2993 Incomprehensible Bravery - Call In Show - June 6th, 2015
Question 1: How do you know when you're “done” with therapy? I escaped a fundamentalist religious cult and have a hard time being passionate about the next stage of my life - do you have any suggestions? | Question 2: A listener reads a letter detailing how his older son found the show and convinced his younger son from pursuing his military career. | Question 3: I'm currently a resident physician in Emergency Medicine. This profession requires deductive reasoning, a rational approach to problems, and critical thinking to successfully treat patients. However, it has become increasingly clear that a great number of people who share my profession do not seem to follow these aspects of thinking when it comes to other issues. Why do you think this occurs in people who have devoted their life to something that requires one to be logical and rational?
Well, for those of you who are on the line this fine Saturday night of Time for Philosophy, for those listening later, welcome to what was recently recorded on a Saturday night of Fine Philosophy.
Mike, who do we have?
All right.
Up first is Michael H. He wrote in and said, Michael, nice to meet you.
Is there anything you wanted to add to that question?
Well, no.
I would just like to start out by saying thanks for taking my call and expressing my great appreciation for the work you do.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, I mean, there's not sort of...
I don't...
In my experience...
Well, first of all, I don't know.
I mean, there's no sort of objective philosophical answer to this.
In my experience with therapy, though, it was sort of like, if you've ever done this thing...
Where you sort of, you walk over, a seesaw or tit-a-tat-a they used to call them.
You sort of walk up, you go over the middle, and then it just starts tipping.
And then you sort of tip over.
There's a tipping point for me, at least there was.
With therapy where I, the intensity of the sessions began to be less potent.
And...
I was originally going for three hours a week, then I dropped down to half of that.
I think then I did a little bit every other week, and then we terminated.
So I would say that when you feel that the road ahead, at least for me, when I felt that the road ahead was somewhat clear, I mean, therapy, I don't think, is going to tell you what to do with your life, but it's going to move things out of the way.
You know, like a mechanic doesn't tell you where to drive, he just fixes your car, so to speak.
And so when I felt that I was fixed enough to pursue the goals that I wanted to pursue, then I felt that therapy was not as necessary for me anymore.
I tapered off.
I don't know how other people do it, but that was sort of my experience.
Do you sort of feel like you have enough in hand to be able to Move on with your life.
I'm not a big fan of sort of this lifelong therapy that people get into.
This is just my opinion.
I don't have any particular facts to back this up.
But to me, therapy is like, you buy a car to drive it, and if you have to put it in the shop, you put it in the shop, but you don't leave it in the shop forever and not drive it.
So I think therapy is there to clear things out of your way so that you can really soar forward with your life.
And if you feel that there's not a huge amount tripping you up, then, you know, run out of the gate, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I guess my main problem is that I find it difficult to figure out what I actually want from life.
Ah, well, that's a different question.
I mean, if we've done the therapy thing, I'm happy to dip into that one.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, yeah, for sure.
Oh, you, Michael, you know what you want to do in life.
You know.
At least I think you do.
I could be wrong, of course, but I think you do.
Well, I think maybe, I don't know if I should give some background to that.
That would make it a bit more clear.
I'd rather not, if we don't need to.
Not because I'm not interested in you.
I just, I'm sort of cognizant of the fact that people often get tipped over at the end of the queue.
So, I'd like to sort of, but when you were a kid, Michael, what excited you from a...
From a heroic standpoint, was there anything as a kid that you found heroic?
Or inspiring?
Or anyone?
Fiction, non-fiction, doesn't matter.
Anyone in your life, anyone in history, anyone in comic books, anyone in movies, anyone.
Well, I think I had the usual dreams about being a fireman or a police officer or something.
And I also always had a pension for working with computers.
And now I do two of those.
I am a software engineer and I am a volunteer fireman.
So, you know, I kind of crossed those two off my list.
And, well, I would like to get a family at some point.
But I don't have, like...
Any, you know, big ambitious goal that I'm stretching out for.
So when you say you don't know what you want to do with your life, you seem to me like you've achieved the two things or two of the three things that you want to.
And you want a family.
So I'm not sure when you say you don't know what you want to do with your life.
I mean, two jobs plus a family is quite a lot to have on your plate, right?
Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Oh dear, I feel my energy deflating with every answer of yours.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
No, don't apologize.
I'm just telling you what I experienced, right?
And the reason that I'm feeling that is I'm guessing that you're doing to me what you do to your own motivation.
Yeah, that would make sense.
I struggle to be excited about my life and that's a big part of the reason why I got into therapy and it's not really helping me in that regard.
Well, yeah, I mean, if you don't know where you want to go, having a roadblock removed doesn't get you anywhere, right?
Yeah, that's true.
It just makes it more stressful to not know where you want to go because then you don't even have an excuse as to why you're not going somewhere, right?
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
Yeah.
So, okay, let's go back a little bit.
I mean, I've got some thoughts, but I don't want to impose some theory of mine onto your life.
So, do you ever remember a time where you felt more enthusiastic?
Yes, but that was when I was in a fanatic fundamentalist cult, where I was very excited about what that did.
I'm sorry, a what now?
A Christian fundamentalist cult.
You were in a Christian fundamentalist cult?
Yes.
And I was very excited about...
And you had enthusiasm, but I assume it was for mostly insane things.
Yes, pretty much.
Right.
Right.
Can you tell me a little bit about this organization?
Well, it's one of those very fundamentalist Christian organizations where basically you live in this socialist collective and you give all the money you can give to the church and you share houses.
So basically it's 100% tithe but they give you room and board?
More or less, yes.
I had my own business, so I still got a little bit of money, but most people in the church were like that.
Yes, they just lived in communal housing and room and board.
And what sort of...
I hesitate to use the word indoctrination because that's kind of leading, but what sort of education or idea transfer occurred in this environment?
Well, it was very much peer pressure oriented and there was the leader of the cult who was this prophet and she would tell people what to do and arrange marriages.
So wait, he would order who should get married?
Well, she wouldn't order it per se, but she would arrange that people were friends.
And then friendships could, of course, develop into marriages later.
So arranged but not really enforced in that way, right?
Yes, but basically you couldn't really say no to anything.
You said the leader was a woman, right?
Was she considered to have this sort of direct pipeline to the deity?
Right.
So her word was synonymous with the word of the deity, right?
Yeah, pretty much.
So if you post her word, you know, everyone would just gang up on you and tell you, you know, that you shouldn't offend the word of God.
Yeah, that kind of thing.
And what sort of, I mean, there was, I guess, social punishments.
Were there any other kind of punishments?
There was no physical punishments, but, you know, shunning and, you know, Well, there was always the threat of being forced to leave the church if you didn't comply.
Yeah, I mean, to a lot of people, that would be like, great!
Yeah, wonderful!
You don't have any money, and you've cut off your ties with your family, and you don't have anyone, so leaving the church would be completely...
Unimaginable for most people there.
And how many people were in this organization?
About 70.
Wow.
And still exists.
Wow.
And were you born into this or you joined it?
No, I joined it when I was in my 20s.
So I was there for seven years.
And why do you think that you joined it?
I'm sure this is stuff you've talked about before.
I'm just curious what your thoughts are.
Well, the main thing that appealed to me about it was I grew up in a very lonely setting and I never felt I fit in anywhere.
So this idea of this close-knit society that would just accept me as who I was and I was certainly someone important and I had a lot of friends or friends at the college, you know, everyone was friends per definition.
So, you know, I was in a very vulnerable place and, you know, those kinds of organizations really prey on the vulnerable.
So how did they find you or how did you find them?
Well, I started with more classical...
I became a Christian when I was 18.
And then I moved from one Christian group to another because I had this idea that, you know, if God was real, then, you know, I wanted to go all in, you know, I didn't want to do it halfway.
So I sought them out.
I sought these extreme organizations out myself.
So I finally found this group and, you know, joined.
To be fair, it wasn't that extreme.
When I joined, it became more extreme as time went on.
But I was basically looking for the real Word of God thing.
I was really committed to my insanity, so to speak.
Right.
Were you raised in a religious context?
No, my parents are actually both atheists.
Right.
I mean, you may have, there seem to be some genetic markers associated with the susceptibility to spiritual or supernatural or mystical experiences.
I've just been doing some research on this for upcoming series on gene wars, and it could be that that is part of your makeup.
It's not good or bad, it's just part of some people's makeup.
Yeah, my grandparents were Odd Fellow.
If you know what that is, that's some sort of masonry organization.
And my father, he was a part of a communist collective in his issues.
So, you know.
So, when you joined this organization, I guess you got what they call the love bomb, right?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Everyone's like, we've been waiting for you our whole lives.
So glad to have you in our community.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, right?
Yeah, for sure.
And that does wash away some people's skepticism, right?
I mean, especially if you felt lonely, isolated, unconnected, then when people give that kind of connection, commitment to you...
Yeah, it was like, you know...
It's really like, holy oxytocin, man, let me snort some of this love juice, right?
I mean, it's very heady, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it was, you know...
Yeah, just like you said, it's like heroin.
It's very hard to resist...
I guess they don't say at your first meeting, let's take 100% of your income or 90% of your income or whatever it was.
Does it sort of gradually go that way?
Yeah, it also wasn't like that when I joined.
That only came like a couple of years in.
What was it either at the beginning?
Well, I think at the beginning it was just like 10% or something regular.
But then people started moving together and having these collectives and it just became more and more so over time.
And they bought a big old hotel and started renovating that and doing all sorts of community projects in the church together.
And you know, they would have collections to fund the hotel and then they would have people work there for free and then get room and board from the church.
And that just grew into this entanglement for everyone.
Right.
And because they saw that I was very, you know, I was skilled with computers.
I had a good job at the time.
They took me into starting my own business, but under the auspices of the church.
So I had the son of the leader running my business for me, and they gave me enough money to live on.
So I was much better off than most other members, but of course I was still not rich.
And then they just skimmed off, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars every year into the church.
Wow.
And what happened, I mean, I know it's a big story, but in general, Mike, what happened to the ark that had you exit after seven years?
Well, I got married two and a half years before that.
Before you left?
Before I left, yes.
I assume there's somebody in the organization?
Yes, for sure.
And we were both working like 100 hours, 100 hour weeks and They were always trying to get people to conform people more to the common standard.
I was always very much my own person.
I had my own ideas on how to run my business.
I had a couple of really skilled software engineers where I lived, but they wanted me to go into outsourcing and kept pressuring me.
Then they started using my wife.
To pressure me for them.
Our marriages just gradually fell apart because she eventually put me on ice.
So for like two weeks, she wouldn't talk to me.
Oh, until you came back in line with the organization?
So we had these days where she would come home and demand that I get a word from God or seek revelation.
The point was I was supposed to give in and I would just sit on our couch and I would cry with frustration because I just couldn't do what they wanted from me.
I couldn't do it.
I'm sorry, can you remind me what it is that they wanted from you?
Well, they wanted me to be more like, you know, not asking questions, never be skeptical, you know, be more socially oriented.
I've always been a bit of an introvert, so they resented that because, you know, they wanted everyone to be like a big happy family.
And they wanted me to work harder.
And there was a lot of different demands there.
But basically, they wanted me to let go of my own identity.
I think that was the core of it.
You know, they really tried to erase people's identity because then there would never be problems with them.
And it's just, you know, it's so vile.
Yeah.
Was it a growing desire to leave, or was it something that just blew up in your heart?
No, it was growing, and that was also why they were starting to put more pressure on me, because they could feel I was less committed than I used to be.
And I got more and more skeptical, because they would say these...
Ridiculous things about miracles that never came true and they would start all these crazy business projects that always failed.
I could just see, you know, rationally then you say this but it doesn't happen, you know, if only a third of the businesses you start succeed.
That's not very divine, is it?
Guys with us.
Oh, wait.
Only until the first quarter.
Yeah.
So I just had so many questions and letting them out wasn't an option.
So I just became more and more depressed and distanced from everything because I just couldn't get it to make sense in my head anymore.
Right.
So when my wife put me on ice for two weeks, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
And I just said, you know, I can't be here anymore.
I'll go insane.
You know, I can't do it.
Can't do it.
And I simply just, I told her, yeah, yeah, I can't do it this morning.
You know, I love you.
And I, you know, I loved her.
And I offered her to take me.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
You loved her?
Oh, sorry.
You could be right.
I don't know if you know, I have this definition of love that it's our involuntary response to virtue.
We're for virtuous.
I don't see a lot of virtue, you know, hanging off the walls and dripping from the ceiling.
Right?
So, what was it that you loved about her?
Well, maybe I should use a different word.
I was in love with her, you know, and I... No, that doesn't...
That's not a different word, technically.
Yeah.
Well, I think...
You know, I think that what sustained this thing was also that 80% of the time, it was really nice.
Everyone was good friends.
We had fun together.
And my wife was generally a very sweet person.
She just, she was, you know, they had to pressure her really hard to turn on me, but she still did.
So I don't think she was happy.
I wouldn't call her a virtuous person but I think there was virtues in her that I liked because she was in many ways kind and she tried to help me as good as she could.
Kind and tried to help you?
By trying to keep you in this By pressuring you to stay in and conform to this craziness, I'm not sure.
I mean, you know, help me just from outside view, right?
I may be missing something, but what is this kindness trying to help you stuff?
Well, the thing is that they believe that, you know, this is what we do to avoid eternal damnation.
So from their twisted mindset, doing all this to keep people in line is actually, you know, an act of kindness.
So, as Christians, you're saying that they followed the letter of the book, right?
Yes.
So, where in the New Testament, and again, I'm no theologian, but where in the New Testament does it say that you should give all your money to the local church?
Well, it doesn't say that and they didn't say that out loud that you should, but they were always referring to the Acts where they talked about this first society of Christians where people came and gave everything they had to the church and there's this couple that sells their field and only gives a bit of the money to the church but say they gave all of it and then God strikes them dead because they lied about it and Well,
no, because Jesus says, who would follow me?
Sell all of your belongings, give your money to the poor, and then follow me.
To the poor, not to some crazy witch in a headdress or whatever, right?
Yeah.
So when you say, well, you know, they were really, in a sense, they were really trying to help me because, boy, they just really believed in this hellfire and damnation.
They were trying to save me from that.
And it's like, no, no, no.
The moment that somebody says, give all your money to me in order to save yourself from damnation, they're not following Jesus anymore because he didn't take money from the apostles, right?
Yeah, I agree.
It's just that, you know, they...
They have deluded themselves to believe differently.
No, no.
Listen, why I'm pushing back is because you said my wife was kind and tried to help me, right?
And then I said, well, keeping you in this kind of organization, hard to define as help.
And you said, well, no, but they have these theological beliefs.
And you said that they're Christians, right?
But it's cherry-picked.
Yes, I agree with that.
And all Christians cherry-pick and all religious people cherry-pick because the religious texts are so full of contradictory information, you can find a silhouette for everything you want.
In that salad bar of infinity, you can find something to suit your taste, no matter how far and how long you go up and down, you'll get something.
Yeah, for sure.
So what I want to point out is that if you're going to try and say that they had a theological justification for their belief system, And they're Christians, then they don't.
Because that is pretty clear.
And I don't know how...
And again, I'm no expert on this.
So this is from my readings of the Bible.
I read through the Bible when I was 19.
When I was walking up north, I read the thing cover to cover because some long winter nights in the cold.
You don't want to go outside.
And maybe there's something in...
Some of the apostles' books about, you know, get 10% or whatever.
I don't know where it comes from exactly.
But Jesus never said, sell everything, to my knowledge, sell everything you own, give the money to me, and I'll give you room and board.
It was, give the money to other people, don't bring any money to me.
But follow me without possessions.
Yeah.
And that's the thing of, you know, they never said this out loud that this was mandatory.
But they were just, you know, they were so mind-bendingly manipulating in everything, you know.
No, I get that.
I accept that.
So this is one mind-bendingly manipulating.
And then when you say, well, my wife was...
Was kind and tried to help me and then you but by getting me to conform with a mind-bendingly manipulative organization as you say it again, I just I I'm fiercely protective of the word love.
Let me just be honest about my agenda.
I don't like, love Satan's armpit, you know?
Okay, maybe it's a good band.
I don't know.
But I'm kind of, I really want to set up a philosophical gator pond or gator moat around the word love.
And that's, and the reason being that, I mean, for me, it's important I use that word love.
