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March 22, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:51:47

2935 Take The Red Pill - Call In Show - March 21st, 2015

A rant-tacular show! Questions discussed include: Referencing the Matrix - do you believe that some people are just not ready for the red pill? I’ve given my two weeks’ notice at my job of fifteen years and am starting to panic - why do I feel so scared? Is the cultural focus on ‘beauty’ abusive towards women? I’m a public school teacher - how can I assist children who are being bullied and best help my students?

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	I hope you're doing well.
	Welcome to our Saturday night of philosophizing and looking forward to it.
	As I always do, these calls are the highlight of my week.
	Even more of a highlight of my week sometimes is waking up to a donation or two.
	So if you can help us out with that, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
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	We ain't asking you to...
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	50 cents a show is our honored request, an honorable request, I believe.
	So if you've been consuming, please, you know the deal.
	There's nothing for free, and voluntarism is supposed to help solve the problem of charity, and that would be our situation.
	So freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	Mikey Mike, who have we got up?
	Alright, well up for us today is Andrew.
	And Andrew wrote in, referencing the matrix, do you believe that some people are just not ready for the red pill?
	Do you think it's a black and white issue?
	Ready or not ready?
	Go on.
	yeah hi everyone uh i just wanted to first you to to give a bit of a plug so everyone please donate because it's a great show and it's the only one on the earth that's that that's really unique and it helped me out probably more than the therapy itself i'm getting now so um back to the question um it's so so what i experienced is sort of like an awakening probably starting about last november december after listening to the show and Reading
	some other stuff before Now I can see that I have a lot of I got a lot of friends and acquaintances that they got similar issues and Some of them are clearly not ready to face to take the red pill Some of them I would say in a sort of a gray area So I'm wondering how much Can and how much should Should I
	sort of try to help other people, you know, take the red pill effectively?
	Well, do you mind if I give you a tiny rant?
	Sure, go for it.
	Right.
	So, when is the world ready for change?
	Well, I have the image of people out at sea.
	And people out at sea know they have to get to shore.
	And some people, I'm not putting anyone, like I'm not putting you in this category.
	This is just the image that popped into my mind.
	So some people know they need to get to shore.
	And they're like a mile offshore.
	When I was, I don't know, 13 or so, I went with my mom to Florida.
	And I fell asleep on a rubber raft.
	And I woke up because some flying fish jumped over me.
	And I woke up and I was like, oh my god, I'm really far out at sea.
	And suddenly you feel yourself like hanging over this vast chasm of predatory depth below.
	I always loved it when I was in lakes or in oceans.
	You put the mask on and when it's sunny you see those lances of sunlight diving down.
	These shadowy lances of sunlight diving down and dippling through the deep.
	And I woke up and I looked around and I couldn't see the shore.
	And I'm like, oh my god, how long have I been asleep?
	Where the hell is the shore?
	Because if you can't find the shore, well, things get complicated and challenging quite quickly.
	And anyway, I squinted and I saw the strip of sand.
	And I also knew enough about, I was interested in marine biology as a teen.
	And I knew enough to know that flying fish jump and there's a predator around.
	So I just...
	You know, virtually walked.
	I was going so fast to get back to the shore.
	It took a while.
	And I just left the raft behind and waited forever for it to come along.
	So, society's out at sea.
	The predators are circling below.
	And there's a shore called freedom.
	Personal responsibility, virtue, integrity, philosophy.
	And I think the question of...
	When are people ready can only be answered by the two most liberating syllables in the human language.
	When are people ready?
	Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?
	Peace.
	I mean, this idea of when will people be ready is your hope.
	Our hope, my hope, I have this, I fall prey to this too.
	It's this hope.
	And the hope is this, Andrew.
	The hope is, well, I won't have to swim to shore nearly as hard if there's a tsunami.
	If I can ride a wave, if there's some momentum that can substitute the brute willpower that is necessary for the world to change and grow.
	If I can find people who already kind of half or mostly want what I've got, then it will be a lot easier.
	And I understand that.
	I think it's a very seductive worldview to think that there's some sort of momentum, some sort of wave that we could ride that's going to make this brute muscling of the world to a higher place somewhat easier.
	Does that Ring a bell or resonate with you at all?
	Am I completely barking up the wrong gulag?
	No, look, you're not barking up the wrong tree, no.
	I mean, I can explain to you how it sort of happened for me, but because it's a...
	I'm sort of, maybe, this could be a little bit cheeky, but in your case, because of your background, it was a lot easier to see, to wake up when you're in such dire circumstances.
	Well, but sorry, sorry, Andrew to interrupt, but that would be to make the argument that most of the people I grew up around who were also in dire circumstances also woke up.
	Okay, yeah, fair enough.
	And I, you know, it wasn't the case.
	I'm not saying it was or wasn't the case more than people who weren't in dire circumstances, but it certainly helped.
	Like, when I started to think rationally and clearly, then...
	It it was illuminating society's response to my dire circumstances but i wouldn't say that it was causal but sorry go ahead yeah so i'll sort of so so i'm well at the time i was 35 which is sort of quite it's quite old but i was always sort of interested in psychology and philosophy and but and i was reading about narcissistic stuff and all kind of stuff for years and years and it didn't really click until So what happened was
	last year I had quite a bit of free time on my own.
	My family went away for a couple of months.
	And that sort of gave...
	So what I decided, and this was the thing which I can't...
	I can't pin it down to anything.
	There was a click inside me that said, stop all the usual distractions and just start working and go inside your head.
	And start reading stuff and sort of stumble upon FDR and then the rest is history.
	But what sort of made that initial click, I really can't pin it down to something concrete.
	There was something that said, stop all the usual distractions.
	Okay, sure.
	And I know that sort of when the student is ready, the teacher appears and so on.
	But I would argue, Andrew, that everything that facilitated your capacity to accelerate self-knowledge and wisdom...
	What's the result of someone's effort against the current?
	We all want to join the movement later.
	I'd love to join the movement later.
	Wouldn't that be easy?
	But we're not.
	That's not where the movement is.
	That's not where the world is.
	We are joining it earlier.
	Which means, yay, more praise from those who come two or three generations after us.
	But it means swimming significantly against significant currents in the present, right?
	There is no momentum except for willpower.
	And the willpower that waits for momentum...
	It's the willpower that waits forever.
	So there's this, in bicycle races, not just the Queen's song, but in bicycle races, there's this constant jockeying for position at the front, right?
	And do you know why?
	Everyone wants to be the leader, in a way.
	No, they don't, actually.
	That's kind of the weird thing.
	They want to be the leader at the end.
	They don't want to be the leader all the way through the race.
	And do you know why?
	Oh, yeah, because if you're up front, you get a bit of air resistance happening.
	Yeah, you want to tuck in behind someone's slipstream, and so they take the wind resistance, and they tire themselves out with that wind resistance.
	So people are constantly moving up a little bit, dropping back, dropping further back, resting, like it's a whole rhythm.
	But when you want to win, you have to just, like, you have to get out of the momentum and you have to just go.
	Now, my question is, and this is not a question specific to you, but, you know, this is a good example.
	One of the things I guide myself by is...
	What does Satan want?
	What does the devil himself want?
	What do bad people want?
	Now, do bad people want you to push and muscle and make the world and annoy the world and be the gadfly and be the difficult one and really push and urge the world to a better place?
	Or do they want you to wait for momentum?
	Yeah, of course they want to hold you back.
	Yeah, but they don't want to hold you back, like, really obviously, right?
	They want to hold you back, like, well, yeah, you make some really interesting points, you know, let's talk about this again later, and later never comes, and then you bring it up again, and they, like, the intelligent resistance to virtue is the delay, right?
	It's the distraction, it's not the frontal assault, right?
	Yeah.
	And so, when you're sort of contemplating how to make the world virtuous, a good thing is to say, well, what would bad people want me to do?
	And then do the opposite of that, right?
	Yep.
	And so, bad people in the world, the people whose interests are harmed by the spread of virtue, Those people want you to wait for momentum.
	And those people want you to live in a fog of, if I think about stuff, inevitably, things will happen, you know?
	And that's not, to me, how creativity works.
	Like, I'm just thinking about, if I think about music long enough, I'll have a symphony.
	Well, you won't, right?
	You have to sit down and write.
	You have to will it.
	You have to will the idea to the action.
	And this idea that when people are ready, that it's a whole lot easier, I don't think is the way to go.
	Because that is to surrender your commitment to the spread of critical thinking, virtue, rationality, empiricism, intelligent reasoning, philosophy.
	That is to spread that, is to defer the spreading of that to the willingness of others to accept it.
	And the only people...
	Who are willing to accept philosophy, I count myself included, are the people who have no real clue where it's going to lead.
	Sounds great!
	I love to think for myself.
	Critical thinking?
	That's wonderful!
	I mean, that's really going to clarify the world to me.
	And you end up like those kids at the beginning of Pulp Fiction.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I had no idea what I was getting into.
	And, you know, there was some...
	I'm sort of...
	Now I am...
	I mean, the only thing I'm worried now is that there was an upheaval and it did cause stress to the relationship with my wife and, you know, that could have a negative impact on my son as well.
	So, you know, when you're sort of...
	I think it's...
	When there are other people involved, it can...
	Especially because there isn't much of...
	There isn't any support program around...
	Ourselves can sort of help you out.
	Okay, you can see a therapist maybe once a week, but that's really woefully lacking in terms of when you're sort of in a big upheaval.
	Once, one hour a week isn't really that much, so you need a lot of...
	Ideally, you would need a lot of other support to go through it and not to...
	Sort of to keep it not not to cause because it did cause me probably about a couple of months of lots of confusion and confused feelings and Anger and the stuff and of course as it happens some of it Some of the sometimes you do silly things which later on you regret just because the support sorry Andrew But the support comes from the inspiration of seeing people who've done it, right?
	Yeah, yeah, or who are in the outgoing and onward process of doing it.
	Yeah I'm going to read you the very first sentence, the very first paragraph of the very first book that I wrote on philosophy called On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, which is available for free at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	I wrote, from a short-term, merely practical standpoint, you really do not want to read this book.
	This book will mess up your life as you know it.
	This book will change every single one of your relationships.
	Most importantly, your relationship with yourself.
	This book will change your life, even if you never implement a single one of the proposals it contains.
	This book will change you even if you disagree with every single idea it puts forward.
	Even if you put it down right now, this book will have changed your life.
	Because now you will know that you are afraid of change.
	This book is radioactive and painful.
	It is only incidentally the kind of radiation and pain that will cure you.
	Let me ask you a couple of questions.
	Sure.
	Martin Luther started out life as a Catholic monk, ended up his life as a married man with children.
	Incidentally, inventing the entire split of Christendom and the Protestant sects and so on, right?
	Changed the course of human history.
	He nailed up his 95 Theses opposing The Catholic Church doctrine on a number of issues, in particular the sale of indulgences.
	In other words, if you had a sin, if you committed a sin, you could go to the priest and make a donation, and he would give you forgiveness or absolution.
	Yep.
	And so naturally, it then became...
	Originally it was after the fact and then it was like, well, you know, I'm going to go and do these terrible things this weekend.
	You know, here's 50 bucks to clean my soul before I go.
	So if something happens on the way, you know, I'll be fine.
	And I don't believe, I've read a lot of his writing.
	I did a whole course on the Reformation as a graduate student.
	Did he wait until the time was right?
	No, of course not.
	I mean, when you believe something like that, you have to act.
	You have to act.
	When countries declare war, when leaders declare war, do they wait until there's the right momentum?
	Or do they just declare war, draft their citizens or their money, and just start to slaughter?
	Yeah, yeah, I mean, of course, yeah.
	I mean, it isn't some sort of an impulse that comes from, I think, somewhere very deep beneath.
	In Canada in the 1960s, when, I think it was under Tommy Douglas' government initially, they socialized medicine.
	The doctors, by and large, hated it.
	They went on strike, they fought, they resisted.
	They hated it.
	But the government basically was like, screw you, you're now wards of the state.
	We're now going to pay the bills.
	You come to us for money.
	You don't have that relationship with your patients anymore.
	Now, the government wasn't like, well, we'll just wait until the time is right.
	The Bolsheviks in 1917 did not say, well, you know, we'll wait until people are ready for Bolshevism.
	We'll wait until there's momentum.
	No, they did.
	They acted.
	They pursued the will to power and seized the helm of the ship of state.
	So if you look at events that have really shaped and changed history, for better and for worse, It was the result of individuals and their commitment to their belief system, however sane or insane that belief system may have been.
	That's what they did not wait for momentum.
	Waiting for momentum is to lull you into the sleeping beauty of ineffectiveness.
	And it's a way of you saying, well, I'm waiting until the time is right.
	The time will never be right.
	Individuals with willpower make the times.
	They do not wait for the times.
	Individuals who are fully committed to a belief system make it happen.
	They do not wait for it to happen.
	They do not wait for people to agree with them.
	Because we know that changing human society for the better is an ugly, bloody, foot-by-foot trench warfare of a barbed wire up your nose situation.
	The abolitionists did not wait until everyone agreed that slavery should be abolished.
	They just worked and willed and worked and willed.
	And my question that goes out in general to activists in this area is this.
	How much time do you think we have Given your knowledge of Austrian economics, given your knowledge of the political system, public choice theory, given your knowledge of democracy, given your knowledge of history, how much time do you think we have?
	It's one thing to say, I'm going to wait for the right time when disaster is not imminent.
	When disaster is not imminent, when is the right time?
	Well, when the enemy is getting stronger, the right time is always now.
	Always now.
	When the enemy is getting stronger, the right time is always and forever right now.
	Because all delays are waiting for the end.
	And preparing and accelerating the end.
	It's sort of like if you're If a tree falls on your leg in the forest and you're bleeding, when is the right time to try and fight to get out?
	Well, every moment you delay, you get weaker.
	And the right time when the adversity of the environment is increasing is always now.
	And I've been pushing for this for years.
	That libertarians and voluntarists and Anarchists and even conservatives need to act strenuously and strongly now.
	Because the enemy is getting stronger.
	Faster than we are.
	All delays in such a situation are inevitable preparations for total surrender.
	And if we lose the future, if Evil wins.
	The people who will be the most guilty will be those with the knowledge who failed to act.
	There will be nobody else who has the guilt of those who have the knowledge but fail to act, to act strenuously, to act decisively, to act vigorously, to act courageously, to act nobly.
	Nobody else We'll be as guilty as us.
	Because we had the knowledge and we waited for the right opportunity and we fell into the quicksand of procrastinating futility.
	Look, I agree.
	I agree what you're saying.
	So let me rephrase my...
	I think everyone has their own individual Battles to fight and to keep moving.
	Let me rephrase my original question, which was I think right now this is one of the things that's bugging me a lot.
	What's the sort of minimum push that you can give to people and then effectively you tell them now you have to make a choice.
	Either keep taking the blue pill or take the red pill.
	So they need to go through a bit of introduction.
	So, for example, that could be your book.
	And then after that, they have to make a conscious decision.
	Yes, they do.
	And then after, my point is that you don't want to...
	There's no point in you trying to force feed and stuff if they're unwilling to do it.
	So there could be like a bit of a...
	Ideally, there would be a...
	From the efficiency perspective on my part, there would be something like, you give them something, you help them out if they're confused with certain things, you can help them out with some whatever discussion.
