'The Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, in his speech Pro Roscio Amerino, section 84, attributed the expression cui bono to the Roman consul and censor Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla: “The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?'"' -- One may renounce a 'law' introduced for his own 'benefit' (Maxim of Law)

"A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing. The usual (and very vicious) nonsense preached on the subject of love claims that love is self-sacrifice. A man's self is his spirit. If one sacrifices his spirit, who or what is left to feel the love? True love is profoundly selfish, in the noblest meaning of the word — it is an expression of one's highest values. When a person is in love, he seeks his own happiness — and not his sacrifice to the loved one. And the loved one would be a monster if she wanted or expected such sacrifice. Any person who wants to live for others — for one sweetheart or for the whole of mankind — is a selfless nonentity. An independent "I" is a person who exists for his own sake." -- Love I that I be loved.

'The final antidote to false morality' -- "Contempt is the feeling that is provided by you when somebody is attempting to exploit you based on your virtue."

'The madness of hoping for sanity' -- "We can’t have higher standards for others than we have for ourselves."

'Once you have analyzed something into its essential logical components, it is easy to see how to proceed, or lead someone else, from one to another. And, especially if you have taken wrong paths and made errors in your analyzing the thing, it is real easy to notice when others are going down a wrong path, and to know what they need to focus on in order to bring them back to the right path. The Socratic Method is easy, if you understand the logic of what you are explaining; it is impossible if you do not. So, if you understand that logic, what you do is you ask questions to see how much your "student" understands first. That way you know where to begin any explanations, Socratic or otherwise. Once you know the starting place, you have to know what the "next" thing you want them to know is. Then you have to come up with a question that leads them there. It has to be a question that is specific enough to be helpful. If the person gives a wrong answer, you have to decide whether there is any merit in showing them why that answer is wrong, or whether you just need to show them that it is. You have to know what the logical ramifications of their wrong answers are, especially where it leads that they are not likely to want to go. Then all you have to do is to ask a question or to that uses their own logic to get them to a place they are unhappy with, and they will give up their wrong answers. Then, to get them along the right paths, you have to know what experiences are likely to give them good insights, and focus your questions about those experiences or ideas. Finally, it doesn't always work. Socrates used to tick off people doing this; they thought he was mocking them by asking them stupid questions or tricking them into being confused because he was clever. ...the method still really irritates people when you (as it seems to them) "show them up" in subjects they think they are expert. Illogical people do NOT like this method used "on" them; and they cannot see it as a method that is being used "with" them in order to help them.'

'These are the four critical points about the questions: 1) they must be interesting or intriguing to the students; they must lead by 2) incremental and 3) logical steps (from the students' prior knowledge or understanding) in order to be readily answered and, at some point, seen to be evidence toward a conclusion, not just individual, isolated points; and 4) they must be designed to get the student to see particular points. You are essentially trying to get students to use their own logic and therefore see, by their own reflections on your questions, either the good new ideas or the obviously erroneous ideas that are the consequences of their established ideas, knowledge, or beliefs. Therefore you have to know or to be able to find out what the students' ideas and beliefs are. You cannot ask just any question or start just anywhere. ...generally when one uses the Socratic method, it tends to become pretty clear when people get lost and are either mistaken or just guessing. Their demeanor tends to change when they are guessing, and they answer with a questioning tone in their voice. Further, when they are logically understanding as they go, they tend to say out loud insights they have or reasons they have for their answers. When they are just guessing, they tend to just give short answers with almost no comment or enthusiasm. They don't tend to want to sustain the activity. Finally, two of the interesting, perhaps side, benefits of using the Socratic method are that it gives the students a chance to experience the attendant joy and excitement of discovering (often complex) ideas on their own. And it gives teachers a chance to learn how much more inventive and bright a great many more students are than usually appear to be when they are primarily passive.'

