Oct. 15, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:06:43
3102 You Can't Have It All - Call In Show - October 14th, 2015
Question 1: [1:30] - Stefan often talks about how the first six months of a relationship are mostly about lust. What steps can be taken within the first months to ensure that the relationships foundation is actually based on virtue and reason - and not simply feelings which might change? How do I know when to commit given that you could possibly find somebody better down the road?Question 2: [1:18:43] - I was always told that work is a right. I grew up in a middle class home where both parents worked but both also had plenty of time for their family – one was a teacher and the other had a 9-5 government job. I enjoyed an international career in my field the last seven years, but a little over a month ago - before finding your show - I began to question my choices and decided to take a year off to reexamine my goals. My desire to return to the traditional sense of work force started to dwindle and I began facing questions about the ethics, morals and validity of my probable decision. Is it morally wrong to stop working when so many people are struggling to find a job? Is work a right or an obligation?Question 3: [1:41:26] - Should I pursue a relationship with a woman I feel is good, but motivated to be so by faith and religion instead of logic and reason? Are the two compatible?
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Please, please, please head to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
Help us spread philosophy throughout the world, my brothers and sisters.
What a show we have for you tonight.
First up is Gabby, a young lady who, while traveling, met a man in a hostel in Rome and then ended up moving in with him in his home country in less than a week.
And she feels he might be the one.
And we had a long conversation about how you can figure out whether someone is good for you in the long run, just based upon initial impressions and things that you know kind of up front.
And I put forward a fairly lengthy, but I think very important laundry list of characteristics to look out for, red flags and green lights to examine when starting out in a relationship.
The second caller felt that he owed something to society, and this uncorked a volcanic rant in me about society that I guess I won't put any kind of forward thinking in.
You'll just have to get to it yourself.
But to what degree do we owe society for having nurtured us when we were young?
It's a good question.
And the third is a single dad who wanted to know if the nicest woman he knew, he's an atheist, if the nicest woman that he knew was a Christian, would it be worth getting involved with her or exploring that?
as a possibility.
My answer may surprise you, and I think we had a very productive conversation about that.
So without any further ado, here is the call-in show.
Remember, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Thank you so much.
Alright, well up first on the show is Gabby.
Gabby wrote in and said, Stefan often talks about how the first six months of a relationship are mostly about lust.
What steps can be taken in the first months to ensure that the relationship foundation is actually based on virtue and reason, and not simply feelings which might change over time?
How do I know when to commit, given that you could possibly find somebody better down the road?
That's from Gabby.
Right.
How are you doing, Gabby?
Hi, I'm good.
How are you?
I'm well, thanks.
Is this an imminent decision?
Are we talking about something in the here and now, or is it future planning?
It's kind of imminent.
I'm kind of planning to make some moves, and I'm hoping that you can give me some advice on how to be sure I'm doing it in a rational way.
Sorry, you said you're planning on doing some what?
Making some moves.
So I'm planning to move overseas to be with A boyfriend and so I'm planning to do it pretty soon and I was hoping to get some advice on it because I feel like or I rationalize that it's a good thing to do but I haven't had so much outside input and so I was hoping to reach out and see what I can get from you.
Happy to help if I can.
Alright, do you mind if I dig for some background?
Sure, sure.
Okay, how long have you and the fine young man been dating?
It's going on about four and a half months now.
Yeah, about four and a half months.
But the situation is kind of unique in that we met while I was traveling in Europe.
And so I'm back in the U.S. now, but I want to go back to be with them.
And we're thinking pretty seriously, but it's kind of an important thing to think about before I make all of these steps.
Yeah, I'm glad you called.
That's quite a big decision, right?
Yeah.
But I called before...
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I called before, early this year, about kind of a breakup.
And so I feel like it's more appropriate to choose this end of my relationship to call than the following end.
Oh, you're that gappy!
Yeah, I'm the same.
Hey!
Nice to chat with you again.
Nice to chat with you again.
Okay.
So that helps.
You take that in.
Now, backstory of meeting.
So you were traveling in Europe and you met this guy and you hit it off.
And how long did you spend together before your travels took you apart?
So I met him when I was in Rome.
And from there he invited me to his country.
Wait, wait.
Is he Italian?
No, he's actually Romanian.
He's Romanian.
Romanian?
Yeah.
Run!
No, I'm just kidding.
Alright, I assume you've had pillow fights.
So, he's from Romania, you met him in Rome, and sorry, how long were you guys hanging out before you ended up long distance?
So, it was kind of this thing where I planned to travel for basically the summer, but he kind of extended it because I was in Rome and I didn't know where to go after that.
I was planning to go home, but he invited me to Romania, so I met him.
I went to Romania and we stayed there, or I stayed there for about three months.
And then I just came back here a few weeks ago to the US from Romania.
Wow.
How did you like Romania?
It was nice.
I feel like with him it was nice.
It's an interesting country, but I think that people make it for sure.
It's pretty rough, but in a good way.
It's really real and down-to-earth, so I enjoyed it.
Okay, and did you guys live together during this time, or how did that work?
Yeah, I lived with him basically almost immediately, so he invited me, and I went there, and I just ended up staying longer than I expected.
Right, right, okay.
I'm just getting the most popular Romanian name, so that I can...
Why did it put Armenian?
Romanian, I said!
All right.
Okay, so I'm just going to choose the top one.
Okay.
Or at least I would if my eyes were younger.
Oh, boys.
Andre.
No, I'm going to have to roll my R's too much.
Alex.
I can handle that one.
All right.
All right.
Okay, so you and Alex.
You met, you moved in.
Right, right.
And it seems weird for most people because moving somewhere in with somebody you don't really know seems like a shocking thing.
But I've kind of been doing this for the past three years.
And so for me, it wasn't as strange as it might be for other people.
I'm not saying I'm special or anything, but like I met my ex, I told you, when I was traveling, living overseas.
So I'm kind of used to backpacking and stuff like that.
So when someone invited me, it's a little strange, but...
I really wanted to get to know him, and it was another country to visit, so that's kind of how it turned out that way.
All right.
And, Gabby, what do you like about him?
It's kind of hard to pinpoint.
It's in this weird way that he's more logical and rational than I am, and it seems like Maybe from my last call, maybe I'm not so much like that.
But I really tried my best to become more like that.
And he's really pushed me to be, to use my head more.
Well, at the same time, he's very empathetic and understanding.
So over the past few months, we've basically just spent almost all day, every day together, except for working.
And we've grown together and we share interests.
And I guess just the reason and His empathy kind of won me over.
So I guess things like that.
He treats his friends very well.
He treats his family well.
I'm just all over impressed by his person.
And so it's hard to pinpoint it, but it's kind of this whole image of who he is really impresses me.
And at the same time, I want to make sure that's what it really is.
And is the moving out, is that to marry him?
Is that to be together permanently?
If you move out there, that's a pretty big step.
Is that a permanent thing you're looking for?
Right, yeah.
We talked about getting married.
It seems really early on, but both of us seem like we've met our matches.
And so I'll go back and try to find a way to settle in or maybe get a visa and then hopefully marry or at least commit to each other.
No, I mean, at some point, someone has to move into Romania.
You may as well be that person.
I mean, obviously, it's mostly a big turnstile going out, but at some point, someone's going to go back in, and I guess you're the great pendulum.
So, obviously, it's alarming, and I'm sure that you're alarmed as well, that you meet a guy, you move in with a guy, and from there...
You're thinking about staying with him permanently and so on.
Obviously, all other things being equal, that is of concern.
But let's keep plugging at it anyway and see what we can get.
Do you know what his family history is like?
I do.
Yeah, that was one thing I really wanted to pry into before I got too involved.
So I've been listening to your stuff and I donate hopefully every month.
I think it comes out of my account because I really just abused your podcast, you know, trying to listen to things like how to bond with people and dig into their past.
And so that was a little hard in the beginning, but I feel like I understand him.
No, listen, normally my podcasts have to pay to be abused.
So if you're doing that for free, I think they can only say, thank you, mistress.
So tell me a bit about his family history.
Right.
So he has a brother.
As you know, like Romania used to be a Soviet country.
And so he was born in it while it was Soviet.
And then when he turned about five or six, it collapsed.
So...
I feel like that's somehow important to just how he sees the world.
So his family, his parents are kind of still in that weird limbo to where they don't know that times have kind of evolved out of Soviet Union and communism.
But he's not really in that.
But his parents, he has a mom and dad who are, they seem loving and caring.
And he has a brother, an older brother, who, while I was there, lived with us as well, who seems just as nice and friendly as he is.
If you could ask something specific, I guess, about his family, it would be easier.
How was he disciplined as a child?
I feel like he was spanked.
I believe he was spanked, probably.
From what I hear, it wasn't so violent, but I do know that he was spanked by his parents.
Right.
I mean, that's sort of the Eastern European thing, right?
Right.
And even me, I grew up the same way, so it's kind of a new thing for me to not consider spanking the right way to punish your kids.
And has he been married before?
No, no.
He's never been married.
He was in a really long relationship.
He was in a seven-year relationship before I think that ended maybe almost a couple of years ago now.
So he doesn't have any kids.
I haven't actually asked why it ended, but I think it has something to do with just the girl not being compatible and him just going along with it just because she was there.
Well, of course, not being compatible is why people break up.
But the question is what, right?
I mean, if If he was crazy and she was sane, that means it's not compatible, but it'd be interesting to know why.
I'm not saying that's the case.
If you want to make notes, these are things to ask about.
From what I heard, he broke up with her.
I don't know if that makes him crazy or not, but it seems like it was probably for a good reason.
Because after the breakup, from what I can see, he's really improved his life.
So I feel like, or from what I see, it was for the better.
And it wasn't because of some craziness.
Right, okay.
And he has a career?
Yes.
That's kind of what the funny part is.
So he actually works as a police detective, which is kind of traumatic for me, considering I have this issue with the police.
And I voiced that to him before I knew he was actually a police officer, and I kind of scared him.
But he works as a detective, a police detective.
Right, right, okay.
And do you guys both want to have kids or not want to have kids?
We both want to.
We've decided that.
Okay.
And...
What are your perceptions as a black woman?
What are your perceptions of what it's going to be like over there in Eastern Europe?
Not exactly overflowing with brothers and sisters, if I understand it correctly.
You may stand out just a smidge.
And how do you feel that will be?
Well, considering I lived in Taiwan for two years, it's really not traumatic.
I really stood out there.
Standing out has never really been something It's bothered me so much to get me out of doing something I wanted.
Well, you can start a movement in Romania, a black life matters.
I know, one black life.
One only.
Right, right.
But no, that's not really an issue.
And what would you do over there, do you think?
Well, the same thing I do now.
I'm like an online language consultant.
So while I was there and while I've been traveling, I just work and teach on my computer.
So I would just continue to do that.
Oh, that's right.
You're very good at COBOL. At what?
Just kidding.
Just a geek joke, which probably should have stayed in my brain.
Okay, so you would head out there and you would marry him.
Shortly after getting going out, but there if things work out well, right And then you would stay you continue to do your online work.
I assume through the marriage you could get some sort of citizenship and Normalize things and then you might have kids that's sort of the general lay of the land right?
Yeah, like I wanted to I kind of want to be able to continue the like spreading philosophy there as well because I Romanian people are some of the most intelligent people I've ever met in the world.
And I've been to about 17 countries, and I've never met just groups of people who are so deep-thinking, I guess.
Even in America, they really appreciate life, and they appreciate their friends and family.
And I see some corruption in the country, and I see how people could change it.
