If you decide to leave the FreeDomain Radio “community”…

[Dear Admin - please could you make this a Sticky]

If the link above does not work, please copy and paste this:
http://www.fdrliberated.com/?p=6250

done

Admin, many thanks for accepting my request. QuestEon's article is thoughtful and well-balanced. I wanted it to be easily found by anyone interested in the subject.

And don't forget---all proceeds from FDR Liberated go directly to Occupy Wall Street!!!!

First of all, thank you very much for the kind words.

This forum archives the parting thoughts of many people who evolved through FDR the way you did. They were initially captivated by the brilliance of SM but, at some point, something about his or his followers' behavior caused them to see the community in a completely different light.

In fairness, although Noesis was temporarily banned and her threads temporarily locked, I believe that Molyneux unbanned her and unlocked the threads later. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it represents any change in his behavior or views. Rather, I think that after all of the other recent bannings of people who disagreed with him (which I've tried to make public on my site), he simply got too much heat for this one.

Noesis's last post was in September in this thread Why Moral Nihilism Makes Some People Sick. Throughout the thread--all the way to the end, she was bullied by FDR member RuddODragonFear and a couple others without intervention by Molyneux. The discussion was confused and fogged, leading to this frustrated comment from an FDR member on the last page: "I don't feel like the OP has even been answered. In almost 30 pages!"

It's no surprised to me Noesis hasn't been back. There are worse things than banning. Perhaps she has found friendly waters elsewhere.

NonViolentWar wrote:

My question for you (finally) is, in your opinion, where does the "good" Stefan Molyneux end and the "bad" begin? Do you find any of his information valuable anymore, or have you dismissed all of it? I think I remember reading you are an anarcho-capitalist and share a good bit of your perspective with Molyneux, but I wonder what your thoughts are on where you draw the line in his work? I realize these are broad questions, and for that I apologize... not sure how else to ask.

Great question. Let me preface my answer by saying I know you asked me directly, but be open to answers from others here. I learn from them!

My understanding of Molyneux has been a journey. I have always prized him and believed him to be worth the effort because he is a teacher. The world undervalues great teachers but great teachers have made the world. I wonder sometimes if Molyneux had only been able to channel himself through the academic track and become an actual professor, how many minds he could have energized.

Because of that inherent value as a teacher, I have always tried to be in the middle, between those who worship Molyneux and those who completely dismiss him as a buffoon. However, the difficult problem I wrestle with is this--the further I go on my journey; i.e., the more I analyze the man, his behavior, and the forces that I believe drive him, the more compromised his work becomes to me.

At the time of this writing, I am working through the fourth article in my "Is FreeDomain Radio a destructive cult?" series. I have just uncovered something that suggests that the best thing to do with Molyneux might be to reject everything he says utterly and entirely. It was quite a shocking little surprise and I'm trying figure out how to deal with it.

But let's back up on my journey. The question on the table is, how do you separate the good Molyneux from the bad Molyneux? The following encapsulates a couple years of my thinking.

Molyneux as...

• Psychologist--I started here. Molyneux's foundational essay that you are not an anarchocapitalist simply because you had statist and/or religious parents (therefore making you an abused child) is preposterous. He has spent years trying to convince his members that nearly every mental or emotional ill they suffer is a result of their parents. The results of his influence have often been tragic. For this reason, I reject any Molyneux writing or podcast that has to do with psychology. He is incompetent at best and dangerous at worst.
  
  
• Creator--This was my next stop. More than anything else, this is probably what prevented Molyneux from becoming the extraordinary teacher he could have been. He simply doesn't want to teach about someone else's ideas. He wants to have the ideas that others teach about. I'm sorry for him--I almost hurt for him in this regard--because he wants it so badly and he simply doesn't have the kind of creative mind that comes up with those ideas. He will always be the Salieri--close enough to understand Mozart's genius in a way few others can but not close enough to duplicate it. Molyneux's "original" ideas are quite often re-branded, already existing ideas. The DRO and Mecosystem are two such examples. Sometimes, he veers way too close to outright plagiarism for my tastes. Therefore, I pay little attention to Molyneux talking about his own "original" contributions to philosophy in general or libertarianism in particular.
  
