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Aug. 7, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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3044 My Ghost Mafia Will F!#k You Up! - Call In Show - August 5th, 2015

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	Good Eva, Eva evening.
	Everybody hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Mullaney from Free Domain Radio.
	This beautiful, beautiful night.
	August the 5th, 2015.
	And yeah, you might want to check out 15 Reasons to Date a Single Mother.
	One of the more enjoyably concentrated rebuttals I guess I've done recently.
	Thanks to everyone who's watching my chat with Peter Schiff.
	Always entertaining and enlightening to chat with the big P. Other than that, of course, please like, share, subscribe, and donate.
	As usual, the request goes out, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	You see?
	I was chatting with a friend of mine tonight in the financial industry, and yeah, Canada looks like it's heading recessionward.
	Oh, the Canadian dollar just plummeted.
	Well, yeah.
	See, I mean, I remember being in the business world.
	You get this giant subsidy.
	You can suck at business in Canada and still make some money.
	You just have to hope that the U.S. dollar stays strong relative to the Canadian dollar, right?
	Because you get this giant subsidy.
	One of the big problems in Canada is that manufacturing is competitive in Canada as long as the loonie is weak.
	When the U.S. dollar loses value relative to the Canadian dollar, suddenly you need skills to make money in Canadian business.
	Like, wait a minute, I'm not just getting some giant subsidy because I eat donuts and say the word, eh?
	And it's about time.
	We've got a good business plan.
	Yeah, it's tough for Canadian businesses when they actually have to compete on parity or close to parity with the U.S. dollar.
	That, of course, happened last year, a year and a half ago.
	So, Canadian dollar was trading at parity, which hadn't happened in, well, a year full of donkeys or a donkey full of years or something like that.
	And so, yeah, now you're just not getting this massive, terrible financial policy subsidy from a weak U.S. dollar and it's tough for Canadian businesses.
	Yeah, they're hitting into recession.
	So, as always, you know, one of the things that I always dreamed of in my life as a whole, I said to myself, self, enough of this easy money of working for a living and being an entrepreneur.
	You know what you want to do?
	You want to start the most risky, controversial, volatile show in human history, but make sure you do it.
	Right around the same time as there's the biggest economic depression since the 1930s.
	You want to combine extremely high risk with incredibly adverse circumstances because otherwise, I mean, it's just not fun.
	It's just not fun.
	And of course, this show basically really started cooking in 08 and at the same time...
	I don't just want to be a tightrope walker.
	I want to have a pool full of sharks underneath me instead of a net.
	And javelins being thrown at me, and so on, and so on, and so on.
	So yeah, I mean, it's been exciting, to put it mildly, to have started this philosophical conversation during a time of enormous downward pressure on the economy.
	Downward pressure on the economy, similar to getting your hand stuck in a vice, you know, where there's lateral pressure on what's left of your metacarpals.
	And she's squished!
	So yeah, if you can help out, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	We need you more than ever, and the show's success is entirely floating on the updraft of your kindness, support, and generosity.
	If you have no money, please remember to like, subscribe, share, encourage other people to listen to the show, and maybe you've got some friends with some money.
	We don't care where it comes from, as long as we get enough to survive and thrive.
	So, thanks everyone so much, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	And, let's move on with the show.
	Alright, well Matthew is up first today.
	And Matthew wrote in and said, I've recently come out as an atheist to my granddad, who's a Presbyterian.
	We had a discussion over breakfast where he told me why he believes in God.
	He says that if God did not exist, I would just be right and that's it, nothing else.
	Then he reasoned that if God did exist, it would be better to believe, worship, pray, etc., so that I would be accepted by God and welcomed into heaven and the like.
	His reasoning comes down to living a lie, i.e.
	being religious with no God, or not living a truth, i.e.
	being atheist and there is a God.
	And that I might as well believe in God, worship God, etc.
	Is this a good, valid argument that my granddad proposed?
	It is a terrible argument.
	I mean, and it's an old argument.
	It was first, I think, was first proposed or at least formalized by Blaise Pascal in the 18th century.
	And it's actually called Pascal's Wager.
	And it goes something like this.
	Ah, you know, let's say that you don't believe in God.
	Let's say that you do believe in God, but there turns out to be no God.
	What if you lost?
	You know, you've gone to see some nice hymns.
	You got exhorted morally by a preacher to be a better person.
	You got up maybe a little bit earlier on Sundays than you would have.
	And then you die.
	It's not been...
	Tea and cake sometimes there.
	So, you haven't really lost much.
	If you believe in God, go to church, pray, and it turns out that there's no God, you haven't really lost much.
	On the other hand, if there is a God and you don't believe in Him, then, wow, you could go to hell for eternity.
	So that's, you know, maybe you don't have to give a little bit of money to the church.
	Maybe you get to sleep in a bit on Sundays.
	But, you know, everlasting rotisserie of God's displeasure, scolding your soul from here to kingdom come, is not such a great thing.
	So, you know, it's just way the odds, way the pluses, way the minuses.
	It's just way better to believe.
	Is that sort of where he's coming from?
	Yeah, that's how he reasoned with me.
	Like, my basis on why I don't believe in God is because it doesn't, you know, pass the first step of the scientific method, which is to, you know, it's observable, you can feel it, you know, it's repeatable.
	I mean, it just, you know, God doesn't really fall under that.
	It doesn't really.
	Oh, it does not.
	Yeah, no, I mean, according to the scientific...
	Any measurement that say two standard deviations are from the expected results has effectively disproven the thesis.
	Climate change.
	But yeah, it's not a rational construct.
	And it is a terrible argument.
	And it only seems non-terrible to people because they already believe in God.
	Yeah.
	I would see why.
	And I'm going to assume that you don't mind some mildly salty language?
	No, go ahead.
	Because they call it Pascal's Wager, but it's not really a very accurate way of describing it.
	I would not call it Pascal's Wager.
	I would call it, my ghost mafia will fuck you up.
	Because you could say that, right?
	You could go anywhere and you could say to someone, listen, you give me 20 bucks or my ghost mafia will fuck you up.
	They will set fire to your house.
	They will give your children spots.
	They will steal your hair.
	My ghost mafia will fuck you up.
	Now, maybe you don't believe in my ghost mafia, but you've got to ask yourself, are you feeling lucky?
	You've got to ask yourself.
	It's just 20 minutes, man.
	It's just 20 minutes.
	It's 20 bucks.
	Sorry, it's just 20 bucks.
	20 bucks!
	Do you really want to risk whether my ghost mafia is real and might really fuck you up?
	You really want to take that risk?
	Whereas for 20 bucks, you can buy yourself peace of mind from my ghost mafia.
	And now, of course, sensible people say, A, you're crazy.
	And B, that's just like a protection racket when the enforcers aren't even there.
	And that's only going to appeal to really paranoid, crazy people who you're now taking advantage of and preying upon.
	But this is even worse because, of course, this is considered to be some sort of moral exhortation as well.
	And there's no fraud that you couldn't perpetrate on people using that exact same argument.
	All you have to do is you have to make the costs far less than the punishments.
	And if the costs are far less than the punishments...
	Then you should pay the costs because the punishments, right?
	And so forget about the God thing.
	I mean, what could you not convince people to believe in, you know?
	I mean, what if Hitler was the second coming of Jesus?
	Yes, we have a show time.
	What if Hitler was the second coming of Jesus?
	You can't disprove it.
	And what if Hitler was the second coming of Jesus and he was come back to smack the Jews into eternity for their complicity in the nailing up of Jesus 1.0?
	And what if now you have to go and praise Hitler, and you have to go and say what a wonderful guy he is, and you have to get a swastika tattooed on your forehead?
	Okay, it's going to cost you some.
	You might not get a lot of dates with some fine Jewish ladies, but on the other hand, if you don't believe that Hitler was Jesus 2.0, then you're going to go to hell forever.
	So, you know, it's going to cost you a little bit, but hey, you're going to go to hell.
	Like, so, there's no argument you couldn't make.
	Right.
	That you should get people to comply with you.
	Because there's no evidence for, like, the contradictory point, like, with, you know, you can't say, oh, just because he killed, you know, six million Jews, you know, it's not really a...
	Can't say it's good or bad, necessarily, because you don't know if God's real or not in that way.
	Well, it's not like Christianity's been entirely free of anti-Semitism throughout its history.
	Oh, yeah.
	Right?
	So, I mean, just read some of Martin Luther's ravings about the Jewish worms and the scum.
	I mean, he was homicidal against Jews in some ways.
	So my point is, I mean, like ridiculous and silly arguments aside, my point is that what could you not convince people of if you just escalate unimaginable, staggering eternal punishments unless they conform to your particular belief system?
	Of course, from a pure cost-benefit analysis, yeah, okay.
	I guess I'll believe that because eternal damnation is really, really bad.
	So that's sort of the first argument.
	The second, of course, is that getting people to believe in something because of threats can't scarcely be considered a moral activity.
	You know, believe in me because my ghost mafia will fuck you up.
	You're roasting hell for eternity.
	That is not...
	I mean, imagine if I just, you know, imagine if I tried to put that into practice in this show.
	You know, like, and real, because you have to believe that there's a reality in the threat of eternal damnation if you're gonna end up believing.
	But, you know, imagine if there were roving bands of free domain radio listeners, you know, like these Muslim enforcers in certain countries who like hit women with sticks who aren't covering up or whatever, right?
	I mean, imagine, and, well, you know. - I've recruited the ghost of Joe Pesci.
	I know he's not even dead yet, but he's going to come over with a baseball bat if you don't go to freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	What?
	I'm funny to you?
	I'm some sort of clown?
	I'm here to amuse you?
	Right?
	I mean, that's not what you want to...
	I mean, so if it's like, well, you know, you really better donate to Freedom Aid Radio.
	Otherwise, Freedom Aid Radio listeners will find out where you live.
	And, you know, we randomly set fire to the houses of people who don't donate.
	Right?
	And would people say, yeah, you know, that seems like a really moral thing to be working on.
	That's a great moral plan, right?
	They say, well, you know, okay, so it's 10 or 20 bucks a month.
	But on the other hand, your entire house might burn down with you in it.
	Would your grandfather say, yeah, that's a great moral argument.
	I think I'm really going to get into that show because that sounds like a really wonderful human being.
	It's not a good argument.
	And the last point, of course, is that I think God's supposed to know what your motives are, right?
	Yeah, of course.
	Right?
	I mean, I think if somebody said, oh yeah, Free Domain Radio is the best show ever, right?
	I don't know.
	I don't know if Paul Krugman has kids, right?
	But imagine this as my business plan.
	First, we kidnap Paul Krugman's children.
	We lock them in a windowless van.
	And then we get Paul Krugman to endorse Free Domain Radio.
	Following that, we will release his children from the windowless van, right?
	Now, would anybody believe...
	That Paul Krugman was sincerely and of his own volition endorsing this conversation?
	Of course not.
	They'd say, hey man, they got your kids.
	Say what they want you to say, right?
	And so the idea that if you are only going to accept religion out of a terror of everlasting damnation and you don't believe in God but you're going to pretend that you do because you're afraid of the tiny possibility of being burned for eternity...
	Well, God would know that if you sincerely believed in and loved God.
	That would be different from a cold-eyed, rational calculation of the costs and benefits and a decision to conform out of the tiny but terrifying possibility of eternal damnation.
	I mean, that would be really hypocritical, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, we wouldn't say that a woman who stays with her terrifying husband because she's afraid that he's going to kill her if she leaves, we would not call that love.
	We would call that terror of consequences, right?
	Yeah, we wouldn't.
	So, it's only a rational argument because...
	It seems rational because of a prior belief system, but an argument should be able to be airlifted.
	Like a scientific theory from one location to another and not completely fall apart.
	Right.
	I mean, you take a theory of relativity and you do it on Mars and you do it on Venus and you do it on Jupiter and you do it in your backyard.
	You know, it should work.
	It shouldn't like completely reverse itself.
	And if you airlift these moral principles out of the realm of religion and put it into the realm of Human activity, it shouldn't be like, well, that's really great and moral for God to do, and then that is pretty much the epitome of evil for a human being to do.
	And that's just one of these unfortunate requirements of universality that moral systems require.
	There's one more stuff.
	There's one more point.
	What if you pick the wrong God?
	There's a whole lot of gods out there.
	I mean, what if this Odin thing pans out?
	No, no, but you pick the god...
	You buy your insurance against the Ghost Mafia, that's the most homicidal.
	I see.
	Odin's Ghost Mafia won't fuck you up quite as bad, right?
	I mean, it just won't.
	Odin's running a sidewalk cafe in Kolkata compared to the big Ghost Mafia.
	Yeah, no, I mean, he's just a guy who's like, hey, give me my hat back.
	Yeah.
	It's like, you know the game where you take some kid's hat and then the two kids play that evil game of monkey in the middle.
	Hey man, give me my hat back.
	That's like the hell.
	Basically, the Norse mythologies have this wonderful Ragnarok thing where there's this big giant fight against, I don't know, ice giants or something.
	And then there's like eternal peace.
	So it's not, you know, they just don't screw you up as much.
	You know, I think that the proper...
	Response to Pascal's wager or my ghost mafia will fuck you up is like, sorry, I don't negotiate with terrorists.
	You threaten me with eternal damnation.
	You're no longer in the realm of philosophy.
	You're in the realm of like, oh God, how can you be so corrupted as a human being that you can't see that this is just unbelievably immoral?
	Right.
	People with eternal damnation if they don't accept your invisible friend?
	Imagine that.
	Some kid in school, you know?
	Right.
	I've got an invisible friend named Bob, and any kid who denies his existence, I'm going to gouge their eyeballs out with a pencil.
	Forever.
	Like, would we go like, yeah, you know, that's some seriously moral shit you got going on, Junior, right there.
	Beautiful.
	You're holding a chicken tender that's shaped like a gun.
	Bad.
	Threatening people with a ghost mafia.
	That's all right, yeah.
	I'm down with that.
	I mean, you know, it's just one of these...
	It's just an argument that...
	You really have to be in the religious mindset to not just get how unbelievably wrong that argument is at every conceivable level.
	Yeah.
	So the way this is to develop the question, I guess, I was raised as a Catholic.
	I was forced to go to church.
	And what if I believed in God voluntarily without force and I didn't impose other people to believe in God as well?
	Would the argument change?
	Wait.
	But if you're a Catholic, then you believe that unbelievers get sent to hell forever, right?
	Yeah, if you follow by the Church, the Catholic Church.
	Well, that's not just the Catholic Church.
	That's kind of in the New Testament, too.
	That's the Bible, yeah.
	Because in the Old Testament, Yahweh, you know, he was a homicidal mad god, but at least when you were dead, you were beyond his reach, you know?
	It's like...
	Because, I mean, the Jews don't really believe in an afterlife, right?
	And so, the Old Testament religions don't have any foundation for an afterlife of heaven or hell.
	That's like a New Testament thing, right?
	That's a Jesus and Muhammad thing.
	And so, if you are going to accept the Catholic religion, you know, it's not a buffet, right?
	Well, I'll take some of this, so much of that.
	Selectively, you take everything or you just don't go in the church, I guess.
	Right.
	And so, you know, if you say, well, what if I just believe, then what does that mean?
	If I believe, but I don't coerce anyone else?
	Well, I mean, that's nicer.
	That's nicer.
	That's not Christianity.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	That's like, I don't know, like, fairies?
	Yeah.
	The great pumpkin?
	I mean, giant unicorns?
	I don't know, right?
	But that's not Christianity.
	And it's nicer, but the problem is, because the cost to religiosity, I mean, it's a big topic in and of itself, but the cost to religiosity isn't just getting up early.
	For 80 years.
	The cost of religiosity is I have unhinged my rational faculties and throw them to the four winds of superstition and blind historical prejudice, bigotry, and inertia.
	I have surrendered my rational faculties in the most important realms of human life, such as truth, virtue, reality.
	I have Shredded my capacity for reason and independent thinking and empiricism, and at the same time, we as a species have giant powerful weapons, right?
	The cost of religiosity is people in cages being burned to death at the extreme edges, right?
	I mean, the beheadings, the ices, right?
	It's not just like, oh, you know, this pew is kind of uncomfortable, and I really don't like wearing a suit and tie on Sundays, man.
	That's not the cost of religion.
	The cost of religion is war.
