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Matthew 7:16-17

"By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit."

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Transcript
00:00Good morning everybody, Stephen Mullin here from Freedomain, hope you're doing well.
00:03freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show, really would appreciate that.
00:07Today in Bible verses we're talking about Matthew 7 16. By their fruits you shall know them.
00:15Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth
00:24forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
00:31So this is very interesting. This is moral empiricism. This is moral empiricism,
00:39and this is the bane of evildoers. This gives you irrefutable strength against evildoers.
00:48So when I'm in call-in shows and people say, oh my brother or my mother or my father did this or
00:56that or the other terrible thing, and then they say, but they meant well, they didn't mean it,
01:01they had bad childhoods and so on, that is a form of placing a ghost of morality
01:11in the empiricism of what the person has done. And it's a way of maintaining a bond
01:19with an evildoer. Now of course it's a good question to say, well what do you mean by
01:24evildoer? I mean we've all done bad things from time to time. Well sure, sure, of course.
01:30But the evildoer is the one who won't admit fault, who does consistently bad things,
01:36won't take responsibility, won't apologize, and only surrenders not to conscience and virtue,
01:43but to power. So if you have power over someone, then they might be quote nice for a little while,
01:50but they will not surrender to internalized standards of conscience or good behavior.
01:56This is the angry will that I've sort of talked about before, that I get what I want, damn it,
02:02and anybody who's in my way is interfering and must be sort of brushed or
02:08cast aside or aggressed against or manipulated or just removed, removed, right? I mean,
02:14when I was working up north, we'd be driving on these logging roads and occasionally there'd be
02:19a log on the road, then we'd have to stop the car and we'd have to wrestle the log
02:23out of the way so we could keep going. We didn't hate the log, it was just in the way.
02:28And the selfish person, the greedy person, the narcissistic person, the
02:33evildoer views your will as an impediment to what they want, right? So they want you to come
02:39for Christmas if you have any hesitations or you didn't have a good time the last couple of
02:42Christmases or your kids don't want, that's just a terrible inconvenience and you just have to be
02:48aggressed against and manipulated until you damn well do what the other person wants,
02:53in the same way that we would try rocking or rolling the log to get it off the road.
02:58When we wanted to continue on our journey, there's an impediment, we need to get that
03:03impediment out of the way and that's just the reality of this kind of angry will. I need to
03:11get my way, anybody who interferes with me getting my way is an obstacle to be overcome by any means
03:17necessary. This is sort of the angry animal will and it would be somewhat honest and direct and
03:25not as corrupt if people simply said that, like, you damn well coming for Christmas and I'm gonna
03:31do or say whatever I have to do or say in order to get you to come for Christmas because that's
03:34what I want, as opposed to, well your father would really miss you if you weren't here
03:40and we've got some lovely presents for you and I really do need some help with this,
03:45that or the other and just sort of a good son or good daughter would do this,
03:49that or the other until this claustrophobic and somewhat creepy moral manipulation is kind of what
03:57goes on. So when we look at a tree and we see in this case, there's sort of two examples
04:07that are made in Matthew 7 16. Grapes of thorns, do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?
04:15And that's true, right? I mean men don't gather thorns, they gather grapes and they don't gather
04:24thistles, which are sort of sharp spiky things, but figs which are tasty, good to eat, good for
04:29your digestion as a whole. So it's saying that the production of evil deeds is not open to the free
04:42will of the person because a tree has no choice about what it produces. If it is an apple tree,
04:52it cannot produce pears or peaches or I guess figs or grapes or anything like that. It is the nature
05:02of the apple tree to produce apples. It has no choice and how do we know what kind of tree it is?
