Oct. 21, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:24:27
2237 Sex, Playas and Single Moms - Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 21 October 2012
Introduction - Review of Libertopia and the Liberty Cruise: 0:00 How to Tell If Someone Is Manipulating You: 3:25 The Emotional Difference between Abuse and Accidents: 25:50 What To Do If You See a Child Being Abused: 50:00 Why Playing It Cool with Women Is a Bad Idea 57:25 Why 'Rights' Are the Secular Equivalent of 'Faith' 1:35:10 The Morality of Economic Boycotting: 1:46:00 Masculinity, Fatherlessness and Russian Rape (a dream) 1:54:00 Outro; Thanks and a Documentary Update: 2:21:17
It is the 21st of October, and it is just after 10 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time, or somewhere between being roused by the cock-a-doodle-doo and pulling on the teats of some unwilling cows on the East Coast, which I have...
on the West Coast, rather, I've just come back from.
A bit of a tour.
I went to...
To Libertopia, which you can find at Libertopia.org and strongly recommend you check it out.
It's going to be more than an annual conference from now.
I always had a wonderful chat with this guy and Joyce.
The brains, the muscle, the gristle and the abs behind the outfit.
And they're looking to expand Libertopia to be a bit more of an all-inclusive year-round experience.
But it really was a wonderful, wonderful time.
Pretty good weather, actually great weather for the conference itself.
Great attendance, certainly up about 20% from last year.
And the media is going to be available soon.
You can again check it out, libertopia.org.
If you do consume the media, I would strongly suggest throwing them a few bucks.
It is savagely expensive to put it on.
But man, the sound system, the stage, the professionalism, it was just amazing.
And it was a real honor to...
I did the opening speech, the closing speech, and I was the master of ceremonies, and it was great.
It was great.
Just a reminder for those who are curious about the next big chatty forehead release into the public sphere November the 3rd at the University of Toronto.
I will be hosting sort of a Liberty Fest North and I hope that you will be able to check that out.
It's being run by Mises.org or actually Mises.ca I suppose it would be.
So you can go to...
And also, I'm sorry that I couldn't make it to Liberty Fest in New York.
Liberty Fest, New York.
But it conflicted with Libertopia.
So it was great.
Then we went on the Liberty Cruise, which was a lot of fun.
And actually met some people there who...
It was a really fascinating experience for me.
I was just walking down the corridor.
Actually, chasing Isabella down the corridor.
We sort of had a game where, you know, whoever gets off the elevator has to race to get to the room first.
And just ran into a very nice couple.
It turned out he'd called into a Sunday show some time in the past, and we went and sat in the library for a couple of hours and had a great chat with everyone.
It was just fantastic.
It really leads me to believe that Sunday show callers may in fact be real people.
It's always confusing.
I'm never sure of the reality of these things, but it's good to know that they are, or at least that they pretend to be in a very, very realistic way.
So, let's get to the callers.
Sorry, my voice is a little, I've been talking basically for 10 days straight, but I'm eager and happy to be back and eager to hear what y'all have to think about and to say.
So, James, if you'd like to bump up the caller.
Sure, first up today we have Alice.
Aless?
Hello?
I don't know how to hear your name.
Hi, do you hear me?
Ah, this would be Aless Cooper.
No, it's actually Aless.
Aless.
Aless, alright.
My question is, the thing that I'm thinking for a lot of time, it's about Real empathy and manipulated empathy and how to really distinguish this and where is the border?
Where are the ethical considerations here if you understand what I'm talking about?
When people are more pretending to be empathic to get something for you or they're really empathic?
That is a great, great question.
So, you're sort of curious about if somebody is manipulating you by pretending empathy versus if they really have empathy, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right, right, right.
Well, I'll tell you the approach that I take, and you can sort of tell me if it helps you at all.
Empathy, of course, is in Empathy is in the questions.
And empathy is in the motive.
And so if somebody has the motive to really help you to find out how you're doing, to get to know you, and so on, I mean, the first question is, what is their motive?
Why do they want to do that?
And that sounds like a question of low self-esteem, or why would anybody in their right mind want to get to know me?
But it's not.
It's a genuine question recognizing the reality that there are manipulative people in the world.
So the question is, why does somebody want to get to know me?
And I think that's a good idea.
It's a good question to ask.
So you can sort of question the motive, and that's not to be unfriendly or anything like that, but that's just to recognize that there is the possibility of manipulation to ask what the motive is.
And the second thing is to look for the questions.
So somebody who is manipulating you has an end goal, right?
I mean, so take a cheesy example, right?
I mean, a salesperson who tells you, you know, He sort of comes up and he tries to frame the conversation.
How are you doing, my friend?
How was your day today?
And so on, right?
I mean, that's obviously a kind of framing it like you're already friends.
Somebody who gives you gifts when you first meet them is attempting to frame the interaction as a kind of Obligation, right?
It creates an obligation, and that's to frame it.
So, I mean, to take a cheesy example, many, many years ago, actually, you know, 12 years ago, I was traveling through Morocco with a friend of mine for Y2K. We sort of went over it in December, because, you know, I figure if the world's going to collapse because of a lack of computers, you want to be in a fairly pre-industrial kind of place.
And we had a driver, and the driver was good.
It was a good driver, although...
How people managed to drive through the desert and winding mountain roads with only one bloodshot eye half squinted open was interesting.
And he would bring us to some great sights and some great sounds and wonderful memories of that trip.
But he would also bring us to vendors, right?
To merchants.
And so at one point he brought us to a carpet cellar.
And the carpet seller, you know, brought us some mint tea and he, you know, brought us some little cakes and stuff like that.
So starting off with a gift, obviously that's, I mean, it's still voluntary.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with it in terms of ethics.
But I ended up walking out of there with two carpets.
And it's just ridiculous in a way because I didn't need two carpets or even particularly want two carpets.
But they did seem quite pretty at the time.
And I did end up using them, but that obviously was a manipulation.
So somebody who gives you gifts and asks some questions like, oh, where are you traveling from?
Oh, how are you enjoying Morocco?
Is it not beautiful here, my friends?
My friends, and here's some tea.
And so there is a social veneer over an economic situation.
And you see this, of course, Quite a bit.
That people will attempt to create a social relationship out of an economic relationship.
And that's obviously kind of manipulative.
Again, there's nothing wrong with it.
But it's important to be aware of what is going on.
So I think...
And obviously the motive with the guy who was trying to sell the carpets was to sell me carpets.
That's fairly clear.
And...
I was able to say no, just this guy was really good, which is why he was selling carpets and not all the other stuff available to buy in Morocco.
And, I mean, just, you can see this, if you walk down an avenue in Mexico or someplace like that, with those little street vendors, they will offer you, hey, my friend, a free margarita, free tequila, or whatever, the little cups of tequila or margarita.
And, This, of course, you know, if you go to a friend's house, he may offer you a drink and so on.
So they're attempting to create a kind of obligation, right?
And this happens unconsciously, right?
If you give someone something, then it creates an obligation.
And a lot of people will respond to that.
And again, to me, there's nothing wrong.
To me, it's a bit cheesy, but there's nothing particularly wrong with it.
So I think the motive is important.
So if somebody's giving you stuff...
And there's a clear motive, or at least a fairly obvious motive for what it is that they want, then I think that stuff is really important to be aware of.
And now, if somebody is asking you questions, then they're more interested in the answers.
If somebody's being genuinely curious or genuinely empathetic, they say, oh, you seem really happy today, what's going on?
Or, you seem a little down today, what's going on?
Then they don't have...
A goal.
They're not trying to lead you somewhere.
They're just being curious about your state of mind and your state of being.
And, of course, they will be patient because you may not know that you're feeling a little down or particularly happy.
You may not exactly know the cause, but they will be interested in exploring with it.
And their purpose is to get true information about you, not to lead you somewhere, whereas somebody who's manipulating you It's trying to lead you somewhere, right?
So, how is your relationship with your wife going is an open-ended question that is not manipulative, so on, at least not in and of itself.
But, have you stopped beating your wife yet is a manipulative question which is designed to lead you to a particular end.
And the way that you would know, or at least have strong evidence that somebody was manipulating you, Is that they ask a question and the next question is something that almost doesn't depend upon the result, the answer that you give.
And so they don't have, it's not an open-ended question, it's I will ask you this in order to get to the next question, right?
So if you walk into a car dealership they'll say, Hello, my friend.
Here is some green tea.
I will sell you carpets and a car.
And they'll say, you know, I don't know.
I mean, I've only bought one car in my whole life.
So, you know, what kind of car are you looking for?
Or do you have a family?
Or, you know, what it is.
Now, they're not saying, do you have a family because they want to set you up with their sister if you don't because you're such a ravishingly good-looking guy.
But they're saying...
Do you have a family in order to ask the next question?
So if you say, no, I don't have a family.
I'm single.
Oh, here, have a look at these red sports cars.
If you do have a family, they say, hey, have a look at these wood-paneled minivans.
And so the first question is not open-ended, like they want to hear a whole lot about how you do have a family and how you feel about it, or you don't have a family and how you feel about it.
But they're asking you that question in order to narrow down What it is that they want to get from you and how they're going to get you to provide it to them.
In this case it would be the sale or something.
So I think that's the way that I generally approach these kinds of things and I hope that's of use.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think this is very helpful and actually it shows me that I also sometimes put bad questions because Now, this with open questions is very good, because I think I also maybe sometimes put a bit manipulative question, but this is not really my intention.
Okay.
I appreciate the answer.
Tell me what you mean about… I mean, I think we all have that at times.
It's natural, right?
But what is it that you're thinking in terms of you being manipulative?
Yeah, I mean that I ask in a way that I want to assume a specific answer or something, but I don't know if I can really explain it.
Yeah, look, I mean, in conversations like this, right, so if somebody has a particular characteristic or a habit That I think may be associated with a particular thing in their history, then I'll ask them about that history.
And the important thing, of course, is to make sure that I'm not serving the theory at the expense of the person, if that makes sense.
And so I think that's really important as well, to make sure that if you have an idea That confirmation bias is another kind of manipulation, which, you know, we're all...
I'm certainly prone to and have to make sure, right?
So I posted something about there's been no global warming for 16 years and then there were some rebuttals of that.
I had to make sure I post that as well because I don't want to just have one...
I don't want it to be at the expense of At the expense of a richer perspective, I don't want to have a particular theory go forward.
Even though I have an emotional investment in a theory, I want to make sure that that's not what I'm putting forward, just as a sole sort of thing, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense a lot.
I think I'm also prone to this confirmation a lot of times, so I have to watch out for this.
Yeah, and the confirmation bias is...
See, confirmation bias...
I mean, bias just sounds bad, right?
But bias is a word that is complicated.
Because bias is...
I have a preference for...
Confirmation bias is...
I want things that I believe to be true.
And...
That's, I mean, that sounds like a bad thing, but I don't think it's escapable.
And I also don't think it's innately any kind of bad thing.
I mean, I want for, you know, beating people up to have negative consequences.
Because if it has positive consequences, that's a big problem for ethics, right?
I mean, if...
If, say, hitting kids regularly made them into wonderful, wise, deep, philosophical, loving, peaceful people, that would be a kind of problem for the non-aggression principle.
And if the war on poverty, the 1960s programs under LBJ, if the war on poverty had eliminated poverty And therefore had reduced the national debt and therefore,
you know, the programs could be eliminated and everybody was incredibly wealthy and if government programs erased themselves and we ended up, you know, if increased government activity was, you know, the communist dream that if you have a huge government then everything becomes perfect and then the government will wither away and you'll end up In a state of voluntarism or anarchy and so on.
So, in other words, if the expansion of violence produced great results and ended up eliminating violence, that would be a nightmare for me.
I mean, it would be a nightmare epistemologically, psychologically, morally, And it would mean that I would, if I wanted to better the human condition, have to go around and start using violence, which is morally repugnant, spiritually, skin-crawling.
