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Stefan Molyneux

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00:00Good morning everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. Fine, fine, fine, truly fine question from a noble listener at freedomain.locals.com. I hope you will check out the community. It is really great.

00:12freedomain.locals.com. You can also go to subscribestar.com slash freedomain and sign up there as well.

00:21So, the question is, why don't I want to share peaceful parenting with my friends and family?

00:27Why, oh why, oh why, do I not want to share peaceful parenting with my friends and family?

00:32And that is a very good, fine, and deep question, and I appreciate it being asked, and the answer is, as usual, fairly terrifying.

00:42Because the question is not just, why don't I want to share peaceful parenting with friends and family?

00:50The question is, most philosophers have been opposed to the initiation of the use of force since the dawn of philosophy.

00:58Why has it taken three to five thousand years for a philosophy to examine the use of force in the parent-child relationship?

01:09I mean, people, this is the beef, a minor beef I had with libertarians many years ago.

01:15If you guys are very much into the non-aggression principle, then if you want to oppose the violations of the non-aggression principle, you should look for two things.

01:24You should look for, number one, the most prevalent violation of the non-aggression principle, and number two, that you can do the most about.

01:32So, the most common violation of the non-aggression principle that you can do the most about is what you should be focusing on.

01:42Now, that's spanking, that's child abuse, and so on, right?

01:46It's not illegal to not spank your child, and it is the most prevalent violation of the non-aggression principle around.

01:55Why don't we work on that?

01:56But, and listen, I understand, I sympathize, it's tough to give up the addiction to politics.

02:02It's tough to give up the addiction to politics.

02:04Working on politics, 99 times out of 100, gives you the illusion of progress while actually protecting the child abusers, because you're not talking about what they're doing.

02:17So, I sympathize, I understand.

02:19The big question is, why?

02:20Why did it take the concept of peaceful parenting to merge philosophy and the relationship with the most moral choice?

02:32The parent-child relationship is the most moral relationship in that it involves the most morality, and it is the most voluntary relationship.

02:44Even in the ancient world, you were not thrown in jail for not beating your child.

02:50And parents spend a lot of time morally lecturing their children.

02:54It really is the essence of parenting, is to transfer a sense of virtue and integrity and morality to your children.

03:02So, all philosophy is centered around moral philosophy, at least the core of philosophy is centered around moral philosophy, because science has a philosophy to it.

03:13But philosophy existed long before the philosophy of science, and the one thing that philosophy does, that no other discipline does do, is focus on ethics and virtue.

03:26So, the core of philosophy is morality, and the most moral relationship, in other words, the relationship centered the most on morality, is parenthood.

03:37And it also has the most choice. Parents can choose to parent in any number of different ways.

03:43So, it really is quite a remarkable thing that a discipline centered on morality and choice has, for its entire history, avoided the most moral relationship wherein there is the most choice.

04:01And I don't mean choice on the part of the children, but on the part of the parents.

04:04Parents don't choose where they're born, they don't choose the families they're born into, they don't choose their language, they don't choose their culture, they don't choose any of that, they don't choose their height, they don't choose their physical appearance and its sort of bone structure.

04:18But what parents do is transmit morality and have an infinity of choices in how they parent.

04:28So, again, just to reiterate just how remarkable and incredible and shocking and stunning this is, that a discipline focused on choice and morality, since the two sides of the same coin,

04:41a discipline focused on choice and morality has talked about everything under the sun and moon except for the most moral relationship in which there is the most choice.

04:54Which is, I can't tell you, it's standing on the cliff edge of peaceful parenting looking down into the fiery furnace, Aztec-based, child-consuming, rip the hearts out of their chest and scatter them on the four winds of politics, it's looking down into hell.

