July 28, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:36:12
3034 In Praise of Self-Sabotage - Call In Show - July 26th, 2015
Question 1: I am from Marxist/Communist/Socialist South Africa. I am working very hard to try and immigrate to another country but at the current rate it will probably take me another four or five years. How do I stay motivated and positive when I’m surrounded by extreme violence and an incredibly high crime rate?Question 2: How would people of lower Intelligence do in a free society?Question 3: Have you ever noticed that when some people set a goal for themselves, they also create obstacles to make themselves fail? And they do this, I think, because deep down they really don't want to achieve their goal and all the responsibility that comes along with it. I think it's because it's easier, and perhaps more gratifying, to have tried and failed, therefore earning the right to complain about how fate is to blame for their own misfortunes. This is essentially how fear of success manifests itself, I think. Would you agree, and if so, why do you think humans do this?
Hi everybody, this is Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
No particular announcements, you might want to check out the Hulk Hogan video.
It's really our first attempt at pornography.
My first sex tape!
I'm excited!
It's extremely rare.
Normally it's the consumption of pornography that produces carpal tunnel syndrome.
In this case, it actually was the production of So I hope you check it out.
Let us know what you think.
And for those of you who are surprised at my deep, deep knowledge of WWE and general wrestling law of entertainment, I'd like to say thank you.
It was hard-won knowledge, and Mike gave it to me, and I read it.
You know, that's not always easy.
I mean, pronouncing some of those names.
I mean, Stoyan is the one who likes giving me the most ridiculous names, especially in the Greek presentation.
It's like, oh, I'm sure we can find a guy with more syllables who'd said something similar.
But, yeah, it was a good show, and I hope that you'll...
Check it out.
Gene Moore's Part 3 is currently cooking in the books, and I hope you'll check that out when it comes up.
I'm really, really excited about that one.
It's really amazing how...
I'm trying not to do Mr.
Confirmation Bias, but we also have The Death of Reason coming out, which is all the reasons as to why you never listen to reason as you listen to a show, trying to convince you to listen to reason.
There's a reason for that.
Now I want a raisin to eat.
Anyway, so hope you're having a great evening.
Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
If you'd be so very kind, we'd appreciate that.
Mike.
All right.
Well, up for us today is Peter.
Peter wrote in and said, I am from Marxist slash communist slash socialist South Africa.
I'm working very hard to try and immigrate to another country, but at the current rate, it will probably take me another four or five years.
How do I stay motivated and positive when I am surrounded by extreme violence and a high crime rate, never knowing when I might be next?
That's from Peter, who may be our first caller from South Africa, ever, so.
Welcome to the show, Peter.
Good to follow you.
I'm well.
How are you doing, Ben?
Good, good.
Thank you.
Now, are you white in South Africa?
Yes, yes, yes.
Okay, okay.
I just wanted to check that.
I don't...
I mean, you may check your back pocket or sometimes it's in your, like, the blazer that you have.
There's a little...
It's a white privilege card.
It's a Pillsbury Doughboy coated in gold, or sometimes it's a Michelin man with diamonds encrusted.
So if you check your white privilege card, then wherever you go, life is wonderful.
The seas park before you, women throw their clothes off and hurl themselves at your feet.
And no one ever ever says anything bad to you or ever accuses you of having white privilege.
That's how powerful white privilege is.
So maybe you've mislaid your card, and if you have mislaid your card, you just apply to whiteprivilegehistory.com and they will send you a new one, assuming that you can submit proof of the fact that you are white, which of course is a terrifying desire to oppress everyone.
You know, I mean, most people who aren't white get up in the morning and they, you know, they want to take care of their kids.
You know, maybe they want to clean out the east trough in their house.
Maybe they got to take their car in for repairs.
Of course, white people, we don't do that at all, particularly white males.
All we do is we wake up and, you know, maybe our wife has given us a list, you know, go get some groceries and pay them.
Tax bills at the bank or whatever it is.
And we basically eat that list and we take out our other list, which is our everyday list, which is before I even eat breakfast, I simply have to oppress minorities.
And that's the only reason I get out of bed.
I got nothing else to do.
I mean, white people, of course, not overly burdened with employment or higher taxes than the average.
And so we just, you know, as you know, you know, secret handshake, white male to white male, we simply wake up and we spend the morning, of course, finding ways to repress and cripple minority aspirations.
And then in the afternoon, we switch to women, right?
We go from minorities, oppressing minorities, to oppressing women.
And then we don't have to have jobs, because apparently that pays a lot to oppress people.
And then we just wish that we had the empire back, because that was so much fun.
Colonialism was just nothing but kettles and roses and foot rubs from other people.
So...
That would be my suggestion.
Instead of trying to go someplace, just remember how incredibly privileged you are, how incredibly powerful you are, and enjoy that.
Does that help at all?
Yeah, sure.
I'll head off to the Lost and Found right now and check my card maybe there.
All right.
right.
Well, the next caller on the show today is...
And remember, anytime a white person such as myself is called a cracker online, remember that it's a big media story because we have so much power as white males that remember that it's a big media story because we have so much power as white males that the media constantly does our bidding And we're And the only time the race card is ever played is, well, he's white and he's a male, so he's got to be right.
He's got to be correct.
Anytime there's kind of any problems between a white male and any other race, the white male is automatically assumed to be in the right, and the other race is always assumed to be, you know, lying or manipulative or racist or playing the victim card.
Just remember that, that you get to float above all human conflicts knowing that the media will always portray you as being in the right because that's really what privilege is all about.
So just enjoy that sweet, sweet fruit.
All right, enough of that.
Salinas, let's get on to it.
Spent a little bit of time in South Africa when I was young, and then again when I was a teenager, like a couple of months each time.
And so I'm scarcely an expert.
We've toyed around doing the truth about South Africa, because when I was...
Let me just do this real brief, and then I'll shut up.
But when I was younger, of course, apartheid was the big issue.
And I remember getting into ferocious debates with people even as a teenager, especially after I'd been to Africa, South Africa in particular...
yeah it's not that simple uh you know if you know of course one race should not rule over another race no question of that but uh these transitions it's not just as simple as well get rid of the white people get rid of apartheid and paradise it just it's not that's not how it's going to work and if you really care for uh the blacks in south africa then um first of all you have to recognize that the that most of the blacks in africa were dying to get into south africa and
In fact, they would even go through the sort of protected areas with the wildlife and risk literally being eaten by lions and so on.
To try and get into South Africa was considered to be one of the best things.
So blacks loved South Africa, even though everyone who wasn't there or had not visited and so on thought it was just horrible and racist.
It's sort of like America, although, of course, America doesn't have any kind of apartheid.
Insofar as everyone says it's a horrible racist country and everybody wants to get in there.
The same thing was true in a lot of ways for South Africa.
And so everybody said, well, you know, basically let's get rid of apartheid.
And then everything's going to be fantastic when blacks get self-rule.
And those of us who know a little bit about history and sort of previous experience with colonized people being handed control of their own government, it's not as simple as, well, you know, the bad whites have gone away and now Garden of Eden, right?
So what's your experience been of that?
Well, you know, I mean, if...
Well, I've lived pretty much my whole life in South Africa, have traveled a bit to other countries, so, you know, I've been to New Zealand, seen how it's been there, and, yeah, once you go to a first world country and you come back and you're like, yeah, it's pretty bad, yeah.
If I can just give you some quick statistics.
Oh, please.
It doesn't have to be quick.
Take your time.
Okay.
If I just start with something basic, living conditions, I'm not going to hunt for food and scavenge, nothing like that.
But I mean, if you take, for instance, just like salary, my current salary is equivalent to 830 US dollars for a month's work.
What was that, 830?
830, yes.
So then, I mean, you do a minimum of...
Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Could it just be not that wages in South Africa are low, but that you're really terrible at your job?
I'm just putting it out there as a possibility.
Yeah.
Look, I mean, wages in South Africa are pretty low.
But, you know, I mean, this is the highest paying job I can get.
I'm currently working as an armed response officer.
A what now?
Armed response officer.
Basically, you're given a gun, a bulletproof car, and, yeah, go make sure...
Yeah.
Oh, like a ninja well-armed security guard.
I don't mean to diminish.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, is that like you're a private security force?
Is that right?
Yeah, private security, yes.
Okay, got it.
And before that, I worked as a medic.
You know, so I've got quite a good reality on, you know, what's going on out there.
You know, I've seen a lot of things firsthand.
You know, I mean, and this is the best paying job I can get currently.
Yeah.
I'm currently working on a degree to broaden my horizons, but that's going to take another four or five years because I'm doing it part-time.
So the best paying job that you can get is basically the shadow cast by, I think what would fairly be appropriately said, to be insanely high crime rates.
Is that right?
Yes, yes.
From that $830 equivalent, if I can put it that way, you have to pay your house.
Electricity costs are going to cost you about $100, $120 equivalent to rand.
Electricity is pretty expensive.
Food is pretty expensive.
You really got to Each month, you know, just get by just...
So that's quite a frustration, you know.
You never get to the point where you can just say, okay, I'm really making progress now.
You know, I mean, so I think I remember back then when you did a thing about Nelson Mandela, you mentioned that, yeah, the average income, you know, got decreased by, I think, like, what, 40%?
Since the new government came to power.
So yeah, that's really starting to show.
Another thing that really bothers me is the murder rate.
Just from 2004 to 2014, there's been approximately 200,000 murders.
What?
200,000.
200,000 murders in 11 years?
Yes.
Well, that's up to the end of last year.
That's not including this year.
And that's just from 2000.
200,000 murders?
Yes.
That's not my numbers.
No, no, I'm not doubting you.
I knew it was high.
And if you go...
Yeah, I mean, if you look back since 1994 when the new government came into power, it's easily near half a million people that has been murdered.
Do you know what the rate was under de Klerk and apartheid?
I haven't actually got those statistics, but I know it was much, much lower.
Maybe Mike, if you're listening in, if you could, he always eavesdropping.
I don't know what's going on.
Mike, if you could just have a look at those, if you're listening at the keyhole.
Yeah, I mean, that's astounding.
So since 94, since the end of apartheid, is that right?
Half a million murders.
And rapes as well.
I know, I was reading a statistic that said the average African woman is more likely to be raped than learn how to read.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I checked those statistics from 2004 as well up until end of last year.
That's like about 730,000 sexual assaults.
Attempted murders, you know, just over 210,000.
Burglaries in the past 10-11 years has been 3.6 million.
Gosh.
I mean, and there's no—I can't imagine any conceivable way that a justice system can operate with that volume of crime.
I mean, they hear about another—like, another 10 murders come in before lunch.
I mean, what are they going to go and chase everyone down?
I mean, once a certain amount of crime exists within a society, you can't do anything about it, right?
It's like you can surf a wave, you can't surf a tsunami.
Yes, yes.
And the thing is, you know, arresting these people is one thing.
And then you get to the justice system, you know, where you arrest people and just literally a few days later, they're out walking the streets again.
I mean, I remember a couple of times, you know, where I've arrested people that broke in, and so you catch the perpetrator, and just, like, wait an hour, police never shows up, and eventually, you have to let the guy go.
Or you catch the guy and then literally two, three days later he's walking the streets again.
You know, and that's pretty frustrating.
Right.
What sort of security measures are people taking?
I mean, I was reading about how if you rent a car in South Africa, it's very dangerous and they have a lot of anti-theft measures in place.
I mean, you have your...
You know, they're promoting a lot of vehicle tracking and so on.
If your cars get stolen, they can track the car.
You know, there's a lot of things, but your home is literally becoming a literal prison, trying to keep everybody out.
I mean, you've got spiked fencing everywhere, and I mean, you've got electric fences...
We've got steel bars over all of the windows.
There's a lot of different measures everybody's trying to take to protect themselves and their property.
And at the same time as well, the government's trying to bring more and more gun control into the country.
As if that's really going to help solve the crime problem.
Right, yeah, yeah.
So, is there corruption?
You said the court system was problematic.
Is it because of corruption, or just they're overwhelmed, or what's the story?
Oh, it's purely corruption.
The government's doing as they please, left, right, and center.
You know, and I mean, the thing is that...
They're spending money left, right and centre as if the country can afford it.
Personally, I think You know, the country is on the verge of bankruptcy because, you know, the government's starting selling off gold and assets.
I think recently the government sold off 9 billion rand of worth of gold to Iran.
I'm not quite sure how much that is in US dollars, but yeah, it's quite a lot of money.
Right.
I'm going to just give a few more stats, if that's all right with you.
No, no, go ahead.
So low interest rates environments known for, of course, inflating credit and asset bubbles.
And this is what over the last 10 years has sort of happened in South Africa.
It's experienced two low interest rate periods in the last 10 years from 04 to 06 and the post-crisis period after 08.
Rapid credit growth and that's far exceeded the rate of economic growth.
So South Africa's real GDP grew by 38% in the past decade.
But private sector loans surged by approximately 225%.
Since 2008, South Africa's real GDP grew by 12.7%, while private sector loans have increased by nearly 45%, right?
So that's not good.
So, yeah, it's almost four times...
The growth is dead.
The M3 money supply, a broad measure of total money and credit in the economy, has had a 400% increase since 2004 and a 50% increase since 2008.
So they're just printing and flooding the money supply.
South Africa's total outstanding external debt or debt owed to foreign creditors increased by 250% over the past 10 years and nearly 87% since 2008.
From May 2015, unemployment in South Africa hit a 10-year high as power outages, drought and widespread pessimism dragged down growth in the long beleaguered economy.
