In this lecture, Stefan Molyneux explores the complexities of human psychology and morality, particularly regarding parenting and self-reflection. He discusses the emotional barriers that prevent individuals from acknowledging their perceived wrongdoings, citing childhood trauma and self-medication as contributing factors. Molyneux critiques societal norms that rationalize harmful behaviors and emphasizes the distinction between subjective and objective morality. He advocates for a compassionate, indirect approach to confrontations about abusive behaviors. The lecture ultimately highlights the challenge of moral clarity and the importance of empathy in fostering personal growth.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Good morning everybody, hope you're doing well. Question from a while ago, sorry about that,
00:05and thank you for your recent questions, I'll get to them soon. Stefan Molyneux,
00:08when you talk with people they might have emotional barriers to hearing some truths.
00:14As an example, they spanked their children, so considering spanking being immoral means they
00:20need to consider them to be immoral. Is it useful to directly point to this possible painful thing
00:26directly? And if it is, I think so, because I believe you did that in your call-ins,
00:32how do you determine the other person is potentially ready or open to consider it?
00:38What is the best way to break it to them? Well, I don't remember a lot of that happening
00:45in call-ins, to be honest, you know, I mean, so I could be wrong about this, but most of the
00:52call-ins that I recall are people who are concerned that they are suffering from evil,
00:59not so much that they're doing evil. A debate, maybe, I had a debate with Dr. Walter Block
01:06about spanking many years ago, a debate, maybe, but I don't think I've had many calls where
01:17someone is calling up and saying, I want to know if I'm doing evil or that I'm doing evil.
01:25Usually, if people have been doing corrupt things like, you know, significant promiscuity,
01:32or, you know, they've been doing a lot of drugs, or they've been wasting their potential,
01:35you know, somewhat negative, corrupt-y style things, but not obviously outright evil,
01:40then they usually call me because they're in a state of exhaustion, or tiredness,
01:48burned-out-edness with regards to their corruption. They're at the end of a particular
01:52road and looking for something better. And usually, they've been self-medicating because
01:58they have been the victims of evil, they've been self-medicating, they're tired of that
02:04self-medication, and they want a different or a better path. So, that is usually what is happening
02:13with the call-ins. They're enervated. It sounds like energized, but it's the opposite, right?
02:19They're enervated, tired, they're burned-out from their avoidance of their victimization,
02:26they're burned-out from their avoidance of the evils that they've suffered. I mean,
02:32if you're stuck in a torture chamber and somebody offers you morphine, well, you'll take it, right?
02:39If you have to have an operation, obviously, you'll take the anesthetic. If you have to have
02:46a tooth drilled, most people will take the Novocain. So, when you're in a situation where
02:51pain is unavoidable, you might as well self-medicate. Otherwise, it just kind of feels
02:56masochistic. I mean, for many people trapped in really corrupt and dysfunctional families,
03:02self-medication is the most positive action that can be taken. Now, of course, the habits of
03:09self-medication tend to continue into adulthood, but that, of course, is because when you evolved
03:20in a bad family, evolutionarily speaking, it's because your bad family was in an anti-rational,
03:27corrupt, cult-like tribe, and you couldn't escape that. So, you might as well just keep
03:33self-medicating, right? The native addictions, sorry, the indigenous populations around the
03:41world, most of their addictions to drugs and alcohol is simply to self-medicate because
03:48their physical survival requires a sacrifice of their true self, their authentic thoughts, their
03:55skepticism, their criticisms, and so on. I mean, in many ways, COVID vaccines were,
04:02I mean, psychologically speaking, obviously, just as my own amateur opinion,
04:07they were a drug that was taken to avoid the discomfort of disagreeing with the crowd, the mob,
04:17the family, the friends, those in authority, those in charge of the media, and so on.