So I don't really know how to incorporate that, but I would love to do something like that there, even if you're just sharing your stuff or something.
But I don't want it just to be, I move to Romania and have my family and that's it.
If there's anything, I think it would be nice to add something to it.
I don't know how to do that yet, but that's kind of the point.
And what do you think of his family?
And is he close to his family?
Would that be, you know, there are some cultures where the family is kind of on top of you.
And that, of course, doesn't mean that's a bad thing.
It's just that there are some, you know, some of the Asian cultures, you know, mom's got a cough, she's moving in for five years.
And some of them are a little bit more, you know, waspy, spacey kind of thing.
So what do you think of his family?
Well, he has a brother who has lived with him and is about to move out now, but he got broken up with his girlfriend and he's been staying with my boyfriend since, I guess, January.
And so his brother is very kind.
He's one of these people that seems like they will do anything for you, but at the same time he got into a really hard place.
I think it was kind of depression where he was kind of sitting around and couldn't find a job and things.
But now everything's fine.
He has a job.
He's going to find some place to live on his own.
But they bond really well.
They've been the two musketeers since they were little kids.
They're only three years apart.
So you can see that they bond very well.
So they always kind of joke with each other.
And hang out together.
So that's his brother.
His parents...
I haven't met his father, but I met his mother.
His mother lives...
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Okay.
Why haven't you...
Are his parents split up?
No, they're not.
It's a strange situation.
His mother lives in Rome and works as an in-home nurse.
And she sends money back home, I guess, to his father in Romania.
So they're still married.
They still have a relationship.
She comes home to visit, but she's lived in Rome for maybe the past seven years or so.
What?
Yeah, it's a very strange situation with his parents.
You know, you can lead with this stuff if you want to save us all some time.
Oh, well, I mean...
It's like me going to the doctor with a giant wart and saying, no wart here.
No ward here.
If you lift up this flap, no ward here.
No ward here.
And then an hour later saying, oh yeah, here's the ward.
Right.
Well, I didn't know how important that would be because it was kind of when he was an adult.
She moved away when he was older.
What?
So they're married.
Right.
And she's moved to Rome to work as an in-home nurse.
She comes back to visit.
She sends money home.
Does the dad not work?
He owns like a farm.
He's owned a farm and he does farming and makes homemade wines and cured meats and stuff.
Well, when you've got wine and meat, why do you need a woman?
Just kidding.
I think it's strange as well.
I don't understand it, but it seems like she still...
She comes back and when I was there, she was coming through to go visit her husband there.
I don't know what's going on there.
I don't know.
What does your boyfriend think about it?
Well, when I first met him and he told me about it, I asked him, I was like, wow, do you think that's strange?
He's like, not really.
And I asked him, I said, could you do that?
And he's like, yeah, I think so.
And then after I left Romania for like a day, he's like, I miss you.
What are you doing?
When are you coming back?
So I think in his mind, he thought it was okay.
But when it came down to reality, it wasn't really what, you know what I mean?
He didn't really accept it for himself.
I'm trying to think of which of the tunnels of potential information I want to go down.
I'm tapping out my spelunking gear and adjusting my helmet and figuring out where we're going.
How pretty is he?
He looks very nice.
He's an attractive guy.
You're very pretty.
Thank you.
And so, one to ten, what are we...
Because you asked about lust, right?
Right, yeah.
And the prettiness has a way of using our hoo-hoos to shut down our thinking parts.
Right.
And so, one to ten, what are we talking here?
Don't be modest.
Well, I will just say that.
Whatever you'd say I am, I think we're probably on the same level as far as attraction.
All right, hang on.
Let me put my glasses and youth on.
Oh, no.
Okay, so you're nines, right?
I would go with eight, but you know, I'll take a nine just because he said so.
Never say no to one extra.
That's my thesis.
Okay, and when you first met him, obviously, sorry, I shouldn't say obviously, leading the witness.
When you first met him, Gabby, was it his looks that were striking to you first and foremost?
No.
No, actually not.
That was one of the strange things about it.
I didn't quite see this coming.
I like looking at guys.
I think guys are attractive, but for some reason, I've got this weird thing where the looks kind of appear after I find someone interesting.
And I know that's not like bullshit, but...
Are you mindful?
Do you have a bag on your head of some kind?
Okay.
Do you put in blackball visine or something?
Not really.
I just like...
I've been around kind of different groups of people of different levels of attractiveness and I've been around really attractive people and not so attractive people and sometimes they're not as interesting equally to me.
And so, especially with my ex where I was trying to be careful about really getting involved with people if it's not for a good reason.
Well, the last time we talked about the guy, you had this lengthy on-again, off-again relationship and so on.
He was pretty too, wasn't he?
Not as.
Oh, he's not as pretty as this guy.
But you didn't notice that.
I'm working hard to believe you, Gabby.
I'm putting my faith full front and center.
But you don't notice that he's attractive when you meet him?
I didn't say that I didn't notice.
Maybe I did say that, but I misspoke.
I meant as far as me being interested in him as a person.
We were in a hostel together, and it was basically just the two of us.
And one other lady.
And she was not interesting.
She was not interesting.
So we kind of ended up just bonding over that.
And I only met him in Rome for about two days.
And how long did it take for you between meeting to becoming an item?
I would probably say by the time he had invited me to Romania, I felt like we had some bonds and I think maybe we were probably an item by then.
I don't know how long that was exactly.
So I met him maybe on a Tuesday and I went to Romania on Saturday or something.
How do you feel about saying that?
I don't feel bad about it.
I'm not saying you should feel bad.
I'm just curious where you are about that.
Yeah, that's what I'm asking.
I don't feel strange about it because I felt like it was...
I know you could say it's how attractive he was or something, but I kind of hang around attractive people a lot sometimes because I do some modeling and I'm kind of around these different types of people.
Right, you do some modeling and you're calling yourself an 8?
No, I mean...
Do you do modeling in very small towns in Arkansas or what do you mean?
I don't know the scale.
I just really don't get that scale so much.
I don't know.
You must get it to some degree if you do some modeling.
I mean, I don't do a lot of hair modeling because I get that scale.
I understand you have to be to some level to be able to model, but I think it kind of depends.
Some models look a certain way to some people.
Yeah.
Who knows?
Maybe I look funny to some people.
Maybe I don't.
No, no, no.
Let's be clear about that.
Anyway, let's move on from there.
Okay, so you met on a Tuesday and you went with him to Rome on a Saturday.
And that had to be because this was very, very exciting for you.
Because Rome is...
Italy and Romania are almost 2,000 kilometers apart.
And that's...
They're actually not that far.
The flight was only about maybe a couple of hours, maybe 90 minutes.
They're really not as far as one would think.
And so it was kind of coming towards the end of my trip in Europe because I was supposed to stay in Italy with my friend and she kind of flaked on me.
So I was like, well, I guess I'm going.
And then he invited me.
So I thought, well, It would be cheaper than a flight back to the US, and I really like him, so I thought it would be worth it.
But you moved in with a guy within a week of meeting him.
Right, right, yeah.
Does that not seem a little fast?
No, it's totally fast.
If we were in America, and he were American, we wouldn't have to have moved in together, but he went home.
If that makes sense, because...
I wanted to get to know him, and he was going back to Romania.
And so the only way I could really get to know him, in my mind at the time, was to go visit him in Romania.
And had you had a sexual relationship between the Tuesday and the Saturday before you went to Romania?
Yes, yeah.
Right.
How long after Tuesday?
I know it's a hostel, so I assume it's all just one big flesh pit, because I've been hostels.
But what was our time frame?
It was kind of...
Okay, I'll say this.
I felt like it was going to be just one of those night things and then you move on.
Just in all honesty, I wasn't expecting it to go into anything else.
So you're in Rome, you're in a hostel, there's one guy, etc., etc.
And I thought that was kind of what it would be because, you know, you're traveling.
I was by myself.
But it seemed like so much more...
By the time we even got to that point, we had discussed a lot of things and bonded.
So it was quick, is the short answer to what you're saying.
I don't need it down to the minutes or anything, but it was quick.
Yeah, it was quick, yeah.
All right.
Okay.
Well, kind of.
Innocent.
I'm sorry?
Nothing.
Sorry.
And I assume that the sex was good enough that leaving a giant hormone trail to Romania seemed like a great idea at the time, right?
right um i mean i assume he wasn't bad in the sack right as in you know okay i'm gonna pull out the dolls and i'm gonna tell you where to poke because this thing with my ear is not working for me right um so i assume that the sex was good enough that uh it was uh exciting enough to to want i'm not saying it's the only reason right but no no i know that's one of the reasons things right yeah yeah Right.
Okay.
All right.
So it looks like his perusal of penthouse letters paid off.
Oh, there's a dated joke.
All right.
So then you get to Romania and how long is it before you meet his family?
I guess you meet the brother right away, right?
Because brother's living there.
Well, that's the thing.
His brother wasn't there when I first got there.
So we actually got to spend like a week together just with each other.
And his brother came about a week later from his hometown.
So he's from another town and he lives now in a different place.
And that's why his father is not there.
His father lives in that other town.
So his brother comes and it's like, all right, now it's three of us.
So we all three live together for the rest of the time.
So for three months minus a week, it was us and his brother.
Now, I'm going to assume that his English is fine, because I'm going to also assume that your Romanian is less than perfect.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I have kind of a negative Romanian, and his English is probably better than most Americans' English.
So, it's kind of sad, but he doesn't believe me.
I told him that.
Especially in the sanctuary cities, but yeah, okay.
Now, how do you feel about the laws that he is enforcing in his job?
Ah, yeah.
That's one of those big things that I see the difference in the U.S. system and the Romanian system in that there are some laws, maybe traffic laws or things that, okay, are irritating in Romania, but the really substantial things like drug enforcement, prostitution, things like that, they're much more empathetic.
Taxes.
Yeah.
And taxes as well.
They're much more empathetic with people and And so we argued a lot about him being a police officer, and I don't know, he kind of turned my eyes around to where it doesn't have to be every cop.
It doesn't have to be every country's cops are as corrupt and horrifying as the U.S. cops.
And he didn't really believe me when I told him some of the stories from the U.S., like the Garner case and Mike Brown, whatever.
Just the idea, even if they were legally...
Allowed to do those things.
Like, he can't get his mind around the fact that cops would do that to people, you know?
I'm not going down the Mike Brown thing.
I'm not.
I'm not.
Don't pull me down the Mike Brown thing.
Stay focused.
But I just want to register that if he went through all the details, he may find a little bit more comprehensible, but...
I mean, I'd explain that one, too.
It's just the idea that cops using so much violence in his eyes is really baffling because...
The most he does is maybe step on someone's face until backup comes so they don't get away.
Right.
You know what I mean?
So he feels that the Romanian police force is not corrupt and he's part of a decent and honorable organization?
No.
I guess he must, right?
Not at all.
No.
No, he doesn't.
There is corruption and he knows it as well.
And he's done things to try to help kind of stave off that corruption or whatever you call it.
But...
He definitely knows that it's not without his fault.
But if we were to compare, I would say I would date a Romanian cop before I would date an American cop.
Maybe that's wrong, but that's how I see it.
These are choices that I'm going to put on the theoretical shelf for now before my head explodes.
Okay.
If you decide to get married and you decide to have kids, at some point, if you are a voluntarist or a libertarian or an anarchist or something, at some point, your kid is going to ask you if you agree with the rules that daddy enforces with a gun.
Right?
Right.
So you're going to have your values, the non-initiation of force and so on, and...