South Africa's unemployment rate climbed to 26.4% as the economy expanded just 1.3% in the first three months of 2015, compared with 24.3% unemployment and 4.1% growth rate in the last quarter of 2014.
You were talking about electricity, of course.
Widespread blackouts have obliged mines and factories to curb output since last year.
Many neighbourhoods also lose power several nights each week now.
Darkened traffic lights snarled traffic jams across Johannesburg and other commercial centres.
Unemployment still remains the biggest problem in South Africa, according to a statistician.
And they've lashed out at local governments.
They say unfulfilling promises to deliver housing, electricity and sanitation services to all.
More than 15,000 such demonstrations erupted last year, said the South African Institute of Race Relations, many of them violent and 100% increased since 2010, according to this Johannesburg-based think tank.
This frustration, of course, jobless young South Africans, social unrest, uptick in violent crime.
At least seven foreigners were killed in recent weeks and thousands fled their homes after South Africans rioted and ransacked shops owned by Somalis, Ethiopians, and Zimbabweans, they say, have taken up rare job opportunities.
And this, of course, happens in America, too, where they lash out.
Blacks in the ghetto will lash out sometimes at Koreans and others who have convenience stores and so on.
Welfare dependency, of course, is a huge problem.
From 2010, South Africa is the biggest welfare state in the world, economist Mike Schustler recently said.
He said, quote, look at South Africa's dependency ratio.
It's three people to one taxpayer, and it's unsustainable.
And so, yeah, three people who are dependent on the state for every single taxpayer.
From 2014, welfare dependency, a problem across the developed world, has reached a danger level in South Africa.
More people receive aid than have jobs, and the ratio has been worsening for five years.
While the handouts have helped address abject poverty since the end of the apartheid regime, they haven't helped recipients get skills needed for jobs in a country with 24% unemployment.
The state gives the money.
Why should we doubt applying for it?
Says a woman as she adjusted the hem of her pink floral skirt over her swollen legs.
Just think how I would have gotten by with all of these children.
The government looks after them.
In all, 16.5 million people receive government benefits compared with 5.2 million working as of the fourth quarter of 2013.
Those on assistance make up 30% of the total population compared with 25% of Brazilians who are on that country's social welfare program.
And...
It is, of course, something you can't see this reported in the mainstream media, because ever since the end of apartheid, the theory, of course, is that South Africa now will be a wonderful paradise of opportunity for blacks and peaceful coexistence with whites, just as in the form of Rhodesia with the white farmers who have just as in the form of Rhodesia with the white farmers who have been run off their land And far more of those white farmers have been killed than were ever killed under apartheid.
The blacks were ever killed under apartheid.
But of course, you can't report on this stuff in the West, because there is this, I dare to say, blackout on these kinds of issues, because the idea that there were some stability benefits to apartheid is something that simply because the idea that there were some stability benefits to apartheid is something that simply goes against this savage egalitarianism manifesto, that somehow you can take a black continent and simply immediately move
So, you know, I think that there is a lot of people who have been in the 21st century, and I think that there is a lot of people who have been in the 21st century, and I think that there is a lot of people who have been in the 21st century.
It's just a mad fantasy.
We're seeing that play out, and I'm sorry that you're caught in it.
It is a complete mess, and it's not about to get better.
Absolutely.
The thing is, as you say, at the moment, The moment you start pointing out certain aspects of the apartheid era were more positive, then you're a racist and this and that, as you said, that's why it never gets mentioned in mainstream media.
As you mentioned, the blackout, that's a huge frustration for me.
Literally about every second day, you've got power failures because the country can't cope with the electricity demand.
The price of electricity is sky-high, and on top of that, Every second day, you know, there's two, three hours of no electricity, sometimes even four hours.
Now, you can imagine, you know, if this happens during business hours, what kind of a disaster that is for a business.
Right.
You can.
And, of course, if you're looking to locate a business somewhere, Do people really think, I mean, other than, of course, mining, a lot of natural resources, if you're thinking of locating a business somewhere, how many people think, Africa, that's where we want to be?
Yeah, and the thing is, you know...
The thing is just that they've been building and building new power stations and so on and it never got properly finished and now South Africa ran to Russia and went again and bought new nuclear reactors.
I'm not actually quite sure who's going to Build those reactors because recently they announced they want to fire all the white engineers from ESCOM, who is our electricity service provider, and replace them with only black skilled workers.
It's actually quite funny, you know, to me.
It's okay to say, you know, all white people should be from these jobs.
That's not racism.
But the moment if you say all black people should be fired to create jobs for white people, that's suddenly racism.
No, there's no question of that.
It is hard for people to understand what kind of racism white people experience.
And it's a volatile thing to say, I get that.
But nonetheless, I have to stand by what is true.
And the reason being that if...
If a white male is the victim of racism, nobody comes to that person's defense.
In fact, generally, it's considered karma for endless centuries of evils of white people and so on.
And it is just...
It is astounding.
It's hard to know...
The special kind of racism that white males are subjected to.
It's hard for people who aren't white males to understand that.
You know, if there's an altercation between a white man and a black man, the white man is almost generally considered to be racist.
Even if there's no proof.
Investigations are launched, lives are ruined, and all that kind of stuff.
And yet, of course, if there are explicit hate crimes, racially motivated hate crimes, I think this Serbian fellow, a bunch of black youths running down the street saying, let's kill Whitey.
And then they find this guy and beat him to death with hammers in front of his pregnant wife or fiance.
And it just vanishes.
It vanishes from the media.
It's simply not reported.
What's called polar bear hunting, which is where black youths will go and try and knock out whites with a single blow, which sometimes results in deaths.
This completely underreported or not reported.
And this general shield over black violence where you have, I think, blacks are 13% of the U.S. population.
Black males are like 7% or so.
And black youths between sort of 15 and 30 are like 2 or 3% of the population.
And in general, they're responsible for close to 50% of the murders.
So 2 or 3% of the population, it's 50% of the murders.
And that, of course, is not, you can't talk about that.
And the moment that any negative black behavior is pointed out, immediately, it's white people's fault.
I mean, it's just immediately.
Immediately.
Oh, there's black dysfunction.
It's white people.
It's white people who are completely responsible for black dysfunction, which is incredibly disrespectful towards the black.
Community.
Because, I mean, when you take away people's capacity to affect their own lives for the better, you know, I fail to see how me living my life, doing my show and raising my daughter and all that, I simply fail to see how that causes some black youth in Chicago to shoot some other black youth.
Like, somebody can tie that to me together in anything that isn't just magical thinking or evil sorcery thinking.
I'd be fascinated to hear it, but it is so disrespectful.
There's a great...
James Flynn, who's been on the show, and Charles Murray debated this recently.
I guess not that recently.
It's a couple of years ago now.
But there's a study, and I'm quoting this off my sort of memory, so it's probably off base.
But Tom Sowell, the black economist, talks about it.
And he says, in the post-war period, post-Second World War, sorry.
I think it was post Second World War period.
Black military service members in the US Army, sometimes they fell in love with and married German women.
And you know, the big challenge, I don't know what the numbers are in South Africa for IQ And again, it's not the be-all and end-all, but it's not unimportant.
We're going to talk to a guy later in the show about IQ. But in America, right, African-American IQ is a standard deviation on average.
Below that of whites, just as whites is below that of Asians.
And whites and Asians are generally, at least in the verbal component, below that of Ashkenazi Jews and so on.
And in sub-Saharan Africa, I've heard studies of 70 to 75, which is, I mean, I don't know how you can...
They've got to find a way to raise that to have a really well-functioning society.
As I've talked about a lot on this show, breastfeeding, peaceful parenting, no corporal punishment, no spanking, and so on.
But Tom Sowell says, in a study of the offspring of the black American GIs and the white German women, it showed that the children of the black fathers and the white mothers, normally in America, they fall halfway between 85 and 100.
So the half of standard deviation below.
And some people say, well, that's a genetic argument.
And the counter to that, again, I'm certainly no expert on these.
I'm simply putting forward the information.
But the counter to that is, as Tom Sowell points out, he says...
Sorry, I say Tom Sowell like, you know, he's just come over for D. Dr.
Thomas Sowell, as he points out, he says that...
Why, with these half-black, half-white kids in Germany in the post-war period, had an IQ test, had tested IQ that was the same as whites.
Virtually, like a point or two or three, whatever, but virtually the same as whites.
And he says, well, the reason for that is very simple, that they were not exposed to toxic black culture in America.
And, you know, the sort of the anti- The intellectualism, the aggressive anti-educationalism, the, oh, you're acting white if you want to get ahead, you know, the rap.
And it's not really going on in the post-war period, but he's saying that there's a toxic element.
Because, you know, you could say, oh, well, America's a racist society or whatever.
It's just become a mantra.
But are you saying that?
I mean, then people would have to say that Germany in, like, the late 1940s was not a racist society at all.
I think given that they voted for Hitler and fought a whole basic race war in some ways now.
It'll be a little tough to maintain that.
And I think it's terrible.
And I think that this white males have become like a kind of interracial Jesus figure where you just have to take on all the sins of all cultures and all problems.
Everything gets dumped onto the lap of white people.
And they call that privilege.
And all it does is take the power to heal and better cultures and Out of the participants in those cultures.
I think it's just absolutely terrible.
So South African, Mike, do you want to do this bit about the murders?
Yeah, I'm trying to dig up stats now.
This is a very hotly debated situation.
There's a lot of numbers getting thrown around, so take this with a grain of salt, because I haven't had a chance to do complete vetting, but this is from a...
Mike, Mike.
No, no, hang on, hang on.
First of all, salt is white.
Get a little pepper.
Damn, I'm a racist.
Cumin!
Cinnamon peels!
Alright, well there's a...
This is being quoted from...
Murder in South Africa, a comparison of past and present, first edition, by Rob McCaffrey, communications director from United Christian Action.
And again, I haven't totally vetted this, because this is pretty short after being asked, so take it with a grain of salt, but...
By the most conservative official figures provided by the SAPs during this period, the total number of murders is 377,465 for the 19-year period between 1990 and 2009.
This averages to just under 20,000 murders per year for every year.
The SAPS figures, however, are grossly underreported as evidenced by other official bodies of the South African government, such as the Home Affairs Department and the Medical Research Council, which both records causes of death separately from the politically-influenced SAPS. The real figures according to these bodies are roughly estimated to be between 30 to 55% higher.
Interpol puts the figures at sometimes up to 100% higher.
The total number of murders in South Africa for the period of 1990 to 2009, if using Interpol figures for five of the years, only available for the years 1995 to 1999 and then separately for 2001, Sorry, this is about 47 million, a population of 47 million.
Yeah.
Right, which is what, one-sixth the amount of those in America?
Yeah.
Right.
So using some of this other information, for the remaining 14 years, we come to a total of 528,791 murders for that period of 1990 to 2009, an average of a bit less than 30,000 murders a year.
And this report is going to be conservative and take a middle-of-the-road approach and put the number of murders for the period at 453,128, the exact midpoint between the two figures, equating to almost 24,000 murders per year every year for 19 years equating to almost 24,000 murders per year every year for 19 years in Again, I can't 100% say this is true, but I knew it was bad.
But even if it's in the realm of this, holy crap!
Holy crap.
Okay, so now you've got one place, and this is again all unconfirmed on the fly, and we'll put corrections out if this turns out to be nonsense, but you've got one place that says that the current murder rate is seven times higher now than it was under apartheid.
Yeah, there's some statistics and graphs in this document.
It does seem to explode after the end of apartheid.
Now, I happen to believe that black lives do matter.
I think white lives matter.
I think everyone's lives matter.
And the fact that you've got 400,000 blacks murdered as the result of a variety of things that may have happened after the end of apartheid, that matters.
Those are 400,000 people who wanted to live.
Those are 400,000 people who could have contributed to the world.
Those are 400,000 people who were surrounded by people who had to bury them and mourn them.
That's 400,000 holes in the economic fabric of South Africa, and that is a lot of dead people.
I'm just still mortified and in shock reading these numbers.
And where are the activists now?
Jesus Christ.
And keep in mind, that's only the murder rate.
That's not even the death count of people that died on South African roads.
We've got pretty horrific deaths.
The amount of accidents here in South Africa.
I know, I've seen a lot.
If you don't get murdered, you're probably going to die just driving to work or whatever.
Mike, can we get a death count on South African roads?
What is the healthcare system like at the moment?
I assume, of course, that there is this massive problem of AIDS and HIV, but what is the healthcare system like for you?
You know, Steph, if I answer this question, people will think I'm probably exaggerating, but as I mentioned, you know, I've been a medic for like four and a half years before my, you know, this current job I had, and I can count on many times that, you know, I've went into government-operated hospitals where you literally find people lying dead there that they just never received any care.
And eventually died.
And the nurses don't even know that the person's dead.
So the healthcare is pretty horrific.
Obviously, if you've got lots of money and you can afford private healthcare, that's a different story.
But if you're forced to go to a government hospital, you're pretty much at their mercy.
Right.
420,000 additional murders after the end of apartheid.
I got some road stats.
This is from The Economist, so I trust that it's accurate.
Some of the world's most dangerous roads are in South Africa.
Last month, this is in 2011, 43 people a day for a population of 50 million were killed in traffic accidents.
My god, that's like, I think scooters in Sao Paulo when I was there for a speech.
I think it was one a day.
But 43 people a day die on the South African roads.
Though it still has less than one registered vehicle for every five inhabitants, Africa's most advanced country recorded 33 road deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2007, according to the World Health Organization.
Which is double the fatality rate of the U.S. Double the fatality rate of the U.S., but the U.S. is like guns, cars, people.
I think in terms of population, right?
