2973 Socialism as Pornography - Call In Show - May 9th, 2015
Question 1: My wife wants to divorce me. Is it possible to save our marriage and if not - what should I do to minimize the damage to our son? | Question 2: Is it possible to morally serve in the military, and what should a person do if they have already enlisted? | Question 3: Are we going to see a Bolshevik like attempt in North America, where the race and class resentful left, unable to win the argument using evidence, use violence to get their way?
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Saturday nights, all right for thinking, as the song says.
I hope you're doing well.
I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful weekend.
I hope you're out enjoying the sun.
We come out like crocuses, like buds, like flowers out to the sun here in Canada.
Canada.
The streets are jammed and everybody's outside drinking deep of the radiation that has been denied to us all winter long.
And my God, what a winter it was too.
So I hope you're out there enjoying stuff.
I hope you're listening to this lying in the sun or doing some frisbee golf outside or something equally enjoyable.
So we have a full deck tonight.
So I'm not going to start with an intro.
We're going to dive straight in.
Mike, who do we have first?
Alright, up first is Alex.
Alex wrote in and said, my wife wants to divorce me.
Is it possible to save our marriage?
And if not, what should I do to minimize the damage to our son?
Wow.
Alex, are you there?
I'm here.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, yeah.
So what's going on, man?
That's a rough situation.
Well, yeah, it's...
I don't know where to start, really.
It's been like this the last year, I guess.
We've been married for 12 years, almost.
We've been together for 12 years, and we've been married for 10 years, actually.
And it's been, I don't know, hit or miss, I guess.
I can't say it was really happy all the time, and I can say it was really bad, too, because...
I could, I guess, start with my analysis of the situation and then see if you can add something to it.
Sure.
I think I was a typical nice guy.
I've been raised by a single mom.
My father divorced her when I was like 14, I guess.
Or maybe 12, I'm not sure.
And I don't have really any positive memories of my father, I guess.
I never miss him, for example.
And as a nice guy, I don't know, did you read the Dr.
Glover book, No More Mr.
Nice Guy?
No, but I do understand the degree to which guys raised by single moms end up being in the nice guy category.
But I haven't read that one.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's a really good one.
It's not just accurately describes problem.
It offers really good solution, I think.
I've been following it for a year, and it's really helpful.
I think I changed a lot for the past years, because for now I'm looking at the past me, and it's just like a completely different person.
If I may recommend it, I would, because it's a really good one.
Yeah, and again, I haven't read it, but the general way that men are raised these days is, if you have balls, you're wrong.
And that is something that is, it's insistent, it's brutal, it's never-ending, this, oh, boys with their toys, and men will be boys, and you're always wrong, and you don't have any emotional authority, and you can't ever have any traction in this relationship, and eye-rolling, and All this stuff, it's really, really sad.
The degree to which positive relations have degraded between the genders is not accidental, sadly, and it really is tragic.
So, the idea that a man can...
So, for instance, marriage is a lot about emotional negotiation, and the idea that a man can be really good at emotional negotiation is just something that most women find incomprehensible.
You know, you always hear these, oh, boys, men with their man caves and their TV and their beer and their, you know, their grunts and their monosyllabic crap and all this sort of stuff.
And the idea that women are these open flowers of emotional communication and men are these Easter Island statues of emotional dullness and so on.
It's not true.
It is highly, highly insulting.
And it's hard to find people who recognize the difference.
Well, yeah.
I think it's slightly different here in Russia because we don't have this, like, feminine feminism influence.
But In kind of intellectual circles, it's still the same, I guess.
Mostly.
So basically, in a nutshell, Nice Guy Syndrome is a man who thinks he needs to cater to women, needs to achieve any attention, and basically needs to pleasure, please women to be successful with them.
And I think I've been that way.
I've completely Shy away from any leadership in the family.
I thought that I was kind of an addition to the family, and I think it killed all my attraction for my life, really.
And now I'm trying to kind of push it back, trying to grow a spine and balls, but I'm just afraid it's maybe too late, and maybe once I start working on myself and once I start To start a journey of self-knowledge, if I may say.
I think I start to see some flaws in my life too.
I just don't want to go back.
I would like to, I guess, rebuild our relationship.
Once again, not from the scratch, but I just realized that she should work on herself too.
Otherwise, it will not work.
And she did not show any signs that she wants to.
What are her complaints about you, Alex?
She's unhappy.
We are just two different persons and all that sort of things.
That's, I mean, of course you're two different people, because getting married to your Siamese twin is pretty freaky.
But what would she say are the complaints that she has?
Well, that's basically it.
So when I try to go for details, she kind of shy away from conversations.
Is she having an affair?
No, I don't think so.
I checked as far as I can, but I didn't find...
Yeah, just because when a woman has unspecified complaints about a man, often it means that, at least in my opinion, I can't obviously say this is 100% certainty, but when a woman has unspecified complaints, like, I'm unhappy.
What about me is making you unhappy?
Oh, I don't know.
We're just two different people and so on.
It means that she's got her...
In my view, it means that she's got her eye elsewhere and...
Because if there's nothing, and it means that it's very hard to fix anything, because if there's nothing wrong with you, then there's nothing that can be fixed about you to have the relationship continue.
Kind of, yes.
Wait, what is not low?
Because if she says, we're two different people, you can't fix that, being the same person, obviously, right?
So, if she said, oh, I don't like that you work too much, then what you can do is say, well, I'll work less, right?
Or if she says, I don't like that you drink every night, you can say, okay, well, I'll stop drinking every night.
But if she doesn't have anything about you that is a problem, then what are you supposed to change or fix, right?
She's saying that she's not...
Yes, I understand the general idea, but there are some small complaints, what I think are small complaints, like you don't do dishes too much, but I don't think it's true, because I'm the main source of income in our family, and I still do some things around the house, which is, I think, enough.
And I don't know.
Well, basically she's saying she's not attracted to me, and sexually it's not okay.
Okay, so she's not attracted to you sexually.
So, Alex, I need you to...
Is that what she's saying?
Yeah.
Okay, so I need you to lead off with that rather than we're two different people, because that latter one sounds a bit more important.
Okay.
Makes sense?
Yes, sure.
It's just, yeah, I think it's general interaction questions.
It's like that she's not attracted to me anymore.
Have you changed physically since you first got together?
No.
I think I gained some weight, but I lost it after I started working on myself.
I lost about 10 kilos, I guess.
I think now I'm in the best shape of my life, actually.
Alright.
So you physically haven't changed much.
Has she changed at all, physically, since you got married?
Not too much, no.
Right.
And when did she first start complaining about not being attracted to you?
I think about a year ago she took her hearing off and before that we had some issues and I think she kind of tried to slap things under the rug and like I think she was not attracted but kind of tried to tolerate it and when she was She wasn't able to tolerate it anymore.
She said it out loud and kind of decided to break it.
And when did she first drop the D-bomb, right, when she first started talking about divorce?
A year ago.
About a year ago.
There was some...
We had some issues like, I guess, four years ago.
We almost broke up then, but we kind of fixed it.
She apologizes, she said she was wrong, etc., etc.
We didn't...
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah.
I think we didn't really thought through our issues back then.
Like, we did not realize what was wrong, what we should do to avoid this situation in the future, etc.
So we don't rationalize it.
And has your income changed at all?
Yes.
We had different, I think, difficult life because I started to get my second education and she worked on her PhD and times were tough because we had our son coming up these times and I think it's just too much, I guess.
Wait, hang on.
So she was working on a PhD and she got pregnant?
Yes.
Was it planned?
I mean, did she want to get pregnant?
No, it wasn't planned, but we decided to keep it because...
And when did she finish her PhD?
She's still working on it.
When is she planning on finishing it?
Like this summer, I guess, maybe autumn.
Okay, so would it be a fair thing to say that there's a possibility that she stayed with you to have you pay for her PhD, and when she gets her PhD, she wants to move on?
I don't think she'll look at it this way, but I don't know.
Well, let's look at the pattern.
How long has she been working on her PhD for?
She's basically been a big fan of history since we met, so it's kind of, I think, my interest for her, really.
Yeah, how long has she been working on her PhD for?
I don't know, like five years, maybe.
And has she had a job?
You said your incomes are different.
Does she have a job at all?
She stayed home with our son, which is, I think, okay.
And she occasionally has some Part-time jobs, really.
So basically, no.
I mean, maybe a little bit part-time here and there.
Yeah, I think I make like 85%.
Yeah, you have been working...
Sorry, you've been married for 10 years.
She's been doing her PhD for the last five.
Did she have a job for the first five years?
Nope.
And how old is your son?
He's five.
He's five.
So for the first five years, what did she do?
She studied.
Oh, she was doing her master's?
Yeah.
Well, she had a job.
I think back then I was a student.
I'm 31 and she's 31 too.
I think it's worth mentioning.
Sorry, did she have a job?
I just need to get clear stuff, man.
Did she have a job for the first five years of your marriage?
Part-time.
Part-time, I guess.
It was part-time job.
And you were a student and she was working part-time, so was that enough to live on?
Yes, it was okay.
No, I was a student and I worked too, so first time, at first we were both students and then I started working and she continued to study at her master.
Yeah, but a master doesn't take five years, right?
It's just...
It seems to me that she spent a lot of time at home or a lot of time not having a job, maybe doing a little bit of studying here and there.
And why was that okay with you that you work, you bring home the income, she basically sits at home, does a little bit of studying.
Did you not feel that it was important for her to get a job or anything like that?
I don't know.
I think I just kind of let it be that way, which was silly.
But why?
Because I was a nice guy who can say no to women.
Oh, so she's like, I don't want to have a job.
I want you to pay the bills, and you're like, okay.
We didn't discuss it, but in general, yes, I think.
Wait, so she decided not to have a job, and that meant you paid the bills, but there was no discussion of that.
It just happened?
Yeah.
Are you ugly?
No, no, no.
I mean, why do you have to be you and a wallet in order to equal one of her?
No, it was wrong.
Like, why does it need to be you plus rubles in order to be her, right?
Right.
No, it was wrong.
I was just trying to...
I'm not trying to get a judgment out of you.
I'm just...
Do you feel like you have to provide you plus money in order to hold a woman's attention?
I think I had feel that way.
Or maybe I just don't...
I don't know.
It's just...
I guess I thought it's kind of all people do it and I didn't really think about it.
Now I don't think it's okay.
What did your mom say about this arrangement?
She was quite happy about it.
She liked her.
And your mom was like, no, she doesn't have to work, right?
We didn't discuss it.
I don't have a close relationship with my mom.
We don't usually discuss deep stuff because...
Well, it's not hugely deep, but what did your mom live on while you were growing up?
Did she work?
Yeah, she actually worked hard sometimes.
It was during the 90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it was really nasty sometimes.
She had to work some really hard jobs.
Now, when you were out working all day and you came home, was there like a hot meal on the table?
Was the house clean?
Did you not have to do that much at all around the house?
Or was she like, hey, you're paying all the bills, but housework got to be 50-50?
I think it's somewhere in the middle.
I think she wants me to do housework, still.
Even why I pay most of the bills.
I don't think she insisted it should be 50-50.
I just think she wants me to kind of be part of it.
Yeah, I just read this article the other day, which was Why a man, basically why a man has to do housework even if he's bringing home, like why a man has to split housework even if he's bringing home the majority of the income.
And it's like, oh my dear God in heaven.
I mean, the amount of logical contortions that had to be put through this argument that you're home and not working, and you have all the time of the day to do housework, and even if you're really incompetent at housework and have a really big house, it's not more than two or three hours a day,
and your man is out there busting his ass ten hours a day with commute or more, so you've got two or three hours a day, he's got ten, eleven hours a day, But the housework needs to be 50-50.
Like, oh my god.
How do people, like, I know you've got tits, but how do you say that with a straight face?
I mean, I just find that amazing.
Amazing!
I think it's just like women feel that men should be part of it too.
And then some way it translates to 50-50.
I think, which is just stupid.
Well, I mean, if you can pull it off...
If you can pull it off, that'd be great.
That'd be great.
I mean, if my wife or girlfriend was doing 90% of the housework and I said, well, yeah, but you've got to contribute half the money too.
I mean, people would be like, you dickwad.
You unbelievable jizz head.
How on earth can you demand that your wife do 90% of the housework and pull in half the money as well?
I mean, people would just be like, that's so sexist, right?
But women pull this stuff and it's like, oh yeah, that sounds legit to me.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh because I know it's a serious issue, but...
No, no.
Once again, I think I take a red pill and I read about stuff on Monosphere.
So I agree completely here.
But by then, she's been trained to be lazy and entitled, right?
I wouldn't say she's lazy.
She's really kind of doing things.
And she had hobbies, for example.
And yeah, I think entitled is a good word.
I wouldn't say she's lazy.
It's just, yeah, she's entitled.
That's true.
Why don't you think she's lazy?
Because she's active.
She's not playing or watching YouTube or chatting on Facebook all the time.
She's active.
Now, as we have son, she's actually actively spent time with him.
Yeah, it sounds silly, but I guess it's just a little...
She's drawing stuff and therefore she's not lazy?
That's called a hobby.
That sounds great.
I spend my days walking and drawing.
That'd be lovely.
Yes, I agree.
It's a hobby, but it's not...
I mean, it's not that she's watching TV all day.
You know?
No, but that's not what I mean by lazy.
Ah, okay.
Lazy is...
Doing stuff that has value to people.
And, you know, the quality of his mothering, I'm sure, is fine.
And, you know, you listen to this show, so I'm sure that she's a decent, if not good mom.
But lazy, like, there are lots of people who are incredibly lazy but work very hard, right?
Like, I knew a guy once, he was working on a rock opera.
You know?
And he would go to Starbucks and he's like, I'm going to work on my rock opera.
You know, he'd come back, you know, maybe some lyrics, maybe a couple of ditties written down.
He'd be down in the basement noodling away on the Hammond organ for his rock opera.
And he had plots and characters and shit on the wall and all that.
That, to me, is incredibly lazy.
Yeah, okay.
Because do something that is going to get somewhere, finish something, go out and try and sell it, and if it doesn't sell, do something else or do it better.
And this went on for years, this rock opera.
And it's like, goddammit.
I mean, I think Wagner wrote his entire Ring Cycle in less time than it took for this guy to write three songs for his rock opera.
And I just, to me, you say, well, he's hardworking.
It's like, no, he's hobbyist.
He's a hobbyist, but he's pretending he's not.
Anyway, so...
I think it's just...
What I wanted to say is that she's not laying on the couch all day.
She's an active person.
By your definition, it's laziness.
Yeah, I mean, she certainly isn't doing all the housework when she's home all day, right?
That's for sure.
It's just nothing to do.
And if I, you know, if I, I don't know, I'm supposed to do these shows, right?
Like I do these shows, these call-in shows and the shows that are solo shows and interviews.
And if I say to the Freedom Aid radio team, you know, hey, I'm going to go and take interpretive jazz dance, right?
And that's going to be my new thing.
And, you know, I'm not sure when I'm going to get any shows done.
Um...
I think they'd say, that's not really very helpful.
That's not really very productive.
It's nice that she doodles and draws and it's nice that she walks and so on, but how about doing something that helps out the family?