'Dialogical Estoppel: As can be seen, the heart of the idea behind legal estoppel is the idea of consistency. A similar concept, “dialogical estoppel,” can be used to justify the libertarian conception of rights, because of the reciprocity inherent in the libertarian tenet that force is legitimate only in response to force. The basic insight behind this theory of rights is that a person cannot consistently object to being punished if he has himself initiated force. He is (dialogically) “estopped” from asserting the impropriety of the force used to punish him, because of his own coercive behavior. This theory also establishes the validity of the libertarian conception of rights as being strictly negative rights against aggression, the initiation of force. The point where punishment needs to be justified is when we attempt to inflict punishment upon a person who opposes the punishment. Thus, using a philosophical, generalized version of “dialogical” estoppel, I want to justify punishment in just this situation, by showing that an aggressor is estopped from objecting to his punishment. Under the principle of dialogical estoppel, or simply estoppel for short, a person is estopped from making certain claims during discourse if these claims are inconsistent and contradictory. To say that a person is estopped from making certain claims means that the claims cannot even possibly be right, because they are contradictory. It is to recognize that his assertion is simply wrong because it is contradictory. Applying estoppel in such a manner perfectly complements the very purpose of dialogue. Dialogue, discourse, or argument—terms which are used interchangeably herein—is by its nature an activity aimed at finding truth. Anyone engaged in argument is necessarily endeavoring to discern the truth about some particular subject; to the extent this is not the case, there is no dialogue occurring, but mere babbling or even physical fighting. Nor can this be denied. Anyone engaging in argument long enough to deny that truth is the goal of discourse contradicts himself, because he is himself asserting or challenging the truth of a given proposition. Thus, the assertion as true of anything that simply cannot be true is incompatible with the very purpose of discourse. Anything that cannot be true is contrary to the truth-finding purpose of discourse, and thus is not permissible within the bounds of the discourse. And contradictions are certainly the archetype of propositions that cannot be true. A and not-A cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect. This is why participants in discourse must be consistent. If an arguer need not be consistent, truth-finding cannot occur. And just as the traditional legal theory of estoppel mandates a sort of consistency in a legal context, the more general use of estoppel can be used to require consistency in discourse. The theory of estoppel that I propose is nothing more than a convenient way to apply the requirement of consistency to arguers, to those engaged in discourse, dialogue, debate, discussion, or argument. Because discourse is a truth-finding activity, any such contradictory claims should be disregarded, they should not be heard, since they cannot possibly be true. Dialogical estoppel is thus a rule of discourse that rules out of bounds any inconsistent, mutually contradictory claims, because they are contrary to the very goal of discourse. This rule is based solely on the recognition that discourse is a truth-seeking activity and that contradictions, which are necessarily untrue, are incompatible with discourse and thus should not be allowed. The validity of this rule is undeniable, because it is necessarily presupposed by any participant in discourse.'

#1. What is truth? #2. What is virtue? #3. What is government? #4. What is law? #5. What is money?

'Babies as young as eight months old prefer it when people who commit or condone antisocial acts are mistreated, a new study led by a University of British Columbia psychologist finds. “We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought,” says lead author Prof. Kiley Hamlin, UBC Dept of Psychology, who co-authored the study with colleagues from Yale University and Temple University. “This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades,” says Hamlin. “Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we are watching for people who might put us in danger and prefer to see antisocial behavior regulated.'

Ayn Rand usedthe word “axiom” in this way: An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. In this sense, Rand’s “axioms” resemble Misesian/Kantian “apriori” concepts the denial of which leads to self-contradiction. For this reason alone, it’s better to refer to the non-aggression principle instead of the non-aggression axiom. -- Confusion has arisen, I believe, because of failure to treat separately self-ownership and ownership of external objects. Property in one’s body is based on the fact that each person has the best link to his body, because of his direct control over his body. Property in external objects is based on Lockean homesteading, where first use, or original appropriation (“embordering,” as Hoppe refers to it), serves as the link between agent and resource.'

