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Sept. 14, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:22:29

3075 The Religion of Human Egalitarianism - Call in Show - September 12th, 2015

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	Good evening, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Saturday night.
	S-A-T-U-R-T-I-Y. Night.
	Thanks all for one for your support.
	Let's, though, move on to the callers.
	Mike, who's the host.
	Alright, up first today is Patrick.
	Patrick wrote in and said, The interview you did with Dr.
	Jim Penman, the author of BioHistory, The Decline and Fall of the West, for more info on that book you can go to biohistory.org, was very challenging for me and deeply anxiety-provoking.
	Perhaps even more so than when I first began to understand male disposability.
	I got a sense of the challenge Stefan faced with this thesis, and I kept thinking, are we on a deterministic journey going from C to V to S? It was very disorienting, and I kind of felt hopeless at first.
	That it didn't really matter what we do as individuals, because human civilization was always going to rise and fall.
	However, after re-listening and thinking it through again, I now see it as just another part of the jigsaw puzzle of more knowledge.
	Knowledge that allows us as a species to learn from and become more aware of these biological tendencies within ourselves.
	Like the urge to always tend to the needs of females.
	It's just another thing to be aware of in ourselves.
	Would you say that this was true?
	Or am I just rationalizing the anxiety provoked?
	That's from Patrick.
	Great question.
	Well, Patrick, nice to chat with you.
	Yeah, hi Steph, yeah.
	So, cultures start with mess and chaos and all that, and then there are certain civilizing principles that take root in the culture.
	The rule of law, separation of church and state, respect for private property, rule of contract, whatever it's going to be.
	Usually it's some rational and empirical philosophy that takes root in a society, and that's sea or civilization.
	And then what happens is, so look at it this way.
	You know, you and I, Patrick, and a bunch of other people are out in the woods.
	And we're just hunter-gatherers.
	We don't really have much to do with our environment and control over our environment.
	We just, you know, we hunt deer and we eat nuts and berries and that kind of stuff.
	And we spend a lot of time lying around.
	It's really great back in the day, right?
	this constant work thing that goes on in the modern realm is pretty new, right?
	In hunter-gatherer societies, a big meal meant lots of lying around, and you kind of didn't want to expend a lot of energy because it costs a lot of energy to replenish it.
	When we came to agriculture, at least during the winter months and the colder climates, there was a lot of leisure.
	But then what happens is, you know, one of us invents an axe or something that allows us to tackle the wilderness.
	And then because we have, you know, property rights or some sort of way of – We get excited about exploring the wilderness and going out and taking control of the wilderness.
	It becomes cool.
	So the first is see a civilization where we get some principles and some technology.
	And the second is, wow, this really lets us do cool stuff.
	You know, like the...
	I'm thinking of the Spanish navies and the British navies and so on going westward across the Atlantic to the new world.
	It's very vigor.
	We're going to win.
	We're going to go and make the world a better place or just go conquer it or whatever.
	You have a lot of vigor.
	And then what happens is your vigor creates this fence of security and plenty around the population as a whole.
	And when that fence of security and plenty around the population as a whole is erected, then people are no longer facing the hard winds and tough lives and so on that they used to.
	I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't know.
	It's been a while since I wielded an axe in the woods.
	The job I had after high school, but it's been a while.
	And of course, most people would be like, an axe, it's heavy and it's sharp.
	No thanks.
	You know, a virtual axe in Minecraft is what they can manage.
	And so civilizations start with principles.
	Principles gives them wealth and technology, and that gives them an enthusiasm to spread.
	And then they set up this perimeter of Yeah, it is, basically, yeah.
	That would be it.
	So there is, of course, this challenge in human life as a whole, which is that we all want security, and then when we get security, we get lazy and flaccid, and we lose any kind of robustness.
	And generally, the control of children passes to the hands of women, and women, I believe, have certain characteristics that are different in the mind.
	For, between men and women.
	And this has an effect on how children are raised and how they behave and all that kind of stuff.
	And so the idea that you brutalize your children, that's certainly not what Dr.
	Penman was talking about.
	He was talking about There's adversity.
	And for adversity, you need a lot of discipline.
	This doesn't mean whipping people.
	Like if you want to become a champion skier, well, you've got to get up pretty early and you've got to do a lot of skiing, even when you don't feel like it, even when you're tired, even when you have a headache and you have to discipline yourself for what you eat.
	And you have to discipline yourself for how you're going to exercise outside of skiing.
	And so he's just saying that there's a lot of discipline.
	But the discipline is in pursuit of a goal.
	But when there's a lot of plenty and security in society, then, you know, we ain't so hunter-gathering when it's like dial-up for a pizza to be delivered to our house while we're lounging on the beanbag playing Call of Duty.
	So, I think there is this general pattern to society as a whole.
	And you can think about this with the early Roman Empire.
	The early Roman Empire had some significantly great principles behind it.
	Roman law is one of the great inventions of humanity.
	And when Roman law gave people the advantages of capital and technology and weaponry and organization...
	Then they got very enthusiastic.
	And from C, which was the original part, they got very expansionistic.
	And the same thing happened with the British Empire as well.
	And then what happened was they got relativistic, they got nihilistic, they got lazy, they got mystical, they got navel-gazing, and they kind of lost their vigor because they had expanded as far as they felt they could.
	And they couldn't expand any further because people got...
	Got lazy and their discipline and their goal-seeking diminished into a life of pursuit of petty materialistic pleasures and distractions and sexuality and eating and mindless games and entertainment.
	The bread and circuses that is the welfare and media of the modern world.
	So there does seem to be this pattern.
	I think it's highly exacerbated.
	By the presence of the state, which we can get into in a bit.
	But I want to get back to your sort of emotional reaction.
	You said it seemed like there was a cycle that you couldn't escape and that gave you despair.
	And of course, one of the great reliefs of accepting determinism is you can't really have any negative feelings about it, right?
	Nothing can be changed.
	So why would I get anxious?
	Does that make sense?
	No, it does.
	Yeah, it totally does.
	And that's why I spent a lot of time rethinking why I was feeling that way.
	And why I came to the position which I think I ended that question on, which was really that this was just a sort of Biological markers, perhaps, you know, that we should be conscious of and aware of.
	And they don't lead to despair like I initially felt.
	I think that's just...
	I think my initial experience of that was just coming from a position of ignorance.
	You know, like I'm learning something new and suddenly I get enlightened about something.
	So, yeah, it's just...
	I think that was my...
	The way that I probably felt or experienced that particular situation, if that makes sense.
	Right.
	So, without the state, I think that the cycle gets broken.
	Because if you look at the common disasters throughout human history, the falls of empires, they all involve state programs, at least to my knowledge.
	And those state programs are rendered even worse by Suffrage, by democracy, by voting rights.
	And so what happens is that...
	Women, let's not just talk about women, we'll talk about men in a sec.
	And we've got the proof in this in a variety of presentations throughout the channel.
	But women get the right to vote, and some women have made good decisions about who to marry, and some women have made bad decisions about who to marry.
	And the women who've made bad decisions about who to marry want a government backup to their problems.
	Some women have parents who are healthy and some women have parents who are unhealthy and needy.
	So if you're a woman and your mom and dad have Alzheimer's and you're married to a drunk, I mean, you're toast.
	You can't possibly have enough resources, especially if you have kids as well.
	And so the women who've made bad decisions want the government to backstop the bad decisions that they've made with regards to reproduction and so on.
	And...
	You know, a woman who's married to a gambler, a gambling addict who blows all of her retirement money, is a big fan of government-provided welfare.
	And, of course, women who married a drunk, they don't want...
	Alcohol to be available so they're big fans of government programs and so on, right?
	So when people make mistakes in a free society, well, they'll be liable for those mistakes and their lives will be very difficult and that will be a great example for other people why you shouldn't do that.
	Be really careful about who you marry because remember so-and-so, she married this guy and her life just went into the crapper.
	And those bad decisions will be there.
	They'll hopefully diminish over time.
	And where people make good decisions, they don't need the government to solve their problems.
	I mean, you don't actually need health insurance if people really, really like you, right?
	I mean, it's a good idea to buy health insurance in a free society, but you don't need it if you're genuinely loved by a wide variety of people because they'll jump in and they'll help you with whatever it is, whatever issues that you have.
	Like you only need to hire people to help you move if you don't have friends with strong backs, right?
	I mean, that's sort of the deal.
	So in a free society, there'll be, of course, no giant government that you can have a temper tantrum in front of and get them to give you resources.
	You can try having temper tantrums with people in your life, but that doesn't tend to work as well.
	They still have the choice about whether to support you or not.
	And so, in a free society, this cycle is going to be much more stable.
	It will happen at individual areas.
	It may happen, you know, in certain business fields.
	It can happen, right?
	I mean, the fax machine, it's the best thing.
	Oh, we got email?
	Oh, man.
	Bummer.
	That's it for the fax machine, unless you need signatures.
	So that aspect of things, without the government, things will be a lot better.
	This cycle is really exacerbated by the state, right?
	So in the RK paradigm, The Ks carve out this civilization.
	You can go to Gene Wars for more of the background on this if you haven't already.
	But the K-selected animals go out and carve out...
	K-selected people go out and carve out a civilization, which then creates protection and excess resources, which with the government allows them, the R-selected people, to vote away the K-selected wealth through the government.
	And then the R-selected people breed like crazy.
	And you can buy power by creating fiat currency, feeding the Rs without provoking the resource limitation panics of the Ks.
	And then the Rs breed like crazy and just vote suicidal consumption policies upon the government and want everything for everyone.
	And, you know, the K selected Margaret Thatcher said, of course, the problem with socialism is eventually you've run out of other people's money.
	And that's a very K-selected thing to say.
	The R-selected are like, cheesecake, cheesecake, cheesecake, sex, sex, cheesecake, nap, welfare, cheesecake, nap.
	But that's all they really do.
	And in a free society, voluntarism is K. Voluntarism is K-selected.
	Whereas in a status society, welfare is very R-selected.
	Voluntarism is you must provide value in order to have people interact with you.
	You must provide value in order to have people interact with you.
	In our selected late democratic democracide situation, the value that you provide is the vote, which is not really value in any free society, right?
	Voting in a free society is like exorcism in an atheistic society.
	People just say, you want to do what now?
	That doesn't make any sense.
	We don't believe in any of this.
	And so...
	So in a free society, your impulses are going to be limited by the fact that people are only going to want to interact with you if they have some sort of benefit.
	And the benefit can be a charity wants to help you get better, but then you actually have to get better, right?
	And you run out of money and you're out on the street and you then go to some charity and say, help me out.
	That charity is going to help you out.
	But you can't be biting the charitable workers and spitting on them and peeing in their soup, right?
	At some point, like if you just continue to be a relentless jerk, then you're basically not going to have a place in society as a whole.
	And, you know, to my mind, it's like, okay, I can...
	I can kind of live with that because, you know, you can't force people to be better.
	So the limits to our selected behavior in a voluntary, peaceful, stateless society, the limits will be very strong on our selected behavior because there's no giant intermediate state by which you can exercise your preferences for infinite resources, lots of sex, and almost no responsibility.
	So, without a state, this cycle diminishes considerably.
	And you were saying that it struck you as strong as male disposability.
	Was it a different kind of feeling or something that was similar?
	I guess in terms of an epiphany, a moment of awareness.
	Male disposability, anarchism, the family, all that came before that, of course.
	This was another one that hit me.
	Wow, there is this kind of trait that we have to be aware of.
	Because I recognize in my own history, I think I've grown up as a K. I've been brought up kind of as a K. I'm going to use that theory.
	I think I've been brought up as a K. But I know I've had R-selected tendencies in my history, in my past.
	Which were quite strong at times, you know, I think back to my thirties and that was in a sense being drawn into the culture that I was in and of course like you've pointed out in the past or you pointed out more recently let's say about we are kind of living in our world, you know.
	And the Ks perhaps get drawn into that, you know, into that kind of thinking.
	Sorry to interrupt, but at some point the K gene set is going to have sex with ours just to keep the K gene set recessive and alive.
	Like, if no Ks have sex with any Rs, the K gene set dies out completely, and we basically go back to Cro-Mannion and further back.
	Then there's a massive devolution.
	So, like, in the same way that you might, you know, you could fake your own death to get out of some god-awful totalitarian situation.
	And so the Ks will have, they'll hold their nose and have sex and raise children with the Rs, Just to keep the K gene set alive.
	And the same thing would happen in reverse as well.
	So the problem is when you're in such an R selected world, and I don't know the degree to which this is all true.
	I'm sort of thinking of Tom Wolfe's book on hooking up and some of the, you know, the rainbow parties that you hear about and the rise of STDs among the young that the complaints that I'm getting from the men who listen to this show is, you know, Steph, you fruity old bastard.
	There may have been some case elected women around when you were young, but now it's like the pirate gene ours everywhere.
	Right.
	And so if you simply can't find it, if you're a case elected guy, you can't find any case elected women.
	Okay.
	Then you'll try and check up unless you're MGTOW.
	You'll try and shack up with the R-selected gene set, and that way at least the K-selected gene set Can get passed along in a dormant way and hopefully be reactivated at some point in the future.
	Now, if you are MGTOW and that's men going their own way, men who've eschewed dating or in particular relationships, marriage and reproduction, then what you're saying is the...
	The power of our selected woman combined with the brutality of the state is far too dangerous, and we then are no longer going to get involved in reproduction at all.