Yeah.
I mean, is your son in school now?
No.
She has...
Oh, I mean, he has...
I mean, he has...
Sections and...
Yeah, basically sections like to...
He's doing music, he's doing preschool, and he's doing...
Well, yeah, that's it.
What is she going to do with her PhD in history?
Is there a lot of jobs out there for that?
I think there are possibilities.
You think there are possibilities?
Yeah, sure.
I don't know what that means.
Ah, okay.
I mean, if my wife was sucking up half a decade's worth of my salary in pursuit of education, I would kind of expect there to be something on the other side.
Look, I took a master's degree in history, but, you know, I didn't sleep with anyone for the money, right?
I mean, so what does it mean you think there are possibilities?
I mean...
What she's going to finish her PhD, she'll defend or whatever, and she'll get her doctorate.
And then, I mean, does she have any jobs lined up?
Does she have any opportunities lined up?
I mean, how is this chick going to pull in a paycheck at some point?
Or, if she doesn't want to pull in a paycheck, Take over the running of the house and make your life a whole lot easier.
And the running of the house, it's not a tiny little thing.
I was just talking about housework before.
But, you know, pay the bills, do the taxes, do any house repairs, manage all that stuff, and do all the housework and laundry and, you know, maybe homeschool your kid.
You know, that's a job.
And an honorable and decent and fine and important job.
And errands, you know, food shopping and all that.
I mean, it's not insignificant.
It's a lot easier than it used to be back in the day.
But what is the plan?
Like, let's say you guys don't get divorced.
What is the plan when she gets her PhD?
I mean, does she have, you know, like, I live with a woman once and I'm like, hey, you got two months to pull home a paycheck.
Yeah.
You know, I don't care if you get a paper route, you got two months, you know, and, you know, this looking for work better be a full time job, you know, like I go off for work in the morning at 7.30 or quarter to eight and I come home, sometimes six, seven o'clock.
I think the reasonable thing to expect if I'm paying the bills, which I'm okay to do for like two months, the reasonable thing to do is you've got to spend at least eight hours a day looking for work.
Like, that is your job, is looking for work.
And it just sounds like things are very loosey-goosey with you guys, right?
Like, okay, you don't have to have a job.
We won't really talk about it.
Oh, you want to get a PhD?
Okay, I guess I'll pay for that.
What's going to happen afterwards?
I don't know.
And it's just like...
Right?
I mean, she's living in this amniotic sack of pampered patriarchal unreality.
No, she actually hasn't.
I think she has several opportunities.
She could apply for a lecturer.
And I think she had a good chance at it, actually.
And that's the one.
And the second one is she could start applying for grants, for grant monies.
And bring some...
She could be not applying.
She might have, right?
These are not facts.
Yeah, sure.
Yes, because I'm describing opportunities to you.
She will do one or another.
I don't know why.
Which one?
Because, once again, because we are kind of getting a divorce and almost, I don't know, we live separate lives really now.
Like we're sleeping together.
So, hang on a sec, Alex.
So, I don't know, obviously, really anything about divorce laws in Russia, but if you get a divorce, I mean, do you split child custody?
Is that the default position?
That's the default position in a lot of places.
You split child custody.
Are you on the hook for alimony?
I mean, how does that work?
I think in Russia it's pretty straightforward.
So, most likely, like legally, If we don't come to any arrangement, then she'll have like five days out of seven.
Basically, she'll have full custody.
I think it's called full custody.
And I'll have to pay 25% of my salary as a child support.
Oh, boy.
And that's the default position?
Yeah.
I don't think I'll pay any another, actually.
That's horrendous.
Well, yeah.
That's horrendous.
I mean, of course it should be.
The default rational system would be 50-50 custody and nobody pays anyone else a damn thing for money, right?
I agree.
Sure.
Right.
So this is a, you know, because if it was like in a lot of places like, oh, 50-50 and, you know, there's no real child support and so on, I'd be like, well, I don't know that you'll be missing much having this giant financial leech off your neck.
But in this situation, of course, we're talking about she's just going to keep taking you for the next 15 years, right?
Yeah.
I don't know.
25% for my son sounds like fine, actually.
The problem that I, of course, can't control any money because paycheck is fine.
No, it's terrible.
No, no, listen.
Shake your head, man.
You should not be paying her to take care of your son because you will be...
50-50, like in a rational system, be 50-50, you're each taking care of your son, right?
So then each of you have to then provide...
No, I'm not talking about rational system now.
I'm talking about the factual system, which is irrational.
I think we might...
I would really very much like it to be 50-50, of course, if we will manage to agree with her.
Yeah, I mean, I think what would be fair, and, you know, she sounds like, would you say that she...
It's an independent-minded woman.
I mean, she's getting an education.
She's smart.
She's not a peasant, you know, tied to a washing machine, dropping babies like flies, right?
So, I mean, I'm saying she's a feminist, but she is not old-fashioned, let's say.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that would be, okay, so I'll take him 50% of the time.
You'll take him 50% of the time.
And there's no alimony, and there's no child support.
Well, yeah.
Sure.
That's what I wanted to negotiate.
Right.
So, I mean, the reason why this is such a tough issue, right, is because she doesn't have any specific complaints other than, I don't find you attractive, and I don't know what that really means.
And maybe you should do some more dishes.
I mean, the I don't find you attractive is obviously a big A big deal, but I don't know how to fix that.
There's not a philosophical cause for that.
I will say this, though, that I do believe that accommodating a woman is like taking a giant hobnob boot and squashing her clitoris.
That, I think, is one of the painful lessons that, you know, as a fellow son of a single mom...
That is not good.
I don't mean accommodating like don't ever be nice.
Be lovely, be nice, be delightful and so on.
But self-erasure for the sake of the woman's needs will kill her desire.
I think that is pretty consistent, right?
It's absolutely to the contrary what everybody says, I guess, but it's just true.
A woman will walk over you and then lose respect.
I think in particular Russian women, wouldn't you say?
Maybe.
I mean, Russian women cream their jeans over Vladimir Putin wrestling a bear, right?
Well, it's slightly different.
It's like 85% of Russian women do that, I guess.
And we are another 50%, so we kind of hate it.
No, I get there is.
My first real girlfriend was a Russian woman, and it was an exciting experience in many, many different ways.
Tell me about it.
I'll tell the story one day, but...
Very passionate, very intelligent.
And to me, it was like being strapped into a jet ski and somebody puts a brick on the accelerator and then there's a waterfall and then there's an ice cave and then there's a tsunami.
And, you know, boy, if you can get through that, it's great.
But there was just a lot of what are called shit tests, you know, like a lot of, you know, basically, let me see if you're strong enough to take on the Russian woman.
It was...
It was exciting, let's put it that way.
And so, you know, I think that you may have accommodated yourself into appearing sort of like a scrap of wallpaper in her mental vision, like not being present and there.
And overaccommodation is bad for all relationships.
Self-erasure, it's appeasement.
It's basically what it is.
It's a little temporary peace and security, but it undermines the basis of the relationship.
There is never a time, in my opinion, there is never a time when a woman doesn't want to see you as strong.
And strong doesn't mean unemotional.
I mean, you can be very passionate, very emotional, vulnerable, and all those kinds of things.
But there is never a time where a woman wants to be treated like some Fabergé egg, and everything is accommodated, and, you know, that is...
The princess is an asexual being because everyone does everything for her.
And, you know, this is not, it's hard for kids as single moms to get this.
It was for me too.
But I just took a bunch of stuff to the dump today.
Oh, here's my exciting, here's my exciting day.
So I drove, I took a bunch of stuff to the dump today.
And I took some of Izzy's old toys and I put them out in the donation section.
There were a bunch of kids there.
I was chatting with them for bed.
Anyway, so...
But there was this big giant box at the dump of books.
You know, I'm still a book fiend.
And I finally got around to reading Marsha Clark's book on the O.J. Simpson trial just because I was...
Anyway, so there was this big giant box of books and they were romance novels, right?
And romance novels, they all have the same...
Picture on the cover, right?
It's some Fabio-style guy with, like, the shoulders and abs of a steroided bull leaning over, apparently about to snap the woman's spine backwards while simultaneously crushing the breath out of her, you know, enveloping her in sweaty body acts muscle while she, you know, faints in orgasmic climax.
And these books are, like, insanely popular.
Insane.
I'm not saying all women read them and so on, but, you know, like vampire books, Fifty Shades of Grey, these romance novels, and holy crap.
I actually once applied for a job at Harlequin Books many years ago.
Oh, this is many, many years ago.
And before I went in for the interview, I, you know, grabbed a dozen or so of the library shelves and I just plowed my way through them.
And man alive.
It is just like...
You know, basically my womanly wiles made this blind, stupid, sexy oxen mad with desire and he gored me with his penis.
I mean, that is just basically, it's like ancient Roman bull sex or something.
I mean, it's just crazy stuff.
And so, you know, there's something important about that.
And there's not, you know, a pasty-looking guy offering up a Visa card on a silk pillow to a woman.
And so, again, not all women are like that.
I get all of that.
But there is something to be learned from that, right?
I mean, in the same way that there's something to be learned from men's view and preferences in pornography, there's something to be learned from women's preferences and views of pornography.
So, I think that your desire to kowtow to a woman to, sorry, that's a bit colloquial, to appease and submit to and accommodate a woman, I mean, it comes obviously from, you didn't see a balance when you were growing up, right?
You had a single mom, which means that there was nobody there to stick up to her.
There was nobody there to confront her.
There was no one there to To limit her behavior.
There was no one there.
You saw negotiating with her and sometimes winning as a husband would do.
And so you basically, I assume that your single mom was pretty assertive, if not downright aggressive.
So you always had to bend to her will.
And I'm sure that when you're a single mom, the needs of your kids, oh man.
And you tell me this was in the 90s, right?
So it can be even rougher.
But when you're a single mom, you have like 12 plates spinning in the air, right?
I mean, you're like a pinball bouncing from one mess to disaster to catastrophe to another.
And holy crap.
What happens is then you've got your boss's needs, you've got your landlord's needs, you've got 6 million things to do, you've got the errands, you've got the laundry, and it's just you.
And what happens is then, if your children have needs as well, it doesn't work.
The whole thing comes crashing down if your children have genuine needs as well.
The fewer resources that the parents have, and a single parent, by definition, is always running six atoms of fumes close to the empty mark.
A single parent is always running on empty.
And if she has to accommodate her Children's needs as well.
And if she has to put her children's needs first, those plates, they just come crashing down.
I mean, for a lot of people, even having two parents involved in parenting is a big challenge to get everything done.
I mean, also, that's just within the household, right?
Friends, those friends have birthdays, you've got parents who have birthdays, extended families, they've got christenings, you've got...
I mean, it's just crazy how much there is to do.
And so generally what happens in single mom households, I don't know about single dad households, but in single mom households generally what happens is the children have to erase themselves and their own needs in order for these spinning plates to not come crashing down and the whole thing grind to a halt.
So, and you know, I'll stop in a second, you tell me if I'm wrong, but...
For you to have needs probably provokes quite a lot of aggression in your mom and so you learn that with women to have needs is to be attacked and that the value that you add to a woman with 12 spinning plates is don't rock the boat.
Don't have any needs.
Don't distract her.
Don't cause her to drop any plates.
Don't exist and be there for her convenience.
This is one of the gravest dangers of the single mom household is that children have to self-erase for the entire facade and charade to keep going.
Does this resonate with you at all?
Does it make any sense?
I mean, I don't think I had a lot of aggression with my mom.
So, if I was kind of saying something about my needs, she wasn't aggressive.
It's just when I wanted to discuss my problems, like, instead of just my problems, I have two problems, like, me and my problems, and her being upset about my problems, if it makes sense.
Okay, so how did she express her upset at your problems?
She just, like, I don't know, she's starting to be upset about it, and that's it.
Instead of giving me some solutions, she just...
She just being, like...
Alright, so I gotta call you out on something here because we do have a list of your Adverse Childhood Experience score.
You say you didn't experience aggression from your mom.
So the first Adverse Childhood Experience that you reported was verbal abuse and threats.
Was that not coming from your mom?
No, it was from my stepfather.
Yes, yeah.
Oh, so the mom that you, the father that your mom chose to be your stepfather was verbally abusive and threatening?
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, he was just really hot.
He was really...
But she chose him to be around, right?
So she's responsible for that aggression, being in your life, right?
Yes.
Okay, got it.
Household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt?
What was that?
No, it was like half point I guess for me because my mother was almost worried about things.
Just constantly anxious.
Okay.
My stepfather was really...
Maybe depressed.
Maybe depressed is a bit strange work.
Maybe he was just moody all the time.
Just Russian?
Well, he was like Russian multiplied by another Russian, I don't know.
Right, right, Russian squared.
More than Russian, yeah, Russian squared, yeah.
Right, right, okay.
So it wasn't so much that you experienced aggression, but whenever you had needs, it would be a negative experience to express those needs, right?
Right, right.
It was convenient for me to stay in shadow and like keep everything to myself and Right.
Okay.
So you can see this pattern with your wife, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, I'm no, as you know, I'm no marital therapist and I'm no psychologist or anything.
So I'm just giving you idiot amateur advice over the wire.
So take it for what it's worth.
If you don't change, it seems to be inevitable that you're going to get dumped.
Yes, but there's another thing I guess because I think I pinched a lot since the last year and it seems like she don't like it because like when I try to stand up to her and call her on her sleep she didn't like it and when I start taking care of myself and spend time on myself and like buy things for me she didn't like it for example Why
is that a problem?
I mean, women are often very excited by men who are inconvenient.
I mean, show me the male in a woman's romance novel who is wildly convenient to the woman.
Well, yeah, because, yes, it's basically, it should work, I think, for our marriage, the fact that I'm kind of strong now and Taking care of myself.
Well, no, I don't know if it will or it won't.
I mean, I don't know if it will or it won't.
But I think it's your best shot.
And, you know, I'm not saying be a jerk or be mean.
I'm not saying anything like that, obviously, right?
But you are in the exciting and perhaps enviable position for some people of having nothing to lose as far as things go.
And...
So...
You know, asking a woman what she wants is losing already.
Because it's like those people who say, who do you want me to be so you'll like me?
It's like, how about someone who doesn't ask me that question?
That would be nice, right?
Yes, but it didn't walk so far for me.
I don't know why.
Well, you haven't expressed any anger in this entire conversation, so I'm not sure.
Maybe this is a big change for you, but you still seem very emotionally monotone.
Like in the first 10 minutes, I'm like struggling to pay attention because you seem very emotionally disconnected from this imminent disaster in your family.
Like I don't get any sense of emotionality from you.
So if this is you in connection with your inner testicular chakra or something, then I can't even imagine what you were like before.
Yeah, I think...
I think I had huge issues experiencing emotions and showing emotions.
Now it's better.
I'm just really tired.
Wait, this is you better?
Wait, are you blaming being tired?
Because being tired often makes people more emotional, right?
And if you're too tired to have a chat with me, Alex, why did you bother calling?
No, I'm not too tired to have a chat.
I'm just too tired to be expressive, I guess.
I don't know.
Wait, are you saying that you feel the emotions but you're too tired to express them or you're too tired to have any emotions at all?