	And then after that, if they're still not willing to take the red pill, then you just walk away and say, you tried your best, move on.
	So what is the initial thing?
	Is there some sort of a, in your experience, is there a Good kind of a Just a bit of a wake-up reading and then you have to Which which just gives you enough information To to actually confront you with with the fact that you need to make a choice Well,
	but you what you're talking about is can I start a movement by Illuminating people in my historical relationships.
	Isn't that correct?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, what do you think?
	I think to a very limited degree, yes.
	I think some people, I think they're almost there.
	Very, very few.
	So I'm still thinking it's worth trying even for those very few people.
	Sure.
	Of course it's worth trying.
	Absolutely.
	And if your goal is to...
	I'm going to sound harsh here, and I apologize for that in advance, and I could be wrong.
	But if your goal is to make people around you more like you, so that you feel more comfortable in your historical social environment, that is not a movement.
	You have accepted a certain number of beliefs and now you are trying to get other people to join you in those beliefs so that you don't have as much friction or tension in your personal relationships.
	That has nothing to do with a commitment for a world that's trying to make you more comfortable.
	That's...
	You could...
	I mean, there could be a part of that now.
	I mean, most of my historical relationship are already...
	In a not very good shape the ones that shouldn't be in a good shape anyway, so it's maybe it's more of us I would say it's more of a at the moment.
	It's it's partially It's when you see that people are sort of Sort of they're they're trying to do something, but they're you know when you see that people are actually they do realize that They need They go issues and and you can see that they're clearly broken and damaged and blah blah blah And you can see that they're trying to do something About it in a very confused way that then I think basically
	One can try to help them out and I have a couple of cases where it's nothing to do with my personal relationship with them I think the other aspect which you probably hinted was some of it is to do with my family and And I would hope,
	I sort of have a, you could call it a selfish hope, that one day, you know, it would be, maybe it's an illusion, it would be actually nice to have a proper family feeling rather than some, sort of, right now the relationships are not, just not, are extremely thin.
	No, and I get that.
	Listen, I, That is the great challenge of committing to reason, virtue, and improving the world.
	And as I've said a million times, and it's applicable now, so when I said it years and years ago, nobody has to do it.
	Nobody has to do it.
	But the reason we're talking about this is you're asking, basically, how much do I invest in people who I already know to become closer to philosophy, closer to reason, closer to thought?
	And first of all, you don't have to bring philosophy to any of your relationships.
	Right?
	The important thing is self-knowledge.
	And I'm not trying to say you lack it.
	I'm just, for those who are listening to this conversation, all is permitted with self-knowledge.
	All is permitted with self-knowledge and ruthless self-honesty.
	So you can say, I like these ideas and I'm going to put them into this compartment within my life.
	I'm going to go to a couple of conferences, going to listen to a podcast or two, going to read some books.
	But it stays in the box, right?
	And I'm not going to bring it up with my brother or my aunt or my third cousin or the cashier or whatever, right?
	That's fine.
	It's no problem.
	But the honesty of that needs to be clear.
	Right?
	So you don't have to bring philosophy to any of your familial or personal relationships.
	But you do have to say...
	I'm not really living it.
	It's not really that important to me.
	It's just kind of like a hobby, right?
	And again, this sounds like I'm speaking negatively about it.
	I'm not.
	I'm really not.
	You know, maybe Vladimir Lenin had a friend.
	And Vladimir Lenin's friend became a communist.
	And his friend, we'll call him Boris.
	Boris...
	Lenin's friend spent his life trying to get his brothers and his aunt to become communists.
	And they just debated and debated and argued and argued and they'd come back and go back and they'd come back and go back, right?
	And that's what he did with his life.
	And maybe he swayed a few people and maybe that had an effect and all of that.
	But if you want to have a communist world, you don't argue with your in-laws.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You go and take over the Russian government.
	That's commitment.
	That's commitment.
	Now if you want, like if you believe communism, I don't, but if you believe communism is what the world needs and you owe it to the working classes to liberate them from the exploitive onus of the means of production, then spending your time arguing at family dinners about communism versus going to take over the Russian government, not that I'm talking about taking over governments or anything like that, I'm just using this as an analogy.
	Then Boris...
	He's doing it for Boris.
	Lenin is doing it for communism.
	You know, you understand.
	He wanted power and all that, but you know what I mean, in general.
	He's doing it for the working class, right?
	He's doing it for the proletariat.
	He's doing it to bring about a stateless society after the government withers array, after the tyranny of the proletariat, all that sort of stuff.
	He's doing it not for himself.
	He's doing it for the cause.
	Jesus, the greatest revolutionary, I would argue, in history, he got it.
	Jesus got it and a half did he ever get it.
	He said, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
	I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
	Do not think that I come to bring peace on the earth.
	I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
	For I come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
	And a man's enemies will be the members of his household.
	He got it.
	He understood it.
	Now, I... That's not my mission at all.
	But he understood that for the most part, personal relationships, historical, accidental, personal, familial, family of origin relationships, act as a massive break and a dampener upon change within society.
	This is one of the reasons why society is so hard to change, especially for the better.
	Is that we all love the ideals, we all love the philosophy, but when it comes to the actions upon those values which inescapably follow, as night follows day, as domino falls domino, that go from those relationships, the principles that lead to those relationships and what can be said in those relationships, that we shy away from.
	As Jesus said, anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
	Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
	And anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
	Whoever finds his life will lose it.
	And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
	Now that is a revolution.
	That and those words Are the statements of a man who, probably more than any other man, changed the course of human history.
	Because he got that the ideals trump everything.
	The people who wanted to get rid of slavery didn't just spend time arguing at the dinner table.
	I'm sure they did that some times.
	But they made it their mission, and they commandeered the political process, and they wrote pamphlets, and they broke with people over this stuff.
	I just read something from Shelby Steele about when he stopped being an angry, militant black activist, his relationships crumbled, because that's what they were founded on.
	People who don't have the truth cannot have relationships.
	Because the only thing they can have is mutual subjugation to shared fantasy.
	And when the truth comes in to those relationships, they either make or they break.
	They either become relationships or they're revealed.
	As you and I shackled together in the walls of the insane asylum.
	And I'll bite you if you try to break free.
	People are afraid of commitment.
	And it is not the values that make people afraid of commitment.
	It's not the philosophy.
	It's not the belief system.
	It's not the faith.
	It's not the religion.
	It's the relationships, particularly the historical relationships, that make people afraid of commitment.
	And the fundamental question, Andrew, comes down to this.
	Will you still love me if I'm inconvenient to your superstitions?
	It's a fundamental question in my life.
	People around, people I had, people I knew.
	Will you still love me if I am inconvenient to your irrational beliefs?
	If I point out the things that you think you know that you simply don't know?
	Socrates was the same way.
	Well, I shouldn't say Socrates the same way.
	I am a minor shadow caused by the giant statue of Socrates.
	What is your relationship to me if I am genuinely thinking for myself?
	Do we have a relationship if I am inconvenient to your beliefs?
	Well, in a lot of communities, no.
	No, you don't.
	I mean, if you question Islam in an Islamic state, The sentence is death.
	Sentence for apostasy in the Islamic belief system is death.
	Well, that's quite a commitment.
	It's wrong, it's evil, but it's quite a commitment.
	And In the Mormons, if you, which we had a caller in a couple of weeks ago, agonizing over whether he could even hang on to his wife and his children or anyone from his community if he expressed his doubts in a concrete manner.
	Ostracism.
	Well, that's how you keep a belief system going.
	And Christians used to be pretty good at this.
	They're not that great anymore.
	I mean, ISIS apparently is slaughtering a whole bunch of Christians in the Middle East.
	Quite a lot of Christians being slaughtered by ISIS. Now, substitute Jews for Christians and imagine what would happen.
	I mean, one swastika gets spray-painted on a synagogue and Netanyahu Israel's saying, hey, come, come to Israel!
	We'll take you, come!
	Let's not go through this again!
	Now imagine if Jews were being slaughtered in Europe.
	What the fuck are the Christians doing?
	Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East.
	And as far as I can tell, well...
	No one cares, right?
	No.
	Christians used to be pretty good at tribalism.
	I mean, if you want to know how to do tribalism, go talk to the Jews.
	The Jews, they know how to do tribalism right, which is why they're 5,000 years and they're still around, if not flourishing, right?
	Unabashedly promote.
	There's some funny Jewish phrases.
	One is called jubilation.
	Jubilation, which is when you're Jewish and you find out someone you really admire is actually Jewish.
	Jubilation.
	Or Meinstein, which is, my kid is always the smartest or whatever, but I mean, can you imagine that Christians are being slaughtered by these lunatics and what's happening?
	Is there no capacity for cohesion left in the Christian world?
	Is there no capacity for, well, maybe we don't agree on certain levels of doctrine, but by God, they're Christians!
	Let's go do something!
	Anyway.
	So, If you want to serve the values that serve the world, it doesn't do...
	It's not the worst place to start to take a few bits of advice from Buddy Jesus, right?
	Who knew what he was doing when it came to changing the world.
	The question of personal relationships when you are committed to reason, evidence, philosophy, and virtue...
	It's significant.
	And I can never tell anybody what to choose.
	What would be the point of that?
	But I do need to clarify the choice.
	I can't show you which way is out of the maze, because that's a personal maze.
	But I can give you a flashlight.
	Right?
	And so at least you don't hit your nose in the dark all the time.
	And the reality is you must decide for yourself at some level what is your level of commitment.
	I can't give it to you.
	Philosophy can't give it to you.
	Reason can supply some things to you in that most of the values that we genuinely benefit from were provided to us by people who sacrificed enormously to bring them to us.
	And I don't mean war.
	I mean in their personal relationships.
	I mean, do you think Spinoza's dad was happy with what he did?
	Seems unlikely.
	And that level of commitment is something that you need to search within your heart to find where you stand on that.
	Do you want a life Where philosophy is a hobby and your personal relationships will silence you, will censor you.
	Are you willing to submit to the dictatorship of accidental history?
	It sounds like I'm stacking the deck, but I'm not.
	I'm describing it accurately.
	Are you willing to submit to the kind of censorship that would horrify any academic That would horrify any reporter, that would horrify anyone interested in the First Amendment or First Amendment issues.
	Are you willing to submit to that kind of censorship where you will simply not speak your mind about that which is most important, most essential, most virtuous for you?
	Are you willing to submit to the totalitarianism of inconsequential and accidental history?
	In which case, and again, I know I'm simply describing it accurately.
	In which case, I don't think philosophy is worth it.
	I don't.
	You know?
	Let's go all the way.
	I mean, this is not a dip your foot in the pool situation.
	I don't think philosophy is worth it.
	If you're going to dabble.
	If your relationships are more important Than philosophy, I would suggest ditching philosophy.
	It's really not a good idea.
	Having philosophy without really being committed to philosophy is like trying to win a NASCAR race with your parking brake cranked to full.
	You're just going to burn out your engine.
	Don't have something that propels you and gives you resistance at the same time.
	So if your personal relationships that you've mostly inherited without choice, your family of origin, if those relationships are more important to you than philosophy, in other words, if you don't want to bring who you really are, what you really think, to your personal relationships, then stop doing philosophy.
	It's a bad idea.
	And you make it harder for everyone else who's really committed.
	You make it harder for those of us who are really committed.
	Because then philosophy looks kind of tentative and kind of broken and kind of silenced and kind of just makes you unhappy.
	Forget that.
	Get rid of philosophy.
	Go back in time.
	Take the other pill to the degree you can.
	And just hang with your friends and hang with your family.
	That's perfectly fine.
	Nothing wrong with that.
	Honestly, I know that's...
	Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
	But to bring philosophy into your relationships and think that the two can coexist, maybe they can't.
	I always argue that it's worth trying and it's worth investing some time into it to see if you can.
	But the reality is that change only occurs when you're willing to give things up.
	But don't bring philosophy in as a half-hearted source of friction.
	it.
	In your personal relationships, I don't think it's worth it.
	I think that you end up with the worst of both worlds.
	You don't get the true power and clarity and effectiveness of philosophy, but neither do you have the comfortable ease of the historical tribe.
	Does this make any sense?
	This may be completely unhelpful.
	No, no, no.
	Look, it really makes sense.
	I think The one thing that does complicate it if you have kids on your own, you know, it's once you have Kids on your own and if you know if if you're if you're looking at a high chance of divorce Then it's absolutely that then it becomes a lot Yeah, it becomes a lot tougher Well, then then the world that you're acting for is the world of your kids You can't have a larger perspective than your own children, right?
	Yeah I mean, there's no big world out there that...
	And also, it's a play I actually adapted to a stage play and produced in Toronto many years ago.
	I called it Seduction, but the original play is called...
	Oh, sorry, the original novel is called Fathers and Sons or Fathers and Children by Ivan Kurt Geniev, which is about the conflict of the old and the new world and intergenerational conflicts and so on.
	And it's very tough.
	It's a very tough situation.
	And, you know, one of the horrible things...
	Throughout history, is that those who are willing to cast aside their personal relationships tend to be kind of sociopathic.
	They tend to be kind of soulless, like they don't seem to go through any agony or any horrors.
	They're just like, oh, this person's not working out for me.
	I don't care if they were my mom.
	Done, right?
	I mean, I was reading this story about this 12-year-old girl.
	Her mom took her iPhone away and then her mom started tasting bleachy things in her drink.
	It turns out that the little girl had dumped bleach into her mother's water containers hoping to kill her because she was angry about the phone.
	Well, that might be placing irrational values slightly above your historical relationships.
	But a lot of the people who were just, you know, Lenin, you know, is like, I'm going to go take over Russia.
	You know, I don't think he thought about it.
	But first I have to convince my second cousin and then there's that aunt who doesn't...
	Because his personal relationships clearly didn't mean that much to him, which is messed up.
	Personal relationships, historical relationships are very important.
	We're tribal animals.
	We're a tribal species.
	Those who can simply walk through historical relationships or in or out of them like there are so many cobwebs are nuts!
	Nuts!
	I mean, I was years in therapy dealing with this stuff.
	It's very dense.
	It's very complicated.
	It's very challenging, which is why I don't tell people what to do, because I can't.
	And I wouldn't want anyone to ever substitute my opinion.
	My arguments, yes, okay, because they're not me.
	They're the arguments, right?
	But my opinions or where you fall on the continuum of integrity versus conformity, I can't tell people what that is.
	But I can tell them I think it's important to be clear about it.
	And that's why a lot of the people who have achieved change in the world have done it for worse rather than For better and So yeah,
	I mean personal relationships are very serious and very important and should never be simply cast aside lightly But nonetheless the reality is that if you commit to Rationality in an irrational world at some point you have to make a choice And the people The people who will
	end up in your corner are the people who respond to clear thinking.
	Like a man dying in thirst responds to a bottle of Perrier.
	If they're not reaching out, if they don't sort of get or fundamentally understand it and reach out For reason and evidence and clarity for philosophy.
	Like it's a banana to a starving man.
	I don't know that they're going to have the will and momentum.
	To continue.
	I had a dream this week.
	I had a dream this week.
	Where I was told.
	Steph.
	You gave up on faith because your friends were cynical.
	You gave up on faith.
	You gave up on belief.
	On religion.
	Because your friends were cynical.
	And I do remember there was a guy who went to my high school.