	The cost of religion is oppression.
	The cost of religion is lying to children with a straight face about the most terrifying things that they can conceive of.
	The cost of religion is more than inconvenience.
	The cost of religion, when practiced consistently, I'm not talking about the people who dip in, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, the people who practice their religions with great integrity and consistency, it's not the hell in the afterlife, it's the hell on earth that I'm concerned about.
	I see.
	And I'm not putting your grandfather into that category, right?
	I mean, he's giving you...
	Oh, yeah.
	...this assemblance of irrational arguments and appealing to...
	Obviously, you're not calling from a cage.
	Listen, before I burn to a crisp, would you mind if I sort it out?
	Yeah, he's not like the Old Testament, you know, you're going to hell.
	Well, no, no, again, New Testament is you're going to hell.
	Old Testament is, ah, you're dead.
	I'm done with you.
	But what I mean is that religion is one of these things that's only survivable by defying its principles.
	And so the only way that society can survive religion is by disavowing the vast majority of the rational conclusions from its principles.
	And that's not good, right?
	No.
	So, yeah, I hope that helps with the argument.
	And the fact that the argument is still around is, again, one of these tragic testaments to just how much people can shred that reason to...
	To overcome trauma, right?
	You've not met your grandfather, obviously, but my guess is that he was lied to about these things, and whether people knew or didn't know they were lies, I don't know.
	Generally, when people have massive punishments for not accepting their beliefs, it's not because those beliefs are oversaturated with rationality, right?
	The crazier the belief, the more punishment and bribery you need to get people to pretend to accept it, right?
	The more hysterical the punishments are, the more irrational the belief system is.
	And the more ridiculously extravagant the rewards are, the more irrational the belief system is.
	If you want to find the true seed of crazy, look at the punishment and the reward.
	It's the same thing that's true in policy.
	It's not particular to religion.
	The punishment for not accepting a particular political system and its moral validity is to go to jail, which is as close to hell as you're going to get.
	Yeah.
	In a secular framework.
	And the reward is, A, staying out of jail, and B, I mean, what do these politicians just, what are they offering?
	Hey, vote for me and I'll give you stuff.
	I mean, if your ideas are so great, why would you need the bribery thing?
	Why would, if your ideas are so great...
	Hey, kids, I'll get it.
	Wipe away your college debt.
	I'm going to give you a free college debt.
	Hey, man, if your idea is so good, why do you need to bribe people?
	Why do you need to bribe people if your idea isn't that good?
	Hey, man, my restaurant is so good, I'm going to pay you $200 to eat there.
	I would have entered it if I look at Yelp and it has five stars, you know.
	Hey man, my cousin, she's so hot, I'm going to pay you $400 to go on a date with her.
	I think I'm getting $400 worth of negative hotness coming off this fine specimen.
	Right?
	It's like that old Sam Cooke song.
	A friend told me he had a sister who looked real fine.
	Instead of being my deliverance, she had a strange resemblance to a cat named Frankenstein.
	And yeah, it's...
	You know, anytime there's bribery, and listen, I mean, because, I mean, I've talked about this show from the very beginning, like, you know, my podcast will fuck you up, right?
	I mean, it's going to be difficult.
	It's going to be hard.
	It's going to be negative, and I can't promise any particularly great rewards.
	I mean, I think integrity is worth following for its own sake, but it's not, you know, free domain radio is not exactly an argument from hedonism, you know?
	You're going to get free stuff.
	The chicks will find you wildly attractive.
	All the single moms will...
	Anyway.
	So...
	I hope that helps in terms of the...
	Yeah, that really shed a light on the issue topic.
	Alright, thanks, man.
	Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
	Um...
	No.
	But, you know, I love your show.
	You know, I'm part of the...
	I could say the younger generation that's going to be facing horrible debt in America, all these horrible things imposed on us from birth.
	I watched the college podcast, the price of a college degree and all that and its benefits, and I found that really enlightening.
	Yeah, just for those who don't know, it's called The Truth About College Debt.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's aiming to help people make a more rational cost-benefit analysis of what decisions they're going to make with regards to higher education.
	Higher education is not what it used to be, just like NASA is not what it used to be and all that.
	So, yeah, it's not what it used to be.
	Well, I'm glad it's helpful.
	Alright, Mike, let's move on to the next caller.
	Thanks again so much for your call.
	Alright, thank you, Matthew.
	Up next is Jaden, and Jaden wrote in and said, I find I am only very interested in a certain career path for a short period of time.
	I feel most productive in the night, and some nights I will stay up with unblinking eyes, as I feel I have found something I could do for the rest of my life.
	The issue comes the next day.
	When I wake, I cannot place myself in the same mental state, and it seems at times I have found everything there is to find on a topic, and it is no longer of use to me.
	Some days I find interest in many things and have productive thoughts, and some days I feel like I was born yesterday, and creating a chain of thoughts is incredibly difficult.
	But does this have to do with something from my formative years?
	And is there a way for me to be at my most productive mental state all the time?
	That's from Jaden.
	Well, Jaden, thanks.
	It's a great question.
	It's a great question.
	And I have this fairly overwhelming, though still vaguely resistible, urge to start off by lecturing, which is probably a really terrible idea, so I'm going to resist it.
	And is there anything more that you wanted to add to this question?
	No, I've wanted to call in for a really long time, but I've just had a hard time kind of forming out a question.
	So I think it would be best if you jumped in before when I was preparing for this.
	Wait, you want me to lecture?
	Yeah, yeah, do, by all means.
	I want to marry you.
	Sorry.
	Let's go find a State of the Union where a State of the Union is acceptable.
	Okay.
	Well, okay, so can you...
	Give me an example of something that you, like, ah, this is the next big thing for me, and then it sort of trails off.
	Okay, um...
	Well, while we were waiting for you for the call, somebody had mentioned Neil deGrasse Tyson, and so it brought me back to when the series Cosmos came out, which I really liked that.
	And I found a course that came out correlated to be in systems engineering.
	It was offered by NASA, and I hadn't really come up to this point of understanding government and force quite yet, so I was like, oh great, you know, I'll go through this course.
	And start planning my life in like 10 years in advance, you know, do all of the necessary qualifications I need and kind of focus around this.
	And that one stayed for quite a while.
	Wait, stayed as a desire or something you actually acted on?
	Oh, as a desire.
	I mean, the course that I was taking, it was offered through the Sailor Academy, something like Khan Academy or Coursera.
	So they had live chats with some systems engineers from NASA and various things, and I was doing well on the course.
	But right at the end of it, I just stopped doing it.
	And a couple of weeks, I didn't look at it.
	And then I went and tried to finish the test and just forgot everything about it.
	And then I didn't bother to go back and read up on it again.
	Just the desire had completely gone.
	Right.
	Well, then how much time did you invest in this, do you think, in terms of hours?
	Oh, it was a decent amount, I suppose.
	Maybe like 20, 25 hours a week.
	I had a lot of spare time.
	I was in Nepal and kind of traveling, you know, Then I also went to Australia to begin working to, again, just to give myself some more time to think of what I wanted to do so I could pick up odd jobs here and there to give myself more time.
	And that's kind of what I find myself keep doing.
	Are you on the run from someone?
	It seemed like it was the case for a while.
	The ghost mafia is getting up.
	Only when I close my eyes, I can see them.
	So I'd stay awake all the time.
	Dream police!
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	So you're a rambling man, right?
	I was ever since I, I guess, just close to when I was turning 19.
	So just after I graduated from high school, I had an idea to go traveling.
	And then I've been traveling for...
	About five years, coming back to Canada for a little while to work or to Australia to work.
	In the last bit of that, I got introduced to Emerson and found my way to listening to yourself.
	Emerson?
	You mean the writer?
	Yeah, self-reliance.
	I may be jumbling a few things here or putting it all together.
	I read an essay called Self-Reliance, which kind of perked me up into that I have control over my destiny.
	I can kind of use my mind to think and create what I want to do.
	I just ended up getting a lot more ambition.
	After that point.
	And then from there I started finding these things like, you know, Interest in Cosmos came out.
	This program came out so I could start developing my skills in systems engineering and Yeah, then it's still kind of, you know, the ambition part has stuck with me, but it wavers.
	But it's been a little bit punitive for you, right?
	Because it's roused your ambition, but undermined your follow-through, or at least it hasn't roused your follow-through to the same degree that it's roused your ambition, right?
	Yeah, right.
	So, in some ways, it's been a negative, right?
	It's been consuming time and energy and also giving you insecurity about your capacity to follow through.
	So, definitely something's missing from what sparks you, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's a good way of saying it.
	So, what...
	And this is a question that should be called out across this generation of single mom-raised young men, but...
	And I... I feel like I know the answer, but tell me, do you have or have you had any man or anyone in your life who has given you clear modeling of how to get things done, how to have big goals and how to take them step by step, break them into component parts and how to overcome inertia and resistance and just how to get things done?
	Have you had anyone like that in your life, growing up?
	Well, I was raised by a single mother, so you've got me there.
	My grandfather was my initial impression of a man, and he is still a bitter farmer.
	When I would work on the farm, it was always, you're never doing this right.
	I could never impress him.
	For that reason, I should end up trying harder.
	And then my father works on the Canadian and US border, so his idea of being a man is that he has a gun and the authority to make your life hell for three hours waiting in line at the border if you don't say something that he likes.
	So I didn't really have anything like that for a while.
	But I met a girl in India and then She came to Nepal with me and then she came to Australia with me and then we flew to France and met her father, who I would consider as one of the most successful men that I personally know and a very driven person.
	He was born in the States, but he took a great interest in China and then ended up getting some pretty interesting positions and became rather successful working with China and the United States.
	And has he taught you or told you or broken down for you how to get things done?
	Not really.
	Okay, so the answer is no.
	You don't have anyone who's given you that skill set.
	Very long answer to come to that point.
	Yeah, no, no, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	So how would you expect to know?
	I mean, just in terms of self-attack, right?
	How is it that you would expect to know how to do a difficult thing that you've never had any example of anyone doing in your life?
	Well, see, when it comes to things that are physical, they're a lot more easy to connect with because you can see direct results.
	So I've always kind of thought...
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	That's why I said difficult things.
	Right.
	Oh, yeah.
	You can go like Winston Churchill used to relax by putting mortar and bricks together and making a wall.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	You can go and make a wall, which is why people who make walls don't get paid much money.
	I guess the Roger Waters accepted.
	Oh yeah, baby!
	You can look it up if you want.
	But it's not...
	That's not hard.
	So we're talking about the tough stuff to do, right?
	Right.
	So you don't have any examples of how you get something done.
	No.
	Something big and complicated, hard to achieve, and so on, right?
	No, it's not like a direct relation.
	I mean, I invest my time in zero to one, like how to create a startup.
	And later, I'd like to know your thoughts kind of on Think and Grow Rich.
	I've been trying to follow this and put myself to something that is difficult, but it's not really.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm not talking about books.
	Okay, then no.
	No, it's not a person.
	It's like saying, you know, reading ASCII text porn is the same as making love to a woman you treasure.
	Okay, not at all.
	It's not a lived experience, right, when you read about it.
	Right.
	There's nothing wrong with the reading.
	Okay.
	So...
	So you're trying to do something you have no template for and you have no lived experience of, right?
	Right.
	So, naturally, the likelihood is that You're gonna fail, right?
	Not because there's anything wrong with you, it's just because what you're trying to do is some of the most complicated stuff in the world and you don't know how to do it.
	And there's no reason why you would.
	Like, there's stuff that blows my mind, right?
	Like, people who can, I don't know, landscaping.
	I mean, again, I'm not saying it's the most complicated thing in the world, But it's amazing to me that people can take money and put decks and stone patios and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
	And, you know, it's pretty and it's, you know.
	So if I said, well, tomorrow I'm just going to go and build a deck or something more complicated than that and put a pool in or something like that, right?
	I mean, would you expect me to succeed?
	It would take you a very long time, but, you know, you might want to just hire someone.
	Right.
	Whereas if I said, well, listen, man, my dad's been putting pools in his whole life.
	I've spent, you know, countless summers working with him to put pools in.
	I'm going to put my own pool in.
	What would you say?
	You're going to have an excellent template for how to get that pool together.
	You're set, right?
	How much money are you going to put on the guy with no experience and no template, putting a pool in himself?
	How much money are you going to put that it's going to come in on time, on budget?
	Right.
	Yeah, might as well.
	Zero.
	You'd be a fool to put any money on that, right?
	I mean, I'm the kind of guy, it takes me four tries to get something from Ikea put together.
	I just find it cool.
	It's impressive and it helps me enjoy the diversity of human accomplishments that there are people out there who find it very easy to do something blindfold that I can't do while going blind staring at instructions.
	So first of all, trying to do something big with your life when you've had mean, lemon-faced, petty, soulless life crushers around you is...
	Because for you to be big, to overcome, to surmount where you came from is fundamentally traumatic.
	And so it's more like I got beaten every time I even thought about a pool.
	Now I'm going to put a pool in.
	Right?
	It's traumatic.
	For you to achieve, right, there's, you know, like I was explaining this to my daughter the other day, you know, sound travels 600 odd miles an hour, and when you are an airplane and you go faster than sound, you break the sound barrier, which creates this huge bang, this massive boom, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Well, what happens when you try to go faster or higher?
	Than your family.
	What happens when you push beyond the limits of your family?
	Is there not an equivalent strain upon the mechanism?
	Is there not a significant crash and a bang and a boom and a strain?
	Right, yeah.
	I think it was your analogy with the drowning.
	You go out and you swim out to the...
	To your family, you've came ashore, you've stopped drowning, you've figured out this kind of solid ground to stand on, rationality and logic, and you go swim out there, and then they end up pulling you back down.
	It's a slightly different analogy, but yeah, I know what you mean.
	So, for you, there is this undertow, right?
	There's a pull-backing-ness, a stay-smalling-ness, so to speak.
	Because when you outgrow and outpace your parents, it is a strain upon the system.
	And we are aversive to outpacing our parents.
	We are aversive to that.
	Because, I mean, look, if our parents are, you know, good people and, you know, maybe they didn't have the greatest of opportunities or the wildest set of ability sets or the highest of intelligence or anything like that, but, you know, they work decently and diligently at their work and so on and all that.
	When you start to do really well, they may be a little baffled and bewildered, but they're proud and enthusiastic, and they may not understand what you're doing, but they're supportive.
	That's not the end of the world, and that's not the kind of boom that I'm talking about.
	What I'm talking about is if you have people in your life who are emotionally dedicated to snuffing out opportunity around them, and then you wish to seize the day and become big and become great and become powerful, Have you ever seen a movie?
	It's an old movie now, I guess, Dead Poets Society?
	Yes, I've seen it a few times.
	Right.
	Why am I bringing that up?
	I'm not sure.
	It's the whole idea of the movie.
	Robin Williams wants the students to find their own walk-in and stand up to...
	Let's see, I'm not exactly sure what...
	A young Robert Sean Leonard...
	He is the young guy who's the sweaty-toothed madman poetry guy.
	The young kid, right?
	He's got this very dark and oppressive and soul-crushing father.
	And Robin Williams represents this opportunity, this life of passion.
	He says, forget them.
	Forget the other people.
	Focus on your passion.
	Focus on your vision.
	Be big.
	Be great.
	Be powerful.
	And his father wants to send him to military academy, which in the leftist world of Hollywood is as close to the Dantean level of hell that you can imagine, right?
	Yeah.
	And, spoiler for those of you who haven't seen it, what happens to the young poet?
	I want to say suicide, but I can't remember.
	Yeah, he kills himself.
	Yeah.
	You see, that's the sonic boom ripped him apart.
	When he tried to overtake his father, when he tried to burst beyond the confines of his father, he died.
	There is a...
	what Freud called thanatos, or the death impulse.
	When you surmount the...
	if you have family or parents that have got this petty hostility and stay small and all of that and...
	With this heavy, dark, soul-crushing crust of infinite cynicism, which lands like a mountain on a tiny fern, to take a line from my novel The God of Atheists, to surmount and break up through and past all of that is very, very hard.
	I was reading about Enid Blyton, who's a It sold like, what, 600 million books?
	Like, it's insane.
	She's like one of the most popular, if not the most popular children's author of all time.
	And she was completely estranged from her parents.
	She didn't even go to their funerals.
