Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Feb. 23, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:08:23

2918 If Slaughterhouses Had Glass Walls - Saturday Call In Show - February 21st, 2015

Does it violate the non-aggression principle to not be a vegan? Why are virtuous individuals drawn to religion when the bible has so many contradictions and depictions horrendous acts? Isn't marriage simply a monopoly on your partner's choices? Why is it that many creative people involved in collegiate arts (film/theater) are incredibly statist in nature? How much of creativity is developed and how much is innate?

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good evening, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	21st February, 2015.
	Oh, is it a munchkin month?
	Is it a vertically challenged month?
	Is it a month whose nose hairs are closer to its shoes?
	Yes, it is in fact a short month.
	So, if you could see away clear, I know.
	I did some rough back of the napkin calculations.
	Got about half a million, probably two million listeners.
	And I think that based upon the statistics of PayPal and other associated income streams, I'm guessing that a significant majority of you are not donating.
	Now, it is a short month, so if you were to feel at all like donating, now would be the month to do it.
	S'il vous plaît.
	That means if you would pay, please, because my French is fairly ancient.
	You go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	You know, pay for what you consume.
	Do the right thing.
	You don't need me to nag you.
	Actually, you really do.
	Statistically, you really do need me to nag you.
	And so if you could do that, that would be fantastic.
	And if you do that, then it seems to me...
	Highly likely that we will not end up using the voice box, which we were playing around with at the beginning of the show.
	And I think that would really be to the benefit of everyone's sanity.
	Well, except mine, because I think it'd be great fun.
	But yeah, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	If you could help us out, that would be beyond fantastic.
	And with that having been said, Mike, who do we have on first?
	Alright, well up for us today is David.
	David wrote in and asked, does it violate the non-aggression principle to not be a vegan?
	If not, how can we justify slaughtering billions of animals per year when it's been proven that we do not need to consume animals to live a happy, healthy life?
	Should we all go vegan for the planet?
	Alright, interesting question.
	What are your thoughts?
	Hi, Stefan.
	David here.
	Hi.
	How are you doing?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing?
	Good.
	Okay, so first of all, I wanted to kind of agree upon the definition of the non-aggression principle.
	So, in my eyes, it's the idea that each person has the right to make his or her own choices in life, so long as they do not involve aggression, defined as the initiation of use of force or fraud against others.
	Do you agree with this?
	Yeah, the non-aggression principle, that shall not initiate force or fraud against others, sure.
	I mean, I think that's pretty standard.
	So, right.
	So, if you initiate the use of force, that would be infringing upon the non-aggression principle, obviously.
	So, yeah, my question is, can we morally continue to slaughter animals against their will when our survivability and health is not incumbent upon doing so?
	So if you can just sort of give me more of an explanation, because the non-aggression principle generally requires a sentient being, right?
	Like, so if I have some sort of infection and I take some sort of antibiotics, then that's not a violation of the non-aggression principle, right?
	Right.
	Okay, right.
	So the non-aggression principle applies to creatures who are capable of comprehending the non-aggression principle, right?
	And this is for people as well.
	So if I'm walking next to you and I have my sudden first and unexpected epileptic attack and thump you in the head, I don't think that people would be overly like, oh, what an evil guy.
	He beat someone up, right?
	It would be like, well, that's a real shame, right?
	Sure.
	And that's because I would not be in control of my body, would not be able to, at that point, Process the non-aggression principle.
	Similarly, if I suddenly just start sleepwalking and you leave your house unlocked and I wander into your house, that's not the same as me coming in to steal or do harm to you or whatever.
	Because by sleeping, I'm not in a state where I can process the non-aggression principle.
	Similarly, at the very low end of IQ, it's possible, of course, that moral responsibility fades into the woodwork.
	And so on, right?
	So babies thump people occasionally because they don't understand the non-aggression principle.
	They're not even in full control of their bodies, right?
	So it does require that the agent, to be covered by the non-aggression principle, be able to comprehend the non-aggression principle.
	And as far as I understand it, that does not cover animals.
	Now, that doesn't mean that I'm indifferent to the welfare of animals in any way, shape, or form.
	But I think if you want to tie the non-aggression principle in, then you're going to have to find a way to have it cover agencies which do not comprehend the non-aggression principle, which I think would be tough.
	Like, if an animal attacks a human being, and often that animal is put down, but it's not put down because it's morally evil, right?
	It's just dangerous, right?
	And so that, I think, is a challenge.
	What do you think?
	Well, I think that humans are entitled to self-defense, of course.
	I can't remember the last time that a wild animal attacked me.
	We live in 2015.
	We don't really have to worry about a lion chewing our head off.
	If that ever happens, by all means, self-defense is a great thing.
	But I also, I guess the question would be, is it morally...
	Oh, sorry, hang on.
	Sorry, just to interrupt.
	I mean, the major danger, of course, doesn't come from wild animals, right?
	Every time you wash your hand, you are killing billions and billions of bacteria in order to keep yourself safe, right?
	Sure.
	So we are under constant attack by other organisms.
	And, you know, medicine and antibiotics.
	And, of course, if you get a vaccine, you are...
	Training your immune system to kill viruses that otherwise would end up doing you harm.
	So we are under constant assault from living organisms around the world that we're constantly killing billions and billions of them every day.
	Sure.
	But I think that, you know, land-dwelling mammals are a little different than bacteria and virus.
	Would you agree?
	Well, no, but we're looking at the principle.
	Land-dwelling mammals can't comprehend the non-aggression principle, and neither can viruses, right?
	So they would sort of be in the same category.
	Where I think your point is coming from, which I don't want to be like an annoying guy who blocks all progress in the conversation.
	I think where you're coming from is you're saying, look, I mean, we wash our hands because otherwise we can get sick, and we use antibiotics because otherwise we could get sick and die.
	But that's different from voluntarily choosing to eat meat, which we don't have to do.
	Is that sort of the difference?
	Yes, but then also, I mean, would you say that bacteria are sentient beings?
	Well, for purposes of philosophy, there's a category called can comprehend the non-aggression principle and cannot comprehend the non-aggression principle.
	The scales of lack of comprehension have some validity, but...
	There is that fundamental divide.
	So you're saying that an animal would have to be able to understand our linguistics, our spoken language, human spoken language.
	Well, to be annoyingly precise, it wouldn't have to be spoken, because mute people can understand it.
	But it would have to be communicated in some manner.
	So many years ago, and then there's a famous play with Anne Bancroft, there was a woman named Helen Keller, of which there were a proliferation of unsavory jokes when I was a kid about her.
	But she was born blind, deaf and dumb, and she lived sort of as a strange kind of beast in a way until a therapist actually got her to understand through touch, through tracing letters on her hand, got her to understand language through tracing letters on her hand, got her to understand language and got her to understand concepts And she ended up writing books and she got well educated and so on.
	And she herself said that before any kind of language, she just existed at a kind of insensate chaos within the mind, just every particular moment.
	But the only sense that she really had, of course, was, you know, taste, smell and touch.
	But...
	So, prior to her having any concepts, would she be covered by the non-aggression principle?
	I don't think she would.
	But after she learned language by this woman tracing the letters on her hand, and after she learned language and concepts and ideas, then she would be covered by the non-aggression principle.
	Okay, so, I guess another thing that I would like to mention is just the...
	The topic of speciesism.
	So speciesism defined in philosophy is the discrimination based on judging others not for who they are but what they are not.
	So the lives and experiences of non-human animals are usually considered less important than those of human beings simply because they are not like humans.
	Obviously a dog does not share the same intelligence that we do.
	The same level of intelligence.
	Yet non-human animals have emotional lives and feel pain, pleasure, fear, and joy.
	So I would argue that any form of aggression toward a being that we can share empathy with would be a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	And I hate to...
	But see, this is the challenge of philosophy, is you'd have to make that case.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And I'm not sure what we share empathy with exactly means.
	Does that mean that it would have to be an animal that would be a pack animal?
	Because as far as I understand it, it is pack animals who have the greatest capacity for sort of bonding and empathy, the difference between sort of dogs and cats and so on.
	So how would you, if you could sort of break it down for me a little more, what does it mean to say those we share empathy with?
	That's a tough one, I guess.
	But I just think...
	I think about the slaughterhouses.
	I think about what's going on so that, you know...
	I think about the subsidies that the government puts in to be able to go to any nearest store and buy a cut of meat.
	That's basically what I think of.
	So, you know, I'm thinking, like I was saying, just animals, you know?
	So, lambs...
	I mean, babies.
	These babies are being slaughtered.
	Lambs...
	Veal is particularly repulsive, right?
	I mean, don't they feed these baby cows like unbelievably rich nutrients and keep them from moving so that their meat gets as fatty as humanly possible?
	It's utterly repulsive, what is done.
	Well, that and then the baby cows.
	Baby cows are taken from their mothers after the mothers are impregnated against their will.
	A female cow, a dairy cow, will be pregnant I don't know how many times, I think it's like 10 times within her life against her will.
	And then every time they birth the calf, it's stolen from the mother because we need the milk, right?
	The humans are not even supposed to be drinking another species' milk.
	We're the only ones that do that, you know what I mean?
	It's disturbing, to say the least.
	Well, okay.
	I mean, I'm willing to accept these arguments.
	And my position, for those who don't know, and this is not syllogistically reasoned out from first principles.
	I mean, some of the earlier stuff around the non-aggression principle is closer to that.
	But my position is that if the true cost of livestock were reflected in the price, meat consumption would collapse.
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, they say what, it takes seven times the water, seven times the food to produce, seven times the energy to produce a pound of meat rather than a pound of wheat.
	Yeah, I think it's more like 11 times.
	Yeah, it probably has gone up, right?
	And the, you know, of course, the amount of antibiotics, the amount of, like, it's just, it's crazy just how expensive eating other species is.
	Now, Because I am a voluntarist, because I'm an anarchist, the question is, if we find this stuff distasteful, and heaven knows, a lot of it is.
	So, you know, distasteful in the extreme.
	And I think it takes a pretty cold-hearted person to shrug and say, well, we're at the top of the food chain, so there.
	There's a great...
	I think Paul McCartney said, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everybody would be a vegetarian.
	Right.
	So I do think it is distasteful.
	I don't think it's morally evil to eat other species.
	And there's a whole bunch of arguments around that, which I've gone into many times before, so I won't go into them here.
	I don't think it's morally evil to eat other species.
	I think it is something that is distasteful and expensive.
	And unfortunately, because of the system we have right now, it's ridiculously subsidized.
	And because of that, it's artificially lowered in price, and I think it would be...
	And of course, people are very distant from the food that they eat.
	You just get this red goo in a plastic bag, basically, and that's...
	You know, the act that got it flayed off an animal's bones and so on is not really very prevalent to people's minds.
	It doesn't really imprint upon people's minds.
	So I do think that animals should be treated better.
	And the environmental impact of...
	Livestock farming is huge.
	And I think it does damage people to some degree to be that distant from the destruction that they are, in a sense, participating in.
	So I think it's a negative practice.
	And I think that the more we can move towards not eating other animals, I think the better.
	I think that that case needs to be made morally.
	But I think the best way to do that, of course, as I've mentioned here before, is treat children better, raise them peacefully, explain to them the realities of the situation in the world, and let them make their sort of informed choices as they get older.
	So I think it's one of these, you know, should everyone be a vegan?
	I don't know.
	Honestly, I mean, I have no idea because I'm not a nutritionist, I'm not a doctor, I don't know what the health requirements or issues are and so on.
	But...
	I certainly do think that the animals...
	Of course, if there was not livestock farming, these cows would probably not be alive in the first place, right?
	Because they're raised...
	They're alive in order to be preyed upon or exploited in this manner.
	Or, say, used, if you want more...
	sort of morally neutral terms.
	I think there would be significantly less of them, fewer cows.
	I don't think that they, you know, they would exist...
	Yeah, I mean, if we could just find a way to ride cows in competitions, they'd be like horses, and they would then occupy a different moral category in our mind.
	You know, I mean, seriously, it is deranged, the artificiality, and the shallowness.
	Well, horses are prettier than cows, so we eat cows, but the idea of eating horses is gross!
	It's like, that makes no sense whatsoever.
	That's a speciesism argument.
	Well, it's not even speciesism.
	I mean, it's because they're prettier.
	And little girls don't bond with cows.
	They bond with horses and so on.
	But, of course, horses have been used in war.
	They've been used in agriculture.
	They've been used in show jumping since they've basically been domesticated.
	And so we have a sort of different relationship with them as utility animals rather than as consumption animals.
	Yeah.
	But it is completely ridiculous just how we favor some animals and not others, you know?
	Oh yeah, I'll eat bacon.
	But the idea of having a thigh of cat is unbelievably repulsive.
	Although, I mean, again, some of it's cultural too.
	I mean, I remember the first time I went to an authentic Chinese restaurant, I really felt like I was just basically randomly throwing darts at Noah's Ark to figure out what the hell I was going to get to eat.
	There doesn't seem to be any barriers there.
	Sea slugs!
	Okay!
	Snake soup!
	Okay!
	It's like, oh yeah, we just eat everything.
	If it can be knocked over by a car, we'll put it in our bellies.
	That's really all they get out of it.
	So I think diminishing, but I think that the focus would be to treat kids well, get to a stateless society, and treat children well and all that.
	I mean, that's the way, I think, to get...
	Animals treated better.
	Treated better in society.
	I mean, the other question, of course, is pets.
	And I have a very complicated relationship to pets.
	And I can't, you know, this is just thoughts and feelings.
	It's not a particularly well worked out argument.
	I was in the grocery store the other day.
	I had to pick something up and I just realized there's a lot of pet food in a grocery store.
	There's a lot of pet stuff going down in a grocery store.
	And, you know, there are, of course, entire dedicated stores for pet stuff and all that.
	And environmental damage of pets is monstrous.
	Huge.
	But the degree of emotional comfort they give people, the degree of familiarity, the illusion of intimacy.
	You know, I mean, I don't know.
	I've said this before.
	People having relationship.
	You know, like the traditional stereotype of the woman who never got married and never had kids having a bunch of cats.
	It's like, well, that to me is a cheap substitute for something that you should have struggled to achieve.
	But yeah, I mean, environmental destruction wrought by pets is staggering.
	Human resources, vets, medicines, antibiotics, grooming, I mean, just the cat litter garbage, dog crap everywhere.
	I mean, yeah, the amount of environmental destruction wrought simply by having pets is astonishing.
	But at the same time, they give people a lot of comfort.
	Now, you could say, well, yes, but the environmental destruction of having cows is prodigious, but it's comfort food for people they really like to taste, and it can be good for them.
	So it's complicated, but I would like to see children treated better, growing up with the kind of empathy that would include other species and no more subsidies for all of this butchery.
	Right.
	Could I jump in there for a second?
	Yeah, yeah, go.
	Okay, so kids first.
	I totally agree.
	I don't disagree with that.
	But I think that couldn't we just say no violence altogether?
	And that would cover both of them.
	That would cover animals and then also the children.
	Because we were just saying children.
	Let's start with children.
	But why not both?
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	You mean both equally?
	Yeah.
	Why can't we?
	No, that's not possible.
	I mean, come on.
	I mean, you're asking for the impossible.
	Because look, there is something...
	The whole reason why we ended up as a dominant species is because of DNA affinity.
	That's the reason why people like their own kids generally more than other people's kids.
	Right?
	It's why races tend to congregate together if left in a sort of uncoerced environment.
	It's why there's Chinatown.
	It's why there's little Italy.
	It's why there's little Greece.
	It's why there's little Afghanistan in places.
	And so, biological affinity, DNA affinity, is foundational.
	I think asking people to not have anything to do with that, I think, is too far.
	Like, if you have a kid, you have a daughter, and there's a dog snarling at and advancing at your five-year-old daughter, and if the only thing you can do, if the only thing you have is a gun, you know what you're going to do, right?
	Yeah, but that's self-defense.
	Well, no, but you said equal.
	Now, philosophically, if they're equal, you can't.
	You talk about the human, though.
	If a human were snarling at you...
	Okay.
	No, let's take another example.
	I get what you're saying.
	Let's take another example.
	Your daughter is drowning and a mouse is drowning.
	Who are you saving?
	I would save my daughter first.
	Of course.
	Of course, right?
	And to think otherwise would be absurd.
	Right.
	And I would assume that the mother mouse would not go and save my daughter either, right?
	Right.
	I would grant the same right to the mother mouse and not call it selfish for saving its own daughter, its own kid, its own mouse-ling.
	So biological affinity is foundational.
	I mean, it's what the DNA do.
	What did the DNA want?
	They want, reproduce us, reproduce us, forget about everyone else, it's us, photocopy us, reproduce us.
	That's what they're all about.
	And I just...
	To say, well, let's treat all species equally, I think is not valid.
	And of course, there's no way to enforce that, particularly, of course, if all living organisms are equal.
	I mean, you can't take any medicine.
	I mean, you get what I'm saying.
	We can't wash your hands.
	I mean, it all becomes very silly very quickly.
	But I do think that asking...
	You know, for me, asking people to overcome...
	Close DNA preference.
