2969 Police Ambivalence - Call In Show - May 6th, 2015
Question 1: I live in Baltimore and have experienced the rioting first hand. I question the Constitutionality of the curfew, but I am at the same time overjoyed at the curfew. I live in a beautiful but noisy section of town - normally lots of fights outside in the middle of the night. I’m surprised at how quickly I stepped off my principles to wallow in the short-term gratification of peace and quiet - and a decrease in the likelihood that there would be more property damage. Can you help me understand my ambivalence? | Question 2: How do I deal with the feeling of hopelessness and inferiority that I get from not being able to (directly) positively impact my own outcomes in spite of the fact that I have been able to help many others achieve what I desire? I want to be a good father for my son, and I don’t want him to grow up with this lack of agency as a role model. | Question 3: Many years ago there was a scene in an episode of Futurama where the human race goes extinct because they all chose sex robots that look exactly like celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe, instead of dating each other and having children. While far-fetched years ago, it seems probable than within less than a decade there might be a thriving sex robot industry. So in the long run, how is marriage and human-to-human sexual relationships going to compete with sex robots?
And by listen, I mean get annoyed with listeners when they interrupt my rant.
Something like that.
And I guess we'll start with the first on the queue.
Mike, who's up?
Alright, well up for us today is Julia.
Julia wrote in and said, There are so many hidden agendas in the speech and actions of the different political and nonpartisan groups, so many wheels within wheels.
The freedominer slash objectivist community here in Baltimore is a bit stunned into mental silence.
We have met and discussed, but we are searching for rational courses of action and lines of thought.
For example, I question the constitutionality of the curfew.
But I am at the same time overjoyed at the curfew.
I live in a beautiful but noisy section of town, normally lots of fights outside in the middle of the night.
I'm surprised at how quickly I stepped off my principles to wallow in the short-term gratification of peace and quiet, and a decrease in the likelihood that there would be more property damage.
I'm definitely in shock.
I was stoic about the incredible pressure of law school exams while a riot and fires are going on outside my window, but then I find myself suddenly angry, almost to the point of crying or hitting furniture.
I second-guess myself every day that I should have left.
And that's from Julia, who is in the heart of Baltimore, as everything that's going on in Baltimore is going on around her.
And just for those who are listening to this sometime hence or say in Timbuktu, what's going on in Baltimore is at the moment, I guess, a kind of uneasy truce, a piece of waiting because six officers, three whites and three blacks, have been charged in various degrees of malfeasance in the death of Freddie Gray, who...
Received an injury in a police van and died a week later.
There have been riots, and those riots have, I think, calmed down, if I get that correctly.
That's going on in Baltimore, and there are various interpretations as the degree of prosecutorial overreach.
The guy, the black guy, who was driving the van has been charged with depraved heart murder, I believe it is, for driving a van.
And we will find out.
I follow the case with interest, though I think that it may be a tad too volatile at this point.
And certainly, there's no way to draw any clear conclusions until we start to see more of the evidence.
I find it fascinating, as I think a lot of people do.
We're just seeing the twists and weaves of the process and it is a very complicated situation and there's lots of issues and frustrations in many layers of society that are coming to a head in this area and it can be one of these moments of learning and teaching or it can be yet another wasted opportunity and We'll see as time goes forward.
Anyway, Julia, you're the one who's there, so you should probably be doing more talking.
How are you doing these days?
I'm alright.
Thanks for asking.
Great.
There's certainly been more destruction than was reported in the media.
The more shop glass broken and looted.
There's a fire across the street from where I live that wasn't on the destruction map.
They had a map of destruction that laid out all of the different places that have been hit.
There are many more places that never appeared there.
But certainly there was a lot going on.
We went to the Roofed watch Baltimore burn, you know, and then a solid week of helicopters, you know, and every night you hear a megaphone that says, it is now 10 p.m.
There is a citywide curfew.
You must be indoors.
So it has been challenging in so many different ways.
I mean, surreal is a perfect word because in one night, I saw these two scurrilous guys crouching out in my back parking lot next to a BMW.
And very unlike me, I'm in my pajamas.
I'm on the second floor.
I throw open the window and I scream at them, get out of my parking lot.
Get away from that car.
I was on a huge rant and the guy just stood up.
He looked up at me and he said, babe, it's my car.
And he holds up the keys and he turns the light on in the car.
They were playing dice for cash in my back parking lot, breaking the curfew.
Wait, they drove to your parking lot in a BMW to play dice and break curfew?
Yes, yes.
I'm no expert, let's say, on the average profile of a BMW driver.
My instinct tells me that's not a perfect match, but I'm willing to grant exceptions.
Welcome to my town!
Yeah, I mean, well, that must be a very hard-working young fellow.
Yeah.
We won a lot of money playing dice.
I mean, I'm in law school finals.
My aunt, who is a very powerful woman in her profession, was freaking out, got me a hotel room.
And then on the flip side of that, my father was nonplussed, and so I had to deal with his disinterest.
You know, I'm second-guessing myself every day.
Wait, his disinterest?
Yeah, yeah.
Nonplussed and disinterested.
Those are some lawyerly words for emotions I can't quite track.
I'm afraid.
And then my aunt is...
No, no, no.
Wait, wait, wait.
Back up.
What does it mean?
Nonplussed and disinterest?
Nonplussed usually means kind of annoyed and negative.
Disinterest, though, usually means indifference.
So I'm not sure how to track your father's emotional state.
Oh, so I thought nonplussed meant that he was not overly overwrought.
So I think disinterested is a much better word.
So he thought everything's fine and my daughter will be, I mean, so the city's burning, she's fireproof.
I assume you are made of asbestos, which is why your father is not at all concerned.
Wow.
I mean, if there was a curfew and my daughter was in Baltimore, I'd be emerging from the sewers.
Honey, I dropped breadcrumbs.
Let's find our way back.
That's so awesome.
Yes, I definitely am very fortunate to be thinking through some of those things about my dad and dad.
And then, of course, my aunt was furious because my father was nonplussed, as I say.
But it has been a very weird mixture of art in danger and the mundane in danger.
I woke up one morning and the entire six-block sidewalk away from my house had chalked names of all the people who supposedly had been brutalized by police officers and their ages.
Hundreds and hundreds of names for six city blocks as I walked to the fitness center.
One guy jumped onto the top of a truck.
He actually brought a whole dance platform And while the helicopters are circling, he's playing Michael Jackson, just beat it, and he's dancing and shaking his fists with all these helicopters.
You know, and it's just, it's really, you know, to have the challenges of all those sort of contradictory forces.
You know, and then my neighbor asked me, do I have time to go to Chipotle before the riot gets here?
You know, you're just, it's...
There's a sentence that there's no...
Like, there's no good thing in life that results in that sentence.
Because we won the lottery, never follows that particular...
Okay.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, law school finals, totally grueling.
You know, I thought, I should have left.
I shouldn't have left.
I want to try to get through my...
You know, just...
So, trying to get through the thought process of, I'm a budding non-statist.
I'm not entirely...
Well thought through yet on those issues, but being faced with some things that I admire about the state's attorney, Marilyn Mosby, who stood up and spoke very forthrightly about the different charges, did her job, I think, well, but wheels within wheels.
What's really her agenda behind all that?
I'm sorry to interrupt, but obviously you're the law student, so you have more knowledge and expertise in In this area, it seems to me, just from the outside, that it was a placate-the-mob rush to judgment.
Yes, I agree.
And so I'm not sure that's doing the job really well.
I mean, I think she should have taken the charges before a grand jury.
As far as I understand it, she put these charges forward within hours of receiving the reports.
And there are indications that she may have made some mistakes in that they say they found a switchblade.
She says, well, that's legal.
What they found is legal under Maryland law.
And the cops are saying, well, no, it's a one-handed spring-assisted knife, so it's not legal.
Not so legal.
I don't know.
I'm happy to hear the case about how she's doing such a great job.
And I'm not saying it's easy to stare down a mob.
That aggressive?
So, you know, I say this from the security of Canada, so I'm fully aware that I'm not having to stare down this mob, but isn't that sort of what you get paid the bucks for, is to pursue the rule of law and not bend to the mob?
Because, I mean, you buy yourself a little temporary piece, but you guarantee yourself worse things in the future.
Yes.
Yeah, I heard that they called in Judy Smith, whose life is the basis for that show Scandal, and, you know, as a communications manager to come in and do strategic counseling, so that might very well be why she rushed to...
Judgment, I don't know if it's the right word, but...
And I hadn't heard about the switchblade yet.
I have had my nose in the book so deeply that I wasn't able to follow all the details.
But based on the list that she went through, it did seem like there was a justification for negligence and some of the different charges.
Which, you know, why not charge?
I mean, it's not a judgment yet.
It's just the prosecutorial attorney.
Yes, but I mean...
To say that, well, of course, yeah, she's saying that there are charges, but it just seems to me that it seems like jumping the gun.
It seems like there should be more research.
To me, it's always an insult to a mob to appease it.
Not our mob.
Well, let's get back to that.
But it seems like if you have the ear of the mob, isn't that a great Time to talk to them about due process, to talk to them about the rule of law, to talk to them about innocent until proven guilty, and so on.
Now, if you have a mob that you don't feel can be reached by any kind of reason, well, then you have a much more significant problem than even what happened to Freddie Gray.
Yes, I agree.
Because then it's like, okay, so Democrats in public schools breed mobs.
This is a case that I think Ann Coulter makes very well in a book called Demonic, which is worth reading just for the haunting descriptions of the French Revolution.
The eyes of the world are on Baltimore.
I think this is fundamental.
The eyes of the world are on Baltimore.
The eyes of the world are looking at the leadership's evaluation of the Baltimore mob.
Yes.
And right now, they're treating them like very volatile and irrational children.
That's what the eyes of the world...
The eyes of the world can't judge the mob, but they can judge how the leaders judge the mob.
I see what you're saying.
Yes.
Yes.
It's like this is, if you have, you know, lack of a non-rational mind that you're dealing with, then this is what you do.
Yes.
It seems to be just appeasement.
It's straight on appeasement.
And there are mysteries.
I mean, again, as I say this a million times over and over, though you and, you know, Mike and maybe three other people seem to listen, but You know, of course, if the officers beat the guy up, if they had a rough ride, which doesn't appear to be the case.
But there's some really hinky stuff going on.
Oh, there's definitely hinky, yeah.
Like, this guy came out who said he was a passenger with Freddie Gray.
And apparently the cop said, oh, he said that Freddie Gray was trying to injure himself by beating his head against the wall.
And then he came out and said, no, no, it was just a couple of taps, right?
But the guy who was riding was 38 years old.
This guy was like 22.
Yeah.
And the woman who was interviewing him was the girlfriend of one of the prosecutors.
That's some seriously subterranean hinky stuff.
I didn't know that.
Oh my god.
That's so...
Yeah.
He's a plant.
He doesn't appear to have been.
There's no record of this guy's arrest.
Anyway.
Well, I had pinned it on the guy, Rice, who had been arrested a couple years earlier for having...
The types of guns, like, what are they called?
AK-47s?
And had been actually sent to the mental hospital.
So I'm like, yeah, he did something before the paddy wagon ride.
Wait, who's this?
So he's one of the officers.
He was arrested for...
Somebody had called the sheriff's office on him, and he had multiple weapons in his house that he shouldn't have had, and then they thought he was a little wacko, so they drove him to the mental hospital, but he's for some reason inexplicably back on duty, and these militarists, if you want to call them, who are the type of...
Self-identify with their militarization.
I'm probably making a sweeping judgment about this poor man, but they know how to do things like break necks.
So I'm thinking, well, maybe he did something.
You mean maybe he tried to break Freddie Gray's neck?
Yeah, hurt him before he got on the paddy wagon because he was one of the one men who was manhandling Freddie Gray before he got onto the vehicle.
Absolutely, but these are the kinds of things we have no idea about.
I know, yeah.
I mean, you know, maybe space aliens reached down with giant lasers and severed his neck as part of some intergalactic experiment in floppy-headedness.
I mean, and obviously yours is a more likely scenario, but this is, of course, what the innocent until proven guilty and get the information.
Yeah.
I mean, and the coroner, didn't he declare it some, you know, negative thing?
And it's like, well, all he can do is assess the injury.
Right.
Well, homicide just means not of natural causes, right?
Right.
And so homicide doesn't mean murder, as you know, right?
It just means, okay, so the guy didn't expire in his sleep from being 140 years old or something like that, which I think we can all agree on.
Yes.
It might have been a depraved heart.
It could have been callousness, it could have been indifference, and so on, but there is...
There's just a lot of unknowns, and I mean, look, I... I mean, I have mixed feelings about cops.
And I think this is kind of what we're talking about, right?
Because this is the ambivalence that we have, which is, I would love a society, as you know, with no state and with private defense agencies and with everybody being raised so wonderfully as children that there are no cops, no criminals.
I mean, that's the ideal, but we ain't there yet, right?
Right.
And it's what Tom Sowell says about a riot, and they stopped doing this in the 1960s, right?
So they stopped doing this in the 1960s, which was bringing out a significant military presence to riots, because that's how you stop a riot.
You stop a riot with significant military presence, right?
So there were two cities, Detroit and Chicago, in the 1960s.
There were terrible race riots in both Detroit and Chicago in the 1960s.
Now, in Chicago, the mayor, I think it was Mayor Daley...
Came out on TV and on the radio and said, well, our police and the National Guard, they have orders to shoot to kill.
And of course, everyone was like, oh, fascism!
But there were far fewer deaths from any rioting in Chicago than there were in Detroit.
In Detroit, they, you know, we feel your pain and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right, right.
And, you know, we feel your pain, you know, we take your TVs.
Right.
It didn't work, right?
Right, right.
I have a very strong liberal background and know exactly what those lines sound like.
Yeah, you know, because we...
There's so many lines of conversation and I don't...
But this reality is that if you have this kind of rioting, then...
But people don't want to do it, right?
And this, again, is Tom Sowell's point.
He says that people don't want to do it because a riot starts and you bring out your military, so to speak, and the riot goes away.
And then the next day, the papers are all like, well, there was just a tiny little gathering, and next thing you know, there's black helicopters with giant sky cannons and all that.
A hysterical overreaction.
action.
It's like, well, yeah, but if they hadn't been there, then it would have gone the way of Detroit.