Yeah, the U.S. has almost one vehicle for every inhabitant versus the one in five for South Africa.
Wait a second.
So in America, there are 300 million cars.
In Africa...
One in five, so there are eight million cars.
So 300 million cars in America, eight or nine million cars in South Africa, but South Africa has double the vehicular manslaughter rate.
Is that right?
Yeah, and it's six times the rate, as in Britain.
Well, and in Britain, they drive on the wrong side of the road, and that, of course, is a carnage, right?
Because it's wrong.
I know, Peter, you called in for some motivational pep.
Run!
Tunnel, bury, build a bunch of statistics.
Wow, I didn't know that it was as bad as it sounds like it is.
And the thing is, you know...
For people who think that this is completely exaggerated or anything like that, I can guarantee it's not.
I spent 12 hours a day on the road, and man, I've had some pretty close calls.
I can tell you, people just completely have no regard for traffic laws whatsoever.
I remember the days when running a red light was a big, big no-no.
You got into a lot of trouble.
Today, it's like...
Every second, third person, they just drive over a red light.
It just doesn't bother anyone.
What about the single fatherhood?
What's the story there?
Oh my goodness.
Let me tell you, from what I've seen, it's pretty horrific because You know, the mentality of the African culture is pretty much the male sits back and relax, drinks his beer, watches soccer, and the mother, she's got to provide for the children.
So never mind child abuse.
I mean, that's pretty rampant as well.
But, yeah, I mean, there's, I think, a single father or single...
There's quite a lack of fathers in the black community.
I personally think that's probably one of the main causes of all these problems that we have.
The thing is, because the black community is also so violent, children get abused quite horrifically.
Obviously, if they're female, they run the risk of getting raped.
Even as early as babies, you'll be quite shocked how often babies get raped in South Africa.
Babies?
Babies.
I kid you not.
Is there some...
I know that there's a superstition that if you have AIDS, if you have sex with a virgin, somehow it's going to cure you.
Is there any superstition or fetish around sex with infants?
Yes, I think it's partly that.
And I think the other part is just...
They're completely evil human beings here.
Because, you know, it's like literally almost every day, you know, you see these things, you know, in a local newspaper, you know.
may baby or toddlers get raped, you know, and that's, you know, as if, you know, it gets reported, but, you know, you've seen it so many times, now you just kind of get acclimated to it.
I can't imagine what kind of trauma that is for a child to grow up with as well.
I mean, astonishing, horrifying.
And what that does to the culture as a whole.
I mean, it's just brutal.
Yeah, absolutely.
When we've talked about the murder and the violence, just this Thursday that passed, I finished my night shift and a 17-year-old kid got murdered for money.
And not just shot or anything.
It was not quite easy to be talked about, but he was disemboweled and partially decapitated.
Disemboweled?
Yeah.
But why would you just kill someone for money?
I don't understand the disemboweling part.
Wouldn't that slow you down?
I don't know.
That seems needlessly sadistic, not that the murder is not horrifying enough, of course.
I don't know.
I mean, it's just like, I don't know why anyone would go to that extreme.
It's just completely shocking to me.
I know in some of the black communities, you know, sometimes children go missing and get chopped up for magic potions and stuff like that.
I know that's a reality.
You know, but doing just this for money, I don't know.
And I can't imagine a lot of money either.
No, I mean, it's...
Yeah, it's actually not really that much amount of money.
I think it was like 8,000 rand, which was probably equivalent of, I don't know, something like $600 or something.
Right.
Well, given the salary, that's almost a month's salary, right?
Yeah, I suppose almost a month.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
What's it doing to you living in this environment, do you think?
How do you feel about it?
I mean, You wake up in the morning and the sun's coming in.
What's your thought about your day?
You know, the thing is, I honestly don't look forward to going to work.
Obviously, I suppose this is quite ironic, but obviously working in a very hazardous environment, being an armed response officer, But at the same time, I'm pretty much scared to death.
It's a reality that you could be next.
I try not to focus on these things, but it keeps on mauling in the back of your head.
Of course, yeah.
As a medic before this job, Man, I had to declare a lot of people dead, man.
You know, you never forget that.
I mean, the worst case I had was, I think it was about a year or two ago on Christmas, literally where I had an entire family that just finished the Christmas meal, got into a car, and gone like that, you know.
The daughter survived, but I mean, you know, having to try and help those people, you know, and afterwards telling her that, sorry, mom and dad's dead, that just, man, that's pretty much hell on me, man.
That sucks.
I know when I chose the occupation of being a medic, there's going to be emotional trauma for you.
It's, I guess, part of the job, but I mean, geez, having one death after another is just too much.
It's pretty much why I quit being a medic.
You just can't handle that anymore.
There must be a pretty high burnout rate for the occupation.
Yeah, man.
Yeah, no, definitely.
And, you know, even this job that I'm doing now, I'm doing it now for about eight months, and...
It's pretty stressful.
You don't have a partner or anything.
It's you alone in a car.
You have to go in some pretty dodgy places, let me tell you.
And that works on me quite a lot as well.
And, you know, I'm studying part-time for my bachelor's degree, as I mentioned, and I just...
I don't quite know exactly how I'm going to endure doing this job and starting part-time as well until I eventually have the capacity to make a move somewhere.
Why?
I don't know much about the legality of this.
Of course, my father lived in South Africa and it was very hard for him to get money out of the country to help.
And then he left when he finished his career.
What is it like to get out?
I mean, where do you want to head to?
You know, like I mentioned, I've been to New Zealand.
I've got some family there.
I've thought of actually maybe going to Japan.
I enjoy learning new cultures and got quite a liking into Japanese culture and want to learn a new foreign language and so on.
Not quite yet, maybe.
I'm still deciding between New Zealand and Japan, but the problem is to, you know, to immigrate.
For Japan, for instance, you cannot get a work visa without a four-year bachelor's degree.
I mean, you can have 20 years experience in whatever.
To have a visa, or to get a work visa, you need a bachelor's degree.
And I saw the same thing with many other countries.
You know, so...
Can you study as a foreign student?
I guess you'd need money for that, right?
But can you study as a foreign student anywhere, like if you go to New Zealand to finish your degree?
Yeah, look, I mean, one nice thing, I'm doing a long-distance studying program, so I can pretty much, you know, work in...
I'm just going to use an example.
I can study in New Zealand or America through the same university that I'm studying now.
So that's not a problem.
And eventually finish my degree overseas.
Obviously, I'd still need a job and money and so on.
Yeah, I mean, my, you know, every day that you spend being exposed to trauma is a day at least that you have to spend decompressing.
And you're building up quite a deficit right here in terms of another couple of years of this difficult, dangerous, and stressful environment.
It's going to be a challenge.
So my impulse would be to try and finish your education someplace more peaceful.
I mean, you've got to, and I don't want to tell you your experience, and I don't want to, you know, project what I sort of thought and experienced, but...
What is the relationship between blacks and whites from your white perspective in South Africa?
I mean, how do you feel you are treated or viewed as a white person?
You know, Steph, I don't want to create a picture that all blacks are bad or anything.
That's certainly not the case, you know.
I mean, there's been cases, I've worked with a lot of black people, and there's been a lot of Black people that has had a positive attitude toward me.
But I can tell you the vast majority pretty much has...
And it's gotten a lot worse recently.
We just have this absolute hatred towards white people.
You know, they keep on...
You know, saying things like, you know, all white people should be killed and they should leave the country.
And, you know, Africa is for Africans, which is actually quite ironic since they're murdering other Africans.
That's not, you know, foreign Africans as well.
But anyway...
And of course, if you can imagine someone saying that Europe is for white people, or Canada and America are for white people, everybody would go insane.
White supremacists, white nationalists, and so on.
But black people can say that.
And I hear that.
I mean, I get those comments on my videos.
You know, that white people should be killed.
White people are the devil.
White people have created all these problems and they've done all these terrible things.
And race on earth is worse than white people and so on.
And that, again, doesn't fit into the generally left-wing paradigm of black victimization.
And, of course, there is this whole theory that blacks can't be racist because they're victims always and forever.
And it is, yeah, pumping this amount of hatred, this amount of anti-white hatred into the world mind, in a sense, into the emotional ideological stratospheres of the human mind.
Pumping this amount of hatred towards whites is...
It's going to have very negative consequences.
And unfortunately, whites will then be blamed for those negative consequences as well.
But at some point, people will recognize that demonizing any race is morally corrupt and vicious.
And I'm sorry that you're being exposed to it, but don't let me interrupt you.
I'm sorry, but please continue.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
I agree.
And the thing is that I've absolutely got no hatred towards...
Black people or, you know, people of other races, you know.
And it's quite a sad thing to me to, you know, to see all these things going on because I know, I mean, you know, South Africa's got so much potential, you know.
I mean, it's just wasted on constant race baiting, you know.
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
And, you know, the thing is, you know, Even like study bursaries now, I mean, as a white student or as a white person, getting a study bursary now is very,
very difficult because recently there was this whole rioting going on again about how getting a bursary should only be more for black people and not for white people.
In the beginning, as you said, we just have this white privilege that we have and unlimited amount of money, so we don't need study bursaries or anything like that.
Right, and this is of course This is the challenge.
I mean, if whites become a minority in their own countries, it's not like the Hispanics or the blacks or the Muslims are going to be all keen on affirmative action for whites.
I mean, this is just a fool's game.
I mean, I basically think whites are just being played.
And I think that whites are surrendering to feelings of guilt, which is incredibly destructive.
I think it's Shelby Steele, who's a black writer I admire enormously, just keeps pointing out that white guilt is incredibly toxic to race relations.
And...
There's a principle, of course, in law that you cannot inherit the debts of your fathers.
Your father runs up a visa bill, it dies with him.
And it's the same thing true with slavery and so on.
And slavery, again, it's always talked about as if, well, it's just whites who enslaved black for reasons of racism.
And that's the only thing that ever happened in slavery throughout history.
Slavery, of course, was a worldwide phenomenon that was occurring before human beings even learned to write.
Before there was a written language, there are depictions of slavery.
Slavery is a universal human constant that was almost single-handedly ended by white Western European culture in the 18th and 19th centuries.
And because whites felt the worst about slavery and worked very hard to end it, whites then get pinned with the guilt of slavery from here to eternity.
And I mean, that's just so ridiculous and so insane.
And the idea, like somebody was talking about slavery in a comment, and I said, never happened to you, was never done by me.
So what are you talking about?
Well, they're trying to push the white guilt button.
If you push the white guilt button, white people will give you money so that you'll stop pushing the white guilt button.
But you know what happens is when you pay off people who are Threatening you, that doesn't exactly get them to stop threatening you, right?
It means that they'll simply keep pushing.
Oh, look, every time we push this big white guilt button, we get money and we get resources.
We get white people to do what we want.
It's the big program whitey button.
It's the white guilt button.
And people are surprised that white guilt is not leading to a healing in race relations.
There was a recent study in America that says most people think race relations is worse now than after the first half-black, half-white precedent was I mean, statistically, there's a good case to be made that there are more black criminals now than there ever were white slave owners in the past.
Now, if I were to say blacks are somehow collectively responsible for the criminal activity of some blacks, that would be completely racist, even though that's happening in the present.
But for people to say that whites are somehow collectively responsible for a tiny minority, like a couple of percentage points of whites who owned slaves hundreds of years ago, that somehow is legitimate.
But if I say, well, there are more black criminals than there ever were white slave owners, And so I get to then say, all blacks owe me for criminality, in the same way that somehow, not all, but some blacks say, well, all whites owe us for slavery.
It's like, okay, then all blacks owe me for the cost of the criminality in the black community.
But that would be a wrong thing to say.
You can't judge...
portion of criminals within the black community in the present.
And you certainly can't judge whites by a tiny proportion of white slave owners hundreds of years ago.
But until white people start feeling guilty and grow the spine that two world war seems to have permanently knocked out of the culture, things are just going to keep getting worse.
And I don't know any other option or alternative to that, which means you're going to have to run the gauntlet of being called a racist.
Sorry.
I mean, that's just a word that people throw at white people to get resources.
I'm sorry.
It's just the way that it works.
And if it keeps working, it's going to keep happening.
And until white people say, no, come on.
I mean, the mistake that white people have made with regards to race is guilt.
It's like it's just become this new Catholic thing that you just have to...
The original sin is paleness.
And you have to pay people to not be called a racist.
And as long as these witch hunts and, I dare say, lynchings of white people occur for any potentially racist thing that happens, whereas Jamie Foxx can go and give a speech at the Oscars and say, hey, I was in a movie called Django Unchained where I got to run around and shoot all these white people.
Isn't that the best thing ever?
I mean, try making that joke if you're a...
Film shooting black people and everyone would go insane, right?
And so as long as this guilt continues, this massive amount of dysfunction between the races is only going to escalate and we just have to stop feeling guilty and stop feeling afraid and we just have to run the gauntlet of being called racist because to really care about the black community is to not absorb all the problems in the black community into this whiteness.
Well, you're white, and therefore, that's why there are problems in the black community.
It's like, no, I'm not going to soak that up, because I think the blacks are perfectly competent to solve the problems in their own community, but they're not going to, as long as everyone keeps telling them, and they believe, that it's just white's fault.
It's white's fault.
I mean, it's like, well, you know, the The black people weren't here by choice.
Yeah, that's true.
That's absolutely true.
Hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Guess what?
Most of the white people weren't here by choice either.
They were fleeing tyrannical regimes at home.
Doesn't make it equivalent, but it's not like the black people all came over on slave ships, which in general they did, but the white people weren't taking the love boat with Julie on the Lido deck handing out shuffleboard sticks.
