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March 15, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:08
685 Philosophy and Girlfriends

When the wrong ones love you right... :o

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Time Text
Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It is March the 15th, 8.28 in the morning.
And it's time for a little philosophy-based relationship advice.
So a gentleman has posted on the boards and he says, Gosh, I think I've just bollocksed up things with my, quote, partner.
Bollocks up a British phrase for mess things up.
I had intended to write a proper introductory post, the one about FDR, that's Free Domain Radio 33.
I've downloaded all the episodes, and I'm listening to such as strike my fancy.
That's listening out of sequence, but it's anarchy, so what am I going to do, complain?
But since I've started listening about a week and a half ago, I've begun to realize some things about myself and my relationship with my girlfriend.
First, I've realized that I am in fact an atheist, despite waffling on that particular account for the past few years.
Second, I've come to the realization that this might be the beginning of the end of my relationship with my girlfriend, though it's still quite nascent.
Good word. Seven months, maybe.
A phenomenal girl, the best I have known by a long shot.
She has, quote, interesting beliefs.
In fact, she and I just had a conversation about fairies.
She believes in them.
Really and seriously.
Well, I've seen a Queen concert. Oh, sorry.
And when she was here in January, she quoted as evidence the Cottingly fairies, which are photographs which are known to be fakes.
I sent her a link saying so. Bad move.
She says, quote, I've seen the site before, which set off bells in my head in regards to the intellectual dishonesty in citing something as true which one knows to be false, but I don't believe it.
Basically, she doesn't want to believe the evidence from the photographer's mouths that the photos were fakes because that interferes with her belief in fairies.
She also has interesting religious beliefs.
She grew up in something called the I Am Activity, and as all of this stuff has been recently coming to a head, I must admit, to myself mostly, that it is a bunch of rubbish.
Objectively, there is no way someone could believe this stuff and call it rationality and logic.
That was surprisingly scary to type out loud.
Of course, my knowledge on these subjects is, as would be her argument if she knew I were posting this, rudimentary and bias.
I have apparently searched out those sources which are negatively biased regarding her beliefs.
At any rate, much as it pains me, I think that things might be over.
I do love her as I have loved no other.
Can this be fixed? Have I provided enough information for anyone to make a judgment?
Should anyone else make such a judgment?
I don't know if I can make such a judgment.
I don't want things to be over.
She's a brilliant girl, and an anarcho-capitalist, though I'm not sure of that sometimes.
She has sort of a nihilistic view of existence and proof.
How do you know anarchy will work?
It's just a belief. Gosh, I don't know what that means.
So she's an anarcho-capitalist, but she doesn't know it'll work.
Anyway, but I'm at a loss.
But anyway, hello, Freedom Aid Radio.
Great show, Steph. Well, thank you.
So, my wife was a deist when I met her.
She believes in sort of higher power and so on.
You can be a little bit patient, but the person has to accept rationality first.
We'll talk about that in a sec.
My problem, he continues after we responded, is that I'm rather antagonistic about the whole issue because it bothers me.
And I don't really have patience.
And I feel in some part of my mind that it isn't something...
That should bother me. It isn't my problem, and I shouldn't pick at it.
But then there's this. As my spiritual beliefs are not lightly founded, nor are they harming or financially supporting anyone, I would prefer not to be presented with your thoughts in opposition to them.
As I do not try to convince you that I can prove what I believe, I would prefer that you do not offer me evidence that you believe proves your position.
I think that we are both well served by our own beliefs, as different as they may be.
I hope that while we may not agree with one another, we have no intent or desire to prove the other wrong in their perspective.
I also hope that we will trust one another to have arrived at whatever theories they support through intelligent and thorough reason, and not without being presented with the other side.
I mean, I mean, he says, what to say?
Is a relationship workable wherein one party believes something which the other party believes is a bunch of claptrap?
I hope I'm not violating your trust.
I'm not giving any personal stuff.
I know that I'm particularly antagonistic to my friend, and she perceives a special brand of arrogance about me when we try to discuss things like politics, philosophy, economics, and this religion-spirituality stuff.
Not that she's wrong about that.
I think I am indeed arrogant.
I don't want to be, because it turns people off from the points I try to get across.
