2903 Landing The Planet - Wednesday Call In Show - February 4th, 2015
What happened when Miss Universe was asked - what can women learn from men? How many kids is too many? How long can a family reasonably home school? Regarding balancing children and career advancement - is it worth working 50 hour weeks given the lost time with children? When we say "to not murder" is Universally Preferable Behavior, do we imply the following “If you want to be virtuous, you should not murder"? Do you think there is a 'war' on white people? What would narrative stories look like in a free and peaceful society?
Time to line them up, shoot them down, the yellow godlike ducks of listener questions and a usual request to you, the listener.
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All right, Mikey Mike, who we got on first?
Laura emailed in with some of the latest information from the recent Miss Universe contest, where Miss Columbia was asked the following question, what can women learn from men?
Now, you know, the previous question's audience, you know, normally clapped politely or somewhat cheered, but this one was met with disapproving oohs and all kinds of grumbles.
And then she answered the question with, I still believe there's still men in That do believe in equality.
I believe that's what women should learn from men.
So Laura brought in to inform us of that, and I was curious.
It was so many women.
What?
What was the name of that other woman, Prigent, who did that long rambling word salad about Iraq?
Oh gosh, I couldn't tell you.
It feels like there's a classic every year from the Miss Universe contract.
So there are some men who believe in equality.
We can learn from them.
That's basically what she had to say?
Yeah, that's it in a nutshell, yeah.
Well, actually, that's pretty much all she said.
All the answers from all the contestants were pretty short and, quite frankly, stupid.
So, is she indicating that there are more men than women who believe in equality and it's the women who could learn?
I'm trying to figure out what she's trying to say.
Maybe that's...
A hole with no bottom that I'm trying to lower myself into.
I'm wondering if there's a little bit of language barrier as well.
She did have a translator on stage, so I'm not sure if she even knew what she was saying.
It could be a language barrier.
It could be.
You know, there is the stereotype that if you have a significant attribute in one area, the gods are not so generous as to bless us all equally.
Yes.
Where they give with one hand, it could be said that with another hand, they, oh, take so much away.
But, you know, obviously there's Hedy Lamarr, who was an actress in the 40s, considered to be, I think, the world's most beautiful woman, and she helped with cryptography, and she had patents, and she was quite a genius.
So it's not always the case.
But it doesn't seem to have been gifts spread equally with a trowel in this case, right?
Right.
But I like the question, what can women learn from men?
Right.
I like that.
I like the question.
Now, was it what can we or what can women?
What can women?
He specifically started, and this is what I found hilarious.
He starts out by saying, I'm sure you're asked all the time, what can men learn from women?
But what I want to know is what can women learn from men?
And right there, he's putting the disclaimer out.
You know, it's okay to say it this way, but I'm going to ask it to you this way.
And suddenly the audience loses it.
You know, I just, it's so ridiculous to me that Why would it be okay one way and not the other?
What could we learn from Hitler?
Mike, weren't you telling me that there was a Super Bowl commercial?
And Sarah Silverman was offering condolences to another woman on their baby?
Yeah, it was a T-Mobile commercial, so make sure you don't buy T-Mobile, everybody.
But her and another woman were one-upping each other regarding their homes that they lived in.
And Sarah Silverman had a birthing center in her basement.
And she handed a baby to the family and said, sorry, it's a boy.
Oh.
Oh.
So sad.
Thank you.
So did you have a particular question or are we just here to crap about the pretty people not making the smart sense?
I mean, I guess in general I was just calling to more or less discuss that question as well as Miss Universe in general.
I was kind of pulling up some things on the internet to try to Researched this a little bit before I called.
And what I found was an interview on the Miss Universe website with Paula Shugart, who's the president of the organization for that, and Miss Teen USA and Miss USA. And she claims that pageants are, quote, dedicated to empowering women, end quote.
And I just...
I need some clarification as to how this empowers women and doesn't bring them down a notch.
And I know they try to dress it up a little bit as if, you know, these women are doing charitable things and that's what we should be focusing on.
But it's, call it what it is.
It's a beauty pageant.
It's listed, you know, it's called that.
So just, how is this empowering women?
Do you have an opinion on that?
As soon as I can figure out what the hell people mean by empowerment, I might...
You know, I mean, empowerment to me just brings an image of Dr.
Frankenstein, you know, it lives!
I brought it power!
But I mean, obviously there is a power in youthful female indicators of fertility, to put it as nicely as possible.
And, you know, men bring resources to women in order to have the woman agree to breed with them.
And so the men who have the most resources tend to mate with the women who have the most fertility indicators, which, you know, changes from culture to culture, even features and a good hip to waist ratio and youth, of course, and all that kind of stuff.
And what's always, you know, what's always bothered me about this is the fact that we just can't speak of this openly.
You know, why do we need to cloak it in empowerment?
I mean, it's like it's an auction.
It's an ovary auction.
Eggs!
Fresh young eggs for sale!
I mean, that's what's going on.
And bring your resources.
Now put on a beard and put out your lower lip and here comes the princess into your harem.
So I just want from the world some basic honesty.
Right.
And, you know, like, I don't know if you've ever had, or maybe you are one.
I don't know.
I doubt it.
But if you've ever had a woman who, you know, is young and hot and dresses attractively and so on, there's nothing wrong with any of that.
But she comes up and just seems to be bewildered.
About how guys just can't look at her as a friend.
Right.
And they just, you know, like, I try to be nice to these guys and they just get so attached.
Like, she's bewildered.
Like, it has never crossed her mind that we're all here because men with more resources mated with more fertile women.
That that's the only reason we exist as a species.
And I just wish we could be honest about it.
Yeah.
Why are you going to law school?
So I can afford a good egg holder.
I mean, it's not the only reason for human motivation, but why are you learning guitar?
Because apparently it makes women's panties vaporize.
That's the plan.
Man, woman, clothing.
Man, woman, guitar, naked!
I just wish people would be More honest about it.
And...
This has to be charity and empowerment and so on.
It's like, they're in swimsuits.
Although I think they've just ditched the swimsuit bit from one of them.
But, you know, they're about to faint from dehydration.
So I just wish we...
You know, we like looking at attractive people.
Yeah.
And...
You know, it used to be more the case that the man didn't have to be quite as attractive, but had to be a solid provider, you know, like the Cary Grant kind of thing.
I'm thinking of To Kill a Mockingbird.
That was Gregory Peck.
Good-looking guy, a great-looking guy.
But, you know, he had a solidity and a wholesomeness and a predictability to him.
That was what was considered attractive back in the day, a suaveness and so on.
Now it's, you know, mostly sit-ups and liposuction and stuff.
But that's for a variety of reasons.
But, I mean, I don't...
It's empowering insofar as female beauty comes with power.
And male resources come with power.
There's a reason why 18-year-old models hang out with Silvio Berlusconi.
I think he's the former PM of...
Italy, and professionally, he just looks like the kind of guy you shake his hand firmly and you come out with like an olive oil coating on your epidermis.
And it's not because he's charming and great looking and all that.
And the last thing I'll say before turning it over to you for your thoughts is that I think it's kind of like a test.
To me, the whole nice guy, gentleman thing is kind of like a test.
Because, I mean, biologically, women want a guy who's going to be a good provider, and that usually means that he's quite assertive, if not outright aggressive.
And there's a reason why women, you know, spend so much time reading Fifty Shades of Grey with one hand.
And...
So I think that, you know, they all say they want a nice guy, but I think that's just to keep the weaklings at bay.
Because I think that they almost want a guy who kind of walks through the nice guy thing.
Not that he's a jerk or abusive or anything like that, but he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you want a nice guy.
I know that one.
And I think women are like, okay, well, now that's interesting.
Because I've been told I want a nice guy, but my eggs want something else.
But what do you think?
Do you think it's empowering?
No, I don't at all, really.
I think it kind of takes females down a notch in general.
I don't know.
It's kind of hard to explain, but I guess prancing these women around on stage and saying, who's the prettiest?
I have no idea how that would bring power to anybody.
I guess I see what you're saying as far as beauty is power to a degree, but I'm just...
I don't know.
Oh, beauty gets money, right?
Right.
Obviously.
I mean, they even reward the prettiest one, quote unquote, with cash.
So, there's an example right there.
That is, you know, men will bring resources.
I mean, this goes on throughout the animal kingdom.
The males bring resources to the females, and then the one who brings the most or the best resources is the one who gets money.
I can't remember the name of the experiment.
There's an experiment with monkeys.
I'm going back to my sociology class like six years ago.
They had all these female and male monkeys in a cage together and they were turning the lights off and in the morning every day You know, progressively they found that the female monkeys were doing less and less work and getting fatter and fatter.
And so they decided to put night cameras on them and they saw that the females were granting the males sex if they brought them bananas.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And you've probably heard a very similar kind of research project where they give monkeys...
Coins that they can redeem for food and the women all go and buy food and the female monkeys all go and buy food and what do the male monkeys all go and buy?
They buy sex, of course.
Yeah, they buy sex.
Yes.
And...
Yeah, so it's...
It's just part of the way we are.
Now, it doesn't mean it's all we are.
We're not sort of solely defined by these biological drives or anything like that, but...
It is empowering...
And it's empowering in a way that...
I'm trying to organize my thoughts here for once in this damn show.
Would you say that you are a very intelligent person?
To a degree.
Okay, to what degree?
I mean, I don't know.
I have schooling under my belt.
I... I'm articulate when not under pressure.
I feel I write fairly well.
I understand concepts.
I mean, what are you looking for here?
No, no, I just, I mean, to raise these questions, to raise these issues, to listen to this show, I'm going to give you some significant brain power, right?
I mean, that's just...
People of average intelligence, you know, get shot, leave appallingly...
Outraged YouTube comments and vanished into the ether to go watch PewDiePie, right?
Right.
So you are an intelligent person.
I don't want to say like an intelligent woman because it sounds like, as opposed to all these other women, this intelligent person.
And so on the bell curve, you're off to the right, you know, off to the higher IQ area.
Thank you.
And you have power because of that.
You have clarity, you have connection, you have capacity to see consequences and, you know, income and opportunities and all of that are highly...
Rated or ranked or correlated to IQ. In fact, you could get rid of four years of college if you could give potential employees a 15-minute IQ test, but that's illegal.
So the reason I'm saying is that there's a bell curve everywhere.
There's a bell curve everywhere.
And these women won the genetic lottery and obviously worked very hard at what they're doing.
And they have received some power out of that.
You go to college, you work very hard to develop your mind.
Maybe you're a super hottie too.
That's obviously possible.
But you're on a bell curve.
They're on a bell curve.
I'm on a bell curve.
Everyone's on a bell curve.
And even those people who are average are on a bell curve in that they have...
There's a bell curve of like social comfort.
You know, so like the people who are less intelligent feel sort of left behind in society and they don't quite get it and they kind of get frustrated a lot and people who are super smart have a tough time fitting into society so even the people who are in the average get the comfort of being right in the middle of the pack in terms of social comfort and feeling part of the Species that they're among.
So they've got the beauty.
Other people have the brains.
Other people have the singing voice.
Other people have the instincts.
Other people have the creativity.
Other people have the musicality.
I mean, it's just bell curves everywhere.
And a lot of times we look at other bell curve situations, like the beauty pageant is one, and it seems kind of odd to us, but I would argue that We're all part of the bell curve at some place, in some area, if that makes sense.
Yes, that makes sense.
And there's power.
And the other thing, too, don't worry, they'll get theirs, right?
Because they get older, right?
Smarter people get smarter, prettier people just get droopy, right?
Yeah.
Accurate.
Well...
Can I offer you another Paula Shugart quote that I was interested in getting your take on?
The Paula Shugart, the president of the pageants.
Oh, okay, okay.
So she had been praised for coming up with these inventive ideas of kind of bringing about awareness that these things were coming up and the shows, I mean.
And by putting the contestants for the beauty pageant on other shows...
One of them being Deal or No Deal, I think I read.
But one of them was Fear Factor.
And her quote from that says, nothing could break down the stereotypes of beauty queens faster than having them compete on Fear Factor.
I was wondering how you felt about that.
I've never watched Fear Factor, but it's an Eat Bugs show, right?
Amongst other things, but yeah.
Yeah, like do horrifying things.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, right.
Right.
Yeah, I myself am not a big fan of spiders.
Winston Smith, it's rats.
Me, it's spiders.
I'm better with them now because my daughter's a big fan.
I got more used to them.
I remember when I was a kid growing up in England, the whole country shut down whenever a Bond film was on.
TV, because it was the 70s, so England was just becoming this progressively Eastern European socialist wreck of a former empire hub.
And I just remember Sean Connery, he had a scene where a tarantula goes up his naked chest.
And I just remember thinking, man, you know, I wouldn't mind being a movie star, but I think I'd have to draw the line, a tarantula.
So having those people in Fear Factor is a way of them what?
According to her, breaking down stereotypes.
Seems like a great way to get ratings, if you ask me.
Let's put the pretty people on the show and force them to eat bugs and hang out of airplanes and do all types of stuff that's going to put them way outside their comfort zone so they have meltdowns, freakouts, and everyone gets to laugh and applaud as this is occurring.
So, pretty people being overly emotional, kind of hysterical.
I'm not saying without cause.
You know, I would say, you know, put them in a chess tournament.
Maybe we're breaking some stereotypes.
I mean, they can do it in a bathing suit if they want.
Maybe that would help them with some of the younger male contestants.
But I don't know, have them do a rap, like spontaneous live rap or beat poetry stuff.
That to me would be more of, you know, ah, there's a mouse.