	And to some degree, I would say that there are case-selected people, and whether they view things rightly or wrongly, I can't really say, because, you know, I'm happily married and I'm not out there dating 20-year-olds at the moment.
	So I would say that you can, in a very late stage of our society, yeah, case will shack up with ours because the alternative is pure gene death for the case, right?
	Yeah, I totally...
	I now understand my history a little bit better, you know, looking back through...
	I mean, it was funny, I was talking with a friend earlier this week, and we were talking about how when we were growing up, and we were thinking, oh, we're going to get married, and we're going to, you know, all this kind of thing.
	And then kind of stuff happened, like, through our...
	Through our 20s sort of thing and relationships, unfaithful women and unfaithful girlfriends and stuff like that.
	And there was this kind of pause.
	You pulled back.
	You didn't get involved.
	And then there was this kind of propensity to sort of go into a kind of R mindset.
	I mean, we're using the R mindset because I think it's just a useful...
	It's just a short-cut way of explaining what was happening to us.
	And we never were particularly good at it.
	That was the one thing, at least from my experience.
	Sure, we had relations with women and stuff like that, but it wasn't anything of any value or any quality, etc.
	And yeah, but it was just a reaction to having had a mindset beforehand, but experiencing a situation where women, perhaps the women we were interacting with are, or certainly, you know, drawn towards that, the are selected mentality, you know.
	Right.
	And this fundamental question that remains to be resolved with regards to humanity as a whole is, are we the same?
	Are we all the same?
	And there seems to be some pretty strong evidence that we're not.
	That, you know, whether it's you look at ethnicity, whether you look at R versus K, you look at men versus women and so on.
	This idea that there's just this common humanity, you know, that's very R selected, right?
	A rabbit is a rabbit is a rabbit because quality doesn't really matter.
	And the question of are we the same?
	I think it's the most fundamental question that needs to be asked and answered in the world.
	Unfortunately, of course, there's been this massive prohibition against pursuing this question.
	Are we the same?
	Is brain volume different?
	Are brain folds different?
	Is brain size different?
	Is IQ different?
	Is emotional propensity different?
	Is particular genetic sets, are they different?
	And are they, in fact, in opposition at times?
	I think that when you're dealing with a particular localized gene set, you know, like a bunch of people who grew up around the Euphrates River, then I think you can say, well, yeah, okay, they're pretty much the same.
	They may change over hundreds or thousands of years as evolution or devolution occurs.
	But yeah, they're pretty much the same.
	And that doesn't mean there's not big changes in ability, but they're not fundamentally in opposition.
	Somebody on your team who's a really good player is great.
	Somebody on the other team who's Opposed to you, who's got a really good player?
	Well, that's a gene set.
	Not in your favor.
	And so this question of, are all human tribes the same?
	That is a fundamental question that, given that there's multiculturalism and that there's voting and we live in this democracy, it's a very fundamental question.
	And it's to do with everything that you could conceive of.
	So women don't fare quite as well in a free market as men do.
	Why is that?
	Women are significantly underrepresented in the sciences, at the top tier of the sciences.
	And in fact, in the first half of the last century, they were better represented in the sciences than they are now.
	Why is that?
	Asians do really well, particularly East Asians, the Chinese and the Japanese.
	They do really well pretty much everywhere they go.
	And Hispanics don't, and blacks don't.
	And whites, you know, kind of in the middle.
	And all of these questions...
	A very, very significant.
	What is the cause of the disparity between ethnicities and gender?
	Is it culture?
	Is it sexism?
	Is it racism?
	Is it genetics?
	Of course, we can't say yes or no to any one of these in particular.
	Although on the left, it's all racism and sexism from white people.
	But anyone who's intelligent, anybody who's curious, anybody who really wants an answer to these questions must...
	To some degree, look beyond the culture to the genetics.
	I mean, simply have to.
	Because it would be irresponsible and anti-scientific not to.
	I mean, if you're looking at vastly different outcomes between subspecies, you would look at genetic factors.
	So...
	This fundamental question of R versus K, in England, there were gray squirrels and there were red squirrels.
	And the gray squirrels wiped out the red squirrels.
	Now, partly it was because they were better at certain kinds of foraging, but they also carried with them a parasite that was fine for them, but very bad for the red squirrels.
	And when I was a kid, I mean, it's like at the beginning, you'd see more red squirrels.
	And then later on, when I was a kid, before I left England, you almost never saw a red squirrel.
	And it is a fundamental fact in biology that two subspecies tend not to inhabit the same area at the same time for very long.
	The primary enemy of the red squirrel is the gray squirrel.
	Because the gray squirrel will displace it.
	The gray squirrel is more dangerous to the red squirrel than the fox or the wolf or the owl.
	And by this I certainly don't mean opposition between ethnicities whatsoever.
	But what I mean is that in a free society we could go everywhere and do anything we want and, you know, it wouldn't really matter.
	But in a government society which constantly initiates the use of force in an attempt to even out and to smooth out and to create an equality of outcome between ethnicities and between cultures and between genders and so on, It is a fundamentally essential question to ask.
	Are we all the same?
	And the degree to which we're different, is it different like we're complementary?
	Like you don't want everyone in the orchestra playing the same instrument, otherwise you get one very loud instrument.
	Are we different in terms of complementary or are we difficult in terms of opposition?
	In other words, is there someone trying to play violin and someone else is trying to operate a power saw?
	Which, you know, to some people who don't like violin might sound kind of the same.
	But are we different to the point where there are opposites?
	And in a state of freedom, it's not a problem.
	But in a state where the state, it becomes a big problem.
	Because if the initiation of force is...
	Used to solve the unsolvable then it will never stop and it will continue to escalate until fascism and totalitarianism So I mean a very brief example is if you look at very fast runners well You will see a lot of black guys, right?
	And there's biological reasons for this that I won't bore you with right now, but there's a lot of black guys in the very fast-running group, and there are not a lot of black guys in the swimming group, in the fast-swimming group.
	And...
	You know, you could say, ah, well, you see, it's because blacks running is free, but swimming, you need a swimming, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But nonetheless, I mean, it's not like all blacks are poor, right?
	I mean, so, and there are specific answers as to why.
	I mean, black bones tend to be heavier, chest cavity is not quite as wide, and so you don't see a lot of blacks in swimming, and you don't see a lot of Asians in running.
	Now, if this was considered to be rank racism, And money was going to be forced around the planet and people were going to get threatened with jail and lawsuits and cutting their funding in order to equalize all of these numbers.
	You get more Asians on the running team and you get more blacks on the swimming team.
	If that initiation of the use of force was attempting to fight something where there were biological trends that can't be solved and not the fault of any particular taxpayer, well...
	Then we have a trouble, a problem.
	In other words, if the plan is to solve the unsolvable, well, that, of course, is the ultimate government plan, right?
	To solve the unsolvable, then government power will escalate because the problem cannot be solved.
	At least it cannot be solved by government power.
	And so your question of...
	What is this cycle?
	The cycle is exacerbated by the state, but it's fundamentally driven by the fact that we have significant indications that people are not all the same.
	And this doesn't mean that they're necessarily in opposition to each other.
	However, when the not sameness of different groups of people ends up being combined with a belief in perfect biological egalitarianism and the power of the state, Then we end up with a complete disaster.
	And I've used this analogy before, but how many Chinese guys are in the NBA? Well, there's a couple, and some of them are fantastic players.
	But if it's perceived that Chinese people are just as great at basketball as, say, blacks or whites or whoever is taller...
	If it's perceived that they're just as good, then the only reason you wouldn't have more Chinese people in basketball is because of anti-Chinese bigotry.
	And then you'd go on these endless campaigns of re-education and cultural sensitization and you'd pass laws and you'd force funding and you'd fire people who didn't have sufficient representation.
	And it would turn into this game of cat and mouse because you were trying to use propaganda and coercion to solve a problem Which is nobody's fault.
	Which is that Chinese people are kind of short, on average, and therefore not going to be as good at basketball as other people.
	That's just one of many reasons.
	And so this question, and that's just ethnicities in R versus K, well, they can't coexist particularly well.
	I think that at the extremes, they're complementary.
	My sort of ideal is a largely K society where there's some R's around to question things and shake things up, which I think is also great.
	I think pure K societies kind of photocopy.
	Too tradition-based, too set in their ways, and you end up with 3,000 years of Chinese rule where you start at one day and you go 3,000 years forward, and it's still kind of the same day.
	But too many R's just go kind of haywire.
	To me, K is the body and R is the evolution.
	Now, you don't want a body where 80% of the genes are mutating every single time, right?
	I mean, you just get to end up with Pizza the Hut, you know, just some kind of blob-like monstrosity that won't survive 10 minutes.
	And so, K is the body and R is the mutation.
	And right now, we have much more mutation than body, which is why things aren't working out well.
	If you have a body without mutations, well, everything mutates, of course.
	But I mean, if you have a body without mutation, you don't get evolution.
	If you have only mutation without body, you end up with a long-running HBO series about running around trying to save things from zombies or something.
	So I hope that makes some sense.
	Once we answer these questions about biological compatibilities and biological sources and biological realities, and we don't have a state, I think this stuff is going to be just fine.
	But right now, We are really in a terrible, terrible cycle, driven fundamentally by the communist knowledge that we are different, which is then generally hid from the general population.
	Of course, we also have the hangover of the soul.
	I mean, the hangover of the soul, which was that, of course, the Christian missionaries went all over the world to all of these different groups and said, well, we're all in God's image.
	We're all the same.
	So we have this idea of the soul, which is that the essence of humanity is common across everyone who's not currently an ape.
	Anyone who's got an ape 2.0 is absolutely the same as everyone else.
	Yeah.
	That does not appear to be the case.
	So the communist insistence, which is the ultimate R strategy, right?
	The communist insistence that everyone is the same, combined with the Christian hangover, that the soul makes us all the same, has blinded us to the fact that there are significant differences tested and to some degree now being mapped through the Human Genome Project.
	There are significant differences.
	And to take another extreme example, you know, if everybody thought that chihuahuas were as great at guarding things, as great at rounding up sheep as sheepdogs are, right?
	And everyone said, well, I don't understand why there are no chihuahuas as a sheepdog.
	Well, anti-chihuahua sentiment would be huge, right?
	And you'd get all these programs.
	We're going to get more chihuahuas guarding sheep.
	And you just end up this bottomless hole driven on absolute ignorance of the very nature.
	Now, we know the vast differences in dogs.
	I mean, all the way from the tiniest dog used to sell Mexican food up to these giant Great Danes.
	I remember when I was eight years old, I was visiting, my mom and I were visiting a friend of hers.
	And I was playing in the woods, and this, what seemed to me, giant gray horse with giant slavering, dripping teeth came up and basically had me pinned up against a tree.
	Not physically, but it was standing in front of me, and every time I moved, it would growl.
	And I thought, well, that's about it for me, because the thing could rip out my throat as soon as I could pick my nose.
	And I just stuck up against this tree, and every time I moved, this thing would growl at me, and eventually it just wandered off, and I sort of snuck my way back to the house we were staying in.
	But if that had been a chihuahua, it would have been, oh, look, a little chihuahua!
	It wouldn't have been like, I would have been looking down, not up, which is quite a bit of difference.
	Now, the variation in the genes between dogs...
	Is only twice that of the variation in genes between humans.
	And look at the variety in dogs.
	And so the fact that there'd be no variety in humans is inconceivable.
	And we all know that there's external variety in humans, but the idea that this variety in humans would reach nothing to do with what the free market evaluates, which is fundamentally cognitive capacity, which just makes no sense.
	I mean, the idea that human beings would evolved for 50 to 100,000 years plus in widely different environments, like all the way from the Arctic to the equator, and that this would have no effect on the brain development or brain evolution is completely insane.
	The brain is our most expensive organ.
	It is, and the idea that evolution would operate on everything in the human body except the most expensive organ is so anti-scientific I wouldn't even know where to start.
	So I think fundamentally once, and you know, this is just because it is considered heresy to talk about genetic differences among human populations.
	It's just like Copernicus or Galileo or Kepler or Brahi during a time of theology, right?
	We have this theology called our selected human egalitarianism is the religion.
	And just as those who talked about the heliocentric model of the solar system, sun-centered model of the solar system, were heretical to the perceived religion of the time, there is a religion of radical egalitarianism.
	And those who are chipping away at the edges of it are considered immoral and heretical, which just shows that those on the left are the new Jesuits.
	They are the new church.
	And anything which goes against received dogma is damned as evil.
	And you try and get people fired and you slander them and you just wage war against them and so on.
	Well, this happens every time there's progress in human thought.
	There's this giant reactionary backlash and so on.
	And, you know, again, I'm I'm agnostic as to the final answers to all of this, but what I am most suspicious of is the degree to which people are not allowed to even explore the subject.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I hadn't realized.
	That's an interesting point.
	I hadn't thought of the idea that being accused of being racist or sexist or whatever would be perhaps some of the anxiety that I experienced about thinking about R, K, S, and C, etc., Penman's pieces.
	But, yeah, that kind of makes a lot of sense, because...
	Yeah, I mean, it is anxiety-provoking to be accused of these taboos that we have in the world today, you know, like the racism slur and the sexism slur, etc.
	So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	I really hadn't thought about that before.
	Yeah, well, there is a perceived wisdom that is providing people a huge amount of power than anybody who challenges that Perceived wisdom challenges that power.
	And think of the amount of power that the government has attempting to equalize outcomes for everyone.