It would be as easy for me to stick my face in a bucket of maggots and rotting fish and start chomping away.
So I have a confirmation bias that violence does not lead to good things in the long run.
And therefore, I mean this is complicated, but therefore I am relieved and horrified that violence is not working.
Bigger governments don't produce better results.
In fact, they just produce worse results for everyone in the long run while producing better results for a small number of nasty people in the short run.
So I have a confirmation bias That violence is bad.
And...
And so, I also have a confirmation bias that violence is very hard to give up for people.
And, I mean, there's lots of reasons why I have that confirmation bias.
One, of course, is that I tried to get people close to me throughout my life to give up aggression and violence, and even though I'm quite a persuasive fellow at times, I was not able to do it, so...
You know, if you've ever been around somebody who's an addict and you've tried for years to get them to stop being an addict or to stop acting on their addictive behavior, then if it turns out that it's really easy and simple to get addicts to quit, you know, just to say these words and they'll start, then it would be like, oh my god, I can't believe that was, right?
That was so hard.
We have a confirmation bias that dieting is tough and keeping weight off When you lose it is tough, because if it's not, then we've been struggling to do stuff that's really, really easy.
So when things are very hard, we have a confirmation bias that they're hard to do.
And so if you could just take a pill and be a genius, it would be kind of silly to keep working at increasing your own intelligence or your own reasoning or whatever it is.
And so, but these things to me are not...
There's nothing wrong to me with wanting a world where you don't have to use violence or violence is not a good thing to use to improve the human condition.
So everything that you get involved with, you have a confirmation bias with.
Because a confirmation bias to me is fine If what you want is good, it's true.
Now, you still have to be careful that you're not racing ahead and you're not, you know, manipulating information to, quote, prove stuff or whatever.
But, like I was just reading the other day about how one of the roots of the U.S. housing crisis was the Federal Reserve produced a study in the early 90s claiming that blacks were being discriminated against in the housing market.
And The confirmation bias around racism, particularly in the U.S., is incredibly strong.
Everything is interpreted as a racist incident, and America is a racist society, and goddamn America, Plymouth Rock didn't land, we didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock ranted on us.
And the study was horrendously flawed and included, like it was just bad data manipulation and so on, and it included ridiculous statements like, you know, the banks pay interest to the people who are Borrowing the money, but because the media in particular, and Ann Coulter has a great new book about this called Mugged, which I would recommend.
It's a very bizarre reading.
It's always a matrix unplugging sort of situation to go through Ann Coulter's work because she just has, I think, very original research and, to me, very surprising facts.
So there was this confirmation bias, like, oh, blacks are being discriminated against in the housing market through banks, not giving them loans and so on.
And this led to, you know, a media storm, and then the government responded, as it does to the yapping chihuahua, insistent yapping Paris Hilton chihuahua of the media, by...
Making banks, forcing banks to lend to people who had no credit history or wouldn't give up credit history, you know, the liar's loans, you report your own income, and to allow welfare payments as, you know, welfare checks as down payments, using welfare as an asset when, of course, it is, in fact, a liability.
And this, of course, forced the banks to lend to a whole bunch of people who would not be able to pay off these loans in the long run.
And everybody who was involved in these loans knew they were going to blow up.
And so they mixed them in with the better loans and then sold them all around the world.
Mortgage-backed securities, we all know what happened to that in the long run.
And this is an example of confirmation bias gone way wrong, right?
Like everybody wants America to be a racist society.
And therefore, whenever any study comes up that, oh, look, there's pervasive discrimination, the whole racism lobby goes into action and the media gets all hysterical.
Like with the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin case recently where they actually edited this guy, George Zimmerman's.
they edited his 911 call to make him sound like a racist, and this woman who did that, I think, got fired or whatever.
I mean, it's just horrendous.
So that kind of manipulation where you have an end, you seize upon something and you hold it aloft as proof, well, you know, I'm prey to that and I'm not so much on the racism side, but I definitely have to watch myself with global warming because it is something that I have a challenge with.
And oh, just by the by, I'm sure it'll come out, but in the Lifetime Achievement Awards for Doug Casey and Dr.
David Friedman that I Yeah, good.
Thanks for your answers.
We talk some other time when we have more to ask.
Oh, you're welcome.
I'm glad it was helpful.
Yeah, thanks.
Somebody has asked how the funding for the documentary is going.
It's going okay.
It's going okay.
And I actually met somebody at Libertopia who Wanted to help fund and I said, I think we're okay.
I think we're okay.
I like the crowdfunding.
I like the listener funding of it.
So I hope that people will continue to fund it.
We're still not quite done.
Sorry for the delay, but I was hoping to get started.
But then, you know, I had to spend this time traveling and speaking and all that kind of stuff.
So it's okay.
It always helps.
So Arash has asked the following, are there different kinds of trauma and do people process it differently, specifically accident-induced trauma versus people-inflicted trauma?
Well, again, I don't know the studies behind this.
I can tell you what comes to mind for me, and certainly this is not any kind of core expertise of mine, but accidents are different from evil, right?
If you get hit by a tiny meteor, hopefully small enough that you can still have some trauma afterwards, otherwise you're just dead, then, you know, that's just all kinds of bad luck, right?
There's no moral component to an accident.
I mean, it's funny, you know, because there are people who have, you know, who act in a more risky manner because of childhood trauma, so they take on They need more stimulation.
They take on wilder sports.
They do things that are just kind of dangerous.
And that would be sort of trauma-related.
But if you just, you know, you're going along and you get hit by someone who's being an idiot in a car, of which there are no shortage of carbon-based life forms who appear to drive as if their head is directly up their rectum, And, you know, you're being careful, defensive driving and so on, someone comes out of nowhere, then that's, of course, very traumatic.
Actually, that's a bit more if somebody's being careless or whatever, so that's sort of a moral element there as well.
But I can't think of one right now.
Let's just say you have an accident, then you have...
I mean, it can be very traumatic.
There can be post-traumatic stress disorder, and you can deal with that with a good therapist.
But there's no moral element involved.
And I think that's important.
Now, what physical accidents do, though, is that they can reveal the limitations in your social network.
It's easy to have friends when you're healthy.
Right?
It's easy to have friends when you have money.
You know, as a song goes, nobody wants you when you're down and out.
Once I lived the life of a millionaire, spending my money, honey, I didn't care.
Taking my friends out for a mighty good time.
Champagne and liquor, bootleg something and wine.
Then I began to fall so low, lost all my friends, had nowhere to go.
If I ever get my hands on a dollar again, I'm going to hold on to that eagle grin because nobody wants you when you're down and out.
So when you're flying high, doing well, I mean, this is...
It's an old cliche, but it's a true one.
Everybody loves you.
When you have an accident, and you're laid low, and it can be for a long time, it can be permanently.
It's the old thing.
You find out who your friends are.
Dr.
Phil, I think, puts it quite well.
He said, you know, when I'm down and out, when I've made a mistake, when I've done something wrong, it's the friends coming in through the door.
That I look for, not the ones edging out through the door.
And that's an important thing to understand.
So what accidents can do is they can reveal the limits of your relationships.
And that can be very tough.
That can be very tough.
And, of course, old age does that, right?
We all start to decay and rot.
Physically when we, not rot, but we all begin to decay and get old.
I was just looking at, when I was on the boat, there were, of course, you know, some women out.
Mostly women, of course, because they live much longer than men.
In wheelchairs with oxygen tanks and crap up their nose and stuff like that.
And it's funny to think that for a human being getting really, really, really old and decrepit and needing machines and robots and stuff to help keep you alive that's actually real success and because women are like 90 or whatever now I mean I hope I'm still obviously mobile when I'm 90 I hope I make it to 90 I'm sure I will but that's successful you
know James Dean live fast die young leave a good-looking corpse That's failure.
I think like Jim Morrison, he didn't even make it to 30.
Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, those guys.
But if you get really, really old and decrepit and you're wobbling around, that's called success.
I remember a picture of Winston Churchill I saw once when he was, a few weeks before he died, just sort of looking out a window.
It's like all really old people, especially those who aren't overweight.
It's a papier-mâché skull.
That's looking out.
And he was such a robust guy.
And that's called success as a human being.
And who loves you when you're old?
I mean, hopefully you have a lot more to offer and you don't end up with King Lea's curse from Cordelia or what she observed.
Thou shouldst not have been old before thou were wise.
Don't get old without accumulating wisdom.
Otherwise you're not much...
It's going to be hard to have a lot of value for people if you haven't developed virtue and what you can provide when you're old is wisdom.
But when you get old, who are your friends?
When you need people to wipe your ass, who are your friends?
A biography of Marlon Brando written by the guy who was a friend of his for a long time and negotiated his book deals and all that.
I mean, he literally was there to wipe Marlon Brando's ass when he was dying.
Well, it's not a lot of fun to wipe people's ass, but that's the question, right?
So, accidents can reveal the limitations of your relationships.
And that can be very difficult to process because then you have the accident and then the diminishing or the fading of relationships that you thought were all kinds of great, which turned out to be dependent upon you not being too much of a bother.
Somebody just wrote, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, just like my grandmother and not like the passengers of the bus he was driving at the time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And someone has written, I agree, Steph, when I lost touch with reality due to the SSRI effectsor back in 2004, all the family and friends who claimed to love me were the least to help, trust, or listen to me at the time.
It was the strangers I met at the time who helped me the most to bring me back to reality.
The scariest experience I've ever been through.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I'm certainly not a fan of SSRIs.
But yeah, when you're not there to provide resources to people, but when you need resources from people, which happens if you get in an accident, well, who is there?
Who is there to help you?
Who is there to provide the resources when you can't provide them back?
Well, That's a good question, right?
It's easy to love a pretty wealthy person, quote, love.
It's easy to feel positive towards people who are giving you lots of positives in return.
But is there a bank, right?
I mean, is there a bank in relationships?
This is a very important question.
It's a very important question.
So, I mean, I don't want anyone to wipe my ass when I'm old.
Just because they sort of feel that it's some sort of positive thing for them to be doing or, you know, out of some sort of obligation or something like that.
I want that.
But I do want them, hopefully, to, you know, want to.
And that will be because there have been deposits, right?
There have been deposits.
And that, I think, is really important.
So, you know, when you When you do people favors, when there are deposits, like you put money in the bank, and then, obviously, if you have an accident, then you're going to make a lot of withdrawals.
But you hope, of course, that there's enough in the bank to do that or whatever, right?
And what you find often is that you feel like you've been making a lot of deposits, but you've just been kind of taken for granted.
And this happens if you're surrounded by people who are kind of selfish, kind of narcissistic.
In that, you know, they're happy to have you come over and help them out and help them move and clean their house before some big thing and stay to clean up after the party.
But they're actually not taking any deposits because they just feel like they're owed that because they're alive.
And that is important to understand.
So then when you've been helping people out or been there for them or whatever, You know, they had a breakup and you're up all night for a couple of nights or you call me whenever or whatever, they're going through a divorce and you're there to help them and so on.
And then you get into an accident and then, oh, you have a problem in your relationship.
It doesn't have to be an accident, right?
It's really, really important to keep your eye on the deposits.
Just, I mean, I obsess about them.
It doesn't have to be, I give you a penny, you give me a penny.
I mean, there's not much point to that.
But keep an eye on your deposits and see what kind of balance you have.
I've been there for many people in my life, and then when I needed resources, they just weren't really around.
They weren't really interested.
They weren't really available.
Oh, I would say to myself, thank you for the clarity.
I'm so sorry.
I thought that I was making deposits.
Turns out I was just giving money to an addict, right?
I thought I had a lockbox in my Social Security.
Turns out I was just being robbed by addicts.
