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Aug. 18, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
51:26
844 The Subjugation of Women Part 1: Practice

The effects of raising women as slaves

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Alright everybody, hope you're doing well.
It's time for us to offend the ladies.
It is the 18th of August, 2007, 12.08pm Eastern Standard Time.
I look forward to your donations.
Please drop past Freedom Aid Radio and buy my book, On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion.
It is a brief, non-technical, easy to read, easy to share, beautiful little book that will truly, truly help you bring freedom to your life now and under $20.
So, I hope that you will buy a couple of copies and hand them out Thanks to everyone who voted for the 2007 Podcast Awards.
We did not win, but we came in the top ten, which I am lavishly advertising.
Congratulations to Grammar Girl, who did manage to win.
I guess we can go down into statism with well-crafted memos.
So, I have a new article on my blog, which I'm going to submit to Lou Rockwell.
It's a nice semi-technical article on the stock market, and it's called, I don't know, Supercharged Stock Market, An Object Lesson in the Perils of Coercion.
I may read that as a podcast.
We shall see.
So, let's get started right away and talk about some very interesting things that have been brought up with regards to two of the fine ladies who, and I genuinely mean that, absolutely fine ladies, who post on the Free Domain Radio boards.
So, to start, this topic came up with regards to the, I guess, the aesthetics or the politeness factor, to some degree perhaps even the ethics, of bringing up somebody's donation status.
For those who have not visited the board or who don't know what this is all about, on the board there are four levels of donators.
Those who've donated, I guess, a penny to 50 bucks are bronze, 50 to 100 is silver, 100 to 200 is gold, 200 to 500 is diamond.
More than 500 is philosopher kings.
And of course, a goodly number of podcasts have been released to various levels depending on the complexity and depth of the topic.
So, the question is, is it ever sort of a valid strategy?
This is not about whether you should donate or not.
It's just an interesting ethical question or aesthetics question, politeness question.
Is it ever valid to bring up Someone's donating status in a debate.
And my sort of particular take on that, I would sort of never, just out of the blue, pick it on someone who has never donated, although I do roll my eyes a little bit when I see someone who's got hundreds or thousands of posts and has never tossed in a penny to the collective vat, or at least to the free domain radio, consider the cost of the boards and the bandwidth and the podcasts and all that.
Not to mention food for the philosopher.
But I wouldn't sort of out-and-out say that to someone.
And yet, if somebody does sort of bring up matters of living your values or integrity or whatever, right?
Then it could be, I think, reasonably supposed that in that sort of tennis anyone metaphor, if you've listened to that podcast, that You could sort of focus on that.
I mean, this is about how to apply philosophy to your personal life, right?
So if you attack someone for a lack of integrity and you have thousands of posts or, you know, hundreds of thousands of posts and you've never donated, I think it's reasonable to point that out, right?
Because we really, really want to make sure that people are never using ethics to attack others, right?
That you live ethics. And when you live ethics, it tends to give you a lot of empathy, right?
To the challenges of living a philosophy, right?
I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why my patience is relatively high and my empathy for people who struggle with these issues is relatively high because having put everything that I've preached into practice to varying degrees, never perfectly, but I definitely am my own first guinea pig.
Having put all of these things into practice, I have a lot of sympathy for Oh, before I forget, I've actually finished The God of Atheists.
I love that book.
I really do, if I say so myself.
I think it is just fantastic.
And it's $50 for the PDF, $100 for the full audiobook, 90 chapters, believe it or not.
And... Pretty much a snapshot of what I was going through when I was developing this kind of stuff in many ways.
But I have finished the audiobook.
Thank you for your patience. And it's available.
Just donate and you got it.
And if you have donated, it's available through the board.
And just let me know. Let me know if you can't find it or whatever.
But we tend to be impatient with other people when we think things are easy.
When we actually realize how hard they are, it tends to be We tend to be patient with everyone except those who are impatient.
Because when people are impatient with the challenges of putting ethics into practice, it's because they haven't done it themselves.
Almost always, right? Everything looks easy to you.
Try and do it yourself, especially ethics.
I would say that it is relevant.
I had a guy...
I think the only time that I sort of brought it up as a major issue, maybe it's one or twice more, a guy came up and was crabbing at me about...
You know, that I should upgrade the website with this, that, or the other.
And he had, like, lots and lots and lots of posts that mentioned lots and lots of podcasts.
Never donated a penny, right?
So the only thing I said was, I said, I tell you what, you donate to me and I will absolutely spend it on the website.
Just let me know.
Of course, I never heard from him again, right?
So people come on kind of strong and then impatient and so on.
And I think it's reasonable. I mean, this is about applied philosophy, right?
So if someone comes on...