  
• Profiteer--We are all capitalists. So Molyneux should be able to extract every penny from the world that he possibly can. However, I think there are some very real ethical issues that come into play when you're selling "truth" and when you're developing a community that, in part, is designed to attract 20-somethings and encourage them to separate from their families. I discussed those issues a bit in this article. In itself, this concern doesn't tell me which podcasts or forum discussions to avoid; however, it does make me take everything I hear with a grain of salt simply because Molyneux has a vested interest in how you think. That's no reason to write FDR off completely. At the same time, I don't think there's any way to avoid the fact that--based on how Molyneux has chosen to create revenue--FreeDomain Radio can never be the "haven of free thought" you hoped for.
  
  
• Logician--It wasn't until Danny and his analysis of UPB came along that I began to understand another curious and limiting characteristic of Molyneux. It has plagued him nearly all his life, from his academic career through to today. Molyneux desperately wants to have grandiose, illuminating, world-changing ideas, but his mind is undisciplined and impatient. There are only a few areas in which one could say he has a comprehensive knowledge. Rather, his mind is full of "swiss-cheese" knowledge common to an undisciplined autodidact. He is very knowledgeable about limited aspects of a subject (psychology for example) but acts and talks as if he has comprehensive knowledge about that subject. He rarely does.
  
  This characteristic has had a crippling impact on his ideas, because he can rarely demonstrate a rigorous logical foundation behind those ideas. He claims that he has built everything starting with A is A and his ideas are logically constructed "from the ground fucking up" but close analysis reveals that is hardly the case. And when that logic is called into question by people like Danny, Noesis, Allison, bake, and so many others, he simply accuses them of being nitpickers and bans or ignores them. Our humble host blew up Molyneux's entire universe with a single question and we all see how that turned out!
  
  When I say this has plagued him his whole life, I mean it. You can see in Part 1 of the Promise and Failure of UPB that this characteristic above all others ended his academic career. For this reason, I see no purpose in books like Real-Time Relationships or UPB and avoid any podcasts in which they play a feature role.
  
  
• Trustworthy source--Throughout my experience with Molyneux, but more so lately, I have wrestled with the knotty problem of whether Stefan prevaricates and what does it mean if he does? If you have a scale that says "honest" at one end and "liar" at the other, where does Molyneux land? He misrepresented the ACE study and doctored another physician's work to advance his own agenda on child abuse. He brags about his Master's degree but neglects to tell you it was unearned. When asked whether he believes you should break off contact with statists and religious people, he throws a word cloud at you specifically designed to confuse the answer, even though his answer is "yes." His sole agenda with trusting acolytes like Tom is to convince them that their homes are toxic, killing environments but refuses to admit he played a role in their separations from their families.
  
  Of the few philosophers I've read, their behavior seems consistent in a way that is very different from Molyneux's. They say their truths boldly and they use language to clarify, not to obfuscate. Rightly or wrongly, I see a thread of dishonesty running through Molyneux's behavior and work. It makes me tend to avoid podcasts in which his points are based on his own personal history or those that are research-based such as his "Bomb in the Brain" series.
  
  
• Example--I think it was Molyneux himself who coined a phrase that goes something like "I can't hear your words because your actions drown them out." He has a history of dismissing people he believes are hypocrites; people who are not living examples of the beliefs they express. Often, this is a gambit he employs when he is cornered during a debate.
  
  Yet, to achieve the financial growth of FDR, he has been perfectly willing to turn his back on virtually everything he was fanatical about in 2007. I tease about it in some of my articles because it reminds me of how the Corleone family from The Godfather tried to move to Las Vegas and take on the trapppings of a legitimate business. Today, Molyneux gives fawning interviews with people he would have railed about in 2007. He appears to be all about patching families up when the dozens of people he has convinced to defoo are out there--alone and family-less--waiting for the happiness he promised them. And I guarantee you, he is not about patching families up. I can identify the books and podcasts that would have to come off the shelves immediately if that were really true.
  
  The vast majority of members of the FDR Forum today are hypocrites, as far as the 2005-2007 version of Molyneux is concerned. He did not design his "philosophy" to be cherry-picked. On several occasions he has called himself an absolutist. So why doesn't he land on those members with both feet and insist they join the virtuous life path that he and Christina have taken? It's because he makes too much money from them. The revenue has apparently corrupted his pure world view and he's more than OK with it, because at the same time he's a little more famous than he was before.
  
  Since Molyneux is no longer an example of what he preaches, I see no reason to listen to any podcasts that have to do with pursuing a virtuous life.
  