	Now, that is only valid, it is only considered a valid policy if everyone is equal and all disparities are the result of immoral prejudice.
	Then the government is fighting the good fight and doing the right thing and everyone who is even willing to explore And whether it's genes or environment, it doesn't particularly matter at the moment, right?
	And the reason I say that is that, and at this point I take from Dr.
	Charles Murray, is that there's no big backup plan.
	Everything's been tried to equalize things without state power.
	And let's say that somebody is not genetically short, they just didn't get enough food when they were growing up.
	Well, they're still short and more food now isn't going to change them.
	Isn't going to make them taller.
	Make them wider, but it's not going to make them taller.
	And so this idea that everyone's equal and therefore all inequalities must be fixed by government power provides people a huge amount of authority, moral authority and power over other people's resources.
	There is a sin called bigotry Which is supposed to be solved by the power of the state in the same way that there's a sin called evil or disobedience that you inherit from Adam and Eve through original sin that is supposed to be solved by the power of religion.
	And if the reason why there are different outcomes is that ethnicities or groups or people are different, then there's no possibility of solving it without massive injustice.
	And even then, you won't solve it.
	And to some degree, you make it worse, right?
	And so, yeah, so those who speak out and question the orthodoxy that all groups, all human groups are identical.
	First of all, it's weird because, you know, apparently if you're skeptical of the received wisdom of climate change, right, the fact that the projections are way off and there's been very little to no warming for the last, I guess, one.
	what, 16, 17, 18 years.
	If you're somewhat skeptical about that, like just, you know, I don't know that this is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
	There's no such thing as science by consensus, for heaven's sakes.
	Otherwise, there'd be no science, right?
	Science can't be consensus because every new scientific theory that contradicts a previous scientific theory starts off with a minority of one and everyone else believes the previous one, in which case there'd be no progress in science if science was consensus-based.
	But the idea that We are somehow anti-scientific if we're skeptical of global warming, but somehow it's pro-scientific to say that subspecies separated by 50 to 100,000 years of evolution in wildly opposing climates,
	with wildly opposing pathogens, with wildly opposing opportunities, with wildly opposing predations, and so on, That there's going to be no differences between them whatsoever outside of a few minor external ones makes absolutely no sense at all.
	Now that is completely anti-scientific.
	But to say that there's a possibility that people are different because they're different, people's outcomes are different because they're different, that it's not racism that keeps Chinese people out of the NBA. That it's not racism that keeps women out of the very top tiers of science,
	but it's a basic reality that Chinese people tend to be shorter and that women tend to cluster around the middle of the IQ paradigm.
	So you'll see fewer homeless women and you'll see fewer women at the very top tier of human intelligence.
	It's just, for whatever reason, it's the way it is.
	And I think it's because men benefit more from rolling the dice as far as risk goes.
	Because if you roll snake eyes, you're toast.
	But if you roll, you know, double sixes and you get top tier IQ, you get a lot of resources, which gets you a lot.
	So that's how we kind of suction cup up the glass wall of dumbness with which you're trying to climb out of the primordial ooze to something better.
	And so, yeah, you just, you threaten people's power when you talk about people being, groups ending up different because they're different.
	Because then there's nothing that the government can do to solve it.
	I mean, if Michelle Obama introduced a program called, we're going to make all children equal in height by the time they're 25, people would say, I, what?
	That's crazy.
	Height is genetic.
	And, you know, to a small degree environmental.
	And so that would be considered crazy, but people don't They don't want to see it.
	Because it also breaks people's heart, right?
	To think that there may be certain groups with certain differences.
	But it is necessary.
	Because the other thing, too, is that if groups are different, then different outcomes are inevitable.
	And if we don't understand that groups are different, then whoever holds power in a multicultural society...
	We'll be damned and condemned as immoral, right?
	And this is the white privilege question, which I think we're going to have a call about later.
	But that is, you know, it is basic self-defense to explore whether people are fundamentally different, right?
	Do groups have different IQs?
	Do groups have different levels of...
	Let me finish.
	Do groups have different IQs?
	Do groups have different levels of adrenaline?
	Do groups have different levels of energy and motivation and so on?
	Because if it's true that they do have different levels of IQ and adrenaline and other things that are sort of invisible to the naked eye, if groups do have different brain sizes and cranial capacities and intelligence as a whole, again, individuals you can't judge, but, you know, groups as a whole, if it's true that they're different, then the dominant group in a multicultural society can't be as easily accused of racism.
	But if everyone's the same and there are different outcomes between groups, then the curse, the blame, the hatred all falls upon whoever's in charge of a multicultural society.
	And of course, in the West, this generally, though not for long, seems to be white people.
	And so it's a basic act of self-defense to look for these differences.
	Like, if you are an NBA owner and everyone's screaming at you that you're racist because you're not hiring enough Chinese people...
	Then you'll say, I hire everyone over 6'6", right?
	I mean, I don't discriminate against anyone except short people.
	They just happen to be more short Chinese people than short black people.
	So, and you send me anyone who's 6'6 and over, and I'm going to look at them.
	And again, I know that they're shorter basketball players, but forgive me for the analogy.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say, it also disables those groups sometimes by not being able to give them information about their Their situation, biological situation or whatever.
	So it not only, as you say, disables other groups from their situation, but also the groups that are trying to protect, it actually doesn't help them in the long term.
	Yeah, I mean, think of the amount of wasted energy in the Chinese population if they were told that they could play basketball just as well as taller groups.
	Think of the amount of wasted energy that they find something else that they're better at and focus on that.
	I mean, there's not a lot of Jewish people screaming that they don't get enough space on rugby teams, right?
	Because, you know, that's not necessarily their stretch, right?
	Or, for instance, Jews test very high in verbal IQ, and they test sometimes a little bit below average on spatial IQ, whereas Asians test very high on spatial IQ, far higher than whites and higher than Jews.
	And so this is why you see a lot of Jewish writers and comedians as all language-based stuff And a lot of Jewish negotiators, a lot of Jewish lawyers, it's all language-based stuff, which is where they test very high.
	And you don't see the same proportion of Jewish engineers.
	Conversely, you don't see a lot of Chinese comedians and so on, but you see a lot of Chinese engineers because they test 30.
	So, but if you said, well, there's absolutely no difference and the Jews should all focus on becoming engineers and the Chinese should all focus on becoming comedy, comedian, right?
	Comedians or whatever, then that would be a challenge, right?
	It would be kind of a waste of both groups' energies.
	Which is not to say you can't have fantastic Chinese comedians and fantastic Jewish engineers.
	You can.
	Individuals, again, you can't tell anything about individuals.
	But as a group...
	You know, you play to your strengths, you know?
	I mean, I'm not going to go out and become a hair model.
	It's just, you know, because they're racist against bald people.
	Terrible.
	You play to your strengths.
	And if we knew these strengths, and people were more aware of them.
	And also, let's say that there were cultural issues, right?
	If you can blame negative outcomes on...
	If you can play negative outcomes on racism, then you don't get a chance to examine your culture so much.
	And I think that's, again, a real shame.
	Anytime you externalize blame, where there's at least ambiguity about the cause of the problem, you have paralyzed yourself from solving the problem.
	Yeah, good points.
	Facts will save us.
	Yeah, I just wanted to sort of swing back to Dr.
	Penman again, because I think you kind of answered it, but I just wanted to sort of get your point, because obviously the RK thing has been a huge thing for you, and I really enjoyed that take and listened to it avidly.
	But I got a sense, at least when I was listening to that interview, that there were some challenges with this review, but also that there was some nuance that you got from the arcade theory that you got with Dr.
	Penman.
	I'm getting the sense.
	I don't know.
	I'm taking this from what you said.
	I'm just curious how you experience reading that book.
	I've read about a third of it.
	It's such a huge book.
	I haven't had time to read it all in the last three weeks.
	I was really curious to hear what your...
	The difference, let's say, the nuance, Matt, perhaps, between the RK theory and Dr.
	Penman's theory for you.
	That's a very big topic, and I would probably want to do more research for that.
	But I would say as a whole that reason ain't working.
	Reason is not working.
	Or it's certainly not working fast enough.
	And from that standpoint, we need other tools in the tool belt.
	We need to figure out what we can do if reason isn't working.
	And I've been sort of at the forefront of trying to bring rational arguments to the world, at least through the internet, for almost a decade now.
	And, you know, like anybody who's engaged in a big project, if you're not nimble, you're doomed.
	If you're not responsive to the feedback, if you're not responsive to the facts, you're doomed.
	If you've got some good that you're manufacturing, you don't just keep dumping it on the market and taking a massive loss.
	At some point, you have to say, hey, how are sales doing?
	How's that going for us?
	One of the reasons why I'm open...
	Well, first of all, it's facts and it's science and I love that stuff.
	I just think that...
	The discipline of science is just glorious.
	And I'm also, of course, very interested in that which society disapproves of.
	Almost by definition, it's going to be something worth looking into.
	Me too.
	The basic issue that we need to understand is that reason and evidence isn't going to do it.
	Look, I think I produce some great arguments.
	I think I do it in as bad and engaging a way as you can possibly do it.
	I try to be as entertaining and spontaneous and enjoyable and challenging and positive as possible.
	And it's not enough.
	I mean, 10 years in, you've got to say to yourself, how's the plan going?
	Great, we've got some peaceful parenting going on.
	That's fantastic.
	But I am no longer of the opinion that we have, like, it's a multi-generational change.
	I'm no longer of the opinion that for sure we have many generations with which to turn things around.
	So I'm always casting about for new ways to examine the challenge of bringing rationality to humanity.
	And...
	Where the biological explanations are kicking in, where the group difference explanations are kicking in, it's really worth exploring.
	Because of course, if I'm wrong, or if we as a society are wrong about group differences, in other words, if we think everyone's the same, but we're wrong about that, then we're not going to achieve what we want to achieve.
	We're absolutely not going to achieve what we want to achieve.
	I mean, it's like saying I'm a shepherd and it makes absolutely no difference what kind of dog I buy to guard my sheep.
	Well, you're not going to be a shepherd for very long.
	you're going to fail.
	And so I think it's just something that needs to be examined, needs to be explored.
	Unfortunately, the technology is there.
	But of course, there's a huge amount of political correctness, which is really boring.
	It's really boring.
	Oh, no, there might be differences between groups.
	Ah, I'm so scared.
	Oh my God, it's the most terrible thing ever.
	I can't get out of bed in the morning if there's different heights between groups and different numbers of teeth between groups and different numbers of vertebrae between groups and different IQs between groups.
	I just, I can't, I can't.
	It's just, it's so boring.
	Like there's just completely our hysteria of like, Oh, science is leading me in a direction that makes me uncomfortable.
	I must scream and throw things and spit venom until anxiety goes away.
	It's just...
	Oh, boy, people are so boring, you know?
	It's like I do a video about the migrant crisis.
	You're a Nazi.
	It's like, oh, yeah.
	You're the first person on the internet to use that argument.
	Where'd you come up with that, you genius?
	And yeah, just this idea that anybody who's interested in pursuing genetic variants between human groups, you're a racist, you're a fascist, you're a xenophobe, you're a big...
	Oh, God, it's so boring.
	It's so, like, it's just so predictable.
	And, you know, I would love it.
	I mean, telling you, I mean, I hate to say things like nobody would like it more than I would because, you know, that means that I'm somehow, you know, the most committed.
	But I would love it if they continued, like, if the prohibition.
	Again, studying group differences in the genomes was lifted and everyone was like, you know what?
	We're just going to rip this band-aid off.
	We're going to go straight into, we're going to throw resources at it, we are going to figure this out and we are going to sort this out.
	We are going to sort this mother out.
	I would be like, fantastic, let's go.
	And if they said after, you know, a hundred studies and a thousand scientists and a whatever, you know, there's no difference.
	It's all environmental.
	All the differences between IQ and, okay, well maybe not teeth, because that's...
	I don't think there's any amount of particular styles of music that produce different numbers of teeth in your mouth.
	But let's just say when it comes to intelligence, it's all environmental and here's our solution.
	Wouldn't that be fantastic?
	We've eliminated the biological causes.
	There's no genetics behind it whatsoever.
	I wouldn't put a lot of money on that, but if that were to happen, fantastic.
	Then we have eliminated that as an opportunity or as an option, and we've got somewhere else to go.
	But I'm always concerned when people in power scream at any advance in knowledge that threatens that power.
	That was the case with the church, with a wide variety of scientific advancements.
	Of course, they believed epilepsy was demonic possession, right?
	So the people who were selling their exorcisms took a bit of a hit when that happened, when this was all discovered.
	And of course, evolution was roundly condemned up until more recently.
	I think it was the last pope who finally accepted that evolution was valid and Just about the most established scientific theory hypothesis on record.
	But yeah, anytime there's an advance in knowledge which threatens the existing power structures, they're going to rail against it and call anyone who wants to pursue that knowledge evil.
	But that's kind of how you know you're on the right path.
	Anyway, I hope that helps.
	I'm going to move on to the next caller.
	Great question.
	How was it for you?
	I know I did most of the talking.
	I hope that was not too intrusive.
	No, it was very good.
	No, no, I was hoping to pick your brains about it, and it's a fascinating topic for me.
	I'm finding it very interesting.
	I completely agree with you about the idea that this is a taboo topic, right, which makes it all the more fascinating and interesting and intriguing, and it makes a lot of sense.
	So thanks, sir, very much.