04:22They were actually, you weren't so much medicating against COVID as you were against the anxiety of
04:27thinking for yourself, for a lot of people anyway. So, I don't have many people, like,
04:34I've had people who've called in over the years who've said, I was a terrible troll against you,
04:40and I put you down, I insulted you, I lied about you, and I feel really bad about it,
04:46and those can be interesting conversations. What I don't have, at least to my memory,
04:53but I'm sure there's been one or two, but what I don't usually have, let's say,
04:58is people calling in and saying, Steph, I currently, I hate you, and I think you're a
05:05terrible guy, and have this terrible habit of spreading lies about you or riling people up
05:11against you, and help me stop while I'm in the middle of that. I mean, afterwards, when the
05:18chaos, the smoke, and all of that clears, that's when I'll hear from people, but not usually when
05:24they're in the throes of it. So, I don't usually have conversations with people who are saying,
05:32in the example that's provided, I don't usually have conversations with people who are saying,
05:37I'm currently beating my children, and I really feel compelled to do it,
05:44and I desperately want to stop. I mean, I would welcome those conversations, and there are some,
05:51I mean, there are some, right? People say, I'm yelling at my kids, I want to stop, and so on,
05:55right? But not usually, I'm beating my kids with a wooden spoon, or a ladle, or a belt,
06:03or something. Those are very rare. People who say, I lose my temper with my kids,
06:07I yell at my kids, I don't want to do that. That's happened, for sure. And so, the reason I'm
06:13talking about all of this, of course, is people who are doing evil don't ask for help,
06:23because they don't believe they're doing evil. You know, a surgeon who's cutting out tumors and
06:31appendices, the appendix for somebody with appendicitis, or who's doing other,
06:35you know, positive and helpful things, doesn't call up someone and say, I have this terrible
06:43habit of stabbing people, right? I mean, because they're doing good, they're helping people,
06:47they're curing people, or at least trying to. I mean, there's this old, it's an old movie with
06:54Steve Martin and Rick Moranis, Feed Me Seymour. And Steve Martin says, you know, well, I was a
07:00cruel kid, I liked hurting animals. So, my mother said, you know, my parents said, well, go be a
07:05dentist, because then you get to hurt people and get paid. But I mean, most dentists aren't
07:10calling up and saying, you know, well, I just, I enjoy scraping people's teeth, and drilling into
07:15people's teeth, and all of that, and putting needles into their gums. You know, if somebody,
07:21if you said to a psychologist that, and they didn't think you were a dentist, they'd say,
07:25well, geez, you got a real problem with sadism there. But then if you say, well, I'm a dentist,
07:29it's like, well, then you're actually kind of helping people, right? Assuming you're doing
07:32dentistry sort of correctly. So, the people who were doing evil think that they're doing good.
07:40So, they don't really call for help. So, in a debate, yes, I will call someone immoral and
07:48corrupt and so on, like, and that's valid. But that's for the audience to see, not for the
07:55person themselves to look in the mirror and say, gee, he's right. I am immoral, or whatever it is,
08:01right? So, the people who think that they're doing good, and this is the parent who the child is
08:08being disrespectful, the child is not listening, the child is willful, and you have to break their
08:15spirit so that they don't become criminals and brought to, you know, some sort of perhaps
08:19religious epiphany or something like that. So, those parents think that they're doing good.
