• 5 months ago
Stefan Molyneux joins Ryan in a deep dive on peaceful parenting, exploring the power dynamics and moral philosophy often overlooked in parent-child relationships. Discussing the shift from physical to verbal abuse, they touch on societal impacts and insufficiencies in positive role models. Stefan challenges beliefs on discipline and addresses the importance of self-reflection for parents to nurture empathy in children. The conversation outlines the pillars of peaceful parenting and emphasizes the transmission of ethical values amidst societal influences. Stefan advocates for peaceful parenting as a solution to societal dysfunctions, critiquing reliance on violence in child-rearing, and underscores the need for secular ethics to uphold universal moral standards. Calling for a shift towards peaceful parenting for societal transformation, Stefan highlights its potential to cultivate harmonious communities grounded in peace and voluntary interactions.

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Transcript
00:00 It is an honor to welcome to our show today an individual whose work I've actually been
00:04 following for over 10 years. I found his insights and critical thinking thought process
00:10 pretty engaging. I have to say, watching how he thinks, observing how he comes to conclusions
00:17 have been pretty powerful. Please welcome to our show, Stefan Molnio. Website is freedomain.com.
00:25 Stefan, welcome to our show.
00:26 - Thank you. Great to be here. I appreciate the invitation.
00:28 - Thank you. When I first met you two weeks ago, you were talking about how you have a
00:35 new book coming out about parenting. We talked about some things that people do today that are
00:41 very different. Can you please share with our audience your perspective on parenting and why
00:46 peaceful parenting is something that really does have a profound, powerful, positive impact on kids
00:52 compared to the traditional method of parenting where, I guess, you have to dodge shoes and books
00:58 and everything else that could be coming your way?
01:00 - Well, I suppose everyone can get comfortable because this is my favorite topic in the world,
01:04 so I will try to keep it brief. I'll fail. I will absolutely fail, but I will do my best to try and
01:09 keep it brief. So the basic argument is that philosophy is focused on moral philosophy,
01:17 and moral philosophy is focused in particular on disparities of power. So we understand that
01:23 a corrupt cop is worse than a corrupt security guard. A corrupt security guard is worse than a
01:30 corrupt crossing guard, and a corrupt judge or political official is worse of all because when
01:35 they become corrupt, they have so much power to inflict negative consequences on people. So
01:40 since philosophy is interested in both morality and power disparities, well, what is the relationship
01:49 that has the biggest power disparity in the world? And everyone thinks, I don't know, like a king to
01:56 a peasant or an ayatollah to a street sweeper or something like that. That's not the case. The
02:02 biggest power disparities in the world occur in the home, in the household, and it is between
02:07 parents and children. Children do not choose to be born into a family. They do not choose their
02:11 parents, and almost always they cannot choose to leave. Now, when you think of philosophy for,
02:20 let's say, the pre-Socratic, so 3,000 years, we've had at least, you know, written down 3,000 years
02:26 of philosophy. It's probably gone on a lot longer than that. And philosophy focusing on morals and
02:33 ethics, in particular with disparities of power, philosophers, moral philosophers, have never
02:38 specifically addressed the family in any kind of detail. Aristotle touched on it briefly, Ayn Rand
02:44 touched on it briefly, John Locke was against corporal punishment, and you could say that
02:52 Rousseau talked quite a bit about it, but then he put his children into a state orphanage that
02:57 almost certainly killed them, so he was not particularly credible. So why has there not been
03:02 a deep philosophical moral analysis of parenting? It's really quite frustrating,
03:08 because it's where most of us perform our greatest moral instruction. I mean, I will nag friends
03:14 occasionally about virtue, but as a parent, what I do is I talk to my daughter about virtue and
03:20 morality and so on, and this is the case for all parents. All parents say, "This is good, this is
03:25 bad, this is right, this is wrong." Now, they do so without the feedback of the experts. They do
03:31 this without feedback from philosophers, and that's really, really frustrating. So, when you think of
03:37 the multi-thousand year history of philosophy and the fact that parents desperately need moral
03:42 guidance because they are morally guiding their children, and since philosophy is really interested
03:46 in morality, objectivity, and power disparities, the fact that philosophers have not deeply examined
03:52 childhood is virtually incomprehensible, and it's something I've been talking about for close to 20
03:59 years in my philosophy show. And I have graduate training in the field of philosophy, and my
04:04 master's thesis is on the history of philosophy, so I know a little bit about what I'm talking
04:08 about, and I'm particularly good at reasoning from first principles, just a complete whiteboard.
04:12 And so, we have these crazy standards in society where we say, "My gosh, it is just absolutely
04:18 terrible for one adult to hit another. Boy, you couldn't come up with much worse than assaulting
04:23 someone else." And yet, in most places in the world, hitting children is considered acceptable.
04:28 Nobody has ever explained why you hit a child who hits another child saying, "Don't hit children."
04:33 It makes no sense whatsoever. Children have no property rights. Their property gets confiscated
04:38 and taken away. Children are confined to their rooms. Even in the timeout situation,
04:43 they're confined to sitting on a stair, and nobody has ever been able to explain how this is morally
04:49 justifiable, because where you have a bigger power disparity, you normally have the highest
04:52 moral standards. In this case, it hasn't really happened. And society is desperate for good
04:58 parenting, and we know that because when you look at every popular television series that involves
05:04 parents and children, the parents are peaceful parents. They reason, they don't hit, they don't
05:09 confine, they don't scream insults, they don't intimidate, they don't abuse. They're just nice,
05:14 reasonable people. But what was it, family ties? They even had a talking stick. Somebody had to
05:18 hold the stick in order to be heard. So, everyone knows what peaceful parenting is. They're yearning
05:22 for it, but there has not been a rigorous philosophical justification from the ground
05:26 up for it. So, I spent, since last summer, researching and writing Peaceful Parenting,
05:32 and it's divided into three parts. There's the theory, which is what rights do children
05:38 objectively have, and what morality should infuse and inform the parent-child relationship. That's
05:44 number one. Number two is, it's fine to have the theory, but what about the practice? How do you
05:48 deal with this parenting scenario and this parenting scenario? And I have coached, I don't
05:54 even know how many parents over the last 20 years who call in with parenting questions, so I've just
05:58 about heard it all, and I've got good solutions for all of that. And then there's the proof, right?