If your kid asks you, what does daddy do?
Well, he's a cop, but you don't like the rules that he's enforcing.
I'm just putting it right.
This is just something to keep in mind.
That's a challenging conversation to have, to say the least, right?
Right.
The answer, he's really good and bad, might shave down your moral credibility just a smidge, right?
I mean, if it were just that, then, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
But, Steph, when I think of stuff like this and, you know, the non-initiation of force, I see it as like a utopic, and not that utopias can't be reached someday, but I see it as an idea to be reached.
And so when I think of the situation we're in now, like the cops we have now, the legal system we have now, and the idea that because we don't agree we shouldn't be a part of it, I just think you're just leaving it to crooks and thieves and gangsters.
You know what I'm saying?
If there could be one good cop who kind of helps protect the people from these bad cops, is it as bad, really?
Does that make sense?
I don't know if that makes sense.
That's kind of what I was thinking in my mind.
He's told me some of these things he's done to try to help keep his bosses or whoever from Overreaching in some ways.
And I think if you weren't there, what would happen?
So I'm kind of in this limbo.
And if you could give me some feedback, I don't know.
I just, I think, I don't think you're allowed to be black anymore if you're defending the police in this way.
I'm afraid you've got to turn in your card, and I don't know what else.
I'm going to have to teach you how to dance.
But as far as the theory goes, of course, not all cops, you know, are just evil, nasty people and so on, right?
I mean, we've had them call in.
We've had military guys call into the show and I've always tried to treat them with respect and so on.
And, you know, is it possible he could be trying to do some decent good within his environment?
I guess it's possible.
But of course, it's a challenge all around because he is going to be enforcing a lot of laws that you would find morally reprehensible, right?
He's going to be dragging people off to jail who've not initiated any force themselves.
You can't get around that.
That's just a basic reality.
Even if he's the most honorable cop in the world, he's still going to 90% of the laws that he's going to be enforcing laws that you would, I think, philosophically recognize as unjust and immoral.
Even if we put him at the very top tier of integrity, He's still got to go pick up people who don't pay their taxes.
He's still got to go pick up people who cross imaginary lines.
He's still got to go and pick up people who smoke drugs.
He's still got to go up and pick up people who want to exchange money for sex.
He's still like, you know, on and on.
He's still going to have to go and pick up guys who don't pay alimony to greedy and false ex-wives or vice versa, right?
So there's still going to be a lot of laws that you're not going to agree with that he's going to go out and get paid to enforce.
I know that's all very abstract, but...
No, no, it's true.
You asked sort of what happens after the six months, right?
Right.
Well, after the six months, you have a life together.
And after the six months, the sexual—and, you know, I always hate talking about this stuff in a way, because it sounds like you get six months of great sex, and then one of you moves to Rome to be a live-in nurse, right?
So I don't want to say that.
Married life, married sex is fantastic and all that, but that particular biochemical hysteria tends to go on for six months.
And when that all lifts—and it's on hold when you're not together— Right?
When you're in a long distance relationship, you are stretching out the end of the hormone mania that goes on at the beginning of a relationship.
And so it's really hard to get closure and normalcy in a long distance relationship.
Because in a long distance relationship, you're apart a lot.
And that really strings out the sexual tension.
And then you're together and you're having a lot of sex.
And again, I don't want to sound anti-sex or anything like that, but it's not the normal parts of life that go on.
Nobody's got taxes to do.
Nobody gets a cold, really.
Nobody has bills to pay.
Nobody has really difficult things at work that they need to chew through for a week or two and all that kind of stuff.
So there's a lot of unreality that Okay.
time.
So let me ask you this, Gaby.
Pretend you're listening to me have this conversation with somebody else.
Okay.
And pretend you're me.
Okay.
And what do you think you would be saying to someone who was saying what you're saying?
I'm such a bad example.
I would probably just tell them to be sure it's what they want to do.
But I couldn't really give them any sort of warnings against it.
Just because of my personality as far as life is being short and Are there no nice guys where you are?
Are you trapped on an oil rig in the North Sea?
Actually, there probably would be some pretty cool guys in there.
This is my question.
It's like your heart throws a dartboard at a map.
It's like, ah, not far enough.
Let's throw again.
I mean, is there no one around where you are that you could develop a little bit more of a less high-stakes relationship with?
Because there's pretty high stakes, you know, off to Romania and get married and, you know, like this, you know?
Right, right.
Where there's sort of a gradual liftoff, not like some jet propulsion cannon shot into deep orbit.
Yeah, it's sad to say, but...
Maybe I'm antisocial or something, but no, I really, at least in my city, I haven't really interacted with people, almost in general, or even guys who I found very captivating in that way.
And that's kind of why I moved away.
I left America as soon as I graduated college.
And I've lived here maybe tops eight months since I left in 2012.
So, I don't know.
I haven't found American culture or the people here as compelling as I have people in other countries.
So that's why I love to travel.
I like America.
I like the people here.
But honestly, I can't say I've had as deep conversations with Americans as I've had with the Romanians I've met in the past three months.
I really couldn't say that.
And maybe it's something to do with me.
I don't know.
No, no.
I'm...
I mean, don't get me started on American men, you know?
The song is American Woman, but I think the real song is American Men.
So, just out of curiosity, I mean, what do you find not appealing about American men?
I think maybe it just might be Americans in general.
And I don't want to sound like this generalizing person who says, every American is this or that, but just who I've met.
I live in the South, so take a few moments to ponder that.
But I live in the Bible Belt in the South, and I was raised very religious, and most of the people here kind of adhere to some religious principles or follow some, you know, usually Christianity.
And I used to be as well, but I kind of broke away from that and consider myself staunchly atheist and rational.
And so when you're looking for depth in men or in American history, Or deep conversations that don't revolve around mysticism or strange irrational concepts, then it's kind of hard to find.
And so I have some friends here, I do.
I have some friends here, some guys and women.
But I just haven't quite clicked with men here in that way.
So, I mean, the one...
And I'm really trying to not put words in your mouth.
So, like, if I get anything wrong, Gabby, just, you know, tell me I'm wrong and I'll...
I'll back off.
But it sort of struck me, just based on our last conversation in this conversation, that you're kind of attracted to guys who are neither tainted by religion nor feminism.
For the last one, I'll say this.
For my ex, he was very...
I feel like he was very tainted by feminism.
I feel like my boyfriend now is the complete opposite of my ex in almost every regard.
Because Eastern European guys are...
Yeah, they don't take that shit.
They really don't.
I'm sorry, Muslims, you've got to turn back.
They don't seem to have spines and balls mashed by the general Western feminist thing.
And of course, because they had a communist history, religion had less of an impact and...
It seems, and again, you know, this is just my perspective, but it seems like Eastern Europe is one of the last places in the West where men are, and here, this show and the Eastern Europe, where men are kind of allowed to be men.
So much so.
Yeah.
And it works out so well.
I guess that's what it is.
When I met him, it was just with my ex, I felt almost so foolish.
Because when you finally meet like a manly man, like a man who just Not even just like manly, oh, he's got big muscles and whatever, but just his thinking is direct and straightforward and he's honest and he's almost untainted by somebody else's opinion.
It's just like, wow.
He's allowed to be happy to be a man in a culture that respects masculinity.
Yeah.
He's untraumatized by modern Western feminism and relativism and the mysticism of the worship of the estrogen life forms and He's in a culture.
He's allowed to be a man.
He's in a manly profession.
He's in a culture that respects masculinity.
And he's not been broken by being screamed at as a patriarch and exploiter and whatever it is for forever, right?
Right, right.
And it seems like he's...
And it seems almost as if he's impervious to changing for other people, kind of.
It just seems like he is the way he is.
I know he went through kind of a rough childhood as far as His parents sent him to a military school, which was a little rough for high school, I think.
So I feel like that could be...
Oh look, we found another mole!
Oh, okay.
Now, he went to a military high school before becoming a police officer.
So his parents live in different cities and they sent him away for high school?
His parents live in different countries.
Well, right now.
Right now they do.
I know right now, the last seven years, and this was, I guess he's in his early 30s, right, based upon the numbers that you've given me.
So he went off to military school.
Do you know how he was disciplined in Eastern European military school, which I don't believe has any spas in it whatsoever?
He doesn't quite talk in detail so much about it, but he did tell me that it was not A good place for him.
Like, it was pretty bad.
And I really talked about him, about his parents, and how they sent him there.
I felt really kind of upset about that and the stories he told me.
I'm not exactly sure how the school treated him, but it wasn't...
Wait, wait, okay, okay.
So you're playing me a little here.
I'm not saying you're doing it consciously.
Okay.
But, you know, I asked, you know, about his childhood and all that, and...
It took a while to get to his parents live in different countries, and it's taken us, what, almost an hour to get to, he went to probably a pretty brutal hazing-based physical punishment boarding school-style military academy.
Right.
So, you know, we're not here to talk about everything that's going right, because if everything was going right, you wouldn't be calling in, right?
We're here to try and talk about the possible warning spots.
Right, right.
Dangerous signs.
Yeah, and I'm thinking of...
You know, now I'm waiting.
We talk for another hour, and you say, oh, yes, and he regularly goes through demonic possession, but he's fine now, because he's got a vial of holy water.
Oh, and he set fire to cats on one of her dates.
But other than that, right, so...
Is there anything else?
Because you're saying that this really bothered me when I heard about it, but you didn't tell me about it for almost an hour.
So either you're hiding things from me or you don't understand what I'm asking for.
Right, right.
No, when I was calling, when I thought of the question, I felt like this would come up, but I don't know why I didn't see how it fit right there.
Only in that he's dealt with it and we talked about it in detail.
But I see how it could have fit in.
You talked about it in detail.
I thought he didn't talk about it that much.
We talked about how he overcame it and how he feels about it now.
But as far as if they spanked him or something like that, not really.
He talked about how it was kind of cold in the winter and he developed a sinus problem from the cold.
Is there anything else that I need to know that could even remotely be relevant as to negatives that this guy has experienced?
I feel like that's probably it.
That's probably the most traumatic, I guess, would be.
The military school, yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to run through a couple of the red flags that I see.
Obviously, it's your decision to make, finally.
I don't even need to tell you that, but I just want to mention that to the audience.
So, you met...
You had sex right away and you moved to Romania.
And you moved in.
In less than a week.
That's not a good sign.
And that's just something to be aware of.
His relationship with his family is troubled because they put him in a boarding school, military boarding school.
And his parents' relationship is troubled because his mother doesn't want to be in the same country as him.
And prefers taking care of some elderly sick person to being with her husband.
You know, I can understand it if, I don't know, Kanye West calls and says, come on my yacht.
It's like, okay, well, you know, that's kind of a cool thing to do, I guess, right?
I'm still waiting for my call.
But if it's like, hey, you know, you could be with your husband or you can go to a foreign country and wipe someone's ancient crusty ass for them...
That's not a very good compliment to the father.
And that means that he's grown up in a relationship where there's just not that kind of mutual devotion and love.
And that is a challenge.
You don't know why his last long-term relationship ended, which either means that you're avoiding the topic...
Or he doesn't know or he's avoiding the topic or both.
That's not a good sign, right?
I mean, you know, as a hirer, when people would come in and looking for a job, if they weren't straight out of school, I'd say, okay, well, what happened to your, you know, why have you left your current job?
You know, I was at this last job for seven years.
Well, what happened?
Why are you leaving?
That's important, right?
So the fact that he would say, come with me to Romania within a week of meeting you, Of course, you know, it sounds very exciting and romantic, and it certainly was, I'm sure.