With my friends and family and with philosophy, and I don't like when it's used for things that are not in line with, I think, virtue as it makes sense.
But you also are going to want to use that word ahead of time.
And you're going to, sorry, next time around, right, if you want a family.
And you're going to meet a woman, and hopefully you're going to meet a discerning and intelligent and virtuous and sensitive and Empathetic and deep, a woman of self-knowledge and so on.
And I'm telling you, man, if you say to a woman like that, I loved my cult wife, what's she going to say?
Well, yes, yeah.
What's she going to say?
I don't know what she would say.
Yes, you know exactly what she would say.
Well, it wouldn't be anything good for sure.
You become a woman of real virtue and independence and courage.
And you say, man, I just loved my cult wife.
Hmm.
What's she going to say?
Yeah, nothing good, at least.
Goodbye.
She's going to say, okay, this is me slowly backing away.
Yeah, for sure.
And there'll be a virtuous woman shaped hole in whatever wall is closest to the bus stop.
Right.
So I would re-examine that.
You sound like a very nice guy, and you sound like you want to put a positive spin on things.
You know, well, but I really loved her.
But I'm telling you, from the outside, right?
Okay.
Okay.
I think...
You know, there's an old joke.
Sorry, it's not an old joke.
It's something like if you see...
Like some teenager is cursing some god-awful blue streak that makes birds burst into flame and leaves fall from the trees, right?
And burning bushes commits seppuku with Robin's beaks or something, right?
So when you see some kid cussing a blue streak, one of the phrases that pops to mind is, Ew, you kissed your mother with that mouth?
You know, it's like, you kiss your mother with that mouth.
And it's like, oh, you use the word love with that woman?
That's sort of the thought that I get.
So I just, I really want to invite you to rehabilitate the word love and reserve it for people who aren't trying to keep you exploited and browbeaten and all that.
Well, yeah, okay.
I think my main justification for it was that she did it because she believed it was good for me.
And I know that, you know, and I guess this is a bit of a sidetrack, so I don't know if you want to dig further into it.
But yeah, I understand what you mean, and I think...
Okay, how do you know that she...
I'm not saying she didn't, right?
I'm just...
I'm always curious when people say stuff like, was she...
She did it because she believed it was good for me.
How do you know that she was concerned with your welfare and not her own issues?
I guess you can never know that.
So I would really avoid making knowledge statements that you don't have proof for, especially about such a sensitive issue as the motivations of your ex-wife in this organization or cult as you referred to it.
Yeah.
And the reason being because when you make those kinds of statements, they sound like you've really thought it through.
There's this evidence.
Whereas if you're just saying stuff because you kind of want to throw roses backwards into a canyon hoping to fill it with positive memories or something, it sets off alarm bells.
Well, I know the motivation of my ex-wife.
She did it because she loved me and wanted to be happy and so on.
My first question is...
How do you know?
And if you then say, well, I don't really know, then I have to be very careful when I listen to you.
Does that make, like, I have to really listen to when you're giving me a tale, right?
You're giving me a narrative, and it means that I really, really have to be alert.
And it's hard to relax in a conversation with someone when you really have to be alert for when they're spinning you a fable.
And I'm not saying you're doing anything consciously or anything, lying or anything like that.
But you have this kind of hallmark sentimentality that I hear a lot of.
I mean, I've done so many of these shows, and I hear a lot of it.
And it's the people who say, oh, my parents, they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, and, you know, they were only trying to help me, and maybe they made mistakes.
And it's like, but how do you know?
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.
But you can't just ascribe motive in the absence of evidence.
That is where you no longer explore what's really going on, because you've got the illusion of an answer, if that makes sense.
You had this organization which was like the illusion of an answer for community and friendship and love and whatever, right?
And a higher purpose, which is sort of what I wanted to start at the beginning.
It's going to be hard, but in this conversation I'm going to be really annoying, as usual, and I'm going to push back when what you're saying I feel is underexplored.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, for sure, and I'm glad you do.
Okay.
So then when you decided to leave, I mean, it wasn't like they changed you to the basement, right?
You could walk out, is that right?
Yes.
And because I technically owned my company, I actually had a financial leverage with them.
I won't go into too many details, but they actually helped me move and start my new life after that.
So they were kind in that at least.
Okay, good.
It wasn't like breaking out of a nuclear submarine at two miles down, right?
So you got out and your wife then, your then wife, I guess, chose to stay back?
Yes, I did.
I'm sorry for that.
I'm sorry for that.
But I'm glad you didn't have a kid.
Yeah, I'm technically not sorry she did, but, you know, because I think it would have been horrible because the only thing we really had in common was this organization.
Wait a minute.
The only thing you had in common was this organization.
Does that mean if you think she was kind that you weren't?
Okay.
I think...
Oh, man, you are like Mr.
Web Spinner, you know?
I gotta be fast!
I gotta have, like, flamethrowers coming out of my wrists to cut through this stuff, right?
Right, right, yeah.
So, what does that mean?
Well, it's just that she wanted very different things in life and she came from a very religious background and Yeah, she was very, you know, I wouldn't call her dumb, but just not very intellectual.
And I am very intellectual.
And, you know, I think...
I have an urge, though.
I'm not ever going to do this.
I have to charge you $12.45 for every cliche you give me.
Oh, no.
Actually, that would be totally unfair, because at the end of this call, I'm concerned I'm going to end up owning your company.
And you've already been through that experience where people take your company.
Right, right, right.
But what does that mean?
You wanted different things out of life.
Everybody wants different things out of life.
You know, how many people put on the same clothes and order the same meals and work at the same jobs and drive the same...
Everybody wants different things out of life.
I don't know what that means.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
I think my main thought is that I don't think we would have been very compatible with Outside of this very specific setting.
Ka-ching, 1250.
Go ahead.
Wouldn't have been very compatible.
So when I say, what do you mean by we wanted different things, you're giving me a synonym for wanting different things called incompatibility and you feel like you're explaining something?
Coke is it.
What is it?
It's Coke.
What?
So, let's try that again.
Okay, how do I sum it up?
Okay, let me be annoying you now.
Okay, did she do anything wrong?
Well, other than stabbing me in the back, no.
Okay, let's see.
So far, this is kind of like, I don't know if you're aware of this flip, right?
Mm-hmm.
She was doing the best for me.
She wanted the best for me.
She was nice.
She was kind.
She wanted to help me.
Okay, stabbed me in the back, right?
That's kind of a boink.
That's a flip, right?
You used very positive language and then stabbed me in the back.
So what does it mean to say she stabbed you in the back?
What was that?
Well, basically one of our last confrontations came from Well, there was this whole process where they encouraged people to snitch on each other, especially married couples.
You mean like deviant thoughts, non-conformist thoughts?
Yes, exactly.
And our final confrontation came out of one of those episodes where she really wanted me to open up and tell her what I felt about things because she felt I was close to her.
And I was because I was afraid to speak my mind.
And then I finally just told her two minor things that bugged me about the church and then she went and told on me to the leaders and that precipitated this It froze me out and just was like a complete ice cream demanding I, you know, repent.
Yeah, and people, I mean, I don't know.
I don't want to take over your story.
I'll keep this brief.
I don't think people understand the degree to which breaking confidence is a threat to a relationship.
It's a huge threat.
Like, I had a friend years and years and years ago who was having huge problems with his wife.
And My friend had been my friend since I was like 12.
So, where are my loyalties?
Lie with my friend.
It doesn't mean I can't be somewhat objective.
But he was telling me all this stuff.
He's telling me all this stuff.
And I'm like, wow, that's, you know, the stuff she's doing is not good.
That's, you know, that's not good behavior.
And I get I'm only getting one side of the story.
I mean, I'm not an idiot.
I understand all of that.
But I'm not going to assume, well, I'm just going to assume you're my friend and you're lying to me, right?
So, anyway, so...
I did tell him about all this stuff, and it turns out the next time he had some big blow-up fight with her, he turned to her and he said, yeah, and you know who else thinks you're a real bitch?
Snap!
And then he told me this, and I'm like, you what now?
First of all, I didn't use that word with her.
And, like, oh my god, how am I supposed to talk to you now?
If you're gonna take my sympathy and use it as a weapon against your wife, how am I gonna come over for tea now?
Right?
Oh no.
And part of me, like, I was sort of on, like, this is back when I was young and naive.
Now I'm middle-aged and naive, so it's very different.
But, um, and I remember thinking, oh, you know, I should call her up, I should go over, I should explain, I should this, I should that.
And...
Just then, you know, if you ever...
I don't know if you don't have kids, but they have these bouncy castles, right?
And the bouncy castles inflate, you can jump around at them.
And these bouncy castles, if you just...
Decide to, you know, it's the end of the day and my daughter always wants to play there until the end of the day.
So what they do is they basically, they just start pushing all the air into it, right?
Because they have to keep this air pumping into these bouncy castles because it's leaking and kids jump and it's all pushed down.
So all they do is they start blowing all this air into the bouncy castle and they're like...
I remember, oh, I've got to go over, I've got to sort this out, I've got to fix this, I've got to have it.
And I just remember at some point, I don't think a thought hit me or something, but I just felt this, like, the fan went off and the whole bouncy castle of this entire relationship just went...
Oh, yeah.
And that, you know, this like, oh, I can't say anything to you because I don't know who the hell you're going to go and tell it to.
So I get the stabbed in the back because people will say, well, you know, she said something outside the marriage.
But the whole basis of the marriage is that there has to be some privacy and some intimacy.
It's what Solzhenitsyn used to say.
He was a Russian dissident.
And he said this, like, in the police state, the only freedom of speech is with your wife under the covers, whispering.
Right.
Unless your wife then goes over to the NKVD and turns you over to the secret police or whatever, right?
And this betrayal of the intimacy requirement is really, really tough.
And so I get that.
It does really feel like a stab in the back because where do you go from there?
I can't say anything I'm thinking now if it's at all critical.
So you're going to run off to the high priestess and rat me out, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think I still felt something, you know, I swore an oath, just like you said recently about your own marriage, you know, I swore to do all this stuff.
And I'd offered to take her with me, but she declined, obviously.
And I expected her to, but nonetheless.
And I guess that may be confusing love for loyalty here, because I had this...
At the time, I still believed somewhat in God.
But much like the bounty castle you described, once I stopped...
Feeling the need to believe in God, then...
Once you start blowing the hot air into the clown head, it takes a quick bow, kisses its own genitals, and falls in a heap.
Yeah, and three months later, I was listening to FDR, so...
Oh, good.
Hopefully.
Yes.
Hopefully.
So you replace one cult with a podcast that just makes arguments on the internet.
Exactly, yes.
Got it, got it.
Well, look, I'm sorry for this experience.
I really am.
Again, I'm just using your phraseology, but if you call it a cult, cults are very, very dangerous organizations.
They do hit you with the love bomb.
No criticism is allowed.
There's usually a central charismatic figure that has lords it over everyone else without any arguments.
There's no admission of faults.
There's usually some direct pipeline to the eternal and eternal.
And it is, you know, all loyalties are supposed to go not towards personal conscience or personal integrity or personal reasoning capacities, but towards obedience to some, you know, center's hub of the wheel guy or woman in this case who just tells everyone what to do.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it is.
And the organization of sexuality telling you where to live, how much of your income you can keep.
I mean, sometimes what to wear, what to eat.
I mean, it's really...
Kind of fascistic in a lot of ways.
And again, I don't know the degree to which I'm describing what you've been talking about, but yeah, very dangerous.
Yeah, very dangerous.
And yeah, I mean, the question of family separation is interesting.
I mean, obviously I've talked about the voluntary family.
Not every ideology that...
Ends up with family separation or has that risk of potential is a cult.
I mean, so there's a woman's shelter, right?
A woman's shelter says if you're being beaten up by your husband, you can come here and we'll shelter you.
And Erin Pizzi, who was founded one of the first women's shelters, has been on the show to talk about that experience.
And now, is that a women's shelters cult because they help get people out of abusive relationships?
Well, I don't think so.
I mean, I don't see how that could possibly...
Be the case.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, that's the Underground Railroad that helps remind people they don't have to stay in abusive relationships.
It's not the case for all situations where that can result in.
But yeah, so I'm very sorry.
And I've had a couple of people who've called in over the years who've talked about early experiences.
One guy was born in what he called a cult and just had a terrible, terrible time getting out because so much concentrated intellectual Well, pseudo-intellectual junk that just ends up bloating up your brain and all that.
So, yeah, they really are.
They can be very, very destructive organizations.
So I hugely sympathize with your experience with that.
And I sympathize with all that led up to that.
You know, the isolation, the loneliness, and so on.
But is it fair to say, Mike, that enthusiasm was, in this organization that you described, enthusiasm was not really the best...
It didn't lead to the best place, let's say.
No, not at all.
Right.
So when you say you have issues being enthusiastic, in my experience, enthusiastic people set themselves on fire.
I'd love to be enthusiastic, not so much with the fire.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Sorry to interrupt, but enthusiasm in pursuit of something that is beneficial, is healthy, is positive, and so on, would probably be, obviously, you'd get then the best without the worst.
The enthusiasm without the decay of identity and all.
Yeah, I actually called in, I don't know, remember, about a year ago, where we talked about exactly how to avoid Having a course consume you.
Did that help?
Yeah, it was a very interesting call, actually.
I did do so.
Now, what I was going to say at the beginning, and I don't want to make the agenda for this call, so I'll just mention it, and if you find it of interest, we can talk more about it when talking about something else.
But, I mean, you've brushed up against some identity dissolving Quote, relationships, right?
I mean, I would assume that the confusion of proximity and shared delusion for intimacy, which is basically the definition of culture, religion, nationalism, racism, you name it, right?
So this idea that if we share the same delusion, we're somehow close, right?
If we can both live in the same sky castles, you know, we are just a big bag of tethered togetherness.
That must have come from something early, right?
The proximity equals intimacy.
And that, I assume, would have come from your family.
Tell me if that's way off base.
Yeah, my family is very much, you know...
Yeah, where the thing we found a connection in was discussing books or discussing politics or having these shared ideas and shared craziness.
My parents are staunch communists, so they had their special view of the world.
Oh, yes.
I mean, I don't always like to say that all atheists are communists or socialists.
I don't like to make that.
I'm doing my very best to not make that association in my head, although I'm not sure I'm necessarily true at all.
And given that atheism comes out of a lot of socialist and communist histories of thought, let's say, to a staunch communists.
And then you ended up in a commune.
Yeah, it's pretty.
The time I decided that I didn't really want to see my parents that much anymore was the time I had them visit where my mother and my father were visiting me and we had a discussion about politics and my parents ended up defending Stalin and the East German regime.
To my face.
And now, was this in 1952?
Because, like, prior to Khrushchev releasing all of the...
That was when?
Last year.
So, I just...
They're just...
You know, I see them from time to time, but I really...
I can't...
Wow, that's a special kind of dedication to defend one of the greatest mass murderers in human history.
That's a special kind of stick into ideology, man.
That's just letting ideology eat you up like a humpback, swallows a piece of krill.
I'm so sorry.
And I also dislike categorizes as a whole.
I mean, give me a Latitude for a tiny ranch here, and I haven't forgotten the thread, but just categorizers.
You know, like, hey, it's me.
No!
Cisgendered white male!
Nope.
Defend Molineux.
No!
Bourgeois!
Son of a bitch.
Really?
Can I just be...
No!
White privilege!
No!
This class, this race, this gender, this...
It's like, God.
Like, can I not be an individual with my...
No!
No!
Because you are in a category.
And because I have categories, you have to conform to those categories.
And if you don't, you're still that category.
Right?
So, in communism, if you understand class conflict, and you accept and class conflict is true, it's valid, and blah, blah, blah, then good, you're a communist.
Now, if you don't accept it, it's because you have false consciousness.
Right?
And you've been programmed to not accept it.
It's like, oh, so if I agree with your thesis, your thesis is proven.
If I disagree with your thesis, your thesis is proven due to my disagreement.
Nice trick.
What are you?
Communist house born of Sigmund Freud theory?
Like, come on, give me a break.
That's horrendous.
And you see this everywhere, right?
It's like, you have white privilege!
I disagree with this argument, and here's why and why and why.
You only think that because you don't even see your white privilege!
It's like, oh!
I see.
You have an invisible spider on your head.
Really?
I can't feel it.
