• yesterday
This lecture explores the relationship between conscience and universally preferable behavior (UPB), highlighting the challenges of moral teachings in childhood. The speaker discusses how children develop their conscience through empathy and the influence of authority figures, emphasizing the need for consistency in moral principles. The impact of hypocrisy in moral teachings is examined, leading to disillusionment as children mature. Ultimately, the lecture advocates for a personal understanding of morality that prioritizes individual conscience over imposed moral rules.

GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!

https://peacefulparenting.com/

Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!

Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material, as well as targeted AIs for Real-Time Relationships, BitCoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-Ins. Don't miss the private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!

See you soon!

https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Transcript
00:00All right, hello everybody, hope you're doing well.
00:04So this is a wee bit of a last show, I did a show on conscience, but don't worry, the
00:08second time will be better.
00:09I don't know what happened to the first one, it went in the flurry of the 15 different
00:12devices I used to record things, so this is conscience, the retake.
00:17Okay, so I've often made the case that people get angry at UPB because UPB is a manifestation
00:26of what occurs in our minds, which we call the conscience.
00:30So the conscience is the universal part of universally preferable behavior, and the opposite
00:38of conscience is hypocrisy, which in particular if it's invisible to the hypocrite is even
00:44more powerful, we'll get to that in a bit.
00:47So as the old saying went when I was a kid, what's good for the goose is good for the
00:53gander.
00:54That if you say that Bob mustn't steal, then how can you say that Doug must steal, or it's
01:05all right if Doug does steal?
01:07If you say these are morals, and that morals are restrictions or advocations on human behavior,
01:16which is why there's no sort of thought crime outside of dystopian novels, China, and well
01:23everywhere these days, I've been gulagged, digitally gulagged for thought crimes.
01:29So there is a basic set of syllogisms that run all operations of morality.
01:36Number one is morality is specific to human actions, and morality is common to all humans
01:45at all times, in all locations, and under all circumstances.
01:50So if you grabbed another kid's toy in the kindergarten or in the early grade school,
01:55the teacher did not say, oh, wait till tomorrow, tomorrow you can do it, no problem.
02:00Tomorrow it's totally fine to do, but today you can't, right?
02:03Or they didn't say, wait till it's raining, or wait until you're outside, because outside
02:08there's totally different moral rules.
02:09No, what did they say?
02:10They said that it's wrong, it's wrong to steal, wrong to grab, wrong to take what does not
02:16belong to you.
02:17It's wrong to take what does not belong to you, thou shall not steal.
02:20And this was a universal claim.
02:22It was not based upon location, it was not based upon gender, it was not based upon race,
02:27it was not based upon circumstance, and it wasn't based upon need, right, it wasn't based
02:32upon need.
02:33I need that toy, right?
02:35No.
02:36It wasn't based upon a disparity.
02:38Well he has that toy and I don't, so I'm just redistributing it, right?
02:42It was an absolute thou shall not steal.
02:44And it was a rule that was universal based upon the human status of the child, right?
02:54So you've seen these videos where some monkey grabs a purse, right?
02:59Like in some island somewhere, so the monkey grabs a purse, right?
03:04And we say, well that's annoying, that's, right, but we don't put the monkey in prison,
03:09right?
03:10We don't try the monkey, right?
03:11So it is a human characteristic, all humans are subjected to thou shall not steal and
03:17thou shall not hit.
03:18No hitting, no stealing, respect property rights, don't use violence, right?
03:23So that is claimed to be universal.
03:25Now it is inflicted by those who have moral authority over the children.
03:32Now if I teach something to a child, I must be in possession of greater knowledge than
03:40the child does, right?
03:41So you've seen these sort of endless memes about the parents trying to puzzle out the
03:46new math, right?
03:48Well I don't know why they're teaching math this way, this isn't the way that I was taught
03:52math, I don't know what's going on.
03:54And you know, when my daughter first sat down and said, okay, this long division thing,
03:59how would you do it?
04:00I'm like, must resist urge to grab calculator, right?
04:04And you know, it sort of came back to be in a horrified, appalling rush, right?