And as we all know, of course, going the way of Detroit means destroying the economy of the city.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm ambivalent insofar as I don't like the way that the cops work.
I don't like that they're run by the government and I disagree with the vast majority of laws that the cops enforce.
I also recognize that we have an existing society full of heavily traumatized people who are not going to listen to a whole bag full of reason.
And we have, of course, a welfare state that shredded the family and all the stuff I did in a recent podcast.
And so I'm ambivalent about the cops.
And I also recognize, of course, that they're heavily propagandized.
And a lot of libertarians don't seem to sort of understand that.
That, you know, cops are raised on a steady diet of cops great, you know, the thin blue line between order and chaos and, you know, they're multi-generational, they're praised, they've been, you know, the staunch defenders of the Constitution for many generations and, you know, they just don't get the degree of propaganda that everyone goes through.
I mean, just because some people have either never experienced it or have broken out a bit or so on, you know, I think it's time to circle back and Deal with these people not as just, you know, evil fascist robots from hell, you know?
I mean, that's just unfair.
And I wrote about this like 10 years ago about soldiers.
I mean, they're not told the truth about the system that they live in and they genuinely believe that they're being heroic and so on and fighting evil and it's really hard to, you know, it's really hard to tell people You know, the dwarf in the Lord of the Rings movie that it's not real.
Yeah.
And when you're surrounded by that environment on a regular basis and everyone that you know supports those values and emphasizes them from, you know, your brothers in arms, from the women who are your wives, you know, who are telling you the same thing over and over again.
You know, how can you think any other way?
Right.
Well, and up here in Canada, the police went on strike and And society went mental.
Like rival cab companies were beating each other up with lead pipes and stuff.
I mean, we all remember what it was like in school when you had the weak-willed substitute teacher, right?
Not a lot of learning going on.
It's a lot of recess.
You know, when the soft-voiced, hey, can you see it?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's just like, woohoo, right?
Lord of the Flies, right here, right now, right?
It's like the Julie Haggerty voice from the old airplane movies.
Guys, you know, get away from the sociopaths.
There's no one in charge.
It's wretched.
It's wretched.
There's definitely a strong white cop contingent here in Baltimore.
There's a large percentage that are African American that are on the force.
But not to go into too much detail live here on our radio, but I've met people and known people that You know, it just really demonstrates that there's a very, I don't want to use the word congealed, but like just a solid, solid force of a closed group that supports itself and supports each other.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, and basically it's really hard to get fired and these are a government union and so on, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so, and struggling with, you know, here, you know, I'm, you know, listening to the show, you know, I've had incredible, you know, just causing my reality to change almost every day, you know, looking at these non-statist ideas, it's like how, you know, to try to integrate all these things that I've been seeing when I'm actually, you know, sort of in shock, but then...
You know, just trying to rationally think through.
And what you're saying right now helps a lot to know even more about the things that are going on behind the scenes.
And, you know, you really long for a real leader, you know, someone who can actually, who has integrity.
And I see that, you know, we just haven't seen it.
But what would you do?
Because, I mean, I challenge all of the big talkers about, you know, people railing against me, and I'm sure there have been people railing against you.
I challenge the big talkers, okay, you're in charge.
What do you do?
Right.
Because, you know, and what I see, if I were in charge, you know, I do see it every day that there are people who are incredibly broken, who aren't even, who, the way that I think and the way that they think are so remarkably different, I can hardly even speak to their situation.
And, you know, maybe you do just take the wind out of the sail of the mob so that the city doesn't get destroyed.
You know, I don't know the answer.
So when you say take the wind out of the city, I can just say, you're the mayor, you call up the chief of the police, take the wind out of the city of the mob.
And he's like, no, take the wind out of the sails of the mob.
He's like, I don't know.
We're not having a regatta.
Perhaps you could give me something more specific.
I don't know what kind of wind are we talking about here.
Which way is it flowing?
How big is the ship?
Well, generally, I mean, whether you're doing marketing or whether you're trying to appease an angry customer, you always agree with them.
You agree with them.
That's how you take the wind out of the sail of an angry person.
You agree with them even if you're being deceitful.
I'm sorry.
With all due respect, that's chickpeak.
Oh!
I'm sorry.
I hate to put it that way.
No, no.
Tell me.
Tell me.
What do you mean?
I have much less body mass and 40% less body strength, so when someone's angry, I have to appease them.
That's a feminine approach, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, that's perfectly natural.
As a friend of mine said many years ago, how do you like to go through life half your size?
It's like...
I guess I'd be a little more cautious too, right?
But that's not, I mean, like we were just talking about how there's very strong evidence that, you know, calling in a very military reaction to a budding riot saves lives.
Or if you look at, this is something that Rudy Giuliani talks about, consistently about the fact that he got, this is off the top of my head, so the numbers may not be accurate, but it's close.
He got the murder rate in New York down from 2,000 people a year to 500 or 600 people a year.
By throwing the people in jail.
Yes.
And keeping them in jail.
Now that's not like, well, I agree with you.
That's like, you know, you and society are not getting along.
I'm afraid I'm going to engineer a breakup between you and society and society is going to stay where it is and you're going to go into the naughty corner with a cellmate.
There's a ton of evidence that in states where there's freer gun laws, that there tends to be, there can be less crime in certain specific areas.
And it has to do with, you know, I mean, I was down in Texas for a while.
It's like, everybody's carrying a gun.
You don't mess with people because they don't have one gun, they have two.
God made Adam, even Smith and Wesson made them equal.
Right.
So the strong heavy hand of leadership is, you know, I mean, you know, you do have that sort of clarity and crisp consequences.
You know, when they locked down and did the curfew, it made such a difference because they were very consistent and all the manpower was huge to be able to enforce it.
And they enforced it.
And it worked.
Oh, it worked.
It worked.
And, I mean, they literally could be saving the very future of the city.
I think so.
If enough of this stuff goes down, I mean, CVS Pharmacy ain't coming back.
They're closing down more stores in Baltimore.
Yeah.
The number of people who then wish to go into these areas and build up businesses and so on, I mean, non-existent, right?
I mean, and so then you get an ever, this is the death spiral of a community, right?
Frustration leads to riots, leads to fewer opportunities, leads to riots, leads to fewer opportunities, leads to riots.
There's no end to that.
And the money leaves the city.
You say, you know, Baltimore won't be open for business.
And you know who else leaves the city?
White people leave the city.
We can talk about this because nobody else is listening.
So we're fine.
But no, I mean, white flight is a very recognized phenomenon.
Yeah.
It is.
And the burgeoning businesses, there's just a terrific, there has been a great, strong trend in Baltimore of upwards, you know, we instituted a casino, which I don't agree with, but there you are, there's money.
And, you know, Baltimore has been on the up and up and now who knows what will happen.
It'll be interesting to see what the dynamics are that shake out, you know.
Is the only bad reputation no reputation?
The eyes of the world are on Baltimore.
Maybe this will kick in dynamics that will build it up.
Or is it just going to be, I'm not going to invest in that city.
Are you kidding me?
Well, there's a whole world.
I mean, you got a dollar or you got $10,000, so you got a million dollars.
There's a whole world to invest in.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, why on earth would you put money?
You know, and it's funny because people are...
Ah, young kids these days.
People are too young to remember that, like, 50, 60 years ago...
I'm not that old either, but...
No.
Detroit was like...
Detroit was like a golden city.
Detroit was like paradise.
Oh.
Like, everybody wanted to move to Detroit.
Crime was low.
Job opportunities were high.
Housing was plentiful.
Wages were good.
It was Dodge, right?
It was the car manufacturers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the big three car manufacturers and all of the associated industries, it's not just the car manufacturers, it's everyone who supplies the car manufacturers and everyone who supplies the people who supply the car.
I mean, it's a huge, huge effect.
And Detroit was...
A golden, shining city on a hill that was considered to be the best that America had to offer.
This is a mere half-century ago.
A half-century is not long in the life of a city.
And given the economy now in Michigan and Detroit, I mean, it's just horrible.
It's horrendous.
Right.
It is horrendous.
It is horrendous.
And the solutions, you know, I mean, again, The joy of being a philosopher is you get to waffle on and windbag about solutions that are far too like a time frame to ever be evaluated in your lifetime.
I like things to be multi-generational because it's untestable.
Like an economist.
Yeah.
So, I mean, what you have, and I'm simply repeating what the experts on this show have told me, but what you have in Detroit and what you have...
In Baltimore, in the black areas, is you have an IQ low population on average, right?
Individuals, sure, there's lots of exceptions, but according to the experts, you know, James Flynn, Kevin Beaver, who've been on this show, and going all the way back to the bell curve in the 90s with Charles Murray, you have a population that tragically is at least on average a standard deviation below, more than a standard deviation below Asians.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And that is...
They fight outside my window every night.
Right, right.
And, you know, with lower IQ often comes higher aggression, poor impulse control, and, you know, use your words is a tougher thing.
And, you know, like everyone, I am desperate and desperate and desperate to believe that this is environmental.
Yes.
Yes.
Because if it's not, I don't even want to know.
When you're eating licorice for breakfast and soda for lunch, something's going to happen to your brain.
Yeah, and if you have under-stimulated...
I mean, I really felt the Freddie Gray.
People say, oh, it's acting.
I really felt the Freddie Gray thing that I was talking about.
I mean, that's a horrible life.
And people are like, well, he should have just pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
He had lead poisoning, for God's sakes, man.
For God's sakes.
If you're missing your legs, don't ask me to hop up a ladder.
Yeah.
So you have this population.
Now, how do you solve...
The standard deviation problem in IQ, again, assuming it's true and assuming it's environmental, which is, you know, not my position to judge.
But we do know, of course, that less corporate punishment raises IQ.
We do know that welfare harms IQ.
Yeah.
We do know that the brain is a muscle that responds to adversity to some degree – You've got to strain a muscle in order to build it and welfare makes people kind of inert and kind of lazy and so on, right?
And so there's lots of things that we could do to promote healthier IQ practices and raise the IQ. Tom Sowell is a great believer in IQ being environmental.
Because, you know, there are people who say – it's a good counterargument, right?
Because there are people who say – like the people who say there's genetics involved in IQ, they say, ah, but if you look at mulattos, right, half black, half white, their intelligence is halfway between blacks and whites, you know, which would, I guess, to some people say, well, that's an IQ. Well, there you go.
But what Sowell says is he says, okay, so if the slave master rapes or has sex with a slave, I guess – Having sex with a slave would always be rape.
Not a lot of consent in that relationship.
But if he has a child by a slave, he's going to be much more interested in his half-child getting better educated, learning how to read.
So, of course, you'd expect mulattoes to be halfway between.
Anyway.
But raising IQ appears to not work later on in life.
And there are some people who argue that it's fixed from very early on in life, but I think that we have not exhausted the possibilities nearly as much, and I'm entirely encouraged by the information that I put out recently, which talks about the degree to which blacks were coming into educated and upper-class professions, and incomes were doubling, and families were relatively strong.
I just would have loved to have seen how far that would continue.
I mean, wouldn't that be fantastic?
I mean, I don't know if my IQ's gone up, but since I started school, my ability to solve logic problems has hugely increased.
I've been running around telling all my friends, I've solved the Singapore logic problem in 10 minutes, which I could never have done before.
So I tend to very strongly advocate that...
Environment can change you even later.
I mean, even after you're a child, I just, you know, and they, I think there's science that shows that you can create new neuron connections.
I mean, obviously, I mean, they say that necessarily, obviously, for a lot of people, it's not.
Like I had a friend when I was growing up, his father was very high up in engineering.
And, you know, we go over to his house and, you know, we wouldn't be playing hungry, hungry hippos.
There would be like math and logic questions pasted around the house.
And as you solved them, you get prizes and so on.
Oh, my God.
His son became a professor.
You know, I mean, is that genetics?
Well, I think we've got a lot of environment to push before we draw that conclusion.
So, but so how and how do you do that?
Well, The city of Baltimore can't stop welfare payments.
I mean, it'd be great if they could, in a way, because I think people would adjust and adapt pretty quickly.
You know, human beings, I mean, people say, oh, you know, it'd be terrible riots and so on.
Well, people fuss and fight until they accept.
And if it's just like, no, I'm sorry, this is a terrible experiment, and you've suffered, we've suffered, taxpayers have suffered, future generations have suffered, children have suffered, this is just a god-awful mess, and we're stopping it.
People will fuss, but as soon as they get your resolution, they won't.
And they'll be like, okay, well...
People get drafted and go to war, and that's a bigger change than welfare, and the vast majority of people did that without blowing up things or setting fire to things.
So people can, oh, you know what, we just privatized the schools, or we gave everyone vouchers.
And people were like, oh my god, that's terrible.
I mean, the number of times you hear in life, this is a catastrophe, this is terrible, this is awful, you know.
We only have nine days to save the planet from global warming.
Wait, is it day 10?
We only have 10 days to save...
11?
We only have 11 days, right?
I mean, like, the number of times it's just, if we do this, like, in Canada, it's like, when I was a kid, the big thing was, you could change, like, the law changed to allow people to shop on Sundays.
This will fundamentally destroy the Canadian...
Oh, we just shop it on Sundays, that's it?
Right.
We only have four days to save the world from...
Anyway, you know, like this...
People adapt.
They absolutely...
Yeah, of course they do.
And people want to overcome obstacles and they want to do well and they want to work hard.
I think humans enjoy that.
And, you know, I agree with you.
I think it would be very interesting to see if we could pull welfare completely and see what happens.
Oh, I mean, there would be solutions within a week or two.
And, of course, the problem is the debt has become so great...
That it's very difficult to cut welfare and return the money to the people.
Right?
I mean, if you're taxing people like crazy to pay for the welfare state, you cut the welfare state, and then people have like double their money.
Okay, fine.
So, you know, everyone gets jobs and stimulate demand and so on.
But because there's so much debt, maneuverability has really diminished, I think.
We're just going to cut everybody off of welfare and now we get more money.
Our taxes are lowered, right?
No, not so much.
Yeah, sorry.
Can't do that.
Here in Canada, there's a province called Alberta.
Sorry, I feel I need to explain this to Americans.
Yes, please do.
I think beyond America, it's just like hazy mortar-covered snow and fog and vaguely threatening people in Berets and trench coats.
And they've been like a conservative, which is sort of like Republican government in charge of Alberta for like 40 years.
And as you know, of course, oil prices have crashed and Alberta is a big resource.