I'm not sure that that's breaking a lot of stereotypes.
I don't feel it is at all, really.
I just thought I'd get your take on it.
Right.
Have you watched the show?
Do you like it?
Oh, God, I haven't seen it in years.
I used to watch it when I was a teenager.
I'd seen some episodes, but it's been a very, very long time.
And I certainly don't recall any beauty queens on there.
They had a show, I have no idea what it's called, but they had a show where they dropped people into the jungle naked.
Uh-huh.
And they, of course, had, you know, like...
Ex-army rangers who have spent the last 18 years of their lives hanging upside down like a bat doing hyper-muscular Matthew McConaughey-style crunches and turning the skin over their giant abs into what is effectively half-invisible rice paper.
And so they have all these hot people and they're naked in the jungle.
And I guess maybe that's considered to be...
I've never watched one, but I guess that's considered to be maybe breaking some stereotypes too.
I don't know.
I don't know.
All right, then.
So, Steph, the question is, what can women learn from men?
Do you have an answer for that?
Oh, I don't have an answer.
Laura, you should have done the ooh and ah and, you know, disgruntled mumbling.
And when I asked that question so we could master the Miss Universe pageant, but...
I did.
I'm sorry.
I was trying to look this up and I didn't have any luck.
I really was listening.
It was pretty easy to look up, but I can't find it.
I saw this article a couple of days ago and it was a woman who had the same sort of questions that you had, which is, you know, like I'm looking at this beauty pageant.
These women are gorgeous.
They're electric.
They're beautiful and so on.
But is it really empowering?
You know, maybe it's just really degrading.
On the other hand, these women, it's their dream.
They've really pursued it.
They've won the genetic lottery.
Why shouldn't they use what nature gave them to their best advantage?
Yeah, but it really is just about looks, and it really is.
Yes, but at the same time, they have to have a talent, and they do lots of exercise, and they, you know.
And just like, bing, bing, bing.
You know, like women's brains, in general, seem to me like, you know those, I think they're called Newton, whatever those things.
They go, bick, bick, bick, bick.
And they're like a bunch of beads hanging from these triangles.
And they sort of, one hits and the other one goes up.
I remember talking about this when I was in Texas to give a speech, you know.
Women is like, they're stuck in the revolving door of, but on the other hand?
Well, yeah, on the other hand.
Well, no, it's true, but on the other hand.
We can't be fickle this year.
Just open the door and walk through.
No, no, I'm stuck in this little rotating thing.
On the other hand.
And I get it.
I mean, I get that way too.
But...
I mean, if there's more that you want to add, I certainly don't want to go off on a rant if there's more that you wanted to say.
No, I mean, that was mostly it.
I guess the other thing that I don't really understand is how there's so many people, you know, as I had said, crying equality, especially women, and then they go and watch this, and I just don't see how this can...
You know, equals equality for women at all, really, but not even amongst women themselves.
But, yeah, this thing has over 8 million viewers, so I'm sure many of them are crying feminist and, you know, and I just, I don't know.
I don't really have much to say about that.
I just wanted to make a point.
Well, you know, the basic reality is that I think that equality before the law?
Sure.
Equality before the laws of man, women, and physics?
Absolutely.
We all need air.
But equality, to me, is a resentful pickpocket from people who feel that they lack something essential.
And I'm just not a big fan of even the very concept of equality.
I mean, it's like saying that the ideal is for all human beings to be the same height.
Right.
Right.
What would that even mean?
I mean, what does that mean?
And it's also putting forward the proposition that somehow people will be happier if there's more equality.
And I really don't think that that's true.
Like, for instance, I could not be a surgeon.
Right.
I mean...
It's gross.
I mean, it's really icky.
When I watch an episode of Bones, half the time I got my hand in front of the screen like, oh God, I can't watch right now.
It's gross, but I'm glad that there are people who do it.
They're different from me.
As far as capacity for surgery would go, I'm way on the left of the bell curve.
They're way on the right.
We're not equal in that.
There are people who have the most magnificent singing voices.
Freddie Mercury proudly never took a singing lesson and smoked.
I've taken lots of singing lessons.
I don't sound like Freddie Mercury.
It's just the way that it is.
And so I think that this equality thing, this...
Nietzsche has this argument or this idea, which I'll just paraphrase very briefly, called...
Slave morality.
And the slaves who are ruled by their masters can't rebel, won't have an uprising, and won't attempt to take the place of their masters.
But what they try to do is they try to put out these sort of noxious ideas that make their masters feel guilty and to attempt to pull them back down into the sort of slave morality.
And there's an argument, Nietzsche sort of has this argument that this sort of master morality Was responsible for the great achievements of antiquity, particularly the Greeks and the Romans, and then the slave morality, the morality of resentment, spread Like this noxious fume from Christianity and then took down the empire.
Because what happens is then those who are strong, those who are proud, and Nietzsche certainly did allow for ethics in the master morality.
It wasn't just about domination or anything, but courage and forthrightness and honesty and a respect for martial prowess and competence and aggression and so on.
All of these things were part of it, but...
I don't know if you ever had this when you were a kid, but when I was a kid, if I had a piece of gum, do you know what the teacher would say?
Spill it out, I'm assuming?
No, it was, well, did you bring enough for everyone?
Oh, yes.
Did you get that one too?
I've heard that as well, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And...
That is, you can't enjoy your gum unless everyone has the gum.
And you cannot enjoy the girl if other people are lonely.
And you cannot enjoy running if there's a kid in a wheelchair.
And you cannot enjoy your strength if there are people who are weak.
And you cannot enjoy your intelligence if there are people who resent it.
You cannot enjoy your money if there are people without.
You don't want to eat your food as a kid?
What are you told?
They're starving kids elsewhere in the world.
Yeah.
You should enjoy this food.
Because there are other children who are eating termites.
Although, given how my mom cooked, termites actually would seem pretty good.
Tastes like chicken!
So...
We are fascinated by inequality.
I was reading to my daughter the other day about genius kids.
She was curious.
Genius kids.
And...
I mean, some of them are just amazing what they can do.
There was this one kid, she was an Indian girl, she became a Microsoft certified professional at the age of nine.
Tragically, he died at the age of 16.
And if you look around at the world that you live in, Almost everything that is the most valuable to you was created by people who are damn well not equal to you or me.
You know, I spent some time as an entrepreneur in business.
Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, I was not.
Those guys had significantly better skills, let's say, in business than I did.
I'd like to think maybe I'm a bit better at philosophy than them, but that's just part of my particular bell curve placement.
But all of these amazing things.
The guy who invented the polio vaccine, Alexander Salk, I think his name was.
Genius to put that together.
Incredibly hard work.
And saved millions of lives.
Saved millions of lives.
And a remarkable person.
And So we kind of want to take all of these incredible gifts given to us by exceptional people and tear them out of their hands and spread them all around to make everything equal.
I think that's a bit of a female thing, because I think boys are very much like, let's compete and see who's the best.
And that's not, you know, it's a big stereotype, it's very general, and there's lots of exceptions and so on, but I think that there is a philosophy that says, whoever wins, we all win.
Right?
Is there a sport that you like to watch?
No.
I'm not a very big sports person.
All right.
Who's your favorite movie actor?
Oh my gosh.
I think I don't even really pay attention to that sort of stuff.
Do you have a flat square device in your house that looks like a window into a hyperkinetic other dimension?
I did.
Pulling out celebrity names.
Let's go with Edward Norton.
He's pretty good.
Oh, Eddie N. Oh, yeah.
No, he's a very good actor.
Indeed.
Okay.
So, I mean, Edward Norton is exceptional, right?
Right.
I don't know if it's talent.
I don't know if it's hard work and so on.
Primal Fear, was that the first film he was in with Richard Gere?
Wow.
What an acting performance.
Fight Club?
Killer.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Even Stone I could live with.
So that's exceptional.
And so we only want to look at the exceptional people and we only want to make the world egalitarian.
But nobody's going to go to Carnegie Hall to listen to karaoke.
Right.
Right.
So we have this ambivalent relationship, you know, on the other hand, stuck in the revolving door.
We want people to be exceptional so that we can get all the fruits of their talent and focus and ambition.
But at the same time, we want everyone to be equal so nobody feels left out or left behind.
Yeah.
And I don't know, there's no answer to it.
I mean, it's not like one or the other.
Of course, we don't want people to be left behind, if at all, avoidable.
But at the same time, we do have this belief, which I think goes right back to the idea of the soul.
Because according to the soul, we are all equal.
There's no bell curve in the soul.
More susceptible to Satan.
Better as a drag queen.
The soul is immaterial and is made by God and is like an impression from a king's ring on wax.
For everyone, it's the same.
So there is an egalitarianism in religion.
That doesn't exist in the biological world.
Biological world is compete and win, compete and win, compete and win.
Or die, and the genes die with you.
And...
So in the realm of the soul, which translates into the realm of democracy, of voting, one person, one vote.
Really?
Really?
That's how it really should be.
No, it should not be that way, of course, and...
There should be, obviously, as you know, I'm an anarchist.
There should be no voting in terms of political power at all.
But there is this idea that we're all told that egalitarianism is an ideal.
And yet we all want to be famous.
We can't all be famous.
I think the most important thing for kids in England these days is to be famous.
That's what they want the most.
To be famous and have a dad.
Wouldn't put them in that order, but...
And so we want to look at these famous people and at the same time we want everything to be egalitarian.
But I think that the idea of egalitarianism is very toxic for people's ambition because they want the world to smooth things out for them rather than go and achieve their highest potential themselves.
Like Barack Obama in his recent State of the Union is really tickling the class warfare ivories, right?
And it's like, well, go tax the rich and give you free stuff.
And I think that's a very sad thing for people to be susceptible to.
I mean, when I grew up, I mean, obviously, when I was in boarding school, there were lots of rich kids around, but when I was in high school, there were two guys there.
One of them was in my theater troupe.
And, I mean, their family was staggeringly rich.
And I remember going over to their house, and it's like, because, you know, I had this tiny little apartment or whatever.
No car.
There's like nine cars parked in the garage.
You go into the house, it's like, oh wow, this is a nice house.
They're like, no, no, no, this is just the antechamber.
On we go.
Pick up some cram and some peaches.
We're going to go on a hike to see the whole house.
And the same thing happened when I visited my dad in Africa.
Some very rich friends of the houses just went on and on.
Furniture, all of them.
It's amazing.
And When I would be around people with a lot of money, my first thought wasn't, boy, it'd be great if I could get the government to tax them to give me their money so that I could have money.
I mean, that to me would be like, well, that guy's dating a really attractive woman.
It'd be really great if the government could force that woman to go out with me, too.
It's like, no, now that I know it's possible, maybe I can aim to get a couple of Coins together in my life, you know?
You look at the rich, you don't say, I want their money taken from me by government.
It's like, no, leave them with their money so that when I get rich, I can keep my money too or give it to charity or do whatever I want with it.
Yeah.
But I think people have kind of been broken down a lot and been very tempted by this sort of low-hanging fruit of political redistribution to the point where they say, I hate those rich guys.
They should give me their money.
All they're confessing is that they never think they could achieve it themselves, which is, I think, a shame, because maybe they could.
Yeah, I agree with that.
All right.
Well, listen, I appreciate that.
Obviously, I'm not going to get to Mike's question, just so everybody knows.
We can do that on a separate show.
It's a solo cast, and I think that would...
And not a solo cast like that woman in the university library.
But, yeah, look it up.
Look it up!
It took me a second.
I got it.
It just...
It was there.
I clicked on it by accident.
I thought it was the twin moons of Tatooine.
Anyway.
Who do we have next?
Thanks again.
Alright, Dan is up next.
Dan wrote in and said, if peaceful parenting is what the world needs, then more must be better.
How many kids is too many?
He also asked, how long can a family reasonably homeschool?
And regarding balancing children and career advancement, is it worth working 50 hour weeks, given the lost time with your kids?
Well, I don't know that philosophy could answer these questions.
I mean, they're interesting questions for sure.
You know, how many kids is too many?
I think that you want to be able to spend a reasonable amount of time, you know, and one-on-one time as well with kids.
You know, a lot of times kids, they get into this like pink blur of like giant chirping baby bird mouths, which parents are just throwing worms into.
And parents don't often say, okay, you know, it's We've got three kids or whatever.
It's my afternoon to go and spend time with just one of the kids and have that sort of one-on-one relationship.
They're just sort of the squalling mess of six arms and six legs.
So I think have kids to the point where you can have quality time with each of the kids.
Not exclusively, but I think that's important.
50 hours a week?
I mean...
Sorry to interrupt.
I wanted to break out the questions a little bit.
The first one, like how many kids is too many.
One of the reasons being, you know, I'm pretty excited about Free Domain Radio.
I'm a big fan.
I've listened to over a thousand episodes.
I donate every month and I recommend others do the same.
Thank you.
And so I'm full in.
I'm interested in homeschooling and all of that.
And so I know that homeschooling obviously would take a lot of additional time compared to I'm sending away to school as well.
And so, you know, given that wanting to spend a lot of one-on-one time with kids and wanting to be able to homeschool them at home, but not having any myself, I'm trying to understand what would be a realistic number.
Because obviously, you know, if peaceful parenting is good, then more should be better.
So why not, you know, aim for the stars, aim for the clouds, but without getting carried away to the point where your relationships with your kids start to suffer because you have too many Especially with all the time it takes to raise a kid, especially with homeschooling.
Yeah, and I mean, I only have one, so I'm not going to be able to speak with much experience here, but I think that you can homeschool all the way.