That's just because it's such an invisible spider that you can't even feel it.
That even proves more that it's there.
It's like, oh my god, you people are just religious people reincarnated.
Right?
And that is crazy stuff.
And you see this all over.
The Patriarch!
You're a patriarch.
It's like, really?
I was raised by women, bossed around by women, schooled by women.
Women are in charge of just about everything.
They deal with most of the spending that goes on and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, ah, all of that is false consciousness brought about by the fact that you're in a patriarchy and you don't even see it.
That's how patriarchal it is.
It's like...
I don't have any words to put or point in the direction of the piece of programmed jellyfish you pretend to call a brain.
I've got nothing to say because there's no words that can reach a computer.
Alright, I'm done with my rant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Spot on.
And the fact that people don't even...
Where does that bit go where you say...
I was watching this documentary the other day on mountain climbing.
Because I miss winter.
I was watching this documentary on mountain climbing.
And...
Man, some...
Crazy people climb up.
I just tell you that, you know?
Crazy people.
I have too much oxygen.
I'm going up, baby.
And this one guy, like they were trying to get to the top of, I think it was K2 or something like that.
Trying to get to the top of this giant crazy mountain that basically is one more foot and you're halfway to the moon, right?
And this one guy's up there and he's just, he's struggling along and he's hallucinating.
He's got 9,000 pounds of crap on his back and he, you know, we're gonna do this oxygen free because that's better.
And he's just struggling along and they're afraid of this giant avalanche that's gonna come down or, you know, somebody holds in a sneeze and fucking mountain turns into a volcano or whatever the shit goes on up there.
And he's being interviewed and he's like, he just, he said, you know, it just suddenly hit me.
He's like, What the hell am I doing this to myself for?
What sane human being would risk a 25% chance of death to climb this mountain?
Are there 72 virgins at the top that you get to scoop up in your mountaineering bag and take?
This is me.
It's not him.
And it's like, no!
What do you get at the top?
It's really, really, really cold.
It's very high.
It's a little pretty.
But now that high-def cameras have been up there, you kind of don't need to.
I get when there was old grainy photos and all that.
Yeah, you might want to go up and see the thing for yourself.
But, uh, I mean, and he's like, what the hell am I doing?
This is just massive.
Why am I doing this to myself?
And I'd love to interview these guys and get their childhood stories.
And he basically said, guys, I'm done.
And he turned around and he just walked back down and kind of leave.
Because this K2 is way worse than Everest.
Everest got like a 5 or 10% death rate.
It was like 25% death rate.
25% death rate!
And it's not like there are all these great views.
99 steps out of 100, you're just looking at snow three feet from your face.
Look, this snow is higher than the snow from an hour ago.
So, that's worth it.
Anyway, so at some point, you know, when people...
I saw the movie many years ago called Reds about a guy.
He's a socialist or communist.
He ends up in some Mujahideen camp somewhere in the desert.
And he's like...
I remember watching this with my brother.
At what point does this guy say, what the hell am I doing here?
What the hell has happened to my life?
How on earth can I be here?
And I just wonder the degree to which somebody doesn't say, I am actually defending Joseph Stalin.
Like, where does that observing ego, that third eye come in and say, what am I doing?
What am I doing here?
What am I, what the hell am I doing with my time, energy, and life that I'm sitting here defending one of the biggest mass murderers in human history?
At what point does that conscience, I don't know what to call it, observing ego, they call it, I think, in psychological circles, they can see what you're doing and say, you know, that's good, or not so bad, right?
And I've had this, you know, with dates occasionally or dating someone, you just look across the couch and you say, what am I doing with this person?
Come on.
What on earth am I doing with this person?
What is going on here?
And yeah, I guess this happened with you, with this religious group that you were in.
What the hell am I doing here?
Yeah, finally I had enough of, you know, double think and, what do you call it, cognitive dissonance.
It just, you know, my capacities for cognitive, what do you call it, is not infinite.
Right.
Which makes you a tragic minority in the human species.
Yeah, unfortunately.
So, as far as enthusiasm goes, How about fighting evil?
Yeah.
That sounds like fire.
Yeah, okay.
Fight fire.
Be a volunteer fireman or whatever.
Because the dreams that you had, aside from the computer ones, the cop and the fireman, well, you're testosterone-based, fighting bad things, life form, right?
You fight fire, fight criminals.
There's no kid who's like, I want to be the cop so that I can nail you for securities fraud and maybe some speeding tickets.
No, it's always like, he stole the old lady's purse.
Let's get him, right?
I mean, all of the free market DRO-based cop stuff is what kids fantasize about.
I want to become a cop so I can eminent domain your comic books and maybe a lollipop, right?
I mean, that's not what kids...
Cowboys and robbers, not a lot of treaties going on that later get betrayed by white man with forked tongue.
So when you were younger, you may had a desire to, you know, fight the badness of the world.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
And now you've got no emotional connection to that at all.
Yeah, no, sure.
Okay, so that's not it.
So let's go back to female responsibility.
What did your mother do, or not do, that you think may have led to you joining what you call a cult?
Oh, that's a very long story.
It doesn't have to be.
It's only going to be long if you want to distract me.
I can give you the story of my mom in about three sentences, but let's hear the story of your mom that's more compressed, because otherwise you're going to give me a bunch of stuff that's supposed to have me not see the diamond in the beach, right?
My mother comes from a very dysfunctional home, so she always had the ideal of realizing the perfect family.
Oh, man.
I hate to interrupt you at the beginning.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Okay, so I said female responsibility, right?
Yes.
What's the first thing you told me about your mom?
That she came from a broken home.
She came from a very dysfunctional home, that's what you said.
Oh yeah, sorry.
So that is the exact opposite of female responsibility.
And that doesn't mean that your mom didn't come from a dysfunctional home, and it doesn't mean that your mom's behavior was not influenced or affected by her coming from a dysfunctional home.
But the first thing you gave me was an excuse.
Right.
Did you notice that?
Yes.
Did you notice it when I pointed it out, or did you notice it before?
I noticed this when you put it out.
Right, but you didn't notice it when you said.
So I said, what about female responsibility?
What actions did your mom take or not take that led you to being involved in what you describe as a cult?
And you said, well, she came from a very dysfunctional home, which is not female responsibility.
And I didn't ask where she came from.
I said, what actions did she take or not take as a mother?
And you gave me the excuse-laced backstory, right?
So this is three, count them, three women you have now defended in this conversation.
Number one, the shaman female leader of this religious organization, right?
Who thought she was doing the right thing and admitted, well, you certainly didn't say she did anything wrong or bad.
And you've talked a lot about how they have this approach and they believe what they're doing and all that, right?
I don't know about her.
I think I was trying to say, at least saying it in the context of my wife.
Okay, so you certainly didn't Say that she did anything particularly wrong.
You said the organization as a whole was highly manipulative and so on, but didn't say anything in particular about the leader of this group, the woman.
And you defended your wife until I pointed it out, and then you said you stabbed her in the back.
And now with your mom, you're also avoiding giving her responsibility, right?
Right, yeah.
Which means that you have a great deal of contempt for women.
Because...
Infants, we don't assign moral responsibility to, right?
Earthworms, we do not assign moral responsibility to.
And if you can't assign moral responsibility to women, there's both great contempt and great anger, I would assume, towards women.
It's just my thought.
Yeah, that's true.
Okay.
So, let's tap into that, because I think out of that anger will come your enthusiasm and your life's direction, right?
Because if you're angry at women...
Then creating excuses for them is a way of drugging yourself and saying to your anger, you are unjust, Mr.
Anger.
Right.
Because, you see, if you feel like getting angry at my mom, she came from a really dysfunctional household.
And if you feel like getting angry at my ex-wife, while she was trying to help me, she was a kind person.
Yeah.
Right, so...
And look, this drugging, this disabling of male anger is, I think...
The most fundamental problem in the world today.
I mean, I don't mean to be Mr.
Hyperbole Sprayer, but the fact that men are constantly diffusing their anger, like this giant boot-stomping footlocker going on the whole time, that every single time, and you've probably heard this if you listened to this show before, the number of times I have to talk about female responsibility, it's not just in our culture, it's in certainly all the Western cultures.
And I think, I personally think that males have the same relationship to culture that abuse victims have to an abuser.
And that they're constantly told that they're wrong, that they're bad, they're generally isolated.
I mean, they're just not allowed to get angry, not allowed to resist, not allowed to kick back.
And any sign of...
The abuser can get as angry as they want, but anytime the victim gets angry, it's horrifying and appalling and vile and scary and terrible and terrifying, right?
You're interfering with my abusive rage, you bad person!
This is what I think males as a whole, particularly white males, have the same relationship to the dominant left-wing culture and political correctness as an abuse victim has to an abuser.
And one of the things that abuse victims have towards abusers is the constant manufacturing of excuses.
And every time you manufacture excuses for somebody who's been abusive, you abuse yourself.
Because all of the anger that you have as a natural, organic animal to having been hurt and abused turns out to be an unjust, inchoate, aggressive, irrational rage.
But it is the anger that is going to free you from the abuse.
What do they say to victims of abuse?
Don't get abusive, but at least get angry.
Because it is the anger that will push back and give you the space and the protection to be who you are, to be yourself, to be secure, to be safe.
It doesn't mean go yell and scream at people and call them names and hit them.
It doesn't mean anything to do with that.
If I want my abuse system to fight off a cold, I don't mean it also should punch my neighbor's dog.
I just want it to keep me from getting sick, to keep me from being ill.
That's all I want from it.
And the idea that males, or in particular white males, can be angry about something It's considered to be such a terrible and terrifying and unjust and horrible and awful thing, right?
So a man, let's say, somewhere in Canada, tries to keep pushing the issue of female responsibility.
Well, he's got mommy issues.
Yeah, because I remember a lot of feminists who were angry being told they had daddy issues.
Do you remember that?
I don't either.
Or, you know, you just hate women.
A woman hater.
Right.
That's why I married a woman.
That's why I love my daughter.
Because I'm confused as shit.
Right.
And so the idea that we just must constantly manufacture excuses.
This is what abuse victims do to their abusers.
Well, he was drunk.
He didn't know what he was doing.
he'd had a bad day at work he blur, he blur, he blur, he blur, he blur, he blur.
And all that does is ensure a repetition of the abuse.
No excuses.
No fucking excuses is the key to get out of the prison of self-contempt engendered by an abusive culture.
And anybody who doesn't recognize that culture is abusive, particularly towards males, particularly towards white males, although it happens in other ethnic communities as well, It's deluding themselves.
It is an abusive, horrendous, aggressive, vicious culture towards males.
And it's going to keep going that way, and it's going to keep getting worse until we get angry.
And getting angry doesn't mean yelling, and it doesn't mean it can, but it doesn't mean being abusive.
It just means recognizing it for what it is.
This is an abusive culture for men.
This is a toxic culture for men.
This is like spermicide planet, this fucking hell that we live in.
Sorry to be so frank, but this is the way that it is.
And I hate the idea that when I was like, oh, it's a girl, I'm like, phew, less toxic for you, plus if it had been a boy.
Oh, boy.
A lot more to explain.
I mean, to explain this to my daughter, it's just going to be a little bit different.
And so the reason why when I say moral responsibility, females, what did your mom do or not do, and then the first thing you give me is an excuse, that's what I'm seeing.
I'll shut up now.
I apologize for the rant.
Yeah, you're right.
So what did she or did she not do?
So basically she wanted to have this perfect idea of her family.
So she moved the family far out in the country where they didn't know anyone and they And because they were intellectuals and they didn't really want to have anything to do with the common people, they never made an effort to, you know, make friends or anything.
And then they moved far away from their jobs, so they had to be, I think my mother was out of the house like 50 hours a week and 60 hours for my dad because they had normal jobs and then plus insane amount of transportation time.
They did send us to the local public school and they did pretty much, they never considered moving any of us.
We were three children, I'm the middle one.
They never decided to take us out before, until my little sister, even though we all had terrible problems at school because we were outsiders.
She basically moved us to this rural farming village.
Like, rural Utah, something, you know, where we fit in like, you know, we were city people.
So it was just terrible bullying and ostracizing.
You mean from the school?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
So, so far, your mother's done nothing in particular wrong.
The first thing you told me, do you remember what you said her first motivation was or her core motivation?
Mm-hmm.
Do you remember what that was?
Yeah, she wanted to have the ideal, picture-perfect family.
She had a perfect idea or ideal of a family.
What does that mean?
Well, I guess...
Because you make her sound like she's chasing this...
To dream the impossible...
She's chasing this wonderful, perfect, lovely family.
That's not exactly moral responsibility.
Because she's chasing this perfectly wonderful idea of a family.
She's an idealist.
She's noble.
She's, you know, I guess reality didn't Match up to what she, but you gave me this framing sentence at the beginning, and I'm sorry to stop and be, but you gave me this framing sentence at the beginning.
Well, my mother had this perfect idea of a family.
I don't even know what that means.
I don't know how you verify or validate that.
I don't know if it's something she said.
I don't know what empirical evidence is, but you gave that to me to give a portrait of your mother.
That she sought perfection.
Which is, to some degree, an admirable trait, right?
Well, the thing it led her to do was simply to just ignore reality or try and suppress it whenever reality didn't fit her.
Okay.
Led her to do?
What?
Is she a dog being taken to walk by her idealism?
Being dragged along in a collar?
What do you mean led her to do?
Well, it seems like that from time to time.
Your mother has this ideal and then it leads her to do things.
That's not moral responsibility.
Forget the ideals.
Forget what you think may have been her motivation.
Okay, but my general perception of my life, my relation to her is that she doesn't like me in particular.
She likes the idea of the perfect son.
And whenever I conform to that, I'm rewarded.
And whenever I'm Does not confound to that, then I'll be shunned or punished or ignored or whatever, you know.
So she's a bully?
Yes.
So what the fuck has perfect son got to do with it?
I've got this ideal that you will perfectly give me $50 and if you don't, I'll punch you in the head.
Well, I guess I'm just an idealist.
Right.
Well, no, seriously, what does this perfect idea of a son have to do with anything?
If she doesn't get what she wants from you, in other words, if you are inconvenient to her, she bullies and ostracizes you.
Obviously, this is your ex-wife, and this is how it led to it.
That's too obvious to even delve into.
But if I say, I want you to conform with me, or I'm going to exercise brutal power over you, well, first of all, I understand why they defend Stalin, but what does that have to do with me having a perfect idea of anything?
No, I think you're right.
I am still trying to, you know, unconsciously come up with excuses for the behavior to make it seem less awful.
I agree, and I'll give you another one.
You said, well, you see, they're intellectuals, so they didn't want to have anything to do with the common people.
Right?
They were just too refined, too high and mighty, too platonic for this base Aristotelian planet, right?
They were too elvish for these, right?
But would you think that I'm somewhat of an intellectual?
Well, I think there's a difference between being intellectual and self-identifying as one as your primary identity.
Well, I mean, there's a technical description, which is an intellectual is someone who sells ideas, not things.
That's Thomas Sowell's definition, and I think it's a reasonable one.
An intellectual is someone whose primary product is ideas, not things.
And my primary product is ideas, not things, because the Freedomain Radio t-shirt shop didn't do all too well, right?
So that's why I'm putting out pixels and putting out ideas and arguments and conversations and so on.
So technically, at least according to Thomas Sowell's definition, I would be something like an intellectual, right?
Do I want to have nothing to do with the common people?
Whatever that phrase means.
Well, I don't think so.
No, I have wide open conversations, right?
With what could the common people, which I think I don't view you or any of my listeners as being part of the common people.
Also, have you...
Okay, they're intellectuals.
They're communists who want nothing to do with the common people.
Communists.
Common people.
What kind of drug trip are you trying to sell me here?
They're communists.
Well, we don't want anything to do with the riffraff.
My goodness, no!
Why would we want to have anything to do with the riffraff?
We're only supposed to care about the eventual triumph of the proletariat working classes.
Why would we want to have anything to do with People who work with their hands.
They're greasy.
They're oily.
They like loud music, often sung by people whose first name starts with Dan.
And my goodness, they enjoy bowling.
They might as well be rolling the human heads of culture down into the gutters of low-lifeness.
Oh my god, it's horrifying.
They often enjoy movies made by people who used to be martial artists.
Oh my god, how horrifying.
Oh, I can't even take it anymore.