I'm too tired to express them.
Regarding the situation on my marriage, I think now I'm not really emotional about it because I thought it's been this way for a year.
I cried a lot and I expressed anger and I've been angry.
It's just like I possess it inside of me.
I feel like now I'm calm.
Okay, so you resigned and you're fundamentally indifferent to the success of your marriage, right?
No.
Because you're giving me the runaround here, right?
I'm saying you're not emotional to say, oh, I'm tired, right?
And then I say, well, are you too tired to have a chat?
You say, no, I'm not too tired to have a chat.
It's like, well, do you feel angry?
No, I'm resigned to it.
Are you resigned?
No, I'm not resigned.
You understand, you're giving me a runaround here.
Okay, I think you're right.
I think now I'm kind of indifferent to outcome.
I think I'm different to our marriage, really, because I don't see what I can do.
So what do you want to talk about then?
I wanted to talk about if we get divorced, what should I do to minimize damage to our son?
So I thought some of this was about whether your marriage can be saved.
I thought that's what you let off with.
Oh, yeah, it is.
I guess I just wanted like...
Okay, but Alex, I'm telling you that if you want to save your marriage, you have to get in touch with your emotions.
If you say, well, no, now, oh, if that's the standard, then I'm not going to do that because I'm fundamentally indifferent.
And now let's just talk about post-divorce, how do I help my son, right?
Oh, no, okay, sure.
Okay, I have to be in touch with my emotions.
I think you're right, I think.
I don't mean your touchy-feely emotions.
I don't mean your cry in a feeling of emotions.
What I mean is, like, this woman took advantage of you!
There was a nice guy.
She knows you come from a single mom household, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, ladies, you know this.
I'm just talking to the ladies for a moment, if you don't mind.
Ladies, you know this.
That if the man comes from a single mother household, his sexual position is roll over and submit.
Maybe tickle my belly a little bit and throw me a fucking kibble.
That's what they got.
Because they were raised not to have any needs, the single mom, spinning plates to put it as nicely as humanly possible, crushed and dominated.
They don't have a male role model and all they know how to do is defer for the convenience of women.
Because they also see a giant smoking crater where the last guy who stood up to their mom was.
He got booted from the family.
So it's like, I don't want that to happen to me.
So when you are raised by a single mom, all the women know this, right?
All the women know this.
Raised by a single mom, oh, you're the kid of a single mom.
Ka-ching!
Baby, you are going to do anything that I say.
Has vagina, dominate you like the vulva-hooded eye of Mordor.
And women all know this.
And it's like, to me, it is incredibly...
Predatory to fix on...
to fix on...
To the son of a single mom and drain his finances and his achievements and his will to live, it seems, with Alex, right?
And drain him dry of his emotions.
It's predatory.
And to be fair and equally gender neutral, it is completely unfair for men to fixate on girls who are raised or women who are raised without dads and exploit them sexually.
Because they've got a giant masculine hunger hole where their daddy should have been.
And men have a giant willpower crushed smoking crater where their dad should have been.
So we all get that it's wrong to go and exploit women who got daddy issues and use them for sex and toss them aside.
We also get, should get, that it's wrong to exploit men for their resources because they happen to have the bad luck and misfortune to be raised by a single mom.
Anyway, so, you know, you got exploited because...
You came from a single mom household, so you're used to deferring to women, and you get negative experiences from not deferring to women, and you are punished in overt or covert ways for being inconvenient to others, and so you turn yourself into a kind of sea snake trying to swim up a waterfall, trying not to make any mess, trying not to have any ripples, trying not to get hit by anything.
And then women come along and say, oh baby, oh this guy, he's smart, he can make some money, he's never been taught how to stand up to a woman, let me jam my proboscis so far down his throat, I can suck the essence out of his balls.
Okay, I guess I suppose to fear anger, but now I don't really feel anything.
I don't know why.
Maybe it's because, maybe it's because I've been angered.
Now I'm like, I don't know.
Now I don't feel it because I kind of did it already or maybe I just really unable to feel anything.
And you know I'm talking about, here I'm talking about how you can help your son, right?
Not how you can help your marriage.
Yeah.
I mean, what is your son...
What is he drinking deep from the well of your masculinity?
What is he getting from you?
What is he seeing?
If your son would have the vocabulary to jump on the microphone and describe his dad, Alex, what would he say?
don't think about it too much You've had a five-year relationship with this little boy.
You know what he would say about you.
What would he say about you?
I think he would say I do stuff with him.
I like build things with my hands.
No, that's doing.
I didn't ask what you do.
What's he like?
What is your dad like?
Not what does he do.
What is he like as a person?
What are the characteristics that you have absorbed from his personality?
What is manhood as you see it through your dad?
Okay, he's calm.
Okay.
I don't know, you took me by surprise.
Good!
I'm trying to get through to something real here, something that's not an intellectual abstraction.
Yeah.
He's calm?
That's what your son, after five years of you being his dad, I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but you're trying to tell me that all you can come up with is, my dad is calm?
I don't know, really.
It's...
I don't know.
I don't know, maybe it's hard for me to myself, I'm a five-year-old, but...
Yeah, that's why I said if he had the vocabulary, because children's minds advance far beyond their vocabulary, right?
Vocabulary is like a tiny little hole that their thoughts get through.
What would your son say, Alex, about How men and women get along?
How does it work?
What would he say about that from seeing mommy and daddy?
I hope you'll have another example, honestly.
What would he say?
Don't abstract that on me.
He would say that men and women live in separate bubbles, I think.
Because now we are living in separate bubbles.
he would say that men and women don't yell at each other and that woman trying to yell at men and men yell back sometimes.
And wait, so he's seeing you and your wife yell at each other?
Yeah, sometimes.
Usually he yelled at me, she yelled at me, and then I started to fight back because I think it's better than just go away in front of my son.
And does she call you names?
Yeah.
And what are the names that she calls you, Alex?
Like she called me lazy, she called me like slow-minded I guess.
Like dull-witted kind of thing?
Yeah.
She compared me with other men, not in my favor, of course.
Then what does she say about, hopefully she's not like a guy describing the fishy court, but what does she say about other men and how does she compare you negatively?
She said the other men doing more for their wife than I do.
So it's kind of...
You mean like dishes or something else?
I mean like, yeah, like physical stuff, like money and like dishes and like...
I don't know.
So she's trying to shame you by saying that you're not a man, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Because other men, you know, go work 14 hours a day down a coal mine, rub their wife's feet, do all the dishes and laundry, and basically have relationships of radical inequality and exploitation, right?
Is that...
Well, yeah.
And you're lazy because you go to work, but she's not lazy because she fucking draws and walks, right?
Yeah.
When did she first start calling you these names, Alex?
A year ago, I guess, but I think that before that she just kind of filed it down inside her.
Didn't you start taking the red pill about a year ago?
Yeah.
So a year ago you start breaking out of the matrix, you start standing up for yourself a little more, and she escalates and tries to put you back down into the little castrated box, right?
Yes, I think it is.
I'm not sure she's trying to put me back, because she's just saying that she doesn't like new me, because sometimes I'm saying rude things too.
I mean, things she considers rude.
Yeah, that's not what she signed up for.
for she signed up for an ATM doormat right a bank spitting out money doormat right and now you're changing and you're standing up for yourself and you're having your own thoughts and opinions and you are pushing back when you feel things are unfair and she doesn't like that right well yeah that's one way to look at it well I don't want to look at it one way like the wrong way tell me how the right way you start taking the red pill a year ago she starts insulting you a year ago right yeah
That's not to lift you up.
That's not to encourage you on your journey, right?
That's to have you flinch back from whatever it is you're doing, right?
Yeah.
I think maybe she's just ignoring it.
Or maybe she's kind of...
I don't know.
It looks like...
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
You fog yourself out with this, well, that's one way to look at it, and maybe this, and maybe that.
Right?
Dude, I'm talking to you about your life.
Don't maybe me.
Yeah, you're right.
Okay.
I mean, don't give me these maybes.
I mean, yes or no, fine.
But maybe this, maybe that.
Oh, maybe she's a cyborg space alien, and she'll suck out your brain stem through your ass.
I don't know, right?
But let's deal with some facts here, right?
I don't really have a lot more to say.
Other than it is hard to change the existing structure of a relationship.
It is.
You know, if you've been a certain way for 10 or 12 years, I guess they've been together 12 years, married for 10.
If you've been a certain way, you've been this accommodating one-armed ATM, no demands, no requirements, no needs, no...
Right?
Then it is tough to change that.
And you don't do it by screaming at people, yelling at people, whatever.
Right?
You can be assertive with a very quiet voice, right?
I mean, that's important.
And in some ways, the quiet voice works really, really well.
So assertiveness can have something to do with like, there is no way that you could ever talk to me like that, particularly in front of a son.
You know, like, you do not get to call me names.
You certainly don't get to call me lazy when you've spent the past half decade noodling around getting a history PhD with no particular plan for employment.
You don't get to call me lazy.
You don't get to call me names.
You know, we may have our problems, we have fathered a child together, and absolutely in no way, shape, or form are you to disrespect me in front of my child.
That is my son.
And if you disrespect me in front of my son, he will not grow up hating me.
He will grow up hating you.
I don't want that for you as the mother of my son, for you to indulge in this petty emotional viciousness, which may make you feel better in the moment.
It may feel like you've got some level up thing going on in the moment.
But by God, that is going to put a stake through the heart of your relationship with my son.
Even if I say absolutely nothing about it, he's going to see that.
Mom is just mean.
And I won't put up with it.
I absolutely will not put up with it.
No matter what happens.
You know, we stay together.
We get divorced.
We are still co-parents for the next 15 years.
And we can either do it in a way that is civilized and hopefully stay together.
We can split up and do it in a way that's civilized.
Or it can get ugly.
And if it's going to get ugly, which I really hope it won't, then it's going to get ugly.
But I'm still going to stand for the same standards in relationships.
And if it gets ugly, I am not going to hide your ugliness from my son.
I am not going to cover up for you.
I am not going to make up stories for you.
I am not going to pretend that it's any different than what it is.
And if my son asks me, I'm going to tell him the truth, which is that I came to you and I said, we need to deal with each other in a more civilized way.
We need to not, you may call each other names, we need to not insult each other.
No matter what.
Whether we stay together or don't stay together, we're still tied together because of the son.
My son comes to me and says, what happened with you and your mom?
I said, well, I really wanted to work it out.
I said, let's go to therapy, which I hope you'll suggest at some point.
Let's go to therapy.
Let's not call each other names.
And your mom didn't want anything to do with it.
She just wanted a divorce.
And it was against my wishes.
It was against my preferences.
That's what she wanted.
You know, one of the reasons women get away with this shit is that men don't tell the truth to the kids, right?
I mean, I'm not saying you've got to call her horrible names or anything like that, but state the facts about the people in your life.
How do you protect your children?
You tell them the truth.
You tell them the truth.
Now, if you've put everything you can into saving this marriage and your wife walks off anyway, Then she's at least going to walk off with the knowledge that you're not going to lie to your child about what happened.
You're not going to lie to your child about what happened.
You're going to take ownership and say, yeah, you know, I could have stood up for myself a lot more and I should have.
I shouldn't have been exploited.
That's the way I was raised.
I thought it was the right thing to do.
It's not the right thing to do.
And please, son, never, ever let a woman exploit you because it is disrespectful to her soul to buy her vagina.
And so don't ever let that happen.
Don't ever let a woman beat you down and take things from you.
And if you have a woman, when you express a preference that she doesn't like, if she gets upset or withdraws or snarls or storms or gets anxious or runs out of the room or takes to bed or has cold compresses on her forehead or plays to Zeus for forgiveness for your sins...
Run screaming because anybody who is going to attack you or withdraw from you for having your own authentic needs and preferences is someone you cannot have in your life in the long run.
You can't do it because we don't get to live forever.
We don't get to be ghosts after we die.
So for God's sakes, don't be a ghost before you die.
Yeah.
And how damaging divorce is, because...
It's damaging.
It is damaging, but you cannot keep her if she wants to go, as you know.
You can put everything that you want into keeping that marriage going.
If she wants to go, she's going to go.
What is damaging divorce?
I can't sacrifice myself to...
What is damaging to children, Alex, is not getting the truth.
Not getting the truth.
That is what is damaging.
Children can handle...
Astonishing levels of honesty.
Oh, kids, you know, they like to be, they like their illusions, they like their Santa Claus, they like their fantasies.
That's bullshit.
It's adults who like fantasy.
Children like rock solid, bottom of the barrel, scrape it up, spread it on toast and give it to them in one bite.
They like the truth.
Kids love the truth and kids know the truth when they hear it.
And, you know, when I was in theater school, we used to make jokes about, like, bad children's theater, you know, where the people are creeping across the stage and doing this little sing-song.
They got big, finey noses on their faces.
And it's just like...
That's why you can't arm children in kids' theater.
They just want to shoot people like that.
I mean, you can do very powerful, very direct drama and stories with children.
And they find it very, very exciting.
I was out for a walk with my daughter.
Today we were playing this game that we were being chased by wolves.
Damn, it was fun.
Climbing trees and, oh my God, I'll take this one.
You run!
I mean, they get very direct and very exciting stuff.
And divorce is particularly harmful, in my opinion.
Divorce is particularly harmful because nobody tells the truth.
And I get why it's hard to tell the truth in divorce because you're still bound to the woman.
And I'm not saying this is true of your wife, but it's like, yeah, I was raised by a bitch and I married a bitch.
You know, I mean, I'm not saying you say that to a five-year-old, right?
But, you know, at age-appropriate times, be frank.
What happens?
I mean, God, I could never find out the truth about my parents and why the hell they split up.
Because everybody was, like, either running their own agenda, which I knew was bullshit, or they were trying to be overly nice, which I also thought was bullshit.
It's like, Jesus, just tell me the truth.
Why the hell?
I mean...
You know, if my uncle dies of lung cancer, say, because he smoked two packs a day.
You know, just say it was a mysterious alien space ray that hit him in the chest.
I mean, give me the facts that allow me to avoid these disasters.
And what I think is so harmful to children after a divorce is they pass into this weird Nazgul Lord of Lies world where everything is like, oh, you know, mommy and daddy are still great friends.
It's like, well, why aren't you great friends who are fucking then?
Because if you're great friends, why aren't you living together, you know?
You always hear this from like, I don't know, the stars and they get divorced, you know, we're still the best of friends.
It's like, well, then why the fuck are you divorced then, people?
I mean, do you not, oh, it's because you want to have sex with people who are really your enemies that you won't still have sex with people who are your best friends?
No!
I want to find somebody I really hate and hate fuck them.
So, it's what happens in divorce is you pass into this realm where there's no reality to what happened.
There's no truth about what happened.
Men do it, I think, out of fear of women, and women do it out of fear of themselves, right?
So, you know, why did you marry, oh, your dad was such a loser, your dad was like, then why the hell did you marry him?
But you can't ask that basic question.
Now, if a woman says, you know, I was raised in a bad environment and I didn't do the work that was necessary.
I kind of knew I needed to do it.
I mean, Dr.
Phil's on, number one daytime TV show.
There are books all over.
The self-help section is bigger than the section on philosophy.
God help us.