That's no particular barrier, and I think the statistics speak quite well of how well the homeschooled kids do, so I don't think there's any limit there.
I mean, obviously check with your local Law enforcement.
But I don't think there's any practical limit to it.
I think that homeschooling with multiple kids is probably a little bit easier because they can also mentor each other and instruct each other on their various skills and abilities, which I think is good because it gives them a chance to mentor as well as be students.
So I think that's all great.
As far as working goes, it's a tough call, you know, because Once you have a very solid relationship with your kids, you don't have to be around quite as much.
I mean, I simply say this, there are days when I'm just like, get obsessed with a particular project.
And it's not often, but you know, I won't see my daughter a huge amount and she's fine.
And she's totally fine with it.
And then the next day we'll spend like eight hours doing something fun.
But as far as work goes, I think that my suggestion has always been that try to get some coin in the bank.
At least for the first couple of years, maybe work less for the first couple of years of your kid's life so that you can be there as much as possible.
And then when they get older, you can gear up your career if you feel that's important or if that is important to you.
One of the reasons I ask is I know that when you talk about doing entrepreneurial activities, especially for young people, even more so when they have more time before they have kids, And how it's, you know, it's not unusual to put in a lot of effort, you know, blood, sweat, and tears raised in a business.
And so I'm kind of curious if those suggestions also apply to people with kids or when you give that kind of advice, are you suggesting, you know, for young people before they have kids?
I'm just trying to get a better grasp on the work and family balance.
Yeah, but I mean, it's not something that you decide.
Yeah.
It's something that you would talk over with your kids.
Gotcha.
So if they're too young, then try to be there as much as possible until they're like a couple of years old or whatever.
Try and be there as much as possible.
But it is the kind of thing where you would say to the kids, listen, do you want more time with daddy or do you want us to have more money?
I mean, I think I know what they're going to say.
Sure, sure, sure.
That would be a choice that you would make With their very significant input, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and that's another thing that I think could come into play with the number of kids, too.
It's like, obviously, the fewer kids, the less salary requirements you would have.
So you would be able to much more easily spend more time, maybe even work part-time sometimes.
Well, yeah, but of course, remember, salary is only one half of the equation of financial security.
The other half is expenses, right?
Sure, sure.
And so, you know, if you, I don't know, buy a place in the country, grow some of your own food, maybe you don't need two cars, maybe you can find a way to work at home.
And so there's lots of things that you could do to keep your expenses down and therefore not have as much of a challenge when it comes to feeding, clothing to kids and all that.
So it's not just, you know, if you need more money, we have this, well, here are my expenses, and I need more money.
It's like, well, just lower your expenses, you know, if at all possible.
And there's usually a lot that we can do to lower our expenses if we really have to, right?
Oh, I agree.
I'm definitely a low-expense kind of guy.
Yeah, I mean, that's how human beings grew up throughout most of human history.
And the other thing, too, is that...
You know, the great challenge of modern parenting is these goddamn electronics.
And that is a huge challenge.
Mike, if you can get me a study or two.
We were just talking about this this week as sort of our research team meetings.
And it's rough, you know.
I mean, the electronics are so shiny and so distracting and so engaging and so enjoyable and all this, that, and the other.
And we do sort of tell ourselves...
That the computers make our kids smarter and there was this big government program in the states to try and get a laptop into the hands of every underprivileged kid and so on and wherever they handed out these laptops the moment their kids got a hold of them the kids math and reading scores plummeted because Minecraft is more fun than reading and so that that is a big challenge For parents these days.
And there are significant indicators that children who grow up with their noses buried in electronics end up with significantly impaired social skills and so on.
And naturally, of course, right?
I mean, when I was a kid, one of the things that I did like about my family was that dinner was conversation time.
And these days, you know, I went to...
A restaurant, fast food restaurant, let's be honest, with my daughter the other day.
And, you know, she's in the phase where she's reading everything she can get her eyes on.
And I introduced her to Braille because there was a door that said staff only and underneath it was in Braille.
So we talked about Braille.
And then we talked about how we would invent our own sign language.
And so, you know, how do we say I love you without using any words?
Just using our hands or my cat really needs to pee or something like that.
And it was really a huge amount of fun.
Of course, you can imagine, right?
And I really enjoyed her creativity in how to communicate with a made-up sign language some very abstract things.
And, you know, that's great fun.
But, you know, one of the things that's always floating around is Is, you know, all the other families where the parents are maybe chatting a bit or maybe playing with their phones and the kids are all on their electronics.
And this is what happens.
The parents sit down, out come the electronics and poof goes any capacity for a conversation.
And that is...
It's a huge problem.
I mean, I think it is a problem that is going to be a world-changing problem, a society-changing problem.
And again, I have no problem with computer games.
I have no problem with electronics in any fundamental way.
It is helpful and useful, but you really do need to compete with electronics as a parent.
And we have the option of upping our game or surrendering to the electronics.
And I think a lot of parents are surrendering to the Electronics.
Seven hours a day, up two and a half hours over the last decade, estimated by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The kids spend on entertainment media is having serious consequences.
Seven hours a day!
It's sugar for the brain.
So here are some of the consequences.
Impeded social interaction.
This is the reason the Academy recommends absolutely no electronics or screen time for children under two.
If you're in front of the screen, you have less interaction with the parent or caregiver, which will directly impact the vocabulary babies are learning to develop, as well as overall social development, says a researcher.
Those consequences don't disappear as kids get older.
Some parents argue, it's okay because my kid is using the computer all day and chatting with friends online.
She's building social skills, right?
No, she says.
They're missing out on nonverbal communication, rich and deep conversational skills, Real-time social skills, knowing how to respond.
We're wired to interact with people and our brain is wired to learn through social interactions.
Squelched creativity.
If you look at it simply when you're engaging in a phone, an iPad, a computer, you're not using critical thinking skills.
You're not being creative.
You're essentially glued to something you're visually watching instead of working on all of your senses and development.
Screen time can be educational but only to an extent.
Researcher says if kids are learning through a screen, they're not learning how they're wired to learn.
Childhood obesity.
For each hour of TV watched, a child would consume an additional 167 calories, according to the archives of pediatric and adolescent medicine.
Interrupted sleep patterns.
Researcher says there's preliminary information coming out about how the blue light of smartphones and tablets can have an effect similar to caffeine.
The light messes with the sleep cycle and tricks the brain into thinking it's still daylight because it's getting all this stimulation.
Behavior problems.
Elementary students spending more than two hours a day in front of a computer or TV screens are more likely to have social, emotional, and attention problems, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Sometimes, though, parents question an attention disorder diagnosis by saying their child can sit still for hours while watching TV. Yeah, well, they're able to do so because it's passive stimulation.
The brain doesn't have to work for it.
Information overload, another researcher says, our goal is a brain that's efficient.
Movies like Lucy make us assume more activation is better, and that's not necessarily the case.
We want teens to work smarter and not harder, not for them to be trying to be on and all over the place all the time.
Human beings aren't wired for multitasking, this woman says.
What we're really doing is toggling back and forth quickly and creating shadow distributed brain networks as opposed to optimizing strong and resilient connections.
A study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior found that sixth graders who went five days without exposure to technology were significantly better at reading human emotions than kids who had regular access to phones, televisions, and computers.
At the beginning and end of the five-day study period, both groups of kids were shown images of nearly 50 faces and asked to identify the feelings being modeled.
Researchers found that the students who went to camp scored significantly higher when it came to reading facial emotions or other Non-verbal cues and students who continue to have access to the media devices.
So that's only five days.
And you can go on and on.
Again, I'm not a Luddite.
I mean, I get that these things are cool and fun and there can be some good stuff, for sure, that comes out of computers.
It's a different world from when I was a kid.
I mean, I got my first computer when I was 12, and I used it to play some games, but basically I learned how to code because games sucked.
Well, Star Raiders was great, although the guy who wrote it never got a penny.
But anyway, it's amazing what you can fit on 8K of assembly.
But...
You've made games, but that's not the way things are now.
I mean, how many kids are programming games?
Obviously a few, but most of the games are so absorbing and so enticing and the freemium model lets you just sample forever.
And they're not interacting with people.
And we are a social species.
And I am concerned about conversational qualities of children and their capacity to interact in real time with other people.
And in general, I've always had a problem trying to chat with a lot of kids.
They just don't seem to have conversational skills.
How to ask questions, how to relate, how to keep a conversation going, and so on.
They're either kind of giggly and hysterical and distracted, Or they're kind of inert and monosyllabic.
And I think that's a real shame because the great delight and glory of human existence is our conversations.
And so I think if you're home, you know, I don't obviously forbid my daughter electronics, but I view it as my challenge to compete with electronics and to make interacting with me more fun than electronics.
So I take it on as a challenge.
But I'm not sure that's the most common reaction.
Does that make any sense?
Oh, definitely.
I wanted to bring one more question.
With regards to the number of kids that's reasonable or realistic, one of the reasons I ask that as well is that my parents were not very good to me growing up, and so I don't speak to them anymore.
And I know that that will definitely make it harder to raise a large number of kids because...
Having grandparents around obviously makes it easy, gives the parents a break, or also allows more one-on-one time if you have four to six adults rather than just two.
And so I was wondering, what kind of impact do you think that might make on a reasonable maximum for kids?
And I don't have a potential wife at the moment, but in the future, if I were to meet one who was also in a similar situation that didn't have the greatest of parents growing up, Would only having two adults present, and obviously we could have friends help out and things like that, but without having grandparents around, would that put a damper on a number of kids that would be reasonable?
Yeah, it's a tough call, and I'm obviously very sorry to hear about what's happened with your family of origin.
But I would say that, again, It's the chance for you to up your game.
Can you make friendships that will give you the same kind of reliability and intimacy and continuity as a healthy family would?
And can you get close to your neighbors?
That is a way of sort of upping your game.
And look, I mean, there's...
If you have the option, if your parents are healthy, and they don't have to be perfect, obviously nobody is, but if your parents are relatively healthy and you have kids, having grandparents around is great.
And I think studies have shown that it is positive.
I mean, not to the point where, you know, if they're horrible people or whatever, I think that's just going to be negative.
But I think that the challenge then is for you to create that kind of same commitment through voluntary social relations rather than through a family.
Sorry, you said it?
I was saying, I think on a net, having my parents around children would not be a good thing.
I understand the definite value, and I wish I did have parents that were good with kids, but I would say that I'd be afraid to introduce any potential kids that I have around them.
I think it would be a net negative.
Sorry for that.
Go ahead.
And so you're saying that you can definitely make up for that with a lot of strong friend and neighbor relations that might be able to also even out that detriment, you could say?
Yeah, I think so.
It doesn't mean that you have to be alone in the raising of your kids.
There are great people out there who want to be in your life because you're a good friend.
Gotcha.
Yep.
All right.
Well, I think that wraps up all the questions I had.
Thanks for your time.
All right.
So listen, best of luck to you.
And I hope your fertility matches your ambition.
We can't always outthink them.
Maybe we can outbreed them.
Hey, why not?
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks, Steph.
Mike's also mentioned that there are theories that the rise in screen time is tied to the rise in ADHD. Yeah.
And it is tough, you know, when you have a geriatric teacher up there squeaking away on a blackboard or a whiteboard, it's kind of tough to compete with Candy Crush.
You get the teacher that's been in her job for 20 years who's, you know, possibly only there because her union won't let anyone fire her competing with, you know, Clash of Clans or something.
That's going to be tough.
It's going to be tough.
After you're a cocaine bender, I'm going to introduce you to some slowed down Eskimo throat singing.
Do you want to learn math?
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, Alex is up next.
Alex wrote in and said, when we say that something is preferable, we imply a condition or a goal as the basis for comparison.
For example, if we want to determine a valid truth about the behavior of matter and energy, it is preferable to use the scientific method.
When we talk about universally preferable behavior, what condition do we imply?
For example, when we say, to not murder, is UPB, do we not imply the following, if you want to be virtuous, you should not murder.
Hello, Stan.
Hi, Alex.
These are great questions and I appreciate you bringing them up.
Did you want to add something else?
Oh, yeah, sure.
So, first of all, before we start, I wanted to say a big thank you for making this world a more peaceful and rational place.
A few friends of mine and I recently started a philosophical project In Russian, inspired by Freedom in Radio.
And so we are working right now on a summary of UPB. We spent hours and hours discussing it among ourselves and on the forum.
And we had a group call.
And I think people get the idea of UPB. But when we start digging into details, then we have questions that people have different opinions about.
And so I hope to get some of them answered here.
Well, thanks for your kind words and congratulations on your project.
I mean, that's very inspiring and I really appreciate that.
And I'll certainly do what I can to answer.
And if I can't answer, I promise to keep working on it until hopefully I can.
So you're saying that there's a conditionality to preferable.
You know, if you want to lose weight, you should eat less and exercise more or vice versa.
So there's an if which preconditions The preferability, right?
Right, right.
Right.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
As Hume famously pointed out, you can't get an is from an ought.
Now, I think I found a backdoor to that, which has been particularly relevant right now.
But certainly, preferences do not exist in reality.
And, you know, the The laws of physics are not open to my subjective whims.
You know, I can't choose to step off a building and keep walking in like a Flintstones cartoon.
So the laws of physics are not subject to this conditional, this if.
But certainly with ethics and anything that's around a free will, there is that aspect of it.
But she said, if you want to be virtuous, do not murder.
Is that right?
Yeah, basically said that, so we have a rule, let's say, you should not murder, right?