	It's sort of like what communists do in saying, well, if everyone works for the common good and no one has any self-interest, you know?
	We only gain the capacity to develop a concept called communism because we respond to incentives.
	And we have close DNA preferences and our species DNA preferences and all that.
	And so...
	That which, I've sort of never been a big fan of a philosophy that is only developed because of particular biological imperatives, then saying, well, we should overthrow these biological imperatives.
	I mean, you just can't make them equal.
	Because again, sorry, and the other thing too is that in order to be covered by the NAP, you have to be able to comprehend the NAP. Right, but I still think that's a little speciesist because, you know...
	No, no, you're begging the question because you're saying it's biased, but you're trying to establish whether it's biased or not.
	It's like calling someone a racist before you've established whether they're racist.
	So speciesist is just one of these.
	It's a bit of an ugly word because it's implying an ugly and nasty and immoral prejudice.
	But we're trying to establish whether that's even valid or not.
	So I don't think you can use that word as yet.
	If you can prove it, then sure.
	Okay, can I present you with another argument?
	Just another thought.
	Let's say, and you've probably heard this before, but what if There's a more intelligent life source, let's just say aliens, extraterrestrial behavior, that is more intelligent than us.
	And they come down and they observe us.
	And they say, man, these humans are treating animals horribly and They have their own language.
	They can speak with each other, but we can't understand what they're saying.
	And they take us hostage.
	How would we feel then?
	Because it's basically like if it were happening to us.
	This is not a possible scenario in any way that I could ever figure out.
	Because I think it twists the variables too much.
	So, for instance, let us say that, let's say you and I find the eating of cat meat particularly appalling, whatever, let's just say that.
	No, no, let's just say for us, right?
	Okay.
	So then we go to some tribe that's never been found before in Borneo that raises cats and eats them, right?
	Okay.
	And let's just say that we're just way more intelligent than this group.
	We would be intelligent enough to understand that this is where they are in their development.
	Uh-huh.
	Right?
	So the idea that super-intelligent aliens are going to come and punish us...
	I mean, if they're intelligent enough, they would be anthropologists, right?
	Okay.
	And they would come and they would say, well, an anthropologist's goal is to study, not judge, right?
	Okay.
	And so they wouldn't come and...
	You know, blow us up because, you know, in the sort of Star Trek 3 whale scenario, they wouldn't come and blow us up or kidnap us or think we were morally horrible for hurting animals.
	Now, they may disagree with us and they may say, look, we've got a really great argument.
	You know, we're going to switch brains with you and a dog.
	This is how good our technology is.
	We're going to switch brains with you and a dog and you will get to live for an hour in a dog's mind and you will get to live for an hour in a cow's mind.
	And then we're going to put you in a cow's mind and we're going to take away your baby.
	And your udders are going to twitch and your four bellies are going to contract in horror and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And then we would pop back in our own minds and say, oh my god, I'm never touching meat again.
	It would be like eating a friend, right?
	It would be like eating my favorite dog.
	So they wouldn't come down and do something horrible to us.
	They would come down and say, well, this is where they are in their development.
	And we can make better arguments.
	We have the technology and so on.
	But the idea that they're just going to come down and do horrible things to us.
	Because being intelligent also, they would recognize that maybe they would have gone through a phase of eating animals, right?
	That have had to, pretty much, right?
	I mean, unless it was an all-vegetable planet.
	In which case, I don't know, we just throw some onion dip at them and let meatloaf eat them up.
	And so they would have had to have gone through an eating other animals phase and then they would have developed some argument or some understanding or something that we don't know about that allowed them to surmount that.
	But then couldn't come to us who don't even have any idea about that and then punish us for that.
	Does that make sense?
	Sort of.
	But then couldn't you also say that we as humans being the most Do intellectual moral agents on the planet have a duty to stop all violence when it's not necessary?
	Well, again, you'd have to make that moral case.
	Stop all violence when it's not necessary.
	These are very easy things to say, but actually putting them into philosophical, objective, universal form is really tricky.
	It's sort of like the argument of, well, the government can redistribute income to end poverty.
	If that's the beginning and end of the sentence, well, who could really disagree with it, right?
	But actually putting it into practice and defining it in a way that doesn't mess everything up, or doesn't get ridiculously confusing, and doesn't suffer from slippery slope, and all this sort of stuff, right?
	All these logical problems.
	It's not really, it's kind of apples versus oranges, because in my instance, I'm trying to stop the initiation of use of force, whereas you're going to an argument for more government, which is the initiation of the use of force.
	No, no, no, that's not, no, no.
	The point is not whether it's more or less government.
	The point is, it's easy to say, well, we have a duty to stop all unnecessary violence, right?
	But the definition of violence and the definition of necessary and the definition of duty and what it means to stop that, these are all very complex issues.
	And you're kind of skating over the surface and giving a sentence that sounds plausible.
	But what you need to do in the realm of philosophy is really dig into those terms and figure out if you can make an argument for them that really holds together and is actionable.
	And certainly, look, if we were to make the case, I think that there would still be a hierarchy, right?
	So we would obviously, you know, so let me just take an argument.
	Let me just give you this argument.
	To stop all violence that is unnecessary, right?
	Well, cats sometimes kill birds for fun, right?
	Do they for fun or do they because they're hungry?
	Right.
	Oh no, cats will sometimes, they play with mice, they kill them, they don't even eat them.
	I mean, there are animals who hunt.
	Like, I watched this show on, I think it was on Netflix, and it was about four killer whales that were hunting a baby humpback whale.
	Oh, okay.
	No, a baby humpback whale, and the mom was trying to protect it, and they spent hours just chasing and hunting and chasing and hunting, and they only ended up, after they killed it, they only ended up eating part of the tongue.
	Mm-hmm.
	Is that necessary?
	I bet you they expended more calories trying to catch this damn thing than they did actually eating it.
	Goldfish.
	Goldfish will eat more food than they need.
	They'll eat food till they explode, right?
	So where's the necessity in all of this?
	So what I'm saying is that if you're going to say all unnecessary violence, we have a duty to stop, but we're going to be policing a whole lot of felines, just off the top of my head, right?
	And that's what I mean when I say it's easy to say that kind of stuff.
	It's hard to actually work out how that Right.
	How that happens in practice.
	Right.
	And I think the thing with the killer whales and the humpback whale and the bird with the cat and the bird, I think that almost, to me, it equates to a human being who is a psycho, who is a psychotic, and goes and shoots up his own kind.
	So goes into a Walmart and shoots down half the people in there.
	No, these are all different species.
	Right, but it just seems very similar to me in that it's something that really doesn't happen very often, but yet still happens.
	Violence for not nutrition, for not eating, I guess.
	So, I don't know.
	You could maybe make the argument that there's a chemical imbalance, you know?
	Because in the human species, we have people that are born, you know, that have chemical imbalances in their brains, right?
	So why couldn't...
	Not that I know of.
	Not that it has any moral bearing.
	Okay, okay.
	So everything is learned then, so...
	No, no.
	You're like one pole to the other, right?
	Okay.
	They're not born evil, so it's all environmental.
	It's like, no, no.
	I mean, there are people, there is a researcher in psychopathy, and he actually, when he scanned himself, he actually has the brain of a psychopath.
	But he was raised in a very loving environment, so he actually is peaceful and studious and helpful and functional and not violent and all that kind of stuff, right?
	I mean, he studies psychopaths, turns out Robert Hare, I think his name is.
	But he studies these guys and obviously he's good at studying them because he's kind of one of them.
	Now, I don't know whether he comes from a family where there was a huge amount of meanness and then something changed and people got better and all that, but He was born with a particular configuration, so we're not all born blank slates.
	The personality does seem to be innate, but that does not determine our moral future.
	Because, of course, anytime anything is determined, it's no longer moral, right?
	So, my suggestion is, look, I mean, I think you've got great ideas and great thoughts about it, but, you know, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is you've really got to syllogize this stuff up.
	And really, you know, the more passionate you are about an argument, the more you should be skeptical against it and really put it through the fire of people who disagree with you.
	I mean, that's the great thing that I've had the opportunity to do for many years now.
	Right.
	If you really want to make the case, and I'm not saying you can't, I'm not the oracle at Delphi, But if you want to make the case for we have a duty to prevent all unnecessary violence, then you need to view it with as cold-eyed a skepticism as humanly possible and figure out whether you can make the case.
	But saying it is nowhere close to philosophy.
	It's not even a Hallmark card, right?
	Sorry to be annoying, but that's just the way it works.
	It's like me saying, I'm an engineer because I want an inexpensive bridge that will stand for 100 years.
	It's like, well, saying it is not going to...
	Not going to put one girder in place, right?
	Well, I'm practicing it.
	I'm sorry?
	I'm practicing what I preach, basically.
	And that's fine, but that's still not a philosophical argument, right?
	You know, I could say, you know, all hobos should have their armpits stapled.
	And I could go out and practice that.
	But that still wouldn't be a philosophical argument, right?
	No.
	So, the more you care about it, and I get that you care about it, and I respect that you care about it, but you have to really go and make a rigorous case for this.
	And, you know, I care about the non-aggression principle and self-defense and ethics and so on, and so I made, you know, years and years of study and grinding God knows what to...
	Poop out UPB, which is like shitting a swordfish sideways.
	And it just takes a long time.
	And then it still can be improved.
	I've just started working on a brief summary of it that is going to take out some of the tangents and some of the problems with the first version.
	So it's still going to be an ongoing project.
	And work it from the ground up.
	I think that's what you...
	Because saying these sentimental things...
	And by sentimental, I don't mean that they'd be philosophically incorrect.
	But saying sentimental things like, well, don't we have a duty to stop all unnecessary violence and all that?
	Who could say yes?
	Who could say no?
	Because it's hard to know exactly what you're talking about.
	But if you really care about this, and you do, then I think you would best serve it by really grinding it through.
	Put it on message boards.
	Message boards are a good place to test your fragile theories with the troll-baked fire from hell, which is a useful and good thing.
	And so that would be my suggestion.
	Okay.
	Alright, I've got to move on to the next call.
	I, for God's sake, is going to finish one of these shows one of these days.
	Maybe it will be today.
	We'll find out.
	But thanks for your call, man.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	And I really appreciate your passion for the subject.
	Alright, thank you.
	Bye-bye.
	All right, thanks, David.
	John is up next.
	John wrote in and said, Why are virtuous humans being drawn to religion, Christianity specifically, when the Bible has so many contradictions, killings, sexism, etc.?
	I find myself in a relationship with a virtuous, generous, intelligent, wonderful woman, but she claims to also be in a relationship with Jesus, and this causes tensions.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, the abstract three-way is...
	It's a real challenge.
	It's tough to compete with the perfect boyfriend of one's imagination.
	Go ahead, John.
	Do you want to give me a bit more of a background?
	Yeah, actually, I was raised in a Catholic home and went to Catholic school for eight years of my life.
	As I got older, I started seeing the consistencies and the ability to justify anything you really want by reading it in the Bible.
	And not a clear answer for anything.
	So you have a history, so you know what's going down with this woman, right?
	Yeah, I had a relationship with God at a time in my life.
	But now, as I got older, I started in politics and economics, and then it worked its way to religion.
	I saw inconsistencies in what the government would do in economics, and I just applied that to faith and religion.
	I said I can't accept that and not accept the inconsistent economics and then look at my religion and then think that that's all fine and just accept the inconsistency of that.
	That makes sense.
	Right.
	Right.
	Do you want to add anything more?
	I mean, I've certainly got some thoughts on the issue, but I don't want to sort of erase your necessary intro.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, I spent a lot of time definitely It was probably the lowest point in my life when I was trying to figure out what's real, what to even believe if there is anything to believe, which I'm an atheist now.
	Thanks, D. A lot of help from what you put out.
	You put good work out.
	So yeah, I definitely spent a lot of time grinding it through.
	Even when I discovered your website, I was definitely a skeptic of what you had to say, too, because I felt like that's a pretty responsible thing to do.
	Good, that's good.
	So, like, I totally grind everything down, and just, I could think, but I'm going to attack it.
	So, I, uh, and then it led me to, like, your books and your theories and whatnot are probably the most relatable thing to where I'm at right now, so.
	Right.
	Why do you think, um, let's just call your girlfriend Sue.
	Why do you think that Sue is religious?
	Um...
	I mean, we have talks about it a lot and, I mean, she wasn't really so involved until high school began.
	So, like, that's like four years ago.
	And I feel like she's religious because she said she felt, like, confused or alone and God saved her.
	So she was confused and lonely and God saved her, is that right?
	Yeah, I don't want to quote her words exactly, but she says something like that whenever we talk.
	So she was not raised religious, is that right?
	Well, she was exposed to it a little because her dad's Catholic too, but she never went like every Sunday like I did.
	Right.
	And why was she confused and lonely, do you think?
	She said she was just unhappy with her.
	She wasn't fulfilled until she experienced religion in her life.
	At the time, she had a boyfriend that was older than her.
	Well, he was also religious, but was class president and all this stuff.
	She said she felt like she should have been happy, but she wasn't until she found God.
	Right.
	And what's her relationship like with her family?
	Well, that's a good point.
	It's not the best.
	Her and her father don't really communicate, and her and her mother do communicate, but they're not really too friendly with each other.
	And why is that, do you think?
	Well, they're very, what I say goes.
	They don't really talk and negotiate a reason with the kids.
	It's pretty much a one-way street in their house.
	You mean their parents dictate?
	Yeah, very much.
	And I assume that's been the case for her childhood.
	Yeah.
	From what I've heard, what she's told me.
	And does she tell you what she prays for?
	Um...
	Not exactly now.
	And does she...
	Has she explained to you, or do you have any understanding, what kind of god she worships?
	Because there's this belief that there's a monotheism Theism, right?
	That there's monotheism in, you know, the basic Abrahamic religions, right?
	The big three.
	That it's a monotheistic God.
	My God.
	Nothing could be further from the truth.
	I mean, first of all, as you know, there's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, right?
	So that's already, you've got, you know, I've given you a new car.
	It's in three pieces.
	Not so helpful.
	And I would not call that one car.
	And so the, you know, the Fruit Ninja that's done with the original And then, you of course, in Catholicism, you have all of the saints, you have the Virgin Mary.
	So it's an intensely polytheistic religion.
	And all religions that flourish must be polytheistic.
	For the simple reason that they wish to appeal to as wide a set of personalities as possible.
	And therefore, they must have as many facets as an airplane hangers worth of piled up disco balls.
	They have to.
	Because they have to appeal to everyone.
	And therefore, they have to have aspects of the deity that is going to appeal to every single personality structure that you can imagine.
	And So for the narcissist, they have, you know, God really cares about you.
	He thinks about you.
	He cares about your life.
	He's got a plan for you.
	It's like, oh yeah, okay, great.
	The most intelligent being in the whole universe is fascinated by me.
	Yes, that works, right?
	And for the neurotics, it's like, God wants you to do contradictory things to get into heaven.
	Ooh, that appeals to my neurosis.
	And for the psychotics, it's like, God wants you to kill people.
	Okay, great.
	And for the people who self-attack, there's original sin and sin and sin and sin.
	Bad you!
	Oh, that appeals to me as well.
	And for the gentle people, there's forgive your enemies, right?
	And for the aggressive people, there's an eye for an eye, right?
	So it has to have as many commandments and as many deities as there are personalities in the world.
	And I could literally do that for like three hours, but I won't.
	Yeah, there's a whole book of that, so...
	Right.
	So, all of that stuff sort of leads me back to my question, which is, what kind of God is she worshipping?
	What is her deity?
	Definitely the all-loving, all-forgiving...
	Love you no matter what happens in your life, it'll always be there.
	Right.
	Right.
	And so what that, to me, says, or the question that that comes to is, what vacuum did this gentle deity rush into fill?
	Sounds like one from her parents.
	And so, incomplete parenting or parenting that leaves a hole in your children is where the power vacuums rush in to fill.
	Yeah, I'd like to add...
	Whether it's nationalism or militarism or deism or whatever, or religion or whatever.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, it also does the all-loving and...
	Like that, Scotch worships.
	And...
	Oh, it will always be there, and...
	It's a negotiating deity, right?
	Yes.
	It talks to her.
	It works with her.
	Right.
	It does not order her around.
	Yes.
	And it's always forgiving and it understands her and it doesn't order her to do it.
	Yes.
	Right.
	So she had, as I think you were saying, non-negotiating, very authoritarian parents.
	And so now she has a deity that does the opposite of what her dad did.
	Yeah, that's pretty accurate.
	Okay, so the question is, since there's no conceivable rational or empirical reason for someone to believe in a deity, the question then is always, if you are in a relationship with someone who is religious, the question is, well, why?
	Why?
	You know, why is this tooth fairy so long in the tooth, right?
	Why is Santa still coming down the chimney when they're in their 20s or 30s or 40s?
	And it's because that which...
	is not generated intellectually must be serviceable emotionally.
	That which is not true must be valuable in some other way.
	And so this is giving her a template for a relationship that is different if not opposite to the relationship she had with her parents.
	Now, what's her relationship like with you?
	Where do you fall in this pantheon?
	That's it.