"Everybody gets this."

“In order to have thoughts of kindness for the suffering of others, you have to have accepted your own suffering. In order to have empathy for others, we have to have empathy for ourselves. Because if we are avoiding our own suffering or the suffering we have experienced, then we will inevitably avoid the suffering of others. That which we reject in ourselves we inevitably reject in others.”

'A tour through historical and contemporary economic issues through the lens of rational philosophy.' -- "There are two ways that societies or individuals change: They have an intellectual or moral or philosophical enlightenment where they rise above the everyday moments of their disasters and look at the big picture. The other is that they simply hit a wall..."

'Morpheus: Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.'

"The only knowledge we avoid is self-knowledge. Everybody already knows. When you say the state is violence, everybody already knows it. The reason we know that everybody knows it is the speed at which they get upset. If they didn't already know the implications, they wouldn't get upset. Statism is violence; there is no 'God'. You have to work hard to avoid that knowledge because it's so obvious. So what are they avoiding? They are avoiding self-knowledge: knowledge they already possess about themselves, about society, about their friends and family, about truth, about virtue, about integrity, about courage. All of these things. So when you speak an idea and people get upset, the knowledge that they are avoiding is not what you're saying but what they already know. They are reacting not to you but to themselves. If you have to conform to other people's bigotries or face attack and rejection – that's not a relationship – it's a cult. And everybody knows that."

"We're bringing light into the kitchen and the cockroaches don't like it. That's the counterfeit-detection machine which is what philosophy is... Nobody wants to think of themselves as bad. Everybody wants to be good and everybody believes they are good. But when you say here's how to be good in practice – in the moment – they run screaming. -- ...to have the false-self self-praise of believing yourself to be virtuous but without actually letting the true-self work the levers of virtue in the real world... The hypocrisies and the pomposity and self-righteousness and self-praise that all goes along with a dedication to abstract virtue... There are no greater opponents to a set of ethics than those who steadfastly pursue them in the abstract and hysterically and angrily reject them in the real, in the present. They discredit their ethics and ethics in general by resolutely opposing the enactment of their values. It's not just their values that they discredit, it's values as a whole."

Gisted/Quoted -- On the Mecosystem: When you demonize the mecosystem, all you do is project it into the world, into things which other people control, into things which you can buy from people to gain their approval and so delay inevitable self-attacks. -- On Happiness: "The only way that I know of to gain the greatest happiness is to serve mankind in the cause of the truth."

You cannot argue against anarchy. You cannot argue against voluntaryism without using voluntaryism. You cannot argue against the non-aggression principle without using the non-aggression principle. You cannot argue against property without using property. You cannot argue against ethics without using ethics. You cannot argue against the scientific method without using the scientific method. You cannot argue against truth without using a 'truth'. You cannot argue against laws without using a 'law'. You cannot argue against rules without using a 'rule'. You cannot argue against universalization without using universalization. You cannot argue against argumentation without using argumentation. You cannot aggress against freedom without using and thus affirming the value of freedom. You cannot aggress against property without using and thus affirming the value of property. You cannot aggress against any body without using and thus affirming the value of your own body and all other bodies.

'We should distinguish two kinds of objectivity: #1. metaphysical objectivity, and #2. epistemological objectivity. -- We also should distinguish two kinds of subjectivity: #1. metaphysical subjectivity, and #2. epistemological subjectivity. -- A claim is epistemologically subjective (or a matter of opinion) if the primary relevant evidence for determining the truth value of statements about the issue is metaphysically subjective. A claim is NOT automatically a "matter of opinion" simply because people disagree about it. People disagree about both matters of opinion AND about matters of fact. In epistemology, a statement (claim, assertion, proposition) is epistemologically objective if its truth value can be determined intersubjectively by generally-agreed methods or procedures. To say a statement is epistemologically objective is not to say the statement is true; it's just to say we could figure out a public method for determining whether or not the statement is true.'