So where does that leave us? Well, his take on current events is interesting. Many of his True News podcasts are OK, I guess. There are a number of podcasts on freedom from statism and freedom in general that are good and a few that are brilliant. The forum can be lively and there are some smart folks there, along with the dogma watchdogs and bullies. I don't pay any attention to Molyneux's views on religion. His understanding of religion is puerile and only convincing to other atheists (except ones like me).

My journey has taken me from thinking "you can listen to this half over here and ignore that half over there" to a point where one needs to question whether it is worth the time or energy to sort out the good from the bad at all. That's where I'm at today but I have a grim foreboding about what my position will be in the future.

NonViolentWar wrote:

Also, if I am really interested in anarcho-capitalism, peaceful parenting, free market economics, the non-aggression principle, etc. where are some alternative sources (YouTube, webpages, books) or places to find them? Molyneux really was one of the best speakers on these subjects I had ever seen, are there others out there who can deliver similar information without the baggage?

This is the much better question, I think. Your last sentence is the one where I share your pain. The man can be a captivating teacher and a wonderful explainer of difficult concepts. It is a tremendous loss to all that his other characteristics prevent him from understanding that.

My personally recommended Web sites to you are:

LewRockell.com
Mises.org
Strike-the-Root.com

I also like FreeTalkLive a lot; I just don't know if I'd consider it a starting point.

Others here may chime in with their favorites.

I'm still trying not to become a parent! If others here are parents, maybe they can point you down the Peaceful Parenting road. The only thing I know with absolute certainty about parenting is that Stefan Molyneux is the last person on the planet I would turn to advice.

Thanks for the questions. I hope some of it was useful. Sorry if I wrote too much--I nearly always do.

Holy essay, QuestEon!! I think you just about answered NVW's earlier questions, but here are my two cents on anarcho-capitalism and the usefulness of FDR.

One of my first thoughts about FDR when I came across it was that it was full of people who thought: "Man, I have spent my whole life searching for the Truth. I didn't find it in my family, I didn't find it in nationalism, I didn't find it in religion. I have finally found it in anarcho-capitalism, and now I can stop thinking critically!"

I think one of the marks of a true philosopher is that they are able to seriously entertain criticism from opposing philosophical viewpoints. Hell, the best philosophers can even tell you themselves how other philosophers would criticize their work.

What is going on here? I think these philosophers understand that axiomatic to their work are certain values. Each of them have different ways of viewing the world and different things that they hold important. As a result, differing philosophies are built on top of these foundations. Yet because they have the insight and the integrity to recognize and disclose their approaches, they can put on other philosophers' hats and see the world from their perspectives.

And then there is Stefan. He certainly has a set of axiomatic value judgements underlying his work, but these are not acknowledged. As a result, what he gets on his forum are the people who see the world the same way he does. Everyone else either stays away or is chased away. So they've ended up with a forum full of people who sit around saying: "Man, how can everyone else on the planet not see the obvious Truths I do? The world [outside of FDR] is so corrupt!" It's an echo chamber.

The fact that the world outside of FDR and its contemporaries has serious criticisms of anarcho-capitalism should give them pause. But they have completely blinded themselves to this reality. I can only assume that the criticisms are too threatening to their viewpoint to be considered.

If Stefan were a serious philosopher rather than an evangelizer/politician, he would devote a sizable chunk of his podcasts to exposing his listeners to legitimate criticisms of anarcho-capitalism, intelligent religious apologetics, a much more nuanced view of the challenges of parenting, and so on. Podcasts where he leaves his listeners with real food for thought, rather than podcasts where he pretends for two minutes like he'll entertain an opposing viewpoint, before moving on to seemingly ripping it to shreds.

Stefan's intellectual dishonesty is the #1 reason why I have all but stopped listening to his podcasts. I do not trust him, and I don't have much use for someone who is unwilling to put his axiomatic value judgements up for discussion. There are only so many hours in the day, and I learn better in an environment of critical thinking than in an echo chamber.

I think the echo chamber dynamic and the intellectual dishonesty also give rise to the cult comparisons. The fact that these are completely dismissed by FDR throws another log on its critics' fires.

Hello NVW
Here are some alternative sources of info / forums for the topics that interest you.

I was referred to them from elsewhere but haven't had time to look into them properly. If you give them a try I'd be interested to know how you find them.

http://articles.philosophyforums.com/
http://www.physicsforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=112%22
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog
http://againstpolitics.com/
http://dailyanarchist.com/
http://anti-state.com/forum/
http://ancaps.super-forum.net/
http://ffrf.org/about/