	We Like, honesty is definitely what we, like, I read your book on Real Time Relationships, and I definitely, like, honesty is our first.
	Like, we are always honest with each other.
	And, um, probably out of, like, I haven't dated anybody in four years until her, and, like, she definitely sticks out to me.
	Like, she's definitely more caring, and, like, all the, like, what she expects out of her God is how, like, she treats, like, people like me, which I think is interesting.
	I think she's always understanding.
	Is that what you're looking for?
	No, I'm looking for whatever you want to provide that's as accurate as possible, of course.
	Right.
	So, she is using the imaginary relationship with the deity as a way of practicing and rehearsing and improving her skills in negotiation, which she didn't get from her parents, right?
	Yeah.
	She'll talk with me about, like, she knows where I stand, that I don't believe in God, and she will, that she, like, isn't, like most people that, you know, spit on, like, look at me like I worship Satan.
	Like, she's real understanding.
	And talks to me about it and stuff.
	Right.
	Or like, oh, here my...
	What you know, sometimes I do talk about God a lot in school or wherever I'm at.
	And then, of course, I feel like it's like this big, homogeneous blob of religion.
	It sends off little blobs at me and I have to fight them off like they're fighting me.
	And I'm like...
	Just sit there and waste my breath, point out all the irrational things about religion and contradictions, and then it just returns back in the blob at the end of the day, and I'm worn out.
	No, but see, that's why I get that, right?
	So that's why I'm asking you what the emotional drivers are for her religiosity.
	Because if you are attempting to solve an emotional need with an intellectual argument, you will fail, right?
	Yeah, that's right.
	You know, gravel is great for paving your driveway.
	It's not so great on your salad, right?
	So if you want a salad and someone's saying, here, I'm going to back up a truck of gravel to your breakfast table, people are like, useful, but not useful here, right?
	Yes, because I feel like she's smart.
	She's high honors and stuff, and I propose these arguments that show how The rationality behind religion, it doesn't seem to affect her idea of it.
	Because I'm looking at it through a scientific mathematical sense, not an emotional sense.
	Right.
	And that is frustrating for you, and it's frustrating for her, right?
	And it doesn't ever get anywhere.
	Yes, frustrating.
	And that's important.
	Look, you can be completely right intellectually and have no effect on someone's emotional state.
	We all know that, right?
	I mean, but it's hard to really get that, right?
	Yeah, that's what it really comes...
	We were just talking today, like, she definitely gets frustrated with me when, like, I... Like, what I say.
	And I get, like, frustrated with her that she doesn't...
	Like, she does, like, know what I'm saying, but she doesn't...
	She always says, well, I need the...
	I haven't thought about it that much, or I need the...
	Look in the Bible or something along those lines.
	Not exactly, but it always comes down to us just agreeing that we're frustrated with each other and something we can work on.
	Well, yeah, and that's because if you want to change someone's mind when the mind is filled with an emotional driver, you have to address the emotional drivers.
	In other words, you have to do a lot of asking.
	You know, what was happening right before you became religious?
	What did it do for you emotionally?
	You know, if there was no deity, what would that mean for you?
	Like, if you can just imagine that for a moment.
	Because look, I mean, I think this is as true for women as for men, but...
	I shouldn't say that.
	But what are your choices in dating these days?
	Well, do you want a theist or a communist?
	Right.
	I mean, this is the choice.
	Like, I'm out there in my own little, like...
	Like, in public education, it's...
	Me and maybe one other friend versus everybody.
	Some days it drives me nuts.
	It's tough.
	And, you know, do you want a woman who's into Jesus or a woman who's into Marx?
	Do you want a woman who's into the Bible or do you want a woman who's into being a social justice warrior and an extreme feminist and whatever it is, right?
	I mean, these are your choices.
	Do you want the abstract statist or the tangible statist, right?
	Do you want the person who worships the God above the clouds or the government in the capital?
	These are the choices!
	That's what you get!
	And it's like, ah!
	It's like, and your website, that's the only form of community I have to keep me sane, or remind me that I'm not just on my end, you know?
	There's other people that take this stuff through, too.
	And listen, man, I'm telling you, John, you might not like her as much if she gives up religion.
	What do you think that is?
	Okay, so you know I'm always annoyingly nagging people about therapy, self-knowledge, right?
	Yeah.
	Because if she's able to, you know, with your wisdom and curiosity, if she's able to get to the root of why religion is compelling for her, and there's personal history, personal trauma, unsatisfactory relationships, whatever it is, that's at the root of why this is an emotional driver for her, Well, if she can get to that, then she can let go of a deity without it creating a power vacuum that sucks some other nonsense in, right?
	Yeah.
	And so, your goal of intellectually talking her out of religion without figuring out why she's interested or susceptible to religion in the first place, you might end up with someone you like a lot less if you succeed.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, I... Would that make her any less...
	Do you think that would make her less honest or less caring?
	No, no.
	What I mean is that...
	Well, let's just say you snap your fingers, she accepts your intellectual arguments, and the deity is...
	I don't believe in the deity anymore.
	What's going to happen to her emotionally?
	That's kind of hard to say.
	Probably...
	I'm telling you, man, you don't want to be attempting to defuse a bomb without knowing what happens if the wires cross, right?
	As they usually do, right?
	Yes, yeah, okay.
	So what happens to her if you get what you want and she's like, okay, fine, there's no God?
	Then that void he was filling becomes of the loving and caring.
	Did that get with the God or is that...
	Depression.
	Depression.
	Depression, because I'm not saying that all religion is the same as a drug addiction, but a drug addiction, whatever addiction it is, is a way of keeping legitimate pain at bay.
	There's a theory which says all mental ill health is the result of the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
	She suffered a lot as a child, and rather than deal with that suffering, she's now created a fantasy relationship that gives her everything she didn't get as a child.
	Yeah, that's funny you point that out, because when I took my intellectual arguments and proposed them at first, she would have to, like, she'd understand them, yes, but she wouldn't accept them, you know?
	And she'd tell her friends and whatnot, and then she got this point, she's like, a month or so back, she was like, I don't have much relationship with God anymore, and I'm so confused and so lonely, and I don't know what to believe anymore.
	And sounding very depressed, you know?
	Like, I feel like I'm not even...
	So I feel like we've kind of brushed on that phase.
	Now she's not really...
	Like, she just stays at a level where she doesn't accept what I have to say, but she definitely listens and understands it, but she, like, refuses to accept it for, I guess, that fear of feeling that emptiness and confusion.
	Yeah, look, I mean, to take a big picture view, the 19th century, the age of science, the age of reason...
	Well, they got major head roads in against organized religion, didn't they?
	And what happened?
	Socialism, communism, fascism, two world wars, genocides, a quarter of a billion people killed.
	I don't know what would have happened if religion had been supplanted by self-knowledge, because that son of a bitch, Sigmund Freud, chickened out under pressure, betrayed the kids.
	And stymied that flow.
	But that's a topic for another time.
	Was it great for the 20th century that the 19th century was incredibly skeptical for religion?
	I don't know.
	Because it seems like what came along was predatory nihilism in the absence of religion.
	And I am more skeptical now than I was in the past.
	I am more skeptical now of removing people's psychological structures unless you have a very compelling alternative.
	Okay.
	So that's where part of this question comes in with...
	Because there's people that demonstrate those virtues, you know, like my girlfriend being one...
	I don't know how to make the onslaught of religion stop without taking that void out, without sitting down with each one of them and finding their own personal self-knowledge within themselves to find it.
	Wait, who are we talking about?
	Human, like religious people.
	Yeah, so why did we stop talking about your girlfriend then?
	I know I went kind of global, but that was just to give a sort of larger perspective, but I don't think we want to start talking about all people.
	Okay, yeah, you're right.
	That's kind of shady.
	Well, no, it's just, I mean, it's a bit avoidant, right?
	I mean, what was your experience when you gave up on religion?
	I guess, do you mind if I start with when I did believe in religion?
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Um, so I was, you know, middle school, grade school, kindergarten, all that, eight years of it, you know, I was fully convinced, like, I have a relationship, there's something I can't see it, touch it, don't really, I try to talk to it,
	it doesn't talk to me back, you know, just denies all my senses and all the sensibility I have, but it's there, and I was fully convinced it was in my mind, so, like, the biggest step for me getting over religion was Seeing that, like, every time I doubt it or question it, my own mind would turn guilty, like, against itself.
	And it was, like, really confusing.
	It was not comfortable.
	Like, it was just a bad time in my life.
	But, yeah, and then once I understood, like, I can be, like, a good person, be forgiving and be honest without having, like, guilt trip my own mind that something's in there, like, telling me to.
	And then, like, I put that out of my mind, like, once I quit accepting that this God was in my mind, really, like, made me come true with, like, self-knowledge and, like, the pursuit of it.
	That makes sense.
	Right.
	The traditional transmission of ethics and virtue and cultural standards has been parents.
	And that's because most historical ethics and culture have been resolutely denied by reality.
	The old, you can't get an ought from an is, from Hume.
	And so the real danger and the real challenge for people is if you, because God is a way of transmitting values.
	I think fundamentally.
	I mean, there's a lot of it, of course, that is, you know, and give us money and Pope needs a new hat or whatever.
	But there is a lot of be good because God.
	God good.
	Just one letter.
	One letter difference, right?
	And, you know, the great challenge is since there is no, there are no values in reality.
	And since the traditional transmitter of values is...
	What is to a child and a toddler all-knowing, all-powerful deities called parents?
	A lot of times what happens, of course, is it's the baby in the bathwater.
	So people throw out the deity and they also throw out virtues and values.
	And then they try to run to science and they try to run to communism or they run to whatever, right?
	Political correctness or social justice warriors or leftism or rightism or whatever.
	Although rightism is usually associated with some sort of religiosity.
	You know, God is gone, and now everything is permitted.
	The rule-giver, the rule-maker is gone, and now all is permitted.
	It's the substitute teacher.
	You know, you ever have that when you're a kid?
	The substitute teacher comes in and nobody listens, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Unless they're some terrifying substitute.
	But most times the substitute teacher is woohoo, you know?
	Everybody just sniffs the photocopies until they pass out.
	But for a lot of people, because they get their sense of virtue and value and meaning and depth and being part of a larger story and having a life purpose and a life message and a life goal, that all comes from religiosity.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And you take that away and they're just looking at bare, bald, uninspiring, empty reality.
	Stuff, nonsense, nothing.
	A chair, a wall, a cloud.
	Where's the good?
	Where's the good in that?
	Where's the purpose in that?
	Where's the grandeur in that?
	Where's the morality in that?
	Where's the story in that?
	Where's my meaning in that?
	Where's my destination?
	Where's my goal?
	How do I know if I'm doing right or wrong?
	How do I know if I'm doing good or bad?
	The chair doesn't care.
	The wall doesn't care.
	The cloud doesn't care.
	Without a God, we all just become mosquitoes, drinking blood, making babies, and getting smacked occasionally.
	Where is the virtue?
	Where is the value?
	Where is the most important part of the human experience, the dedication to good, to virtue?
	Where is that?
	When the lawgiver passes from the land, people cannot comprehend that there is a law.
	Because law is externalized.
	Law is reward and punishment.
	It's carrots and sticks.
	So for most people, when we say a stateless society, they cannot comprehend it.
	Without a lawmaker, without a lawgiver, there will be no law.
	There will be no structure.
	There will be no roads.
	There will be nothing.
	A war of all against all.
	We will be reduced to mere bald apes.
	It will be Lord of the Flies.
	There will be no restraint.
	We will be feral.
	It will be brute winds, nature red in tooth and claw.
	The whole nightmare scenario.
	And what they're saying is that if someone is not telling me what to do and what is right, I don't exist.
	I am...
	I am depressed at the very concept of looking at a world without orders.
	I would not want to get out of bed in a world without rewards and punishments.
	The idea that I would evaluate and understand and possibly even generate my own values would be like asking a car to drive itself without a driver.
	Note to future listeners, this is before there are driverless cars.
	And so, we are told what to do all the time as children.
	We are told where to go to school.
	We're told where to play.
	These days, it's become truly lunatic.
	I mean, I was walking off to school.
	I mean, I took trains to go to boarding school when I was six years old.
	I wasn't trained for hours.
	I flew with my brother when I was six years old to Africa.
	We would walk to return pop bottles when I was six or seven or eight years old.
	When I was eight years old, I was walking, I think, about a mile and a half to school.
	And now, well, I mean, the intrusiveness of the state with regards to children, even though children are far safer now than they were when I was a child, We now, well, some woman got child services involved in her life, some family got child services involved in their lives for years investigating and evaluating and harassing because her 10-year-old and her 8-year-old walked a block to go to a park.
	A woman left her 6-year-old alone for 90 minutes and her 6-year-old son was taken from her.
	She lost custody.
	I'm not saying it's great to leave a 6-year-old alone for an hour and a half, but Come on.
	I mean, the world is much safer than it was when I was a kid.
	And a degree of paranoia.
	And this is what I mean.
	Like, children cannot be left alone.
	They cannot.
	The way that I grew up as a kid was go away and come back at dinnertime.
	Get out of the house.
	Go do something.
	And, of course, home life was incredibly boring.
	I mean, there was nothing on TV. And...
	I could read, of course, I could devour books.
	I could read a ferocious amount from the library.
	But, you know, you go out.
	You have to.
	You have to.
	And you've got no money, so you're going to make up your own games.
	And you'd just be out.
	And you'd be gone.
	And the glorious anarchy of negotiating money For what to do with no money.
	This is all gone.
	So kids are just ordered from noon to night.
	And video games do that too.
	Here's your goal, here's your objective.
	It's a little bit of open world stuff for some of the kids and so on, but you're still working within the structure of the game.
	And one of the biggest predictors of intelligence and success as adults for children is what's called open world play, imaginary world play, creating your own entire world.
	That's why Dungeons& Dragons was so good for the development of social skills, of entrepreneurship, of intelligence.
	I just did a podcast on this, so I have to go into it in more detail.
	Yeah.
	But people now are so heavily structured.
	Kids now are so heavily structured.
	I had a boss I was chatting with who's got teenage kids and he says, oh yeah, it used to be, you know, you go out and just go and play in the park, you go to the woods or whatever.
	But every time we go out, you've got to go out with your kids and it's always 20 to 40 bucks every time you go anywhere.
	Because it's got to be structured.
	It's got to be Chuck E. Cheese.
	It's got to be Palladium.
	It's got to be a movie.
	It's got to be something that's structured.
	And this has created...
	personalities with all the internal consistency of a liquid because they're just held in structures all the time so they never need to know their own shape.
	That structure is school, that structure is church, that structure is video games, that structure is media, that structure is the entire world.
	You know, and as a kid we just, we get poured out like liquid into the ground and you've got to find some kind of shape or you just seep away.
	And so your girlfriend Grew up with some pretty rigid structures, right?
	I assume she went to government schools, she went to, she had some exposure to religion, and she had dictatorial or bossy parents, right?
	And she, the idea of living without structure, the idea of, I hate to sort of say being the generator of your own values, because that sounds kind of Nietzschean and it also is not what philosophy is all about.
	But the idea of What your priorities are?
	What the story of your life is going to be?
	What the meaning of your life is going to be?
	It's very hard.
	I'm almost done and then I'll be quiet.
	This is very hard for people.
	It's very emotionally difficult.
	You know, take away the container of water.
	It's like taking a baseball bat to an aquarium.
	You just end up with fish flopping on the floor, expiring.
	So if you strip...
	Life from the universe, if you strip consciousness from the skies, if you scour mere matter free of purpose and rules and a structure and a story and a goal, the fundamental organizing principle of prioritization, which is religion, what is going to happen to your girlfriend's personality?
	That's a good point.
	Yeah, so I don't know if I should...
	Do I want to liberate her from...
	Or attempt to, like, self-knowledge?
	I guess that would be the first route to go.
	Ask questions.
	When...
	So from...
	After having this conversation, yeah, this definitely helped.
	So do I want to...
	Like, God fills my girlfriend's void of...
	And feeds it.
	Yes.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but the more she surrenders to this imaginary structure, the more liquid she becomes.
	So it's a process, right?
	It's not, oh, she's got no liquid.
	They self-reinforce, right?
	Yes.
	So the longer it's lasted, the more challenging it is going to be to undo.
	And the undoing has very serious personality consequences.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, so I don't know if I want to go from here and try to undo that, but try to install or fill it up with my current self-knowledge of her past and knowing why she thinks what she does.
	Well, you want to get to know her.
	Yes.
	I think.
	And religion is part of her.
	And irrationality is part of all of us.
	I mean, if I said only hang out with people who are rational, I would not be able to sit in my own skin.
	Because I do not follow my values from time to time.
	I have irrational ideas.
	I make mistakes.
	I have my prejudices.
	I have my biases.
	I have my confirmation.
	All of these things, right?
	And so the fact that she has irrationalities in no way, shape, or form makes her Unfit to date.
	Because I don't think there's anyone alive.
	Yeah, maybe in the future, way down the road, but now, I mean, it's not really possible.
	And so, if you have an area where you're more rational, and she has an area where she's less rational, it's dangerous to only judge the relationship by those two areas, if that makes sense?