'A live action example of how to take down your inner Nazi.' -- "With great power comes great responsibility."

"I refuse to create a set of standards for women that is less than would apply to men. Because that would be to say that men have the strength to achieve virtue but women do not. And women do. But the degree to which we excuse women's vices and violence and corruption and control and abuse and verbal attacks – the degree to which we excuse that is the degree to which we damn women; it is the degree to which we say: you are beyond help; you cannot be helped; you poor women, you don't know what you're doing, you're not strong enough to be moral so we have to make up all these excuses for you because we think you're just that pathetic. Well, I don't think women are pathetic. I think women are incredibly strong; I think men are incredibly strong. I think that when you lower standards for people, you debilitate them, you weaken them, you destroy their moral fibre, you undermine their upright natures. So I won't accept any lower standards for women because that is the worst cruelty of all."

"I think it is something so respectful of women to say that they are subject to the same moral laws as men. If we excuse women from the just and universal application of moral laws, are we not then saying that they are a different and weaker species, a different and weaker gender? If we excuse female violence by portraying them in the role of victims – then we insult ALL women; we insult all women who ARE moral. So we really do have to avoid this notion that women are the gentler sex, and the weaker sex, and they need to be protected, and they need to be saved from themselves, and they need to be excused, and they need to be managed. Women DO NOT need to be managed. Women are subject to all the same moral laws as men, and they are EQUALLY as powerful a moral agent as men. Whatever men are capable of morally, whatever men are responsible for morally – women are capable of morally and responsible for morally."

'It's hard to get upset with people who are so deluded...' -- "Politics is violence. Government is force. 'Laws' are violence. Prison is coercion. The police kidnap and imprison. National debts are theft from the unborn. Taxes are theft. Tariffs, regulations are all the initiation of force. The State is a monopoly agency for the initiation of force in a geographical area. The State is the very definition of violence. Government is exactly what people don't want to do because they have to be forced. Whatever someone is doing when they have a gun to their head, is exactly what they don't want to do."

"I discovered very quickly that there were major inconsistencies..."

"When you've got a gun to your head, morality is irrelevant. The only people who are perfectly guilty are the intellectuals. The intellectuals who have the intelligence, the ability and the language skills to introspect and to deal with their own childhoods, and to stop projecting their own trauma onto the world as 'philosophical' systems. They're trying to normalize their own childhood experience by projecting it as a universal ideal thus inflicting it upon other people. And that's part of the rage that abused people have towards those who never tried to help them. My whole struggle as a communicator about family history, if you wanted to sum it up in a nutshell, is to get you to stop normalizing your histories. To stop you from thinking it wasn't so bad. To stop you from thinking it could have been worse. To stop you thinking that your parents did the best they could. Because we need to denormalize our experiences relative to reality, not relative to social norms."

'How to tell an honest debator from a counterfeiter...' -- Don't hate the sinner, hate the sin.

Also, read Plato is now a meme. -- "This is what happens when you confront people's irrationality." -- [Notice the many commenters trying to argue that to point out flaws in your opponent's argument is an attack rather than MUTUAL self-defense. To a bullybot, *everything* looks like bullying.] -- "I want give you the tools to see crazy; to see the crazy in the world so that you can avoid it. Because we can't avoid what we cannot see." -- 'Here is your counterfeit detection machine.'

"If you really love someone, you owe it them to correct their crazy... You owe them an intervention if you want to continue to claim you love them."