08:24They think that they are dentists causing pain for the good of health. They think that they
08:29are surgeons causing pain for the good of health. A surgeon does not get charged with stabbing
08:36someone. A dentist does not get charged with assault, even though he may cause you considerable
08:41pain. So, they believe that they're doing good. Now, how do you change that? Well, of course,
08:48evil that calls itself good inoculates itself against genuine morality by calling genuine
08:53morality evil. Let me say this again. Evil inoculates itself against good because evil
09:02says that good is evil. So, if you say to a parent who's very aggressive with his child,
09:10violent with his child, or abusive with his child, if you say that's immoral, then the parent
09:16will say some variation of, well, it's my kid. This is the right way to do it. I was raised,
09:22I turned out well. You coddle your kids, they're going to turn into terrible people, soy boys,
09:28you know, strictness in the pursuit of discipline is a virtue. And, you know, if I'm a coach and I'm
09:36telling a kid that he needs to train harder, the kid's going to be upset, but that's how you win
09:40the gold. Like, he's just going to say that you're trying to turn me into a bad parent by telling me
09:46to not be aggressive with my child. We see this all over the place. Social media is everybody
09:52trying to define what they're doing as good. So, the people who want, let's say, a USAID
10:00to be cut, they say, well, we're saving money, we're saving the republic, America's going to go
10:04bankrupt, blah, blah, blah. They do all of this stuff. Whereas the people who wants the USAID
10:10spending to continue say, we're saving lives and people are going to die. And so, it's good,
10:17right? So, that's all that people are doing is they're attempting to define the good as what is
10:25usually materially beneficial for them or emotionally. Let's just say beneficial. I'm
10:30thinking materially like Doge, but we can talk beneficial emotionally like bad parenting,
10:36right? So, people just say, what I like or what is good for me or what I want or what feels good
10:44is the good. And the most fundamental conflicts in society are all about the definitions of morality,
10:54which is why UPB. UPB takes away subjective definitions of morality, which takes away the
10:59most foundational manipulation within society, which is what is the good, right? If the good
11:05is objectively defined, right, then you can't manipulate people with it. And that's all that
11:11happens in society. It's just an absolute madhouse, it's absolute chaotic madhouse of
11:16people redefining the good as that which magically serves their own material interest. So, the
11:21analogy would be if someone is a witch doctor, some local superstition-based charlatan, and
11:31the witch doctor says, give me money, I'll do a dance, and that will bring the rain.
11:38Well, as soon as you understand that the physics of rain is not dependent upon
11:47the leg shaking of a con man, the con man loses his power. So, objective definitions
11:56destroy subjective manipulations. Nobody anymore pays people to do rain dances. But in the past,
12:04before they understood the physics of these things, they did pay people to do rain dances.
12:10If you believe that you are infected with a curse called sin, and you have to pay somebody
12:17to remove that curse called sin, then you will end up probably paying that person, right? But
12:23once you understand that your conscience is yours to solve or assuage through apologies, restitution,
12:30and promises of non-repetition, then your salvation, so to speak, is in your own hands,
12:35and you don't need to pay somebody for a magic spell to drive the badness from your brain.
12:42It's the same thing with objective morality. When you have objective morality,
12:47then you take away the ability for people to define a morality as that which benefits their
12:55own interests, makes them feel good or has them avoid feeling bad. Hedonism masquerading as
13:01objective morality is really the greatest curse of the world, always has been, and hopefully won't
13:07always be in the future. But a man who wants to hit his children, because he's angry and
13:12possessed of the brutality of his own parents probably, a man who wants to hit his children
13:16defines hitting children as good. A man who wants power over others says that the only way that
13:23people can be helped is by other people surrendering their power to him, and he calls it benevolence
13:28and kindness. So people who want a lot of money from USAID define USAID as doing good and them
13:35doing good and so on. So it's all just hedonism. It's just hedonism masquerading as virtue,
13:40but when you objectively define virtue, you take away the manipulative control of morality from the
13:45witch doctors of self-interest pretending to be moralists. And so that's a tough transition.
13:52It's a tough transition for people. You're trying to take away the biggest power,
13:56which is the sophistry definition of self-interest as, quote, morality, right? So in general,
14:03I don't talk to people doing direct evil. I have, I mean, of course, I've talked about this before,
14:10I have at times over the course of my life confronted parents in public who are being
14:14very aggressive with their children. And there's always a little bit of a shock, because of course,
14:19nobody really does that. And people can get away with just about anything, even in public,
14:24except being aggressive towards women. Then all these heroes will step in because, you know,
14:29they want to show the woman that they'll be nicer to them than this nasty man so that they can be
14:34with the woman instead. But people will step in if a woman is being aggressed against, but not,
14:39and maybe it's more common now, but they won't step in if someone's being aggressive towards
14:43a child, at least certainly not when I was young. And it doesn't happen. I've not seen it other than
14:49what I've done in public. I've never seen somebody be aggressive with a child and somebody
14:53step in other than myself and a few people that I know to intervene. So I wouldn't confront someone
15:02in general, in the act of doing evil. What I would do, let's say that I, for some reason,
15:08I was stuck in a relationship in some way, stuck in a relationship with somebody who was
15:13abusing children, is I would not confront it directly and say, you're doing evil,
15:19because then that just provokes the defense and aggression, right? The defense of I'm doing good,
15:25you canceling me to do evil is actually the real evil and I'm doing good, right?