But I knew I had to do this work.
I knew I had to really get self-knowledge going, but I didn't.
And your dad was charismatic and I thought he was going to make a lot of money and I was willing to put up with his shitty behavior because I'm an idiot and I really made a bad mistake.
Now that's being helpful to your son, right?
Hugely helpful to your son and your daughter saying, these are the mistakes I made, here's how not to make them, right?
That's having self-ownership, self-responsibility.
Now, so either it's like, you know, he's a jerk, he was a loser, he was a drunk, he was abusive, he was like...
But you didn't have to marry him!
Did he ever do these things before you got married?
No!
He was wonder...
Like, you get into this bullshit, up is down, black is white, you can sneeze Santa Claus if you hold your breath long enough kind of unreality.
Or, it's like, we're still great friends.
I love your father.
I just couldn't live with him.
It's like, what kind of message is that to send to kids?
You know, you don't want too much love.
You want to have a little loathing in with your love.
You know, because that's how you find people attractive in the long run.
For heaven's sakes, don't actually love the person without hating any part of them.
I mean, you gotta mix it up.
You know how food is good with a little bit of spice?
You know, you want your love with a nice, good punch-to-the-soul, a plexus shot of distinct loathing.
You know, you just gotta...
I mean, you want to kiss someone, but at the same time, you want to Robert De Niro-style chew their fucking cheek off.
That's, you know, you want to have sex with them, but you also want to punch them straight in the head.
That's the best way, you know.
Love is an open heart and a crash helmet.
That's what you want in your love.
I mean, that doesn't...
Because when you say, oh, we're still the best of friends, and, you know, we just couldn't quite get along, it's like...
What?
Isn't the whole point of being best friends that you get along really well?
So, yeah, just be honest.
You take ownership for the mistakes that you made.
My daughter gets older and she'll ask, as she will, did you date people before mom?
And I'll be like, I did.
And boy, did I make a lot of mistakes.
I really, really made a lot of mistakes.
And I... Had some excuses for making those mistakes, had a very bad upbringing, but at the same time, I should have known better.
You know, I should have done the work.
I should have gone into therapy long before when I did.
And I should have done more self-work.
I should have raised my game.
There's reasons why I didn't.
I don't blame myself for it.
I castigate myself for it, but I do have ownership for it.
And to be honest about these things is really essential.
And what happens in a divorce is children pass from the sunlit uplands of reality into the minds of Moria Nazgul-laced, Lord of the Rings, overloaded, metaphorical land of lies.
And then it's very, very hard for them to ever get any common sense or reality out of things.
Yeah, that's a really good point, I think.
Because it always bugs me, like, people after divorce saying that we just can't live.
Basically, what you're saying, you know.
We just drifted apart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What are you, fucking leaves on the stream?
You got no willpower?
We just drifted apart.
Oh my god, that's sad.
I'm a boat.
I think that's exactly, because I think I'm a boat attitude is one of the reasons, probably main reason, because I'm so reluctant about this marriage, because my wife, she's always like...
She's always saying this sort of bullshit, like, she never takes ownership for her actions, and she always, like, we are just two different people, we just don't understand each other.
Instead of, you know, we have this issue, like, let's walk on it.
That's the problem, that's how we could possibly fix it.
Or, that's the problem, I don't know how can I fix it, right?
Women break up with a man, listen, Alex, women break up with a man when they think they can do better.
Well, yeah, that's...
When she says you're lazy, she's basically saying, and now I have the sexual marketplace value to get a man who's less lazy.
Right?
When she says, I'm not attracted to you, she's saying, you know, my hypergamy, my desire to marry up, you are...
Now that I have this PhD, I want to go for a guy who's richer, who's more educated, who's what, what, what, right?
And this is the great challenge.
You know, people are like, well, how do you hang on to women?
It's like you keep borrowing alphawood.
I mean, I mean, you got to keep, you know, Angelina Jolie is not leaving Brad Pitt because he's the ultimate alpha for a lot of women, right?
And I mean, what's the Duchess of Cambridge, like that semi-bold guy who can't pull off a real smile but makes his mouth look like the grill of a 57 Chevy?
Prince Andrew?
William?
One of those.
One of those mafioso clan offspring.
But, you know, what's she gonna do?
I'm going to trade up from the Prince of England, right?
I mean, until Jesus comes down and is on the market, you know, that's not really going to happen, right?
So she got her PhD.
She's in her early 30s.
Now is the time to make the move, right?
Which is why she's getting restless and she's added a lot to her marketplace value.
And I don't know what the culture is like in Russia, but I am really trying to get people not to date single moms for a variety of reasons.
But one of them is that if single moms don't have marketplace value, then they'll stay with their boyfriends or husbands.
Because, like, if I could have my way and nobody would date a single mom, then your wife would be like, okay, well, I can't go out and get another guy because I'm a mom.
So, I'm staying with this guy.
I'm going to work it out.
But because all these idiots are out there who are willing to date single moms, then they're like, okay...
Family breakup time, because other guys will date me.
Whereas if dating a single mom is not what men will do, then single moms, then they won't become single moms.
They'll generally stay with their boyfriend or husband.
I think there might be an option where a single mom is an actually okay choice.
I'm sorry, I missed the beginning of that.
Can you say that again?
Yeah, I'm saying that there might be an option where a single mom is an okay choice.
What is an option where a single mom is an okay choice?
If she realized her mistakes and basically like reverse situation of our situation, I guess.
She's destroyed a family?
No.
For example, if her husband destroyed a family and she realized mistakes on her part...
Wait, the husband destroyed the family?
Well, if...
No, no, no!
No!
Women choose men!
Alex, women choose men!
Come on, it's a mutual process, obviously.
No, it is not a mutual process.
It is not a mutual process.
In 19 times out of 20, statistically, 95% of dates are initiated by men.
Men go and ask women out, and women evaluate.
There's this conveyor belt of penises going by, and women are like, eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
That's what they do.
Women choose who they date.
They choose who they get married to.
Any woman who's not got a foot growing out of her forehead, and I'm sure there's a market for that on eBay somewhere, has a reasonable number of men who will go out with her, right?
At least half a dozen to a dozen men women can choose from if they're not, like, fugly, right?
And so your mom could have chosen any number of men to go out with.
She chose to date, get engaged to, get married to, have a child with your father.
She chose that.
She chose that.
Listen, there are experiments where they send an attractive man into a bar, like a tent, a total stud muffin.
And he's so good-looking, and he goes up to a lot of women and says, I'd like to have sex with you.
And the women all say, no!
Right?
And they do the exact same experiment with a 10, a woman who's really attractive, and in a bar or a hotel bar or something, she says, I have a room upstairs.
I'd like to have sex with you.
What do the men say?
Oh, yeah, no.
Yeah!
Yeah!
Sounds good.
I don't care if you've got so many STDs, there are ass crawling out of your hoochie coochie.
I don't care if there's radioactive bubbling and the Joker's getting his face melted between your labia.
I'm coming up and I'm going to do something because eggs!
Right?
So, men are constantly putting themselves forward to ask women out, to date women, to get women to go out with them.
And the women are like, eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
I've got this big forest full of penises waving at me and I can choose and grab and yes and no.
Women, men propose, women dispose.
It is not a mutual process and almost nowhere in the animal kingdom is it a mutual process and we are animals.
And because women have so much more to lose from pregnancy, men can go and impregnate 20 women in a day.
More if he's willing to use a turkey baster.
More if he's 19, right?
But, I mean, holy crap.
I mean, women, if they get pregnant, a man impregnates a woman, he can go off and do whatever he wants.
A woman gets pregnant, she's going to get...
A baby, which is a 20-year commitment and breastfeeding and less access to quality men and stretched out stretch marks and sagging boobs and no sleep.
I mean, because it is such a massive commitment for women and such a tiny commitment for men to make a baby, men propose and women dispose.
That's the way it works.
And your mom could have chosen a better guy.
And your mom could have chosen a better stepfather.
That's why I was sort of pointing out, so she's responsible for this guy being in your life, right?
Well, yeah, sure she is.
I mean, she's just not 100% responsible because she's responsible.
Sure, I'm not trying to have responsibility.
Okay.
I've got to move on because we're just going back and forth in Fogland here.
But I really appreciate the call.
I hope you'll get your wife to go into some kind of therapy and do what you can to save the marriage.
But my goal with you is, you know, be honest with your kid in an age-appropriate fashion about what goes on.
But, all right.
Thanks very much.
Let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, Andrew is up.
He wrote in and said, Is it possible to morally serve in the military?
And what should a person do if they have already enlisted?
And this is not a theoretical question.
I know, I get that.
Lock and load, baby, lock and load.
That was Andrew, right?
Yes, yes.
Alright, how are you doing, Andrew?
I'm doing alright.
Alright.
How did you end up in the military, my friend?
I grew up in a very small town.
I went to high school in a very small town.
Most of my classmates ended up in the military.
Something like 40% of my graduating class wound up in the military, which is a lot more than average.
What kind of shitty school was that?
A tiny school in South Dakota, so...
Well, no, I mean, look, small schools can be, you know, at least that's politically correct than the bigger ones.
I mean, was it a bad school?
It was a public school, so I didn't think it was...
But even by public school standards, would you say it was not...
Yeah, it was not a great school.
It was...
I mean, I haven't been to very many schools, so I can't really compare it.
Just 40% is like, well, it could go to college or murder gang.
Right, okay.
Oh yeah, and some of those went to the National Guard or the reserves or whatever because that way they could pay for their college, which is one of the big reasons why people do it, to my knowledge, is to pay for college.
And so...
I was looking to travel and become independent from my parents.
It was a big thing.
I didn't have exactly the best childhood ever.
I wanted to get out of my small town.
Don't skim over that part.
This show is all about digging into the archaeology.
What happened in your childhood, Andrew?
My dad still has a major depressive disorder.
He's Been struggling with that basically his whole life.
And my parents got divorced when I was around 10 years old.
And with my mom, I went and lived with my mom.
And sorry, did you, I don't know if you were listening to the last bit.
Yeah.
Does it like passing into the land of shadows and lies?
Does that resonate with you at all?
Or was that more particular to Alex?
That speaks to me a lot, actually.
Quite a bit.
So, yeah, I wanted to get out of that situation.
I wanted to go somewhere else.
And for my entire life, everybody tells me, oh, it's moral, just, righteous to go serve in the military.
It's serving your country.
It's good for you.
Sorry, who was saying that?
People in my community in general and, you know, the media and, you know, things that I see around me.
And what did your parents say?
I think they agree with the theory that it's like an upstanding career, like a good career for an upstanding citizen to be in the military and serve their country.
Right, okay.
But you said you think.
It's a little detail that did not escape me.
I mean...
Yeah, I haven't really talked to my parents about this all that much.
I mean, I live on the other...
Yeah, but you did say you wanted to join the military.
At some point, you talked about that with your parents, I'd assume, right?
Yeah.
And, yeah, when we discussed it, my mom had some concerns with, like, my career choices.
But once I decided on what I ended up doing, she was fairly happy about it.
She just didn't want me going into, like, a combat situation.
Right.
Okay.
But, I mean, you're too smart, based upon what you're doing in the military, and we don't have to get into any of those details, but from what I know about what you're doing in the military, you'd kind of be wasted on the front lines, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
You ain't cannon fodder material, my friend.
Okay, so...
Your question is how to be a voluntarist in the military?
I guess my question was, is there a way to be in the military and not be a bad person, basically?
And I've come to the conclusion, and that's one of the reasons why I've decided that I'm taking steps to get out of the military now, that I can't do that in my personal situation.
But I think that there's a requirement for security, I guess, for human beings.
People need to feel secure and feel safe in their homes and stuff like that.
Oh, I'd go further than that.
I mean, Andrew, what you're doing is a deterrence role, right?
Yes.
I mean, I'm not a military expert, but you're big on deterrence.
I can't really discuss everything that I do.
Don't discuss anything that you do.
I can't discuss anything that I do.
But people, you are in a deterrence role.
You are like, you know, don't fuck with this role, right?
Yeah.
Now, I'm a huge, you know, the fact that I've made it to 48 and have not been blown up in a war is almost exclusively to do with deterrence, with the mutually assured destruction scenario, right?
Yeah.
I mean, there would for sure have been a war after the Second World War, in my view, between the remnants of capitalism and the pretense of communism.
Yeah.
There would have been a war in the 60s or 70s and it probably would have come out of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It would have escalated into a land war.
With even more hellish weapons, but because there was a deterrent weapon, right, that both sides had, it became proxy wars, economic wars, and then the collapse of the Soviet Union.
So I am a big fan of deterrence because I'm, I think I would say, addicted to oxygen and my continued intake of it.
So what you're doing, to me, is one of the areas in the military where That has served the peace of the planet quite considerably.
I'm sorry if I just blew your mind.
I grew up as a Cold War baby and we were waiting for this shit to blow up left, right and center 24-7.
It never did.
And I've talked about this in the show before, but I... Thank you.
Thank you!
And all of the guys, men and women, who've been working on this deterrence stuff, you know?
Rather the weapons weren't there, but they are, and because they are, we've not had a third world war, which would definitely have been the end of Western civilization completely.
I don't know if it would have necessarily been the end completely, but it would have definitely been very bad.
Well, it would have occurred in Eastern Europe, and it definitely would have spread.
And it would have been 20 years of technological advances, even beyond the horrors of the Second World War weapons.
And I think it would have been...
I mean, we wouldn't have been back to grass huts.
Because the Second World War was only sustainable at its current level because of the draining of the various empires, right?
And without those empires to drain, I mean, it would have been even more brutal in Europe, so...
And it would have also just been like, why on earth have kids when they're just going to be fed into the endless gears of war?
Why the hell would we want to even get out of bed?
We just had three giant wars in 50 years or 60 years and forget it.
Like it would have been the end of any vitality.
I'm not saying that Europe would have become completely depopulated, but it would have been, which came close enough as it was, it would have been the end of any vitality or growth or enthusiasm or optimism in Europe.
Yeah, I can agree with that.
But my real problem with what I was doing in the military wasn't so much the deterrence or that role.
It had more to do with the fact that I felt like I was stealing from people by doing my job.
Because I feel like...
I mean, I was the repair parts petty officer on my ship.
I ordered parts for my boat, for my job.
And...
It's just a ridiculous, like the process and the expense and everything associated with it is just ridiculous.
And I couldn't do that job because every single time I had to buy something, I felt like I was stealing from the American taxpayer.
And I mean, I was stealing from the American taxpayer because we're holding a gun to their head.
Okay, I know.
I get that.
And I certainly understand the mechanics of that.
And for those who are sort of new to the conversation, that's because the military is paid for through the initiation of force against domestic citizens through taking their money through force.
But there's two kinds of government stuff.
Look at me getting all technical.
Government stuff pile A, government pile stuff other.
One requires a blue form, the other requires a green and yellow and red form in triculacate.
Now, push hard, but there is the stuff that is currently provided by government that would still be provided in the free market, right?
And then there's stuff that's provided by the government that would never be provided in the free market, right?
Yeah.
Now...
I believe that at least for some period of time, during the transition or shortly thereafter to a free society, that your job would exist.
And I've talked about this before, you know, the role of deterrence in geographical defense in a free society.
