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Nov. 13, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:47:11

3126 Win-Lose Situations - Call In Show - November 11th, 2015

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Please remember to support the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	So the first caller is calling in from China and is having trouble negotiating with people, especially middle-aged women.
	And we talk about some of the reasons, both cultural, general historical and personal historical, as to why that might be the case.
	The second caller had a good question.
	Isn't immigration just another form of free trade?
	In other words, the problem is the welfare state.
	And if we get rid of the welfare state, then immigration can be a free situation and environment.
	So why fight immigration when we should be fighting the welfare state?
	Well, that's a great question too.
	And we had a good back and forth about it.
	Third caller.
	If an 11-year-old boy shoots and kills his 8-year-old neighbor girl, Because she would not let him see her new puppy, should the father of the boy be sent to prison for murder.
	This actually did happen in America a little while back, and we talked about the various possibilities and the moral stance of that.
	Fourth caller.
	Hey man, what's wrong with me wanting to get laid?
	Why is it learning certain pick-up artist skills, how to talk to a woman you think is attractive?
	Bad for some guys.
	If you were only self-sabotaging without them, what's wrong with learning these tools of the trade, these tricks of seduction?
	And you'll probably be a little bit surprised by my answer, but it's a great show.
	I look forward to your feedback on it, and thank you so much for listening.
	Here we go.
	Alright, well up first is David.
	David wrote in and said, I experienced a quote-unquote phase shift in my mind when I am negotiating, especially with a middle-aged female party, and a sudden quote-unquote depressed shock comes in, and I feel like I must give in to the terms of the opposite party, even if I am treated unjustly.
	How can I work on improving this for myself as this seems to be a problem that hides my subconscious and truly comes out only in these negotiating types of situations?
	That's from David.
	Right.
	It's a great question, David.
	Again, I keep, I don't know if you're white or not, but the privilege card, if you've missed, you know, like if it's Just look around.
	Check under the couch.
	Check where your testicles used to be.
	Just use your male privilege.
	A lot of people forget that, that it's this magic card.
	I mean, we can see that the guy who's in charge of Missouri University, right?
	He's currently...
	I think he's checking in his glove box for his white privilege card because in...
	In truly Chairman Mao fashion, he's being forced to confess his sins and make a public apology and grovel.
	And that, of course, is all about the privilege.
	Sorry, are you going to say?
	Yeah.
	Well, the thing is, since I'm working in China and I've read a lot about Chinese history, back in the days when there were like eunuchs walking around, you know, those people who served the emperors and they had their balls cut off, they actually would put their testicles into like this small bamboo compartment and hang it in like the they actually would put their testicles into like this small bamboo compartment and hang it in like the So I'm sure there are those rooms floating around somewhere.
	Yeah, I think, in fact, you can get entire syllabi.
	Put forward by frizzy-haired ladies about all of this stuff.
	Absolutely.
	Well, that's a very interesting question.
	Now, is it in business for the most part?
	No.
	That this occurs?
	I think, I mean, I remember the...
	And by the way, thank you for having me on your show.
	I mean, I can't tell you how...
	Oh, it's my total pleasure.
	It's a real pleasure to be able to chat with you guys.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And you, in particular.
	Oh, thank you.
	Well, the thing is, it's just that ever since I... I've been actually looking into philosophy since, like, years back, but I didn't first start with you.
	I first started with an extra guy, but he was more Plato than Socrates, and I kind of dumped him after a while because he was still pro-government.
	So I was like...
	Once I discovered you guys, I realized, you know, if my world was a ship, the ship basically sank, but you guys are like that log I'm hanging onto in the middle of the ocean.
	Well, let me tell you this, David.
	I'll keep this brief.
	I'll keep this brief.
	But in going over the news and going over the voting patterns...
	And going over what American people believe and what other people in the world believe, I can really see where Plato is coming from.
	I can really see.
	Philosopher King, yeah, that sounds like about right.
	Can I get a whip?
	Can I get some hot candle wax on the socialist nipples?
	That's what I want, baby.
	Oh, man, I'm telling you.
	Because, of course, Socrates saw the man he loved the most.