15:30I mean, it would be like if I said to a surgeon, you should not operate on this person dying of
15:35appendicitis, the surgeon would say, so you just want this patient to die? Like, what's the matter
15:39with you? Like, you're crazy. That would be murder. I can help the patient, gonna help the
15:43patient. To not help the patient is to have the patient die. So you just, once they've defined it
15:48that way, and that would be, of course, a pretty good definition, but once people have defined
15:51things that way, you can't say anything to them. I mean, you can't, that demoralization is when
15:57good has become evil and evil has become good, because then you can't reach people.
16:01So what I would do instead is, you know, ask about their history, their childhood,
16:05what their relationship with their parents is like, and I would approach it more indirectly,
16:11because when people have the good is evil and evil is good, hardwired definitions,
16:16like they're baked into the brain, you can't change those definitions any more than you can
16:21convince a benevolent surgeon to let someone die of appendicitis or, you know, if the inventor of
16:26the Heimlich maneuver to let somebody just choke to death in their food because they're enjoying
16:30their piece of cheesecake, they're just not gonna do that, right? They're just not gonna do this.
16:34It would be like trying to talk a lifeguard, even if he's off duty from rushing in to save
16:38a drowning child, like, they would look at you like, what's the matter with you? Like,
16:41why would you want me to do such a terrible thing? So when people have defined the good as
16:47evil and evil as the good, you can't confront those definitions because you just shift it
16:51into the category of evil, and the person then just escalates their defenses against you.
16:57I sort of think of it in the mind as the equivalent of an autoimmune disorder,
17:01autoimmune disorders to some degree are when the immune system attacks healthy cells and not
17:07dangerous or foreign cells, and the autoimmune disorder of good is evil and evil is good means
17:12that evil is protected and good is attacked, and that is the default position of society,
17:16is to defend evil and attack the good, and I don't need, certainly after the last half-decade,
17:21you don't need me to tell you that. That's pretty blindingly clear and obvious with this kind of
17:25stuff. So what you have to do is, or at least what I would do, is bypass all of that and try to
17:35figure out where the thinking comes from, right? So if somebody says hitting children is good,
17:41then if you try to say hitting children is bad, they'll just put you in the category of bad and
17:46dismiss you effortlessly, like it will happen. But if you say, oh, what was your childhood like? Oh,
17:52your father hit you. Oh, gosh, what was that like? And show them a little bit of sympathy
17:55and so on, then there's a possibility of beginning to loosen some of these bolts,
17:59holding these false definitions in places, you know, patience and curiosity and so on.
18:06I think that's the way, but the problem is, of course, I mean, at some point,
18:10you are going to hit that defense, right? At some point, you are going to hit that defense,
18:15where the more sympathy you show towards them as a child, the more, it's like possession, right?
18:20Like the devil fights to keep his own. And once the devil has wormed his way into a soul,
18:25trying to dislodge the devil will bring counterattacks. The devil does not give up souls
18:29without a ferocious battle. And most times the devil wins. It's something I said, oh, gosh,
18:35was it 2015, 2016 or something like that? A knife of freedom? That's a decade ago, almost.
18:42I said, you know, the problem is that they're making crazy people far quicker than we can make
18:45sane people. Because whatever educational system you're allowed to be controlled by,
18:50a coercive entity will eventually be used to produce evildoers and to corrupt the young.
18:58So I hope that helps. And let me know if there's anything else I can do to answer that question,
19:03freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I really do appreciate that, my friends. Have
19:06yourselves a wonderful, beautiful, charming day. Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon.
19:10Bye.