Sometimes, when they go to work, they play their music so loud, my monocle doth vibrate in my eye socket.
I mean, I'm a communist, but I hate the working classes.
I don't have anything to do with them.
Yes, pretty much, yeah.
So please stop giving me this insane propaganda that just takes a moment of thought.
It's like, what is this?
Yeah, okay.
I think the idea was that, you know, they view people who are opposed to their political views as, you know, I can't remember the weird terms anymore.
But they didn't want to hang out with people who wasn't on the left, basically.
That was just of it.
I mean, that doesn't go to Manhattan, for God's sake.
I mean, why would you...
Sorry?
Yeah, it's insane, you know.
It's...
Yeah, crazy.
And if they disagree with the entire system, I mean, I don't quite get sending you to government schools in a capitalist...
What they would view as a capitalist country.
Mm-hmm.
No.
So, wouldn't they just be pouty, bullying hypocrites?
I mean, wouldn't that be...
Okay.
Now...
Is this something they had a choice about in any way, shape, or form?
Well, you know, they both have educations that doesn't really lend themselves to doing useful work.
They have humanistic degrees, both of them.
Right, so they wanted the working class to fund their pursuit of educations that had nothing to do with actually working for a living.
Yeah, well, just like most other intellectual communists, I guess.
Yeah, the Champagne Socialists, they used to be called.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is, you know, from my private car, I do love watching the bubblies go up in my little stem glass and overlooking the liberation of the working classes, some of whom I employ to clean my gutters.
Right, okay.
So, your parents chose to get degrees that weren't particularly valuable from an economic standpoint, but if you're going to say that they're led by their ideology, then they have to be led by their ideology.
What I mean by that is you can't say, well, my ideology led me to do this, which is in conformity with my ideology, but this, which is also in conformity with my ideology, I didn't do.
Which goes back to the first conversation that we had about the religious organization that you joined, where I pointed out that there's nothing, to my knowledge, in the New Testament that says give all your money to the priest or to whoever, right?
So you said, well, they're Christians, and it's like, well, but they're only Christians in certain areas.
Another here is they seem to be I don't know, more akin to the Baader-Meinhof gang or the mafia.
All loyalty to the group.
And so, if you say, well, my parents' ideology led them to do this or whatever, then if it lets them do some stuff, but then they do the complete opposite of their ideology, when that's convenient, then the ideology is not leading them to do anything.
They're using their ideology as an excuse, as a vanity plate of self-regard.
Right.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
I mean, so people can be communists.
Okay, good.
Then...
Then go work for a living.
Go join the toiling masses and go work from the inside and get to know these people, these working class proletariats.
Go get to work with them, right?
Don't just, like Marx did, just hire them and have sex with them and then throw them out on the street and deny that you ever had a child with them, right?
While you go to the British Library every day while making money from a capitalist who ran the working classes like Engels with his factories.
Anyway...
I think their self-justification is their teachers, so they can brainwash the youth with communism as their main goal in life.
So I think, yeah, they're part of the propaganda system.
Oh, so they were teachers in the government school system?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they didn't have to follow the general curriculum, they could just put a bunch of communist stuff in?
No, not directly, but...
You know, at least in Denmark, the education you get is very much, you know, pro-socialist, pro-everything, you know.
Denmark is, you know, socialism with a smiley face on top.
All right, okay.
All right, so, okay, so they wanted to be propagandists towards children.
They wanted to Imprint their communism on children who were forced to be in their classroom and had no functional capacity to say no to what they were being indoctrinated with.
Well, they're high school teachers, so you could technically...
Okay, so slightly older children from 15 to 17.
Still not there by choice, still can't get away, still dependent upon the goodwill.
So it's like me saying, I'm going to be a boxer.
I'm going to be heavyweight champion of the world.
I'm only going to punch people who are 14 or 15 years old.
I ain't going to punch anyone who's big than that, because...
They can punch back.
But I'm going to be Mr.
Punchy Guy.
Punchy Guy.
Hey, are you almost my height?
Can't punch you.
Do you have anyone shorter I can go punch with?
Wait.
No, you're a boy.
Do you have a girl?
12-year-old girl.
12-year-old girl.
I'll go in the ring with a 12-year-old girl.
Okay, I really like her to be drunk first.
Little dizzy.
Spin around.
Put a blindfold on her head.
Put a bag over her head.
Okay, I'm going in with the dizzy 12-year-old.
Spin around.
Doof, doof, doof.
We are the champions.
Right?
I mean, this is...
How on earth do you measure yourself against children and say, oh, look, I'm fighting the good fight?
Yeah, you know, and then simply not used to getting pushback from anyone who's their intellectual equal.
I remember one time I tried to tell my father, referring the truth of Jaguara, and he became so beside himself with rage that he couldn't speak for an hour.
Afterwards, he was like, I can't believe it, and it's, you know, it's propaganda.
Oh, that's propaganda.
Right.
Yeah.
That's propaganda.
Right.
Right.
Oh, yeah, that's very intellectually honest.
And Nazi, well, I've got sources that disagree with this, and he may have mispronounced K, but it's propaganda.
I have a magic repel reality spell called propaganda.
Away it goes.
It's like a car horn in front of the seagulls of reality.
Bam!
Bam!
Off they go.
All right.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
So as far as enthusiasm goes, we, we, this is my general theory.
I don't have any proof.
It's probably bullshit, but I'm going to put it out anyway.
When we're young, we get enthusiastic about that which makes us happy.
When we get older, if we are moral, we get enthusiastic about that which makes us angry.
And the entire point of getting people to suppress their anger is to get people to suppress the moral energy of enthusiasm, which is called outrage.
If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
And so when we're younger, yeah, sex and going staying up all night and going to discos and all the other kind of cool stuff that you and I and other people did when we were younger, that's enthusiasm because it makes us happy.
It's exciting.
And then we grow up and we realize that...
This buzzing electrical excitement that distracted us in a youth was hiding this big giant greased-up dildo that was coming to rape us of our future, called the national debt and increasing regulation and wars and god-awful school systems and so on, right?
And then if we're alert and we're awake, we go, ah, this is horrifying!
I am really pissed off about this!
And then our enthusiasms, instead of being driven by personal happiness and pleasure alone, Get driven by an outrage at the collective wrongdoing being done to the planet, to freedom, to the young, to the future, to money.
And so the reason why we're not supposed to get angry is the most insidious viruses bypass our immune system, right?
They don't trigger the immune system.
That's the most insidious virus.
So if people get cancer all the time, most times the immune system figures out, oh, cancer cell, kill it, right?
And sometimes, for whatever reason, it doesn't.
It's the same thing with other immunodeficiency ailments.
They're most dangerous because anything which triggers your immune system has a really good chance of being kicked out of your system and losing, right?
And the anger of...
People who aren't self-obsessed, shallow, narcissistic youths, like most youths, the anger of the middle-aged is the immune system of the species.
The old people, they're too busy sucking off the government tit, and they're too busy complaining about their hips, and they're too busy predicting rain with their rheumatism, and I'm only saying this because I'm not that old yet.
I still envy those who get there.
But the old are not...
Any particular agents of change.
And the young are too sex-crazed and stimulant-hungry and unknowledgeable to make any foundational change.
The young are too easy to dismiss as inexperienced.
The old are too easy to make dependent.
I need a doctor!
I'm not gonna rock no boat.
I can barely swim.
My joints won't move that much anymore.
And so the young can be dismissed and the old can be bought.
But the people in the middle, the great 30 to 55 group, those people can kick the shit out of complacency in society if they want.
They've got enough experience to be taken seriously, and they've got enough independence because they're not so old that they have to rely on an increasingly brutal vampiric system to drain the blood of the young, to feed them.
And so for people in their middle age...
If you don't get angry, middle-aged people, you don't get angry, nothing is going to change.
In fact, it's only going to get worse.
Which is why, in particular males, what have we got?
Eight times the testosterone that women have might make us a little bit more punchy, a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more focused on being capable of making change.
And so, middle-aged men, in particular, need to be neutered.
We need to have the balls kicked right up our throats so that we don't ever think of getting angry about anything.
Because whenever we get angry, everyone fakes this...
Right?
Ah, he's getting angry!
He's a brutal patriarch!
I'm so scared!
I need to go to my room and watch puppy's frolic and hug pillows!
Don't clap with his anger!
Just make jazz hands!
And so...
That's sort of what I'm trying to point out here, that yeah, there's responsibility.
You know, the old people?
Yeah, they set up a system that fucked us.
They did.
And they certainly applauded and approved it and never fought one damn thing of it, with some very obvious and noble exceptions.
And the young people, you know, there's some great young people who listen to the show, very smart people and so on.
They usually don't have the heft or the resources or the experience or understanding the value of their anger.
Plus, they're usually in a system.
You've got to be outside of a system to kick the shit out of a system.
Young people are stuck in the system against their will, and the old people are stuck in the system because they're dependent, right?
And they usually need that kind of stuff.
But middle-aged people, we've got some independence from the system.
I don't have any exams to study for.
I've got no essays to hand in tomorrow.
We can kick the shit out of the system because we've got some independence and we're also not dependent.
Right?
Sorry, that's kind of repetitive.
But you know what I mean?
Independent from a system and we can really give it some kicks, which is why middle-aged white people tend to be the most castrated.
Middle-aged people of all...
Racist, but in particular, of course, men.
And that's sort of when I give you, let's talk about responsibility, particularly on part of your mom, and you give me excuses and excuses and excuses, what you're saying is, my anger makes society uncomfortable.
Me being pissed off is inconvenient to society, and I can tell you this, sure as Sherlock, well, I'm telling you, don't let me tell you your experience, tell me how I'm wrong.
But, my friend, is this not exactly how it worked for you when you were a child?
That when you got angry, what happened?
Oh, yes.
Yeah, you know, that was bad.
You know, that was horrifying.
And 90% of our public school teachers were women, or maybe only 80, but basically, you know, no male role models anywhere to be found.
Yeah.
Even my father is the weirdest non-person I've ever heard of.
So unassertive.
I think that's part of what I really wish I had.
Something I could do, something I could do with my time that feels like it would make a difference anywhere.
But you know exactly what to do with your time that's going to make a difference.
Well...
I'm not sure I do.
Of course you do.
Who do you think you're talking to?
Well, I know what you do.
And I've supported your show for a long time for exactly that reason.
And I hugely appreciate that.
But how about...
Joining me on The Ramparts.
Well, yes.
If, yeah, anything, you know, I'd be happy to help out with...
No, no, no, no.
Not help me.
Not help me.
Not pass me some ammunition.
Right?
Right?
Not mail me a bullet or two.
Metaphorically speaking.
Right?
But...
Not stand with me, because it's the internet, right?
But stand up, so at least we can see each other.
You over there, me over here.
Ten people stand over there.
Twenty people stand up over there.
Hey, next thing you know, we've got something going on.
Right.
Yeah, I've often thought of, should I just up and move somewhere where there's a bunch more freedom-minded people?
No, I guess I don't.
You want a group?
Because it's scary doing it alone.
You want a group?
I get that.
I get that.
But I wouldn't make it a prerequisite.
Right.
Yeah, that's a good point.
So, but yeah, we have a small FDR meetup community right where I live, and that's fun enough, but it's, I haven't really found anyone who I really, you know, felt, you know, we can go somewhere together, we can get stuff done.
Can I tell, okay, let me appeal to your boss, is that all right?
Yes.
Is that okay?
I'm going to verbally tap them and do some Benoit magic.
One of the reasons that standing up heroically and speaking the truth to the world and taking whatever bullets and monkey poo flies your way is you get to unfurl a giant hero cock above the clouds.
Visible to anybody, particularly a woman, with eyes to see, right?
Right.
And that is a, you know, heroism and courage in the face of an increasingly assholic planet is a great mating dance, right?
And so if you want a great woman to find you, Unfurl your giant hero cock above the planet.
And she'd be like, hey, I like that big flapping thing.
I wonder what's at the root of it.
Is there a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow?
Let me find out, right?
We have this fantastic giant orgasmatron lasers on the moon capacity to advertise our own heroic penises.
So, unfurl, baby!
Send that Pee-pee skyward.
And, you know, as they say, round up the flag and see who salutes.
So if you get out there and, I mean, I'm not in any kind of mating scenario because I'm happily married, but, you know, for a young single guy like yourself, you know, go leave some intellectual fist marks in the face of evil.
And, you know, checks will dig it.
Yeah, but what do you do then?
Because Pointless and, you know, going to a political rally or something.
I don't know.
No, no, no, no, no.
Politics.
Come on, man.
No, no.
I mean, you find something that you really hate and then you publicly hate it.
All right.
You find something that makes you angry and you're publicly angry.
I mean, it's so sad.
I've got to tell you.
This is how emasculating our culture is.
Oh, God, it's completely mental.
You've got to just...
I don't do this, but, you know, just every now and then.
I guarantee you it's there.
Go to one of my videos where it's all remotely confrontational, or I have to be assertive, or I have to interrupt people because they're just...
I mean, I did with you.
I hope I do it in a reasonably nice way, but...
Oh, yeah, sure.
But I just see how uncomfortable even...
Positive assertiveness makes people.
Oh, he kept interrupting.
He didn't let that guy speak.
He's like, what are you all, a bunch of girl guides?
I mean, girl guides are more assertive than that.
I'm just being honest, right?
Oh, he's making me uncomfortable with his being assertive.
Oh my God, when did we ever become such a bag of sackless jellyfish?
You know, I get angry at stuff.
I am passionate about stuff.
I'm not always right about stuff.
My God, but so what?
If perfection is your standard of behavior, welcome to your initial grave of nothingness because you'll never get anything done if you wait for everything to be perfect.
Yes!
I've said there weren't any major Western wars in Europe in the 19th century.
The Franco-Prussian War.
I'm going to deal with it.
I made a mistake.
I read that in Ayn Rand.
I didn't double check.
Oops!
I'll fix it.
But everyone's like, well, I'm not going to take him seriously.
He made a mistake.
I'm not going to take him seriously about anything anymore.
It's like, okay, fine.
Well, all you're telling me is you don't want to do shit.
Because it's not the best song in the universe ever, so I'm not gonna write it.
It's like, hey, Yesterday is taken.
Bohemian Rhapsody is taken.
I think there are still other musicians out there doing stuff, so get off your ass and make some bad music.
Anyway.
Right.
So, you find something that makes you energetic and hatred and, you know, I sound like the emperor, but hatred and anger are enthusiasms, right?
I mean, hatred of illness breeds a cure.
There's no cure unless you really hate that disease because of the passion.
You know, the researchers who's like, well, my mother died of breast cancer or something.
I'm going to kill those bastards, right?
And good, you know, good.
This idea that nothing good could come out of hatred is only something that is put forward by evil people because they know that the strength of virtue is in its hatred of evil.
Right.
And so they'll, well, don't hate anything because we're hateful.
Don't be angry at anything because we are horrible human beings.
And so basically it's just like, woohoo, we can slip past the immune system because we've made hatred and anger a bad thing.
So no one can ever fight us because they can never get angry at us.
Anyway, so.
Yeah.
I mean, politically correct people, anytime anyone's assertive and angry in some group they don't like, Well, it's just horrible and abusive.
And every time someone's angry in a group that they approve of, it's like, well, that's just self-righteous anger that comes about as a result of injustice.
Because I'm not a white male.
Anyway, so...
Particularly, you know, those of us who come from Europe and come from that particular background, I don't care what your race is, you come from that particular background...
God Almighty does the world need us.
God Almighty does the world need us to bring the Enlightenment kicking and streaming into the 21st century, to bring at least limited government, at least some kind of objective rule of law, at least the memory of a republic, at least something to do with property rights, at least something to do.
With reason and evidence and empiricism and individuation and integrity.
Like that stuff, like it or not, comes a lot from the West.
Doesn't come a lot from Japan, where conformity plus rape seems to have been a large portion of their history.
It's going to come from the European tradition.
They need us.
Ah, yeah, they hate us, but so what?
Doesn't mean they don't need us, right?
Yeah, that's a really great point actually.
I think you have the right of it.
I need to find something that I can get angry enough about and I can actually do something about.
Also, you can always get angry about the income tax or something.
If that's what makes you angry, great!
I guess my next book should be The Joy of Hatred or something.
It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
All right, man, listen, I've got to move on to the next caller because I'm breaking my own mouth left, right, center.