'One of the most powerful debating techniques is to assume that your opponent’s premises are true, and then prove that they lead to absurd consequences. Thus, the argument which states that certain people may use violence on behalf of others – through taxation and welfare – can be easily countered by saying that, if it is the right thing to do, then everyone should be encouraged to do it. -- One fundamental truth of human nature is that if people think that something is moral, they will bear almost any burden to support it. Women send their sons to war. Wives kiss their husbands goodbye. Children are proud of their father’s murders. As it is with war, so it is with state power. If people believe that the state helps the poor, or heals the sick, or educates the ignorant, they will bear any burden to support it. They may grumble at their levels of taxation, but will soldier on regardless. So if the argument from economic efficiency does not work, what can?' -- The Argument From Morality

How many fingers, Winston?: "My position that religiosity is fundamentally child abuse because it is the aggressive infliction of empty and bigoted conclusions upon the minds of children – and you do not have the right as a parent to inflict your bigotries and preferences and faith onto your children. You DON'T own their minds."

'Voluntaryism is the doctrine that relations among people should be by mutual consent, or not at all. It represents a means, an end, and an insight. Voluntaryism does not argue for the specific form that voluntary arrangements will take; only that force be abandoned so that individuals in society may flourish. As it is the means which determine the end, the goal of an all voluntary society must be sought voluntarily. People cannot be coerced into freedom. ...the voluntaryist rejects the use of political power because it can only be exercised by implicitly endorsing or using violence to accomplish one's ends. The power to do good to others is also the power to do them harm. Power to compel people, to control other people's lives, is what political power is all about. It violates all the basic principles of voluntaryism: might does not make right; the end never justifies the means; nor may one person coercively interfere in the life of another.'

'A wise listener and long-time parent takes issue with a few of my philosophical parenting principles.'

'How to plan your life to be a great parent.'

'A brief history of childlessness - mine included.'

'What I admire about my daughter.'

'The plan for philosophical parenting, and the results so far.'

'Choice is quality.'

'Talking to tykes.'

'An examination of the root justifications for parental authority.'

'Reducing conflict by earning respect.'

"Uncorking the volcano."

'The genesis and evolution of humiliation.'

'The primary social evil of our time is lack of respect for self-ownership rights. Self-ownership is rendered meaningless if the right to own private property is not also respected. The unique relationship between a person and "his" body — his direct and immediate control over the body, and the fact that, at least in some sense, a body is a given person and vice versa ... is what constitutes the objective link sufficient to give that person better title to his body than any third party claimant, even his parents... Any outsider who claims another's body cannot deny this objective link and its special status, since the outsider also necessarily presupposes this in his own case. This is so because in seeking dominion over the other, in asserting ownership over the other's body, he has to presuppose his own ownership of his body, which demonstrates he does place a certain significance on this link, at the same time that he disregards the significance of the other's link to his own body.'

'To say a person is estopped from making certain claims means that ... he will not be heard to make a statement which is flatly inconsistent with his earlier behaviour (and which another relied upon). Principled application of the estoppel principle would result in a free society. For all coercive crimes could be: punished (if not by the state, then at least by victims or their agents or defenders); and all non-coercive "crimes" could not be enforced. Since an arguer is estopped from denying the validity of estoppel in general, he must accept its validity—and he must also accept the validity of the results of its application. [This] framework establishes the validity of the libertarian nonaggression principle, which has been shown by many others to justify a libertarian or at least a minimalist or night-watchman state. Thus, everyone "must" accept the validity of the free society; to urge otherwise is to argue for inconsistency, and to be inconsistent, and to necessarily be wrong.'

'When a religious person is told that there is no God, what he hears is, “My parents lied to me.” A thinker cannot logically differentiate the nonexistence of a deity from the nonexistence of any other thing which does not exist. All con artists operate by affirming a general rule, and then creating an exception for themselves. A thief wants everyone to respect property rights except him; a counterfeiter wants everyone to accept the value of money except him—and a philosophical con man wants everyone to reject truth except for his own propositions. Don't fall for it, not for a minute! The moment an agnostic says, "Gods may exist in another dimension,” immediately identify the principle behind his statement, which is that no truth can be stated, and apply it to his own statement, thus rendering it invalid. To create a singular exception to a universal rule for that which makes you uncomfortable, rather than just admitting your discomfort, is dishonest and cowardly.'