For me... It's difficult to practice not being arrogant, because I tend to become impassioned by debates and arguments with people, and I get caught up in the moment.
That happens a lot when I argue with this girl, too.
Our talks generally leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
For instance, although she is an anarcho-capitalist, ideally, she says, she still sees value and participation in the political process.
I, however, would consider it a violation of my personal principles to do such a thing.
I struggle with whether or not to vote, and when I move to New Hampshire as a member of the Free State Project, I wonder if I will participate in town hall meetings in addition to generally stirring up mischief.
Although I have respect for people like Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher, insofar as they have more Friedman or less Thatcher libertarian tendencies, I believe that they are subject to moral judgment.
Friedman advocated some government control, and any government is evil, and so on, so on, so on.
Discussing Abe Lincoln, she also tends to use the word belief rather than theory, law, or truth.
That is, capitalism is merely a belief, and socialism another belief.
So, I mean, this is very, very interesting.
Thank you so much for posting. I hope that you don't mind.
I've not used any personally identifying details.
Let me just make sure that I have to go through the 19-point check to make sure that the whole system is working before we go.
All the plugs are in, all the cords are attached, everything is going to set because my notebook battery, since it's a fairly old notebook, isn't going to make it all the way to my work.
And this question is a very interesting one, and I do really appreciate you for posting it.
And the reason that I think it's really worth talking about is that this is a very, very fundamental issue when it comes to being a philosopher.
Because fundamentally, that's what we're doing, right?
We're not anarcho-capitalists.
We're not tactical logicians.
We're not existentialists.
We're just philosophers. We're thinkers.
We're reasoners. And I think that where truth tells us and what I've tried to do in this show is to take the windiest abstracts that the mind is capable of and plug them into daily decisions.
And that's why the sort of motto of the show is the logic of personal and political freedom.
Political later. Political as a possible derivation of personal freedom.
But personal freedom always first.
Personal freedom always first.
Because... We can't get political freedom in the absence of personal freedom, and even if we had political freedom in the absence of personal freedom, it would not be meaningful.
As I've mentioned before on this show, if I were married to an unpleasant or difficult or whatever woman who was making my life messy and naggy and unpleasant, and I've been there, not in terms of marriage, but in terms of dating, when I was younger, Then it wouldn't matter if my taxation rate dropped 50%.
It wouldn't matter if I had no taxes at all.
I would still be enslaved. I would still be miserable.
I can't do that much about the state other than have these conversations.
But what I can do is I can focus on my personal relationships.
And I can focus on achieving freedom within the sphere that I actually do have some control over, which is the sphere of my life and my relationships.
The important thing, I think, is to recognize that you can be a stateless society.
You can be a stateless society and you can achieve far more political freedom by working on your personal relationships and forgetting about the government than you can by focusing on the government at the expense of your personal relationships.
And in fact, since none of us by focusing on the government can uproot the government, Then, if we focus solely, or even largely, on trying to uproot the government, then we're actually enslaved to an impossibility, and there's going to be nothing but frustration that comes out of that.
We can't uproot the state.
The only way that you can work to uproot the state is to live a life of personal virtue and integrity and joy, and to clean up your personal relationships.
That's a very essential aspect of that process.
So, that's why I wanted to talk about this, because this is very core to what goes on in libertarian circles, in anarcho-capitalist circles, but most importantly in philosophical circles.
So, when we are faced with a difference of opinion, when we meet people, and I've been working at philosophy, lo, these 25 years, so when I meet somebody, the odds of them having the same belief system as I do is very small.
And... The question is, what is an acceptable difference?
And what is an unacceptable difference?
And to me, there's a clear line in the sand.
I mean, there's lots of fuzzy stuff in philosophy, but this is not one of them.
There is a very clear line in the sand.
The content of somebody's belief system is not actually that relevant.
The content of somebody's belief system is not actually that relevant.
You could meet the High Priestess of the Flying Spaghetti Monster if you wanted, and of course if she was hot then you could ask her out, but it wouldn't really matter that she was the High Priestess of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It wouldn't matter at all.
She coated herself with duck feathers and ketchup and mayonnaise and, oh wait, let me just enjoy that for a moment.