Thanks for your time.
Hey, man, in all seriousness, I'm really sorry about this indoctrination and these loopy-froopy pseudo-communists.
I'm really sorry about that.
I'm really sorry about the seven years in the religious group and...
I'm really, really grateful for your support of what we're doing here.
I mean, without you, without people who support this show, I'm basically just a crazy guy in a room talking to himself.
So, I mean, I may still be.
You're all a fantasy.
I don't know.
But I really, really appreciate that.
So thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Keep us posted.
If you get an Angry Man channel or something, let us know and we'll broadcast it.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
All right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks, Michael.
Up next is Mr.
Jack.
And Jack has a letter that he emailed in that was so fantastic.
I asked him if he'd want to call in and read it on the show and have a chat about it.
So go ahead, Jack.
Okay.
Can you hear me?
I can.
How are you doing, Jack?
Okay.
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
How are you?
I'm very well.
Thank you.
That was...
I'm still...
Changing gears after listening to that call.
I appreciate you hanging onto the line.
Holy moly.
It's all big and disgusting.
Yes, yes, yes.
I feel like I need to reboot.
But nonetheless, I will read the letter.
Please do.
So, Stefan, I was introduced to you four years ago by my eldest son, Daniel, who at the time had been listening to your podcast for a few months.
I'm I'm sorry, I'm an emotional human.
Don't ever apologize for your feelings.
We were just talking about the joy and necessity of feelings, so I appreciate your passion.
I didn't expect it as soon as I started reading it.
But anyway, I'm writing you this evening because I think it's important that you receive feedback to help you understand how profoundly positive an effect you've had on the world, even when it's not easy to see.
On May 23rd of this year, West Point graduated its class of 2015.
When they entered West Point, there was 1,261 members of the class, including my second son.
I do not know exactly how many of those 1,261 graduated, but I do know that there was one fewer graduates than there would have been had it not been for you and for my son Daniel.
Daniel was a college student when he was introduced to you.
Shortly after that, his brother, who was two years younger than he is, was accepted to West Point.
I'll always remember the day that he received his acceptance package and the feeling of pride I had in him.
It was just about a year earlier that I found out that he was interested in the military academies.
He had made his decision to pursue a military path without the thought ever entering my mind.
A teammate of his had gone to the Naval Academy who had sparked his interest.
My son said to me one night that he could get his education paid for and all he had to do was serve his country for five years.
And he said, there's nothing wrong with that.
My, how things can change.
The best thing about the military academies in the United States is that students do not have to officially commit to the military until the first day of classes in their third year.
Daniel knew this, and after his brother had been at West Point for one year, he began an all-out effort to convince him that he had to get out.
He started sending him things to read, and to his credit, his brother read everything that Daniel sent.
It didn't take long for his brother to become convinced that the war in Afghanistan was wrong in so many ways, and he knew for sure that unless someone could convince him otherwise, he would never be able to lead troops into that battle.
He then made it his mission to find someone, anyone, in the Army's leadership who could explain to him why we were fighting in Afghanistan.
He tried for about six months.
No one even tried to justify it.
Everyone he spoke to who had actually been in Afghanistan admitted to him that the morale there amongst the troops was horrible and that no one felt that we were actually making anything better.
Some even admitted that we were causing more problems than we were solving.
So as soon as he finished his final exams at the end of his sophomore year, he informed the academy that he was leaving.
He then made the mistake of honestly filling out the exit forms regarding the top three reasons for leaving.
He cited the war in Afghanistan, the military's use, misuse of drones, and the army's failure to properly address sexual assault in its ranks.
His commanding officer in general and his lieutenant colonel In particular, during the exit interview, made the next 18 days miserable.
A classmate of his failed his finals and was out-processed in less than 24 hours.
My son, who is a very good student, who chose to leave on his own, was out-processed in 18 days.
After taking a year off, my son is back in school and doing quite well.
He is quite busy, but he still sends me links to articles, mostly from Glenn Greenwald, about the abuses of our government.
Today he gets it, as do I. And this is a directly result of his brother finding you.
Sorry.
No, that's fine.
Had he not chosen to do that, had you not chosen to do what you are doing, I'm quite certain that my son Would have graduated from West Point and be embarking on a career that would damage himself and others irreparably.
How do I adequately say thank you for that?
All I can do is say that I'm eternally grateful for your role you played in this.
I had planned to write so much more And tell you about myself and the evolution of my thinking that has occurred because of my relationship with Daniel and his relationship with the FDR community.
But I'm going to stop now.
And simply leave this as a letter of gratitude regarding my son.
I have so much to say regarding my own background, my belief in God, My parenting and my four boys, my mistakes, my successes, and most importantly, my journey with Daniel into FDR, which I assure you does not fit any conception that I have heard you describe regarding your listeners and their parents.
But after writing you about my son's journey, I decided to mix the two wouldn't be appropriate.
For now, I simply want to say thank you, thank you, thank you.
Well, thank you.
I mean, that's incredibly moving and powerful to hear, and I hugely appreciate that you took the time and honesty and openness to communicate that.
I hugely appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Has he had any second thoughts?
Or has it been like, you know, you don't get out of a bear trap and say, well, you know, I had another leg I could have put in.
Or has it been pretty much like out and in the rear view good?
You know, no, he's definitely had some thoughts.
I mean, just the other day when his friends were all graduating and they're all, you know, they all got their...
You know, they all get $30,000 basic, almost, you know, interest-free loans.
So they've all got money and they're all going on little trips prior to their, you know, getting full-time into the Army.
He's actually right now at a baseball game with a friend of his who just graduated.
Actually, it happens to be a friend that hated West Point, but he graduated nonetheless.
So, you know, he's had those kind of...
But he has no regrets as far as...
I mean, he just sees the...
You know, the horrors of the whole thing now that we never saw before, you know?
So, yeah, now he's paying for his own education and he's got bills, you know, that he wouldn't otherwise have.
And, you know, also other people say that when you tell them that my son was at West Point for two years and now he's at, you know, Setsu Setsu College, They say, oh yeah, you know, not everybody can make it at West Point or whatever.
But he said to me, you know, Dad, he said the much easier path would be to continue what I'm doing, you know, and to continue at West Point.
And that was because he had friends, he was doing well, everything was paid for.
He had a job coming out, right?
But it's just, I mean, but he just saw it.
He saw it for what it was.
He saw it for...
And ironically, the...
The lieutenant colonel who did his exit interview really was just outright abusive and, you know, accusatory and just disgusting.
And, you know, that helped.
I mean, it was like, well, Dad, if I had any second thoughts, he certainly, you know, he certainly eliminated any of those.
So, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, life is harder because bills, you know, having to take responsibility and not relying on, you know, Having the big gun to take care of everything for you is not easy.
So that's where he's at.
I mean, there's so much about your letter that's fantastic.
A couple of points that I'd just sort of like to ask about.
First of all, I was really impressed that your son gave the Army the opportunity to make its case.
Like, why are we in Afghanistan?
What is the endgame?
What is the purpose?
What is the evidence that we're there for good reason and doing the right things?
And I think in your letter he said six months.
He gave them six months to come up with an answer.
And what's chilling is that he probably was alone in that quest.
Everyone else is just like on this conveyor belt going out to this carnage of the front or whatever number of fronts there are.
I was really impressed that he's like, okay, so I've heard from this crazy free domain radio side or other people that he's listening to and influenced by.
Let me take this information or let me just take this case to the army and maybe they can make a good case.
I think that's very fair-minded for somebody.
And Is that your influence?
Is that something that's innate to your kids?
Is it something you've noticed among all your sons?
I don't want to say it's not their honor and virtue, which it certainly is.
But it's unusual enough that I've got to ask, can you bottle this?
Can we put it in the water supply of some Midwestern town to experiment on people?
I mean, it's such an incredible capability.
Well, a couple things.
One is, it's not correct that he was alone, because he had some classmates that were with him, but I think those people were alone, and therefore they didn't take the step he took.
My son had his older brother, and he actually asked me Several times what I thought he should do, and my response to him was, this is so totally something that you have to find yourself.
Because I felt very strongly what I wanted him to do at that point.
But I was telling him quite clearly that this is a decision that he had to make for himself.
But he had his brother, and actually he had you.
And because of that, he was able to ask questions.
And I'm telling you, if you talk to people that would cycle through West Point, having done tours in Afghanistan, there's not a one of them that's trying to defend what we're doing.
There are some that defend the army and, you know, no, you can't.
He just didn't talk to those people.
I mean, the people that were really, you know, stupid, you know, you can never question stuff.
But the people that, I mean, he sought out the people that he felt he could talk to.
And I guess also to answer your question, yes, I, you know, I kind of alluded to in my letter there that I, I don't know, I alluded to, I said, you know, that I have a belief, you know, strong belief in God and I'm a, you know, I had my own, my own Belief system, but I did not raise my children with it because I believe very strongly that whatever belief you have has to be your own.
It can't be indoctrinated.
It can't be, and you certainly, a child can't decide.
So I've always encouraged my children since the very beginning that they just simply have to, you know, figure things out for themselves and that nobody can, you know, Including their own parents can't tell them where to go.
They can certainly influence them.
They can certainly give them an environment to help them make those decisions.
But I've always encouraged them very strongly to figure that stuff out.
But what an unbelievable journey.
You also said at the beginning when your son said, West Point it is, That you felt pride.
And that makes perfect sense to me, given the culture and the environment and so on, that you felt pride.
And to go from pride to...
Is it fair to characterize it as horror or a recoiling?
That is an incredible emotional journey to make in a relatively short period of time.
Well, you know, so I have...
So my oldest son is...
As deep a thinker and as strongly in pursuit of the truth of anybody I've ever known, and he's also, I mean, I mentioned his college in the letter, which he told me not to reply, but, you know, I mentioned it because it's, you know, it's the best, you know, it's as good as it gets.
You don't get in there unless you're incredibly bright.
And so he has that capacity, but he uses it to really, really pursue the truth.
So when he came at me with ideas that were quite contrary to what I believed, I simply couldn't dismiss him because of who he is and the depth of his intellect and not just his intellect, but his sincerity for the truth.
If he was telling me this stuff, even though it was very much in contradiction to my beliefs, I just simply couldn't dismiss it.
We had long talks, and then I started my journey on podcast number one.
I'm telling you, Steph, it was not always fun.
I think I may have mentioned that in the liner notes, that this is a brutal, it can be a brutal experience coming face to face with stuff that challenges core beliefs, core assumptions.
It's like somebody flips the reverse gravity switch and you're stuck to a ceiling.
Yes.
I guess that's a, you know, that's a, you know, I just think of it as an incredible, you know, punch to the gut.
But, you know, it's a, Truth is truth, you know, so there's, you know, it's, and I've always, I've always known that.
I've never shied away from that, but when it's, you know, when it's just really that, and I gotta tell you, I mean, it hasn't been, I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff.
I mean, we could talk for hours.
I mean, I certainly, you know, don't agree with you on a whole bunch of stuff, but, you know, that's, you know, that's the way, way, way more important part is that, The biggest thing my son challenged me on, I'll just say, is consistency.
And he said, well, simply, Dad, if you think this, then what about this and what about that?
And I found inconsistencies.
I was riddled with inconsistencies in my life.
And then he also got very personal.
We had a 13-hour car ride together.
In which he basically, you know, basically there's three things in his life that, you know, my major screw-ups, you know, and he shared them with me.
And actually, you know, one of them I had no recollection of whatsoever.
But I also had an experience with my mother where one time when I was a kid, and I was actually showing her my report card.
And anyway, through the process, we got in an argument and she slapped me.
And many, many years later, when she was very old, we were talking about it, and she said, I never did that.
I would never have slapped my child.
And I remember it like it was yesterday.
Sorry to interrupt, Jack.
Was that the only time that you were slapped or hit?
By my mother.
My mom had two things.
She said, yes, or she said, ask your father.
My dad was the one who was the enforcer.
You don't really get hit a lot, but I certainly got hit.
I told him I hated him one time, and he said, I'll teach you to hate me.
And he taught me to hate him.
It was like a handful of times in my life.
Was that somewhat unusual for where you were growing up?
Yeah, it was unusual.
But later in high school, my dad, I think he...
Yeah, I would say.
It was unusual.
But he was a, you know, he was certainly an old-school, you know, disciplinarian.
But, you know, I mean, but little things, you know, like, he'd get angry at the little things.
He could handle the big things really, really well.
No, and what I mean is that that's a low incidence of hitting for, I assume that we're not wildly dissimilar in age.
But, I mean, that's...
I think as far as the times go, that's pretty positive as far as, you know, not getting hit once a week or twice a week or, you know, there's been studies recently, like, you know, three times a day or whatever for moms hitting kids.
So I'm sort of saying that in a positive tone that that's not as common as I would imagine it would have been for a lot of people.
No, absolutely not.
I got hit, you know, probably a handful of times in my life.
Right.
You know, so...
But my point was about my mother is that she was absolutely certain that she had never slapped me.
And I remembered it.
It was crystal clear.
And so when my son was sharing these experiences with me that I didn't remember, I also knew for sure that he was right.
And you know, I just wanted to sort of pause and point that out.
I mean, I know you get it, Jack, but for other listeners, you know, the fact that you had this conversation with your mom contributed so much to your son having this conversation with you, right?
Certainly contributed to my understanding it, yes.
Yeah.
Having been on his side of the conversation with your own mother, it was much easier to get where he was coming from and give him the benefit of the doubt, right?
Because you'd gone through the experience of your mother denying, so you did something different with your son when he came up with something you couldn't recall, right?
Correct.
Absolutely.
You know, and then, you know, so anyway, it was a long, long car ride, but he just, you know, and I later, you know, in listening to later podcasts, I hadn't gotten very far at the time, but Where, you know, I think he was just taking, you know, your cue and just confronting me about the things that were on his list, you know, and things.
And so it was, you know, and always, always with my son.
Actually, I made a mistake.
It's funny because I, not funny, I guess, but it's, you know, he, I always defer to him because he is my intellectual superior.
Yeah.
And I told him that, because my dad actually told me that.
I said that to my son as if I wanted to make him feel good, but he actually told me how much he hated hearing that.
And then he said how disappointed he was when he realized it was true.
Right.
I mean, we want our children to outstrip us, if at all possible, but it can be a bit disorienting for them, for sure.
Well, also, when I started telling him, he wanted me to know everything, you know?
And so I probably started saying that before I should have.
So one was when I spanked him in a situation that I didn't remember.
A second one was actually After he had committed the free domain radio community and actually decided that he was an atheist, which was completely against everything that I am.
And he said my reaction to that really bothered him.
And so we talked about that for a long time.
And that was a real struggle for me.
And I didn't actually plan on going down this road in this call.
But anyway, he...
But then I just realized, I came to the understanding one day that, you know, from my understanding, the fact that he doesn't believe in God bothered me a lot more than it bothered God.
And so I had to give that one up and not worry about it because he's an incredible human being who is doing the right thing and can't be, you know.
So whether he declares a belief in God or not, or has a belief in God, it's just...
It's just not something that I need to worry about.
So anyway, all these things have...
I mean, I say that, but it was all part of a journey over the last few years.
And if you just keep going at it, I just kept going at it, as I had taught my children their whole lives to...
The emotion of it is, okay, no, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, but the reality is truth is truth and consistency is consistency.
So I have to live by the same things I wanted them to live with, so that's how we went down that path.
I guess that's all in response to your question about my son at West Point and his journey and asking the questions.
So I don't know if it's anything to be bottled, but I certainly have always believed that as a parent, with all the mistakes I made, even my son thanked me for not forcing my belief system on him and just letting him figure things out for himself.
Jack, when you said that you came to a realization about your son's atheism, was that something that You said that it wouldn't bother God as much.
What did God have to say to you about your son's unbelief?
I mean, assume that you would pray about this.
And what did you get back from God about your son's divergence of belief from yours?
Oh, I wouldn't say I got anything back from God.
I just, it was a thought process that it was, no, it was simply, it was much more of a thought process than it was a religious experience.
It was just that, you know, I mean, I know a whole lot of people.
I mean, I've listened to your podcast when you say you disprove God's existence, and boy, oh boy, oh boy, do I agree with you that that God that you described doesn't exist.
And I know a whole lot of people.
I mean, I know a lot more people that say they believe in God.