	I mean, Alcibiades may be sexually, but the man he loved the most was put to death by the mob.
	And that can give you some pause when it comes to thinking about democracy.
	And it was interesting in the Republican debate last night, they kept talking about philosophers and philosopher kings and so on.
	And yeah, I can understand, you know, if you look at the masses of people, and it's not by accident, of course, but the lies that they believe, and it's not entirely their fault, because the way the powers work.
	You're like, okay, enough negotiating.
	I am a giant brainstem.
	You will now obey because you don't know what you're doing.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, I can definitely sympathize with Plato on that one.
	Yeah.
	Definitely.
	Well, the thing is, I don't think it's just middle.
	I mean, I've had a few months to think about this question because I know I was scheduled to come on August a few months back.
	But, like, I think that it's not just with the women.
	I think it really stands out with the women because of my experience with my mother from my early childhood.
	But I think that it's just...
	She was very aggressive, right?
	Like, you have an adverse childhood experience score of 8, which is very high.
	And for those sort of new to the conversation, you can just look up ACE or adverse childhood experience score, which is pretty...
	I mean, it's not exactly comprehensive in the way that I would like it to be, but it's a good measure of how your childhood is.
	At least it gives you some numbers behind it.
	You have one of eight, which I'm obviously incredibly sorry for.
	That's a very, very tough place to start.
	Thank you very much for that.
	I appreciate that.
	I think it's just that the original archetype for that mean, non-negotiating monster came from my mother.
	It's not just a middle-aged woman when I think about it.
	It's just anybody.
	The country where I live in, you definitely know this, but I experience it personally every day.
	Even if you go down to the convenience store, if you even show a little bit of what seems like Polite, meek vulnerability, you get attacked.
	I mean, it's just like the people will just verbally abuse you.
	Like, oh, if you ask them, like I was in the supermarket, I was asking, hey, do you know where something is?
	They'll be like, How could you not know that?
	It's in that aisle.
	Or like, it's in that aisle.
	Can't you see?
	Or something like that.
	But they'll say it in Mandarin, of course.
	But like, it's just like, service here is almost, it's downright non-existent.
	Can I give you my Asian, my brief Asian story?
	Sure, sure, sure.
	Go ahead.
	Go right ahead.
	I want to hear it.
	So it doesn't really matter the circumstances, but I met in a really Japanese restaurant.
	Oh.
	Some wealthy Japanese men.
	And, you know, they give you that – you come in as a big-nosed, blue-eyed foreign person and, you know, you kind of get that look.
	Like I wonder if he comes with that fishy smell that I've heard comes with Caucasians or something like that.
	Really?
	You get that look.
	And anyway – and it was a very authentic Japanese restaurant, which means I'm frightened to eat anything, right?
	It's like you want to go for really authentic Chinese food?
	I really don't.
	In fact, I pay good money.
	Give me something really anglicized that's basted in heavy MSG. That's what I want.
	And so I was just nervous to eat stuff.
	And so they were, what do you want?
	I was like, we'll take...
	I was there with a friend.
	We'll take sushi!
	And everyone literally just burst out laughing.
	No, no, it was tempura.
	Tempura.
	We want tempura.
	That's what we want.
	And everybody just burst out laughing like...
	How, you know, and of course, I don't know what exactly the joke is, but you can feel that harsh, it's like rocks on a tin roof sliding down, that harsh laughter.
	Like, you can see this on the fail videos, you know, that laughter, you know, it's like...
	Yeah, that high-pitched, screeching laughter.
	Oh, my God.
	It's a brutal part of culture.
	And of course, you see this on the internet sometimes when people post that all caps, ha, ha, ha, ha.
	They just have to crawl inside your head and make you crazy.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I really like that.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	It's like you internalize that.
	Now that you bring that up, it's just like a reverberation from inside of you when this random person who's just completely shallow and dumb Outside of you gives you that attitude and you feel that inside of you.
	It's like, oh man.
	But here's the thing.
	I'm veering back and forth on a whole bunch of stuff at the moment.
	Nothing, obviously, foundational.
	Zeus!
	He's got all the answers.