Okay, I'm done. It wouldn't matter because the question is not the content of somebody's belief.
The question is the methodology of somebody's beliefs.
The scientific method is not invalidated because some scientists believe bad things or believe things that are incorrect.
Or some pseudoscientists believe in ESP and Theosophy and the Bermuda Triangle and the Loch Ness Monster and all of this sort of nonsense.
And fairies. The fact that people deviate from the principles of the scientific method does not invalidate the scientific method.
In fact, it validates the scientific method.
That's how we know that people are deviating from the scientific method.
That's how we know, because they're not using reason, evidence, logic, and all the other goodies that we've talked about in this show for some months.
So, as I said, when I met my wife, she was a deist.
She believed in a God that was out there that didn't interfere with human affairs.
She was not interested in organized religion, but she believed in a sort of spiritual being that was out there and so on and so on and so on.
And we discussed it for some months.
But she's a very rational human being.
She's a very reasonable human being.
So, she didn't take it personally.
When I would say, well, help me understand this.
I don't quite get the whole logic behind this and so on and so on.
And she was also very much enmeshed in the virtue of the family, the virtue of the community.
We're a community. We stand together.
We will do anything for our children.
We this, we that, we the other, right?
This is what is very much embedded in the Greek community.
And she believed in that because it was said so, right?
Because people just said it, right?
But then when I was over at her parents' place, I kind of noticed that the woman that I knew and loved sort of didn't come with me, right?
That she became very silent and didn't really talk to them very much.
And so it became sort of me trying to make conversation with elderly Greek people who didn't speak much English while my wife did other things.
And it sort of became sort of odd, right?
So I wanted to try and understand that.
So we began talking about that, and that led to a whole bunch of other stuff which we can get into.
So, the issue is not fairies.
The issue is not fairies.
I'm not saying that the fairies are a good indication any more than the High Priestess of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a good indication of openness to rigorous mental processes, but the content is not the problem.
The content is not the problem.
You can meet a woman who is a raving socialist.
You can meet a guy who's a Wiccan.
And they can have latent capacities for rationality within them.
And you start talking about them reasonably, and they believe that they have come to those beliefs reasonably, as this woman says, although she violently rejects evidence.
And if they have achieved their beliefs with their knowledge through rationality, with their belief through rationality, they believe they have, then when you start to present them with better arguments and more consistent and rational and empirical arguments, then they're going to change their mind.
They might kick and fuss, but they will change their minds because they hold rationality as a value.
And they say, why do I believe what I believe?
I believe what I believe because it's true.
And how do I know that it's true? Because there's evidence or there's reason or there's something.
Even the most vile racist will make up some reasons as to why he hates a particular group.
Oh, I hate those Scottish people.
They're so cheap and they invented golf which kills old men.
They don't just say, I hate Scottish people.
Why? Because I hate Scottish people.
that nobody posits a tautology as the basis of their belief system because then it's a mere arrogant assertion of blind will and ignorance and bigotry and so on.
And everybody has to come up with some reason.
Some guy who hates blacks says, Oh, look, they're a higher prison population.
Oh, look at how many children they have.
Oh, look at how many fatherless black children there are.
Oh, blah, blah, blah, right?
No concept of the history of slavery, no.
No concept of police bigotry.
No concept of all these things.
I'm not saying that all of the problems of the black community are external to the black community, but there are some.
So, the problem is not that the girl believes in fairies.
We'll call her Sue.
The problem is not that Sue believes in fairies, my friend.
The problem is that she believes that she has reason through the evidence to come up with a belief in fairies.
And then she tells you that...
Well, she lies to you by pointing you towards photographs that she knows are fake.
That's not good. I mean, that's really not good.
That's not a good situation at all.
And yeah, I'm sure she's a great woman in many ways.
I'm sure she's very exciting. But my friend, you must look to the long term here.
I mean, if you're going to stay with this woman, play this scenario out, right?
And we'll get to that a little bit later.
But here's the things that I sort of see as a problem.
And to me, they would be deal breakers.
But of course, everyone can make their own choice and everybody has their own learning curve.
So you can let me know what you think.
So first and foremost, she tells you about fairies.
And I don't know the degree to which she told you about fairies with any knowledge that belief in fairies is an unusual thing.