	Whose name...
	That doesn't matter.
	A guy who went to my high school.
	He was religious.
	But smart.
	I shouldn't say smart like the two are necessarily antithetical.
	But he was religious.
	And...
	He gave me the argument that the mathematical probability of amino acids and so on combining to produce life is so infinitesimal, it's so improbable that basically it could not occur in X number of universes or whatever.
	I thought it was a good argument.
	It's well-reasoned, it's biologically based, it's mathematically sound as far as I could tell.
	And so I remember hanging out with some friends of mine and I brought this argument up.
	I said, it's a pretty good argument.
	Let me tell you what it is.
	And they're like, yeah, but it happened.
	God, come on, give me a break, right?
	I remember being quite startled at this rigid, black-minded cynicism.
	You know, as Oscar Wilde says, a cynic is somebody who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
	Now, I was an atheist by this point, so it wasn't like I gave up.
	But I think the dream was telling me that I refuse to explore irrational beliefs because of the cynicism of my friends, but refusing to explore the cynicism of my friends was the irrational perspective that I was backing away from.
	Oh dreams, they're so complex.
	None of those friendships have made it to my adult life because If you do want to change the world, if you do want to live a life bigger than your petty rebellion, your concerns or whatever, right?
	Your sort of immediate concerns.
	If you want to live a life bigger than your lifespan, bigger than your square inches of wetware and the prison of your soon-to-be-dust skull, Then you cannot be stronger than the weakest person around you.
	You cannot be more certain than the least certain person around you.
	And by least certain, I don't mean skeptical.
	I mean unable to commit to anything.
	If you wish to leap forward, you will be tripped up by those who wish you immobile.
	Who don't want your movement, your rise, your ascent to make them feel like they're sinking into.
	Quicksand.
	Life is quicksand.
	We sink, we sink, we sink, we sink.
	We sink into the invisible.
	We sink into the grave.
	We sink into history.
	We sink into nothingness.
	We sink into the star shit that we were born from.
	Some star exploded.
	Here I am!
	Soon I will be food for worms.
	Our star will explode.
	Or at least expand to beyond the realm.
	The range of...
	Venus.
	We will vaporize and we will go scooting through at 500,000 kilometers a second or whatever the hell it is, go scooting through the universe and then eventually we'll make some nine-legged silicon beast who himself will have this brief glimmer, this brief opportunity to do something that means something.
	There's no meaning anywhere in the universe, no meaning in a rock, no meaning in a tree.
	No meaning in a lizard.
	No meaning in a cloud.
	We get this.
	Pow!
	Thunderclap.
	We can have meaning.
	The whole point of the universe.
	There's no point to anything in the universe except what we can will, what we can choose in this incredibly brief flash fire of possibility where matter gets up, says important stuff, walks around, does something, and then dies.
	This star sneeze that we are composed of has come together With this unbelievable opportunity.
	Would you want to be any other kind of matter in the world than a human being?
	Of course not!
	I mean, 100 billion stars just in our galaxy, billions of galaxies around the universe, 14.8 billion years old.
	And billions of years of life, we get this incredible opportunity out of all the matter in the universe that we know of.
	This little wetware, this little ball of fiery possibility, we get this.
	We get this shocking capacity to have meaning to do something, to defy the inevitability of mere physics, to choose, to will, to create, to grow.
	And what are we tripped up by?
	What are we stopped by?
	Cynicism, a rolled eye.
	Oh, here we go again.
	The whole potentiality of philosophical matter, the greatest paradox and potential the universe has to offer, dies because of a side-of-the-tongue raspberry.
	And we simply slide and fall down.
	Into nothingness.
	We erupt with unbelievable potential, unbelievable possibility, and I think this is true for just about everyone.
	By God, what we can achieve, what we can do, what we can make, what we can build, who we can convince, the joy and excitement and possibility and fear to the wrongdoers that we can jet and lightning through the fuzzy clouds of bullshit history known as the human condition.
	And we have this incredible eruption.
	Matter.
	Star sneeze springs to life.
	And we tread the very atoms of possibility and we become self-generating star tissue.
	Self-creating star tissue.
	And we can do anything relative to mere matter.
	And we, instead of being like lava that erupts from the center of the world and forms a phoenix that flies, we instead just become a ball that's thrown in the air.
	The physics of culture, the physics of momentum, the physics of merely personal history take over.
	People roll their eyes.
	People don't like us.
	People have problems with us.
	People lie about us.
	People say negative things about us.
	And we go...
	And we fall into the swamp.
	And into the swamp, we vanish.
	And all the people out there who view all the flickering lights of human lava eruption potential as something to be turned back into mere, lifeless, dead fucking rock, those people send up the ragged black cheers of the dark-hearted that another human flame turned to nothing.
	Turned to mush.
	Turned to wet sand that swallowed up the star stuff that should make legends of everyone.
	And that's what I think commitment can bring to you.
	It's when you look back over the...
	You know, we're like a meteor.
	Literally.
	We hit the air.
	Squatted out of a mother's vajayjay, we hit the air.
	And most people...
	Most people, it's like their mom is giving birth squatting over a fucking grave.
	Dead.
	You fall off the umbilical and you fall into a tombstone.
	That's as much choice and as much willpower as people are willing to expend in this life.
	And it's because...
	I wrote in a poem years ago, I fell out of the hole that was my mother and I fell into the hole that was my mother.
	The personalities are so empty.
	The personalities are so rigid.
	The personalities are so reactive.
	The personalities are so...
	Fixed, mazed, castrating of potential.
	Oh, you shouldn't do that.
	That's too difficult.
	That's going to be tough.
	That's boring.
	Oh, who does that anymore?
	Oh, you just love objectivism.
	You don't care about people.
	You only care about thoughts and ideas and philosophy.
	Taking a slow pee on the endless fire of human potential and the pee wins forever, it seems.
	But we're like meteors.
	We can...
	If you've ever seen a meteor, when I used to work up north after high school, I spent a long time gold panning and prospecting with the most incredible northern lights and sky and stars.
	I've always loved astronomy.
	And you see, as I did sometimes up there lying out in the woods at night in the cold, and you would see these blazes of light flash across the sky.
	That In the eyes even just of human history, let alone geology, let alone the universe, let alone biology, in human history, we are here gone.
	Here gone.
	Hit the atmosphere, burned up.
	And now we are just star ash falling into the ground.
	Food for worms, that's it.
	And I... I never wanted to look backwards and see nothing.
	I wanted to see fire in my wake.
	I wanted to see a light that lights up a Siberian forest.
	That's what I want to look back on.
	I wanted to say, I got the greatest gift any piece of starshit could possibly get.
	The gift of consciousness.
	The gift of virile imagination.
	The gift of thought!
	Nothing thinks but us!
	Nothing in the whole universe that we know of thinks but us.
	What an unbelievable gift to get out of nothingness.
	Out of a sweaty fuck, a sperm and an egg grows a Vesuvius of thought.
	Apply it.
	Look backward.
	Do not let the fiery star stuff Of your effects on human history be pounded and turned out and pissed on and extinguished.
	Because you will not get a second chance.
	I will not get a second chance.
	We go back to being inert starshit forever and ever and ever.
	Amen.
	And that's the zoom out.
	That's the perspective.
	That anyone who wants to improve the world, anyone who wants to improve the human condition in a fundamental way, that is as bright as you have to burn.
	And if people don't like the fire, let them put themselves out, not you.
	Does that help?
	Thank you.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Do you mind if we move on to the next call?
	No, that's fine.
	All right.
	Thanks, Andrew.
	Appreciate it.
	Thanks a lot for that, Seth.
	Thank you, buddy.
	All right.
	Well, up next is Roberto.
	Roberto wrote in and said, I've made the decision to give my two weeks' notice next week.
	And this was a little ways ago, so Roberto's coming up on...
	I've been working there for 15 years.
	How I want to live does not match how I live in my current working places.
	I want to spend more time with my family.
	I'm financially prepared to take this hit of taking a break from work and later finding another job that allows me to spend more time with my family.
	Why am I feeling so scared of doing this?
	I am panicking.
	Did you quit yet?
	I'm not sure where we are in your timeline.
	Yes, I put my two-week notice on Monday, this last Monday, so I still have another week to go.
	Right.
	But they already have my letters.
	Okay, okay.
	And what's your worst-case scenario?
	My worst case scenario...
	I mean, if I had to go to another year of not working...
	No, no, no.
	I mean, if you quit, like you're going to quit, right?
	So what's your worst case scenario from that?
	Oh, I already quit.
	No, I know, but you're afraid of quitting, right?
	Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
	So what's the worst thing that can happen?
	I mean, I have these irrational thoughts that I wouldn't be able to get a job or, you know, I would have an accident and not have insurance or things like that.
	That would be my worst-case scenario if something happened.
	And that's serious, right?
	Yes, yes.
	I mean, you say that's an irrational fear, but if that's a possibility...
	Well, it's a possibility.
	That's serious.
	I mean, I wouldn't say that it's irrational.
	An irrational fear would be ghost spiders are going to eat my nose hairs.
	Yeah, but I really don't think that's what it is, because that's what I'm just telling you right now.
	It has to be something else.
	Because, I don't know.
	It has to be something else.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	I mean, those sound like very real fears to me, and those are fears faced by anyone who goes out of a comfortable, unpredictable situation into something fraught with challenges and all that.
	Well, yeah, but all this time, you know, all these 15 years and through all my life, I really didn't have that sort of emergency.
	Something happened to my life or, you know, having an accident.
	I mean, it's there, but it doesn't mean that it's going to happen.
	It's just in my mind.
	Right, but you've been how long in this job?
	15 years.
	15 years, and you have insurance through this job, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so this is a huge change, right?
	Yes.
	Now, is this a government job?
	No, no, it's a corporation.
	But you feel like you have good job security?
	That I had?
	Yes, I could have kept working here for many more years.
	Okay.
	And why do you have good job security?
	I mean, obviously, I assume you're good at your job and not just like the boss's nephew or something.
	So you're good at your job and you have good job security.
	Is it a quality of you that you have that job security?
	Yes, yes.
	It's something very specific.
	It's an engineering field, very specific.
	So there's not really that many people that can do what I do.
	Well, that's ascribing the virtue to the marketplace rather than to you personally, right?
	Okay.
	I mean, are you good with your customers?
	Do you manage?
	I mean, how do you provide value to your current employer?
	Yeah, I'm good with the customers and I turn around work fast as required by the market.
	And you have a good relationship with your boss?
	No, no.
	Ah, okay.
	Okay, that's important.
	Because that can affect your reference, right?
	Yes, yes.
	Okay, so what would your boss say if I called him up?
	I'm not sure, but I don't think he would say something good.
	Oh, I think you probably know, don't you?
	I mean, you've worked there for 15 years.
	You probably have some idea of what they're going to say, right?
	Well, last time, somebody that I know was applying for a job, and I was there, and a hiring manager was asking him about this person, and he said, oh, this person is old and arrogant.
	That's how he referred to him, to this other guy.
	So I would think something in the same way.
	You know, thing.
	He would say the same about me, probably.
	Right.
	Now, I always have a trouble...
	How long has he been your boss for?
	Maybe 10 years out of the 15th.
	Okay.
	So, I always have a...
	I mean, because I've dealt with these kinds of situations before, where people have come and wanted a job from me, and they say, my last boss didn't like me, right?
	And look, that can happen, especially when you're younger.
	I mean, you, right?
	This guy's been your boss for 10 years.
	And so it can happen.
	And it's always interesting to me because, you know, two sides to the story.
	But if your boss were to call me up, if I were to call up your boss and say, you know, tell me about this, you know, guys, you know, what's he like and so on.
	And if he said, oh, he's, you know, not good in some manner or another, right?
	I'd say, oh, well, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.
	And then I would ask him the most important question.
	Which is, if you're a good manager and this employee is not good, why was he still working for you?
	Right.
	I mean, you know, first thing I do in a new situation is a clean house.
	A clean house.
	Yeah.
	Bring in the exterminators, right?
	Which is...
	And just people who are dysfunctional.
	People who are, you know, whatever, right?
	And it's not fun, but it's incredibly useful and important.
	So...
	If you do want references to work, and if you've had a problem with your boss, obviously you have to be upfront and say, look, I stayed there too long.
	This boss wasn't the right guy for me.
	I was scared to leave.
	But it's not that important to fear a bad reference if you have an intelligent person asking about your references.
	I mean, if you're fired two weeks after the new boss comes, that's a different matter.
	But if he's been your boss for 10 years and he's kept you on, then either you're a good employee or he's a bad boss, right?
	Yes, true.
	Now, if you've left a job with a bad boss, that's a plus to me as a hirer.
	And if the boss is saying that you're bad, despite the fact that he kept you on for 10 years, he's just an incompetent idiot and, you know, good riddance, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, but you have to trust somewhere, somehow out there, there are people who will understand that.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Yes, yes, yes, definitely.
	Yeah, I mean, look, outrageous things have been said about me over the years.
	I just assume that there are people intelligent enough out there to be able to separate obvious nonsense from things that are even remotely true.
	And, you know...
	Yes, there are, fortunately, people who can't think for themselves.
	I think that's one sort of comfort that you can get, because when you leave a job and you may have a negative reference, it can make you look better, especially if you've been at the previous job for a long time.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes, it does.
	Now, we always want more resources than we have because winter, right?
	Because, you know, famine, because the herd doesn't come by when you're hungry, and because storm knocks down the fruit trees.
	Who knows, right?
	We always want more resources than we have.
	So when we knowingly take on a situation of lower resources, it's just going to be Tough, right?
	I mean, it goes against the grain.
	It goes against what we're used to.
	It goes against what we're biologically programmed for.
	Like, you know, when I took a 75% pay cut to start this show, or at least to work on it full-time, that is...
	That goes against the grain.
	It goes against the grain.
	And...
	If you're programmed for a short-term reproductive strategy and you start looking for virtue instead of mere good looks and sexual availability, that goes against the grain, too.
	It goes against the grain to not eat lots of sugar and salt and fats and all that kind of stuff.
	I think that it may not be a psychological challenge, but rather acting against biological drives, so to speak.
	Yes.
	If we're in a situation, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right?
	Historically, that was the way to go.
	Right?
	I remember when I first came to Canada, we used to play a game in England called rounders.
	When you hit the ball in rounders, I've said this before, but when you hit the ball in rounders, you can say, oh, I'll hit the ball better next time, so I'm not going to take this one, so pitch to me again.
	And...
	Of course, in baseball, when you hit the ball, you've got to run.
	You can't say, oh, I can hit it better next time, fellows.
	Just throw me another one, colonist.
	And so that's the difference between the two games.
	You don't get a do-over.
	You don't get a mulligan in baseball, but you get it in rounders, at least the way we played.
	And so in general, it's better to have something that's predictable rather than let go of that and go for something that's bigger.
	And, you know, bigger risk, bigger reward.
	And some people are more horrified for that, and some people are not.
	But it is a challenge to say, I'm going to let go of this sure thing in the hopes.
	That's why people stay in mediocre relationships.
	It's like, well, I have a relationship.
	I let go of this one.
	Who knows what's going to happen in the future?
	So letting go of a, quote, sure thing is hard, right?
	Yes, and in this case, what I would like is to really spend more time with my family.
	I have three children.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	I have three children.