Attacking someone else for not living with integrity, and they haven't even donated despite being around for a year and posting hundreds or thousands of times, and the other person has donated, then the person who has donated gets something pretty significant about philosophy and acting in accordance with your values than the person who's attacking.
So I think that's relevant.
I don't think it's a good place to initiate.
But I also think it's...
Personally, I use it a bit as a shorthand for credibility.
And you can chalk this up to whatever self-interest you like, but...
For me, when I see someone who has lots of posts or has been around for a long time, or references lots of podcasts, and hasn't donated...
It just says to me that they don't really get it, right?
And that's fine. There's no rush to get it.
It's just that that's sort of what it means to me.
But of course, that's everyone's decision to make for themselves.
So, in a recent discussion...
This sort of topic came up, and there was somewhat of an abrupt response to someone who was, I think, accusing somebody else of lacking integrity.
This guy's a Philosopher King donator, so certainly does get reciprocity.
In relationships, you know, isn't just taking, taking, taking from free domain radio and not providing anything in return.
So certainly reciprocity and living by values just from that particular example is something that you'd be in pretty thin ice being a non-donator and attacking.
A donator for integrity, not because this is the sole definition of integrity, but it's the evidence, the only evidence that we have in those kinds of interactions.
So then the question came up, About, you know, should you take the high road?
Like, should you criticize someone for this, you know, or be gentle and curious and sort of take the high road and don't descend to other people's level and so on?
And this question came up in another context and I talked about a principle that I found to be helpful and I think has a kind of consistency to it and a logical structure around it, which is that I treat people the best that I can and The first time that I treat them, I deal with them. And after that, I treat them as they treat me.
So, if I meet you, I'm going to treat you with all the greatest politeness and respect that I can deal with.
If you start becoming insulting or whatever, I'll...
See, treating them as they treat you does not mean insulting them back.
It does not mean insulting them back.
So, if someone comes up to me and says...
Hi, Steph! You know, I'll say, hey, Beck, you know, where'd you come from?
What's your story? How you doing? And if they come back and say, well, I just wanted to come here and say that, Steph, you're a total jerk, and your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries, which is not true.
It was cranberries. And then I would...
I would not respond with...
Like, oh, tell me sort of what you're feeling.
I wouldn't respond to that, right?
I can't ignore... Abusive language.
I can't ignore abusive talk.
And so if somebody's sort of verbally abusive, whatever, it doesn't mean that I say, oh, yeah, well, your mother wears army boots and your father smells of, you know, cow dung or something.
That's not what I'm talking about.
But what I'm talking about is not having any tolerance for that kind of stuff.
So what I mean by that is if somebody comes into my life And does not treat me with respect.
I am not bound to treat them with respect.
Sorry, singular to plural there.
If a man comes into my life and does not treat me with respect, I am not bound.
In fact, I would say it is unjust.
To treat him with respect.
In return, respect is a coin that has to be earned.
I have to earn it. You have to earn it.
Everybody has to earn it. And you can print up the fiat currency of handing out respect to people who don't deserve it, consideration to the inconsiderate, politeness to the rude, but that's not what they've earned.
Justice is recognizing the facts of reality.
If somebody's come on and being verbally abusive, it doesn't mean you have to be verbally abusive back.
But it means that if they're not treating you with respect, You do not have to treat them with respect.
In fact, I would say that it's the wrong thing to do to treat them with respect and consideration and kindness.
Because then you're saying that people who treat me with respect, consideration, and kindness, I treat with respect, consideration, and kindness.
People who don't treat me with respect, consideration, and kindness, I treat with respect, consideration, and kindness, which means that There's no benefit to treating you with respect, consideration, and kindness.
You pay it back.
No matter what, right?
No matter what. So you don't fake reality.
You don't fake reality. You don't pretend that someone who is rude or aggressive or abusive is as worthy of your respect as someone who is curious, gentle, kind, wise, compassionate, rational, brave, whatever, right? You don't fake reality.
You don't fake reality. You don't pretend that people are what they are not, and you don't pay the same moral coin to the virtuous as to the non-virtuous.
People who act badly, you cannot justly treat the same as people who act well.
That's exactly the same as, to take an extreme example, some guy gets mugged, And you send both the mugger and the victim to jail.
You treat them the same, regardless of their actions.
That would be completely unjust.
We would completely and totally understand and recognize that any legal system that treated the virtuous and the corrupt, the perpetrator and the victim equally, any legal system that did that would be a travesty of justice.
The differentiation between initiation and response in terms of aggression or abuse or violence is essential.
It is not just to treat an abusive interaction the same as you would treat a benevolent and virtuous interaction.
It's not just. It's unjust.
You can call it Zen and you can call it taking the high road, but it's just not just.
It's not moral. It's not just.