I know that somewhere in the UK they've actually stopped the housing development because of fairies.
Well, it actually makes a lot more sense than most things the government does.
But I mean, I don't know if she just said, I believe in fairies or fairies.
What do you mean? Fairies are real. Of course they're real.
Or whether she brought it up like, okay, this is a little off the curve here.
This is a little tangential to the mainstream.
I'm fully aware of it.
It is a real deviation from what most people would claim as a reasonable belief, but here's what I think and here's why.
And this is how I generally will introduce stuff like anarcho-capitalism to people by saying, you've got to prepare them, right?
Because when you start talking about truths that are in direct violation to what everyone is taught through the brain-mincing machines of state propaganda schools, then it's good to prepare them, right?
I mean, if you're going to operate on someone, a little anesthetic is nice, or at least telling them that you're going to cut them open so that they don't think you're just stabbing at them.
So I say, well, you know, my beliefs are not mainstream and they're not alternative like because I'm trying to be cool alternative because the idea of me trying to be cool is pretty funny.
Why even say anything?
Because I'm cool, brother.
And try and prepare people a little when you're coming up with beliefs that are way off the radar of the mainstream.
It's important, right? So that you recognize the difference, right?
That that's okay. It's okay to be off the charts as long as you know you're off the charts and you don't say, no, this is what all the maps point to.
It's like, no, it's not on any map that I've ever seen before.
At least tell me where the hell you're coming from and at least acknowledge to me that you're not on any map I've ever seen.
I mean, that's very helpful.
And I would really recommend that patience and positivity.
So, if she just introduced it like fairies are real, what are you talking about?
Then that's not a good sign.
That's a sign of somebody who's trying to overwhelm you by pretending something is normal or mainstream or even vaguely rational when it's clearly not.
And then she points you to a website that she knows has been reported as false without telling you that this stuff has been reported as false.
So, if I say, I don't know, Lincoln was an evil dictator, and people then do a search for Lincoln, and they find all of these hymns and hagiographies about how Lincoln was this wonderful guy who freed the slaves and levitated and healed the sick and so on, right? Then they're going to say, well, your belief is wacky.
It's just way out there.
But if I say, I believe that Lincoln was an evil dictator, Who, pretty much more than anybody else in the 19th century, managed to corrupt the original ideals of the Republic.
And it was going to be someone, and it just happened to be him.
And that there are dozens upon dozens of countries that ended slavery peacefully without the need for murdering hundreds of thousands of people, destroying the economy where the slaves needed to gain their jobs after emancipation, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Fiat money, all this sort of nonsense, central banking, all this kind of crap.
I mean, the guy was a lunatic. He had nervous breakdowns, he was a neurasthenic.
Anyway, so he was an evil dictator, right?
And if I say that to somebody, and then I say, but I'm fully aware that this is very much against what is generally written about Lincoln.
Lincoln is, you know, he's got a statue, and Jet Bartlett goes and kneels before it to pray for wisdom, and all this sort of stuff.
So I know that Lincoln has this wonderful reputation.
I don't believe that it's true, and I'll tell you why.
I think that there's a lot of praise that's gone into it because people obviously recognize that slavery was a bad thing and believe that he ended it and so on, and I understand that.
There are a number of historians who are looking again at the legacy of Lincoln, so I'm not, like, way out on the limb here, but it definitely isn't mainstream history, and I'm aware of that, and I'm certainly willing to hear arguments of the contrary, but this is the evidence that I've sort of gathered and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because then at least you know that you're deviating from a course, right?
I don't think she did that, and I'd be very surprised if she did that given her later conversation.
If she didn't, that's important.
So if she's going to send you to a site where there are fake photographs, then she can say, well, I'm going to send you to a site where there are these photographs.
However, it turns out that the photographers say that they fake them, but I know that that's not true because I know a guy who knows a photographer.
They were paid off by the Anti-Fairy Society or whatever, right?
Whatever, just to prepare you.
But no, she sort of pushes you off to this site with no warning about how she knows that the photographs are faked.
And then she says, I just don't believe that they're faked.
Uh, huh?
I mean, that's, it's not up to you, right?
It's not up to me. It's not up to Sue.
It's not up to anyone. I mean, our beliefs are not up to us.