	Yeah.
	It gives you a false positive, it gives her a false negative, right?
	- Yeah. - So I would say that just be curious.
	Ask her about, you know, and you can be honest.
	Obviously, if this is going to be your goal, then say, listen, I've been nagging at you about religion.
	And it's been kind of disrespectful because I don't really have a full understanding or maybe even a partial understanding of what it means to you, of how important it is to you.
	So I would like to talk about religion with you.
	I wouldn't like to talk about it like Jesus does this for me and God answers my prayers because I'm not religious.
	But I really would like to understand, without the goal of undoing, but really would like to understand the emotional drivers.
	I'd also like to understand what it would mean for you if there was no God.
	Not because you then have to believe that, but I just really want to understand what is driving this for you.
	And the worst case scenario is you don't change your mind.
	But I get to know you a lot better.
	Sounds like a good place to start.
	I feel like I was so focused on people asking, what do you think about guys?
	I get a name for being a little knowledgeable.
	People always ask me, what do you think about guys and girls alike?
	I sit there and I Given my perspective on all the arguments for it, like I've read some of your books, like God of Atheists and all that, so I use some of those, and then some analogies I come up with on my own, and then now I'm in a relationship.
	I haven't been in four years, so now that's what I turn to, that same nagging, like, here's my argument, what can you accept about it?
	And now it's more emotional, it's more than just, you know, Right.
	Right.
	That, yeah, that would be my, you know, and of course, I mean, but I think, I still think it's important, of course, if you're going to get married and have kids in the future, that you do have some sort of agreement about what's going to happen with the kids.
	Yeah.
	Because I still am very strong that, you know, the kids should not be taught that religion is true.
	They should be taught about religion, but they really should make up their own mind as they get older.
	You say, this is what mom believes, this is what I believe, and so on, right?
	But that, I think, is pretty important.
	Yeah, I've told her that, and I think she agrees with me.
	Okay, that's good.
	Yeah, raise them with nothing but actual, physical, factual, empirical things, and then tell them about religion, but then If they want to accept it later on in life, then they can, you know, begin to understand things or make their own choices.
	I love that they can, they can, but later on they, you know.
	All right.
	So is that given you enough to maybe move forward on?
	Yeah, I think it definitely helped a lot because I was just looking at it so intellectual, not emotional.
	I guess it's more like I feel, you know, like I definitely have to focus on that because it's like, you know, I'm in a relationship now.
	Yeah.
	Because I do care about her and see things in her that I haven't in a lot of other girls.
	Right.
	And her religiosity is serving you to some degree insofar as she's practicing all this negotiation, right?
	Yeah.
	She's pretty wonderful.
	Especially with caring and kindness and the way she's around kids and she nannies and stuff and it's like Where have you been?
	She's so, like, understanding.
	Right.
	Okay, well, do give us a chance to let us know how it goes.
	And, you know, if she's at all interested in calling in, I'd certainly be happy to chat with her.
	I'd like to do that.
	Yeah.
	I think it'd be thrilling.
	So, yeah, keep us posted.
	And, you know, I hope it gives you something new to chat about.
	And, you know, we always need a new approach when something really isn't working, right?
	Alright, thanks so much, John.
	Very, very interesting chat, and best of luck to you, Beth.
	Yeah, thanks.
	Bye.
	Alright, up next is Victor.
	Victor wrote in and said, I'd like to discuss the concept of marriage and how I find it contradictory to what anarchy stands for.
	Isn't marriage a monopoly on your partner's choices?
	Sure, every relationship has rules, but I don't see how marriage is relevant to enforcing those rules.
	If all parties involved express commitment to each other, how does marriage enhance that?
	In a healthy relationship, I see marriage as redundant, complicated, and unnecessary.
	All right.
	But tell me how you feel about marriage.
	Hey, Stefan.
	Hey, Victor.
	Nice to meet you.
	How are you doing?
	I'm super excited.
	Well, thanks.
	Great set of questions.
	And let's just say that you're not the first person who's had some skepticism about marriage in the history of this show.
	So I get it.
	I really do.
	And, you know, until I'd gotten married, I would probably be among those.
	And that doesn't mean anything other than sort of personal admission.
	First of all, I have to praise you a little bit.
	I'm very, very excited to speak with you.
	You've been my role model for a few years now, and I'm super, super excited, and I'm deeply honored to speak with you.
	Well, likewise, I appreciate your very kind words.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Tell me a little bit more about the Monopoly thing, because that's where my first spider sense started tingling, but tell me more about the Monopoly stuff.
	Okay.
	I was thinking that if two people commit to be with each other, I don't see the necessity of advertising it to the community that they're together by being married.
	If they're together and they love each other and they decide to be together, I see it as irrelevant to get married and marriage would be just a little bit redundant if If both of you want to be together, then I don't see how marriage is necessary.
	Tell me what you mean by marriage then.
	Because it's a very complicated word.
	It shouldn't be, but it is, right?
	Insofar as there's what develops spontaneously, there is religion, there is government, there is property rights, there is divorce court, there is family law.
	So marriage is not, you know, it's one of these very bundled terms.
	So what do you mean by marriage?
	Well, I was, I mean, today marriage is, I guess marriage is necessary today because we live in the society that we live in.
	And, you know, maybe marriage today is used for legal purposes, for income tax and such.
	So, I mean, when I say marriage, I guess I'm talking about the traditional sense, like the way you are married with your wife, in that sense.
	So, what difference does it make in your life, the fact that you're married?
	Is it...
	It's probably...
	Good for you for tax purposes or if you wanted to migrate to a different country when you're married, it's a bit easier, as I did.
	Yeah, that really wasn't what I got.
	I didn't get down on one knees with a tax lawyer and a tax accountant and an expat specialist saying, well, the experts say that our paperwork will be vastly diminished if you accept me.
	Do you have a cell phone?
	I do, yes.
	And are you on a cell phone contract?
	Yeah.
	Okay, and what's the term?
	Is it like two or three years or something like that?
	Yeah, it's like two years.
	Two years, okay.
	Now, do you want to upgrade your cell phone?
	For the sake of your question, let's say I did, but not really.
	I mean, I'm not the type of person who changes cell phones.
	I mean, I'm satisfied with what I have, but for the sake of your question, let's say that I do.
	If you could get a free upgrade for your cell phone, would you take it?
	Yeah, sure.
	Okay.
	But you can't because you're limited, right?
	But if the company offered me a free phone, yeah, maybe I would take it.
	Yeah, it's likely.
	But I assume that you are not allowed to upgrade your cell phone until the end of the two-year contract, right?
	Or paying the penalty, yes, correct.
	You pay the penalty, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, okay.
	So that's your answer.
	Okay, so there's...
	You're committed to your current cell phone because you signed a contract that says, I'm going to keep my cell phone for two years, and maybe I can upgrade after that, but that's my cell phone, right?
	And so what happens is you don't sit there and check the cell phone upgrade path or check, oh, there's a new cell phone, maybe I should upgrade to that, because you're like, nah, two years, I'm not doing anything, right?
	Okay, but...
	Okay, I see.
	Um...
	You know, by the way, I wanted to say that I listened to your recent video about gay marriage and you talked a lot about marriage and I agreed with all the points how important it is for the sake of the child, for the adults, they owe it to the child to stay together.
	And my point, I'm not against...
	I'm against about the part of two people are in a way Maybe the way you describe it, they're forced to stay together, because it removes the challenge part from the relationship.
	Hang on, wait, wait.
	Sorry.
	Okay, so, because you've used monopoly in your original thing, and now you're sort of bringing the F word in, right?
	It's the worst F word around, which is forced, right?
	Okay.
	Go force yourself, right?
	But...
	First of all, we're not forced to stay together.
	We can get divorced and wake up tomorrow and say, I'm going to divorce you.
	And she can wake up tomorrow and say, she's going to divorce me.
	We're not forced to stay together.
	There are consequences to that.
	If you can get divorced...
	There's no force, right?
	If you can get divorced anytime, so why get married in the first place?
	If marriage is not okay...
	Because...
	No, see, okay.
	Okay, okay.
	Let's...
	Okay.
	Would we agree that it's important to choose the best partner with whom to raise your children?
	Yes.
	I'm afraid that's a can't-wiggle-out-of-it one.
	This doesn't mean I've won anything other than a cheap, obvious point.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	But people get married without kids, too.
	No, no.
	I get that.
	But marriage is there because there's children.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Right?
	I mean, because we need two people to invest 15 to 20 years, I'm talking historically, we need two people to involve, to basically spend the rest of their lives raising children.
	Because when did marriage evolve?
	Marriage evolved when the average life expectancy was like 30 or 40 years old.
	And you had five or eight kids.
	Right?
	So marriage evolved when There was nothing but childbirth going on, basically.
	And that doesn't mean, of course, that people who don't have kids can't get married.
	Sure, they can ride the marriage bandwagon, but if people didn't have kids, there would be no such thing as marriage.
	And it doesn't mean that people who don't have kids are any less legitimately married or anything like that.
	But the institution is there because of children.
	But Do you think marriage came before...
	I don't really know the conception of marriage, how marriage came to be exactly.
	No, nobody does, but basically the more you can developmentally delay your children, the smarter they'll be.
	This is a biological principle, Mike, if you can look it up, but I can't remember what it's called.
	But basically, offspring which develop very quickly are really stupid.
	I mean like tadpoles and fish.
	They come out very self-sufficient.
	They can go and eat and they can survive.
	The turtle eggs and all that.
	They're very self-sufficient.
	They don't need a lot of protection.
	The longer you can delay the maturation of the offspring, the smarter they're going to be.
	And so what happened biologically and historically was Every tribe where a genetic mutation occurred which delayed the development of the offspring produced smarter offspring.
	And we know that intelligence is a very great advantage, biologically speaking, right?
	And so you needed two things.
	You needed the slower development of the children and you needed the greater investment on the part of the parents.
	The two together are necessary, right?
	And so the genes that developmentally delayed the children, I know it sounds kind of contradictory, like developmental delays result in greater intelligence, but it's just one of these biological principles.
	And so what happened was, biologically, wherever there was a mutation that Delayed the development of human children, and that was combined with an increased investment on the part of the parents, that tribe would become more successful and would spread its genes further.
	And as it spread its genes, it would spread its culture.
	And so as the children's delay, the delay of the children got longer and longer, and the culturally transmitted species Marriage vow, commitment to stay together to raise the children, also spread.
	That's how it developed.
	Does that make sense?
	It's sort of lockstep, one or the other.
	So, hang on.
	So, that's sort of how it developed.
	And that's why I say it's all about the kids.
	So, the reason why marriage is important, that's the biological reason.
	Obviously, it's better for the kids.
	A pair bond, a permanent monogamous pair bond is better for the children.
	So there's that facet.
	But the question is, why do we choose to get married?
	Well, have you lived in more than one place in your life?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Have you lived in a bunch of different places or just one or two?
	A bunch of them, yeah.
	Okay.
	Now, imagine, Victor, if I told you You have to move somewhere, but where you are going to move to is where you're going to have to live for the rest of your life.
	How carefully would you choose your destination?
	Well, I would make sure that place is a very free place.
	Well, no, but you would really rack your brains.
	You'd spend a lot of research time, right?
	Okay.
	Right?
	So if I said the next place you live, you have to live for the rest of your life and never leave it, you would really, really do a lot of research and you'd be very careful about where you live next, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	That is the point of marriage.
	Okay.
	It allows, it really, quote, forces, it strongly encourages you to choose the very best person to raise your children with because You are committing for the rest of your life.
	And so because you're going to move to the city called your spouse and never leave it for the rest of your life, at least that's what you commit to, it encourages a very strong selection standard, very high selection standards for the mother of your children.
	And so those cultures which said, Well, you know, let's get together.
	The marriage will be renewable every six months, and if you don't like it, you can just walk away.
	No foul, no penalties, no negatives.
	Well, people would choose for nice tits, right?
	People would choose for great abs, nice hair, whatever, right?
	They'd choose for stupid, shallow reasons.
	That wouldn't have anything fundamentally to do with the quality of parenting.
	It might have to do with the quality of genes, but it wouldn't have anything to do with the quality of parenting.
	Whereas if you say, you must choose a spouse that you will never leave and you will be monogamous to, that really makes you think carefully.
	Not just about great hair, nice tits, big dick, great abs, but...
	Will this person be a good parent?
	Will this person be with me in my old age?
	Will they be gentle and kind and caring and nurturing?
	Or whatever it is, whatever the standards are, right?
	So it's a way of really upping the quality of whoever it is that you're looking for.
	Now, I use the term quality here kind of loosely, so it may be a really good Mormon person.
	Nice Mormon girl, right?
	Which, you know, quality is...
	But it really does mean that you have to choose more on values than on appearances.
	And that means that if you choose on values rather than appearances, then you have to choose compatible values.
	And that means that those values are more likely to be stably transmitted to your offspring because you both share the same values.
	So it's a way of locking in the values.
	It's a way of upping the demands for quality.
	And it's a way of...
	Overcoming the shallow vanity of youthful sexual preference by having a lifelong commitment.
	Again, I'm not saying this makes it all moral or anything like that, but I think that's why it came about.
	Well, if you use knowledge for the process of selecting a partner, it wouldn't change a thing if marriage existed or not.
	If you, Stefan, have the knowledge to If you have the desire and the knowledge of what it takes to raise a child the best way, you choose a partner that has similar values as you and maybe similar knowledge.
	And you both know and agree because you partnered together.
	You both know beforehand that raising a child together and being together while raising the child is the best way for the child.
	You both have the same values and you have the same knowledge.
	You're going with the same knowledge.
	So whether a marriage exists or not is irrelevant to you sticking with your wife, not your wife, your partner, and being around with a kid because you both love each other.
	You both agree from the beginning and you have the knowledge, the scientific knowledge from the beginning that being together It's the best thing for the child, and you want to maximize your investment.
	You want to do the best thing for your child.
	So, the concept of marriage itself is redundant.
	Maybe it has a romantic value, a way of...
	Hang on, but I just made a case.
	Maybe I'm...
	Because marriage is the commitment to stay together, right?
	And be monogamous.
	But you don't need marriage to make the commitment to be together.
	We can evolve beyond that.
	You're saying, I want to call the computer an abacus, and therefore we don't need the word computer.
	But it's still the same thing, no matter what you call it.
	We don't need a name.
	We don't need a name for two people being together.
	We don't need a name for that.
	Yes, you do.
	We need a name for a computer.
	No, no, no.
	Of course you do.
	There's a reason why people who are married wear rings or have dots on their forehead because it's monogamous.
	No, it's not superstition.
	It's monogamy.
	No, you have to know who's on the market and who's not, right?
	Who needs to know?
	Like, listen, if you want to sell a house, you put a for sale sign out front, right?
	And you don't sort of stop at people's houses, knock on their door and say, I want to buy this house, right?
	It's not on the market.
	But the way I'm thinking is that if you're with someone and that someone meets somebody better than you, then whether she's with you or not, it's irrelevant.
	She needs to live her life.
	She has to maximize the happiness of her life.
	If she's with you...
	No, no.
	What do you mean she has to maximize the happiness of her life?
	And that means trading in a relationship for someone new.
	How on earth are you supposed to know if someone new is going to be better for you?
	You're going on these big...
	How do you know?
	So let's say I've been married now for like 12 or 13 years, right?
	The idea that I could find someone for me better than my wife is incomprehensible to me.
	But it is possible.
	I don't believe that it is.
	But it's not the best thing for your child, though.
	No, no, you just missed what I said.
	I do not believe that it is possible for me to find someone better than my wife.
	So, okay, but you're saying this romantically.
	You're saying this...
	No, I'm saying this rationally.
	But there are...
	7 billion people...
	Okay, sorry, that's a bad argument.
	If...
	You know...
	No, because of investment.
	Mathematically speaking.
	Because there's something that I know and something that I don't know.
	Right?
	And what I know is the degree of compatibility and happiness and love that my wife and I have with each other.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Right?
	That's a known quantity.
	Yeah.
	So for you, whether you marry or not...
	Than 13 years with the person who I love more and more every year.
	Who I'm incredibly thrilled, honored, and privileged to spend my time with.
	I say, well, there could be someone better.
	No, there honestly couldn't be because there's just no 13-year history that I have absolute certainty about.
	I mean, we could still have rings.
	Okay.
	You know, you I don't disagree with anything you said and I share the same thoughts of you.
	I share the thoughts of it's best for the child.
	I just, you know, looking around and I see all these people getting married and divorced and I'm thinking like, you know, maybe for us, because I'm married as well actually, but for us marriage makes sense and because we...
	I don't think I... You're married.
	And you're arguing strenuously against marriage.
	But what I'm saying is that whether I'm married or not, it doesn't change the behavior I have toward my wife.
	In which case, there's no harm in the word marriage.
	If nothing changes whether the word is there or not, then there's no harm in the word.
	Yeah, you're right.
	I think you're fighting a ghost here.
	I mean, a lifelong commitment to stay with someone...
	Whether you do it under the covers, privately, or whether you do it in a Kardashian-style giganto wedding, the commitment is the commitment.