04:09Like popping a blister or something.
04:11So if I'm going to teach my daughter chess, then obviously I have to be in possession
04:18of greater knowledge of chess than my daughter.
04:22I must also, of course, practice what I preach.
04:25If I say that the castles or the rooks cannot move diagonally, right?
04:32Because that's the rule in chess, right?
04:35The bishops can move diagonally, as can the queen, as can the pawns if they're taking
04:39something, right?
04:41And the knights can do that weird L-shaped epileptic diagonal and jump, right?
04:46So if I say the rooks cannot go diagonal and the bishops cannot go straight, they can't
04:52go XY, right?
04:54Then I, of course, will have to be restrained by that rule, right?
04:58So if I say the rooks cannot go diagonal and it's written down, I write it down for my
05:03daughter's reference and then I try to move my rook diagonal, she would say, wait a minute,
05:09you told me the rooks, so I would have to be constrained by the rules I had imposed
05:12upon the child, right?
05:14So all morals are UPB.
05:16It's universally preferable behavior and there are negative consequences for immoral behavior.
05:25So what are the requirements that are taught to children?
05:29Well, maybe the first time you get away with just grabbing a kid's toy, say, no, don't
05:34grab, right?
05:35It's not nice to grab or how would you feel it if the toy was grabbed for you?
05:39You'd give some sort of basic, right?
05:40Because kids emerge from this primordial ooze of a diapers and no moral responsibility,
05:46right?
05:47That's just, kids are that way, right?
05:50So the baby is not responsible for grabbing things, right?
05:55Babies will grab and maybe you gently take it away, maybe not, but babies will grab and
05:59you don't hold them morally responsible and say it's rude or bad or immoral to grab, right?
06:06Babies grab, surprising strength, right?
06:08As they're taking candy from a baby, have you ever tried that?
06:11So babies grab, that we know.
06:13So then at some point, moral consequences can start to be encouraged or morally good
06:21behavior can start to be encouraged.
06:23So if the child decides to share a toy, you can praise the child for sharing the toy and
06:28so on, right?
06:30So the child has to be knowledgeable of morality, have some knowledge of morality, so at some
06:37point when your baby grabs and the toddler grabs, it goes from, well, isn't that cute?
06:42He's grabbing, that's natural, to, right, that's not good, right?
06:47That's bad, right?
06:48So babies will sometimes need the breasts while they're breastfeeding, that's good.
06:53If you're not breastfeeding and you're 14, that's not good, right?
06:57With an adult for sure, even with your own age group, that's not good, right?
07:01So at some point, moral responsibility starts to occur and that's because the child now
07:07understands morality, understands empathy, understands consequences and has the capacity
07:13to put himself or herself in the other person's shoes and that's sort of what empathy is,
07:19right?
07:20How would you like it if somebody grabbed from you?
07:21And we all went through this, sorry to be so detailed, but there's a reason why I'm
07:25doing all of this and you may have nodded along five minutes ago, but it's important
07:29that I really lay this foundation because there's going to be a bit of a whiplash coming
07:32soon, right?
07:34So we are all taught universally preferable behavior.
07:39Now we're not taught the theory in the way that I have proven the morals in this way,
07:44but we're all taught universally preferable behavior and then there are exceptions.
07:50So if you have a spanking father, then you are not allowed to hit, but your father is
07:56not only allowed, but encouraged to hit.
07:59Now we can say, of course, to sort of make the case, we can say, but there's lots of
08:03things that adults can do that children can't, right?
08:06Adults can drive a car, children can't.
08:07Adults can drink alcohol, children can't.
08:10Adults can sign contracts and rent cars and children can't.
08:12So we understand that, right?
08:14But in general, they would redefine it, right?
08:19It's not hitting, it's discipline, right?
08:21It's spanking, it's not beating or whatever, right?
08:24Or it's confiscation, not theft, right?
08:26Like I'm taking away your phone because you looked up bad things and listened to bad things
08:31or played rude games or watched rude video.
08:33I'm taking away your phone.
08:34So that's not called theft, that's called confiscation and it's a punishment.
08:39You have failed to, you know, what do the parents always say?