	Yeah, I have three children and I'm 41 and I see that times just going by and I just see them grow and I'm not kind of involved with them and I would like to be more Here with them right now.
	So because you were saying that we let this thing go to get something better, but for me, that's the better thing.
	Oh, yeah, of course.
	Look, I'm just talking from material stuff.
	I mean, obviously, we want to improve some...
	I wanted a better life by getting out of the software entrepreneurial field or software executive field and getting into podcasting.
	I wanted a better life out of that and more time with my family.
	So...
	What does your wife think of your choices?
	Yeah, she supports me 100%.
	She's right here.
	Ah, fantastic.
	Well, do give her my congratulations.
	And what do your kids think?
	My kids are wonderful.
	I'll be here.
	They're really excited.
	The oldest is six, but he's really excited.
	He can't wait for me to be here more.
	Yeah, there was a woman I knew who Like a lot of women, you know, when she was at home with her kids, she wanted to be at work.
	When she was at work, she wanted to be home with her kids.
	And she kind of pendulumed back and forth between these two worlds, work and family.
	And she said, oh, you know, I mean, my daughters, I don't know, they're happier, I guess, when I'm home, but they don't seem to really mind that much whether I'm at work or at home.
	I thought, oh my, that's terrible.
	That's terrible.
	I mean, like saying to my wife, hey, let's go on vacation, my wife and my daughter.
	And they say, What, all together?
	And I said, well, yeah.
	They said, well, I guess you could come.
	I mean, if you come or you don't come, it's fine, but that's either way.
	I'd be like, what have I been doing wrong?
	You don't want me to, right?
	That it's not important, right?
	Yes.
	So I think, I mean, it's definitely the right choice for the future.
	Yeah.
	It's definitely the right choice for the future.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I see it.
	The way I see it is more like an investment.
	Like I'm putting my money to something that will give me something back later, which is being with my kids and connecting with them, rather than just go to a job and just get money, money, money.
	And then at the end, because I've been working here 15 years and I've seen people retiring like at 65 and their life is gone.
	And they die.
	The last guy died a year after.
	And the guy before him died two years after.
	And it's a waste.
	Retiring sucks.
	Retiring is like, medically speaking, as far as I understand it, retiring is like basically just playing a Russian roulette with a foggy bullet.
	That's all it is.
	Because people, you know, people who keep working live longer, like significantly.
	Quality of life, quality of brain, they just live.
	I mean, retirement was for people who were digging ditches whose arms were falling off because they were 65.
	It wasn't for anybody who's got any kind of brain work.
	I mean, keep doing it.
	I'm never going to retire.
	I mean, I'll podcast on my deathbed if I can.
	So, yeah, I mean, retirement is catastrophic.
	And the idea that retirement is some sort of prize is like, hey, early grave, you're the winner.
	Go for it.
	But at least you deferred a lot of great life stuff so you could get an early grave after you retire.
	And no, it's brutal.
	Retirement is deadly.
	Literally, literally deadly for people in general.
	And It's just one of these heaven, you know, churches will promise you heaven to get you to obey in the here and now, and people promise you retirement in order to, you know, like I was reading the other day about how fewer and fewer people want to become cops in America these days.
	Well, that's a shocker!
	One wrong move, and you will be investigated for years by the Department of Justice, and you will lose your job, and you will have to go into hiding, and you will have to change your name, and your children will be threatened, and...
	Want the job?
	I really don't.
	But it's a lot of people that say, oh, I'm kind of stuck.
	I got a pension.
	I got a pension?
	A pension?
	A pension is a...
	Well, they can afford to give you a pension because they know that the inactivity is going to kill you quickly.
	I mean, a pension is like, well, I'm going to wait until I'm old and take up a four-pack-a-day smoking habit called a pension.
	Anyway.
	So, I mean, and the investment that you're going to make here and now, Roberto, is...
	So important for the teenage years of your kids, right?
	Everything, you know this, right?
	Everything you're doing now is laying the foundation for what kind of teenage life your children are gonna have.
	And the kind of quality of life that you and your wife are gonna have as parents during the teenage years.
	And that is, you know, boy, it may feel like a sacrifice now, and I'm, you know, occasionally it does.
	For me too.
	But boy, oh boy, does it ever pay off when they get older.
	Because they'll come to you for the significant life-changing life choices that they're going to make when they get to be 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and so on.
	They'll come to you.
	They'll be bonded to you.
	They won't be peer-bonded, which is always the lowest common denominator of idiots in their social sphere tend to end up running everything.
	And The quality of life that you're going to have as a parent in their teenage years, the quality of decision-making that you're going to be able to negotiate and influence with your children as the result of really bonding with them through the latency period and so on, like the sort of 5 to 12 age, that quality of connection is going to last the rest of your life and the rest of their lives, and that's what they will then bring to their own children, too.
	I mean, you're radically Improving the trajectory of your entire gene pool, in my humble opinion.
	Thank you.
	My plan was to use the pension money and my retirement money and pay my debt, which the only thing I have is the house.
	Because that way I could get a job where I can just work part-time and then just drag it as long as I can, you know, so that I can be here with the people that make more sense to me.
	Oh yeah, no, I'd rather live in a car with my family than in a mansion at work.
	So I think it is tough and it goes against the grain.
	It goes against the grain for a lot of what men are told to do and a lot of what women are told to do these days as well.
	It goes against the grain.
	You know, we are a society that pays endless lip service to put your children first and children are everything and we do anything for our kids.
	It's like, okay, will you...
	Cut down your lifestyle choices so you can actually spend more time with them.
	Well, no, because the Apple Watch is out.
	Mama needs a gold one or Daddy needs a gold one.
	So I think the fact that you are...
	And this is difficult.
	I would imagine, and I'll shut up in a second, I promise.
	But I would imagine, Roberto, that there's a lot of people around you who feel kind of uncomfortable with your choices.
	Yes.
	My parents don't know my decision yet.
	Right, right.
	And I assume that they didn't make those choices.
	No, no, no.
	And this is why it's so hard to change society.
	It's this ballast of people's opposite choices in the past.
	Yeah, most of the people around me don't really know because I find another opposition or some of them tell me, no, you just need to work more and find somebody that can help your wife at home or things like that.
	Oh, yeah, no, it's...
	I get it.
	I get it.
	I mean, the number of assumptions that people make about me based on nothing but prejudice is astonishing.
	Oh, you know, he hates women so much he's married to one.
	And his major philosophical influences have all been women.
	That's how much of a woman hater he is.
	Ah, because of that accent.
	He must have come from money.
	So he doesn't understand anything about underprivileged stuff or whatever, right?
	And it's nonsense, right?
	And he blames women for everything and says that it's women's parenting because women have all this control over kids.
	And it's like, I'm a stay-at-home dad.
	So people just have a very tough time with it.
	And I think what bothers people as well is I did take the risk to leave a very time-consuming career where I was doing a lot of travel, working a lot of hours.
	I left a very time-consuming career in order to take the risk of internet podcasting and have much more time with my family.
	And that is a challenge for people.
	That is a challenge for people.
	Because do they have the kinds of relationships where people would welcome them Being home, like if I said to my family, that's it, I'm going back to working 80 hours a week, they'd say, please don't, because, you know, lots of fun to have around.
	Let's not do that, if we can at all avoid it.
	And if you're going to, particularly if you're going to do something different than what your parents did, It's a real challenge.
	You know, there is always an implicit criticism in opposing choices.
	And we all try to pretend that there isn't, you know?
	Oh, yeah, science and religion and science, so compatible.
	Faith and reason, so compatible.
	And, you know, well, I'm just making different choices based upon my own personal values.
	That's not really it.
	It's not a jazz versus blues argument if you're making fundamental different choices than your parents did.
	Opposing choices to your parents.
	There is obviously a criticism in that.
	I mean, I can't see how there isn't.
	Am I completely off base here or maybe I'm just talking my own prejudices?
	What do you think?
	No, no, you're okay.
	Yeah, I had a conversation with my dad and he said that I was telling him that I was having some problems at work.
	And he told me to take care of my work, to love my work.
	He mentioned, when you were little, I used to work a double shift.
	And he said, do you know why I did all this?
	And I said, why?
	He said, for you.
	And I had already made my decision when I was talking to him about this, but he just made me think, I'm doing the right thing.
	Because I didn't want him to ask.
	Well, did he ask you?
	No, no.
	No, I mean, I've asked my daughter, would you like us to have more money or would you like more time with me?
	This is, I mean, if I went back to writing books and if I went back to doing more public speaking and if I, you know, went back to whatever, right?
	I mean, or if I went back to my career in software.
	Do you want more money or do you want more time with me?
	And, you know, she's like, well, what could we buy with more money?
	And I said, well, we could, I don't know, vacations or, I don't know, a tablet.
	Whatever, right?
	I mean, what could we do?
	And she's like, no, I mean, I like the time we spend together.
	And that's, you know, people say, well, I did it all for you.
	It's like, you could have asked.
	Yeah, and it sounds more like...
	You're doing something for me if you didn't even check in, right?
	It's like saying, I ordered this pizza for you.
	I'm lactose intolerant.
	It sounded more like he was justifying what he did after the fact.
	He wasn't around.
	Well, sure.
	I mean, there is the programming of, you know, mail send resources home, right?
	Yeah.
	Man, bring goodies home.
	Man, be disposable...
	Resource provider for women and kids, right?
	Yeah, that's what he tells me.
	It's your responsibility to work.
	You are the provider.
	And I'm not just a provider.
	I'm a father.
	I'm a husband.
	So he's tried to just lock me into this category of you are the provider.
	You need to work.
	Well, and he's wrong.
	And it doesn't take a lot of research to figure this out.
	I mean, there is...
	There is not a very high statistical correlation between father presence and positive outcomes for children.
	There is not a statistically high correlation between absent fathers and high income and positive outcomes for children.
	What is best for the kids is for the father to be as present and involved as humanly possible.
	That is what is best for the kids.
	I worked a double shift so you could have more stuff.
	So we could have a second car.
	So we could have a bigger house.
	So we could have another vacation.
	That's all got nothing to do with what is actually beneficial for children.
	And it's not complicated to figure that out.
	I mean, just look at how we evolved as a species.
	It wasn't with parents working double shifts.
	It was with the dads involved in the raising of the kids.
	Significantly involved in the raising of the kids.
	Particularly for boys.
	Because moms tend to play with kids with toys and dads tend to play with kids like down roughhousing and all that kind of stuff, teaching them limits of physical strength and empathy and good sportsmanship and all of that kind of stuff which tends to temper and focus and hone the male aggression so that it becomes something beneficial rather than something destructive to society.
	Yeah.
	Yes, I remember now.
	He said, when you were little and I was working, there was a lot of bullying going on at work, and I took it because of you.
	What is he, Jesus?
	Yeah, I know.
	You had the original sin of requiring food and shelter, and therefore I allowed myself to be nailed to the cross of male disposability.
	Yes, yes.
	That's what I was telling my wife, that now he's changing his strategy, now he's turning into a victim.
	He's a victim.
	Well, he sacrificed himself, Roberto.
	For you.
	Yeah.
	For you.
	And this is just a way of creating reciprocal obligations with a lack of investment.
	So, he's like, well, I didn't invest in my personal relationship with you, but now I'm going to guilt you for the money that you never asked for that I provided, so that you will feel a reciprocal obligation to me.
	No, and am I right in saying that you're not wildly divergent from a Hispanic culture?
	Yeah, I'm from Mexico.
	Okay, so, I mean, there is a little bit of machismo around...
	Providing, right?
	Yes, yes, machismo.
	Yeah.
	And that is, I mean, that's pretty brutal.
	To me, a man who's addicted to providing is basically just confessing that he needs to buy the affections of those around him.
	Yeah, and that's what my dad has done through the years.
	He has given me money because he does have the ability to connect with me.
	Sorry, he does or doesn't?
	He does not have the ability to connect.
	Every time he comes over he gets drunk and then he starts crying about something in the past.
	Yeah, certainly with this great machismo almost always comes this great sentimentality.
	I was thinking for some reasons that don't really matter.
	Oh, I know.
	We were talking about aging sperm.
	And I was thinking about Zorba the Greek, because Anthony Quinn had a kid when he was in his 70s, I think.
	And in Zorba the Greek, there's this, oppa, vitality, life!
	And then he's like sobbing and broken.
	With this great machismo also comes this great sentimentality.
	But sentimentality and brutality, I think as Jung pointed out, are Flip sides of the same coin, technically called the superstructure.
	Sentimentality is a superstructure that's built on top of brutality to camouflage it.
	So no, I'm very glad that you're making a different decision and there's no substitute for connection.
	I mean, obviously you've got to eat and shelter and so on, but the connection that you can have.
	Kids want their parents around.
	The fact that this needs to be said is so bizarre to me.
	Kids need and want their, I mean, positive, good parents.
	They just want their parents around.
	That's it.
	I mean, not that complicated.
	You know, for a parent to go to work when they can be spending time with their kids, it's like me asking a woman out and saying, oh, let's be for dinner at Friday at Il Pestore or whatever we're going to go eat.
	And then calling her Thursday and saying, well, listen, I can't make it, but listen, just go have the date without me.
	Or like that old joke about fistfights.
	The old joke being, okay, man, you and me, there's going to be a rumble right outside of school at 5 o'clock.
	And if I'm late, start without me.
	It's like, well, we kind of need two to have the date, kind of need two to have the fight, Absent Fight Club.
	And you need the parents there to parent, right?
	I mean, it's an old Dr.
	Phil cliche, but true, that parenting is a verb.
	A parent is a verb, not a noun.
	It's not a person.
	It's not a thing.
	It's an action.
	It's something you do.
	And I'm very glad that you're choosing to do it and I'm glad that you are Having the opportunity to.
	And yeah, it is going to be difficult, but the difficulty probably has a lot more to do with going against your inherited norms, if that makes sense.
	Yes, yes.
	Yeah, and we are also homeschooling.
	So...
	Wow.
	That adds, like, a lot of people don't agree with what we do.
	Right.
	Yeah, I know.
	I mean, it's tough.
	You talk about not wanting to send your kids to...
	Government schools and people are like, well, why not?
	What's wrong with them?
	I went to government schools and I'm fine!
	I mean I'm offended by your different choices but I'm fine yes It's just all these decisions that kind of put people almost like against us.
	So it's very difficult to connect with other people.
	It's kind of isolated.
	Well, technically it's not difficult to connect with other people.
	It's just difficult to connect with the people who disagree with you.
	Yes, yes.
	Right?
	If you have people around you who agree with you, not that difficult to connect with them.
	No, that's true.
	But sometimes you have to deal with what's available rather than what's ideal.
	So you went from very active in your life choices to a little bit passive.
	I feel like I just suddenly crossed over and I'm talking to your dad now.
	No, no, no.
	We have reached other people.
	We are involved with other groups.
	Okay.
	But they are not as close.
	They are in other states, in other cities.
	But the people that we have around here in the neighborhood, that's a different story.
	Roberto, can I just ask you for a favor?
	Yes.
	Can you look down for a sec?
	Do you see your feet?
	Yes.
	Are they currently encased in any kind of concrete?
	Have they sunk into the floor and the floor has flowed over them like sand on a kid's legs and you can't move?
	No, no, that's right.
	That's correct.