	I should have been in the wrong church.
	You might be a better option now.
	And more rip-torn.
	But One of the things that I'm veering is, like, it's not the responsibility of the average person to come up with a philosophical theory, right?
	I mean, any more than it's my responsibility to come up with a scientific method or, like, and very, very few people have the intelligence, the drive, the commitment, the ambition, the ability to go out and create some philosophical framework.
	Right.
	Right.
	And of course, all societies develop in the absence of a philosophical framework.
	This is the huge challenge that philosophers and thinkers and people with compassion and curiosity always face, is that society is like this scar tissue that happens when you take the heart of reason out of childhood.
	Like Aztecs, you crack the chest, go in, suck out the beating heart of rationality.
	And then the blood that rushes in, the superstition that rushes in, the nationalism that rushes in, the tribalism that rushes in.
	All of that is when you, right?
	And this process of removing reason from the hearts and minds of children creates this giant sucking chest wound called society.
	And it's not people's fault and it's not, you know, 99.999% of people have no capacity to fix it.
	But here's the thing.
	In the absence of philosophy, we still have to make decisions.
	People gotta get healthcare.
	Stuff's gotta get built.
	Cars gotta get made.
	People gotta get their haircuts.
	Criminals need to be dealt with in some manner.
	We have to make decisions as a society.
	And believe it or not, this is actually part of what you're talking about.
	Which is, we have to make decisions in society.
	And if we don't have philosophy, if we don't have compassion and reason and evidence, what are we left with?
	We're left with win-lose.
	We're left with win-lose.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	And people who only deal in the win-lose, which is everyone around me, it seems, foreigner or local.
	I mean, I'm a foreign teacher, but everyone.
	I mean, I'm fluent in Mandarin, but everyone around me, they're on the win-lose.
	And it's just like It's like you're just in this world of complete non-thinking shallowness of predetermined ideas.
	And even in the foreign teacher circles, you get these wild, naive, Pollyanna-type liberals who think like, oh, I went to school with a couple of smart Asian kids, so now...
	Like, this place must be so full of culture and da-di-da and da-di-da and, like, perfection and just, like, this bubble.
	And then you get, like, the conservatives who are religious and then they're like, oh, okay, well, they're all misguided, you know, and it's just that, you know, everything has something that has to be criticized.
	And, you know, it's like, oh my goodness, is there, like, a balance?
	You know, is there, like, a balance somewhere?
	And where there's no balance, I mean, it's just going to be...
	It's just pure isolation.
	And where there is no balance, you're going to end up basically, you know, it's only going to lead back to suffering and, you know, the road to perdition is pretty much on its way.
	Yeah, and the people who've invested their entire emotional and psychological and verbal and intellectual skill set on win-lose...
	Are heavily invested in the prevention of the spread of philosophy.
	Why do people get so mad at philosophers, right?
	What are the two things that are constantly railed at?
	When philosophers come along, number one, you refuse to believe in the gods of the city.
	And number two, you are corrupting the young.
	Well, no, actually, we're trying to prevent the young from being corrupted.
	That only looks like corruption to the corrupt.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And so society as a whole has coalesced around this win-lose paradigm.
	And you've got to think of that as an evolutionary environment.
	This is an ecosystem where certain kinds of brutalities exist.
	And contempts and manipulations in personality structures do really well in that environment.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Like the sadist does really well in the concentration camp and the empath, their head explodes, right?
	And so all of society has coalesced around...
	This win-lose situation.
	Win-lose, win-lose, win-lose.
	And it's everywhere.
	And this is part of the immigration debate.
	Oh, if the immigrants come in, we're going to lose.
	But if they don't come in, then they're going to lose.
	And the idea of it being win-win is out of people's heads for the most part.
	And it's also out of the structure of society as a whole.
	And the reason...
	So when you're in an environment where you want to negotiate, well...
	If you have to look at the culture around you as a whole and say, okay, well, what is the cultural methodology for resolving disputes?
	How does this culture resolve disputes?
	Now, in China, appeal to authority, appeal to ancestor, appeal to age.
	I absolutely love that.