I mean, we have choices, and we can choose to believe whatever we want.
But the truth value of those beliefs is not up to us.
I mean, it's like saying that the reason that the theory of relativity is true is because Einstein really believed in it.
And the reason that, I don't know, alchemy didn't work is because people just didn't have enough faith.
Well, that's nonsense, of course, right?
That's complete nonsense.
The truth value of our beliefs is so absolutely and completely not up to us that it's ridiculous, right?
And we'll get to this question of arrogance in a few minutes.
But I just think, okay, the photographers confess to faking it, and there's tons of evidence.
I mean, I don't know. I assume that there's decent evidence.
Confessions are usually pretty good, as far as that goes.
But the photographers have confessed to faking the photos, but I choose to believe that they're real anyway.
But that's not belief.
Belief has got to have something to do with an external fact.
You could call it faith if the word faith had not been so corrupted with Christmas cards and angelic children and candles and crap like that.
It's bigotry. To believe something in the absence of any form of evidence is bigotry.
It's bigotry to believe in God.
It's bigotry to believe in the state.
It's bigotry to believe that your mom is good because she's your mom.
She may be good because she's a virtuous person.
She's not good because she had sex and squeezed out a pup.
It's bigotry. It's rank, vile, base bigotry.
Belief without reason is just bigotry.
And people will, I choose to believe, I have faith in, they'll use all of these positive words.
But it's just base, blind, mentally destructive bigotry.
I believe in God.
Why? Because I do.
I believe that God is good.
Why? Because the Bible tells me so.
So what? Hearsay is not evidence.
Especially hearsay that contradicts itself as much as the Bible does and claims all of these ridiculous things like walking on water and talking snakes and coming back from the dead.
Jesus the zombie. I mean, it's a bad fairy tale.
God killing the world. The most virtuous God killing the whole world in a flood except for Noah and a couple animals and then saying, okay, that was bad.
I won't do it again. But really, I am the most moral being in existence and you should worship me because I'm good.
Not just because I'm powerful, but because I'm good.
I mean, it's madness. If you submitted this as a story to a publisher, they'd just throw it out.
They'd say this is the rantings of a lunatic and it has no consistency.
It has no consistency.
So... That's, I think, a central issue is the methodology.
Now then, when you begin to bring up opposition to her belief, she basically gets angry.
Not a good sign.
A hostility towards counter evidence is not a good sign.
And...
And so when you say, but there's this and there's this evidence against it, the concept is self-contradictory and this and that and the other.
And the fine lady gets angry at you and tells you not to be arrogant and says, oh my god, this one, if I had a dime for every time I heard this one from a debating partner, but I assume that you're going to at least respect my beliefs.
Right? You're at least going to respect my beliefs.
Right? Because they are such tender little buds and shoots, and they must be cared for.
And kiss my beliefs! Kiss them!
Touch the beliefs! Drop them!
I mean, come on, people!
Why on earth should I respect bigotry?
What does the word respect even mean?
And compared to what?
Compared to what? The most fundamental question in philosophy.
Compared to what? This is true.
Compared to what? Something that's false.
This is rational. Compared to what?
Something that's irrational. I should respect your beliefs that are mere blind bigoted assertions.
Why? Compared to somebody who works really hard to reason out their beliefs and takes on all the personal burdens and pain and challenges of reasoning through to the truth and holding it forward like a lamp ahead of the darkness and lighting the way for others?
Should I respect you relative to somebody like that who takes on the personal challenges of confronting their own biases and beliefs and scarred histories of being lied to and works their way through to the truth?
and holds it fast and submits themselves to logical tests and empirical tests and correction who has the maturity and the intellectual strength to work through and stay straight as best he can or she can on the path of truth?
Should I respect you relative to somebody like that?
Should I even use the same word belief for somebody who has reasoned their way through from first principles all the way to ethics?
and has a belief that is based on empirical evidence and logical consistency and a rigorous application of rationality and who is open to correction and who enjoys being corrected and that person says this is what I believe because it is true and here's the evidence should I use the same word for that as somebody who says I like fairies I think fairies are pretty I've named my left nipple Tinkerbell,
and it is in fact a fairy.
It is fluttering now as we speak.
