Each individual should have the freest possible scope for the development of his faculties and his personality. In order to have this scope. He must have freedom from violence against himself, violence can only repress and Destroy human growth and Endeavor. And neither can reason and creativity function under an atmosphere of coercion. If each person has equal defense against violence, this equality before the law will permit him to maximize his Potentials, welcome to Keith's night.
Don't tread on anyone today. We have Sean layout to discuss a book. He has written regarding morality. I don't want to give away the title just yet because it's terrific. Sean. Thank you for coming on Keith Knight. Don't try it on anyone. Oh, thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it. So when discussing morality, a few things, come to mind that we can sort of all agree on without there being, you know, a fight in the cafeteria at work about anything and it's like, Okay, the things we know are wrong slavery. Rape murder kidnapping, theft genocide. What is it about? These acts that you think is immoral. Well, yeah, that's that's the big question. And I actually was listening to your show with Mark passio and
Larkin Rose recently. And that question was, it was floated and it's a challenging one. So, I took a step back and I started thinking, okay. So who has who? Who determines this, this morality where, you know, where is its source?
And when looking at a particular act, I realized that we all know that the person who takes an action, can't be the judge of the morality of that action because then they, you know, the classic example is, you know, mousey tongue or something can judge his own actions to be moral external. Observers can't judge. Either because they're not
affected by the action at all. So, by logical deduction, only the receiver, the person who is who is being affected by that action, is the one who's judging that action to be moral or immoral and ultimately it comes down to consent. If the person who is being acted against is consenting to the action. Then, the action is perfectly moral. If they are not consenting to the action than the action, is Oral. And thus was where I made the connection between consent and
morality. And so that's why I titled the book consent is morality. Now, just so we're on the same page. First of all, I love how at the beginning of the book, you get definition. So, we're on the right page. So many philosophy, books could either just not have been written or if saved 300 Pages by just making sure, we're talking about the same thing. How would you define consent? Okay, so consent. Is the affirmative decision or expression of accepting an
action? It's when we can get into into the depths of the consent itself, but that that's really the bottom line is if a person voluntarily, you know, without without external coercion allows, another person to take an action or doesn't action to themselves than by definition
that consent. To it, but it's really about the voluntary acceptance of. And what's also very important is the is the expression of it. It must be explicit and it must be. It must be given so that the other party that's taking the action actually has the consent. Do you think there are times where there is implicit consent? For example, if I let someone in my house, well, they can get some water from the fridge. They can sit on the couch.
Maybe they can have, you know, they can use my pen and the ink in there, but they can't take my car. Do you think there is some implied, consent in the action for the sake of? I mean, it would take so much time and effort and energy to get consent for every single thing. That's sometimes we do go on implied. I think that there's there's certainly cultural aspects to to that I argue in the book that technically, if you want to get down to you know splitting
hairs. There's no there's no actual implied consent. I think the the good example is if you're if you fall unconscious and, you know, medical people start to start to try to help you. Or if you know, if a young teenager attempts suicide or something, then people try to to save that person. There's some people say that there's an implied consent. In fact, I argued that the medical personnel in that example. Violating the person's consent.
Now, maybe in our society. We essentially are looking the other way to the violation of that consent, as you know, a lot of folks in our space. A lot of people are looking the other way about a lot of violations, comes of consent in society. So that's not entirely unheard of but technically you want to get down to brass tacks. I would argue that those are violations of Sent and do you think that they can be justified in some instances?
For example, is it okay for me to go and invade anyone's house whenever I want to? Well, no, that's a blatant violation of consent. Well, what if Jack and Jill get married and they Jack takes out an insurance policy for two million dollars, Jill goes, missing the next day. We see Jack carrying a heavy Persian rug out of his house at 2:00 a.m. Well, and he refuses to come down to the courthouse. Well, maybe then I can initiate aggression and forcefully enter the house.
Or if someone's choking. Can I put my body up against theirs and thrust? Really hard to stop them from choking. Is it ever okay to violate the consent of a person, right? Well, I'm obviously in the first example, that that person took out the insurance is has already committed the aggression, right? So it was a, you know, the actions would be would be the would be an attempt to punish those. Those, those aggressions in the choking example, I think in those examples.