06:04 So, there's the theory, which is the rational proof. There's the practice, which is how to
06:07 implement it. And then there's the biological, psychological, and scientific truth, proof for
06:14 why peaceful parenting is important. What happens if you're not a peaceful parent? What happens to
06:17 your child's brain? What happens to their medulla? What happens to their neofrontal cortex? What
06:22 happens to their risks of drug abuse and criminality and promiscuity and smoking and
06:30 eating badly? What happens to the risks of obesity and so on? And all of these risks go sky high.
06:35 Severe child abuse can reduce up to 20 years from someone's lifespan. It's in many ways even worse
06:41 than smoking or some forms of drug addiction. So, I wanted to make an absolutely airtight case.
06:47 So, the theory is solid. Here's how to do it. And if you have any doubts as to why,
06:51 the proof of the negative effects of harming children is irrefutable. So, I needed to prove
06:59 beyond a reasonable doubt. I needed to have a criminal standard of proof in a sense,
07:03 because I am accusing immorality, although it's hard to say people are immoral before they know,
07:08 but I'm accusing people of some immorality that's significant. And if they continue to hurt and
07:13 abuse their children even with this knowledge, then they go from people who are ignorant to
07:17 people who are actively evil. So, it's a criminal case I'm making. It has to be proof beyond a
07:21 reasonable doubt, not a civil case, which is just a preponderance of evidence. So, the work is out
07:26 for donors at freedomain.com, and I'm allowing people to share it as much as they want. We've
07:31 got the book. I've finished the audio book. And there's also an AI interface, so you can ask
07:36 questions of the peaceful parenting philosophy. That's not just the book, but many other things
07:41 that I've written and talked about with regards to peaceful parenting. So, it's a multi-language
07:45 resource, 70 plus languages that people can ask and answer questions in. So, I'm
07:51 very close to revealing this to the whole world. So far, it's just for donors, although they've
07:55 shared it with a lot of people who found it very helpful. And I just want it to be a seminal work
07:59 that changes the course of human history. Nothing too ambitious, you understand? Nothing too crazy.
08:03 - That's awesome.
08:05 - Yeah, that really is the goal. So, that's the general overview of what I've been up to.
08:09 - Well, I love that you are putting this out and that you're taking a look at parenting from a
08:15 philosophical perspective, because it hasn't been done before, long overdue. When Dr. St.
08:20 Lawrence's parents today said, "Well, years ago, when kids were getting hit, I guess the kids were
08:25 a little more," they say that, "Well, kids were more respectful years ago, and today, they're not
08:30 respectful. And today, they get trophies for everything." And I think they're trying to tie
08:37 on the fact that kids were hit or kids were given tough love that somehow has made them more well
08:44 adjusted for adults. From your perspective, when you look at your peaceful parenting,
08:49 how can children grasp the lessons of being respectful, grasp the lessons of being resilient,
08:56 and also have a sense of self-worth for overcoming tribulations by the way of a peaceful parent
09:05 compared to a parent who just thinks, "Well, if I yell at them, they're going to adapt,
09:09 and they're just going to adapt and become stronger that particular way."
09:13 - That's a great question. And I do hear this objection, and people do, of course, say,
09:18 "Oh, kids are so coddled these days, and they don't have any toughness," and so on.
09:22 But as a society in general, we've switched from physical abuse to verbal abuse. And in many ways,
09:29 that's even worse. Physical abuse is, you get your bruises, and it's painful, and it's unpleasant,
09:34 but you heal, and you move on, and it's clearly wrong for parents to beat up on their kids.
09:38 But verbal abuse is really, really insidious. It gets into your brain like a worm and works
09:43 away at the base of your personality. And these days, of course, if you look at what's going on
09:49 in the educational system, there's all of the end of the world, global warming is going to drown us
09:53 all, apocalypse, which takes away children's happiness. There is, particularly for Christians,
09:58 there is a hatred of their history. There is, "Oh, all of your ancestors were colonizers and
10:03 evil, and you stole the land, and you're just terrible human beings." And there's that
10:07 whole level of things. There's a lot of racial animosity that's being taught in the world,
10:11 particularly towards white people. And so, what's happened is, and of course, the men,
10:17 the boys, the boys in the school are considered very toxic and negative, and, "Well, boys aren't
10:22 just like girls, and therefore, they're broken and need to be fixed and drugged." And there's
10:26 all of this impatience. We have no fathers in the home. I mean, how on earth is a boy supposed to
10:30 grow to be a man easily, or at least with not too much difficulty, without a father in the home?