Yeah.
And so the government is like, okay, so oil prices have crashed, which means that we have to pay more out in unemployment because a lot of people lost their jobs.
We're not getting as much money from taxes because economic activity has slowed.
So we're going to cut some spending.
And everyone's like, no!
No!
God, guts!
We only have four days to save the world from the conservative budget in Alberta.
Like, I mean, and people are just going insane, so what they did is they just voted in socialists.
Oh, no.
I'm like, that's a great solution.
Oh, are you telling me the truth?
Well, bye, because we've got this lovely liar over here who's going to tell me that they won't need to cut anything and end Greece.
Oh, my God.
Abdication, darling.
So I don't know what the, you know, the solutions are long term.
And even if, you know, even if we say, ah, you know, well, the problems are all environmental.
It's like, people think that if they say environmental, they get this giant magic wand that solves problems, you know?
It's like, well, okay, so how are you going to change that environment?
Yeah, and that's why it was such a two-edged sword when the woman who beat up her son on national television because he was being a demonstrator, everybody was like, yeah, you go, mama, you beat your son and tell him not to be a protester.
It's like, you're beating your son, that's why he's out there.
He's trying to rise up into his manhood and you're beating him down.
You have six children by three different men.
Yeah, so it was a two-edged sword on that one, you know.
Yeah, so I mean, I don't, you know, for me, the solution is just nag people about parenting.
Yes, please do.
Because that's the only thing.
Now, of course, the challenge is, I mean, if you have a low IQ population, and please understand, I'm saying what the experts say, and I'm certainly not referring to everyone in various communities.
But I mean, the problem is, if you have a low IQ population, convincing the low IQ population to improve their parenting is Yeah.
I mean, after, you know, years and like 50 or 60 years of people talking trash about spanking, still 80 to 85 percent of whites and 70, 75 percent of Asians are still hitting their kids.
So it's, you know, it is a it's a long, brutal process.
And of course, the people in charge in Baltimore just want things not burning now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's hard to say.
Short term gratification.
Yeah, I think, you know, the other thing, too, is that what people also don't see, and, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm speaking from, you know, massive hood cred experience, but, you know, a lot of criminals in the ghetto.
Yeah.
And a lot of good people who have terrifying experiences People in their neighborhood.
And, you know, the cops are there because someone called them.
Right?
The cops aren't like, well, we got called to the rich Asian neighborhood, but we decided not to go.
Right?
The cops are in those neighborhoods because there's a lot of criminals in those neighborhoods.
Not criminals elsewhere, too, but a concentration of criminals in the ghetto was huge.
Yeah.
And...
That is, you know, there's some Blacks who want more police, more police presence, you know?
Like, I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of Black business owners who are really, really happy about that curfew.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, I'm fortunate to be in a very diverse population in school and all around me, and the opinions are, you know, everyone's got one, but it's There's a lot of people who are very excited and happy about some of what other people would call strong-arming of the leadership.
You mean this sort of very heavy...
Yeah, and lines and lines of police officers with batons and shields, some of them upside down.
If you're going to carry a shield that says police on it, don't hold it upside down.
Unless that covers your nuts more.
I don't know.
I'm not an expert on these things, but...
But I, you know, the, you talked about, are you there for school?
Because you talked about, like, should I leave?
And did you mean that sort of like before exams, just by the riots?
Or do you mean that sort of in general?
Oh, I didn't mean leaving school.
I meant should I find a remote location from which to do my studying?
And, you know, I worked very hard to set up everything, the fitness center, my food, my perfect department, you know, everything's all set up for going into the, you know, brutal grind of studying for exams.
And, you know, I didn't, so I made a choice not to leave.
Right, right.
And they didn't push any exams, I assume.
They didn't sort of say, you know, take an extra week or two because insurrection kind of.
They did not.
They did pull some of the ones that were being given in the evening and move the schedule around to have some during the day.
I believe that some people could defer an exam if they were giving legal help to some of the, you know, protesters or people who needed it.
I never heard that officially, but, you know, I heard it through the grapevine.
Right.
Okay.
And are you done your exams?
No, no, not at all.
I haven't taken any yet, so I'll be doing this hopefully full survival.
Right, right.
And did you move to Baltimore, I assume?
Is your family from elsewhere?
I grew up mostly in D.C. and overseas as well.
Right.
Yep.
And this is your first experience with this kind of stuff, is that right?
Yeah.
I lived through 9-11, and I bicycled to the Pentagon when that happened and was one of the first people there.
The streetlight was broken for you conspirators out there.
And I... Did you find the drone?
I lived in Bangkok in the 70s, and there were riots going on there.
And, you know, there was a lot of danger during that time, too.
So certainly haven't seen quite this much of a little war.
But so it was, you know, still shaking.
Right, right.
And is this your final year?
Nope.
I have one more year to go after this.
Excellent.
Excellent.
And what made you decide to head to Loyal Land?
So I'm doing, even though I'd done a lot of writing and art, I'd been working as a paralegal for a long time and had actually gotten very interested in international tax.
I'm sorry, what now?
International tax.
Hang on, sorry.
Skype must be acting up.
Hang on, Skype.
I'm sorry, I thought what you said was you got very interested in international tax.
Yeah, I did.
Was that international sex?
Was that international taxidermy?
I may have internaval pins.
No, no.
Okay, you got to break that out for me, just for personal curiosity.
So studying tax law is like studying a virus.
If you want to know...
Where if you want to learn about life, you can study viruses as a way to learn about life because viruses only go where life is.
And tax is similar.
You know, tax only goes where the business really is happening.
I love business and I love...
Solving complexity and detangling complexity.
So I know that many people need this who choose to pay their taxes.
And I've lived overseas.
I went to college fairly overseas and it was the perfect fit.
It taps my aptitude.
So that's what I'm doing.
Okay, my first guess was, like, in Bangkok, you had disturbed the tomb of some ancient warlock, and they, you, you, death, death is not, death is too kind.
It shall be international tax.
No!
No, no!
If I get sat next to someone at a dinner party and they stab themselves with...
Anyway.
No, it's hot and cold running ecstasy.
It's amazing.
I love it.
I'm sorry?
It's hot and cold running ecstasy for me.
I mean, it's just...
I love it.
It's like solving puzzles.
It's just...
It's the coolest thing.
And herein, I am once reminded of the delightful diversity of the human experience.
Takes all time.
No, no, absolutely.
And, you know, there's lots of people who were like, Why are you at all interested in ethical philosophy?
It's like, because it's hot.
Because it makes me sexy.
Exactly.
No, no, I get it.
I get it.
People can't believe what the hell.
Wait, you could actually make money as a software entrepreneur and you're podcasting?
But no, that's the wonderful diversity of the human experience.
I know people who are accountants.
I'm glad that there are people who are accountants.
And you are the insanely good Steve Jobs of the philosophy world.
It's three months that I've been on Freedom Main and I haven't even exhaled yet.
How did you sign the show to begin with?
I was studying, I've been reading Ayn Rand, even though I have a liberal background, and I was looking up Ayn Rand, and you have a wonderful video series on Ayn Rand.
So I was looking at that and went, wow, he knows what he's talking about.
And I could actually do four of four.
I could just change the number to three of three.
No, no, that's cheating.
We all know.
We're all waiting for it.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It's Miss International Tax.
Anyway, I thought that was the point.
Anyway.
All right.
Is there anything else that you wanted to add?
I certainly wish you the very best with your studies.
And, you know, I think it's great to have those questioning the state in and around the tax land.
I think that's fantastic.
Thank you.
And this is such a great opportunity to – I feel connected and feel a little bit of healing from just being able to talk through it.
Thank you so much, Steph.
And thanks to Michael.
Yeah.
And listen, I mean, you know, hang on to that ambivalence.
There's, you know, there's – I get this – okay.
I'm sorry.
Do you mind if I just do a tiny bit?
I really haven't done any yet.
Just one?
Is that okay with you?
Yeah.
Another one?
Okay.
All right.
I'm good.
Rant consent is very important as far as I understand it.
But there is a dualistic kind of thinking that is the antithesis of wisdom and curiosity, right?
So when I point out facts about a police matter, what do people say?
You're pro-cop!
Hypocrite!
Right?
Right.
And...
When I point out things about race, ah, you're a racist!
It's just this weird dualism that people have.
I push for female responsibility.
Do you know there are no girl orcs?
What?
There are no girl orcs.
Oh, that's...
There were no...
I know, and I know this because...
I mean, look, we all have our fetishes.
No, I'm kidding.
But there were no girl looks.
You see, because...
Girl orcs would be to have an evil female character.
Yeah.
Who isn't pretty, right?
Men will accept evil if a woman's pretty.
I ain't bad.
I'm just drawn that way.
So when I push female responsibility and say, listen, we have to grant women the respect of allowing them to have good and bad like men do.
People are like, you hate women.
You got mommy issues.
When I say that there are benefits to marriage, it's like, You just want to enslave men through marriage and you hate MGTOWs.
It is really – I mean being out on the internet is like – you know strobe lights can give you epilepsy.
There's no gradations.
It's just bright, dark, bright, dark, bright, dark, bright, dark, about 3,000 flashes a second and you've got to stand before it and say – And you've got to use your calming words to soothe people down to some subtlety, some irony, some ambivalence.
I can talk about the facts of a police matter without endorsing.
And even when I say, I'm not saying I believe, I accept all of this stuff, but these are still the facts and blah, blah, blah.
I can espouse common law principles like innocent until proven guilty without saying, I now support everything that's in the tax code.
You know what I mean?
Like people, it's just like they can't sort of – it's like people feel like any two ideas is like a boat and a dock and they're going apart.
You have to jump on one or the other.
Oh, you fall to your death or something, right?
And so – You can't have simultaneous emotions.
You can't have simultaneous, you know, juxtaposed positions on things.
Yeah.
I mean, you're skeptical of police power, and at the same time, police power can be very helpful.
Right?
I get it.
I get it.
I mean, it is a challenging situation.
Thanks.
Yeah.
So, I get it.
I mean, you don't like the fact that helicopters are ordering you into your house at 10 o'clock, but you also like that there's fewer flames around.
You know, I get it.
It's not easy to navigate.
I think it is a mark of, I don't know, it sounds kind of elitist, but I think it's kind of a mark of intelligence.
If intelligence to be able to have more than one thought about something at a time without slipping into some massive polar opposite scenario where...
It's called polarized thinking or black and white thinking.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
That's an absolute statement.
But I mean, this is part of, I think, the subtlety in intelligence that we need to bring.
I put this video out where I was talking about how...
Totalitarian Nazism was a kind of socialism, and that's not good.
And apparently, I don't know where they come from, maybe they have Google Alerts, someone saying something bad about Hitler on the internet, I must intervene.
And then it's like, Stefan Molydoux is, you know, and it's just like, okay, that only works because you don't know about the silent X at the end.
Stefan Molydoux.
That doesn't work as well.
But then it's suddenly, now it's like suddenly, apparently it's bad to be anti-Nazi.
And this must mean that I'm part of the Jew world order.
It's just crazy stuff like this.
And it's like, yeah, okay, so Hitler hated communists and I hate communists.
So what?
I mean, that doesn't mean that Hitler and I are the same, you know?
Right, right.
Just because I like Viking mythology, I like Vikings, I think they're cool, sometimes I dress like Vikings, that doesn't mean that I'm a Nazi.
No, no, no.
I would say not.
And I don't think we're going to go any better than you dressed in Viking gear.
So, with like the flames of Baltimore rising behind you as you're trying to save kittens from trees or something.
But yeah, thanks.
Listen, keep in touch.
It was a really, really enjoyable conversation and it's great to chat with a new listener and certainly welcome to this corner of the world of philosophy.
Thanks again.
All right, thanks.
Take care.
Alright, thanks Julia.
Up next is Anthony.
Anthony wrote in and said, How do I deal with the feeling of hopelessness and inferiority that I get from not being able to directly positively impact my own outcomes in spite of the fact that I've been able to help many others achieve what I desire?
I want to be a good father for my son, and I don't want him to grow up with this lack of agency as a role model.
So you've been able to help other people achieve what you yourself desire.
I guess that's like Bruce Jenner buying dresses for his girls or something, right?
But can you tell me a little bit more about that?
That part in particular, I want to make sure I understand.
Sure, Steph.
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, welcome back.
Yes, thank you.
First off, I just want to say a very heartfelt thank you to you.
The relationship that my wife and I now enjoy has improved markedly since last summer, and I just really need to thank you and the work.
That you all are doing there.
It hasn't made things easier.
It's actually made things harder, but it's made us stronger as a couple.
So I just wanted to preface the call with that and that gratitude.
I'm thrilled to hear and, of course, overjoyed that the conversation was helpful.
So thank you very much.
I always love to get the updates.
People drop off this void of calls and it's like, hey, circle back!
It's great to hear.
I'm happy for that.
Sure.
To answer your question right now, What I'm discovering through a lot of journaling and a lot of counseling is that I am very, very effective when I have what I call conferred authority at achieving things for other people and helping them to achieve business outcomes or business results or Something
even in their personal life.
But when I go to ask for something in return for myself, it's almost like this electric pit in the center of my stomach that stops me from proceeding.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So to sort of give a very concrete analogy, you're happy to help people move?
But then when you need help moving, it doesn't work, you feel anxious about it, is that right?
Yes, and I can give you an even more concrete example than that, but I would prefer that you actually lead the call.
Oh no, listen, I like dealing with facts rather than, right?
Sure.
Well, the perfect example of up until this past week, I was kind of uncertain This theory that I've had goes back to when I was even a little kid.
I am here to provide for others, but I'm not actually able to provide directly for myself.
That came up this week when my wife and I were at a party, a family event for a local business.
My son swallowed a staple in a cupcake.
Right today, we're finding out that he'll probably be okay, but what I discovered was that it wasn't just a staple in one cupcake, it was a staple in every cupcake.
Oh my god!
Yes, yeah.
Sorry to ask such a prosaic question, but how the hell did a cupcake staples end up in a cupcake?
Well, one would ask, is it a mistake or is it intentional?
And it was actually, it was intentional.
It was, quote, part of the design.
Wait, wait, wait.
It was intentional that there was a staple?
I mean, it sounds like that if there's one in each cupcake, but it was intentional that somebody put potentially killing stuff into a cupcake which kids ate?