It's pretty clear that the person who is saved or the person who has helped would turn around and say, thank you. Yes, I I, you know, retroactively consented to your action or by or even actually, even by the choking example. A lot of people will sign to themselves and point to themselves and and and somehow indicate that they need help. Obviously if they're unconscious, they can't. But I I think the, I didn't say early on, I didn't make it.
Clear early on in the book that the world is not perfect. Human humans live in the meat space as they say, and it's very squishy and and there are definitely exceptions and situations where that would be a controversial or or may appear to poke holes in the floor. Safiye. But and I do address that I do address that early on to make sure that the folks know that the ideology is consistent.
It just because if there are, there are little weird examples that might fall outside of, it doesn't mean that the entire philosophy is, is, is damaged, and that is so important to get into. Because I mean, yes, literally anything can be justified in extreme examples, like anyone. It was openly against slavery. Well, was it okay to enslave someone for three seconds to save the entire human race from cancer? AIDS covid. And another speech from Bernie Sanders. Yes. Absolutely.
Those things are so terrible that if just some small microscopic thing can be have such a different challenge, different change to a human events. Well, in some cases it would be okay. All of that is a clear distraction or stalling tactic use to get Away from the major examples. So my question to you is what are some major reasons we should value consent and aren't we already doing that?
Well, clearly, we're not, as I mentioned before, there's a large number of Acts that are taken every single day that violate consent. My my argument in the book and the book is kind of laid out in three sections. The first is kind of to describe. The philosophy of from beginning to end. The second is to give some of these examples that we've been talking about a little bit more real world examples.
And then the third is to is to talk about what happens in a world where sent is not being followed. And one example, I talked about is it is with children. If or if I can consent for someone else, what would happen if if if you're not able All to withhold your consent. What kinds of things that could happen in society? I could, I could take all of your property. I could enslave you. I can take your children.
I can, I mean if humans don't have the ability to withhold consent, I argue that society would not last. Actually. I don't think it would stay cohesive and any sense for very long at all. So at the very end of the book, I talk about why, what kind of actions that are being that are that are violating consent and how to recognize them. And what do we need to do to build a more consensual Society? Sure as far as just getting any philosophy, consistently applied, if you say no, screw
this. I don't care about consent or who has the right to own what that can't even be consistently applied because if I have the right to steal your headphones, well that implies I have the right to own and possess them and then someone should steal them from me because theft is right, but they can't rightfully take it and own it and exclude because theft is okay. And I can violate their consent, the only consistent methodology to any philosophical discussion.
Here would be something that talks about both. Consent and ownership. So I'm curious. How do you determine who owns what? And who was the aggressor in any given situation? Sure. The AI from the very beginning.
I start very, very basically, I mean I even start at, I think therefore I am I go right to the root of humanity and talk about ownership and very clear about how a person because they own themselves and I talked and I Make sure that I set that Baseline about why people on themselves. I discussed the fact that when you own yourself, you own your
time. So a lot of folks, I'm sure who are, you know, a lot of your viewers, a lot of your listeners or to know this but for those who are new to it you because you own your life, you own your time. That's something that because it's yours. You may freely trade it for something else. And that something else that property is now as much a part of you as that time. Was that you traded for it? Those two things are equivalent, which is why if anyone steals
something from you. If someone steals a car from you, they are essentially enslaving you for the time that you spent to produce that the the resources to make that car. So it's when you do when you look at it from that angle, it's very clear. We're about who owns what? It's the, it's who voluntarily and peacefully traded, what they own for something else in agreement to other people. I think that's that's yeah. Go ahead yet. Now, would you agree with me that voluntary consent?
Can Trump labor value or labor effort? For example, if I go to a place and I work for Ten hours a day, five days a week for a year and I build a bunch of houses. I don't own the houses, and I'm don't even have the right to be compensated. If I chose to sign up for a charity to help build houses for people. So, in that sense, could I do a ton of Labor and rightly not be compensated? Because I voluntarily agreed.