But that is a challenge.
There is a disparity of values when it comes to the state and policing and coercion and so on.
And again, this is not to say that I don't want to put all cops in that same category, but it's not so much the problem is not so much that he's a cop, it's that you're an anarchist, right?
I mean, lots of people can date cops, but I don't know about anarchists.
That's more of a challenge as far as the value disparity goes.
You will be moving to a very foreign culture.
And I'm not saying that that's not exciting and interesting and maybe a plus.
But when you visit a place, you see the positives of a culture.
To take a silly example, if you go to Sandals in Jamaica, you see some pretty nice aspects of Jamaica, right?
But wander off the resort and it's a different matter.
And so...
If you go to Romania, there will be a dark underbelly to Romanian society, as there is to just, I think, every society around, which you probably haven't had much exposure to as yet.
You will be, to some degree, isolated over there because I know that you have some friends where you are, but when you go to a new country, particularly where you don't speak the language, you are going to experience some isolation.
And he's going to have his job.
And so there will come a time where you'll be sitting in an apartment in Romania.
It could be a month after you get there.
It could be six months after you get there.
My concern is that you then say to yourself, what am I doing here?
That's what we want to avoid because that will be very upsetting for you and for the man and will leave you to future self-mistrust, right, in terms of romance and where you're going to go.
And let me just ask you this in general, and I'll tell you why, and just I don't want to surprise you with sort of why I'm asking this.
But in my experience, Gabby, I've been the most drawn to very rapid-moving romances when my life has felt less than rich.
If that makes sense.
Because the excitement of romance and what it does to us biochemically, particularly as we talked about in the first six months, fireworks look brightest against a black sky, against a dark sky.
In other words, if not much exciting stuff is going on in your life, then this grand adventure seems all the more appealing.
People who have great lives don't run away to sea, so to speak.
And so I guess my question is, how's the rest of your life doing, and your relationships, and your career, and all of that?
How's that going as a whole?
Well, I feel like after I called the last time, which was February, I took that time as kind of...
And I did listen to all of your...
Your warning signs.
And I have a question in a minute, like, after I say this.
But after I called, I felt like at that point I was at the lowest.
I feel getting over my ex was kind of...
Hopefully not as a result of the...
No, no.
After I called you, Steph, I really, really hit rock bottom.
And I thought, well, I've just talked to Steph.
It can't get any worse.
I'm just getting going.
Well, now I'm doing it again.
What was I thinking?
Glutton for punishment!
Actually, give me this guy.
Give me Alex's number.
I'm calling him about warning signs.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no.
But that was kind of what I was thinking.
I had wrapped my whole life into this person and they just kind of left me high and dry for someone else.
I think February was probably the lowest point and after that I was like, hey, I'm just going to do what I can to make sure I'm living in a happy way and a life that's Genuine.
And so I started looking at my relationships and like with my family and my friends and trying to weed out the ones that were kind of similar as to my ex, like kind of this leech, like sucking energy out of me, but not contributing things.
And so I kind of stepped away from a lot of people that I knew in that time.
And I've continually kind of been on an incline, like going up as far as like happiness and quality.
But I'm never quite as happy in my life as when I'm traveling.
I don't know where that stems from, but I've always liked traveling and seeing new places.
So when I met my boyfriend now, I'd already been to Kazakhstan, and I traveled to other places, and Rome was the next one, and then what was going to be the next one.
So I feel like at that time, aside from not having a boyfriend or having someone with me, I feel like that time was kind of the best time.
I was very happy.
Well, thirst for novelty plus quick sexual activity puts you in the R camp, I'm afraid to say.
The more I listen to things, I feel like I'm probably due lean towards the R side.
I'm a very sexual person.
A lot of times, when we ended up sleeping together quickly, I'm not so attached to people in that way now.
With my ex, it was very strongly that way.
But I wasn't seeing it as, okay, this is going to be my relationship.
It was just like, I'm in Rome.
There's wine, there's beer.
It's kind of like that.
And so the idea that I still wanted to be around him after that was kind of surprising to me in a way, but I was happy about it.
I was like kind of the cherry on top of my trip.
So, um, I can't say my life is just completely happy.
There's no worries.
I get pretty lonely sometimes.
Um, Trying to find some sort of companionship with people who think similarly and stuff.
Oh, just people who think I don't even care about similarly anymore.
Like, I have these guests on the show where people are like, well, he said something you disagree with and you didn't fight him to the death.
It's like, yeah, I enjoy the fact that he's thinking about something.
I'm not going to agree with him about anything, about everything.
And it's not a debate.
It's just an interview.
Right, right, yeah.
All right.
So, and I'm not saying you shouldn't go, but I just want you to put on this thought experiment.
Okay.
Which is, let's say...
That he calls you up tomorrow and it's like, no, it's off or, you know, it turns out I'm a reconstructed woman.
My parents never told me that's why my mother went off to Rome to wipe people's asses for a living.
It's off for some reason.
What's the emotional reaction to that for you?
I can't imagine.
I feel like I would be really broken.
I feel like I've hurt pretty bad for a while.
And what would that hurt be about?
I feel like if that were to happen, we're kind of to the point where if that were to happen, something terrible must have happened.
You know what I mean?
I know it seems like such a fast time and all, but I think you just talked about with your wife, when you met her, you kind of knew.
And from the day that you went on a date, you just went out and you were together every day or something like that after that.
And so I feel the same thing.
When we met, after he invited me, we We just started living our lives together.
He went to work.
I stayed home.
I worked.
We cooked.
We talked.
We had parties together.
We had financial troubles together.
You know what I mean?
It just seemed like an expedited process of things that would have happened anyway.
And so if he called me and said, don't come, I feel like it was all a lie.
And he's a good actor, I guess.
He would be the best actor in the world.
Right.
So, yeah.
And if this, I mean, I don't know, maybe you got hit by a bus.
Again, I'm not trying to curse him or anything, but I'm just curious what it would be like, what would your life be like without this thing to look forward to?
Because romance...
And the, especially a long distance romance, the anticipation of being together and the sex and the intimacy and all of that, it gives you kind of like an oasis to get to.
It gives you a destination.
It shapes your life.
It shapes your, everything kind of aligns, you know, like your life becomes like the salmon in a stream all swimming based upon a particular current called this is where I'm heading.
and it can kind of become how your life is defined.
Right.
And then if that goes away, there is often, I mean, obviously there's the missing the person and all of that, but there's a void, like a lack of purpose, a lack of, okay, well, now my life just seems kind of empty and I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.
And I think that's one of the things that drives people into these kinds of relatively fast-moving romances is that what's the life without it?
And I think that's the challenge.
Right, right.
That's kind of when I was there, how I wanted to be sure that I was still doing something for myself.
Yes, I was living with him, but I still worked full-time on my computer and still kind of travel around even in and out of Romania.
I went to Paris and Bulgaria, Turkey.
You know what I'm saying?
I still continue to do the things that make me, me.
But there was so much better with him, of course.
So if he weren't here, I hope that I could still be myself And do the things I love.
But I feel like my life would be much less enriched if something were to happen to them.
So please stop saying that.
No, no.
Don't worry.
They're just words.
The gods aren't listening.
And you had a question that you wanted to ask before the end of the conference.
Right, right.
So one of the first things on your list you were saying was that we had sex very quickly and I moved there very quickly.
So what does that say?
And why is that such a If we're kind of thinking in a slightly rational way, aside from being very fast, what does that say about our relationship in your mind as to why it's a warning sign?
Can people just know?
You know what I mean?
Is it possible to just know that you like someone and that they're special?
Well, I mean, it depends upon the person.
I think that we can have good instincts, but, you know, not six months ago you had bad instincts.
Right, right.
Right?
So, you know, if it's somebody who, let's say that they were married for 30 years, their wife gets hit by an asteroid, and then, you know, a year later they say, well, I met someone and I just kind of knew right away.
It's like, well, okay, you've had a lot of positive experience, you know what a good relationship looks like, and you know what compatibility looks like.
But...
Six months ago, you were caught in this entangled mess of a relationship with the guy who was there and not there and infidelity was floating around and it was a big giant cosmic mess, right?
Right.
And so the question then becomes, can you develop really fantastic instincts in six months?
Have you dated anyone in the interim?
Oh, can you say it again?
Sorry.
Did you, have you dated anyone between February and, I guess it would, because you've been with this guy for how many months now, the Romanian?
We met in May, so February, March, April, May, so a few months.
March, April.
March, April.
Right.
In eight weeks or ten weeks, can you develop really fantastic instincts about who is the best guy for you?
Well, that was what I was thinking was, is it really instincts?
A lot of the things I listen to on your videos are like real-time relationships and not videos, but your podcasts.
You give kind of direct instruction sometimes, things to ask, things to look for.
And so during this whole process, I've been kind of grilling him, asking about his childhood and asking about his thinking and stuff.
So I felt like it wasn't just like jumping in.
You've been hiding things from me.
You say what?
You've been hiding some things from me in the conversation that have kind of just come out.
Oh, just now?
No, no, just as a whole, right?
I mean, that we've been chatting for a while, and oh, his family's wonderful, and he gets along so well with his brother, and his brother's such a kind person, and he's such a wonderful person.
And then a little while later, it comes out that he's a detective.
And then a little while later, it comes out that his parents don't live together.
A little while later, it comes out that he was in a traumatic boarding school for years of his teenage life and so on, right?
And so that gives me some concern that you're mentally shuffling things around because you You have a great desire to be with him.
And because of that, and I felt that there's this sort of inevitability to the end of this conversation, which I'm trying to fight, like in my own mind.
I'm just telling you my experience.
It's like, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, okay, off I go to Romania, right?
And I feel, and that's my concern, is this feeling of inevitability.
Because you gave me and you'll hear this when you listen back to this call, which I hope you will.
You gave me a wonderfully polished sales job on this guy at the beginning.
Whereas, you know, and so if you had brought up all the red flags at the beginning, it would have made me less concerned than if you basically gave me all the wonderful stuff about him.
Which, of course, I assume.
I mean, if he's some serial axe murderer, you ain't going to Romania, right?
So I get that.
There's some good things about him.
And I did ask you what you liked about him and so on.
But, you know, first 15-20 minutes were mostly like, this guy's the best thing.
You know, he walks on water, he can heal with his beautiful eyes.
Sorry?
Right.
I guess one of the things is, as far as his childhood and things he's grown up, you didn't quite ask, what is his personality like?
You asked me what I liked about him, but for me, I don't think in such a deterministic way that because someone has this childhood, I didn't have such a great childhood.
Of course, it did reflect in some of my choices.
And in February, you were involved in a disastrous, massive relationship with a guy who was on drugs and sleeping around on his girlfriend.
Right, and so that's what I'm saying.
If you were to ask more about his person, I can understand the things around him maybe 15 years ago in high school.
It does affect you, but who is he now, I guess?
You know what I'm saying?
Is it all external factors?
No, it's not deterministic.
I mean, if he's done therapy, if he's done a huge amount of self-work, and yeah, it's not deterministic.
When I thought about that...
He's a guy who went to military school and became a cop.
Right.
But you're going no matter what I say, right?
No, I don't mean that.
Let's be frank, right?
Well, being a cop actually had to do with a contract somehow.
When you go to military school, you have to do service as a cop.
So his thing that he ended up, they paid for his master's degree in law, and basically he has to serve as a cop.
Now don't tell me you think I'm deterministic when you say basically he had to do it and had no choice, right?