	Well, when I say love, I'm being sarcastic.
	My mom and dad banged each other before your mom and dad did, so you must listen to me.
	The tree with the most rings wins!
	Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make any sense because, of course, well, okay, there's two sides to this, right?
	So on the one side, the young people look at old people and say, you guys are like really stodgy and you don't know how to have fun and your ideas are all kind of fossilized and all this kind of thing, right?
	But on the other hand, when you get older, you have seen a lot more stuff.
	And if you've been at all alert to the patterns in life, you can extract some wisdom out of a dismal series of photoshoppedly brutal experiences in the world.
	But in China, how do you win?
	You win by tree rings, right?
	That's how it works.
	You count them up and, right?
	Or it's male to female or it's female to children.
	But how do you win?
	I'm bigger.
	I'm older.
	I'm taller.
	And in other areas, I'm better looking.
	Yeah, totally.
	And in other areas, I'm richer.
	And in other areas, I'm more popular.
	And in other areas, I win because I'm more athletic.
	Yeah.
	And it's just so shallow.
	But the thing is, it's not...
	Even if you win, I mean...
	If you appeal to authority, you're basically like, you gotta shout.
	You gotta shout, and it's just like, oh, I have a louder voice, or I just know more than you without having to provide any reason, ration, and evidence, but I just...
	I look like I'm a terrorist, and I'm gonna blow myself up if you don't give in, and basically that's the appeal to authority.
	But then...
	Yeah, and in a society where there's no reason and evidence to resolve disputes...
	Self-knowledge is a giant curse.
	Because self-knowledge breeds doubt.
	And doubt breeds losing in a win-lose society.
	Now, in a win-win society or in a win-win environment, self-knowledge is very important.
	But in a win-lose society, self-knowledge and the associated doubt and humility...
	Becomes a giant loss, which is why societies without philosophy reward people who do what I call repeat and escalate.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And with that other side, I was going to make a point.
	There's the other side to that with the win-lose.
	And the person who loses, they go into the slave mindset and they'll just wait, wait.
	They'll just be like, I'll be passive-aggressive whenever I can.
	And whenever the master shows vulnerability or doubt, I'm just going to go in and do something that's going to sabotage everything that he or she wants.
	And it's just like the...
	And when you live in this kind of society, it's like, how can you foster and harbor a sense of understanding what equality means?
	You can't.
	I mean, people who grow up in these kinds of cultures, when they go overseas or abroad, I mean, you see this.
	I see this.
	Before I went to China to work as a teacher, I've met these people who came from China, but they'll be like, you know, oh, I'm so happy to be here.
	I'm so happy to be in the States.
	It's so free here.
	But then they'll just go back and the next sentence will be like, oh, Americans are so lazy and they're just so this and that.
	They need someone who can control them.
	American kids don't get hit and blah, blah, blah, which is not true.
	You see this paradigm of complete win-lose.
	I wasn't aware of this back then, but Now, looking back, if I had known what I know now, I don't know if I'd even go to China.
	Because back then, like years back, I was also in that, oh, the culture thing, like culture equals virtue and virtue must be because, you know, there's culture and stuff like that.
	But that's because people who are into culture, they forgot about virtue a long time ago.
	So that's pretty...
	Right.
	So when you're in a negotiation with someone, If you have sort of sensitivity and empathy and self-knowledge, which is to say if you're intelligent for the most part, then what's going to happen is you are going to be at a disadvantage.
	In the modern world, the blind jocks strut down the hallway like peacocks with their balls on fire.
	And the nerds get shoved into closets, right?
	The people with self-knowledge.
	And this is what's confusing sometimes about this show for people in that I have a good degree of self-knowledge, but I think I also have a reasonable amount of self-confidence, assertiveness, and so on.
	And that's kind of confusing for people because most time assertiveness is associated with aggression.
	And in a win-lose society, yeah, whoever screams loudest.
	You can see this playing out in campuses across America at the moment.
	People have no principles behind them.
	They just scream loudest.
	And they win.
	And everybody says, okay, okay, just appease you.
	Give you what you want.
	It's too uncomfortable.
	Go ahead.
	Fine.