"You can't get people to make sacrifices based on economic calculations and the argument from effect. But you can get people to make sacrifices for virtue. Human beings are so fundamentally driven by morality that, if you can hook into that power, there's no stopping the movement."

'A performative contradiction arises when the propositional content of a statement contradicts the noncontingent presuppositions that make possible the performance of the speech act, such as occurs with "all statements must be false." In Jürgen Habermas's usage of the concept, a performative contradiction is a lack of fit between the content and the performance of a speech act. For Habermas, the truth of statements is a central element to his communicational ethic, implying that a statement which does not contradict the performance of the statement but its truthfulness is considered as a performative contradiction too. The above example "all statements must be false" is a performative contradiction because the speaker performs the action of stating something that contradicts the truthfulness of the speech act.'

'"Argumentation ethics" is a defense of libertarian rights. Hoppe asserts that argumentation, or discourse, is by its nature a conflict-free way of interacting and requires individual control of resources [the body]; thus, he argues, certain norms are presupposed as true by anyone engaging in genuine discourse. These norms include the libertarian principle of non-aggression, which itself implies libertarian rights. Therefore, no one can argumentatively deny libertarian rights without self-contradiction. Kinsella's "estoppel" theory draws on Hoppe. Kinsella argues that an aggressor cannot coherently object to being punished for the act of aggression, by the victim or the victim's agents or heirs, i.e. he is "estopped" from withholding consent, because by committing aggression he commits himself to the proposition that the use of force is legitimate, and therefore, his withholding consent based on his right not to be physically harmed contradicts his aggressive legitimation of force.'

“Right now we have this crazy system where to protect your property, government takes half your property. If there was no government and you proposed it, people would think you’re insane!”

“You don’t need to bully children into believing things that are true; you only need to bully children into believing things that are false.”

Gisted/Quoted -- The degree to which you need to invent scare stories to keep yourself in an existing relationship, is exactly the degree to which you really hate that relationship. Everybody who is not enlightened will always try to put you in a master/slave relationship. Slaves attempt to master each other by mimicking the state in every interaction. That's how deep it goes. The state replicates all the way down the chain because it comes from all the way up the chain from the origins of the family. Everything slaves do is to try establish dominance – yours or theirs, depending on their trauma. But philosophy is not the language of dominance, it is the language of humility, the language of truth derived from nature which is non-dominant, non-personal and universal. That's why if you speak the truth people will get so frustrated, so angry, confused, frightened – and lash out at you – because philosophy is shattering their paradigm of hierarchy right there in the moment.

"Vanity is bad because it is a lack of originality and a reliance on other people to define who you are."

'What to do with this information, and how you and the world will achieve freedom.' -- "It's very important that you have respect for the work that you have done [on gaining self-knowledge], and that's the only way other people will genuinely have respect for the work that you've done and that means living with integrity. Recognise if you've done a lot of work on self-knowledge, treating people who haven't done that work as equals is completely irrational. To treat them as equals is unjust to the work you have done on yourself."

'The scientific evidence underlying the near-universal resistance to reason and evidence. If you want to change the world, you first must understand the unconscious barriers to thinking.' -- '"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Western said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaledoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then get massively enforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

"When we raise children in a non-violent way, then philosophy is something that becomes possible for people because most philosophy now is just ex post facto justifications for child abuse. So when you say to people we should have a free society, they immediately feel that gangs are going to come along and slaughter everyone. They have an emotional association with freedom bringing anxiety and terror and imminent disaster and that's not empirical. Why do people have such an emotional reaction to the idea that if authority is taken away, disaster occurs? Well, because that's what they were taught as children. They were told that they were bad children, that they were aggressive, that they were selfish, and they were constantly bullied and [told] that it is only the presence of authority consistently inflicted that prevents people from attacking each other. That's why people get so tense and emotional – they're not talking about the government, they're talking about their parents."