05:16Looking from peaceful parenting into the history of philosophy is looking into hell because philosophers have talked about, oh, a whole bunch of things that are deep and meaningful and powerful and incredible and wonderful and are we really in the brain of a demon, is there such a thing as a reality, can you get an ought from an is, what is the nature of the divine,

05:40where can we access this higher reality wherein is ensconced all the deep and wonderful things in the universe, is a life of perpetually scratching, a perpetual itch, the very best possible life, what is the nature of love, are we in fact two souls separated at birth that we just merge together, oh my god.

06:03Where exactly do human rights come from and what is the nature of political power and what is our relationship to the collective and is there a world spirit that animates particular nations to rule others and what is the justification for a just war.

06:24Honestly, I could do that for an hour or two, all of the stuff that philosophers have talked about, philosophers are very concerned with two things, morality and choice.

06:35Oh, and the determinism thing, that's not philosophy, that's just defensive of bad conscience.

06:41But philosophers are very, very, very concerned with morality and choice and childhood is not a foreign country, well you see I couldn't have studied morality and choice in the family because that stuff was all written in ancient Aramaic and I know speaky ancient Aramaic.

06:59Sorry, it's so horrible that a wry laugh is occasionally to me the response.

07:08See, childhood is not a foreign country that you need to visit and learn its ways for 20 years in order to speak of its contents.

07:18Childhood is not an ancient language that you have to piece together with scraps of the Rosetta Stone.

07:24Childhood is something we all experience and have lived through for 20 years.

07:33I mean, you can say a quarter century if you want to count final brain maturity, but let's just say 20 years.

07:39So, you put these three things together, philosophers are about morality, choice and everyone has experienced childhood automatically for 20 years and then of course you become a parent and you parent your children and so on.

07:56So, something which every philosopher, everyone, experiences for 20 years, the philosophers focus on morality and choice and they completely ignore something which they experienced for 20 years.

08:10They completely ignore the relationship wherein morality is inculcated and wherein there is the most choice.

08:16The most moral conversations in the world, all throughout history, the most moral conversations occur between parents and children.

08:24Because parents are consistently saying, you did wrong, you did bad, you're naughty, you need to be punished, you disobeyed, you're sinful, you're full of sin, you're sinning and all morality.

08:37You're selfish, you don't listen, you deserve, I deserve this, you should treat me with respect and it's a constant cavalcade of endless moral invective.

08:49I mean, schools do it too, but parents do it even in the absence of formal schooling, parents do it, right?

08:57It's a constant stream of morality and parents have an infinity of choice on how to raise their children.

09:04So, of course, if you are concerned about morality and choice, then you should focus on the parent-child relationship.

09:13As I did from, I think, what was it, show two, I started talking about the morality of childhood or at least after I read my essays.

09:23It's wild, philosophers all have childhoods, all experienced 20 years of childhood and are very focused on morality and choice

09:37and they steadfastly and relentlessly and permanently until this conversation, permanently avoided.

09:47The most moral relationship with the most choice while promoting morality and choice and they cannot claim a lack of experience since we all experienced it for 20 plus years.

10:02And thus, it would seem to me that almost all the history of philosophy is centered around enabling child abusers and avoiding child abuse.

10:16And of course, there could have been countless philosophers in the past who wrote about these things and all their work was burned and they were exiled or killed.

10:26I mean, so, obviously, I'm not saying I'm the first, but it's certainly the first in what is on the record.

10:37And again, I'm not saying that no philosopher has ever talked about childhood, but in terms of a philosopher who's centered on the morality of childhood.

10:43I mean, I know Locke talked about childhood a little bit here and there and Rousseau, of course, talked about it quite a bit, but he was a rampant, he was a child murderer, basically.

10:52So, he tossed his kids into a almost fatal, almost certain to be fatal state orphanage, FIFA for kids, if I remember rightly.

10:59So, yeah, I mean, it's not a very credible thing and so on.

11:02And I'm also aware that the intranet has made this sort of thing possible.

11:10I'm also, I mean, it would be interesting to know, because a lot of philosophers left thousands of pages or tens of thousands of pages of writing.

11:18It would be interesting if any of them had done any treatises on childhood that remain in the archives, had never been published for fear of blowback or, you know, whatever happens when you start to promote the rights of children and thus puncture the power of the rulers.