And therefore, again, we're back at consent being the root of morality instead of time and effort, equaling my right to something. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's that makes perfect sense. If if a person I think with situations like that, you have to think about it from a little bit of higher level, right? So think about the person who okay, so a worker volunteers his or her time to build houses, the
person. Now the organization that they're being volunteered, their volunteering to gets all of the labor builds the houses and either do It's them or sells them to another person. And then that other person now, is very grateful. They have the house. But if the labor walks in and says, hey, this is mine. I built it. It's, you know, they're they're they're going against their, their original agreement.
Certainly, there's some ethical, certainly, there's ethical problems there and which I do separate out in the book, the difference between ethics and morality, but you know, they The property exists that they gave their time freely voluntarily just as you would give money or any other property and the the other person whose have received it now, even though they received a freely it's it is there as because that property was and that time was given voluntarily at the time and it's
gone. That's once you once you give something away and you agreed to give Away, and then I suppose you could get a situation where somebody decides does that. If someone does that someone gives away property. It's now I want that back. They're not going to get a very good reputation. So I think, even even in the situation where, where you could where someone could argue that they could, they could retrieve that property back. It's not going to come without consequences.
They're going to they're going To be seen as somebody who does that and the trust is going to be gone. So there's a there's a lot to there's a lot to that possible. Now one major thing is, you can always, you know, come up. It's always interesting to come up with examples. Is it okay to steal, you know, one penny to save the entire planet from destruction. Yes. Well in some of these cases, aha, I've got you and sort of a bit of a conundrum there for the existence of a state is
legitimate. That is the biggest non sequitur. You can imagine it's the equivalent of saying, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity in our dealings there for Amazon has the right to coercively. Rule us make executive orders. We have to follow like no because all of the shortcomings that we Face, apply tenfold to this group of people called the state or any other group of people saying that consent and morality applies to them differently. You have a great question that
you posed to the reader. You say should the more reality of a particular action if that action is right or wrong, be judged using the same method for everyone. Who does it regardless of their job or intent. Why is that question important? It really does go right to the
question about government. I mean, I do it kind of subversively because the, the, the target audience when I was first coming up with the idea of this book, is that kind of young person idealistic person, maybe who considers themselves? The left who really, you know, maybe grew up in the in the me to movement as it was getting big. And really did fundamentally understand. That consent is primary. And I think a lot of people do not do believe, deep down. That consent is is key.
It's the thing that that's really the biggest thing to to, to be cognizant of. So, starting from that. I started putting those Those kinds of little less seeds in the beginning of the book and that question in particular, was to get to the point later on where. Yes, just because somebody has, you know, a blue uniform and a shiny badge. They're just a human being just like the rest of us and they don't have any special powers.
They you can tie. You can go in this through this in the book as you can't Grant powers that you don't first possess. So I make sure Were I started a very simply and so that it supports the argument that I make later on? That's so important because people can just apply that consistently in any case, if people will often say well this is my job or even, you know, non police officers, non members of the military will say, well
that's just their job. And that's just what they're doing as if getting paid like doing the thing is bad, but if Is paying you to do it now? It's okay. It's I mean the example I use is yes, I go around assaulting women, but I only do it when their ex-boyfriends hire me to do it. And so I'm just doing my job and now it's totally different and morality doesn't count. Of course, not. The other thing you said about the ability to transfer things. You don't have, this is vital
when it comes to consent. Because if you say, well, the people consent to something like regulation or Station. Well, if the citizens, look, if I just don't have the right to go around issuing taxes to people or going around regulating people or conscripting them. How can I delegate that to a group of individuals who if I don't have X, how can I transfer X to someone else? And I can't take it back. Like, there's no method of me saying. I hereby a, you know, take back
my right. And I'm going to just, I'm going to enforce this on. On my own terms, you guys tried swing and a miss. Thanks so much Congress. You guys did not do great on that. You talk on page 29 about group. You say groups do not act. What is the importance of understanding that groups?