	So two people who don't get a marriage license, but who have fully committed to staying with each other.
	I mean, so I don't care about the license.
	It doesn't matter.
	The public, and I think in general it should be a public declaration for reasons I've gone into before, but if they make that public declaration and they're fully committed, yeah, they're married.
	I mean, the piece of paper is the government thing, right?
	But in a free society, don't get me wrong, in a free society, there would be a piece of paper as well.
	I mean, the idea that you have a piece of paper with your cell phone, but not with the mother of your children or the father of your children, there would be strictures and structures around marriage.
	Now, the question as to why are so many people getting divorced?
	Well, that is a very interesting, big, and deep question, which I can only very touch on briefly here.
	Basically, the reason why so many people are getting divorced...
	Because they have no philosophy.
	Well, that's partly it.
	But, you know, it's not like people in 1950 had a huge amount more philosophy.
	They had more values in many ways.
	But the reason that people are getting divorced...
	It's because there's almost no social stigma involved in it anymore.
	Because people don't give a flying fuck about kids anymore.
	It's all become this baby boomer, navel-gazing, selfish narcissism.
	And people face no social stigma.
	In the past, if you got divorced, you were gone from society, baby.
	You were gone, gone, gone.
	Your friends would vanish, you'd not be invited to any social gatherings anymore, and you'd just tumble down the stairs of social disapproval until you landed in the basement.
	And what happened was, when the government came along and said, oh, we'll handle it all for you, people were like, whew, great, now we don't have to enforce any social standards, which can be uncomfortable, you see.
	I love the video you made about Danton Abbey.
	I couldn't agree with it more.
	Yeah, and this is how, I mean, you either have social rules enforced horizontally, or you have bizarre, fiat-funded, crass dictatorships imposed vertically.
	I mean, people need rules.
	Sorry, it's just the way life is.
	People need rules.
	Everybody likes that.
	I mean, you don't want to rent an apartment, move in, and have to rent triple next month.
	You want a contract, you want a lease.
	It's going to be the same in a free society.
	And the contract which creates new human life and sustains and nurtures new human life is going to be there in a free society.
	Free society isn't going to be some giant narcissistic communist love pit of endless orgies.
	Free love!
	Yeah, that's right.
	Your philosophy is so good you have to throw in a side order of endless vaginas just to make it worthwhile.
	You and the suicide bombers.
	Right?
	You have to...
	There are going to be all these rules and structures.
	And if somebody gets divorced...
	I mean, if you get divorced before you have kids...
	You know, what do they call it these days?
	A start of marriage.
	Yeah, I was married in my 20s for two years.
	It was a start of marriage.
	Okay, no kids.
	Bad decision.
	You know, a big waste of cake, but whatever, right?
	But...
	But, yeah.
	Once there are children, you're getting divorced for one of two reasons.
	Either A, you married a monster.
	And you had children with a monster.
	But that's your fault.
	Well, and you now have...
	You've got the child of Chucky, right?
	You've got monster kids.
	So you created children with a monster.
	Okay.
	And...
	Well, unless you can get the monster thrown in jail, in which case they're growing up fatherless, or the monster is not in jail but is floating around and co-parenting, in which case he's going to be influencing the kids.
	Nobody's going to like you for that.
	Oh, you dated, you got engaged to, you got married to, and you had children with a man or a woman who's a total monster, and now we've got to deal with your kids when they grow up, and all of the negative effects of that.
	So I'm not happy with you, young man or young lady, for doing all of that and, you know, bad, bad, bad, right?
	Or you got married and the guy is not a monster.
	You just, you got restless.
	You got bored.
	You felt dissatisfied.
	Well, screw you and the shallow self-absorbed horse you rode in on.
	You know, don't bust up an entire family and screw up your kids just because you're a little bored.
	God Almighty!
	How ridiculous is that?
	And how harmful and selfish is that?
	Right, so what are the good reasons for getting divorced?
	Well, I don't know.
	Your husband, a railway spike accidentally goes through his head and changes his entire personality.
	I'm sorry.
	That's a pretty good reason to get divorced.
	You have my sympathy.
	But wanting out of something you voluntarily got into when there are children involved?
	Nobody made you get married.
	Nobody made you have kids.
	Now suddenly it's, oh, it's terrible.
	My sympathy is not the highest, it's not the greatest.
	My sympathy for the kids is enormous.
	But we don't have those standards anymore.
	Now it's like, oh, you're divorced.
	I guess it didn't work out, now did it?
	Well, that's too bad.
	Or, good for you for not putting up with an unsatisfying relationship.
	Putting up with, putting up with, God Almighty.
	You put up with cancer, you deal with cancer, you choose to get married.
	It's not inflicted on you.
	Or, he just changed.
	He was great, and then he just changed.
	Yeah, well, apparently one of the most stable things in the entire universe is human personalities, so I very rarely believe that at all.
	But, I think Most people go into unsatisfactory relationships until they listen to your show.
	They listen to your show and they realize that they acquire a new set of principles and they realize that their marriage is a disaster based on the principle that you present.
	The way I see it is that most people get married or get paired with another person Based on nothing.
	Based on attraction.
	Physical attraction or...
	How many people out there get together with the right mindset, with the right formula?
	Not formula.
	I don't have the words, but...
	No, a lot of people do.
	A lot of people do.
	A lot of people do.
	Do you know how much pressure Jewish women are under to marry Jewish men?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	Do you think a lot of Muslim men want to date Amish women?
	Are they happy?
	No, no, no.
	Happy?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	But what I'm saying is that the idea that you marry compatible values is only lost to the secular left.
	And those secular leftists, I mean, just look at the, quote, diversity in academia.
	Are you far left or far, far left?
	Okay, you're in.
	Anyone towards the center or to the right?
	Forget it.
	You're never getting in.
	Look at newsrooms.
	90-95% of news people in Washington voted Democrat in the last election.
	There.
	These guys are all into diversity.
	Right.
	It's too funny.
	But the idea that you hang with people with like values is everywhere practiced and everywhere denied.
	Almost everywhere.
	Except in religious communities.
	Yeah, Mormons will say, yeah, I want to marry a Mormon.
	Jews will say, yeah, marry a Jew.
	Marry similar values.
	I meant to say healthy values.
	Everywhere practiced.
	I meant to say values that are based on happiness, on personal happiness.
	Because isn't the whole point of philosophy of life is to maximize your happiness?
	Why do you treat kids better?
	It's because you want your kids to be your best friends when they grow up.
	You want to be happy.
	You want to be happy with your kids.
	You want your kids to make you happy when you're older.
	Oh, so you're saying that philosophy is maximum hedonism?
	Sorry?
	You're saying philosophy is maximum hedonism?
	Hedonism?
	I'm not sure what you mean by that.
	Happiness.
	Like, the happiness is the goal.
	I think Socrates and his drink of hemlock might disagree.
	I think that Spinoza being banished by the Jewish community for questioning God might disagree.
	I think that Galileo pursuing the philosophy of science might disagree.
	I could sort of go on and on, but I think the number of people who've suffered enormously for the cause of truth might disagree that philosophy's goal is maximum happiness.
	I mean, how do you see this?
	You know, to me, philosophy was a tool to increase my happiness.
	Ever since I discovered philosophy with your help, I became a happier person because I see things for what they are, or I think I do.
	My vision is clearer and clearer.
	The more time passed, the more I see things for what they are.
	And that's all thanks to philosophy, which made me happier.
	And it also...
	Philosophy helped me to find better relationships in my life.
	So if I were single, I would look for a wife based on the values that I acquired from philosophy, and those values are all toward my happiness, are all aligned toward my happiness, my personal happiness.
	So Yeah, but that's because you are a consumer of philosophy, not a spreader of philosophy.
	I am a spreader.
	I am a spreader as well.
	I talk about philosophy.
	I challenge people.
	I go into heated arguments.
	That's how I filter through people.
	Who can be in my circle of acquaintances?
	It's someone who has critical thinking.
	I challenge them.
	Philosophy for me is a filter to get closer to people.
	Are they able to...
	How do they respond to philosophy?
	That's how I filter them.
	Well, I apologize.
	It was unjust of me to say that you're a consumer.
	Okay, so...
	Happiness, obviously, and this is a big topic, obviously a big abstract topic, but philosophy is certainly involved in happiness, but it's hard to judge where that sort of maximum happiness is, so to speak.
	Mm-hmm.
	In so far as, you know, philosophy might bring you into massive conflicts and then you get hit by a bus, right?
	And then your last six months were not that much fun or whatever, right?
	How is that?
	What do you mean by that?
	No, in the same way that if you're overweight, you want to lose weight, you might have an unpleasant diet and exercise regime and then get hit by a bus, right?
	But philosophy is not unpleasant at all.
	I don't see...
	How is philosophy unpleasant?
	How is that a chore?
	So philosophy has not caused any problems in your personal or familiar relationships?
	Well, it detoxicated me from people that were poisoned to me.
	That was an excellent thing.
	And it wasn't as painful as maybe for some people.
	But for me, maybe it's because of my character or my personality, but for me it was a very enlightening experience.
	It It changed me completely.
	I'm not the same person I was five years ago.
	And I didn't go through a lot of hardship.
	Maybe some others do, but personally, myself, I didn't.
	I don't know.
	Maybe you can give me an example.
	Sorry, of the relationships that you had five years ago, how many of them have survived into where you are now?
	Most of them.
	However, I don't sacrifice myself to them anymore.
	They're relationships that I don't feel, I have no obligations toward them anymore.
	So they're really, even though they're shallow, they were always shallow from the beginning, but now I can pinpoint and call them the right, like I know exactly what they are.
	It shines light on them.
	And although some people are still around me and always will, it's stress free for me because I don't feel like I owe anybody anything anymore.
	I only owe to those that make me happy because I want to keep their company.
	So it pleases me to please them.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, for a lot of people, when they dig into philosophy, it's more of a challenge to their personal relationships, but you have maintained your personal relationships, so it's less of a challenge for you.
	I sort of understand that.
	Well, it's not like I had strong relationships before philosophy.
	It's not like I had...
	So, nothing has really changed.
	Right, but not much has changed.
	And I'm not making that a critical point.
	I'm just trying to differentiate it for other people.
	Okay, that's fair.
	Yes, that's fair.
	So, I mean, if nothing has really changed other than you've gained some personal advantages but have maintained the shallow relationships you've always had, then it's not that much of a challenge, right?
	But even if I lost some relationships, how would that be, you know, if you realize that the relationship was unhealthy, how would that be a sacrifice?
	How is it a sacrifice to get rid of a bad habit?
	See, I've not used the word sacrifice.
	You're introducing new terms here.
	Or how is it...
	Well, you know, you gave the example of losing weight, of going on a diet.
	So I'm referring a little bit to that.
	Yeah, so what you're saying is that you have a hard time understanding if people won't accept shallow relationships and want to have deeper, meaningful relationships...
	And perhaps lose relationships they may have had for many years from that.
	I think you can understand that that would be a painful process, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	It would be?
	Yeah, I suppose.
	I mean, people, let's say, they had a certain relationship with their parents.
	And after philosophy, they realized that their parents abused them.
	To me, they don't have to cut the relationship with their parents.
	They just have to stop sacrificing themselves to the relationship.
	I don't see it necessary to cut the relationship completely.
	I mean, you could if you wanted to, if that made you happy.
	Maybe some people went so far, but I never felt that I need to.
	Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say.
	I never felt that I need to terminate any relationships.
	And in that way, you're right.
	When you said that, not a lot have changed for me.
	You're right about that.
	So I didn't You know, I didn't make drastic changes in my life because of philosophy, although it's, you know, now I'm being repetitive, but it made me happier and it helped me to see the relationships I had for what they really are.
	And without the need for me to do anything drastic like Some relationships I had were terminated, but I didn't feel any pain from that at all.
	Wait, so you did terminate some relationships, but you felt no pain?
	But they were very shallow relationships.
	They were just less important acquaintances.
	Maybe philosophy helped me to be happy.
	To be happy with myself, sorry.
	Even when I can spend a whole day by myself without feeling lonely.
	It connected me with myself, with my emotions, with myself.
	Sorry, you were talking about deep versus shallow relationships.
	What about your relationship with your wife?
	Would you characterize that as deep or shallow?
	It got much deeper since I discovered philosophy.
	And how is she with philosophy?
	For her sake, I'm not going to go into those details.
	I'm very sorry.
	No, no, don't apologize.
	That's perfectly fair.
	She's not here.
	Yeah, I don't want to talk about my relationship with her without her consent.
	And maybe I'll talk to her and maybe we can call back together.
	I certainly would be curious.
	But I can definitely give you general answers.
	Because if there is a way to have nothing but positive experiences with philosophy, I would certainly like to know more about it.
	You're right.
	It wasn't a smooth sailing.
	Philosophy made our relationship stronger.
	Because there was some confrontation on some subjects.
	But luckily for me, I didn't, likely for me, she was intelligent enough to listen, to have a conversation, to really think about it rationally.
	And it was, you know, I could have easily ended with a different person because when I, you know, when I united with my wife, I didn't, You know, I consider myself at the time very, very mature.
	I was very mature, and it was just a strike of luck that I ended up with my wife, which we've been together for over 10 years, and I'm very, very happy with her.
	But it was...
	I think that maybe not everybody is as lucky as me.
	And the original subject is that if I were married with her, and I would discover philosophy, and she wouldn't connect with the philosophy, she...
	She wouldn't be open to the conversation of philosophy.
	Then maybe I would be compelled to find something else.
	Sorry, not something else, to find a different partner.
	And the fact that I was married beforehand, it would vastly complicate my life.
	So I agree with everything you said about marriage and two people being together and the ring and all that.
	It requires such a high level of maturity and it's like you need to take maybe an exam before you get married.
	You know, there should be some kind of...
	No, there shouldn't be anything.
	Sorry, I take that back.
	But so few people do it the right way that I wonder whether it's a positive thing or a negative thing in society in general.
	For you, I have absolutely no doubt that it's a very natural, very positive thing.
	But maybe for many others, maybe I'm wrong.
	Maybe, like you said, maybe a lot of couples are perfectly fine together.
	But I don't know many people that understand and embrace philosophy the way I do and you do.
	Most people, they're together based on Based on maybe cultural values, but they're not together based on philosophical values, like based on being able to open up to each other and communicating their feelings.
	In your opinion, how many couples communicate their feelings, in your opinion?
	Oh, I don't know.
	I think we're drifting topics here.
	But I just wanted to mention that, yes, if philosophy doesn't Really disrupt your personal relationships, then it certainly is a lot more comfortable.
	And I can certainly understand where you're coming from, from that standpoint.
	And so I just really wanted to, yeah, point it out that if, you know, as you characterize them, if you have shallow relationships and you...
	Continue those shallow relationships and it is going to be easier.
	But I think for other people, I mean, whether you admit it or not, it's not particularly relevant.
	But for other people who go further or deeper into that, then it does become more disruptive.
	Now, in that greater disruption, there is greater capacity for growth and connection.
	But I think that it's important.
	It may be helpful for you to understand that not everyone has the same sort of set of standards or experiences or philosophy that you do.
	But...
	All right.
	Thank you very much for your call.
	I appreciate it.
	Very, very enjoyable and a great set of questions, Victor.
	I really do enjoy the topic of marriage.
	Thank you so much, Devin.
	Thank you, man.
	Take care.
	Bye-bye.
	All right.
	Up next is Bob.
	Bob wrote in and said, why is it that the most creative people who go to the collegiate arts tend to be very statist, i.e.
	film slash theater majors?
	And we've talked a little bit about that on the show, but there's a follow-up question.
	How much of creativity is learned or developed, and how much of it is innate?
	Hello?
	Yes, hello.
	Oh, hello.
	Yeah, so first, thank you for...
	Sorry, I'm a little nervous.
	Thank you for doing the show, but more importantly, thank you for being a stay-at-home dad.
	Just from my own experience, my dad was a stay-at-home dad, and I can tell you that when your daughter grows up, she'll be very fond of the time that she spent with you.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's a huge pleasure.
	And it's something I feel just immensely grateful for every day.
	So thank you.
	And if you can do it, I highly recommend it.
	Yeah, it makes a big difference.
	But yeah, so this question kind of comes from a...
	Well, the follow-up question comes from a discussion I was having with my mom.
	We were talking about Creativity and where it comes from and you know are people just innately creative or You know is it a skill that you have to learn?
	I was more on the skill you have to learn since I'm I consider myself a creative person Even though like I understand that doesn't really describe anything.
	It's like saying I have hands but um Yeah, so I just want to have a little discussion about that Yeah, I mean I don't think that anybody succeeds in a creative field without a huge amount of work.
	And I think that is really something to understand.
	I've got a podcast out there called Screw Talent, and I do get that to some degree.
	There are some innate things that you need for certain kinds of success.
	I mean, obviously, if you want to be a model, you have to be good-looking.
	And if you want to be a singer, you have to have a good voice.
	And I think that having lengthy fingers probably helps with certain musical instruments.
	And, you know, there's things like that.