'An introduction to the power and practicality of philosophy - from the host of Freedomain Radio, the most popular philosophy show on the Internet.'

"Slaves attack each other for stepping out of line. The State is the willingness of your fellow slaves to attack you for pointing out the truth. If you want to be free, you simply have to stop associating with people who will attack you for pointing out the basic moral, economic and practical realities of our situation, of our lives. The State is your fellow slaves."

'The first thing to recognize about self-defense is that although it describes the use of violence, it remains fundamentally different from the initiation of force, in that it is reactive, rather than proactive violence. Since self-defense is a universal standard, it is not restricted to a single individual – i.e. the individual being attacked – but extends to everyone, thus permitting third-party defense such as security guards and courageous bystanders. (It also validates the highly useful proposition that it is preferable for a skilled third party to take out my appendix rather than forcing me to do it myself.) Since self-defense is a reactive action, it can be universalized, since it is merely the shadow of the action of the initiation of force – where the initiation of force is not present, neither will self-defense be present. Any reasonable moralist would far prefer the non-initiation of force to self-defense, just as any sane person prefers not getting sick to getting cured.'

'Will a free society be able to put out fires? Yes, after it puts out the inferno of the state!' -- But who will build the roads?!?!?!

"The shape of political authority in society mirrors that of the family. When you have better families you end up with better governments. When you have non-authoritarian, pacificist parenting with respect for the self-ownership of children, you will inevitably end up with a free society. If you want to change society, you have to change people's early childhood experiences. Objective morality, property rights and self-ownership all fall counter to just about everybody's experience of their family and certainly against their experience of church and school. So we're fighting a real uphill battle, it's one that we'll win, but it's going to take a long time."

Don't feed the philosophers!

'A delightful study just published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that belief in free will predicted job performance better than conscientiousness, belief in influence over life events and a commitment to a ‘Protestant work ethic’ where diligent labour is seen as a benefit in itself.'

"It is functionally impossible for a human being to argue for a system that defines his current activities as evil. This is the astounding power of morality in the world. People resist the definitions of virtue so much because once the definitions of virtue change, behaviour must inevitably change. Definitions are like gravity wells for people's behaviour. People struggle only to accept or reject definitions, once those definitions are accepted or rejected, behaviour flows inexorably from those definitions. The definitions are the first dominoes that go down in the endless causal chain of human action. The definitions of virtue are what control the entire world. This is one of the reasons why governments are so eager to press money and unjust privilege into your hand. Because they know that once you accept the money, you will begin the ex post facto rationalizations to justify why accepting the money is a good thing."

'The greatest danger for slave-owners is that they will lose control of the moral definitions of “slavery” and “freedom.” The worst and most terrifying aspect of slavery is that you have to pretend that you are not a slave. If you are a slave, and you want to become free, the solution is simply this: Stop acting like a slave! Slaves are not allowed to tell the truth. So – you start off by telling the truth. This is the core of the Real-Time Relationship (RTR). The Real-Time Relationship is about empiricism and curiosity – fundamentally, it is the scientific method applied to our relationships. If our emotions tell us that we will be attacked for telling the truth – and we have not been telling the truth – it is because we wish to avoid confirmation – i.e. certainty. If we wish to “avoid” certainty, it is because we are already certain. Thus it is not really “certainty” that we wish to avoid, but the results of accepting what we already know to be true.'

'We humans are uniquely fortunate that ambivalence pervades everything we experience, think, feel and intuit, or we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have. Within the scientific realm dealing with tangible objects, we have become very accustomed and skilled at managing and using contradictory possibilities and options. In fact that’s how science has progressed. It’s the art of putting things together that previously weren’t supposed to be married, and taking apart things that were supposed to remain together. But when it comes to dealing with ambiguity in the intangibles of human life—we suddenly lose it! We stumble into ambiguity-illiteracy. We try to make reality caveman-simple, of which good and evil is the best example; in making the most important decisions of life we have only two options instead of a thousand or more. Violence is one of the principle outcomes of simple-mindedness. Ambivalence is the key skill necessary for the creative management of multilayered comprehension.'