I mean, they were fleeing the tyrannies of their governments at home and had pretty crappy lives as a result of it in many ways.
Anyway, I mean, this is a bit of a ramble, but I joined together with the Black leaders who, you know, Shelby Steele and Tom Sowell and going all the way back to some of Marcus Garvey's and Booker T. Washington, these guys who said, look, I mean, we have to treat each other as equals.
And I don't think there's any way that you could say, well, you see, white drug use must be blamed on black people.
Because they feel bad about slavery and they're self-medicating and therefore it's black people's fault that white people use drugs.
I mean that would just be a stupid thing to say and it would then wouldn't give white people the opportunity to look in the mirror and say how can I fix it myself?
And I am, you know, I'm just relentlessly dedicated to treating races the same.
I'm relentlessly dedicated, which means, no, I'm not going to feel guilty because some white, like a tiny percentage of well-connected and rich white people owned slaves.
I mean, that's like, well, you see, there are a lot of Jewish bankers, therefore all Jews are responsible for the financial crash.
I mean, that would be anti-Semitism.
And the idea that, and that's in the present, right?
Hundreds of years ago, 2% or 3% of Jews did X. Therefore, all Jews in the present owe me $10,000 a piece.
And it's like, oh, come on.
Come on.
I mean, we just have to say no to that stuff.
And we have to say no out of love and out of respect and out of concern and out of care and saying, no, listen, man, you blame me for your problems when I'm not the source of your problems.
You're just disempowering yourself.
And you are making sure those problems can never, ever be solved.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, absolutely.
So, what about teaching English in China?
I hear that's not too hard a gig to get into.
Yeah, that's actually the thing that I... Well, it's kind of part of my plan that I wanted to do in Japan, is teach English.
But once again...
But in China, I don't think you need a BA. Yes, yes, I actually do.
I did the research.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
I just came to a dead end as well.
That may be new, or it may just be from South Africa, because I know we had some listeners who boogied out to China to teach in the past.
I don't think they had degrees.
But again, maybe...
Yeah, Peter, let me just put out the call.
I know there's quite a few people that listen to the show that have either done this or are currently doing this, teaching English in a foreign country.
So if you have any information that would be helpful for Peter, please send it to me at operations at freedomainradio.com, and I'll forward it to him.
Maybe the collective Borg brain of the listenership knows something that we don't, might be able to help you out, Peter, so...
Okay, great.
thanks yeah yeah um oh yeah this would be great
I tried to go down that avenue and actually it was kind of the I know it maybe sounds stupid, but kind of the inspiration to get my bachelor's degree is, you know, so I can at least have something or some way to escape the current situation.
Can I make an offer here?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I know like most guys, you're like, help!
Help!
Accepting help will make me gay!
Or something like that, right?
But will you take a minor offer of help?
Oh, absolutely.
Okay, so let's say you can get somewhere.
I know, I mean, trying to save up cash on 600 bones a month is pretty tough.
If it's just like a plane ticket or something that you need, will you give us a shout, let us know, and let us help you out?
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Good, good, okay.
And, you know, we can get listeners to, you know, meet you at the airport and get you set up so you're not heading out alone and all that.
So if you'll take the help, And I, you know, I say this to people who in traumatic situations as a whole, I don't care what race you are, but if you're in a traumatic situation, we actually think we made, yeah, we made this offer to a black guy who called in who was in a traumatic situation.
If there's something that we can do, like if it's just a matter of money or information or resources or support or a community that you can get to, let us organize something to help you.
That would make me feel good.
Not that you care necessarily about that as your primary goal.
But if it's just a matter like you need a flight or whatever it is, we can cover that, get you out, get you to some place where you're not in this situation of exquisite terror every day.
Yeah, look, I definitely appreciate it.
And yeah, I accept any help I can get.
And, you know, I really appreciate it.
Alright.
Okay.
So we'll try and get you some resources.
We'll certainly work to do our best to get you some help.
And thank you so much for calling.
And I am sorry.
And, you know, it really makes me mad.
It makes me mad.
And I'm not even going to do a big rant here.
But it just makes me mad that these activists come in and it's like, oh, let's end apartheid.
Let's end racism.
And they don't have to live in the aftermath.
They don't have to live...
You know, with half a million murders and three quarters of a million rapes, they don't have to live in these gated communities, they don't have to live with, I remember when I was there, broken glass on top, have you seen that, right?
Broken glass on top of the walls.
To keep people out and bars on the window.
It's more than a virtual prison.
And fear at walking down the street.
And so these activists, they come bungeeing in, you know, and it's like, Freeman Nelson Mandela, end apartheid!
And then they go back, and they don't have to live with the aftermath.
They don't have to live with babies being raped in their environment.
They don't have to live with kids being grabbed off the street and cut up for magic potions.
They don't have to live with that.
And that's what bugs the shit out of me when it comes to activism.
I think if you're an activist, stay.
Because then you're invested not just in your own moral self-congratulation and thinking what a great and wonderful person you are.
Oh, look, I've demonized white males.
You're a moral hero because no one gets to do that.
You know, go down, take on the nation of Islam.
Okay, I'll give you some props.
But protesting about white males are bad, white people are racist.
Oh, yeah.
Wow.
I've never heard that one before.
You're such a moral hero.
Boy, are you ever cutting the new edge of human excellence in ethics.
But...
I just, it bothers me.
And I remember saying this at the time, you know, like, oh, you're pouring all this weight and emotion and energy into this.
And yeah, apartheid was not a good system.
I'm an anarchist.
I don't think any government system is good.
And no one bleeds to death is just a lie.
But everyone just walks away from the blood, leaves the body on the pavement and says, look at me.
I'm such a great person.
I demonize white people.
I fought racism.
I'm an activist.
I'm powerful.
I'm good.
And then the country falls apart and they're back home playing Wii.
So anyway, keep us posted, man.
And let us help you.
If you can, and if we can.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Stefan.
Jan, I just want to say thanks to you and the team.
I appreciate all you guys are doing, and keep up the good work.
The work that you're doing is, I believe, really making a difference out there, and it keeps me sane.
Thank you, man.
And listen, I know we danced on some pretty volatile landmines here.
How was the conversation for you?
I just wanted to check before you left.
No, it was amazing.
Thanks.
I was actually looking quite forward to talking to you about these things and actually really helped me just to have a bit more hope again.
Good, good.
Well, we'll do what we can to try and help you out.
Not that you can't do it yourself, but it always helps to get some aid.
So thanks, mate, for staying up our own office.
All right, thanks, man.
Let's move on to the next caller.
All right, thanks, Peter.
Take care and stay safe, man.
Well, Luke, thanks.
Bye.
Alright, well up next is Brandon.
Brandon wrote in and said, Since Stefan is doing a series on gene wars, I thought, since I have an IQ in the 90s range, I thought it would be a good idea to get some point of view from people having an IQ that is lower than the average mean.
As someone with an IQ of 92, I wonder what solutions we can do to help our underclass prosper.
That's from Brandon.
So how do you know you have an IQ of 92?
I looked it up.
Okay.
I took an IQ test.
It was 95.
I took another IQ test, but it was of lower quality.
Wait, wait, wait.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when you say you took an IQ test, what does that mean?
Because an IQ test needs to be administered.
You have to have a professional.
You have to discuss the results with you.
And 92, you know, because there's different components to an IQ test, right?
There's the verbal component.
There's the spatial reasoning component.
And you may score high on one and low on another.
And so I just wanted to know what it means when you say that you got it.
It was on the internet.
Like, yeah.
Do you know what my IQ is on an internet test?
What?
What?
I've just had a curiosity.
I took one because I've never taken one.
So I scored 180.
And I don't think that that's particularly valid.
So I don't know what that means.
But I would say that if you took a test that was not...
That's why I don't count what I... I just took it for funsies.
But if you took an IQ test that was not administered...
By a professional who really knows what they're doing, can interpret the results and can walk you through what it means.
I would not self-categorize myself with an IQ of 180 just because I took some half-hour test online.
And I certainly, for you, I would not, if I were in your shoes, I would not say, oh, I have an IQ of 92 because that's what the internet says.
But, I mean, it's a great question nonetheless, right?
Which is...
What do we do, so to speak, if that even makes any sense, what do we do with people who are less intelligent in a free society?
Is that sort of your basic question?
Yeah.
Right.
What are your aspirations in life, Brandon?
What is it that you want to achieve?
I would have liked to become a video game creator.
Wait, that sounds like your obituary.
Brandon, he left us too soon.
He really wanted to become a video game creator.
But unfortunately, he took a step on a South African road.
And now, a stain.
Right?
I mean, what does that mean?
Do you want to do these things in the future?
Yes, I do.
Okay, and do you think you can?
I mean, I don't mean you can.
Like, is it...
Intellectually possible.
What I mean is, do you know how to take the steps to achieve what it is you want to achieve?
Not really.
And have you done any mod design or level design or level creation or anything like that for existing games?
No.
I tried to, but I just got too lazy.
Well, I believe that laziness may have an effect on capacity to do things, for sure.
So which game did you try, if you don't mind me asking?
I didn't try anything.
It's the Drunger and Kinginger effect.
I was in another high school with all these other disabled kids.
I'll get to that later maybe, but I was in another high school with So I just thought, you know, fuck this.
I'm too smart for this.
These people alienate me, so I want to go and go to this other school.
And I thought I was smart because I passed the test.
And because these old women were like, you're smart.
So I believed in them.
And when I got educated, I was in for a world of shock.
It's a lot harder than I thought it was.
Sorry, just before we go on, you said that you were in a class with disabled kids.
Did you mean mentally disabled or physically disabled or both?
Both, I guess.
I have cerebral palsy, mild spastic duplegia.
My arm, so like my arm, duplegia means like the lower legs and limbs are, yeah, so I have problems like walking, like, or I can walk, but my walking's very crooked and my muscles are stiff.
Right.
Well, my sympathies for that.
I mean, I know you've been living with it for a long time and But I just really wanted to sympathize.
That's tough stuff to deal with, I think.
So, if you wanted to become a video game designer...
Well, you do, right?
So, the steps, I don't know.
I've never...
Well, I started learning how to program by...
My first game was I tried to do Missile Command with ASCII text.
Well, a bit of a challenge.
But I did create a sort of space exploration and combat game on the pet, you know, where you had limited to 2k of coding ability.
But if you start learning how to mod games, and I think you can do that without a lot of coding.
And I think that there's some third party tools that let you do it without any coding.
But you can sort of do level design and let your imagination run wild.
And I know a lot of people learn how to do this through like Doom or Unreal Tournament and the sort of all the successive waves of those games.
And they learned how to do mods.
They would release their mods.
And if their mods are really good, then they might get an internship at a company to help.
Or levels.
If their level design or mods are really good, then they might get internships at a company to help.
To learn how to do that as a career, and some people can even parlay that into, like they can make jobs out of that.
So you've sort of thought of doing mods or level design, is that right, but never got around to it?
What's a mod?
A mod is where you create like a new weapon, or like there are mods in, I don't know if you even know these games, but in Skyrim there are mods that give your horse armor and stuff like that.
I'm sorry?
Everyone knows Skyrim.
Okay, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know what people play.
You could be a Pokemon guy for all I know.
But yeah, so the mods are, and you can release them online.
You can actually even charge for them as well.
Like, you don't even have to join a company.
You can create mods and then sell them for a couple of bucks.
I think you can sell them through Steam or other places.
But there's opportunities, you know.
Things that I could only have dreamt of when I was your age, but there are opportunities for getting into game design now that were not around when I was younger, perhaps for the best.
But there's ways of learning these things and sharing these things and getting feedback on these things that can lead to a reasonable or above reasonable income.
But, you know, the lazy part is definitely an obstacle, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I assume that at the beginning it's more fun to play games than mod them.
Yeah.
Right.
So that would be just by the by.
I mean, if you wanted to get into video game design, I think that would be a good approach to take.
And look, I'm going to tell you, man, I mean, everything, when you start learning it, it sucks.
Yeah.
It's so annoying.
There's stuff that you know how it can be done, but you don't know how to do it.
I remember the very first time I started coding in Windows.
This is with a program called Microsoft Access.
This was version 2.0.
I think there was 1.1 and then there was 2.0.
And I remember the very first time, this is before you could get coding examples on the internet, really.
This is before there was no type ahead, like you do a dot and then you get all the next commands.
I remember sitting there for nine hours to try and do one thing, which was to open up a record and to change the value in a database and then close that record.
And it took me nine hours to learn to do that.
Incredibly simple thing that now would take me about 30 seconds.
And so, you know, as far as the laziness goes, I mean, it's really annoying to learn how to do these things.
But the good thing is, is that you know, as you keep going, then...
You're stepping ahead of everyone else, right?
Like all you have to do is keep persisting and you're just pulling ahead of everyone else because there's lots of people Like you, I guess, in your past manifestation, hopefully before this call, there's lots of people who will just let things stop them.
Oh, there's something good on TV. Oh, this is getting really annoyed.
Oh, I got to pee.
And then on the way to pee, I decided to check out the Google Play Store.
And oh, look, there's a new version of Icewind Dale.
I guess I'll try that out.
And next thing you know, you're 30.
And so...
If you just sit down and say, I'm not going to get up.
I've literally done this.
I did this with the first round of my theory on ethics.
It's like, I sat down and I said, and I don't like to sit that much.
Every time, like, it's like, oh, do we have to review something on the screen?
Because I'd much rather walk around or, you know, while I've got Skype on a headset or whatever.
But I don't like to sit.
