These are great questions. Sorry--I got too busy to respond immediately, but they needed good responses. I'll respond to the questions in separate posts.

2defoo wrote:

Thought I would help out here...in the "01:25 -- 02:40: There are no accidents, only malevolent actions" analysis, Stefan is drawing a distinction between a willed action and an accident at the start of that portion. ("a bad action requires a willed action on the part of another".) IE, somebody driving on your lawn and you getting upset until you found out the guy had a seizure. He then said "in the same way" if I cut down a tree that damages your house I should restore the situation. His language is pretty sloppy, but the interpretation is rather strained to suggest he is saying all accidents are malevolent (particularly in light of example of the guy having a seizure while damaging your property). Do you agree with this?

Nope.

I'm not going to give him a pass for sloppy language because sloppy language and what he is trying or claiming to do philosophically cannot coexist. Is there any field where the meaning of words matters more? Poetry, maybe, but little else.

Before I get to your first point, let me start with a similar response I gave to Memeverse. Forgiveness doesn't require restitution. Period. We can debate all the points Molyneux makes after the first 50 seconds of the podcast that we wish, but the entire podcast is invalidated by the silly error Molyneux makes at the beginning. My argument is not born of philosophy, morality, or anything so esoteric. It's born of I know how to read a dictionary.

But, slogging away at the rest of the stuff is fun anyway. To your first point, here are the significant lines from the passage in question:

• "Forgiveness is something that requires a bad action which itself requires a willed action on the part of another."
  
  
• Then he says "If I cut down a tree that falls on your house, clearly I've done a bad thing that I need to restore your house to its original state."
  
  
• Which he then follows up with "the feeling of being wronged…these occur after the willed and malevolent actions of someone else."

What does Molyneux mean by "bad action" in the first sentence? How about "I've done a bad thing" in the second? What does he mean when he changes from "bad action" to "malevolent action"?

Personally, I think Molyneux was using "malevolent" and "bad" synonymously here, mostly because "malevolent" sounds more fancy and erudite. Perhaps you may suggest he was using both adjectives to characterize only the action itself (and not the actor)--in other words, "an action with an unfortunate outcome." Or perhaps "an injurious action."

But he didn't chose those words. He chose words that the English-speaking world commonly associates with intent. Huge difference. Why?

One of my problems in having absorbed the FDR zeitgeist over all this time is that it becomes harder to ignore all of it when doing some microscopic exegesis on this line or that. In other words, we can focus only on the words in this passage to understand what Molyneux is saying. (But we're still left with the troubling question: Why do all if his words in this section suggest intent, when there are many other words he could have used that do not?)

...or we can also be influenced by the other things we've heard Molyneux say and do. I do have a personal feeling and bias based on that exposure. My personal feeling--just my opinion--is that he chose words people normally associate with intent subconsciously, because he faces the world with (to quote myself) "the haughty grandeur of a narcissist." Personally, I do believe he considers anything that affronts him (and there is a lot of stuff that will) to be malevolent.

Take a look at what happens when people with good intentions, patience, and deference dare to question Molyneux's logic (the way Allison and bake did when all of the flaws in Real-Time Relationship were exposed). The guy made a podcast to publicly punish them for not addressing him correctly and then banned bake altogether. He once exclaimed to a caller in another podcast that he won't even take directions from anyone he believes doesn't care about him as a person.

You may say that I went too far in my analysis of this section and that Molyneux is actually a kindly soul who graciously overlooks accidents if you wish. Can we also overlook that the entire podcast is about the broken glass you should make the people you love crawl through if they offend you?

One more thing, though. Did you wonder why Molyneux didn't start the podcast this way? "...There's a whole range of human actions that cause some kind of injury, from completely blameless accidents to demonic evil. Today, I want to talk to you about people who hurt your feelings on purpose and whether or not you should forgive them."

Easy as pie, right? If he doesn't believe himself to live in a world swarming with people who commit "bad actions" against him, why didn't he say that? Why couldn't he say that? Instead, he tries to come up with sweeping all-encompassing definitions that fail miserably.

In this passage, the listener is left with two choices: (A) Molyneux believes all injurious actions are malevolent or (B) Molyneux's rhetoric is clumsy and inarticulate.

Either option is awful.

Continuing on...here are answers to the next two questions...

2defoo wrote:

(edit) Oh dear, and then the next section "02:41 -- 04:13: People who apologize are aggressive"...would you draw a distinction between sincere apologies and aggressive apologies ("I said I was sorry! let it go.")? Because the example by Stefan was given as being aggressive, which does not follow that all apologies would be done that way. Just that example.

Yes, I can draw a distinction between sincere and aggressive apologies. But you jumped over the most important error Molyneux makes in this section, the one that renders all discussion of apologies moot: "Forgiveness cannot be willed into existence."

Of course it can and I would suspect more often than not, it is. The type of apology Molyneux chooses to illustrate here is of no consequence. Forgiveness may be given even when no apology is made.

2defoo wrote:

(edit 2) "04:14 -- 04:39: You can’t grant forgiveness"...dictionary.com. forgive - "to give up resentment of or claim to requital for". Resentment - "a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury" Giving up an emotion/feeling, right?

Yes, it is about giving up an emotion or feeling. Let me give you an example that would sound almost surreal on FDR. You may find it ridiculous.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!"
-King Lear Act 1

Did you ever consider how often a parent is insulted or hurt by a child growing to adulthood? Most parents know it's not a bad thing--kids start to assert their independence starting at age 2 and they try to grab more and more of it until they leave home. Sometimes it gets pretty rocky but it works out most of the time. During those years, when the three-year-old is shouting "NO," and the young adolescent is humiliated to be seen with his/her parents, and the mid-adolescent first tries to assert his or her independence in stinging emotional outbursts, many parents have to take it all in, take a deep breath, let go of any emotion they feel, and forgive.

How often do those slights occur during the growth of a child to adulthood? Thousands?

Yes, I know that in the FDR-world children are damaged, blameless, innocent souls and their parents unethical bumblers, but in the real world if parents didn't have the capacity to forgive the stings and hurts that naturally result from growing children, healthy familes probably couldn't exist!

Want to test it? Let's see if Molyneux uses the "teachings" in this podcast against Izzy, making her crawl through that glass every time she offends him. If he does, then that poor kid will spend the rest of her life in therapy, guaranteed.

Of course, if he forgives and forgets the way most parents do, he'll merely be a hypocrite. I hope for her sake he is.

How sad and tragic and funny it is that Molyneux relentlessly browbeats his followers into believing their parents deserve no forgiveness, when those same parents undoubtedly forgave them thousands of times over.