05:09Well we say it's an apple tree because it produces apples. Now we wouldn't say well the apple tree is
05:16producing apples but it really meant to produce pears or figs or peaches. No, it's an apple tree,
05:24it produces apples and it will never not produce apples or rather it will stop producing apples
05:31only when it's dead, but it will never produce anything other than apples because it is an apple
05:38tree. So when you say it is an apple tree you are judging the apple tree or the tree by its products
05:46which are apples. That's how you know it's an apple tree. If you think it's an apple tree but it
05:50produces peaches then it really is a peach tree. Sorry it's a bit repetitive but it's a really
05:55powerful statement when it comes to morals. So you've heard me in call-in shows a million times
06:01say to people I don't want the narrative, I just want the facts. Just give me the facts,
06:08I don't want the narrative. Because the narrative is well she meant well, she herself had a bad
06:14childhood, she didn't really mean it and it's sort of peering beyond the fact that the tree
06:21is producing apples and saying well but the tree didn't mean to produce apples, the tree was
06:26confused when it was younger, it was pruned too aggressively, it really means to produce peaches
06:31and I'm sure it will at some point and this particular bible verse is saying no, no that's not
06:40a rational or reasonable approach to the question of a good or evil person. A good person produces
06:48good in the world, an evil person produces evil in the world and that's how you know whether they're
06:54good or evil and the narrative means nothing. If a tree produces apples it's an apple tree
07:03and if someone were to say well it didn't mean to produce apples, it actually meant to produce
07:10birds or ipads or peaches or like it didn't mean to, it meant it's like no no but it's an apple
07:16tree, it's producing apples and it's not going to produce anything different just because you have
07:22a narrative. Now what's interesting is that the verse does not say that it is a combination
07:30of intention and outcome that we judge people by, it is not a combination of intention and
07:38outcomes that we judge people by, it is saying that by your fruits, by their fruits shall you
07:46know them. You know them by what they produce. That's what I call moral empiricism.
07:54It's similar to if there's a volcano and the volcano erupts, there's a temptation for the
08:02people who live in the shadow of the volcano to manage their anxiety by saying well the volcano
08:07erupted because we offended the volcano god. Now somebody was singing when the volcano erupted,
08:14clearly the volcano god doesn't like singing so we'll stop people from singing and of course the
08:19volcano will erupt again and then oh somebody was humming, oh somebody was dancing and then you just
08:24end up with this progressive restriction that occurs. So that is putting a motive
08:32into something that is simply a fact. The fact is the volcano erupted and this is a dangerous
08:38place to live. Now if you want to keep living near the volcano for some reason then you need to
08:45create an imaginary motive as to why the volcano erupted so that you can pretend you have control
08:53over the volcano erupting. So this is why you'll say oh well so and so was singing and clearly
08:59the volcano god doesn't like the singing or if we sacrifice five goats or one child to the volcano
09:06god the volcano god will be appeased and therefore we could stay in close proximity to the volcano
09:12god. So creating imaginary causes to physical actions keeps us trapped in the cycle of abuse.
09:26I mean we see this in the sort of typical example of the woman who's being abused by her husband
09:31and he says oh you know you're a terrible wife because the food was cold. The food was cold
09:37that you served me and she says oh well he yelled at me or maybe he hit me because the food was cold
09:43and therefore if I make the food warmer I'll be fine. But then of course it turns out there's just
09:50some other thing that occurs that causes the abuse. The abuse is the constant
09:56but you need your victims if you're an abuser you need your victims to blame themselves
10:02rather than say you're just an abuser because if they blame themselves
10:06right which is like I was singing and the volcano god doesn't like it and therefore
10:11that's why the volcano erupted you need to blame yourself so that you have this imaginary control
10:19over the negative situation. If a disaster happens a physical disaster a flood a giant
10:26fire a volcano erupting or something like that or just that there's no rain for a month or two
10:33you have this terrible anxiety. Now that terrible and let's just take the fact that let's say
10:39there's no rain right so if there's no rain your great temptation will be to imagine that if I do
10:48some particular kind of dance or some particular kind of ritual the rain gods will be pleased and
10:54I will get rain. It's false right there's no amount of dancing that's going to produce rain
10:58no amount of ritual that's going to produce rain. Sacrificing goats will not produce rain
11:04so it keeps you trapped in this cycle of abuse. Imaginary causality traps you in repetitive
11:10disaster. So what you need to do of course is move your tribe to a place where there's more rain
11:19or start to set up irrigation. If you start to set up irrigation then you can have you would
11:26have less concern over the rain and this is what the Boers did in you know fairly dry aspects of
11:33South Africa and other places they set up all of this irrigation because rain was uncertain.
11:40But if you have imaginary causality you are trapped in repetitive disasters. If you think
11:46that some ritual controls negative outcomes then you cannot break the cycle of abuse because you
11:52will always end up modifying your behavior under the guise of imaginary causality.
11:59You will end up modifying your behavior in order to try to control that which you cannot control.