Oh, that feels good.
Thank God it's not cold.
Well, it's not belief. It's not belief.
I'm not trying to mock Sue.
I mean, I don't know her.
I'm just sort of saying that this language that is hijacked by people who don't have any basis for their beliefs That they talk about respect, and they talk about beliefs, and they talk about knowledge, and they have nothing but blind assertion.
And they have nothing but rank-based bigotry.
Well, somebody says that a black man is poor only because of the white man.
And you say, well, a black guy from West Indies who is physically indistinguishable from an American black has a higher standard of living than whites.
Well, he didn't come from a history of racism.
He didn't come from a history of slavery.
Well, there were slaves in the West Indies.
There's racism. But when people just make up responses so that they don't have to accept evidence, that's important.
That's important. The rejection of evidence is very important.
Philosophers are always accused of arrogance and intolerance and rudeness and shortness and a lack of respect for other people's beliefs.
And a lack of respect for other people's beliefs.
Well, you can listen back to the podcast, the dueling podcast on psychological defenses, which may help you, but this is something called projection.
People who say that fairies exist despite the fact that the photographers who claim to have taken the photographers later recanted and said that it was all faked but believes in those photographs anyway, now that's arrogance.
To believe in direct opposition to all the evidence known to mankind, to simply assert Assert as a fact a belief that you have in the absence or in opposition to all evidence that is available.
Well, my God, that's arrogance.
That's arrogance. If I say I believe that oriental babies can fly and commission a massive study and interview oriental babies and say, fly, damn it, lift them off the bed only an inch or so and then do all this sort of stuff.
Go through all the physics, get a PhD in physics, understand gravity, understand mass.
And at the end of it, I say, I still believe that oriental babies can fly.
Well, that is actually a mental illness.
I mean, seriously, I'm not kidding.
I know she's a great and exciting woman, but she's mentally ill.
I don't use that term lightly.
But she's lying to you.
She's misdirecting you.
She's not giving you any evidence.
She's attacking you for questioning her crazy beliefs.
I mean, I'm telling you, this is a form of mental illness.
And it may be a very common form of mental illness, but it really is.
and that's the nicest phrase that I can come up with.
So when she calls you arrogant...
Then that's pure projection.
There's nobody more arrogant than somebody who just asserts belief in the absence of evidence or in contradistinction to elements, to evidence, excuse me.
There's nobody more arrogant than that.
Religious people call atheists arrogant for asserting there is no God, but we have all the evidence and rationality in the world to help us assert that there is no God.
And we're not asserting it. We're accepting it.
I don't assert that there is no God.
I accept that there is no God because of reason and evidence.
A mathematician does not assert that 2 plus 2 is 4.
He accepts that 2 plus 2 is 4.
A geographer does not assert that the world is round.
He accepts that the world is round.
A physicist does not assert gravity arrogantly.
He accepts gravity.
You don't assert that fairies don't exist.
You accept that fairies don't exist.
This idea that every statement of truth or proof or disproof is just a mere blind statement of will that's designed to destroy other people's belief systems and undercut them and arrogantly assert your own beliefs.
And remember I said, not two podcasts ago.
I didn't do it as a video, sorry for those on YouTube.
Not two podcasts ago, I said that this is more common among women than men.
This blind assertion of belief followed by emotionally manipulative tactics to get you to keep from asking questions.
I did a full podcast on this two podcasts ago called Hostility to Rationality.
Go listen to it, if you haven't listened already.
I know you're listening out of sequence, you anarchic bastard!
But go listen to it.
That's why... And we'll talk about the why some other time.
But this is a thing that you have to be careful of, that you have to watch out for.
I mean, I once stated a woman who said that she was, you know, psychic, had psychic abilities.
Of course, I gave her the amazing Randy test.
My God, you're going to be a millionaire. Let's go get the money.
Oh, no, no, it doesn't work like that.
I can't will it. It just happens to me.
Ha! Yeah, got it.
Bye. So...
I think this is serious stuff.
I mean, I think this is really serious stuff.
She's really out of control mentally.
Really out of control mentally.
She's holding bigotry as virtue.
She's holding lies that she admits as lies as truth.
She's accusing you of attacking her when you're simply trying to square off what she says with basic reality.