08:42You have failed to exercise your choices responsibly, therefore your choices are going to be reduced,
08:47right?
08:49That's what they always say.
08:50So it's redefined, right?
08:51It's not hitting children, it's discipline and spanking and consequences and it's not
08:55taking, it's not kidnapping and confining, it's, you know, it's teaching a child consequences
09:01by putting the child in his or her room and so on, right?
09:06It's not withholding food as torture, it's, well, if the kid doesn't want to eat, there's
09:10nothing else to eat so they just have to go to their room and wait till tomorrow, right?
09:15It's all this redefinition stuff, right?
09:17So the conscience is formed prior to morality, right?
09:23There's a pre-conscience mindset which is universalism as a whole and this is called
09:28object constancy, it's called conceptual or concept formation and so on and that is the
09:34idea that chocolate is always good, right?
09:40Unless you get some, like there's a weird jelly bean game I played with my daughter
09:43a couple of times where you spin the wheel and maybe you get a good jelly bean or maybe
09:47you get the sour milk jelly bean or whatever, it's actually, it's kind of fun, but a chocolate
09:51bar is always good, ice cream is always good, objects have properties, right?
09:56Broccoli is always bad, brussels sprouts are always, well, actually they're evil, that's
10:00a different, different, that's the only exception to UPB, it's just brussels sprouts, unless,
10:04unless they're covered in bacon and sauce, anyway, now I'm hungry, back, back on track
10:09ADD boy.
10:11So you are going through a process of extrapolating and universalizing as a baby and as a toddler,
10:21you are learning automatically and universalizing the automatic properties of nature as a whole
10:28and this isn't of course just, I mean all creatures that are alive that have the capacity
10:33for concepts, not describing concepts with language, but having concepts, right?
10:38The lion does not assume that the next baby zebra is poisonous, right?
10:42That's not what the baby, sorry, that's not what the lion believes.
10:47The fox does not believe that the next rabbit is explosive, it's not going to blow up, right?
10:53Now it's tasty, right?
10:55Especially if it's running, it means it's fresh, right?
10:58Fresh, exciting, so are we all, all the living creatures, certainly the mammals and lots
11:03of other creatures as well, like when you pour out the cat food, right, and the sound
11:08of you pouring out the cat food has the cat come and, well, want the food, right?
11:14So they understand that sort of cause and effect, right?
11:20So and you've probably seen those videos of the, you just put a couple little pieces of
11:24food in the dog bowl and the dog just kind of glares at them like, bro, what are you
11:28doing?
11:29Why are you Kate Mossing me?
11:31I'm a wolf, hungry like the wolf, I've got a little bit of music brain today.
11:37So the baby, and in particular through the acquisition of language and so on, the baby
11:43is learning all about universalism, right?
11:49A tree is a tree is a tree, a swing is a swing is a swing, a playground is a playground is
11:53a playground, chocolate is chocolate is chocolate, and you are, as a baby and a toddler, you
11:59are learning all of these universals, right?
12:02A candy store is a place you want to go to and get candy from.
12:08Your favorite movie will not mysteriously change every time you watch it.
12:13So we are universalizing as a whole in order to understand the world, learn, survive, basically
12:20our higher brains or our neofrontal cortex is identifying the behavior of matter and
12:27energy in its most fundamental anatomic form.
12:31We have concepts because atoms, the behavior of atoms are consistent, right?
12:35Water is water.
12:36H2O is H2O.
12:37When you're thirsty, you drink water.
12:39You don't drink oil, right?
12:41There's a line in some Anne Marie MacDonald novel that I never finished because her writing
12:45is just, it's like paper cuts to your soul with the horror on the page, but there was
12:50something about how it's in the back of the car and mom put on her lipstick, which always
12:54had the color and reminded me of candy, right?
12:58And you've seen those soaps, right?
12:59Those soaps in those stores that look so good that you want to eat them, right?
13:03But don't, unless you've sworn.
13:06So we are developing all of this conceptual ability just as part of being an advanced
13:15mammal and also in particular through language and through our concept formation, the ability
13:19not just to process concepts at a sense level, but identify, abstract them and define them
13:27an abstract level, right?