	And so this repeat and escalate can only arise from people who are absolutely certain that they're right.
	And you see this with comedians, right?
	I mean like Bill Maher and John Oliver and so on.
	Funny guys and some stuff that's really smart and some stuff that I could certainly get behind.
	But in general, they're just so absolutely sure that Republicans are just plain morons.
	Like the Republicans have nothing of value to offer.
	Nothing of value.
	They're all just mouth-breathing, trigger-happy douchebags who lick statues of Jesus and masturbate over racism.
	They have nothing of value whatsoever to offer.
	And they have no doubt about that.
	I said it's really dangerous to put yourself in that black-white kind of mindset.
	No, no.
	It's dangerous for you.
	It's dangerous for me.
	They love it.
	They love it.
	I mean, Bill Maher is not sitting there going, well, you know, I do have a successful television show and I am in demand to speak.
	Right?
	I mean, they have no doubt.
	For them, it's fantastic.
	Because when you don't have a rational methodology for resolving disputes, you've got to go tribal.
	Oh, yeah.
	Right?
	You've just got to have more people behind you buoying you up.
	Right?
	The social metaphysics that Rand talks about, right?
	That you say not what is true, but what do people believe is true.
	And can I get enough people behind me to jam my truth through in society, which is kind of the definition of democracy.
	So when you're negotiating with someone, first of all, the question is, am I actually negotiating with someone?
	Because this repeat and escalate is very, very common.
	You'll see it a lot, right?
	So somebody will say, My position is x, y, and z.
	And you say, well, you know, here's the problem I have with x, y, and z.
	And they said, my position is x, y, and z.
	Well, you know, x, y, and z, there's some problems.
	The x doesn't lead to y, y doesn't lead...
	My position is x, y, and z!
	No, again, I'm having trouble with the X, Y, and Z. Let me tell you why I disagree with it and why I push it back.
	For the fourth time, I feel like I have to keep explaining this over and over and over again.
	My position is X, Y, Z. Yeah, and you just have to give them some carrots after a while.
	You're like, alright, I'm sorry, I didn't know.
	Here are some carrots, Mr.
	Rabbit.
	Well, and what do you do?
	No, I mean...
	These are people who are...
	They're not looking for win-win.
	No, they're not.
	And when your beliefs are rigid, you have to end up clinging together with other people who have the same rigid beliefs.
	This is as true on the left as it is on the right and anywhere in between.
	I mean, if you...
	You know, it's like the people who are absolutely certain catastrophic anthropogenic global warming to be solved by massive government programs, and anyone who doubts it, anyone who has any skepticism about it...
	Yeah.
	And...
	It's incomprehensible.
	Like jeers and mocking and all this kind of stuff, right?
	It is really hard to tell.
	It's really hard to find anyone with anything in common with you once you start getting self-knowledge.
	I started doing the self-journaling thing earlier this year.
	I was listening to your shows for hours on end, like five, six hours a day, and As I was listening, I would journal.
	I remember listening to this podcast you did with Dr.
	Daniel Mackler about self-therapy.
	I'm overseas right now, and I can't afford therapy right now, but I'm trying to do everything I can to untie the cobwebs that have built up in my mind over all these years.
	Then I started reading some books by Ayn Rand.
	I started reading this book called Introduction to Objectivism.
	I'm just beginning...
	I realized that if I really accept these values and beliefs, I really would be a completely different species from these people who are just win-lose.
	You just think completely differently.
	I was raised in a very win-lose household.
	I couldn't find any kid around me who was raised Like me.
	And then after I grew up, because I was against the Iraq war back in 2003, I started going on these alternative news websites.
	But a lot of them, unfortunately, were pretty conspiracy-geared, too.
	So I got into that for a while.
	But then I remember downloading this book supposedly about the MKUltra program that the U.S. government did to brainwash some kids so that they became assassins or whatever.
	I read in the book about how the parent would make the kid memorize math charts and ask them random questions.
	That was kind of how I was raised.
	Even going back as far as I was three in my early childhood.
	I think that did kind of fuck me up.
	I wasn't exercising my negotiation muscles.