	That's another point of, you know, leaving this work that now I have the option to move anywhere else.
	Right, right.
	Whether you should or shouldn't, obviously, but, you know, when you say, well, you have to make do with the people around you...
	For the time being.
	That's what I mean.
	Okay, okay, but...
	Move to where your tribe is.
	Move to where the people are who get what you're doing.
	Life is too short to be going against the social grain the whole time.
	And of course, if you're going to raise your kids to think, if you're going to raise your kids to be independent, then I would suggest the more you live it, the easier it's going to be for them in the long run.
	Because if you sort of hang out and you're sort of teaching them that Well, you live your values in your family and then you fight with everyone around you all the time.
	It's like, oh, that looks like fun.
	Yes, I agree.
	I haven't seen it that way.
	So when you said that it must be something else other than material concerns, it probably is around that, right?
	Like around social choices and what other people think of your choices.
	Yes, yes.
	I just thought it would also be related to my inability to speak up about things.
	It takes me a long time just to speak up, just to say I disagree with these or I don't like these.
	Inability?
	Sorry.
	Can we just go back to that word for a moment?
	Inability?
	Unwillingness would probably be more accurate.
	Unwillingness, yes.
	You could, right?
	Inability is like, can't do it.
	I can't fly without a plane.
	Unwillingness, yes.
	Yeah, so you have to, you know, because it's really important to accurately describe things.
	And I'm sorry to be annoying because you know this, but try to avoid putting inevitable words where there are choices.
	And try to avoid putting choices where there are inevitable words, right?
	Yes.
	Or where there's an inevitable situation.
	But really try to describe.
	You don't have an inability, right?
	Somebody paid you a million pesos to do it tomorrow.
	You could probably do it for five minutes, right?
	Maybe, yes.
	Two.
	Two minutes.
	30 seconds.
	One second.
	Anything, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, unwillingness.
	Because like I said, I've worked here for 15 years and it took me 15 years to get out.
	That's kind of a long time.
	Right.
	Right.
	Right, but I would imagine that when the idea first crossed your mind, that's when choice begins, right?
	Yes, yes.
	There's no free will in the absence of possibility, if that makes sense.
	Yes.
	And that's a really, really important thing to understand.
	Like, if I don't know that I can use my brain to teleport, Somewhere, and I drive, I don't have the choice to teleport because it's never crossed my mind.
	Like, I didn't even know it was kind of possible.
	Like, imagine if it was possible.
	Like, I didn't even know it was possible.
	Someone comes along and says, Steph, what's with all this driving?
	Just teleport.
	And I'm like, you what now?
	We can do what?
	And that is...
	You know, don't think that your free will is somehow broken if you didn't exercise it before the possibility crossed your mind.
	Once the possibility crosses your mind, then free will is something that is carved out.
	A free will is like carving an ice cave.
	Like you can't walk where there's still ice, but you're trying to whittle back the ice all the time to give yourself some freedom of movement.
	And it wasn't like you You know, we're stuck in this job for 15 years and didn't even think about it.
	I would imagine that it was like, well, this is what you do.
	You get up, you go to work, I've got a good job, you know, I'm satisfied, it's good pay.
	The idea of something like what you're doing now wasn't something that you thought of 14 years ago, but swallowed, right?
	Right, yes.
	Right.
	And this, to me, this is the job of philosophy, is just chip back that ice cave, give people some freedom of movement.
	Because right now, most people in the world, they're like those, you know, frozen Paleolithic guys stuck in the bottom of a glacier, you know?
	Can't move.
	Can't barely breathe.
	Exhale, going up through my nose.
	We're just trying to chip them out, give them some motion, saying, okay, well, now we've chipped out a little bit of room here.
	Chip out a little more.
	Now, here's your ice pick.
	You can keep chipping away.
	And then you get the universe.
	Next stop.
	Freedom for the universe.
	And so that's why whenever you say inability, you're frozen, right?
	And that's why I use the ice pick of choice words where there is actual choice and absolute words where there are, in fact, absolutes.
	Like, so, for instance, we use a choice word where there's an absolute where we say, well, I really want to change this person, right?
	Now, unless you're talking about a baby in a diaper, you can't, because you can't change another human being, right?
	So there's where we use a choice word, but there's in fact an absolute.
	You can say, well, I will strive to influence this person, maybe, to the best of my ability.
	But saying, I really want this, I want to change this person, I really want this person to change, and so on, that's putting a choice word in where we don't actually have choice.
	And that, that freezes us.
	Because we think we have control over something we don't, and so we end up doing the same thing over and over.
	So you then put your absolute in, like, I can't change this person.
	I can't change this person.
	I can't get inside their brain and make their mouths and body do what I want, right?
	And...
	That's putting a choice word in where we don't have that choice.
	But the other way around, we don't want to put in absolute words where there is in fact a choice.
	So I'm sorry to be annoying, but I know you know all that.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I guess what I was referring is to the fact that it takes me a while to take action.
	Even though I know what to do, it takes me a while.
	But that may not be a flaw.
	That may be...
	A fear.
	You know, it may be caution.
	It may be sense of, you know...
	I'd love to fly a plane, but it probably would be good if I learned a little something first, right?
	Yes.
	Preparation might not be the worst thing.
	Right.
	You know what they say?
	There's an old thing which says, act in haste, repent at leisure.
	Yes.
	What do you say, Sebastian?
	Yeah, what I was talking about was standing up for myself.
	That's what I have problems with.
	Well, again, sorry to be annoying, maybe you don't.
	I mean, do you feel like you have to stand up for yourself with me?
	No.
	What about with your wife?
	No.
	What about with your kids?
	So, you don't have a problem with standing up for yourself.
	You have a problem with people who oppose Who you are.
	Who are bothered by the choices that you're making, who are oppositional to your identity and your actions and your values.
	Yes, yeah.
	I've never been a big one for like, I'm going to stand up for who I am and confront people.
	I was like, no.
	I mean, I'm going to find all the foods I really hate and I'm going to learn to love them.
	It's like, no, I've got foods I love.
	I don't need to figure out how to really enjoy a sea cucumber sandwich.
	What was it I was joking about with my daughter the other day?
	Mmm, peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich.
	I mean, I just, you know, I don't want to find things that I hate and learn to love.
	I've got lots of things that I love.
	So, I don't want to find people who work hard to stand up for myself and fight to make myself hurt and have a voice like, oh my god, that's exhausting.
	I mean, who wants that, you know?
	So, it may not be that you have a big trouble, big problems with assertiveness.
	You know, as I've said before, you might just have some Jerks around.
	Yes, yes.
	Who oppose you.
	I've been told that I'm not assertive, but then when I'm assertive, I get punished for it.
	But that's just manipulation from work.
	Yeah, parents and both.
	Yeah, that's another thing that's the same relation that I have with my parents, the same relation I had at work.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, parents train us very well, oftentimes, to be compliant drones in the workplace.
	But in return, society will tell you to be loyal to your parents always, so it's an unholy deal on both sides.
	Yes.
	Listen, man, do you mind if we get to the next caller?
	No, no.
	Will you let us know how it goes?
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much, Stefan.
	If I didn't, you know, if something comes up that we didn't even remotely cover here, just call on back, because I know I sort of batted around a bunch of stuff.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	And thank you, man.
	Great job, Roberto.
	Congratulations to you, to your wife, to your kids.
	It's, you know...
	Don't look back, Cedario.
	You'll love it.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	All right.
	Thank you, Roberto.
	Up next is Jesse.
	And Jesse wrote in and said, if sexual harassment is an abuse of supposedly, quote unquote, male power over women to get what they want from women, is it fair to say that the obverse, i.e.
	sexual avoidance, is equally an exercised abuse of, quote unquote, female power when used to get women to get what women want from men?
	Well, first of all, don't you know that women have no power and have no voice?
	Anyway, tell me more about you, Mina.
	I don't want to sort of jump to conclusions, but I'm not sure that I agree with your formulation, but I could just have misunderstood it.
	Can you tell me a bit more?
	Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
	You can hear me, obviously.
	Yeah, great.
	This is like a tour of the world's accents today.
	It's quite delightful.
	Yeah, this is around the world in four hours, I guess.
	So, obviously, we've just been talking about, you know, Makismo providing buying affection and compliant drones.
	So that's sort of the topic.
	I'm a bit nervous, by the way, so I'm a bit starstruck.
	Oh, I appreciate that.
	Well, I mean, I appreciate that That you're being honest about it.
	That certainly helps.
	Yeah, I'll probably relax a bit more once, I guess.
	Anyway.
	So, and one thing you said on the first call related to this was ostracism is how you keep a belief system going.
	And that's sort of where I'm going.
	Sorry, not ostracism.
	It's a willingness to do it.
	Not that you do it.
	Yeah, well, we were talking about keeping beliefs.
	Well, you said belief...
	Yeah, keeping a belief.
	They flourish.
	And I just want to be clear, you don't have to ostracize in order for a belief system to flourish.
	But if you want the belief system to flourish, you have to be willing to put your ideals above your historical relationships.
	So it's a willingness to do it, if that makes sense.
	It's like the taxation system lasts because governments are willing to put people in jail, not because they put everyone in jail, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	That was my lack of clarification, so I appreciate you bringing that up.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	Where did this question come from?
	Weirdly, I've been reading The Beauty Myth and a book called The Manipulated Man, sort of side by side, and it's quite interesting.
	So, talking about beauty...
	Being used to exploit women economically and bring them shame and self-loathing and guilt and denial and all these things and essentially saying that beauty is an oppressive tool.
	Whereas other books like Warren Farrell and this Manipulated Man talk about beauty is used as a tool of power.
	So one is saying that beauty is about being a sex object.
	And other books talking about how men become success objects, as Warren Farrell calls them, to get beauty.
	So that's why I was saying that you've got...
	My question really was sort of looking at like, you know, if you think in the workplace, you know, sexual harassment, harassment, bullying, Obviously not allowed things like, well for good reason, but then things like ostracism, exclusion, keeping people sort of outside the group, you know, all those things that forms of, you know, exercises of power.
	So I was just sort of trying to link the two really and see what you thought, whether sort of, I mean in this manipulated man, And Warren Farrell, in The Myth of Male Power, he talks about beauty.
	We're conditioned that beauty must be earned or bought, or you have to bring resources in order to have access to it.
	So my question, maybe not so well formulated, is ostracism or sexual avoidance, as I quote unquote called it, is that an exercise of power?
	I'm not sure what you mean by sexual avoidance.
	Well, I guess, as a man, we're conditioned or socialized to...
	Like the previous guy, what was his name?
	Rodrigo?
	What was his name?
	Roberto.
	Roberto, yeah.
	So he was talking about, you know, his parents are telling him you've got to work for the children, you've got to work for the family, no matter how you feel, you must go out and work.
	And that's sort of like a conditioned conditioning, isn't it?
	No, but give me a sort of concrete example.
	So a female avoidant, you don't mean like she doesn't go on a date with me, right?
	That's not female avoidant, right?
	No, no, no, no.
	Obviously, no.
	Okay.
	More that, well, I guess in a way that, you know, like, okay, like for instance, you know, in Britain, you know, it's a coincidence that women here like people who play soccer and not ice hockey, you know, but in Scandinavia, people, women would like women, men who play ice hockey, but not basketball.
	Yeah, my cricket skills did not go down in the colonies.
	Yeah, and in the US, women are probably more attracted to basketball players than they are cricket players.
	And there's obviously a common thread there is that in each of those regions, one owns more than the other.
	Well, it's status and the money that's related to status, right?
	You know, in the 50s and 60s, you know, astronauts were probably...
	They're quite popular, but they're not anymore.
	Oh, yeah.
	As far as I understand it, there were quite a lot of man-whore spacesuit putter-outers.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so I guess this thing about being a man and sort of your capacity to earn and bring money and bring resources is effectively what you have to bring to the table, effectively.
	Still don't know what your sexual avoidance thing is.
	You've got to break it down for me a little bit, brother.
	Is it MGTOW? Is it men not wanting to get married?
	We've heard of the glass ceiling.
	We'll call it glass...
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Maybe this is going completely off.
	I'm just kidding.
	Maybe.
	Anyway.
	Yeah.
	Maybe I can't explain it.
	Do you want to formulate and come back?
	I mean, I just don't want to go off on a rant if it's got nothing to do with your question.
	I love your rants.
	I still don't know what your question is.
	Yeah, no.
	I love your rants anyway, so they're good.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Maybe...
	Is it something personal?
	No.
	Something that is an idea for you that's personal?
	No, no, no, no.
	It's just more listening to your show and reading sort of different books on the side and just, yeah, just more philosophical thoughts really then.
	Okay, well, I'm happy to, I mean, I love gender stuff and the idea that beauty is somehow emotionally, sorry, somehow financially exploitive of women.
	Yeah, but the idea that beauty is somehow exploitive of women financially, I just think it just shows such an appalling lack of knowledge of even rudimentary evolutionary biology that I just find it shocking.
	The women attempt to make themselves look better, but Than they are and that's the pursuit of beauty because beauty is a coin in the sexual transaction world.
	The man brings resources and the woman brings beauty and that is foundational and fundamental.
	And, you know, why is a wide hips and a narrow belly so attractive to a lot of men?
	Well, wide hips means that you've got good childbearing hips, and the wider the woman's hips, certainly the wider the pelvis, the bigger brain can be pushed through the birth canal.
	And the narrow waist means the woman is not already pregnant.
	So, that's one of the signals of, you know, and so...
	Beauty is the coin that women bring to the table so that men will give them the more resources.
	And there's nothing wrong or right about it.
	And, you know, the fact that women control 80 or 85% of domestic spending in a household, the idea that this is somehow exploitive of women, I mean, it just takes a monstrous time.
	Amount of navel-gazing narcissism to not even notice that there are men out there dying earlier than women at a far higher rate than women.
	Like, 96% or 97% of workplace fatalities are men.
	And this, you know, unbelievably appalling situation where, you know, women in the Western world feel victimized.
	I mean, it's just absolutely astonishing.
	Well, we didn't have the vote for a long time.
	It's like, right!
	Right!
	Because with the vote comes the draft.
	That's the point.
	You didn't want the draft, you don't get the vote.
	And the fact that women got the vote without the draft meant that they could vote for wars without having a go.
	Not very fair.
	In fact, Phyllis Schlafly, who has been on the show, I don't think we've released the interview yet, but Phyllis Schlafly...
	Fought against the Equal Rights Amendment very successfully by saying to women, oh, do you want full equality under the law?
	Yes, we want full equality under the law.
	Then you'll be subject to the draft.
	Well, we don't want that.
	Because we're so exploited.
	We want the vote.
	No draft.
	Anyway, I just think it's just funny.
	And to me, it's just more, well, if we complain, men give us money.
	And basically, politicians have turned into beleaguered husbands who are like, here, go to the shoe shop.
	I can't listen to this anymore.
	You need a purse with a dog in it?
	Fine.
	Go for it.
	I mean, it's just, it's just, it's just what, you know, this is patented, you know.
	Women allure when they're young and then nag when they get older.
	Not all women and not my wife.
	This is just a general biological thing, you know?
	How do I get resources?
	When I'm young, it's through being attractive.
	When I'm older, I get resources by being difficult and by being naggy.
	And lots of women escape this mold, but there is a biological drive for it.
