Stefan Molyneux
  • 2 days ago
Proverbs 25:18

"Like a club, a sword, and a sharp arrow is a person who gives false testimony against his neighbor."

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Transcript
00:00All right this is Bible verses this is Proverbs 25 18 which is telling lies
00:07about someone is as harmful as hitting with a rock, wounding with a sword or
00:11shooting them with a sharp arrow. Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow is one
00:16who gives false testimony against a neighbor. This is really interesting and
00:21of course a tiny bit personal to me but this is really interesting why
00:28defamation I mean slander defamation whatever right let's just say defamation
00:33why let's go with slander slander is more juicy. So why would it be so damaging to
00:43tell lies about someone to to gossip to put them down well it's because when you
00:52slander someone which is you know saying things about them that are negative and
00:56false and usually highly negative right so when you slander someone or
01:02participate in that what you're doing is you are destroying the value of having a
01:12good reputation which takes many years or decades to build up so we all know
01:18that if thieves come along and steal stuff then there's no point accumulating
01:23wealth right why would you bother as a farmer for instance why would you bother
01:30putting together an amazing parcel of land and trying to figure out like
01:35working days and nights to try and figure out a better way to grow crops
01:38why would you put in all the effort to to plant and experiment and you know
01:44maybe splice some crops together why would you put out put out all of the
01:51money to hire people to pick your crops and well you would do that in general
01:57because the accumulation of capital that you would gain you would take all these
02:01crops to the market and you would sell them and then you would use that money
02:06to maybe buy more land or there's a dowry for your daughters or you know
02:12whatever else you would use the money for but it would be worth putting in
02:17decades of work to become a really really good farmer because you could
02:22keep the proceeds of your farm work and this is why if somebody comes along like
02:28you do all of this you work for 20 years to become a really good father you
02:30finally hit it, farmer sorry, you finally hit it big and then you have a bunch of
02:37gold and then somebody just comes along and steals all your gold the ripple
02:42effect of that is enormous right it's not just that you probably won't have
02:45any real incentive to gather together your gold anymore to to be a good
02:51farmer which means huge amounts of excess crops no longer get built but
02:56it's the ripple effect too which is that everyone else is like oh did you hear
02:59about Bob, you know Bob had worked really hard had all this money and they
03:03just came and cleaned them out you know whether it's the government or a private
03:07a thief so to speak
03:09it's even worse if it's the government or as is often the case the private
03:13thief acts knowing that the government either won't prosecute him or will prosecute
03:17Bob for defending his property right in in most totalitarian situations the
03:23purpose of the government is to prevent you from responding to thieves to
03:28prevent you from protecting your property
03:31so the lives of millions of people hang in the balance of whether Bob gets to
03:39keep his gold because not just Bob other people are like oh forget that
03:44forget that I mean the same things happens under capitalism where if you
03:49become too prominent economically the state may act against you right if you
03:54are trying to reduce the size and power of the state or at least not working
03:58lockstep lockstep with it so for the population to be sustained thieves have
04:05to be restrained
04:07it's the same thing with housing right if
04:11Billy builds a bunch of houses and then people just squat in them they just
04:16squat in them and he can't get them out and they just take his stuff then then
04:19he's not going to build any more houses and the story is going to spread and no
04:24more houses really are going to be built. I mean we understand this from an
04:29economic standpoint if your social media accounts right I worked for 15
04:37years building up social media accounts if they can be taken away on a whim with
04:42no recourse and for no particular clearly stated with no warning and with
04:47no particularly clearly stated violation then people will stop accumulating
04:53social media stuff right or if they do try to do it they'll stay very they'll
04:58color very much within the lines so it's this this chilling effect it's not
05:02just that the thief steals from Bob or Billy the thief steals from everyone
05:11else who will no longer bother to accumulate resources and grow a lot of
05:17food or build a lot of houses he's stealing from them as well the ripple
05:21effect is enormous when it comes to this kind of thievery but it's exactly the
05:27same with reputation so to accumulate a good reputation is to act in an