And that's really, really important to get a sense of whether you're putting money in a bank when you're helping people out and doing stuff for them in a relationship, or whether you're just throwing your money into a bonfire, into entitlement, into narcissism, into, well, I deserve it because I'm me, and I will choose if I want to give anything back to you if and when I feel like it.
And, you know, those people can be very helpful if you run into them or if you have them in your life because they can help lead you back to whatever lends you to be susceptible to giving resources to people without the self-esteem of reciprocity.
So when I have those people in my life, when I have those people in my life, That was not good.
It was not good.
Because to have a relationship, I had to be me plus, right?
You don't want that.
You don't want to have to be you plus, right?
Me plus money.
Me plus giving them lots of resources.
Me plus pouring lots of emotional energy into me plus, right?
Which wasn't reciprocal.
The me plus, I mean, it's just, to me, signs of insecure bonding as a child and A lack of reciprocity on the part of the parent and selfishness on the part of the parent or the caregiver or whatever.
You don't want to be a me plus because we end up with no pluses, right?
When you're 90, it's not you plus.
It's you plus a whole lot of resource requirements.
And this is, of course, where the baby boomers are heading.
They're heading into there's no plus now, right?
Yeah, me in a colostomy bag.
Yay!
Yay!
And only virtue and love can reduce the need for the me plus.
And so an accident can really expose selfishness in those around you.
And, you know, from the other, somebody else has an accident around you who can expose the selfishness in you.
Again, we all are prone to these things.
I want to make it sort of...
Everyone here is listening as the victim and everyone out around is selfish.
But that's really, really important.
Now, on the other side, and I'll make this one shorter because I've talked about it a number of times before, but if you're a victim of evil, if you're a victim of abuse, if you're a victim of harm, of beatings, of verbal abuse, of neglect, of exploitation, Well, that's a whole different ballgame.
That's a much harder trauma or infection to cure.
Well, you can't cure it because you were the victim.
You can be healed of a broken arm, but you can't be cured of a broken arm.
A cure is when you are kind of back to where you were beforehand.
So if you get a cold and your antibodies fight off the cold, then we'll fight off that particular cold virus, of which I think there are about 100 If you get one a year, by the time you die, you don't get any more colds.
Woohoo!
Good plan.
Probably why there are only about 100.
But, you know, if you get a cold and then you wait it out or whatever, then you're back to pretty much the way you were before you had the cold.
A little bit older, you've got one extra set of antibodies in your system.
But you're kind of back to where you were before you had the...
You're cured, right?
If you get...
I don't know, a UTI, you take antibiotics, you're back to...
You're fine, right?
But you can't be cured of a broken arm because you can't be back to where you were before your arm was broken because your arm was still broken and it's set.
It doesn't set quite the same way and so on, right?
Many years ago, I fractured my forearm.
I'm just checking now.
I still can't quite straighten it out.
Probably never will.
So there's no problem.
It doesn't interfere with anything, but you can't be cured.
And so the question is, well, you know, if I've experienced evil or evil has been inflicted upon me, you can't be cured because you can't be somebody to whom evil was never inflicted upon.
You can't ever not be somebody who has experienced evil.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's all bad.
I mean, Being susceptible to evil, being subject to evil.
We're all susceptible to evil as children.
It doesn't mean we all experience it, but we're all susceptible to it because of the helpless and dependent nature of the relationship.
But I can't be somebody who doesn't have the knowledge, not only of the direct experience of evil, but of the degree to which society supports AIDS and abets evil by Allowing it to continue by not interfering, by not calling the authorities by...
I mean, the degree to which...
I mean, evil exists like the government exists only because of enablement.
Only because of enablement.
Almost exactly.
I mean, particularly with children.
Let me be clear about that, because I think I went too far with that statement.
I mean, some woman who gets jumped and raped is not...
But the rapist comes from...
A traumatic history and that traumatic history occurred unless they were living in the woods.
The family was living in the woods.
It occurred within a social environment that really allowed it to continue.
So evil continues because the abuse against children in society is largely and almost universally aided and abetted and enabled by everyone around who either doesn't care or gets their rocks off on hearing or seeing children Be harmed, or at least ignoring the effects of it.
So if you suffer an accident, then...
Now, it can also benefit all your relationships.
People can surprise you, and people can really come out to help, and you can deepen your relationships and so on.
But when you have suffered evil, then that is the ultimate matrix deprogramming.
So when you yank out of the matrix.
Because then it's impossible to look at the pompous...
Self-congratulatory, self-praising, endless statements of, we're so virtuous in society, and believe it at all.
Believe it at all.
So, that's my thoughts about how...
I mean, if you suffered evil as a child, then your entire life Social relationships as a child are called into significant, significant question.
Because if nobody knew that you were being harmed as a child, then it's hard to imagine how they could claim to be close to you as a child.
Right?
Because if you're...
Let's say your dad starts drinking and beating up on you and your siblings and maybe your mom too.
Well, that's going to have an effect.
And people can't say, well, I had no idea.
I mean, they can, and that's generally the lie that people say.
But if they had no idea that you were being harmed as a child, then they weren't close to you as a child.
Because if they were close, you would have said something.
Or they would have noticed and asked the questions.
The effects of child abuse are very clear.
to anyone with half an eye to see and anyone who doesn't notice change in a child's behavior as a result of abuse or doesn't notice the signs of a child who was abused from day one is simply not close to the child and is purposefully looking away or avoiding that which is right in front of them for the sake of their own screwed up and selfish preferences.
And if they did notice but didn't do anything, I mean, I don't know which is worse.
I mean, it's hard to say.
Left leg or right leg broken, who cares?
It's still bad.
But all of your relationships are thrown into question if you suffer child abuse.
When you become aware of that, when you become aware of how everyone around you was enabling the abuse.
The abuse can't happen without people enabling it.
So, yeah, that's really tough.
And then it sort of radiates on outward.
Because then you start talking about child abuse with friends if you've experienced it.
I mean, if you've experienced child abuse, it's a pretty important part of who you are.
I mean, let's say it's at least as important as the country you grew up in, or the place you grew up, or the culture you grew up in.
If somebody wants to know you, oh, I know my friend really, really well.
Mahmoud.
Great guy.
Know him really, really well.
And then people say, oh, where did he grow up?
And in what culture did he grow up?
You say, I have no idea.
Well, then you can't claim to know him very well if you don't even know whether he was brought up Hindu or Muslim or atheist or if you grew up in Iceland or Timbuktu or Northumbria.
Right?
I mean, it just wouldn't be credible to say you know someone really well, don't know anything about Where that person came from.
This is why child abuse so often leads to isolation because if you try to talk about your child abuse you run into the general, oh shit he's talking about stuff which makes me really uncomfortable and I shut down the conversation or avoid it or dismiss it or maybe I'll grit my teeth and give him one patient listen for half an hour and then hope that he never brings it up again or resist if he does, right?
Because in my experience the prejudice against atheists is very high But the prejudice against victims of child abuse is even higher.
It's the ultimate bias in society.
It's the bias against those who wish to be honest about their experiences.
If those experiences are histories of child abuse, people don't want to hear about it.
They will avoid it.
They will re-inflict the abuse.
It's incredibly cruel, and it's monstrously selfish in society for people to do this.
But it is...
The greatest bias, the greatest prejudice is against those who've experienced child abuse.
In my experience, I don't know if that's statistically true, but if you think I'm wrong, then the important thing is don't listen to anything I say, but put it into practice to find out if it's true.
I don't mean talk to strangers on a bus, right?
You can talk to people in your life about your history, if you've had child abuse, if you experienced it, and see how they react.
Well, it will be very prejudiced against what it is that you're saying.
In my experience, maybe I'm wrong.
But I don't see really how that's particular.
I mean, it's almost tautological that this is the way it's going to be.
Almost.
Because the child abuse could only have been perpetrated by people who were willing to ignore and avoid child abuse.
And therefore, the people in your life who are around when you were children, which you hope are going to be the people closest to you, are the people who have great shame, great self-hatred about their own cowardice, who are traumatized themselves, who've been avoiding their own child abuse, which is the only way that you would allow it to continue in others, as if you have avoided it in yourself.
So when you bring it up, you provoke all sorts of negative responses into them, not from them.
And it really is a...
A terrible, terrible situation.
So, anyway, long answer.
Great question.
I hope that that was useful and helpful.
And do we have any other calls?
Yes, we have Jack on the line.
Yes, sir.
My friend, how can I help you?
Hello.
Hello.
Hi, Steph.
I had a question about Property, right?
Sorry, let me just say, I would like to say hi, Jack, but I'm not sure if somebody may be playing this on an airplane, so let's undo that.
Right.
Go ahead.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes, go ahead.
Yes, go ahead.
Please don't make me edit.
Hello, can you hear me?
I've run into a lot of people who are really...
I can...
Yeah, go ahead.
Is my sound cutting out?
It was for you, but go ahead.
Yeah, that's not going to work.
I think we're going to need to call the phone.
Maybe you can just whisper it to James.
getting any kind of sound here.
All right, Stu, Do we have any other comments?
Not at the moment.
I'll see if I can get Jack on the phone or perhaps give him a call back.
Alright.
Somebody has said, what do you recommend doing if you see child abuse being perpetrated on a child?
Well, the first thing, of course, is to understand whether it's legal or not.
Right?
I mean, if you're in Europe, then spanking for many countries is illegal and then you can I mean, it depends what you want to do, of course, right?
I certainly recommend approaching, you know, gently and positively, as you would in any violent situation, is you would approach gently and positively and say, oh, you know, you seem to be really stressed, but this is not what you want to be doing as a parent.
This is not going to lead you to the right place.
This is not going to be a good thing and, you know, maybe suggest some resources or whatever.
But anything like that.
If you're going to approach a situation where somebody is already using violence or aggression, then if you approach with violence and aggression, I mean, it's just going to lead to a bad place.
So I say, listen, I mean, this is, you know, I say something like this.
This is not good.
This is what you're doing.
You know, I sympathize.
You're obviously stressed and upset and so on.
This is not good.
This is not what you want to be doing as a parent in the long run.
So, you know, I really, really recommend trying to find ways to do this in a non-aggressive way.
I know it gets frustrating and so on, but, you know, you can try non-violent communication, or I chatted with a very nice lady who was reading a book called Scream-Free Parenting, I think it was called, and we chatted about parenting for quite some time.
And so, you can approach The parent, if you want, of course, the temptation is to approach with aggression.
I don't think that's a good idea, either practically or almost in terms of self-preservation.
Or, of course, if it's really egregious, you just call the authorities.
I mean, this is the system that we have.
This is the situation that it is.
If the child is being pounded, you just call the cops.
You call security, or you...
You know, you can get a license plate and do something with that if that's possible.
Somebody has asked, what do you do if you see a kid getting called Miss Bitch by her parents in a grocery store setting?
So a kid's being called Miss Bitch by her parents in a grocery store setting?
Well, you know, tragically, but inevitably, verbal abuse is not Verbal abuse is not illegal.
And, I mean, it would be hard to, right?
Hard to prove.
I guess you could get it on tape or whatever.
But, illegality with regards to parenting is really tough.
Because, who's the backup parents, right?
I mean, who's the backup parents?
So, let's say, oh, both the parents are abusive if you throw the parents in jail.
Which, you know, I'm not saying is the right solution, but that would be the solution in the state of society.
Well, okay, so who parents, right?
Who parents now?
And what happens when the parents get out?
I mean, again, in these kinds of situations, as it is in the public school, children are technically hostages rather than anything else.
So, what would you say?
That's really tough.
You know, I'm just trying to think, sort of put myself in that kind of situation.
I think I would walk up and I would say something like...
You get that this is not, I hope, I'm sorry that you're so frustrated, but I hope you understand this is not, this is probably not what you wanted to be doing when you decided to become a parent, right?
This is, I mean, appeal to people's hopes and goals and aspirations.
I don't think there are a lot of parents who say, oh, I think I'm going to have a kid so I can sort of scream and yell at them and hit them and so on, right?