So we say every time we have a preference, when something is preferable, we need a condition for it, or a goal, just like with the scientific method, for example, right?
So when we say you should not murder, what would be the condition here?
Okay, so, yeah.
You should not murder is technically nagging.
It's not philosophy.
Guys, don't pick my pockets.
Hey, no stealing.
No killing.
I mean, that's a commandment, right?
Oh, you should not murder or don't murder.
If you want to be virtuous, do not murder.
But that's circular, and that doesn't break the problem of what is virtue.
Because it's a tautology.
So you say, well, not murdering is virtuous, and so if you want to be virtuous, do not murder.
But all we've done is create a synonym for not murdering called virtue.
But we haven't actually added virtue.
Anything?
It's like the old, you know, when I was back in my debating team in my early 20s in college, you know, we were taught about tautologies, which is, you know, Coke is it, and then I end up defining it as Coke.
So I've just said Coke is Coke.
It hasn't really added anything.
And so if virtue is then synonymous to don't murder or not murdering, Then all you've done is create a logical equivalent between do not murder and virtue.
But you haven't convinced anyone or you haven't really added anything as far as an argument go.
So if you want to be virtuous, do not murder is not a philosophical statement.
So the way that I would reframe that, not that I'm saying you should go and murder, but the way that I would reframe that, Alex, is I would say that murder cannot be universally preferable behavior.
And there's lots of reasons which I've gone over on the show a million times before.
So, you know, the two guys in a room, they can't both murder because murder has to be unwanted.
Otherwise, it's euthanasia or something.
So you can't both murder.
Two guys can't both murder each other in the same room because murder then has to be something that both people universally prefer and universally reject at the same time.
In the same way that...
If you want to borrow something of mine and I say, okay, you can take it from me, that's not theft.
But to steal something from me means that I don't want you to steal it.
And if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then I have to want you to steal from me, but at the same time, I have to not want you to steal from me, because that's the only way that the condition of theft or unwanted removal of property will be met.
So it is logically and practically impossible for two people to To both follow the rule, murder is universally preferable behavior, or rape is universally preferable behavior, or theft or assault are universally preferable behaviors.
Right, right.
Sorry for interrupting.
Yeah, you also define virtue as acting in accordance with UPB, so I agree with you, right?
We get a tautology here, or a circle reference, we define virtue through UPB, and UPB through virtue here.
But I was wondering, what could be a condition here?
Because do you think that every time when we talk about any preference, when we say that something is preferable, like not murder is preferable, there should be a condition.
Like maybe it could be not virtuous, but if you want to act more...
No, no.
Sorry to interrupt you, Alex.
But preferable is dropping the U. You're just making it into PB, preferable behavior.
It's the universal behavior.
That makes it ethics.
So you could say murder cannot be universally preferable behavior.
And therefore to refrain from murdering is to act in accordance with universally preferable behavior.
So this makes it not a preference.
Because that sounds like I like...
Lemon meringue pie over bumbleberry or something.
It's not the preference part that's essential because as you know, preferences exist in life as a whole that have nothing to do with ethics, right?
Koalas prefer eucalyptus leaves to eat.
It doesn't make it an ethical choice for them, right?
Lizards prefer the sunlight when it's hot.
This is not an ethical.
So preferences exist All over the place.
The lion prefers to eat the gazelle.
The gazelle prefers to not be eaten by the lion.
But these are not moral decisions.
It's the universality that makes the preferences specific to both human consciousness and philosophy.
Because animals do not have the concept or the abstraction called universally.
Obviously, they can tell...
A lion can tell it's an antelope rather than a rock and so on, so they have sort of sense data that they can abstract.
But they do not have the concept of mammal versus lizard as sort of an idea.
So it's the universally part that is really important.
Most people focus on the preference, which is fine, it's certainly part of it, but it's a very tiny part of the preferences that living organisms have As a whole, and it's only living organisms that have preferences into rocks or anything like that.
You know, there was this old idea that Aristotle had with this sort of four elements, also a soul group.
And, you know, that there was a fire element was way up and that fire leapt up from the ground because it wanted to rejoin the element and the water element was below and water poured down a cliff because it wanted to rejoin.
It had a preference to rejoin the element and so on.
So, you know, entertaining nonsense in hindsight.
But...
So I get that you're focusing on the preference stuff, which is important, but the most important thing to focus on is the universality.
So murder, the initiation of force as a whole, cannot be universally preferable behavior.
And therefore, you cannot propose it as an ethical standard.
Now, you can say some people like to murder.
Steph, hold on a second.
Let me clarify this.
When we say a scientific method is universally preferable if we want to determine a valid truth about behavior of matter and energy, right?
Do we mean universally preferable here in the same way as we mean to not murder is universally preferable, or in a different way?
Well, I'm trying to sort of jam science into UBB, so give me a second here to back this truck of So basically, the question is, why do we have a condition there?
Like, if you want to determine a valid truth about reality, right, then a scientific method is universally preferable.
But if you don't want to...
Okay, so hang on, hang on.
Wait, wait, don't keep talking while I'm trying to get my thoughts organized.
I just get confused.
So I'm trying to sort of bring it back to the room.
Bob and Doug, my two famous Canadian examples of logical consistency.
So Bob and Doug...
Cannot both steal from each other at the same time.
I think we've gone over that argument.
So I'm sort of thinking about this.
So in this environment, can Bob and Doug...
Can Bob pursue the scientific method while Doug consults chicken entrails to determine some truth about the universe?
Well, they can, right?
So that's how we know, I would say, that...
Science does not exist in the realm of morality.
Because two people in the same room can both pursue science and not pursue science at the same time, which is not the case with something like rape or murder or theft or assault.
And so that's how you get the if for one, but not for the other.
So you would say to these two guys, you'd say to the guy using the scientific method, good on you, mate!
And then you'd say to the guy who's reading Chicken Entrails, You're just getting dirty for no particular reason other than your own delusions.
So you would say to them, if you want to know something true about the universe, you need to use the scientific method.
But with regards to theft, it's impossible for theft to be universally preferable behavior.
Whereas two people can both pursue and not pursue science at the same time.
Does that help at all?
Right, but if we take the part that's possible, let's say, to not steal, right, to not murder, should we have a condition there, too?
Just like with the scientific method we have.
If you want to know the truth about reality, then the scientific method is preferable.
No, no, because theft cannot be universalized.
Well, I'm talking about to not steal.
So to not steal is universally preferable if, I don't know, maybe if we want to act morally?
No, because this is self-contained.
There's no if in this part.
Theft cannot be universally preferable behavior.
You know, it's completely impossible.
It's a massive contradiction to imagine that theft can be universalized.
It can't happen either practically or theoretically.
Whereas you cannot pursue science.
Now, of course, people can go and steal.
Of course, individuals can go and steal.
But it cannot be universalized.
Now, what's also true is that chicken entrail reading for discovering the truth about the universe also cannot be universalized.
But at least one person can pursue science and one person cannot pursue science in the same room.
But with regards to theft, rape, assault, and murder, it's impossible.
For two people in the same room to achieve those as universal, universally preferable behavior.
So, in one, there's no if.
You know, if you want to be moral or something like that.
It's just that these things cannot be universalized.
They cannot be universally preferable behavior.
Now, people can say, if they want, well, ethics doesn't have anything to do with universality, right?
And that's a way that they would try and jump out of UPB. But they would then have the challenge.
If they say that ethics has nothing to do with universally, it's just preferable behavior, then they have to say how a lizard wanting to go into the sun is not in the realm of ethics, but things like rape and murder are.
Now, they may say, if they really want to hang tight to this bobsled into the canyon of irrationality, they could say, well, yeah, a lizard's desire to go into the sun is an ethical, in which case I think that they just, I mean, you could tease that apart logically, but I think at that point they've just taken themselves out of the realm of rational consideration.
And so, if people say, well, ethics has nothing to do with universality, then they have to not use the term ethics, and they just have to use the term personal preference.
And then there are two kinds of personal preferences, of course.
There are personal preferences which do not impose on other people.
Do not infringe upon other people's liberties and personhood.
And then there are personal preferences, which do infringe on other people.
So one personal preference might be, I really want to pick my nose.
Well, assuming I'm not on some kiss cam at a ballgame that's going to gross people out, I'm not really infringing on other people.
So if I'm sitting in my basement picking my nose...
But if I want to go out and strangle some guy, then I am imposing, right?
So there are these two kinds of preferences, one which is violently imposed upon another and then the other ones which aren't, whether it's trade or something that you're just personally doing to yourself, whatever.
And to attempt to jam all of these things together, like the lizard wanting the sunlight and choices which are, or preferences which are imposed upon others versus not imposed upon others, which are voluntary versus violent and so on, then you're just Jamming everything together and there's this this giant blob which is undifferentiated and I think that would not even be remotely precise enough and not to allow for any divisions in that are rational and divisions which would be opposite in practice so I would say
that People can't dump the universality out of ethics in the moment the universality is necessary and For ethics, which I think I made a pretty good case.
Again, if people want to get more into the book, you really should.
It's a pretty well-written book, and it's pretty clear.
There's some things I like to polish up, but we'll get to it.
Oh, it's on the list.
But it's called Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
You can get it at freedomaderadio.com slash free.
But I certainly would not argue that...
You could just dump universality out of preferences.
And the moment you have universality, by definition, really, it has to be universal.
So anything which cannot be universalized cannot be part of ethics, because ethics is, by definition, universally preferable behavior.
Steph, hold on a second.
So with the scientific method, is it the universal preference or not?
Is it universally preferable behavior?
Yeah, so when we say...
Yeah, you've got the if.
If you want to say something true about science, sorry, if you want to say something true about the material world, you need to use the scientific method.
Right, so it's a universal preference.
But with UPB, given that ethics is universally preferable behavior, I know that sounds like a tautology, but I've really made the case in the book, so forgive me and dig it up, and if I haven't, please let me know.
But...
Hold on, give me a second.
Let me clarify.
So when we talk about preferences, let's say we say this car is preferable to this car based on certain criteria, right?
So scientific method is preferable to dancing, praying to gods, for example, right?
If we want to learn truth about reality, right?
But when we get to UPB, you're saying that To not murder is universally preferable to murder without any condition.
Again, I don't know why I'm having trouble getting this across to you, but you keep going back to the preferable part, which is it is impossible for murder to be universalized.
And because it can't be universalized, it cannot be ethical.
Right, but there's still a preference, right?
We prefer...
Not to murder, over to murder, right?
No, no, no, no.
I just told you, I just told you, you hung up on preference, and then you went right back to preference.
Forget the preference, okay?
But it's there, right?
Forget the preference.
No, no.
Think of the logic of it.
Think of the logic of it.
Do you understand that it's not possible for two men to steal from each other at the same time?
Right, right.
Yeah, totally get that part.
But I was just wondering...
Okay, so no, no, don't go any further.
Don't go any further.
Stop.
Step by step.
Because you keep on...
You got a Pogo stick with a jetpack on it.
Okay.
So it is impossible for...
We'll just go with theft.
It's the easiest.
It's impossible for theft to be universally preferable behavior, right?
Now, there's no if about that.
Right?
Let me put it another way.
Is it possible for a gas to both expand and contract at the same time when heated?
So if you phrase it, to not steel, it's possible, right?
No, no, hang on.
You're going somewhere else again.
Just stay with me for this part.
It's really important.
Is it possible for a gas to expand and contract at the same time when it's heated?
No.
No.
Now, is there an if about that?
But here we're talking about...
No, no, no!
Stay with me!
Stop breaking ranks!
Just let yourself be led, and then I'll let you lead me afterwards.
Just let yourself be led, step by step, right?
I'm like the dance teacher, and I'm saying, step here.
And you're trying to do handstands, all right?
On a trampoline, on the wall.
Okay.
So it's not possible for a gas to both expand and contract at the same time when it's heated, right?
Right.
Okay.
Is there an if about that?
No.
Okay, so that's exactly the same as UPB. But here we talk about behavior of people versus physical reality.
No, no, no.
It's not behavior.
It's the universality.
Okay, is it possible for two and two to make both four and five at the same time?
No.
Okay, is there an if to do with that?
No.
Okay, so that's what I'm talking about, is that it is logically impossible for theft to be universally preferable behavior.
Now, forget about the murder-preferable ethics.
That is logically impossible.
It is a contradiction.
It cannot ever happen in any universe, in any way, shape, or form.
Okay, so...
Let me paraphrase it.
So you're saying...
If, for example, theft is not possible, right, as UPB, then there is no if here.
But for things like scientific method that are possible to be universalized, then they have a if condition, right?
It is not a logical contradiction to avoid the scientific method in the same way that to promote incompatible behaviors or opposite behaviors as universally preferable is.
So there are two different categories of things, right?
Yes, yes.
Let me give you an analogy, and I appreciate your patience with this, because this is where people get tripped up a lot, and I get it, right?
Let me put it to you this way.
There's a difference if I say two bricks and two bricks make four bricks, right?
And if I say...
If you want to build this wall, you need 50 bricks.
This wall will take you 50 bricks to build, right?
So one of them is two and two make four, right?
There's no if involved.
It's not like, well, if you want it to make five, it can make five.
Or if you want to build a whatever.
It's not.
Two and two make four.
Two bricks and two bricks make four.
That's a self-contained reality, right?
Now, the if is, well, if you want to build this wall, you need 50 bricks.
So those two are not the same situations.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
All right.
Let me maybe approach it from a different side.
With aesthetically positive actions, when we talk about, for example, be on time, right?
Or be polite.
Is there an if there?
I'm just trying to...
Hang on.