	Same thing was true to a large degree of Abraham Lincoln.
	Danica Patrick, the race car driver, she ran away when she was 16.
	So the question is, Who is standing between you and the light that you want, the light that you need?
	Or another way of putting it is, who are you running from?
	Who is standing between you and what you want in your mind?
	I try to be rather self-aware as much as I can of when something comes up and when I start getting this fog that you can't think this way.
	I figured that because of the traveling, I had been running...
	I didn't know exactly what I was running from, but it was every time that I went back to Canada, then it was bad.
	So I said, well, it's Canada.
	I need to keep traveling.
	So then I leave, and then I came back, and it just seemed to be my family.
	Just everyone.
	Except maybe...
	How did your family...
	How did you react to your dreams?
	Well, I wasn't really allowed to have any.
	It was, you know, the children kind of have to be a little bit more quiet.
	I remember there's always the kids' table and the adults' table.
	It wasn't.
	Maybe it was just when we were quite a bit younger, but I couldn't really express myself.
	There was an idea of man, and man was farmer, or man was strong.
	I didn't grow up on the farm, so I was skinny compared to everybody else, and I was put down because of that.
	So what Anything else that would have been out of the ordinary, out of their sort of lifestyle, it just wasn't talked about.
	Conversation couldn't go past small talk, it seemed like.
	So I don't know.
	There was never any interest in what I wanted to do and I didn't have any interest in sharing Anything with other people or even really doing it for myself, you know?
	I don't know.
	I found a lot of escapism from video games before I could leave to then traveling and yeah.
	Right.
	So you have barriers to greatness within you?
	Yes.
	Would you say that I have undertaken a big challenge, a big goal, a big project?
	Yes.
	To me, it seems a rather daunting task.
	Yeah, it is a very, very big project.
	Good.
	I'm glad it's not just me who seems to do this.
	At least someone else out there.
	How well do you think I could do it if I had lots of people saying, oh, come on, give me a break.
	You're not going to do it.
	What are you, crazy?
	I mean, you're just some guy.
	You know, you don't even have a PhD in philosophy.
	What are you?
	What are you doing?
	It's such a waste of time.
	You should go back to the business world.
	This is all narcissistic.
	You love the sound of your own voice.
	If I had half a dozen people around me telling me this every time we socialized, or even worse, ignoring this show completely, how do you think I'd be doing it?
	You can't be more bigger or powerful than those you accept, I think is something I wrote down of you saying before.
	You wouldn't do very well if that was your support group.
	I couldn't do it at all.
	It's not like I wouldn't do very well.
	I couldn't do it at all.
	I never would have gone off the ground.
	Right.
	Getting things done is a steady process of detaching yourself from everyone who says it can't be done or you can't do it.
	There are enough doubts in this world when you take on a great and perilous venture.
	There are enough doubts in your own mind without people feeding them for the sake of their own neurotic smallness.
	Every great thing in this world has been created by people who have refused to listen to everyone around them.
	Wilberforce, the 19th century British politician who fought to end slavery, How many people do you think he had to ignore to get that done?
	Yeah.
	I moved away from where my family lives and I've still kind of kept...
	No, but what about your friends?
	What about...
	Are there people around you...
	Who believe that you're capable of great things.
	No, and there's not...
	No, I don't have that, but I don't really have the other side either.
	I've kind of locked myself in my chamber and just trying to come up with something to know is not the best thing.
	I haven't really went out and met with like-minded people or people who could...
	Push me towards my goals and want to keep me on track and that.
	Yeah, I haven't really found that.
	See, we can do things in isolation.
	We cannot do things in opposition.
	We can do things if we're just alone and people write books, but we cannot do things in opposition.
	We cannot do things when people are unconsciously opposed to what it is that we're doing.
	We cannot do those things if they're in our lives.
	In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' first breakthrough play, he has a character in it.
	He works in a factory and he's writing his poems down on shoeboxes.
	And this character is kind of a buffoon and...
	You know, just refers to him semi-derisively as Shakespeare, you know, like he's writing down poems and Shakespeare, you know.
	It just doesn't ever ask him what the poems are about.
	It doesn't ever ask him what his ambitions are.
	It doesn't ever offer to read them.
	Hey, he's like that poet guy, you know, like Shakespeare.
	He writes...
	He's just a big, kind of goofy, buffoon-y guy.
	And he's someone who started off with great promise and...
	Has kind of gotten nowhere, right?
	There are studies that have just recently come out about how all the cool kids in high school amount to a little less than a hill of beans and ashes by middle age, but that's a topic for another time.
	Now, the character Tom Wingfield in the play only invites this guy over because his mother is nagging him to find a boy for their somewhat fragile, for his somewhat fragile sister.
	Put it as nicely as possible.
	Laura.
	And he's not friends with this guy.
	Now, could he have written this play if this guy, I'm sure, was based on a real guy, and a young Tennessee Williams did work in a factory, and I'm sure this guy was one of the guys around, just as Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire, the He's the towering, alpha-preening penis of the modern stagecraft.
	He was based upon a guy he served with, or a guy he knew who was an ex-army guy and all that.
	And he couldn't have written The Glass Menagerie if he'd been best friends with this guy and tried to share his literary aspirations with this guy.
	He would have been like, I guess that's like Shakespeare.
	Interesting.
	You need fuel.
	To get over mountains.
	You can't have dead weight.
	You can't.
	You gotta think of your life, it's like a business.
	It's like a business.
	Are you gonna pay people who work against you?
	Are you gonna pay people who make whatever it is you're making and equally pay people who break whatever it is that you're making?
	If you wanna get somewhere And you've got a rowing team.
	Are you going to have people on the rowing team who are rowing with you and equally have people on the rowing team who are rowing against you?
	Of course not.
	Now, if you don't want a life bigger than your parents, it doesn't matter.
	They'll be happy to help a lot of times, right?
	Yeah.
	They're with that business non-plan, right?
	They're down with that.
	I'm never gonna threaten you by being a bigger person than you.
	I'm never gonna threaten you by being a more powerful person than you.
	I'm never gonna threaten you by having bigger goals than you.
	I'm never gonna threaten you by being a positive force in the world.
	I'm never gonna threaten you by being happy, by being brave, by being inspiring, by being courageous.
	By having integrity.
	By loving my life and the people around you.
	If you don't have that template, you need to be aware of how much that opposition is working against wherever you want to get in life.
	Because every time you try to achieve something great, a lot of it sucks.
	It does.
	A lot of it sucks.
	There are moments of inspiration, of poetic force, of power, of depth in this conversation, in this show, in this rich vein of philosophy, but a lot of it is looking things up.
	A lot of it is choosing the right icons in a PowerPoint presentation, right?
	A lot of it is, oh dear, the file transfer failed.
	I guess I'll try again.
	The sound didn't come through right.
	I don't know what's going on.
	Yeah, oh dear.
	A lot of it is, uh, frinkle, crinkle, buzz, blurp, blurp, schnarkle, schnarkle, right?
	Yeah, I understand.
	Audio and video is a little out of sync.
	What happened there?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And a lot of it also is, oh, I've got this great idea.
	We're totally going to prove it if we find this correlation.
	Oh, dear.
	We did not find this correlation.
	Six hours later.
	I'm sorry?
	Six hours of intense research later.
	Yeah.
	If I can only find this one piece of data, I will have the most...
	This piece of data does not exist, right?
	Or it does exist, but it's behind a paywall that costs $20 million to break through, and you need to go before a board of directors to have access to the information.
	Or it does exist, and it seems to correlate with the great thesis and theory.
	Unfortunately, it's from a highly biased group who cannot be trusted.
	Right?
	I mean, the work-to-show ratio, Mike, do you have a...
	Oh, man.
	To produce five minutes of material, I mean, how many...
	How much time is it?
	Oh, there's...
	If I had a dollar for every half-finished show that I've done, that I've threw in the towel on just because it's been so frustrating, it would be a lot of donation money right there.
	Special offer.
	If you send Mike a dollar, he will send you all of the unfinished shows.
	Your internet will collapse.
	Yeah, same thing with me as well, right?
	I've got two or three half-finished books.
	Right.
	There's huge amounts of stuff that we want to work on that turns out to not pan out.
	There's also stuff where we're like, well, I don't know if this is going to be a really big news story.
	So let's...
	Oh, no.
	Oh, news story is gone.
	Yeah, what you want to do is you want to publish that video right after everyone stops talking and completely stops caring about this subject.
	That's exactly what you want to do.
	No, remember, Mike.
	For the real views, let's talk about peaceful parenting.
	Those are always the breakthrough video, right?
	Boy, people are going to be terribly interested in David Letterman.
	Oh!
	Oh, David Letterman!
	Oh!
	Oh!
	Let's talk about the giant dildo of time that passed through Mike.
	I didn't sleep for two days.
	Oh boy, everyone would be talking about David Letterman before his final show.
	What, no one cares about David Letterman?
	Oh dear.
	But at least it was only a three hour presentation.
	Which may have had something to do with it as well.
	It didn't do very well.
	I really enjoyed the David Letterman presentation.
	I remember where I was listening to it.
	Stop sucking up the mic.
	That's my job.
	No, I've got a consideration of the work-to-download-and-view ratio, which was a bit skewed.
	There's some which, I mean, I'm happy with the finished product, but a whole lot of work goes into it, whereas, you know, Steph can do a YouTube comment, which does the equivalent amount of views in one one-hundredth of the time and makes me cry.
	Yeah.
	Let's see.
	Say in about a month, you know, just for funsies, go look at the David Letterman presentation, which took all of us, I think all combined, including, like, the number of takes it took, Yeah, probably about a week.
	And then, oh, I've got 20 minutes.
	Why don't I do the 15 reasons to date single moms?
	And let's circle back in about a month and see.
	And it is.
	It's just the way it works.
	It's the way it works.
	Stoyan did a fantastic presentation on the truth about public schools.
	And, yeah, I mean, it's journaling.
	It's doing okay.
	But it's a lot of...
	You know, there's a lot of work underneath what you see that is sometimes really not a lot of fun, right?
	Yeah, I understand that, too.
	And I... I don't feel that that's really what's holding me back.
	I don't have the issue with doing things that aren't really fun to do.
	What's it called?
	A graph that somebody had created.
	And on the top, it said, I'm great, kind of keep going.
	And on the bottom of the graph, it said, I'm never going to get anywhere.
	And in the middle, it just says, keep going.
	And it goes up and down and up and down.
	As time goes on, it starts flattening out and just keep going.
	Is the idea.
	So all of the work that you end up putting through, you have...
	At first, you're a lot happier with it, and then there's times where you're really sad with what comes out, or you're not really happy with it.
	But as time goes on, you just keep working, and that's it.
	Like, I... I don't...
	I won't really have a problem with that.
	Yes, you do.
	I do.
	I do.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, but you do.
	Empirically, you do.
	Okay.
	Because you have to achieve what you want, and you've put a lot of time and effort into...
	Pursuing things that you want, and then you deflate, right?
	Right, yeah.
	So you do, because the deflation for you, and this is natural, raised by a single mom, right, and all that, right?
	But for you, the deflation is an excuse to stop.
	And because you're young, oh, don't young people love to hear that shit, right?
	Oh, they love it.
	I just love it.
	But because you're young, you don't understand that the deflation is where you hit the gas because that's where the breakthrough is.
	It's when you most want to stop doing something that you commit to do more of it because that's where the breakthrough is.
	That's where you will find out why you don't want to do it and conquer that feeling.
	I'm not saying you understand, but you sort of get it.
	You say to yourself, well, my motivation has vanished.
	And maybe you wait for the motivation to return, or maybe you sit there and say, well, I wonder why my motivation has vanished, or whatever, right?
	But the only way to find out is you just keep going.
	I don't care that I'm not motivated.
	I don't care that I really want to do it.
	I'm going to do it anyway, so I can find out the truth about my own resistance.
	I see.
	Yeah, my excuse, well, I think I would pose it as an excuse to accept that deflation would be, well, you know, is space going to be something that's coming up?
	So will this be necessary?
	And now with NASA and a lot of funding coming from taxation, you know, then it's like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't do this.
	And so how did I know about the single mom thing?
	Lack of motivation.
	That's what your mom did with your dad.
	She loved him enough to marry him.
	She loved him enough to marry him, and then she hit something in the relationship which was a problem.
	And instead of saying, well, here's now where I really need to be honest and open and vulnerable, With my husband, she started saying, well, you know what else really bothers me about him?
	And, you know, he sucks his teeth, and he always has his pinky up when he holds his tea, and, you know, he snores.
	And she just started talking herself into disliking him in the same way that you talk yourself into thinking there's no real point in continuing.
	Yeah, I think it was actually a shotgun wedding, and she left very shortly afterwards.
	But I do understand.
	Okay, so to put it bluntly, she liked him enough to have sex with him and get pregnant with him, and unless she's functionally retarded, Unprotected sex can lead to children.
	I believe that's why it's crowded on the subway.
	Yeah, in your video that you posted today about the excuses, well, I had so much contraception.
	It's just there must have been probes or something, aliens that were trying to impregnate me.
	I talked to her about this a couple of months ago, and that was her excuse.
	Yeah, I was on contraceptives.
	Yeah, women will always say, oh, I was on 19 different kinds of birth control, but I mean, he's just got like ninja sperm, right?
	It's like watching Tom Cruise go through lasers and targeting and flying monkeys and shit in a Mission Impossible movie.
	They just get through somehow.
	And who can verify it?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Any woman who says I got pregnant accidentally, I just assume that they're lying unless I'm there watching.
	And even then, I'm assuming they're lying.
	Does it mean it can't ever happen?
	It can happen.
	No, and I do give her full responsibility to go in with that.
	But has she accepted and owned her responsibility?
	Oh, absolutely not.
	No, and my last conversation with her was that I don't think we should carry on this relationship anymore.
	She's just not owning any responsibility and not saying, listen, I'm so sorry.
	I had sex with a guy I couldn't stand to be around, and so you had to grow up without a father.
	No, we were having this conversation while she was driving me back down to a different city.
	And I started asking her some difficult questions.
	And then she turned it around and she started to cry.
	And when she looked over at me that I didn't have any reaction because I wasn't taking the bait, she stopped crying instantly.
	It was like it was practiced.
	Oh, man.
	At least you drank about it.
	Wait, magic tears not washing away male spine?
	fine okay i guess we'll turn those out yeah yeah Yeah.
	Imagine, I don't know, imagine Donald Trump's trying to run for president and his wife is giving interviews to the media saying, the guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
	He's never been that interested in politics.
	It's just a big ego trip for him.
	How would that work?
	He would probably make her one of his new ex-wives.
	It would torpedo his presidential run, right?
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	Because people would say, well, I can't judge the loftiness of whatever this person is doing, but I can judge people who know this guy a whole lot better than I do, right?
	And the people who know Donald Trump a whole lot better than I do, i.e.
	his wife, in this hypothetical, don't think he should be running for office and saying it's complete bullshit, right?
	So we'd have to go with her judgment because she knows him better than we do, right?
	Yes.
	And her opinion would be very, very valid among the leftists.
	Yeah, and I mean, look, love him or hate him, Donald Trump is such a giant hard man-cock that Ivana has endorsed him.
	What is Donald Trump against him?
	A giant hard man-cock.
	He is.
	And this is what's so startling in the American landscape.
	Oh my god.
	I actually think there's a penis here.
	Holy shit.
	I thought that was just like something in the undergrowth.
	It's a giant fucking penis.
	And it's scaring everybody.
	My anaconda don't.
	My anaconda don't.
	Until you go run, son.
	I think we hit a new low point in the show.
	What is this penis doing in America?
	We've just spent the last 50 years trying to drive these like that saint drove the snakes out of Ireland.
	We've tried to drive all the penises out of America.
	Hulk Hogan has vanished!
	Once proud symbol of American masculinity.
	A little on the cartoony side, but he was pretty much a giant walking penis.
	So much of a giant walking penis that he had to put a little condom on his head all the time, or he would ejaculate and fertilize the very clouds that gather above him.
	He impregnated ringside whenever he came down to the ring.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Hulk Hogan...
	Giant, ball-rolling man-cock, battering ram, crushing down leftist fantasies of infinite fragility of masculinity.
	And this is what happens, is that he couldn't be the giant man-cock that he is.
	Right or wrong, crazy, not crazy, it doesn't matter.