10:37 We have kept men away from little kids in government schools, or in daycares. And I
10:43 worked in a daycare for many years. I was the only guy, of course. And so, we have taken male
10:49 role models away, and a lot of kids, like boys, from single-mother households, they don't even
10:53 meet any adult authority figure until they're in grade seven or grade eight, like they're 12, 13,
10:58 14 years old. So, I think we've really messed with what helps kids grow the most. And of course,
11:05 we say to the little girls, "Well, you see, there's this giant evil patriarchy that runs the
11:09 world, and it's just out to get you, and everybody hates you, and all the men just want to pay you
11:14 less, and this is all nonsense, and it's incredibly destructive." So, you've taken away... I mean,
11:20 when I was a kid, you got caned in school, like you actually would get caned when I was in boarding
11:24 school. So, that's all gone, and that's for the betterment, but unfortunately, it's been replaced
11:29 by some really, really toxic verbal abuse that is causing a lot of despair, and drugging, like
11:36 straight-up drugging of kids without a huge amount of scientific proof. And I don't know, giving
11:41 next-door-to-speed drugs to kids because they can't concentrate in the most boring environment
11:45 known to man doesn't seem to be particularly beneficial. And the unfettered internet stuff,
11:51 you know, children are now getting exposed to hardcore pornography at the age of 10,
11:55 and up, and some even earlier. So, we've got a lot of messes, and saying, "Well, it's just less
12:01 spanking," is not the answer, because the spanking is absolutely bad. I mean, I did interviews with
12:08 Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff probably close to, I don't know, 14 or 15 years ago, and she did a meta
12:14 analysis, which is a sort of overarching umbrella analysis of all of the studies to do with spanking,
12:20 and with maybe only one or two possibly neutral exceptions out of the dozens and dozens of studies
12:26 that she did, that she reviewed on spanking, they were all negative. They all produced negative
12:31 behavior. You get short-term compliance and long-term resistance and hostility, because it
12:36 breaks the bond. And of course, we wouldn't say, "Well, you know, my wife, she brought the dinner
12:41 to the table, and it was just cold, and it wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I hit her." Like, we
12:46 would never, if your wife does something wrong, even if your wife does something, quote, "bad,"
12:50 like she totals the car or she has an affair, you still don't get to hit her, right? So, we say for
12:55 adults, "Well, that's unthinkable." But then, really, that's only because the wife can leave,
13:00 and the kids can't. So, people can't really handle power very well, and so without morality,
13:06 power tends to be pretty abusive. And, you know, think of governments without court systems or
13:11 bills of rights or constitutions, they tend to be pretty bad. And parents without moral guidance
13:17 tend to be just exercising power, and the kids can't leave, and they are helpless,
13:20 and they are dependent, and that seems to summon the beast in a lot of people. So, yeah, I wouldn't
13:25 say the spanking is the big variable, because kids are going through so much propaganda and
13:32 self-hating verbal abuse that I think that's pretty much the key as to why kids are kind
13:38 of messed up these days. -I concur with that. Thank you for your answer. And when everything
13:44 happened with COVID, I was so just disgusted to see how children were abused and how parents
13:51 pushed on their irrational fear on their children, and it just made me absolutely sick.
13:57 And when it comes to maturity, you know, every person goes through their life, they have shadow
14:05 aspects of who they are. If a parent has not engaged with their shadow self, tried to heal it,
14:13 do they naturally pass on those qualities, that struggle to their children subconsciously through
14:20 their mannerisms? Is that something else that the child will have to take on as a tribulation
14:25 in addition to a parent who is not yet fully matured to adulthood?
14:31 -That's deep, brother. That's very deep. I like it. So, we're talking about sort of the
14:36 Jungian shadow self. I mean, very few people are more dangerous than those who deny their
14:41 capacity for evil. And we all have the capacity to be mean and nasty and petty and vicious and so on.
14:48 And the problem is if you deny your own capacity for evil, then all immorality in your relationships
14:53 must come from others. It must! It must come from others. So, if you say, "Well, you know,
14:59 I as a parent can't do wrong," then if your children are acting badly, it has to be 100%
15:04 on them. And the case I make in the book is a very rational and patient case. And the book is,
15:11 you know, it's quite stern, but it's not too ferocious. The first couple of drafts were
15:17 when I decided to shave down those edges and douse some of the flames. But if my daughter
15:22 is acting badly, the first place I need to look is myself. I mean, if I'm teaching her how to speak,
15:29 and she's getting the words wrong, do I just yell at her? Like, "No, I'm teaching her how to speak.
15:34 I'm teaching her how to read." And so, if she's getting things wrong, it's on the teacher,
15:39 not on the student. The teacher has to be self-critical first and foremost before blaming
15:45 the student. So, if you say, "Well, I can never do any wrong," then when bad things happen or
15:51 negative things happen or problematic things happen in your relationship with your kids,
15:54 you're just going to come down on them like a ton of bricks. And it's really not. I mean,
15:59 children can perform, this has been well studied, children can perform moral reasoning at 18 months
16:05 of age. And I actually did a show way back in the day where I taught basic ethics to my daughter
16:11 when she was two and a half. And yeah, I mean, she's a little smarter than your average bear,
16:15 but it's pretty easy to get. And teaching empathy to children is very important, because empathy is
16:22 like 12 or 13 complex parts of the brain all wired up to get the mirror neurons so you can feel how
16:26 other people feel. And I actually had this question yesterday in a show. Somebody was like, "Well,
16:31 I was in the park with my daughter and she really, really wanted to get on the swing,
16:36 but there was another kid on the swing." And so, she's like, "Dad, get that kid off the swing. And
16:40 I want to have the swing and I want to do the swing." Right? And like, "How do you handle that?"
16:44 And I actually had that situation with my daughter when she was very little.
16:48 And so, you say, "Well, okay, let's be patient and let's wait," and so on. Right? And she's like,
16:53 "No, no, no, I really want the swing. I really want the swing." It's like, "Well, just give her
16:56 a chance." And anyway, so I went to play with her elsewhere. Right? And then eventually, of course,
17:01 the kid got off the swing and my daughter got off the swing. And I said, "Now, if another kid came
17:04 along and wanted the swing, what would you say?" She said, "No, it's mine." It's like, "Ah, you see?"