11:32Promoting the rights of children is puncturing the power of the rulers.

11:35My novel, Just Poor, was based upon a fear I had that my thoughts would vanish.

11:46And, you know, it's funny when you try to advance an argument that is inescapable and unacceptable, that's when you really get hammered, right?

11:59When you advance an argument that is both inescapable and unacceptable.

12:04Accurate and anathema.

12:06Then people really get angry.

12:09And, of course, my novel called Just Poor is about a brilliant person who can't find any scope for her intelligence in society because society is so arrayed against the accuracies and perceptions that she has.

12:25And much like my novel Revolutions, it was my fight against hatred of the hypocrisy in society.

12:31You know, society claims, oh, we care about children, oh, we care about virtue, oh, we don't like to use violence.

12:36And then the moment you point out what happens in families, everybody's like, they close ranks and they exclude you.

12:42So, why don't you want to talk about peaceful parenting to friends and family?

12:49It's part of a larger question.

12:50That's why I have philosophers as a whole, moral philosophers focusing on ethics and choice, not talked about the most ethical and choice-based relationship that they experienced for 20 years.

13:02Why? Why?

13:04Well, it's a grim answer, but a necessary one.

13:09So, the grim answer is that there's a foundational question in why do people like us?

13:17Why do people like us?

13:18Why do people like you?

13:20Why do people like me?

13:22Now, do they like us because we are useful or funny or we comply, we appease, we nod and we agree?

13:35Is it because we have money?

13:37Is it because we have good looks?

13:39Is it because we have status?

13:41Is it because we have something to offer them?

13:42Is it because our presence reinforces their own bigotries, errors, prejudices and immoralities?

13:49Why do people like you?

13:53Why are you liked? Isn't this really a foundational question?

13:56Why do people like you?

13:58And there's a tension.

14:00There's a great tension.

14:02And if, of course, you remember that almost all of human society, almost all of human history was all based on violence,

14:10then individualism is suicide because you need a group, you need a collective in order to survive, right?

14:16So, individualism is suicide and therefore conformity with the collective based upon the violence that other collectives are able to summon through.

14:26If you've got someone who can use collectivism to raise an army of 10,000 men over the hills with the swords of 1,000 men,

14:35then they're going to carve up the individuals like turkeys.

14:42So, individualism throughout most of human history was kind of suicidal.

14:47I mean, that's the arguments of Socrates, you know, think for yourself and then look what happens, right?

14:52Think for yourself, let us cast aside our illusions is a form of suicide.

14:59It just means you get taken over. Individualism throughout most of human history was just suicide.

15:05And therefore, the powers that be or the culture works to oppose individualism very strongly so that they would not be taken over by collectivist societies, right?

15:18Individualism is a fatal weakness in a sea of armed collectivism.

15:25One guy can't fight against a hundred guys.

15:28So, how are we liked? What are we liked for? What do people like about us?

15:34Well, in the past, it was you serve the tribe, you serve the group.

15:39You are, you know, isn't there a bee that his basic job is to guard the door?

15:43That's his job. He just guards the door.

15:47Or you've got the worker bees and you've got the honey bees like the honey making bees and so on.

15:52And everyone has their role and there's no individualism there, right?

15:57So, why are you liked?

16:00Well, in most relationships, I would say virtually all relationships, most people are liked for utility.

16:08You're liked because you're useful.

16:09You're liked because liking you is a reward given for obedience and subjugation of your identity for the sake of the blank interchangeable requirements of the collective that you are liked because you serve.

16:29If your parents mistreated you, and I've heard this in countless call-in shows,

16:34if your parents mistreated you, then they like having you around because having you around allows them to credibly pretend to themselves that they treated you well and were great parents.

16:48So, you are liked, you are invited over on the condition that you don't talk about what you actually experienced and what actually happened.

16:58So, you are liked because you serve the vanity and the vanity requires the suppression of the conscience and the suppression of the conscience is achieved by inviting you over and pretending that everything is great.