No, I'm just saying, until this point, it's kind of like some countries choose your college path.
You get this score on your test.
You're going to go study engineering.
That's just how it kind of worked there.
He got these scores.
He ended up being a cop.
He could change his job, and he's talked about it.
So this could happen to your kids in Romania, right?
That they end up being in the military or...
No, no, I wouldn't send my children to military school.
His parents chose to do that.
They didn't have to.
Right.
So I guess the reason why I kind of didn't say that stuff, I like to think of people's backgrounds when I'm judging them, but when I meet people who seem to have, like, investigated themselves and, like, he knows there are things wrong in his family.
He understands that his childhood wasn't the best, but it's not who he is.
In a sense like that's just on his forehead.
It's military school on his forehead.
It's cop He's a person and so I'm trying to judge him on his person without you know what I'm saying judging him as The kid who was 15 went to military school.
His parents live far apart like who is he and who am I? And so I guess what do you what do you sorry to interrupt?
What do your friends say about this?
You move into Romania permanently to marry the guy Whenever I tell people about my life and what I'm doing, it's usually kind of this like, wow, that's cool.
I couldn't do something like that.
The only person who's really said something in a negative way was my mom.
And she's negative about everything.
So it's kind of like I always tend to take things with a grain of salt when they're coming.
So you're saying you're moving to...
I don't know, a place that recently popped out of medieval communism.
You're moving over there, away from your culture, away from your upbringing, away from your race.
And, you know, I don't want to sound like race is hugely important, but it's not unimportant, right?
And people are like, cool.
I see why you might want deep conversations with anyone who's not your friend, because they got cool.
You get cool out of that?
Well, kind of.
It's like there's this kind of surprise, but...
For who I am, I guess...
I'm not saying I'm so strange or something, but just people have gotten used to me doing this kind of stuff, for good or bad.
People are like, where are you heading next?
That's usually what people say to me when they see me.
You're going to marry a Romanian guy I met in a hostel?
Yeah.
Cool?
Really?
Yeah.
So there's not a lot of depth keeping you where you are, I'm guessing.
No, no.
That's really not.
But I do try to share...
This stuff with the people around in my city.
And I can see how it can heal and help people.
But as far as me being really enriched by my environment here, I don't see it so much.
And so I'm kind of a floater.
I can take what I can from wherever.
And so as far as him, aside from him being so far away, if he were here, I feel like the same thing would be going on.
Ah, but if he was there, he'd probably be either ball-busted by feminism or MGTOW. Well, that's the thing, yeah.
Yeah, so in my mind, I'm like, wow, this is an awesome thing.
Why would I just...
Like, you have that video on your, like, risk is what makes you worth loving.
And so if I met this person and I think they're worth loving and I want to take a risk, I do want to be rational, but at the same time, oh, it's easier to stay in America.
Oh, it's easier to meet some black guy who...
Likes black stuff.
You know what I'm saying?
Okay, cool.
Some black guy who's an anarchist, who is an atheist, and who's willing to defend cops.
Actually, that might not be super easy.
Okay, I guess it's not easy or realistic at all.
But if I meet somebody, and that's why I really want to be with him.
If he came here, that'd be nice.
You know, if we're possible, of course, our immigration things makes it hard for us to be together without doing this.
Just tell them to go to Mexico first.
I guess so.
You'd be swept in and the human tide.
Yeah.
I have a hard time getting in Europe, so I guess I should just, like, float into Greece and just walk my way to Romania.
So, I don't know, like, that's...
That's right.
It doesn't seem like it's working out, and so...
I'm Syrian.
I've just seen a lot of sun.
Yeah, and I touched a plug in the wall and my hair stuck straight over.
Just shave it down, man.
All right, so Gabby, obviously I can't tell you what to do and it would be pointless to even think about that, but I'm going to give you just a little list that I thought of today.
Okay.
So, and I, you know, these are just things to keep an eye out and things to look out for.
Okay.
So, how do you know if someone's worth sticking around with, you know, in the beginning of the last and so on?
Well, how do they treat other people?
That's important, right?
I mean, and it can be as simple as how do they treat waitstaff.
You see...
The purpose of our loins is to make babies.
I know this is going to put some dolls up here for the show or something.
But people forget that because we think to some degree that sexuality serves our needs, our lust, our orgasm and all that.
But sexuality is for kids.
It's for making kids.
And that doesn't mean that you have to have sex only to have kids.
But the reality is that when you meet someone, you see how they deal with people they have power over.
Right?
That's really, really important.
If they have a complaint against someone, or if the waiter or waitress brings them the wrong food, how are they?
Are they relatively nice, but without being too, like, oh, it's fine, no problem, still leave a big tip, no matter how rude the waiter is.
But do they have appropriate boundaries, right?
Are they able to say, are they assertive enough to send the food back without being so aggressive that they make the person cry, right?
I mean, because the rehearsal is...
How's this person going to be with my kids?
Right?
How is this person going to be with my kids?
And so seeing how they deal with people they have power over is a good foreshadowing of how they're going to be with the people that they're going to have the most power over, which is the children that you have together.
Even temper.
And even temper is very, very important.
To genuinely get angry should be a rare occurrence under significant circumstances.
Provocation.
Impatience.
You know, this general seething frustration that a lot of people seem to grind their way through a pitiful life with is important to keep your eyes peeled.
Do they have unrealistic expectations about how life is supposed to go?
Hey, guess what?
Life is messy, and crap happens that you just never expect.
It hits you sideways, it knocks you over, you get back up, you keep walking, and then something knocks you over again.
That's a lot of what life is...
I feel I'm getting all Buddhist here, but if people have an unrealistic expectation about life, then your life with them is going to be hell.
In other words, if they have this belief that life should just kind of sail along, nothing should really go wrong.
The gas station you're going to should never be closed or out of service.
You should never get unexpected stuff in the mail that makes you unhappy.
You should never ever get a weird warts that you've got to go to the doctor and have checked out.
You should never stub your toe.
You should never lose your wallet.
You should always remember exactly where you parked your car in one of those N-dimensional American parking lots where they basically seem to shuffle things around like a card shark at a Kearney.
But do they have these unreal...
No one around me should ever get sick.
My car should never fail to start when I'm trying to get somewhere in a hurry.
Planes should never be delayed.
My luggage should never get lost.
Like, if they have this expectation of perfection in life, then you basically have been hanging on to this giant rolling...
Silver ball of pinball rebounding, resentment, confusion, frustration, anger.
And that is, do they have unrealistic expectations about how life is supposed to go?
And life is messy.
And life is frustrating sometimes.
And stuff's gonna, great stuff happens too, but you gotta recognize that A lot of stuff is going to happen that you're not happy about.
Someday you're going to be in a hurry to get somewhere and you just can't find your passport.
Or, you know, you're going to go on vacation and it's going to rain the whole time.
When I went on my honeymoon with my wife, it was unbelievably cold.
Like, weirdly cold in the tropics where we were.
And, you know, we were even thinking of flying someplace else.
It was so bad.
Oh my God.
But, you know, we still had a great time.
And so having people who are ready to roll with and be in alignment with the vagaries and random stuff and upsets and problems that happen in life...
In life, sometimes friends will turn on you for reasons that remain inexplicable even years afterwards.
It's going to happen.
People make their own decisions and sometimes they make bad decisions.
And sometimes you're going to make a bad decision and sometimes he's going to make a bad decision and it might have negative consequences for a while.
This is all part of life.
And being ready to accept all of the vagaries of life is the best way to have a relatively calm and happy life.
Are they helpful to people without being people's slaves?
That's an important balance to have.
We want to help people, but we don't want to be exploited by people, so having that kind of balance is really, really important.
What's their view of life?
Do they view life as generally a pleasurable exercise with some challenges, or is it a nightmare drudge through a hellscape of ruined expectations, right?
So, Again, it's usually somewhere in between, but usually people have what Ayn Rand called a sense of life.
What is life fundamentally all about?
Are they willing to stand up for what they believe in in a way that doesn't just make endless enemies?
They want to stand up for what they believe in in a way that hopefully inspires and encourages other people.
Yes, I'm aware I'm describing myself, but these are the virtues, so don't be shocked that I think I'm trying to practice them.
But that's an important aspect as well.
Are they willing to stand up against true wrongdoing in the world and being willing to accept that that's going to make you some enemies and it's going to make you some friends?
And if you have the choice between being forgotten or having both enemies and friends and anybody who's deserving of friendship, is also deserving of amnesty because friendship is the result of virtue and virtue harms the interests of evil doers and therefore to have friends is to have enemies.
The two are one giant package deal.
To love is to lose and to love is to be hated because you're promoting virtue at the expense of evil doers So is he willing to take and do that?
Is she willing to take and do that?
And these are just a few of the things that you can see with people.
You know, when you're with them for any particular period of time, you're going to be sitting at a restaurant, or you're going to go to a restaurant, and the restaurant's going to have an hour wait, and you're hungry.
And is it like, oh, I can't believe it!
You know, first world problems, people.
Or you're going to want to pick something up, or you're going to go to a movie, and the movie's going to be sold out.
Like, is this a big problem?
Or is it like, eh, you know, that's a shame, but let's go get some dessert and enact the movie out with salt and pepper shakers.
So you can see these things very early on, and it's generally a good idea.
You asked why not have sex until you know these things, because...
Sex is like a grappling hook that pulls you along, whether you like it or not, right?
So, you know, you'll see these spy movies where they shoot the grappling hook and then they pull themselves up over the castle wall or something like that and then bring, I don't know, any carbs to Tom Cruise's abs or something.
And once you have sex with a man in general, and this is true for men with women as well, and I sometimes wonder if it's not more true for men with women as well, once you have sex...
You've made a kind of commitment that renders the temptation for ex post facto reasoning and justification for why you had sex so tempting, which is why I was listening so carefully at the beginning of this conversation for any negatives that might come up.
And when I saw a whole slew of positives, I knew you'd had sex really early.
That doesn't mean the positives aren't there, and I'm not trying to say that that magically erases them.
But what it means is that once you've had sex with someone, then you have made a kind of commitment already that And then what happens is you generally will focus on the positives and downplay the negatives even within your own thoughts and experience.
Because you're flooded with the oxytocin that comes from sexual activity.
There's a bonding chemical that goes in there already.
And you then, once you have sex...
You lose your objectivity when it comes to the other person, which is why you want to be alert to the warning signs, the pluses and the minuses before you have sex.
Once after you have sex, it's like, oh, he's great.
These things will, I'm sure, work out.
The negatives will work out themselves.
The red flags aren't really red flags and so on.
And it's just because, you know, there's an orgasm at the end of the rainbow that you're busily pursuing, both for men and for women, which tends to make you I don't particularly need any response to that.
These are just things to think about and to mull over.
It's such a big decision.
To decide to cross the world and live in a new culture and a new country without speaking the dominant language with a guy who's a cop and whose parents are split up to a large degree and who had some pretty severely traumatic episodes in his childhood and I don't imagine has gone through a lot of therapy.
There are some warning flags.
And I don't know exactly what to say because I do get a sensory heading anyway, but I just wanted to mention those things first.
Will you keep us posted?
Yeah, yeah.
With that in mind, I'll definitely listen to this over again.
Has he heard your earlier call?
Say it again?
Did he ever hear your call from February?
No, I didn't show him the call, but I did tell him in detail about that.
I've kind of been really open and honest about all of that stuff and the things I'm looking for in my life.
I haven't really put in these weird hidden expectations on him.
I just told him, straightforward.
But yeah, I'll definitely think about this stuff.