17:10 So, that's what the girl who had the swing before you was feeling as well. Right? So, her need
17:16 switched from wanting the swing, wanting the other girl to give up the swing, to when she was in the
17:21 swing now, she didn't want to give up the swing. And so, understanding that sort of basic connection
17:26 when you are saying, "I want the swing," well, the other person, the other kid doesn't want to
17:30 give up the swing. And then when you get in the swing, you become that other kid who doesn't want
17:34 to give up the swing. So, that's just a basic empathy and teaching kids how to negotiate and to
17:38 see things from somebody else's point of view. Or when my daughter would want candy,
17:46 she comes by that, "Honestly, I have a ferocious sweet tooth." So, when my daughter would want
17:49 candy, she'd say, "Oh, I really, really want this candy." And I'd be like, "Yeah, man, me too. Oh,
17:54 I could eat this whole row." Like Pac-Man, whack, whack, whack. I could eat this whole row
17:58 and the second row too. And I tell you, I could tear the whole bag of candy, I could eat it on
18:03 the drive home and still want more. And so, instead of saying, "Well, you're not going to
18:09 get any candy, but you shouldn't have that feeling." It's like, "Yeah, me too. I love candy
18:14 as well." And that way you're sharing in her desire, you're saying it's perfectly natural,
18:19 and you're also modeling not getting the candy. So, this is all very helpful and useful stuff
18:25 to parent with. And kids don't want stuff as much as they want to feel heard and understood
18:31 and recognized. And if you empathize with what your kids want, my daughter would want a particular
18:36 stuffed animal. And instead of saying, "Oh, you have so many stuffed animals, why do you need
18:40 another one? Stop being so greedy. It's ridiculous. Look at your shelf, it's full of stuffed animals."
18:44 Be like, "Yeah, it is really cute. I like this one and this." I would take home the whole
18:50 armful of them. And after we had those conversations, we just leave and she'd
18:54 forget about wanting it because her feeling, her desire had been recognized and empathized with,
19:00 and I had shared my own thoughts and feelings about it. And that tends to be a lot more
19:03 productive. So, yeah, you can teach kid a lot about ethics. Kids lie, all kids lie. We all
19:09 experiment with lying. That's a perfectly natural thing. I mean, lying is 90% of nature, right? They
19:15 all just hiding and sliming and laying their eggs and stealing stuff. And so, my daughter would lie
19:22 and when she was little, and I would say, "Well, I make promises to you, right? Like if I say,
19:28 I promise after I'm finished lunch, we'll go to the park, right? And how would you like it if I
19:33 said that and you look forward to the park?" And then afterwards, I just said, "Now, it's just
19:37 lying. We're not going to the park." "Oh, I'd be so upset. I'd be mad." I was like, "Yeah, absolutely.
19:41 Because when I make a promise, you feel good. And then if you can't trust my promises,
19:45 then you feel bad, right?" And so, it's the same for me, right? We're both people. I mean,
19:51 I'm older, I'm not a different species. And so, if you don't want me to lie to you, it's kind of
19:59 important not to lie to me as well because I feel as bad when you lie to me as you would feel if I
20:04 lie to you. And so, just these sort of basic things to reciprocity and negotiation and helping kids
20:10 understand the other person's point of view, it's, I mean, I hate to say it's not that complicated,
20:15 but it's really not. I mean, it's really not. What to me is really hard is yelling and hitting and
20:20 slamming them down on the stairs and it's like, "That seems like a lot of work," as opposed to
20:24 just, "Yeah, I understand your feelings and I share them." And then you're teaching kids that
20:30 feelings don't have to translate into action. And they get this stuff very, very quickly.
20:35 And it's not just my daughter. I mean, I've been around a bunch of kids over the course of my life,
20:40 relatives and friends and so on. And I've had a number of conversations, a large number of
20:44 conversations about this kind of stuff with kids and it doesn't really matter where they come from
20:48 and it doesn't really matter what their circumstances are. And everyone, the kids all
20:54 get it right away and it doesn't have to be repeated too often. They get it. You know,
20:58 if my daughter were to keep lying, it'd be like, "Okay, so we just don't tell the truth. Now you
21:02 can't trust anything because I'm not going to keep telling the truth if you keep lying, right? Because
21:06 I'm not going to have higher standards than you." And I know that sounds kind of aggressive, but
21:09 it's just a fact, right? I mean, if I order something online and they send it to me, I'll
21:14 pay for it. But if they don't send it to me, I won't pay for it, right? So, it has to be reciprocal.
21:18 And you're saying, "Well, I'm not going to tell the truth if you think it's fine to lie." Now,
21:23 she didn't really go that far, but it's something that you can say so that they can understand
21:28 then what it's like to be on the receiving end of a lie. And that basic empathy of "do unto others
21:33 as you would have them do unto you" is not that hard to teach. You just don't teach it by screaming
21:37 and hitting. Don't teach anything other than fear and compliance. - I appreciate your answer. And
21:44 what you said about that you can do it without violence and also the fact that, I guess, kids
21:49 at 18 months already have empathy. And if we're looking at children right now and talking about
21:56 a moral code, is there one particular principle that a person should adhere to where all the good
22:05 foundations can come from with their decisions? I'll give you one thing that I do with my child
22:09 is I always try to adhere to the principle of unconditional love. So, whether I'm happy or sad
22:17 or just pleased with my child, I always want to keep in mind unconditional love. Like,
22:22 am I showing unconditional love? Does he have to behave a certain way? Am I going to accept him for
22:28 who he is, whether he has a variety of emotions? And I try to say the answer is no, I'm going to
22:33 love him no matter what, no matter who he is. So, that's just how I go about things. But is there
22:40 any foundational principle that parents can look to and say, "Look, if I accept this one principle,
22:45 all the other decisions that I make because I accept this one principle will more than likely
22:50 be done in a peaceful manner. I will most likely be on the right path and not on a path of violence
22:56 and not on a path of emotional destruction for my child." Right, it's a great question.
23:01 I mean, there are sort of three general principles and they're mostly interrelated. The first is
23:06 what's called the non-aggression principle, so don't initiate the use of force. Right, so if your
23:11 kid is hitting you, you can use force to restrain the child, like a sort of quote self-defense thing,
23:16 right? Again, your child shouldn't be hitting you unless they've been exposed to violence in some
23:20 fashion or another, but let's say they do. So, don't initiate the use of force. You can use
23:26 mild force to protect yourself with kids, but you don't initiate the use of force. That's called the
23:30 non-aggression principle. That's number one. Number two is tell the truth, right? Tell the truth,
23:35 so be honest. You have to model what your children, whatever you expect your children to do
23:40 morally, you have to model to them consistently first. If you want your children to learn the
23:46 language, you don't invent a different word for tree every time you point at a tree, because then
23:50 they're not going to learn language. So, you need to consistently model the behavior that you want
23:54 in your children, and they'll pick it up as surely as a shadow blocks the light from a statue. So,
23:58 tell the truth, don't initiate the use of force, and respect property.