I can send a picture in the chat if you like.
No, no, no.
I'm not doubting you.
I'm just saying that isn't that someone away in jail for life?
One would think.
One would think that someone would have the common sense not to include metal In a cupcake.
However, when I inquired to the business owner and to the homeowner where the venue was, I'm like, hey, you know, our focus is our sun.
We want to make sure everything's upset, but we really want to know who made these because it's not safe.
God, yeah.
I mean, they could be all over the city.
They could be, I mean, yeah.
Yeah.
So we were being inconvenient to this group that we were previously a part of, and we were ostracized by, you know...
No, but don't you call...
I mean, I hate to put it this bluntly, but don't you call the cops?
We're in contact with the Department of Health, which is who the cops said to call.
With these kinds of issues.
Yeah, with these kinds of issues.
So it is open right now, and...
Okay, so good.
I'm no lawyer, but it sounds like close to criminal negligence to me.
Yeah, it pretty much is.
But I guess the point that I'm making is that people were actually mad at me for daring to ask who made these cupcakes.
Right, right.
Right.
Whereas, of course, they should have made the call way before you to find out.
Because people, it's like, oh, this is inconvenient to me.
It's like, well, it's a lot more inconvenient to some other kid who might not even be as lucky as your son and who might get some sort of perforated stomach lining and acid pours out into their internal organs and Bob's your uncle, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, to bring that back to my original, you know, what I originally called in for was that Before this happened this week, I didn't know if I was imagining it or if it was real.
What I've kind of come to the conclusion of is, number one, I really don't care if these people aren't my friends because they're not my friends if that's how they behave.
And that somehow I have surrounded myself with people who behave like that.
Yeah, people who...
Your son potentially having a life-threatening thing in a cupcake that wasn't just like one staple that fell off and, you know, bad enough, right?
But in every cupcake there was something that could have killed people and then you're inconvenient to these people, right?
So they obviously have no regard whatsoever for the health and safety of your son and of others and others who may be harmed.
They're only thinking of their own Right.
Yeah.
These are complete monsters, complete monsters in my opinion.
I agree.
It was very eye-opening for ...
I was really happy that my wife and I were on the same page.
That's something that our work together has really solidified us in because there would have been a time where she would have wanted to back down.
Don't make a fuss, right?
Don't make a fuss.
And now she's like, Anthony, you can't back down with this.
You cannot.
It's our kid.
So it's really...
The challenge that I have, though, Stefan, is that there's a part of me that...
We've retained counsel, right?
So I know what the deal is.
And there's a part of me that feels bad, like for a split second.
But then that goes away.
And that's what I think.
It's sort of that same feeling that I was describing earlier, that sort of like electric stomach pit.
Like, oh, that would be awful.
But then I'm like, no, this is my son.
This is my family.
I have to.
And I'm sorry to interrupt, Tony, but were you raised religious?
So I went to Catholic school from one through six, and when I previously talked with you, I didn't think that it had...
That big of an impact on me until our call.
And I've done a lot of journaling and reflection, and I realized that it has probably had the largest shaping on my life, which I was completely blind to.
So, yeah.
I'm not religious anymore.
Right.
No, I get that.
I get that.
But...
I think I can tell you where your anxiety comes from in these kinds of confrontations.
Sure.
My enemy the soul returns to rear its ugly head, right?
So, of course, in Catholicism, there's an essence of the human being, which really is the human being, which is how they can make the promise of life after death, right?
Mm-hmm.
And this is specific in particular to Christianity because in the Old Testament you died and that was it, but in the New Testament you're brought back to death for judgment and all that kind of stuff.
And it is hard for people to understand who are raised in a religious context where the good in you can't be killed, that you can always reach the good in someone and confession will restore you to God's grace and so on.
It is very hard in the religious mindset, particularly where the soul is involved, to understand the degree to which human tribes are fundamentally in opposition to each other.
And irrevocably, at least in the present, irrevocably in opposition to each other.
So somebody who's empathetic and somebody who's sociopathic Exist in a predator-prey relationship.
Yes, yes.
It's a win-lose relationship.
If the person who's empathetic teaches other people about empathy and self-protection, which hopefully is a little bit of my job description, then the sociopath is revealed, is unmasked, and is rendered impotent.
Has to get a real job, which is not great, right?
And, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched the new Battlestar Galactica, but...
Spoiler!
I don't think it's much of a spoiler, but the Cylons, I think they're called, for the first time, like in the previous one, they didn't, but now they look like people, right?
So they can have cool, orgasmic, spine-glowing sex or whatever, right?
And the big challenge is, you know, can you figure out a machine that's going to let you detect whether a person is a person or a member of an alien race bent on your subjugation and destruction, right?
Now, the Cylons are not human, right?
They are an alien race, and I think a robot race, and they want to enslave and destroy humanity.
Now, this is true of people.
We are not all hands across the water, kumbaya, everyone's the same deep down.
There's good and the worst of us, and bad and the best of us, and it's just a matter of grace, and we're all together in one place.
Human journey and human adventure and if we show empathy to those who are cruel, we will melt away their cruelty and so on.
We exist among human beings.
Not all, of course.
We've got a great circle of friends and family and massive props to the listeners who keep all of this going.
We are in predator-prey relationships.
There is win-lose in human society.
We're not all one big happy family.
We are an ecosystem.
And what you feel, I think, is that you are dealing with people like you.
Yeah.
And so you extend empathy because you make the mistake of thinking you're talking to a zebra when you're in fact arming for a lion.
Yeah.
So you say, well, if I was in that position, then I wouldn't want to, whatever, be in trouble or something like that.
And so because you were raised with the idea of the soul and that there's you in everyone, because everyone has a soul, all created as equals in the eyes of God and so on, right?
Right.
And so to refuse empathy, to view someone as an enemy, is an act of impiety, right?
It is an act of blasphemy, if that makes any sense.
Yes.
Because it is refusing to recognize what Mother Teresa, bless her blackened little heart, said about the poor.
I don't serve the poor, I serve Christ in the poor, right?
In every poor person I see Jesus.
And to fail to see the humanity of In someone else, to fail to see their goodness is to fail to see that they are a creature made by God with the divine spark of virtue that cannot be extinguished in their breast, right?
But this is not the reality of everything that ethics, and I believe a significant portion of brain science tells us as well, that somebody who was born and tragically receives terrible treatment, particularly In the womb and certainly thereafter receives brutal,
cold-hearted, mean treatment, we can have great sympathy for the sorrows that they went through and the pain and the agony that they went through and the neglect.
Great sympathy.
But it doesn't mean that they're not a lion.
It doesn't mean that it is win-lose between us.
And the identification of, you know, when I had cancer, yeah, kill those cells.
You know, it's win-lose.
I want them to die, so I don't, right?
Right.
And that is the reality of a significant portion of the human race.
It is win-lose.
And this idea, like, we feel this hesitation, right?
To act staunchly against those who are fundamentally opposed to everything that makes life worthwhile for good people.
I mean, and so we are causing trouble for others, and we think they're like us, and then we say, well, I wouldn't want people to cause trouble for me and so on, but they're not like us.
Maybe they don't have mirror neurons.
Maybe they've just committed to exploiting people.
They're not like us.
And to say, well, you know, they're people like we're people.
They're people like we're people the way that a gazelle and a tiger are both mammals, okay?
But they sure as hell don't have the same interest.
In fact, their interest is win-lose and fundamentally opposed.
And that's a very empirical, philosophical, but anti-religious sentiment, if that makes any sense.
So, Stefan, a lot of that resonated with me and clicked on some things in my head.
And the biggest question that I have, I have two from that, is my heart was pitter-pattering when I'm listening to you, and I'm like, I'm food.
How do I not be food?
That's question number one.
And question number two is, why is it that I'm comfortable being a predator and a damn good predator?
When it's authorized by other people, but I can't do it for myself.
Tell me how, what do you mean by it?
If somebody else either contracted me or hired me or working for some agency said, go accomplish this, I would do that.
Not hurting people, but I would be extremely efficient and have been extremely efficient and effective.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
So you're talking about the outsourced conscience.
Okay.
So having your own conscience is a very difficult thing for most people.
I don't think it used to be quite as much, but it certainly has been the sort of relativism, goopy, sympathy for everyone stuff that's going on.
I think it's become harder in some ways.
But just before we move to that, I just want to add one little point about religion to some degree was invented by evil people to make good people hesitate by saying that we're all the same, we all have a soul, and so on.
It causes the fatal hesitation that allows immorality to win.
I mean, if you're in a duel with someone, If you can get them to hesitate for one second when you turn and are about to fire, you're going to win the duel.
And so this hiccup that you feel, this tentativeness, this anxiety that you feel in confrontation, that's sort of the point of religion.
It's to get you to stall so that the other person wins.
It's to get you to hesitate so that the other person wins.
On the battlefield, this is, of course, if you can get the other person to hesitate, then you get the advantage, significant advantage in all combat, right?
Hesitation on the part of the other person grants significant increased chances of victory.
Absolutely.
All have the soul, all children of God, and so on.
This is designed to make you hesitate.
But what you're talking about, the outsourcing of conscience.
So, you know, if I go up to a bunch of guys at the mall and say, let's invade Iraq, right?
I mean, they're going to be like, what?
What are you smoking?
And keep it away from us, right?
But if you put a particular kind of structure in place and heavily imbue it with propaganda, then people will.
Do that.
They will outsource their conscience in the same way that if the priest blesses the warriors, then they've outsourced their conscience to him.
And the harvesting of human conscience is the fundamental task of a hierarchy.
Because if you can get people to turn over their conscience to you, then Nothing will stop them from obeying your orders.
I'll take your conscience.
Okay.
The Pope talks directly to God and God has said that the invasion of Iraq is morally good.
It is a just war.
Okay.
Right?
So now you've harvested people's conscience.
You've embodied it in a weird ex-Nazi with a funny hat.
And now they will just do whatever you say.
And so the outsourced conscience is fundamental.
It's the same thing with the cops, right?
Well, the Congress has passed a law and so it's the law of the land and so we got to go do it and shoot anyone who fights us back and disagrees, right?
That's the outsourced conscience.
And it happens all over the place with the state.
The state and the church in particular harvest There's an old story by Google called Dead Souls about a guy who's going around buying souls.
It's a great story to read.
And I've always really found it a very powerful analogy because this is what hierarchies do is they buy souls.
They say, join this hierarchy and I will relieve you of the burden of your individual conscience through metaphor, through ritual.
Through appeals to authority.
I will take from you this hot, inconvenient rock that you have to carry around called your individual conscience.
And people are desperate in many ways to give up their individual conscience because, of course, if enough people do it, anyone who retains theirs gets attacked, right?
By all the people who only have left of their conscience guilt and aggression.
So, yeah, people give you permission.
Wow.
So I guess what is the path then to reclaim that for oneself?
of.
I think it's recognizing that people may look like you, but they're not you.
You know, I mean, Joseph Stalin looks like a person, right?
Yeah.
He looks like an exceedingly over-jovial uncle you probably wouldn't want to leave your kids with, but he looks like a person, but he's not a person.
He is a predator who waves his hand and, with the bought consciences of those underneath him, can kill millions of people, and did.
Hitler was not a person like you and I. He was, as Winston Churchill described him, an adventurer of the old school, back when adventurer meant somebody who was really dangerous, Napoleon.
Was not a person like you and I, because I couldn't just take a bunch of people and order them to their deaths.
I couldn't do it.
And they're not like you and I. I've said this story before, but at the end of the First World War, I think it was November the 11th, 1918, it was the last day of the First World War, and peace was going to be declared at 11 o'clock.
And there was a commander...
Who had received orders for his men to go out on a sortie into no man's land at 8 o'clock in the morning.
He knew that the war was going to be over at 11, but still he sent his men out and a bunch of them got shot.
Wow.
Son of a bitch.
Yeah.
I mean, son of a bitch.
Wouldn't you be really happy to not get people killed in the last couple of hours of a war you know for certain is going to end?
No, but see, that's not like us.
I mean, I couldn't do that even in the best circumstances, and I certainly would never, ever do that.
You know, like, there's...
I don't know if you've ever seen a movie called The Life of Brian.
Yeah.
Okay, so you know that there's a...
When they're sort of lining up to be crucified...
Crucifixion.
One guy is like, crucifixion's too good for him.
Nail him up, I say.
Nail some sense into them.
And then there's this really dewy-eyed, gentle guy.
He's like, oh, I don't know.
It's pretty nasty.
And your name is?
Are you okay?
He's really kind of nice and gentle.
And the other guy is a complete psychopath who loves the idea of people getting nailed to crosses.
Well, they're not the same species.
Right.
It's not the same species.
You know, somebody who's going to sexually prey on your kids, they're not of your species.
And this fundamental mistake that we look across the broad swath of humanity, the win-lose of humanity, the predator-prey relationship of humanity, and think that we're all the same, is something that is so belied by history.
You know, up until they really started turning up the sociopath soul-scrubbing Basic training after the Second World War, like 80 or more percent of soldiers never fired their weapons at an enemy because the prohibition against murder is so strong in people.
And yet there were those still 20 percent who did and then a bunch of people who enjoyed it.
I mean, Churchill loved war.
He loved it.
He said, God help me, I don't like myself for liking it, but I love it so.
Disgusting.
Well, yeah, but that's the way it goes, right?
I mean, that is the reality of the human condition that there are people in the world whose interests are directly opposed to us, and it's them or us.
You know, it's good people or bad people.
And, you know, I believe in peaceful parenting.
I know it's going to make a lot more good people and reduce the prevalence of bad people.
And I look forward to the day when that occurs.
But that's not the world we live in right now.
You know, like when you settle a city, you drive out the wolves, right?
And then you don't have to worry about wolves when you walk down Fifth Avenue, right?
In Manhattan.
But we are not in the city of the future yet.
We are in the land of wolves and predators.
And that is the reality.
In the future, we will not have to worry about wolves and predators, but right now, they stand between us and a better world.
And, you know, based upon your story, these people put staples into the bellies of children.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do I... How do I prevent my son from getting a hiccup without turning him into a monster?
Yes, this of course is the great warning of Nietzsche, is that be careful when you fight monsters that you do not become a monster.
I don't have a deep or syllogistic argument for this, but the shadow cast by love is hate.
And it is a weak, weak person who disallows himself to hate.
I mean, we are the immune system.