	Yeah, there's no negative judgments or views of any group can be inferred from the pursuit of the truth.
	No bigotry against anyone can ever be assumed from the pursuit of the truth.
	Because bigotry is a rejection of the truth.
	And in fact, the only bigotry that is shown in the area of genetic differences between human groups, the only bigotry is shown by those who resist its exploration and understanding, because that is setting itself against reason and evidence, and that's the very definition of bigotry.
	Thank you, man.
	No worries.
	Good night.
	All right.
	Well, up second is Ingrid, and Ingrid wrote in, and her question says, For years I lived as a chameleon, avoiding conflict and mirroring others.
	This conduct weakened my communication, affecting my relationships, and made me feel insecure.
	How can I engage in effective communication and cope with the fear of rejection?
	And that's from Ingrid.
	All right.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Hi.
	Nice to chat with you, Ingrid.
	How are you doing tonight?
	I am really excited and thanks so much for taking my call.
	Alright.
	Actually, I didn't even know.
	I don't mean to impose night on you if you're in our Singapore listenership, but it doesn't usually matter.
	So, what do you think is the cause of this, as you say, chameleon-like nature?
	And is it basically you just like to please other people and you don't Does it make you anxious or uncomfortable if you can contemplate doing things which don't please people or might not be convenient for them?
	I think, Stefan, I will give you a little bit of background.
	So, for example, I grew up in a mainstream Catholic family, and lately I've been exploring that this chameleon face, which is basically insecurity, is coming from From a pattern that I am repeating of my mom.
	So for example, we would be, you know, these, or seeing as these kind women that, yes, are basically accommodating to others' needs.
	So for me, at least the last two months have been shocking in the way of, oh my God, like I'm just realizing how I don't want to be this person anymore.
	You know, how being a chameleon has changed Basically, weakened all my relationships, like how being a chameleon is not being myself, like it's not being honest.
	And obviously, I don't engage into any kind of conflict, right?
	Because I am afraid that I am not even gonna, you know, pursue anything at all.
	So basically, you know...
	What do you mean by pursue things?
	Yeah, so for example...
	Let's say with my partner, like I wouldn't, I would be totally compliant and I would even mirror himself, you know, as if I don't have any voice at all, because my insecurity makes me feel that, you know, I'm not good enough or that, you know, okay, so let's, let's do whatever you're proposing because I, you know, I don't have enough to offer kind of.
	Right, right.
	Can I just give you a tiny little speech, and I just want to make sure that we're on the right page?
	Yes, please.
	Okay, so I'm not trying to give you sort of my experiences, if they're yours, but my experiences, Ingrid, were that I thought I had friends, but it turns out I just had people I was convenient for.
	And when I stopped being as convenient, they found me of little utility at all, if that makes sense.
	Yes, yes it is.
	And that was a huge challenge.
	Now, of course, I had kind of trained them and I'd invited them in my life to...
	I don't want to say exploit me exactly, but it's not far off from that.
	And when I had needs that were...
	Upsetting to other people, generally they would just not want to engage.
	And that was a huge challenge and a huge problem for me.
	Like when I was in therapy, when I was talking to my therapist, if we had disagreements or conflicts, you know, the therapist would welcome them and we would talk them out and, you know, it would really be a positive experience.
	And once you've had that experience, that conflicts lead to something very positive.
	Then you can have a very different relationship to conflict, and you recognize that a friendship is necessary where there is inconvenience, right?
	You don't have to have positive feelings about someone, you know, like you're leaning over a bridge, you drop your phone, they catch it and return it to you.
	You are very happy about that person.
	There's not a lot of, you know, thank you, whatever, right?
	Unless you were trying to dispose of evidence, I get overcomplicated.
	But so when someone does you a good turn, a stranger or whatever, or a friend, then great.
	You don't actually need the skills of friendship when you agree.
	Now, you have a friendship, hopefully, because you agree on basic values and so on.
	But, you know, Mike and I disagree, or Mike and Stoyan and I, we disagree about things from time to time.
	And it is our commitment to our friendships that is what is necessary during those times.
	Our commitment to friendship is not particularly necessary when we agree on everything.
	I mean, it's great that we do, but that's not...
	You know, the reason you take vows when you get married is there may be times when you don't feel like being married.
	And the reason you sign a contract...
	What is a contract for?
	A contract is for when you want a break.
	The contract.
	And then you say, well, no, I won't because Donald Trump sues or whatever, right?
	And so this idea that friendship is somehow defined by agreement, I do not think is true.
	Friendships exist because of some significant agreement, right?
	But friendships are fundamentally sustained by our capacity to productively disagree with each other.
	Because Nobody agrees all the time.
	I don't agree with myself even in the same day at the same moment.
	Sometimes I'm battling back and forth in my head or weighing the balance might be a nice way of putting it or I can see both sides of it.
	I'm arguing both sides or whatever.
	And so nobody agrees all the time.
	If you have a similarity of values, then you have a friendship.
	But the friendship will not last unless you get over that hump of disagreeing.
	And sometimes having very strong disagreements, that is all essential.
	And the friendship is most necessary when you don't want the friendship in the moment.
	Just as a contract is most necessary when you're most feeling like breaking the contract.
	And I found that my friendships in the past, and not all, but most of my friendships in the past...
	Could not sustain themselves when I was not agreeable.
	In other words, they really weren't friendships.
	They were people who were willing to spend time with me if I fundamentally wasn't there.
	And that was, you know, it's basically like having a guy who wants to have sex with you if you pretend to be someone else.
	It's like, well, that's not really me then, is it, right?
	So...
	I don't know if that's similar at all to your experience, except for the last analogy, whether that has any connection with you.
	No, yeah, it totally relates.
	For example, this thing that you mentioned about You know, friendships that when you stop being convenient, they kind of disappear.
	That's true.
	You know, like I am definitely facing that.
	Right now, that I'm working in being honest and actually, you know, not caring about what other people want to listen, but actually being more, being myself and just saying what I believe and doing what I believe.
	Yeah, there's people that just don't know how to cope with it.
	And They are not, let's say, relationships that I have anymore.
	But at the same time, you know, my whole challenge, Stefan, is that, you know, within my whole life, I was not engaged into conflict, right?
	Because I was accommodating, because I was a chameleon.
	So now that I am getting rid of all these masks, my question for you will be, You know, how do I engage in effective communication?
	So how do I, you know, stand up for myself?
	How do I defend my truth?
	You know, without being aggressive, but also without mirroring, without being compliant.
	Right.
	Okay, let me give you just an example, if you don't mind.
	And I recommend this for everyone.
	It's not always easy, but I recommend it.
	So I had a friend for 30 years.
	30 years.
	And we moved a little further away.
	I had a car.
	He didn't have a car.
	So every time I wanted to see him, I had to drive for like an hour or an hour and a half to see him.
	And okay, I'm like, okay, I'll do it.
	But it's kind of a drag, right?
	Now, he never said, I'll take the subway as far as I can, and then I'll take a cab from there, right?
	He was always like, let's get together.
	You know, I'll meet you down the street from where I am.
	It's like, okay, so it's a short walk for you, and it's an hour and a half drive for me.
	And he didn't have a driver's license even, right?
	And obviously no intention of getting a car.
	Then he got a car for free.
	Oh, man.
	A free car!
	You know, I don't know, he tripped over Oprah or something and something sprung out of her pocket, right?
	But I know, he got a free car.
	And he got some money.
	It doesn't really matter what the details are, right?
	But he got a free car, got some money.
	And I was like, hey, you know, now you can get your driver's license.
	And he's like, eh, I don't know.
	You know, then I have got to get insurance and you know, I I gotta pay for gas, then maybe some maintenance over time.
	You know, it's...
	I don't know if it's worth it to me, right?
	Now, I don't want to sound like this was the whole relationship because, you know, when you know someone for 30 years, they're not the same person at the end as they were at the beginning, right?
	Habits, you know, they start as cobwebs, they end up as chains, right?
	And he had a habit, not so much of living for other people, but, you know, kind of pursuing his own thing.
	And it wasn't that huge a deal back in the day, but it kind of...
	Crept up and crept up and crept up.
	And this wasn't the only thing, but this was just something that kind of crystallized in my brain.
	And I said, you know, well, it would be helpful to me if you had a car.
	Or maybe you can just build up your leg muscles and bike over it.
	And I'm not saying every time, but once every couple of times would be nice.
	And this, of course, became more complicated after...
	It's one thing to say, I'll drive for an hour and a half.
	It's quite another thing to say, I and my three-day-old daughter will drive for an hour and a half.
	You know, it's not as easy, right?
	And it just became kind of annoying.
	And I thought, you know, either he doesn't know That I have to do all this driving, even though I've said, you know, it's a drag to drive out here every time.
	Either he basically doesn't understand that I have to do all this driving and I'm just this guy who appears.
	Or he does know and he doesn't care.
	Or he does know he cares, but he's hoping that things will just continue to be convenient to him, even though they're growing increasingly inconvenient to me, right?
	Because, you know, I've got to pay for my insurance.
	I've got to pay for the gas.
	I've got to pay for the wear and tear on the car.
	I've got to spend all this time driving, right?
	And anyway, long story short, I just didn't call him.
	I was busy, you know, and I just, new parents and all that, I just didn't call him.
	And I wasn't sort of playing any games.
	I wasn't like, well, you know, now it's his turn.
	I mean, it wasn't anything like that.
	I was just kind of curious.
	And, you know, a week went by, a couple of weeks went by, a month went by, a couple of months went by.
	I'm absorbed with being a new parent and, you know, building this show and all that.
	And I just realized one day, I'm like, wow, I haven't heard from this guy in six months because I'm not calling and I'm not driving over.
	And then at one point...
	Oh, yeah.
	So about eight or nine months afterwards, he left a message because, you know, we would often hang out around Christmas and, you know, get presents for us and other people and all that and sort of a ritual.
	And he's like, you know, I'm going to be in town.
	I'm going to be downtown for Christmas.
	And I was like, you know, there was no acknowledgement that we hadn't spoken in so long.
	And that level of invite yourself into other people's antechamber of unreality was like...
	I mean, so I have to now call back and pretend that nothing happened or I have to be the one who said, well, you haven't talked in eight or nine months and what's going on and blah, blah, blah.
	And I was like, it just, you know, it just, I remember this book where the guy was describing a priest who lost his faith and there was a Like a tile with a little bit of water running down, and he's a stick insect, just climbing up, climbing up, and then just washes away all at once.
	That was his faith.
	And I was looking at the phone.
	I'm thinking, well, I can call this guy, and I can get into this big thing where I try and bring all this reality to whatever, right?
	Or I can just pretend that nothing happened, which is weird, right?
	And I was like, ugh.
	And it just, bing!
	It broke.
	It broke.
	And...
	I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day about, and I haven't seen this guy in years and years now, and never heard from him again.
	You know, we all see these scenes in the movies and sitcoms back in the day, not so much after 9-11, but, you know, the guy's running through the airport because the girl's about to leave on a plane.
	He's got to tell her.
	He loves her.
	He's going to do anything.
	Oh, my God, does that not happen?
	I don't know.
	Maybe it happens to other people.
	It doesn't happen with me because everyone who's in my life now is here and would do that, but that's never going to happen because of the commitments.
	But I just thought, I thought, you know, what if this guy, you know, Drives up to my house.
	He's got his license and he's like, you know, man, I really thought about it.
	I really miss you.
	And, you know, here's what...
	And you know what?
	That's never going to happen.
	Because the moment I wasn't putting lots of energy and resources into the relationship...
	Well, what?
	Did his phone get super heavy?
	Was it somehow glued down?
	It's like, no.
	It just doesn't...
	And so this, how do you negotiate?
	Well, you can't negotiate in that environment.
	Because it sort of feels like, okay, I have $5 to spend on a Maserati stuff.
	How do I negotiate so I can get the Maserati?
	And the answer is, you can't.
	Because no one's going to sell you a Maserati for $5, right?
	So when there is an inequality in the relationship, if you're not both as important to each other in general, Then you can't negotiate.
	You can negotiate when you both have equivalent value to trade, right?
	I don't know how much a Maserati costs, like $200,000 or something.
	So if you come in with $190,000 or $180,000, then you can negotiate.
	Maybe you'll get the Maserati, maybe you won't.
	If you go on with $300,000, okay, you're getting the Maserati, right?
	In fact, the salespeople will probably step on other people's head to sell you the Maserati.
	So if you're over, well, it's not going to work out for long.
	If you're kind of equivalent, then you can negotiate.
	But if you care about the relationship more than the other person cares about the relationship, usually you can't negotiate.
	And so that is, I think, the first important thing.
	The question isn't how should you negotiate.
	For me, the first question is Should I even bother negotiating?
	Like, what is the evidence that this negotiation is going to go anywhere?
	In other words, is there any evidence that I am even remotely as valuable to this other person as they are to me?
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, definitely.
	It does.
	You know, for me, I think it was difficult even to realize, like, oh, my God, yes, you know, I have a voice.
	I want to be heard.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, basically right now it's just choosing those relationships that are worth, right?
	That definitely are worth keeping aside of, you know, just fake relationships, right?
	Right.
	I remember reading many years ago the novel by Mario Puzo called The Godfather, and of course got made into a famous movie.
	And in The Godfather, I don't even remember many of the circumstances, but there was some woman who needed to get out to the mafia family's house, and it was a long way, and she didn't have a car.
	And the mom in the mafia house said, basically, oh, you know, get the cab driver, get him to drive you out here.