I mean, almost everybody that I know that says they believe in God is not the kind of person that my son is, and he says he doesn't, so who cares?
Um, it's kind of, there's the empiricism again, that, that is such a, a joy at the center of your family is that there's the empiricism, which is, well, you obviously admire and respect and love all of your sons, but the one we're talking about enormously.
And that is the empirical part of your relationship, if that makes sense.
I don't mean to tell you what your relationship is like with your son, but there's this empiricism, which is again, okay, let the army make its case, but what kind of person is he?
Regardless of the belief system, what kind of person is he?
And if you find him more admirable than some people who claim to be religious, that's the empirical essence of, I think, how you guys interacted.
So fundamentally philosophical, if that makes sense.
Yes.
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, because it's, you know, anyway.
Can I just, I want to mention one thing that, just before I forget it, because, you know, I was really moved by your letter, and I didn't want to miss out on that.
I mean, partly, of course, it's wonderful to hear that this part of your gene pool is staying away from the volcano edge of the state and of trauma and of war.
And if so on.
But what I love is the idea...
I want to just interrupt you.
Can I just...
Yeah, go ahead.
Because I just got...
As you said that, I got goosebumps all over.
And I wouldn't have listened very well to what you were going to say next.
So I just want to say, the way you describe that is so right on.
It is so...
You didn't do a nice thing because you've set out on what you're doing.
You saved his life.
You saved my life.
You know, because he was on the precipice of being involved in hell.
Hell on earth.
And contributing to that hell.
People who have children graduating from West Point are worried that their kids are going to get killed.
I was worried that my kid would go kill.
And it's not a, it's, I can't, I can't, that's why I got so emotional reading that.
It's not, it's not, I mean, this is so far from, I mean, saying it's not trivial is just trivial, because it's like, it is so unbelievably, excuse me, fucking profound, you know, that, that you had this impact on our lives.
I can't even, I can't even, there's nothing, there's nothing.
You know, if I were Bill Gates, I couldn't pay you back.
Well, look, I appreciate that, but I also wanted to point out that there's a wonderful false modesty in what you're saying, in that you say, well, I did this and I did that.
I made some shows.
You guys had the tough conversations.
You guys got the evidence.
You guys worked through it.
You had the conversation with your mom.
Your son had the conversation with you.
You accepted these conversations.
I'm just...
Chatting in a car, right?
You guys are doing the work.
I just want to point that out.
And I appreciate you saying that I did it, but you know, I did it.
Maybe I write a diet book, but you're the one who has to put down the cheesecake, so to speak.
There has to be a catalyst.
Yeah, but what I love about this story on so many levels, Jack, is the degree to which, you know, when trauma enters into a family, particularly when A foundational moral trauma, like death, like murder.
When a trauma enters into a family, it possesses the genetics.
And what I mean by that is, you know, your son would have gone over and god-awful stuff would have happened no matter what.
And he would have come back and he would have brought that war back with him.
It gets encoded into your DNA. And I don't just mean that metaphorically.
The actual genetics change.
And you can see trauma down the generations that have changed the gene pool.
Grandparents who are traumatized show different genetics in their children between grandparents who weren't traumatized.
And the fact that the gene pool as a whole has been rescued and kept on the safety side, on the secure side, on the unbroken side of the human experience, to me, means not only did your son, your son would have come back with this trauma, this darkness with him, that would have spread horizontally.
Because, you know, obviously he's going to be part of your family, right?
So it would have spread among others.
His siblings, and to you, and to your son's children, and it would have been there, like a spilt ink on a white carpet that just keeps spreading and spreading until the carpet is gray, then black.
But what I'm so particularly and profoundly impressed by what your family has done, I'm hugely honored to have contributed to in any way, is that your relationship with your grandchildren is fundamentally altered.
Because your grandchildren are going to be different human beings because of the choices that your sons have made.
And the love that is going to be available to you between you and your grandchildren is such a different species than what would have been there otherwise had he gone to this hellhole and had he participated in the deaths of people who had never threatened him or you or anyone you love.
The idea that we bring this bucket of blood known as a former human being back from a war, that blood spreads in the family and it's such the opposite of what you should do for a living that your relationship with your grandchildren, all of them, but in particular the son who would have gone to fight, Assuming you had grandchildren, assuming he wasn't killed or maimed or disabled or rendered impotent or something like that.
But you have a different set of grandchildren, not just in terms of their emotional experience, but their genetics are going to be different and more open and more robust and more curious and more loving.
And that is an incredible seed, I think, to have planted, given where otherwise it could have withered and died.
Yeah, and as you say that to me, my thought is how obvious that seems to be now.
And how incredibly remote of a thought that, I mean, it was a non-existent thought.
I mean, like I said, going back to the day that he was accepted into West Point.
You know, I mean, it's just like, how could I have gone through my life and not realized what you just said when now you're telling me that two plus two equals four is Why didn't you know that?
And I have no idea why I didn't know that.
There's a huge amount of work that's done at almost every level of culture to keep us unaware of this.
To keep this hidden from us.
And in hindsight, beforehand everything seems impossible to achieve, and afterwards it seems impossible that it could have been otherwise.
That's the nature of passing through this veil of learning that philosophy grants us.
But yeah, I mean, no kidding.
This is why one of the very first articles I wrote was immense sympathy towards people who end up in war, because of the degree to which, both consciously and unconsciously, With moral responsibility and with just the inertia of history, they're just lied to.
Or things are falsified for them in an unconscious manner.
And that degree to which there is a matrix imposed upon people or a matrix that we inherit, it's, you know, no way to un-tease discordian knot of moral complexity.
But it is a huge amount of work that goes into having people not see that ordering people to kill is Except in an extremity of self-defense or some sort of geographical defense, which Afghanistan certainly does not represent,
that ordering people to kill is a huge moral challenge and doesn't matter what costumes and it doesn't matter what paperwork and it doesn't matter what flags are there because the conscience doesn't care about culture.
The conscience is disarmed by culture.
But the conscience always comes back, especially in sons like yours, who obviously were raised in a humane and forthright and open and loving fashion.
You know, if there were some sociopathic monsters, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
But because your sons were raised with reason and with intelligence and with compassion and with sensitivity and with leadership, The culture disarms their conscience so that they don't see the gun, where it comes from, and where the bullet leads and how it's justified.
But then after, after the fact, and I think this is what PTSD is, it's Post-evil traumatic syndrome because the evil that's hidden ahead of time is revealed by the conscience afterwards when it's too late.
And trying to awaken this moral consistency and this conscience so that you can avoid the disaster rather than have the disaster hit you, I think is, you know, based on your profession too, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Yes.
As I was going through the process and I was listening, when my son was first at West Point and we went, I actually took my younger son, just a little side note, my third son also applied to and got accepted to the Naval Academy because he's just behind my second son and that didn't happen either.
And then my fourth son was with us when we took my son to West Point and he was just like, wow, this is so impressive.
These people are so amazing.
So you could have had three in there, right?
There's a possibility.
And then I started listening and it's like, boy, Steph is so wrong about the people who go into the military.
These are really good people.
These aren't people that come from traumatic backgrounds.
And my youngest son said to me, as we left West Point one day and we stopped at a grocery store for dinner and it was late night and a bunch of people working there, he said, gosh, people at West Point are so much more impressive than You know, regular folks and whatever.
And it's like, yeah, Steph doesn't get how good these people are and whatever.
And anyway, then I just went down to process it.
And then especially as my son did his exit interview with a guy who was...
I'm sorry, but...
I'm sure you can edit this out, but was just a certifiable prick.
He was so abusive and he was so nasty.
But one day, somewhere back whenever, he was a cadet who was probably bright-eyed and probably a decent kid.
But somehow, he just became a part of an ugly, ugly, ugly machine.
And so, yeah, watching it happen and watching, you know, and I actually was working on some people that I knew there, some of his classmates.
A friend of mine had a daughter there, you know, and I don't want to go into too many details, but so much I wanted other people to get out, you know, and just, you know, I don't know when it happens.
I don't know exactly how it happens, but, you know, you go over there and like you said, I mean, how you described it, how you described it affecting people Generations.
I mean, people, it's the change.
They're good.
I mean, the process is fine-tuned, you know, to take the humanity and to eliminate it.
Well, yeah, and that's something that's really post-Vietnam because, as I mentioned before on the show, I mean, in the Second World War, the majority of people never shot their weapons.
They just couldn't, right?
And so they changed the training to really break down the personality.
But I will agree with you very passionately.
When the army says the best and the brightest, the degree to which young people respond to service, to honor, to dignity, to loyalty, to the ethics of the military, is the degree to which they do have moral heroism within them.
So this is the really frustrating thing for me about the military is that it does understand what motivates people who are really motivated by morality, by honor, by virtue, by service, by ethics, by protection of those who cannot protect themselves.
We fight overseas so that you don't have to fight here.
We have won the freedoms that allow you to criticize us.
These are genuinely perceived and believed things.
And I think that the military...
I don't know the degree to which the leaders don't come from that.
The guy who was in charge of your son's exit.
Maybe he was one of the nastier specimens who got into the military.
Maybe that's why he went to the top.
But I genuinely accept and believe that your sons were like, wow, these are noble people.
They care about honor and virtue and dignity.
You don't get that when job interviewing for Walmart, right?
I mean, and I don't mean to sound contemptuous of Walmart, which is, I'm sure, a fine organization, but...
They do care about honor and virtue and dignity and loyalty and courage and standing up for what they believe in and fighting the good fight for a virtue and a way of life and a system that they hold to be the best in the world.
And that's what's so incredibly frustrating if we could get 1% of the military to get into philosophical Conflict, so to speak.
I mean, we'd win.
Philosophy would win and the world would be a peaceful paradise.
And so they are impressive.
People who go into the military I mean, not just because it's like, you know, there are a few loonies in there who just like to kill people, but I think that the majority of young people, especially, you know, from your kind of world, go in because they believe and they care and they want to do good in the world.
And this is...
This is the only profession.
This is what's so insane and frustrating about the military.
It's the only profession that recruits on virtue.
It's the only profession.
I mean, the cops a little bit as well, the thin blue line and all that, but the enforcer class of the state...
God, it's so annoying.
They're the only people who recruit on virtue.
You might get some mealy-mount stuff about teaching in a city or whatever in the teaching profession, but for the most part, they are focused like lasers on the motivating power of virtue.
And so for people who really care about virtue, where else are they going to go where they're going to get motivated by virtue?
Where that which most fires them up is going to be praised and accepted and considered foundational.
The military is the only place you can go to get recruitment by deep ethical standards.
And that is...
So frustrating, but also it's so motivating for me because, I mean, okay, so if we can recruit people to philosophy, to peace, to virtue, to peaceful parenting, based upon the same moral intensity and the same moral focus, I could be that catcher in the rye that Salinger talks about, you know, catching the guys going through the rye and sending them to a better place, if that's even a remotely productive analogy to what I'm up to.
But that, to me, I get what they say.
Like, these are admirable people.
And it is that very, the very best of commitment to ethics end up in the service of the most questionable foreign policies.
And that is, I think, one of the greatest tragedies.
Yeah, I mean, I hadn't thought of that, but it sounds exactly right.
I mean, it's...
I mean, the Peace Corps is like, hey man, want to smoke dope in the jungle while pretending to dig a well for the natives?
I don't know.
But man, where do you go if you're morally passionate these days?
Who talks about it outside the military?
Yeah.
And then try to get into a discussion with people that, you know, my son left West Point and it was the greatest thing ever.
You know, that's an uncomfortable conversation to have with people.
Sorry, what do you mean?
The people who thought him leaving was the greatest thing ever or that West Point was the greatest thing ever?
No, no, no.
When I'm having conversations about my son, you know, what is he doing?
Where is he?
And I say, well, he was two years at West Point.
And then we get into a conversation about why he left.
And most people can't think of any good reason to leave West Point.
I mean, West Point is, you know, wow.
You know, that's...
That's not just the army.
That's the top of the top.
That's wow.
So there couldn't be anything good and virtuous about leaving.
And I said it was the most noble and virtuous.
I can't tell you what I feel.
I can't even tell you.
I've told you.
But I can't even begin to really describe what I feel about his journey.
That journey that he took.
To separate himself from West Point.
And I couldn't, you know, I say, you know, I was proud of him when he went in, but not nearly as proud of him as I was when he came out.
And it was unbelievable.
Oh yeah, most people hear that and they hear like, well, you know, he got into Harvard Law, but there was a really great opening at the McDonald's up the street.
So obviously he took the job at McDonald's and people like, they just don't process it, right?
Because it's too challenging to process.
Yeah, and so, and if you even begin to go down the path of, yeah, because otherwise he would have been doing something really evil.
There's one in 10,000 that you can have that discussion with.
Anyway, you know the process.
I had relationships with parents of West Pointers.
How could I continue to have those relationships?
We get in a conversation and I start saying what I think.
It doesn't work anymore.
No, I know.
For me, it was like, hey, maybe if I just start organizing my life around some principles, I can tweak it a little.
And then you wake up in a different galaxy, and it's like, no, no, tweak!
Not change!
Tweak!
And it's like, oh, it doesn't really work that way.
Sorry.
No, it doesn't work at all.
But, you know, and then, again, I go back to my biggest...
My philosophical and intellectual challenge has been the pursuit of, you know, that I have undertaken, you know, based on my path through free domain is consistency.
And, you know, that's, you know, I've had that discussion, you know, a thousand times and it rarely goes well.
You know, it goes great with my son and it goes great with my children and my wife and And, you know, those go fantastically well because it's stimulating and it's like, you know, my God, this is...
And it's painful, but it's fantastic.
But it doesn't...
No, and I get what you're saying.
You don't really get how crazy the world is until you slap a little scene in your brain.
And then it's like, whoa, that's different.
That's a different view from here.
So...
And we haven't, and obviously I respect that you probably want to keep her out of the conversation, so I don't want to delve in, but first of all, you obviously have, you know, ultimate alpha wife, you know, and good for you, great for her.
And, you know, it's true, biologically, alpha females generally have more male sons than females, daughters.
That's just the way it works biologically.
I don't know why, but that's the way it is.
But, you know, massive...
There's two people I obviously really...
I mean, your son goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Incredibly heroic, incredibly brave.
Bravery is really required when courage is incomprehensible to other people.
When everyone's cheering you, courage is a lot easier, right?
But the real courage is when your bravery is incomprehensible to others.
That's when you really need the philosophy and the integrity and the support.
Sorry, you were saying?
No, I just want you to say it again.
You say it again.
Thank you.
No, I get it.
So, massive kudos to you.
Also to his brother, his younger brother, right?
I mean, for a younger brother, I mean, I'm a younger brother myself, but for the younger brother to say, I am now going to attempt to influence my older brother and my father from the standpoint of being third or fourth in the birth order, well, that takes some serious overcoming the younger sibling.
Syndrome cojones.
And, you know, massive kudos to him for putting forward the case, for sticking with it, for, you know, pushing through some very difficult conversations.
You know, it's one thing to say, don't do it.
It's another thing to say, hey, I know you're on the roller coaster.
It'd be really great if you jumped off halfway through.
It's like, eh, it doesn't feel so good.
So, you know, kudos to them.
Kudos to you.
I mean, kudos is not even the right word.
It's a cheesy word to use for, you know, the courage and commitment that you have as a father.
I mean, you know, my daughter wants to jump from the sixth step and my heart goes through my throat.
And you're like, yeah, you could decide about it.
Military, even though, you know, you have your convictions.
I am humbled before that resolution for your children's independent thought, and I will remember that.
I'm telling you this man, Jack, I will remember that example until my dying day, and I will use it an embarrassing number of times for myself and for my listeners, that you could have the courage and integrity of That I can at this point in my fathering only dream of to say, military, it's your choice.
I mean, oh man, that's so inspiring to me.
I can't think of anything else that would be tougher off the top of my head.
So God, what an incredible commitment you guys have.
To each other, to truth, to virtue, and what an incredible and heroic spectacle.
We've got to bronze you people and put you on a mountaintop.
Let's get round Rushmore.
Knock off all those sociopaths from Mount Rushmore and we're going to put your family right up there, you know, carved with, you know, fingers straight up heading towards the state.
So, and also, you know, Lincoln, let's get you in a chair, right, in a white marble with people taking photographs pretending to pinch your toes.
But that's incredibly admirable.
And I will say that, you know, as a father, I have a huge amount to learn from you.