Do not act only individuals act. That's actually one of the biggest misconceptions that I found for people that are outside our space that are that, that aren't, you know, was a collectivist mentality, is that He said, well, the people have spoken or, you know, the voice of the people or something like that is, is the, is the idea that a group of people have some sort of separate. Cognition.
There's some sort of living entity or, or morality that exist within that is separate and distinct from all the individuals. And that's just, it's just when we say that, A group Acts or the people of spoken. It really is just a shortcut. It's the, it's a, the example that I give. I don't know if they'll give this in the book. I don't remember. But a flock of birds, a flock of birds does not chirp each bird chirps because you can't. So you might say, oh, that flock
of birds chirping but it isn't. It's the all the individual ones and taking action of themselves that that's making the sound and it's the same thing with any Group of humans that if it actually this kind of dovetails into a little conversation, I have later on in the book. If you grant these kinds of anthropomorphic ideas to groups, if you give them it's like its own identity and the group can take actions. Then what it does is it absolves any individual within that group
who may have committed a crime? If you're standing next to somebody in a big crowd. And someone else throws a book. I mean, a brick through a window. Well, you didn't do that. And so or maybe the other person could say, well, it was just, we were just the, the other group that did it. You can never identify the individual. If the group is, is committing an atrocity. That's very and important. What do you think about how you would tell someone that this
really matters to them? And their life, the idea that consent is morality. And might say, well, yes, taxation is theft. The regular regulation is violent domination. The draft is slavery. And war is mass murder, but that's not going to change me and how I act and how I operate. So, it's something far-fetched and hard to really care about. Well, what would you say to that
mindset? Yeah, it's, I would approach it by saying, think about ya. Think about your own life and think about, you know, somebody doing something to you. Think about someone just, you know, for a lady, taking your prayers for man, taking your wallet. Think about the situation where your consent is violated. It's it's well, I mean at the very basic level, it's not. It's, you know, it's, it's not a happy thought. And so knowing that that, that that damage, that your that's
done to you. When your consent is violated, is universal is the And which is, which is why I assert that morality is subjective because it's based on consent, even though each of us consent to different things. We all either consent or withhold, our consent to Every Act was taken against us. And so that that fact that everyone can sense is universal, which means that it is objective human. It's an objective piece of
humanity. So for the person who's putting it off to the outside, I would just I just think about it, be able to more empathetic right, think about it, how you would feel and at that kind of that kind of thing is we and we talked about it in foreign policy. I think they think about what Americans would feel if someone else is doing it to us, that kind of reversal, I think is really instructive. Yeah, it's sad that you know, like a thing that you should kind of learn in kindergarten to
explain. Well, you shouldn't hit this kid because you wouldn't want to be hit, right? It's amazing how we lose that obvious, that obvious empathetic tool. I mean, I just had it the other day. Now we're someone's like, well regulation is there for us to flourish. It's there to, you know, protect us and set parameters, so we can flourish and I said, alright, so from here on on out before you post anything on the internet, just send it to me.
I'll tell you whether or not I approve or disapprove. It just to make sure that you can have a space to flourish and he blocked me. Now. The point is is not to change. This person's mind. It's did you know show everyone else? And it is it almost benefits you to see how people respond to different ways of communicating something and just to plant seeds in the minds of everyone else.
I am so glad That someone sort of, you know, ask me these questions and made me think about these sort of ideas. I think the main reason or the main way that looking into, you know, consent morality self ownership has changed me, is if you really understand people on themselves and people own their own time, you realize that you're not automatically entitled to other people's time or property. So anytime you want to spend one second with someone or years
with someone, you have to say. All right. They don't owe me. Any of their time. I need to create something of value. I want to be someone fun to be around and you know, what, if they don't like me, maybe I'll change a little. Maybe I'll change a lot depending on whatever reason I have 2 or motivation that I have. But when you recognize that other people don't own you and you don't own them inversely. It totally changes.
The dynamic at least for me the dynamic of Ships and the and how you, you know, create value for other people. Do you see actual relationships changing once the people embrace, the philosophy of self-ownership and volunteerism. I think there's I think there's a lot to that thinking about, even from a basic business standpoint.
