And that’s exactly what the point of all of these abstract moral abstractions are. They’re designed to bypass your natural animal resentment at being ordered around by idiots. And as soon as you stop believing in this nonsense, then you get some healthy anger, which allows you to push back at these people who just make up all this stuff to cripple your minds and to cripple your animal instincts, to cripple your natural self esteem and feel a healthy push back at people who tell you what to do.

And that’s why I dislike these categories so much, because they are the root of abuse. They are the root of exploitation. They are the root of the destruction of the human mind and the human personality and human morality. Humanity’s capacity for morality is completely destroyed if you come up with these all-powerful, overarching moral constructs that have no existence and therefore have to be “interpreted” by individuals who are only doing it to exploit you. I hate these things! They are the cancer of the human soul. As Solzhenitsyn wrote in “The Gulag Archipelago,” secrecy is our cancer. And in this case, dishonesty is our cancer.

There is no invisible apple. Your family was brutalizing you. There is no state, there is no God, there is no country. There is no such thing as a municipality or a city. There are things, there are buildings, there are people, there are guns, there are trees. There are no concepts that exist anywhere in the world. They exist in our minds as useful ways to organize physical objects and that’s it. They mean nothing. They have no existence whatsoever. And to obey a concept is as ridiculous as trying to eat the idea of food. It is as ridiculous as trying to chop down a forest without touching any single tree. It is completely insane! And this insanity is a sickness that human beings have to outgrow, we have to fight our way out of this fog that is placed here to exploit us.

We do this in compassion for ourselves and compassion for those who are our fellow exploitees, but perhaps it’s possible also to find just a shred of compassion for those who claim to be our masters and are as absolutely enslaved in this sick fantasy, as enslaved as everybody else. George Bush is not a free man. Vladimir Putin is not a free man. They’re slaves! They’re slaves to this illusion that we all feed into and try and live on. I mean, it’s not about fighting the rulers; it’s about fighting the falsehoods. It’s not about bringing down the government; it’s about exposing the facts. It’s not about overturning authority; it’s about affirming the truth.

And if we can do that, if we can affirm the truth, if we can simply state the facts that have been so long obscured to us in our own hearts because of the corruption that we all faced as children, the lies that we were all force fed as children, the terrible and horrible choices that we all faced as children, if we had the strength to face up to that, and to speak the truth, and to stay in the conversation about what is real, and what is true, and what exists in reality, rather than what exists as sick exploitive fantasies in other people’s minds, then by god we cancan wake humanity up from this nightmarish ten-thousand-year slumber of the damned! We can end war, we can end poverty, we can end hunger, we can end violence, we can end murder and theft and rape! Because all of these sicknesses can be traced back to that awful crossroads early in life, when we are forced to choose loyalty to lies and corruption over the truth. And if we can reach back to that part of us that could never believe in such sickness, that could never believe that the world is an asylum peopled by those who have power over us – who are insane.

If we can reach back to that part of us that never believed, reach into that part of us which never believed those lies, then we’re really can free the world! By god we remake the world. We really can bring a new light to humanity – ha, new light? – it’s the first light! The Enlightenment came close, but they all backed away, because they couldn’t get rid of the State, and they couldn’t get rid of God. They all became Deists and allowed it to trundle along, and so the cancer grew back.

We can make a new world that will be as unrecognizable to us now as we are to people in the Fifteenth Century. We made that leap in the past because we started to recognize things like property rights, and the common humanity of all, and we began to question authority, and remove the State, and remove the intertwining of state and religion, and there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t continue to do it, but we have to continue to tell the truth at all times. So thank you so much for listening, I hope this has been helpful. It’s been quite exciting for me, and I will talk to you soon!