And I really appreciate you sharing that.
Let me just say real quickly that I'm not sure what would have happened had he said, OK, I'm going down this path.
You know, I'm not sure what my reaction would have been then, but anyway.
But you did it anyway.
And because that's such a terrifying thing, that's something for me to remember at all times.
Because I can be a little bit, here, honey, let me worry about that for you and prevent you from doing it because it makes daddy anxious.
It's like, no, no, no, that's not going to stick true to my values.
And you've really reminded me of that.
Right.
I'll just finish by saying that I would like to, as I have so many, as I said at the end of my letter, there's so many things I would like to talk to you about, which I will do in emails.
Oh no, come back if you can.
You're welcome back anytime.
And you can bend my ear six ways from Sunday anytime you want.
You are welcome back anytime.
And I'd rather do it if you're comfortable in this kind of format.
But if you're not, you can certainly do emails.
No, I did not think I was going to be, but you have made me completely comfortable.
I got off to a rough start because it was a bit emotional, but anyway, I thank you.
I thank you very much.
Well, so we hope to hear from you again.
And, you know, please give a massive virtual hug to your family for me.
And I'm simply, I'm starstruck by your family.
And I can't praise you enough.
So thanks so much for calling in.
And I hope that we get to talk again soon.
Thank you.
Bye bye.
Thank you, man.
Yeah, thank you so much, Jack, and I look forward to you calling back with some criticisms.
Should be a great conversation.
All right, well, up next is Michael, Michael G., seeing as we already had a mic on the show previous.
He wrote in and said, I am currently a resident physician in emergency medicine.
This profession requires deductive reasoning, a rational approach to problems, and critical thinking to successfully treat patients.
However, it has become increasingly clear that a great number of people who share my profession do not seem to follow these aspects of thinking when it comes to other issues, such as if the state is valid and supporting force against one group to benefit another.
It reminds me of atheists who approach the likely nonexistence of a spiritual being using logical proofs and reasoning, but who seem to support other rational ideas, almost on a whim.
Why do you think this occurs in people who have devoted their life to something that requires one to be logical and rational?
That's from Michael.
Hey, Steph.
Great question.
Great question.
Yeah, I know.
Not probably the most...
Concise way of putting it, but...
I'm confused, Mike.
You said atheists may not be completely rational in all aspects.
I don't understand what you're talking about.
I've never observed that in my life.
Oh, you've got to check out...
I just listened to this the other day.
I think it was for the second time.
The channel, A Girl Writes What?
Karen Straughan, she's been on the show a couple of times, and she's got a...
I don't know if she does podcasts, but she's got a video called Atheists or Atheism You Asked For It, and it's really quite good.
Is there anything else you wanted to add to the question?
Well, maybe not so much add, but I've tried to think of this.
I mean, the only thing I could kind of come up with is just that maybe it's because when you have a profession that requires you to use deductive reasoning and Maybe it's because most people's upbringing and education doesn't really involve a lot of that.
I mean, it's not something that really gets taught in high school.
So maybe when you're exposed to it, when you, let's say, you get into medical school and you're trained to think a certain way, maybe it just becomes part of like...
Well, I need this to do my job.
And for some reason, it just doesn't apply to – I mean, if it's – why wouldn't you think about this in everything in life?
Why are you only using this type of thinking when it comes to, okay, I'm at the hospital and I'm treating patients.
I have to figure out what's going on.
I mean, that's the best thing I can really kind of come up with, and I don't know if it's just an issue because of propaganda from childhood that just overrides every other aspect of everyday life.
I mean, everything that people kind of consume, whether it's like stand-up comedians or things on TV, is just kind of this echo chamber with what a lot of people that I come in contact with seem to believe anyway.
I don't know.
I mean, that's just something that I kind of never really thought of until recently, being exposed more and more to this.
I just thought it was interesting that it would only apply to a certain thing, and it's like, why wouldn't you use rational thought in everything?
I mean, why just when you're in the hospital?
Yeah, it's a great question.
I hope I'm not going to be answering it from a bias standpoint.
I'm currently delving into The genetics of emotional development.
So I'm going to answer it from that viewpoint.
Yeah.
Which, you know, again, I hope is not overly influenced by the research I'm doing at the moment for a series called The Gene Wars.
But I will say that obviously our emotional apparatus has developed according to evolution, like our eyeballs, like, you know, our emotional apparatus has developed according to evolutionary standards or evolutionary pressures, let's say.
And so the question, when I look at these sort of seeming contradictions, I ask myself, what evolutionary purpose would this serve?
It's not the final answer, but it's not a bad place to start.
So when I look at this question of why are people rational with regards to reality and irrational with regards to people, and I think it really comes down to that.
They're rational with regards to reality, but irrational with regards to people, with regards to the tribe.
So wherever irrationality meets objective, empirical reality, people are called crazy.
You know, if you're talking to someone who's not there, you're crazy, right?
Because they're not there.
But whenever sanity and rationality hits culture or the tribe, people are called crazy.
And this double standard, where sanity with regards to reality is great, and irrationality or insanity with regards to the tribe is also great, must,
it's so universal and so common, it must have an evolutionarily positive aspect to it, because it simply could not Develop across groups of human beings who've been separated.
Sometimes 50 or 60 or 70,000 years of separation between the various human races and tribes and groups.
Some people end up in Siberia.
Some people stay in Africa.
Some people go across the land bridge to North America.
Some people end up in Australia.
And they all have, all of them, every single one of them have in common...
If you're crazy with reality, you're crazy.
And if you're sane with the tribe, you're crazy.
And if you're rational with reality, you're sane.
And if you're crazy with the tribe, you're sane.
So there must be an evolutionary advantage.
Now, I don't want to lecture if you've had some thoughts, because I heard a snort or two, which I consider like a brain-snorting activism.
So is there something that comes to you when we talk about it from this angle?
No, I mean, actually, I mean, what you're saying, I agree with.
It's just, yeah, I mean, I don't know, maybe I just haven't really given it, I mean, I never really, I mean, I agree with what you're saying, it's just I never really probably thought of it in that way.
Well, let's take a swing at how it might benefit the tribe.
So let's say you're a tribal leader, right?
Or you're an aristocrat.
You've got serfs or you're an emperor.
You've got slaves.
You're a tribal chieftain.
You've got your tribal followers, right?
Right.
Now, the warrior class and the priestly class, which are sort of the two sides of the same unholy coin of human ownership, we're just looking to Stone Age or ancient Egyptian or Babylonian or way back in time.
Now, what do you want from your slaves?
Well, you don't want them to be insane with regards to reality, right?
Otherwise, they're planting their wheat in oceans.
They're attempting to fish in a desert.
They're attempting to bury pigs in order to grow new pigs.
They would not be valuable human livestock.
If they were insane with regards to empirical reality.
In other words, they have to be sane with regards to empirical reality, otherwise they can't produce stuff for you to take, right?
Right.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
Now, if they're sane with regards to empirical reality, and they're sane with regards to social structures, then they're gonna say, You ain't a king, you're just a guy in a funny hat, right?
You ain't a priest, you're just a guy who's using language to pretend he is, right?
And so, if you think of sort of human evolution and the fact that we were warring tribes to a large degree, fighting for resources, fighting each other and so on, those tribes whose members were crazy with regards to reality died off, right?
Or would be taken over by some other tribe and if they weren't productive...
So slaves who weren't productive got killed or driven off or who cared?
They just weren't fed or something, right?
So we would develop this genetic predilection towards sanity with regards to reality because those human livestock who weren't productive weren't kept alive, right?
So that would die off, right?
Now, in the same way, if we were not crazy with regards to society, we'd say, well, why am I the slave and why are you the king or whatever, and we tried to fight that, we'd also get killed, right?
Right.
If we brought the same sanity we have with regards to reality, and we tried to apply it to human beings, then we threatened the hierarchy of human ownership and we get killed.
Right.
So, insanity with regards to reality is weeded out of the gene pool, because you're not valuable, you're not productive, nobody wants to keep you alive, because you're crazy, and you can't produce anything that's worth taking, right?
So those people who were insane with regards to reality were weeded out of the gene pool.
Those people who were sane with regards to society were also weeded out of the gene pool.
Hey, guess who's next up for human sacrifice to the gods for disobeying and blaspheming and whatever, right?
Right.
So if you...
Challenge the irrationalities of human subjugation and the hierarchy, the oligarchical hierarchy, if you challenge that, you're killed.
Or if you're not killed, you are at least driven out of the tribe.
Now, for your gene pool, whether you're killed or unable to breed is completely irrelevant.
Right?
For your genes, death Physical death or not breeding is completely the same thing.
They don't care because you still, either way, you don't pass on your genes.
Does that make sense?
So if you're ostracized or excluded and nobody will mate with you, that's exactly the same for your genetics as being killed, right?
So if we look at how human society would evolve, it would evolve to the most valuable or the most productive tribes prior to philosophy and all that would be people who were sane with regards to reality and crazy with regards to the hierarchy of their society.
They would genuinely believe.
That the king was the king appointed by God and whatever the king said was the same as what God said and the priest was always in charge and there couldn't be any disagreement because if you disagree with the king then the priest We'll say that nobody should marry you, right?
Which means gene death for those disagree with the king thing.
If you disagree with the priest, then the priest whines to the king and the king kills you for blaspheming the gods or whatever, right?
So that's gene death.
So the genes that develop a split mind It's called compartmentalization.
I think in psychological circles, I'm no psychologist, but that's my understanding.
So we develop this compartmentalization where we have this perfect fluidity of like, oh, I'm stepping into the real world here.
I better be rational.
I better be empirical.
I better be sensible.
I better plan.
And I better not let any craziness interfere with my dealings with the real world.
Because if I do, I don't get to breathe or I get killed, ostracized, whatever.
It's gene death.
Now, I'm stepping out of the farmer's field, or out of the fishing boat, or out of whatever, the hunting, whatever.
And now I'm stepping into the tribe.
And now I've got to do some ooga-booga dance, I've got to paint my face, I've got to, you know, kill a chicken for the priest, and then, strangely enough, the priest eats it.
I've got to do all this crazy shit over here in the tribal world, and I've got to completely forget the rational empiricism that makes me valuable as a human livestock.
I've got to go over here in the social world, bing!
My brain flips over.
And suddenly, sane is crazy and crazy is sane.
And I think that we developed this incredible capacity for compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance because it is what granted us the most and greatest capacity to survive and be a valuable part of the human livestock food chain.
Does that make any sense?
I'm not saying this is like some empirically proven thing, right?
But I think it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
No, I mean, I absolutely agree with you.
I mean, because I've thought of this as myself.
I'm like, what is it that...
I mean, it's something that can make people excuse just massive, like, obscenities by, let's say, a government, you know, violence or something.
But people tend to react – tend to have a stronger reaction when they're double charged with something at a cash register compared to like some things when it comes to certain things that a government can do.
And I don't know.
I mean one of the things I kind of came up with is probably based on something else that I've heard.
But I mean – I mean, it's just I think that a lot of institutions such as like government or whatever you want to call it, they have a lot of what you could say.
They have a great many press agents.
A stranger on the street that you meet, I mean, he doesn't really have much more than his own personality or charisma or something.
He doesn't have...
I mean, the government or people running for the government or something have a lot of press agents, I guess.
Why would you trust somebody with all that power when you probably wouldn't even want to look sideways?
A lot of people wouldn't approach a stranger on the street with that type of trust, that they would give a complete stranger in charge of...
I agree with what you're saying.
What else would be able to excuse a lot of this stuff?
I don't know.
I'm probably just rambling a little bit there.
I get what you're saying, but I would probably try and clarify or at least focus your intellectual acuity on where propaganda is aimed at.
Propaganda is fundamentally aimed at women.
This is really, really important to understand.
Let's go back to the First World War.
I said in a show recently that morality trumps our survival drive because men will go to war for honor rather than stay home and live, right?
And this ties into the most fundamental question.
So years and years ago, I put out this against me argument and let's talk to people about their willingness to use force and so on.
And I don't know anyone who's done it, like who's had that against me argument.
Maybe this last caller had that in their family and so on.
And so the question is, well, why not?
It's a logical argument.
It's a powerful argument.
And people avoid it like the plague.
And the question is, why would someone...
Choose, like somebody who understands where society is heading and what's happening with fiat currency and deficit financing and unfunded liabilities going into the hundreds of trillions of dollars, like we all know it's going to end in a complete crap fest.
So why would people continue on this?
Why wouldn't they listen to reason?
This is the fundamental cry, which I think you're putting out, this barbaric yawp of why into the world.
Why won't people listen to reason?
Right.
Why won't people listen to reason when it's clear, when it's empirical, when it's evident?
Taxation is theft, people!
What's so hard about this?
Governments don't exist.
They're just people with guns.
What is so hard about this?
And people kick in these resistances that when you're coming at them gently, peacefully, openly, with a rational argument, they react like you're calling in an airstrike on their gene pool.
Because you are.
Because, and this took me years to understand, and I'm just turning that corner now.
This is my big new thing, right?
So it's a tiny preview, but because you are, because all the propaganda is fundamentally aimed at women, why do men go to war?
They go to war because women are told not to sleep with cowards.
Men go to war because going to war gives them more of a chance of reproducing than not going to war.
So when we go back to the First World War, the white feather campaign was women would hand out white feathers to any man they saw on the street, not in uniform, and the white feather was a mark of female disapproval.
It was a mark of cowardice, which is a mark of gene death.
We will not breed with you, which is why propaganda is always fundamentally aimed at women.
Because women are the gatekeepers of genetic life or genetic death.
So whatever women can be convinced to fuck will flourish.
And whatever they can be convinced to reject will die genetically.
And this is so fundamental.
The fact that I missed it for so long is ridiculous and all that, but, you know, I keep trying to get better at this crazy, slippery, electric Eola philosophy.
And the propaganda, I think if you trace it and look at it, The propaganda is fundamentally about women.
Why get the sports car?
Because women like the sports car.
Why get a lot of money?
Because women like a lot of money.
Why do this?
Because women like it.
Women don't like it.
Why go to church?
Because you can't have sex.
You can't get married.
You can't reproduce if you don't go to church.
Which is why so much pressure is put on women to open or close their legs based upon what the elites want.
Because the elites...
Are gene-selecting us?
So if you can convince the women not to reproduce with men who don't obey the rulers, then the rebellion gene vanishes from the population.
Female propaganda is hierarchy eugenics.
Rebellious genes, inconvenient genes, non-conformist genes get bred out of the population if you can convince women to reject a rebel.
It's constant pruning, constant manipulation of the gene pool of the livestock.
We do this with livestock.
We do this all the time with pets.
There's a reason why dogs won't attack you when wolves will, right?
And we do this with plants.
We do this with flowers.
We do this all the time, constantly pruning, constantly adjusting, constantly finding ways to make genetics better serve our needs and our purposes.
And as far as human hierarchies go, the fundamental question is, Who will the woman have sex with?
If the elites, if those in power, can convince a woman not to have sex with some characteristic, that characteristic gets bred out, vanishes from the gene pool.
So if you can convince, I love a man in uniform, if you can convince a woman not to have sex with a man who doesn't go to war, you can Remove from the male gene pool basic survival instincts and replace them with conformity to power instincts.
Because if conformity to power is the only way you get access to the eggs, Then your genetics will take the risk of war because in the risk of war you might come back and get an egg and get to breed but if you don't go to war and then the women reject you then you get gene death.
Your genes will take the risk of war because the alternative of female ostracism kills them out of the gene pool.
And each one of your genes is only using you to make another gene.
They don't care if you get blown up if it gives you a 25% chance of eggs.
Whereas if you only get a 10% chance of eggs if you don't go to war They'll take the war over the ostracism.
And the more that the powers that be can get women to reject men who have traits that are inconvenient to the powers that be, the more that human beings get bred to compliance with female wishes and female desires.
This is why I've been focusing on female responsibility so much.
Because if we don't see it, and I'm only, I'm still, I'm peeling this onion, but if we don't see it, We can't see what fundamentally drives us and why we have the emotions that we have.
So a man who's crazy with regards to reality can't get the resources that women need when they're pregnant and breastfeeding for 20 years.
So a man who's crazy with regards to reality can't get the resources a woman needs and therefore would be rejected by a woman.