I'm not sure we finished the last part.
Because it feels like I'm just trying to grab the soap, but it keeps jumping out.
Now we're going off into aesthetics, right?
But did we finish the last part?
I think no.
Okay, then let's go back to the last part, because I want to keep moving.
Even before we get to the proof, I'm just even talking about the very beginning when we just defined UPV. Even before we get to the actual proof, I wanted to, since there is preference there, I know that there is universality.
But there is also, we say that scientific method is universal, right?
And you're saying that theft is not possible for two people if we want to look further ahead into proof.
But for example, not stealing is universally possible.
So when there's something that's universally possible, even if we go with this logic, is there an if for something that's universally possible just as not stealing or using the scientific method?
Well, can two people both be late at the same time?
Yeah.
All right.
So it's a different category from theft, right?
Two people cannot both steal from each other.
Sorry, theft cannot be universally preferable behavior.
Two people can both be late at the same time.
Actually, it's an interesting question.
I'm not sure if two people can be late at the same time.
So the first person comes in first, and then at that moment the other person is late, but this person cannot be late anymore.
If we're talking about two people that are meeting together, right?
No, if we're going to meet at 9 and we both show up at 9.15, we're both late, right?
Well, I guess, yeah, if it's a great time.
Right.
Okay, but let's go back to the bricks, right?
So, if you want to build a wall, you need 50 bricks.
That's a conditional, right?
Okay.
But two bricks and two bricks make four bricks is not an if.
It's not a conditional, right?
Right.
And that's the difference.
So UPB is two bricks and two bricks make four bricks, not if you want to be moral or if you want to build this wall, you need 50 bricks.
Okay.
So to not murder is a consistent logical moral proposition, right?
Universally preferable behavior.
Oh, universally preferable behavior.
Yeah, murder cannot be universally preferable behavior because it must be both wanted, it must be both the highest value and the opposite of the highest value at the same time.
It's like having a physics theory which says that a rock falls both down and upward at the same time.
That simply can't happen.
And so to not murder is UPB, right?
Well, to be more precise, because not murdering is, I mean, technically that's true, but it's not a very helpful category.
I would say that murder cannot be universally preferable behavior.
And this is the challenge and this is, you know, where I need to work on the book and a little bit more because the opposite of evil must be good, right?
But what is the opposite of murder?
Well, it's to not murder, but I don't think that we would say that somebody is necessarily the paragon of virtue because they've managed to go through a day without killing someone.
That's a topic for another time.
If we could just get rid of rape, assault, theft, and murder from the world, we'd have a paradise that we could barely even conceive of at the moment.
So I'm happy to just keep working on that.
There are more positive virtues that I think are important.
You know, courage, integrity, and standing up for people who are being hurt or wronged, standing firm against the evildoers, you know, all that kind of stuff.
There are positive virtues, but they're not enforceable.
You can shoot someone who's coming to strangle you.
You can't shoot someone for lacking courage, right?
I mean, so the sort of the realm of positive virtues, I will get to in UPB 2.0, which is, you know, I've actually started making some notes for it and all that.
But right now, for sure, we can definitely say that the four major bands that every moral system has at its heart, except for the rulers and the priests and gods, Is, you know, thou shalt not kill, rape, assault, and murder.
And those are perfectly validated by UPB. And there's no conditional in them.
There's no if you want to be, then don't do.
Because, I mean, not only would that not be good philosophy, but it would not be particularly convincing.
I mean...
I don't want to kill anyone.
You don't want to kill anyone.
And if we did, I don't know that a philosophical argument would stop us.
So, it's the old thing.
It's like, ethics traditionally has been a diet book for people who are already at their perfect weight.
Okay.
Alright.
So, for example, when we say that, and there's an example in the book, if you want to live, it is universally preferable to eat, for example.
Yes.
So we have a condition here, right?
And so can we say that to...
Sorry, sorry, hang on, hang on, hang on.
But if you choose to starve yourself to death, that would not be in the realm of ethics, because it would not be universally, would not be imposed upon someone else violently and blah, blah, blah, right?
So this would be an example of a conditional statement, which would be separate from the moral bans in UPB. Okay, so when we say that it's universally preferable to adhere, we are not using universally preferable in the same sense.
As we use universally preferable about to not murder, for example, right?
Right, because this one is, if you want to build this wall, you need 50 bricks.
Okay, and so we cannot have any positive actions as UPB, right?
Simply because they don't pass the comma test, and we simply can't perform anything simultaneously at every single moment, right?
Right.
Okay, then going back to the aesthetically positive, so we have seven categories, right?
The first is good, universally preferable, enforceable through violence, right?
And the second is aesthetically positive, also universally preferable, but more enforceable through violence, such as politeness and being on time.
So when we say that the second category, aesthetically positive, it is universally preferable, does it mean that Actions that fall or behavior that fall into this category should also be performed at every single moment.
Or at least have the capacity to be performed.
No, no, they can't because if I don't have to meet anyone, I can't be late.
So being on time can't be performed at every moment, right?
Right, and so then my question is why do we say that it's also universally preferable but not enforceable?
So if it's universally preferable, then it should be able to be performed at every single moment.
No, I mean, it would be nice if people were on time in general, make the world much more efficient and so on, right?
But it's completely avoidable, which is sort of important, right?
Something like some guy sticks a knife in your ribs and says, give me your wallet.
It's not really avoidable because he's kind of got a knife in your ribs, right?
On the other hand, if you have a friend who's perpetually late, you can just decide to not meet that friend anymore.
It's completely, you're participating, you are, you know, creating that situation.
And the avoidability has a lot to do with the ethics of the situation, which is an argument I go into more in the book.
But certainly, I think we all prefer that if we're going to meet someone at nine o'clock, that they're there at nine o'clock.
But so it's universally preferable behavior.
But it is not something that can be enforced through coercion because it's not something that is the initiation of force.
It's eminently avoidable.
And there are, of course, circumstances that can occur outside of your control that can make you late.
Right?
Some big traffic accident or your car won't start or the bus is broken down or whatever it is, right?
Terrible snowstorm.
Whereas I don't think that we would say that there's a, you know...
A terrible accident that ended up with you raping someone, you know?
The bus was late, so I strangled a guy.
So I think those would be, again, just off the top of my head, those would be some other differentials.
Right, so why do we say then that the aesthetically positive actions are universally preferable, but at the same time we don't require them to be performative every single moment, like being on time or be polite, right?
But I just went through like three or four different reasons for that, so I don't want to do that again.
Sorry.
But if we say that something should be, if something is universally preferable, right, we have in the definition requirement for this thing to be, people can prefer this thing at every single moment, right, in any place.
So I would imagine that any action that...
No, but see, being on time can be UPB, but theft cannot, because both people can be on time at the same time, right?
So it can be universally preferable behavior, but doesn't mean that it's enforceable in the same way that self-defense is.
And I've got an article on self-defense which goes into more detail about that.
So you're saying that there is no requirement for universally preferable to be able to be performed at every single moment?
Well, okay, so let's say that not stealing is UPB. Then, of course, you're not stealing when you're sleeping, you're not stealing when you are playing squash or whatever it is, right?
So you can achieve the not stealing.
That's universally.
Now, it's nice if everyone is on time and that it's a universal standard, but that doesn't mean that everyone is continually in a state of being on time.
In other words, being on time is aesthetically preferable actions, right?
Right.
Because remember there's UPB and there's APA, aesthetically preferable actions, right?
Being on time falls into the category of aesthetically preferable actions rather than universally preferable behavior.
Because it can't be universalized.
Maybe I'm confused then because the book says, the definitions are, the first one, it is good, it's universally preferable.
The second is it is aesthetically positive and also universally preferable.
So the fact that both of them are universally preferable Maybe that thing...
Honestly, I have not read the book in five years or six years, so I do know that there's UPB, APA, neutral, and then the negatives of those.
So if I've got somewhere written in there that it's UPB, when I'm talking about APA, please send me the note, and I will absolutely fix that in the next version.
I apologize for that.
It says universally preferable, and so I'm thinking that maybe we probably mean universally preferable in different places, different things.
In some cases, we mean that 31st Categories are good.
In some places, we mean the universalizable actions.
And in some places, for example, here, when it says it is aesthetically positive, which is universally preferable, but not enforceable through violence.
So I assume the universally preferable should not be here, right?
Well, or it should be more clearly differentiated in that it is universally preferable for everyone to be on time, but it cannot be that everybody is on time all the time, whether they're asleep or awake, no matter what their circumstances.
So I should probably change some of that language, and I appreciate you bringing that to my attention.
Yeah, and I was thinking maybe we need kind of also like another condition here, for example, it's universally preferable to be on time when you meet someone or it's universally preferable to be Eat when you're hungry because you also cannot eat at every single moment, but we say that it's universally preferable to eat if you want to live.
But it's also an action.
Yeah, and of course, these are all positive actions, right?
Right, but universally preferable tends to be a ban rather than the espousing of positive actions, right?
So being on time is a positive action.
Man on a comet Test can't be on time, can't be late, right?
Can't be part of that.
So I think that the fact that it's a positive action, and it's in the category of aesthetically preferable actions, or aesthetically positive, I thought it was preferable, but it could be positive.
I think that would sort of give an indication.
But again, that's something that would be more clear in the language, which I'll work on in the next version.
Alright, I've got to move on to the next caller, but thank you very much.
Great, great conversation.
I really, really appreciate people's interest in UPB, and I promise to make an even clearer version.
I think it's fairly clear, but absolutely could be improved, and I appreciate people's patience in hacking through it, and let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, thanks, Steve.
Thank you, man.
Great call.
Alright, up next is John.
John wrote in and wanted to know, do you think there is a war on white people, white males in particular?
You can have organizations for blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Mexicans, etc.
But if anyone came up with a white organization or support group, then they are immediately labeled a racist.
You also have affirmative action in the promotion of multiculturalism from the left.
Is there a war on white people?
And if so, why?
Yeah, what is that?
I want and believe in self-determination for my people, said the black man.
I want and believe in self-determination for my people, said the brown man.
I want and believe in self-determination for my people, said the white racist.
So...
Yeah.
What do you think?
I mean, I'm not talking about – when I talk about white people, I'm not talking about like George Bush or Bill Clinton because there's not a war on for them.
I'm talking about the average, everyday, round of folk, white person.
I think there is.
I think it has to do with either the – I don't even know if it's a Zionist-controlled media or the communist socialist left, but I think they want to break up the family.
And I think there's something about white people.
I mean, I see it every day in the news, you know, racism, racism.
And like you said, you've been all over the...
I mean, I've traveled.
I've never met a racist white person.
I mean, I literally have never met...
I mean, it's like hunting for Godzilla or something.
Yeah, I mean, it's...
I don't see a lot of people focusing on the lack of multiculturalism in Japan.
Or the lack of multiculturalism in Israel, for instance.
And so, like, I don't see a lot of people saying, you know, well, the problem with Japan is, you know, they need more Australian aboriginals and Nordic people in order to mix things up a little bit.
And I don't see a lot of people saying about Israel, you know, they need a lot of pygmies and Germans to go in there and mix it up a little.
So, there's a huge challenge with immigration.
And, you know, feel free to cover my ass while I go out on extremely thin ice here because I know a lot of libertarians are very keen on immigration.
And, you know, I am in many ways, too.
I'd like for the entire category to be scrapped and just call it moving.
It doesn't matter where people live or what they live.
But culture exists.
We have to recognize and understand and accept the reality that culture exists.
And it's not actually that hard To figure out what happens when cultures tend to collide.
So, I'm sorry, what was your name again?
John.
John.
Okay, John.
Let's say you move to China, right?
Now, the dominant ideology in China remains communism to a large degree, right?
Yeah.
Or if you go to Japan, it's what, Shinto religion or whatever.
Anyway.
So, if you move to China, are you going to go and become...
A communist and speak Chinese and lose your English and really blend in with the local population.
No, I'd probably stick out like a sore thumb.
Right.
I mean, all we have to do is think of going to the most exotic place we can think of.
Would we abandon our existing culture and language and religion and ideal set or belief set or whatever?
Would we be like we had been born there rather than born wherever our culture is in our origin?
I think the answer is pretty clear that we would not.
Now, the melting pot in America Which is the idea that people come from around the world, but they adopt American values and separation of church and state and the republic and limited government.
They come and they absorb and, you know, it takes a while, but they do it.
Maybe second generation or whatever, right?
That's sort of the idea behind the melting pot.
And that works, but there's ways in which it doesn't work.
And...
One of the main ways it doesn't work is that if people move to a country and there's a huge, what we would call an expat population, or there's a huge area where millions of people from the host country's culture all live there, all reproducing that culture, right?
Yeah.
Have you ever been to a Chinatown in a city?
I've actually lived there in San Francisco.
Oh, okay.
So that's about the biggest Chinatown in the States, right?
Yeah.
Now, it's really China in a lot of ways, right?
I mean, seriously, they've got like...
God knows what skinned animals out there.
Don't you have any place in the store for this food?
And it's...
Yeah, I mean, I've taken some strolls down when I was in the business world.
We did some business in San Fran.
And I mean, it's really different.
The smells, the people, the language, the science.
I mean, it's really Chinese, right?
And then when people come over from China...
They generally, not always, but in general, if they have a choice, they would like to go to Chinatown, right?
Yep.
That's why it's there.
That's why it exists, because they like to go to Chinatown.
And, you know, I can't help but understand that.
When I went over to do business in China in the year 2000, I spent a couple of weeks in China.
And who did I hang with?
Well, the other people who were Westerns.