	And you'd want to get resources for the granddaughters and grandsons and so on.
	Yeah, so I've done a podcast on this.
	I don't want to go into much more detail, but...
	Complaints without any concept of the male perspective is just shocking.
	I mean, this idea that women are the empathetic gender and men are selfish.
	I mean, oh my God.
	Oh my God.
	I can't even imagine it.
	Men get raped, and not counting prison, men get raped at an equal level that women get raped.
	And you can't find out about this anywhere.
	Anywhere.
	Anywhere.
	Except you can go to The Truth About Rape, which is a presentation at freedomainradio.com slash videos or YouTube slash freedomainradio.
	You can go look for it there, but I mean, these facts simply don't exist.
	They don't exist.
	They don't exist.
	Did you know that, I think it might not still be the case, but I remember at least a few years ago in Scotland, I remember someone told me that a man being raped by another man, actually, there's no crime to report, because it's just not on the books.
	So there's nothing you can do, really.
	Right, right.
	A study of more than 17,000 unmarried heterosexual men and women, 84% of men and 58% of women said men pay for most dating expenses, even after dating for an extended period of time.
	44% of women said they were bothered when men expected them to help pay.
	See?
	Help pay.
	Not pay.
	Help pay.
	57% of women offered to help pay, but 39% confessed to hoping the men would reject their offer.
	76% of men reporting that they felt guilty accepting the woman's money to pay for dating-related expenses.
	And that is quite astonishing.
	84% of men and 58% of women said men pay for most dating expenses.
	One group is lying.
	I wonder who.
	I wonder who.
	That could be.
	Now, I just...
	I don't know.
	The thing...
	I just want more honesty in the dating process.
	I am putting my vagina on the bidding block.
	Who has dinner and a movie?
	Do I see dinner and a movie?
	Dinner and a movie and roller skating.
	Dinner and a movie and a weekend away and roller skating.
	What have we got here?
	Dinner and a movie, roller skating away.
	And yes, there's a purse with a doggy in it.
	And I'd like a flat screen TV. Oh, I've got some student debt that needs paying off.
	Here's some cleavage.
	I've got a hug, I've got a hug, I've got a shaker, shaker, shaker.
	Shake your money, maker.
	How much are we going to get for the vagina?
	We need to see what's going to get for the vagina.
	That's just what I want.
	It's honesty.
	And for men to say, yeah, I have to pay because...
	That's what the biological imperative is.
	Men bring resources.
	Women bring eggs!
	Dogs!
	Gotta have a show with the eggs.
	And just be honest about it.
	Just be honest about it.
	That's all I want in the dating game.
	But there's this weird thing where it's not a transaction.
	It's romance.
	You gotta be a gentleman.
	You gotta be romantic.
	So that means what?
	Pay, you bastard.
	That's all it should be.
	Romance.
	All romance cards.
	Pay, you bastard.
	All flowers.
	What note do you want?
	Under pay, you bastard.
	What do you want?
	What note do you want?
	Pay, you bastard.
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	This is all throughout the animal kingdom.
	It's perfectly...
	But it's got to be so weirdly sentimentalized.
	That's the thing that just bothers me so much.
	Yes, I want men to ask me out because my vagina is on the block.
	My eggs are on the block.
	And that's what I want.
	Because if I have to go ask a man out, that's not empowerment.
	That is...
	Anyway, listen, why don't you, if you can sort of nail down more of the jelly of the challenge.
	And gender stuff is very challenging, so, you know, it's no problem.
	But if you can nail down the question a little more.
	I'd be happy to chat about it again.
	Yeah, and I appreciate that.
	Sorry about that.
	Oh, no, no sweat at all.
	Thanks for the call, and I guess we've got time for one more.
	Cheers.
	Thanks.
	All right.
	Up next is Tess.
	Tess wrote in, and her question is, what is the popularity thing with kids in high school all about?
	As a teacher, when I'm dealing with bullying and friends issues, I'm at a loss for how to advise kids on how to deal with their problems.
	How can I bring philosophy to these issues?
	Hey Steph, how you doing?
	Nice to meet you, Tess.
	How you doing?
	I'm good.
	I actually have called in before, so it's the second time I've met you, but it's okay.
	It was a couple of years ago, so...
	I recognize the microphone, but not you.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	No, I mean, I'm glad you called back.
	What did we talk about last time?
	The resource-based economy of self-defense.
	Right, right.
	Good, good.
	Now, public school or voluntary school or government school?
	Yeah, forced school.
	Forced school, okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	I'm actually a new teacher.
	That's your first challenge, right?
	Yeah.
	Kids in prison.
	Yes, exactly.
	So, I'm actually a new teacher.
	I've just started this term.
	So, I've been teaching for...
	Like, nine weeks now.
	Tell me about it, if you don't mind, before we dive into the question.
	I'm always fascinated by these kinds of experiences.
	What's it like?
	How is it?
	Yeah, great.
	Well, it is a really interesting program that I'm actually doing.
	It's not just normal teaching avenues that I've come through.
	So it's called Teach for Australia.
	There's actually Teach for America, Teach First in the UK, Teach for India, a few other ones around the world.
	But the idea of it is to combat disadvantaged education in the country that you're in.
	So it's government, obviously.
	So the idea is that they find, like, I can actually read you maybe something from your website that might help.
	No, no, not so much the mission statement, not that I'm not interested, but your sort of personal experience of it.
	But I just thought maybe you'd be interested in how I could listen to your show for two years and then go on into teaching in a government school.
	Look, I mean, if they're going to learn from someone, I'd rather it be you than some artist or...
	Well, that's kind of what I'm calling in about is that, yeah, like I want to figure out like how can I be of the most use to my students, bring the most truth and critical thinking and without totally terrifying them and that sort of thing.
	And also given the backgrounds that they're from.
	So...
	The program has placed us in disadvantaged schools around Australia.
	So I've just been put in a little country school in the south of Australia.
	So I've moved my whole life up here.
	So I've got sort of a real farm Aussie kids, basically.
	So that's where I am.
	And I've only had six weeks of training.
	Are there Aboriginals as well, or are they part of the school system?
	Not so much at my school, but nearby definitely.
	But yeah, I could have been put in the Northern Territory where all the Aboriginal communities are.
	But some of my other colleagues are there, so I'm here and this is a bit less Aboriginal.
	So anyway, just a long story short, basically I've had hardly any training to be a teacher.
	They track us in the deep end, but over the years that we're in the school that they've placed us in, we're studying our Master of Teaching at the same time.
	So it's kind of like an apprenticeship.
	Okay.
	Right.
	So can I finally extract your own personal experiences from this?
	Oh, sorry.
	Okay.
	Don't make me come over there.
	Actually, no, it's sunny.
	Make me come over there.
	Make me come over there.
	It's a beautiful Sunday day today, so you would love it here.
	It's lovely.
	Okay, so personal experiences in regards to bullying and friends issues, or do you mean as a teacher?
	No, just getting nine weeks.
	I mean, how has it been?
	I love it a lot.
	I really love it.
	I never loved anything more than this before.
	I'm 27 and I spent so long I'm trying to find something that I like, and this is amazing.
	I love the kids.
	They're so funny and amazing, and they're just interesting to me, and we really get along.
	I'm teaching maths, and I love maths, and it's a nice black and white subject.
	I don't have to worry about telling them.
	It's not like history or something where I might get caught up in some government textbooks.
	Right.
	Comparative religion.
	Yeah, so maths is pretty straightforward, so I'm enjoying teaching them that, and it's such a massive learning curve, so I've never faced anything more challenging than this before.
	It's amazing just pushing myself to the limit, and it's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done.
	But it's confronting in many ways, and one of the ways I knew it would be so is because I am in a disadvantaged school.
	That's what they say, quote-unquote, disadvantaged.
	I have some issues with that anyway, but...
	Where these kids are coming from really broken homes, a lot of time abusive, and they've got the usual bullying issues and stuff going on.
	And just the other day, one of my students came to me who I've developed a really close relationship with.
	She kind of leaves the class every now and then to go and, I don't know, get a drink or she forgot something in her locker.
	And I just sort of asked her, you know, are you okay?
	What's going on?
	And she pulled me back at lunchtime and she just told me that she's going because she feels dizzy because she's not eating.
	Because her dad doesn't spend any of the money, little money that he gets on her.
	He's a stepdad and he goes and spends it on his boat or whatever else.
	But she's only staying there with the mum and him because she's trying to save her sister, her little sister.
	It's just, it was heartbreaking and it was the first real time I faced that kind of desperate poverty in a kid.
	I come from quite a nice background so that's been really challenging for me and I really want to get some good tools to try and help these kids as much as I can.
	Since I'm a teacher, I'm not sure where my boundaries might be as well.
	So, like, I get the instinct to just, I want to just adopt her and feed her.
	You know what I mean?
	But I don't think I can do that, so.
	Well, of course, yeah.
	You want to throw yourself as a human shield between this harsh world and these tendrum hearts and minds, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's just awful, the stories that I hear.
	And some of the families in the town that I'm in, it's a 4,000 people town, and most of them are on welfare, I'd say probably most of the families.
	And it's just, yeah, it's pretty rough.
	Well, I mean, it's to your credit that they feel comfortable, I mean, assuming it's not manipulative, which I'm sure you'd pick up on, but it's to your credit, Tess, that they feel comfortable enough to tell you these things.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I never told a single teacher about anything that was going on in my house.
	And that's actually one of the biggest things I'm trying to achieve here is to create those relationships where I can be of use to them in this way, at least if all they can do is talk to me.
	That's, I'm sure, help enough in itself.
	And that's, yeah, that was a goal of mine to be that person and not only be someone to talk to, but even sort of display, like be a role model that displays Something else from what they used to do with adults to normalize their views of their experiences from home and show them that what they're experiencing isn't okay.
	A lot of kids, not all, but a lot of kids are like the ultimate MacGyvers.
	I'm going to build this interplanetary jet engine with four paperclips and a piece of chewing gum and a Heel from a lady's shoe.
	I mean, what kids can fashion, the kind of future the kids can fashion out of a mere glimpse of something outside the norm.
	Yeah.
	Is amazing.
	Do you mean like giving them even that little tiny glimpse can really be a big influence?
	Is that what you mean?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I guess I could do it your way, like say your way, which is succinct and helpful.
	No, let me just go back to more analogies.
	No, that's exactly what I mean.
	I mean, as you said, I mean, the key thing is denormalize, right?
	As I talked about with Roberto, I mean, if you don't even know you have a choice, you really don't even have any free will in that area.
	And the fact that this is all they've seen.
	And I mean, I've spent some time in towns like this.
	Small towns plus welfare.
	It is grim, grim, grim, grim, grim.
	And it is really the worst of all possible worlds, particularly for kids, because you have dysfunctional people who don't even have the relative function reinforcement of regular employment.
	And that is really horrendous.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, a lot of their goals would be just to get on welfare, like their parents.
	They think that that's okay, clearly.
	Sure.
	Well, it's that implicit criticism of opposite choices.
	This is why the welfare state is such a trap.
	Because if this is what your parents have done, if you want to do the opposite, if you want to go and make something of yourself and have a life and get out of the town, There's this implicit drag down.
	The moment you can make parents make bad or you can encourage or subsidize parents making bad decisions, the chance of those decisions being replicated in the next generation goes up hugely.
	Dare I say to a math teacher, exponentially.
	And then there's like the kids, if they succeed, they have a resistance to succeeding because it will make their parents look like They're lazy and they should have done more with their life.
	So obviously there's that whole social resistance bringing everyone down and to not leave the town and not make something big of your life.
	Because to sort of make it in any other way other than taking on the family farm business or being a hairdresser, maybe becoming a cop, maybe becoming a teacher, maybe opening up a business on the main street, there's nothing else really open to them that they can see.
	And to get anything further than that, you have to kind of move away from the town.
	Terrifying in itself, but if you do that, it's almost like saying, Stuff you guys.
	I can see something better, which you didn't do, and I'm going to do that.
	And it's, yeah, that's hard.
	Well, and these zombie towns, I mean, they're in northern Canada, too.
	It's like, kill the town.
	I mean, no, but like, without welfare, who would be out there?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, that's this weird, like, this no-time biozone just...
	It's like that Stephen King story about the town that gets this force field around it.
	It's like, this is the welfare state.
	You know, we get frozen in time.
	The mine closed.
	There were these towns I'd sort of work in or stay in.
	It's like, there'd be this like dingy bar with these smoking fat guys and like, oh yeah, the mine closed 30 years ago.
	It's like, why are you here?
	Why are you here?
	The town that the mine closed 30 years ago.
	Go somewhere else.
	Go to where the jobs are.
	It's like, well, we don't have to because we got welfare.
	We got the biodome of money coming down from the sky.
	We don't have to move.
	We don't have to change.
	We don't have to grow.
	So you end up with these human enclosures in the middle of nowhere that no one should be.
	And then the kids are stuck so many times there because to leave means to leave everything.
	Whereas these towns should be dead.
	People should be in a place where there's economic activity and growth so the kids have more opportunities.
	Yeah.
	And so, as you can imagine, in Australia, you just drive down the highways thousands of kilometres and there's just those towns every couple of hundred k's.
	There's another ghost town and you wonder what the hell people are doing here.
	But the government subsidise all the government jobs to go out there.
	So, if you're a teacher in a rural area, you get more money.
	If you're a doctor in a rural area, you get more money.
	You get sponsored if you're a cop as well.
	So, they're like blatantly trying to subsidise the These places remaining.
	Yeah, it's like government programs are like, we have subsidized the creation of places of infinite suckiness, terror, desolation, and human misery.
	Now we've subsidized the creation and maintenance of these, we're now going to subsidize normal people to go out and get infected by the same disease.
	How can we bring it back to more people that can...
	The town I'm in, though, does definitely have value in economic terms.
	So the most...
	It's a farming area, dairy and beef and stuff.
	But the thing is that with more efficiency in agriculture, most of the farms are becoming bigger and the family is smaller, so the population actually decreases in that way.
	But farms aren't towns.
	You said 4,000 farms aren't towns.
	I mean, there's a little town where the farmers go to get the stuff they can't grow on their farm.
	But the only 4,000 people, how many farms do you need to serve?
	How many people do you need to serve farms?
	Not that many.
	Yeah, well, no, there is always a hub, like, connecting everybody, and you do need to have, I'm sure that, yeah, without the government supporting it, you'd still have services joining all those farms, in a way, right?
	Did you think that there would just be farms scattered everywhere?
	No, but the farms are, I assume, part of the, I know that Australia went through some sort of liberalization of the market some time back, but the question is, I mean, are the farms subsidized?
	I mean, is it all just one big, giant welfare hub?
	Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure they are, actually.
	Surely.
	I don't know for sure, but I imagine, yes.
	And there's this argument, I don't know how relevant it is to Australia, but there's this argument that Charles Murray puts forward, which sort of talks about the sort of widening gap between rich and poor.
	And he says one of the reasons that this is happening is that universities are getting much better at finding and hoovering up talent from smaller towns.
	Which is one of the reasons why, like when he was going to Harvard, I think in the 1760s, no he's not that old, 1860s.
	Since the time he was at Harvard, the verbal SATs have gone up like a full standard deviation.
	Look at me trotting out my math.
	It's gone up a full standard deviation.