	And she said, there's no way he's going to want to drive that far.
	And the mafia mom said, tell him we'll pay him triple the meter to come out here.
	And, you know, that stuck in my head for a long time.
	And I thought...
	Damn.
	Mafia moms are nicer than most of my friends.
	That's not a good sign.
	Well, there's a show title for you there.
	But this woman cares enough about getting this woman to her house that the family will pay triple the meter to get the cab to come on out.
	And I remember thinking, wow, that's impressive.
	And it did cross my mind, though I squelched it at the time, I wonder who would pay triple the meter for me to come if there was some emergency or whatever, right?
	And that is, you know, who is committed to you.
	And I don't think anyone can be committed to you if you're compliant.
	Because if you're compliant, the only thing they're committed to is their own convenience.
	You have to show up and be there and be inconvenient.
	Because all progress is inconvenient.
	Everything great in this world is ridiculously inconvenient.
	Say, I just made a huge investment in rotary dial phone.
	Oh, push button phones?
	Okay, never mind.
	Switch that investment to phones with cords.
	Oh, what?
	Cordless phones?
	Man, okay.
	Switch that investment to cordless phone.
	No, you know what?
	We're going into cable.
	Because cable is the future and ca- What?
	What's this?
	Internet?
	What?
	Okay, we're going to switch our investment to local ISPs with hamster wheels and yogurt string and yogurt cups and that's how that...
	What?
	Oh, huge Comcast, really?
	Okay, right, you can see how this just cycle plays itself over and over.
	We're going to invest in record labels because music sale...
	Napster?
	Really?
	Come on!
	Right, I mean, this is life as a whole, is that you keep investing in stuff and it gets overturned.
	And inconvenience is everything that comes further ahead is ridiculously inconvenient for a large number of people who came behind.
	So all human progress, we were just talking about this in the first call, but all human progress is ridiculously inconvenient, right?
	I just bought a huge batch of new slaves.
	What?
	I'm sorry.
	What just became illegal?
	Oh, come on!
	Right?
	I mean, the unluckiest investor in history is a skit that could go on for about four days, you know?
	1929, I've just put all my money in the stock market.
	It's got nowhere to go, but ahhh!
	Right?
	You could go on and on, right?
	And so...
	For there to be progress in any relationship, there has to be a willingness to be inconvenient.
	If entrepreneurs said, I really...
	What do they call it?
	I want to create a paradigm-shifting product.
	Well, a paradigm-shifting product is one where, you know, I just invested all my money in wristwatches because people, of course, they always love to know what the time...
	What?
	Why they got cell phones with watches on them already, which they have to carry around anyway?
	Oh, come on!
	Right?
	I mean, this is going to go on and on, right?
	And...
	All progress is inconvenient and the same thing is true in relationships.
	If no entrepreneur was willing to be inconvenient to existing business interests, there would be no progress in the business world.
	And every novel, like if you buy a novel, you're not buying someone else's novel and so everyone who wanted to be a writer but who didn't want to disturb existing sales patterns would never write anything.
	Same thing with movies and music and all that, right?
	So if you're not willing to be inconvenient, you can't actually have a relationship with Of any substance, and you certainly can't have a relationship that progresses.
	And if I sort of look back on the history of my relationships, not just the one I was talking about, but other ones that didn't work out in the long run, they really didn't progress.
	And the reason they didn't progress is deep down I knew that the moment I was inconvenient, I was no longer going to be around, and therefore I refused to be inconvenient, and therefore the relationships became like one of those mosquitoes where the amber flows over them and they just get stuck in the same position.
	Who, you know, in some movie, there's a story told of a guy who is climbing glaciers, you know, and his father climbed the same glacier 30 years before and went missing, and he finds his father frozen in the glacier, and he's actually now older than his father was when his father died, because his father got cryopreserved in the glacier ice, right?
	I mean, your relationships just get stuck.
	If you're not inconvenient, there's no progress and eventually you'll either die or die of boredom.
	Yes, it makes sense.
	Mm-hmm.
	I've, and it's often struck me that when you read the history of whatever creative endeavor was going on, there's so much conflict in those creative endeavors.
	You know, like apparently the guys who played In Star Trek, fought like crazy for their characters, fought to get more lines.
	If there was something that they didn't believe their character would do, they'd fight with the writers and so on, right?
	And Alan Cummings, who plays in The Good Wife, was complaining to the writers that his character, he could never imagine his character having sex.
	And then they gave him an affair, which, you know, kind of, quote, fleshed out the character, if you know what I mean.
	And this amount of conflict is really important to the creative process.
	And that's where, you know, friction makes sparks.
	And so when it comes to negotiation, for me, and I've got, of course, a book called Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love, which is available for free at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	And you don't surrender your emotional integrity in the relationship because that is surrendering yourself.
	I mean, I know you've read it.
	That's just for the other people.
	But If you feel uncomfortable about something, you say, I feel uncomfortable about something.
	You don't jump to conclusions and say, because you're pushing me.
	I don't know.
	Maybe, maybe not, right?
	But you simply talk about your own emotional experiences and you don't push it down.
	And if people roll their eyes or don't care or withdraw because you have an emotion that is inconvenient for them, At the time.
	Well, you know, best way to kill a drinking party is to say, you know, it seems like every time we get together, we just drink.
	I mean, do you think we're trying to, like, not talk, not have any kind of meaningful discussions about anything?
	Because it seems like we're just drinking.
	And how people are going to say, you know, I think that you might have a case there, at least one of you does, and let's try getting together and not drinking and talking about things that really matter to us.
	No, it's going to be like, what the hell are you talking about?
	Relax.
	Dude, just having fun.
	Lighten up.
	Get another beer.
	Stuff your face with chips.
	Hockey game's almost done.
	Shut up.
	You're making me uncomfortable.
	Go away.
	Reality, truth, honesty, openness.
	I'm allergic.
	Don't make me break out in hives.
	Then they start scratching their ears with their hind legs.
	Anyway.
	So, yeah, I think it's negotiation is really just relentless honesty.
	No, still don't feel comfortable, don't know why, not saying it's you, but I don't agree with you and here's why and all that.
	So that's where, you know, relationships are the overlap of two individuals.
	And there's no relationship if one is goo and the other one is a rock, you know, then there's no merging, right?
	There has to be a joining and the joining means two real people overlapping.
	Can you give us...
	I feel that I'm giving you lots of theory without much practice.
	Can you think of a specific...
	Yeah.
	Like, for example, this last thing that you mentioned about being a rock, you know, basically I think that was my relationship with my partner before realizing all of this, in which I even got codependent.
	You know, I... I got even his likes.
	You know, I adopted his likes in music.
	I adopted his likes in movies.
	You know, I was so insecure that I couldn't even brought up something new, right?
	Like something new to the relationship.
	And right now, you know, trying to get rid of all of these things, like it's difficult.
	It's difficult for me to, you know, kind of to push my limits, like to even find what is it that I like.
	Another example would be, you know, being a chameleon and compliant and kind of telling what everyone wanted to listen to and not probably what I was really feeling.
	That also made me engage into so superficial conversations.
	You know, instead of actually, I don't know, if someone asked me, so how are you doing?
	I would be just getting into the surface of kind of replying, oh good, You know, I got kind of lazy in the sense of not actually willing to engage into a deep conversation.
	And I think that was basically coming from insecurity, from, you know, this fear of being rejected, of not being worth, of not knowing how to argue back.
	So, yeah, definitely your words totally resonate with me.
	So can you think of a particular conflict that shows up where you think you'd need some better help with negotiating?
	Yeah, for example, lately I've been, you know, I've been exploring all of these things, right, which I'm not new, but I think in the last two months, they really resonated with me.
	They clicked.
	You know, it's as if I found the pieces of the puzzle and everything was just arranged.
	And, you know, for me, I was first defensive.
	For example, if my partner would mention a specific situation in which, oh my God, you're being insecure or you're being insecure, I will be so defensive because it will hurt.
	And sometimes I felt judged, you know, instead of...
	And this was something that took me a while to talk to him, into actually saying, you know, okay, it's so difficult to...
	To manage all this insecurity, right?
	Like to realize that, oh my God, I have been lying for my entire life.
	Like I haven't been honest and authentic and I want to change it.
	Like I know that I have so much to offer.
	I am courageous.
	I have so many virtues.
	But we just got into a conflict because I felt judged.
	I felt that every time that he pointed out that I was being insecure, you know, I... I took it as if he was judging me rather than helping me.
	Are you still religious?
	Sorry?
	Are you still religious?
	No.
	Because, you know, you said you grew up in a Catholic household and sensitivity to being judged in a Catholic household may, you know, that may be fertile ground for upset, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, no, I'm not religious anymore.
	And I've been, you know, kind of more aware of trying not to take things personal.
	Like I remember so many of your podcasts in which you basically say, you know, we shouldn't be responsible of...
	We're responsible of what we say and we shouldn't be responsible of what other people feel, right?
	And that's what I've been kind of trying to do.
	But, for example, for me it's difficult to...
	To go against, you know, what my partner would say about my insecurities.
	Like it would be difficult for me to find examples, to find, you know, kind of to even go inside.
	But hang on.
	So let's go back to the origin, right?
	You said your adverse childhood experience is zero, and that's totally fine.
	But when you were a child, did you have...
	Any capacity to negotiate with parents, priests and teachers?
	Yeah, I do.
	I feel that I did.
	You know, I think I am the youngest of three.
	And there's a big gap between my siblings and I. However, I felt listened.
	I felt listened to, and I believe that, you know, if there was something wrong, like, I would speak up.
	But also, let's say a big thing that I found out was that, you know, yeah, my parents...
	I'm just the same.
	You know, there have been really, really important things happening for my siblings, and my parents didn't stand up as they should have.
	You know, they would be always supportive and, you know, kind and But they wouldn't actually stand up, or they didn't stand up in really difficult situations that my siblings were facing.
	For example, my brother, he married a woman that, you know, she's kind of the best example of a red flag woman.
	And my parents, well, yes, they were kind of telling him, like, oh my God, why are you marrying, you know, so young?
	Like, are you sure?
	But I guess it was not enough.
	It was just not enough push from them towards my brother, or there was not a deep communication with them and my brother in order for my brother to assimilate.
	Oh, that's true.
	You know, this is a red flag.
	But no, it's not just in the moment, right?
	Parenting is...
	Almost never ex post facto or after the fact, parenting is, from the very beginning, you have to lay in the values that are going to have him reject a red flag woman.
	What were the flags, just out of curiosity?
	So, for example, she would be a really superficial woman.
	You know, just seriously caring about money and about the clothes that she's wearing.
	And, you know, right now they have, she has a van and she wants another one.
	And she wants her kids to go into private schools and she wants to travel.
	And, well, there is my brother totally compliant and there are my parents not telling anything to them, right?
	Just probably, I think, two months ago I had, I would say, the very first Deep conversation with my parents about this.
	I was like, oh my God, how come?
	You know, you both haven't secured, you know, our family.
	Like, you need to look for our backs, right?
	And they were, yeah, they were crying.
	Both of them were like, oh my God, that's true.
	That's true.
	We haven't done a good job in that.
	So, you know, I think slowly they've been doing changes with my brother and, you know, they've been engaging into more honest conversations, also with my sister.
	Alright, so hang on.
	So, your brother, he's now married to her?
	Yeah, they are married.
	And how pretty is she?
	I wouldn't say she's even that pretty.
	Maybe a seven.
	And how handsome is your brother?
	Probably eight and a half.
	So, is she very smart?
	Is she very well educated?
	Is she very witty?
	I mean, how is she making up for this?
	I don't know.
	You know, I've been trying to find her qualities.
	Yeah, she's educated, but...
	Last time I saw her and I talked to her, she has no emotional intelligence at all.
	What's your mom like?
	Does your mom have a lot of emotional intelligence?
	No, I don't think.
	I think she's just right now realizing all the stuff that she needs to work on.
	And does your mom have any sort of materialism or shallowness with regards to that stuff?
	I don't think so.
	No.
	Like, at least my experience, you know, I've seen my mom as kind of, you know, humble and not really caring about superficial stuff.
	But I guess it might be there, right?
	And that's why my brother is coping.
	Well, it's not necessarily there.
	I mean...
	That's a self-fulfilling thesis, right?
	If it's not there, it's not there.
	I'm just kind of curious why...
	And again, it's not like everything has to come off the mom, but that's a pretty significant amount of imprinting.
	I'm just wondering why your brother would be susceptible to such a low-quality woman.
	Yeah.
	Does her family have money?
	Is she high status in some way?
	No.
	She tries to be.
	She has always tried to be someone that she's not.
	And did you have concerns about her and your brother before they got married?
	Yes, yes.
	I think either, yeah, my parents, my sister, like all of us saw these flags and we talked to my brother.
	And, you know, I even feel guilty because it's like I was 15 when he got married to her.
	But, you know, even remembering all these things, I do feel guilty for, yeah, for not pushing harder.
	Well, come on, you were in your early to mid-teens, that's your parents' job, right?
	Or at least elder siblings, right?
	Yeah, being raised, so when did you first begin to doubt the existence of a god?
	Maybe eight years ago, ten years ago, let's say.
	For example, my family, yes, they are Catholic, but they wouldn't be super Catholic in the sense that they don't go to church every Sunday or something, but they do.
	They are Catholics.
	And I guess I was never really engaged, you know?