Now, I didn't only do that.
I also got my ass handed to me on a plate in ping pong battles that were epic, at least in their loss for me.
And I went to have business meetings where people rubbed my feet under the table and got me all kind of goosed.
And I had, you know, business lunches, business dinners with people where I was, I think, continually referred to as the big nose foreign person.
But anyway, But, you know, there was also a lot of socializing.
And if it wasn't for business, I would have done some of the socializing with the locals, but I also would have...
I was just sort of picturing if I moved there, I would want to move to, like, little North America or whatever it is there, right?
And it wouldn't be like I'd never have anything to do with the other culture or anything like that.
But it's not natural, and it's not particularly easy for people to just say...
I'm now Chinese.
I'm communist.
I'm into this stuff.
I'm into that.
This is how I'm going to raise my kids.
I'm not going to speak my language of origin.
I'm not going to have anything to do with the belief systems I came from.
I am now in the host country's belief system.
Now, I think that can work.
And the way that it used to work in America was they used to...
They'd have pauses between immigration.
So from like 1920 to 1960, in the 1920s to the 1960s, there was very little immigration into America.
And because of that, I mean, compared to what came later, because of that, there was much more blending, right?
Much more assimilation into sort of the dominant culture.
Now, since the 19...
And I think in the...
In as late as 1963, 1964, like the vast majority of people in America were Christians who spoke English kind of thing, right?
Now that all changed in the Civil Rights, sorry, not Civil Rights, the Immigration Act.
I think in 1965, I think it was.
1965, Ted Kennedy was a sponsor of it.
And they just shifted.
So we don't want people from as much from...
Western Europe anymore.
We want people from the Third World.
We want people from India and all this kind of stuff.
And of course a lot coming up from South America, Central America, particularly Mexico.
Well, you let them in.
They vote communist.
They vote Democrat, obviously.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean, the Democrats want...
This is why Obama has got this shadow immigration system going.
Well, a couple of million people have been granted work visas even though they're way outside the bounds of what's been authorized by Congress because they just, you know, power-hungry bastards who...
Anyway, so with these constant waves of immigration, what happens is you get these Hispanic neighborhoods, you get a variety of different neighborhoods that grow up, and because there's wave after wave of immigration coming in, there's not that assimilation factor that occurs.
And so, like, southwestern California, Has become pretty significantly Hispanic.
And the Republican Party has basically had to, as far as I understand it, give up the entire state.
They're never going to vote for Republicans, right?
So, I don't know that there's a war on white people.
I think there is a very...
Strong desire for the Democrats to have power.
And what's happened is that they've lost union power, because unionization in America has declined considerably.
They've lost the power of forced union dues, and so they've needed to find some sort of substitute.
And they've not been willing to engage in the war of ideas, like even after conservative has been slandered repeatedly and seems almost infinitely for the past 30 or 40 years and certainly since McCarthy.
The conservatism has been so slander, but still twice the number of Americans identify as conservative, as liberal.
So they've really been unable to win the war of ideas.
And so they're basically just using the war of moving human bodies now.
I mean, it's not a very noble way to get your way.
But, you know, that's just the way it is.
I think that the war on the family, of course, as well, I mean, it's just another way to create a Democrat voting bloc.
I mean, single moms, single women and single moms in particular, overwhelmingly vote for the Democrats.
So they have every incentive to split families and they have every incentive to create conditions in which single motherhood flourishes.
And so, yeah, this attack upon the family and this relentless immigration that does not give time for assimilation is, it seems to me, it's just pretty much a massive political ply on the part of the Democrats to bypass the need for a debate on the ideas.
And it seems to me they've got more than a finger but an elephant foot on the scale.
And, Mike, if you could just look up the way in which the demographics have changed over the past 40 years.
You know, just a tiny little project there.
And you could read those off if you get a moment.
So, yeah, I don't think it's a war against white people.
And white males.
I mean, let's be honest about it.
It's mostly white males.
But I think it's just the necessary byproduct of...
What is needed by the Democrats to gain and maintain political power.
I'm sorry?
Where do you think it comes from, though?
Is it a communist movement?
Is it a Zionist movement?
Because I'm, I mean, it seems very messed up.
Yeah, I think they've infiltrated.
I mean, they've infiltrated somewhere, sometime.
Yeah, communists for sure.
I mean, we've gone into this.
We've got the truth about the race war.
Yeah, I mean, I've seen all your videos.
And the truth about immigration.
Yeah, communists for sure.
And that's not any kind of conspiracy theory.
That's the outspoken aims and goals of the Communist Party, both in Russia and in the USA, to provoke as much minority resentment and to use minorities as a tool by which to destabilize a society and drive a wedge through any kind of...
Unity of Republican, sorry, the Republic, not Republican, the party, but Republican idealism.
And so that's definitely been the case.
I mean, the degree to which Jews are associated with communism, you know, it was quite a lot of the founders, of course, are the major theoreticians and so on.
But, you know, they all lost to Stalin.
And then there was a purge against the Jews in the Communist Party in the 30s.
But the degree to which it's driven by Judaism is...
You know, depends which time slice of history you're looking at, you'll find more or fewer.
But Communists, again, they've been unable to win the war of ideas, and they certainly haven't been able to win the war of history.
They've only been able to win the war of how many bodies can we pile up so that they reach halfway to the sun.
Yeah, they don't seem to sleep or anything.
I mean, Hillary Clinton, how old is she?
You have all the money in the world, all the power in the world.
You think you'd retire on an island somewhere, but they just keep coming back.
Well, it's an addiction.
Political power.
Political power is an addiction.
It must be the greatest power ever, or they're not human.
It's one or the other.
Yeah.
Like, David, either David, I just write...
Definitely human.
It's what makes them so tricky.
They're cyborgs.
Yeah.
Cylons.
But, no, a political power is an addiction.
I would not...
You know, these people almost never exit from public life willingly because it's a high.
And the amount of emptiness, depression, nihilism, and, I don't know, perhaps even suicidality that would be on the other side of them not receiving this kind of public attention is...
It would be horrifying.
It would be horrifying.
You know, I mean, I'm willing to be like a minor public figure for the cause of philosophy, but I have no particular desire to be a public figure other than the fact that it's kind of necessary to serve philosophy.
But I think these people just really, really love it.
It must be a high that we can't, maybe we don't know, you know, experience it yet.
I mean, it must be that great.
Because they're 70, 80 years old.
They don't stop.
Yeah, but I mean, not everyone likes his cigarettes, right?
Some people try it and hate it.
I couldn't imagine political powers being anything other than repulsive.
I'm sorry?
Just putting on a suit every day and lying, just reading off a script or whatever they're doing.
Yeah, I mean, they're human, but they're intraspecies predators, I would assume.
Yeah, psychopaths.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, the changing demographics are kind of important, right?
I mean, whites, 85% of Americans in 1950 down to 63% in 2011 projected to be 47% in 2050.
Hispanics, 3.5% in 1950, 17% in 2011 projected to be 29% by 2050.
And Asians 0.6% 1950, 5% 2011, protected to be 9% in 2050.
And yeah, there are challenges.
There are challenges when it comes to integrating people with a very different culture.
And the other thing, too, is that everybody knows that multiculturalism, I mentioned this on the show before, everybody knows that multiculturalism means race.
It's not about culture.
I think multiracialism is what they're talking about.
Because if I were to say, oh, on the board of Free Domain Radio, not that there's a board, but on the board of Free Domain Radio, we are very multicultural because we have a British guy, an Irish guy, a French guy, and a German guy.
What would people say?
But that's not multicultural at all, because you're all white.
It's like, well, then let's not call it multicultural.
Let's call it multiracial.
And the degree to which races, particularly races combined with different cultures, mix well together remains an open question.
There's Studies that show that multiculturalism within neighborhoods causes significantly negative consequences.
There are lots of different arguments and problems with multiculturalism.
I don't have any particular answer other than we should all be philosophers and forget all of that nonsense.
And that's the best gift that I have to offer this particular question.
But I mean, I grew up in England where There were some significant cultural differences between us and the Irish.
I mean, I would go on to Ireland in the summers, visit my father's family and occasionally my father.
But the rest of the time I'd be in England where I was continually warned that if there was an unattended bag or package in the bus shelter that I should get the hell out because it would likely be an IRA bomb.
So, you know, there's some cultural challenges for you that I grew up with right there.
And so, yeah, I mean, again, a war on white people, I mean, I think that we're just stepped on the way to power, so to speak.
I don't think it's anything particularly personal.
Yeah, I think that the—it's very strange, though.
You know how, like, when you mention, like, libertarianism or, you know, you not have a government, they say, oh, move to Somalia.
Yeah.
But when somebody brings up racism, they don't say, oh, you don't like it here?
Move to Somalia.
Right, right.
But it's just a weird thing.
Lately, it's been bugging me because I just see it in the news every day.
This guy, Charles Blow is his name.
Did you hear that thing about his son in Yale?
A black cop pulled a gun on a black guy and he said it's racism.
What are you talking about?
They want to start some sort of war.
I think it's a very dangerous thing.
They want to start a black against white war.
It's just stupid.
It's very low-level primitive nonsense.
It just seems very...
I don't even know how to explain it.
It's just low-level stupidity.
That's what it is.
It's hunting for Bigfoot.
There's no...
Yeah, look, I mean...
There has been a focus on sort of the crimes of the whites or the crimes of the Europeans or whatever it is that's been going on for quite a long time.
And look, I mean, to be fair, white people have done some seriously bad shit, mostly to other white people, tragically.
I mean, this is the First and Second World Wars, you know, carried off tens of millions of And of course, other races and other cultures too.
I'm not trying to magically dismiss that or anything like that.
But I think that the near-cultural suicide engaged upon by white Western Christians throughout the 20th century was something that I think broke the spirit of Western culture.
It's really hard when you're digging your way out of that many bodies to say, yay us, right?
And I think that...
Where that goes, I don't know.
I think that where I'd like it to go is peaceful parenting and anarchism.
That's where I'd like it to go.
That, I think, would be the best way to learn the lessons of the past.
And, of course, I've been reading this audiobook by Lloyd DeMoss called The Origins of War and Child Abuse, which you can get at freedomainradio.com.
That's where I'd like it to go.
You know, going to appeasement and guilt and throwing money at minorities, which only cripples them, I mean, I think is not...
The right way to go.
But, you know, I think that it really broke the spine.
If you look at how confident Western culture was in the 19th century, or you could say, I mean, you say white culture, I don't know if that really helps in particular, because there's lots of non-whites who've contributed magnificently to Western culture and so on.
So, you know, I just talk about sort of Western European culture with all of its complexities and challenges.
But, you know, sort of post-Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and Empire, the end of slavery, ending of slavery, more rights for women, and so on.
I mean, there was a pretty magnificent run that Western European civilization had.
And then the end of that run was running straight into the fucking meat grinder of the First World War.
And then from there, staggering into...
The hyperinflation and stock boom of the 20s followed by the 13-year Great Recession culminating in the Second World War, culminating in the Cold War, and this century of potential, this century of progress,
this century of optimism, this century of hope, this century of advancement to end as it did in the Endless democides and cultural suicides and slaughterhouses of all of the 20th century was,
I mean, to me is one of the most unbelievably tragic events and changes in all of world history.
All of world history.
It is brutal.
It's horrendous.
It had a lot to do with the government taking over education combined with the implementation of central banks.
I know that sounds all kinds of not important, but it really is.
You can't get willing soldiers unless the government controls the education, which you can find more about in The Truth About World War I. And you can't fund these unbelievably interstellar carnage factories of world wars without fiat currency.
And so these two socialistic, if not communistic, infections in Western Europe, government schools and fiat, currency central banking, that was fucking it.
I mean, that was it.
That turned, that beat the plowshares into swords.
And we've really been reeling from the effects of that ever since.
Do you think that they...
I mean, who's they?
I mean, that's what I'm trying to think of.
It's obviously a leftist-communist infiltration.
I mean, it's blatantly obvious.
But I don't know where it comes from, but it's just...
I don't like where it's going, though.
It seems very collectivist, very statist.
It's just a weird thing.
I can't even explain it.
Well, you know, as I've made this case before, the they is...
The rulers.
No, it's the priestly class who transitioned to the intellectual class.
You know, they saw that the ship of God was listing and going down, and they all jumped ship to go to universities and politics and the state.
And they took their considerable rhetorical skills, they detached them from their dying god, and they fastened them onto the jugular of the new world.
And they continued their black wizardry of language, parasitism, and were willing to drive people to war, and willing to propagandize people to self-slaughter.
It is the oldest enemy of mankind, I believe, is the sophists.
The people who can make a worse argument appear the better by emotional manipulation rather than reason and evidence.
And we are the fucking ninjas of all time to take these people on.
I forgive them in many ways for they know not what they do.
They have simply adapted to use words.
I gave this speech, they control humans with language.
Oh, that was a great video.
Spells.
That's exactly what it is.
I mean, that's what they write about in the old...
You know, the Old Testament and the old folklore books, that's what it was.
That's what a spell is.
It's just language.
But the best comment is that, which I didn't even think of at the time, someone posted on YouTube, you spell a word.
I mean, it's even right there in the language.
Jordan Maxwell goes into that, yeah.
And this emotionally manipulative language that bred itself in the bosons of dark deities throughout most of human history Found it fairly easy to transition from the cross to the flag.
And from the church spire to the ivory tower, it's a very nimble transition.
And the option of working for a living in the free market is anathema.
This is not what they're adapted for.
It's like asking a fish to live at a treetop.
