5267 When Loving the World Drives You Mad!
Freedomain with Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
4.7 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2023
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
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I really appreciate your philosophical definition of “love”, but find that I’m left with a blank space in my brain trying to describe so many relationships now. I know people who choose to not strive toward virtue but for whom I still have affection. I can’t “love” them, but I wish them well and are rooting for them to choose better and be happy. I agree with you about how profoundly language matters, and this is a something I’m stuck on. Is there perhaps a Greek word to describe this? “Agape” maybe?
Is there a philosophical basis for the modern phenomenon of being called out for “mansplaining?”
ARTICLES:
"Men score higher on financial knowledge than women, but why?"
"Men score somewhat higher than women on the science knowledge scale overall"
"Women living in the world's most advanced democracies and under the most progressive gender equality regimes still know less about politics than men. Indeed, an unmistakable gender gap in political knowledge seems to be a global phenomenon, according to a ten-nation study of media systems and national political knowledge funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)."
I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I should love people. I don't mean people I know; I treat people I meet as well as I can the first time I meet them and then treat them either as well as they treat me, or as well as I have to treat them for utilitarian reasons, whichever is better. But my question pertains to humanity in the abstract. I am coming to terms with the fact that I do not love people, do not love humanity (hesitant to say "I hate people" but that's kinda the thought).
I've been trying to devote my life to caring for others and helping to make the world better for people, but I'm starting to think pretty seriously about abandoning ship before it sinks, which means abandoning the people I casually interact with, the children whose lives I'm improving, and in a sense abandoning my efforts to improve the world to just save myself. How do I know when it's time to release everyone else to their possibly horrific fate, including all these young people who are not responsible for what's coming to them? My heart breaks for these young people even while my view of the adults around them hardens in me that they deserve what's coming to them; American leftists deserve the dictatorship they're building for themselves, and American conservatives deserve to lose because they just won't understand the origins of totalitarianism in child abuse and their own errors and hubris.
Imagine you're creating a family motto for your coat of arms (armorial achievement); what are those words you choose to live by? 🛡️
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Alright, good morning everybody. Hope you're doing well. Time for a walkie-talkie. Walk |
| 0:07.2 | and talk as the man from Glad takes to the woods. Alright, questions for free |
| 0:14.0 | domain.locals.com. I hope that you will check out that absolutely fantastic |
| 0:19.6 | resource, free domain.locals.com. Alright, now first question, I really appreciate |
| 0:27.9 | the philosophical definition of love. My philosophical definition of love is it is |
| 0:33.2 | our involuntary response to virtue, if we are virtuous. But find that I'm |
| 0:39.0 | left with a blank space in my brain trying to describe so many relationships now. |
| 0:42.9 | I know people who choose to not strive towards virtue. I know people who choose |
| 0:50.1 | to not strive towards virtue but for whom I still have a faction. I can't |
| 0:54.1 | quote love them, but I wish them well and a rooting for them to choose better and |
| 0:58.0 | be happy. I agree with you about how profoundly language matters and this is |
| 1:03.7 | something I'm stuck on. Is there a Greek word to describe this? Arape. Maybe I |
| 1:09.2 | only know that because my wife is Greek. So affection, love, all the various |
| 1:15.1 | bounds of what we are drawn to. And of course for men and for women there is |
| 1:22.3 | sexual desire for physical markers of fertility that are not associated with |
| 1:32.9 | virtues. We also will often feel warmth, just sort of evolutionarily speaking, we |
| 1:40.3 | will often feel warmth and positivity towards people who are in the position of |
| 1:46.4 | giving us gifts or advantage. So the king is in many ways to find is the man who |
| 1:53.7 | can give gifts and punishment, who can bribe and punish. That's sort of one of |
| 1:59.5 | the definitions of power, the ability to bribe or punish. And since, throughout |
| 2:05.9 | human evolution, of course, so much of what we benefited from was on the |
| 2:12.9 | whim of unstable others, being in the good graces of those in charge was |
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