17:13If you're a guy and there's some girl who's just pretty and you date her because she's pretty, then you like her because she's pretty.

17:21Maybe she's a status symbol, maybe she makes you look good and so on.

17:25And I remember I once dated a girl who was so pretty that everyone referred to me as the bodyguard.

17:34You know, you walk into a bar, you walk into a restaurant, you walk into a mall, you walk into a movie theater or something, and everyone's going to assume that you're the bodyguard.

17:43And I thought that was actually very funny.

17:45So, why?

17:48Why do people like you?

17:49Why do they want to spend time with you?

17:50Well, maybe it's because you're all addicts, right?

17:53You're all drinkers or you smoke pot or maybe you're all avoiding life and you need other people to avoid life with you so it doesn't feel so lonely and sad to avoid life, to sort of hide out.

18:07As Arlo talks about this in the present, I'm just hiding out at the feet of the dinosaurs.

18:12I'm just running for cover.

18:14So, maybe you're part of a collective whirlpool or were.

18:17I think we've all been there.

18:18In my early teens, I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons for a couple of years and I was hanging out with people who were avoiding girls.

18:28And sadly, I think a good half of them ended up avoiding girls permanently.

18:33I sort of broke out of that orbit and started talking to girls and dating and all of that and encouraged them to do that as well.

18:41But they just preferred to stay in the fantasy world.

18:44And it's very sad.

18:46It's very sad.

18:48Why do people like you?

18:50Now, if you come to people with something like peaceful parenting, you'll find out if they like you or not.

18:58When people say, I like you, they're saying me as an individual have evaluated you and found you positive.

19:04I like you.

19:06I love you, right?

19:08So, if you come to them with something that is unpleasant for them in the moment, but they love you, then that will not break the relationship.

19:21In fact, it will strengthen the relationship.

19:23So, if your wife comes to you and says, you know, I think you gained a little bit of weight, let's weigh you and check and so on.

19:31Maybe we need to fix your diet or our diet or something like that.

19:34Well, I mean, is that pleasant to hear in the moment?

19:35No.

19:37No.

19:39But it means that she cares.

19:41It means that she wants to be healthy.

19:43She wants to spend more time with you.

19:45It means all kinds of many wonderful good things.

19:48Although it's unpleasant in the moment, it strengthens your relationship.

19:53Because if she just let you get fat and didn't say anything, well, that would not be good, right?

19:59That would show that she didn't really care if you were healthy or not.

20:02Didn't care if you had energy or not.

20:03Didn't care if you could get it up or not.

20:06Didn't care about any of these things.

20:08Just kind of let you get fat.

20:10That would be cold and weird and uncaring, right?

20:14You know, you go to your dentist and she says, oh, your gums are a little bleedy.

20:18You need to floss better or whatever they would say.

20:20It's unpleasant to hear in the moment, but it makes you happier in the long run.

20:25And if you follow your dentist's advice and your oral health improves,

20:31then you like your dentist more and you're more loyal, right?

20:35You're more loyal to that dentist.

20:37So, if you come to people who claim to love you

20:42with something that you genuinely think and believe and accept

20:46and talk to them about it and they then turn on you,

20:50it means they never loved you.

20:51Because love is not something you carve people up into.

20:56Well, I like this part. I really hate this part.

20:58This part is good. This part is bad.

21:00That's trying to make them schizophrenic almost in a way, in my view, right?

21:04Because you're trying to splinter their personality

21:07and condition them into suppressing parts of themselves

21:11and exaggerating other parts of themselves.

21:14And this is good. This is bad.

21:17I like this part. I hate this part.

21:18That's not good, right? That's not good.

21:23When I say, I love you, it's got to be the whole of you, right?

21:27I mean, there's no part of my wife I do not love.

21:30So, if you go to people around you,

21:35and it doesn't have to be peaceful parenting.

21:37It could be any number of things.