	And, you know, erectile dysfunction and being a porn star are probably not going hand-in-hand unless you're willing to faceplant into a bowl of blue pills.
	So I do think that there are some innate things that are necessary.
	I also think that it's oddly helpful to look the part.
	And that doesn't always mean good looking.
	It just means look the part.
	I do sometimes wonder if Einstein hadn't looked like a crazy scientist, whether he'd be as famous.
	I mean, obviously his contributions to physics were staggering and amazing and all that.
	But I think it helps to look You know, like the devilish look that Christopher Hitchens had, the genial uncle that Richard Dawkins has.
	You know, the looking the part has, I think, a lot...
	If you fit into people's sort of stereotypes, I think it works pretty well.
	You know, you're not going to get Danny DeVito playing Gandalf.
	Right.
	Although he would do a fine job.
	He's a great actor.
	But looking the part...
	I remember seeing Jumanji...
	With a friend of mine's kids a number of years ago.
	It's a Robin Williams film and he's like, well, this is the closest I'm ever going to get to playing an action hero because he doesn't look like Harrison Ford or any of these kinds of guys, right?
	Right.
	And so there is a certain amount of success if you look the part.
	Whatever that part is, you know, mad scientist or, you know, Richard Branson.
	I mean, doesn't he look like a pirate?
	And he just sort of has that air about him.
	And I think that looking the part can be really helpful.
	You know, accents aren't the worst thing to have in the world in these kinds of...
	I know.
	Not the worst things in the world to have in these kinds of environments.
	So there are certain factors to success that are important.
	And, you know, they don't sort of necessarily make it or not.
	But there's something that Dennis Miller said.
	He said he's exactly the same as all of his writers, except he has really thick hair.
	And that's why he's in front of the camera.
	And the Beatles all had hair all the way through their life.
	I don't know how old Paul McCartney is, but he had that song.
	When I get older, losing my hair many years from now.
	When I'm 64, I don't know how...
	He's got to be closer beyond that now.
	Guy's still got thick hair and all that.
	Whereas men at work, they all started losing their hair in their 20s or whatever when the band broke up.
	If you have that sort of...
	That Brian May giant pot scrubber hairdo, you just want to gel it and spin a pot in it to clear out all of your mashed potatoes.
	I mean, you have that kind of stuff as well.
	Do you have the look?
	Do you have...
	Sting, great singer, great songwriter, great musician, but ridiculously Pomo, devilish, good-looking guy.
	Brimstone and Treacle is where he really plays that up in a movie.
	So if you have a kind of look that works and that fits, then it really does add, I think, and help in your success.
	There's a German singer...
	Nina Hagen.
	We are going to another disco.
	Disco after disco.
	And I mean, she just looks like a high cheekbone freak for another planet.
	And if you see, you know, super skinny, dueling eyeball David Bowie when he was younger, I mean, he really looks that freaky vampire alternative part.
	And I mean, you could sort of go on and on.
	But if you look at the icons, Andy Warhol looks, you know, like a slightly disoriented Beck.
	And so all of that kind of stuff is important.
	Do you look the part of the rock star?
	Do you look the part of the scientist?
	Do you look the part of the entrepreneur?
	Do you look the part?
	And I mean, for me, it's been fantastic.
	I mean, what an incredible gift it was for me to not keep my hair.
	You know, I was a damn fine looking young man.
	I mean, I think I look fine now, but I think I would have been tempted into a very shallow player kind of temptation with all of that.
	So a lot of the stuff that was important for me has a lot to do with losing physical vanity.
	And boy, there's nothing like looking at yourself in 1080p under bright lights with no makeup to help diminish your physical vanity and all that.
	I think there is a lot that goes into success.
	The question is, are you marketable?
	It's not obviously as important for writers and all of that, but if you've got any kind of public face, it really matters to a large degree how you look.
	I think probably there is certain life circumstances that Give people the raw material for creativity.
	I was always reminded of the number of great writers who were sickly as children.
	Robert Louis Stevenson was one of them who comes to mind, who spent a lot of time in bed.
	And of course, you know, back in the day, no tablets, no TVs, no computers, no internet, no nothing.
	I mean, you just, you write.
	You write a lot of stories.
	I remember when I was 11 or 12, I would write space operas.
	For my friends and I to act out.
	Because, you know, we were bored.
	And I learned, you know, blowing into a microphone makes a good explosion sound.
	And I'd write all these space stories.
	And we'd act them out.
	It'd be quite a lot of fun.
	And of course, Dungeons and Dragons was sort of big storytelling.
	But that had a lot to do with just growing up broke.
	You know, no money.
	And nothing on TV. There was like one hour of cartoons a week that we used to watch.
	I think Sundays, sort of 5 o'clock, there'd be an hour of Looney Tunes cartoons.
	Or occasionally I'd watch these bizarre Japanese space star blazers or something.
	Ah, star blazers.
	And I'd never see the end of it because it ended at 9 and I had to get to school.
	So I'd never miss the last 10 minutes.
	But, you know, these weird Japanese things where most people look like people except for some people who look like the complete opposite of people.
	Probably those of the writers in school and their own self-image and all that.
	So there was precious little to do and we had no money at all.
	And so for me, reading was a big thing because I could at least go to the library and I would go to the library and I would just sit there and I would read and I would read and I would read.
	Also not wanting to be home because home life was a mess.
	So not wanting to be home also kept you out of the house and you had to find stuff to do.
	And so you would find interesting stuff to do.
	And so there was a lot of that stuff.
	I wasn't sick as a child.
	I had asthma when I was very young.
	But I was never really sickly as a child.
	But my limitation was just no money.
	No money for anything.
	And because of that, I mean, I would write stories.
	I made dioramas.
	I don't think people even know what those are anymore.
	Now that there's like Free AutoCAD or something.
	But dioramas is where, you know, if you want to create an African, a scene from an African jungle, then what you do is you get a big flat piece of cardboard and all that, and then you draw and cut out the animals, and you tape them, and then you fold them up, and you make trees, and you make a whole sort of 3D jungle.
	And, you know, it takes forever, it's pretty complicated.
	The amount of...
	There's incredible origami complexities that we would put into something as simple as making paper airplanes.
	I mean, if you came up with a new and better way to make a paper airplane, I mean, you were like a living god among the young.
	I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to make a paper biplane because, as I mentioned, we had no money.
	And so the amount of sort of inventiveness and creativity that you have to come up with when...
	And I think about this with regards to my own daughter, you know, just what it's like for her with this excess of...
	And that's why I try and give her, you know, like we'll make up stories, we'll, you know, we'll games, we explore the house like we're exploring a new planet and stuff.
	Like I want to give her that sort of imagination stuff because I think that's a risk with the sort of easy entertainment of a lot of the sort of modern media.
	So I think that there are situations which can provoke and stimulate creativity.
	Creativity is like this resentful scar tissue of the wounds of early life.
	Because, I mean, a lot of this stuff, I mean, if we'd had more money, or if we'd had any money for that matter, I'd have been really happy.
	I mean, I just remember having to ask people on the street for a bus fare to go someplace because I wanted to meet friends.
	We had no money, right?
	And so I resented all of this at the time.
	But all the stuff which is annoying at the time or feels hugely limiting at the time, I think in the long run can turn out to have enormously beneficial aspects to it.
	Again, it's not like we want to inflict that for the sake of potential future creativity.
	But I think that there are certain limitations that...
	Certain personalities, like certain personalities, they hit limitations and they stop.
	You know, like...
	A car comes up to a wall.
	It can't go around.
	It just has to stop, right?
	It has to back up or whatever, right?
	I get what you mean by that.
	Yeah, but there are other personalities where they hit limitations and they spread around them.
	And it's that spread around-ness that I think drives a lot of creativity.
	Because what it does is it starts to accumulate those 10,000 hours.
	And I know that that's somewhat controversial, but this argument that the Beatles became the Beatles because they played for 8 or 10 hours a day in Hamburg.
	They got so bored of doing the songs that they knew that they started to write their own songs.
	Yeah.
	In a year or two in Hamburg, they did more live music than most bands achieved across their entire career and so on.
	All of this stuff is just to say that I don't think the talent is innate, but I do think that there are certain personalities that are more easily stopped than others.
	I don't know if that's willpower or not, because I'm not a personality that's easily stopped.
	I don't want to ascribe it all to...
	My personal virtues, because I don't think that that's fair.
	Because that would be to say, well, I just did it right, and other people...
	I don't know the degree to which it may be innate or not.
	Or because I had a sense of how much I could conceivably accomplish, there was really little point in stopping, right?
	I mean, if you have a four-octave range, you don't sing up an octave and then just stop, because you can go higher.
	So, I mean, if you have a particular physical capacity, that is going to increase your ambition.
	Whereas those who have that physical capacity...
	Who then say, well, you know, I was just ambitious.
	It's like, well, yeah, but you were ambitious because you had this physical capacity called high IQ or whatever, and you didn't want to waste it, or you knew you could do it, or whatever.
	I mean, when I sort of sat down eight years ago, or whatever it was, to eight or nine years ago, I said, I'm damn well going to work out this problem of ethics.
	I mean, that was because I'd spent years reading, writing, studying philosophy, history, art, and all that.
	I mean, I really felt like I could do it, and I think I did.
	So, but that was the result of a huge amount of, I mean, even back to Dungeons and Dragons, playing particular ethical conundrums out in the alignment, sort of lawful good, lawful evil, and that kind of stuff.
	So I think, I'm sorry for this long ramble, and I'll shut up now, because kids sort of go on all day on this topic, but I think that the innateness of stuff is always troubling to me, because it challenges things like free will, moral responsibility, and so on.
	I do recognize that the studies seem to say that certain personality types seem to be somewhat innate.
	Working with my own daughter's personality has been really fascinating in that regard, seeing what's innate and what's adjustable.
	But I do think that there are certain circumstances that generally are perceived as negative at the time that create strengths.
	I've said this before on the show, and it's the last thing I'll say before I show up, which is I read a story many, many years ago.
	My mom was away, my brother was away, and I spent the summer with a friend of mine's grandparents.
	And he was actually my first friend I made in Canada.
	Really, really nice guy.
	We used to spend our recesses just walking around the playground and chatting.
	A sweet guy, really nice guy, died.
	Oh, just tragically.
	He just had a heart defect.
	And just died in his sleep after I'd known him for about a year.
	And I have these memories of being at his house and just gone.
	Just never came back.
	And all of these challenges can help in terms of developing people's creativity and their resistance and so on.
	I think that's some innate stuff.
	I tend to focus more upon environment because obviously there's more that we can do about that.
	And I think we're a long way of knowing what's innate because I think people's environments are still so tragic in so many ways.
	So I think we work to improve people's environments, see where they end up.
	So yeah, talent I think is one of these terms that's just so vague and such a catchall.
	I think that it obscures more than it clarifies.
	I think there's just no substitute for limitations, spreading around your limitations and finding new avenues and just working as hard as you can.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, that actually makes quite a bit of sense and actually touches on some of the things that I wanted to talk about with the development of creativity.
	I had always thought that That creativity, the ability to do free thinking was something that developed in childhood.
	Of course, I have to take that from my own personal experience.
	I had a very free, open childhood, and so did my brother.
	We both had very different personalities.
	Like you said, personality does make a difference.
	But we both ended up very creative because our parents gave us the tools that we needed, that we wanted, the incentives.
	But when my brother got into, you know, a little older, he kind of stopped with his music, but I continued on with my art until today, you know, until current time.
	And so I think personality does make quite a bit of difference with that.
	And I agree with that, but I'm not sure, I can't really relate to the scar tissue aspect of it that you mentioned.
	Well, some of it was scar tissue and some of it was just limitations.
	I mean, I don't think that being poor, growing up poor, was not traumatic.
	It was frustrating, obviously, at times, and it did provoke some envy in me for just about all the other kids who had decent money, right?
	I mean, we were getting...
	Eviction notices at times and I was worried about ending up on the street and just really broke.
	Like broke to the point where it's like there's nothing to eat at home.
	I've got to hang around friends places looking thin and pinched around supper time hoping that they'll throw me a bone or two.
	Like a really, really poor for a long time.
	And there were some aspects of that that were certainly traumatic in terms of like fearing homelessness and stuff like that.
	That was more so after we came to Canada.
	Things were a bit more stable in England.
	We were still broke, but I wasn't fearing any of that kind of stuff.
	But I don't think that the poverty was not traumatic.
	Because if you're relatively comfortable and you compare what's called poor now to what was actually poor like 100 years ago, it's night and day.
	So relatively comfortable.
	So I think that the limitations of poverty...
	We're more of a challenge to stimulate the imagination.
	And I tried a lot of different things.
	I was a big painter for a long time.
	I remember walking home from school one day and there was a house that was being torn down.
	And in the front was a giant white door.
	And I picked up with my sturdy eight-year-old frame, I picked up this door and dragged it home.
	So that I could finally have a canvas big enough for me to realize my vision as a painter or whatever, right?
	I painted half the damn thing with just a wide variety of what I thought were going to be wonderful naturescapes, but which turned out to be depressingly bland daubed paint.
	Oh, that's a horrifying thing.
	When you're a kid, I guess any time, right?
	Oh, yes.
	I remember when I was in kindergarten, I guess four or five years old, and I remember the construction paper and these paints.
	And these paintbrushes.
	And I wanted to do, I've mentioned this before in the show, and I wanted to do this picture of a kid going down on a toboggan, with rosy cheeks, a snowy hill, rosy cheeks, his hair, and scar flying in the wind and all that.
	That was just what I had in my head.
	And of course, you know, I've got this ham fist of a four-year-old, and I've got these, well, I guess we'll bring Brian May's hair back in for the thickness of the paintbrushes, and, you know, these kid paints, and they're just like, Here is big circle on a thing that looks like a sideways J with white splashed underneath.
	And I couldn't get anywhere close to the kind of detail in the picture in my head.
	And the weird thing was, for me, is that I really completely recognized this crazy gap between what I wanted in my head and what I was actually able to paint.
	And I remember even as a kid thinking, I'm never going to get there.
	It's the same thing.
	Like, I played guitar for a while.
	I did piano.
	I played 10 years of violin when I was a kid.
	And I was in an orchestra and so on.
	And I remember, you know, there were some older people.
	I mean, I was still a kid, right?
	Some older teenagers who were really good.
	And I remember thinking, I'm never going to be able to do that.
	It was the same thing with guitar.
	You know, I learned, like, four songs or whatever and tried to reproduce various bass lines.
	And I, you know, farted around with the guitar for about six or eight months.
	And...
	I remember, you know, then you sort of, you hear David Gilmour and you're like, I'm never getting there.
	I'm never, I'm never ever going to get there.
	Now, that's, of course, a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but nonetheless, I think it's important for me, you know, because first of all, you have to want it, you know, the old Bryan Adams song, I got my first real six string at the five and dime.
	Played it till my fingers bled.
	I have to want it to the point where you're going to put crazy glue on your fingers like Stevie Ray Vaughan just to go back and play another set.
	You have to want it that much.
	I just didn't want it that much.
	And for a lot of things, I'm like, oh, I'm never going to get there.
	Now, with philosophy, I've never really felt that.
	So it's not like some basic insecurity where I'm like, well, solve the intractable 5,000-year-old problem of secular ethics Well, I'm never going to get there.
	I'm like, no, I'm going to get there.
	Right?
	I'm going to get there.
	And that...
	So, you know, those limitations was, you know, obviously Eric Clapton felt about the guitar the way I feel about philosophy.
	Or David Gilmour, or whoever, you know, is your favorite.
	Lenny Kravitz, whoever is your favorite guitarist.
	Dweezil Zappa.
	So, this...
	Where your ignition is, is really...
	Unusual and widely spread across the population.
	And I wonder if kids find their ignition as much, again, with the sort of media stuff that we've been talking about recently on the shows.
	I don't know the degree to which kids find their ignition point anymore because I think there are so many distractions.
	Right.
	So, anyway, that's just another ramble.
	So, you don't have to be traumatized to be creative, but I do think that you have to be in an environment where you have to generate...
	Internally, something which in many ways you would rather have provided externally.
	Right?
	So I think of Robert Louis Stevenson as a kid stuck in bed year after year.
	He's got to start creating something.
	He's going to go mad, right?
	And there was nothing.
	There probably were like five books in the village or whatever.
	And so he started writing stories.
	Because he wanted something to be provided externally, but there wasn't anything being provided externally.
	And our inner resources were Rise to meet a world that is short of stimulus.
	That's why I think this crazy external stimulus world that kids grow up in these days is leaving them kind of short on internal generation and imagination.
	It's a complete cliche.
	And I get that it's been said about television and it's been said about movies and now the new thing is video games.
	But nonetheless, I mean, the amount of time the kids...
	Mike, we looked this up recently.
	If you could just drag that number again just for people who are listening for the first time.
	Dear God.
	Dear God.
	The amount of time that kids are spending on screens is, you know, unprecedented.
	We are performing this massive, unbelievably complex and long-term experiment on our children's brains.
	Unprecedented in human history.
	35 hours of TV per week for kids.
	But it's even more of that for screen time, right?
	Something like that.
	I mean, if you count...