I know that people are not required to buy the book, for example, I am so grateful that people are voluntarily giving of their of their self of the time and energy that They used to make to make money to hand, it to me for four, essentially. You're just ideas that I put down on paper. I am so grateful and so appreciative and so knowing that that that they are doing it voluntarily, it makes it makes
it all the difference. I mean, I had a conversation with my daughter when she was very young. We used to use the little stars to when they do good, you get a star and when you earn enough Stars you get you get a reward and we had a conversation. Because if your brother didn't get enough Stars, would it be okay for you to give him your
Stewart? Your stars so that he could get a reward and she's like, yeah, but what if I made you give him your stars and and you could almost see that that look on her face and she didn't really understand. It was just you know, like a six-year-old. But but if there's something viscerally wrong with that and being able to, to give, you know, they know that whole that nonsensical sharing. Is carrying ideology, you know, that that leads into the that socialism kind of ideals.
If you don't have the ability to voluntarily give or to voluntarily work together, then there's no, there's no value in in doing something if you're forced to it. So it absolutely makes all the difference when it comes to interpersonal and comes to business. Everything. And you can just look at how you feel, how different you feel when you've either volunteer at a charity or you've given to charity and then you have given money to the IRS given Loosely. It's like, oh my God, more
genocide and Yemen versus. Oh gosh, seeing that woman, smile was worth everything and then there's the secondary effects of. If people automatically get money, there's less of an incentive to use it efficiently, so they have to create value. Maybe there will be corrupt. Ian, that's why we need a free market in charity.
Be so we could opt out of funding the corrupt with the state, you just fun corrupt and there's nothing you could do besides protest and then them lie to you about the audit that they did. So there's so many different Dynamics where we going to say. No. No. No, that's yeah. Yeah, you can you can go down a lot. There's lots of rabbit holes that you could go down for short. Now, a major obstacle in this is You can make a lot of great points. But if someone's mind is open this much.
It's hard to get through. So how do you first open people's minds to First? Accept the idea that consent is the root of morality. Well, well, first, I do, I do ask the person in the book. Do you believe, what do you think about consent? And we consent is primary. Are you the kind of person who, who does genuinely value consent? Because I think most people do, as a matter of fact, I did some speaking. At a local public, high school, and the one.
And B. Even though I'm quite a very, very upfront about a, my anarchism position, the people who are there, there's a public school. They asked me back multiple times because they know that my philosophy is based on peace and and consent. And that really resonates. I think with, especially like high school kids and young adults, who Who understand the absolute criticality of respecting consent choices?
And so, that's where I start. Okay, if you're with me, if you already see the value and the requirement to respect consent choices, let's follow that path down. So that's what I've always felt as the is the key, as the kind of the pry bar in. Yeah. People will sort of sometimes scoff at At trying to get to the front, the fundamental rights and philosophical aspects of
something. They're like, well, I care about the consequences in the real world real-world outcomes of certain policies, not this whole rights and all this, you know, made up stuff in your head to, which I say, first of all, they never even do that with themselves. Historically there like slavery, objectively wrong. Genocide objectively wrong. This person was bad. This person was on the right side of history, but when it comes to today, the way, Analyze policies is, well.
What will it do for the unions and how will this affect GDP? First of all, you have no clue because you're lied to by Keynesian economists all day. Second of all, why is that relevant? I mean, like, if I made a great, there's so many people whose GDP and productivity would increase, if they were enslaved. What does that tell you about the morality of slavery? It just tells you, you can increase productivity without it being moral, and it's still
being unjustified. Well, there's people, we could, you know, steal from and kidnap and that would, you know, stimulate economic yada yada yada, long story short, they apply morality historically, but to the present, they can't analyze anything because of Rachel, Maddow feeding them nonsense all day. Along with, uh, with Sean Hannity you. It's like you will you get it
from both sides. So do you have any go to questions to sort of plant seeds in them in their mind, so maybe Go II. Can't let this guy know that he's outsmarted me. But at the same time you want to give him something to think about later. Any ideas on that. Yeah, it's I really I think we'll my Approach was just, you know, how much do you? How much do you really believe that that's consent is primary how you know, I'm asking the reader. This is how, how much, if if I am.