But this is probably not what you wanted to be doing when you became a parent and there are options, right, to ending up Calling your kid, Miss Bitch.
There are options which can help.
If the kids are older, you can read the book, I guess, Nonviolent Communication.
It's not a bad place to do it.
It's certainly a fine tool in your tool belt.
I'm a big fan of Parental Effectiveness Training.
This book, Screen-Free Parenting, that the woman was reading, seemed quite good from what she relayed to me.
But there are lots, you know, you can take some classes.
You know, there are parenting classes important to take so that you don't end up in these kinds of situations.
Because this is, I mean, this is not good, right?
This is not a good thing for your child to hear.
It's not a good thing for you to be sane.
And there are options, and I'd really strongly encourage you to pursue them.
And remember, I mean, remember that the most important person you're talking to When, if you decide to say something to a child abuse situation, the most important person you're talking to is the person you can't talk to directly.
It's the child, right?
If you provoke the parent, if you humiliate the parent, then the parent may take it out on the child another time, right?
So, or just later, right?
Get them to the car and smack them in the head.
I can't believe you embarrassed me in front of people, right?
So...
You know, patience and positivity is important because you don't want to provoke retaliation against the child later.
But I think you do.
I mean, so the other problem, of course, is that if nobody does anything, if nobody says anything, then the child is going to grow up with the understanding that nobody in society has any problem whatsoever with the way that she's being treated or he's being treated.
So it's challenging and it's tough.
You know, you don't have to do it, obviously.
And if you're not in the right frame of mind to do it, I wouldn't do it.
If you're not relatively confident, I mean, it's a scary thing to do.
If you're not relatively confident that you can do it in a positive and peaceful way, it's probably better not to do it, in my opinion.
Again, this is all just my opinion.
I mean, I don't think there's any particularly hard and fast answers about this.
But I do think that's important that the child see someone who has some kind of problem with what the parent is doing at some point in the child's life.
I mean, I think it can be something that can really change things.
Yeah, you can do role play and such things as well.
All right, do we have our Jack back?
We don't have a Jack back yet, but we have a Cain.
Cain, how are you, my friend?
What can I do for you?
I'm doing good, Steph.
Can you hear me?
I can.
Okay.
It's weird.
I'm a little nervous to kind of ask this question today.
Okay.
But my question is around...
I've been kind of taking a critical look at my relationships with women lately.
And I've noticed the pattern has been...
Because whenever I get into situations with females, especially during introductions, I tend to play...
I'm really distant and aloof, if that makes any sense.
And I know that has a lot to do with my history.
So what usually ends up happening is the women that I end up getting involved with, I guess they pick up on my distance.
And then when I get to a point where I'm like, alright, I'm ready to kind of be close to you now, they either disappear or the relationship kind of self-dissolves, if that makes any sense.
Yes, it does.
It does.
But go on.
So...
I'm aware that a lot of it has to do with my relationship with my mother.
For some reason, I'm in the middle of five kids, and I've become aware that she's very distant with her boys, if that makes any sense.
My mom's a single mom, too.
Sorry, your mom was the same.
I just missed that last part if you could repeat it.
My mother was a single mother as well.
Okay, right.
So I don't know.
I've kind of been stuck and I haven't been able to come to any real solid conclusions.
This is kind of like a blind spot for me.
Right, right.
Now, if you're The picture is to be guessed at.
I mean, you are a massive hunkasaurus of chocolatey goodness, right?
I mean, you're a very good-looking fella.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
And you have a voice that probably has women jump into their shower heads at the moment.
You know, I put the white in Barry White, but you put the soul in Barry White.
So you are an attractive package.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
Right, and so...
You're an attractive package, and the temptation when you are an attractive package is, you said, aloof, right?
And distant, which is, I think, that is the technically correct way of saying cool, right?
Yeah.
Right, so have you been pulled into the player orbit at all?
What's crazy is, no, I don't have the heart for it.
The first thing that pops into my head is I couldn't imagine somebody doing something like that to me.
It's weird.
I can't treat women as just objects, but at the same time I become Every time a relationship kind of crumbles in front of me, I become resentful.
Right, right.
Okay.
And are you mostly dating black women, or are you playing around the gene pool?
I don't discriminate.
That's good.
Well, you do on the basis of gender, I'm assuming.
Yeah.
Right.
Now, I mean, because...
I mean, we live in this kind of culture, and because you're a hunkasaurus and a half, women would be obviously interested in you and would want to get to know you and so on, right?
And so, because, you know, playing it cool and aloof doesn't work if you look like a hobbit, right?
I mean, but if you look like a, you know, especially tanned Aragorn, you're in the right neck of the woods for the cool thing, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
And...
Why do you think that your mother was...
And now, did you see...
I can't remember, sorry, if you did say this.
You said she was cool to her sons.
Was she warmer towards...
Do you have sisters or...?
Yeah.
Okay.
And she was more warm towards her sisters?
Yeah.
And what was her relationship with your dad?
Did he stick around?
Was he in your life...
Well, no.
For the most part, he wasn't.
My father was pretty much, well, I'll start with how they got together and that will kind of give you a picture.
They got together because my mother was in an abusive relationship with a previous boyfriend and My dad at a bar came to her defense and pretty much that's how they got together.
My mother found out towards the end of their relationship when she was pregnant with me that my dad was actually married.
So, yeah, it was just a huge mess for the most part.
And after that, he was never really in my life at all, for the most part.
What do you mean by for the most part, if you don't mind me saying?
Like, he would stop by sometimes and, you know, I would see him, I knew who he was, but there was no relationship.
But you knew he was your dad, but there was no predictability, but just like whenever I can slip away kind of thing?
Yeah.
Do you know if his wife knew about you?
Yeah.
She did?
And what was the relationship with your dad?
Sorry, she did, right?
And what about your siblings?
I don't assume they all came about from the same guy?
No.
I... I have one sister that me and her, we share the same father, but my mother has had a series of traumatic relationships with men.
So, sorry, you have one sister, but she didn't know, I guess, for some time that he was married, right?
Yeah.
Right.
Wow.
She's not exactly shattering the stereotypes, is she?
That's too bad.
And she was warmer towards your sisters, and do you know what her relationship was like with her own father?
Yeah.
With her own father, it was...
He was also pretty abusive with my grandmother.
And he actually moved back to, I believe he was from Philly, and moved back to Philly.
And I think my mother had gotten into a slight argument with my grandmother at one point when she was still a kid and asked to go live with her father.
And she went to go live with her father and My mother, for some reason, she doesn't hide certain truths from us.
She let us know that while she was living with her father, she was abused in all kinds of different ways.
When she came back, she never spoke to him again.
I also wasn't the same person.
And a lot of it, I think, you know, I think that has a lot to do with my mother's history.
Right.
And is your...
I guess this was an odd question to ask, though it shouldn't be, but is your mom or was your mom physically attractive?
I mean...
Yes.
You mean that your genes come from somewhere, right?
So...
Okay, so then...
Okay, so...
So she would have been a magnet for guys as well, right?
Yeah.
At least certain kinds of guys.
So do you think that prior to you guys and gals coming along, do you think that your mother had a close relationship with any man?
Or a respectful relationship?
No.
Right.
So, I mean, it's then hard to...
I mean, it's hard to imagine how she could, in a sense, have that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
So, the reason, of course, is that it's really important to understand, of course, that our parents come with history, right?
I mean, you know, when we're kids, they're just these...
These gods, right?
They're huge.
They're powerful.
They're impressive.
And we don't get a sense of them having a history, right?
And coming in with baggage or anything like that.
I mean, they're just...
They're the thing.
They're the world.
They're the sun, the moon, and the earth, right?
And so what happens is, of course, because our parents are causeless, right?
To me, you know, the people say...
People who...
I mean, this is, you know, a minor dip into a side topic, but...
People who say, well, we were created, therefore we have to have been created, right?
Which is a religious argument.
And then you say, well, God had to be created too, if that's the logic.
And they fail to see that.
It's because they have not achieved an adult understanding that their parents were children once.
Like, they can believe that these great beings just popped into existence without history, which is God, and then created mankind.
And since God is the parent of the unconscious...
It must be because they have not received or achieved or been allowed to achieve a mature relationship with their parents understanding that their parents had a history, were created themselves, and were subject to influence, and what children want to, and so on, right?
If you can exclude someone from the cycle of life, it's because of an immaturity with regards to your own parents, which is either not, like it's either willed or inflicted.
But anyway, so...
When we grow up, sorry, when we're kids then, because our parents, our first experience of our parents is that they are causeless and kind of perfect, they are the world.
They are gravity, right?
So asking little kids to accept that the parent's behavior is a choice and comes out of history and may be mistaken is like asking for an adult to believe that gravity is choosable.
That gravity is out to get them.
Gravity has its issues.
It has its problems.
It never got along well with light and magnetism.
Too much peer pressure from dust and all that sort of stuff.
The inverse square law kept dipping its pigtails in the inkwell or something.
Sorry, that reference means nothing to people under 40.
So when we're kids, right, and this is why everything that happens from our parents is our fault.
You know, no adult who falls down blames gravity.
Right?
I mean, ridiculous.
You trip, you fall down.
It's like, that goddamn gravity, it's always out to get me.
My shoelaces were conspiring last night to tie themselves together and trip me.
They're always out to get me.
We would understand that that would be pretty crazy.
And in the same way, parental behavior is the literal physics of an infant's and a toddler's world.
The toddler has no more conception that his parents were children than, you know, we can walk with dinosaurs.
It's just not going to happen, right?
Yeah.
So, for you, of course, if your mother is cold, then it can't be her any more than gravity can cause you to fall down or is out to get you.
It must be because of something that you're doing, right?
Yeah.
Or not doing, or something like that, right?
Yeah.
Does that sort of make any sense?
Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense.
More so because when I was a kid, I was pretty much a straight-A student.
I did things not to be a botherer.
Because first off, there were so many of us, and I wanted to be as helpful as I could.
So by kind of not having any issues myself, I felt like that took a load off of her.
Right, and I'm sure that you were helpful with raising your siblings and so on, to the degree that you could.
Yeah.
How many were there?
You said so many.
I'm picturing a Monty Python sketch here, but I'm just wondering how many we're talking about.
Well, I'm in the middle of five.
And how many dads?
Three.
I'm sorry, how many?
Three?
Three.
I say dads, I probably mean sperm donors.
Because to me, dads is, you know, being a dad, it's more than a couple of ounces of liquid.
So anyway.
Okay, so why, if you can sort of remember back to being a toddler, why did you feel, or what reasons did you give yourself for your mother's distance when you were little?
It was, you know, when I was little, I didn't really recognize it as distance.
You know, it took, it took For me to get older and just, you know, start going to therapy and start, you know, doing, uh, listening to like FDR to really start examining some of this stuff, you know, cause to me as a kid, it was just normal.
Well, but, but different from your sisters, right?
Did you notice difference from your sisters?
Yeah.
Well, I really started noticing the difference when I was, when I was becoming a teenager.
And I was in a situation where I kind of needed that adult wisdom.
And I felt, especially when I went through one of my first breakups with a person that I was with for three years, I felt like my mom couldn't empathize.
Right, right.
Yeah, but I mean, by the time you're a teenager and you're dating, right?
My question, I guess, is earlier, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I did notice early on that the relationship was different, but...
I guess in my head it kind of made sense that they were all girls, so it was just like, oh yeah, they're all girls, so they'll have a different type of relationship, you know?
Right, okay, yeah, yeah.
They're on the same beta wavelength or something like that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
They get it, man.
Vulcal mind meld or something like that.
Okay, all right, that makes sense.
What about...
Your feelings about why your dad wasn't around?
When you were a kid, what do you think was the cause of that?
When I was a kid, I thought...
Actually, I really don't know...