So I said, for me, sitting is like a little kind of prison.
It's why I do my shows sort of standing up.
Because also, you know, when you see pictures of Rush Limbaugh in a...
A German tutu.
You say, well, maybe sitting is not the best thing for my long-term health prospects.
So for me, when I say I'm going to sit down, I'm not going to get up until I've got this solved.
That is kind of a torture for me.
So it really motivates me to get something done.
And so if you just say, well, like, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to pee, and I'm going to get myself something to drink, and I'm going to bring the water of it, or whatever it is.
I'm going to sit down, and I'm not going to get up until I've solved this, whatever it is going to be.
And then you just have to, you know, I hate to say it, you just got to make yourself do it.
You got to keep your word to yourself and say, I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to do anything else until I get this done, right?
I mean, am I fairly right, Brandon, in assuming you've got some spare time?
I think Brandon dropped off and he went offline.
Well, I'm afraid we'll just have to leave Brandon with that piece of advice.
As far as, so I'll just do a little bit of thing about, I don't know what his IQ is.
I don't know what his intelligence is.
I have no idea.
You know, the 92 based on an online test, I wouldn't say is particularly valid in any way, shape or form.
It needs to be It needs to be professionally administered.
That's important, right?
So, as far as less intelligent people in a free society, well, they're going to be there.
And less intelligent people need better social cues, right?
Like, you know, when you're learning to dance, they actually have these, like, footprints.
You put your feet into the, like, because you're learning how to dance, you need footprints to learn how to do these things.
And like in piano sometimes, I think you can get like light up, teach yourself pianos and all this kind of stuff.
And you can get, you need more cues, better cues, which is why you need coaches and teachers and so on.
So when you're less skilled at something, you need better social cues.
And this is why it's so, to me, it's so vile.
I'm going to take my headset off for a sec here.
It's so vile, the degree to which...
Society has taken away the markers for less intelligent people.
It's so unbelievably vile how this has occurred.
So if you say, oh man, you know, everything's relativistic, and there's no truth, there's no right, there's no wrong, this and so on, right?
Well, really, it doesn't make really smart people dumb to do that.
But what it does is it removes clear markers for less intelligent people to achieve moral quality.
I mean, if you, like if a pilot, I don't know, I'm just making things up here, but if a pilot, let's say, is incredibly skilled, no, even better, if a blind man has to navigate around a maze, the blind man is going to do pretty well, because he's experienced at navigating through a maze.
And so, Think of smart people like people who are just habitually blind.
And so, but if you take someone who's had sight his whole life, you blindfold him and then you tell him to go through a maze really quickly, he's gonna be really bad at it, right?
And, you know, like for me in the middle of the night, I wake up, oh man, I gotta pee.
And I'm like, I don't want to turn the light on.
So I'm like, I'm going through like, I don't want to brain myself on a doorframe or something like that.
So I'm feeling my way along like a squid on a coral reef trying to find my way.
And yes, I sit because I'm a guy and it's nighttime and it's dark.
Can't do a tough voice when you're sitting and peeing.
Anyway, so smart people are like habitually blind people getting through a maze.
They can do it.
relatively efficiently but when you blindfold someone who's had sight their whole life they're really really slow and inefficient at it and so blind people do things better without sight than people who've had their sight are and so when you take away these kinds of cues from people that the people can really understand and process and work with the less intelligent people end up suffering a lot more than the smart people And the smart people also
kind of know that relativism is bullshit.
I mean, they just do.
They just do.
And so...
And the reason I'm saying that is because, you know, if you say to a relativist, some really intellectual relativist, if you say, okay, then give me your money because I'm going to steal from your...
They'll be like, no, you can't do that.
Oh, social society's got to have structure to exist and all that kind of stuff, right?
And so they know that to some degree it's just a bunch of malarkey and, you know, it's just polysyllabic sounds you make with your breathing hole in order to get money from...
The government.
But less intelligent people take intellectual cues much more seriously.
And so when you say to a smart person, everything's relative, they're like, yeah, that's kind of cool, but, you know, I still got to obey the speed limit.
But when less intelligent people hear everything is relative, they take it very seriously.
They don't have the intelligence to know when people are bullshitting them.
And so, when really smart people bandy about this relativism and all this kind of stuff and, oh, it's all quantum phenomena and all that kind of stuff, right?
I mean, I'm sure that Deepak Chopra knows that his constant invocation of quantum theory to explain the mystical crap that he's peddling is nonsense, and you can see Richard Dawkins confronting him on this, but the less intelligent people are like, yeah, I guess quantum theory does mean that everything is relativistic, and there's no truth, and there's no right and wrong, and so on.
Now, Deepak Chopra laughs all the way to the bank, but the dumb people are left fundamentally, or the less intelligent people are left fundamentally unmoored from reality.
And that is the incredibly brutal thing that happens when intelligent people rip apart the linguistic fabric of reality, is that intelligent people still remain relatively nimble, but less intelligent people go crazy.
Like, they really get damaged by this.
So this is why I think the job of really smart people is to try to communicate complex and difficult topics in a way that's actionable by people of less intelligence.
Of course it is, right?
In that you want your grandmother to be able to use email without typing lines into a DOS prompt, which, you know, she's probably not going to learn how to do.
So the job of smart people, as I've talked before, is to GUI up intellectual and intelligent stuff so that it's consumable by the masses.
So I'm certainly doing my part to try and make philosophy accessible to the masses.
And, you know, let's say that this listener's IQ is valid.
I don't think it is.
But if it were, okay, he's listening to the show and he's getting value out of this show.
So fantastic.
I've been able to translate high IQ philosophy into 92 speak, right?
I'm very proud of that.
You know, that's not as easy as it sounds.
And so...
I think that when intellectuals, it's like when people use all of these $20 words to describe $2 things.
They don't end up with benefiting the people who most need them.
Right?
The more concrete people, the people of lower intelligence, they need very clear cues.
They need the footprints painted on the ground so they can do the dance moves.
They need things, quote, dumbed down for me.
You know, it's that old thing.
Can you dumb it down a shade, Doc?
I think it's an old line from Homer Simpson in The Simpsons.
You know, keep going down.
You know, it takes great confidence to say to somebody, explain it to me like I'm a three-year-old, like a not very intelligent three-year-old.
And that...
is the challenge.
And if you are a high intellectual, high IQ intellectual, and you're not trying to find a way to get your work consumable by the masses, then you're like a doctor who refuses to treat anyone except healthy people.
I mean, that's just not the job.
The job is to translate the social, philosophical, and moral cues into as much Of a consumable format, as great a consumable format as intelligence can possibly allow.
And that takes a huge amount of work.
It takes far more work to build a GUI interface than it does to build a command prompt interface.
Like I had a guy working for me years ago.
Who took a course in coding, and the first thing they had to do was build an operating system.
And of course, it wasn't like the 40...
I think it was Windows 2000 had 40 million lines of code or something.
It's probably much more than that.
I know it's more than that for Windows.
What came after that?
Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows...
Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, it's coming and all that.
And of course, the amount of code to build a user-friendly GUI interface is far more than it is to build a command line interface.
But that's the deal.
That's the job.
Computer people understand that.
Intellectuals very much are just passing complicated bits of Linux code back and forth and then wondering why the masses don't respect their contributions to society.
So...
Yeah, I think in a free society there'll be far more opportunities for people of less intelligence because, you know, I mean the wealth of society will be far greater and there will be People of lesser intelligence are crippled at the moment because intellectuals are only talking to each other and not talking to the masses as much.
And that means that the gifts that high intelligence can create and bring into being are not being translated and handed down to people of lesser intellectual ability.
In other words, there's no GUI interface.
There's no mouse.
There's no voice command.
There's nothing like that.
And...
That's not great for people to be able to work with.
I mean, if you've got a ZX80 interface, you ain't going mainstream with your computers.
It's in the same way that tablets and touchscreens and so on are just a great way of getting very powerful computing potential into the hands of people who otherwise probably wouldn't even use computers.
I sort of think of the average, you know, 15-year-old girl taking a selfie.
I mean, she would not be somebody up to their arms and trying to figure out how to reconfigure a Unix kernel to do what she wanted or anything like that.
So...
When you make things more accessible to people of a wider intelligence base, you're kind of doing your job as an intellectual.
And if you, say, wanted to start a smartphone company and say, well, I'm going to base my smartphone on DOS 4.0 because it's really...
I mean, you don't have to pay anything for it.
And we need far cheaper processors because DOS runs on like a 286 or something.
And so we'll just get tiny keyboards attached to tiny screens.
They don't need to be touch screens.
You could produce a phone very cheaply, but nobody would even remotely think of backing that as an investor because they'd be like, where's the market?
And this is sort of what I think of.
This show, we do a lot of research into what some very smart people are saying and doing.
And a lot of it is behind paywalls and a lot of it is written in this really dense academia speak and it's not popularized.
And then when we sort of trace the original academic article through the mainstream media, it's inevitably distorted according to various biases and, you know, trying to track back this stuff.
It's really hard work.
I'd like to think that intellectuals, or as I think Tom Sowell points out, that anybody who owns their living by products of the mind alone, intellectuals should really be facing the mass as a whole and translating high intellectual achievement into easily actionable.
And easily consumable digestible mental nuggets for the masses.
And that would happen in a free society because you wouldn't have this giant narcissistic wall of government money being forced out of the masses and into the hands of intellectuals so that they'll end up worshipping the state.
If I were to stand in front of people who had average or below average IQ, I would have to say...
Donate to me, right?
I mean and I hope that people do if they find what I'm doing valuable, but my challenge then is I have to say Okay, well what value can I provide to you if you have an IQ of 90 or 100?
If you have an IQ of that what value can I provide to you?
Well me delving into you know all the complexities of my theory of ethics or universally preferable behavior That wouldn't provide you I assume much value So what can I do to provide you value?
How can you take the very highest achievements of human intellect and translate them into something which provides value to people of average or below average intelligence?
That is a huge challenge.
And most intellectuals don't have to deal with that challenge because they're in universities or they're getting government grants or whatever.
But the real geniuses are the people who say, how can I take this very complicated computer, bits and bytes and burps and assembly code and machine language and all that, how can I take all of that and put it into something where people can play Pac-Man by swiping glass?
Right?
I mean, that's the huge engineering challenge.
And that's the same thing that is occurring, for at least what I'm trying to do in the realm of philosophy, is...
Make philosophy into a smartphone rather than something where you've got to hold wires together to call your friend, and he's the only other one who has a pseudophone.
So, Brandon, I think you're back at the moment, is that right?
Yep, he dropped off again.
All right.
Well, we're going to have to move on to the next caller, but thanks a lot for calling in.
All right.
Up next is Paul, and Paul called in a little while ago.
We had a debate about race and IQ. And Paul wrote in again and wanted to know, have you noticed in yourself or in others that when some people set a goal for themselves, they also create obstacles to make themselves fail?
And they do this, I think, because deep down they really don't want to achieve their goal and all the responsibility that comes along with it.
I think it's because it's easier and perhaps more gratifying to have tried and failed, therefore earning the right to complain about how fate is to blame for their own misfortunes.
Almost like an elaborate attempt to frame the universe.
This is essentially how fear of success manifests itself, I believe.
Would you agree?
And if so, why do you think humans do this?
That's from Paul.
Hmm.
Well, you've obviously put more thought into it than I have, which is not any kind of negative statement, but what's your theory or your theories?
I think that's just it.
It's this subliminal fear of having to deal with all the responsibilities that would come along with achieving whatever that goal may be.
Can you think of a more specific example for people?
Well, I think if you're trying to get from point A to point B and you find yourself taking all these random steps to get there, I realize this is not really any example.
It's almost like self-sabotage.
You take a path that underneath you subliminally know that it's not going to help you get there.
Instead, it's going to help you trip on yourself.
I run into this stuff with myself a lot more so when I was younger than in more recent times.
And it would become sort of evident to me if I were working on a computer problem And the computer would crash after having devoted like two hours into something and I didn't save it.
And then after I start over, I realized, well, you know, I really should just do it this way and just, you know, I could do it and I do it in like 10 minutes.
A really sort of small, small example.
But I think it applies...
Sort of on goals too, where you want to get to in life.
And I experienced something.
I think I had sort of the wake-up call when I was struggling financially.
And me and my family had to make some really tough choices.
And we were sort of in a situation where we were partially homeless.
And the clock was ticking really quickly to the point where we would be going from partially homeless to completely homeless.
And it was under that sort of stress that I realized, I just can't fool around.
I have to solve this problem.
It sort of forced me...
Sorry, can I just pause you for a sec there?
How did your family end up almost homeless?
Well, it's just a gradual decline of work.
Just a real sort of gradual decline.
But gradual is not an answer, because gradual means, and there's time to avert it, right?
Right, right.
I think I had some flaw in my thinking that things were going to turn around.
I've heard of a lot of entrepreneurs who have this problem where they devote their heart to their Capital.
They're all into something that they really believe in firmly.
And they're like, no, this thing's going to work.
This thing's going to work, right?
And it's this sort of denial of, you know, this isn't going to work.
And you really have to change direction if you really want to go somewhere.
I mean, ultimately, we basically almost hit rock bottom.
And it was in that moment that I had this sort of I'm sorry, but this wasn't your family like your parents.
This was you, your family.
That's right.
That's right, yeah.
Yeah, me and my wife and kids.
Holy crap, that's supposed to be pretty terrifying to your kids.
They're really small.
For them, I don't think they even remember it.
They were like three and five at the time.
No, it wasn't hard for them.
It was hard for my wife, that's for sure.
It was hard for me.