So your job would be...
Funded voluntarily would it be more efficient?
Yeah, it would be more efficient.
I get all of that, but it's not in the same category as Something else right to me.
There's a difference between Going and invading Iraq which if people had to pay for they never would have as opposed to a Big deterrence mechanism that does keep the peace to some degree in the world, which I think people would pay for Yeah, I can agree with that I I think it's just, and it's a lot of things with my job, and it's a pretty terrible job just in general.
I mean, I worked like 140 hours a week when I was in port, and then I would go to sea for months at a time in which I would not see the sun for, you know, extended periods.
And it's pretty much a sausage fest on the waves, right?
It is, it is.
There was no women on my submarine.
Right.
But it can't be, because if a woman gets pregnant, she can't hang on to the baby because you can't breathe that recycled air and have a baby, right?
Yeah, well, they're trying to implement that right now, but I don't understand how it's going to work.
It's not going to work.
Yeah.
No, I mean, and for those who don't know, I'm sorry to be annoyingly technical, but for those who don't know, the way that the air is recycled on submarines allows for dudes to be fine, but a woman who's pregnant, the air quality would not be enough to sustain a healthy baby.
At least it would be dangerous for the baby, so you can't have...
Anyway, I know you get it, right?
Yeah, I get it.
I understand, because I worked on one for a long time, but...
Yeah, we definitely...
One thing that I don't think people understand is that our oxygen levels and stuff like that are...
We sparingly provide oxygen to the boat.
We have methods of producing it, but we don't do it very often because one method is noisy and the other method is very perishable.
We run out of it quickly.
So we pretty much always operate with...
Sustenance-level oxygen.
Oh, you guys are Sherpas.
You have to climb Everest.
You'd be like, I don't know what the fuss is all about.
It's better air up here.
Yeah.
So...
So yeah, not a lot of ladies and not a lot of sunlight and so on, right?
Yeah.
And it's something that in a free society I would pay for if there was threat, military threat.
Because as I've talked about before, WMDs and deterrence is a very cheap way of ensuring security.
So just because I don't want the government to do it doesn't mean...
I don't like the government at all.
I think that there will still be roads in a free society, at least until we get our own personal teleporting jetpacks or something.
And so if you said, I'm building roads, I wouldn't be like, that's evil!
Because, you know, in a free society, there'd be roads too.
And, you know, I don't like the fact that the government's doing it.
That doesn't mean the activity itself is necessarily...
The mechanism of funding it is immoral, but it's not like it would cease to exist as a function in a free society.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then...
On top of that, you add in just the people that you work with in my field.
And closely with.
Very closely.
Very closely, right?
Yes.
I yelled at several people.
I sit in a room on the boat.
It's a control room for the reactor.
And there's three people standing watch and then one officer in that room all the time.
And I was talking to them, and I yelled.
I got so mad because I had three adults, three grown men, telling me how it's good to hit your kids.
Ooh.
Ooh.
How it, you know...
And where you are, it's like getting into a wrestling match at a cockpit, right?
You kind of upping each other's grills pretty significantly, right?
Yeah.
And what actually sparked the thing, and this is the other reason that I could not continue to do the job that I was doing, is that the reason that sparked this conversation is because I'm not very socially adept.
And one of the operators that was...
Sitting next to me, asked me if my parents spanked me as a child because they thought that I didn't get spanked enough.
Was the con...
Well, that was the con...
Yeah.
Right.
They didn't beat the social awkwardness out of you.
That's the problem.
Yeah.
And in a way, I mean, in terms of getting along with people who were probably significantly beaten as children, they didn't beat you enough to get along with those people.
So good for them, right?
Yes.
And no.
I mean, that's an interesting way to look at it.
A lack of compatibility with those around you is not a sign of deficiency in all situations, right?
Yeah, and I recognize that.
I have to get out of that situation.
I have gotten out of that specific situation.
I'm still in the Navy.
I'm I started going to therapy, and they took me off the boat.
Is that a rule?
Like, if you go to therapy, they've got to take you off the boat?
No, not necessarily, but just in my particular case, they decided that that was the best option.
You know, it sounds like a reasonable course of action.
Not because there's something wrong with you, but because there's not that much, you know, compared to other people, wrong with you in that situation.
Yeah, uh...
Definitely.
As I started listening to your show, I started listening to your show about, I want to say, three years ago.
I was still in school at the time.
And as I started listening more and more, it's shocking, the things I see every day.
And the more I listen to philosophy, the more I get into it.
I just can't function in the realm of being in the military anymore.
Right.
And you have an exit strategy, right?
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
And, I mean, you've received good education, and you've obviously had some pretty interesting experiences, not that you've got to treasure all of them.
So, yeah, I mean, I... There are people, you know, like, even when I said, I like some of what you're doing in the military, I like what you're doing in the military, you know, I hear these, like, little pops of, like, the clatter of little libertarian heads exploding across the world as people listen to me saying this stuff, you know?
And I think that it is terribly cold, I think, to look at people in the military and And people who are in uniform and just say, I don't know, tool of the oppressive class!
You know, like, I don't know what people say that, like, you guys are not human beings.
You are human beings, right?
And I don't agree, obviously, with my lofty, enlightenment-y, I've had 20 years to study philosophy, na-na-na-na-boo-boo, you guys haven't.
You know, I can say, well, this is the wrong way to ideally do it in a free society and so on.
But you went in to this gig with honorable intentions, right?
Yeah, definitely.
You weren't like, I can't wait to become a foot soldier of the Emperor, right?
I mean, give me Stormtrooper.
I know that the Emperor is really evil, but give me that white tin can suit and I'm going to shoot me some Ewoks, right?
I mean, you were like, protect the homeland.
It's an honorable profession.
Everyone around you is saying it's a good thing to do.
It's a secure thing to do.
It's an honorable thing to do.
20 years and you get your pension and you can double dip.
And like, there was...
I mean, was there anybody who was saying, dude...
By the way, it's painful through the initiation of force, right?
I mean, this wasn't even in your orbit, right?
No, not even.
I had liberal classmates that were not very against joining the military, but for their own reasons, not because it's not the initiation of the use of force or anything like that, but I think they just thought it was beneath them in a way.
You're stealing money from our social programs, dude!
Yeah, which is...
Yeah, and I still get in debates with them sometimes, because...
Yeah.
So, I mean, the people who you were serving with were not, like, waking up every morning rubbing their wily coyote mustaches and plotting what evil they could do in the world, right?
I mean, they're...
Doing a tough job that they feel is a necessary job, that everyone has told them is a necessary job, and they do not...
I mean, I'm sure there's some cynicism about the military, you know, like, if it moves, move it!
If it doesn't move, paint it!
Hurry up and wait!
You know, there's lots of stuff that goes on in the military that is cynical about it, but it's kind of cynical, like Joshy cynical, like, this is a bad way to do a good thing.
Yeah.
I would say that there are There are some people that I worked with that were just mean, just cold-hearted, ruthless people.
For example, there's a torpedo man on my ship who just really wants to sink a ship.
He just wants to kill people.
And he talks about it all the time.
He's like, I picked the wrong job.
I wanted to go and shoot people.
And do you think he was just being like...
Was this bravado?
Or was he just really itching to turn some human being into red mist, right?
I think that it's bravado stimulated by his own ignorance.
I think that he doesn't comprehend the gravity of the situation.
Because...
I think about it.
We have, you know, torpedoes on our submarine.
If we fire one of those, it could kill a thousand people.
Like, instantly.
And...
Maybe he really likes sharks.
Like, he feels that they're hungry and need some food.
Yeah, it's...
You know, and I think about that, and I... And it's in my...
You know, it gets in my head, and I'm like, what am I doing?
Like...
I don't have any control over what this massive weapon that I'm driving around in does.
You know, I don't have any say in it.
I'm just assisting with its operation.
I'm just, you know, I'm a cog in the machine, if you will.
But when was the last time, I mean, this guy's also, you know, a little military history wouldn't hurt.
I mean, when was the last time America...
Sunk a big ship with a...
I'm thinking, what, the Gulf of Tonkin?
I mean, when the hell did they last use a torpedo?
The Battle of Jutland?
I mean, this is like forever.
Yeah, I want to say it was probably World War II the last time a U.S. Yeah, I don't think they even used them in Korea or Vietnam or anything like that.
Not a lot of use for it in Operation Desert Storm, you know?
These torpedoes are kind of slow in the sand.
Perhaps we could just use a bomb.
Yeah, and, you know, I think that he got in to the military and then sort of got assigned, you know, as they will put you where they need you, basically.
Or maybe he's like, I really want to kill people.
It's like, I think you'd be really good in your torpedoes because we don't really use those.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
What I do know is, like, I got to pick my job because I... I took what's called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or the ASVAP. It's a multiple-choice test.
And I scored in the 92nd percentile.
And so they were basically like, here's the brochure.
Pick what you would like.
Oh, Andrew, I feel terrible because when it comes to military calls, we have a cutoff of the 93rd percentile.
Gosh, I really feel bad about having to end this call.
I'm just kidding.
Go on.
And and so for me it was I got to pick my job and I picked a job where I knew I wasn't gonna have to be going out and shooting anybody and I picked a job where I was gonna be able to travel a lot and you know do what I wanted to do get what I wanted out of it and I know that a lot of people don't have that same opportunity wait a minute I gotta just back up for a second when you say travel a lot I mean, isn't it the same inside, wherever you are?
I found that out the hard way.
Okay, because I'm going to say, you know, this bulkhead looks totally different in the Atlantic than it did in the Pacific, because the light is...
Oh, wait, no, wait, we don't see any sunlight.
Yeah, and I've been around the Pacific.
I've been to Liberty Ports in various places around the Pacific, and I live in...
So, it's definitely...
I've seen a lot more than the Midwest of the United States now, which is pretty much all I had seen before.
So your question was originally, is it possible to morally serve in the military, and what should a person do if they've already enlisted?
My goal, of course, is, at least in the current situation, I think it's better to not enlist.
And the reason not, not because I think that being an armed defender of a geographical region is innately immoral.
It's not.
I'm not a pacifist.
Never have been, never will be.
I fully believe in the right of self-defense.
These are big, complicated issues, so I'm just touching on them very briefly here.
So, I don't believe that...
It's immoral to be an armed defender, and I'm glad that there are armed defenders in certain situations.
But the problem is, of course, in the modern military, in the government military, I think, as you pointed out, Andrew, you don't know where the hell you're going to be pointed and for what.
So in a private military force, there would be massive constraints.
There would be no empire, no imperialism, no let's go and have self-indulgent military fests to avenge the wrong country for some terrorist attack and so on.
So this kind of stuff wouldn't happen.
There wouldn't be any of this nation-building that is a complete...
So, in the current military, while I believe that being a soldier can be an honorable and necessary occupation, even in a free society, you don't have any real power or constraint over it.
Where you get pointed and I think that to me is is the real challenge at the moment so You know, can you morally serve in the military?
I think it's tough.
You know, this is one of these things, if I'm saying yes, I'm sort of scouring through my head about how that works.
The military is different from something like the IRS. You know, can you morally serve in the IRS? Ooh, that's really tough, because there'd be no such thing in a free society, though there would still be military defense in a free society.
Even if it's just against space aliens, if the whole world is peaceful or whatever, right?
Asteroids could come with, you know, helmeted thugs.
So I think it is very tough.
There's things that you can do in the military that can help people.
You know, I mean, obviously, you know, you guys deliver medicine and education and so on.
You know, Rush Limbaugh is basically, you know, the military is there to break things and to blow up things and kill people.
Yeah, but there is also stuff that the military does that is more humanitarian in nature and there could be some positive stuff that comes out of that.
The funding issue is the funding issue.
There's no particular way around that other than to say that there are things that would be funded in a free society and therefore it's not like you're doing the wrong occupation.
It's just you're doing the wrong way of funding what could be the right occupation.
If a person is already enlisted, if...
If it's against one's conscience, then...
And I think that the military has avenues for that, at least according to military men and women that I've talked to before.
The military does have avenues around a crisis of conscience and what it is that you can do if you no longer agree with the ethics of your situation.
So those are things to explore.
I did a whole interview.
Mike, if you could look it up.
I can't remember the name or number of the podcast, but I did an interview with a fellow...
Who is part of a support organization to help people who've had a crisis of conscience in the military explore their options of getting out without creating some dishonorable disaster or risking time in Leavenworth or whatever.
So there are options within the military to pursue a crisis of conscience, a series of options.
So I think that should be explored.
I mean, I think it is very difficult if you no longer believe in the mission.
And I think the military recognizes that insofar as if somebody's had a moral crisis of conscience in the military no longer believes in the mission of the military, I don't think the other soldiers want that person around particularly, right?
Because a lot of the military situations involve don't hesitate.
It's like a duel.
You suddenly go, I wonder if dueling is really good right when it's like turn and fire.
It's like, okay, welcome to the land of nevermore, right?
Yes.
And...
That, no, sorry, Karen, it wasn't Karen, it was someone else who I talked to.
It was an interview with a guy, yikes!
I'm sorry, I'm setting my oven-wired glue chase.
I think it was four years ago or so, I did an interview with a guy who helps, who runs an organization to help people.
If they want to find a way out of the military without it becoming a complete disaster, there are avenues.
So, I think that's worth exploring.
I mean, you're a soldier.
I mean, does that make any sense?
I mean, I'll sit here in a comfortable Canadian house and whatever, right?
Yeah, I agree.
And I think that with, like, more combat roles, that that is definitely very true.
In my particular case, I'm in a very technical job, which is severely undermanned.
And so when I, you know...
When I leave my job, it puts all the burden of all my work onto everyone else.
And they're like, well, we don't really care if you don't like what you do.
We just want you to do all this paperwork and all these, you know, maintenance items and such that we have to do.
I'm sorry, just before we move on, the podcast number is 1543.
And the podcast title is Courage to Resist, the Free Domain Radio interview with Jeff Patterson.
And he's a bit of a switcheroo guy because it's one T, P-A-T-E-R-S-O-N. So Jeff, J-E-F-F Patterson.
So people can do a search for that if they want.
So, yeah, I think it's very difficult to make a good case for...
Being in the military, given the way that the military is run at the moment in their status system.
You know, there are militaries which don't have an imperial element to them.
You know, as you know, America's got like 700 plus military bases all over the world and so on.
There really is an imperialistic element.
It's tough to say that it's all about defending Houston.
Because you never know, they could be sneaking into the Pakistani or something like that.
And I think that's tougher.
I think there are other militaries where.
And it's sort of like the question of being a cop.
You know, there are elements of police activity that would be replicated in a free society.
I mean, and there will be people in a free society who are unwilling or unable to defend themselves, who will want to outsource that...
You know, arresting a guy for having some marijuana, obviously in a free society, I don't think that would even remotely happen.
But if there was, you know, if there's criminals about or, you know, there are people who are raping and assaulting and thieving and so on, right, then yeah, I can certainly see how there would be in a free market people who would take that on.
Would they need to be armed?
Yeah, well, perhaps so.
But again, you don't know where you're going to get pointed when you're in.
When you're in uniform.
I think that that's probably my single biggest issue.
The simple fact that I do not have control over something that is so incredibly deadly.