	I would only go to church for weddings or so, but definitely like when I, I would say when I got out of the closet and being totally open with them about, you know, what I, I don't need a church or a religion, right, like to be spiritual.
	I think that was probably eight years ago.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, the challenge, of course, with being raised religious, and this is not true of all religions, but I think it's pretty true of most religions, Is that, like, the naked eye cannot see a sunspot against the sun because the sun is so damn bright.
	I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I used to measure a sunspot.
	I bought myself a little telescope.
	Consumers direct all the way.
	Shop right, baby!
	And you could point there.
	You can never look at the sun, of course, directly through magnifying anything.
	But I'd take the telescope, point it at the sun, and you could see sunspots and you could map sort of solar activity on a piece of paper and all that.
	I did that for a while.
	And you can't see the sunspots because you're looking at the sun.
	You also can't see anything on the other side of the sun.
	You know, the stars show up during an eclipse and then they vanish when the sun comes out from behind the moon, from the other side of the moon.
	And my concern with religion in particular is that relative to a deity, you are less than a sunspot in the face of omnipotence and omniscience.
	That a mere individual disappears against the divine.
	The divine eclipses the personality.
	We're all on the other side of God, and we can't see ourselves because the deity is so huge.
	And my concern is that the size of the deity is the diminishment of the individual.
	You see, if you, I say, worship a human being, right?
	Like, if you have a hero, then that hero is of a human dimension, and to some degree, what one man or woman can do, another man or woman can do.
	So if you have a human hero, then you can aim to reproduce some of the characteristics of that hero.
	And that means that your hero worship is kind of like a grappling hook that pulls you up to the next level.
	But with a deity, with a god, you can never, ever, ever get anywhere close.
	You are infinitely smaller than the deity.
	You can't ever get there.
	You can't ever achieve perfection.
	I remember flipping through the TV years ago and I saw some show.
	It was one of these law and order shows or whatever, I think.
	And the policeman was swearing vengeance and he's religious, right?
	And the other character said, well, that's not what Jesus would do.
	Jesus preached his forgiveness.
	And the guy said, well, Jesus is perfect.
	I'm not.
	Which I thought was a good little line there, something to really chew on mentally.
	But he's saying, I can't get there, so it's of no use to me.
	I can't get to perfection, so it's of no use to me.
	And in a lot of ways, having an impossible moral standard is a way of excusing yourself from moral standards.
	Jesus is perfect.
	I'm not.
	I'm flawed.
	I'm sinful, so I don't...
	I'm not responsible for doing that because it's impossible, right?
	And, you know, like, I can't sing as high as Sting or as well, you know, so I'm not going to try, you know?
	And this aspect of things is really essential, I think, to see or to grasp because the primary relationship that children who grow up with religion have is with God.
	It's with the deity.
	Now, in the deity, there is no negotiation.
	You negotiate with equals, and you don't negotiate with deities.
	I mean, I know people make their bargains, you know, like, oh, Lord, please let me arrive home alive, you know, and I'll sacrifice a goat tomorrow or something.
	And I think that was the last time I ever had any religious sentiment was when I was 19 and I was in a tent and Way deep in the woods, panning for gold and looking for gold.
	And I could have sworn there was a giant bear.
	I didn't even know if there was or not.
	But there was a sounds of a snuffling.
	And I saw this giant shape going around the tent.
	And, you know, of course, I'd hung up my food in the tree like you're supposed to.
	But you never know when those claws are going to come through you, ghetto style, and just take you limb from limb.
	And that was the last time I was like...
	Dear God, please let it not be a bear that's hungry and angry.
	Please let me not be sleeping where she wants to sleep.
	Or, you know, accidentally her cub came into the tent and is licking my boots and bye-bye leg.
	Hello, Stumpy!
	And that was the last time I sort of had any sort of religious sentiment that I can recall.
	But that's more like begging, but it's not really negotiating.
	And so my concern is that if you grow up in a religious environment, your primary relationship is with God, because your parents can't send you to hell or get you to heaven.
	It fundamentally comes to, right, if a guy introduces you to a job interview, you know, hey, I'm driving you down to the job interview, and this is the job of your dreams, and you're desperate to get it, then your primary relationship that day is with the guy interviewing you for the job, not with the guy who got you there.
	And it's the same thing with parents and God.
	Your primary relationship is with God, not with the parents who've introduced you.
	And there is no negotiation, and your personality vanishes next to the divine, and the divine judges you, and commands you not to judge.
	So automatically we have opposing, chaotic, messy, moral beliefs, plus thou shalt not kill, and God kills pretty much the whole planet on a regular basis.
	So there's disconnection, there's subjugation, there's invisibility in the face of the divine, there's a complete lack of negotiation.
	And there's whim-based dictatorial judgments being hurled down, literally like thunderbolts from on high.
	And I would not underestimate, Ingrid, the degree to which the relationship with the God shaped your relationship with others in your life going forward.
	Yes, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it makes sense.
	Particularly, you know, also what you mentioned about not being judged.
	Yeah, you know, that was basically my fear of not engaging into a discussion or not speaking my truth.
	You know, basically, I didn't want to be judged.
	I was insecure.
	I didn't know who I was.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, so if you could sort of imagine, you know, these are some of the prayers that ran through my head when I was a kid, you know, where I kind of, I wanted to sit down at the big white table with Morgan Freeman or whoever was to stand in at that particular time for God.
	I wanted to sit down at the big white table and I wanted to say, okay, I get it.
	You're big, you're powerful, and you are moody.
	I got it.
	I mean, that is your thing.
	Yeah.
	You're all about giving orders, not following orders.
	I get that.
	You're beyond space and time and blah-de-blah-de-blah and anything that you expect other people to obey, you get out of scot-free.
	You're like the Nancy Pelosi of the divine world.
	I get it.
	You and all your friends are off scot-free with the rules you impose on everyone else.
	No Obamacare for you because you're God.
	I get it.
	But I still have a couple of bones to pick with you because I think it's important to negotiate, right?
	So, God, you've got to sit down.
	We've got to negotiate about this stuff.
	Okay, number one.
	Number one.
	Okay.
	You're kind of a peeping Tom.
	You've got to stop looking in through the windows and stuff.
	I've got to not see these big ghostly eyeballs staring through the vents.
	Sometimes I'm scratching myself and sometimes I'm doing other stuff that apparently is wrong as well that gives me ape hands.
	But you've got to stop just creeping me out with this Eyeball, eye in the sky at all times.
	That is not really right.
	Secondly, the death threats.
	I don't mean to be all judgy on you, Mr.
	Judgment Day, but the death threat's not really the best way to get me to love you.
	You know, like, love me or you'll burn in hell forever is sort of like, love me or I'll strangle you.
	That is pretty much a horror movie for Not a Hallmark card of infinite love.
	So please stop with the endless watching.
	Please stop with the death threats.
	And the bribery too, right?
	I mean, like my mom raised me not to be into people who buy my friendship.
	You know, like if I really don't like someone, I'm not just going to hang out with them because they buy me dinner.
	And I don't put out for money.
	And I don't show allegiance to somebody who offers me magic kingdom after death.
	You know, like that's just kind of like a bribe.
	And it kind of goes...
	You know, if you don't love me, I'll strangle you.
	If you do love me, I'll give you a million dollars.
	Right?
	I mean, that would be a horror movie.
	That would be something where Jennifer Lawrence is running away in slow motion, you know, shooting a crossbow over her shoulder or something like that.
	So you've got to stop with the creepy watching stuff.
	You've got to stop with the bribery.
	You've got to stop with the death threats.
	And you've got to stop with the just plain crazy.
	Right?
	So you could do that all day.
	But that would sort of be an idea of sitting down and negotiating with God.
	And God saying, well, you know, you've got some points.
	I disagree with you about some stuff.
	I mean, I made the play.
	I like to watch.
	You know, I mean, that's...
	But the idea of sort of sitting down and negotiating with God and saying what you like and don't like about the relationship, it's kind of incomprehensible, right?
	So religion doesn't train you in that.
	Yeah, no, that's true religion.
	Religion shows you, you know, it's better to be afraid, to have fear.
	To follow everyone.
	Yeah, and you know, like it's sitting there across from the big white table and saying, so, Max G, another thing that's kind of confusing is lots of really creepy, nasty guys live to a ripe old age.
	The other day, I read that a tree fell on a nun.
	So, you're kind of giving us mixed messages here, you know, like...
	Two guys.
	One's good, one's evil.
	And the evil guy wins the lottery and the good guy gets foot-in-mouth disease and dies of leprosy.
	You know, you could switch that up a little bit.
	Like, if you were writing a play, that would be kind of confusing.
	And given that you are writing a play called Us, maybe you could straighten out a little bit this sort of stuff.
	So, maybe a few less giant sinkholes opening up under orphanages and a few more lightning strikes on the bad guys.
	guys.
	You know, that would be a little less confusing because right now it looks kind of random.
	And bad guys seem to get their just rewards on earth quite considerably.
	You know, lots of really bad guys.
	You start giant wars and get their faces on postage stamps, while a lot of guys who try and oppose those giant wars get shot and thrown in a ditch face down and beetles eat their ass.
	So straighten things out a little bit because we're supposed to be making all these decisions, but you're kind of giving us a whole bunch of bad cues that make things look kind In other words, don't say you have to believe in me and then create a world which looks completely random like you're not doing anything.
	Oh, another thing too, you keep saying pray, it'd be great if you could answer the prayers.
	I know, sometimes God answers your prayers and the answer is no, that sucks.
	Because there have been all these double-blind experiments about people praying for other people and people not praying for other people.
	It has no difference in whether they get better or not.
	So don't say pray and then don't do anything about it.
	You know, that's like ordering the iPad and not even getting an empty box, but just a chattering teeth laugh you, which then bites you on the nose.
	So, you know, just straighten out the messages.
	Give us a little bit more of the straight and narrow and just stop being so confusing because otherwise it kind of just feels like we're obeying a bully out of fear.
	I don't think that really was the goal when it came to creating people as virtuous as you because, you know, you don't have to obey anyone out of fear because you're the fear giver, not the fear taker.
	So, if you give us all this random stuff, you don't answer prayers, good people die like dogs while the evil flourish, and then you complain that we choose evil over good sometimes, it's kind of stacking the deck.
	You know, like if I want the woman to date me and not my friend, and I give her a million dollars and a roofie to date my friend, can I really then complain about it?
	Anyway, so just, you know, you could do these kinds of negotiations all day, but the idea that you would negotiate with God as you need to negotiate with people is Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, that was going to be my question.
	How can I break the pattern?
	You know, right now that I've been trying, yeah, to be more honest.
	And it feels good.
	It feels just so good to be clear and to be just, you know, to speak what I am actually feeling and thinking.
	But sometimes it's frustrating because, yeah, because I don't know, I guess I'm still afraid of being totally me.
	But do you have people's agreement for this plan?
	What do you mean?
	Do people agree with your plan?
	Like if you said to me, Steph, I want to go become a lawyer, you know, and I'm married and have, you know, three roommates, I'd say, well, is everyone behind your plan?
	They agree with it.
	Because that's going to help a lot, right?
	So are people, does your partner, do your friends, do your family, do they all say, yes, this is an important thing to do, we support you, we're behind it, and we're with you?
	It's like sobriety, like if you want to quit drinking, it's really important that everyone around you not drink in front of you and support you not drinking for a while.
	Yes, I do feel supported and that is huge, right?
	Because I honestly don't feel that I am just walking this path alone.
	I do feel supported.
	Really, even my parents, I feel there's some light in there with our latest conversations.
	Even my mom, she just mentioned that she wants to go into counseling and Great.
	Well, then, you know, I'm a big fan of talk therapy, of course, so I'm sure you've already heard my pitch about that a million times.
	You can find a therapist fantastic.
	But I would suggest, Ingrid, just to trust the people around you to keep you reminded, right?
	It's like if you've got an exercise buddy like someone you always go and exercise with and you say, well, how on earth am I going to keep on with my exercise regime?
	It's like, well, find someone you trust and let them motivate you.
	And if people around you are behind what it is that you want to do and you're in therapy and you're working on it, I think that's the best chance that you have for success.
	And that's more than most will ever get.
	So good for you and good for them.
	Thanks, Stefan.
	Yeah.
	You are very welcome and thanks very much for calling in.
	Of course, feel free to drop us a line and let us know how it goes and good for you and of course good for your family for waking up to where you're taking them.
	That's very noble of them to do.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	And really I wanted to take the chance to To really share with you how you've honestly changed my life.
	You've been an excellent eye-opener.
	And you know all these flags that before I would be living in this beautiful world of rainbows.
	You've been an excellent help for me to look at red flags in other people, in myself, in women particularly.
	So thank you.
	Thank you very much for your help.
	Stefan Molyneux, professional rainbow killer.
	Thank you, I appreciate that.
	And Mike, I know that our third caller has had internet issues, and he might be in Canada, and I'm using the internet at the moment, so...
	But we had a couple of juicy YouTube comments for me to...
	Yeah, I rounded up some more Bernie Sanders-related comments from people.
	Feel the burn as what's left of my brain melts out of my nose.
	I actually took the time to cultivate these and read a bunch, so I'm sorry to myself.
	Please send your condolences, too.
	So, you've been reading Bernie Sanders supporters' comments.
	My brain shriveled up and jumped out my ear.
	You're socializing your intelligence.
	It's nice.
	There you go.
	Alright.
	Number one.
	Stefan, you're the idiot.
	Not you are.