I really didn't think about that too much, you know?
Were you in an environment where that was kind of normal?
Yeah.
Did you have friends who you'd go over and their dads would be there and boring everybody with bad jokes and doing the usual dad stuff?
No.
When I was a kid, the majority of my friends didn't have fathers.
Right.
And, I mean, to be fair, some wives, not all, but some wives...
May not be altogether happy with the hot single mom coming over.
I'm just saying, you know, I mean, it's a minor territorial thing, but it's possible.
So, was it most or pretty much all your friends that grew up without dads?
Most.
I had one friend that had his father around, but it was strictly his father.
His mother wasn't around, so...
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Holy crap.
Oh man, I'm sorry about that.
I mean, I share that experience.
I mean, just based upon the economics of the situation, you end up around, you know, somewhat crappy people.
I mean, I hate to say it, you know, and there were some nice people in my neighborhood.
I say that, you know, without any coming to mind, but I'm sure that there were.
But, you know, when you have a single mom, I mean, you fall down the economic ladder.
I mean, family income just...
Craters and so you end up mostly around other people in the same situation and if you have a two-parent household and They're in the economic environment of single parents.
It's usually because the two-parent household is really dysfunctional So This is the underworld and it has something to do with economics and you know, I'm certainly I can already see the email tsunami coming in Oh, so you're saying that poor people are dysfunctional rich people are all functional hell no I mean, it was rich people who blew up the economy in 2008, and it's rich people generally who start wars and so on, so I'm certainly not saying that.
I'm just talking about in this particular environment, you know, poverty tends to have particular kinds of dysfunction that is usually relational.
Yeah.
In relationship to each other.
Rich people have dysfunctional relationships with society.
Poor people have dysfunctional relationships with each other.
It's my general way of looking at it, which is certainly not scientific.
So yeah, you end up with this...
Okay, it normalizes in your environment, right?
I mean, this is just the way things are.
Yeah.
I mean, you flip on the Cosby show, it might as well be coming from Mars, right?
Pretty much.
Yeah.
For the most part.
And it also seemed like every guy that my mother did get into a relationship with after, they all seemed to be just kind of brutes in a sense.
I had a stepfather, a guy that my mother was in a relationship with for a long period of time, actually.
This is where I kind of picked up on the distance thing.
He never lived with us.
He lived in an apartment below us.
And their relationship was like that for years.
And he was kind of a brute, constantly throwing his weight around, always angry.
But when Christmas came around, he would shower us with gifts.
And I actually found out later that he was actually hitting my mother.
know, I always kind of, I knew in the back of my head as a kid because, you know, I didn't, you know, I never really liked him, but, you know, she would always kind of hide it from us.
Right.
it.
Yeah, I mean, he just may not have wanted to live with because, you know, did you say five kids?
Yeah.
I mean, it's a terrible mistake that women make.
I mean, Lord knows men make their own mistakes, but it's a terrible mistake that women make.
Because, I mean, once you have kids, to a new guy, kids are kind of like a liability.
And so your marketability...
In the dating world goes down considerably when you have kids.
I remember reading an article, coincidentally written by a black man.
I don't think it's particularly important.
But the article, and it was a whole series of debates about, you know, what is, you know, is it good or bad, you know, if the woman has kids, do you want to start dating?
And the general consensus among the guys was that it's pretty bad.
I mean, they're expensive, right?
So it's a lot of money.
To give to other people's kids.
And we're still mammals, right?
I mean, we don't want to put a huge amount of resources into other people's children.
But he was also saying, the guy who wrote the original article, was also saying, well, you could have some crazy ex-dads around, you know?
You know, just kind of floating around, kind of thuggy maybe, and just kind of like...
You're in there sleeping with the mother of their children and parenting their kids, and then the kids maybe rile up the real dad against the new...
He said it's just a big mess, which is an expensive and potentially dangerous kind of hassle.
And, of course, the women were all like, you know, oh, that's terrible.
You shouldn't not want to date a woman just because she has kids.
Kids are wonderful and so on, right?
And this illusion that you can somehow amass kids around you and have no negative effects on your dateability or marriageability is crazy.
Of course, any man who's, you know...
I mean, it's a huge sign of kind of not being responsible to have a bunch of kids without a dad.
And, you know, I don't mean to be down on your mom, but it just seems like...
I mean, it's just this...
You know, it's like a whole bunch of tattoos.
It's like, oh...
I think this person is communicating something.
What is it they say in the wedding crashers about the lower back tattoo?
It's actually more of a bullseye.
It just says something about the person as a whole.
And the fact that they're dating means that none of the fathers are really around or whatever.
It's a big colossal Negative.
And it means that, of course, the kind of guys you get to choose if you have a bunch of kids around you, it's almost certainly going to be not high-quality guys, right?
Yeah.
So, you know, it becomes an almost impossible-to-escape prophecy, right?
It's a trap.
You know, by the time you have a kid or a couple of kids with a bunch of different dads around, I mean, because you have had bad relations, you almost can't have a good relationship after that, at least until the kids are grown, if that makes any sense.
I mean, not without a huge amount of self-worth.
Yeah.
And did your mother ever do any therapy or anything like that?
I would say the closest thing that she's had was when she was during her time in rehab.
Didn't mention that.
Rehab for what?
She had a history of drug abuse.
Oh boy.
What kind of drug?
I believe it was like heroin.
Yikes.
Yikes.
I'm so sorry.
My god, I mean that's a complete mess my friend.
I'm just, I'm so sorry.
I'm just, I'm so sorry.
About that kind of history, I mean, it's exactly not what you should have had to put up with or had to deal with.
I mean, that's a whole lot of growing up, all kinds of early, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I just really, I mean, you've been piling these sticks on the camel's back, so to speak, and I just really want to say how I'm really, really incredibly sorry I am for that kind of history.
That is a whole lot to overcome, and of course, you can be a A stronger, better man, and so on.
But, I mean, you don't really want to have to work your way through that, and I'm sorry that you have to, but I'm incredibly happy that you are.
Yeah, I feel like I've been invested in it, you know, sometime now, so, you know, starting to somewhat get a handle on things.
Right, right.
Right.
And so, I mean, given your history, the aloof thing, I guess, I mean, let me just ask another question.
And what do you want from your future in terms of relationships and family and potential kids?
What is it that would be ideal for you?
What would be the best outcome?
The best outcome for me, you know, just listening to FDR for For some time.
I want, I want what, you know, what you have with your wife.
You know, I want an actual partner.
You know, I don't want to be that whole me plus thing.
You know, that makes any sense.
Yeah, no, no, it does.
I mean, I came up with the idea, so I hope it makes no sense to me whatsoever.
What the hell are you talking about, man?
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I would recommend it.
And this is one of the reasons I couldn't have the marriage that I have if I hadn't gone through therapy and done all that self-work.
I mean, you just can't.
Okay, so you want, obviously, a partnership with an equal and someone you respect and love and all that kind of stuff.
And are you interested in being a father yourself?
Yes.
Yes, I am.
Okay.
Okay, so this is...
Bullshit bad advice, and I apologize for it up front.
I mean, it's good advice, but it's so obvious that I don't want to insult your intelligence by saying it, but I'm going to say it anyway, so I apologize for that.
So, if you want something different from your parents, then you have to do something that's different from your parents.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, if you had a mom who sat around with a thumb up her butt all day, and you didn't like What that produced, then you have to not sit around with a thumb up your butt all day, right?
I mean, obviously, right?
And so if you want a relationship that is different from your mother's relationships, then you have to do the different thing.
You have to do almost the opposite from what you're...
I mean, I hesitate to use the word parents, but what they did, right?
And so the cool and aloof thing Is going to attract a particular kind of woman.
Now, my guess that the cool and aloof thing is going to attract a particular kind of woman who is used to cool and aloof, right?
Yeah.
Emotionally unavailable as the phrase goes, right?
Yeah.
And so then if you attract a woman who is not a fan of intimacy, let's say, And then you say, well, when I try to get close, it doesn't seem to work, right?
You know, it's like saying, hey, I want you guys all to join my basketball team, but nobody over five feet two.
Damn, we just don't seem to be winning, right?
Yeah.
I mean, if you've got a standard and then, you know, you attract women according to your emotional unavailability and then you switch gears and they bail, that's kind of predictable, right?
Yeah.
So what you want to do is, and you know, with some discretion, right, but what you want to do is be emotionally available.
And what you can do, I mean, the real-time relationship works really well right up front in this.
Okay, so you be some woman that I, as you, want to get close to, right?
Okay.
Okay, so, hi.
Hi, how you doing?
I can't do it.
I don't know.
Neither the soul nor the incipient throat infection that you seem to be born with.
So, how you doing?
Anyway, so, sorry, there's no reason why you should be from New Jersey or anything like that.
Okay, so, it would be something like, you know, hi, how you doing?
You know, it's funny, I'm trying this new thing, because I was trying this old thing, That was not working.
And so I used to be this cool guy, and now I'm going to be not cool guy.
I don't mean nerdy guy.
I don't have any dice in my pocket that are more than six sides or anything.
But I'm trying this new thing because I'm actually really interested in long-term, mature, positive relationships and so on.
And I used to just kind of play it cool and be...
You know, a big licorice shtick of, you know, ultimate hipness.
But I'm gonna try this thing where I'm gonna actually talk about what I think and feel.
And I actually feel quite nervous about doing that.
And, you know, I actually feel kind of fluttery in my stomach.
I feel kind of excited and scared to just actually talk to you without any kind of attitude or any kind of game or, you know, any kind of strategy or anything like that.
How am I coming across?
You know, just something like that, where you're actually talking about what you're thinking and feeling in the moment to the person.
And you'd think, you know, intimacy is nothing more or less really than honesty, right?
You're not trying to do something for an effect.
You're just, I'm thinking and feeling this in the moment.
And if somebody is not interested in what you're thinking and feeling, you can't have a relationship with them.
I mean, you can have sex with each other, you can hang out together, you can watch movies together, but you can't actually have a relationship with them, because there's no connection that's based on truth and honesty.
So, if you say that, and the woman is not interested in any kind of intimacy, or doesn't want you as a piece of arm candy status, then...
I mean, a lot of...
I don't know if this happens more for men or for women, but a lot of women...
Don't so much think about whether they're attracted to you, but they think about whether their girlfriends will think that you're attractive.
I don't know.
Particularly whether they're...
But so, if the woman is not interested, then you save yourself a lot of time.
Yeah.
They'll be like, I don't know what the hell that guy was saying, but he was just freaking me out.
It's like, oh, good.
Okay, so we don't have to waste time dating.
Good.
I saved some money.
Yay.
But if the woman is like, that's interesting...
You know, tell me more or, you know, I get that, you know, I'm sort of drawn towards these aloof guys and, you know, it doesn't work out and so on.
Then you can actually start to have a conversation.
And do you feel how kind of relaxing that is?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, or the woman can say, I spend about 20 times more time on making myself physically attractive than I do on making my personality appealing.
You know?
I spend two hours a day on hair and makeup and no time a day on self-reflection and self-knowledge.
Or something.
I mean, it may not come out quite that way or whatever.
But recognizing that making yourself shiny and empty only attracts other suits of armor, so to speak.
And it doesn't get you to connect.
So, I mean, if you're just sort of honest in the moment about what you're thinking and feeling.
Because we sort of play this weird game where We don't say, I'm attracted to you.
Or, I find you like a very attractive person.
I love that smile.
You've got this gleam in your eyes when you laugh.
I just think that's great.
Yeah, I mean, I know for me as a kid, whenever I You know, when I first started approaching, you know, girls, it was, you know, if I told them straight out that, you know, hey, I like you, you know,
I want to get to know you, you know, I like you, yes, no, or maybe on a note or something, you know, it was kind of like that kind of honesty It was a surefire way of rejection, if that makes any sense.