But I'm assisting and operating.
It's like, what happens if we end up going to war but I decide that it's not the right war or whatever.
I'm still just going to be sitting in my little box in the back of the boat.
And I'm not even going to have the information to decide whether or not that the torpedo or the cruise missile that we launch is worth launching or not like that.
But I feel like I would still be more morally responsible if that were to hit the wrong person.
Because I provided, you know, for that to happen.
You know?
Right.
Yeah, I mean, it would be on your conscience.
And I, you know, I believe in good and evil.
I believe that humanity is not a big circle of kumbaya togetherness.
And I believe that there are times where lethal force needs to be used in defense of the good.
And so, yeah, I may be closer to your way of thinking or the military way of thinking than a lot of other people.
So I accept and believe all of that.
And so if you're going to take a life or be involved in the taking of life, then you need to be really sure that it's in accordance with your moral values because that is...
An unrecoverable line that you cross, right?
And I think if you take a life that is gonna harm someone else, Then you're probably considered, you know, it's a regrettable but honorable thing to do.
I mean, nobody, of course, wants to take life.
But if that's the situation, then that's what you do.
And I think that's the right thing to do to defend the good, right?
You know, it's the old thing.
There's some mass murderer in the mall.
Shoot him.
You know, like, shoot him.
Because, you know, I certainly know.
If my family was in that mall and there was some shooter there...
Fucking kill him.
And, like, kill him twice.
Kill him three times.
Shoot a chandelier to fall on his head.
Do whatever you've got to do to stop him from killing people.
You know that crazy guy who went on that island, was it, in Norway, and went and shot up all those kids, like, triple digits?
God, I mean, shoot that guy.
I mean, so...
I think that the taking of life is...
It's such a line to be crossed.
I mean, it's not like unrecoverable, like you'll always be unhappy, because if you've done the right thing, you've done the right thing.
But it is such a giant moral decision that we want it to be as restrained as humanly possible.
And right now, I don't think it is in the U.S. military or in many of the militaries around the world.
Yes, I agree.
Yeah.
Well, I guess you pretty much answered my question.
I mean, I don't really have anything else to put for the conversation, but I definitely appreciate the conversation.
Now, can I just ask you one question?
Yes.
Go ahead.
What kind of dad do you think you're going to be?
A lot better of a dad than mine was.
Go on.
I don't mean about your dad, but what are you going to do as a dad?
Yeah.
I'm definitely not going to hit my kids like my dad did.
I'm going to try to make sure that they're educated to the maximum extent possible to make sure that they have all the opportunities that they can possibly have.
Definitely going to tell them about my time in the military and how it was a pretty big mistake.
Discourage them from doing that.
I won't, you know, I won't force them to do anything, but I think that if I, with honesty, like you were talking about, with your last caller, being honest with your kids, then they'll learn and they'll do the right thing on their own.
So, you know, I think I'll be a pretty good dad.
And Andrew, if you tuned into this show and heard me screaming about how all soldiers are irredeemably evil, do you think he would have kept listening?
No, probably not.
I would hope not.
Right.
And this demonization, look, I have my temper, I think, like everyone, and I can go too far sometimes in my condemnation, and I'm working on it with massive amounts of medication that unfortunately or fortunately has to be injected straight into my left testicle.
Well, it's a mixed bag, let's just say, at least after the first injection.
But this idea that Just screaming about, you know, mustachioed evil, uniformed agents of the state is irredeemably evil and so on.
That's certainly not how you see yourself.
That's certainly not what you were told at all.
And if there's just that screaming that goes on about cops, about prison guards, about soldiers and so on, you're not going to listen.
And you shouldn't listen to somebody who's just screaming that you're evil.
I mean, I sure as hell wouldn't, right?
I'm just not going to do it.
I mean, I got too much self-respect and pride to just listen to that.
But by engaging in conversations with cops and soldiers and prison guards, when I was in the States once, I met up with two listeners who were prison guards.
They both, they were married, they were prison guards, and we had some incredible conversations.
And, you know, if I just, oh, you're agents of the state, you're kidnappers and so on, you know, what the hell?
And they were going to be parents soon until we talked about parenting.
And, you know, they did talk about how uneasy they felt in the situation and the system.
They also did, like a lot of people who are in the state apparatus do, is they say, look, we have concerns about if we leave, who's going to replace us?
You know, we treat the prisoners well.
We keep fights to a minimum.
We never abuse the prisoners.
Like, what if some psychosadist comes in after we leave?
And that is not insignificant.
These people had a relationship with the prisoners in the penal system, and the idea that they would just go and wander off, and who knows who's going to replace them, that's significant.
Same thing with public school teachers.
Oh, Oh, you're agents of propaganda, Satan's armpits wet and all.
You know, what are they going to?
And they say, well, look, if I leave, then they're going to get some other teacher who's not even going to be able to give these kids any exposure to better ideas and going to propagandize them like crazy.
And I care about these kids.
And like, it's not easy.
It's easy to demonize people and to just draw this line down the middle of the human heart and say, well, we are all glowing angels of light on this side.
And on the other side, they're just, you know, satanic knee scrubbers of devilry.
But all that means is that you don't get a chance to influence people.
You know, I'm glad that you called in.
I'm glad that you listened to this show.
I am really sorry.
I'm really sorry that you live in a culture where a lot of what we talk about in this show, Andrew, is kept hidden from you.
Not that this should be drilled into your head like some sort of automaton, but even the exposure to these kinds of ideas, you know, is hard to get a hold of.
And, you know, people...
Whenever I do stuff about cops, you know, like everyone and their dog, you know, screams, pro-cop!
And it's like...
If you really, you know, libertarians have a tough relationship with people in authority.
Let's just say.
No, no, that's up.
Am I, you know...
Yeah.
But the reality is that...
If you want there to not be cops, if you want there to not be soldiers, at least in their current incarnation, you really need to convince soldiers and cops and prison guards to be peaceful parents.
That's why I asked you about what kind of father you think you're gonna be.
Because I can virtually guarantee you, and tell me if I'm wrong, Andrew, but a lot of the people who were in the military, if not most, they had pretty rough childhoods, right?
Oh, yeah.
Yes.
I actually don't know a single person that didn't have childhood issues to some level or another.
And like I said, there was three people, three grown men telling me how it's good to hit your child.
Right.
Your problem was you weren't hit enough as a kid and therefore you don't fit in.
It's kind of true.
Right.
And so if you want there to not be cops, then you need to engage with people who are cops or who can influence people who are cops or anyone for that matter.
And you cut off the supply.
You cut off the supply of traumatized people and you reduce the power of Of institutionalized oligarchical hierarchies.
That's what you do.
I mean, it's not going to fit on a bumper sticker, but that's okay, right?
But you have to detraumatize the world so you don't get this conveyor belt of broken people riding out into the world on their iron horses to smash things up.
You know, broken people break people.
Hurt people hurt people.
And the fewer people we have coming off the conveyor belt of modern parenting with traumas and rage and suppression and aggression and enlarged fight or flight amygdala responses and shrunken neofrontal cortexes for impulse control, the more broken people we have coming out of the machinery of parenting, the more broken the world is going to remain.
And if you scream at people or, you know, you just have full of rage at cops, You are actually re-inflicting the kind of trauma on the cops that turned them into cops in the first place, was an intense amount of aggression when they were children, and probably what has made it possible for them to be cops in the first place.
And if you are, you know, going on verbal tirades against all soldiers, you're actually reproducing the aggression It's a form of self-indulgent, emotional, masturbatory whack-jobbery that is designed to make you feel good in the moment, but has nothing whatsoever to do with moving the conversation forward for peace in the world.
It is your emotional self-indulgence.
It has nothing to do with reversing the trend of child harm that is producing that which you're railing against.
All you're doing is stepping into...
All you're doing is you're stepping into the shoes of the abusers that produced these traumatized people who are willing to hurt others in the first place.
You are simply recreating, reproducing their childhoods as an adult, and that is going to do nothing to make them better parents in the long run.
It's going to harden their defenses, it's going to make them turn against you, and then they will never listen to the message about how to be a better parent.
And they don't have to be a 100% better parent.
Man, I'd settle for 10% some days.
But...
They really are going to listen to you if you're open to the conversation.
I'm not putting people, and you understand, I'm completely 180-ing from the conversation here, and this has nothing to do with you, Andrew, just because pedophiles not in this category, right?
I mean, this is not like, ah, yes, but you see, if you're upset with pedophiles, you're responding to the same, like, I'm not, I get that there's, but this is not, you know, pedophiles don't go into it saying, this is an honorable occupation with a good pension defending people that everybody agrees with is a great thing to do.
I mean, that's not where pedophiles are coming from.
I don't want this to get anywhere close to your conception of yourself or your history, Andrew.
But yeah, I mean, people who are beating up children, people who are raping children, people who are traumatizing children and so on.
There are a few people, I would say, who have had no access to any better information and are hitting their kids.
Because they come from a tiny town, they've had no access or very limited access to other, but there's very, very few people who have never had access to better methods of parenting and never, you know, because there just aren't parenting books out there, at least outside of fundamentalist religious texts that advocate beating your kids or hitting your kids significantly.
So there's a lot better information out there.
There are a few people who have no idea that smoking is bad for you, but that's not very many people anymore.
And so, you know, if you don't know how to read and you're in the Ozarks and you just find a pack of cigarettes every now and then, you need to smoke, and okay, fine, you know, there's one in a million people who don't know that.
So, as far as child abuses go and pedophiles and rapists, I mean, I get that they've just gone full predator, but that is not the case, I think, with the majority of people in uniform.
Does this make sense to you at all?
Again, I'm trying to even drag any of this other stuff into your world.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I'll say this.
There are good people that I have worked with.
There are people that I've talked to about your show, and I hope a few of them have started listening.
It's a small minority, but there's definitely still good people in the military.
Yes, I don't get it.
And there are people in the military that if you want them at your house when there's a home invasion.
Yeah.
You know, like, if I know people are coming over to beat me up, I'm inviting some of those guys over for dinner.
You know, I'm not inviting the pacifists over.
Yeah.
Hey, man, there's no need to...
Yeah.
You know, yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Okay.
So, yeah, there are good people.
We need to reach those people.
And, you know, screaming at them about their bottomless pits of evil known as human hearts is not...
It's just not going to...
A, it's not honorable and respectful of the situation that they're coming from.
I'm lucky.
I'm lucky that I happen to come across...
The information that I came across.
I did not invent this stuff all by myself.
Good heavens, I've maybe taken the conversation a couple of percentage points further in certain areas, maybe some more in other areas, but holy crap!
I mean, the idea that I've just become this...
Zeus-like thunderbolt god who can stand up on this high mountain and hurl my thunderbolts of moral indignation at everyone whose jacket matches their pants and who has a hat on is just ridiculous.
I'm lucky.
I was lucky to get exposed to the information.
I'm lucky that the information was available.
I'm lucky that there was an internet to do further research.
I'm incredibly lucky that I have the internet to put this information out in this way.
A lot of it is, yeah, there's some hard work involved, but a lot of it, particularly at the beginning, was just good luck.
There are six million writers I've never read.
Six million a mom would have made Ayn Rand, which started the whole damn thing.
So the idea that I was lucky and therefore I can use my luck as some sort of fundamental moral pride and use it as a lever by which to damn other people who simply haven't been exposed to the same information is...
Absolutely false, and it's the wrong way to use knowledge and wisdom.
Alright, is there anything else that you wanted to chat about?
No, like I said, you answered my question.
I appreciate you spending the time.
I'd also like to say that I feel like I was pretty lucky that YouTube suggested your channel when I was, you know, Three years ago.
It's funny, eh?
It's funny how those little things, it's like, hey, I guess I just watched this guy's video.
I'm sure it'll be, whoa.
Right?
And suddenly it's like, holy shit.
Fork in the road.
Spork in the road.
Here we go.
Different direction.
Ah!
It's just funny how these little...
Every now and then I get this weird chill.
Like...
If I hadn't got a job here and met this guy here who invited me to play volleyball with him here, I never would have met my wife.
And it's just like, ooh, ooh.
It's horrifying to think of.
I'm not saying that that's necessarily the same intensity of relationship.
But it's just funny how these little things pop up and then it's like, okay, different life.
Okay, I guess we're going in a different direction now.
So thanks a lot for calling.
Do keep in touch.
You're welcome anytime.
And thank you for your service to philosophy.
Yep, thank you.
Take care.
All right.
Thanks, Andrew.
Up next is Ruben.
Ruben wrote in and said...
Damn it!
Now I'm hungry.
He wrote in and said, Hello, Steph and Mike.
I am a biracial and ethnically Hispanic.
I recently got into several arguments with other people of color over Facebook during the aftermath of the Baltimore riots.
In one of the discussions, revolution was mentioned, and people felt that the situation in Baltimore was the beginning of an uprising.
A person in the thread, and with a lot of support from everyone else, advocated killing whites, the rich, and anyone with whom would be an ally to them, including me, since I argued against the riots.
Are we going to see a Bolshevik-like attempt in North America, where the racist and class resentful left, unable to win the argument using evidence, use violence to get their way?
Without a doubt, that's what the leftists want, and that's not my conspiracy theory.
That's exactly what the leftists and communists have been saying.
For almost 100 years.
The idea was to use minorities within North America as foot soldiers in the attack upon the remnants of the free market.
We've got the truth about the race war, which people can look at at YouTube slash Free Domain Radio or FDRpodcast.com.
Yeah, that's the plan, right?
Which is to take people who...
And it's funny because you can't say minorities...
Because Asians are a minority in North America, but they do better than whites.
You can't say blacks because West African blacks have a higher per capita income than whites in North American society.
So it becomes really difficult to narrow it down to any particular group.
Every ethnicity you come up with has vast numbers of them who are very successful in North America.
And it's not like every single white person is successful in North America.
So it becomes really hard.
But basically, where there's a bunch of people who aren't doing well, Yeah, I agree.
Can you hear me, Steph?
Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead.
Ironically, actually, the guy that originally put the post up, he's from Venezuela, and he visited Venezuela recently.
He went on vacation there, and he was talking about all the issues, the economic issues that are going on there, and all the shortage of basic supplies, basic consumer supplies, like toilet paper.
They don't even have that.
It runs out.
It just rashes.
Actually, you put up a podcast recently about this when you spoke about Nazism and socialism, and it's ironic that he condemns socialism in Venezuela but supports the left.
Here in the United States.
And he even works for a union in California and boasted about arm twisting in some sort of government capital town there, in a government building and negotiating and doing whatever unions do best, which is corner labor prices for their benefit, and anyone else that's trying to come up.
It's ironic, really.
Any unskilled worker that wants to try to come up and compete in the labor market has to deal with the effects of unions.
And this guy advocates on one side for raising minimum wage and fight the oppression, fight the system.
But the things that he does and supports on the other side are what cause the disparities of the poor, of the poor.
of the unskilled workers, which a lot of them are blacks, are black males.
These people don't want to have that conversation.
You speak to them about The economics of it and try to get them over to the truth.
And it's immediately about, well, no, rebellion, revolution.
It's, you know, the riots and destroying some small businesses.
It's justified because of the oppression and, you know, you capitalists are going to get yours.