13:28A conceptual level.
13:29To define concepts as concepts is a uniquely human attribute in the same way that every
13:34other creature, but human beings, if you point at something, they look at your hand.
13:39But toddlers, when you point at something, they'll look at what you're pointing at, right?
13:42That's just sort of basic sort of empathy stuff, right?
13:46So we have all of these concepts that are formed in our mind that are universal.
13:52And that is the fertile soil in which universally preferable behavior from a moral standpoint
14:00is planted, right?
14:02That's how we get it.
14:03That's why it hits us so deep.
14:07So if we just look at universally preferable behavior prior to morality, so universally
14:13preferable behavior, right?
14:15I remember my brother and I, when we were little kids, there was a sort of little wooden
14:20box, a sort of long box of after-eights.
14:23And we were just snacking on the after-eights and putting, like magical thinking, right?
14:27We were putting, they come in these little paper sleeves, right?
14:30Little black paper sleeves.
14:31And we just kept putting the paper sleeves back.
14:33We'd reach around in, we'd get some more after-eights, we'd munch on them and so on.
14:37And so the universally preferable behavior for us in that moment was do that which gets
14:43the after-eights in your mouth, right?
14:45Then of course, at the end, we were kind of horrified and had to hide it and all of that
14:49because, oh my God, there's no after-eights left, we're doomed.
14:51So universally preferable behavior.
14:54If you're tired, go sleep, right?
14:56If you're hungry, eat something.
14:57If you're thirsty, drink something.
14:59If you want a good tasting food, go and get a little stool and go up on the cookie jar,
15:05open the cookie jar, get a cookie.
15:07And if you don't want something good to eat, for me at least, then have your mother bake
15:11some weird German rusk cookies that basically have been excreted from a wildebeest's armpit.
15:16And she'll call them cookies, but all you'll do is daydream about chocolate-covered digestive
15:20cookies, which are little slabs of paradise in a bag.
15:24So, man, I'm hungry again.
15:26I should have probably eaten before doing the show.
15:28Oh, well, we'll survive.
15:29Or will we?
15:32So there's universally preferable behavior in terms of getting what you want, getting
15:36good tasting food and all that, resting when you're tired and so on, right?
15:40And if your parents say, clean up your toys and you can have a nice snack, then if you
15:46want the snack, you'll go clean up your toys.
15:49And so that's universally preferable behavior to get what you want, to get the candy or
15:53whatever it is, right?
15:55So you've got all of this universal preferable behavior that's going on just in terms of
16:00sense data and the automatic extrapolation of immediate sense data into universal concepts.
16:07And then there is cause and effect, you know, like for the lion, right?
16:10If you're hungry, go chase something and eat it, right?
16:13I mean, you've probably seen the video.
16:15It's on X, I think, where there's this species of bird where the mother feeds the children
16:22until they're relatively old.
16:23And then when the children, when the babies leave the nest, what happens is they just
16:28stand where there are bugs and open their mouth, expecting the bugs to sort of jump
16:32into their mouth.
16:32And it takes them a little while to figure out that they actually have to sort of chase
16:36the bugs and eat them, right?
16:39Because they're just so used to being fed.
16:41But enough about the welfare state.
16:43So then we are primed for this universally preferable behavior in terms of morality,
16:53right?
16:54If I want a piece of chocolate that my mother promises me for cleaning up my toys, if I
16:59want the piece of chocolate, I ought to clean up my toys.
17:02And then she would give me the piece of chocolate.
17:03So that's, you know, universally preferable.
17:05So we're all primed for universally preferable behavior based upon direct sense data going
17:10into concepts.
17:10And by concepts, I don't necessarily mean that we have defined those concepts in our
17:15minds.
17:15But, you know, a kid knows to roll a ball before he could define what a ball is, right?
17:21I mean, the same way that a lion can chase a zebra without being able to define what
17:25a zebra is, right?
17:27There's sense concepts, and then there's abstract concepts, right?
17:30So we are primed for this universally preferable behavior simply based on our sense concepts
17:39and then our cause and effect concepts.