Because you're faking reality.
And proportionately, you are sending both people to jail.
It's the moral equivalent of, right?
I mean, it's sort of in a positive sense, right?
If you're on eBay and some guy mails you a check for $50 for some good, maybe a Maybe we'll do it this way, right?
So I run the sales of On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, out of lulu.com and stores.lulu.com forward slash free domain.
Ready? So somebody sends me a check for $20 or $19.50 for the price of the book, and it cashes, right?
It cashes out and gets the money.
I send them a book. The next guy...
Sends me a check, which I drive over to the bank to deposit, and I find out that it bounces.
Not only do I not have the 20 bucks, I have a $25 charge for my bank, because this guy bounced his check on me.
Do I send him the book as well, as if his check had cleared?
No, of course not. Of course not.
That would be unjust.
Irrational. Now, I mean, fundamentally...
People who treat you badly, you get them out of your life, right?
I mean, you get them out of your life.
I don't have that particular option on the board, and not many other people.
I have more of that option on the board because I can bend people, but other people don't, right?
It's a public conversation, right?
So, let's get to...
So, that's sort of my explanation as to how it's just not right to take the high road.
It's just unjust. It's just unjust.
And we'll get to that in a sec.
So here's from one of the fine ladies who, it is my absolute desire never to offend because you never want to cheese off the people you know who live in Hawaii because, well, we'll get to that another time.
So I mentioned about my principal that you treat people as they treat you afterwards, and she says, right, I've heard you express this before.
before.
I agree with treating people well and then not interacting with them if they prove themselves unworthy of my time and attention.
However, I disagree with treating people poorly as a parry response to their bad behavior.
To behave poorly myself only says something about me and my lack of integrity and self-respect, in my opinion.
Obviously, you think differently, and I can't fathom the logic of it.
If what we're attempting to do is lead by example, can you please explain why you think it is best to treat others as they treat you, if in fact that behavior is not how you would normally act?
Well, I certainly can.
I certainly, certainly can.
I can sort of give an example of a business situation that occurred, I guess, many years ago.
Sometimes, if you've got a boss who's a jerk, you can't just choose not to interact with them, right?
So I had a boss once who was irrational and aggressive and so on.
It was my own fault, of course.
In hindsight, I saw this.
But it was a recession and I needed the job and so I took the job.
My boss was a jerk, right?
So I got him fired.
And I won't go into all of the machinations about this.
I could not cease to interact without quitting and there wasn't any other job waiting at the wings and I needed the money.
So, I maneuvered and politicked and made contacts with the right people and purposefully provoked him in meetings so that he would show his temper and so on, right?
And, you know, basically this guy wanted to build the software without consulting with the market or with clients.
This was a bad idea, right?
Of course, right? Build stuff just based on your own preferences.
You're going to get it wrong more times than right.
And so I wanted to budget for talking to the clients, and he didn't want to give it.
So when the board was meeting, I brought this issue up, and I needled him in a very nice way, in a sort of very positive way.
He blew up. Raised his voice, swore, and I didn't respond.
I just sat there, let the uncomfortable ugliness of his actions fill the room.
Well, he got canned, right?
When I was an employee even further back...
I managed a guy who told me to go to hell in a meeting, and so I was just going to fire him for insubordination.
And my boss wouldn't let me fire, so again, I had to do the same sort of thing.
In the meeting, I just provoked him until he blew up, and then it was easier to get him fired.
I mean, I knew I was doing the right thing, but I'm not going to sort of back down in these kinds of situations and let the bad people run the world.
When I worked at Caribou, after I became a contractor and the company was in the process of being sold, I was laid off for two months, right?
And I accepted it.
I mean, the company had been sold.
This is after it had been sold for the first time.
So I was an employee.
And, of course, they can do whatever they want, right?
So I was laid off, and I took no pay for two months.
And then... The CEO of the company who had bought it called me in and he said, I want you to come back to work, right?
Of course, right? Because all these client deliverables that I was working on managing.
And they'd all gone awry since I wasn't there working and managing.
Plus, I knew the code. I'd built the whole sort of system from the ground up.
So I knew I could make a change in five minutes that would take someone else five days, right?
Just because when you know the code, you know the code, right?
So I said, well...
I'm happy, because I was on the fixed-rate contract, not hourly, but monthly.
I said, well, what has happened to the client delivery dates, right?
So we had a couple of projects due in, I think, four months, and two months had gone by.
And I said, well, what's happened to the client delivery dates?
And he said, well, they haven't changed, basically.
And I said, well, then I'm a little confused, right?
Because you laid me off for two months, and now you want me to come back...
But the delivery dates for what I was supposed to deliver in four months hasn't changed.
So basically, you laid me off for two months, and now you want me to work twice as hard to make up for that last time.