05:35honorable and consistent and moral manner for years or decades however if
05:43someone can come along and destroy your reputation and other people go along
05:48with it and so on if other people can just come along and destroy your
05:53reputation then there's no point accumulating a good reputation right if
06:00you have a bunch of gold because you're a fantastic farmer and it took you
06:04decades to achieve that somebody just takes your gold there's no point being a
06:08fantastic farmer people only then end up growing for what they themselves need
06:15and the city starved to death or you end up in this situation where the farmers
06:22are accused of hoarding right because the government just wants to take all
06:25their grain so the government is accused of hoarding I'm sorry the the government
06:30accuses farmers of hoarding comes and takes all that stuff there's no seed crop
06:33and you end up with you know terrible horrifying brutal famines like the
06:37Holodomor so when it comes to the value of gaining a good reputation if there is
06:46a practical value to getting a good reputation then people will pursue a
06:50good reputation they will act honorably they will be honest they will keep their
06:54promises they will fulfill their contracts they will pay their bills they
06:58will you know to all of these good things right but if the good reputation
07:02can simply be taken away then there's no point doing it and therefore the
07:07incentive to be good and moral and righteous and honest and have integrity
07:13and keep your word and fulfill your contracts and pay your bills
07:18there's no point accumulating any of that there's no point accumulating
07:24virtue if it can just be taken away with a whisper campaign and it's really even
07:31worse than gold the loss of reputation is worse than a loss of gold in many
07:37ways because at least with gold you can maybe put it in a bank you can hire
07:42guards to keep it but there's nobody you can hire to protect your reputation
07:48there's nobody there's no guard because it just takes one malicious vengeful a
07:56hole to start spreading rumors about you and you don't even know that it's
08:04happening other than you maybe see some funny looks from people or some negative
08:08response from people you can almost never find out who started it and and
08:12you can't fight against it so you can guard your land you can guard your
08:18property you can take a portion of your wealth and use it to guard your wealth
08:23but your reputation is seed in a field the birds come by and peck away at it
08:33and take it away and there's really not much you can do about it now what
08:37happens in society when integrity is wantonly robbed well people don't want
08:47to be good or virtuous or honest or have integrity anymore at least in the public
08:51square but that's only part of it what happens with slander is you end up in
08:59this situation where moral men and women historically generally men in the public
09:07square historically men view society as repugnant and repulsive because because
09:16slander only has legs if people walk it from place to place in other words if
09:23somebody says to you did you hear that Bob cheated on his wife and has had sex
09:28with one of his donkeys and now has a brain rotting sexually transmitted
09:33disease did you hear that now that's somebody attempting to slander Bob right
09:40now the person if the person who's listening says I don't think that's true
09:44but let's I tell you what let's let's go and talk to Bob and they grab them by
09:48the ear and they hold them down to Bob and they say why don't you repeat to me
09:53what you told me about Bob but repeat it with Bob's like Bob in the room or even
10:00if they don't want to grab the person by the ear if they say I'm gonna go
10:03straight over to Bob's house and I'm gonna check this out because this does
10:06not seem believable to me at all this is not seem believable to me at all and
10:13then they go and they check with Bob and Bob is like well no this is all
10:16completely crazy my health is good of course I haven't cheated on my wife this
10:21is all false and then the community goes back to the original gossiper and
10:27demands to know where he got that information and they trace it back and
10:31they're rigorous right and they work very hard to protect the value of Bob's
10:37reputation from a liar and a slanderer right that's what an honorable society
10:44does that's what an honorable society does is at the moment it starts hearing
10:50terrible things about Bob it will work as hard as possible to verify them and
10:55then it will severely punish the liars and the slanderers severely punish them
11:02it will ostracize them economically religiously socially people will no
11:09longer have anything to do with the liar and the slanderer so that's what an
11:14honorable society does now a cheap sleazy dishonorable crap stain of a
11:20society what it will do is it will say oh my god really oh wow Bob cheated on
11:26his wife and Bob has a sexually transmitted disease he got from a donkey
11:30oh my god and they go did you hear right and they will go and they will destroy