	And he says it's partly because of, you know, the student loans and government guarantees and all that.
	The universities go in and grab people out of small towns.
	But these are the high IQ people.
	Yeah, they're the people in the community.
	It's like a brain drain out of the smaller towns.
	So people used to go to local college, they'd settle down in a smaller town, they'd be a lawyer or whatever.
	Or maybe an engineer or a doctor or something.
	But now they're all going to Harvard and Yale and Vassar and all this kind of thing.
	And they're meeting and breeding with other really smart people there.
	And certainly intelligence has its genetic component.
	And so basically the towns are getting dumber and the colleges are getting smarter.
	And it's a big problem.
	Yeah.
	So I think ideally that what education should be hoping for is to get them better educated.
	Maybe if they have to move to the city to go to uni, if that's what they want to do, and then go back to their community and bring back the value of that to their local community.
	But I don't know how to encourage that path, especially if back home is just a welfare pit of despair.
	Yeah, I mean, the way that you get people to come back, you know, if only I could find a way for my wife to come back home every day.
	It's like, How about you're a good husband and a nice person who loves her and, you know, oh yeah, that's why she comes back.
	If you want the town to be someplace where people come back to, maybe the townspeople could be really the best people around.
	It's like, there's no people like those people.
	That's where I want to go.
	I just wanted to mention, I've been pinged that Australia is low when it comes to farm subsidies.
	Oh, right.
	Is that right?
	So Australia and New Zealand farmers have received the lowest levels of subsidies of any farmers.
	Australia is right at the bottom when it comes to total expenditures on agriculture as a proportion of national GDP. So I just wanted to mention that.
	That's a positive thing.
	All right.
	So let's...
	Sorry for that roundabout, but maybe we can dip into the bullying thing, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, so I thought that I'm...
	What sort of bullying are you seeing now?
	Well, in my short time there, I haven't seen heaps of it, but I did have, I've got a couple of incidences in my class.
	One of them is with the Year 10 class where a girl, well, she just kind of kept doing things that she knew would get her sent out of the classroom so that she could leave the class, and then I would ask her, you know, what's going on, and she'd say, because they're bullying me,
	and I don't feel welcome in there, and then no one likes me, and I have no friends, and And I just, I'm trying like, okay, I've got to try and deal with this rationally and help her think through it and maybe not help her to see it, you know, what part she's playing in it as well.
	And I just thought, okay, so have you done anything that you think that they might be not liking about you?
	And that's why I don't like you.
	And she's like, no, I haven't done anything.
	I just don't understand.
	And So I was just like completely at a loss of what to say.
	And I just thought to myself, well, I would know, I kind of think I'd know how I would react if that were an adult and how to give people advice once they're grown.
	But as a child, I kind of don't know how to say, well, don't worry about it.
	I can't just say that to kids.
	I remember when I was in high school, the popularity was such a big part of everything.
	And I understand how much it weighs on their shoulders.
	And so, yeah, I just don't know how to deal with it.
	But popularity is a shield to bullying.
	It's not pursued for its own sake.
	You know, I don't lug around a big garbage can lid shield unless I'm going to battle in ancient Rome and then I really want one.
	Right.
	You know, so the popularity is just, well, it's a sign of sexual success.
	Romantic success, desirability, but that's all tied into it's a shield against bullying.
	You're right, yeah.
	You can put yourself into a protective group sort of thing.
	Yeah, so if you're popular, what it means is that if people pick on you, other people will attack them.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right?
	This is more to my American audience, and I'll keep this really brief, but it's like If you are a Republican and you go into politics, you are going to be regularly insanely trashed by the media.
	And, you know, the most horrible things are going to be said about you.
	Everything's going to be dug up.
	It's just going to be, you know, lies and all that.
	Whereas if you're a Democrat and you go into politics, the media will fawn all over you and try and report only nothing but positive and cover up whatever you're doing that's negative.
	It's just a fundamentally different planet for Republican politicians with regards to the media.
	As it is to Democrat politicians.
	And it's an incredibly effective way of keeping the highest quality people in some ways out of the Republican fold.
	Because, you know, smarter people look at that and say, no thanks.
	Well, who the hell wants to live like that?
	And so the media bullies Republican politicians and it shields The Democrat politicians, which makes life a lot easier for the Democrats because the moment that anyone picks on them, the media is going to attack them.
	They have their attack dogs.
	So they don't have to lift a finger to fight back.
	Right?
	They just have to...
	Let the media do the dirty work for them.
	And it's the same thing too.
	If you're popular, what it means is that you either have something that people want or you're scaring people.
	And so because you are in a situation where you are providing some sort of positive or negative social reinforcement to people, if anyone attacks you, then...
	Other people will attack them back, so you have this human shield, so to speak, or this phalanx around you, if that makes sense.
	So that's probably why they want to get to that place of popularity so that they won't be attacked.
	That relief from attack is probably what they're in search of.
	Yeah, so it's, I guess, in those years of forming your personality.
	And I think that the popularity thing really begins sort of in year eight.
	I've noticed that my year sevens are very, they're still quite innocent in a way.
	I like that word.
	I can see how that word really relates now that I'm a teacher.
	And I think it's like when you begin the age of like sexuality and sexual development and personality and identity formation, you start to sort of see what that culture, you're around values and what is going to be popular, what ideas are popular, what the social memes are, what's favoured and what's not, what is worth, what you're going to get social capital for and what you're not.
	And those things are what drive Which groups have power or not?
	And I think those are the forces that are in play and it's all got such a high influence on the kids at that age because they are still so weak in their identity because they're just growing and they don't know yet much about who they are.
	So I think that's why they're such victims of it.
	So then I'm thinking that, okay, if that's the case, then I have to look at the culture to sort of see What are the common themes and memes and zeitgeists of that culture that are, you know, that the popular groups hold?
	And then maybe to diffuse that, maybe this is a massive task, thinking that I can, you know, stop the popularity wave, but maybe sort of encourage lots of other different types of aspects of a character and a personality or things that you're interested in to be popular as well so that it doesn't become so focused on one thing and therefore the popularity scale has a lot more Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it seems quite ambitious, but it certainly makes sense.
	But as you know, sorry to interrupt, but the kids who are bullied at school are the kids who are bullied at home, and the kids who are bullies at home are the kids who are bullied at home, right?
	The kids who are bullied at school The kids who bully at school are the kids who are bullied at home.
	The bullies and the victims are playing at the parents and the children in various homes, I would assume.
	Yeah, well the bullies, I know that the bullies at school are bullied at home by their parents.
	Or will they just have an awful home life?
	Yeah.
	Is that what you mean?
	Yeah, but their victims are bullied or ignored, probably even more neglected, right?
	The victims of the bullies are neglected because they've got no parents who are going to call the bully's parents up and say, what the hell is your kid doing?
	That's true, yeah.
	So what do you think of...
	I mean, do you think that...
	Okay, I'll give you an example.
	So we've got this thing called the breakfast club at school where if you...
	If you need breakfast, you can come to school and eat just before breakfast.
	So that's a really popular thing.
	Well, sorry, I won't say popular.
	It's a thing that's very valuable to many students because they have problems getting enough food.
	So that's, I think, a great initiative and something I'd like to be involved in next term when it begins.
	Oh, the irony in the midst of, like, hectares of farmland.
	Yeah, I know.
	Anyway.
	I know.
	So, yeah, I was talking to my mentor about that, my teaching mentor, about doing that and she's like, well, that probably wouldn't help some of the students, many of the students who do need food because all the ones who go to the breakfast club are the ones who are the bullies and so it's seen as a rough thing to go to and in a way not,
	I don't know if cool is the right word to use, but if you go to the breakfast club then you're sort of amongst that crowd so either you're intimidated or you're rough and you're kind of a, you know, Yeah, so I think that's seen as a weakness.
	I'm not 100% sure on how much that is frowned upon, though, because so many kids are in that state.
	I'm not sure that that could be necessarily seen as so bad.
	I know that the bullies at the breakfast club are intimidating to the ones who do want to go, and so the ones who really need it, yeah, they feel like they can't go as well.
	So yeah, my thought was, okay, I've got pretty good relationships with my kids, so I'll go to the breakfast club.
	I'm at school really early anyway.
	I'll go there, and I'll talk about it during class two, and I'll just talk about how great it is.
	It's so fun and I'll make it really fun for them and just completely sort of re-transform what it really means to go to the breakfast club.
	So make it not so much about, I'm hungry, I need food, how can I get it for free?
	It'll be, you know, let's just go hang out before school and see if that, I don't know, that makes it a little less intimidating to go to.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, I think I would imagine these kids are really hungry for any positive interaction.
	With an adult?
	Yeah.
	Whatever you can do to surprise kids with laughter and fun, especially if they've got a bit of a grim death march of a home life, I think is quite positive.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Yeah.
	You know, there's this...
	I'm sorry.
	Sorry, you were about to say something else, Tess.
	Go ahead.
	I wasn't.
	No, that's okay.
	Go.
	I wasn't.
	Okay.
	It sounded like a pensive um...
	Okay, so, yeah, there's certainly things you can do.
	You know, lecturing about bullying, I don't know.
	It's like lecturing lines about meat-eating.
	It's like, well, we already know how to do that, you know?
	Like, bullying is the intimidation of another kid for personal gratification.
	It's bad.
	It's like, well, it feels good, and I know how to do it.
	But the real challenge is, I think, for the kids who come to you with their stories, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And I don't know what to say, but I can certainly say that a perspective that helped me is that high school is like opposite world for kids.
	And I think we all kind of know this deep down, but high school is like opposite world in that if you want to be a success in life in general, Yes.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	You know, it's opposite worlds.
	Yeah.
	It's like the bad singing group.
	And it's like, I want to go be a singer.
	It's like, you know you're in the bad singing group.
	So whatever makes people popular and successful in high school tends to be the termites that eat away any future success of any substance that they might have.
	So, I mean, there was, you know, a guy in my high school who was considered really cool because he was like, he'd get really drunk and, you know, he'd say things and mouth off to people and he was a rebel and all this kind of stuff, right?
	And he made scenes.
	I remember him getting dragged out of a prom, like, I didn't do no disturbances, man!
	And now he died.
	Yeah.
	He died.
	He's an alcoholic.
	He was like a rebel.
	And he said things that no one could imagine saying.
	And he was like...
	And he's dead.
	Yeah.
	You know, one of the guys who was considered...
	I accidentally went to my high school reunion.
	I know.
	Sounds ridiculous.
	What do you mean?
	I accidentally went.
	So a friend of mine lives near the high school that we went to.
	And we were going to meet up for dinner, and we were just driving past the high school, because it's on the way, and it was like, reunion tonight!
	Now, you know how you're supposed to, I don't know, you get dressed up, and you're supposed to, I just went in with whatever the hell I was wearing, right?
	You know, to impress everyone in the last few years.
	No, no, none of that.
	So we went to the high school, and it's amazing to me just how incredibly imprinted people I hadn't thought of.
	I look at them, I go, that's a person's name, that's a person's name.
	Oh yeah, I slept with that girl.
	Oh, I'm going to sit next to her.
	Okay, see what she's doing.
	Right, all that.
	So...
	And it was great.
	It was great!
	Because it's vindication of opposite world.
	So another guy who was really cool, he had a job selling advertisement space for a phone book.
	Well, that makes me feel better.
	When was this?
	How old were you?
	Was this before FDR? Um...
	Because that would have been pretty cool to go there now, wouldn't it?
	I think it was before FDR. Okay.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	But you'd already written some books?
	I'm sorry?
	You had already written books and stuff?
	I had.
	I had written books.
	I've written novels, but none of the philosophical stuff.
	And I could sort of, you know, I could sort of go on and on.
	But the point was that it's just opposite world.
	And the people who were nerdy and cool were the guys driving up in Porsches.
	Like, nerdy and uncool were the guys driving up in, you know, nice cars and all that.
	And the people who were really square and boring were the guys with, like, seemingly happy families and, you know, the three kids that, you know, seemed to be having fun and all that kind of stuff.
	And there was...
	The opposite world.
	And, you know, the question to ask kids who are being bullied in high school is, well, would you like to be successful now and a loser later on?
	Or would you like to suffer now and be a success for the rest of your life?
	Because, I mean, school is like a prison.
	And the skills that make you really...
	You want to be the most successful person in prison or not?
	Because if you're the most successful person in prison, outside of prison, you're not going to do so well, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm the best guy at breaking kneecaps in the mafia.
	It's like, okay, in that context, I can see how you have value.
	However, in a service-driven industry, these skills may not translate.
	And that perspective, like what you say to someone who's in grade 10, you know, who's got like another two or three years to go, it's hard.
	But it is important to get that high school is kind of like opposite world.
	It's kind of like a prison.
	It's kind of like lowest common denominator, rules the roost.
	And And the people who do well in high school are kings and queens of an involuntary situation.
	Right?
	In other words, where people are cramped together against their will, I do really well.
	Well, the kids of victims of bullies wouldn't be there if they had a choice.
	They wouldn't be around bullies.
	It was a voluntary situation.
	And the kids with any brains wouldn't be there at all.
	They wouldn't be within a million miles of the place.
	There's a reason you have to force people to go.
	There's a reason you have to force parents to pay for it.
	Because it's a goddamn prison.
	You can do good and blah.
	I don't want to sort of say you're now, right?
	But as far as from the kids' perspective goes, you're there by choice.
	You could leave tomorrow if you want to, but the kids are not.
	They're not in their families by choice.
	They're not in their homes by choice.
	They're not in their neighborhoods by choice.
	They're not in their town by choice or their country.
	And they're not in their schools by choice.
	So there's very little that is voluntary.
	And if you sort of remind them of that and say, look, this is not what you choose to be.
	It's not a voluntary situation.
	So the fact that you don't adapt well To enslavement?
	It speaks to your character.
	This is not a place you want to succeed at.
	This is not a place you want to do well in.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, that's the sort of stuff that I want to be able to convey to them.
	But it's so difficult, though, also doing it in a way that they understand.
	Because it's just all this sort of stuff requires so much back knowledge as well.
	Like, Firstly, I don't even think they really get that they're forced to go, apart from, you know, their parents force them, but I don't think they get the gravity of how much that force is backed up by certain things, and that literally is a prison for them.
	I think they just concede that their parents want them to go, so they go.
	Yeah, everyone goes to school, and that's what you do, right?
	But yeah, I completely agree with what you were saying before about...
	But for you to know that, and, you know, you don't have to have to draw it out and...
	You know, get them all anarchic or anything, but, you know, this is not a place where you've chosen to be.
	That's why I'm...
	You know, I was never really bullied.
	One guy threatened to get me once.
	It doesn't really matter the circumstances.
	And I just avoided him, right?
	Because, you know, I'm a big one of fight like a spy, not fight like a Marine.
	And...
	There's a great burn notice where the guy's trapped at a bank with some bank robbers and he just fights like a spy.
	He just never confronts them.
	He just manipulates them.
	And that's the way to fight.
	But that guy, I mean, yeah, I mean, just he ended up doing nothing with his life and all that.
	I mean, it's just, I mean, God, the guy who...
	The guy who was one of the biggest guys and therefore had the capacity.
	He wasn't a huge bully, but he definitely threw his weight around a lot.
	He ended up assistant manager at a convenience store and still living in the neighborhood where the school...