24:02 And teaching children to respect property is really, really important. You don't grab
24:06 toys from other kids, right? Because you obviously don't like it when people grab your toys,
24:12 and so don't, you know, give kids stuff, it's their stuff, and non-violence, of course,
24:18 in your interactions is another form of property rights. Like, you don't use violence,
24:21 you don't steal, you don't control, because when you intimidate a child, or you threaten a child,
24:25 or you hit a child, you're, in a sense, taking over that child's body. You're not allowing them
24:30 to have self-ownership. So, yeah, tell the truth, don't initiate force, and respect property. I mean,
24:36 it's the same thing we have in adult society, right? Don't initiate force means don't assault.
24:42 Tell the truth, particularly in important moral matters, has to do with thou shalt not bear
24:47 false witness from Christianity, and of course, you know, in a court, thou shalt tell the truth,
24:53 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And we generally have a respect for honesty in society,
24:59 so yeah, I mean, and respect property, don't steal, right? So, it's the same thing, don't
25:02 initiate force, don't take people's property, and tell the truth. These are things that
25:08 are good in society, and they're good with parenting as well.
25:13 Now, the issue of unconditional love, I think, is really, really interesting.
25:16 So, I think what you're doing with your son is really, really good for within the family, but
25:22 one of the challenges… I'm sorry, how old is your son again? I'm sorry, you mentioned this before,
25:26 but… He's four.
25:27 He's four, okay. So, beautiful, you know, immerse him in the simmering, bubbling paternity juice of
25:34 bottomless love. That's wonderful. But I would say, though, that you're going to have to build
25:39 skills within your son to do with out in the world. Now, of course, he's 14 years away from
25:46 being an adult, so, you know, but over time, he's going to have to go out into a world
25:50 where nobody really cares about his needs at all, right? I mean, outside of friends and family,
25:56 right? He's going to go out there, and he's going to want to get a job, and, you know,
26:00 "I need a job" is not enough for somebody to give you a job. Like, you have to have mutual benefit.
26:04 He's going to want to ask a girl out, and his desire to have her go out with him is not any
26:10 kind of demand that she actually do it, right? So, he's going to have to figure out how to
26:14 negotiate with people who aren't you and aren't bathing him in unconditional love. So, the
26:21 unconditional love is great within the family, gives him a good foundation, but he is also…
26:26 and I'm not saying you're not teaching him this, but over time, he's going to need to learn the
26:29 kind of empathy and negotiation skills to look for win-win situations where there's no
26:34 unconditional love in the relationship at all, like with employers, with women, with people he
26:39 meets, people on a sports team, you know? Like, he joins some pickup league of volleyball or
26:43 something, there's not going to be any unconditional love. It's going to be like, "Do a good job,
26:48 please, if you don't mind." And so, the unconditional love thing is great,
26:53 and it's wonderful for when they're young, and it's very powerful within the family,
26:57 but you are also going to have to build skills over time for him to go out into the cold,
27:01 harsh world where people… he's just another face of the crowd, and he's got to provide some real
27:07 value outside of the unconditional love stuff that's within the family, if that makes sense.
27:12 - Definitely want to work on it. And one thing I'm going to… I'd say I'm challenged with him
27:21 is that you'd mention, "Okay, well, you teach children don't steal, don't initiate violence,
27:27 don't… you know, property rights." And then you look at what is the foundation of government.
27:31 Government violates all those principles. It steals, it kills, you know, property rights,
27:37 and what has happened? You don't give it consent, it's just some magic that it happens.
27:42 So, I'm wondering, just looking at that alone, raising your child in a society where this
27:50 benevolent being called the ruling class exists, how can you teach your children good moral values
27:59 while you have at the same time this overbearing, nefarious institute hovering over and trying to
28:08 intrude on all aspects of their lives? Not only that, but you have various people in society,
28:14 groups in societies, are always infringing upon you. I mean, one of the worst things I had to
28:17 experience during the whole thing with COVID is I was walking in stores with them, I did not have
28:23 the mask on, everyone else did, we were like the people that were doing our own thing. And most of
28:29 society kind of went along with all this stuff. So, I guess this is a two-part question is how do
28:34 you parent successfully when you have people that are willing to infringe upon you through government,
28:41 and how do you parent successfully if large segments of the population do not carry the
28:46 same moral values that you do or don't hesitate for a second to infringe upon you and your family?
28:52 - Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Do you remember how old you were? I remember where I was when I first
28:59 found out about the national debt. Do you remember that at all from when you were a kid?
29:03 - No, I think I was 16. And at that time, it was kind of nothing. It was like, "Yo,
29:09 it's heading towards 500 million." Something really asked for a low number, a billion or
29:15 something. - Yeah, I remember, it's not a competition, but I think I was probably maybe 12
29:21 or 13, and a friend of my brother's was telling me about the national debt. And I was like, "Wait,
29:29 what? I'm born into," I think back then it was like $100,000 of debt. If you count the national
29:37 debt plus the unfunded liabilities, which in the States is, I think, closing on $200 trillion,
29:42 plus the, was it $40 trillion now or whatever it is, the national debt.
29:46 So, I remember learning about that, and it's like, "Wait, but society claims to really care
29:55 about its children. So, if society really claims the whole point of this whole school system,
30:01 the whole point of everything, 'Oh, we just love our children, the children are our future, and
30:05 children are everything to us,' and it's like, 'Okay, so if that's true, then why would there
30:11 be a national debt?' Like, I can't say that I claim to love my child while secretly taking out
30:18 endless credit cards in her name and racking up $100,000 in debt, which she's going to be buried
30:25 with when she turns 18. You would not call that good parenting from an individual. And philosophy,
30:31 of course, recognizes only individuals, that there are individuals making that choice.