	Yeah, if you count sort of every moment the kids are spending in front of screens, from phones to tablets to computers to Xboxes to TVs to PS4s or whatever, PS3s, it is a truly staggering amount.
	I mean, when I was a kid, I was like, oh, you know, A, don't sit too close to the TV, and, you know, if you watch more TV, your eyes will turn square, or whatever they used to say.
	There was this...
	Sort of reminds me of this video I saw once online.
	Some guy was complaining about, you know, I've been trying to get my kids to go stop playing, you know, go outside, go outside, get out of the basement because they're playing video games, right?
	And what do they do is they take their wireless controllers and they sit outside looking through the basement window and play the video games that way.
	And I wonder at the degree of lack of internal generation that is occurring with this bombardment.
	Well-sought-after bombardment of external stimuli.
	And I remember reading a book called Pornified years ago about a woman who was saying that with the prevalence of pornography, we have less of a desire.
	People who masturbate have less of a desire to think back on sexual exploits in the past as their source of stimuli.
	The average American watches more than five hours of live television every day.
	The average American then spends another 32 minutes a day on time-shifted television, an hour using the internet on a computer, an hour and seven minutes on a smartphone, and two hours, 46 minutes listening to the radio.
	Listening to free-domain radio.
	I think that's the average.
	But that's adults.
	I think for kids it's...
	Kids it's much higher.
	Yeah, I think for kids it's a lot higher.
	And there was this government program that wanted to hand over all these tablets and laptops to kids, and they found that the kids' reading and comprehension and writing scores and math scores just plummeted.
	And this is another tragedy in the black community, is that the black community, probably because of the prevalence of single motherhood, single motherhood plus media is a real problem.
	Because, I mean, single moms are busy.
	You know, they've got households to run, they've got life to do and all that.
	And a lot of times, of course, there is, not for all, but a lot of times there is this problem where, you know, the media becomes the babysitter.
	And I remember that when I was a kid coming home with my brother after school.
	And it was the usual deal.
	We'd be home by 3.30 and my mom would get home around six, two and a half hours.
	Well, what did we do?
	Well, sometimes we'd play and sometimes we'd go places, but a lot of times...
	We sit in front of the 12-inch black and white TV that always seem to have these ripples, these second-hand TVs.
	And it's pretty passive.
	I think Mike's got some more data for me.
	Today's children are spending an average of seven hours a day on entertainment media, including televisions, computers, phones, and other electronic devices.
	Seven hours a day?
	That is a lot.
	That, of course, you know, you've got, what, seven hours of school?
	8, 10, 12 hours of sleep, depending on the kid's age.
	7 hours a day on entertainment media.
	That is a wild, wild experiment in what is going to occur.
	I think like most of these wild experiments, it's going to have positive and negative effects, but it's a huge change.
	Listen, Bob, I'm sorry for rambling so much.
	It just brings up so much...
	That's quite right.
	For me, all of the stuff.
	You had another question about leftists?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, I went to college for an engineering, but most of the guys in engineering, they're a bunch of squares.
	If you're not talking about math, you can't do anything.
	So most of my friends were actually in the arts division, like film and stuff like that.
	The Communist Division.
	Yes.
	The Communist Propaganda Division.
	Yes.
	But boy, trying to get them to, I don't know, trying to come up with anything interesting.
	I actually did write a lot of scripts for them and stuff like that.
	But a lot of times they just didn't like it because I kind of had a different twist on it and we would get into these huge arguments and I don't know.
	But I just thought it was just very interesting how usually there's a dichotomy between, you know, you have the thinkers, which are usually like the hard science, and you have like the artsy-fartsy division.
	But there's no, like you had mentioned before earlier in your show, there's no room for diversity in a lot of these other areas.
	Oh no, they're ferocious.
	Ferocious censorship occurs in the arts.
	You know, I mean, for those who don't know, and I don't know how many would care, but after I was involved in the sale of the company that I co-founded, this was in Lordy 2001?
	Yeah, 2001 I think it was.
	So after that, I took a year and a half off because my My dream had been to be a writer.
	That's what I wanted.
	I went to the National Theatre School for acting and playwriting.
	I was a playwright.
	And I wanted to be a writer, a novelist.
	That was my philosophy.
	I thought philosophy would be a useful thing for me to have in my novels, and a powerful thing for me to have in my novels, but I wanted to be a novelist.
	And you can get my novels, and I think they're good.
	And I got some fantastic reviews, like a guy who reviewed The God of Atheists who had a PhD in literature said that this was the great Canadian novel that everyone's been waiting for.
	I remember after I got these reviews, after I went through a writing program, I was going to get an agent, and I remember sitting at my office job, and...
	Every time the phone rang, I'm like, well, I guess I'm quitting because I guess this is my big writing.
	I mean, that was the kind of positive feedback I was getting.
	And everyone said, you know, my writing teacher loved my writing, the agent loved my writing, and all that kind of stuff.
	And it never sold.
	Never sold.
	And that was a challenging experience, to say the least.
	And it took a long time for me to sort of really get what was going on.
	And look, it could be that I'm not a good writer.
	That's certainly a possibility.
	A good novelist.
	I think I'm fairly okay.
	It could be.
	That's certainly a possibility.
	I think I've got enough positive responses from my novels and I've written hundreds of poems and like 30 plays and just you name it.
	But I think it's good.
	I think it's very good stuff.
	Or at least it's good enough that it could be books.
	In trying to figure out why everyone was so excited about my writing, but nobody could ever sell it, I had to sort of try and go back in my mind, go back in my mind.
	I remember when I showed up at the National Theatre School, the director said, oh, you guys are all pretty young, white, and bougie, which is short for bourgeois, which meant, of course, that he was on the left, significantly on the left.
	And there was that real prejudice Real prejudice.
	And the left, of course, is all about the creation and portrayal of victims.
	Victims, victims, victims, victims, victims, victims, victims.
	And victims not of any personal malevolence, but of a general structural problem.
	Structural violence, structural violence.
	The class conflict, right?
	That there are these giant structures in society that crush and oppress the people.
	And they can't do anything about it.
	And this is why Bertolt Brecht and Mother Courage and her children Even Tennessee Williams says people are just crushed by this circumstance.
	Nobody's trying to be mean.
	Everybody gets destroyed, right?
	Or at least lots of people get destroyed.
	And this, you can see this communism shittery all over the place.
	And even in kids' movies, you know, what is it always?
	There's some forest with all these lovely animals, and then there's this evil mall developer who wants to crush the forest and put up a mall, and, you know, it's just, you know...
	Bad guys want to knock down the orphanage and build soulless condos and, you know, we've got to put on a show to raise the money to save the...
	I mean, it's in the Blues Brothers, for God's sakes, right?
	It's everywhere that there is not personal immorality, but there is a structural problem.
	And the reason for that, of course, if there's personal immorality, that's the religious, that's the Christian approach.
	If there's personal immorality, then you...
	You either fight the bad guys or you try to turn them into good guys, right?
	You reason with them, you exhort them to better, or you fight them if you can, right?
	But it's not a structural thing, right?
	And you see this with racism, too.
	Structural racism.
	Racism is in the structure of the society as a whole.
	Or sexism.
	There's these individual racists that we need to make better or fight, right?
	It's the whole goddamn thing.
	Like exploitation.
	It's not like there are good bosses and bad bosses.
	The whole system is exploitive.
	The whole system is sexist.
	The whole system is environmentally destructive.
	And this is just a naked grab for power.
	Because if you can identify...
	If the structure is not a problem but there are bad people in it, then you fight the bad people and you...
	You leave the structure in place, whatever the structure is.
	But if the whole structure is unjust, innately, then communism, then socialism, then fascism, then Nazism, then some massive change.
	It's a coup of structure.
	And so you have to portray endlessly these noble, good-hearted people, particularly the poor.
	Noble, good-hearted people just...crushed down by circumstances beyond their control.
	And that arouses in you a hatred of the structure of your society as a whole...
	...which is how you dissolve the remnants of freedom...
	...that remain from the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.
	And that's all.
	Communism.
	And that means that you have to get rid of individual choice.
	And this is what happens in communism.
	In communism, it's all class conflict.
	I mean, in communism...
	Theoretically, the capitalists aren't bad.
	Of course they are, because every religion needs its devils, right?
	But it's the actions of capitalism.
	It's the nature of capitalism.
	The means of the production, they're not bad.
	Because if they were bad, you'd just say to the workers, well, you go be there.
	You go buy the factory and everything will be great, but that was never the solution put forward because that's not structural.
	That's just replacing the owner's property.
	The whole structure, everything, goddamn thing, whole thing has to go.
	Everything has to go because you can't save individuals when the structure is bad, right?
	It's like...
	Going down to the Titanic right now and giving mouth to mouth to the skulls, right?
	It's not going to help them out because it's long past any...
	So you have to get rid of free will.
	You have to get rid of personal moral responsibility.
	That's really foundational.
	Really foundational.
	The way you do that in propaganda is you make sympathetic victims out of everyone who's being oppressed.
	And it is only the oppression that is harming them, right?
	So the poor...
	I mean, when was the last time In a movie, you saw someone who was poor because he was stupid.
	I don't mean like retarded or low intelligence or anything like that or developmentally challenged.
	What I mean is because he just made really bad decisions.
	He had money, he just blew it.
	He just made really bad decisions and did stupid stuff.
	And that this happened among the poor.
	There are some people who are poor because of bad things that happen.
	And then there are other People who are poor because they're mean.
	You know, my mom broke and mean.
	She got so mean, she's just unhirable.
	Couldn't be kept on in the workplace.
	You know, how many people are poor because they're just mean and selfish?
	Certainly not 100%, but it certainly isn't 0%.
	The fact that you never see them in movies.
	You know, when was the last time you saw a poor person in a movie who was genuinely unlikable?
	Well, it's not common.
	Because we deny humanity when we use people as categories.
	We deny their humanity.
	When was the last time you saw a Native American who was just mean and nasty?
	Oh, you can't.
	You can't.
	Because you see, they're a giant category that is there to provoke the guilt and expose the system as racist and bigoted and hateful and horrible and therefore must be smashed and destroyed and replaced with something I don't want to go on about this all day.
	But art, for the most part, art now is simply a form of structural coup.
	They simply want to take the remnants of the Enlightenment, the remnants of the free market, and...
	Destroy it and replace it with the usual freak horror show of history which is some sort of totalitarian despotism.
	And the people who hunger for power and who hate life and hate humanity are constantly driving this.
	Once you see this really clearly, that this leftist propaganda is virtually relentless.
	Virtually relentless.
	It is impossible to miss.
	It doesn't mean you can't enjoy stuff anymore.
	I mean, you can enjoy propaganda as art.
	But at least you do need to see it for what it is.
	And the degree to which the left understands the value of propaganda is a beautiful, evil thing.
	They get how to change the world.
	The right...
	The right keep thinking that it's arguments and data and facts and reason that changes the world.
	Because, strangely enough, for being on the right, they're empiricists.
	I mean, there's more evidence for the virtue of God than the value and virtue of communism, empirical evidence.
	I mean, religion in people's lives very often statistically makes people happier and live longer and have more satisfying relationships, a stronger social net and support system.
	So there's more evidence for the value and virtue of a deity than there is for survivability of communism.
	So people on the right, yeah, they look at the facts and they produce the facts.
	And people on the left create empty-headed slogans.
	They chant, no justice, no peace.
	And they just have the most vicious verbal abuse that they pour on anyone that they dislike.
	And they win.
	And they win repeatedly and repetitively.
	Partly because there is this viciousness on the part of the left.
	And also partly because they have all of this juggernaut of propaganda behind them that makes what they say seem plausible, even though it's mostly insane.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, I mean, that's actually a point I was going to bring up too, is that most of the hard left, they're very, very good at tapping into the emotions and bringing those emotions forward, while the right...
	They have trouble with anything that's emotion and tapping into that.
	Because art changes culture.
	That's the main change of what culture is.
	You want to see what culture is nowadays, just go watch the latest music videos and have your brain melt through your ears.
	Yeah, like art changes culture and the sort of the minds that are more drawn towards arguments, they've never really understood the importance of art, I would say.
	Well, look, I mean, it could be that you're right.
	It could be that you're right.
	Or it could be that it's just way too late.
	So, I mean, I worked for I've been off and on for a quarter century at developing my writing skills.
	Couldn't get published.
	So maybe people are just like, well, since all these lefties are in charge of the media, I mean, I'm not going to.
	Like, forget it.
	Won't do it.
	Right.
	Yeah, I definitely got that.
	It could be that they don't understand it, or it could be that because they're empirical, they're like, okay, yep.
	I guess that's not going to work, right?
	Right.
	This is very interesting, yeah.
	And then the other thing is...
	Who's the guy...
	Sorry to interrupt, just before we move on, because I had another example of that.
	I honestly cannot remember his name, even though I like him.
	As a writer, I've read a couple of his books.
	He debated gun control with Piers Morgan.
	And I think a year later, or 13 months later, Piers Morgan got fired from his show.
	He's like the new editor at Breitbart.
	Mike, if you can just look that up and give me his name.
	A good writer, and this guy originally started writing fiction, and he actually wrote a couple of scripts for The Good Wife, which is a political show, a legal political show.
	And people were very interested in it, and they were moving forward and this and that and the other, but he had a conservative bloc.
	And he had an agent and they were in the process of selling these scripts that he'd written.
	So this guy, a very talented, very smart guy, good writer obviously.
	And then his agent called him up and said, I can't sell these.
	It's over.
	And the guy said, what are you talking about?
	His agent said, oh, they found your blog.
	They found your blog and there's no way that they're going to buy a script from you.
	And this was kind of jaw-dropping for the guy, right?
	Because he, you know, he was really quite shocked and stunned at this basic reality that, you know, good writer, everyone wanted the scripts, loved the scripts, and then it's like, oh my god, he's got conservative leanings, right?
	Yeah, that's...
	Yeah, I mean, that is very possible.
	Maybe they just never got into it.
	Art does seem to be a good modulum of propaganda, and the left is always in need of propaganda.
	Ben Shapiro.
	Ben Shapiro.
	Another fine Scottish name.
	But yeah, I'm just kidding.
	Ben Shapiro.
	Oh, yeah, I know this guy.
	Yeah, and well worth reading, and a very smart guy.
	And he is...
	Yeah, so he tried, but there is an old saying that comes...
	It's not really a saying.
	And this is...
	I think it's in Godless by Ann Coulter.
	And it's...
	A really terrifying state of affairs that came out of the 1930s.
	And Whitaker Chambers, I think it was in 1938, broke with the Communist Party.
	So he was an American writer and translator.
	And he was in the Communist Party.
	And in 1938, or 1939 I think it was, I think it was 1938, he basically realized that he was on the side of evil.
	And he broke with the Communist Party.
	And The full story is incredibly gripping, incredibly powerful and wends its way into the accusations of Soviet espionage against Alger Hiss and McCarthyism and the complete falsehoods that are thrown around with regards to McCarthyism.
	And it's a gripping story and she's a great writer and a very entertaining writer and what a storyteller.
	But Whitaker Chambers said that conservatives will never win against communism because they don't understand how evil it is.
	Because they're pretty good-natured, because they're Judeo-Christian, because they're free-market guys, they don't get it.
	They don't get just how sinister, vicious, evil, anti-life communism is.
	And he said that the battle for the future...
	Our freedom will be fought by two groups and two groups only.
	The communists and the ex-communists.
	Because it is only the ex-communists who have seen deeply enough how evil the doctrine is.
	The conservatives will be irrelevant.
	It will be the communists versus the ex-communists.
	And unfortunately, we just have not produced enough ex-communists to win the battle.
	Interesting.
	Well, I think that covers pretty much everything I wanted to talk about for that first point, for the first question anyways.
	It just becomes more painfully obvious how propagandized all the media is.
	It makes it somewhat difficult to enjoy, but I can still enjoy some of the stuff.
	It does make it tougher to enjoy, but that's okay.
	I mean, you don't want to enjoy Nazi propaganda, right?
	Again, I'm not going to say that the left is the same as a Nazi.
	Because we know that Nazism is bad.
	But it is a challenge.
	I would certainly not count myself an ex-communist, but I was definitely a socialist when I was younger.
	Oh yeah, I think in the teenage years you just have tendencies to play with that sort of idealization.
	Well, you live in a world of words rather than facts.
	And giving money to the poor is a shallow and stupid way of helping the poor.
	I'm not saying it's never appropriate to give money for charity.
	I mean, I do regularly and quite a bit.
	But the idea that poverty is solved in the long run Through the transfer of money is ridiculous.
	I mean, charity has been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but it's only in the last 200 years that the poor have had anything other than disastrous in their life as a whole.
	And that's not because of charity, it's because of the market, because of freedom.
	And there is a natural bias.
	And it comes because I mean, we're hoping that the Flynn effect is going to catch up with us and people can get smart enough to understand these things.
	But, you know, the fool looks at the man giving money to the poor and says, what a generous and helpful person.
	And the fool looks at the man brainstorming an idea for how to start a new business and says, oh, he's only in it for the money.
