5356 NEW YEAR'S DAY: HOW I SURVIVED!
Freedomain with Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
4.7 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2024
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hi Stef, Is it accurate to say that there are some evils I don't have the free will to commit. By this, I mean that I would probably break or lose my sanity before I found myself comitting grave evils. If for example, I was ordered to torture orphans or commit some form of infanticide, I'd probably go insane before doing so. Therefore, I am not free to commit grave evils or mortal sins because I would break before doing so. Does having a strong moral conscience mean that you lose the free will to commit evil? On a deeper level, what is a moral conscience and does its capacity to guide your behaviour validate or invalidate your free will?
Dear Stef you have repeatedly spoken about the whirlpool of madness and dysfunction that boys of single moms face, my question is why you Stef did not fall into mental decay and a failed life, how did you beat the odds Stef, is it because of your great inborn natural social skills combined with your genetic high intelligence or some other reason? My own mom was like a schizophrenic, some members of my extended family were diagnosed with this condition whether my mom had a legitimate mental illness or not I personally did not beat the odds because I was very introverted and had no social skills so I was bullied in high school and had an overall miserable childhood. As an adult my life is much better but I am doing much worse then the average man my age. Of course I’m not saying every boy of a single mom is destined to be a failure, I don’t have to explain the tall woman fallacy to you Stef, nevertheless being the son of a single mom there were significant odds you faced Stef yet you managed to overcome them which begs the question Stef - why?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, happy new year. It's Steph. We are out, finally got a little bit of snow, and |
| 0:06.7 | we're out here in the Canadian Hinterlands to answer your questions. Hi Steph, is it accurate to say that there are some evils I don't have the free will to commit. |
| 0:17.0 | By this I mean that I would probably break or lose my sanity before I found myself committing grave evils. |
| 0:23.0 | If, for example, I was ordered to torture orphans or commit some form of infanticide |
| 0:27.0 | I would probably go insane before doing so. |
| 0:28.0 | Therefore, I am not free to commit gray evils or moral mortal sins because I would break before doing so as having a strong moral |
| 0:34.9 | conscience mean that you mean that you lose free will to commit evil. |
| 0:38.0 | On a deeper level what is a moral conscience and does its capacity to guide your behavior validate or invalidate |
| 0:45.6 | your free will? Well, you know, man, I appreciate your optimism about your capacity to resist evil. |
| 0:53.6 | I think that's a very powerful statement. |
| 0:57.5 | Honestly, given what I know about history, |
| 1:00.9 | it strikes me as wildly overconfident and could be wrong of course but I don't think that |
| 1:10.3 | There's a form of humble bragging here like I'm just too virtuous to commit any kind of evil. |
| 1:16.0 | But I think, the first thing I would say is I think that that misrepresents the nature of evil. Of course the nature of evil, or people who do quote evil, |
| 1:26.5 | they don't think they're doing it evil at all. |
| 1:30.1 | They don't think they're doing evil at all. |
| 1:39.5 | There was a certain form of religious fanatic in the past who would convert heathen and then cut their throats right away, right away, so that they wouldn't have the opportunity to revert to their heathenish |
| 1:46.7 | ways and forego the true religion or whatever you'd want to call it, right? |
| 1:51.2 | So of course, under the certain circumstance, they were |
| 1:54.0 | considered to be doing great good. |
| 1:57.0 | Most people have a destination called virtue, of course, right? |
| 2:07.0 | And they let other people define what that virtue is, |
... |
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