	This is what I think, and fuck you if you don't like it.
	Come on, why do you think he's getting such a response?
	People are hungry.
	For Giant Mancock.
	They are.
	They just are.
	I mean, aren't you?
	I know I am.
	I love me some Giant Mancock, yes.
	You have a new ringtone.
	I'm sorry, what was that?
	Don't have it ring during the interview, unless you are in fact interviewing for gay porn, in which case it's probably quite appropriate.
	No, and I, look, I mean, I, you know, obviously I grow my little goatee to simulate pubic hair as a giant wannabe man cock myself, but this is what's so confusing to a world that has grown up without non-caricature male role models, right?
	Well, what do we get?
	Oh, fuck.
	We don't get real men.
	What do we get?
	Superheroes.
	You can be manly as long as you're fighting guys with tentacles and you have superpowers and are not from this planet.
	But don't you dare say anything against your female teacher or she'll send you down to the principal.
	Right?
	I mean, there's just this incredible emasculation of American manhood.
	American manhood used to be the envy of the world and the pride of America.
	And it's just been cheese grated into Danish levels of estrogen-based testosterone death.
	And so, you know, you were raised by a single mom.
	Was there a guy around at all when you were growing up?
	I don't know if you could really call them men.
	Yeah, the pitiful beta drones who just orbit any vagina anywhere, right?
	Yes.
	The kind of guys who will hump a pool table if they're left alone for three minutes in the room.
	You should see her current boyfriend.
	Yeah, their penises come out like chalky blue shit all over them.
	Oh, that was good.
	That was good.
	Actually, you can just keep the table.
	Really, I don't...
	I don't want it back.
	I don't...
	I don't want it back.
	What's on the felt?
	Oh!
	But no, that's...
	And so, she's just got this succession of loser men around, and so you basically had a terrifying succession of pussy beggars around, right?
	Like, we put this video out today, and...
	Like, about single moms, and I don't know if you've seen it, and I'm sorry, because, you know, your mom is a single mom, but, you know, why is everyone saying, well, why would anyone have anything to do with a single mom?
	What are they all saying?
	Oh, they're so strong.
	Yeah, I watched your video as you put it out.
	They're so strong.
	They're so powerful.
	No, no, no, no.
	Some of the guys are saying, maybe Andrea Dworkin's hand puppet, but no, the guys are saying, well, the only reason you have anything to do with a single mom is because they're easy sex.
	Oh, right, okay.
	Because they've already shown that they have very bad judgment in the realm of vagina-ness.
	So, yeah.
	Other single moms who say, I've learned.
	I've learned how to be a better person.
	I've learned.
	It's like, okay, so you couldn't handle the relationship when there weren't children involved.
	Now you're going to try and cross-blend a family, which is about the most difficult land-to-space-shuttle-on-an-aircraft carrier possible way of forming a family.
	You couldn't handle it when it was just you and a guy, but now you've got you and kids and him and maybe more kids, and somehow you can make all of this work.
	Yeah, you've become that good with an IQ average of 92.
	Right.
	I'll be holding my breath for that.
	Never.
	I will never hold my breath for that.
	So...
	You have, I think, like a lot of men, and some women, right?
	But I think slightly more men, based on the statistics that I've read, and you can look up Charles Murray on gender contributions to civilization's greatness for more on this.
	But you have a call to greatness, right?
	To some degree, right?
	I mean, I don't, you know, you have a call to greatness, right?
	But what, I don't know...
	I don't want to speak for your experience, so I'll just tell you what I think, and if it doesn't hit your experience, obviously you can just toss it aside, but there's something really humiliating about being raised by a single mom.
	It is kind of the opposite of the masculine drive for the call to greatness.
	You know, we as a gender are programmed to buy eggs with extravagance, to buy eggs with greatness.
	To accumulate maximum resources, maximum prestige.
	That's kind of how we're wired.
	And that's not what society allows us to do anymore.
	So many examples of just strong males getting smashed down.
	And thinking that if they apologize, Things will get better.
	It doesn't.
	It gets worse.
	And there is something vaguely humiliating.
	Because your mom was the mom that a decent guy doesn't want.
	She's like what the restaurant throws out.
	And yeah, some scabby, weird-haired homeless guys will scrabble around in the dumpster.
	But she's thrown out because nobody ordered that dish.
	Or if they did order it, they quite quickly sent it back.
	This tastes like crap.
	Throw it out.
	And it's humiliating.
	It's humiliating to be raised by a single mom.
	Because she's the woman that nobody wants.
	She's the woman who can't get a decent man to stick around.
	Because she's annoying.
	Because she's whiny.
	Because she's blind.
	Because she's petulant.
	Because she's horrible.
	Because she's monstrous.
	Because she's evil.
	Because she's vicious.
	Because she's underhanded.
	Whatever.
	It doesn't matter fundamentally.
	When I was a kid, In boarding school.
	I mean, I had no money.
	I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it doesn't really matter how, but it was the case.
	And I remember I wanted a little piece of chocolate.
	I didn't have any money.
	But I had a little pencil sharpener, and on that pencil sharpener was a tiny little gold-painted plastic train.
	A little steam engine.
	And it was junk.
	Pencil sharpeners in every room.
	But there was this little half-flaked-off plastic steam engine on top of this pencil sharpener.
	And I could get, back in the day, a little piece of chocolate for half a penny, which was the smallest possible amount of money that you could have.
	You know, approximately $12,000 in modern fiat currency.
	But half a penny, half a penny.
	And I really, really wanted a piece of chocolate.
	Now, the other kids in general came from pretty wealthy households.
	Mine was a real exception.
	And of course, to my knowledge, I was the only kid there who was from a single mother household.
	And I know this.
	I visited a bunch of the other kids from time to time on holidays.
	And they all had two-parent households.
	So I knew I was the exception.
	And I had this little pencil sharpener with the crappy little plastic train on top of it.
	And I wanted to sell it.
	And I was willing to take half of a British penny.
	And I was going around saying, hey, who'd like to buy this for half a penny?
	Who'd like to buy this for half a penny?
	And everyone just looked at me like, oh, come on.
	You've got to be kidding.
	I mean, I might as well be in a two-year-old saying, I made you a mud cookie.
	cookie.
	Would you like to buy it for $50?
	But see, this is a single woman and her heart.
	Thank you.
	Eh, it's kind of broken.
	It's not a pencil sharpener, it's a penis shaver, but that's a topic for another time.
	But will you buy this for half a day?
	Come on, I'll throw sex at you.
	I'll pretend to really like you.
	I'll pretend you're a cool guy.
	I'll pretend you're a great guy.
	Will you stay with me?
	It doesn't take more than a moment's thought.
	You think, you're a single mom.
	Think about going on vacation.
	You want to go on vacation.
	When you want to go on vacation before kids, basically you're just saying, can I have wall-to-wall sex with room service please?
	And, you know, if you want to go on vacation with a single mom, she's got two kids, she probably can't afford it.
	What are you going to do?
	You're probably making more money than her, or at least you have more disposable income than her.
	She's got two kids.
	What are you going to do?
	You can't go to the adults-only place because of the kids.
	Can you take her without the kids?
	Maybe.
	She doesn't have any money.
	So you've got to pay for it.
	Oh, but maybe you did it once and then next time the kids have got to come with us.
	Which means, instead of your wall-to-wall sex...
	Hey, let's jump on an intertube and go down the lazy river for the 12 millionth time.
	Hey!
	Really want to watch an annoying Chris Rock Zebra in Madagascar 3 for the 12 millionth time?
	You can!
	You can!
	You can if you want.
	And even if you don't want, you'll have to anyway.
	I mean, just something as simple as going on vacation with a single mom.
	What a mess.
	It's going to cost you three times as much.
	And then just when you're getting your groove on, the kid coughs in the next room.
	And it's all over.
	So when you're raised by a single mom, it's kind of humiliating because you're raised by the woman that no one wants.
	I saw this with my own mom.
	No one has quality.
	Yeah, the guys have quality.
	What would some young, successful, good-looking, competent lawyer guy, and he sort of sees your mom, what's going to happen?
	Yeah, stay away from that.
	He's a lawyer.
	He knows.
	Oh yeah, he knows in particular, right?
	Yeah.
	Can I fuck you into baby jail for the next 20 years?
	Thank you.
	So when you want to do something great, you're raised by a single mom, and this is, again, a generality.
	But what is your capacity to believe yourself capable of greatness?
	It's hard.
	The good news is you get nothing to lose, right?
	I mean, that's why you can go either way as far as greatness goes with this kind of beginning.
	Mm-hmm.
	But when you really start to want to achieve something, you know, the other thing too is that if you've got a bunch of, I'm not saying you do, I'm talking general for the audience, if you've got a bunch of losers around you, what are they going to do if you really become successful?
	Let's say you become really successful, you make a lot of money.
	What's going to happen?
	They'll feel quite...
	They'll want to pull you back down with them.
	No, if it's money, they'll encourage you to go on so that they can clamp on like leeches to your financial success.
	Alright, okay.
	Who's the parachute pants guy who spent all of his money?
	MC Hammer!
	I have 200 friends!
	Also known as vampires!
	100 of them can fit in each of my pant legs!
	But yeah, you got lots of friends.
	It's like that song, nobody wants you when you're down and out.
	Dwayne Johnson actually has a Showtime series called Ballers, which is pretty much based around this entire concept.
	Dwayne Johnson?
	Yes, yes, your crush, my crush.
	For those of you who don't know, he's Mike's giant cock man crush.
	That's about true.
	I'm not blaming Mike.
	Dwayne Johnson is a serious pile of man-hunkiness.
	Hey, you share my affinity for Dwayne Johnson as well.
	Like, holy shit, man.
	Spread out A, those biceps, and B, that charisma.
	Just a little bit.
	I'm not asking for all of it.
	I don't expect you to send me your arm in a freezer bag, but for God's sakes, sneeze a little charisma northwards.
	Let the wind drift it across the Canadian border.
	I'll just, I'll snort a little bit.
	I mean, I'll take the guy's old underpants.
	I don't care.
	Just, you know, give me a little.
	Share a little of the love.
	Because he's, yeah, he's a very impressive guy.
	And the diversity of roles in acting as well.
	Yeah, he's done some funny stuff.
	He's done some serious stuff.
	He's a tooth fairy to San Andreas, right?
	So, wait, what's his show about, Mike?
	It's about...
	He's a football player, a retired football player, and he becomes a financial manager and tries to sign on a bunch of other relevant football players that either were former teammates or, you know, has a connection, knows a guy that knows a guy.
	And, of course, it's him butting heads with...
	In the main storyline...
	This really successful football player and his hanger-on friend who is managing his finances.
	And by managing, I mean not managing them at all.
	The moms of the child stars and stuff?
	There's some element of that in the show, but the big storyline is this guy's childhood friend who has done nothing, but he can hang on to the successful football player and whisper in his ear and get things to go his way, and he's a terrible influence and it leads to a lot of problems, and Dwayne Johnson's character is butting heads with him throughout the entire series.
	That's as far as I've got.
	I don't know how it resolves itself.
	Oh, it's like the fantasy that with Entourage you can bring your loser friends from your hometown and they're just going to be great for your career.
	It's high school forever!
	Yay!
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, because the guy who was like assistant manager at a pizza place in Buttfuck, Indiana is going to be really great at negotiating with very experienced studio heads because that happens.
	Oh, man.
	Have you ever driven through Buttfuck, Indiana?
	I've heard some things.
	I have with the windows rolled up.
	Good.
	And I will say that I don't care if there's a red light.
	Strangely enough, though...
	Don't stop short in buttfuck Indiana.
	No, I did end up with a banana in the tailpipe.
	Just metaphorically.
	No, no!
	I mean, really, really.
	Anyway, so can I just...
	These are some of the things.
	It's going to be tough for you to break through this ice of loserliness that you grew up in.
	I mean, look, I've taken on arguably the most insane task I might agree, yes.
	Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.
	And, you know, I'm the guy who came from, you know, dirt poor, surrounded by losers and failures and resentful other blamers and futile...
	Wastes of God knows what, right?
	And the idea that I could step out of that Petri dish into this glorious Elysium Olympus of the highest aspirations of philosophical excellence, well, let's just put it this way.
	The helium don't rise if it's tied to a dead person.
	The helium balloon stays right where it is, right?
	And you've got to...
	If you really want to...
	Have a great goal in your life?
	Sounds like you do.
	I encourage and applaud that.
	People have got to be with you.
	They've got to be doing great things with their lives too.
	Not just, quote, encouraging you, but they've got to be in motion with you, right?
	Right.
	People race fastest when they race with someone of equal ability.
	So have people around you who are doing great things.
	Have people around you who are encouraging you.
	Have people around you who believe in you.
	And they can either get on board or they can get in the rear view.
	I mean, it's only three things, right?
	You can give up your higher aspirations and you can sink back down into the swamper of failure and futility that you were raised in.
	Don't think you want to do that.
	Number two, you can tell people what you want.
	They can shake off their complacency and hostility and cynicism and they can join you in this goal and they can get their own lives in motion and you can all support each other.
	That's called Neverland.
	Or, you know, number three, you can say, I'm going.
	I'm going.
	Come with me if you want.
	Get moving in your own life if you want.
	But I'm not staying here.
	I'm gone.
	Because the only thing around getting something done, you just keep doing it.
	You know, to be a loser, and I'm not putting you in this category, just so you know.
	I'm not at all.
	I wouldn't be saying this if I was.
	It's a single tear dripping down my face.
	No, but to be a loser is...
	To somehow imagine that it is your emotions alone that will lead you to where you want in life.
	Self-indulgence of emotion is one of the great castrators of the human condition.
	Because I know we live in this world of, like, feels.
	Well, emotional intelligence is important too, you know.
	We live in this gynocentric world where to have feelings is somehow to have excellence.
	You're not communicating your feelings.
	You're emotionally unavailable.
	Feelings are all that matter.
	Feelings count.
	But that's just...
	That's Chick Planet.
	And that's not even healthy Chick Planet.
	That's just Chick Planet.
	Well, feelings come easy to me, so I'm going to make feelings the most important thing in the world.
	Well, no.
	And you know that's nonsense because, you know, if Barack Obama said tomorrow to all the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single mothers, if he said, you know what?
	We're not going to send you money anymore because money is produced through hard work, not through feelings, and you guys really value feelings.
	But we are going to be emotionally available to you as an administration.
	You can call us up.
	We'll listen.
	We'll sympathize.
	We'll care.
	Because feelings matter, not excellence, competence, productivity, hard work, entrepreneurship.
	Actually getting shit done, making things, creating new things, hiring people, meeting payroll, satisfying your customers.
	Those are all thought things.
	Those are all hard work.
	They're manly.
	We're not doing any of that anymore because you've convinced us it's emotional intelligence that matters.
	It's the feels that matter.
	So what we're going to do, we're not going to send you any of this money because that's just thought products.
	That's human doing, not human being.
	So we're going to set up, you know, helplines.
	We're going to call.
	We're going to sympathize with you.
	So we're cutting off your welfare checks, but we're going to give lots of emotional availability to you.
	What would those women say, those single moms say?
	Right, yeah.
	It's not really what they want.
	It's not really what they want, yeah.
	I think they'd say a lot more than that.
	And I think they'd get their boyfriends to go and trash the White House, right?
	And they wouldn't.
	I mean, this feels thing...
	And don't get me wrong.
	Emotions are not your enemy.
	Emotions are not bad and they're fine.
	But the idea that we are pushed around by our emotions...
	Right?
	You said, and I thought about this all afternoon, right?
	You said, oh, you know, I stopped feeling like doing it, basically, right?
	Yeah.
	Now the successful person says, so what?
	I mean, how healthy are you going to get if you stop exercising every time you feel a little tired?
	Think you're going to get to the Olympics?
	Think you're going to get to a pickup team?
	Oh, you know, I was going to lose weight, but I got a little hungry.
	No, I mean, emotions are there to inform you, but to put emotions as the primary drivers of your life, as the primary deciders of your life, is to live in a chicktatorship.
	Feelings, they come and they say, well, this is what I feel.
	And you say, well, that's interesting.
	Here's what we're doing.
	Show hasn't always been a total joy.
	So what?
	I've done shows with headaches.
	I've done shows with stomach aches.