	You're the idiot.
	You're are assuming that the rich are working harder than anyone else and are rightfully entitled to the ridiculous amount of money they have to compare to people who work hard their entry lives and have nothing to show for it.
	Adam Smith did not believe in a minimum wage because he was naive enough to believe the firm, when making great profits, would share the income with its employees, and then it was not doing well.
	Employees would understand cuts in wages.
	He was a moral philosopher like yourself, which is one of the most useless jobs ever, and yet you want to call people with bad grammar idiots.
	It's YouTube.
	Get over yourself.
	Obviously...
	Captain, the whole concept is breaking up and re-entry.
	I could follow it for a while and now it's just like trying to give a hug to a breaking up spaceship as it goes through the atmosphere.
	Obviously you do not have a highly sophisticated forum because no one cares about what you have to say.
	You can go on quoting economic logic like you like to make your points and undermine others, but you being an educated man should know better that none of those economic laws are an exact science.
	They're T-H-E-I-R. Far from it.
	And they change like a...
	the word they're going for is chameleon but chameleon changes colors from ricardo hume mills smith marx keens samuelson friedman to greenspan greenspan is spelled wrong they all are regarded as great minds who figured out nothing do not agree with each other and made up so much economic crap laws rules logic or whatever else you call it
	i prefer crap to support their points Yes.
	When a philosopher puts himself above the people who are not just thinking of things all day, but actually doing them, I know the philosopher has not clue what he is talking about.
	I hope I was proper enough for you, but if you didn't understand what I was trying to say, I hope you get one thing out of this.
	You're the idiot.
	Idiot is all caps and your is Y-O-U-R. And it's followed with an LOL. That's why.
	You know, let me give you a tip if you're a YouTube commenter.
	And this is like, this sounds like Mike has just gone through 10,000 to find one like this.
	He really hasn't.
	First of all, okay, here's a couple of clues.
	Number one, if when you're typing...
	About two-thirds of your response has a red squiggly underline to it.
	You may not be gaining the upper hand in the intellectual thrust and parry of debate.
	It's just possible.
	Maybe they just think that that means the word is feeling the burn, because it's got the red underline underneath.
	My word has jumped up and down on your argument to the point where it's a squishy red substance underneath my typos.
	Victory!
	It's like Godzilla vs.
	Bambi.
	Pfft!
	I'm sorry?
	Like in Bernie Sanders' hypothetical budget, it's all in red.
	A, because it's Bernie, you know?
	And B, because it's a deficit, and C, because red is the color of communism.
	I like that.
	Triple layer joke.
	I like it.
	Tastes great and more filling.
	So, that's one clue.
	The second clue, of course, is that if...
	You're going to enter into a sword fight.
	It's really important not to just slash yourself first.
	Like if there's lots of blood flying around in the sword fight, but it's all yours, you're not going to win.
	And boy, I mean, I don't even know what to say about that.
	You know, that's like someone who just, oh yeah, you think you're a good chess player?
	Look, I can pee on the chessboard.
	Victory!
	Well, I'll tell you what, you can keep the chessboard.
	But it's still not a victory.
	I will retreat, but only because I don't like splashy, gross stuff.
	I like when people alert us that nobody cares what you think, Steph, but then they spend a lot of time writing a big comment in response to something that you've said.
	And the other thing, too, just because you can't understand it doesn't mean that it's useless.
	Like, I'm not very well versed in the mathematics behind quantum theory.
	I don't think quantum theory is useless.
	I just recognize that there are people way smarter than me in the field who know what they're doing, and I accept the evidence.
	I don't know what philosophers do, so it's useless.
	I'm almost sorry that we have to carry you with our intelligence to a better place, because it almost feels like it would be better for the gene pool to leave you behind.
	But we're nicer than that.
	So fine, come on to the future, we'll save you too.
	I'm going to quote a list of all these public intellectuals that have accomplished significant things, we can argue good or not, and then just logic or whatever you want to call it.
	I prefer to call it crap.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, here's the tragedy too, right?
	And this is – it's a sad thing in a way.
	Like I – they've done a lot of tests.
	And the tests are, and yeah, Mike, if you can put it in there, I'd like to see a little bit more of these, I guess you could call them sentences if you can put them in the chat.
	But they've done a lot of tests and what they've found is that if you want to judge someone's success in, say, their job, just give them an IQ test.
	And that's pretty much the best predictor.
	It's better than your references, you know, which are just like friends you've worked with who've agreed to lie about you, whatever, right?
	I mean, this is not a very objective way.
	It's better than your resume.
	It's better than where you went to school, although that certainly does help.
	But IQ tests.
	What determined your job success?
	Most, you know, not all of it and so on.
	Yes, there's a little bit of emotional intelligence, but that's only 2% or 3% of the average job.
	Emotional intelligence is just something that's invented to make emotional people, women, feel better about not doing as well on IQ tests.
	It's just your consolation prize.
	You don't have as many brains.
	Here's a little bag of feels to make you feel better.
	You don't need a lot of emotional intelligence to know not to piss on the chessboard.
	So, um...
	So, if you are dumb, and I don't think this is just a matter of not knowing English.
	I think I have to go a little further than that.
	You know, somebody who is just currently walking into a wall is not just not great at gymnastics.
	It goes a little bit deeper than that.
	But if you are not very intelligent, then why people get paid a lot...
	It's incomprehensible to you because you don't know why they're getting paid because you're not smart enough to know how not smart you are.
	I mean, there's nothing like great intelligence to make you humble because when you become really good at something and you invest the 10,000 hours to become really good, and I'm cooking at 45,000 or so on philosophy, but when you put a huge amount of effort into becoming really good at something, you get how specialized you are.
	Incredibly difficult it is to become good at other things, too.
	And if you're not good at anything, then why anyone gets paid a lot Is incomprehensible.
	Like, you know, William Hung, if you ever want to hear some cat scratch fever, just Google him.
	He's a bit pitchy, right?
	He was a really bad auditioner for American Idol back in the day.
	You know, he obviously thinks he's a great singer because he went and auditioned for American Idol.
	And, you know, maybe he has no idea why Kelly Clarkson won or whoever won that year.
	And for him, you know, he's such a bad singer and, I don't know, has never recorded himself and played it back.
	He Probably has no idea.
	Oh, it's all politics, man.
	You know?
	She's just pretty, you know?
	And nobody loves him enough to tell him he's not a good singer, either.
	Yeah, like, it's just pretty.
	Like, there's no such person as Neil Young or every single one of the man trolls in Rush.
	But anyway, that's a topic for another time.
	But, um...
	Yeah, so, you know, I get it.
	I mean, this guy is IQ 85, maybe?
	And he just doesn't understand.
	They get paid a ridiculous amount of money.
	It's like, yeah, because they're way smarter than you.
	And, you know, whether that's the result of this guy just never reading a book or deciding to play video games, or maybe there's something just the way his brain is, I don't know, it doesn't really matter.
	But it would be ridiculously immature of me to be offended or upset by anything like this.
	This is a temper tantrum.
	That is occurring when you bring a child to a business meeting.
	This is, you know, one of the things, and I've restrained myself from time to time of typing this, but it is tempting, and I might as well get it out of my system, otherwise it's going to block up and give me a kidney stone.
	But the sentence goes something like this.
	Hello YouTubers!
	I don't mean to interrupt your rant, but adults are trying to get important work done.
	You need to go back to the children's table and not eat so much sugar and glue.
	Because you're interrupting adults trying to get important things done.
	Now go away!
	Go on.
	Go back to the children's table.
	There's popsicle sticks.
	You know what?
	On second thought, you can have more glue.
	It's not like you can damage much.
	Off you go.
	Back to the children's table.
	Adults at work.
	You need to go play.
	And it is tempting to type that kind of stuff, but obviously it's a snarkyment, so I get it.
	On the bright side, though, he did spell your first name right, Steph, which is a rarity in all these comments, despite the fact it's right there on the channel.
	I've seen more ways to spell Stephan Molyneux than I could have ever imagined.
	A-S-S-H-O-L-E-F-A-S-C-I-S-T-H-I-T-L-E-R. Anyway, dot, dot, dot.
	Lots of different ways to spell my first name.
	Stephen's logic is so flawed, there is no way to respond to it.
	He's responding to it.
	I hope people are not buying what he is selling.
	Not selling anything.
	Does he make a living doing this?
	Yes!
	Yes.
	If so, what idiots are giving him money?
	Well, I guess that would not be you.
	Which is okay.
	You probably need the money for more glue.
	If you thought he was right, answer these rhetorical questions.
	All caps.
	If you lived with your family of five and the oldest child makes the most money, should he pay for the popped tire of the car that all the members own?
	Should a billionaire phone maker thank the customer or is it backwards?
	What?
	Dude, billionaires, go broke!
	No, no, wait, wait.
	You come in one at a time.
	Okay, let's do the first one.
	So the child who makes the most, should he pay for the popped tires?
	If you lived with your family of five and the oldest child makes the most money, should he pay for the popped tire of the car that all members own?
	What is this where the oldest...
	Wait, hang on.
	Wasn't that a TV show with Nev Campbell?
	Party of Five, where there were like no adults around?
	Shouldn't the parents pay for the popped tires?
	But the oldest child makes the most money.
	I don't know why he's still living at home and driving in the family car, though.
	Oh, like we're talking Macaulay Culkin's parents in Home Alone days?
	Is that what we're talking about?
	Well, look, I mean, first of all, if it's voluntary, I don't care who pays for what.
	You know, like, if my girlfriend and I enjoy having sex with rubber duckies, is that right or wrong?
	It's like, I don't know, just keep it off the street and, you know, pull the blinds and, you know, go to town.
	I don't care if you motorize the damn things and stick them up your ass.
	It's your choice, right?
	I just don't want to have to pay your medical bills to have them extracted using some giant aardvark implement that only proctologists have.
	But go for it!
	Have fun!
	I just, you know, just keep it off the street.
	That's all.
	I don't want to see it.
	So, you know, don't film it anywhere where 50 Cent is around and you'll be fine.
	But wait, you said the pop tire on the car that all members own, so it's a tragedy of the commons type situation.
	Wait, all the children own out of a car?
	With the family!
	Oh my god.
	I mean, listen, metaphors get away from me sometimes, but at least I'm aware of it.
	The second one is, should a billionaire phone maker thank the customer, or is it backwards?
	Okay.
	I don't know.
	You know what, Mike?
	Can you read that backwards?
	Because maybe there's a secret message in it.
	Actually, you know what?
	That makes a lot more sense to me.
	It's like there's an old ELO record where there's a...
	And you play it backwards and it says, the music is reversible, but time is not.
	Turn back, turn back.
	It was the coolest thing.
	For those of you who don't have records, okay, you have infinite music collections in your ass, but you missed all that kind of cool stuff.
	But yeah, I don't know.
	I mean, somebody who makes a phone and sells a phone, it's win-win.
	You know, the guy wants your money more than he wants his phone.
	You want the phone more than you want your money.
	Everybody's happy.
	So I don't see why it has to be one or the other.
	Wow, nice fear-mongering you got here.
	Keep supporting your corporate masters.
	Bernie is going to give them exactly what they deserve.
	Libertarian clowns like you are the most immoral people on this planet.
	From, I had to include the name of this guy, the atheist socialist vegan, which, you know, if he was into CrossFit, he might qualify as the most annoying person on the planet.
	Sorry!
	Sorry, vegans.
	Hang on.
	Sorry.
	What if we put the letters NVC at the end?
	Oh!
	Oh, God.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	The nonviolent communication spouting atheist socialist vegan crossfitter.
	Oh, God.
	It just spontaneously combusts from having to talk to tell everyone about this stuff non-stop.
	Can we put just saying at the end?
	Just saying.
	Well then why say it if it's just a- if you don't stand behind it, stand behind your words or shut up.
	Anyway.
	Fuck you, Steve.
	How's that pretty bad?
	So wait, I am- wait, am I actually in the category in this person's brain of the most evil human beings on the planet?
	The most immoral people on this planet.
	Libertarian clown.
	The most immoral people on this planet.
	Libertarian clown.
	You know, like face-eating hobos, people who start wars, rapists, pedophiles.
	Like, okay, let them go free.
	But that guy on YouTube, holy shit.
	I mean, we gotta get that.
	I mean...
	I don't even know what to do with him.
	There's no fires of hell enough to rain down on that spotty forehead to make him pay enough for his crimes about humanity called speaking, having thoughts and opinions and providing evidence and talking to experts because that's, you know, okay, there are people who rape babies and lots of them seem to congregate in South Africa.
	You can check out our presentation, The Truth About South Africa, but more on baby rape.
	Boy, there's marketing if ever there was stuff.
	Lots of people who rape babies in the world, but there is this guy on YouTube who says stuff that you don't have to listen to.
	Get him!
	So, yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm just thinking about libertarian clowns.
	I mean, do you hire a libertarian clown and come to your child's birthday party and he explains welfare to them and, you know, maybe out of balloons he creates a replica road to show how it would be built in a free society?
	I don't know.
	I think you may be overcomplicating it, Mike, because libertarian clowns, you just put them in academia, isn't it?
	That's just what you do?
	Free market is great for everyone, but I want tenure.
	That's so important.
	Free market produces quality, but I'm in academia, so I'm not subject to the free market, so I guess I suck by definition.
	Don't worry, if we educate everyone about the free market, they'll totally want the free market.
	I have a PhD in economics, and I want academia.