11:36Bob's reputation with glee and abandon with happiness with sadism okay and then
11:44because once you've participated in slander you can never have a good
11:49reputation in your own mind right you can't have a good conscience and you
11:55can't say it's really important to tell the truth and it's really important to
11:58be honorable and it's really important not to lie about people because you've
12:01already participated in a slander so good people no longer want to help your
12:09society good people no longer want to improve the morals of your society I
12:15mean this is like the case I made many years ago almost 20 years ago now the
12:20trial and death of Socrates that Socrates got so disgusted by Athens that
12:25he gave them the final curse of obeying the state which sealed their fate or you
12:30know you could argue that maybe that's what Plato had to write so he didn't end
12:34up with the same fate now there are two ways in which a society is
12:41defended one is morally and the other is martially now the martial tends to
12:47become more important as the moral of the society fails so for instance if you
12:54have let's picture an imaginary situation I know this is a little bit
12:58off the beaten path but let's say that you have a really good relationship to
13:05your society and there are taxes involved the taxes are small they're
13:10reasonable and you get great services and like let's just sort of picture that
13:14scenario like it's I know it's a pure theoretical but let's just say right so
13:18your taxes are like 2% and you get you know great streets and a really good
13:24justice system and you get a really good police and and the society is sort of
13:29safe and clean and all of that it's 2% right and you really admire the people
13:33running the government and they really work to make sure that they provide as
13:37much value as possible to their citizens right well will you need a lot of
13:45enforcement of a couple of percentage points of your income with clear and
13:50measurable and valued and valuable goods and services provided by the state well
13:56no I mean there'll be a few people who won't pay but most people will simply
14:00pay in the same way that if you're a really good waiter people will tip you
14:04they don't have to but they will in general I mean I worked as a waiter for
14:09many years heck I still work for tipsfreedomain.com slash donate life is a
14:14circle now as the government services begin to decay and as the government
14:20power and corruption begins to grow people don't really want to pay their
14:24taxes as much anymore so then you need all of this enforcement and chasing
14:28after people and and so on right so if there's a moral case that's valued the
14:35martial case is much less or there's much less requirement for the martial case so if
14:42we have a society where moral people keep their reputations and anybody who
14:49tries to lie about the moral people ends up being you know dragged out and
14:54humiliated and it doesn't work and they're ostracized and so on and they
14:58have to pay restitution like all this kind of good stuff happens then moral
15:02people admire society and want to add to its virtue and will encourage people to
15:06be good and will have a respect for the society and so on right so that's that's
15:11how that works now you've probably seen this kind of stuff as well recently
15:15where the soldiers or people who are traditionally soldiers in America
15:20certainly under the last administration did not seem to be overly keen to sign
15:24up to be a soldier for America you know it's one of the one of the issues with
15:30spending two trillion dollars and 20 years to replace the Taliban with the
15:33Taliban is that you have destroyed the incentive for many people if not most
15:40people to want to honorably serve in the military in order to do and to protect
15:44America so that's not good because and again certainly under the last
15:51administration I don't know what's going to happen with this one exactly but
15:55the Americans now are no longer enthusiastic soldiers of virtue they
16:01are rationally calculating mercenaries of benefits so if moral men and women
16:09look at society and see that society enthusiastically participates in lying
16:16about moral men in order to destroy their reputations then they will have
16:20private virtues for sure they will have private virtues for sure because private
16:26virtues in your business and in your personal and romantic and family life
16:30are good they're good but public virtue no no why would you do all of the
16:38extraordinarily hard work of having and building and maintaining a reputation if
16:46it can simply get taken away and you can go from having a good reputation to
16:51not just having a good reputation taken away but have it be replaced with a bad
16:55reputation to go from being perceived as honorable to being perceived as crazy
17:00twisted evil whatever it is right why would you bother doing that in the
17:04public square and given that you know this about your society that the general