	And again, it's not like these things are terrible.
	It's not like he became an axe murderer or something.
	And I remember the girl who was the queen.
	There's always the queen, right?
	The queen bee.
	The Beyonce of the bee locker.
	And there was this girl who...
	I don't know.
	Everybody...
	Every guy asked her out.
	I asked her out.
	And I think this is grade seven or eight.
	I met her at a party years later.
	And she was still...
	You could feel this physical, gravitational yearning and mourning for that time in her life.
	Going back to when she was...
	Beautiful and popular.
	Yeah, I mean, she was still attractive and all that, but she was like, oh, junior high school, man, that was like the best time of my life.
	Oh, my God.
	Oh, my God.
	I never thought I would live to hear that sentence in my life.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, I completely agree with all that, and that's sort of why I'd love to just sort of tell them, like, I actually did my E7s, Like, when you get out of here, you look back and go, what the hell was all that popularity stuff about?
	The people who were popular were all the dropkicks and the people who ended up being, you know, unsuccessful in life later on.
	And it was all just, like you said, backwards land completely.
	And I just sort of want to, like, almost just get that in their heads now.
	But I know I can't.
	They kind of have to experience it themselves and just see.
	But if I... Well, I don't know.
	I mean, how hard is that to...
	I don't think they would, believe me, they would be receptive to that.
	Just pointing out to them that, you know, do you think that Bill Gates was king of his high school?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	I mean, someone they know, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, who were the cool kids in Bill Gates High School?
	Do you ever hear from them?
	No.
	Yeah, so I'll just give them some examples.
	That's a good idea.
	Yeah, just, you know, who were the, you know, Get them to watch Tennessee Williams' A Glass Menagerie, where there's a guy who was king of his high school who's just floundering.
	In life.
	But you can, you know, find kids, you know, did Kurt Cobain, I mean, I don't know, because these kids are like, I don't know what the hell they're listening to these days, right?
	But were these, you know, Kurt Cobain was not a big fan of high school.
	Like, find who their heroes are, musically or intellectually or literally.
	I guarantee you, almost can guarantee you, that they just did not have fun in high school, whoever they were.
	Yeah, no, that's a really good idea.
	I'd bring out some people that I know.
	One direction, maybe.
	They're pretty successful at the moment.
	Yeah, and get quotes from them.
	You know, like, here's what so-and-so said about their high school or whatever, right?
	You're not alone.
	Anybody of any quality is going to suffer in an involuntary environment.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Yeah, I have a quote of the day in the morning.
	At my home group, it's my little philosophical inspiration for the morning and then I try and get them to talk about what it means to them and act it out in that day.
	And one of them I had was, you have enemies, good, that means you stood up for something.
	It's one of my favorite quotes.
	And I thought, that's a bit edgy because that can be taken in so many ways, especially at a high school, you have enemies, good, you know.
	So I really tried to talk to them about that.
	Well, that's more in a voluntary environment, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, drug dealers have enemies.
	But, no, and I always had luck trying to talk.
	I mean, it sounds really old-fashioned, but it's old-fashioned for a reason.
	I always had luck trying to talk with kids, like, what does it mean to have character?
	What does it mean to be a good person?
	Yeah, yep.
	Right?
	And why should you even bother?
	Yes, yeah.
	You know, don't you see bad people succeeding all the time in the world?
	And don't you see good people, like, being mown down?
	Like, the example I used to use was, you know, like, think of a war, right?
	So the good soldier goes and fights the enemy, and the bad soldier hides, right?
	And who's more likely to come back?
	What does it mean to be a good person when you're a soldier?
	Is it good for, like, you want to survive?
	Is it good for, like, you want to go and kill whoever you're told to kill?
	I mean, I don't know.
	And I find those, I always find those kinds of questions really interesting.
	What does it mean?
	Like, let's say, is it, are you a good person if you go and break up a fight?
	But what if you get stabbed?
	Is that a good, smart, sensible person?
	Like, what do these things even mean?
	Yeah, what does it mean?
	Who defines that?
	Right, right.
	And what does it mean to be obedient?
	Yeah.
	You know, which rules are sensible to obey and which rules just make you like a Nazi?
	Well, that's my...
	You know, like, I mean, obedience has caused a huge amount of problems in the world.
	I said that the other day.
	I said someone did something...
	Because I said so or something.
	That was a, I don't know, some kid said, I'll do it because teacher says.
	And I said, never do anything I tell you to do just because I told you to.
	That's how Nazi Germany happened.
	And I was like, what the hell is she talking about?
	You realize you just said, never do anything I tell you.
	Dude, you must take this oath to never take an oath.
	But yeah, that's one thing I saw was like, I will never, ever teach them to obey me.
	Yeah, obedience is the first sin of humanity, because obedience magnifies the power of charismatic and dysfunctional people.
	Again, that's why I never tell people what to do, because, I mean, obedience is a huge, huge problem.
	You can't have wars without obedience.
	I mean, how many people are like, I want to go live in mud with my toes rotting off and shoot people.
	That's my plan for the day.
	It's like, that never happens.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Unless there's obedience, right?
	So...
	Or make people think they're doing the right thing.
	Either one.
	Yeah, but kids, I think kids are really interested in ethical issues.
	Really interested in ethical issues.
	And you can talk about ethical issues in ways that don't, you know, bring you in direct conflict with whatever parental values may be out there.
	I think it's reasonable to ask kids, as long as you ask them sort of the open-ended questions and stuff that you don't have You're massively strong and, you know, hopeful, like, unconsciously manipulative, which we all do, right?
	But...
	What do you mean, for what?
	So, I mean, so if you ask them ethical questions like around, for me, do you...
	Like, in a war, I could certainly see the value of fighting and shooting to kill, right?
	You know, bad people are invading your country or whatever it is, right?
	Your neighborhood, your whatever, right?
	So that, you know, I can see that.
	On the other hand, you know, wars of imperialism, maybe it's just better to hide and come out and whatever, right?
	I mean, these are, so I don't have a like, well, you must do this kind of thing, right?
	This is right or this is wrong.
	They're interesting questions.
	So whereas if there would be other issues, like, I don't think I could explore the should you hit children question openly with kids very easily, because my, you know, my perspective is too fixed, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	And they can smell that, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, so do I have any of those sorts of things which I've got a massive investment in?
	Oh, you have.
	We all do.
	I mean, there's a billion questions, you know, that are fun to explore when it comes to ethics.
	And, you know, I can virtually guarantee you that they're probably not going to get that from, you know, other teachers and other environments and so on.
	Exploring ethics, ethical questions.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, why be good?
	What is goodness and why bother?
	I mean, that's sort of a fundamental question.
	I'd love to talk to them about that.
	That's like my dream.
	If I could talk to kids about that, I just, I want to know what they have to say.
	Like, I just find them so interesting.
	And, um, I mean, listen, good kind of geeky.
	Good is considered kind of geeky and nerdy.
	Yeah.
	Do you mean good as in good versus evil good?
	Yeah, like moral stuff, like, you know, goody two-shoes.
	Isn't that what kids, I don't know, kids say stuff.
	Yeah, it's weird.
	Apple plush or teacher's pet, you know, like, oh, it's such a keener.
	And, you know, isn't good kind of nerdy?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And I just want to – Good didn't used to be that way.
	Like if you took King Arthur or Lord of the Rings or whatever, I mean, good is like, it's strong, you know, you had orcs and stuff, you know.
	Now it's just become kind of nerdy and compliant and circle and stuff.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've got so many things that I would love to talk to them about.
	and trying to figure out the right forms.
	And there's no time.
	It's amazing.
	Bring in some newspaper articles.
	Newspaper articles, I mean, I have these conversations with my daughter.
	It's like newspaper articles are full of the most fascinating ethical questions.
	Yeah, like opinion pieces and stuff.
	And just talk about opinion pieces or...
	Yeah, and you can bring the stuff in and say, look, we're doing some news.
	We're doing current events and asking questions.
	I mean, it would be really tough for parents to get mad at that, I think.
	Yeah, that's a good idea.
	And I do have six minutes in home group.
	I'm sure I could just somehow squeeze it in there.
	But I wanted to start like a lunchtime group of talking about just anything, like problems or friendship issues or dating issues, anything that they want to talk about.
	Here's one I go back and forth on a lot.
	Can criminals be rehabilitated?
	Right, yeah.
	You know, I've heard arguments both ways, and I don't know.
	I mean, I think it's an interesting thing to think about and to ask questions about.
	So, these are, you know, just pick up some stuff from the newspaper and...
	Broach it with them and see what they have to say.
	Yeah, see what they have to say.
	I mean, I remember getting into really great conversations in classrooms about...
	I was in the Model UN. We debated abortion, the death penalty.
	You know, I mean, some of that stuff may be a bit too volatile to start with.
	But it's really interesting.
	You know, what effect do you think electronics have on your life?
	Yeah, that would be an easy one to bring up, actually.
	Yeah, do you spend more time texting or more time talking?
	Do you eye contact?
	What is communication?
	What is relationship?
	What is friendship?
	What does it mean?
	Can you do it?
	I mean, everyone's part of this giant electronic Borg brain experiment of, you know, we now have these devices which people use many, many hours a day.
	It's radically new.
	It's like less than half a decade old.
	It's a couple of years old, this giant massive experiment of facefuls of infinite entertainment and stimulation and information.
	Yeah, we literally don't know how it's going to program our brains.
	It's like now that it's coming from babies onwards, we don't know.
	And I know for me, I'm 27, but already I can feel my brain needs to be When was the last time you went to the bathroom entirely by yourself?
	I think there's lots of stuff that you can get people quite interested in.
	And the moment you start having people think about ethical issues, I think Like empathy.
	Is empathy a strength or a weakness?
	Now, if you have a conversation about that with kids, I think that's really going to open up avenues within their own individual brains to think about bullying.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Not collectively, not, oh, is bullying good or bad, but, you know, hey, we've all been there.
	Like, I love being empathetic.
	I hate being empathetic, right?
	I mean, it's a blessing and a curse.
	Yeah.
	Well, we do have a really great, the school's actually really good with restorative practices is what they call when a child does something, you know, that's deemed as inappropriate behavior, where they have to think about their effect on others and also themselves and stuff.
	But that's finger-waggy stuff, you know.
	I want you to sit here and think about what you've done.
	I know, but at least it's sort of...
	I understand that thinking about their impact on others is an important thing to do, or at least that's what society does and wants them to do.
	But you see, but you could make that fun, right?
	Which is like, well, what if you're a sadist?
	Yeah.
	Because like sadists, they think about the effects it has on other people.
	I spent that with someone the other day, actually.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, yeah.
	You know, I mean, do you think bullies don't know the effects of bullying?
	Of course they do.
	Yeah, yeah, right.
	I mean, they like it.
	That's their sick little power thrill, right?
	And so, you know, I want you to think about your effects on other people.
	It's like, oh, I am.
	Oh, I am.
	And it's good, right?
	Because, you know, helping kids to understand that There are very differently configured human personalities and sometimes quite opposingly configured human personalities.
	I think it's pretty important for them.
	What a great life lesson that is to not think that we're all the same deep down because, you know, look at brain scans.
	We really aren't.
	That's a good point.
	So I think...
	If finger-wagging at kids, I mean, just makes them roll their eyes.
	It makes everyone roll their eyes, right?
	Because it's so blatantly an attempt to impose power and order, not to their benefit.
	But getting them to sort of start to think more lively, in a more lively manner, about ethical issues, but without it being goody-two-shoes ethics of, like, you know, share be nice and crap like that.
	I think that would be...
	You know, that's the Socratic method, and that's, you know, what a great age to get that at.
	Yeah.
	Because that's when you really are making the moral decisions that shape, in a very foundational way, significant portions of your life.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I feel like I've just got this stage and opportunity to pass on some of these amazing values or ways of thinking to these kids, and I really just want to do it well and effectively, efficiently.
	Yeah.
	And you have to be in a situation, Tess, where they're going to ask you, what do you think?
	Yeah.
	And you have to be able to honestly say, I'm not sure.
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Right?
	Because if kids ask me, what do you think about spanking?
	Well, sit down, kids.
	I'm going to tell you with graphs.
	Right?
	And I'm not saying...
	I'm not trying to...
	Obviously, I can do whatever you want.
	I'm not trying to say don't have...
	But the reason...
	If they start to ask you what you think...
	Then they'll put too much value in mine.
	I'm not trying to teach them to...
	No, it's not that.
	No, it's not that so much.
	I mean, it's that they may go home to their parents and say, well, teach your test set.
	You know?
	Whereas, you know, if it's stuff where it's like, I don't know, I'm exploring, that's more fun.
	And then you know for sure you won't be trying to unconsciously get them to a particular conclusion, which is something...
	Yes.
	I want to teach them to think and to come up with their own things rather than me saying stuff.
	And yes, like you said, to avoid them going home and saying, this is what missed.
	I don't want that.
	That would be bad.
	I kind of might have overstepped the line with that the other day.
	We're talking about marijuana.
	So hopefully that will...
	There's a reason my whole purse is full of nothing but Pringles.
	I don't smoke weed, but I've got some opinions about the laws on it, clearly, as an anarchist.
	Yeah, but it's just so much fun.
	I really love it.
	So I'm hoping that all this stuff you're telling me I'll put into place and try out new things and see what works.
	And yeah, it's all exciting.
	Right.
	Well, thanks, Tess.
	And listen, I hope that you will pursue encouraging these kids to think they have a rare opportunity with someone like you, if not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with someone.
	And I certainly think that if I'd had a...
	Philosophically inclined, witty, and highly intelligent teacher, I wouldn't have traded that in for the usual run-of-the-mill union trash.
	So I think that enjoy.
	Enjoy your time.
	I mean, someone's got to be there.
	Why not you?
	Thanks, Steph.
	That's really nice.
	Thank you.
	Take care.
	Let us know how it goes if you can.
	Yeah, I'd love that.
	I just wanted to say on a side note, I just thought I'd chuck in another accent for today as well.
	Just throw in the other accent.
	Oh yeah, no, I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	Next up, we're going to be Elvish, I think.
	Klingon!
	Good.
	Followed by some clicking language.
	Great.
	All right, well, thanks again, Tess.
	Great hearing from you again.
	Enjoy the sound show.
	What?
	Enjoy the sunshine.
	Sorry, it's almost over.
	It's okay, Steph.
	The sun will come out tomorrow.
	Tomorrow there will be sun.
	You know, this has been the worst winter in Canada for temperature like in the last 135 years.
	And it's just been relentless.
	And it's too cold even for winter sports.
	So basically, I made a fairly well-appointed spaceship.
	I'm complaining here that it's not that cold, but yeah.
	I'm sorry about that.
	Enough of my whining.
	Yeah.
	Actually, I'm in my sort of...
	This isn't a white wall behind me.
	This is just Canada.
	This is all it is.
	It's just snow.
	So, all right.
	Well, thanks everyone so much.
	Please feel free to drop my...
	In fact, I strongly encourage, urge, and request you to drop...
	Drop by, as my daughter would say, I command, demand, and respectfully request that you come by to freedomadradio.com slash donate to help out the show and help spread the conversation.
	Look at this!
	Four corners of the world, virtually, is where the penetration of philosophy, with your support, is landing.
	So freedomadradio.com slash donate.
	Thank you everyone so much.

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