Oh yeah, no, I got it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, no, I totally get that.
You can't speak what is actually on your mind.
I mean, isn't that the physics of most people's relationships?
Yeah.
It's not cool, to be honest, right?
And...
And the reason that most people don't like that is that if you are honest, it repels the empty people and that the empty people don't like that, right?
Because if you're honest and you speak a language called, this is what I'm thinking and feeling in the moment, you expose other people's emptiness.
People who are empty want you to be empty so they don't feel empty.
I mean, that's a basic thing.
They either holler you out or they lure you in, right?
They'll make themselves as physically attractive as possible and put on all the shiny...
Toss your head laughing kind of thing, in order to draw you in and empty you out.
That's the reason why vampires and zombies are getting even more popular in the modern culture, right?
It's because they're everywhere.
I mean, aren't vampires always sexy?
They can't see themselves in a mirror, right?
They have no capacity to reflect upon themselves, right?
So, but so it's, you know, the truth is sunlight to vampires, right?
Honesty.
And so, yeah, it'll drive them away and they make fun of you and they'll all go over and giggle.
But I don't know.
I mean, probably you're not 12, right?
But just simple honesty is going to save you a lot of time and a lot of hassle.
And, you know, God help you in unwanted pregnancy, which will doom your life, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've managed to avoid it so far.
Yes, yes, well, I would say do not keep rolling those dice.
Yeah.
But anyway, we've got a couple other callers, so I do want to move on, but I just wanted to know if this was helpful.
I guess it's always important to me to try to be helpful.
Yeah, yeah, this is really helpful.
Okay, good, good.
Good.
All right.
Well, thanks for your call and drop me a line and invite me to your wedding.
Because, you know, that's what happens next.
But yeah, thanks so much for your calls.
Great questions.
All right.
Sure.
Thanks, Dan.
All right.
Take care.
All right.
Bye.
Hello?
Hello.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
The question I had was, do we need to talk about rights once we have ethics?
Or can we just use ethics directly and not worry about rights?
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
Rights are nonsense.
Rights is a way of claiming universality without having to prove universality.
And thus it falls into this sleazy, statist kind of manipulative ethics.
There is no such thing as rights.
And now, there's no such thing as ethics either, or philosophy, or logic, or the scientific method, or anything like that.
But at least when you say logic...
People know that universality is there.
You're claiming universality.
But when you say rights, what happens is you get the benefit of universality, but you can just attach it to particular human beings.
So, for instance, there's women's rights.
Well, what the hell does that mean?
That's like saying women's logic.
I mean, this is physics just by and for women that has no relationship to anything else other than women.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
Women's math.
Try teaching that course and see how far you get, right?
I mean, it's silly.
So the moment that you take something called rights, which only has any power because of its presumed universal claim, and then you attach it to a specific group, Then what you're doing is claiming universality and applying it specifically, which is a contradiction.
You know, if you said, like, so taxes are considered to be universal, but if you said gay taxes, all taxes are gay, but gay taxes, that would be silly, right?
I mean, gay ethics would be kind of silly, right?
So I think you're right.
I think we want to start moving towards ethics, because The moment you can get someone to swallow rights for any particular group, then you have universality for a specific group, which is a contradiction.
Universal physics for these five rocks.
No, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
Right?
So I think we want to...
Sorry, go ahead.
What I was looking for is a good way to explain properties Property rights.
Sorry about you cutting out.
I think I get that.
But property rights, you know, the best arguments are those that are contained within the framework of arguing and have to be accepted in order for the argument to continue.
Because that's when you find out...
You differentiate between people who are manipulating and people who are actually interested in the truth, right?
So property rights...
I mean, I hate having to use the word property rights, but that's just because it uses the word rights, which I don't like.
But that's the convention, right?
So that doesn't...
You know, you can't reinvent everything.
So, you know, with property rights, you know, self-ownership, owning the effects of your actions, that's required to debate.
It's required to even have a conversation.
So I think we can do that.
But just to go back to rights for a sec, because they're very, very tricky, right?
They're very, very tricky.
You know, so rights is a shortcut to avoid a conversation about ethics.
So there's, you know, UN declarations of the rights of children.
There are gay rights, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights.
I mean, everybody, the union rights.
I mean, everybody just tries to create this word rights.
Now, rights is a challenging word, of course, because it includes the word right, which is sort of a mnemonic or it's a...
A sort of subconscious programming to accept an argument.
And if you deny rights, then you're obviously a bad guy.
You're denying that which is right, and you're denying the just and fair treatment of people and so on.
But yeah, rights is people who want to claim universality, and they can't prove it because it's inconsistent.
They're using it to manipulate.
They just try and get rights, which is considered to be universal, attach it to a particular group, and then attack anyone who denies those rights, you know?
And so...
It's like the word justice, you know, social justice and all of that.
No justice, no peace.
But justice is just one of these words that if you can get people to attach the word justice to your particular cause in the same way that if you can get people to attach the word rights to your particular cause, then it is a linguistic club that you will then use to beat up on anyone who disagrees with you and reward those who agree with you.
And so it's the usual thing that it's argument by adjective.
I mean, this is all you ever hear these days, because philosophy is in a desperately, desperately low state.
Present company accepted.
And so, all that you'll hear these days is argument by adjective.
I mean, this is how ridiculous...
I mean, the Patriot Act, we all know.
Are you against patriotism?
You know, the just and fair and honest and wonderful and loving and good treatment of children act.
Well, it's just a bunch of adjectives.
And if you write just kind of another one of these adjectives, Like justice.
So, all that happens is people try to attach positive words to what it is that they're doing, and that's called an argument.
So, for example, there was an article that I read recently about, I think it's about a third of Americans no longer declare themselves part of any religion, and this was considered to be, you know, rising atheism or whatever, and What the writer was saying was he was saying that it's not rising atheism.
What it is is that people who were only cultural Christians are now openly declaring...
They weren't really Christians before, but they're just openly declaring not being Christians now, and it's not any particular monstrous or huge change from where it used to be, but it's just...
A declaration of a former agnosticism in a formal way, whereas before it was just informal, but the number of, you know, as he called it, devout.
Devout Christians.
People of deep faith, you know, who have a deep and abiding spiritual faith, and they're devout and so on.
Well, these are all adjectives, these are all words that you attach to an irrational preference.
To make it sound noble.
It's like the public school teacher called in the other day who wanted to attach the word noble to his profession right off the bat.
And it's like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
That doesn't quite work.
Like, so, I mean, and you only need to...
To understand how this is working, right?
So this is not, of course, to equate Christians with Nazis or any religious people with Nazis.
But if you were to write an essay on a man who had a spiritual awakening and made a deep and devout and faithful allegiance to Nazism, that he was a devout Nazi, that he...
He was a person who had a deep and abiding faith in Nazism.
We would understand that this would be kind of jarring, right?
It's like, wait, wait.
Deep and abiding faith?
Spiritual awakening?
Devout?
I mean, these are all positive words.
And to attach them to an irrational belief is a kind of manipulation.
It just means that you can claim a positive without having to prove it.
If you can just attach enough positive words to whatever it is you're claiming, then it's just a form of manipulation and kind of a bullying.
So, I just sort of wanted to mention that I think you're right.
I don't like the term rights, because they are only claimed and inflicted and bullied, never proven.
Because the moment you're going to say rights, and you're claiming universality, it's like, okay, so if you're going to claim, for instance, universal property rights, then you can't have a government.
But then people always change that, right?
Well, people also have a right to be free of criminality, and therefore...
You know, they need a government.
It's like, okay, so you're just using the word right then to just attach to some argument to make it sound correct or that it's proven, right?
People have a right to healthcare.
It's something that you just say, oh, people are owed this no matter what and you don't have to make an argument because you've used the word right.
So I do have a problem.
It's, you know, right is almost directly analogous in the secular world to the word faith in The religious world, right?
So if you have faith, you don't have to prove it.
And it doesn't matter if it's irrational because you have faith.
And faith is basically a claim in something that's true without having to prove that it's true.
And right is the claim that something is virtuous and universal without having to actually claim, or actually having to prove or establish that it's good or virtuous and universal.
So every irrational belief system, which is almost every belief system in the world, every irrational belief system needs to invent a word That is the opposite of what it is, right?
So you don't say theft, you say taxes.
You don't say violence, you say government.
You don't say caging, you say laws or prison.
You have to invent this new word that covers up what you're doing.
And when people say a right to, they usually mean that the involuntary or forcible transfer of resources from other people.
Like if people say with Scott Walker in Wisconsin...
So he's opposing union rights.
Well, what are the union's rights in the public sector?
It's the right to steal from other people.
It's the right to impoverish the poor through inflation that's used to pay for all of their benefits or to steal from the unborn to pay for their to-come pension benefits and so on.
So it's actually wrong.
See, you can't say the word wrong, you have to say the word faith.
You can't say the word theft, you have to say the word taxes.
And you can't say the word immoral, you have to say the word rights.
To me, it's another linguistic trick that I just try to avoid at all costs.
I'm sorry, we just got another caller or two, so if we can move on, I hope that was helpful.
I won't wait for your reply because you're all kinds of breaking up.
Unfortunately, I actually dropped off the call.
Maybe another time.
Next up, we have Julian.
Hello.
Hi.
I'd like to thank you, Stefan, for your amazing and conscious, sorry, conscience-shaping work.
And I'll just get right to my question.
I'm curious about your thoughts on boycotting outside of the political sphere.
I think the people who have listened to you have a pretty good idea about sort of your ideas on abstaining from voting and Sort of, if necessary, not taking more money from the government than you've been forced to pay in.
But outside of the government, I'm curious about your approach to when you decide to boycott something like Chick-fil-A or some other organization that has made comments that are nauseating in some way.
Yeah, I mean, boycotting is...
A universal phenomenon, almost universal phenomenon, right?
So, I mean, if you get married, you're boycotting all other sexual partners, at least if you get married monogamously and that's your goal or whatever, then you're off the market, right?
When you have a job, you are boycotting all other job openings that you're not pursuing, so to speak, right?
So non-participation is almost universal, right?
I'm talking about something...
No, no, look, I understand.
I understand.
It's not exactly what you're talking about.
I'm just sort of framing it to understand that if you're against boycotting, then you're against not doing something, right?
And we're all not doing just about everything, right?
I am not currently picking my nose.
I am not currently having sex.
I am not currently working out.
I am not currently talking to any of the other six billion people that I could be having, well, I don't know, English speakers, some kind of conversation with.
I think I know someone at Bellevue who feels that way.
I think I know someone at Bellevue who feels that way.
Boycotting is simply not doing something that's involved in economic association.
Free association, it's really important to understand that everything that we do is an infinity of other things we're not doing.
Now, but I understand what you mean.
Boycotting is, I don't like what this particular company is doing, and so I'm going to try and convince other people to not do business with them, right?
Yeah, I might otherwise get some chicken at Chick-fil-A, but what I know about them makes me not.
Right, right.
And I think that it's fine, obviously.
Voluntary association is fine.
But it's not fine if what you tell is not true.
Right, so if I were to say that Chick-fil-A is deliberately putting ingredients into their chicken that sterilizes black men because they want to end the black race, and that's not true, then clearly I have spoken an economically damaging falsehood and would be liable for, I don't know how that would exactly work in a free society, but it would probably not be good for me, right?
Certainly.
Right, like, I mean, if a woman says that some guy raped her and he didn't, then she would be punished, of course, because it's a very serious claim.
Oh, I hope so.
It's a horrible thing to do.
Yeah, and so if I make a claim that they're engaging in, you know, criminal acts harming other people, they're deliberately poisoning their food, and it turns out that that's not true, then I have done harm to them through my false claim, and, you know, there would be some negative repercussions.
But, um...
So if I say things that are true, right, so let's, I don't know, I think the Chick-fil-A thing was something about homosexuality.