But we went through and in that period of high stress, I invented something.
I was able to produce a product and get ourselves out of that situation.
It's all basically a really nice happy ending to the whole saga.
But it was in that sort of high moment of stress and anxiety I just cannot fool around right now.
I have this many days left.
I have to reach the target right now.
I can't fool around.
I don't know.
I had that observation and I wonder if other people do this to themselves as well, where they just take a path that is just not going to get.
I think subliminally they know.
I think we know inside that It's not.
And I just posed the question because I was wondering, is it just me that thinks this?
I'm just curious if you had run into it.
Well, yeah, so there's two things around sort of self-sabotage versus do people operate better under stress?
Well, yeah.
Mild amounts of stress are very good for performance.
And so, yeah, people operate better with deadlines.
People operate better with a certain amount of stress.
Not...
It's not perpetual terror or whatever, but people do operate, you know, some of the, you know, when I want to grow the audience, when I sort of want to push through to do new things, I mean, I can't keep doing the same show over and over again.
I would get bored, and it would be sort of an insult to the listeners.
So I want to try new ways of doing things.
I want to try new ways of communicating.
We want to take risks with the show, and that keeps a sort of mild, a bit of anxiety, and is this going to work or whatever...
I think that's productive.
That's how things should be.
And so I think that when you're pushing the envelope, when you're trying to do new things, it also keeps the right kind of listeners around.
Because people who want to hear the same stuff over and over again would not be, I think, the kind of people who I'd want to talk to forever, right?
I mean, it's fine for a while.
But I know that we're constantly just like, now we're going this way.
Now we're going this way.
Here's something new.
Here's something different, you know.
And that's interesting and exciting for me.
I know that some listeners like it, some don't and so on.
And it's not like I'm only in this to please myself, but I certainly can't do a great show if I feel like I'm doing the same show over and over.
So I think that the challenge is always important.
And if you want to get better at anything, if you want to become a really great tennis player, you can't keep playing the same not good tennis player over and over again.
You have to continually be operating where you don't know if you're going to win or lose.
And so without possibility of failure, there is no excellence.
And I'm not an excellent walker because I can walk without falling down.
You know, easily.
Now when I was a kid learning how to walk, I had to really concentrate on it.
And so I don't really...
I have a chance of failing at walking, and I don't think there's anyone who sees me going down the street saying, that guy is an Olympic-class walker.
That's the best walking I've ever seen.
I envy that walking.
I wish I could be his inner thighs rubbing together as he walks, right?
I mean, nobody does that because it's just walking, right?
Why is Duke Nukem watching you walk down the street is what I want to know.
Duke Nukem watches me do everything.
Especially when I take a dump the size of Duke Nukem.
It echoes.
It reaches back up.
It grabs me.
It spins.
It pinatas.
And I'm stronger and better for it.
You should have the movie trailers on the side, Steph.
It is unflushable.
Duke Nukem is unflushable.
In a town where...
Anyway...
That's an old Janine Garofalo joke.
Every single trailer one summer was like, in a town where...
But...
So, you have to have the possibility of failure.
I mean, I do a certain amount of work before the shows, and sometimes it's scripted, but there's always tensions, but I always want to have the capacity of failing when I'm having a conversation.
Like, that's why I say, oh, am I right?
And I'm willing to, you know, push the envelope and talk about stuff other people don't want to talk about, because A, I think it's important and healthy and helpful, and B, there's the possibility of failure.
And And that's why comedians kind of have to tell new jokes, right?
Because the chicken across the road is not going to get you an amphitheater, right?
Because they have to have the possibility of failure.
And so I think it is really important.
You know, where there's no excellence, where there's no failure, there's no excellence, right?
I mean, you can't really fail on welfare.
You can't really fail in the post office.
Government unions can't really fail.
And so there's just no particular excellence.
And the American society is like, oh, man, people fall through the cracks.
It's like, yeah.
And that's why, because there are valleys, we have mountains in the West.
And...
I've read a book, gosh, not even the whole thing.
East minus West equals zero, which is basically if you take away all the stuff that the Soviet Union stole from the West through industrial espionage and through the Communist Party and through just a variety of subterfuges and subterranean channels, the Soviet Union basically invented nothing.
And if you look at the more socialist countries...
In Europe, I mean, the age of their innovation is done.
It's done in general.
And yeah, there are exceptions, but for the most part, the innovations are coming out of America.
America is still the economic engine that drives most progress.
And yes, the sort of Japanese and Chinese cultures are very efficient, but not quite as innovative.
They tend to be more photocopies than originals.
And so if you like new stuff that's cool, then you have to accept a society with a wider disparity between rich and poor and with a greater capacity for failure.
And you can eliminate that capacity for failure and you eliminate progress.
I mean, it's just the yin and yang of what it is to be alive.
If you eliminate failure in an organism, you prevent evolution.
And you end up with dysgenics, right?
Because the number of negative mutations or harmful mutations are far greater than those that are beneficial, right?
Like if you're blindfolded and spun around and then you throw basketballs across A basketball court at a hoop, you're going to have far more misses than hits.
And it's the same thing with genetics.
And so if you remove the capacity for failure from an organism, it immediately begins to decay.
It immediately, immediately does genetics kick in.
Now, I know that you can only take biological metaphors so far when it comes to the Free market.
I mean, you know, there's an old statement in if you're on 100% commission, you eat what you kill.
That's what it's called, right?
I mean, you got to kill something, you got to make a sale in order to have food.
But of course, if you lose in an economic competition, the winners don't get to eat you, right?
Unless it's the Hunger Games or something.
But we understand that biologically, if you remove selective pressures from a species, it immediately begins to decay, to fall apart, to lose its vigor and vitality.
And everybody in the universe wants everyone else to be competing madly, right?
I mean, to get your Obama phone, right?
You've got to have the competition in the...
In the free market, in the realm of cell phones and cell technology and wireless technology, that competition has to be fierce.
And so everybody wants everyone else to be competing fiercely.
To get the best music, you need really fierce competition among musicians.
To get the best movies, you really need fierce competition among movie makers.
You get the point, right?
And so everybody wants to consume things of extraordinary high quality, which means that they really want everyone else to be operating at the edge of their ability, they want everyone else to be competing fiercely, and they themselves wish to be excluded from that.
to compete fiercely.
Does that make sense?
Like everybody wants everyone else to produce fantastic, wonderful, amazing, cool things for them by competing fiercely with each other for that person's time, attention, and money.
But that person wishes to be excluded from that same fierce competition.
That is a universal human, I would assume, biological demand.
Does that sort of make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I, it never, The whole principle of the free market and how it is an engine of innovation never became clearer than that time in my life because it became personal.
You're like, I'm fucked, so brain… And the brain is like, oh, are we fucked?
Okay.
Here's the Mona Lisa.
Fine.
Creativity is like a wounded rat.
It only attacks when cornered.
Otherwise, it just runs away.
And do you know that old MacGyver statement that necessity is the mother of invention?
You never know how creative you can be until you're cornered, right?
That's right.
Yeah.
That reality is really important.
And there can be people who say, I don't want competition.
I don't want a free market.
It's okay, but then buy stuff from socialist countries.
That's your punishment.
Yeah.
Only consume government services.
You have to buy cars that were made in Russia in 1957.
You can't use anything that's been produced by fierce competition.
There's no such thing as American Idol where everyone gets a prize.
Nobody would watch that show.
And people love consuming all of the incredible stuff that comes out of incredibly fierce competition.
But then when they have to compete, they're like, why?
I don't want to.
It's like, I get it.
Of course you don't want to.
Of course you want the fruit of everyone else competing and you don't want to have to compete.
I mean, of course, the thief wants everyone else to have stuff so he can steal it, right?
He wants to have everyone else respect property rights so he can violate them.
That's the whole point.
We create these rules and then immediately...
We start to look for these exceptions.
That's just how the brain works.
And you've got kids, right?
So you know what that's like, right?
Like if you say, oh, I always do this.
Well, not always!
Right?
Oh, I really have to go to work right now.
Well, you don't have to.
You have to eat.
You have to breathe.
But you don't have to go to work.
You want to go to work, right?
And so every time you set up a rule with kids, they immediately will try and find the exception.
And that's human nature.
Because there's no better way of surviving than getting everyone else to follow rules that you yourself don't have to follow, i.e.
government, priesthood, monarchy, you know, all this sort of stuff, right?
Yeah, and so this is one by the by this is a reason why we can't have a government is that we are so incredibly well adapted to Creating rules and inflicting rules on others and then creating magical exceptions for ourselves that can never be talked about We're so good at doing that as a species.
It's so incredibly profitable It is such a fantastic way of flourishing as a species and That government just creates such a bottomless temptation to achieve that, that it simply can't be allowed to exist because it will always be used by this incredibly amazing capacity.
I mean, can you think of one with your kids?
I was just trying to think of one for mine where you set up a rule and then immediately they look for the exception.
Yeah.
I feel like they do that every day.
It's continual.
And it's instinctive.
I didn't have to train my daughter to do this.
She just immediately looks for...
The moment I say, you know, I have to really couch my stuff, like I have to basically run her through bell curves, right?
Because I say, well, you know, people are kind of like this.
Well, not everyone.
Right?
Yes, that's true.
Now what?
Right?
And so every time I have to say, well, you know, not everyone is like this, there's kind of a tendency and this and that.
And she's like, well, where is it on the bell curve?
I'm like...
But, you know, try this, you know, try this around your average six-year-old and say, well, all people do this.
Well, not everyone, right?
They're always looking for that exception to the rule.
And, of course, since government is a giant exception to the rule of virtue, this is why people are so good at manipulating government, because that's just, the genes that weren't really good at doing that could not compete against the ones that are.
So, I know that we've drifted a little bit.
To go back to your original question, self-sabotage?
I like self-sabotage.
I do.
I think self-sabotage is a wonderfully underrated aspect of human nature.
I do.
I think that self-sabotage is wonderful and should be encouraged as much as possible.
So, why is that?
Oh, self-sabotage is fantastic, because I want to, like, when I go and see, I don't know, let's see, a concert I saw a couple of years ago.
Colin James.
Great singer, great Canadian guitarist, and he's done a lot of different kinds of styles, right?
Now, I don't know anything about Colin James, right, other than he had a bad hairdo on Letterman years ago.
But I assume that there were a bunch of people who all liked playing guitar.
I mean, did you ever try and play an instrument?
Yeah.
I actually play the guitar.
You play the guitar?
Okay.
But you're not like a guitar god, right?
Right.
I mean, because you're on the show.
So, Colin James, there were lots of people who picked up guitars.
And I did.
I picked up guitar.
I took piano lessons when I was younger.
I played the violin for 10 years.
And as a musician, I make a really good philosophy podcaster.
That's, you know, that's where I should be, right?
Yeah.
And, you know, I went to the National Theatre School.
I wrote plays.
I acted and all that.
And as a playwright and an actor, again, I make a very good philosophy podcaster.
I'd had a lot more success in the business world, but I'm still happier and I think I'm better at this and it's more valuable.
So, was I self-sabotaging when I didn't play much guitar or didn't really...
I mean, I worked at it for a while.
I was like, man, this hurts my fingers.
I don't, you know, I don't have very long fingers.
Like, I don't have the Brian May full-on spider hands, you know, which I think are really helpful for playing guitar.
A lot of people who don't, right?
But self-sabotage is fantastic because you want that resistance, right?
You want that resistance in people.
Because otherwise, they'll be applying their abilities to something that they're not particularly motivated at or good at.
I mean, I almost think...
I almost think we should, as a society, encourage people to fail more.
Because what people are really good at and what really gets them motivated, which, by the by, is generally what's really the best for society.
Right?
So, for instance, like...
Let's...
There was...
Mindy Kaling, who's a comedian, she had a brother who passed himself off as black.
He's Indian, she's Indian.
He passed himself off as black and he went to a couple of years of medical school and then he dropped out, right?
Well, I wish he'd self-sabotaged his first day on medical school because then maybe they could have got someone else in who could have become a doctor, right?
So I think if you say to people, and not that you would, but if you say to people, as a guitarist, you're pretty bad, right?
It stinks, right?
But at the same time, Should you, I mean, again, unless you just take sort of innate pleasure in playing guitar, fine, or whatever, or you want to be that guy who pulls out a guitar at every party until people beat you to death with your own guitar, because it's like, we want to chat!
I can't do any more Van Morrison.
Again, you can't make me!
But you want to encourage people to not do things, because then if they really push through, boy, they're committed, right?
Mm-hmm.
And so self-sabotage, yeah, I think it's great.
Like, I remember going out with a girl many years ago who was terrible at exams.
You know, she'd, like, every time there was, she just would freak out and her mind would go blank and this and that.
It's like, well, you shouldn't be in school then because school is a whole lot of exams, right, in college.
Yeah.
And, you know, if she was studying engineering and it's like, I think engineering can be kind of stressful because, you know, stuff's got to stay up and not kill people.
And if you're freaked out about exams, I don't know how good at building bridges that are supposed to keep trucks and ships not together, right, to keep them apart.
I think it's good.
Like, so is that self-sabotage that needs to be overcome?
No, I'd say she's going in the wrong direction.
You know, to me, you've probably had this thing where you're, before GPS's, right?
I used to be in business, even before you could get, like, I don't know, there was some Microsoft product, MapQuest or something, that you could, before even that.
And you'd have to, like, get these paper maps, purties and stuff, right?
And you'd have to go and buy, you're going to Philly for a business meeting, you've got to go and buy the map for Philly, and then you've got to figure out how you're going to get there and all.