So I'm going to work the same amount of hours as if I had been working for four months, but I'm only going to get paid for two months, which doesn't interest me.
Right?
So, and I said, not only does it not interest me, I would rather work the four months than work four months' time in the two months, right?
I'd rather have four months of 50-hour weeks than two months of 100-hour weeks.
So, it's beyond a net negative, right?
So I said, at the very least, you have to pay me for the time that you head off.
And I also knew, of course, that if I accepted this, it was just going to happen again, right?
Then what would happen is there'd be more client deliverables.
They'd just lay me off in two months, right?
They're getting the same amount of work in half the money, right?
I mean, if I did not, right, sort of put my foot down, right?
And this, of course, turned into a large battle, but I was more than willing to walk away at this point.
I'd saved up enough money. I wanted to start working on books, right?
And I had to sort of publicize this more widely because this guy started bad-mouthing me, calling me greedy and irresponsible and unprofessional.
So I had to meet with the right people, talk about the story in a rational and calm way, discredit this guy.
And of course, I ended up getting all the money and found ways that I didn't end up having to work quite so hard.
But... I'm not going to give ground in these kinds of ways.
It's all well and good to say, well, I just don't interact with people who treat me badly, but...
I don't really have that choice, like in some situations.
You can always quit, but I don't believe in leaving the field to others, right?
I don't believe that you walk away from the field of combat and leave all the resources in the hands of bad people, right?
So, we can sort of go on and on.
I think you get the general idea.
So, you know, when people start...
Politicking with me or bad-mouthing me or manipulating or exploiting me, then all bets are off.
I mean, there's the same argument as to taking student loans.
It's a state of nature. All bets are off.
There is no high road with me except what you earn.
There should be no high road for me except what I earn with you.
So, you know, it's that, you know, not to sound sort of cheesy macho guy, but I don't start fights.
I end them. And I've had to do this a number of times in my career.
I don't back down from these kinds of conflicts.
Now, there certainly are times when I leave a company, if I'm not being treated with respect, and I have no avenues to make things better, then I'll...
I'll leave the company, right? Then it makes sense, right?
If you can't make the situation... But I won't leave a company because if I have any capacity to improve the situation, and if the person who's treating me with disrespect has to get fired, I consider that a good thing to do.
I consider that a moral victory.
I consider that the right thing to do.
For me, again, this is over-characterizing it in a sense, but to sort of slink off the field of battle, because I don't like...
That somebody is acting badly.
And I don't switch immediately into this modal.
I'll certainly try and have the conversation.
But you can't save people.
You can't change people. You can certainly take a stab.
But you can't change people.
And there's nothing wrong with slinking off the field of battle either.
Right? I mean, if you say...
Well, you know, I could fight this person.
I have some leverage. But I just, you know, it makes me too anxious.
I really, really hate conflict.
You know, I was raised to be the peacemaker.
I really can't handle conflict.
It makes me really uncomfortable. I don't like it.
I feel like I can't win.
I mean, to me, that's fine, right?
You can make that choice. And I certainly made that choice in my life.
I just don't replay it as value in my mind.
I don't replay it as virtue in my mind.
That's the part that I have a problem with.
There's nothing wrong with throwing down your weapons and running off the field of battle.
Just don't call it wisdom and courage.
That's sort of my issue.
Now, I have a great deal of sympathy for women in this area, and we'll get to that a little bit later, but just don't call it courage, or don't call it Zen wisdom, or don't call it taking the high road, don't call it rising above.
You're just running away.
And it's okay. I mean, I've done it.
You've done it. You just don't...
You know, we always have this urge.
Again, please, order the book.
I wish I could give you a copy and then you could pay me after you read it because I'd actually probably make more, but that's just not the way it can work.
But please, go order the book.
I go into this in more detail.
We have this very deep urge to recast our decisions in the most positive moral light.
And that's a great temptation.
It's like a drug. It's like heroin.
And it will give us relief from anxiety in the short term, but the problem is it freezes our decision-making process, corrupts our decision-making process.
If, say, for instance, we avoid conflict because it makes us anxious, but we recast that as taking the high road, being a bigger person, being a better person, being zen, not letting it get to you, not lowering yourself to other people's standards and blah, blah, blah, then what you've done is you've just made cowardice courage.
Which means you will never stop being a coward.
It's the same way that Christians make faith virtue.
Therefore, faith becomes impenetrable.
So to metaphorize it and to align this with the principles of self-defense, you don't have to.
It's not immoral to run from the field of battle.
And again, I apologize for characterizing it in this way.
This is how I see it. I'm certainly willing to be corrected, as always.
You don't have to fight bad people.
You don't have to carve out a niche of goodness in this world.
You can surrender everything and its brother to the bad people in the world.