	Whereas it's the latter person who will really help the poor and the former person is halfway between helping and halfway between enabling but certainly isn't going to break any kind of cycle, right?
	Yeah.
	The idea that, and this is straight up objectivism, of course, but the idea that selfishness is not beneficial to society as a whole but is rather harmful is really corrosive and really, really destructive.
	Especially, and especially those who are generous with other people's money.
	It's always easier to spend other people's money.
	Oh yeah, there's a coarse old saying, you know, like, she's so ugly, I wouldn't fuck her with your dick.
	And, you know, it ain't charity if it's someone else's money, right?
	It's not charity.
	It's just bribery.
	It's just vote buying.
	That's all it is.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And then, of course, the poor who've become dependent and the rich who've become dependent on these kind of handouts scream bloody murder when these handouts are threatened, right?
	I mean, did you know that for, I think, two years, from 2012 to 2013, Greece gave subsidized vacations to lower and middle class people?
	Give them these big set of coupons.
	Austerity!
	Yeah, Mike, you had it.
	I can't find it right now.
	Do you want to just read that thing off?
	Oh, now you're putting me on the spot.
	Oh, here we go.
	Greece subsidized vacations for the poor from 2013 until 2014.
	The program provided, I guess, vouchers for social groups with mid and low incomes to take holidays in tourism establishments everywhere in Greece.
	It included discounts at Greek hotels and other lodges of all categories that obtained some particular...
	Government seal.
	So subsidized vacations.
	And they scream bloody murder.
	Now normally, when people scream bloody murder, we are skeptical, right?
	I mean, if there's a tax increase for the rich, and the rich scream bloody murder, what do we say?
	Cheap and stingy greeting people.
	Yeah, yeah, greedy people, of course they're going to say that because that's just where their self-interest lies, right?
	So, you know, we may listen, but we're going to listen skeptically, right?
	Or let's say that someone who's a climate change skeptic has received a bit of money from an oil company or two, right?
	What do we say?
	Oh, just paid off, you know.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No objectivity is just paid off, right?
	It's just his self-interest, right?
	People were pretty quick to throw that at Patrick Moore when we had him out for an interview.
	Patrick Moore, who was on the show.
	It's like, oh, he was in a commercial for an oil company, so that's my scientific argument.
	Or Veronique de Régis, right?
	She works at some institution which apparently gets the money from...
	The Mercatus Institute.
	Yeah, she gets money.
	I think that it's cocaine money, right?
	Did I get that right?
	It would probably be less vitriol attached to it if it was cocaine.
	Yeah, if it was only cocaine money rather than coke money.
	Oh, for a moment I thought it was the coke brothers.
	It turns out it's just an illegal Colombian powder.
	Colombian, as I've been told.
	But yeah, I mean, so people are...
	So she's compromised, right?
	She's compromised.
	It costs nonsense, right?
	I mean, a person with great intellectual integrity that I, you know...
	Anyway, so there's certain groups.
	When we see financial self-interest in...
	Oh, God!
	We discard them because they're totally compromised, right?
	But when the poor scream about cuts in the welfare state, what do we say?
	Oh, you poor, poor, poor people.
	How could you possibly do this to them?
	Because we don't give them humanity.
	The poor are a giant lever used to dismantle freedom.
	People don't care about them as individuals.
	Caring about someone is a very complicated thing.
	Caring about someone is a very complicated thing.
	Caring about a group as a whole is an impossibility unless you are willing to reduce them to a cartoonish stereotype.
	You cannot care for a group as a whole.
	You can care for individuals and that is really hard.
	I mean, boy, you ever want to know why the welfare state doesn't work?
	Just watch the show Intervention once or twice where people try to Stop drug addicts and people addicted to alcohol or other destructive stuff.
	They try and stop them from killing themselves with drugs or alcohol or whatever it is.
	And they stage interventions and they threaten to break all relations with them and they get professionals and they get training and they get experts and they...
	Right?
	And...
	I don't know.
	I've only watched one or two episodes but both times it failed.
	Some guy who had a bunch of tanning salons just drank himself to death.
	Look at the Dr.
	Phil family.
	This is a family that...
	I was just thinking of them, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's a doctor and his wife and their kids and they've had massive amounts of psychological and social worker and expert resources and medical care thrown at them.
	I think this went on for like seven years.
	And it seemed to me that they were bloody well worse off at the end of it than they were at the beginning.
	Wow, I didn't know that.
	It's some chilling stuff.
	It's some chilling stuff.
	I mean, if you have tried it, Bob, if you tried it, like really trying to help someone in your life who's got some significant dysfunction?
	Yeah, my dad's extended family.
	We have no contact with them.
	I've only met them once, but my dad had, in his younger years, he had tried helping his brothers and sisters.
	And it got to the point where he was just like, I can't have you guys around my kids.
	I can't have you guys anywhere.
	And cut off all contact.
	Never met them.
	But I've heard stories.
	I have heard some just awful stories about how they are.
	And they like to blame my dad for everything.
	Like, oh, he's just greedy and he keeps everything to himself.
	And he tried.
	He tried hard to help him.
	Yeah.
	Just reading about this, you can go to drphil.com slash shows slash page slash family underbar archive.
	Six years ago, Aaron, mother of Alexandra and Catherine and wife of Marty, wrote Dr.
	Phil asking for help.
	They seemed like an all-American family on the outside, but behind closed doors.
	They were struggling with problems that threatened to tear their family apart, including a teen pregnancy.
	Pregnancy.
	Anyway, so...
	Six years later, right?
	So this is after six years of intense intervention on the part of Dr.
	Phil, I mean, obviously a recognized expert in his field.
	He's got Dr.
	Philip Zimbardo on his team.
	He's got like massive amounts.
	He's got the top guys in every field to do with mental health that you could conceivably imagine, right?
	Right.
	And six years later, after six years of intervention, six years later, Aaron, Marty, Alexander, and Catherine are back and facing new troubles, an arrest, custody battles, divorce, and more.
	Follow their journey.
	It's like, it's really not a journey.
	Exactly.
	I mean, it's like dropping an egg out of an airplane over tarmac and saying, follow the egg's journey.
	Are they going to journey over to the Jerry Springer show, which may be a more appropriate venue?
	Oh my god.
	I mean, it's just a...
	I mean, they had babies.
	The daughters had babies that were born addicted to drugs.
	They got involved with criminals.
	The girl was homeless.
	I mean, this is all after years of intervention.
	Years of intervention.
	And it's, you know, it is really hard to help individuals.
	I mean, Mike, let's open the kimono a little here, shall we?
	Ooh!
	Okay, first of all, stand over the heater.
	Anyway, so Mike, I mean, we've been doing this show for a couple of years, right?
	And I would say we give, or I, it's me, right, mostly, give people some fairly not useless feedback from time to time, right?
	I would agree with that, absolutely.
	And it's not perfect, but, you know, go to therapy, get yourself knowledge, live your values, it's standard stuff, right?
	Of the people who have called in that we have followed up with, which is not everyone, obviously.
	It's not even the majority of people.
	But the people who listen to and follow the advice in a consistent way.
	You know, it would be tough to put a percentage on it because I don't follow up with everybody.
	Of the people that we do have some idea of.
	I will say this.
	It's not uncommon for me to get an email saying, hey, I was on the show two years ago.
	Or, you know, a year ago or something.
	Can I come back on?
	And it's like, oh, well, what's your question?
	What do you want to talk about?
	And it's about...
	Exactly the same stuff from two years ago.
	Why do you ask?
	The exact same thing.
	And it's like, well, you know, because I keep notes on, like, the previous shows and stuff.
	I go back and it's like, oh, so have you gone to therapy?
	I think that was discussed in the previous show.
	No, I have not gone to therapy.
	So it's like, uh...
	So you want advice, you want feedback, but you're not going to actually act on that feedback if it's something that you don't want to hear.
	It's like watching a television show of your own life.
	You don't actually have to do anything.
	You just expect things to happen.
	I think, and I think, I think just total guesswork, right?
	But I think that probably...
	I think 20-30% of people who call into the show do something seriously positive based upon the feedback they get.
	What do you think, Mike?
	Do you think that's way off base, or...?
	I certainly get more positive messages from people that are doing stuff with the feedback that they get on the show than I do, like, I got this feedback and then I did nothing.
	That's pretty passive.
	So maybe it's 50% or more, right?
	So maybe it's 50% or more.
	It's certainly not, you know, high 90s or anything like that.
	Yeah, it's not like 75%.
	So, you know, if you come on this show and we talk about some stuff, I give you some feedback, then 50-50, 60-40, whatever.
	You've got a, you know, pretty...
	And that...
	I mean, I think that it's some of the best stuff around.
	I do.
	I mean, obviously I do.
	Otherwise, I'd say to people, oh God, go somewhere else.
	Go somewhere else, right?
	And it's worth every penny that people don't pay for coming on the show.
	And this is a show where people have listened to this philosophy.
	They have obviously some respect for what it is that I have to say and so on, right?
	And still, it's 50-50 about whether people...
	Even do the stuff which I suggest or may recommend in the show.
	Now, whether they follow up with it and expand on it and keep it going and continue to grow and so on, right?
	The therapy thing is the one that really stands out to me.
	Like, I've been listening to the show for three years.
	Have you gone to therapy?
	No.
	And I get that.
	I mean, that's a huge decision.
	And it's pretty expensive, of course, for a lot of people.
	I mean, it's expensive.
	I mean, if you've got insurance, a lot of insurance.
	But most people don't, right?
	So that is a big commitment.
	And I'm one to talk, right?
	I mean, I had to wait until things got pretty bad in my life before I really dug into therapy.
	So I kind of get it and I understand that.
	But it is...
	It is a huge challenge to actually proactively dig in and help people in a productive and meaningful way.
	Now, I know this show does that because we get countless emails of like, you know, I don't hit my kids, I've got better relationships, I'm more honest with the people in my life, I've got the job of my dream, whatever, right?
	I mean, there is, you know, it's why we do it.
	It's why we do it.
	Because it is clearly helping huge numbers of people.
	I mean, huge numbers of people live vastly better lives.
	And that's what it's all about.
	That's why we do it.
	That's what makes it worthwhile.
	But the idea of giving, of helping a category of people called the poor Is so fundamentally bigoted.
	I mean, if I had one opinion about all blacks, what would people say?
	Racist.
	And it would be true.
	If I said, blacks are...
	Right?
	It fundamentally wouldn't even matter that much whether it's positive or negative.
	It would be racist, right?
	And...
	But this kind of poor...
	Poorism, you know, where you just, the poor are this, right?
	The poor are victims, the poor are noble, the poor are struggling, the, you know, the single moms are victims and they're heroic and the teachers are, all care about the kids and they're, you know, the system may be bad, but they, you know, like all this nonsense.
	All this nonsense.
	You know, because people sometimes get upset at, oh, you're deaf, you know, you said something positive about the police, right?
	And I'm not sure that I have in general, or I don't know if I have even in particular, but I really, really resist categorizing a group morally.
	Yeah, there are corrupt cops.
	Of course there are.
	I mean, vicious, brutal.
	I mean, three cops.
	I think it's two guys and a woman.
	Three cops just got charged with Gang rape.
	Repetitive gang rape ring.
	Yes, there are some really nasty, vicious, evil cops around.
	And there are some cops who are really trying to do some good work and really trying to help their communities.
	There are shitty government teachers.
	And there are government teachers who are really trying to do...
	I mean, I was taught by one or two of them.
	Really trying to do some good in a system and a skeptical and...
	No, we've had some people call into the show.
	Some teachers.
	I'm sorry?
	We've had some teachers call into the show that are really trying to do some positive stuff in a really terrible situation.
	Yes, that's very true.
	Exactly true.
	And so, people want to create these convenient categories.
	And, I mean, obviously, at the extreme ends of the human condition, I'm not sure how many gentle concentration camp guards there were in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia or whatever.
	Probably not a lot, if any, right?
	But we're not at that stage in the society.
	And, of course, a lot of the people in the concentration camps...
	Probably thought they were doing the right thing.
	I mean, we can see that all over with us.
	We know that the initiation of force is immoral, but people believe that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society, right?
	That is just the way that things are.
	Prior to knowledge, there's no such thing as moral responsibility.
	And the expansion of knowledge is the creation of moral responsibility.
	So it is a challenge.
	And the poor are a very complex group.
	A very complex group.
	And some of them are there because they were tragically preyed upon as children and their lives were destroyed through abuse.
	And that is horrible.
	Some of them are there because...
	They just were not born with much intelligence.
	Intelligence is a bell curve.
	Some of it is genetic.
	Some of it is environmental.
	Estimates widely range, but without a doubt, some of it is genetic, at least to my mind.
	And some people are born less intelligent.
	Some people are born more intelligent.
	And some people are poor because of that.
	Some people are poor because they're mean.
	Some people are poor because they're lazy.
	And so what happens is, because we have this weird category, categorism, This categorism, this bigotry based on categories.
	If I say something like some people are poor because they're lazy, people are like, oh, so you're saying all the poor are lazy, right?
	I mean, and it's just this weird click that happens to people and it's the result of decades of incredibly positive propaganda.
	Incredibly effective propaganda.
	Which lumps all the poor in one category.
	And you get one giant brush with which to paint the poor.
	And it's like this ultimate fill program.
	You know, like F-I-L-L in Windows or Mac.
	You touch something and it fills the whole category.
	The whole circle or the whole triangle.
	You got one thing.
	One brush.
	And you paint all these people with one brush.
	And you just...
	You can't...
	There's no...
	No exception.
	And so if you say poor and lazy...
	It's like, oh, all the poor are lazy.
	Right?
	There was a lot of this on the Truth About Poverty video that I believe was put out last year.
	And people, they can't process it.
	And of course, because you're talking about people potentially having the opportunity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps through hard work, you must be someone that's rich white male born with silver spoon in mouth.
	Well, or the people who know about Me starting life in grinding poverty in a welfare ghetto who are like, well, but you were born with particular gifts.
	And you think that everyone...
	Again, it just can't fit the paradigm.
	But the poor are people.
	I mean, it seems weird to have to say this.
	The poor are people too.
	And I grew up among the poor.
	I think I have some insights around the poor.
	I grew up poor in England.
	I grew up poor...
	In Canada.
	Lived in a variety of locations.
	Also spent some time around some pretty rich people too.
	In boarding school.
	It was a pretty expensive school.
	My father was paying for it and then he stopped paying for it.
	It's the only reason I was able to go.
	But the poor are people.
	And there is no category called the poor that eclipses the individuality of people who happen to be in that category.
	And The idea that we cannot ascribe virtues and vices to an entire category of people is a way of fundamentally dehumanizing them, which means that they're being used for political purposes and nobody cares about these people as individuals.
	I mean, I'm reading a book by Shelby Steele called White Guilt, How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.
	He's great.
	I mean, like I'm, oh my god, like my teeth are tingling with how great a writer he is and how insightful he is.
	And I won't sort of get into it, but he basically, he says, it incredibly frustrates me when people talk about blacks as a collective.
	And refuses to ascribe individual virtues and vices to People within the black community.
	Because there's this weird fill program.
	You know, you just want to put one point on the screen and it fills the whole damn thing, you know?
	I knew a black guy who was mean.
	Oh my god, are you saying all black guys are mean?
	It's like, no, it's not a fill program.
	It's pointillism.
	There's no fill.
	Fill is your bias.
	It's nothing to do with what I'm doing.
	Anyway.
	Sorry.
	It wasn't too much of a tangent.
	Probably was.
	It's okay.
	Alright, I think I should probably end the show.
	What do you think?
	Yes, probably.
	Was that even remotely useful or I was basically just rambling for Mayona today?
	It was useful.
	It was very interesting.
	I enjoyed it.
	It went in a very different direction than I thought it would.
	Well, listen, Bob, if we didn't get it, please rebook.
	If we didn't get it, it'd be very useful.
	Maybe I'll call in again.
	I'd like to talk more about childhood developmental and how schools and the amount of drugs that they pump into the kids and how that might affect future creativity generations.
	I might call back in again.
	Oh yeah, when I was a kid, you just got lines and detentions.
	Oh yeah.
	You didn't actually physically rewire your brain with pseudo-medications.
	So yeah, no, I think it's a very good topic.
	Yeah, when I was in elementary school, my teacher wanted to put me on ADV drugs.
	My mom was like, nope, switch schools, sit and dodge the bullet on that one.
	Wow, good for her.
	Do give her our thanks.
	Yeah.
	As I'm sure you've...
	Yeah, I'm sure you've given her yours.
	But yeah, it's a great topic, and I know that I rambled all over the place here, but please call back in again.
	You've got great questions, and I promise to listen more next time.
	Okay, yeah, that's great.
	Thank you so much, and of course, thanks everyone so much for calling in, for supporting the show, freedomainradio.com.
	Slash donate.
	We really do need a leg up here.
	It's a short month.
	It's after Christmas and we still, our calorie requirements have not diminished to the point where we don't need your help.
	So please, please, please come and help us out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Sign up for a subscription and put a smile on our faces and some food in our bellies.
	So have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.
	We will talk to you on Wednesday night.

▲