	I've done shows feeling nauseous from chemo.
	You just do what you do.
	But you have, of course, raised by a single mom, feelings dictate.
	But since feelings are the products of cognition, it's allowing prejudice and bias to dictate your life, which puts you in an ever smaller circle, which is why those dedicated To acting out their feelings end up so pitiful later on in life because they've got no direction.
	Anyway, the wind blows.
	The feelings come and they overrule the intellect and basically shut that part down?
	Is that kind of what you mean?
	You have a goal!
	You have a goal saying, I want to be systems engineer or whatever it is, right?
	You've got a goal.
	And then you say, well, my feelings aren't that into the goal today.
	And because you're raised by a self-indulgent single mom, somehow it seems legitimate for you to stop the goal.
	Push through it.
	You know, I mean, I don't know if you ever had one of these gym teachers.
	I had this crusty old Scottish gym teacher when I was in junior high school.
	Like, I never ever had him breathe anywhere near me without almost passing out from, like, chew tobacco smoke.
	I think he had, like, four teeth left, right?
	You know, he made Willie the Gardener from The Simpsons.
	Look like someone out of the Bolshoi Ballet.
	Right?
	And I, you know, I took a...
	Everything was to say, walk it off!
	Right?
	We used to play murderball, you know, back before we lived in this dictatorship.
	If someone could get hurt, right?
	We used to play murderball.
	Yeah.
	Dodgeball, right?
	Same thing?
	Well, we called it murderball because we were honest.
	Because it murders your balls.
	Yeah.
	Because if you're a guy, where do you throw it?
	You throw it at another guy's balls.
	Right?
	Most effective area.
	Absolutely!
	I've won!
	Not just this game, but the entire genetic lineage between me and him.
	Because his balls will no longer function.
	And so...
	I took a...
	I remember taking a...
	And we use these, like, they weren't medicine balls, but they weren't, like, fucking Nerf balls or whatever the hell they use now.
	Like, they were big, substantial half-basket balls or something like that, right?
	I mean, you get one of those to the face, man.
	You know, you're speaking Chinese even though you don't know it, and you're seeing stars and dead relatives are beckoning.
	I mean, you go on a journey.
	You're disoriented, right?
	And, of course, back in junior high, you have such a wild disparity.
	Of size, right?
	Because some of the kids hit puberty two years ago, and some of the Asian kids are still three years away from puberty, right?
	And so it's like the Morlock versus the Eloy or something like that, right?
	And so I saw one guy, his name was Sam, you know, the kind of guy who could have stood some back of the finger shaving when he was 11.
	He could pick up this ball with one hand, you know?
	He threw the ball, he like, even like two or three people open.
	It was like bowling for this guy.
	And I took one of these shots to the face, right?
	And I was like, what the fuck, right?
	Oh my God, like literally saw stars, you know, the whole Looney Tunes thing.
	And the gym teacher goes, walk it off!
	It's like, what do you mean walk it off?
	I got hit in the face.
	I don't walk in my face.
	Walk it off!
	Right?
	You'll be fine.
	And, you know, part of me was like, but that's not what mommy would have said.
	Right?
	Yeah, mom's going to give me a popsicle.
	Are you okay?
	Walk it off!
	Right?
	I mean, and this is just, you know, these are sort of two extremes or whatever, right?
	But, you know, dads are there to say, kid's fine.
	And the moms are there, God bless them, you know, it's beautiful.
	But the moms are there, are you okay, my sweetness, my darling?
	Right?
	And because, you know, every time a kid gets hurt, it's like punching a woman in the ovaries because that's where they came from, right?
	I mean, and again, there's nothing wrong with that.
	That's a beautiful thing.
	But guys got to stand between that, you know, it's time to cut the cord, right?
	She'll be fine.
	And this idea, you know, that guys, you walk it off.
	I don't care that it hurts.
	Walk it off, right?
	And this used to like, I don't know all that, it's Mallory Towers, right?
	In Mallory Towers, a book that I read when I was young that was written out in the 40s or 50s by this Ina Blyton woman, it's about girls in a boarding school.
	And there are all these girls, do nothing bitches.
	Mike, help me out.
	What was the name of that woman?
	Oh, Ronda Rousey.
	Ronda Rousey!
	Now, don't you love a hot woman who has the phrase Rousey in the name?
	That's very Rousey-ing.
	And what was her basic thing, Mike?
	Oh, it's a short little clip that kind of went viral before her last fight last weekend.
	And the basic premise was there's some women that say, I look masculine.
	I have muscles.
	I'm masculine.
	And she's like, yes, I have muscles.
	I'm not a do-nothing bitch.
	My job, my muscles are there because they are part of what I do.
	Every sculpted muscle I have has something to do with functionality for my purpose.
	And that functionality is not fucking a millionaire.
	Yes, yes.
	And props to you, Rhonda.
	Props to you.
	Yeah, the do-nothing bitches, they're just interested in looking pretty, and they say I look too masculine and so on, and that's because I have a function and a purpose that is not trying to get money out of guys by having sex with them, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, I mean, I thought it was a great clip.
	I mean, you've got to hand it to her.
	I mean, more masculine than three-quarters of the men I've ever met.
	Actually, 95% of the men I've ever met.
	And harder working, too.
	And harder working, yeah.
	I have a lot of respect for anyone that just puts in the hours and works incredibly hard towards what they deem important and what they want as a goal.
	Even if it's a goal I staunchly disagree with, I appreciate the hard work and can respect that.
	Right, so she's more of a feminist than just about any other feminist I've ever met, in that she's not saying, you guys are harming my body image.
	No, she's like, guys do nothing, bitches.
	I'm out here getting, I'm fit, I'm doing what I want, every muscle serves my purpose.
	She doesn't care.
	And she's, you know, people are shouting her down and trying to shame her and all this kind of stuff, and she's like, comes back fighting.
	You're the losers, not me.
	So...
	Forget your feelings, man.
	At least for a bit.
	Because, you know, you're raised by a single mom.
	You're raised by a lot of female teachers.
	And you're in a culture where the feels...
	I feel offended.
	Jesus.
	You want to feel offended?
	Try being a white male in this culture.
	Jesus fucking Christ.
	Stop your whining.
	At least people care that you're offended.
	Try being a white male and say, I'm offended.
	I'm offended.
	Good, you fucking patriarch!
	I'll return the feels when I'm granted the feels.
	People have no idea what it is to be offended if they're not a white male.
	Sorry if you don't agree with me.
	If you're not a white male, I don't care, because you just haven't experienced it.
	You're not a member of a protected class that everybody leaps in to assuage and pacify and all that, right?
	So, you got a goal.
	And that's your goal.
	And you do it until when?
	Until you don't feel like doing it?
	Nope.
	Until you lose interest?
	Nope.
	You do it until it's done.
	Now, this doesn't mean that you've sold away your future into slavery and so on.
	But while you're doing it, you just fucking do it.
	So now, with the systems engineering thing, my recent new thing I've started putting time into is coding.
	Now, I guess this is kind of not asking on a different level.
	I think that coding might be more useful to me, especially in the near future.
	Now, is this just me making an excuse, or should I... I don't know.
	What are you learning coding?
	I really don't.
	I don't have...
	No, no.
	Don't give me a long thing, man.
	Okay.
	I don't know.
	So you don't know why you're learning code.
	No, I don't.
	No, no, no.
	See, that's chick thinking.
	And again, I'm generalizing and so on, right?
	And the reason I'm saying that is that a lot of women, when they're young, they don't have to provide value other than vagina.
	Pretty vagina.
	The shrine of pretty vagina, right?
	But men, we've got to go out and do stuff, right?
	And I'm not talking about women as a whole, and certainly not talking about women in history.
	I'm talking about modern stuff, right?
	I'm certainly not talking about women across the world, most of whom are working really damn hard.
	But you're like, I bought makeup, right?
	And you buy makeup, you make yourself look pretty, you go out, and guys give you stuff.
	You know, I mean, the value is kind of passive, right?
	Because men go around and say, basically, will you sleep with me and I'll buy you stuff and let's go on a date, right?
	And they're active and the women are generally passive.
	They make themselves pretty and then they wait, right?
	And they shoo away whoever they're not attractive to and they Okay, so that's what I'm doing with coding.
	I'm putting makeup on myself and waiting for something to come up that just jumps in my face.
	I'll make myself pretty, and someone's going to come and buy me a house.
	I see, yeah.
	And then, I will cut his balls off, throw away the balls, but keep the house, right?
	So, and again, this is what your mom did, right?
	Did your mom make herself into a great person?
	No.
	No, she tossed up the vagina flag and saw who saluted.
	Did your mom have to really work to provide great value to these guys?
	She had to be very conniving.
	Yeah, yeah, no, I get all of that.
	But why were they interested in her?
	No, she didn't have to put the effort in.
	They were, I don't know, like we were saying before, knots kind of.
	Great man.
	She's not a high-quality individual.
	It's the same thing with my mom.
	I don't try to pick on your mom.
	Every now and then, my mom would get some guy who'd try to be friends with me.
	It's like, I tell you what I don't think we have in common.
	You like my mom.
	So already, we're already in opposite sides of the planet.
	And you couldn't respect the guys who, quote, liked your mom, right?
	No.
	I mean, there was this one guy who was really good at putting on a show.
	He was definitely a salesman type person.
	So he was interesting to be around because you could get around.
	You could have a bit more in-depth discussion.
	He was quick-witted, but...
	Yeah, I can still see the...
	How long did he stick around?
	It was, I think, two, maybe three years they were married.
	That was my mother's third husband.
	Third?
	How pretty was she at this point?
	Not even.
	I mean, after she had my brother, she gained quite a bit of weight.
	I think she was quite pretty until her mid-20s.
	She had my sister, who was older than I, when she was around 20, and then me a year after.
	So...
	After she had my brother, she just kind of let go.
	She wasn't really pretty anymore.
	Wait, so this guy, this quick-witted guy, got married to a fat woman with kids?
	Yeah, I don't know exactly what it was.
	I'm not disagreeing with you, obviously.
	I'm just like...
	What's wrong with him?
	How do you piece those two together?
	Well, he was...
	See, this is going off of what my mom says, but I can't really trust a lot of what she says, that he gambled a lot of money away, and a lot of what my mom says was her money, but she didn't have any sort of way to get that money, so it's hard to believe that, too.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what he saw in her, or...
	Maybe she always had a gun behind her back.
	I'm not sure.
	You get a goal and you stick with it.
	Fundamentally, your goal in the end...
	I'm just trying to align you with the facts of male nature.
	I'm not trying to put you into some sort of straight jacket of commitment and whatever.
	I'm not trying to turn you from a free-flowing dandelion fluff into a train or anything, but For a man, the reason we're ambitious is to give shit to our kids.
	A man's ambition, if it's fundamentally about you, then it's not in accordance to why it was developed.
	And women make this mistake, and they're really encouraged to make this mistake these days.
	But women, you're not hot because nature wants you to feel good about yourself.
	You're not made attractive to men so that men will buy you dinner and give you compliments.
	Sex is not about you.
	Fuckability is not about you.
	It's about the kids.
	Women, you're made hot to men so that men will buy you stuff for your children.
	And your ambition as a man is so that you can give stuff to your children.
	A man without a wife and kids can live on 10-20% of the money.
	You don't need a lot of ambition to cook up $15,000 a year to live in someone's basement.
	And I'm not saying all men who are ambitious have to have kids.
	It's like saying all women who are sexy have to have kids.
	I'm not saying any of that.
	Everyone's going to misunderstand it, but who gives a shit?
	I'm speaking to the smart people here.
	A man's ambition, why do we have testosterone?
	Why are we on average slightly smarter and dumber than women?
	Because we overreach, we excel, we improve so that we can get stuff for our children.
	Because the man who was more ambitious and succeeded was able to have more children until the fucking welfare state.
	In which case, smart, successful people get their wallets ripped out through their gonads and handed out to irresponsible single moms.
	But we're talking about the development of male characteristics prior to the dysgenics of the welfare state.
	Why do you want to achieve great things?
	For your children.
	For your children.
	Now, you could be an infertile man and still want to achieve great things.
	You inherited the reason for it without the means to enact it.
	You may be a highly ambitious man who doesn't want to have kids.
	You may be a highly ambitious woman who doesn't want to have kids.
	Ayn Rand didn't have kids.
	No problem with that.
	I've never said, oh, she should have had kids.
	I don't think she would have been a great mom, to put it mildly.
	She would have run into the limits of philosophy if she'd had children, to some degree, because her personality is largely innate.
	Anyway, neither here nor there.
	But You want great things.
	You want to achieve great things.
	You want to do great things with your life so that you can provide resources to your children.
	Knowing that, look, if you had a really hungry child at home, you didn't have any food in the house.
	It's like 2 o'clock in the morning.
	You live in a small town.
	Your kid's really hungry.
	You put the kid in the car and you go driving around.
	The first restaurant you come to is closed.
	Do you just go home?
	We find food.
	You go find food!
	Because your kid's hungry!
	Whatever it takes.
	Got to drive to the next town?
	Drive to the next town.
	It's your fault the kid doesn't have any food.
	It's your job to get the kid food.
	Kid's hungry, no food in the house.
	You go until.
	Even if you've got to knock on the neighbor's door and beg for food, you do it until your kid has food.
	Right?
	Now, your mom didn't have to Have that kind of commitment because she had the government and she had other guys to come and backfill the mistakes in, right?
	Oh, honey, did you choose the wrong guy?
	He has $50,000 a year in benefits.
	Let's see if I can pay you to choose the wrong guy, right?
	But that's not how men develop.
	Men don't have the safety net of men, right?
	Men go out and achieve To gain excess resources to buy the highest quality eggs that they can get and then to provide more things for their children.
	And that's what I mean.
	So fundamentally, you're making your ambition about you.
	Now, I happen to make my ambition about the world as a whole.
	I get how it works and I harness into that.
	And so I'm like, I'm not getting things for my kid.
	But you know what I mean.
	But make it bigger than you.
	Because the only reason that you have ambition and goals and drive and an excess of testosterone and ambition is because it's not about you.
	It's about the next generation.
	Like the whole reason that a woman is hot and attractive and that men give her stuff is not about her.
	It's not about her.
	Sexiness is not about the woman.
	It's about the next generation.
	The man is buying children from you by giving you stuff.
	He's showing that he has resources so that you will have sex with him so that he can give those resources to your kids.
	So your ambition is not about you just as a woman's sexiness is not about her.
	And if you view your ambition in its proper context, then it's like going to get food for your hungry child.
	You don't just stop when you feel like it.
	But you probably didn't get that from your mom.
	No.
	Which is going to doom you to a life of inconsequentiality and frustration and a generally draining sense of purpose.
	Right.
	So for this ambition, I just have to constantly look to the future or do I have a kid?
	Who is it for?
	Have a kid.
	I am studying coding so that I can make the world a better place.
	I am studying coding so I can make a lot of money so that I can support my family.
	I don't care what the reason is, but it can't be just, ah, see what happens.
	Right.
	I mean, that's a woman who's like, oh, I'll put on makeup and see who approaches me, right?
	Men are hunters.
	Yeah, and when I said the coding thing, it wasn't like, I have this plan that I have this business that I want to put out and get funded as a startup from Mark Andreessen or something like that.
	It was, I'm not sure what it is, but I want coding to use as a skill.
	So I... I don't know what I can do with it yet, but that's the point of learning it.
	So is that the same thing as makeup?
	I don't know who's going to approach me, but I'm going to make myself as pretty as possible.
	Well, it's not that I think something will open up to me, but as I learn more about coding and what I can do with it.
	The more time that I put into it and as I can gather a startup to make a startup or something.
	To make a startup or something.
	Oh my god, man.
	It's incredibly vague.
	Do you listen to yourself?
	Yeah, I know.
	You are standing before your investors.
	Hang on.
	Imagine you're just standing in front of a bunch of investors because everything you invest in, like you're in your mid-20s now, right?
	You're not a teenager.
	You gotta get some shit sorted out.
	Yeah.
	What are you gonna do with your life?
	You don't get to live forever.
	And time's slipping away.
	Yeah.
	And you wouldn't stand in front of a bunch of investors who are tapping their pencils and very busy men and women and say, you know, maybe a startup or something.
	Yes.
	No.
	No.
	No, I wouldn't.
	That's what I mean.