And I'd be driving, looking for a building, and I'd get this uneasy feeling that I'd gone too far, right?
Now, am I self-sabotaging?
No.
I should turn around or stop or ask for directions.
That uneasy feeling that you're not doing the right thing is important.
It's not trying to screw you up.
It's trying to help you, right?
So this woman who was studying engineering, I don't know if she ever became an engineer or it doesn't matter, but the idea is like, well, I have this I'm inhibition.
I'm self-sabotaging.
It's like, well, no, maybe you just would be a bad engineer.
Maybe you don't really like it.
Maybe it's not really your thing.
Maybe whatever, right?
In which case, you should listen to yourself, like self-sabotage for a reason, right?
Which is, you may be heading in the wrong direction.
I think self-sabotage should really be encouraged.
Really be encouraged among people.
No, that's bad.
Oh, that's terrible.
Oh, man, that song you wrote, you know, like in that Tina Turner movie when Ike Turner's writing a bunch of songs and she's like, man, they all sound the same.
I mean, it's just not good music.
Sorry.
I wish that more bands had managers who said, oh, man, this is terrible.
Like, you should just stop whatever you're doing.
Remember Joshua Tree?
That was a good album.
What you're doing now?
I don't even know, right?
But I think that pushing back against what people want to do is very helpful because a lot of people want to do stuff for not the right reasons.
Not because they're internally or intrinsically motivated.
But because they think it'll make them a lot of money, or they think it's cool, or this is what their parents are encouraging them to do, or whatever, right?
And I don't know, self-sabotage, unless you're just pathologically full of self-hatred, in which case, you know, obviously, major therapy and all that is probably the way to go.
But no, I think that more people should be told that they suck at stuff.
Sorry, go ahead.
So, what about fear of success?
Have you thought about that?
That means that you should not aim at that kind of success properly, right?
You know, like, I'm sorry to interrupt.
I even used this scene in my novel, The God of Atheists, and I won't go into it, but I also pointed out that it was a cliched scene.
You know the scene where the person is up on stage for the first time?
And they've practiced, and they've got the microphone, and they're going to sing, and they don't know if they'll be able to sing, and they don't know if the words will come out, and then they break through, right?
And everyone has this fantasy.
Like, I'm terrified of doing something, but if I just, I get up there, I say, whoa, right?
But, you know, I would like to present the court with exhibit A, which is Kelly Clarkson's American Idol audition, right?
She just played Toronto last night, and...
Very charismatic woman.
What an unbelievable set of vocal chords she has.
Like, I'm glad the baby gave her back her voice, because she is just like God's gift to humiliate mediocre singers like myself.
But she's, you know, she's written her own songs.
She's made a fortune.
She's married to Reba McIntyre's son, I think.
And she's very charismatic.
She's very emotionally open.
She actually started crying during one of the songs.
The compassion is fantastic.
And that's great.
Now, if you watch her initial audition, she's hilarious.
I mean, she's like...
I don't know if she ended up sitting in Randy's lap or pretending that she was going to take over the session or whatever.
And I haven't in forever.
But I bet you if I went back and listened to some of my very early shows, I wouldn't be like, oh, those are terrible, right?
I'd be like, oh, man, that's pretty good.
I can see why people started listening.
That makes sense to me, right?
And so Kelly Clarkson, I don't think she ever...
I mean, I'm not saying she was never nervous.
Of course she was and probably still is and so on.
But she wasn't like this sweat-laced moment of, can I even go on?
Or Catherine McPhee sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow, a beautiful, beautiful performance on one of the American Idol shows.
And the piano started off wrong or too quiet.
She just basically had to start without...
The piano accompaniment, hoping that she was in the right key, hoping it was going to work out and all that.
That's pretty tough.
You know, one of the biggest speeches I've given so far was at the next web conference.
I lost my speech.
I lost my whole speech.
I had the whole, like, bullet points all written down, things I wanted to hit.
I mean, I lost a speech somewhere in the morning.
Put it down somewhere.
Someone moved.
I put it down somewhere.
Someone must have picked it up thinking it was theirs or whatever.
In the washroom, I think.
So it's like, okay, well, I'll just go do the speech.
You know what I mean?
Like, I wasn't like...
I've lost my speech.
What am I going to do?
And I get up there and I'm paralyzed and I'm sitting there for three minutes and people are like, whoa, is he going to say something?
That's just not how it works.
And so...
As far as self-sabotage and paralysis, so people love the scenes where people are terrified and then they break through and it's all perfect after that, right?
Because they fantasize that there's just this moment and then you just break through and then everything's great.
But, you know, if you're really scared of doing something, if you really don't want to do something, there may be a pretty...
There may be a good reason for that, which is the unease that you've driven past the address you're looking for and you shouldn't just push through it.
You should sort of stop and circle around and say, do I even want to be heading this way at all?
Yeah.
I just think it must be a natural nervousness that's part of the human condition that you would much rather be, most people would much rather be a follower than a leader, you know, because one of them has a lot more responsibility than the other.
What do you mean people would rather be a, no, they want the pay of the leader and they want the ease of life of a follower.
Right?
I mean, that's the same thing that everybody else wants.
They want everyone else to compete, but they don't want to compete.
Right?
And so everybody wants to...
Like, they look at the CEO and they say, man, that guy made $5 million last year, right?
I want that $5 million.
It's like, yeah, I bet you do.
A, do you have the capacity to do it?
And B, do you have the will to do it?
Right?
Because those guys make a huge amount of money after they put in 20 hours Sorry, 20 years of 80-hour work weeks, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you don't just, I mean, for the most part, you don't pop up and just become a CEO, right?
I mean, I've, in the business world, like I've been around some people, oh man, like just brilliant.
Just like, I gotta write down everything you're saying, right?
I mean, people who come in and look at your business plan or look and just say, boom, boom, boom, right?
And you're like, wow, you just saved me like a year of my life and possibly saved this business in five fucking minutes.
I mean, wow!
That's great!
And what's that worth?
Business working versus not working, because somebody spent five minutes telling you something.
It's worth a lot of money, right?
And those people are very...
Rare, and they're really worth it, right?
And, you know, it's like the movie stars or whatever, right?
I mean, you know, you could save a lot of money hiring your gardener to be the front man of your band, even if he can't sing, and is 80.
But, you know, we want the resources to go to the people who most want it, who are best at it.
And so self-sabotage seems to be like an entirely great idea.
Because we'd all be rock stars.
We'd all be, you know what I mean?
Like, we'd all win the lottery.
I don't know, that's not really a skill-based thing.
But we'd all want stuff that we may not be that great at.
I mean, how many people go, I mean, lots of people go to a concert and say, wow, I'd love to be up there on stage, right?
But they're probably not suited for it.
They're probably not great at it.
They're probably not...
It's going to be a waste of resources for them to try and pursue it.
So I think self-sabotage is a very noble and healthy part of the ecosystem of how to get things done efficiently in a society.
Yeah, and I think that the kind of sabotage that I was observing is one where person A has all the skills and abilities to be able to achieve this great thing.
Maybe it's a singer or a comedian.
You know, just pick any comedian.
Let's say that instead of having said the jokes that they said, they had taken a path that was really not well suited for them.
And it turned them into a lousy comedian because they took that path.
So it's almost like I can get to my destination and I'm going to pick the path with the pothole between me and the destination.
Why would anybody do that?
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
You see the abstractions and I generally want concrete examples.
No, I wish I'd prepared a little better.
You say someone has the ability to be a great comedian, except they fail at being a great comedian.
Well then, by definition, they don't have the ability to be a great comedian, right?
Yeah.
I mean, if you've ever been to Amateur Hour, there are some people whose skills would, let's just say, best be applied elsewhere.
Okay, let me give you this example.
Let's say somebody is a great comedian, and they're already great.
They've really worked on their skills, but in order for them to really make a living off of it, They would have to really get themselves exposed in a big way.
And all of a sudden, an opportunity opens up where that will be possible.
So they have this opportunity that's opened up to put them in the limelight, so to speak.
And for whatever reason, they come up with some way to intellectualize why this would be a bad idea.
But in fact, this would be the thing that they really need to do in order to take themselves to that next place.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Who's to say that next place is good for them?
Or what's really right?
Well, sure.
That's a question in and of itself.
But what if they do want to achieve that sort of, I want to be a famous comedian, and I want to be a wealthy comedian?
What if that is part of their aspiration?
Aspiration, I get that, for sure.
I get that, but...
Who's to say that that's the best thing for them?
Sure, yeah.
I mean, listen, I don't know if you've spent any time around comedians.
Not always the happiest people in the world, but it is possible, right?
And let's say that they become very famous, right?
And very rich.
Maybe they'll flame out.
Maybe they don't have a social support system.
Maybe they're too needy.
Maybe they're not narcissistic enough to survive that kind of thing, right?
I don't know if you've spent any time in the public eye, but it's a bit freaky.
Sure, yeah.
It's a little freaky, even in my own minor way.
A little bit in the public eye.
The public eye kind of doesn't blink very much.
It's kind of bloodshot and, you know, it turns red on a full moon.
So maybe, you know, maybe there's a part of them that's like, why would you want to be out?
Like most celebrities are, as far as I understand it, have been remote diagnosed as narcissists.
So could it be then that maybe this profound survival instinct is where this fear of, you know, quote-unquote success comes from, like the modern...
No, no, it's not fear of success.
It's not fear of success.
Listen, I'll tell you this.
Let's say somebody called me up tomorrow and said, Steph, we want you to do a primetime television show, right?
Uh-huh.
Now, would you think that I would be interested in that or excited by that?
That's a good question.
I mean, only you could answer it.
I would assume so, because it would give you a much bigger platform, right?
Absolutely, it would give me a much bigger platform.
I'd get to talk to a lot more people.
No question.
So, if I backed away from something like that, or I rejected something like that, would this fall into your category of a fear of success?
So, explain again, what was the offer that was placed?
Steph, we want to put you, I don't know, on C... I don't know who's...
I don't even know who's big in television these days.
I mean, Fox or whatever, right?
I think Fox is number one of the...
We're going to give you your own primetime TV show.
You can do anything you want, any guest you want.
We're going to build you a million-dollar set, and we're going to broadcast you into millions of homes across...
Tens of millions of homes across the world, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Now, if I said no to that, would this fall into your category of a fear of success?
Well, I guess it would depend on why you're saying no.
You know, it would fall in my category if you actually wanted something like that, but still said no.
So, Mike, if I got that offer and I was on my way to say yes to it and you were in the room, what would happen?
Well, you know, I was guaranteed in the no position.
Then you're like, primetime on Fox, there's a devilish pull.
There really is, but the answer is no.
No, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, I tell you, I am perfectly happy with the show the way that it is.
More money, more problems, right?
Philosophers don't do very well in the public eye.
Because the better a philosopher you are, the more you harm the interests of more people in society, right?
But sorry, you were going to say?
Did you ever, when you were embarking on the venture that you're currently on with Free Domain Radio, was there ever a lingering concern about putting yourself into the public eye the way you have?
A lingering concern?
Why, yes, there was more than a lingering concern.
So there was a little fear, a little hesitation, yeah, right?
Because I would define what you have as success.
I'm doing everything I want at the level that I want to do it at.
Yeah, you can't get more successful than that, right?
That's what I mean.
So, do I have a fear of success?
I think a desire for self-preservation probably has something to do with it, right?
You know who was a really famous philosopher?
Socrates!
Everybody knows his name, right?
You don't want that cheers opening, right?
You don't want to be the philosopher where everybody knows your name.
You don't want to be that guy.
Unless you're spouting the party line as a whole.
No.
The well-known philosophers are usually the ones with pennies on their eyes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's true.
If someone were to jump off the Empire State Building tomorrow, when they finish doing the chalk outline, everyone would know his name for a day, but it's not a good thing.
Yeah, I mean, look, and as a philosopher, you're allowed one quirk card in general, like if you're a philosopher, right?
You're allowed, like, you get one quirk card, use it wisely, right?
It's your one get-out-of-jail-free card, you get one.
So, like, you can be Richard Dawkins and you can be the atheist guy, right?
So you can be as conventional and conservative and mainstream in every other, but you're allowed one, okay, he's the atheist guy, right?
You get that, right?
Or you can be like J.R.R. Tolkien, who's mainstream and everything, but kind of like an anarchist, right?
So you get one thing.
You get one card that you're allowed to play.
Unfortunately, I'm playing with a full deck of cards that nobody wants me to have, right?
Let's talk about race.
Let's talk about the fallen tree family.
Let's talk about atheism.
Let's talk about no government.
I mean, it's like it just goes on and on, right?
And because people will...
It's like...
I'm trying to think of a good way of putting it.
It's like they'll accept one crazy card from you from their perception, right?
They'll accept one crazy card from you.
You start playing with two or three or four...
People get very, very aggressive, right?
Because they'll run away...
Like atheists, right?
You push back their crazy, or they've had their crazy pushed back from religion, and where does it run to?
It runs to the government.
And then you say, well, you know, government's no good, right?
And then maybe it runs to their family.
You say, well, you've got to judge the family morally and objectively and this and that and the other.
Like crazy...
We'll fuck you up when cornered.
And this show does not let your crazy go, like, run anywhere.
We will corner your crazy and we will take it out back and we will put a fucking bullet in its head.
Sorry, that's just the way the show runs.
Or we'll coax it into eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and rationale, whatever metaphor you want to do, right?
Mm-hmm.
Or, you know, radical feminism or socialism.
People's irrational insanity always needs a place to run.
And if it's blocked here, it's like water, you know?
If it's blocked, it just runs somewhere else, right?