So, I mean, I sort of hate to say this, and I really do hate to say this, but it's a one-word suggestion.
Run like the wind Run, run, run, run, run, run, run Get away, get away my brother This is not going to lead anyplace good.
This is not going to lead anyplace good, and this is going to be like a sore tooth now.
You just won't be able to stop going there.
You just won't be able to stop going there.
And because it's pretty fundamental.
It's pretty fundamental. You can't connect with anyone except through reality.
You can't connect with anyone except through reality.
You can't connect with this woman if she just has bigoted beliefs that are not founded on any kind of reality.
And when she specifically and overtly rejects any kind of rational examination of those beliefs, you can't.
You can't be intimate with this woman, other than the biblical sense, which is going to be progressively less satisfying and more contentious.
Because she resents you for your rationality.
She resents you for having reality processing.
She resents you for having mental efficacy.
She resents you for the virtue of your integrity.
She resents that which is good.
She labels as arrogant or unpleasant, or I was going to say evil, but that may be too strong.
She rejects as negative.
Intellectual curiosity and rationality.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe you could be a little less harsh in your criticism.
I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there, but that's not really the central sin here.
I mean, this is a...
I've had a number of women say to me, well, it's not what you say, it's the way you say it.
It's like, oh, I'm so sorry.
Let me go and wrap the truth up in a pretty bow and dissolve it into something that's no longer truth and put it forward to you in nice paper that you open up and there's nothing there so you don't get offended, right?
But that's just ridiculous. I mean, that's just a way of saying, I don't want to think.
When somebody says, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.
That's just somebody who doesn't want to think, who doesn't want to change their mind, right?
And it's, again, anti-thinking.
It's not who doesn't want to think, doesn't want you to think.
It's anti-thought as a whole.
So let's play this out.
Where does this go? And what happens?
Well... So...
You're gonna stay with this woman.
You're gonna have these fights forever.
They're gonna get worse. She's dug her heels in.
She's not turning back. She's not turning back.
And I'll tell you why in a minute or two.
She won't. She's incapable of turning back.
Never gonna happen. Never gonna happen.
And... Where does this go?
What happens later? Where does this play out to?
What happens? So...
Maybe you get married. Excellent.
What are your vows going to be?
To love, honor, obey and never express my opinion?
And never ask questions?
To never connect through reality?
Excellent. Oh, let's have some children.
Yay! This is going to be great.
How are we going to raise those kids? What standards of truth are we going to?
Instruct those children on them.
How are those children going to enjoy being raised in a household where mommy and daddy believe completely opposite things and never talk about them?
How much respect are they going to have for daddy's rationality when he married mommy even though she's hostile to rationality?
How good a father are you going to be?
What kind of lesson are you going to say to your kids?
What kind of lesson are you going to say to yourself?
Well, I believe in principles and I believe in the virtue of rationality and I believe in consistency and I believe in integrity.
And I believe in courage and honor and humility, the humility to subject myself to reality and my belief system to logic and testability.
I believe in all of those things, but I'm going to marry a woman who believes the exact opposite and is hostile to all of those beliefs.
So there's the blood that goes to my head which swells my virtue, and there's the blood that goes elsewhere that swells my subjugation to the irrational.
And we all have been there.
I mean, don't feel bad. Nature is sometimes a bit of a scattershot in her desire to get us to reproduce.
Mmm, irrational but curvy.
Very nice. Sexy time.
So, you're going to completely betray all of your principles if you stay in this.
And not just your principles like you made them up, like I like spam, but like real principles, like principles that are objective and true.
Integrity, rationality, humility.
Virtue, courage, self-criticism, all the things that are good.
I'm a wise and mature person, which I still am at.
But, you know, I get that once in a while.
But, yeah, you're completely betraying all of your virtues and values.
And why? Well, she's pretty.
I mean, I get that. I totally get that.
I mean, this is one of the problems that women face.
And it is a problem that's more generated by men than women, if you don't mind me saying so.
Because if she's pretty...
Then people don't confront her because she's pretty.
That's what she brings to the table.
And so people will bow down before the gale of her prettiness.
So that's probably, I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what's going on.
So she's pretty and she's good in bed in the way that crazy women often are.