We thinkers are the immune system of the social body.
You know, if you have some virus or some infection in your body, do you want your immune system to be understanding?
No.
You want it to be murderous, right?
Like, kill, kill, kill, and don't stop until they're all dead.
And you remember them well enough that if those new bastards come along, you can kill them without even breaking a sweat, right?
Right.
I mean, the viruses want to live, and so do you.
And it's them or you, right?
And so, to love virtue is to hate vice.
To love goodness is to hate evil.
Everybody loves the goodness stuff.
It's the hating of the evil stuff.
That is a challenge, right?
And knowing that there is a battle.
We all love to watch these battles on superheroes and all that.
We love to watch these battles in movies and on television and so on.
We just love.
I mean, just watch Battle of the Five Armies and it's just like, man.
If you gave a dollar to everyone, if you got a dollar for every giant orc that was killed by Tom Thumb the Dwarf, I mean, you'd forget that they're a millionaire, right?
And they all know that it's the orcs or them.
It's good and it's evil.
And to, you know, to remind your children at age-appropriate times and with non-traumatic examples that the story of the victory of virtue is not At an end as yet.
The paradise that virtue can deliver humanity into is still far over the horizon, and there are many devils between us and the peace of the species.
I think that if you allow yourself to love virtue and accept that that is going to have you hate vice, the hatred of vice that you retain is your immunity.
From becoming the monster that you fight.
I see.
But people are uncomfortable with hatred.
And of course, evil people want us to be uncomfortable with hatred.
Of course, right?
Because that's our weapon.
That's the only thing that will allow us to win in the long run.
Right.
Well, I'm just...
I'm...
Yeah, I... I'm just at this crossroads right now.
Obviously, I want to be a good provider for my son and my family, and I want to raise him up peacefully.
And this call has really helped me see that that's not...
Man, it's just...
I'm just still taken aback by how much of an impact that religious upbringing had on me from so long ago.
Well, look, I mean, Catholicism has had over 2,000 years to refine itself.
You know, the fact that you didn't overcome it as a toddler and a child is entirely understandable, right?
I mean, how the hell are you supposed to, right?
I mean, a toddler can't take on a 7-year-old, let alone a 2,000-year-old, right?
Right.
Of course.
I mean, there's no...
I mean, I was talking about this with a friend the other day.
The effects of my religious upbringing will always be with me.
Of course.
Of course.
I mean, it's a near-perfect virus.
And you can't fight it.
It's hard enough to fight with support and particularly if your parents are pouring it into you.
It would be an impossible fight.
If the fight were possible, religion wouldn't have survived and all the good and bad of the results of that.
I think don't ever underestimate the degree to which early values are still part of your life and they always will be.
I can reject religion, but I cannot reject that I've had to reject religion.
I would not consider my experience to be a fundamentalist, but I distinctly recall being punished.
I would be punished if any of the other boys in the class misbehaved.
Because I guess I was, like, a fairly clever or bright boy.
And I, like...
Yeah, it just...
I mean, it was...
The more I look into it, the more I'm just, you know, like, okay.
Well, so I'm constantly trying to manage everyone else's behavior.
Or I was.
I had been.
Because...
I feared the consequences if someone else misbehaved.
Well, you understand, though, that collective punishment is a way of making sure that hierarchies flourish off slave-on-slave violence, right?
Collective punishment is the most ancient way of turning the slaves against each other and getting them to police each other.
Because if the slaves put down each other's rebellions, you don't need that many whips in your hand, right?
So collective punishment, like I remember when I was a kid, they'd have a piece of gum, just enjoying a piece of gum because it We release the tedium of this god-awful school experience.
Our teacher will be like, Stefan Mullen, did you bring enough gum for everyone in the class?
It's like, well, it's not my job to chew gum.
It's your job to teach.
Did you bring any good teaching for anyone in the class?
Isn't that a little bit more important than whether I have any gum?
I should correct myself, Stefan, because I didn't actually mean collective punishment.
I meant that if anyone misbehaved, it was supposed to be up to me to...
Sorry, why you?
I know you said you were clever, but why you?
Right, so the nun would say, well, you are the best student in the class, so you need to set a role model for the other students.
And so if you see them doing something wrong, and you don't stop it, then I'm going to punish you.
Oh, I see.
I see.
So because you were the quickest witted, you were supposed to be the one who ferred out.
So you were like the little secret police, the NKVD, the Gestapo in amongst the class, right?
Trying to get people to...
Or more like pleading with people not to misbehave.
Right?
I would go...
Well, no.
But that's to make sure that you are disliked by your classmates.
And therefore your intelligence can't be something that in combination with charisma could lead any kind of rebellion.
Right?
So this is why smart kids are always picked on.
Because smart kids represent a threat to those in power.
And so whatever teachers can do to turn...
Students, again, smart people means that they're insulated from the kind of intelligence that might actually lead them out of the wilderness.
Interesting.
Wow.
You form assist around intelligence so that it can't threaten a hierarchy, right?
Yes.
Which is also known as academia, but anyway.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, thank you.
I mean, I've just...
My brain is full, again.
And I've learned so much.
I mean...
It's not easy.
What you're saying about the ostracism, I can't tell you how powerful that is.
How powerful ostracism is?
You know, that's the whole foundation of a free society, so I think you can tell me.
Right.
No, no.
If ostracism doesn't work, we're stuck with the state.
No, no, no.
But even when it's used by non-virtuous people, it works both ways.
It cuts both ways, is my point.
Oh yeah, evil people can use it as well.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I can't tell you how painful it was for my wife to receive these threats from her people who she sees every day.
Oh, she received threats because you guys had a problem with staples in children's food?
Right.
And, you know, it just, I mean, it is extremely powerful.
Like, just amazingly powerful.
It cuts both, but it does cut both ways.
Oh, absolutely.
Of course, yeah.
No, there's no question of that.
And this is why people try to isolate thinkers in society, you know, through ridicule attack and mockery and hostility and so on.
I don't actually engage in the arguments.
I mean, that's a lot of work.
But, you know, you can spread horrible rumors about people and, hey, look at that!
So no, I think it is right.
Of course, I mean, the mechanics of a free society are even better understood by evil people than by good people, and we're trying to fix that through this show.
Right.
Right.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Keep us posted, and I certainly wish you the very best of luck with protecting future children from staples in the belly.
I mean, that really is horrifying, and I'm glad you're doing something about it.
Indeed.
I posted in the Skype chat there a picture for you to check out.
But in any event, thank you once again for a very, very meaningful call that will mean a lot to me and my family.
If this has done anything like the last call did, I will have some amazing things to report to you.
Well, I'm thrilled.
And please do pass along my very, very best wishes and admiration for your wife.
In her joining of your journey, just tell her, good for her.
It's tough when you're married to someone and then they get into some new way of thinking or hopefully just way of thinking.
It's a challenge.
I really do appreciate her support of what you're doing and her participation in this.
Do give her my best.
Thank you very much.
Take care, Anthony.
Bye-bye.
Alright, up next is Josh.
Josh wrote in and said, Many years ago there was a scene in an episode of Futurama where the human race goes extinct because they all choose sex robots that look exactly like celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe instead of dating each other and having children.
While far-fetched years ago, it seems probable that within less than a decade, there might be a thriving sex robot industry, and not just in Japan, but in America too.
So in the long run, how is marriage and human-to-human sexual relationships going to compete with sex robots?
All right.
I feel that this show should never have gone 3,000 episodes without dealing with sex robots.
So, I appreciate you bringing up the topic.
I assume you yourself are not a sex robot, because I don't think the technology is quite that advanced yet, right?
No, no.
So, just if I could first start off, say that I have finally decided to do some therapy, and I signed up.
I have my first session tomorrow with a therapist, and you are a big part of that, and I'm very helpful about it.
That was one of the questions in the email.
I just wanted to finally stop procrastinating on that.
The second thing is, back on subject, I know I don't own any sex toys.
I've never really...
Wait, we've expanded it from robots to toys as a whole?
Well, I feel like, you know, a sexual body is a derivative of, like, sex toys today.
And so I've never owned any, and part of me thought that, you know, if I owned a sex toy, the idea, it would kind of discourage...
It would discourage, like, going out there and trying to pursue a woman, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I get it.
At least until sex robots get the right of alimony and child support, but yeah.
Right.
No, I'm just sort of envisioning...
Okay, first of all, of course, and no disrespect to you, but I'm going to be listening for faint buzzing sounds during the conversation.
And also, it's, you know, to my, I guess, slightly ancient 20th century way of thinking, a sex lubricant is not something that involves engine oil, but...
I guess now that's changing.
So sex robots would be...
Would they be companions?
Or would they simply be simulacrums for sexual activity?
Like highly sophisticated blow-up dolls kind of thing?
Or would they be more like robot companions?
Two notes on that.
First being...
So I saw this video that had like a million views on YouTube that came out in December.
And it's like talking about how, you know, the sex robot discussion and some news broadcasters were talking about it.
And they kind of showed some designs that a French artist put.
And then they also showed this video of a robot.
It had to be French.
It's never a Scotsman.
Right, I got it.
They invent golf, not other putt-syncing activities.
Okay, go on.
Right, and then there's this robot that dances.
It's like a stripper robot.
And dancing and syncs to the music.
And I was like, wow.
And then, of course, I've seen before, like in Japan, they already have full-blown...
Models that people have sex with.
Okay, you can't use the phrase full-blown when talking about sex robots.
No, these are not...
I'm just telling you.
They're not blown up.
They're actually like...
No, no, I'm talking about blown like blowjob, just to really...
Okay.
And so I think about, like, all right, this is 2015.
I got this super smartphone that I just got, and I was like, wow, in 10 years...
Especially the way that relationships between men and women are really fractured today.
There's so many men that just play games.
Dating is just like, why bother?
And it's not just in Japan.
It's in Europe.
It's in the West.
Okay, so I get that.
I mean, there certainly will be some people who would prefer artificial sex to real sex, right?
And we don't have to go to sex robots to know that.
We simply have to look at the presence of pornography, right?
Because masturbation to pornography is kind of like a two-dimensional sex robot with your hand or whatever, right?
That you can achieve your orgasm and And so on without anyone else there, right?
I would assume that that would be kind of a driver.
Right.
And I don't...
I'm not going to say that it's going to be given up completely, but I just wonder how it's going to change given that, like, there's no laws...
Like, there's prostitution laws against, like, men going out and just, you know, sticking with a prostitute.
But, like, if men...
Because, like, sex for...
Men and women is a bit different.
I think for women it's more on the emotional side, where for guys it's more on the, I just need this to be able to think for tomorrow.
Yeah, and there are some studies that have come out, I think just very recently, We talked in the Truth About Sex presentation, which everyone should check out at freedomainradio.com slash videos or YouTube slash freedomainradio.com.
Sorry, YouTube.com slash freedomainradio.
But we talk about how the number of sexual partners that a woman has significantly impacts her happiness in marriage and the success of the marriage.
The more sexual partners a woman has, the less likely she is to remain happily married.
This does not seem to occur for men.
So the number of sexual partners a man has doesn't seem to have any effect on the stability of marriage, but the number of sexual partners a woman has does.
So yeah, of course, men and women, I mean, just look at the number of sperm versus the number of eggs, and it shouldn't be hard to figure out what goes on from there in terms of sex differences.
Right, right.
And so I was just thinking, like, this might be a thing in the future.
And I personally, like, I was asking myself, like, would I do it?
And it goes back to what I thought about, like, not buying a sex toy, because at the same...
Sorry, when you say sex toy...
I mean, what do you mean?
Do you mean like a...
What do they call them?
A fleshlight or something like that?
So that's an artificial vagina, right?
You know, women get vibrators and stuff like that.
Right, right.
And I think that there are also just heads for oral sex and so on.
They are?
Yeah, blow up dolls and so on.
You know those...
Those blow-up dolls with the perpetually surprised expression and so on, right?
Right.
So, like, these are basically, like, sophisticated.
But, like, it just got me thinking of it like that.
In Futurama, like, they had, like, people that they actually...
Like, a Marilyn Monroe was going on Fry and then he passed away having sex with this Marilyn Monroe robot.
And then it backed up, and it showed that all humanity just gave up.
And that's really far-fetched, and I don't think it's going to ever come to that.
Oh, it might.
I mean, but that doesn't mean that's sort of the end of society.
That just means that a more virile society will come along.
Right.
And take them over, right?
And so I was thinking about this question a lot, like...
Why did this come to mind?
Why did I submit it?
And it kind of got me, like, thinking emotionally, like, why...
Like, it made me think about myself, because I haven't...
It's okay.
Some small background.
I think the way I've...
Originally, I pursued women because I was young and I wanted to have sex and I wanted to get laid.
And then I did this and it was really unfulfilling.
Relationships just felt like...
Like, okay, I did this thing called a relationship, and it sucked.
And now it's horrible.
I don't ever want to do it again.
And I did it so many times.
Well, wait, wait.
No, hang on.
Because you're talking about two things.
You're talking about sex, and you're talking about a relationship, right?
Right.
And the reason I'm saying that is because I think the original driver for a lot of men is they want to get laid.
And then later on, they get feelings, and they think, okay, I want to...
It's that first...
Lust is kind of...
Look, I get it.
Men are incredibly vulnerable to falling in love.
What's called the biochemical endorphin released fantasy called...
Women know this, right?
There's this documentary called Sex, Lies, and Rinsing.
R-I-N-S-I-N-G. It talks about these women who basically...
Flirt with men.
They never sleep with them, at least so they claim.
I think it's true.
They seem far too cynical and bitter to actually enjoy sex, but they flirt with men and then men buy them stuff and just keep buying them stuff.
There's this model who guys will pay 50 pounds to speak with her on Skype for 10 minutes.
And so men are incredibly susceptible to infatuation probably is the best way of putting it.
And I think that men are much more susceptible to infatuation than women are.
And that's because women have to spend so much more energy and resources to produce a child than men do, right?
So women tend to be at least in a state of nature because the equivalent of sex robots for men is the welfare state for women, right?
which provides them an artificial husband without an actual person being there, right?
The husband is supposed to give the woman resources while she's laid up having babies and breastfeeding and taking care of an endless brood.
The husband is supposed to be providing her resources.
And so the welfare state is the sex robot and the pornography for women.
This is what's so funny to me about women who are against pornography.