Or giraffe to feed on sperm whales.
This is not what they're adapted to.
And I think that fortunately the internet has given us the capacity to bring Words and the powerful cancel spells counter magic of reason and evidence.
We've been able to, you know, we've got 100 million plus downloads of this show, lots of other people working to bring clarity to the world.
But it's the human farmers, and the human farmers are not those who use weapons, but those who use words.
It's that great line from an old In Excess song, Words are weapons, sharpen the knives, makes you wonder how the other half dies.
And, yeah, the only power in the world is words.
Everything else is merely the shadow of power.
And that, I think, is where it comes from.
Those who have adapted to...
Create the farmers fences of language in the minds of those who become livestock by believing imaginary language Like patriotism in country religion, I mean, how do you think this thing plays out in the end?
I mean obviously It can go either way, but it doesn't play out if I thought it played out I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing It goes where the people with the most will and resolution wanted to go That's where the world goes The world goes where those who plant the deepest fucking stake in the heart of the world are willing to stand there in the face of all storms and opposition and say we will not move unless budged by reason and evidence.
That is where the world goes.
The world goes where those who are willing to stop it Hold still and swing it around in its orbit, though it dwarfs their very mind.
That is where the world is going to go.
The world goes where the will takes it.
The world goes where you want it to go.
That is where the world goes and no other place.
And if they want it more than we want it, they win.
And if we want it more than they want it, we win.
Because all they have All they have is slander.
All they have is negativity.
All they have is hostility.
All they have is the little whispered lies of ugliness.
And we have the giant airstrike sunlight of reason, clarity, evidence and truth.
So how it plays out, what a passive thing to say.
Don't mean to bitch on you, but it's a passive thing to say.
It's not a train going down a hill, like it either stays on the tracks or it jumps.
No.
The world has these giant levers called language, and it will fly delicately like a dragonfly, like a helicopter, like a jetpack.
It will fly delicately where you move the levers of language to go.
That's where it goes.
That's where we can fly it.
The future is wherever the fuck we want to land the planet.
And yeah, we're fighting like sons of bitches for control over the joystick, over the flight sticks, over the rudders.
We are fighting like crazy.
Elbow, elbow, give me that stick, give me that.
I want that stick.
I want to land it in hell.
We want to land it in heaven.
And if we don't do anything, yeah, we're the passengers.
In a Taiwanese plane that goes into a bridge.
We just...
Ah, passengers!
I'm going to see where this thing goes.
Well, it's going to go badly.
Get to the cockpit.
Wrestle for the stick.
Hi, NSA. Right?
But that is where we have to have our mindset.
The passivity of how does this play out?
What's going to happen to the world?
What's the end game?
No!
Get into the goddamn pilot seat and go for the joystick.
It's going to go where you want it to go.
And...
It will only go where the bad people want it to go if we step back and step out.
That's true.
I think we...
I mean, we obviously have the numbers.
I just got to get over that propaganda.
Numbers?
Oh, yeah.
I don't know if we have the numbers.
Oh, the numbers of people.
Not the money.
We have the facts.
No, I don't...
Fuck the numbers.
No, no, fuck the numbers.
Because with the numbers, when you focus on the numbers, my friend, what ends up happening is you say, I will take a stand when there's enough of us.
Right, right, right.
You take a stand and you bring the people to you by having the stand.
That's true.
Right?
Because now, if there are real bullets, you don't do that.
Right?
You don't do that if there are real bullets.
But where the war is merely language, where the war is merely words, then hell yeah!
You stand because nothing can hit you but syllables.
Sticks and stones, brother.
Sticks and stones.
You stand and you keep trying your barbaric yawp of truth to the very roof of the world.
And sooner or later, people look up and say, I don't think that's lightning up there.
I think that's human thought, changing physics, changing what I thought was physics, unraveling the matrix, changing the very nature of reality as I have perceived it, and as my tribe has perceived it, lo these many thousands of years.
There is someone up there who is undoing history, who is taking a giant Thor hammer of thought, Cracking it down on the mountaintop, altering the physics of what we call society.
And some people are like, oh, I'm going to the basement.
I think I'm just going to hide till this is over.
Let me see who wins.
Shameful.
I don't mean you.
Shameful.
Shameful stuff.
And there are other people who are like, I'm going to grab whatever I can.
I'm going to get up there.
I'm going to make some fucking lightning.
I am going to go up there and I'm going to alter some fucking physics.
Because this tilting world that keeps dragging us down and down and down into the fires of history, into the fucking repetitions of history, but with better weapons and more technology, EVIL networked!
EVIL bit-enabled!
EVIL with TCPIP! EVIL with nuclear weapons!
Look at that!
The free market has given us so much technology, we've armed EVIL to the teeth!
What a great, great job that's been!
Yay!
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no.
No!
Enough.
We go up there and we fucking change history.
We take this, whether it's Atlas Shrugged or whatever you want to call it, we take this, we put our fucking shoulders to that tilting slope that's pushing us into hell itself and we push the fuck back.
We push the fuck back.
We get our shoulders under it and we lift that seeming inevitable tilt of the world back.
And whoever slides off the other end, I couldn't give a shit.
But we tilt this son of a bitch back.
We get up there to the mountaintop.
We take out the biggest hammer we can.
And we strike fire from the feet of the very gods of history.
We make them dance to our tune for once.
Fuck this inevitability.
Doesn't have to be that way.
But it will be.
If all we do is hide.
Exactly.
That's some badass shit right there.
Thank you for your call, my brother.
Yep.
Take care.
That was awesome.
Thanks.
All right.
Up next is Trip.
Trip wrote in and said, What would narrative stories look like in a free and peaceful society, especially for teens and adults?
Would healthy relationships lead to an increased quality of certain narratives that depict win-win paradigms, while overall television slash film slash book slash video game fiction would die off?
What do you think?
I don't know.
What do you think?
Hey, Stefan.
Before I answer your question, I'm a big fan and wow.
I actually can't believe this is happening right now.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I was thinking about this last night.
More than that, but especially last night.
What I thought was there would definitely be certain genres that would Die for the most part, I mean, you know, we have no idea what's going to happen.
But, like, most likely we won't see a lot of patriotic films or we won't see a lot of, like, action films won't be as numerous as they are now.
Like, with the whole, like, the Die Hard or, let me take a deep breath for a second.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, so one thing is we wouldn't see a lot of action films because just the aspect of...
Just because the pro-state, pro-spy, like my country versus that country wouldn't quite exist.
We wouldn't have a lot of rom-coms due to the fact that we would have a better understanding, ideally, of relations between people.
And a lot of the rom-coms follow the same pattern of...
This girl needs to find some guy, and all of a sudden, she happens to find the right guy, but then something bad happens, and they have to resolve it at the end.
And we really wouldn't see a lot of...
I think it was during the first Call Her In, a lot of what I call freak show narratives, like Fear Factor.
Or the show you're thinking of was Naked and Afraid, where they drop in the two people who are naked...
In like, you know, like Vietnam or like somewhere in a jungle that no human can survive in.
And like, also I feel like a lot of comedies actually would like dive because comedy for a good, for like a good deal, for like most part it's like tragedy plus time and ideally there wouldn't be quite that much tragedy.
Like we wouldn't see something like South Park or The Hangover Emerging in a free society.
These are the ones that came to mind, but I'm thinking very bad things with, I'm forgetting the guy's name off the top of my head.
It has Cameron Diaz in it, and they go to Vegas for a honeymoon.
Not a honeymoon, for a...
Oh, Dennis Miller's the judge, and the guy from that set, Ashton Kutcher is in it, right?
That might be a different one.
I'm thinking it's...
I literally...
Whatever.
An example of something we wouldn't see, though, is...
Do you know the Bobcat Goldway film, God Bless America?
I don't.
It's this film that he came out with in 2011, where this guy has a brain tumor, and in order to solve all the problems in America, he goes on this rampage with his...
It kills people like the West Baptist Church and the judges of America's Got Talent and that sort of thing.
We probably wouldn't see stuff like that, but I would imagine that there would be musicals and historical pieces, especially those where They might follow the lives of people who actually first stood up to statism.
I can imagine sci-fi.
Again, some other types of comedies.
I can imagine Life of Brian being popular or something like that.
Overall, I do think that narratives would be relatively plentiful.
Ideally, I think during the second call with Dan...
Mike brought up the statistic, teens watch about seven hours a day with media.
I feel like people wouldn't be spending that much time, and ideally with more people and face-to-face with parents and friends.
There probably wouldn't be as much media because there wouldn't be as much of a demand.
Those are my thoughts, and oh my god, that was jumbled up.
I would love to hear.
No, no, it wasn't jumbled at all.
It was very interesting.
I appreciate your thoughts.
Not jumbled at all.
And there would still be historical movies about the horrors that society had escaped, right?
I mean, you can still, of course, there's movies about slavery in America.
And there was movies about the Civil Rights Act and so on.
And so there would be these Spartacus movies.
So there'd be historical movies where they would still have access to the drama of how things used to be.
And there could, of course, still be dangerous space alien movies, right, where a virtuous planet defends itself against space aliens.
That could, of course, still occur.
There is, of course, you know, we are going to march onto the future with the brainstem from the distant past.
And so there will always be challenges in terms of self-knowledge and growth in the human psyche and in the human mind.
So I think that there's no perfection within the species.
You're never in perfect health, right?
I mean, there is no perfection in the species.
So the continual improvement is something that will always go on.
So Michael Jordan, right, a basketball player, of course, you know, continued to practice, though he was considered pretty much the best in his field, continued to practice four or five hours a day.
It's like, well, I can always get better.
Always get better.
And so even if he's top of the game, he still practices.
A Canadian hockey player named Wayne Gretzky was considered at some points in his career to be the very best athlete in the world because he was so much further ahead from number two.
He was the furthest ahead from number two statistically and proportionately than anyone else in sports was ahead from their number two.
And he continued to practice many, many hours a day, even though he was considered the very best athlete.
In the history of athletics, at least in modern athletics.
So I think that there will always be this desire to improve, that the standards and measurements would change to some degree.
And I think that there would be more internal measurements.
Dialogue, I think that novels might be more...
I mean, movies are kind of action-based, and it's very hard to have an inner dialogue or inner moment in a movie.
And so I would imagine that there will be, or there would be, more interior dialogue kind of stuff.
And, you know, there'd still be space shooters, I guess.
You know, we'll always enjoy, I think, some simulated combat.
Again, because we've got the monkey brainstem from ages past.
All the way back to single-celled organisms, so we'll never transcend that.
There will be no nirvana of non-humanity in the future because we're always going to be building on the basis of our biological nature.
So I think that will still be stuff.
And of course, there will still need to be alertness towards the potential resurgence of evil in the world, which I would consider highly unlikely, given that people would be raised better in a free society.
We can't have a free society until they're raised better.
And there wouldn't be, yeah, I think there wouldn't be things like honey...
Boo-boo, Jerry Springer, and as Mike says, he shows which glorify and mock dysfunction.
I think there would be a lot less of that in the future, if any.
But I think art would still be a challenge, and the challenge would be if you want to coach...
Coaching humanity at the moment, because humanity is still pretty primitive, is not that complicated in some ways.
But if you want to be Michael Jordan's coach, you better be the best damn coach around.
So I think that the very best artists will need to have the very best self-knowledge to help human beings improve whatever they're working on.
In the future.
So I think it would be more challenging to be an artist.
It won't just be car chase.
You know, I'm not saying it's that simple, but otherwise everyone who made a car chase movie would make a fortune and the new Wachowski Brothers movies would be as good as The Matrix, which apparently is a wee bit shy on.
So, yeah, I think there would still be lots of challenges to continue to work on.
And, of course, you know, once we get a free society, we'll get interplanetary and interstellar travel relatively quickly, and then there'll be all of the excitement of working with other races, other cultures, or whatever is out there in the universe.
I don't think there's going to be much that we'll have in common with other species, because the idea that we end up at the same level of development in a 15-billion-year-old universe or 20-billion-year-old universe or whatever it is Would be pretty unusual.
So they'll either be, you know, a billion years ahead or behind, which would make them not particularly interesting to us or them in either case.
But there will be all of that stuff to do and all of those challenges of new environments.
So I think they'll still be cool out in the future, but it will be hopefully more subtle and more refined.
Right, and I was sort of thinking stuff like that.
I've done reading, but a lot of my exposure has been mostly movies and video games.
And yes, I probably do.
Actually, I do have ADD, and I'm sure that's just coincidental and has nothing to do with the exposure for hours since 1998 when I got my first Pokemon game.
But...
I guess, like, where I'm coming from, though, is that ever since, like, I'm a senior in college, and, like, ever since my junior year of high school, I've been, like, I've been noticing, like, a lot of the media, like, a lot of films, and, like, to an extent, like, modern literature seems to be, like, the same sort of thing.
Well, the same, like, subgenres and, like, nothing really...
There's very little or rare new things to come out.
I mean, how many times have they redone Dracula and they came out with that Dracula film over the summer, right?
Yeah, but I mean, the alternative is to actually teach people about the dangers of sociopaths in their lives.
Rather, they'd rather fictionalize it and make it abstract so people don't notice the sociopaths in their lives.
Dracula movies and vampire movies are great camouflage for the dangerous people in your life.
But anyway, go ahead.
I've been trying to come up with ideas for writing.
I ran the side whenever I don't have to worry about my history papers or my psych papers.
I chose two really writing-intensive fields of study, but whatever.
A problem I've come across, though, is trying to get in touch with human nature.
I've FDR really has helped...
What am I saying?
You've really helped with this.