I don't believe in Jesus, but ghosts are real, right?
Oh, did they disprove the Loch Ness Monster?
Oh, is that me being subducted by an alien?
I think it is, right?
And so, like on the left, they're like, oh, you know, like we're doing the truth about Bernie Sanders.
And it's like, well, he wants to reduce the military.
That sounds like a good plan to me.
Oh, wait, no.
Because he's a socialist, then he wants massive amounts of government spending and worker control of the industries and so on, right?
And, of course, people say, well, are you in favor or not in favor of workers' control of industries?
It's like, I don't know.
I don't want anyone using guns to achieve whatever they want.
Is that okay?
You know?
Are you in favor of going to the Olive Garden for a date?
I don't know.
I just don't like rape.
But, like, whatever you want to do when you're not raping is your business.
Fantastic.
You know, less rapey.
Maybe that includes Olive Garden.
I don't know.
But, you know, if you want to start a business, then don't ask me.
Start the damn business.
Give workers control of it and, you know, tell me how it goes.
I didn't know.
Don't ask me.
But...
I just want to say, worst Olive Garden commercial ever.
That's right.
That's right.
More Olive Garden.
I thought the other day, Mike, whatever happened to that?
I did this little thing on Coke, how good Coke was when I was a teenager.
I think we put that out somewhere.
Put that out somewhere.
Soda, not cocaine.
I can't imagine why our show's not bigger, Mike.
I think we put that out somewhere.
That was a long time ago.
I'm thirsty again.
Anyway.
Mike, what did we do with this one random show in the middle of 3,000 shows?
That was six months ago.
Mike, they're all random.
But anyway.
So this idea that...
You know, they put me on TV, and I'm going to have all this production quality, and I'm going to just, oh, just you're crazy to run to religion?
Okay, we'll take apart religion.
Oh, does it now run to the state?
Okay, we're going to take apart the state.
Oh, does it run to environmentalism?
Let's take apart environmentalism.
Oh, does it run?
And eventually, the crazy genes in people which want to survive and not get wiped out, they'll just turn and they would fuck me up.
Guaranteed.
Guaranteed.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think this is great.
You know, humanity cornered, insanity cornered, which is pretty much a synonym these days, but human insanity cornered will make you hate the human race, right?
You've got to give, you know, there's this Oriental thing or this, I think it's in Japan in particular, this saving face, right?
Face saving, right?
Mm-hmm.
Right now, it's so early in training human beings to be even remotely rational that you have to give insanity the capacity to save face.
It's the only way to live among human beings and think that you're among remotely civilized people is to not corner them.
Because when you corner them, they reveal such unbelievable pre-medieval ugliness.
That you literally probably couldn't even get out of bed.
It's just willed ignorance of the true nature of the people around you that you have to give their out a crazy and out.
Otherwise, it's full frontal, right?
I mean, you know, if the demon can hop from body to body, then it's not going to turn and fight.
But if it's in the last body it can go to and you've got it cornered, well, you're in for a very ugly time of it.
And so, no, I would not...
Hey, you want a TV show?
I really don't.
I really...
This is exactly the right way for me to do it.
This is right for philosophy.
It's not cornering people.
There's too many bodies of philosophers throughout history.
I know where it leads when you corner crazy.
You've just got to plant the seeds, right?
But it's not pretty.
When you strip away...
I don't know if you've ever had this with someone where you sort of relentlessly...
Or, I shouldn't say relentlessly, that sounds really sort of cruel or whatever, but you...
When you...
I'm trying...
There's a good word for it.
Give me just a second and it'll come to me.
Persistently.
You persistently undo their defenses.
Or you persistently undo their lies.
Or you persistently undo their excuses.
Right?
Right.
I don't know if you've ever done that with someone.
And if you have, do you know when you get to that last one, what happens?
Well, they get very upset.
And they just want to not continue to take.
Well, I've never had an instance where it became violent.
You would lose that friendship, potentially.
But they'd get very aggressive, right?
It doesn't mean that they beat you up or anything like that.
I get that.
But they would usually...
When you keep peeling back people's defenses, you get to a core trauma that is the fight or flight that all of the bullshit and all of the language and all of the superstructures that we build, whether it's religion or nationalism or whatever it is.
When you peel all that stuff away, there's a core trauma in people.
That they have to want to deal with themselves.
If you just peel that away and then you touch that raw trauma in people, they explode in rage.
And that has been my sort of consistent and persistent experience throughout the years.
And, you know, I know enough of it.
It's not everyone, right?
But it doesn't have to be everyone, right?
And if you just keep peeling layers away...
What happens is people's lack of identity becomes clear to them, and they experience a death panic, like a non-existence panic.
And they lash out at you like you're attacking them with a weapon, because you're attacking them with the weapon of reason, which shows the non-existence of irrationality at the core of their trauma, and they just erupt.
And can you imagine?
I mean, what advertiser would want to be on this show?
I mean, anybody who offered me a TV show, you know, as that old Groucho, I wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have me as a member.
Anybody whose business judgment thought it would be a great idea to hand a television show to me would be somebody whose business judgment would be so bad, right, that I wouldn't want to do business with them.
Steph, do you want to hear modeling contracts?
I don't know, but I sure as hell don't want to do business with you if you think I'm a good candidate for a hair modeling contract other than the before of the hair clump for men picture.
Yeah.
So, I mean, as far as, like, fear of success or anxiety about success or whatever, I don't know, a lot of successful people aren't happy.
Right, right.
So, it's not necessarily like, well, you've got to reach the pinnacle of success, and if you don't, you know, that's a failure, that's a problem, that's like, no, no.
My goal is not to reach the maximum of success.
My goal is to reach the maximum of happiness.
And I can't picture being happier doing something else other than what I'm doing at the moment, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
I can certainly see how it could go bad, but the idea that that would be a big step up and forward and that's got to be the inevitable next thing is like, nope.
I don't think it does.
Yeah.
Yeah, it makes sense.
I mean, obviously, you're, you know, far more advanced from a maturity level than, say, someone who's just entering their career like a 20-year-old or someone in their late teens.
And I think some of that lack of maturity that you obviously already have, because you have the experience, you have the years, when it's not present in a younger individual, they may be more prone to make the wrong choices, you know, like take the show that was offered to them, when in the end that doesn't really lead to the success that they really wanted or the happiness that they really wanted.
Yeah, I mean, you know who had great hair?
James Dean.
Mm-hmm.
Great head of hair.
I don't know if you've ever seen...
You've probably seen pictures, right?
Yeah.
I mean, great hair, right?
And, you know, probably when he was growing up, other kids around were like, wow, it's a good-looking guy.
He's got great hair.
And so he became a movie star and he drove really fast and he died.
So great hair.
Bye.
I don't know.
Did you, when you were growing up in high school, were there like really, really, I guess there were, there's always one, right?
Or maybe more than one, really attractive, like sexy as hell woman, right?
Sure, yeah.
And of course, everyone else is like, wow, I wish I were that good looking, right?
Well, I'm sure, yeah, that's probably what all the other women were thinking, yeah.
Yeah, and I don't know.
I mean, from my experience, that doesn't go too well a lot of times.
True.
You know, envy is the fantasy that an accidental attribute would make you happy forever, right?
And I just don't...
I remember Sting from the police.
He said that the best time was somewhere between the van and the private jet.
Right?
So when they were doing the van, it was hard and they were broke and all this kind of stuff.
And he said somewhere between the best time to be in the police and to be in that van was between...
The van and the private jet.
The private jet sucked and the van sucked.
Somewhere in between was a great time.
So would you say that maybe our definition as a culture of success is warped and twisted and overall sort of ill-advised?
I don't know.
I mean, I'm just saying, I don't know.
But I would say that you saying that people who don't go all the way according to money or fame or whatever, that they may be wiser.
You know, if John Lennon was a less successful musician, he'd probably still be alive today.
You know, it's what Sharon Stone said about fame.
She says, you think it's feeding you, but it's eating you.
I think she's a very smart cookie, and there's a reason she's not been much in the public eye.
When you're in the public eye, everybody projects all their shit onto you, and you've got to be very strong or completely narcissistic and not notice the existence of other people, so to speak, in order to survive that.
It's sort of interesting.
The more you're in the public eye, the more of a conformist you have to be.
I mean, it just is because if you're in the public eye and you put one foot wrong or you offend one person or you...
I mean, obviously, a little bit of that's going to be allowed.
But if you do something to upset, you know, one of the sort of precious baby groups in society, man, I mean...
Donald Trump, you know what?
People just go mental on you.
Now, of course, he's got 10 billion dollars of, I don't give much of a crap.
Frankly, my dear media, I don't give a damn.
But yeah, I mean, you have to be that wealthy to be able to say even mildly unpalatable truths.
Like, you know, some people who come into the country illegally are contributing to significant amounts of crime, right?
So I think just in Off the top of my head, I think it was just in Texas, over the past certain, I can't remember, 10 years or whatever, there have been like 3,000 murders committed by illegal immigrants.
Well, America went to war for about that number of dead on 9-11.
But you can't mention this, right?
Because it annoys people, it annoys people who want the democratically reliable Hispanic voting base and so on, and people just go mental on you.
Now, I mean, he's, what, 68, 69 years old?
He's got $10 billion.
What does he care, right?
He can go and all that, right?
But, and think of the amount of truth-telling that I would bring to bear on social conversations as opposed to just a couple of tiny, relatively tiny, philosophically little things that Trump is talking about.
I mean, forget it.
I'm not going to invade and take the town.
I'm going to shoot a couple of fireworks out and say, out here in the woods is a party.
People want to come?
Great.
But to go into town?
No.
No thanks.
Well, you're doing a great job of it, Stefan.
You've obviously had an effect on a lot of people's lives.
I've listened to your show for a while now to know that that's the case.
By all measures, I think you've achieved a lot of success in your field.
I salute you, and I hope that you continue doing it.
I appreciate that.
I don't For me, my measurement is also not Greta van Susteren or whatever, right?
I mean, that's not what I'm measuring because she's not a philosopher, right?
My measure is other philosophers and the degree to which other philosophers are influencing people's lives.
Well...
For the better.
Obviously, there are people out there doing great work and so on.
I think I stand pretty firm and tall with the best of them.
And that's my goal.
And, of course, this is the kind of work that goes on and on, right, long after I'm dead, right?
People are still talking about the Socratic method 25 years after he was killed for being a concern troll from infinity.
And so...
This, you know, you plant your seeds, this crop is going to grow forever.
You know, this stuff and people are going to be debating this stuff forever.
And, you know, there's nothing, you know, haste makes waste.
It was something I really remember as a kid.
kid and if you're in too much of a hurry you don't achieve what you want and what i want is to sow the seeds i know it's going to be multi-generational change and uh and it's fundamentally not up to me right i mean if you if you start a charismatically driven leader central movement then you can affect change through sophistry proselytizing and bullying but since i have no desire i would view the starting of any kind of charismatically driven movement to be the exact opposite of philosophy
Think for yourself by following me.
Go your own way by getting in line.
That's not how it works, right?
Yeah.
And so, yeah, just encouragement and all of that is the way to go.
And clarity and all that, it's...
These ripples never stop spreading in the ocean of human thought.
And so just being patient.
It's always earlier than you think, as the old saying about revolutions go.
So no, I'm completely happy and content doing what I'm doing because I think that I am...
I think a lot of...
The show reaches a lot of those people, and those are the people I want to talk to.
Most other people, their, quote, belief systems are just tripwires attached to landmines that only take you out.
And the idea that I'd want to dance through that minefield would be, that to me would be, it would be self-sabotage to take a television show.
Yep, yep.
Way to bring it around Circle.
Good job.
Thank you, Stefan.
I really appreciate you taking the call.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
And thank you everyone so much for listening, for calling in, for supporting the show.
And you can go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us.
Donation request pitch.
This week I'd like Duke Nukem if you could, since he came up earlier in the show.
Duke Nukem.
All right.
All right.
Duke Nukem.
How would Duke Nukem get you today to philosophy?
Is he going to talk about walking you or watching you walk down the street with your thighs chafing?
Is that how he's going to go?
No, he would not.
All right.
Freedom Aid Radio listeners, this is Duke Nukem.
I don't want you first and foremost to mistake me for your conscience.
I am not your conscience.
I am Duke Nukem.
I'm too pixelated to have a conscience.
So, these are your balls, talking.
And, even if you're a woman, you can have these balls.
They're eggs, they hang drop, like egg drop soup.
Basically, it's like egg drop soup.
I'm a Chinese chef, but not your conscience.
I'm confusing myself, because I'm mostly pretty and muscular.
I've spent a lot of time in the gym, not much time reading.
So this is Duke Nukem saying, if you like philosophy, and I don't know what philosophy is, but I hear you can hit it with a rocket launcher, so I like it already.
If you like philosophy and you want me to load up rockets and hit philosophy with this rocket launcher, and by rocket launcher, I mean my penis, then I really need you to go to freedominradio.com slash donate so that I can load up my penis and shoot it at this thing called philosophy.
Because I have an entire vat of my own personal Juergens lotion that I've got to put somewhere.
And I hear that painting the face of philosophy with your money is the way to go.
freedomainradio.com slash donate.
People are either going to donate or never donate again.
Personal Juergens.
I think we've got the name for the show.
Paint the face of philosophy with your own personal Juergens.
I was waiting for him to go off on breastfeeding like the last time, but he didn't just go around.
That's okay.
He's rocket launchers.
I'm back.
Well, yeah.
Thanks, everyone, so much.
We'll talk to you Wednesday night.
Yeah, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