17:41And hopefully, of course, our parents have kept our words so that cause and effect is
17:45relatively clear for us, right?
17:48So then we are told that universally preferable behavior is our moral standards involving
17:58niceness, kindness, and empathy.
18:00It used to involve justice until education and religion became completely feminized because
18:07femininity is more about niceness and is harsh against perceived rudeness, whereas male morality
18:14is more around justice and is harsh against cheaters and liars and thieves and murderers
18:20and so on, right?
18:22So women, they want cooperation, and men want peace and honesty, right?
18:29This is the tension, right?
18:30If you grow up with a single mother, she wants you to lie in order to save people's feelings,
18:35but you, as a man, you want to tell the truth, right?
18:38You don't want to lie, right?
18:40Back to the jello experiment I've talked about before.
18:43And both are important, right?
18:44It's important to have some diplomacy in the world, as I remind myself from time to time
18:47or am rather forcefully reminded from time to time.
18:50It's important to have some diplomacy in the world, but it's also important to tell
18:53the truth, right?
18:54And this is why, like I said, there's nothing more uniquely feminine in a way than the concept
18:58of malinformation.
19:00Disinformation is stuff you know to be false.
19:02Misinformation is stuff you think is true but is false.
19:04Disinformation is stuff that is true but negative in some manner.
19:08It hurts people's feelings.
19:09It upsets people that might need to negative social outcomes.
19:12Okay, so that's just the tyranny of conformity to narcissistic bullies, right?
19:21Because the moment you say, don't say that which offends people, people will just censor
19:25others by pretending to be offended, right?
19:27And being offended is just a mark of low intelligence, right?
19:31It's just an inability to handle emotions and a complete disinterest in the truth and
19:36an over-focus on emotional responses and a belief that if you're upset, it's a completely
19:42irrational belief, which is that if you're upset, other people are bad for upsetting
19:46you and must be punished, right?
19:47And again, that's just a low IQ thing.
19:49There's only not much you can do about that.
19:51It's like all the people who think it's a genius thing to add, oh, there's an exception
19:54to a general rule.
19:55It's like, oh, thank you very much.
19:57I really appreciate that.
19:59So if you want to get to the North Pole, probably go north.
20:03Well, not if you're standing right on the North Pole.
20:05It's like, okay, but then you're already there.
20:06All right, so UPP is the conscience, and the conscience is accepting the universality
20:15of moral rules that are taught to you as a child and inflicted upon you as a child.
20:23Now, the conscience is the part of you that accepts that the rules that are claimed to
20:29be universal are in fact universal.
20:33In other words, that the people who are teaching you morality aren't lying, hypocritical a-holes,
20:42right?
20:42That's the foundation of the conscience, is that you are taught that stealing and hitting,
20:51taking and pushing, taking and hitting is bad and wrong for everyone at all times, and
20:57it is taught to you by people who know the rules and practice the rules.
21:02Since they're inflicting the rules upon you, they must therefore be inflicting the rules
21:05on themselves.
21:07So, stealing and hitting is bad, and it is being taught to you by people who have almost
21:13infinitely greater knowledge and the practice of moral consistency than you, right?
21:20So, to take the analogy again, if someone is teaching you chess, then you're going to
21:25assume that at the beginning, since you know nothing about chess and they know a lot about
21:29chess, that they have infinitely greater knowledge of chess than you have, and that they
21:36consistently follow the rules themselves that they're asking you to follow.
21:41Because the only reason that you would not follow the rules you were inflicting on others
21:45is because you want to cheat them through their integrity, right?
21:50So, if someone teaches you a particular chess move and then tries to get away with breaking
21:57that chess rule, then that's because they want you to be bound by a rule that they're
22:02not going to follow because they're lying hypocritical cheaters who want to win against
22:07you and dominate you through your devotion to consistency and integrity to the rules.
22:14They're the worst kind of people, and this is just in a chess realm, right?
22:17In the realm of morality, it's just infinitely worse.
22:21The people who teach you moral rules so that you'll follow them and that they don't plan
22:26to so that they have an absolutely unfair advantage, right?