21:39You go to the people around you and you say,

21:41I value X. I believe in X. X is important.

21:44And they turn on you and they attack you or ostracize you

21:46or roll their eyes or turn away or signal

21:51that they don't want to talk about it

21:53and they never bring it up again.

21:55Then they're saying that they don't love you.

21:57Because love is the whole person.

22:01Love is the whole person. It's the whole thing.

22:03It's the whole being.

22:05Because you say, I love you.

22:07It's a very simple statement.

22:09I love you. You.

22:12Not, well, I love it when you conform to me.

22:14Oh, I love it when you look pretty.

22:16Oh, I love it when you make me laugh.

22:18Oh, I love it when you spend money on me.

22:21That's not what you say. People don't say that.

22:24If they did say that, maybe be more honest.

22:26I love it when you comply with me.

22:28I feel uneasy about how I raised you,

22:30so I love it when you come over and we pretend everything's fine

22:32because it makes me feel better and keeps my conscience at bay.

22:35People say, I love you.

22:37It's a simple statement, which means the entirety of me

22:39loves the entirety of you.

22:41And when people say, I love you,

22:42we get this warm, cuddly feeling that we are accepted and so on.

22:47And it's easy to get addicted to that warm, cuddly feeling,

22:50and there's nothing wrong if it's real,

22:52but we don't want to interfere with the supply of the drug

22:57if it turns out that people really don't love us.

23:02They only like that we make them feel good.

23:06And if we bring something to their attention

23:09that has them feel bad,

23:10then they hate us or they want to punish us,

23:16they want to hurt us, they want to train us out of making...

23:18So they don't love us.

23:20They love some positive reaction that we generate within them

23:28that is highly conditional.

23:32If you don't upset me, if you don't bother me,

23:35if you don't ever point out that I might be doing something wrong,

23:37if you don't bring any difficult moral truths to me,

23:40if you don't do this, if you don't do that,

23:42well then I have a positive experience of you

23:44and therefore I love the positive experience.

23:47Are we dopamine delivery mechanisms

23:50or are we authentic people loved for who we are?

23:53Are we little happy joy-joy-juice conveyor belts

23:55or are we loved for who we are in our entirety as human beings?

24:00That's a pretty big question.

24:03It's a pretty big question.

24:04Now, the challenge is that collectivism

24:08only survives on the illusion of love.

24:12You say, well I love my country.

24:15Well no, your country's done some pretty awful things.

24:18All countries have, right?

24:20But if you believe that you love your country,

24:22then you will serve your country.

24:24If you believe that you love your king,

24:26you will serve your king.

24:28And so collectivism is driven by the illusion of love

24:30that is highly conditional

24:31and all deviances are punished.

24:34So you are challenging a very foundational relationship

24:38that feels extremely dangerous

24:40and is and has been throughout almost all of human history.

24:43Extremely dangerous and that time, of course,

24:46seems to be returning, but I hold to the truth.

24:49I mean, there are already billions of liars in the world.

24:52Why does the world need one more, right?

24:55So that's the question.

24:57Why don't you want to bring peaceful parenting

24:59to those around you?

25:01Because you don't want to find out

25:03if they love you

25:06or if they only like you when you please them, right?

25:12And then for them to be honest,

25:14they wouldn't say love you.

25:16They'd say like you when you please me,

25:18which is a whole lot less compelling.

25:20And if the truth weakens a relationship,

25:24it wasn't a relationship.

25:26It was an exploitation.

25:28I mean, parents the world over

25:31genuinely feel that they can hit their children

25:35because the parents are frustrated.

25:37In other words, the children aren't doing what they want

25:39and therefore the parents are frustrated.

25:42In other words, frustration is a bad feeling.

25:45I mean, it is actually a good feeling

25:47because it helps you get the energy

25:49to push through on things.

25:51But frustration is a negative emotion.

25:53We don't love it. It's a negative emotion.

25:55And so parents think,

25:56well, I'm going to hit my kids

25:58because they make me frustrated

26:00and hit my kids because they make me feel bad.