30:37 And so, I remember saying to this friend of my brother's, and I said, "Well, why doesn't someone
30:44 run for office to get rid of the national debt? Because that's not good for the kids, and everybody
30:48 says they care about their kids. And I see people, they take their kids to the doctors, they take
30:52 their kids to the dentist, they seem to be upset if their kids are doing badly in school, so they
30:56 really do care about their kids. So, why doesn't someone run for office on the platform of
31:04 eliminating the national debt?" Now, he was, I guess I was 12, he was like, I don't know, 14 or
31:09 15, so he didn't really have the answer to that. But I think we all know, even with someone,
31:17 even with a wild card like Trump in the race, nobody talked about the national debt, nobody
31:21 talks about paying off the national debt, it's not even part of the conversation. It's just not
31:25 going to happen. And it's just... It's impossible. I'm sorry? It's impossible. Come having interest,
31:30 you can't pay it off. If they pay it off, the whole thing will collapse.
31:32 - Well, I think one of the ideas behind Trump was, if Trump can liberate the economy to the point
31:41 where we get massive increases in productivity, then maybe we can grow our way out of this thing.
31:47 But then COVID came along and wrecked the economy, and 40% of all the US dollars in circulation ever
31:53 have been printed in the last couple of years. So, unfortunately, that plan did not quite pan out.
31:59 But I just remember that. I remember thinking, like, okay, so how can society both care about
32:06 its children and sell them off to foreign banksters for political profit in the here
32:12 and now? How is that possible? And I asked a few adults, and you just get this thousand-yard stare
32:19 like, "I don't know, kid, but there's a great sports ball game on TV, so I'm going to have to
32:24 move to another room." And so, I think that there is that basic reality. Now, the question is, of
32:30 course, why do people, why are people so enamored of political power? This is one of the most
32:36 fundamental questions, and this really, of course, came out with COVID, where you seem to get every
32:40 turbo Karen known to man screaming at everyone about masks and distancing and the social distancing
32:46 stuff. It was all made up. I mean, it was some kid's science fair that was completely unverified.
32:51 It's all mostly nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. And so, why do people, why are they so enamored
32:58 of political power? Well, I think it's because we say that violence is required to raise children.
33:06 Violence is required. We certainly say that coercion is required to educate children,
33:11 because schools are paid for with debt and taxes, which are coercive. And so, we say, well,
33:17 the raising of children, the education of children all requires coercion. So, coercion must be a good.
33:23 It must be the good. How could it not be? And so, if people think that childhood requires violence,
33:30 that the ordered and structural needs of society all have to rest on violence, then when they get
33:37 older, how are they going to say, "Well, maybe we can have a society that doesn't rest entirely on
33:41 violence. Like, maybe we could." Because they then would have to say, "Well, if violence is bad for
33:45 society, then why would it be good for children?" And that, I think, is really tough. So, my argument
33:51 has been, you know, I started the show 19 years ago, my argument has been that if we raise children
33:58 peacefully, well, first of all, a lot of the dysfunctions that we think we need government
34:03 for will mostly evaporate. And I'm not kidding about that. I know it sounds utopian, but the
34:07 science is very clear. So, if you raise children peacefully, you get almost no criminality,
34:12 right? Criminals come from abusive households. You get very little promiscuity. In fact,
34:18 girls who are raised peacefully even menstruate later. They start menstruating later because
34:24 their bodies are not preparing for, you know, spray and pray, you know, rabbit-selected battle
34:31 reproduction. They're actually become more, they become more reasoned and better able to defer
34:38 gratification sexually. So, promiscuity goes down. Criminality goes down. And not by a little bit,
34:43 like enormously, like 90 plus percent. And drug abuse, drug addiction goes down, which means
34:50 criminality also goes down, which means that dysfunction goes down. And of course, all the
34:54 people who would have been single mothers and who would have been criminals and would have been drug
34:58 addicts and so on, they actually work productively in the economy and therefore, you know, our wealth
35:04 goes up enormously. And so, a lot of the things that we think we need government for are dysfunctions
35:10 caused by violence against children. And so, if we spread peaceful parenting, then at some point,
35:18 the government won't have much to sell us. Because like, we have to keep you safe. It's like,
35:22 from what? There's almost no criminality. Well, we have to make sure that the single mothers are
35:30 taken care of. It's like, yeah, but if you raise children peacefully, promiscuity and single
35:33 motherhood goes down enormously. And you can sort of come up with just about any issue that's, well,
35:41 there are all these drug addicts and well, no, no, drug addiction. Drug addiction is a form of
35:46 self-medication for people who are miserable as a result of child abuse. They don't take drugs to
35:51 feel good. They just take drugs to feel normal. Like if you have a headache and you take an
35:56 Advil or an aspirin, you're not trying to get high, you're just trying to not have a headache,
36:00 right? So, if we peacefully parent, then a lot of the boogeymen that the government uses to
36:06 frighten us into compliance will all evaporate because it just won't be there. And then,
36:10 if you don't have these things around to frighten the population and you don't have all of this
36:16 instability and danger and so on, then people will be like, so what do we need all this political
36:22 power for if we don't really need to be protected from anything and people are functioning and wealth
36:27 is going up? And of course, there will be some people who will still be problematic, but the
36:30 society will be so wealthy, they can easily be taken care of with charity. So, it's not so much
36:36 how do you teach kids about political power, it's that if you teach kids peacefully,
36:42 the drive and urge to control others, the fear of the danger of others will begin to diminish and
36:50 hopefully we can ease our way out of this paradigm that we need to run just about everything in
36:55 society on brute force. - Thank you. And it seems like right now we're in the midst of a
37:02 peak collectivism and it's the individualism, individual thoughts and ideas seem to be
37:07 diminished. They want to push us aside. Stephan, I had a question about the impact of having some
37:16 form of spirituality in your life, how that impacts adults and children, psychologically
37:24 speaking, how it impacts them. I had, we briefly spoke, I touched upon that I am a former Catholic,
37:31 I grew up Catholic and then I left. I just did not agree with a lot of the principles that were
37:38 in there. Although I wanted to say that I wanted to treat people good, I want to express unconditional
37:43 love whenever possible. But the paradigm, the values that were in there, I felt that at least
37:48 from my perspective, and the religion was very, like a lot of it was fear-based. Okay, you're not
37:52 doing this because you're afraid to, because you will go to hell if you do this or that.