22:30This is one of the things around Christianity that Christians sometimes don't understand
22:34how some other belief systems have no interest in universality or consistency.
22:39They're only interested in inflicting it upon their foes to cripple them in conflicts.
22:44I'm looking at you, Zoroastrianism!
22:46Actually, no, I'm not looking at Zoroastrianism.
22:48I don't even know fundamentally what much of Zoroastrianism is about other than it's
22:51manichean good versus evil and mankind is decisive for the balance.
22:55That's all I basically get out of that.
22:57It's not a lot.
22:58Anyway, so, but at least it's not making me hungry.
23:02Wait, Zoroastrianism?
23:03Indian food.
23:04Mmm, saag paneer, mutter paneer, cheese cubes.
23:11All right.
23:13So, we are taught, well, so we develop this universality, sense-based, conceptual-based,
23:19language-based, and then morality-based, and we fully accept when we're little,
23:26for the most part, sorry, I shouldn't say fully accept for the most part.
23:29If you have a really hypocritical family, you're going to have doubts about this,
23:32but like we're just going to say for the most part, like in the main, in the majority.
23:37So, you accept that the people who are teaching these moral rules know these
23:42moral rules infinitely better than you do and practice them consistently.
23:45Otherwise, you're just in a state of nature where your goodwill and integrity is being
23:49used against you, which is going to turn you pretty feral pretty quickly, right?
23:53So, the conscience is the part of us that extends sense, conceptual, or conceptualized
24:03and language-based concepts into the moral realm based upon the moral rules taught to,
24:09and we believe modeled and inflicted on us by moral authorities when we are little children,
24:16toddlers and little kids, right?
24:18From the age of sort of two or three, sort of onwards, right?
24:21So, we're taught that things are universal, and we're taught by people we perceive to be
24:26of infinitely greater moral, not just moral knowledge, but moral practice, right?
24:31Almost infinitely greater moral practice, right?
24:35So, someone who has not played chess can teach you the rules just by reading
24:41the rules out to you from a website or from money.
24:45When I was a kid, I would spend endless afternoons and like just thumbing through,
24:49we had a big old Encyclopedia Britannica, which was the, I guess, the original Google of the day,
24:55but without the horrendous corrupting propagandistic bias,
25:00but so they could read you the rules, but they can't teach you the strategy because
25:04they don't have any experience in playing a lot of chess.
25:07Like once you play a lot of chess, then you can teach people strategy, right?
25:10But if you haven't played chess, you can read off the rules, but you can't teach strategy, right?
25:15So, it's not just that somebody has to have knowledge of chess, right?
25:18They have to also have experience with chess or experience in chess, right?
25:23So, that's how we develop the instinct, the conceptual, automatic,
25:31unconscious processing of universal rules.
25:36So, when I say that UPP is the conscience, the conscience is the part of us that accepts
25:42the moral legitimacy of universal rules, which is bound into the moral legitimacy
25:49of those who teach us the moral rules, because they teach us their moral rules
25:55based upon not just their knowledge of those moral rules, but also based upon their decades
26:03and decades of experience manifesting and practicing those moral rules.
26:09They have authority not just based on knowledge, but based on experience.
26:14In the same way that we take health advice from somebody who is healthy,
26:21right?
26:21We take diet advice from somebody who's not obese.
26:25And so, those who teach us morals don't say, well, I don't really practice this, but you have to.
26:33Well, I don't really believe in this, but I'm going to inflict it on you, right?
26:37So, the way that morals are inflicted upon us is by, frankly, fairly pompous, overbearing,
26:45smug, certain people who claim moral authority based not just upon perfect knowledge of
26:53universality, stealing, hitting, but also on the consistent practice of that morality,
26:59which has given them the absolute authority, experience, and credibility to inflict their
27:07rules upon us.
27:09So, this is why chefs are allowed to be fat, right?
27:12Trainers are not, chefs are, because a chef who's fat obviously enjoys his own cooking.
27:18So, things change though, particularly in your teenage years, things change.