26:03And I'm going to hit my kids

26:05so they stop doing the things that make me feel bad

26:07and do the things that make me feel good.

26:09Well, that's, I mean,

26:12there's no such thing as conditional love.

26:14Or to put it in a better way,

26:16sorry, that was a bit inelegantly phrased.

26:18Love is conditional upon virtue

26:20and virtue is imperfect.

26:21And therefore love is on the striving towards

26:27and relative achievement of virtue.

26:29Love is based upon that.

26:31So love is conditional upon virtue.

26:33But virtue is conditional upon honesty.

26:36This is the paradox.

26:38Can you be loved by someone you are lying to?

26:41Not really. Not really.

26:44Because love is conditional upon virtue

26:47and honesty in relationships is a virtue.

26:51And therefore if somebody demands,

26:53I only love you if you lie to me,

26:56they're saying I will love you for falsehood,

26:59for corruption, for fear, for subjugation.

27:02But that is not loving a person.

27:04That's loving the absence of a person.

27:06If people love you because you conform to their preferences,

27:09then they're loving the absence of you.

27:12Because you're, and so of course,

27:14you want to be in relationships where

27:16you spontaneously want to serve people's happiness

27:19and so on.

27:21You've got to have virtue in the general ocean

27:24in which you swim.

27:26But, you know, if we all have this in school, right?

27:29If the teachers punish you for speaking out of turn

27:32or bringing facts inconvenient to their propaganda,

27:36then you are punished.

27:38In other words, you are rewarded for compliance,

27:42which is the absence of you,

27:44and you are punished for independent thought,

27:48which is the presence of you.

27:49And therefore, people say,

27:52I like you when you're not there.

27:54I like you when you are an empty vessel

27:57of dopamine delivery to me.

27:59And that's what's so kind of twisted about human relationships,

28:03is that the language is all virtuous,

28:06and the behavior is, in general, utterly corrupt.

28:12People say, I love you,

28:14which is a way of saying I as an individual

28:17love you as an individual.

28:19I do not love anyone who pleases me.

28:22I mean, like Leonardo DiCaprio,

28:24I love your 24-year-old cheekbones.

28:27I will not love your 25-year-old cheekbones.

28:30That's not love, right?

28:32Well, the way that guy grew up in the world of show business,

28:37I mean, he has no capacity to pair-bond.

28:40I mean, that's one of the prices you pay.

28:42So, yeah, are you left for who you are?

28:45Well, if you're left for who you are,

28:47then everything you think should be welcome,

28:49and if you're left for other people,

28:51they should welcome that too,

28:53in the same way that we welcome the dental scraping,

28:55which keeps her teeth healthy,

28:57even though it's unpleasant in the moment.

28:59It strengthens the bond.

29:01And we need a bond, right?

29:03We need pair-bonding.

29:05We need the bond of love and virtue

29:07so that we can flourish in adversity.

29:09So why don't you want to bring up peaceful parenting?

29:12For the same reason nobody's wanted to bring up

29:14peaceful parenting in a moral context.

29:16I mean, there are people, of course,

29:17who have talked for centuries

29:19about being nicer to children and so on,

29:21but they all tend to be totalitarians

29:25in their political mindsets.

29:28So they are lovers of violence

29:31in a different sphere, right?

29:33So a lot of the people who want smaller government

29:35tend to be harsher on children.

29:37A lot of people who want nicer parenting

29:41tend to be sociopaths politically.

29:43And so neither of those is a great solution,

29:46to put it mildly.

29:48So I hope this helps.

29:50I really do appreciate the question,

29:52and thank you for letting me unpack it with you.

29:54And freedomain.com slash donate

29:56if you find these conversations helpful.

29:58And just remember, until the end of the month,

30:00you get the Peaceful Parenting AI,

30:02you get the audiobook and the e-book versions

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30:06to read, love, like, share,

30:08and consume as you see fit.

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30:11freedomain.com slash donate.

30:13Bye.

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