Yeah, they released anti-gay statements, you know, that were pretty ugly.
Okay, so if you simply repeat their statements and say, I don't want to be associated with people who make those kinds of statements, then you are making a true statement.
You are quoting the people who are making that statement, and you are saying that I don't want to do business with them, and you shouldn't either.
Oh, I realize that that methodology is of the utmost importance.
Yeah, I think that's fantastic.
I think that's a wonderful example of anarchy.
A wonderful example of the social correction mechanism that is available to people.
And I mean, obviously it can be abused, right?
I mean, you call people racists or whatever, I mean, whether or not or whatever.
But where it's true, it can be fine.
And I mean, it can work the other way too, right?
So, you know, if I ran a restaurant called, you know, Godless Grits or something, And, you know, and I had on my menu...
Yeah, I don't think you'd have prayer groups flooding in.
Yeah, I mean, if I wrote on my menu, God eats free, because I'll never have to worry about that check getting cashed, or whatever it is, then the church groups could say that Godless Grits is an atheist restaurant, and I don't want to patronize them.
Fantastic.
I mean, it can work any way that you want.
Any particular group can find some other group that it finds offensive and organize a boycott or organize some sort of resistance to it.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist, certainly.
Yeah, so I think it's a perfectly wonderful thing.
As long as it's not libelous or slanderous, it's a perfectly wonderful way for people to spontaneously self-organize to enforce their particular social norms.
And I'm also just curious about maybe your experience with boycotting, and I don't know if you have any anecdotes that you think might be illuminating.
You mean in terms of who I have boycotted?
Yeah, and maybe trends in your boycotting, something like that.
You know, nothing in particular comes to mind.
I mean, most of the boycotting that I've heard about is to do with You know, we go boycott the South African government because of apartheid.
That was sort of back in the day, and now they're talking about...
There's more embargoes and stuff like that, which I've never been a fan of and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, I know I've engaged in a few over the years, like none of them in particular popped to mind, and I've certainly never been part of an organized let's boycott such and such.
I mean, for the simple reason that I'm into philosophy and economic pressure is not a philosophical argument.
So it's not something that I'm particularly interested in pursuing, but yeah, it's fine.
I'm sorry, somebody says, how do you boycott a government?
Well, you can't.
You can't because boycotting is a voluntary.
Yeah, well, I mean, you just don't take welfare and don't vote and things like that, I think.
Would that constitute boycotting?
Well, yeah, but I mean, that's non-participation in particular things, but you can't boycott them as a whole because they...
Oh, yeah, I guess, yes, that's right, of course.
Yeah.
Your explanation of your methodology I'm sure has been helpful to people.
I guess I'll leave it at that.
Thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
I guess you can do barter and stuff like that if you want to boycott some of the economic transaction stuff and so on.
Thank you.
Have a great day.
Thanks very much.
Appreciate that.
Good question.
And next up, do you have time for one more today?
Let's see how long this one goes.
Well, there's only one person left.
Alright.
It fits together perfectly.
Alright, so up next, last person, Ian.
Hey, how you doing, Stephan?
I'm great, how you doing, my friend?
Oh, thank you, thank you.
This is my first time calling into your radio show.
I've done this after watching, you know, many of your videos.
I gotta apologize for not donating, but I've achieved quite a value from your insights, disproportionate to what I've given back to you.
But I thank you for putting those out there and helping me I'm really nervous.
No problem at all.
Listen, I appreciate you mentioning the donation thing.
If you have a great question, I would consider that a donation.
I was going to do a dream interpretation.
I wanted to start out with that.
Sorry, let me just ask you this though, first of all, because I do have a stop date of about 15 minutes from now.
Is it a long dream?
That is one of my shorts.
I had a short one just to kind of start off.
Let's do the short one.
Oh my gosh.
I'm in a classroom and Vladimir Putin is there.
I don't know why, but I had seen a video of him the night before.
And he has some kind of a female assistant with him.
He's wearing a military uniform and he kind of gets up to address the class and he's speaking.
And I know he advised me personally at some point.
But I forget what that one was.
But he told me that...
He didn't tell me, but he asked me a question.
He was like, where is it that parasites go?
So he addressed the question in the class.
And he says, they go to your kitchen because that's where you store your food and spices.
And what you always have to do is to keep your house clean and take out the parasites with overwhelming force.
And then he sat down and I went to talk with him.
And I told him, you know, I knew a lot about him and everything, and when I told him some story about how he threw out, you know, these oligarchs that were messing up Russia at some point during his history, he told me that he kind of changed the subject really quickly, and then, let me see, he gave me that piece of advice, and after that I kind of woke up.
I'm wondering what your interpretation is.
Very interesting.
Very interesting.
What was your relationship with your dad like?
Oh, wow.
He wasn't really there.
Most of his presence.
Straight to the father.
He did a lot of traveling, though.
What is your relationship to Makizmo?
To who?
Macho man, being a tough guy.
To his mom?
No, sorry, your relationship to this tough guy thing.
My relationship to my father?
No, your relationship to masculinity, like in terms of being a tough guy.
I mean, I don't necessarily feel like I'm a tough guy per se.
Do you think that...
Sorry, go ahead.
People tell me I should be more tough.
Sorry, could you just repeat that?
People tell me I should be more tough because I'm always, you know, smiling and kind of obliging a lot of the time.
And I said, oh, you should be tough.
You should be, you know, like hysterical New Yorker, you know, just don't give a crap about anybody.
Walk around with a frown, you know, like you're tough.
Right, right.
Right.
Okay, so have you watched much to do with Vladimir Putin?
Did you watch anything the day before you had the stream?
I did, yes, I did.
It was a Christmas video called The Rape of Russia.
The Rape of Russia?
Yeah.
And what was that about?
It's about how Russia was destabilized by elite individuals.
I believe it was the Rothschild family.
And then Putin kind of stepped in and turned back that tide.
Right, okay.
Because, I mean, Putin had a bunch of pictures of him riding horsebacks and fishing with no shirt on and so on.
Right.
And he is, yeah, he is, I mean, according to reports, I mean, who knows, right?
Yeah.
But he is considered exceedingly attractive by Russian women.
I guess so, I guess so.
I mean, I'm just reading this.
I just looked this up while you were talking.
This accountant, Eleanor Volkova, says, I think he possesses unique male allure.
In my opinion, he's the best leader we've ever had in Russia.
And another woman said, thank God we have the head of state that looks splendid.
And she is mostly fascinated by the president's eyes and smiles.
She does not like the term sex symbol.
I always judge a man by his eyes.
Putin has an intelligent and serious look.
And, you know, I mean, this is a very accomplished politician.
To us, it's ridiculous to see him without his shirt on when he was in his late 50s, but it works in his country, right?
So his power, his machismo, I mean, he's not a handsome guy, but he has power and he's macho and so on.
I mean, this obviously tells you a huge amount about fatherhood in Russia and, you know, the fact that people like Lenin and Stalin have such allure.
I mean, totalitarianism cannot survive without the support of mothers, right?
Without the support of women who are willing to train their kids in this kind of allegiance and so on.
In the same way that religion knows to focus upon Women.
Dr.
Friedman at Libertopia was asked a question, you know, how can libertarianism be more attractive?
And he's like, well, we need more attractive women.
Because, you know, whatever attractive women believe, men will repeat in order to breed with them.
I'm paraphrasing.
I'm sorry?
It's kind of like a business.
They respond to what their customers want.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, so the idea that, I mean, in Germany, it's, you know, what is a woman interested in?
Well, church, kitchen, and children.
And the focus, of course, of religion on women, when women got rights, suddenly you have to virgin Mary, right?
Because you need to make Catholicism more attractive to women.
And the virus is transmitted largely through the maternal side, because women educate the children in almost all societies, whether it's through Through daycare or through teaching or through motherhood or whatever it is, right?
So the totalitarianism impulse in Russia has a lot to do with, of course, how the fathers are, how the mothers are, and so on.
And the mother's reverence or the woman's reverence for Putin is a very powerful thing.
Because it means that if a woman is really smitten with Putin, I keep thinking he's a plate of french fries and And gravy and cheese, but that's another matter.
So if a woman is really infatuated with Putin and you want to get into the woman's pants, then you don't say anything bad about Putin.
And if you're known for being anti-Putin and the women are all pro-Putin, then, you know, that interferes with your sexual selectivity and so on, right?
And if you don't have A father, then you've got to find something to define your masculinity, right?
The absence of a father simply means that you have stereotyped views of masculinity.
And when I say you, I mean me as well.
No, you're right.
I do have kind of an estranged relationship with him, although I'm recently getting back in touch with him.
This is kind of how it's been.
Right.
So I don't think it's any accident.
Like, so when I was a kid...
Rocky came out.
I think I was 11 or 12.
This is a movie Rocky.
And the movie Rocky changed things enormously for a huge number of people because it was through that that the muscle and fitness thing, where the muscle thing was born.
And so to me, it's not too surprising that in a decade where fatherlessness Became a chronic problem in society, and ever-growing, right?
So divorce rate went up 300% in the 70s, and that's just the official divorce rate that doesn't, of course, count single moms who never got married and so on.
The amount of single parenthood, as a result of the social engineering of the welfare state, which was negative, and sort of feminism, don't put up with abuse in your relationship, which I think was positive, all of that changed society, And then you have this huge cohort of boys growing up without dads.
And so to me, it's not then surprising that you end up with these really stereotyped and crazy views of masculinity.
Right, right, right.
Right.
So now it's big muscles as being a man or having power as being a man or scoring with women as being a man or being really good looking as being a man or being tough or fights or the fight club crap.
I mean, what's that great quote from Fight Club, you know?
We are a generation of men without fathers.
We are a generation of men raised by women.
I don't think another woman is going to solve her problem.
And, I mean, there's real insight in that, in that we grew up surrounded by women, And there are no fathers around and no dads around, or those who are around are pretty crappy and can't be our role model for anything.
And so, given that androgyny is not how mammals differentiate themselves, we are mammals, we want to be men, women want to be women, what that means, though, is unorganic.
It's not grown into, it's not understood innately through Continual exposure to a positive role model.
I'm basically fitting myself into an archetype?
Yeah.
And it's an archetype that is empty.
It's media.
An archetype can have this sort of collective unconscious depth to it and so on.
Right?
But so my daughter has had continual exposure to me for almost four years.
And so when it comes to what is a man, she's going to have I'm going to be the biggest single influence.
And what a man is for her is a complicated and deep thing.
Right, right, right.
I'm nurturing, but I'm hopefully firm.
I am emotionally open.
I can be irritated.
I am, you know, I am loving.
I am respectful.
I am curious.
And I have my own life, but I really want to engage with her as much as possible and so on, right?
So it's a big, complicated, rich, and deep thing.
Yeah, right.
Right?
If you go watch a movie about a guy doing a bunch of sit-ups and you think abs are manhood.
Right, right, right, right.
Being pretty is whatever, right?
And it's equally bad for the women because the girls who grew up without fathers don't have any depth, innate depth to their attractiveness, which is why being cute and funny has become the thing, right?
Right, exactly.
Yeah, the quality of character doesn't matter anymore.
Like women don't sit there and think, okay, so I have these eggs, right?
And these eggs require a man to be around providing resources off and on for like at least 22 years or 25 years if you have two kids or close to 30 years if you have three or more kids.
You know, just to get them through college or whatever they're going to end up doing.
If they don't go to college, become an entrepreneur, hopefully you'd want the husband to be around to support them in that as well, right?
Right, right, right.
And so the women don't say, well, I got these precious eggs that are going to grow into precious children, so let me do the research.
Let me do the research and find out what is going to be the very best thing for my children.
And they will find out that the very best thing for their children is Is to have a stable, loving, patient, kind, and hopefully economically somewhat successful or successful husband and father, right?
And then align themselves to that and say that what is going to make a good father for my children is qualities of character, is qualities of virtue, right?