	Sorry, I was hoping you wouldn't make that connection.
	Wait, do I have a sabbatical already?
	Bye-bye!
	That is gone.
	Oh, boy.
	The second one was, or the next one was, all caps, FUCK YOU STEVE! How's that for feedback?
	I don't know who Steve is, but he doesn't like him.
	That's very clear.
	Maybe he wants it.
	You know, people are always like, FUCK YOU! Like, that's a terrible thing.
	I think guys like to get fucked quite regularly, so, you know...
	You know, more cake, person who likes cake.
	More wine, wine aficionado.
	I mean, fuck you, human being who likes sex.
	I do not think this word means what you think it means.
	I read an article on one of the terrible liberal sites that I'm not going to give any promotion by mentioning it, but it was talking about the users of Grindr and some other gay dating apps or something, how they're racist because they often put things like no Asians or no blacks in their profile, and apparently someone has done a study Yes.
	I'm sure it's being publicly funded, too, folks.
	A publicly funded study on racism in dating profiles.
	And they've come to the conclusion that, yes, the use of no blacks or no Asians or no fatties or something like that, this is racism.
	This is...
	This is the social justice warriors' most important thing they need to tackle next is someone and their sexual preference and who they would like to sleep with or not like to sleep with.
	You're a racist if you don't like sleeping with Asians, folks.
	Just so you know, if you didn't figure that out.
	If you like blondes, you're just a brunettist.
	So, yeah, I don't know.
	I don't know what to say about that.
	I mean, isn't gay just sexist then?
	I don't like to sleep with women.
	I like to sleep with men.
	I guess I'm a misogynist.
	Gotta be.
	Oh, man.
	Oh, man.
	I have a preference, for whatever reason, for a particular person and body type, and therefore everyone else feels the wrath of my penis absence.
	So, horror.
	If you LinkedIn people, you're fat shaming.
	Wow, how can somebody be such an idiot?
	Demokatic.
	D-E-M-O-K-A-T-I-C. Mike, you've got to pace that.
	I don't know.
	Basically, it sounds like you're coughing up.
	A typewriter.
	I don't know.
	What?
	Oh, look.
	It's a found poem.
	Okay, wait.
	Wow, how can somebody be such an idiot?
	Democratic socialism.
	Work in Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, etc.
	And all these countries have billionaires enough.
	Not as much as America, but still a high number.
	Okay.
	Nummer, that's a hummer you get when you're numb.
	No, he pasted something else.
	Government, there's work for ordinary people.
	You like hearing yourself speak, don't you?
	You know what's so funny?
	Because people say, oh, he just loves the sound of his own voice, and that's my contribution to the argument.
	I actually almost never listen to myself again, much to Mike's frustration again.
	Mike, this is good to go!
	You know you were speaking in tongues.
	I think there was Klingon, and at one point you were barking like a badger with his leg caught in a trap.
	That sounded fine to me, because you don't listen to yourself again, man.
	The recorder wasn't even on.
	You sent me a blank file.
	What's the problem here?
	That's right.
	Still safer than race and IQ. Government, okay.
	Government, their work for the ordinary people.
	You like hearing yourself speak.
	Your words are so twisted and not from someone who has educated himself in world events.
	Words are twisted.
	I don't even know what that means.
	People who misspell are twisting words.
	But anyway, you sound like you just memorized parts of books you have read.
	Bernie Sanders is not blinded.
	He sees exactly what is going on with the inequality in this world.
	1% having more wealth than 99% is considered insanity in parts of this world.
	Only if you are selected, my friends.
	You just spat all these words that go nowhere.
	Americans see right through you.
	I know I do.
	And you know, like, this is just a bunch of words that basically says, your mouth shapes upset my brain parts, and therefore I'm going to regurgitate negative adjectives at you in order for other people to think that you're somehow wrong without me having to take the energy to actually disprove anything you say.
	This is why I keep writing there in particular.
	It's everywhere, but I just wanted to put it there.
	Not an argument.
	Not an argument.
	It's not even worth rebutting something that isn't an argument.
	How can you rebut someone who says, your words are twisted?
	It's like, I'm not twisty wordies?
	I mean, how can you possibly respond to that?
	Like, let me give you an example.
	Okay, this is not an example.
	It's just something I wanted to talk about, I'll be honest.
	Okay, so I was reading a book review of Camilla Gibbs.
	She's a famous novelist.
	She wrote a book, an autobiography called This is Happy, Camilla Gibbs.
	Alright, so here's an example of so many things we talk about in this show.
	They describe, she says, born in England, she came to Canada as a toddler with hopeful parents desiring new world freedoms.
	That dream remained wholly elusive.
	A reticent mother, an unstable, alcoholic, and increasingly erratic, bitter, paranoid, monomaniacal, cruel father.
	Mike, can you see any of the imbalance here?
	Maybe if I squint.
	It's tough.
	See, and this, if you're not a man, you just, you won't even see this because of, whoa, women are a wonderful effect, right?
	So, a reticent mother.
	I don't know what reticent means.
	Usually it's like, it's not even that negative a word.
	Reticent is like, you know, I don't take shits in public.
	You know, I like some privacy.
	Yeah.
	So reticent is just, you know, a little hesitant, a little not forthcoming, you know, maybe a little shy, hesitant, you know, that's a reticent, right?
	A reticent mother.
	That's the worst thing that can be said about this mom.
	The dad, though, unstable, alcoholic, increasingly erratic.
	Wait, more!
	Bitter, paranoid, monomaniacal, cruel!
	Father and an acrimonious divorce set the family adrift.
	Gib, now, so again, this is The Women Are Wonderful, right?
	Gib repeated a studious notebook jottings and her younger brother eventually turned to drugs and colossal fury.
	See, when girls are upset, they write things in notebooks probably covered in butterflies.
	They doodle.
	Men become enraged drug addicts.
	Because we're all about egalitarianism.
	It's just like...
	Again, these are just adjectives that are different between men and women.
	But there's no differences between the genders whatsoever, though.
	It's all just a simple construct.
	Nope.
	That whole having babies thing?
	Ignore it.
	No difference.
	Yeah.
	And then, you see, she became a single mom because she had a bunch of affairs with men.
	And Gibb also recounts an intense series of romances across several continents.
	I think that speak for her tramp stamp imprinted the beds in countless hotels across the continent where she left a series of hypodermic needles in doctor's offices filled with a wide cocktail of antibiotics as she tramped her way across the continent.
	Continent spanning whore!
	No, an intense series of romances.
	They ultimately paled it when compared to the love she felt for Anna, her eventual wife.
	So she, I guess, switched into lesbian and got married.
	Four years into their idyllic romance.
	It's idyllic.
	You see, she was raised with this kind of horror.
	And she just had terrible relationships with men because her father was such an asshole.
	But as soon as she got together with another woman, you see, all of her problems were solved because you see, then it's woman with woman.
	And it's idyllic romance.
	And she found herself shocked by the strong and sudden desire to have a baby.
	With Anna, she decided to become a parent.
	Now, When the marriage, abruptly and unilaterally terminated...
	You see, when there's a man involved, it's an acrimonious divorce from an unstable, alcoholic, increasingly erratic, bitter, paranoid, monomaniacal, cruel father.
	An acrimonious divorce!
	However, when it's a woman, it's perfectly idyllic, and then it just gets abruptly and unilaterally terminated, you know, like a contract.
	Someone just forgot to fill out a form.
	Yeah.
	You know what?
	Her partner, while out healing lepers with her tears of femininity, lost the keys and the GPS and couldn't find her way back home.
	It was terrible.
	Nothing here about the childhood.
	The childhood of her children, right?
	She's got furious black moods, gales of tears that accompanied her attempts to be more than what she judged herself to be, a grieving single mother.
	She's institutionalized.
	She cries for months at a time and so on.
	And nobody's sitting there and saying, well, that must have been fun for the kids.
	Are you kidding me?
	How about finding a stable person?
	How about becoming more stable yourself rather than selfishly?
	See, she had a strong and sudden desire to have a baby, Mike, so she should just have a baby.
	Even if she's not in a stable relationship, even if she's batshit insane, she should have a baby.
	Because women, babies, and goodness, and the fact that she's like furious, black moods, gales of tears, sobbing, and it's like she's a grieving single mother.
	She's just grieving.
	Oh, I think the children are grieving a little bit more than she is.
	Anyway.
	I just wanted to point that out.
	That just fucked the shit out of me today.
	And again, people don't even see it.
	She's recovered slowly.
	Oh, man.
	People don't see it.
	They don't see it.
	Anyway, we're working to help them.
	Let's do one more.
	Well, I'm going to do one more stuff, and then you're going to read these as a follow-up based on this one more.
	That's the plan.
	This guy has a condo on Bullshit Mountain.
	This guy has the most pretentious voice.
	He's like a Scott feigning American English.
	What a total wanker.
	Okay, Steph, so I want you to be a Scott feigning American English and read these next two.
	All right, give me one.
	Let's do it.
	All right, are we ready?
	Let's see here.
	Wait, oh, these two, right?
	All right, I can't.
	All right, here we go.
	This is an American trying to feign, a Scotsman trying to feign an American accent.
	I can't even begin to describe everything that's wrong with us.
	I need to write a full paper on the ludicrousness of this man's callousness and vitriol to even start deflating my exasperation.
	Unfortunately, I only have a shitty college degree, so I guess I can't...
	Oh my god, I gotta break my head.
	I think we were whiplashing so far across the world in random accents that I think I actually saw the moon scape up close at one point.
	Wait, maybe this one could be Brigadier General blah blah blah.
	Alright, are we ready?
	Oh, this guy is an ignorant bigot with massive ego issues.
	Notice how he's trying to do his best to look and sound intelligent.
	But the more he talks, the more he sounds like a typical asshole with all the answers.
	So what he's saying is that assholes typically have answers.
	You may be looking in the wrong place for your answers.
	My asshole has these answers.
	I like darkness, and I like to get rid of food, and I also like to get rid of gas.
	Those are the only answers that my asshole has.
	So unless it's darkness, food evatuation, or degassing, I don't really think you're looking in the right place for your answers.
	If you like us reading the Bernie Sanders comments, let us know.
	People seem to like the last one, so if you like it, it will continue.
	Yeah, boy, you know, here's another tip, you know, just for people on the internet.
	If you want to rebut a, you know, rationally presented argument with evidence and sources...
	If you spend much more time or rather if you spend all your time describing how wrong the other person is rather than actually pointing out where the other person is wrong.
	If you spend all your time describing how wrong the person is and none of your time showing how that person is wrong You will not be taken seriously by anybody with half a brain, right?
	I mean, it's one step up from my feelings are hurt, therefore you're wrong.
	First of all, I'm a philosopher.
	If your feelings aren't hurt, I'm not doing my job.
	Sorry.
	The whole point of a philosopher is to bring surprising new perspectives based upon unthought-of universalities to the general population.
	And so, yeah, of course your feelings are going to get hurt.
	That's the whole point, you know?
	What do you mean slavery is wrong?
	My feelings are hurt.
	Okay, well, that's too bad.
	What do you mean women should be equal?
	My feelings are hurt.
	Well, you know, that's too bad.
	Well, you know, what do you mean the sun is the center of the solar system?
	God's feelings are hurt.
	Okay, well, I care about that because, you know, his application called Tinder is lighting people on fire.
	So if he swipes left, you know, oh, that's hot.
	Wait, no, that's really hot.
	That's not what we want.
	Yeah, when God swipes and says, I find this person hot, a lot of people tend to light a pyre underneath him.
	So yeah, if you find yourself typing a bunch of stuff, Which has no intellectual content, but it just seems to give the impression that someone is wrong.
	The only people you're fooling are people who will never show up in the intellectual landscape, right?
	I mean, all you're doing is you're giving sunscreen to cave dwellers who will never see the sun.
	I mean, they're never going to show up in the debate.
	The only people they're going to convince are people who will vanish in history like they never existed when it comes to the intellectual path of the species.
	If you want to disprove someone, take the work, figure out how to make an argument.
	And I say this with some sympathy because...
	You've all been raised on Xboxes in government schools and so, I don't know, falling asleep and pretend rocket launches is all you have to bring to the ammunition of an intellectual firefight.
	But you really do need to figure out how to make an argument, how to rebut an argument.
	There's lots of guides out there on the internet and it's really, really well worth your time to invest in it because right now you're kind of in the way.
	You know, there's a beautiful play going on and you're You know, you're kind of running across the stage going derp, derp, derp, derp, you know, when people are trying to get something beautiful accomplished.
	And I don't know if you think you're doing something, but all you're doing is getting in the way.
	Maybe that's your job.
	You know, maybe you're just the great blind inertia of society that's supposed to make people despair.
	Oh, man, there are so many idiots out there.
	How can I get anything intelligent across?
	I guess I'm going to give up.
	And thus tradition and stupidity and inertia win.
	Well, that's not going to work because we've achieved enough success out here.
	It's just made us hungry for more.
	But we do, of course, appreciate your feedback and comments and donations, of course, desperately required and needed and preferred at...
	Freedominradio.com slash donate.
	Have yourselves a wonderful night, everyone.
	Thanks to the callers.
	Thanks to Mike.
	Thanks to Stoyan.
	Thanks to you, the dear listeners who like, subscribe, and share, as I hope you'll do with this and all of our videos.
	The word gets out, starting from here, but spreading with you.
	So please do what you can to help philosophy out and save the world as you go along.
	Have a great night, everyone.

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