So, yeah, run, run, run, my brother.
This is not going to work out well at all.
Not going to work out well at all.
And if you doubt me, you just simply have to try and assert your values.
Assert real values. The real values are truth and falsehood in this relationship.
So why? And see what happens, right?
If you don't believe me. And see how much fun it is to be stifled, right?
You want to live in a dictatorship, live with somebody or be with somebody where you can't express what's valuable to you.
You can't express what moves you, what's important to you.
And of course, she'd say the same thing.
Well, you're not letting me express what moves me, what's important to me.
It's like, yeah, but the difference is that I have wisdom and you have bigotry, that I am in pursuit of truth, and you're just blindly asserting whatever strikes your fantasy.
So the question is, why won't she turn back and why can't she change?
Well, she can't turn back because she's made a positive declaration about the corruption of what you're doing, the negative aspect of what it is you're doing.
Now, people don't back down from those positive declarations.
At least I've never seen it. Theoretically, it's possible.
But now that she's dug in her trenches around this issue, she's just not going to back down.
And why would she back down?
There's no external reality that would give her that requirement, that would even need her to.
She can just blindly assert that what you're doing is bad and what she's doing is good and you're not respecting my beliefs and blah, blah, blah.
She can do all of that.
But there's no external reason that would ever cause her to surrender her will to correction.
It's like faith. You can't argue people out of faith because they've already told you, I believe whatever the hell I want to believe and screw you for coming up with rationality.
How are they ever going to reverse their position?
Based on what? Compared to what?
There's no compared to. It's a vacuum.
It's a void. It's nothing. It's a null comparison.
And the second and most important reason that you should run, my friend, is that this woman's family is completely screwed up.
And that's really the fundamental issue that's going on here.
That's what she's defending. That's what's going on.
See, she didn't just come up with this whatever the hell she went through as a kid, this whatever it was, me first or whatever, me bigotry.
Blindwill.com?
She didn't come up with that.
That was inflicted on her by her parents.
It wasn't that she just doesn't know how to think.
She was actively prevented from thinking by her parents.
She was told that not thinking and blind bigotry is the ultimate virtue by her parents.
And that's the real cliff that you're facing, my friend, and it's not going to be scalable.
It's not going to be scalable.
How is this woman conceivably going to be able to say, well, I was lied to by my parents.
I've been lied to my whole life.
They told me what was valuable.
They told me that this was valuable.
X is valuable. X is, in fact, the opposite of valuable.
X is incredibly destructive.
My parents lied to me. They corrupted me.
They forced me to refrain from thinking.
They prevented me from thinking.
They attacked me for thinking and reasoning.
Because, of course, this is all just her mom or her dad.
When you get older, you realize that this generational echo is...
There's almost no people out there.
There's just generational echoes.
Masquerading as individuality.
I mean, you'll get that, right?
I'm sure you know a little bit about her parents.
So is she going to be able to say, well, my parents lied to me my whole life and they told me something was valuable when it was in fact the opposite of value.
They fed me poison and called it fruit.
And she's not going to be able to do that.
She's not going to be able to do that because why would she?
She can just believe that her parents were virtuous and taught her all these wonderful things because she wants to believe that.
And there's no compared to.
There's nothing she needs to subjugate her belief system to.
So, yeah, run. I mean, certainly you can suggest that she get...
I mean, what she needs is not a philosopher.
What she needs is therapy so she can deal with the pain of her past.
And that's not something she's going to be very likely to pursue.
But I would run.
And if you do care about the girl, then I would suggest to her very strongly that she get some therapy because her parents did quite a number on her capacity to think.
And she's defending it as a virtue.
She's holding up her scar tissue as beautiful skin.
And that's not going to be a good thing for her.
It's certainly not going to be a good thing for you, but it's not your job to fix her.
That's her job. Thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations.
I will talk to you soon. Oh, so sorry.
Somebody subscribed to Free Domain Radio to the $18 a month, which, again, I would really appreciate.
And I lost the email.
I'm so sorry. If you subscribed recently, I will check my account.
And I didn't send you the goodies, the novel.
Then... Please send me an email again, and I apologize for that.
It's the first time it's happened. I feel really bad.
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