It's like, okay, then you should be against the welfare state, which is just pornography for women because it gains them the advantage of being in a relationship without them actually having a human being there, right?
They get resources without a husband in the same way that a masturbating or sex robot fetishizing man can get sexual release without a woman being present.
Well, sexual release for resources is the old trade in the animal kingdom.
It's not the only thing that goes on in a relationship, but that's the reason why there is a relationship and the reason why there are two genders.
And so it's just kind of funny that we have a sex robot called the welfare state for women.
And yet, you know, if men even remotely think of going down that direction, it's weird.
Anyway, just sort of point that out, right?
No, I totally resonate with what you're saying there.
I didn't go like MGTOW, but...
I didn't really know about that term until within the last couple years or so, but I kind of already did it.
Just within the last few years, I was like, man, why would I ever want to go back?
MGTOW, men grabbing their own wallet.
That's a good one.
And so, I didn't know why.
I was like, I don't know why I would want to go back to pursue relationships with women.
And it wasn't until...
You started talking about, like, self-knowledge and, like, the value of marriage and, like, what to look for in a woman and, like, I was like, wait, like, there's another way?
Look, I mean, and let me just make, I'm sorry to interrupt, but let me just make this basic speech and I'll forget it because it is important and I think it really does fit into what you're talking about.
Society's That reduce struggle, reduce risk, reduce challenge, reduce uncertainty are conquered by societies that don't.
I mean, it's just the basic reality of the way that societies work.
We all have an inbuilt desire to reduce risk and to eliminate, like each individual has a desire to eliminate negative consequences of bad decisions.
Of course we do.
It's natural.
We also have an infinite desire to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos, right?
And not work and have free money and all these kinds.
And we all have, of course, that's natural.
And through the state, we can achieve artificial results, non-organic results, right?
Through the state, we can...
Like the women who choose a bad guy, they can get the state to...
pay for their abortions or pay for their housing or get free, quote, free schools and subsidies and healthcare and all this sort of shit, right?
So when we refuse to let individuals fail, they're going to take a moral hazard in the marketplace.
To hell with that.
The real moral hazard is in the sexual marketplace.
And if you – we're bailing out the banks.
It's like...
We're bailing out the single moms, people!
It's a little bit more...
That's why we have to bail out the banks.
It's because we're bailing out the single moms.
And so when we don't allow or accept failure...
At an individual level, societies fail.
So right now, we're in this...
And I've mentioned this before.
We're in this weird extreme swing of the pendulum.
Where...
Women, to a large degree, are running politics.
I mean, sometimes think that the only reason there's a military-industrial complex or an empire is so that women can get turned on by men in uniform and get their pensions and stable income.
And so, if there does turn out to be a craze in sex robots, well, all that will happen is that those cultures will die off.
And other cultures will move in to take their place.
For instance, I submit Europe as a whole where the original inhabitants of Europe are not having children very much and let's just say new arrivals to the land of Europe are having babies by the beach sand bucket full.
And so the The people who don't deal with the tendency of...
All societies tend towards gynocentrism.
All societies tend towards pleasing the needs of women.
That's natural.
It's inevitable.
And free societies keep that balance.
And state societies simply do not.
Particularly social welfare democracies simply do not keep that balance.
Women have so much power in society that giving them the power of the state as well is completely...
I mean, we've seen all this distortion that has gone on, and I've got whole presentations about this on the channel, so I won't go into any kind of detail here.
But yeah, there may be very compelling sex robots, and that may make a lot of guys...
Withdraw from the sexual arena.
And that means that simply there'll just be fewer and fewer kids.
And then the society will be taken over either somewhat peacefully through immigration or somewhat non-peacefully through invasion.
It's the story of the Roman Empire.
I mean, the Roman Empire got increasingly gynocentric towards the end and collapsed.
And, you know...
Men plus the state is a natural limiter because men pay the taxes and men go to war.
So men have – there's a reason why it's the founding fathers and not the founding mothers because men have a skepticism of the state because the men suffer the most directly when the state expands.
But as I talked about recently in another show, it's not the same with women.
And when women and the state get together, society quite rapidly falls apart.
It's not because there's anything wrong or bad about women.
It's just the nature of politics plus vagina.
It's just the way that sexual selection works.
So, you know, any society that gets addicted to sex robots won't be around for very long.
I mean, it just won't.
And it will be an increasingly aging society.
I mean, you see, of course, this stuff happening in places like Italy and Spain, Portugal, France, Japan, of course.
England, yeah, I mean, certainly.
And...
It's just a sign that society has swung too much one way or the other.
And so when societies go off the rails, in other words, once they lose the self-correction of the marketplace, and the state is like steroids that make your arms so strong that when you lift weights, they fall off, right?
Yeah.
I mean the muscles are way stronger than they should be.
So the bones rip out of the joints and rip out of the sockets and you're left with like very heavy weights and your arms on the ground bleeding to death in the corner.
It just – it steroids up things too much and the natural correction of the marketplace – Would be the result.
It's blocked.
It's blocked from any kind of natural compensation.
You know, like self-regulating systems don't involve the state.
Like the weather doesn't respond very well to the state.
Even when the state claims it wants to control, it doesn't do a very good job.
And the weather, because it's not subject to the state, has a self-balancing mechanism.
There are...
Natural phenomenon occur this way as well, right?
So, I mean, if a predator is removed and then from an environment, you know, think of the rabbits in Australia and so on.
If the predators are removed, then their prey breed and then all starve to death, right?
So there's this balance in nature.
One of the great famines in human history that's generally underreported occurred a couple hundred years ago in France where...
There were bugs that were eating the foliage and the emperor wanted things to be more green.
And so they, you know, trapped and killed the bugs, trapped and killed the birds and so on.
And then, you know, the problem was that the...
The birds were eating the foliage, so they got rid of all of the birds and then the insects, uncontrolled by the birds, ended up eating all the crops and like tens of millions of people died of starvation, right?
So it's only the state that can produce these wild oscillations in any kind of system.
Massive violence does that.
And so in a system where there was too much power, sort of I'm centralizing in women.
Then, yeah, men would veer away from getting married to women and then other women would be willing to relinquish certain powers in order to get men to come back.
But that's not the way it works with the state, right?
I mean, the state just makes all the laws and people just, you know, marry the alpha male state until it rides them into the graves.
Anyway, I sort of wanted to mention, yeah, sex robots could certainly be there and would be compelling for people, and it would be the end of that particular culture.
And then some other culture would come along that was more aggressive or more lively or whatever, and then that would be...
that would take over, right?
So it's not the end of the world.
It's not the end of human society.
It's just the end of that society.
So basically, the Western societies that...
Where the pendulum has swung too far one way are basically going to be overrun by other cultures.
Well, unless people do something, yeah.
I mean, I think that's what history tells us quite repeatedly, that when a culture loses the basic desire to fuck, it gets fucked.
Yeah, I saw this Vice special where they went to Japan and they...
I guess they're called herbivores or something.
I feel like society's kind of headed that way and I got kind of scared because I was like, man, I need to get back in the daily game and create some people in the future that will reverse these things.
Well, I mean, yeah.
Or, you know, we can just give up and become like the, you know, the mouse utopia experiments.
They've tried to design six million different ways that they can create a perfect environment for mice.
Like, no predator is just the right temperature, more than enough food, as much sexual access as possible.
It never works.
It always degenerates into chaos and violence and fighting, but there are a group of mice that basically remove themselves from any interaction with society.
They go off onto the side.
They groom themselves.
They try to make themselves look pretty, but they don't engage in sex, and they basically just get enough food to eat.
They're the MGTOWs and other people who have gone galt, and they just look at all of the chaos.
So that's where things are at the moment, and Maybe people will wake up and maybe people will say, yeah, you know, we have a civilization and a culture that is worth preserving in the West and we're willing to start doing the necessary fights to do that.
And I applaud the MGTOWs for doing what they're doing.
I mean, for bringing attention to this, like, state steroided gynocentrism and so on.
I think it's fantastic work and it's been very illuminating to me.
It's the solution to not breed.
Well, I have some doubts about that.
I think that if we look at the cultures that would take the place of Western culture, they're not cultures I want to live in.
And the wonderful thing about not having kids is it makes you – it tempts you with fundamental indifference to the future.
But when you have kids, your time frame extends – You know, like there's this thing about Keynes, right?
Keynesianism, the John Maynard Keynes, the economist.
People would say, well, in the long run, and he'd say, well, in the long run, we're all dead.
Well, he was gay, he didn't have kids.
Yes, it's true for you, but it's not true for us breeders.
Wow.
Yeah.
But I just...
Just to reiterate, like, you really changed a lot of my...
Attitudes towards dating and just women, marriage, everything.
That's why I'm always taken aback when people are like, oh, Steph is such a misogynist and he hates women.
I've developed a much better respect for women than I didn't have before because I didn't grow up in a great household.
It's just like hearing from what you said, just hearing some of the women callers that call in and talk about their dedication to peaceful parenting.
I was like, wow, I really don't need to not check myself out.
No, you don't need to check yourself out.
Again, I don't think that...
I think if it was so late in society that the only option was to strike, was to go on strike, I wouldn't do a show.
I wouldn't do a podcast.
I wouldn't.
I mean, I'm doing this because it's not too late.
Right.
This isn't a check yourself into the terminal ward and try to make yourself as comfortable as possible.
No, I'm a big one for rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I don't believe it's too late.
I don't believe it's too late at all, and the internet has made it possible for it not to be too late.
And...
So people who come here expecting a too-late message, check out, groom yourself...
Masturbate, play video games, fucking die.
It's all over.
Well, they've come to the wrong place.
This show would not exist if I believed that.
If you would have asked me maybe a few years ago, after I was still reeling from the pain of the relationships, I think I would have a totally different answer.
Yeah, but...
After listening to your shows, I was like, wow.
The self-knowledge part was just powerful.
I was like, wow.
I think I've done more critical thinking about Everything, any subject within the last year than I've probably ever done in my whole life.
And just re-evaluating, like, why do I believe these things?
And, like, listening to my emotions, not just, like, just really powerful stuff, man.
I'm really glad for that.
And, look, I mean, if this conversation or this show as a whole has helped open up your heart to love and hope, And fatherhood and so on.
Fantastic.
It really is.
The death of the West is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's not a certainty as yet.
Absolutely.
It's the old thing, like, oh, if we believe that there's no hope and no future and why have kids, okay, then it's true.
But it's only true because people believe it.
I mean, the West survived the Black Death.
The West survived the Crusades, which...
Contrary to a lot of popular opinion, was not exactly always initiated by Christians, to put it mildly as possible.
The West survived the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War.
The West survived the predations of the aristocracy that lasted for over a thousand years.
The West survived endless famines and plagues and, you know, the idea that we're going to be fucking killed by alimony.
It's so ridiculous.
It's so ridiculous that I don't even know what to say.
That's why I just want to grab people and say, remember the size of your ancestors.
Remember the place that you came from.
Remember the grandeur of your culture.
The idea that we're going to be undone by shitty little voters with shitty little agendas after What our culture has survived and flourished under is ridiculous.
I just want people to remember how big and powerful they really are and how much a culture has surmounted to bring the extraordinary gifts of reason, philosophy, capitalism, modern medicine, science.
The gifts that the West has bestowed upon the species will likely never be matched by any other culture again, past, present, or future.
And we did that.
We brought empiricism and rationality to the world through a state of fairly medieval superstition and the dominance of an ancient religious organization.
And we brought the concept of limited government, constitutionally limited republican government or a republic, For the first time in history, people say, ah, Rome was a republic.
Yes, with slaves.
So...
And they say, ah, well, America was a republic with slaves.
It's like, yes, but not for long.
Yeah, and if I... Like, when you were saying this just now, and you said, like, the West actually did something good for the world...
I immediately thought of all the propaganda I've had my entire childhood and going to public schools of like, oh, saying anything good about Western culture is racist and that you should embrace multiculturalism.
But basically saying that whites are all shitty somehow is not racist.
Exactly.
Whites are all bad is not racist.
And saying that whites have done some good stuff, that is racist.
But that's just, I mean, who can take any of that shit seriously?
Absolutely.
You tell me one other fucking culture that has brought as many...
You know what I say?
If you don't like white culture, boycott.
Boycott everything made by whites.
Come on!
I dare you!
I dare you!
Boycott everything made by white people.
I'd like to see what kind of life you're going to have.
Probably won't be hearing a lot from you in the 21st century.
Just boycott everything invented or made by white people.
Make sure you boycott science and modern medicine and political freedom and freedom of speech and freedom of religion and and and, right?
Absolutely.
But the point I was the emotion that came up when you said that I was thinking if I just said that to like people They would all get uncomfortable.
To me, it's an obvious fact.
Western culture, we've got the freedom of speech and all the things that we...
We don't want to live in cultures where that doesn't exist, but we're not supposed to say that.
Just the fact that even though I've really developed in the last few years, that emotion still comes up.
It really shows just how...
Deep down, the propaganda has really gone far.
No, absolutely it has.
It absolutely has.
And there's this giant, ridiculous shit test put on white culture by the world.
And we're just supposed to shit in our own nest and cower for having existed.
And I mean, it's ridiculous.
Oh, yeah.
There was imperialism from whites.
It's like, yeah, welcome to the human fucking race.
Imperialism from every, every single culture.
Every single culture was imperialistic.
Hey, was it fun in China being ruled by the Japanese?
Not really.
How about being in Greece under the Turks for 400 years?
Not particularly.
Great.
You know, what was it like being invaded by Muslims in the 17th century?
Was that fun for a lot of people?
It really, really wasn't.
And this idea that we're just going to focus on white imperialism when whites were the first people to voluntarily relinquish an empire and the fact that we're going to talk about white slavery when the whites were the ones who ended.
You know, I don't say this because I'm white.
I'm just looking at the facts, right?
I mean, whites ended slavery.
And there were no other cultures.
I mean, slavery has been around as long as human beings have been around.
And what was the culture that ended slavery?
White culture!
Right?
I mean, any thanks for that?
I give thanks that white culture ended slavery.
I think it's wonderful.
Maybe because I'm Irish and I could have been sold as a slave.
I don't know, right?
But it's just, I don't know.
I mean, it's, I don't know.
I don't even know what to say.
It's just, it's too ridiculous for words.
But it's just, it's the fashion, you know, these days.
And, you know, we can believe it and cower and, oh, so bad and all this.