12:07So putting a ghost of a volcano god into the volcano and trying to appease and manipulate
12:15the volcano as if it were an angry god is false. And with regards to this section from Matthew 17
12:27it's saying that the processing of good and evil the processing of good and evil is a passive
12:38and empirical process. A passive and empirical process in the same way that you look at the fruit
12:49that a tree puts out and without any tricks or projections or anything strange that would go on
12:56that way you simply say oh oh this is an apple tree because it's producing apples. Right there's
13:03a funny bit in Monty Python's Life of Brian. This bush has bought forth juniper berries it's a
13:09miracle. Well of course it's bought forth juniper berries it's a juniper bush what did you expect?
13:15Well that's what you get. Now evil doers will say that the cause of their immorality
13:24is your behavior. You did something wrong you know you kids just won't listen
13:32he just doesn't do the right thing he's lazy and and therefore I get angry.
13:37But if somebody pours forward abuse name calling insults screeching hitting whatever right if
13:44somebody pours forwards abuse they are an abuser. That's it. You judge them by that which is
13:53empirical and you've probably heard me say over the course of decades of doing call-in shows
13:59you've heard me say to people I don't want your interpretation or your story I just want the facts
14:05and I say the reason for that is that if your interpretation or your story was correct
14:14the problem would already have been solved. So for instance if you were to go to a doctor and you said
14:22I'm sick and you said well it's because I'm lactose intolerant and so I've cut out lactose
14:31and then the doctor would say well did that solve the problem you say well no
14:35well then I guess you can tell me it's not lactose intolerance because you've already
14:39tried cutting out lactose and the stomach pains still continue but if you go to the doctor with
14:47an ailment and you say here are all of my thoughts about the ailment the doctor will most likely say
14:54well I'm just going to run some tests or something because if you've been living with this ailment
14:58for quite some time and you've tried all of these different things I suppose it's helpful if you've
15:03eliminated a bunch of things but don't tell me these things as if they provide me any information
15:08about curing you because whatever things you've tried in dealing with this ailment over the last
15:13months or years clearly has not worked which is why you're in the doctor's office. So when somebody
15:19says to me well there's a tree in my backyard that produces apples and then they say but you know
15:27its real secret goal is to produce peaches and that's what it really wants to do and you know
15:34I've tried having conversations with the tree to produce peaches and it seems to listen but it sort
15:41of slips back into producing apples and so on my general thought is sorry hang on just just tell me
15:52what fruit is coming out of the tree well apples okay that's so it's an apple tree but that's
15:59really tough for people right or to put it another way if you give up hope that the apple tree can
16:06produce something other than apples if you give up hope about that then you are freed from exploitation
16:13right so if you have let's say an abusive mother and then you give up the hope that she can be
16:20anything other than abusive then she loses power over you. The ghost in the machine the god in the
16:30volcano is put there so that you can have hope in a situation where there is no hope. Also I know
16:41from people who've grown up let's say with abusive parents that as children they had to have hope
16:47but they absolutely had to have hope as children and so if they continue to have hope
16:54as adults I know of course for a simple fact that this is a continuation of a childhood
17:02necessary perspective or a necessary childhood perspective. You have to have hope and you have
17:09to take ownership yourself of bad outcomes as a child right your your father yells at you because
17:20you didn't pick up your shoes from the hallway and put them away and then you say oh well then
17:24I'll just pick up my shoes from the hallway and put them away and then you find that it's something
17:31else or some other problem or whatever it is right whereas if you say well my father yells
17:37because he's mean the apple is produced by the apple tree because it is an apple tree.
17:45Now of course I understand that people say well but human beings are not apples and human beings
17:50can change and reform and improve. Well that's always an interesting question it is extraordinarily
18:00rare it is extraordinarily rare. Of course our entire prison system and the prison system was
18:10developed not obviously it's fairly corrupt now with statism but the prison system was developed
18:16ostracism system and so on was developed based upon the fact that people don't change. I mean
18:22you could theoretically say that someone who is a murderer or a rapist could wake up one day and
18:27just be like really realize how bad he'd been and commit to being a nice guy and and so on
18:34and that's a pretty dicey roll to make right it's a pretty dicey roll to make. What are the odds of
18:44spontaneous recidivism like becoming a good guy after being a terrible criminal? What are the
18:51odds of that? Well again I'm no doctor but as far as I understand it some cancers undergo a
18:57spontaneous remission yet in general people will try to treat their cancers. So what are the odds
19:06that somebody who is violent or abusive or destructive as a whole what are the odds
19:15that that person will spontaneously become a nice warm-hearted friendly a person?
19:22Well it is effectively a zero percent chance. Now can you say it's impossible?
19:31I mean it's hard to really understand what the mechanics of that would be.