The same way that you don't have to defend yourself if you get physically attacked.
Somebody says, hand over your wallet or I'll whack my finger at you from a medium distance.
You can throw them your wallet. It's nothing immoral.
It's your property. You can do whatever you want.
I mean, you are rewarding bad people and punishing yourself who is a good person.
But you don't have to.
You don't have to.
But of course you have the right to.
And I would argue that it is a better thing to do.
To defend yourself.
It is a better thing to do.
It's not immoral to not defend yourself.
But it is definitely better to defend yourself.
It's not immoral not to stand up for your beliefs.
But it's not evil, right?
You don't get thrown in jail for not standing up.
People can't shoot you for not standing up for your beliefs.
But nobody, I think, would characterize that as a good thing unless there was some particular extenuating circumstances like you need the job, you're going to get fired or whatever, right?
But if it's just some amiable dinner party or some stranger at a party and you don't stand up for your beliefs, it's not evil, but nobody would say that it's good.
It's just kind of, you know, I guess lazy.
But it's a bit more than lazy, right?
It's wrong. It's not evil.
It's wrong. You'd call it immoral.
It's not evil. No force could be used.
But I think that we would certainly feel more admiration for somebody who stood up for his or her beliefs.
And in the same way, if you have the chance to Like if some mugger's coming at you and, I don't know, you have the chance to...
And of course, if you can get away, so much the better.
But if the only thing you can do is to shoot him, then you do that.
It doesn't make you the same person, right?
If I get kidnapped by some, I don't know, face-skin-wearing, it will put on the lotion kind of sadist, and I shoot him in the leg to free myself, that doesn't make me a sadist.
I'm not doing it for the pleasure.
I'm doing it to restore my liberty, which was taken away.
It doesn't make me a sadist.
I'm not pursuing him and capturing him to torture him.
I'm shooting him to get away.
It doesn't make me a sadist.
If somebody acts in an aggressive or abusive manner, whether verbal or physical towards you, and you defend yourself or attack back, that doesn't lower yourself to that person's level.
I think that's an excuse.
And I think that it's an excuse that women make up, not just women, but we're just talking about women here, for reasons that I have a great deal of sympathy for, but in some ways no more patience with.
So we'll sort of move on to that in a second.
So, I asked this woman, I said, do you think it's a good action for me to ban people?
And she said, honestly, I'm really torn on that one.
I'm aware that banning wasn't your first response, but only done after extensive attempts to resolve the issues and find alternative solutions.
On one hand, if everyone ignores a troll or a flamer on a public board, they'll usually eventually go away.
On the other, I really get the dinner party analogy, and I can appreciate keeping the company and conversation high caliber in the setting you personally pay for.
I'd have to say, in this situation, it's your party, and so, your call.
Now, with near-Twilight Zone eeriness, this is almost exactly the same response that another fine lady on the board came up with when I asked her the same question, right?
Because that's sort of important, right?
So, this other fine lady...
Said with regards to board questions as to whether or not it's right or wrong to ban someone on the board, she responded in this way.
She said, in public I'd say it's best to remain polite, since being rude only makes you look bad.
But since FDR belongs to you, it's up to you to decide what crosses the line and deserves to be disengaged, i.e.
banned. Up until that line, man is present to your best side and provide the offender with a reason to reform their behavior, blah, blah, blah.
So it's up to me.
It's up to me. But it's not.
We're dealing with universally preferable behavior.
So the challenge, right, and again, this is to overgeneralize the gender, but it's not inaccurate in my experience.
So this is the pattern that I see, and I do have sympathy for this, but I want to make it very clear at least what I see, so hopefully it can help clarify the issues.
So, the women come along, and this has happened a number of times in my life, maybe it's happened to you as well.
Maybe if you're a fine female specimen, you have done this.
They come along with disapproval with regards to something like impoliteness.
And they say that it is better.
To take the high road. It's better to take the high road.
It makes you look bad.
You want to help change the other person.
It's lowering yourself to other people's level.
You don't want to get sucked in.
You don't let other people define the standards of the debate.
Blah, blah, blah. So they put it forward as an objectively better thing to do.
It is objectively better not to respond in kind to an abuser or whatever, right?
And this is not a subjective statement that is put forward.
This is not a I like ice cream.
This is a put forward as UPB. Now, of course, the challenge with putting any behavior forward with UPB is, well, how do you respond to somebody who doesn't follow it, right?
So the challenge with UPB is if you say, well, it's always better to be polite, the question then is then, well, what do you do with people who aren't?
UPB is... and it can work in terms of politeness.
UPB can work in terms of politeness.
It just doesn't go in terms of evil.
It is universally preferable that you show up on time when you say you're going to meet someone.