If I explain this other problem, like, let's say stealing from a, I think the exactly one of the examples is, you know, should we steal from a billionaire to save the life of a homeless person? And that's not a ridiculous question, right? That's a daily question that people that people ask and if your answer is, yes, you know, okay, but are you really do you then to, how much do you really care about consent?
Yeah, and then I, you can go into the argument was well, did the billionaire actually get their? Legitimately and how would you develop, you know, distribute that equitably? I do. Go into that a little bit, but the bottom line is, how much do you care about respecting consent, violations?
I really try to hit them in the fields as much as possible, because that's, I think and, you know, we've a lot of folks in our space talk about approach to talk about strategy and The strategies that we've been taking just have not have not been as successful. I think as a lot of us would have wanted the fact of the matter is, people live on their fields, they live on their emotion and so by tapping into that a little bit and saying, okay.
Do you really are you okay with violating someone's consent to achieve your own personal interest in the world. Well if least if someone says yes, and I know they're being honest, but they need to At least understand that, that is what they're doing. Yeah. One they have to understand that's what they're doing. Because if they're going off Fields, well, maybe you want to make them feel a little bad about what they're doing and then second of all you go. Wow.
Okay, so it's okay for people to violate your consent and then you just get back into the conundrum of earlier of no one owns anything even themselves. If you have the right to steal and enslave of virtually everyone. You also have a pretty cool little map that is built within the structure of the book. A way for people to actually get cryptocurrency just by reading the book. How can people get Bitcoin just by reading the book?
Okay. So this was kind of an idea to because one of the things I oppose intellectual property, as far as I'm concerned, that the ideas in the book, should be should be free. However, I wanted to reason for folks to actually buy the print copy of the book and so, I had heard on another show, the idea of, with, with Bitcoin. You could hide a Bitcoin key in a book and walk it across a border and bring your Bitcoin with you. And so, as it will 109 do that with this book.
So there's a pattern of words in the book itself and those patterns that those particular words, when entered, I believe, it's a bit addressed a torque. I've got all the instructions online and I'll like it can explain how to get there if you, if you put Certain pattern of words together in the right order and enter that into a key generator on bit addressed out org, it'll spit out a Kia, public, and private key
combination. And if you enter the right words, you'll get the Bitcoin wallet that I've pre-loaded now right now, it only has .01 Bitcoin. But as we record this, that's what about 300 bucks. I think $330 in that range, which isn't zero. It's something and I'm Going to be adding for every print copy that is sold on my website consensus morality.com., I'll kick in another dollar, so it will grow until someone finds it. So best place to buy. The book is, where is consent is morality.com.
I know I was able to grab the, the URL for the name of the book. So I thought that was pretty good. Excellent. Yes, and of course, you'll see that link in the description. Sean any primary aspects to consent? Or morality, the philosophy of peace that I missed, or you would like to reiterate for the listeners. There is a before I get too far off the Bitcoin thing. I want to give out a little hint to the pattern because if you didn't have a hints to the pattern, you'd never find her.
So as a thank you to you and to your listeners. I'm going to give away one of the hands on all the hints have four. I'm sorry three words and the hint for your audience is Concatenated in order, concatenated, in order. Now, that hint doesn't make any sense to you guys. So what I owe you will need to do is you'll need to go to consent as morality.com. And there will be a link to get all of the rules and information on how to grab that Bitcoin and links to where the other hints
are. But yeah, as far as the book is concerned, it's a, it's a short book. It's all about 125, huh? Three pages in that range. I wrote it for the I wrote it for the non libertarian for the non Anarchist. So I think it's something you can hand to someone in your family who maybe is sympathetic to the ideas to get some, some real basic groundwork and to understand the importance of consent. Sean Liao. Thank you for your time. And thank you everyone for watching, Keith.
I don't try it on anyone. Thank you.