So far, he doesn't seem to be so low on that list of the things he said.
So that makes me feel better.
All right.
Well, keep us posted.
Obviously, I wish the best for your heart and head, no matter what happens.
But I appreciate you calling in.
I hope I was of some help.
And I hope that you'll keep us posted about how it goes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thanks, Gabby.
Always a pleasure.
Take care.
Alright, up next is Nuno.
Nuno wrote in and said, But a little over a month ago, before finding your show, I began to question my choices and decided to take a year off to re-examine my goals.
My desire to return to the traditional sense of workforce started to dwindle, and I began facing questions about the ethics, morals, and validity of my probable decision.
Is it morally wrong to stop working when so many people are struggling to find a job?
Is work a right or is work an obligation?
That's from Nuno.
Well, welcome to the show.
Thanks for calling in.
Hello, Stefan.
Thank you.
I must confess I normally have a pretty good sense of what people are talking about, but this one was confusing to me.
Okay.
Is it wrong?
To not work if you don't have to because other people are looking for work?
No, what I mean is that, well, as I say it, I feel that I don't really have a reason to continue to, but apparently most people around me, they do not see why I'm, well, taking these steps and they think that it is not really fair, well, given the fact that I have I have a skill set that the market needs.
I have opportunities.
I'm totally in the market and all that stuff.
I walk away when so many people simply do not have the chances that I have or had.
Yeah, again, I don't understand.
There are lots of people who are lonely.
Does this mean we have to be in a relationship?
Your choice about whether to work or not is your choice.
Maybe it's frustrating to other people that you have that choice.
Maybe for other people, maybe they got degrees in history or God helped them, something like that.
And they don't have job opportunities, the kind of job opportunities that you've had.
So maybe they're frustrated that you have these choices and they don't.
But I don't see how you are somehow obligated to work because people are looking for work.
Again, I don't understand how that...
Could even be a bad case to make.
Yeah, well, I'm not sure, but yes, you kind of see where you are going, and I agree that these kind of answers came from people with kind of a lack of opportunity in the job market.
And on top of that, there was also A couple of people with a feedback kind of questioning my labor ethics or whatever as you can call it.
Were these people on the receiving end of government benefits or programs at all?
Yes.
Oh, okay.
So yes, they kind of take benefit of my...
I get it.
You've got to go to work because I need to put my socialist proboscis into your pocket and suck out your money.
Yes.
I get it.
Okay, so I understand.
Go back to work, you know, in the same way that the farmer wants the cow to eat because we want milk and meat.
So yeah, the parasites need the host to go out and get them some goodies, right?
So yeah, I understand that.
Go work, because if nobody works, I have to.
Yeah, well, that is exactly the case.
One of the people that had that statement is a single mother that works but obviously takes loads of grants from the government.
And I do take it that hard because, well, let's be honest, I'm 37 and I would by no means be in the situation I am if I would be a lazy person, okay?
By no means.
You've had a very successful career and a very challenging field.
And in order to achieve that, I had to change my country twice.
Well, which is a burden, basically.
And I did fought for what I have, okay?
And I really take it at heart that the person that does...
A very small fraction of the sacrifices I have done in my past to say that I'm lazy because I choose to kind of retire when I'm 37.
Are you retiring at 37?
Well, at least...
I'm not criticizing.
I thought you were just taking a break.
Yeah, well, I'm not exactly sure how it will go, but I'm considering a total abandonment of the typical workforce.
I'm not saying that I will be...
Sleeping like 20 hours a day, that is by no means my goal.
No, no, I get it.
And listen, you're preaching to the choir.
I mean, I left, it's eight years since, seven years since I left the permanent workforce.
So I'm with you.
I find something you love and you never have to work a day in your life.
Yeah, that's exactly what I think.
Well, although I do love what I currently do or what I have been doing This far, I think that I can and should be using my time going forward to, well, basically give back to the society.
Wait, wait, hang on.
What do you mean give back to the society?
What has the society given you?
Yeah, well...
I'm going to say my education and stuff like that.
I'm not exactly sure how to answer that one.
Wait, do you mean like your government school education?
This is something you really...
I don't have an enemy bad enough that I want to pay them back for that because it would involve a huge amount of fucking napalm.
So I'm not sure what you mean by what has society given you?
Well, at the very least, the opportunities.
I do not defend the equal outcome, but the equal opportunities I do.
And I think that some people need extra help to be able to either identify or get those opportunities.
And I may be able to help you.
I'm just curious.
I'm not saying don't be generous, don't be charitable.
I've used this phrase before and I'm aware of that, but I do have a challenge with give something back to society.
Let me tell you what good people give society.
Do you know what good people give society?
A lot of suffering.
Because society is largely composed of parasitical shitheads out to rape and pillage any productive person they can find in order to avoid work and buy votes.
That is society as a whole.
A squalling, open-mouthed baby beak full of suck the worms out of mommy and daddy so that they don't have to roll off the couch and do something productive with their lives.
That's a lot of society.
A lot of society.
There's this woman.
Her last name is Slaughter, believe it or not.
And she is a Princeton professor and her husband is a Princeton professor.
They have two kids, two sons, I think it is.
And when she was a Princeton professor and her husband was a Princeton professor, she had no problem, no problem at all with work-family balance.
Well, yeah, if you work five or ten hours a week and you get three or four months off in the summer and every third or fourth year you can take a whole year off for a sabbatical, I don't think you're going to have much trouble with work-family balance either.
But then she decided to take a job as Hillary Clinton's number two at the Secretary of State.
She became Hillary Clinton's assistant.
And then she left her family.
She moved to Washington five days a week.
She'd come home on the weekends, just like Schwarzenegger would, except she didn't bang as many maids.
And she was away, and she signed a two-year contract.
And during that two-year contract, her eldest son kind of went off the rails.
Started hanging out with the band club, had real problems at school.
I think he ended up on drugs.
Because she wasn't around.
And then she now wrote an article that said women can't have it all.
It's like, yes princess, welcome to the world of men.
Men can't have it all and we've known that for about as long as there have been testicles hanging there obscuring the view of short people in the world.
So yes, I get it.
You can't have it all.
You know, it's funny.
I can't be there for my children and at work.
Gosh, men have been so hysterical about this and it comes as such a huge surprise to a man every single morning.
Gets up, puts on his suit and tie, gets in the car, drives to work and he's like...
Wait, I've got to do this again?
I want to stay and play with the kids.
That looks like you've got a new sandbox.
I want to play with the kids.
Why have I got to go to work?
I want to have it all.
Can't have it all.
You're a guy.
So we've known all of this, but to a lot of women, particularly women in state-protected industries like academia, it's a big shock when they actually have to work for a living and have a tiny taste of what it's like to be a man for a while.
Oh no, I can't have it all.
I have to make decisions and compromises and changes and this and that.
And this is the reality of the society we live in, where it comes as a genuine shock to highly intelligent women that you can't be in two places at once.
You know, to me, anyone who says you can have it all can never have an alibi in a crime, because they apparently can be in two places at the same time, so there you go.
So, I don't know what it is that you owe society.
Society has been using your money as debt collateral to sell your children into slavery.
Society stuffed you into unbelievably shitty government schools so that fat government teachers could get their loathsome spotty behinds on chairs, sit there, stare at you placidly, recite boring shit and have really nice pensions at the end of it all.
And so what do you owe?
What have they done for you?
What has society done for you that you owe this big giant gift back to society?
And again, I'm wide open to the possibility, but I can't quite see it myself.
Yeah, well, I think that this is all very recent.
I have no plan about, well, going forward.
The thing is that the way our taxes are used is By no means something that I approve or can do anything about.
And that also works against my will of going back to work since I really don't feel that I have to.
Oh yeah, no, you don't owe...
You owe society the legitimate and natural suffering that comes from having the hypocrisy and immorality of society exposed.
You owe society a giant Moe, Curly and Larry poke in the eyeballs.
That's what good people do to society is they inflict the legitimate suffering that society has earned through its cruelty and dominance.
That's what you owe society.
Yeah, well, I think there is a subtle but significant difference in our point of view and that is translated into the wording we use.
I don't think that I owe anything to society.
I think this is a purely voluntarily made decision.
I wish to give Quebec, I by no means feel that I have to or I owe.
It's just something that I, well, I think that I could do and yeah, well, that's it.
I don't think that I owe.
It's more like I want to.
No, but what did society give you?
That's what I'm still trying to answer.
Look, on a farm, the cows could say, well, I'm really grateful for the electric fence and the feeding that I get and the water that I get and the little bit of grass I get to wander around on.
I'm incredibly grateful for all of that, to which I'd say, You shouldn't be, because these things are only given to you so that you will provide meat and milk to the farmer.
You say, well, I had these opportunities, economic opportunities to make some money.
Society didn't give that to you because it likes you.
Society gave that to you because in a relatively free market, there's enough economic productivity that more parasites can feed on the host.
Why do you give the cow food?
Because you want to eat more cow.
And more food equals more cow.
So the idea that society gave you these liberties because they just love you so much and want you to be free and productive and happy is nonsense.
They gave you these liberties and gave you this, quote, education so that you could make more money for them to sell your votes and sell your children.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, but still...
Well, I think that all of us, if given the opportunity to...
Yeah, well, give back the...
No!
No!
Back to where we started.
Yes, yes.
I'm sorry.
Look, if you want to do generous things, that's fine.
And look, this is the great challenge.
So I'm just going to ask you to relax for a moment while I get this off my chest.
Okay.
At which point I should end up with the chest of an 11-year-old Japanese girl.
But...
I mean, I really, really want to be generous to society.
I mean, I really, I just, I want to, I would love to have someone to give back to.
I'd love to feel that I was paying back a legitimate obligation that society had provided to me by doing what it is that I'm doing.
And it's really hard to give back to society.
Because society is kind of stupid in a lot of ways, right?
I'm not just talking YouTube comments, although they don't help sometimes.
But it would be really nice if society, A, recognized that they kind of screwed and shafted the young by jamming them in bad schools, by having intelligent rhetoricians and sophists convince their mothers to go off to work and dump them in daycares, by using their future productivity as collateral to sell off their lives to foreign banksters.
To threaten them with wars, to threaten them with global warming, catastrophe visions, and thermageddon blowing up the whole planet.
And I mean, it would be if society wasn't just so unbelievably wretched, particularly to the young, I'd love to live in a society where I felt, wow, the society is really great.
What a wonderful society.
How much it encouraged my mother to stay home and breastfeed me and how much it encouraged my mother to not spank me and how much it encouraged my parents to stay together and really stuck it in there to make sure they could hang out and do better things.
And how much it has protected the future economic potential that I have and how much it's really protected my capacity to earn a living and be productive and safe for my own retirement.
And how much it loves liberty and how much it's willing to make me be free and encourage my freedoms and so on.
And how much it encouraged education that served my needs rather than serve the needs of government unions and so on.
I'd love to live in a society where I felt a genuine love and respect and gratitude for that culture and society to the point where I would be very happy to pay it back with blood, sweat, tears and toil in the raising of the lamp of virtue above the darkened landscape of the future.
That would be wonderful.
That ain't where we're living.
And it ain't even heading in the direction That we wanted to go.
It's kind of heading in the opposite direction.
I mean, this could be just from having to put myself into the face-threading cheese grater of democratic, quote, debates, which is basically a war of, hey, we'll give you more free shit we pillage from other people.
No, no, I'm going to give you more free shit that I pillage from other people.
More!
Free!
Infinity!
Forever!
No limits!
Free!