37:55 And the path that I'm on, the spiritual path I'm on, I mean, I do things because why not do
38:01 something beautiful and why not do it for the sake of doing it? So from your perspective, how does
38:08 spirituality or organized religion have an impact on a child's development as well as
38:13 adults' development, as well as fostering any kind of sense of community for towns and nations?
38:20 Paul I like the giant questions. Huge, love them.
38:23 Rishan Thank you.
38:24 Paul Love them. This is my meat and drink. So, I also grew up as a staunch Christian,
38:30 and the problem that I saw in society was that if our morals come from God,
38:37 then you can eliminate morals by not believing in God. And this is what we're going through
38:44 in society at the moment. As science has advanced, God has retreated. Now, I'm talking about real
38:52 science, not this pseudo-scientific mystery cult known as government-funded science, like the actual
38:58 real genuine science, the scientific method. And science and the free market have unquestionably
39:04 provided the greatest benefits to mankind that have ever existed. If you sort of look at the
39:10 sort of virtual flat line of human progress, and then over the last 200 years, 225 years, I mean,
39:16 since the enclosure movement in England in particular in the late 18th century, we've
39:22 just had this massive explosion of wealth. Now, that did not come from God, that did not come
39:28 from religion, that did not come from the Bible. It came from science and the free market and the
39:34 general engineering and medical advances that came out of the excess wealth and objective methodology
39:40 that capitalism and science represent. So, I think people have said in their hearts, "Well,
39:46 you know, the church was in... religion has been in charge of humanity in one form or another
39:52 for 150,000 years. Superstition, spirituality, religion, whatever you... mysticism has been in
39:57 charge. And it was only after science and capitalism came along that we really, really
40:04 progressed." Now, that has given people a lot of skepticism. And you can say, of course, that science
40:09 is the study of the mind of God, and you can say that capitalism is just "thou shalt not steal"
40:13 writ large, and I get all of that. But nonetheless, when religion diminished and science and the free
40:21 market began to displace it, humanity, by any metric you can think of, did immeasurably better.
40:28 And so, that made people quite skeptical towards religion. And then, as their skepticism towards
40:34 religion grew, their belief in morality faded. Because if morality comes from God, you can
40:42 waive away ethics by no longer believing in God. I don't like that. I think, as a philosopher,
40:50 it has to be that there's a case for ethics that exists independent of the gulags of the government
40:57 and the ghosts of God. There has to be a way of proving morality so that you can't disbelieve in
41:04 it. And I've got a whole... The Peaceful Parenting book will be free, and I have a free book on
41:10 ethics called "Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics."
41:14 And the argument is, if you don't believe in God, if you want the government to throw guns at
41:21 everyone who disagrees with it, then you have a challenge in that the four bans in all rational
41:30 moral systems—a ban on rape, theft, assault, and murder—can be proven from first principles
41:37 rationally through philosophy. They are indisputable. I came up with this theory like
41:42 17 or 18 years ago. I've debated it live. I've debated it online. I've had endless written
41:48 arguments. It is absolutely unassailable, the proof for secular ethics. So, if you say,
41:57 "Be good, but you can only be good if you believe in God," then people have a big incentive to no
42:03 longer believe in God, because then they say, "Well, I don't believe in hell. I don't believe
42:06 in divine punishment." And then it becomes... I mean, this is what Nietzsche was talking about
42:10 in the 19th century. It becomes a Darwinian will to power, a war of all against all. And then
42:14 lying and big lies, propaganda and threats and so on, they all become justified. We saw this
42:24 during COVID. There were so many big lies that are coming out now, finally. There were so many
42:28 big lies that were told over the COVID era, and there's no reckoning, there's no guilt, there's
42:33 no... Because, you know, "Hey, I lied and I made a fortune and I got lots of power and I frightened
42:39 people," and so on. So, why wouldn't you do that? If there's no God, then you do what you can get
42:45 away with. And in particular, if bad people have control over the major organs of justice in
42:54 society, then they can get away with anything. And so, we're sort of seeing this play out,
42:58 that if you don't have God, all is permitted, and the only thing that is bad is not winning.
43:08 So, if you have to lie to acquire resources, then what's wrong? There's no problem with lying.
43:13 Nature's full of, as I mentioned, nature is full of deception. I mean, camouflage is a form
43:17 of deception. "No, I'm not me, I'm the tree," right? I mean, the chameleons are changing the
43:22 colours, a form of deception. The lion pretends to be just the grass, you know, creeping up slowly,
43:27 and the shark has... Also, it's camouflaged so you can't see it looking up and you can't see
43:31 it looking down. So, deception and falsehood and misdirection and trickery, they're all... I mean,
43:36 even the rabbit running away from the wolf is like, "I'm going this way. Just kidding, I'm going
43:40 this way. Just kidding, I'm going this way," right? It's all misdirection and deception to win
43:44 and to lose. And we're in that situation now where a lot of people have lost their faith,
43:50 not just in God, but in virtue and ethics itself. And then, ethics just becomes a tool that you use
43:56 to dominate others with no intention of being virtuous yourself. And that's a pretty bad
44:02 situation for society as a whole. So, that's been a lot of the work that I've done, is to prove
44:09 ethics beyond the capacity of anyone to disbelieve, unless they want to throw reason and objectivity
44:15 out the window completely, in which case they're just a rank relativist and subjectivist, in which
44:18 case they're out of the moral discussion, if that makes sense.