	But you are investing.
	You are the investor here.
	Because you're investing in learning coding.
	Maybe for a startup or something.
	That's not how it works.
	Not how life works.
	So it's if I find something to do and I need coding, then that's when I would pick it up.
	Well, yeah.
	And only if you can't afford to hire someone better.
	Right, where's my time going?
	We try and outsource everything we possibly can.
	Like, if you're Michael Jordan, you're not doing your own typing.
	You're not learning tax law, right?
	It's like anything that is not you in front of a basketball net is a waste of time.
	Mike, have you ever had this conversation with me?
	Yes, I have.
	Many times.
	Mike, I can sync up the video and the audio for you.
	I remember when you were like, I can mow my yard.
	And I'm like, you can't podcast while you're mowing your yard that maybe will take this amount of time that you could be doing something more productive.
	But Mike, if I pay someone to mow my yard, it costs me money.
	Oh yeah, now I get it.
	Opportunity cost!
	Opportunity cost!
	It's like Michael Jordan saying, well, you know, I could buy a washing machine.
	Yeah.
	That costs money.
	And you know, there's a creek.
	And that creek is only three and a half miles from my house.
	And sometimes it's kind of clean.
	I can go down there with soap that I've made from my own sweat and brush my own clothes.
	Sorry, I can't make it to basketball practice today.
	I'm doing my laundry in a creek.
	Things Michael Jordan has never said.
	So, listen, I gotta move on to the next caller, man, but I know we've covered a lot here, but...
	Expose yourself to some man juice.
	That's all I'm saying.
	Look, I'm just saying, you know, it's like that old Friends episode where...
	You know, Chandler, who's always kind of effeminate, and Rachel is saying, you know, just put on ESPN. In the background, it doesn't matter.
	Anything, right?
	Okay.
	Listen to some...
	These are not people I'm endorsing.
	Just everybody knows.
	But throw on some Tom Likas.
	You know, listen to some of the MGTOW guys.
	Just expose yourself to some unrepentant masculinity.
	Balance up my estrogen and testosterone.
	Yeah!
	You know, de-tit a little bit.
	I mean, you're just surrounded by these giant fun bags of maternalism.
	And, I mean, just, you know, hack your way through a little and get to the, you know, forest of manly cockman.
	That's all I'm saying.
	You know, just testosterone it up a little bit.
	God knows society.
	Look, society's really going to need this because this, like, matriarchy of female voters for endless entitlements, this shit's about to end.
	We're gonna need some guys around.
	The whole society is gonna need some men around.
	You can see this on my videos.
	Mike, I wonder if you could imitate to me, if you wouldn't mind.
	I am assertive with the listener.
	You're so mean, Steph.
	You're so mean.
	You didn't even give a chance to talk.
	I didn't even want to talk.
	I have a point, and I'm trying to make a point.
	And then you cut them off when they try to make their point.
	Why did you do that, Steph?
	You're so mean.
	And then the other comments are saying, oh my god, I can't believe you're so patient.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah, so basically, I have to either hit the person, or let them walk all over me.
	That's the only way in which people will be happy.
	Yeah.
	Alright, so here's what could colloquially be called a man who has commented on the single mom's video.
	Are you ready?
	So this is on the 15 reasons to date a single mom.
	I really struggle watching Stefan's videos sometimes.
	On the one hand, he's very insightful and intelligent, making great points and arguments.
	And then on the other, he comes off as so snarky, judgmental, so dismissive, and so nasty towards certain topics.
	I just can't get behind some of the things he says on single mothers.
	While I agree on a lot of points, and I agree that there certainly must be a lot of women like this, it just seems so broad-brushed and so generalized and so dehumanizing.
	Life is more complex than just point to somebody who has a failed relationship and a child and saying, it's your fault.
	You made a bad decision.
	Deal with it.
	People change.
	People learn.
	People make mistakes.
	I don't believe people are as insightful as Stefan thinks they are or as knowledgeable about their behavior.
	It just goes on and on.
	It's just like empowerment.
	It's just like, oh my god.
	Steph, I can't get behind your points on single mothers, but unfortunately the single mothers didn't have a problem with people getting behind them, which is why they're single mothers in the first place.
	Right.
	It's like, well, I struggle, because he seems to be intelligent, but then he also seems kind of snarky, and it's like, are there any facts in your brain at all?
	Or is it just this giant tit wave of estrogen-based feels?
	I put together an hour of raw data on the effects of single motherhood on society and on children as a whole.
	It's called The Truth About Single Moms.
	It's there.
	Look at it, everyone.
	Look at it.
	It's not good.
	It's not good at all.
	Oh, yeah.
	There should just be a test.
	Like, you want to get to Frieda Bain Radio, and here's the one simple test.
	Number one, does a generalization include exceptions?
	Yeah.
	If you don't think it does, you are not a listener.
	You are a time-wasting brain virus.
	Well, I know a single mother who's nothing like this.
	Tall Chinese guy.
	You're so mean, Steph.
	You're so mean.
	This has not occurred before in history, so it can't happen in the future.
	I'm saying this and typing on a keyboard that did not exist 30 years ago.
	And I'm telling you that things that don't exist can never exist on the internet.
	Oh, fuck.
	You know, it is a battle.
	I'm either going to make The planet is going to make me a fucking retard.
	There's no middle ground.
	I'm going to give them some brain cells or they're just going to eat my entire brain.
	There's nothing in the middle.
	All right.
	Thanks again, man.
	Yeah, thanks so much, Steph.
	I really appreciate it.
	Take care.
	Bye-bye.
	Who's next?
	All right.
	Up next is John.
	And John wrote in and said, in your podcast, you often refer to the topic of collections or groups of things not existing and instead just being made up of singular entities.
	For instance, governments are individual people.
	I would like to know your opinion on the subject of emergent properties, new things that arise from groups of individual entities that did not previously exist or are exaggerated.
	Some examples, forests slash jungles are a group of trees, but give rise to entirely new ecosystems when in large numbers.
	Human brains are groups of neurons and synapses, but give rise to consciousness in large numbers.
	Societies are groups of people, but give rise to trends slash cultures slash fashions.
	in large numbers.
	That's from John.
	Right.
	It happens.
	Okay, I'm done with that.
	Okay.
	I don't mean to be dismissive, but yes, there is such a thing as an emergent quality, for sure.
	Yeah, I mean, and I've talked about this a lot of the free will stuff and so on.
	You know, two trees rarely create an entirely new ecosystem, but it certainly is true that a jungle is more than the sum of its parts, right?
	It's an interdependent, right?
	One rabbit will starve to death.
	Rabbit plus grass is lots of rabbits.
	Rabbit plus grass...
	Plus Wolf is metaphor for our case selection and an explanation of left versus right ideologies, but nonetheless, right?
	So yeah, there certainly are emergent properties.
	I mean, each individual will often think for themselves.
	Well, each individual has the opportunity to occasionally think for themselves, put said individuals into a crowd, and reason tends to go out the window.
	So yeah, I mean, there definitely are.
	There's massive effects on these things, right?
	No atom creates a star.
	Put enough atoms together and you get a 10 billion year nuclear weapon that burns my skin.
	Yeah, it happens.
	I don't know if I have a huge amount to add to that other than emergent properties is the fundamental.
	No atom is alive, but put enough of them together and keep them away from U.S. foreign policy and you get something that's alive.
	I don't know if it's the fact that there's 3am here or the toffees I've been eating to stay awake, but between the anacondas don't and the ghost gangster rap battle protection, I'm just totally done here.
	You know what?
	You've actually just fallen asleep.
	I was not ready for this.
	And this is just a show that people dream of when they've ingested too many toffees and it's four o'clock in the morning.
	And perhaps Nicki Minaj is doing her The Fall of Western Civilization rap across the bottom of your brain screen or something.
	I really do think that that woman is the harbinger of the end, but that's the topic for another time.
	She's smuggling a nuclear weapon.
	It may not just be a metaphor.
	If it's not Eve with the fucking snake, it's Nicki Minaj with the fucking anaconda.
	It's always these chicks and the snakes that bring the end of all good things to the universe.
	Okay, well, I will briefly expand.
	Well, I'll ask you, could you say anything about emergent properties of governments that we might miss if we were to get into a successful anarchy?
	Successful anarchy would be a stateless society, so I'm not sure there'd be any emergent properties from something that isn't there.
	Well, we would miss them, like a national defense being organized or, yeah, like the space program or something.
	Things that just couldn't be done with, unless you do have a...
	Yes, inefficiency would be a negative.
	You know, I'd like a space program that wasn't a goddamn spectator sport.
	I'd like a space program I could actually participate in.
	That'd be kind of nice.
	You know, the space program, it's like you can't have sex, but here's porn you can watch once every 10 years.
	I mean, the space program is, I don't want it to be, you know, I'd love to go into space.
	I'd love to go into space.
	What an unbelievable experience that would be.
	To float around the world, to see sunrise over the whole planet.
	To see this blue orb that has the only intelligent or life of any kind that we know of in the universe.
	To see this blue orb that is the tapestry on which it's written.
	The entire fable, mythology, and hopefully future documentary non-fiction of the species.
	God, what an incredible experience.
	But no!
	Because the government's running.
	All I get to do is watch some pictures of Pluto.
	Fuck!
	Take your pictures of Pluto, stuff them up your ass.
	I want a rocket that can take me up.
	I don't want to just watch it from a distance.
	So yeah, I think in a free society, there'd be a great space program.
	It's just that it would be something you'd actually get to participate in, rather than something that you'd watch.
	You know, I mean, if the government had taken over the airline industry at the very beginning, there'd be four flights a year, and you'd get to see pictures of it.
	That's it.
	We'd be using planes that have not been improved since the first flight.
	Right, right.
	You know, you'd get to hold a rock from some other country.
	Well, that's almost the same as going, isn't it?
	Here's a piece of obsidian from Costa Rica.
	Well, you wouldn't want to actually go, would you?
	It's okay.
	The government sent a flight there 10 years ago and brought back this rock.
	It's now in a museum and you can go and touch it.
	You suck, government!
	Give me space!
	Stop taking my money, wasting it on pompous, pimply NASA engineers who never seem to get anything right, who blow up people regularly.
	Give me space, man!
	Keep my money, I'll buy space for myself.
	I was wondering if you could think of any emergent properties that might come from a free society, because that's an interesting thought.
	Happiness.
	Social cohesion.
	A lack of witch hunting.
	Stability.
	Yeah.
	Look, I mean, look at something as simple as Hulk Hogan, right?
	As simple as Hulk Hogan?
	You spent some sentences describing him earlier.
	Something as simple as the Hulk Hogan lynching, let's say, right?
	So Hulk Hogan expressed a desire for his daughter not to marry an unsuccessful member of another race.
	Well, okay.
	I've heard exactly the same from the black community.
	Which is, you know, black women don't like it when successful black men date white women.
	I've heard the same thing from every religious group.
	You're marrying outside the Klan.
	You're marrying outside the Klan.
	Wasn't this resolved with Disney's Pocahontas film?
	I've never heard the argument from Pocahontas before.
	Now I feel I've fallen asleep.
	So...
	I don't know where we've got bangable celluloid drawings that make you feel naughty.
	I don't know where that comes from at the moment, other than with Cher fondling for that or what?
	We're so at one with nature, we die from tooth decay.
	I don't know.
	I mean, that's a whole other story.
	But no, so Hulk Hogan, he says, you know, well, I would like my daughter to marry within my race.
	At least if she's going to marry someone unsuccessful, I'd rather it be an unsuccessful wife.
	And I've heard exactly the same thing from Asians, right?
	And I've heard exactly the same thing from blacks, and I've heard exactly the same thing from Hispanics and from people from every religion.
	People of similar whatever, genetics or belief systems or whatever, they like their kids to marry within those belief systems.
	Right?
	I mean...
	He phrased it inelegantly, right?
	And I'm not saying I even agree with the sentiment, but that would just be like, okay, so this guy said that, who cares, right?
	But because of the state, you see, the lefties, and this is not...
	This is not my made-up stuff, right?
	I mean, not that a lot of this is, but the leftists have for a long time, almost a century now, been focused on riling up the African-American community in America to destabilize the capitalist system, to render it unfunctional.
	See the truth about immigration and the truth about the race war for this information that's well-sourced, everyone.
	This is not being pulled out of stuff's ass midstream.
	It's truth about immigration, truth about the race war.
	It's well-documented in there, all right?
	Actually, we should have non-ass fact.
	N-A-F. Non-ass fact.
	We should have a little chime or something.
	Or maybe it's just like a held-in fart or something.
	It's a non-ass fact.
	And so you've got to go all crazy on Hulk Hogan to rile up the black community so you can further the agenda of the leftist takeover of Hamina Hamina.
	This is all very well documented and not anything too shocking.
	So would you miss that?
	So the leftist takeover of harmony harmony is an emergent property of Hulk Hogan?
	Of statism.
	Right.
	Of statism, right?
	Because in order to gain more power in a system, you have to make people unhappy.
	Because in order to sell someone salvation, you have to damn them first, right?
	Heaven comes after hell.
	Right?
	So if you want to sell...
	Diet pills to people, you have to tell them that they're fat.
	If you want to give something to someone, if you want to gain power over them, and this could be economic power in a more innocuous way, or it can be political power in a more sinister way, but if you want power, you must make people fight.
	And then you come along and you say, I can make it better.
	In the same way, if you throw a snake into someone's bed and it bites them in the ass, suddenly your anti-venom snake serum looks mighty appealing.
	Without the medical power, you wouldn't have all these people trying to foment all these unbelievable hostilities among people.
	Male versus female.
	How long have people been going on about that, just provoking this Gender war, right?
	Provoking this anti-male hysteria, provoking all of this hyper-ridiculously cartoon Jessica Rabbit-style fainting feminism or whatever, right?
	Feminism is supposed to make women robust and now they need hug rooms when they hear someone who disagrees with them.
	Are you kidding me?
	When did feminism ever turn into making women such hothouse flowers that they can't hear the kind of intellectual discourse that is one-tenth of one percent of what the average eight-year-old boy hears in trash talk in an average soccer game?
	But anyway, I mean, so without this stage you wouldn't have as much of an incentive to continually foment hostility and disagreement and rage and collectivism and bigotry and hatred among people.
	So gender inequality or infighting is an emergent property of government?
	Well, it's an emergent property of a variety of things, but in particular, it's an emergent property of government.
	Because if you can set men and women against each other, then you turn from K to R. And when you get R's, sorry, Truth About Gene Wars, if you haven't watched it, you're going to find this stuff pretty incomprehensible.
	Or to put it another way, for those who haven't, if you can get women to hate and fear and mistrust men, then it provokes even stronger sexual desire to Because if a woman doesn't like a man, but her genes want her to reproduce, it simply cranks up her sexual desire until she'll have hate sex with him or whatever, right?
	And so you increase a woman's sexual desire, which is why you get this Miley Cyrus and the Slutwalker family disintegration video that I put out a year or so ago.
	And so if you can set women against men, they'll still have sex with men, but they won't Have sex with quality men, which means they'll be saddled with children and will then vote for bigger government and more powerful government to give them resources because they had children with the wrong men.
	And so if you can set women against men, you get a wonderful socialist welfare state ever increasing out of it.
	I've got to say, your ability to come back to this subject is incredible from any starting point.
	Someone needs to time you with a stopwatch.
	All arguments lead to this point, all roads.
	Right, well, I'm done.
	It's nearly 4am here and my brain is frazzled.
	I'd like to see Pascal choose between those two theories of anacondas and Hulk Hogan, so I'm done.
	Alright, well, let's continue as if you're dreaming.
	I could probably do that for about another four hours, which would make things progressively more surreal for everyone.
	It can't get any more surreal.
	We'll see.
	Oh, I always like taking that challenge on.
	Yeah, so that's my thought.
	I mean, some emergent properties...
	I mean, I think that in general, most of them would be beneficial, although some of them would be in the transition between now and a free society.
	Of course, some of the properties or some of the transitions would be pretty negative and destructive, but worth doing it.
	I'm entertained.
	It's been worth the wait, definitely.
	Thanks very much for your time.
	All right.
	Well, thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	Mike, you're dying to do one more?
	Yeah, if you don't mind, can we do one more?
	Aaron's been on the line.
	I've been waiting for quite a while.