And anyone who says otherwise, anyone who says we can't give you free stuff is the bad person who wants to steal from you what is rightfully yours.
So you're looking at that, you know, squalling maggot pit of entitlement to bribery, corruption, and human filth.
Yes, it's a little hard to stomach, and maybe this is sort of where I'm coming from.
Anytime I talk about historical facts on this show, every idiot and their typing with their face dog brain comes and says, oh, you said that colonialism had some positive aspects.
I guess you love slavery.
You know, like, oh my god, people are just such idiots.
I mean, this is not the majority.
Maybe it's just a few minority who feel that their stupidity is a wonderful Shakespearean sonnet that has been tragically locked away in the door of their own cave-dwelling, neckbeard-growing, mouth-breathing idiocy.
It's just been kept out of the light.
It needs to come up like a rocket.
They need to spray their idiocy across the sky of the human intellectual landscape because these fireworks just shouldn't be set off in a toilet.
Let's bring them outside.
My stupidity should paint the sky purple and red and glowing colors and all that.
And the confidence by which people are just so idiotic is something that almost never gets any pushback from society as a whole.
I saw Bill Maher the other day.
I'm not a Republican, as everyone knows.
I saw Bill Maher the other day.
And he was like, oh, you know, the...
Republicans are just complete idiots and they live in a bubble and they're addicted to Fox News and they're no nothing.
They're just idiots, right?
And no doubt.
Like there was no doubt in the same way that the Democrats, you know, Hillary Clinton was saying, well, yeah, more than half the country are my sworn enemies and they have nothing of value to offer and they should really be put down like the rabid dogs that they are.
I may be paraphrasing a little, but I'm pretty much reading the subtext.
And there's no doubt.
No doubt.
You know, I mean, I can find some great points from the left.
I can find some great points from the right.
Because only an idiot thinks that there's a bichromatic defecation in human thought where there's pure good on one side and pure evil on the other side.
And it's a Manichean battle of Thor against Satan.
So, but this is...
What goes on in society?
And you see this all the time.
What do you owe these people?
You owe these people a mirror.
That's what you owe them.
You owe them a mirror.
You hold up a mirror to society and watch it squirm because it doesn't look like it thinks it looks.
You hold the mirror up and they don't see some hero who should be standing on the prow of a ship.
King of the world.
That's not...
Who they are, they basically are like orcs with bad skin and bad breath and tusks coming through their cheeks and eyeballs hanging in zombie orcs.
You owe them the accuracy of showing back to society exactly what they look like.
And that will make them suffer.
But that's okay.
The doctor, when you go to the doctor and you're fat, you know what the doctor does to say to you?
Hey, you're fat.
You really should lose some weight.
That's what my doctor said to me.
I mean, I was never fat, but, you know, I didn't lose 20 or 30 pounds.
And the doctor said, hey, you're a little overweight.
I'm like, you know, you're actually right.
I think I'm going to fix that.
And I give up chocolate and all that.
So, What do you owe society?
You owe society a clear-eyed reflection of who they are, which will make them scream, because everyone thinks they're a romantic hero, but basically they have the starring role in a horror movie called themselves, and you've got to hold that mirror up so they see what they look like.
That's how they're going to change.
Because as long as they think they're pretty when they're ugly, as long as they think they're smart when they're dumb, they don't have enough pain to change.
Clearly it was good for you when you were a kid.
It must be great for society because they're all big people and should never scream when they look in the mirror and see who they really are.
That's the end of The Rent.
Thank you very much.
Please go on.
Okay.
Well, again, I... I really do not think that it is about owing.
It is fully voluntary, my decision.
And also I think it may be helpful if we particularize a bit.
One of the ideas that I have is that Since I'm fairly versed in a range of sciences, I could, for example, help kids out.
Both my parents are highly educated.
My father has a sciences background.
My mom has a humanistic sciences background.
So I had a lot of help at home.
And not every kid has that option.
And that is, for example, something that I would be able and happy to give back.
And it's not about giving anything to anyone.
Especially to a kid that I don't know, either the kid or his parents.
It doesn't matter, okay?
It's really something that I think that I can do and it's something that will, in a non-financial way, Okay, but hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
I apologize for that.
But now we're talking about something else completely.
Your first question was, am I obligated to work?
And I think we've chewed through that one.
Now, if you're saying, well, here are things I might want to do with my life, I think those are great and important questions.
They're just not part of a philosophy show, right?
Because me listening to you talk about things that you might want to do with your leisure...
If we were friends, it'd be very interesting.
We'd sit and have a coffee and I'd open my ears.
But unfortunately, given that this is a show where we try to apply as much philosophical rigor to life challenges as possible, that's not really part.
So I think we've dealt with the question.
I'm going to move on to the next caller.
But it's a great question.
And I'm glad we had a chance to do it.
And I also appreciate your kindness in letting me rant.
That was something that...
It's fine.
I appreciate that.
And yeah, if you do come to a decision, let us know.
know and maybe we can help you share with the world what it is that you're doing and i you know certainly i'm glad that you have the leisure to do it but yeah don't let the parrot side say you have to work um you know they uh they go find someone else to host off if they need to but it doesn't have to be you yeah yeah thanks man i appreciate it great Great call.
Okay, thank you.
Bye.
Alright, well up next is Andrew.
Andrew wrote in and said, Should I pursue a relationship with a woman I feel is good, but motivated to be so by faith and religion instead of logic and reason?
Are the two compatible?
That's from Andrew.
No.
Okay.
Alright, thank you for your time.
You're welcome.
Do you want to have kids?
I already have a seven-year-old, and I don't know how much background you want, but for the first 30-something years of my life, I was the poster boy for bad decisions about women.
So I ended up where I'm a single father with full custody of my son.
Boy, you got dicknapped pretty hard, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, yes.
Oh dear.
Do you ever need someone to sit down and do an intervention?
You're the guy, right?
Here's the after picture.
See the giant smoking crater where my financial future and testicles used to be?
Oh no.
Very much so, yes sir.
I'm sorry about that.
And is your son religious?
No, not sort of, yeah, maybe.
Well no, I mean, are you an atheist?
Yes.
Okay, and so given that you have sole custody, I guess you don't have to count out to an excess superstition.
So why would your son not be an atheist?
I'm not saying he has to be exactly like you, but wouldn't you have made the case or at least had him explore the ideas to the point where he comes to a rational conclusion?
Yeah.
It gets a little complicated.
We definitely, yes, logic and reason.
And I make a point to, at an age-appropriate level, explain things as accurately as possible.
I recently moved closer to my parents, who are staunch religious folks.
And part of the reason for that was just some help, especially because I've had custody since he was...
Uh, seven months old and, you know, having to work and not wanting to, uh, you know, go through the trauma of someone strange, you know, uh, watching my son for me, 40 plus.
No, I, I certainly, uh, I can certainly understand and appreciate that.
Um, and, uh, just very briefly, I mean, does, does his mom have anything to do with his life?
Very...
Only if she sees that it'll be inconvenient to me.
Oh, God.
One of those.
Right.
So, you know, once a quarter.
Like, she's, you know...
He's not a child.
He's a weapon by which I can torture my next husband.
Okay.
Yes.
And she's since moved on and now has another child with someone who...
I guess they deserve each other.
What did your parents think of your relationship with this woman before you had the kid?
Apparently they thought poorly of it.
Apparently?
They didn't decide to let you into that little nugget?
Nope.
That's a conversation that I've sort of delicately explored a little bit.
Obviously, maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but Oh, come on.
You know, when you're young, you're stupid.
You've got a son, right?
If he's running towards the road, you say, stop!
Giant death machines are on the road, right?
Oh, absolutely.
And if you're running towards crazy pussy, stop!
Giant death vagina about to eat you whole.
I mean, isn't that what you do when you're a parent and your kids are running towards danger?
If you have a good relationship with your parents where you discuss things like that, I feel I would definitely do that with my son.
My parents were the quintessential best we could with what we knew type parents.
My mom...
Those type of conversations are not terribly fruitful.
I mean, if I want to have an argument, that's a great thing to go down.
And this may be part of my background, because I don't spend a terrible amount of time with them, and I know they've got a finite amount of time.
Oh, your son does that.
Oh, yes.
And that's...
I listened to where you talked about Christians and how Not always, but especially where I am, and in the south, the Bible Belt.
And I explored some atheist organizations, and you go to a coffee shop, and it just wasn't very nice.
Like just a bunch of fairly unshaven, resentful guys who've never seen a sit-up.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I get it.
I mean, you leave kind of feeling like, man, if this is the alternative...
I hate religion because Jesus was too well-groomed.
It offends me.
Where I live, it's nicer people.
If you want your son to play with nicer kids, there's things that we do that I don't agree with.
Some of the philosophy behind it, but...
The alternative is, okay, we're staying at home today, so we'll read some books and not really venture out into the world.
But your concern with your parents is not their religiosity, it's their lack of emotional connection and processing, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
And I'm sort of even hesitant to – I kind of hung up the looking for anyone hat because I'm in my late 30s now and it's not a moral imperative that I settle down.
Yeah.
It is a challenge.
I mean, I really appreciate what my mom does, how much she helps me.
When you read about, you know, I think it was The Pursuit of Happiness, the Will Smith movie, you know, what a single father went through to do it completely on his own.
And, you know, his story, I guess, was good enough to make a movie out of.
But if you look at what his son went through being dropped off and those types of things...
You know, obviously I think his son would have preferred he made different life choices before he came along.
And for me, you know, that ship has sailed.
I think at some point I'm going to have to have an honest conversation with him about, you know, this is how I totally screwed up so much stuff.
You want to do that around puberty to scare his penis into becoming an innie.
Yeah.
How pretty was your ex?
She was pretty, yeah.
And, you know, someone told me one time, not too long ago, and it's really kind of stuck with me that, you know, the human male has enough blood to operate only one head at a time.
And that was definitely what kind of led into it.
Yeah, basically, I think what you're saying is tits should come with ball-hitting tasers.
Right.
You reach for them, it's...
Thank you!
Thank you!
Right, right.
You need aversion therapy, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
Some clockwork orange, you know.
That's right.
Strap me down and just show pictures of attractive looking.
I want to see this woman in an aging program, you know.
I want to see this woman in 45 years.
Ah!
They call them trippy tits.
You know, when I reflected on it, she had a plan, and I did not.
She went into it with a plan.
Oh yeah, the wide-eyed innocence of women, this like eyes big as saucers Disney heroine who just doesn't know the world from a hole in the ground.
Women are...
And I say calculating, not in a bad way.
It's evolutionary, right?
But women's capacity to...
Play innocent is sort of foundationally important.
And you see this all the time.
I'm going to put a video out about makeup and women are like, I just weigh makeup for fun.
You know, it's just fun for me.
Yeah, right.
That's a pretty expensive hobby.
Don't tell me it hasn't got anything to do with enhancing your appearance and thus snagging about a guy who's got more resources or at least is higher status.
Give me a break.
I go to yoga because it helps me with my flexibility.
Yeah, yeah.
You want yoga butt.
Got it.
That's why I went too.
But anyway, so yeah, this is why when I point out that women are not idiots, somehow I'm anti-women.
You know, and I sort of point out that women have been evolutionarily designed to figure out how to maximize their sexual value for the sake of getting the highest quality sperm donors that they can.
And hopefully getting those sperm donors to stick around and the idea that this is exactly what evolution would have done to women's brains and that women are not stupid and they know exactly how attractive they are and they know exactly what kind of man they can get and they're not idiots about this stuff and somehow I'm anti-women for giving women the capacity to think in an evolutionary advantageous way.