17:10population is so freaking stupid that they will get a tiny momentary
17:15transitory thrill from participating in the sharing and spreading of salacious
17:19and false gossip that they will absolutely destroy the moral heart of
17:23their society but why on earth would you care what happens to that society right
17:29I mean I grew up in England and in you know various you know England and
17:35Ireland in fact and in the various houses and schools and locations and
17:39neighborhoods and places that I lived nobody ever intervened in the child
17:44abuse that I was experiencing which is very loud and very violent and then
17:49after I became after I went public with the child abuse that I had experienced
17:57and then tried to help other people who were also other adults who were victims
18:00of child abuse it started in England but you know the media turned on me
18:04rushed to protect the abusers and to attack the virtuous well I mean that's
18:13a drag you don't get me wrong that's a drag but but on the other hand I
18:18actually don't have to care what happens to England anymore I did my best I did
18:24my best so other people will have to rush to defend England but it ain't
18:29gonna be me I did my best so when society enthusiastically and in a
18:36cowardly fashion a cowardly sadistically joyful fashion tears down unjustly
18:43the honorably earned and acquired reputation of moral men and women then
18:49you will end up with very quickly a distinct lack of supply of honorable men
18:55and women and then from there you end up with fewer soldiers who are willing to
19:01get who are willing to risk injury and death in order to protect the society
19:06see the soldiers have to like the society in order to risk maiming and
19:11death to protect it and if the society is just full of sad pathetic scurrilous
19:18weaselly people who just turn like a bunch of pathetic jackals on any decent
19:23line in the environment well it's not it's not really worth defending I mean
19:30this is the demoralization of a society one of the best ways to achieve the
19:34demoralization of the society is to encourage people to gossip to destroy
19:43the reputations of good men and women so that the value of being honorable is not
19:49just eliminated but reversed and that way moral men and women don't want to
19:54protect society because society does not protect moral men and women has to be
19:59reciprocal and then when moral men and women don't want to protect society you
20:03don't end up with honorable myths that drive the martially inclined soldiers to
20:08protect the society as a whole right so that you end up with there's no honor in
20:14society because it's all been torn down by the petty vicious stupid mob and
20:20because there's no honor in society people don't create the necessary myths
20:23that drive the soldiers to want to protect the society and then the society
20:29is destroyed it's taken in from outside it collapses from within it's over so
20:36telling lies about someone the Proverbs 25 18 telling lies about someone is one
20:42of the central dominoes that destroys the entire society and of course smart
20:48people would tell children that and it certainly comes in through the
20:53Bible right that if you lie about good people good people won't protect your
20:58society and they won't encourage soldiers to protect your society and
21:01you'll get taken over and turned into a slave or killed so there's a direct sort
21:06of causal set of dominoes between lying about a good man and being killed or
21:11sold into slavery so telling lies about someone Proverbs 25 18 is as harmful as
21:18hitting with a rock wounding with a sword or shooting them with a sharp
21:21arrow like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow is one who gives false testimony
21:26against a neighbor yeah for sure for sure now I mean I know that the chain of
21:30reasoning isn't laid out in this kind of way but I would argue of course that
21:33it's worse you're hitting with a rock because you can you can hire people to
21:37guard you from being hit with a rock but you can't hire people to maintain and
21:42patrol your reputation so I hope this helps I hope that this this is a
21:47obviously fairly bitterly one knowledge as a whole this was certainly my thought
21:53process when I abandoned politics lo these four and a half years ago because
21:59I was like okay so I've been deplatformed and I'm twisting in the wind
22:03and nobody's really jumping up to defend or or invite me back in and so good luck
22:09everyone I'm turning to other topics and we can sort of see how that sort of
22:15played out as a whole so I hope that this helps and I'd love to hear what you
22:21think about this Bible series I'm really enjoying it and it's really getting to
22:25sort of the root of my moral education as a young man I was you know I lived in
22:32church as a as a boy and I'm finding it very helpful and interesting if you
22:36would like to help out the show I would hugely deeply and humbly appreciate it
22:39at freedomain.com slash donate so lots of love from up here my friends take
22:44care I look forward to your feedback I'll talk to you soon bye