	You got the energy and you got the juice.
	Good.
	I can get some juice.
	All right.
	Aaron wrote in and said, the last few years of my nearly decade long service in the Marines was spent allowing myself to internalize the destructive nature of government and deprogram myself.
	Apart from peaceful parenting and sharing Freedom Aid radio and other shows, what can I do to compensate for my actions undertaken while in uniform?
	What are some methods of presenting information to other veterans and or people considering military service that would help them minimize resistance to new information?
	It's a good question.
	Is there anything more you wanted to add to that?
	No, I'm sure some more will come up in conversation, but I don't need to add any more right now.
	What did you do in uniform that you feel you need to attend for?
	Primarily?
	Well, during my first tour, I was at a city called Ramadi.
	It's been in the news lately.
	But I found myself looking at these people as we'd be going around the city and realizing that had our positions been reversed and there was an invading army in my hometown, chances are good I'd be doing exactly what those people were doing.
	And sorry, is Ramadi the one that just fell back to...
	ISIS? Yeah, the whole damn thing, right?
	It's like Fallujah, right?
	The whole damn thing has been returned to an even more brutal enemy than the one that was driven out.
	Correct.
	I'm sorry for that.
	I'm sorry because the amount of suffering that everyone went through in that whole process, you'd think that'd be a slightly better outcome than what has actually occurred, but...
	I expected that outcome.
	I mean, after I left country and...
	Started learning more.
	I came to expect that outcome, to be honest.
	Is there any reason in particular why?
	Or was that like a gut sense?
	It's hard to articulate?
	More of a gut sense, but I mean, it just...
	I mean, I looked at, you know, history.
	You know, I looked at how Vietnam turned out.
	I looked at what happened, how we kind of stopped short during the first Gulf War.
	You know, in...
	No effect had really been achieved aside from destruction of property and life.
	So I absolutely expected the same outcome with this one.
	Right.
	Right.
	And I'm not trying to probe, and obviously you don't have to talk about anything you're uncomfortable with, but was there any particular action that you feel the most regret for, or was it more the general situation of being there?
	Well, it was mostly the general sense.
	I mean, I... Didn't do anything that would have been considered unethical or war crime from our standpoint, from the standpoint of our government, from the military and things like that.
	It's just mostly my participation in just destruction.
	I don't know for a fact if anybody that I... Killed anybody or anything to that effect.
	You know, I mean, they attribute, you know, in awards and whatnot, they attribute, you know, killed X number of bad guys.
	You know, but I don't know.
	I didn't see anybody die at my hand or anything to that effect.
	But I mean, but just the entire participation, you know, the fact that we were there.
	And I didn't allow myself to think along these lines while we were in country, just out of self-preservation.
	And I even remember thinking at the time, it's like, dude, you can't be thinking about that.
	Just put that off.
	But as I got home, got stateside, and I started finding information and coming to More libertarian leaning views and the further the further I progressed in that kind of line of thinking the more I realized that just how fucked up things were and how now I contributed to those actions and it kind of started to kind of really bother me and
	now I just kind of want to know how I Obviously, I can't compensate anybody monetarily.
	I mean, the amount of money that went into my training, went into equipment, that kind of thing, you know, there's no way.
	No, there's no way that I could ever repay any of that to anybody.
	And who would I repay it to anyway?
	But, I mean, the damage that I did, you know, psychologically to my family, to friends that I no longer have, How do I rectify those?
	I find myself at a loss trying to figure out how to repay that.
	Aaron, do you think there was anything in your childhood or your early life history that led you to be more susceptible to military endeavors?
	My grandfather was in the army but he never talked about it much which actually if he had talked about it more may have kept me from going in but my family is also very religious my parents are I grew up Mormon something that I haven't participated in in many years at this point but I mean,
	it was, military service was, if not actively encouraged, it was at the very least tacitly supported.
	So, I mean, there was no kind of, like, well, maybe you shouldn't do that, or, you know, any kind of discouragement there.
	But aside from that, I really wouldn't say, you know, there was anything that led me down that path due to hardship or anything like that.
	And how were you disciplined as a child?
	Mostly verbally.
	My mom yelled at us a lot, you know, but given her upbringing, she was beaten as a kid, and so kudos to her for not progressing that pattern.
	But she did yell at us, and my dad was not really the disciplinarian, although, you know, there was one One memory that sticks out was the use of a belt was threatened.
	Right.
	But it was timeouts, you know, yelling, that sort of thing more than anything else.
	Right.
	When you first got in country, did you not have the same perspective of, well, you know, if people invaded my country, I'd be kind of doing what they're doing?
	Not at first, no.
	You could call me a neocon in my early 20s.
	Late teens, early 20s, I was very jingoistic, patriotic, stars and stripes, all that bullshit.
	Death to our enemies, regardless of where they come from or what their motives are.
	So, and I think it was, I mean, I think it was partly, you know, seeing these people and seeing that they were really not that different from their day-to-day was not that different from, you know, what I might find in my own neighborhood.
	Right.
	And I think that's what started to kind of push me in that, towards a libertarian view.
	Right.
	Now, when you were growing up, what was the women's attitude towards military men in your environment?
	Well, there was no discussion of that nature or any substance.
	When I was first discussing the possibility of going in, my grandmother and my mother were obviously concerned for my well-being.
	But, you know, the most substantive conversation was held around how attractive the uniforms were.
	So, if that was any indicator.
	Okay, you gotta break that down for me a little bit, Marvin.
	That's quite a remarkable statement.
	I know that song, like, I Love a Man in Uniform, but is it really like, oh, you look so handsome in your uniform?
	Was it that?
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, like...
	Particularly, like, after boot camp, particularly, my mom wanted pictures in my dress uniform and, you know, that kind of thing, which kind of somewhat bolstered my, you know, my attitude that this is the right way to go.
	But there was really no discussion of, you know, the moral aspect of being in the military.
	Yeah.
	Aside from, oh, it's so brave, and it's so, you know, what a great sacrifice that this is going to be.
	But the sense was that it made you more attractive, right?
	Like, that's really attractive.
	Oh, yeah.
	Wow.
	See, and this is, oh, man.
	You know, I mean, that's a big topic and all that, but, I mean, that's the really important thing.
	I mean, when you would tell the women around you what you were thinking of, I mean, how did they react?
	It was kind of a mixed bag.
	I mean, I was, uh, I mean, I was friends with quite a few liberals and not the good kind of liberal, you know, mindset.
	There were, there was some of those, uh, people that were fairly close to me that were not my family, but, uh, not one, uh, ever, you know, it's like, oh, well that's an immoral practice.
	You know, that's an immoral job.
	That's, you know, it was, if anything, it was like, oh, I'm not, I'm not into that.
	That was about the The biggest objection to any of the women that I knew at the time was, that was it.
	Like, I'm not into that.
	There was no real sense of, oh, well, I'm not going to associate with this person now because he's in the military.
	In fact, many of them stayed friends even after I'd been to Warren back.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	So no negative as far as that went.
	Nothing that would have dissuaded me, no.
	And was that surprising to you?
	Somewhat.
	Mostly because, I mean, I met some of these people through a local college which was known for being a little more left-wing than some other institutions.
	So it really did kind of surprise me a bit.
	Right.
	Right.
	I guess they view it as a stable paycheck and stuff, right?
	I'm sure some did, and some were absolutely very aware of the various benefits that I now had access to.
	Right, right, because that's going to work out pretty well for you, right?
	I mean, at least well for them, if they can get involved in that kind of stuff, right?
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	I mean, if you can imagine, I mean, this is not any kind of direct analogy, so I hope you'll sort of take it the right way.
	But if you said, hey, you know, I'd be really keen on becoming a car thief, right?
	You know, like I've had it with just buying things, you know?
	I'm going to become a car thief.
	What do you think women would have, like, how do you think they would have reacted to that?
	Well, I think the predictable reaction is, well, isn't that a dangerous job?
	Or isn't that something that you wouldn't want to hurt people to do?
	Wait, are you saying that, so there may be some moral aspect to it then, right?
	You'd think.
	It's a dangerous job.
	It's like, well, you know, if you can steal cars safely, I'm in.
	Well, who wouldn't, right?
	If it's safe.
	I don't know.
	People who like other people and don't want to steal from them.
	No, and this is important, right?
	Because I've said this, but I'm not trying to sort of strip you of moral responsibility, but I'm trying to give you a sort of a context that men We're biologically evolved to guide ourselves by what women find attractive, right?
	Of course.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Oh, absolutely.
	There's no shortage of what we call tag chasers.
	There's no shortage of what...
	No, I know.
	I heard the words.
	I just don't know what the syllables mean.
	Tag chasers?
	Tactical army grunts?
	What is tag?
	No, no, no.
	It's...
	It's a woman whose sole objective is to land a military man.
	Oh, like a dog tag?
	Right.
	Ah, I broke the code!
	I'm not a civilian geek.
	No, I am.
	But, okay, okay.
	So tag chasers, so their goal is to land a military man.
	And these women are, some of them are generational.
	You know, I mean, their mother was, you know, Married a military man, and then...
	So that's...
	It just kind of perpetuated.
	But that...
	I mean, there's...
	They're very prevalent.
	Most of the...
	In fact, most of the women that I knew that were spouses of military personnel were...
	Had met their husband while he was in the military.
	Right.
	And I mean, there's a whole show, right, called Army Wives about this phenomenon, right?
	Yeah, I never watched it, but yeah, I was aware of it.
	Yeah.
	And so, and do women, is there prestige?
	Like, oh, you know, I'm married to an army guy.
	Is that considered to be higher status?
	Like if they say, oh, I'm married to a garbage man, that's probably not higher status, right?
	Definitely in the community.
	Within the military community, women, their wives have a tendency to believe that their husband's rank extends to them.
	So, the higher their husband goes in the military, the higher their own prestige is.
	Right.
	Right.
	And...
	I mean, this is simplistic, right?
	But this is an eternal question.
	Why is there war?
	Why is there this aggressive foreign policy, let's say, in the United States?
	And I guarantee you, fundamentally, it's because women will have sex with soldiers.
	I agree.
	I mean, I don't mean to be coarse at all up.
	I say this to a military guy, but you know what I mean, right?
	I mean, because women will fuck soldiers, we get an aggressive foreign policy.
	Because if women wouldn't fuck soldiers...
	No guys would want to be soldiers, right?
	I totally agree.
	I mean, the white feather, I think you've even talked about it, the white feathers during World War I. It may have even been World War II as well, I don't know.
	But I know for sure it was in World War I, the white feathers that women had handed to a supposed coward.
	And yeah, they were mocking them as sexually unattractive.
	Right.
	And, you know, because women are supposed to be so empathetic, right, Aaron?
	I mean, they're supposed to be just like, women are all about feelings and empathy and so on, right?
	So why didn't any women say to you, well, you know, if somebody came and invaded your country, wouldn't you kind of react the way that these people in Iraq react?
	Like, because they have basic empathy for the Iraqis.
	And I know I did actually have an interaction with a gal after, you know, after I got home from my first tour.
	That was...
	I know her theory was kind of along those lines, but her approach was incredibly aggressive and basically spitting on us and calling us baby killers and shit like that.
	Which is not exactly having empathy for you and all the...
	I shouldn't say deceptions, because that makes it sound like...
	But all the things that weren't true that helped you to get into that position, right?
	So, I mean, that's not exactly, you know, spitting on a guy like you and saying, oh, baby killer, it's not exactly an example of a person overflowing with empathy.
	But this is why, you know, I hear all this stuff about how women are so empathetic.
	But you learned something through your experience in Iraq that no woman who, you know, is supposed to be so empathetic could have told you beforehand.
	You're going to get over there.
	You're going to find that they're just like you.
	You're going to find that they're doing what you would do in their situation.
	It's going to make it really hard to continue because I am woman.
	Hear me empathize.
	Most of the empathy that was professed was towards me.
	For my safety, for the experience, the hardship that I had to endure.
	Which, I mean, by comparison, I mean, I was separated from my family, been sleeping in dirt, but aside from that, I mean, didn't really compare to what some of these families that we encountered over there had to deal with.
	Like, not by a long shot.
	Well, look, I mean, just before we go any further, Aaron, I'd I incredibly admire you.
	I mean, I just want to be clear about that because, as you know, I'm not a big fan of aggressive foreign policy, to put it mildly, anything like that.
	But that's not you.
	You are a guy who was told a lot of stuff.
	You went over with the best of intentions to do good and do right and to fight the good fight.
	You found that it was not the case.
	You had the incredible integrity to confront those facts at a time that was survivable and appropriate, i.e. not when you're there, right, where hesitation can cost you your life.
	And now you're back wondering how you can make the world a better place.
	That is incredibly admirable to me.
	That is the real soldier, that the real fighter is now, in my opinion, right?
	And I just really wanted to express that.
	You know, I've taken a few bullets for the cause, but I would doubt that it's come anywhere close to the kind of struggles that you've had in coming around to a more rational perspective, if that makes sense.
	Oh, yeah.
	I do appreciate that.
	I mean, it hasn't been...
	I mean, the progression for me has been, you know, it cost me additional friends.
	Oddly enough, most of the people that I know that I served with are more receptive to these ideas than some of the people who've never served, who've never experienced anything like that.
	When I think a lot of those guys that are open to it, if not consciously, at the very least, on some level, kind of felt the same way.
	But, you know, I've noticed that those that I have had to or have broken ties with me were on the liberal side of things, which I find kind of interesting.
	Well, you know, there is that argument from the R versus K, the Gene Moss perspective, that The R's like provoking foreign wars because it kills off the case and gives them more access to the women.
	So the fact that you would be turning against the war might provoke some ire among the R's.
	But anyway, that's obviously a big other topic.
	But also, I mean, the amount of suffering that you saw, obviously both on the American and on the Iraqi side, the amount of suffering that you saw over there could in some weird way make more sense if something really great had come out of it.
	But the amount of suffering and how much terrible stuff has come out of it is certainly going to lend the people who are out there really suffering to wonder what the hell is going on.
	That there was so much suffering and things seem to be even worse now.
	That is going to raise questions in all but the most brain-dead of people.
	That's an excellent point.
	If it had been a war like the American Revolutionary War, You know, in its traditional depiction in history, that bastard King George was taxing RT, you know, whatever, right?
	I mean, that there was a war based on principles that produced some significant liberation, as the story goes.
	Well, okay, suffering and but, you know, or, you know, the traditional narrative of the Civil War that ended slavery, but people had to die.
	There was terrible suffering.
	But, you know, one out of three southern males was killed, but it ended slavery.
	You know, if something, even if it's mythologized, if you can at least believe that something good has come out of that amount of suffering, it doesn't make it feel okay, but it makes it feel somewhat better.
	They died for something.
	People died for something.
	But to die not just for nothing, but for worse things.
	I'm not surprised that it's the people who were out there who are more receptive because the cognitive dissonance of the goal of going out there and the end result looking back.
	How many people died for Fallujah?
	Or the town you mentioned.
	I mean, thousands probably.
	And now it's just passing back and forth.
	It's like, you know, it's like that three square miles in some...
	French trench warfare in World War I just goes back and forth, back and forth.
	What the hell are we all dying over this piece of mud for?
	So I can see why that might...
	Those questions might cluster around the people who've actually been.
	I can certainly understand how that might happen.
	That doesn't make a lot of sense.
	Are you a dad?
	You are, I think.
	Yes, I have two sons.
	One from a previous marriage I mentioned.
	My ex-wife and I met while I was serving, actually.
	And I have a three-month-old from my current life.
	Right.
	Right.
	Now, since you mentioned peaceful parenting, I obviously can assume that you're down with that program, so to speak, right?
	Yes.
	And actually, I do have a question that kind of dovetails into that, along those lines, that kind of ties into this whole thing.
	My older son, his first five years, I was enlisted, so I was not home, really.
	And I've been...
	I've been trying very hard to kind of repair some of that damage, I guess, to the relationship.
	It's hard to call it damage if it wasn't there to begin with, I guess, but I think you get my drift.
	No, it is damage because he knew that he had a father and he knew his father wasn't there.
	And, you know, that stuff can't just be replicated by more time later, right?
	Right.
	Well, I definitely try—I'm not trying to substitute it by more time.
	I try to do quality of time.
	That's what I'm trying to focus on now.
	No, but what I mean is so if you were hungry for three years, right?