Apparently I'm both anti-science and anti-women for supporting evolution and the intelligent perceptiveness of women but you know that's just the natural way things go.
It suits women for men to underestimate them.
And that is not a...
That's what dads need to say to their kids.
And again, I don't want to sound like women are these cold calculating Pink Floyd hammer walking robots or anything like that.
It's just that men look at and immediately evaluate a woman's attractiveness and women look at and evaluate immediately a man's attractiveness.
And there are very few men who have no idea how attractive a woman is and there are very few women who have no idea how attractive a man is.
And, you know, why do men buy sports cars?
Because they want to go fast?
No!
And why do men work so hard?
Well, all we have to do is look at the income of men who aren't married and don't have kids to the income of men who...
Are married and have kids.
It's, you know, five to ten times more over time, right?
So, yeah, we all know why men gather resources and we all know why women make themselves attractive.
And the idea that we just, I don't know, women are just so sensitive and delicate and Victorian that you can't ever talk to them about why they wear makeup and why push-up bras are important and why they wear heels and totter around like idiots in a circus on stilts half the day.
Well, because it makes your ass look like a shelf.
That's why you wear it.
And also it makes your calves look...
More muscular and it makes you look like you can't run away, which I guess for some men is a turn on.
So this idea that we, again, I come back to this makeup store I saw in a mall once, big sign over the makeup, tools of the trade.
Women all know that they need to enhance their sexual market value in order to get the highest quality and most dedicated sperm donor they can.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's perfectly natural and it's perfectly healthy.
But it's much better for men if men think that women are just wide-eyed and innocent and have all the sexual knowledge and sexual calculations of an asexual librarian robot.
But as you know, right, the calculations show up sooner or later.
Oh, it's three-variable calculus, and I'm sitting there counting on my fingers.
It was not fair.
It's really not fair.
You're playing on a PS3. She's got a virtual reality headset and Google glasses.
That was ColecoVision.
Yeah, no, it's not fair.
And women's processing for evaluating hypergamy or the desire to trade up and evaluating height and social status and reliability, that's what nature has tuned women in to do.
Women who were bad at evaluating potential mates.
Did not have genes that survived.
The only reason there are women and the only reason there are men is that we are finely tuned to figure out and exploit sexual market value.
And exploit sounds bad.
It's not.
It's not moral judgments.
Every frog tries to get the hottest frog it can, at least according to all the frog porn that I have on my thumb drives.
But this is natural.
And the idea that women are innocent, it's something that It's a line that I remember reading.
I read The Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams many, I guess I was in my teens.
And Stanley Kowalski says something.
The woman says, do you think I'm attractive?
And Stanley Kowalski says, I never met a woman who didn't know exactly how attractive she was, and some give themselves more credit than they deserve.
And it's true.
This basic, frank thing.
I've never met a woman who doesn't know exactly how attractive she is and exactly what kind of man she can get.
If you deny that, you deny evolution.
So I just wanted to put that out there.
It doesn't diminish women.
it actually points out that they're very smart at what they do and it's exactly what they should be doing.
Uh, just as men's, uh, evaluation of a woman's attractiveness is, um, uh, is, is very finely tuned and, and absolutely necessary for the advancement of the species.
But yeah, when, when a woman played plays dumb, I mean, it's just because she's a soft dialing a lawyer, uh, in her, uh, in her pants.
So let's get back to your question.
So So, if it's a good woman motivated by faith or religion, well, of course, the real question is, what's your son going to say about this when he's old enough to reason independently?
Now, if it's a good woman Who happens to be religious, and if her heart is good and religion is sort of part of it, okay, well, that's a plus, right?
Certainly, I would much rather be in a relationship with a good Christian than a nihilistic atheist, you know, and much rather be in a relationship with a good Christian woman than a, you know, scrawny, snarky communist chick, right?
I mean, so the values of philosophy are closer to In many ways to the values of religion than they are to the values of what is commonly called secular humanism.
And by that I mean...
Enlightened Christianity.
I don't necessarily mean Amish faith or whatever it is, right?
Fundamentalist or Orthodox Judaism or something like that.
But sort of, you know, modern live and let live.
We don't kill you for leaving the faith and separation of church and state and pro-strong nuclear family and pro-strong values and virtues and so on.
Well, that's much closer to a rational philosophy than...
A lot of that lefty, weird, politically correct, social justice warrior, gamergate, atheist crap.
And I say that as an atheist, but having had a deep study of a variety of different belief systems, I think there's more compatibility.
The challenge, of course, is that if her virtue is dependent upon her faith...
And you, in your cunning, testicular-enabled way, work to undermine her faith, then you also may be working to undermine her virtue.
Like, hey, I wonder what happens if this little thread comes off.
Oh no, the whole person has collapsed, right?
So that may not be great.
But if she's a good person who has some religious leanings, then she can lose the religion and keep the virtue.
But if the virtue is entirely dependent on the religion, you are playing at the bottom of a very shaky house of cards with, again, soft-dialed lawyers on top, right?
Sure.
I guess that's going to be the challenge to distinguish because this is someone I've known for a few years now and in her story she got married and They were not able to have kids for whatever reason.
And for him, that was – I guess he was not a great guy, so she didn't pick a good guy.
So he left and found someone he could have kids with.
And she's – Well, hang on, hang on.
I assume that there was more to it.
Oh, absolutely.
Just, I mean, if he's desperate to have kids and she can't have kids, then I can understand why he might regretfully say, sorry, this is just too big an issue for me and I, you know, I need to be someone I really want to have kids.
And so it doesn't mean that he's a bad guy, in my opinion, for not being with a woman if he desperately wants kids and she can't have them.
Oh, absolutely.
But I'm sure there was other stuff too.
Yeah, I mean, that's probably the oversimplification of it.
Yeah.
But, you know, she does a lot of work with kids.
That's actually how she met, is, you know, her doing things that my son was involved in.
And, you know, her peaceful parenting comes from her parents, you know, not, you know, because Christianity doesn't teach, you know, peaceful parenting.
It teaches spare the rod, spoil the child.
It's a big bucket to put Christianity into, because there's so many different perspectives on it.
Yeah, the southern...
A lot of, yeah, certainly in the south.
Well, you know, you all got to produce the warriors that are needed to invade the empire, so of course you got to hit your kids.
I mean, how are they going to shoot people?
Absolutely, yeah.
We got to send people off to boot camp.
Yep.
Yes, I guess that's the challenge, is then finding out if those two are inseparable.
I guess I didn't really think about what impact that would have on me, because my dad's never a conversation we've had, but I don't think he's religious, but he shows up to church, because that's what my mom expects.
He, like myself, I remember when I saw the movie The Departed and Matt Damon told his girlfriend, he said, you know, if this isn't going to work, you're going to have to end this because I'm Irish.
I'll put up being miserable for the rest of my life kind of deal.
And yeah, I grew up with that.
I mean, my dad works, I think, as much as possibly he could and still does.
I mean, he works more now than he did 20 years ago.
Because I don't think they'd be married if they were in closer proximity for longer periods of time.
So I didn't...
Wait, was your mom pretty when she was younger?
Oh yeah, and he was too.
Right.
So maybe as a woman who had used her own prettiness to some degree, she wasn't in the best position to warn you away from a pretty woman?
Sure.
I'm not saying your mom is the same as your ex, right?
No, no, absolutely not.
I'm just saying that she may not have been.
Having used that weapon herself, she couldn't exactly warn you against the dangers of that weapon, right?
Yep.
And my dad had no real insight to offer.
And we weren't and still aren't terribly having those types of conversations.
And I make a point with my son to have...
You know, as in-depth conversations about everything he wants to have as often as possible, you know, because I don't want to have that where, you know, at some point in time he has something that he's concerned about and he doesn't think I'm the first person to come to.
Right.
I mean, it would ideally be his wife, but it'd be better if he had someone rather than no one.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, my son, when he's seven, you know, I guess at some point he'll be married and, you know, but growing up, I want him to always consider me the someone he could come to with anything.
Oh, sorry, your son.
I'm sorry.
I thought you should have met your father.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
That is how you avoid the problems that come from over-strong peer bonding, which is inevitable to happen for kids.
Kids mate with their peers, not their parents, so they're going to be more peer-focused as they get older.
That's why you've got to really make sure that the lines of communication stay open between parent and child, so that it provides a counterweight to the inevitable growth on peer dependence as they age.
And I'm sort of a recent convert to more Definitely the atheism.
The logic and reason, not so much.
By education, that logic and reasoning are two things I've dealt with for a long time, but applying it to my life was something that I just didn't do.
You clock out and your brain turns off.
I've kept him out of government school.
We didn't do pre-kindergarten.
I started him a year late for kindergarten.
I'm Trying everything I can do.
Good for you.
Good for you.
Yeah, so, I mean, if she's got a good heart, you never know what reason she may be open to over time.
You know, later in life, changing one's mind about anything fundamental is like trying to pull food dye out of water, right?
After you've already poured it in.
Because it becomes...
I'm sorry?
Old dogs and new tricks.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and it's because the dog is part of a pack.
Teaching an individual dog new tricks, that's okay.
It's just whenever you try and teach a dog new trick and it gets attacked by the rest of the pack, it's kind of a downer for the dog, right?
So if, you know, this woman has, you know, embedded relationships horizontally, vertically in her community and her friends, and right then you trying to lead her away from the church, a little bit higher stakes, right, than when she's younger.
When she was younger.
So that, of course, is a bit of a challenge.
But again, I will choose a good heart resting to some degree on superstition over an empty heart surrounded by syllogisms.
And certainly I think that you could argue that kids need affection more than they need the Socratic method.
And so if it's a good-hearted woman, you know, with a Hard work ethic and a sharing, caring heart and possibly even a strong back.
You know, that's some real pluses to be said for that.
And I guess my question is, what is your son?
Has he met her?
What does he think of her?
Obviously, they've done work through...
She works with the kids at the church that my parents go to.
And, you know, not socially or anything like that.
I've been very hesitant to...
I haven't dated or anything in years, so he's not aware that there would be...
We've just kind of talked around different things that we've done.
That's a very poor way of saying that.
We've spoken when we've been at things that were like functions, but not like a date or anything.
Right, right.
It's not a conversation about him.
If you like her and if she's a warm-hearted person, I would certainly suggest that it would be a good thing to go out and have a coffee and so on.
You can, of course, also bring her over to the house as a friend and see how she gets along with your son.
Obviously, I don't need to tell you.
It's easy.
Take it slow.
But no, I would not immediately disqualify someone for having religious leanings.
I mean, if she's some feverish-eyed screaming through a bullhorn on a street corner...
Maybe not so much, but obviously she's not that, otherwise this wouldn't even be part of the conversation.
No, I see that around, but definitely not part of that.
Yeah.
Yeah, and she may be the most moral person around.
And I don't mean to say like, oh, the best of a bad bunch or anything like that.
She may genuinely be the most caring and moral person around.
And you don't know what kind of influence you may have on her over time.
But I definitely would go for the practice of virtue rather than the correctness of the theory, if that makes sense.
Sure, absolutely.
I would rather have the wrong doctor and the right prescription than the right doctor and the wrong prescription, if that makes any sense.
So to me, it's the action that matters.
And if you can find a really good woman who has, obviously, a religious side, a religious bent to her, that's certainly something worth exploring, in my opinion.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
You're very welcome.
And thanks everyone so much for calling in.
Always a great pleasure to have our chats and our conversations.
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