So that's what I deal with on a daily basis on Facebook.
Would you like to stop dealing with that on a daily basis on Facebook?
Because I can't see how that would be any fun.
I mean, like, not that I deal with it directly, as in, you know, I choose my battles wisely.
Wait, no, hang on, hang on.
How have those battles been going, Ruben?
Any luck turning people towards the light, my brother?
I've got to try.
I feel like I've got...
No, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Because you're saying, well, these people, they're not responding to evidence, they're not listening to good arguments, they're not responding to reason, right?
Are you responding to evidence that they don't respond to reason?
Here's the thing, here's the thing, Steph, before I answer your question.
In high school, back in, I remember the socialist revolution in Venezuela happened, like, I think it started in 1998.
And in high school, back in the early 2000s, I was like, yeah, socialist, I'm a Chavista, I'm all for the Bolivian Revolution.
Blah, blah, blah, this and that.
And I believed in it so much.
Che was my hero.
Fidel Castro was my hero.
And I believed in it so much.
It's like, man, this is the truth.
This is the way.
So much so that I'm willing to challenge my own beliefs.
And I know that the result will be that I'm right.
And I go and do that.
For, you know, little by little, a few years go by.
I study economics in school.
I read stuff on my own.
And lo and behold, now I'm a volunteerist, an anarcho-capitalist.
Excellent.
Yeah, so...
Hang on, hang on.
Go ahead, finish.
I can do that to somebody else.
Okay, let's go back a little bit.
So...
Let me ask you something.
So when you were, you know, into Shea and Castro and all these kinds of things, did you get laid for that stuff?
Did I get laid?
No, I didn't get laid.
I mean, I had a lot of friends.
Were there no women around in these environments?
I went to a very small high school, and no one cared.
No one cared what I was talking about in that particular...
Oh, okay, okay, okay.
Because it's been my experience that chicks put out for socialism.
Oh, that it's sexy, right?
To be like...
Well, I mean, you know, yeah.
I mean, chicks dig the rebels and communist chicks are very easy.
I don't know if they're just socializing their beans in production or whatever, but...
Whereas conservative women, conservative chicks, if you want to put it that way, they don't put out very easily, right?
No, they don't, unfortunately.
I mean...
No, no, fortunately.
R versus K reproductive strategy.
And chicks put out for socialism because they need the government to clean up their mistakes.
They need the government to pay them.
You know, like, I'm a single mom.
I'm doing it all alone.
No, you're not.
You're not even close.
You got Section 8 housing.
You've got welfare.
You got Obamacare.
You got government schools.
You got pre-K. You are not even close to doing it alone.
And so women put out for socialism.
I mean, try being a capitalist, an open and outward capitalist at university and, you know, see how many dates you get.
Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.
I definitely have an experience with that.
We all think we have these beliefs.
All we're trying to do is get women.
This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's also somewhat not tongue-in-cheek, which is that what do women go for?
And they go for socialism.
Definitely.
I mean, there are not a lot of capitalist feminists out there, right?
But there are a lot of Marxist lefty socialist feminists, right?
And so men are like, which magic words open the leg?
Let me try capitalism.
Clamp!
Socialism.
Open sesame!
I used the magic word socialism and here comes the P slot.
So that is just something to remember.
That it's just not easy to get laid if you're a free marketer.
Do you think it could also be that...
These sort of women are also attracted to the commitment to violence that a lot of leftists have, you know?
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
Because women do not like a violent society.
They like getting resources.
And I'm talking way down deep in the biological reproductive system.
Base of the brain stuff.
They don't want a violent society.
Well, I mean, if they really dig in the reproductive strategy, then they probably get turned on by violence.
But in general, women want resources and the government is a more stable method of getting resources than a husband, right?
You don't have to cook the government dinner.
You don't have to do the government's laundry.
You don't have to put on makeup for the government.
You don't have to go to the gym for the government.
You don't have to be a nice person at all for the government.
And the government will send you that check every single month, no matter what happens.
And there's simply no way for the majority of women to resist free stuff, as I've talked about before, because free stuff is what women are designed to get.
And that's what the reproductive imperative is.
Get me free stuff because I'm going to be disabled by having kids, by being pregnant, by breastfeeding, by childcare, by being up three times a night with spit up and changing diapers and crap like that.
So free stuff is catnip.
It's ambrosia.
It's heroin.
It's a complete drug.
For women.
And it's almost impossible for the majority of women to resist free stuff.
In the same way that it's almost impossible for the majority of men to resist free sex.
I mean, this is not a good or bad thing.
It's just a reality of the way that the reproductive imperative works.
So women don't want a Mad Max world.
What they want is a world of guaranteed resources.
And socialists and leftists and Marxists give those guaranteed resources.
They guarantee those resources for women.
Yeah, you'll have access to abortion if you choose the wrong guy and sleeping around turns out badly for you.
Yeah, if you have a baby, we'll give you money, we'll give you time off, we'll give you free schooling, we'll give you food stamps, whatever, you know.
Yeah, you get older and there's just...
Because, you know, the risk of a woman choosing wrong in the having reproduction happen arena, these risks are catastrophic.
And the insurance is called the state, and then the state changes everyone's behavior because what becomes insurance, so what starts out as insurance in case something goes wrong, turns into subsidizing everything going wrong, right?
That's just natural.
So, yeah, women will, you know, they're turned on by socialism because socialism is porn for women.
You know, because it is sexually stimulating.
It is.
You laugh, but it's fundamentally absolutely true.
Socialism is porn for women.
It's just that porn for men, which involves guns going to people's heads deep down, is snuff porn, which is morally hideous and reprehensible.
But the fact that socialism is porn for women and it's basically a snuff film in disguise because there's still guns to people's head to pay these women, they don't want to see that.
They just want the resources.
Wow.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And I think you found the title of this podcast.
Socialism is important for women.
Not all women.
There was Ayn Rand.
But she's not a kid.
Yeah, and actually, I have my own first-hand experience with this sort of thing, with this class of women.
When I started college, I was in a course with a 30-year-old woman.
She was coming back to college...
And she's like, you know, a hardcore feminist and socialist and rah-rah Cuba.
By then I was, like, libertarian at the time.
So I wasn't really hearing any of it.
But I was in really good shape.
Guy, tall.
And so, you know, I call her fancy and she threw some signals my way.
Well, more than that, she made it explicit that she wanted some action.
And She bought a little Reuben sandwich!
Sorry, that's what I wanted to say.
Okay, I'm done.
I'll never make that joke again, and I'm sorry I did already, but go ahead.
That's fine.
And I was not about it.
She was a single mother, and even before I was listening to you, I just did not want to deal with that.
It's something...
No way.
And yeah, it makes sense.
I mean, this lady has a lot of tattoos, single mother, just the stereotype.
Feminist.
That is not the luckiest child in the known universe, I just really wanted to mention.
No.
No, he isn't.
And yeah, I think you're right about that.
But I just feel like...
Let me give you a piece of pop culture that...
That backs up my point.
It's not a proof.
Just a backup.
There's a very funny British show called Coupling that came out, I don't know, like 15 years ago or something like that.
I think that was a remake for American television.
You can watch it.
It's hilarious.
It's really, really good.
And in it, there's one guy who is a conservative.
Are you American?
I can't remember where you came from originally.
I was born here in the United States, yeah.
Okay, so conservative, because I wasn't sure if you came from some other country whether conservative would be the same thing.
But he was a Republican, he was conservative, and of course he was portrayed as an idiot.
Right.
You know, because he's conservative and you wouldn't want to actually engage in a realm of ideas.
So you just have to make him an idiot.
But apparently he had a giant cock.
And the women were like...
I don't want to sleep with him because he's a Republican, but he does have a giant cock.
So I'm torn.
Actually, that probably is not the right phrase, although maybe it is.
But it's like, I really want to have sex with him because he's got a giant cock, but he's a conservative too.
Oh, what should I do?
What should I do?
And so this just shows you, I mean, if he was a liberal, they'd be all over him, right?
But it's like, how big a dick do you have to be?
How big a cock do you have to have to overcome being a right-winger?
That's how negative it is for women, because right-wingers are putting female responsibility back to women!
Right?
No, you don't get to backstop your shitty mating decisions with guns to everyone's head and fiat currency and the death of the environment and the death of the economy, the unemployment of millions.
No!
You got your body, your choice!
Not your body, government gun.
Your body, your choice.
Yes, you own your hoochie hooch and you own your eggs.
And if you get pregnant with the wrong guy...
You gotta live with it, because you're a big person now.
You get adult pennies, and you get adult responsibilities.
If I screw up at work and I get fired, I have to live with that.
I don't get to show up with a gun and get my job back.
And if you have sex with the wrong guy, and you have a baby, or you get pregnant, that sucks.
That really sucks.
And so, Republicans on the right, they kind of want to give responsibility back to women.
And how keen are women on that level of responsibility?
Well, not that keen.
Not that keen.
And so feminists are like, okay, it's true that, what, 750,000 female fetuses a month get killed in America through abortion.
It's a genocide against female fetuses, but somehow it's pro-woman.
Anyway, so I just wanted to point that out about the degree to which women will encourage women Particular political perspectives through a pussy access, right?
I'm gonna pussy you into socialism.
I'm gonna sex you into socialism.
I'm gonna lick you into the left.
I can't compete with that then.
There's no way.
I don't know how any intellectual philosophy can, you know?
I have reason and argument on my side, but over there is a giant herd of socialist pussies.
Everyone goes over to the socialist pussies and rides them into the giant crater known as the former smoking asteroid of Western civilization.
Yeah, it reminds me of a Joe Rogan stand-up.
He made it back in 2006 where he's describing getting on one of these jets with the Air Force, one of these like sick jets that goes like three Mach or something, whatever, super crazy speed.
And he's like, man, when he got off, he's like, man, how can anything go that fast?
It's ridiculous.
Like that's so intense, so intense.
And then he goes, But nothing, you know, nothing goes, it doesn't even come close to pussy.
You know, like, pussy is way better than any of that.
And he's like, dick has nowhere near that pull, that kind of pull.
Yep.
No, no, listen, I mean, there's no gravity well, black holes included, like vagina preferences.
I mean, most men, they can't even, like, there's no crimpons to get down that ice wall that leads to vagina.
Yeah.
Vagina preferences.
Whatever women prefer, men will say in order to eggs, right?
I mean, there's a biological imperative.
You can't really fight it.
And this is why, again, you know, if you want to know where the world is heading, just look at what women put out for, and that's the destiny of the world, which is why we talk about female and male responsibilities and issues on this show, because I don't expect that mere intellectual arguments are going to win against biological imperatives.
It's just not going to...
Maybe if I turn into a giant pussy...
Then I'll somehow win the war of ideas, but other than that, we'll see.
Okay, so let's get back to the Kill Whitey stuff, because that had my attention.
Yeah, in this conversation, in that conversation thread...
This one lady tells me, well, you know, the revolution is coming.
And I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember it verbatim.
But the revolution is coming and, you know, we're going to have to take you out as well.
And she says it so like in such a coy manner.
And then she commented like, boop, like, you know, because you're you're for, you know, You're against what we're about, and so you need to be taken out, because it's that sort of binary where if you're not with me, you're against me.
And I was a little shocked by it.
I was like, somebody had the audacity to just say, hey, you know, you should totally be gunned down in the revolution, because I don't like what's coming out of your mouth.
Yeah, and everyone thinks they're kidding until they're not kidding, right?
Yeah, well, Baltimore is a sign that Yeah, I mean...
You know, like I did a video on Freddie Gray about his childhood and so on.
And, you know, some people were like, well, I had it tough when I was a kid.
It's like, yes, but you didn't have debilitating brain-destroying lead poisoning.
Sorry.
That is physical stuff, you know?
If you get a brain tumor that eats away half your brain, willpower is not going to do you a lot of good.
But anyway, that's...
But the one thing that is the case is that...
And again, I'm not a big fan of the war on drugs.
I'm speaking for a mainstream perspective.
This guy was a drug dealer.
He'd assaulted people.
He'd been arrested like 20 times.
No, some of it was some pretty serious and dangerous stuff.
And I'm trying to think of the last time whites rioted or Asians rioted when a white or Asian criminal, career criminal, Jeffrey Dahmer got killed in prison under the protection of the state.
Was Whites rioting because he got killed in prison?
I think Whites were like, yay.
Paul Bernardo was this crazy, I think, Canuck who was just a complete human monster and he got killed in prison.
I was at Baltimore last weekend, nine people shot, two killed.
Nine blacks shot, two killed.
Can you get back to cheering for Martin Luther King and maybe step back a little bit from cheering to the assaulting heroin dealers?
Can you not find some slightly better people to pin your cause on?
Right.
Yeah.
You know, wasn't there some crazy Asian guy who was killing some guy on a Greyhound bus or whatever?
And I didn't notice the Asian...
I mean, if that guy had been killed in police custody, I don't think the Asian community would have gone rioting and burning.
Look, it's tough because, I mean, there is this great mystery.
And, you know, the number of people who have opined upon the mystery and...
It's nearly infinite, but there is this great mystery.
Why are some people doing really well in North America or in Europe and some people are doing really badly?
It's not as simple as race.
It is not as simple as race, as we talked about before.
If whites are just racist, then why are Asians doing so well?
I mean, surely we should just hate everyone who's not white.
Well, why do we love Asians so much that we give them a higher per capita income?
And why are blacks from other cultures doing really well in America?
And why were blacks doing better Much better, I mean, in terms of improvements, why were they doing better in the 1950s?
Why was the black family so much more solid?
Why was there no violence in the ghettos?
Why Were blacks improving so significantly in the post-war period?
And why did that come to a crashing end in the mid-1960s?
Civil Rights Act?
Was it...
I don't know, right?
I'm not any kind of a brain-spanning expert on this stuff.
Was it the welfare state?
Is the welfare state the new plantation?
Was it the fact that the Marxist infection took hold of a lot of the elements of the black community?
You know, if you hate the society that you live in...
Guess what?
You're probably not going to do that well in that society.
Am I going to become president of a frat if I just hate the frat?
No!
You're not!
And so there is this, there are these, and every human being with a shred of empathy cares about these communities that are doing really badly.
Really badly.
But I find this answer of white racism!
White racism, slavery.
White supremacy.
White supremacy, white racism, slavery, white privilege.
Wait, there's a common theme in there.
What is it?
Something to do with color.
Anyway.
But everybody wants to rush to this answer, and we have to deal with the discomfort of saying, we don't know exactly what the answer is.
But anyone who tells you it's slavery plus white racism is not correct.
It's simply not correct.
I'm not saying it's completely irrelevant.
Is there white racism?
Yeah.
Was slavery a negative thing?
Yes, it was a negative thing.
Absolutely.
Horrifying thing.
But anyone who tells you that the reason that Baltimore is doing badly, or the reason that Detroit is doing badly, particularly in the black communities, if they say it's white racism and slavery, They are selling you a line, and they're on the left most likely, or they're Marxist-influenced, and it's really...
I think it's really exploitive.
It is incredibly exploitive of a community to say, the barriers that you face to live a decent life are insurmountable to you.
It's institutional.
It is systemic.
It is...
Structural!