	Let's say you were captured, you put in some concentration camp or POW camp.
	If you were hungry for three years— Then having really great food later on, it's nice, it's good, and it's definitely an improvement, but it doesn't mean that you weren't hungry for those three years, and whatever effects that had on you will still be there, right?
	Right.
	That's sort of all I mean.
	The fact that there wasn't a relationship is significant.
	I mean, I say this because I grew up without a dad, and I had a relationship with that absence, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that does make sense.
	Because that's the whole thing of, how can you miss what you never had?
	It's like, well, you really can.
	You know, scurvy is missing vitamin C because you never have it.
	It still means that it has an effect on you, right?
	So there is stuff to fix, in my opinion.
	I mean, I think that makes sense.
	Absolutely stuff to fix.
	No question.
	How's your relationship with his mom?
	It's strained.
	I mean, we talk.
	We're able to...
	Hold cordial conversations.
	Things like that.
	To be honest, there was no what would be called marital strife.
	We didn't argue or anything like that.
	But she ended up wanting and asked for a divorce when my boy was three.
	And I, at the time, wanted to I wanted to make it work, you know, but, you know, given distance, I mean, at the time, I was literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
	you know, on a ship, and, you know, the problem of distance was unsurmountable, and she was not open to meaningful communication to try and repair the relationship, and so it kind of...
	Kind of exacerbated my absence with my son.
	Because even after I got home, it was a three-hour conversation just to convince her to let me in the house.
	So, I mean, it was...
	Was there another guy?
	Not to my knowledge.
	I mean, I don't want to say no because I don't know for sure.
	But I never got that suspicion.
	Do you know why she wanted to?
	Well, I know the kind of platitudes that she paid towards.
	We're just two different people.
	Right.
	And, you know, Obvious bullshit answers, but I could never get a straight answer out of her.
	So I have to say I don't know.
	And how has she been surviving since you guys split up?
	Oh, off me.
	We split up, but we stayed married for two years.
	And then I was paying for everything, paying rent, paying for food.
	Whatever.
	It was all coming out of my paychecks.
	In fact, she didn't get a job until probably three or four months after the divorce was finalized.
	So she wanted to stay married to your money, but she just wanted to divorce your ass, right?
	Pretty much.
	I mean, to be fair, I kind of did...
	Convince her to not file for divorce right away, so it wasn't all her.
	But she certainly didn't turn down the money.
	Right.
	Well, I'm going to assume that you upgraded in your second marriage.
	Yes, absolutely.
	My current wife is very much an anarchist, the same as I. She's intelligent.
	And she's open to learning more and more.
	So it's more than an upgrade.
	Fantastic.
	I'm really, really great to hear that.
	And, you know, once you get your hooks into a quality woman, you're like, wow, I can't believe the crap I used to eat.
	Now I've finally had a decent meal.
	I know what my tongue's for.
	Yay!
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And, I mean, this is, to piggyback on some of your earlier shows, you know, This is the most K-relationship that I've had.
	Huh.
	What do you mean?
	Well, most...
	I mean, I was kind of a man-whore for a little while.
	Which, you know, as a...
	Wait.
	A military man-whore?
	Oh my god!
	We finally found one!
	Sorry.
	Yeah.
	So, this is...
	To be fair, I've poured far more into...
	Into this relationship than I ever have in the past.
	Not to say that I was, you know, neglectful of, you know, I just wasn't as, I don't know, forthcoming with, you know, with either my feelings or my resources or, you know, or really anything approaching what my relationship is now.
	Well, it's, you know, I think like myself, when I think back to the times before I started to really think for myself, for me, it's hard to even really say I had a personality or an identity.
	I was just what I was told.
	If you had all this stuff, these ideas put into you of propaganda or whatever about the military, about the state, about nationalism, about war, if you're just full of all that stuff, as I was when I was a kid, For me, it was hard to sort of say, well, I wasn't emotionally available.
	I wasn't this.
	I wasn't that.
	I just wasn't.
	I just was full of Hallmark cards from black-hearted people.
	Platitudes.
	Yeah, platitudes, exactly.
	Just everything I said was a cliché.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Yeah, when you get people to believe stuff that's not true, the only thing they can recite is cliches.
	So it wasn't like I was emotionally unavailable.
	I just wasn't.
	I wasn't there yet.
	Yeah, that's exactly the same.
	Now, as far as what you can do, man, you are one ambitious...
	Guy, man, you are one ambition.
	Well, I've finally overthrown the military madness, and I've overthrown the belief in the state and the nation, and I've overthrown my religion.
	But, Steph, I feel like I haven't done much yet.
	What more can I do?
	Well, if you can play the space-time continuum, see, and go back in time, you get to work on that.
	There's some things we can fix in the past that can make things better in the present.
	I mean, first of all, I hope you're You know, willing to accept, like, the incredible journey that you've made so far in every conceivable way.
	Yeah, I know I do.
	I mean, it's...
	Honestly, this transition has been more of a strain on past relationships than anything that I've had.
	I mean, my mother was opposed to me going in the military for, you know, selfish reasons.
	But my transition to an anarchist has really strained.
	I mean, to this...
	To the point where when I do, when we do go over to my folks' house for dinner and stuff like that, I can't, we can't have those kinds of conversations anymore.
	It's not by my choice.
	I mean, that's an amazing thing.
	I would love to have those conversations.
	That's an amazing thing when you think about it, that people are more comfortable.
	I mean, everybody knows what the military is for.
	It's not a humanitarian expedition.
	They're there to Break things and kill people.
	What are you talking about?
	They gave me a humanitarian medal.
	Hmm.
	Yes, they did.
	For helping to rebuild things that had been broken.
	Right?
	And Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize.
	But, um...
	But when you think about it, I mean, as I'm sure you have, I don't even know, right?
	But your mother was much more comfortable with you joining the murder brigade than she was with you really thinking for yourself along these lines.
	You know, go kill people, okay.
	Philosophy, oh, that's, I gotta draw the line somewhere.
	That's where I draw the line.
	And that's amazing and kind of terrifying when you think about it.
	Oh, yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	So, I'm sorry about that.
	Hopefully, just calm and persistence and remaining rational will bring them around.
	We can certainly hope so.
	But what you're doing with your son...
	Well, your son, obviously, is incredibly responsible and very respectful of them and your marriage and the future that we all want to live in.
	So, you know, that's an incredible transition already, which you should be enormously proud of.
	That's...
	I mean, you get the medal no matter what just because of that.
	If you want, like, extra super-duper medals or whatever.
	I would say...
	Yeah, maybe not exactly the right phrase.
	The bulletproof jacket of philosophical invulnerability.
	Well, Napoleon had a thing about metals.
	I don't remember the exact quote, but to paraphrase, it was like, you can get a soldier to do anything for a little bit of ribbon and a pat on the back.
	Oh, yeah.
	Crazy.
	I'll kill 1,400 people for a really resounding attaboy and a 21-gun salute.
	I would say if I were to give you the best that you could do for the world, it would be to focus on your own happiness and contentment.
	To be thoroughly and selfish about taking pleasure in your wife, taking pleasure in being a father, taking pleasure in the community of minded people that you have around you.
	Forget about the world for the foreseeable future and sink back into the well-earned hot bath and Japanese foot rub of really living some very powerful values in the here and now.
	Well, I can definitely...
	I can definitely kick back with the best of them.
	Yeah.
	I would not focus on any mission at the moment.
	And I think that will be the best.
	You know, when you have happiness and contentment and love and virtue in your life, just living that is advertisement enough, so to speak, for the joys of a rational perspective.
	I'm just concerned that because you are a very ambitious and obviously very capable man, that if you think there's some mission outside of what you're doing right now, that you're going to be discontented and less available to the people in your life right now.
	That's a good point.
	I think you've earned some R&R. Some reason and relaxation, right?
	I like it.
	I'm stealing it.
	Good.
	Yeah, I think that would be the focus.
	And now, if some organic purpose comes out of that for you at some point in the future, you'll know, and you'll know if the time's right and so on.
	But I'll tell you this.
	I cast about for a good idea, and I say, oh, what would be a really great idea for a show?
	I should really, oh, what would be a great idea for a show?
	I do that when I don't have any great ideas for a show.
	And the important thing for me to do is to be honest with myself and accept I don't have any great ideas for a show right now.
	Now, as far as your big, larger purpose in bringing reason and virtue to the world, if you don't have anything that's sort of brewing in you or really organic or an opportunity that you're really excited about in the moment, I think accepting that is really key.
	And build, you know, if you're going to go out and try and weather the storms of bringing reason to the world, you really need a firm family foundation.
	You need a great relationship with your kids.
	You need a great relationship with your wife.
	You need friends and supporters who are, you know, with the mission, so to speak.
	And I would instead, you know, before bearing fruit, you need deep roots first.
	And I would really focus on growing your family roots, growing your relationship roots, getting connected with your firstborn and growing even deeper your relationship with your secondborn, getting wound even more into your wife's heart and don't worry about the world right now.
	Get the deepest and most relaxing joy you can out of your world.
	And then, you know, if something comes up, you'll know, and it'll be irresistible, and so on.
	You'll be excited by doing it.
	But I think you're looking for something to do, partly because you're restless and ambitious, and partly because there is, I don't think, anything that you need to do right now other than what you're doing with your family and as a father.
	That makes some sense.
	At ease!
	There's nothing more that American people like it than when people with vaguely British accents pretend to be military people, right?
	There's nothing more enjoyable than that.
	But no, that I think would be my goal.
	What do you think?
	No, it makes a lot of sense, and especially...
	I mean, I've probably been driving my wife a little bit nuts with kind of crusading, so to speak, on...
	Facebook and Reddit and whatnot.
	I think she's probably had her fill of me listening to what this asshat said.
	Yeah, listen, don't bring the crazy people into your house.
	Yeah, I've gotten better about that.
	Yeah, you need that fireball.
	Listen, man, I've been on Facebook, I don't know, for about a year or whatever.
	I don't miss it at all.
	Yeah.
	If it's going to take away from your contentment with your family and your happiness as a father and a husband, it's really not worth it.
	Don't bleed away your mighty heart for the sake of inconsequential trolls on the other side of the world.
	It's the old thing about don't wrestle with a pig in shit because you get covered in shit and the pig likes it.
	I'm stealing that too.
	Oh, I stole it, so you might as well.
	Fair enough.
	So yeah, the crusade-y thing and all that, I mean, you will change far more people's minds just by being a happy and contented person who is surrounded by love and support and who is loving and supporting those around you.
	That's going to give you much more weight in the world, in the future, than getting all pissed off at typing and typists, so to speak.
	That is excellent.
	I think I actually really needed to hear that.
	Yeah.
	Because I know, especially as a dad, we have crusaders in the world, and it's a great thing, I guess.
	But if you don't have kids and you're not K, you don't get just how much we're motivated to try and make the world a better place for our kids, because we really get that they're going to have to live there, and we want to acquit ourselves honorably in the battle for reason and virtue and philosophy.
	But Yeah, I mean, if you heard me, you know, getting involved in ferocious Twitter disputes, would you think, wow, that's a great use of that guy's brain?
	Well, if I didn't know who you were, I'd certainly think, why is he wasting his time?
	Right.
	The real fruit of your future, I think, is in your family and in your friendships.
	Anything that would interfere with that, I think, would be a negative.
	I think also you want to make sure that your wife continues to have a positive regard for philosophy, and if it's bringing a lot of tension and frustration and fractiousness into the household, it's going to be hard to have her stay behind it.
	That is true.
	That is true.
	And you want your kids to say, wow, philosophy really makes you a strong, healthy, and happy person, as opposed to, the thing I remember most about my father is the degree to which the keyboard left an impression on his forehead when he pounded himself against it in frustration.
	philosophy looks great that's awesome alright alright Do we have a plan called No Plan?
	Well, we have a plan of Take It Easy, I think.
	Beautiful.
	Beautiful.
	You've earned it.
	I mean, what a journey you've come across, and again, how admirable it is.
	I think you've deserved a multi-year break from striving.
	Well, I do appreciate your time.
	I appreciate the call, and thanks so much.
	Listen, man, if there's anything I can do, Just don't hesitate to be in touch.
	It was a real pleasure speaking with you tonight, Aaron.
	Same goes to you.
	This has actually been one of the more enlightening conversations I've had in the past 10 years, so I do appreciate it quite a bit.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	You'll keep us posted?
	Yes, absolutely.
	And if there's anything I can do for you, you let me know as well.
	All right.
	Thanks, Aaron.
	And all my very best to your kids and your family, man.
	Thank you.
	Keep your eye on the mailbox.
	I'm sending you some money soon.
	All right.
	If you can, great.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you very much.
	Very kind.
	And thank you, of course, everyone for speaking and listening and criticizing and encouraging and giving the feedback that we need to keep this show as sharp a honed blade as humanly possible to help out the show, of course, as you know.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate to sign up.
	Please share and subscribe.
	FDRpodcast.com.
	Tell people to go and let philosophy let loose its buzzing hornets of reason into their honey-soaked brain.
	Have a great evening.
	Mike, yes, is there something you wanted to mention?
	Well, I just want to say this.
	I am desperately trying to get people that were offended by the single moms video we released today for the show.
	So if anyone is listening that disagrees with Steph on this topic and wants to call in and discuss it, debate it, I would be more than happy to schedule some people.
	There's some people on the forum, some people on YouTube.
	I've put out a couple invitations.
	Hopefully someone takes me up on it.
	Fingers crossed.
	And you'll also, for everyone who's listening, you'll notice how Mike asked me whether I would enjoy that.
	So Mike has just basically announced this.
	I'm with Mike!
	Because he said it.
	Well, you can tell if I'm annoyed at Steph because I'll passive-aggressively book five determinists in the show in a row.
	Oh, and then you'll realize how much that backfires on all of us.
	But yeah, I'd be interested if anyone wants to call in about that subject, and I think you'd be up for that debate as well, Steph.
	Listen, I am thrilled to have people call in who disagree with me.
	It is always a pleasure, and certainly I can't claim to be right about everything.
	That would be ridiculous.
	So yeah, plug into the Borg brain, and if there's feedback...
	I did, of course, see a few people who were like, you can't talk about single mothers because you were raised by one.
	I just want to see them phone up Def Jam.
	You can't have any black rappers talking about black experiences because they're blacks and they have black issues and therefore they can't be objective.
	So let's get some more Icelandic and Inuit rappers in there to talk about what it's like to come out of Compton, I believe it is.
	Compton?
	Compton.
	I love the fact that you specifically made that point within the video, yet it's presented as if it was not made in the comments.
	Oh dear.
	Oh dear.
	You know, I'll just be satisfied when these guys go to Louis Farrakhan and say, you have whitey issues.
	Because, you know, if I have mommy issues, he has whitey issues.
	It's just that I don't think they ever will, because that might have some more real-world repercussions.
	For some reason, people think I said I'm voting for Donald Trump.
	Did you hear that?
	I didn't say that.
	And apparently, I hate all women.
	No.
	We've endorsed Donald Trump.
	I'm voting for Donald Trump, even though none of those things were said or done.
	Okay, I'm not sure what conversations people listen to, but thanks for listening, I guess.
	You forget the magic words.
	It seems to me.
	It feels like.
	Yeah, I get the impression that.
	Well, I don't get the impression.
	I know.
	You don't listen, you're emotionally defensive, you're reactive, and you're blarping.
	So please do that somewhere else, not on our channel.
	Let's get one thing straight.
	Dot, dot, dot.
	Whatever follows that, you know what it's going to be.
	And you know, I've actually trained my brain that the moment somebody uses the word bashing, all I see afterwards is wingdings.
	That's the font.
	That's all I see is like hieroglyphics.
	He just bashes.
	Okay, that's all I... Because the moment somebody uses the word bashes, I just know that they simply don't have a brain.
	Or if they do, it's a wall.
	And that's true.
	I wish that somebody's also, I wish that when people would say blah-de-blah-de-blah, period, they'd put the period at the beginning so I wouldn't have to read to the end to know that they're idiots.
	Period.
	This will be followed by period.
	Okay, great.
	Now I don't have to read it.
	But they lure you in and then period.
	Oh, dear.
	I wish I'd known about the period idiot thing at the beginning.
	But anyway.
	All right.
	So thanks, everyone, so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful evening.

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