That doesn't mean, though, that you can shoot someone who's five minutes late, or an hour late, or who never shows up at all.
It's still universally preferable to be punctual.
So, UPB can work in terms of politeness.
So, what's put forward is UPB in terms of politeness, but then the question is, how do you deal with people who don't?
So, the non-aggression principle is UPB. Don't initiate the use of force.
Well, the question is, what do you do with people who initiate the use of force?
Well, you have the right to retaliate with force.
Same thing. Well, it's UPB to be polite, but what do you do with people who are unpolite?
Well, you have the right to be unpolite back.
I mean, you don't have the obligation.
You have to do a damn thing. But you certainly have that right.
Because the challenge of UPB lies not just in the definition, but even more so in the response, in the retaliation.
There's very few people who say murder is good, but there are lots of people who say that self-defense is problematic or challenging.
And this is the challenge of UPB, is in the retaliation.
Women put forward UPB, or these arguments are put forward that politeness is always better, it always takes a high road, and so on.
The question then comes, well, what do you do with people who aren't polite?
What always comes back then is suddenly it switches from objective to subjective, and that's where my suspicion goes up.
That's where my suspicion goes up.
So people say, well, the women in this conversation, and I'm just picking on two here, and they'll all do apologies and so on, but I try to treat women with respect, which means if I sense an inconsistency, I will treat them as I would treat a man.
I have huge respect for women.
So if it's put forward as UPB, Then you can't use an argument from effect, as we've talked about before.
So you can't say that you should be polite to people because it will help them stay in the conversation and change their minds.
It doesn't solve the problem.
I'm not going to go into this argument again, because this is way back at the beginning of the whole conversation.
You can't use an argument from effect to establish universally preferable behavior.
So... It has to be sort of universal, which means that everybody has to follow it, and those who don't can be sanctioned.
In fact, should be sanctioned, again, according to my sort of argument from justice, from recognizing reality.
So, then when I say, well, should I ban people?
Then suddenly it becomes subjective.
Hey, I'm not going to make a decision.
It's your call. It's your board, Steph.
But that's a cop-out.
With all due respect, that's totally Weasley.
But you can't come on strong with UPB and then when you're asked to support a decision that would result from your UPB, say, well, that's personal.
And of course the women are very smart here.
As this particular aspect of the false self always is, right?
So you come rushing forward with a moral definition.
And then when somebody says, well, what would you do in this situation?
They know they can't say, well, I would never ban this person.
Because that would be to...
I mean, criticize me, which is fine, but they then would have a tough time coming up with why they would never ban that person.
And then, of course, they would, in a sense, never be able to break up with a boyfriend or, you know, with things that just wouldn't work, right, in terms of practicality.
But then if they say that, yes, Steph, you absolutely should ban people who are acting in an abusive or destructive manner and who won't, you know, respond to reasonable arguments to the contrary and so on, then, of course, they're saying that taking the high road is not...
Not always the right thing to do.
And so they just say, well, you know, it's your call.
But that's a cop-out, right?
If you're going to put forward the definition of right behavior, then you've got to follow it through.
And you can't just sort of then say, when you apply that, well, that's personal, that's an individual decision, and there's no way to determine right from wrong in this area.
So I hope that that makes some sense.
Basically, well, should we...
Should we get into that?
Should we get into that? Yes.
So, and of course I've asked now two women, one hasn't responded, one has, for examples, right?
Because one of the things that I sort of get very quickly very suspicious of is when people put forward UPB definitions like always take the high road or whatever, right?
When people put forward those definitions, I always want to know how it's worked in practice.
How it's worked in practice.
So of course if I said, to take a silly example, if I said you should defoo from abusive family members and it turns out that my family members are abusive but I've never defooed or haven't defooed and have no plans of doing so, then it may be reasonable for you to ask, why aren't you taking your own medicine if you've got the same disease and you're recommending it to others?
Why aren't you a guinea pig? And so, with people who say, well, I take the high road and so on, my question is, well, how's it worked out in your life?
Can you give me examples, right?
And, of course, what I'm really looking for, and I'm, you know, perfectly willing to re-evaluate based on evidence, right, is evidence trumps even reason.
But, because if the evidence doesn't work with your rationality, there's something wrong.
If the scientific results of the experiment or the empirical results of a scientific experiment don't pan out, then clearly...
There's something wrong with the theory, right?
So I ask for the evidence.
It seems reasonable. And, of course, what I'm really looking for is people who've reformed family members, right, based on taking the high road.
The family is where you should have, by far, the most traction in terms of the value of taking the high road and being the bigger person and reforming through curiosity and generosity in the face of negativity or abuse or whatever, right?
So one woman did not respond to the question of, you know, give me an example, right?
Because if there aren't any examples...