Right, right, right.
And since women control masculinity, Then you end up with all of this nonsense, right?
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
I didn't see it that way.
So, Vladimir is in a classroom, right?
He advises you personally what to do with parasites, right?
Yeah, exactly.
They go through your kitchen and take out parasites with overwhelming force, right?
Yeah, supposedly, like that.
Well, this is Win-Lose, tough guy, primitive ape.
I'm sorry.
That's what I should do in my kitchen.
I'm sorry, can you say that again?
He tells me that's what I should do in my kitchen.
He doesn't actually go and do that action.
No, but he tells you that that's what you should do.
Take out your parasites with overwhelming force, right?
Yes.
Right, so this is not win-win negotiation.
This is primitive ape dominance stuff, right?
Okay.
And, you know, the rise of fatherlessness and the rise of Of pro wrestling is coincidental, right?
Right, right, right.
They coincide, right?
Because a lot of these guys, they grow up without a rich, involved, emotionally complex and mature relationship with a dad.
And so they have to end up with cartoons because they don't have live action, right?
Right, they had to get other father figures, for good or for worse, I guess, right?
Right, right, and it's not, I mean, the psychological adaptation seems, at least to me, to be really clear, in that if you grow up without a father, then you're going to assume that the reproductive strategy is not to stay and invest, but rather to spray and pray, right?
To have sex with a lot of women, And not invest in any one of them, but just hope that some of them get to maturity, right?
Yes, I see what you mean.
And so then to end up with big, cartoony, dominant, muscular, conquer your enemies and so on, that is the paradigm that you're going to grow up with.
And this is why movies like Rocky with heavily muscled, cartoony characters become so popular in a time where fatherlessness has become the norm.
Because you are going to assume then that virtue is not your sexual selection capacity, but to be big and strong and dominant and so on is the way to go, right?
Right, right, right.
And so the caricature of masculinity, which is to be strong and attractive and dominant and so on, is basically along a rape paradigm.
It's not perfectly lined that way, but it's along the rape paradigm.
So, in the spray and pray method, then generally what you do is you get a whole lot of muscles, you dominate, you capture, dominate the other women, and you rape them.
And that's how your reproductive strategy works.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
I know that.
Right, so to me it's not too surprising that Vladimir Putin is talking about dominate, take out your parasites with overwhelming force.
And what was the movie that you saw?
It was from Chris Dwayne.
It's titled The Rape of Russia.
Right.
He used the power of the state, being the premier of the state or whatever at the time, to push out...
And what do Russians call their country?
So in Germany, it's the fatherland, or it was the fatherland.
What do Russians call their motherland?
I'm giving you the answer.
They call it the motherland, right?
Mother Russia.
Yeah, right.
Mother Russia.
Right.
So I would say that your relationship with masculinity comes out of this dominance paradigm because you weren't raised with a father and that tells you a huge amount about it programs you to have a particular relationship with reproduction that is not around being good and helpful and supportive of your family and investing in your children but basically is have sex keep moving and you know Just
throw seeds from an airplane, don't plant and nurture, right?
Oh, shit.
Okay, I see what you mean.
And unfortunately, of course, that has transmitted itself to...
The fatherlessness has transmitted itself to women as well.
I think it's also the parallels that it has with my life as well.
Sorry, say again?
I think I'm beginning to see the parallels as to how this kind of also intermeshes with...
With my life as well, too, since you mentioned that at that point.
How so?
Yeah, I mean, I haven't really had much relationship with women, too.
And the one that I did have was very short, very short-lived.
And that would be, again, if you grew up fatherless, then, I mean, one of the things that is, I mean, sorry, let me just sort of be, so to switch from sort of the biology to the ethics, right?
It is extremely traumatic for a child to grow up without a father.
I mean, I've done the studies, I've cited the studies of this, and I've got a YouTube video, you can have a look for it, about all of this stuff.
And so it is, you know, it produces much higher promiscuity is one of the sort of major, major things that it produces.
And that ties in with the biological drive, the spray and pray method of reproduction, right?
Yeah, makes sense.
And this is relational as well, right?
So if there's a lot of promiscuity in the culture, then staying and investing in a child also doesn't make any sense because you can't guarantee that the child is yours.
Does that make sense?
Right, right, right, right, right.
Yeah, my father was also, he went through several relationships as well, too.
Married, divorced.
I think when he got to my mom, he might have been the third in series.
He's currently in the fourth.
Right, right, right.
Right, so I believe that happiness, you know, comes about from sort of intimacy and love, and I think that's best achieved and most sustainable in a long-term committed monogamous relationship, you know, if it involves children so much the better, in my opinion.
And some of that's not just my opinion.
So they did a study recently, That was a pretty large study that went up on people's whole lives and they sort of tried to figure out what were the biggest predictors of health from people who were 50.
They found cholesterol levels had no impact on health and longevity whatsoever.
Do you know what had the biggest impact on people's health and longevity by far?
Having good relationships with others?
With one person, the quality of the marriage.
Oh yes, that's true.
The quality of the marriage was by far the biggest predictor of longevity and positive health outcomes.
The health and the happiness of the marriage.
So this is not just my opinion.
Science is pretty clear on this.
That if you want to live well and be happy and live a long time, the best thing you can do is to marry well.
The best thing you can do is to marry well.
You don't hear a lot about this.
You hear a lot about quit smoking.
You hear a lot about watch your diet.
You hear a lot about exercise.
I think those things are fine.
But you don't hear a lot about marry the right person.
That's the biggest thing you can do.
Marry the right person.
Yeah.
But if you want to marry the right person and get all the benefits of that long-term relationship, then you need virtue.
You need integrity.
You need self-knowledge.
You need negotiation skills.
Love skills.
And you don't get that by doing sit-ups, right?
Right, right, right, right.
You don't get that by buying a fast car, right?
Right, right, right, right.
There's nothing external about it.
The emphasis is really in your virtues.
But you're right, though.
Having gone through the vitriol of the divorce, it kind of lasted around five years.
Yeah, I can see definitely the great importance it is to marry the right person.
At the outset, before it gets to that point.
Or if you be married, the right person doesn't get to that point.
My suggestion would be to figure out what being a man means to you.
My particular perspective is it can't be exactly the same as being a woman.
We have different bits.
Not to get too technical.
Especially around child raising.
My boobs are all taps and no plumbing, right?
So we have different bits.
There's different requirements.
I'm not disabled while my wife was pregnant or shortly thereafter and so on.
So there are different things about being a man and a woman.
I think you need to figure out what masculinity means to you and what kind of man do you want to be?
Do you want to be a player?
Do you want to be physically attractive?
And then put your resources into that but recognize that You're going to have fun when you're young, but it's going to be pretty empty and unsatisfying, right, for the second two-thirds of your adult life, so to speak.
Or do you want to be, you know, a warm and nurturing and competent and wise and virtuous and strong man who's there to protect and provide for your family?
Then you're going to have to take a different approach that's going to have less to do with reducing your body fat and more to do with upping your virtue quotient.
And so I think you've got to make that decision and then you've got to Kind of avoid the media portrayals of empty, dominant manhood, you know, where you can go blasting your way through all these things and not have any negative effects.
And, you know, this sort of the James Bond, you know, blow things up, shoot people, and drive fast cars underwater and sleep with lots of swimsuit models.
And, I mean, this is all cartoony shit that comes out of the rape paradigm of being The dominant male who either attracts through empty muscularity and political and military power women to sleep with him who have themselves no interest in virtue or who just goes and takes women and rapes them.
That's along that paradigm.
You just should avoid that stuff.
Okay, okay.
Because it's unhealthy.
I mean, it's toxic if you want the benefits of a long-term marriage and stable marriage.
Fatherhood and husbandhood and so on.
You know, that might have been the contributing factor probably when my relationship had ended that one time.
Yeah, and you weed out the women who want the Attila, right?
Right, of course, of course.
You want to be Attila like Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, not Attila like the seed spraying Mongol hordesmen, right?
Right, right, right.
And so, and remember, this is going to be a lot of rejecting on your part.
But unfortunately, the women who grow up without fathers and so on, fatherhood has a huge impact on female sexuality.
It has a huge impact on male sexuality too, right?
The studies show quite clearly that fathers who approve of premarital sex, or who approve of teenage sex, will end up with children who have sex that much earlier.
I also believe that because families are so traumatized these days, children are actually entering into puberty, depending on how you measure it, between six months and two years earlier than they used to even in the 1970s.
Why is that occurring?
Yeah, I mean, they haven't found any particular cause.
So there may be a cause, but you'd think that that would be pretty easy to find.
No, I think that what happens is When you are in a...
I think that your body says, oh crap, we're in the spray and pray methodology, so I'd better be fertile earlier.
Because I'm not going to be so long-lasting.
You know, why did it start to rise with the rise of divorce?
Well, I think...
I mean, I don't know.
Nobody knows.
And I know least of all, right?
But that would be my guess as to where to look.
Because they can't find any external cause and this has been studied for a long time.
Obviously childhood obesity has some effects because our fat cells have an effect upon that.
But even the children who aren't fat.
I mean almost a quarter of African-American girls are showing signs of breast development.
That's crazy.
It's crazy.
So anyway, I just wanted to mention that and I really appreciate you bringing that up.
It's a great question and a great set of issues to look at.
So I have to kind of solve my identity of manliness, I guess, right?
Well, you have to, you know, one of the benefits, right?
So there's lots of negatives in growing up without a dad.
But one of the benefits is that you don't get imprinted with stuff.
And that's a problem.
That's a problem.
But the positive is that you get to invent something that's very different from where you came from, right?
I mean, I grew up without a dad, which means that it's not hard for me to be a different father than the one I had.
Does that make sense?
Right, right, right.
You're learning a new paradigm instead of unlearning and relearning something else.
Exactly, exactly.
I wasn't badly taught, and therefore I could teach myself better.
And so I don't have a lot of unlearning to do.
It's mostly just learning.
So starting off with a blank template is good if you want to change Yes, so the stakes are pretty high but you do get to choose rather than just be imprinted and cycle through that same same crap does that i hope that gives you something positive to look for as well
yes thank you all right Well, once again, you know, I appreciate your time.
And once again, you know, thanks to everyone so much.
You guys have the most I think this is the smartest show in the world.
I genuinely and truly believe that this is the smartest show in the world.
If it wasn't, I'd go be the I'd go fetch coffee for whoever was doing the smartest show in the world.
And the Sunday show is the is the high point of the smartness of the show.
And I think that's to do with the questions and the feedback and the conversations.
With y'all.
And I really thank you for that.
This wild and exciting journey.
I thought about this, you know, speaking on this immense stage to, you know, with a professional sound crew and six cameras trained on me and Speaking to all of these people on the West Coast, I'm there because of you.
I'm there because of you.
Whether you've contributed thoughts, emails, whether you've contributed money, whether you've contributed questions or comments or criticisms, everybody participates.
And I really appreciate that.
And the fact that I'm able to do all of this stuff to go and speak, which is something that I'm really enjoying now, and I think particularly the closing speech was about as perfect as I can If I can get.
So I really thank everybody.
Thank you, individually, collectively, for producing this amazing conversation.
I mean, it's just astounding.
You know, up to about a quarter million downloads and views every week.
Every week.
And that doesn't count all of the other people who've reposted and republished stuff elsewhere.
That's just the stuff that I can track.
So it could be Double that.
It could be a third higher than that.
Who knows?
And it's not just the numbers.
But the numbers don't hurt.
So thank you everybody so, so much.
If you want to help out, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
But thank you everybody so much.
Have yourselves a wonderful week.
I will talk to you soon.
Oh, and I'm doing a debate on Thursday night.
I'm going to do a debate on Thursday night with somebody fairly important, which I will keep you posted about.
And I hope that you will reserve some time to come And listen to it and watch live and have such a great week.