But every time I write a story, I get up to a certain point, and I realize that I don't actually know the motivation of these characters.
And having to go back and reevaluate that, which...
I guess what I'm trying to ask is...
Is there really a difference with getting in touch with empathy for characters they are creating versus the empathy that you would have without talking to someone else, considering that you're the author here?
Yeah, I mean, having empathy for characters in movies requires that they first have personalities.
And most...
Characters in movies, and to a large degree in novels as well, most characters in movies and novels, they're not people.
They're not people that you would recognize as individuals.
They're like templates.
They are, you know, mean drug dealer, snarky heroic Han Solo type.
You know, like the Guardians of the Galaxy type.
Cool guy.
Hot chick who has got an icy heart.
You know, these stark characters.
They used to be a phrase like, oh, this guy's right out of central casting.
And what that used to mean is...
I need a kindly old man.
And you'd go to Central Casting, which was where they had the bumbling husband, dumb dad.
And you'd go, I need a kindly looking old man.
Okay, let's get Peter Fork.
And he'll be the guy who reads to the grandchild in A Princess Bride or whatever.
And those characters don't...
Don't devote empathy because they're not real people.
They're cardboard.
They're no depth or complexity, no personality.
I mean, you go to something like Streetcar Named Desire, and there you have real personality.
Or you look at the husband and wife at the beginning of Great Expectations, Joe, and I can't remember the woman's name, and there's real, real characters, real personalities.
And that...
It's usually, where you'll see is whether the person has inner conflicts.
Whether the person, or they're just, they do what they do.
And they just, they make quips or wisecracks or whatever.
They just kind of do what they do.
And they're like rocks rolling down a hill.
That's not how people are.
You know, people struggle.
They're afraid.
They have eagerness.
They have.
some movie with Paul Newman where he plays a lawyer where he's very afraid to do something or if you look at Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men when he's confronting Jack Nicholson's character he's terrified to do it there's someone who has a conflict and requires courage to overcome whereas you know the sort of wisecracking Han Solo type types they're just you know they're You know, like, well, I'm just going to go fight the war.
You know, the Luke Skywalker.
I just go, I find the war.
I fight the war.
That's what I go to.
Chop off the hairy ape's arm and go fight the war.
And then just, blah, off they go.
And there's no particular conflict.
If you look at a movie like The Fight Club, well, there's a character who's got significant amounts of conflict that you find out in more detail about at the very end.
And life, to be realistic, people, and I've tried to work with this in my own novels as well, but you try to, there's a forward motion, a desire, and a resistance.
There's a desire and a resistance, and that's the tension of life.
You know, I want to help the world with philosophy, don't really like being a public figure.
Right?
So there's a desire and a resistance.
And what happens is, this is a personality, in a movie in general, It's all of the inner parts of a single human personality are all extrapolated and blown all over the screen.
Oh, yeah.
So then, you know, Luke Skywalker has a desire and...
Darth Vader is the resistance, but Luke Skywalker himself has no resistance, right?
And there's no good in Darth Vader.
And so you put all these people in the same head and then you've got an interesting character.
But when you split them all out and they become these sort of one-dimensional forces of gravity and repulsion and magnetism and so on, it's like, you know, put all these people in the same head because they all come out of the same head, right?
They all came out of George Lucas's imagination.
I think he was the writer, right?
Right.
George Lucas is the guy that died in the middle of the first...
I think, actually, I'm sorry for the tangent.
I think, actually, George Lucas wanted to go a completely different way in the first movie.
And the guy he co-directed the movie with, who had died just before it was released, told him, like, no, don't make Han Solo a scummy...
It's gonna be like Alien who tries to sell people used cars, make him a bounty hunter, or make him a smuggler instead and some of that, but I digress.
Right, and there's not this complexity of characterization.
Stanley Kowalski in A Street Car Named Desire is by turns funny, aggressive, seductive, babyish, Uh, and, uh, vulnerable and, uh, all of that.
Uh, and, and this is, uh, this is a relatively simple minded, but not simplistic character.
Uh, of course the ultimate is, is, is Hamlet with his, uh, to be or not to be in his continual dialogues of, um, which way to go as I've argued before a Renaissance or enlightenment mind trapped in a medieval, um, environment.
Uh, and, um, Modernity clashing with primitivism.
And there is a real splitting that goes on, I think, in the writers of a lot of modern movies.
And it appeals to people who are split themselves.
People often find it quite uncomfortable to see a hero who's terrified.
Right?
Especially if they don't know if he's going to end up doing the heroic thing or not.
Like, if it's just a standard, oh, his hands are shaking, but he's going to go off and do it anyway.
But people don't like to see that.
And they don't like to see a villain who mourns the loss of his soul, so to speak.
They don't like to see that.
He's just this wind-up automatic robot villain, and there's a wind-up automatic robot hero, and it's just nothing in particular.
In the same way that you see this cliché these days, which is that the kids are smart and the parents are clueless.
That's the trope these days.
Oh, I... I mean, I'm closer to that age, and oh my god, I never even liked it then.
I mean, obviously, the parents would probably know a little bit more than the kids about how the adult world is.
It makes Disney a lot of money.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's not just Disney.
I think it's all over.
You know, you've got the shark-haired kid who's cool and comfortable and collected and never has any pimples and, you know, like never has any self-doubt and, you know, never is trying to deal with strange body odors from his growing body or no awkwardness and no, you know, and it's just this cliche.
And there is, of course, also the cliche that physicality is destiny, right?
So if you go to Freaks and Geeks, right?
So the...
The pretty boy is the cool guy.
And the nerdy-looking kids are the nerdy-looking people.
Like, body is destiny.
And that, to me, is such a terrible cliche.
And it's so limiting to people.
And this is all over the place in youth movies.
That body is destiny.
Looks is personality.
And you cannot go counter to your looks.
There's something that Robert Williams said when he was making Jumanji.
He said, hey, this is the only chance I'm going to get to play an action hero.
Because...
He doesn't look like Brendan Fraser, right?
Doesn't have that look.
And so there's so much that is done in shorthand.
You've got to look like Harrison Ford to be the hero.
And if you look like the guy who played the melting-faced Nazi, then you're the melting-faced Nazi.
There's just no two ways about it.
You can't switch those roles.
Especially afterwards.
I always love it when I see people who...
Whose physicality is not their personality.
Like I met a young man the other day, looked totally nerdy, confident as all get up, a real delight to chat with, does judo or whatever it was.
Interesting.
You know, like, it's great.
And I thought that was really, really cool.
And when you see that physicality is not destiny, is not personality, that's great.
I mean, that's just fantastic.
I'd love to see Ned Beatty cast as Superman instead of Christopher Reeve, who I'm dating myself and all that.
But I think that casting against type is much more challenging and wakes people up A lot more.
You know, it's like the old cliche of, well, she wears glasses, so she's totally plain.
But then the moment she takes off her glasses and her hair cascades, suddenly she's hot.
And it's like, oh my God, how embarrassing, how ridiculous, how foolish, and how inevitable, and how plain to the lowest level.
Common denominator, that is.
And easy.
Which is why media harms people's capacity to interact with others.
Because you spend most of your time with cliches.
And then when you actually come across a real human being, I don't mean you, but when one comes across a real human being, when you've spent your whole time dealing with cliches, it's sort of like trying to get into a conversation with someone when all you've been listening to is Audio tapes of sentence fragments in another language, and then you go and try and speak to someone in the other language.
You have no clue what's going on.
Because it's all fragmented and broken up and not real people.
Humanity, there is no substitute.
Well, apparently I've been going about learning French the wrong way.
But, um...
Well, it's fine to learn, but it just doesn't make you conversational, right?
Right.
I mean, the more...
Never mind.
But, um...
Whatever.
But, um...
The one thing I'm working with is I've had these different character personalities and it's not necessarily the personalities that I'm having trouble with because I have the protagonist of one of the books I'm working on or the protagonist of the main series I'm trying to work on is this guy who's about It's like a 50s archaeologist.
And then somehow, like a Freaky Friday sort of thing, except it goes back in time to a medieval society.
And part of it is just not being comfortable as the young...
Someone just logged.
Oh, okay.
But not being comfortable being the young handsome guy, because that's not what he looked like.
And the pros and cons of that, but going on this quest and not really taking seriously the fact that, oh, dragons are there when there's no dragons and that sort of thing.
And it's just like...
I guess what's a game to me is...
Every time I write a plot, the characters are interesting, but sometimes I'm trying to...
I want to try to do something new and not do it for news sake, because that's not the cannon worms.
But I'm guessing I try not to rely on, at least especially more recently, rely on violence being the thing that solves the problem at the end of the day, or relying on some sort of overly used trope.
I'm trying to think for...
For example, there's a...
There's a...
One of the characters...
One of the supporting characters I'm working on is this...
Like a...
Time traveler.
It's sort of like...
From the outside, she looks like what...
Feminists try to say every woman should be like.
But on the inside, she has this...
She comes from this really, really dysfunctional and messed up place.
And how that affects her decision making.
She comes from a near but technologically advanced future, but still society isn't quite as peaceful as it could be.
She comes from a...
This might get a little dark, but her mother got pregnant from one night stand in college.
She comes from a traditional family that doesn't want to handle it, so they try to get her to have an abortion.
She does, but it fails.
She gives birth, kills the mother.
Then the family doesn't want anything to do with it, so they're going to put up for adoption or something like that.
The Black sheep of the family who's the sister of the deceased mother decides to adopt the baby and she and her partner like a female partner adopt her but the female partner is abusive and all this kind of stuff and obviously that creates a fucked up person but it's sort of like a What
I had the idea with in that character in mind is what would it be like if you had someone who is the future person who goes back and past and obviously knows better than everyone else and has the deus ex machina machine and that sort of thing.
But what if that person joins a group and then slowly transforms away from the good Guys try to get the highest position of power, if not rule.
That sort of thing.
I know these are the specifics of generalities, but it's just a case where I have these characters in mind and the idea is to try to relay messages that quite aren't in our culture right now.
That ideally would help and propel us forward, but I guess my big thing I'm struggling with is there's so much violence in movies and video games.
I think maybe three video games I own don't rely on some sort of violence or To, like, a resolve initiative.
Well, and with the violence comes the one-dimensional characters, right?
Right.
So, I mean, there's this cliche in video games, which is, you know, I mean, the old stories was the maiden that you had to go and rescue, right?
Right.
And, you know, the dragon would carry her off in its claws, and, you know, Fay Wray on King Kong's arm.
And then...
This, you know, we're going to turn that on its head and Carrie Ann Moss is going to kick chandeliers down on your head from the ceiling and stuff like that, right?
And it became now, there's this cliche that, you know, all women in video games have to be relentlessly tough.
And they have no, there's no conflict about it.
You know, like, I'd be fascinated in a video game if one of these tough chicks, you came across her crying because she thought, I don't know, maybe I'm Not attractive to men because I'm too aggressive.
Not that that would be right or wrong, but I'm sure that's what some people think.
And so, you know, it's just become, you know, it's like we just stagger like pendulums or pinball silver balls from one cliche to another.
is like the cliche of the helpless woman is now the cliche of the punk tough woman who is competent at everything and never has any doubts and all that.
And it's just, it's become, it's, you know, we're trying to become multidimensional by bouncing from one extreme to the other.
And, um, That, I think, is a real shame.
We all have these complexities within us.
We all want acceptance, and we all want to do the right thing, and we're all challenged.
Certainly, for those of us in this kind of conversation, we all are in situations where We want to say or do the right thing and there's social pressure to not.
And sometimes we make it and sometimes we don't.
And it's, you know, in the dragging forward of the human condition, it's never a steady path, right?
I mean, Lara Croft is not worrying about her eggs dying on the vine.
You know, when am I going to have kids or anything like that?
There's just none of that kind of stuff.
And, you know, And Blazowski or whatever his name is in the Wolfenstein series, he's just a tough guy.
That's what he does.
He's just tough.
You know, there's never any particular, you know, I don't even know if I'm doing the right thing.
Why am I even fighting this battle?
I mean, there is.
I've never heard of it.
But Duke Nukem and all.
I mean, it's...
Unfortunately, it's just one-dimensional.
And that tells you that the people who are creating these things are kind of one-dimensional people.
As well in their understanding of how their various parts work together, the various parts of their personalities work together and oppose together.
What I call them ecosystem is that we are all...
We have aspects of ourselves, imprints of others, and it's all an ecosystem of personality structures that we attempt to work with.
And that, I think, is called full personhood.
But these are all split off.
And everyone takes their little pieces of personality and put them in these black and white roles in these movies.
That even when assembled would resemble a very split human personality, but when separated in a movie, render it reliant upon special effects and car chases and violence and sex in order to stimulate you, because there's not the stimulation that comes from connection and intimacy.
There is only the stimulation that comes from the sense data and the stimulation that comes from Fear and danger and lust and all of this kind of stuff.
So, yeah, I mean, this is the challenge.
You know, I tried in my novels to create more complex characters.
And, you know, as a novelist, I ended up doing a podcast on philosophy.
You can see where that went.
All right, listen, man, it was a great call.
I really appreciate this.
I certainly love the artistic topics, and I think that we could do a lot more work in the realm of art as a community.
But it certainly sounds interesting what you're working on.
I hope you'll keep writing away and bring the world what you've got.
It certainly is a lot easier to get books out into the public sphere now than it was when I was younger.
So thanks very much for your call.
Thank you very much, of course, for you, the listeners.
Please, please, please, as I must...
For the sake of the show and my continued sustenance, remind you to go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
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