44:23 - Make total sense. And I wonder if this... What we're going through right now is a cycle. And
44:30 if you look at other previous societies, what do you think would have been some of the most
44:33 moral societies throughout history? What was the foundation for those morals? And have you ever
44:38 seen a society kind of be founded on the principle of just pure voluntarism, just decided like,
44:44 okay, what we will not know, initiating any violence? I do wonder if the greatest society
44:51 is yet to be formed. I tend to look at societies that have gone through mass tribulations and see
44:57 what has emerged before that. And it seems like in the midst of a total period where people are
45:02 going through a lot of hardship together, that they kind of form bonds and maybe they grow a
45:06 stronger society. I don't know where we are. I feel like we're in the dark ages right now and
45:10 tend to get really bad before something gets better, but it could be wrong. Or maybe this is
45:14 the way humanity is kind of devolving, and this is what we're gonna look at definitely. But
45:18 from your perspective, do you have hope for the future? And also, coming back to the question,
45:24 are there any peaceful societies that you've explored throughout history and why they were
45:28 so moral? - Yeah, I mean, the best society is yet to come. I actually have a whole novel on my
45:34 website called The Future, which is 500 years from now, what does society look like in the best
45:41 and ideal case? And it's a description of a purely voluntary society. So no, there's been no societies
45:49 prior to the modern world and including the modern world that's founded on peace and property rights.
45:54 Because, I mean, all societies pretty much prior to a couple of hundred years ago were
46:00 slave, rape, and pillage societies. So, I mean, 40% of the Roman Empire was straight up slaves.
46:08 So that's certainly not a peaceful society. And conscription in the Roman Empire was like 20 years,
46:13 and you had very little chance of making it back alive. And if you didn't want to be conscripted,
46:18 they'd just kill you. So that's war slavery, it's just about the worst of all. So no, there are no
46:24 peaceful societies. But if you want to look at a peaceful society, look at your phone book,
46:29 look at your contacts. I mean, I assume you don't lock people in the basement when you want to hang
46:33 out with them. So if you want to look at what a voluntary society looks like, look at your friends,
46:37 look at those around you who you choose voluntarily to spend time with. That is, I call it utopia,
46:45 like Y-O-U, like utopia. You don't want to kidnap people to have them come to your dinner party. You
46:50 don't want to be kidnapped to go to other people's dinner parties. You want for mutually beneficial
46:56 interactions and exchanges, you want peace and voluntarism in your world. And if somebody said,
47:02 "Oh man, I just spent a long weekend with Bob for the cottage." "Oh, how did that come about?"
47:08 "Well, he chloroformed me, he put a burlap sack over my head, and I woke up chained to the
47:14 radiator in his cottage." You'd say, "Well, that's just appalling. He kidnapped you. For heaven's
47:19 sakes, call the police and get Bob arrested, because that's just terrible." And so we would
47:24 be absolutely appalled. Or if somebody said, "Oh yeah, I just got off the phone with the police
47:32 because Bob cloned my credit cards and ran up $50,000 worth of debt in my name." You'd say,
47:39 "My gosh, that's absolutely appalling." And yet we have the national debt, right? So what you would
47:45 find appalling in your personal life, we should find appalling everywhere, because people are
47:50 people and principles are universal. And the purpose of reason and evidence and moral philosophy
47:56 is the same as the purpose of physics. We don't say that physics is different in Philadelphia
48:00 as opposed to Kabul, as opposed to Minnesota, as opposed to the North Pole. The physics are the
48:05 same. It's universal. And morals are universal. And if you would be appalled at something in your
48:11 private life, then we should be appalled about that anywhere in society. And it doesn't matter
48:16 what costume people are wearing, and it doesn't matter what titles they give themselves, or
48:19 whether they're wearing a funny hat like a crown or a tea kettle or a tea cozy. It doesn't matter.
48:24 Morals are morals and they're universal. And so, yeah, I wouldn't say that there have been free
48:29 societies. I mean, in the past, even America was founded on a tax revolt. And then, what was it,
48:35 in Pennsylvania, George Washington was writing down-
48:38 Represents.
48:39 Sorry? Yeah, the whiskey tax, right? I mean, he was writing down with 10,000 troops to behead
48:42 anyone who didn't want to pay the whiskey tax. And within 80 years of the founding of America,
48:47 the Constitution was largely in shreds under Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. So,
48:52 you know, it's tough. It's tough. And it really comes down to, if you grow up with peace,
49:00 then you will expect a society that's peaceful and violence will be jarring to you. If you grow
49:05 up with violence, then you're going to expect a society that's violent and peace will be jarring
49:09 to you. And that is the goal. Because people have been trying for as long as there have been people
49:15 to restrain the power of political authority with words. There's an old, it was a Roman general,
49:22 I think, he says, "Stop quoting words to men with swords." And the idea that we can use pieces of
49:30 paper and language and words, which are, there's no magic spell, there's no, that we can use that
49:35 to restrain and contain those sociopaths with bloodlust for endless violence, it's a fantasy.
49:42 And so, we can't solve the problem of political corruption with words, right? So, what do we have
49:52 to do? Well, we have to raise children peacefully so that we end up with fewer boogeymen for the
49:58 politicians to scare us with, and people will look at politics and say, "Well, boy, that's totally
50:03 different from my life. And, you know, I'm very appreciative of having peace and reason in my
50:08 family. Therefore, we should probably have that in society." Or at least give it a try,
50:12 because Lord knows we've tried everything else, and this is where we've ended up.
50:14 -
50:15 Stephan Molyneux, I want to thank you so much for being with us today. I loved your answers,
50:23 and you're sharing a lot of wonderful insight. Learn more about Stephan by going to
50:27 freedomain.com, and we'll also post links to his site and for his book. And again,
50:32 please want to become a patron for his site, we'll post a link there as well.
50:35 Stephan, it was an honor to meet you and to talk with you after all these years. Thank you so much.
50:40 - I appreciate the conversation. Thank you for giving me access to your audience,
50:43 and you had some fantastic questions. Thank you.
50:45 - Thank you.
50:45 -