It's like, oh, we can just say, yeah, well, Show me the better culture.
Show me the culture that's provided more benefit to the world.
I'm totally willing and happy to hear it.
Show me the empirical evidence.
Of a culture that has brought more benefit to the world and whose products and ideas are more voluntarily in use throughout the entire human family.
I'm really open and willing.
I try to be an empiricist if I've got some blind spot, if I'm whatever, right?
It's just the way that it is.
And why it is, I don't know.
But I'm happy to hear the case.
And it's not like something I take pride in or anything like that.
I didn't do those things, but just looking at it objectively, you know, the Japanese will probably give us great sex robots.
I mean, I think that's objectively the case.
And, you know, the Harlem Renaissance and black culture has given us some fantastic stuff, and Asian culture has given us some fantastic stuff, and white culture has given us some fantastic stuff.
And, yeah, anyone who says otherwise, I mean, I just...
I don't know.
I mean, it's...
Do you think there's...
Go ahead.
Do you think there's, like, going to be, like, a more segmentation in society because of this, like...
Like you said, the maus going in the corner, like the MGTOWs, and then I guess people...
Is there going to be more extreme ends of the spectrum as society goes forward in the sense that one part will be moving towards peaceful parenting and then the other side is just going to be buckling down, going as hard in the other direction as possible?
Or...
I don't know.
I mean, I will tell you that I want people to move more towards reason and thought and evidence than someone.
That is, you know, I can't say where do I think things will head because I'm one of the people who's trying to make it head in a particular direction.
Like, you're talking to the captain of a ship and saying, where do you think the ship's going to go?
And it's like, see this wheel here?
Right?
That's true.
And would you, if there was anything you could say to The Japanese men, which are committing cultural seppuku.
I lost for words when I saw this Vice short documentary about what's going on there.
Because I already kind of see it here happening.
Well, I would just say that...
You know, this is to Japanese men and women, and just find your balls.
You know, I mean, find your balls.
Write your story in the page of humanity.
Write your story in the page of humanity, or write your page in the story of humanity, probably is a better way of putting it.
That it's not over, it's not done.
And to flee into petty sense pleasures...
Is to withdraw from the most essential combat in the story of the species, which is to promote virtue and fight vice.
If you don't like your culture, don't run away.
Fucking change it.
If you don't like your social structure, don't retreat into the sewers of self-regard.
Fucking change it.
We are as grand as we allow ourselves to be.
We are as deep and meaningful and powerful as we allow ourselves to be.
Don't like something.
Don't whine.
Don't complain.
Don't disappear up your own ass.
Don't just sit there playing video games and masturbating and complaining.
Get up and fucking change it.
Get off your ass.
Go start something.
Go speak to people.
Go do something.
And remember the power and grandeur of human existence is not confined to storybooks and Marvel comic heroes and people who fell into vats of radioactive liquid.
It is in your heart and it is in my heart.
I am not that smart.
I just screw my courage to the sticking place and speak the truth as I see it and try to be as accurate and as honest as possible.
And that is available to everyone.
That is available to everyone.
People write me all the time and say, oh, I wish I could learn to speak like you.
I wish I could learn to communicate like you.
And it's like, start practicing.
Just do it.
Set up your camera.
Speak your mind.
Have courage.
Open your heart.
Listen.
Be passionate.
Care.
We all care.
We all care about what's right.
We all care about what's good.
Just, you have the most incredible megaphone the world has ever seen.
You can reach the whole planet from your toilet.
Okay.
You can.
You can.
You can hide under your bed, record a show, and put it out for the whole world to hear.
And there's no barrier, and there's virtually no cost involved.
And at such a time, when we have the greatest trumpets of human connection and the greatest capacity to bring reason, truth, passion, evidence, and virtue to the world, what do people do?
Look, I'm playing a video game and making a funny voice.
Oh look, I'm putting some weird colored shit on my eyes.
Oh look, my cat fell.
Oh look, someone fell over.
This tininess of manifestation.
In the face of such unbelievable possibility and opportunity is one of the greatest tragedies of the modern world.
It's like as our opportunities have grown, we have shrunk as a species.
People in the past went over trench walls to a near certain death.
Because they thought they were fighting the good fight for king and country, for civilization.
People trekked through trackless wastes with predators and viruses and scant food and uncertain water.
Half of Europe fled to the New World on creaky ships that sank regularly and took six weeks to take you across what a plane can fly over now in four and a half hours.
And they came to a whole new country where they knew almost no one, had a couple of dollars in their pocket, and they built a whole world, a whole civilization.
And created the greatest explosion of wealth and freedom that history has ever seen.
And don't tell me that this is somehow reserved for the people you read about as chapter headings in history books.
No, these are average people taking incredible risks, doing amazing things, stabbing out into a completely unknown world for the possibility of freedom and self-ownership, the amount of courage it took to uproot yourself from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and Ukraine and Croatia and England.
All of these countries go across the sea to a new world and carve a new world out of a wilderness where there were language barriers, cultural barriers, religious barriers.
This is what the average person in the 18th and 19th and 17th century was willing to do.
And what stops us now?
Well, there are feminists.
And Alimony.
It's Alimony.
Really?
Really?
Our ancestors walked through walls And we fall flat on our face and whine because there's a dust bunny.
Really?
Is this what we have reduced to?
And if this is what we have reduced to, then maybe we should just become a shadow in the history books despised by all because we damn well let it happen.
That was powerful.
I feel like they are like A few years ago, I would be totally buying into all those arguments against marriage.
Even those arguments are like, oh, well, there's too many people on the planet anyway.
That stuff is like poisoned.
And I feel like it's poisoning the people who would be best having kids.
No, listen, the overpopulation freaks go to the Muslim countries.
Go learn Arabic, go become an imam, and go and preach overpopulation in the Muslim countries.
No, seriously.
I mean, they're the ones you should be talking to about overpopulation, if that is your concern.
But they're not doing that, are they?
No, they're going after people who have actual concerns about people who think about Getting into marriage and people who think about having kids, that's like their target.
And I kind of bought into that.
I think you said once that it's easier for a man to be alone.
Like a young man, it's easier for him to be alone than for a woman.
And I feel like I've been living that kind of life.
Yeah, look, a young man is gathering resources, whereas a woman...
It's losing fertility.
Yeah.
And, I mean, so much has...
I mean, the distortion that has happened through social media and so on, it used to be a lot harder for a woman to get attention.
Now she just, you know, posts a Photoshop picture on some site and, you know, she's now got this drug of male attention and so on, right?
I mean, although I saw the study today that after the age of 22...
Basically, men run out of interest in women pretty quickly on the internet after they pass the age of 22.
That women are looking for sort of same age partners, but men are always looking for women who are 22, at least until the men hit 40 or whatever.
Maybe after that, they stop or at least maybe adjust it to 23.
But yeah, so it's harder for a young woman to be alone because, you know, her time is running out, whereas a man's resources are accumulating.
so it's easier well that's this has been an amazing call and I just wanted to say to all the people out there who haven't donated yet you're going to feel really good about it if you do because
And the reason I chose to start subscribing is that I would hear couples on your show that would talk about dedication to peaceful parenting and asking questions about how to resolve conflicts.
And I'm just like, wow, By keeping this show alive and growing it, you're tangibly actually...
People are making decisions in their lives that...
I was spanked as a kid and I don't want that to happen again.
Before your show, I was like, yeah, spanking...
If you don't spank kids, that's what the problem is in society is that we don't have enough spanking.
Right, right, right.
I was pulled out of that matrix and...
By donating to the show, you're pulling more people out of the matrix, and you're going to feel really good about it because tens of thousands of parents are going to stop hitting their kids, and that's going to change the future.
Yeah, I appreciate that, and I'm very sorry to hear about your experiences as a child, but congratulations on making that commitment.
There's something else that I sort of just mentioned just as we end up here, which is, and I speak to white people, You know, it's funny, you know, because if I was a black guy speaking to my black brothers and sisters, it'd be like, yeah, you know, preach on, you know.
White guy talks to white people, it's like, whoa, that's bad!
It's natural, but the reason, and I'm, actually, I just, no, forget it.
I'm not going to talk to white people.
I just talk to everyone.
Listen, everyone, I want to let you in on a little secret.
White people are really nice until they're not.
Right?
Like, British people, really, really nice people.
Very polite, very deferential.
They stammer, they stutter.
They do all kind of Michael Crawford in his early days stuff.
Really, really nice people.
There's lots of Chamberlains, the guy who tried to appease Hitler and so on and secure peace in his time, as he said.
Lots of Chamberlains who try to compromise and do really nice things and so on.
I think that that's kind of a weakness.
Neither here nor there.
But white people are really nice, and then they're not.
Right?
And so, like in England, they will try to appease Hitler, and they'll try to keep peace, and then they will fucking bomb Germany back to the Stone Age.
Right?
So that's something...
I don't want that to happen.
Right?
I don't want sort of that white backlash-y stuff to happen.
Right.
White people stand up for themselves because when white people get cornered and they realize that they've really been taken advantage of and they've been shit on for a long period of time, well, they go a little crazy.
Like America didn't really want to get into the Second World War, right?
Right.
Right.
I mean, they did the land lease and, you know, they wanted to help out the special relationship British.
Like, they really didn't.
And they sure as shit weren't thinking of getting into a war with Japan, right?
I mean, I know there were blockades and all that kind of stuff, but they really weren't aiming at a big giant war with Japan, right?
And then the Japanese are all like, we don't take prisoners, right?
It's like, oh, is that how we're going to do it?
Here's two fucking nuclear bombs, okay?
That's white people.
I'm serious.
Because white people are really, really nice until they're not.
And then they're really, really not nice.
White people are like, we'd really like to end slavery.
We'd like to offer you some lovely things.
Here's a lovely gift basket if you'll help us end slavery.
That'd be just lovely, you know?
Perhaps we could give you a little rubdown from my auntie.
She's very good with her hands.
We'd sure love to help you end slavery.
It would be very nice if you would end slavery.
Oh, you're not?
Okay.
We'll fucking sink your ships and feed you to the sharks!
I mean, it's like...
They go from like Hugh Grant to Joe Pesci in a blink.
And that's, you know, that didn't get knocked out of the species or the race, you know, by two world wars.
It's still there.
And it's not a particularly great thing.
And so I hope that white people will stop self-shaming or being shamed by others.
You know, not No need for any counter-aggression or anything like that, but I just think it's important to wake up to our strength before that ancient, white, murderous assholery starts pouring out of every pore.
Absolutely.
You don't want to bottle up that stuff and you don't want to be an appeaser.
You want to stand your ground and Yeah, be assertive, you know, because, you know, there's nothing, you know, you push any people down long enough, right?
Right.
I mean, the idea that white people are in charge is like, are you kidding me?
I mean, the only people who are really in charge are the people you're not allowed to criticize.
Who the hell has any trouble criticizing white people?
It's like the most boring cliche around these days.
Oh, white people are bad.
White people are bad.
White culture is bad.
Right?
Right.
And what's funny about that is I was originally really turned off by philosophy because I had a really bad experience with it.
So...
I took a philosophy course in college, which is the worst place, I guess.
Me too.
Yeah, and it was more about white guilt and white shaming, and it was feminism, and they kind of mixed some stuff about Socrates and Plato and stuff in there, but all that really stuck out was how About multiculturalism.
I had this really bad impression of what philosophy was.
And it really wasn't until your show that I was like, wow.
So philosophy is actually almost like a science and math.
It's like a concrete way of determining morality and truth and falsehood.
It's a really powerful tool.
And this is really, really hidden from people.
Oh, absolutely.
I remember my first philosophy class in college was like some 800-year-old guy droning on and on about Descartes' thought experiment about a demon being in charge of all your reality and it's just like, oh my god, like how ridiculously boring and inconsequential could you try and paint this discipline?
But he wasn't in the market, right?
He wasn't in the free market.
Absolutely.
In the free market, you actually have to offer something of tangible value to people.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, it was exactly like that.
It was just, like, epistemological, like, all these concepts, but they didn't teach me how to think.
Like, they didn't teach me how to, like, come to, like, a way of thinking.
It was just...
It was boring, and I think it was almost, like, deliberately boring to, like...
No one in the class was, like, really interested in anything going on.
It was...
But your show is, like, one of the most compelling things out there.
Oh?
Hello?
It's...
Oh, got it.
Sorry, I just left you for a second.
You were just in the middle of praising this show, and the internet cut out, bastard.
Yeah, sorry.
I was saying, your show is, like, one of the most...
No, it is the most compelling thing out there.
Like, I've...
I've heard other podcasts and other radio shows, and they're great and all, but you can talk about any subject here.
You talk about subjects that I kind of find myself reaching for the volume dial, like, maybe I shouldn't play this that loudly.
He's talking about white people again.
Stop him!
Yeah, but then I think, wow, why do I think that?
Oh, I have programming in me.
Right.
And it's like...
It's like that Seinfeld episode, you know, for the older people.
It's like, I don't think we're supposed to be talking about this.
It's like, well, that's what philosophy should be talking about.
Absolutely.
And that's what's the beauty of it.
And because it's donation-supported, you don't have to care about any advertisers that, you know, would have a problem with whatever you say.
Another thing that, if I can bring it up, that you changed my mind about was, like, I would...
I always found...
I never thought that I could have intelligent discussions with women, and that sounds really bad, but it's just because I was thinking about it.
I was like, okay, my mom is pretty intelligent.
She had a PhD.
Yeah, pretty intelligent.
Yes, she's fairly intelligent.
And so I thought, like, wow, if I date an intelligent woman, she's going to, like, ruin my life and divorce me and take out my house and everything.
And I just had that...
Wait, sorry.
Is that what your mom did to your dad?
Yeah.
And he was an abusive person.
And so it's, like, there's fault on both sides.
But, like...
Because of this show, I thought, wow, the reason I'm not choosing women that I can have conversations with is because I'm unconsciously avoiding them.
Not because they don't exist, but because I'm consciously avoiding them because I'm afraid of being taken advantage of.
And then you point out that actually intelligent couples where people are intelligent are more likely to We're less likely to divorce, more likely to stay together, more likely to go to divorce couples counseling and try to make it work.
A lot of positive benefits to dating an intelligent person.
I realized that the prom wasn't dating women.
It was that I was dating all the wrong women for all the wrong reasons.