So you have to have sanity with regards to reality to go plant the crops, to go raise the livestock, to go plow the back 40, to go arrow the deer or whatever the hell you're going to do to get your resources to give to your women and your children.
Got to have sanity with regards.
You don't sit there and pray for food to fall from the sky into your woman's lap.
No woman will want you because there's no elk going to come crashing out of the sky into your woman's lap.
So you've got to go hunt.
You've got to cause and effect, reality, objectivity, sanity, tracking, subjugation to physical laws.
You're not...
You don't throw a bad thought at the animal and hope it will faint in horror and you can go pick it up.
So if you're not sane with regards to reality, you can't get the resources that you need to feed your wife and children.
So the woman will reject a man who's not sane with regards to reality.
But if you're sane with regards to society...
Then the elites will brand you a heretic, a monster, evil, immoral, or whatever, right?
And then the woman will shy away from you So that you are consigned to physical or genetic death by the ostracism of women, which is why I'm saying propaganda is foundationally applied to women because men are desperate for the eggs and women have always been the gatekeepers.
Rape has been illegal and actually subject to the death penalty in the United States up until the 1970s, in fact.
And so That which does not serve the elites is bred out of the gene pool by the elites' focus on controlling who the women will accept and who they will breed with.
There's this massive eugenics program run by propaganda, focused at women, I don't know what weird regressive gene pool our audience comes out of, but this is why I say it's a multi-generational change.
Peaceful parenting will breed a different kind of human being.
But we've had hundreds of thousands of years, or at least you can say directly tens of thousands of years, of specific, unconscious often, sometimes quite conscious, eugenic breeding to breed particularly males, but also females, Who are rigidly sensible when it comes to reality and rigidly insane when it comes to society.
And when you try and flip this around, when you say, well, let's be consistent, right?
As Jack said, consistency is hell.
Consistency feels like death.
Philosophy and integrity feels like death.
Asking people to be sane with regards to society is exactly the same as asking them to be insane with regards to reality.
And the reason why people will fight that to the death is throughout history, if you didn't fight that to the death, you would experience physical or genetic death.
Right?
So if you didn't fight anyone throughout history who suggested you be sane with regards to society, if you didn't fight and reject them, first there might be an agent of the king who's coming to try and convince you to say something bad about the king so he can kill you.
This is how they regularly would weed out people who were suspicious, is they'd send in spies and say, oh, that king, he's a real bastard, isn't he?
And if you said, well, maybe a little...
You're out of the gene pool, right?
So people will be like, no, I'm not going to agree with anything that anyone says bad about the king or the priest or whatever, because it could be an agent of the king or priest who's going to kill me.
And even if he's not, there's only two of us.
And if anybody finds out, the women will shun us.
So your genes are like, shut up with the sanity stuff about the king and the priest, because it's going to get us killed or gene killed.
And either way, we're dead, say the genes.
So the fact that people are empirical and rational with regards to reality, and then you ask them to bring that to society, they're like, fuck off!
Go away from me!
Shut up!
Don't talk to me!
You're a bad person!
But that's their genes saying, really like to propagate, and anyone who didn't have this emotional reaction didn't make it.
So guess what?
There's a whole lot of people with two eyes and this emotional reaction.
Does that make sense at all?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think your description of people reacting like it's an airstrike on their gene pool is probably, yeah, I don't think there could be a more accurate description because it's definitely the, I mean, if I had to describe the reaction that I've gotten when I do try and engage people, I mean, it's probably on the level of what you would probably call an airstrike, I think.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, and this is me, because I'm convinced by reason, so there's me merrily at the beginning of this show coming, dum-de-dum-de-dum, we're going to talk some reason, you know, and suddenly it's like the beginning of Pulp Fiction, except there's no outlines, I'm just, right, because I didn't get it.
I didn't gag.
I'm convinced by reason, so in my weird way, I think, oh, the world's going to be just like me, I've got to bring reason to the world, and I'll respond to reason, and they'll respond to reason, and it's like, no, no.
You're a freak.
You are like insane to the world because you see the insanity of the world and the only way that the world's insanity is hidden from itself is by pretending that sane people are crazy.
So, sorry, you go on.
I had a long chat.
No, no, no.
I mean, absolutely.
And that's the thing because people – I mean, I think that's probably one of the unfortunate things is that, you know, I know I definitely have just sometimes just resigned myself to not even bothering.
And I think that's probably a bad decision because I'm like, I just don't want to even deal with it.
it.
But I mean, that's not a very good, uh, you know, probably a decision.
And it's like, it shouldn't, it shouldn't fear of being ostracized.
Shouldn't, you know, make you afraid of engaging people.
I mean, I mean, I think I've gotten a lot better at that.
It should.
No, Genetically, it should.
Well, genetically, yeah.
Gene death, right?
And so anybody who wasn't scared of being ostracized, like, this is why people, anyway, we'll get into this topic another time.
I know ostracism, which I've always talked about as the foundational driving force within society.
People say, well, how would ostracism protect a free society?
It's like, well, everyone who was against a free society would be ostracized and those genes would die out.
Look at that!
We have genetic consistency with a free society because ostracism keeps the eggs away from the evil sperm.
So I know, kind of got instinctively how it was going to work, and people, they don't understand the power of ostracism because they don't probably understand the degree to which genes influence emotions, and the degree to ostracism weeds genes incompatible with that society out of the gene pool.
So get married, then be an anarchist.
Anyway.
Or get married, have kids, then be an anarchist.
But...
So, that is...
Ostracism generates or activates the same pain centers as physical torture in a human being.
We are terrified of ostracism.
And rightly so.
Because ostracism...
Anybody who wasn't terrified of ostracism would be ostracized.
And those genes that weren't terrified of ostracism...
Would be in the radioactive wasteland known as didn't make it, Gene Poole, right?
So the fear of ostracism is so foundational to us that it is exactly how a free society can and will and must be structured.
Yeah.
And anybody, sorry, anybody who doesn't understand how terrifying ostracism is has never stood up against society.
That's all.
That's all I gotta say on that.
If you don't, like, oh, being a pro football player is easy.
You can just roll out of bed and do it.
You don't have to practice.
I don't know why these people even show up for practice while just running through tires and stuff.
Just roll out of bed, grab a helmet.
Ah, if you need a helmet, just dodge properly and you won't need one.
Pro football is real easy.
Well, the only way that you'll ever hear that from someone is they've never, ever tried to play football, right?
Which is a tough and stressful and grueling game.
And, you know, I remember on some, I think it was some X Factor show or some singing show, you know, a couple of annoying, sneering young women came up and they were like, ugh!
You know, like the Spice Girls, they like totally suck.
I mean, we can totally do better than them.
I mean, it's so bad.
That's embarrassing to watch them, right?
And Simon Cowell, who was the mentor for the Spice Girls, who was like, okay, go ahead.
And they were terrible.
They were just horrible.
No harmonies, out of T, out of tune, and they were just rolling their eyes and barely moving.
And it's like, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect, right?
Which is that idiots don't know that they're idiots, right?
And so anyone who says, well, I don't understand how like a free society could run off ostracism.
I mean, what's so bad about ostracism?
It's like, I know now for a fact!
You have never done anything that bothered anyone.
You've never got fundamentally in trouble with any authority figures.
You've never done anything any organization that has power over you fundamentally disagrees with.
You're telling me ostracism doesn't work because you've never ever done anything to risk it.
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the truth.
I mean, when you said that's like mental torture, I mean, that is what it is because, I mean, I think that's just how power is maintained.
I mean, it kind of reminds me from the scene from 1984 when Richard Burton's talking to John Hurt.
He's like, you know, how do you maintain power?
And he's like, you make people suffer.
I mean, I think that's...
Power is the power to say that two and two make five and have people believe it.
You have to really believe it.
You have to torture them until they're willing to subject any rational capacity to subjective control.
Because in 1984, nobody's trying to break him to the point where he can't work.
I think that happens at the end, although it's a bit ambiguous.
But nobody's trying to break the proletariat to the point where they can't produce any goodies for the party.
All they want is for them to produce goodies to be rational in the factory and then completely insane when it comes to subjugating themselves to the party.
And that's the whole point.
And so this combination of be rational out in the field and be irrational at the church where we rule you is absolutely foundational to human societies.
And I can't think of any other configuration that would be successful in a tribal war, a pre-philosophical tribal resource short environment where conflict with the scarcities of nature and conflict with other human beings for those scarce natural resources.
I can't think of any situation Which would be more optimal than be sane with reality and insane with the tribe.
Again, maybe this is my limitation.
And so, you know, the reason that I deal with the ostracism such as it is, I just know that I'm standing up for this particular gene set.
There's a particular gene set, and maybe this last caller was part of it too, there's a particular gene set, and part of it is choice, part of it is free will, and I get all of that.
But there's a particular gene set that says, no, it's truth, baby.
Truth.
You know, I don't care if it's uncomfortable.
We go for the truth.
And that gene set is responsible for every single foundational progress that the species has ever heard of, ever dreamed of, or will ever achieve.
Truth at all costs is the gene set.
Now, I want my gene set of truth at all costs to spread.
To spread, to grow, and I'm sorry that that's a problem for the crazy, shitty gene sets of subjugation and conformity.
I'm sorry.
I get that they recognize me as a predator, because if my gene set wins and we're rational, their gene set of crazy, irrational conformity, well, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Nice knowing you.
You are off the island!
And so for them, it's like, oh, this guy's a predator.
I get whatever interferes with the transmission of a particular gene set is identical to a predator from the view of that gene set.
It might as well be a lion and they're a zebra.
I get that.
So for me, it's like, okay, I just, but I'm pushing out this gene set.
And the way that I'm doing it is by putting out rational arguments that people who have some particular gene set and some combination of free will are going to respond to.
And I know that now because I've been putting the show out for eight or nine years.
Some people respond very powerfully.
Some people respond very negatively.
A lot of people, of course, have never heard of us, but you can go to freedommedradio.com slash donate to help us out to spread that.
But it's just putting out the clarion call to the gene set and saying...
You people who have truth at all costs, and I'll bear any discomfort to get to the truth, you people have some children, for God's sake, because, you know, we gotta breed, because conversion through language alone is too threatening to the irrational gene sets.
To the irrational gene sets, philosophy is the ultimate predator that will wipe them off the planet.
And so they respond to the presence of philosophy exactly.
As any animal responds to a dangerous predator.
Fight or flight.
Known as let's pretend he's not talking or let's slander him.
That's fight or flight to the lower life forms, right?
So...
That's a lot of stuff to pack in there.
And I'm not trying to say it's, you know, only genetics and all that kind of thing, too, because there is free will and elements and choice involved.
And it's all a bell curve, so there's places.
But there are people who will never hear the message because they're totally ruled by irrational genes that view us as a predator and run their fight-or-flight mechanism to the point where saying, listen to reason is like saying, hey, want to feed this hungry shark with your nutsack?
And people are like, hey, no.
On the other hand, there are people who get it right away, and there are those people who have more compatible gene set, and I would assume that the gene set has something to do with intelligence and integrity.
And there are people in the middle who can make a choice one way or the other, and that's where I'm sort of sitting at the moment.
So your question was apt based on the research and work that I'm doing at the moment.
I hope, though, of course, I haven't tried to shoehorn my particular intellectual endeavors at the moment into your question, so let me know if that has happened.
No, I don't think so, because I think that you've kind of filled in a...
I think that was probably...
I was just probably...
I mean, there was just something missing from my thought process with this.
And, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, what you're saying to me makes sense, because when I think about just, you know, personal experiences, and then...
I mean, yeah, I mean, you're saying, you know, to be rational in...
I can't remember how you said it.
To be rational in the real world, but irrational in the tribe.
Is that how you said it, or did I get that wrong?
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, because if you couldn't, like you said, if you were irrational in both, well, the species probably wouldn't even be here right now.
Well, your tribe certainly wouldn't be there.
Your tribe would be taken over by tribes that weren't that way.
Oh, right, right, yeah.
I mean, it makes sense.
I mean, I think the biggest thing that I really connect with and that I think is really powerful, probably going back to my question, is the whole thing about ostracism.
Because I think it is amazing the things that you'll hear some people say that's sometimes pretty vile, and the things that they'll support.
Against a group or just people that they simply disagree with.
I mean, something that they just don't like.
It's not even something that's just like, oh my god, awful.
Just things that they don't like.
They'll happily support force against...
Well, and just to point out, so traditionally men have controlled coercion and women have controlled...
Gene life or gene death, right, by access to eggs.
The reason why feminism, political feminism, feminism within a state context is so deadly is that it gives women control over gene life and death, which they've always had as the gatekeepers to the eggs, and they get control over coercion.
Through voting blocs, through political activism and so on, right?
That is like a way crazy combination of powers.
And this is one of the reasons why it so rapidly advances escalating challenges and decay within a political system.
Women should have all the power and choice in the world, but if you give them the power of genetic life and death along with the power to It's
like giving men the power of rape and expecting them to buy flowers.
Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
No.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly.
I mean, that's like the old saying.
I don't know if to call it an old saying or whatever.
You always hear, like, some people say, well, you know, if women were in charge, there wouldn't be any wars, which has got to be one of the most fucking stupidest things I've ever heard in my life.
Yeah, I mean, women are in charge.
Women are in charge in families.
And women are in charge of children for the most part.
And let's just see how well women do with being in charge of children.
Which you could argue is slightly less fucking complex than being in charge of a modern industrial economy and an army economy.
And fiat currency and national debts and inflation capacities and interest rate adjustments and all that kind of crap.
So let's just put women in charge of little children and see how peaceful they are and then we'll see whether a world won by women is peaceful or not.
And what you find, almost invariably, is when you put women in charge of children, they beat them up a lot.
They hit them a lot.
They scream at them a lot.
Right?
We've done these studies.
So 936 times a year, toddlers are hit by their moms from the ages of 18 months to 3 or 4 years old.
So, forget about putting women in charge of an economy.
Let's just see how women deal, say, with a three-year-old.
And the way they deal with a three-year-old in general is hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, blame, blame, blame, yell, yell, yell, yell, yell.
So, I think until women can handle, say, your average three-year-old without hitting them, I'm loathe to give them power over an army and a modern industrial economy.
I don't want men to have power over that either, because men hit and abuse children as well.
But this idea that, well, you know, women beat up a lot of children, but put them in charge of an entire country in a military industrial complex, they'll be angels, right?
This is just, that's part of the women are wonderful phenomenon, which is well known in psychology.
You know, it's this halo effect.
Women are wonderful, you know.
It's just propaganda that's just too ridiculous for words.
And The more wonderful women are in people's perceptions, the more that is just a smokescreen and a cover-up for the genuine immoralities that are the foundation of so many other immoralities that women are doing in society, particularly against children.
Yeah.
Yeah, we've seen the outcome of it.
Yeah, I agree.
Oh, and by the way, sorry, the reason that...
I've finished reading Lloyd DeMoss' great work, The Origins of War and Child Abuse.
So I hope that people will go to freedomradio.com slash free and download and listen to it.
It's a really powerful book.
It's a great book.
I've tried to do justice in the reading of it.
And thanks if you can sort of, you know, share it around and all that.
Lloyd's not charging for it and neither am I. I'm sure donations either at psychohistory.com or freedomainradio.com would be greatly appreciated, but I just wanted to mention that because we just finished that up, and that's something that's going to go out soon.
So I've given you some stuff to mull over, right?
Is that a reasonable first swing of the question?
Oh, no, no, absolutely.
I think that...
I think it's absolutely correct.
I never really thought of it that way.
In general, it's a pretty simple thing, but I think it's very true.
I do.
I really do.
Good.
I appreciate that.
Well, yeah, if you have any thoughts of it, please call up because, again, this is something that's sort of boiling over in my brain at the moment.
So I'm happy to talk about it again.
Have a listen to this again or I'm all over it.
If there's missing stuff, you know, let's talk about it again.
But great question.
I really, really appreciate you bringing it up.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks.
I look forward to your presentation on the gene wars thing that's going to be coming out.
It's the biggest stuff I've done since bombing the brain.
And I'm currently quite deep in the rabbit hole of trying to understand all this stuff.
But I think it's going to be very important for having-- it's one of these giant clicks that has clarified the world in immense ways for me.
And so hopefully it will help for other people too.
So, all right.
Thanks very much, Mike.
It was great to chat.
Alright, so we're going to call it a show for the show for the night.
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