27:24One of the most fundamental things that changes is you realize that your parents,
27:29if they hit you, they no longer hit you, and instead they reason with you, and you happen
27:33to notice that this coincides with you getting as big or bigger than they are, right?
27:39You happen to notice that your parents magically find sweet, sweet reason, the moment that you
27:45become big enough to fight back, they abandon aggression and start reasoning with you.
27:51And that is a pretty, like deep down in your unconscious, right?
27:53Maybe it's conscious for you, maybe it's not, but deep down in your unconscious, it's like,
27:57oh, so it was not about discipline, it was just about size and strength, right?
28:05The other thing is that as you begin to understand how your society works,
28:09and you realize that children are forced to go to government schools,
28:12and adults are forced to pay for government schools, then you realize that the use of
28:19violence as the foundation for government schools means that the teacher who told you
28:23not to use violence is relying on violence to get her paycheck.
28:27So you begin to get these cracks, right?
28:31And I very, very vividly remember, and I wasn't alone in this, I think this happens to a lot
28:36of kids, but I very vividly remember when I first started hearing about the national debt,
28:43and I was like, wait, what?
28:45Hang on, I was told to not overspend, I was told that I shouldn't waste my money,
28:50I was told that I needed to save for a rainy day, I was told that society really cares about me,
28:54so why on earth would I be born into debt?
28:56Like, it made no sense to me, at all.
28:59There is, you cannot go with the flow, you cannot go with what the other kids are doing,
29:06right?
29:06It's the old thing, why did you do it?
29:08Well, everyone else is doing it.
29:09Well, if everyone else was jumping off the Boston, jumping into Boston Harbor,
29:12would you do that too?
29:13If somebody else was jumping, everybody else was jumping off the CN Tower, would you do that too?
29:16Right?
29:17So you were told that personal integrity had nothing to do with the will or preferences of
29:22the majority, but then you're told that the government is legitimized by the will of the
29:27majority.
29:28I was like, what?
29:30We're talking not just, you know, I threw an egg at a house because the other kids were doing it
29:35too, we're talking about actually going to fucking war.
29:39We're talking about jail, we're talking about sometimes the death penalty, right?
29:44We're talking about the institutionalized use of force,
29:48not just egg throwing or whatever throwing.
29:52Why did you throw all these toilet rolls into the tree?
29:55Well, everyone else is doing it.
29:57So we're told that there's no such thing as the majority is right, and then we're told that the
30:04entire society and violence and war and debt is all founded on the majority is right.
30:09So again, we start to get these cracks where things don't start to make any sense, right?
30:14I mean, obviously my mother hit me, and then when I hit her back, she was just shocked and
30:19appalled and how dare, like, you know, you just get this realization that you're just
30:24surrounded by stinky old liars, right?
30:27I mean, that they don't have all of this moral authority, that they don't actually practice
30:33what they preach, and that you begin to suspect that morality is the exercise of power.
30:40It's not really morality, it's just the exercise of power.
30:44And you know what?
30:45Prior to UPB, for the most part, you'd be right.
30:49You'd be absolutely, completely, and totally right.
30:53See, here's how morality works throughout history.
30:57When you begin to suspect that there are hypocrites who are in charge of morality,
31:05there are hypocrites in charge of morality, you begin to suspect that.
31:08Well, you're right.
31:10And then you realize who it is you have to obey, who has power.
31:15So, the people who have power in your life, those who can inflict moral rules on you,
31:22that they are excluded from themselves.
31:25And you can't say anything about it, really, right?
31:30Those who can inflict moral rules upon you, that they are exempted from themselves,
31:35and you can't really point it out, those are the people who have power.
31:39So, the infliction of moral hypocrisy is a marker for power.
31:46And so, when you begin to see, wait a minute, I was told to be responsible in my spending,
31:51I was told that that is bad, and yet the entire country and all the voters have indebted me just
31:57before I was even born, right?
31:59So, that tells you who's in power and who's in charge, right?
32:02So, I'm not allowed to print money, but the government can print money, okay?
32:07If I kill someone, I'm an evil murderer, unless the government points at someone else
32:13and forces me to kill them, in which case I'm a hero and a good guy, right?