Yeah, all these esoteric terms, these strange, abstract ways of explaining it.
Yeah, and it's like, but basically the message is impossible.
Right, right.
Impossible.
Nobody says, well, so-and-so did it, so let's figure out how you can do it.
But you're responsible for your life, for what's going to happen, and so on, right?
They're saying to these people, it's impossible.
Thus, more state funding.
And Baltimore, since the 60s, has been run by Democrats.
And they're run by the left.
And their police chief is black.
Their mayor is black.
Nine out of 15 of their city council members are black.
So when they say white supremacy, and then you will cure your leaders, they're not white.
Well, and this is...
I mean, I can't obviously speak for white people, and I can't speak for anyone but myself.
But my sense is, Ruben, that there is...
A running out of patience with this narrative in society because of these very facts.
I think there is a weariness with this narrative and a fundamental growing disbelief in this narrative for the reasons that you mentioned.
There is this...
Perspective that so much money has been poured into these communities.
Baltimore got $1.5 billion in stimulus packages since the late 2000s, right?
So over the past half decade or so, $1.5 billion has been poured into Baltimore alone just from the stimulus packages out of Obama.
And apparently, this is the result.
And it's what Ben Shapiro said about the fact that three of the six officers who've been charged with the death of Freddie Gray are black.
It's like, hey, white racism is getting a lot more diverse now, isn't it, right?
And this is, you know...
There's a pendulum in human society, right?
I mean, everyone thinks that things just tip topple over and they fall over.
And occasionally they do.
But most times, particularly with modern communication, there's just a kind of pendulum.
And I think that we're kind of at the end of this pendulum of white guilt being this infinitely mindable resource.
That, oh, you're upset and things aren't going well.
Here's more money scooped out of the futures of our children for you to spend on things that never seem to get better.
Like the welfare state...
It's not something that people advocate now as some sort of big positive good.
I think there's basically this feeling that, well, dear God, if we cut the welfare state, there'll be riots, right?
I mean, it's not like that's not a very ringing endorsement of the welfare state.
I don't think that people believe in that stuff anymore, fundamentally.
I mean, there's lots of propaganda about it.
But I think that the idea, like President Obama said, well, we need to invest more in our local communities.
It's like, God Almighty, how much fucking money is this going to take?
I mean, are you kidding me?
How much money is this going to take?
And I feel so much anger.
I feel so much anger towards all of the people who use these people trapped to a large degree in these communities.
And I'm sorry to say it, I know all this is free will and so on, but right now, We're good to go.
Or you fail.
And you fail because whites are racist.
You know, I'm really fucking tired of this trash talking of white people at all times.
I mean, this is just, it's pathetic.
And I think people are not fundamentally believing it anymore.
We have to look somewhere else than white racism, slavery and not enough government spending because trillions of dollars have been poured down this gullet of these communities and it's not doing any good.
I feel so much anger towards people who won't even give these black parents in these ghetto communities or whether they're whites or blacks doesn't really matter.
Won't even give them something as simple as a fucking school voucher.
Jesus, dear God, can we at least give these parents the choice about where they sent their children to?
Well, no, because we need the unions of the public sector teachers to give us money so we can get elected.
It's like, okay, then don't tell me you care about these communities if you're not willing to grant these parents the right To send their children to a school of their own choosing, to the point where they have got to sit like beggars, hoping that some charter school in this waiting for Superman god-awful horror, that some charter school is going to pick their name out of a fucking lottery.
I mean, do people not get how insane that has become?
The people are so desperate.
40% of the school teachers in these cities don't even send their own kids to government schools, and that's on a government teacher salary.
So we've got to beg to get their children out of these fucking gulags and send them to a decent and reasonable school of their own choosing.
Anybody who's not promoting school choice, anybody who's not willing to sell these apartments to the people who live in them, for God's sakes.
Give them the apartments.
Give them the communities.
Let them own these things.
Anything that is not owned, Everything is crap.
Anything that is not owned is turned to crap.
And everybody knows this.
You go down all these streets, you see all these nice gardens, and the one garden is the house that's boarded up, and that garden looks like crap.
And there's concrete blocks in it, and there's old tires in it, and there's garbage that nobody picks up.
Everything that is unowned turned to crap.
And if you want to help the ghetto, Give the ghetto to the people who live there.
Just give it to them.
They can buy it, they can sell it, they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
Just give them this stuff.
Give them choice.
Give them choice.
Give them ownership.
Let them own the damn streets.
Let them own the parks.
Let them own everything.
Turn it over to the people.
Let them have it.
Let them keep it.
Let them buy it.
Let them sell it.
Let them do whatever the hell they want.
And for God's sakes, get the government out of these houses and get the rent controls, get the subsidies, get all of this crap out.
And give them the responsibility and maturity and freedom of treating them like adults.
Because if nobody's willing to treat them like adults, then don't be surprised if they continue to act like children.
And the number of people who just want to give them things in a paternalistic way and manage them and control them and provide this incentive and give them that money and so on, it's called enabling people.
You're somebody who's riddled with debt, you give them more money, you're just going to create more problems for them.
Give them the responsibility and the maturity of treating them like adults.
Are they going to get upset with that?
Yeah, they might get upset with that.
Probably a lot of people will breathe a huge sigh of relief, and some people will really hate it.
So what?
If you don't lend money to the guy who's horribly in debt, he's going to get pissed.
If you don't give a drink to the drunk, he's going to get pissed.
If you don't give drugs to the addict, he's going to get pissed.
So what?
We do it all the time.
When I didn't study for a math test, I got a 55.
Because that was the reality of it.
So I just, sorry for this rant, I just, it just really, it just pisses me off so much that people say these people can't succeed, there's all this institutional racism, people treating them badly.
Now we need to manage where your children go to school, and we need to control your apartment, which we won't going to give to you, even though you've lived there for 20 years, and we're going to control your neighborhood, and we're going to, well of course if you keep doing all this shit for people.
Then they're going to continue to live in this entitled and immature existence.
Just turn the ownership over to the people and give them all the choices you can and then step back and, dear God, just let them be adults.
And if they rail against it, so what?
They still have to be adults because the option of continuing the status quo has got to stop.
I agree a thousand percent with all of that.
Especially with the comment about public housing or subsidized housing.
Just let them own it.
And I noticed that I live in New York City and there's a ton of public housing buildings around.
And they're always in some sort of disarray.
I'm pretty sure if you give these people some sort of co-op We're good to go.
I need to buy some things to spruce up my place.
Even that small project would solve a lot of problems.
I feel like leftists just want to be there in control.
Oh no, they can't give the ghettos to the people.
They can't give the housing to the people because then what do they have to sell them in the next election?
Exactly.
What favors do they have to grant them in the next election?
You turn people free, they don't need to sell their votes to you for free shit.
You give them ownership, you can't dole out rental agreements in dribs and drabs to keep your political power going.
Oh, no, no, they want to keep these people enthralled to the state.
It's the guarantee of future power for the leftists.
And this is all very clear, and the voting patterns in the ghetto are very clear.
Maybe it's all Democrat all the time.
And so the Democrats would fight tooth and nail.
I mean, to give these people autonomy, to give them freedom, to give them ownership, to give them full rights as adults, to run their own lives in their own communities as they see fit, to buy, sell, come, go, move, stay.
Oh, God, no.
The Democrats will never do that because then they'd actually have to try and engage in the war of ideas rather than drugging people with stolen goods.
Right.
And Stefan, ultimately my question is, what can I do or any of us do to at least slow it down or stop it, this sort of narrative that gives us an economy that is incredibly dysfunctional?
Like, what of my children, my future?
I don't have children, but my, you know, What kind of world are they going to live in if every city, if every community wants to just implode under cultural Marxism and failed economic planning?
Well, listen, you've got to stay away from the crazies.
The crazies will give you a distorted view of reality.
If you're getting engaged with Marxists and radical leftists in Facebook, if you keep doing that, you're going to get a view of the world that is very distorted.
You have to take very strict care of the company that you keep.
So you really need to be careful, you know, be as cautious and selective and discriminating of the people you allow into your mind as you would with the food you allow into your body, right?
You wouldn't just say, hey, it's a dead squirrel by the road, get a fork, because that would be like, I don't know how long it's been there, I don't know how many flies have laid their eggs in it, and I don't really want to become a giant queen beehive nest for bottle flies.
So, You need to be very careful about what you allow entrance into your mind because Everyone that you give access to your mind will take up residence there and reproduce and will infest your perspective and so on.
So, you know, arguing on Facebook with people who are philosophically mental, I mean, there's this sort of, oh, white countries are so bad.
It's like, why the hell does everyone want to come then?
I mean, that's just crazy.
I mean, why is everyone literally risking life and limb to get into white countries if white countries are so terrible and white people are so terrible?
I mean, wouldn't that be like Jews trying to break into Auschwitz or Treblinka?
I mean, that wouldn't make any sense.
Shouldn't they be heading the other way?
So, I mean, people who are that disconnected from reality and people who are full of that much hatred that they're talking about killing white people, I mean, those people can't be reasoned with.
I mean, they're really disturbed people and bad people, to use the technical term.
So you have to figure out what it is in you that is driving you to engage with people in this kind of way and at this kind of level.
You know, we learn from politicians.
Politicians, you know, Hillary Clinton is not going to give a speech at the Republican convention hoping to get Republicans to vote for her.
You know, politicians, they figure out, okay, these people are going to vote for me no matter what.
And this is why Democrats are the last people to respond to black concerns, because they feel that the black vote is in their pocket anyway, so they're not going to do anything to really address issues within the black community.
All they're going to do is ginny up a bunch of race riots and race conflicts, race baiting, so that Republicans come up with stuff that they consider oppositional and they, you know, all they're doing is guaranteeing their vote.
The best way to get Democrats to respond to black people would be for black people to stop voting Democrat, right, and then They would start to, right, respond, but they're not because they don't need to, right?
And, you know, you don't bring flowers to the sure thing booty call, right?
You don't need to.
So the politicians divide people into three categories.
Will never vote for me.
Will for sure vote for me.
Might vote for me.
And they focus their energies on the might vote for me, right?
There's no point pouring their energies in people who are already going to vote for them.
No point pouring their energies in people who will never vote for them.
They pour their energies into people who might vote for them.
Now, these people are never going to focus and follow a free society.
This is all childhood trauma.
This is nothing to do with reasoned position.
This is all to do with very disturbed and very, very traumatized childhoods.
Anybody who can say, I want to kill white people is so disturbed that the idea of reaching them with reason, with evidence, is...
Impossible.
I mean, you're not going to do it.
I mean, if you want to try reaching past the psychotic, violent aggression and try and find a way to touch the hurts and help them with the hurts and so on, you can give it a shot, but I wouldn't.
I mean, that's...
Even if they really wanted help from a mental health professional, the odds of them overcoming all of that and developing empathy is so tiny that even if they wanted to and there was a dedicated professional who was trained and focused on helping that person, the odds of them getting better, I would imagine, are very low.
As far as I understand, there's no cure for that kind of lack of empathy.
So you are not a trained mental health professional and these people are not even asking for help.
So even if they wanted help and you were trained, the odds of helping them would be tiny.
The odds of you helping them or me helping them, zero.
Not a little bit, not a tiny bit, not one, zero.
Absolutely zero.
And I'm saying this to you because I think it's true and because you need to focus your energies on the people who have minds to change.
Right?
People who agree with reason and evidence, yeah, have great chats with them and so on.
People who are virulently opposed to reason and evidence avoid them like the plague.
The people who have minds to change They're capable of thinking.
They're capable of listening to reason.
They ask intelligent questions.
Doesn't matter if they disagree with you for months, as long as they're asking intelligent questions and willing to accept particular arguments.
And you've heard this when I talk to people on this show.
There's always this weird thing.
Reasoning is a series of steps, right?
If A, then B. If B, then C. And you establish something, you get to the next step, and then they act as if the first thing was never established.
Well, these are people you can't have continual conversations with because you can't ever, you're trying to build a house, you put one brick on top of the other, they knock the bottom brick out.
Guess what?
You can't build a house with that person because that's all they're going to do.
So look for people who've got curiosity, who've got originality, who are open to new evidence, who are willing to explore possibilities and so on.
And who are not offended by original thought or at least thought that is original to them.
Those are the people that you want to focus on.
My concern, Ruben, is that you are going to spend your time energy on these people who aren't going to change.
You're going to beat yourself up and bruise yourself and it's going to become like a torture to have conversations with these people.
It bothers me that that's impacting you emotionally, as I'm sure it is.
It also bothers me all of the people that you could have brought reason and evidence and philosophy to that you haven't because you're beating your head against these wall of empathyless creeps.
Does that make any sense?
You can unmute now.
Sorry for that.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
And you're right, it did affect me emotionally when I read that little comment.
Yeah, well, of course, it's a murderousness.
It's a murderousness.
It's horrendous.
But of course, anti-white racism is given almost infinite play because it's considered to be come from wounded injustice and so on.
So anti-white racism is considered a form of self-defense, whereas any expression of white supremacy, of white preference or white nationalism or standing with other whites is just immediately it's white supremacy and evil and so on, right?
So even if it's not against any other race.
But you've just got to not be around people like that.
It's like triage in a wartime situation.
MASH unit or something, right?
This person is going to be okay for an hour.
This person is going to die in the next four minutes.
This person, if I work on them, has a chance to live.
And then I'll get to the guy.
So it's just triage, right?
And these people are not going to be available and open to reason and evidence.
They are some seriously damaged and disturbed people.
And I think it's...
It can actually be dangerous.
So my sense is to steer clear of those people and really try to work with people.
You know, you're shooting out flares.
Just put out a little bit of counter information and if you get swarmed with hysteria and hostility or, you know, whatever, then it's like, okay, well then, I guess I'll keep moving until I find people who have a mind to be changed.
Facebook arguing with trolls is going to wear you out and it's not going to change anyone's mind.
They're drawing you off, Ruben, to keep you away from the people.
You're perfectly playing into their hands.
Right?
They're setting this elaborate trap, which trolls do, and what trolls do is they set these elaborate traps, you go in, you engage with them, and they're like, well, great, he's now not out making the world a better place.
He's coming and playing these stupid games with us, which we're never going to change, and we don't even care.
We just want to paralyze the good, paralyze the good.
And the best way to paralyze the good is to get it engaged with people whose minds will never change, which keeps good and curiosity, reason, and evidence away from people who have minds to change.
You're joining them in their cause, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
All right.
Anything else you wanted to mention?
No.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's my pleasure, and thank you so much for the work that you do.
Give us a call back in sometime as well, if you don't mind.
I don't mean to say, you Hispanic, therefore speak for a Hispanic community.
But I am kind of curious.
I've noticed some really positive stuff in the Hispanic community around freedom philosophy lately.
And if you want to call back in sometime and chat about that, I think that would be a lot of fun.
Yeah, I definitely will.
All right.
Thanks, Ruben.
I really appreciate it.
Have yourself a great night.
You too.
And that's it for the show, man!
So, thanks everyone so much for calling in.
It was a delightful, delightful conversation, Matrix, as always.
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Shekel for an old ex-lepper.
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This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedomain Radio and, I dare say, Modern Philosophy, signing out.