19:38When a certain amount of wrong has been accumulated in the mind reform becomes functionally impossible
19:44because so much cruelty has been enacted that empathy has now become impossible because to
19:55empathize with people in the future would require the absorption of the violence and harm and
20:01destruction that have been done in the past and character is a fairly robust constant over the
20:09course of your life. I mean I remember when I went to a high school reunion almost by accident
20:15really many years ago I saw people down the hallway they still had the same body language
20:20the same posture the way of talking the way of holding themselves and it was very clear
20:27that they were who they were back in the past and everyone said to me my god you're the same
20:31you haven't changed and all of that even though of course I'd lost my hair and so on but that's
20:35what people say. Sure have people fundamentally changed over the course of your life.
20:43Fortunately I always had an instinct to not do the wrong thing I mean I remember when I was in
20:50boarding school I lost a pen and went to the headmaster and he said oh we found a pen it's a
20:55really nice gold pen and I said that's not mine and he said he seemed a bit surprised oh that's
21:00very honest of you and when I was in I was 12 or 13 working in a hardware store I was given all the
21:06cash to take to the bank because everybody knew that I was very honest about these things I've
21:12never really hurt anyone I find that kind of repulsive. There was a Joe Haldeman story from a
21:18collection many years ago called Study War No More I think it was Joe Haldeman about an alien that
21:24gave someone empathy to the point where they felt what other people felt and
21:29it was quite crippling and destructive for that person's personality hard and harsh so I managed
21:38to avoid doing abusive harm to people over the course of my life. I mean I stole a few things
21:46in my early teens which obviously was not ideal but I stopped that fairly quickly and
21:53I just did not accumulate the kind of quote bad behavior that would render me immune to
22:02my conscience over time. Once you have done a certain amount of evil you become an evildoer
22:08and you cannot recover your conscience. The idea that there's a ghost in the body or the mind
22:16that can recover coldness and cruelty and turn it to warmth and empathy
22:21is kind of a superstition as a whole and I certainly occasionally will think about this
22:28with sort of cold-hearted people from my youth they don't they've never sort of called me up and
22:33said gee I could have done that a little bit better or I'm sorry that you went through some
22:37challenges in your reputationally and so on. There's nothing right there's nothing there's
22:42nothing so I don't believe that they have changed at all and there's no evidence that they have
22:50which is good because otherwise I could have spent 30 or 40 years hanging out with people
22:56who weren't changing. So if you look at judging people by their actions then you can no longer
23:05be manipulated by claimed intentions. So if you simply say well this is an apple tree
23:14because it produces apples. This is an evildoer because he or she produces evil actions
23:23and that way you get the substrata of immorality and that way you cannot be manipulated by
23:31transitory kindness. Right this is sort of the cycle of abuse where you know the husband beats
23:36up the wife and then is really apologetic and sorrowful and full of remorse and begs for
23:43forgiveness and you know all that kind of stuff right and then the wife gives way and he's so
23:51sorry and he'll promise he'll never do it again and it's not her fault and he's got his issues
23:56and he'll fix it and then you know once he's got power over her again then the behavior just you
24:03know starts getting worse and worse again all that kind of stuff right. Everybody I think is fairly
24:07aware of this kind of stuff. So with regards to that kind of behavior if you say well this person
24:16is an evildoer and the only chance that that evildoer is doing good is in order to lull
24:28my defenses so that they can further exploit me again. So when I was in the business world
24:35occasionally people who were kind of corrupt would be less corrupt or even not corrupt but
24:41that's because they wanted some investment or some advantage or to look good for the new owners
24:46or bosses or something like that right. It had nothing to do with any foundational
24:51commitment to a virtue. I mean if you've confronted people who've done you wrong
24:57and they've collapsed into self-pitying tears you know that it's still not about you right that
25:02they're just doing their own thing for themselves and it's not about you it's still all about them
25:10they feel sad and they just cannot get through to connecting with you with anyone else. Everything
25:19is always about themselves and the other thing too is that if you can surprise them and have
25:24them feel bad about things that they've done then quite quickly usually within a couple of hours or
25:30a day or two at most their defenses will reorganize themselves and then you will end up being blamed
25:40by them for making them feel bad. They might cry a little bit but then they'll be kind of cold and
25:45shocked and horrified and appalled and angry and then they'll just go back to that way right. So
25:50life is a lot simpler when it comes to evaluating people just look at the good or bad that they've
25:57done and again sort of how much bad stuff does it take to make a good person bad well I mean
26:06most people will have food from time to time that is not great for them and not everyone exercises
26:10every day even if it could be beneficial for them to do so so it is a difference between people who
26:17eat nothing but junk food and never exercise and people have who have an occasional treat and skip
26:23a day or two of exercise once in a while those things are vastly different. So the way that I
26:31generally judge whether somebody has reformed is do they of their own willpower and accord
26:39do they contact me with nothing to gain and focus on righting the wrongs they've done
26:47until I am satisfied with no agenda preference or purpose or need or requirement of their own.