If there aren't any examples, then basically I'm just dealing with a form of religious dogma.
The women here just believe that something's true.
I'll take the high road. But they don't have any particular evidence in their life of how it's worked.
So here we're just dealing with a kind of religious faith.
Like when somebody says government is necessary and then you ask them for reasons for that and then you start disproving their reasons, then...
If they still hang on to their beliefs, then it's just a form of dogma that you're dealing with.
It's not thought, right? Which means it's scar tissue, which means it's a false self-emotional reaction to early brutality, and so on, right?
So again, this is where I have sympathy for this, but I honestly care too much for these women to have them suffer under these illusions, if in fact they are illusions.
So here's what one lady said in terms of her response to the question, give me an example where this approach has worked in your life.
And she said, when I was in fifth grade, so I guess around the age of 10, I slipped on some ice.
And a boy, he done laughed at me.
Sorry, he laughed at me. I went to tell him it wasn't nice to laugh at me, and he punched me in the face.
I shrugged and said, fine, be nasty, and started to walk away.
But a playground official saw the whole thing and dragged us inside.
The detention lady, this was the first time I met her, I can't for the life of me remember her name, asked why he had hit me and he said he had thought I was going to hit him.
She asked me if I was going to hit him and I said no.
He laughed at me and I was going to tell him it was mean.
The boy looked really embarrassed and with no prompting he said sorry.
She gave him detention anyways.
I saw him later and said I was sorry he'd gotten detention.
We didn't hang out much.
But he did defend me, and one of my friends later, when another boy, started swearing at us.
And call me dense-o-rama.
Call me a cab. But I have a great deal of trouble processing this story in a way that makes sense.
It could just be being dense, but this is the challenge that I have with this story.
Because I said to... Because you were sorry that the boy got a detention.
So this boy punches you in the face.
So if he laughs at you, you get up to tell him that it's mean, and then he punches you in the face.
So we have verbal aggression, for sure, and put-downs, verbal abuse, followed by a punch in the face.
And this lady was sorry that this boy got a detention.
For verbal abuse followed by physical violence.
And this is a 10-year-old boy.
He's not a 5-year-old kid.
This is a 10-year-old boy on the verge of puberty, on the verge of growing into brutal manhood that can really do some damage, right?
So I said, well, do you believe that the boy should not have been sanctioned at all for his verbal and physical violence?
She's like, oh, well, it didn't hurt.
I was taller than he was.
It didn't really hurt, and I just felt that he shouldn't have gotten detention.
And, of course, it's not immoral to, you know, have to press charges against anyone, but it's better to do that, right?
Again, school's all you've got, right?
But even if you sit down with a kid and explore it or whatever, right?
But she said that it didn't hurt me.
But that's, of course, not the issue, right?
That's not the issue. To take an extreme example, right?
I mean, if... If you're some, I don't know, tall, strapping Amazon woman and some guy the size and build of Les Nesman tries to rape you and you fight him off and you say, well, I wasn't really that scared and he never really had a chance and I could have taken him down with my little finger so I didn't press any charges.
Well, that's fine for you, but what about the next person he tries to rape?
I mean, what about the next girl on the list?
So yeah, you're taller than he is.
He punched you and it didn't really hurt.
But what about the next girl he punches?
He might break her nose.
He might break her glasses.
He might hurt her badly.
He might split her lip. A ring might go into her eye.
Who knows? So just because he didn't hurt you doesn't mean that it's then okay to not want him to be punished.
It's not... That's an argument from a fact.
He didn't hurt me, therefore he shouldn't be punished.
Well, and again, punished is, you know, who knows what a detention does.
But saying that he apologizes, he didn't apologize until he realized.
See, what you got from this interaction, my fair friend, is that, well, as soon as he realized I wasn't going to hit him, he got really embarrassed and apologized.
Well, sure. Of course he did.
Of course he did. Because he realized that he was going to be in a lot of trouble for hitting a girl, right?
He's already laughing at you.
That's cruel. It's humiliating.
It's painful. Right?
So he's already got a cold streak.
He's already got a non-empathetic, anti-empathetic, a sadistic streak, we might say.
In fact, I think it would be reasonable to say.
So he laughs at you. He thinks you're going to So he punches you in the face.
That's pretty preemptive, to say the least.
And then when he realizes that he's caught, you must have told him that you weren't going to punch him.
Until you revealed this in front of someone, he wasn't apologetic.
He was only apologetic when he realized that the shift of blame was now falling on him.
So, she then said, well, because his problem was solved, the reason I said the reason that, she said the reason that I didn't want him to get the detention was that his, the problem of his behavior had been solved.
Because he'd apologized and so on, right?
And this, to me, is just kind of jaw-dropping, like in a very fundamental way.