Gisted 2/2 -- It is the truth-telling slave who extends the universalization of ethics to the masters – and thus exposing them as morally evil – who is the greatest threat to every other slave because of their past horror and humiliation of having been enslaved to evil through their desire to be good, of having that which is the best of you turned into service of that which is the worst in humanity: lust for power, domination, theft, murder, war, debt. They react with the hair-trigger psychological defenses called slave-extending-morality-to-masters-will-get-us-all-killed! People can't easily process the universalization of morality, so all they can do is get mad at it. They have to create exceptions to universal morality because that's what we've all been programmed to do throughout the violence of history. So how do we change this? We have to reveal the negative consequences for immoral actions. We have to replace statism with voluntaryism. WE have to replace violence with ostracism.

Gisted 1/2 -- It is the rulers of mankind who most understand the moral nature of mankind. The ruling class is ALL of those who gain the majority of their income through violence. The ruling class is not about rich vs poor. A rich entrepreneur is in the slave class. A low-paid government worker is in the ruling class. The ruling class is about which side of the gun are you on. It's about violence vs voluntaryism. -- Morality is the most effective slave owning device that there is. You simply can't own people more effectively than inculcating morality within them. It is the slave's desire for virtue that enslaves them and makes them a slave to evil – and this is fundamentally humiliating. The masters will teach you that their 'morality' is universal and their 'ethics' are absolute, and then with zero comment or admission of any exception, they will act in the opposite manner. And if you bring this hypocrisy up, YOU will be attacked by your fellow slaves.

Gisted -- All of the evil, corruption and predation in the world follows from the moment when this invisible apple is offered that you are told you must believe in or die (or be condemned at the very least). If you get a sense of the agony the world is in at the right now then you get a sense of the horror of this moment of ultimate betrayal and soul murder that inevitably pushes people into becoming either sadistic, amoral, exploitative abusers; or masochistic, compliant, passive-aggressive victims. Either way, abuse or victimhood is made into an absolute so that you can avoid the pain of knowing that people chose to hurt you when they could have chosen otherwise and to repress the pain of acknowledging that your sole means of survival, your capacity to understand things rationality, was under direct attack by those who claimed to love you. But that pain still exists in the world and whatever we don't permit ourselves to feel we end up causing other people to feel ten times over.

"So the elders say, “Only good little boys can see the apple!” That’s why they layer in this moral dimension. ...by getting the person to believe that if they can’t see the invisible apple they’re bad, well then you torture them and you set them up with this lifelong quest to see an invisible apple which they just frickin’ well can’t do! You’ve put them into this mode of a dog chasing its own tail for the rest of its life and that person is then going to pose absolutely zero threat to the power structures that exist in the world, because he’s going to be so consumed with his own inability to see this invisible apple that he’s not going to raise any sort of basic or sensible questions to those in power. ...you’re fundamentally, absolutely, and completely helpless, because how are you going to question the morality of those in power with reference to logic and facts and our common humanity, when at the very beginning of things, you swallowed this invisible apple and called it tasty?"

"We can only meet in reality."

'What boredom proves in personal relationships...'

'What needs to change to save the world' -- "Don't hit. Don't hurt. Don't steal."

"The original sin is now imperfection."

'How false concepts obscure real violence.' -- "Like all [2+2=5], she wants to divide violence into 'good violence' and 'bad violence'."

Is there any proof I am bound by such a contract, Officer? Am I obliged to sign a social contract, Officer? Under whose authority and under what law?

'A short example of how to use a universal theory of ethics to prove the validity of property rights.' -- “It is impossible to argue against property without using property.”

'Rothbard described the axiom as such: "No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory."'

"The only way forward is down."