26:55I mean usually at some point over the course of your life by the time you get into your 40s or
26:5950s it will almost certainly have happened at least once somebody from your past will contact
27:05you hey haven't talked to you in a while blah blah blah and it turns out turns out that they
27:12actually just need something from you maybe they've joined some sort of multi-level marketing
27:17scheme and they need you to buy something or maybe they're looking for a job or whatever it is right
27:22so those kinds of situations are quite common if people from your past are going to contact you
27:29who haven't contacted you for a long time it's usually because they need something now I've not
27:36had it I've not had it but I can theoretically understand it and I'm telling you if there were
27:43if there was someone to whom people in the past would come back and apologize I mean I've had
27:51calls with people who've been quite negative and hostile towards what I do for years and I mean
27:57usually it's it's fine and all that but so if there were people from my sort of distant past
28:01who wanted to reconnect and apologize or whatever then you know they're pretty easy to find and my
28:07moral stances are pretty well known and so on right so it doesn't happen you know it's it's
28:15just an important thing to understand and to accept it's very liberating painful it's very
28:20liberating to just truly accept and understand that you will go to your grave with no apologies
28:31from those who've wronged you they will never get it they will never understand
28:36they will never develop empathy they will never see it from your perspective
28:41they will never view themselves with any substantial moral criticisms
28:46they will never apologize you can go and beg plead bully whatever you can go with as much reason
28:54and clarity as can be mustered by any mortal frame and you will be unsatisfied I mean I
29:02talked about this in the show yesterday regarding COVID people went a little crazy over COVID right
29:08they really kind of turned on family members and turned on friends people do it through politics as
29:15well and how many of the people who said you were bad and wrong for questioning the narrative
29:23have apologized to you and tried to learn your mindset so that they can do better next time
29:29I mean I asked this I think one person said yes but I wasn't sure whether it was just has
29:34apologized but so they chose the lies of strangers over the truth of family and close friends which
29:43indicates their loyalty I mean we've just had a whole example of all of this right people turned
29:51on critical thinkers and the skeptical and the curious all things that people say you know if
29:57you were to say to someone gee do you think you should just blindly accept whatever corrupt
30:03authorities tell you to accept they say well no I mean everybody who's debated at all knows the
30:09argument from authority which is fallacious which is to say some important person believes x therefore
30:14x is true so people fail to their own standards over COVID I mean especially those on the left
30:22I remember debating those two communists calling the worst freaking communists around because they
30:27sided with giant multinational corporations over me kind of a working class hero and they also
30:33were very keen on getting people to be vaccinated which is to sort of swallow the
30:39falsehoods or at least some not exactly great or vetted information from giant multinational
30:46corporations now have those guys or anyone ever contacted me and said you know I've really looked
30:55into this and it turns out you were kind of right and so on well that doesn't happen so by their
31:02fruit shall ye know them is very powerful it's very liberating it's very sad you know stripping
31:10illusion is a sad sad thing and it is a process that the old self feels is deadly feels like
31:20you're gonna die what do I have if not my illusions is the foundational cry of the dying
31:26false self but it is true and it is valid and I have seen no compelling examples to the contrary
31:36and I certainly I mean think of all the things that I've been right about over the past 20 years
31:43think of all the things I've been right about over the past 20 years that are now being validated not
31:48just by economics but by a science and general ethics and empirical data think about all the
31:55things that I have been right about over the last 20 years and all the names I've been called and
32:02how many people who called me names have ever circled back to say sorry that was unfair you
32:09were right doesn't happen it doesn't happen and I would be a giant case study in all of this right
32:18so anyway I hope that helps and it's painful but a very necessary liberation you just judge people
32:25by what they do and that's it it's very simple judge people by what they do we are what we
32:31consistently do and evildoers are judged by the corrupt actions that they take and make and if
32:39you do that you can be very much free from control and manipulation however difficult the process
32:46that can be it is well well worth it all right freedomain.com slash donate
32:51thank you for your support lots of love from up here I will talk to you soon bye