And it's no secret because this is on the board, but this lady has a violent and abusive father.
Throws things and screams and so on, right?
Terrifying, terrifying brute of a man.
And I just...
And to me, this is kind of jaw-dropping, that someone would say, well, the problem of this boy's sadistic and abusive nature...
We're solved because he said sorry when he was caught.
But it's not solved.
A sadistic personality structure, first of all, it's almost uncurable.
All you can do is use sanctions to affect the behavior on a mere calculation standpoint.
I mean, a DRO will not be able to turn a thief into a saint, but it will make the thief's argument from effect negative towards thievery, right?
By exclusion from economic interaction.
But a 10-year-old boy who laughs at someone who's fallen rather than going to help them, and who then punches someone in the face, is a seriously disturbed personality.
To think that one apology that is extracted under threat of punishment solves anything even remotely fundamental, let alone tangential, with regards to this boy's personality is absolutely unworthy of such a brilliant woman.
I mean, it's clear, right?
She forgives this boy because she can't forgive her father and feels bad about it.
So, I consider it a reasonable thing to say, right?
That you haven't solved this kid's behavior problems by getting him to apologize under the threat of detention.
And so, of course, I said...
And both these women have come from abusive backgrounds.
Once in it.
And so...
I mean, this is the question of tennis, anyone, right?
Which is that if you have a theory...
about how to productively deal with destructive people, then that theory should have been proven with regards to your family first and foremost.
You have much more impact on your family than some random kid in a playground.
You have much more contact, much more leverage with your family than you do with some random kid on a playground.
You have much more interaction.
You have a Potential to reach the expectation on your parents' side for a lifelong relationship.
Your parents will end up dependent on you when they get older.
This is where your theories of productive interactions should have the greatest traction.
Really, if you think that taking the high road is the way to deal with destructive personalities, and if this woman feels that there's some healing in this forgiveness, and if this woman feels that there's some healing in this forgiveness, forgiving this boy for laughing at her sadistically and then punching her in the face because he apologized under the threat of punishment, if forgiving this boy for laughing at her sadistically and then punching her
If you feel that this kind of forgiveness is going to reverse a sadistic personality, and of course I asked her this on the board.
I've yet to hear a response, which is not surprising.
I mean, Then, you know, it should be working beautifully with your dad.
Forget the kid on the playground.
Forget the stranger on the bus.
Forget the guy in the parking lot.
Forget... Hey, didn't we just see you?
Is there a bear coming?
Is there a bear coming?
Do I need to run too? Mom and her kid just jogging past you.
But start at home.
Right? Start at home.
This is where you have the most impact.
Start with your brother. Start with your sister.
Start with your mom. Start with your dad.
Start with your cousin. Start with those people that you have a long-term interaction with.
Right? That's what I want to hear.
Right? That's something which we can get into detail about.
Right? Some story of when you were 10, which, you know, Wherein forgiveness magically reverses personality of a sadistic, almost young man.
Not going to happen.
It takes years of therapy as an adult, years, to reverse tendencies towards sadism, and it's highly unlikely that anybody like that would ever end up in therapy.
So you can decide not to forgive this kid.
I don't think you're actually adding to the good of the world.
And if it does work, then what you should be doing is improving your father's behavior towards you by forgiving him.
And that, of course, is where the rubber hits the road as far as that goes.
And you need to work from practice to theory.
Just read a couple of books on Zen and then say, well, this is how you deal with destructive people.
You start with your family.
You start with your family.
If you have a destructive or abusive family, you start with those people.
And you try putting your theory into practice and you see how it works.
That's where you've got leverage. That's where you've got knowledge.
And that's where you can do follow-up.
You have to have a long-term relationship in order to judge the effects of your interactions.
You see some unhappy person in the bus and you smile at them and they smile back.
You don't say, wow, I can cure people just by smiling at them.
I mean, that's like being a therapist and giving people heroin and saying, well, hell of a lot happier when I left my office than when they came in.
You need the long-term relationship to figure out the effects, right?
And I know it's really tempting.
It's really tempting to believe in this high-road stuff, right?
Because it's a way of avoiding conflict and feeling moral by doing so, right?
I mean, again, not to be overly contemptuous in this manner, but it's reframing cowardice, courage, Which bypasses the need for you to deal with problems with conflicts.
So I hope that this helps understand.
I'll do a podcast next, which will sort of detail my theories about how this sort of comes about, because I know that this may sound harsh, but again, absolute huge respect for women.
You all have to be on board, or this philosophy, this freedom is never going to work, because you are the Charles Razors and so on, and I mean, basically try to please you, so you're the keystone of the arch of freedom.
But I'll sort of give my empathetic at least theory as to how this comes about with women next.
So thank you so much for listening.
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