Yeah, and you would be susceptible to a woman like your mother without self-knowledge because that would be your template for femininity, right?
Absolutely, yeah.
Right, right.
No, and without self-knowledge, most knowledge is dangerous.
Is that because that knowledge will kind of fall into like an equation that's already in your head?
Well, that's partly it, and also partly very intelligent people who lack self-knowledge are experts at intellectualization, and intellectualization is a defense not only against your own emotional authenticity, but if you're a good enough communicator against the emotional authenticity of others as well.
So people who are very intelligent but lack self-knowledge, they don't just harm their own emotional development and expression, but those of others as well.
I mean, so to give you an example, so I had a professor when I was in undergraduate.
I did a full year course, if I remember rightly, on political philosophy.
His name was Charles Taylor, and not the African dictator.
I think Charles Taylor was a Canadian academic.
Couldn't tell you one goddamn thing I learned that whole year.
Now, me?
Pretty interested in political philosophy, I would say.
It's something I'm rapidly fascinated by, in fact.
Took a full year course with this guy.
Considered to be one of the great political scientists of, political thinkers of, you know, the 20s.
Couldn't tell you one thing I learned in that guy.
I can remember other guys.
There was a professor I had who did a fantastic Churchill impersonation.
History professor.
Great.
And actually a nice guy.
A nice guy in many ways.
But I couldn't tell you much that I went to do.
A teacher on Aristotle was great.
It was a woman.
She taught my class on Aristotle.
And I did extra papers.
We'd sit in her office chatting and she'd go through my extra papers, astonished that I was doing extra papers.
But, you know, I really wanted to figure out this reasoning from first principle stuff and Aristotle is a great place to start.
And she just took on relativists like nobody's business.
I mean, she was great.
She's like – I mean, the guy was like, well, you know, you might – Have a different moral opinion tomorrow.
She's saying, oh, so what you're saying is that under the same exact circumstances, the exact same person could have opposite moral opinions.
So that just ranked relativism.
There's no place in this class, right?
Now, it wasn't a great argument, but nonetheless, she was a pushback against relativism, and I really liked her as a teacher.
Not just because, you know, there was lots of things I disagreed with her about, but she was very...
Very sharp and so on.
And, you know, one day maybe I'll go into more detail about the professors who I had and all that.
But this Charles Martin thing, it's like, what are we talking about?
Like, what are we talking about?
You know, I've been meaning to at some point, I would get around to this, going down to a philosophy class.
You know, maybe in grad school.
And, you know, just pinging people as they come out the door.
Hey, you know, you're taking philosophy.
Can I chat with you for a couple of minutes?
Hey, can you tell me what is truth?
Hey, can you tell me what is virtue?
Hey, can you tell me what is good, what is evil?
Do they exist?
Hey, can you tell me if societies are better or worse and why?
You know, I mean...
That's pretty basic, right?
That should be stuff you learn the first day or at least start studying the first day.
I can virtually guarantee you that all we get is a complete bunch of postmodern baffle gap that would make us feel tired and irritated and more irritated if we pay taxes.
Yeah.
And so, but they're very smart.
Very smart.
Very smart.
I had a friend, a friend of me, I guess.
He was, when I was in undergraduate at McGill, and he was taking philosophy.
I love philosophy.
I was taking some philosophy.
I took more in grad, but no, I took some in undergrad, should be fair.
And, you know, he and I would get into these conversations and I literally felt like I was going into like a crazy town house.
Like, you know, there's, I don't know if you don't have kids, you remember when you were a kid, right?
You go into these fairs and they have these like fun house mirrors and these back and forth sidewalks and, you know, these things that spin you around.
Like going into this guy's language was like dropping LSD, blindfolding yourself and just throwing yourself into a zero gravity, scary ass, Distorted clown head fun maze.
And I just could never figure out what the hell we were talking about, which way it was up.
And after a while, I would just get so annoyed at this baffle gap of post-modern stuff.
I mean, I made a lot of fun of it in my novel, The God of Atheists, but it was very serious fun.
That stuff is...
You create your own language to...
To break the utility of your discipline to the general public.
And dear fucking God, if there's one discipline that should have its greatest appeal to the greatest number, it should be philosophy.
It must be philosophy.
That is the one discipline that should have the greatest appeal to the greatest number of people.
I mean, I can't think of another one.
Nutrition?
Well, you know, just...
Eat sensibly, a variety of things.
You don't have to be an expert in nutrition, but we all have to make choices about good and evil.
We all have to make choices about right and wrong.
We all have to do what's right and avoid what is harmful to ourselves and others.
If there's one discipline that should be firmly rooted in the hearts and minds of the people, it must be philosophy and in particular moral philosophy.
I mean, your body can take a huge amount of punishment and still function, but not your brain.
Your mind cannot.
You know, people, Keith Richards is still alive, exhibit A, right?
But the minds cannot take a lot of contrary mechanisms and processes and survive and flourish in any way, shape, or form.
It's more like a, you know, the development of the human mind is more like a launch of an interplanetary spacecraft.
You know, not a lot of margin for error, right?
You know, rubber duckies can be thrown around the room, but spaceships need precision.
And the body requires far less maintenance than the mind and far less concentrated improvement and focusing on excellence than the mind does.
And...
So yeah, I mean, it's always frustrated me.
It's just the one discipline that should be in the hands of the people in ways that they can understand, in ways that moves and motivates them.
The one discipline that is the most important for humanity to succeed and to flourish, or at least not to die a fire or nuclear death of economic cold winter, is philosophy.
And in particular, moral philosophy.
And of course, that's been a big goal, is to just try and get...
Principles, enthusiasm, meaning, depth, and power of philosophy into the hands of people.
It was given to me.
I think I've worked a few kinks out and just passing it along with as much enthusiasm and importance as I can.
This is not a gig.
This is not a game for me.
This is very serious stuff around making the world a better place.
If I have to be a clown, To get people to take philosophy seriously, I will do that with happiness.
Absolutely.
And I think it's valid because it's also closer, it's more natural.
Like, religion isn't very natural, whereas, like, empiricism and, like, right and wrong are things that, like, if you take something from a kid, He's going to be like, that was wrong.
That's a natural reaction.
And what gives me hope is that all the bad things going on in the world, they take...
I don't know if I'm paraphrasing you right, but you said once that things that people do that are bad Usually require a lot of propaganda, a lot of effort, like 15 years of school.
And so it's almost like those things aren't quite as sustainable.
Yeah, no, I mean, it's a great Tom Sowell quote where he says that these ideas are so ridiculous that it takes a highly educated person to believe them.
Right.
And like religion, it requires that you force kids to learn it at an early age before they're able to really rationally process such subjects.
And that kind of gives me hope that all statism and religion, they require a lot of time and effort.
Where things like raising a child to...
Right from wrong doesn't take quite as long.
It doesn't require breaking their natural inclination to You know, reason and rational...
Like the thing with presenting a tablet inside of an empty box and telling them there's a tablet there but there's nothing in there.
And the kids will just...
They have to be broken.
And I think society...
It's kind of breaking less now.
Religion is kind of fading.
More people are questioning the state.
People are questioning parenting.
There's this kind of eroding away slowly of all the effort that requires these barbaric old ways of thinking.
No, and I agree, but that is a time of great danger, right?
Because it creates a power vacuum.
And the power vacuum is not essential to human nature.
It's just essential to how we're raised, which involves a lot of power.
And so I agree that a lot of the old paradigms are breaking away.
But that is a great danger.
That's why I put out like 250 or 300 shows a year.
These are a lot of work and we got researchers and we got...
I mean, it's just video people and sound people.
But by God, I mean, it's now or never as far as I'm concerned.
This is the time when, to use a ridiculously hoary cliche, this is a time when all the planets have aligned for humanity to take a quantum leap forward.
You know, bad people...
Are using the internet, right?
I hear there are some bad people on the internet.
Mike, you gave me this.
Didn't Joss Whedon just boot himself off Twitter?
Ran him off Twitter.
How do you get the guy who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer off Twitter, Mike?
Perhaps you can explain this to me.
Because he's, uh, apparently he's sexist in his portrayal of female characters in the new Avengers movie.
The person behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, could there be a stronger female lead character than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is apparently sexist towards female characters in his film.
Isn't he also straight?
I don't know.
Can I do it at a time?
Yeah, so there are bad people out there, right?
I mean, bad people out there on the internet.
And people are afraid of taking risks because, you know, Google is forever and so on, right?
Google has become this collective Borg brain that nobody can escape and all.
But let me just take a slight tangent.
No, I won't.
I'm going to take a slight tangent.
I'll do that in another show.
But yeah, so I think it's kind of now or never.
And so that's one of the reasons why I'm pushing so hard.
To get as much philosophy out there as possible.
You have to outrun the dark.
You have to outrun the dark, and the dark has got some blurred legs, baby.
Definitely.
All right.
So, I know we covered a lot of ground, but was it useful, helpful?
Absolutely, and we started with sex robots, and then we got into how to save humanity, so I think that was a good covered all bases conversation.
Fantastic.
Mike, did you want me to do the poem?
I would love a dramatic reading of the poem, Steph.
So by dramatic, you just mean screamed, right?
I trust your judgment.
Oh, did you look up Charles Taylor?
I did.
I did.
He's 83.
Multiculturalism.
2010, Taylor said, multiculturalism was a work in progress that faced challenges.
Identified tackling Islamophobia in Canada as the next challenge.
Yeah, you know, this overuse of phobia is really not a very philosophical approach, you know?
I don't know.
Just attacking the word phobia onto something.
Irrational fear of Islam.
Well, I think that mostly it's Muslims who have an irrational fear of extremist Islam, right?
I mean, anyway.
I wonder if the Christians that they take down by the river have an irrational fear of Islam.
Hey, could I coin a term for you guys?
Mm-hmm.
So, much of my adult years, ever since high school, I live in California.
So this is...
I coined this term called Comedy Central Liberal.
And it's people who watch The Daily Show, or Colbert, or like, you know, all the other shows, spin-offs of that, like, they watch it, like, religiously, man.
And it...
Because it makes you laugh, they think, oh, it's just comedy.
But it's really forming their core beliefs.
Oh, yeah.
No, it's programming.
And programming in comedy is very powerful because your defenses are down.
And you automatically like people who make you laugh.
And I thought about that.
That's why I try to be as relentlessly unfunny as humanly possible.
And I think succeed a fair amount.
So, go ahead.
I saw your presentation on art.
It was incredibly powerful.
When you talked about how...
I noticed this with...
The right is very obvious with their propaganda.
Like American Sniper.
That's just so obvious.
Right wing, let's go fight Iraq.
Whereas leftist propaganda is really artistic.
People don't even call it propaganda.
They wouldn't even...
They're so propaganda they can't even recognize it.
Right.
For them, it's just, it's no more propaganda than I consider physics propaganda, right?
It's just the way the world is, right?
Like, they say, like, oh, capitalism is evil, and just, like, these comedies said we're liberals, and, but...
Viacom is a giant conglomerate corporation that owns Comedy Central, and they have huge studios of people writing this stuff to appeal to people's, what's it called?
Liberal bigotry?
I was going to say confirmation bias, but...
Yeah, yeah, same thing.
It's like super reinforced.
It's like an echo chamber.
And if I ask them, like, have you ever heard of any alternative arguments to, you know, like, you can't have true free market capitalism without, like, the currency being free.
Like, that's the basis of capitalism.
And they just...
They become like a sheep...
I'm like a deer in the headlines.
They really haven't been exposed.
And it's kind of frightening to me.
And then when The Daily Show guy said he was going to retire soon or something, I saw this endless feeds on Facebook of people like, this is the greatest thinker of our time.
I'm like, wow.
It's so unfortunate.
So yeah, I just wanted to give you that term because it's so dominant for the people in their 20s.
Oh yeah, no, it is.
John Stewart is like the cool guy and the funny guy.
And John Stewart does not express any intellectual doubt.
None.
I've never seen him.
I mean, he's admitted that he's wrong a couple of times if he got some facts wrong and so on, right?
But I have never heard him express...
Any appreciation for opposing arguments, and I've never heard him or seen him express any intellectual doubt.
And that is the mark of a propagandist, and that is the mark of somebody who hopes that his certainty is going to drag you along like you're an unconscious water skier behind a fast boat.
And that is just terrible.
I mean, it's terrible, terrible stuff.
Yeah.
Like, I've never heard him say, well, you know, there's a really good argument here.
Like, I've talked about this.
There's really good arguments against evolution, and I've gone through some of them, right?
And I've just, you know, an appreciation for the quality of the arguments on the other side.
People who don't have that, you know, I've talked about the benefits of religion in a pretty emotional show recently, which, you know, I hadn't done before.
Constantly talking about, I've talked a lot about My, you know, support of the war in Iraq when it first came out.
I've done entire shows reading out corrections to criticisms of things that I've done, invite people on to debate and so on.
And I just...
He just...
He's so absolutely certain that his way is the moral way and his way is the right way.
Yeah.
And that to me is...
It's just terrible.
And he's selling.
He's just selling confirmation bias, and that's really terrible.
Like, he'll come on and rake Jim Cramer over the coals, but not the head of the Federal Reserve, right?
Absolutely.
And you know for a fact that he's just never read and studied anybody outside his particular political milieu.
I agree, and I think that's why he's able to speak with such conviction, because if you believe it, then you can really Portray that it's true to you, you know?
Right, right, right.
All right, so before I get sucked into the giant hole of Jon Stewart's exit, we're going to finish with a little Dylan Thomas.
Now, Dylan Thomas was obviously a famous poet from the last century.
He was born at the beginning of the First World War in 1914.
He died in 1953.
And most people know the word Dylan because of Bob Dylan.
Mm-hmm.
And as Bob Dylan said, I've done a lot more for Dylan Thomas than he ever did for me.
So I just want to mention that.
So this is a famous poem.
You may have heard of it, you may not have.
And it's a famous poem about...
I don't know if this was his father who was dying, but it is, I think, appropriate to...
The twilight of the culture that we wish to bring a new son to.
And it's called Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know Dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning.
They do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learn too late they grieved it on its way, do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men near death who see with blinding sight, blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse.
Bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
That's really deep.
It's a good poem.
And like all poems addressed to a deathbed, it's really addressed to people who aren't dying yet, right?
All the elegies are there for those still living, right?
So, thanks for a great call.
Thanks for a great show, everyone.
Thank you.
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