32:17So, you begin to suspect that there's all of this moral hypocrisy, and of course, you're right.
32:22But if you then begin to demand moral consistency from those who told you that
32:26moral consistency was everything when you were younger, you're in serious freaking trouble.
32:31You're in grave danger.
32:32Chuckles to himself in back of school bus land.
32:35I'm in danger.
32:36So, UPB makes people anxious because it exposes the moral hypocrisy of those who are in charge,
32:42which historically has been a grave danger for people.
32:46So, if you are a moral hypocrite, UPB bothers you because it proves that you are a moral
32:52hypocrite.
32:53If you're not a moral hypocrite, UPB makes you nervous because it puts you in the, what
32:59was historically the generally suicidal position of calling out, quote, moral rulers for their
33:06moral hypocrisy when morality was invented to exploit.
33:10Morality was invented for the slaves, the serfs, the voters.
33:14It was not invented for the powers that be.
33:17It was invented so that, like the thief wants to teach you that you shouldn't steal,
33:21because if everyone steals, nothing gets produced.
33:23He has nothing to steal.
33:24So, the thief teaches you that stealing is wrong so that he can steal more, right?
33:31I mean, the government teaches you to respect property, right?
33:33So, it can, well, we know how all of that goes, right?
33:36Nothing new under sun or moon as far as all of that stuff goes, right?
33:40I mean, the people who are really into diversity don't hire conservatives, half the population,
33:45right?
33:45So, it's all, you know, very sort of boring and predictable.
33:48So, this is why UPB is very tough for people to take on, because if you are a moral hypocrite,
33:55then UPB makes you very uneasy by pointing out your moral hypocrisy, or it makes you
33:59uneasy because your victims will learn something about moral consistency and thus, right?
34:04UPB inoculates you against the exploitation of moral hypocrisy, right?
34:09And so, if you are an exploiter, then people who are moral exploiters don't like their
34:16victims to be empowered, right?
34:17They don't like their victims to learn more about moral hypocrisy, right?
34:22So, one of the most foundational exploitation is for the parents to say,
34:28well, I hit my children because my children are cognitively deficient, right?
34:33And then if the children grow up and say, okay, so is it okay for me to hit you when you become
34:39old and you have cognitive, you know, they call them senior moments, you have cognitive
34:42deficiencies, right?
34:44So, if you spanked me for losing my phone when I was a kid or losing some valuable thing,
34:52then am I allowed to hit you when you get old and you lose things, right?
34:57Well, so, people don't like this moral hypocrisy because all the hitting of the kids is in the
35:02past, whereas the wanting to exploit your kids is in the future, right?
35:05So, they don't like that.
35:07And I understand that.
35:08I really do.
35:10Of course, yeah.
35:10And it's bad luck, you know, bad luck for the moral exploiters that UPB came along and
35:14empowered their victims to escape these claustrophobic, strangling, suffocating necks of pure rank
35:19vicious hypocrisy, to coin a phrase or two.
35:25So, that's why people get uneasy about it.
35:27It is their own conscience.
35:29And your own conscience, it starts off as the belief in the universality and authority
35:34and experience of your moral instructors and then grows, ends with you growing into the
35:39deep understanding that the people who taught you morality are, you know, vicious exploiting
35:44hypocrites and you better shut the hell up about it, or you're going to be dangling from
35:49a flagpole or illuminating the night sky on a torch next to a funeral pyre next to a witch
35:57or something, right?
35:58So, that is my general conversation about the conscience.
36:02Conscience is UPB.
36:04UPB is the delineation of the validity of the conscience.
36:07But as soon as you start applying the moral rules that your rulers claimed to be consistent,
36:12consistently, you're in grave danger because the entire point of them instructing you on
36:16moral rules was for you to be good and them to be evil, right?
36:21So, that's my general thought on the conscience.
36:23I'd love to hear your thoughts about what it is I am talking about.
36:29And lots of love from up here, my friends.
36:31Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
36:33I would very much deeply and gratefully and humbly appreciate it.
36:37And I will catch you on the flip side, known as Australia.
36:42Bye!