	I wasn't exercising my reason, my logic.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Yeah.
	Okay, sorry to interrupt.
	But first of all, I don't think it's Dr.
	Daniel Mackler.
	I think it's just Daniel Mackler.
	He's got a master's degree or something like that.
	Oh, I'm sorry about that.
	No, no problem.
	But you said you weren't exercising this.
	Listen, I mean, it's like if you're a kid locked in the cupboard under the stairs and you say, well, I guess I just never got into running.
	Well, no.
	Children are born negotiators.
	I mean, if you want to have a successful human being, just don't resist the negotiation with your kids.
	And I don't think my daughter is unusual in this regard.
	It's like, well, you got to go to bed at 8.50.
	8.53.
	8.52.
	8.51.
	You know, we get into this barker back and forth, right?
	I mean, they are born negotiators.
	And if you, you know...
	If you are a win-lose personality structure and a child tries to negotiate with you, it's going to provoke aggression in you, which is why this brutality tends to replicate.
	But when you're in a negotiation with someone, first of all, never assume you are in a negotiation with someone.
	Never.
	Okay.
	Never assume that you're in a negotiation with someone because by far, the majority of the people that you're ever going to have disagreements with in your life, you know, and you get older and you start to self-select people and you start to recognize that Life is too short to waste time on people who are low quality.
	It was a fundamental realization.
	If I'm going to live forever, I guess I can just go hang with these people.
	Oh, wait, what?
	Mortality?
	Death?
	Okay.
	Let's start eating better and let's start exercising more and let's start cleaning up our social environment so that I'm not wasting my time being surrounded by people with the spine and passivity of man-of-war jellyfish.
	So, So, do not assume that you're negotiating with anyone until proven otherwise.
	Be open to it, of course, right?
	But do not assume that you're going to be negotiating.
	Now, there's people who are willing to take on the win-lose personality structure in certain situations.
	I mean, I'm certainly willing to do that in certain debates and so on.
	If that's what's necessary, yeah, I'll escalate.
	But it's not what you want to do.
	What you want to do is surround yourself with people who are going to Feed the negotiation muscle and starve the aggression response.
	And you can't negotiate people into something they were never negotiated out of.
	Like you can't reason people into beliefs that they were never reasoned into in the first place.
	And when people are good at negotiating, you'll know it right away.
	And these are the people that you want to Keep close to you, and you want to hold them as precious gems to your golem-beating heart, right?
	I mean, you really want to hold these people close, and you want to build your life around the relationships of reason and empathy, curiosity, compassion, evidence, love, right?
	I mean, when I was younger, I thought I made my way in the world, and I carved my way in the world, and I thought that making my way in the world was achieving sort of material success and fame or success.
	Sexual success or whatever it is.
	And all of that is just a bunch of nonsense, a bunch of fireflies that lead you off a cliff.
	The reality is that you want to build your life, you want to carve your way in the world by gathering together and holding together the most reasonable and lovely people you can find.
	That the ambition is not for money or fame or stuff, that the ambition must be for love.
	And love is impossible in a win-lose environment.
	And it's the antithesis.
	Of a win-lose environment, because love is our involuntary response to virtue, and it is fundamentally a lie to dominate people and then pretend that you're negotiating.
	It's a fundamental falsehood.
	In the moment you can get people to lie about whatever's basic to their personalities, you own them, because then they become dependent on you to maintain that lie.
	And so, you know, nationalism or racism or certain sorts of religiosity and so on.
	Don't assume that you're negotiating with people, and if you do find yourself in a situation where you are unable to negotiate with someone, you know, if you want to go and play tennis with someone, and they show up in a chicken suit with a shotgun, well, you may be playing something, but it's not really going to be tennis.
	It might be running away.
	It's a game called Don't Shoot Me Chicken Person.
	And so...
	When we're young, there's a kind of learned helplessness because we're just born into our families.
	We're born into our environments.
	We're born into our schools.
	We're born into our social circles or whatever.
	And we can't get away.
	We may not like it there.
	It may be the very antithesis of who we are as human beings, but we can't get away.
	And sometimes we take that helplessness with us when we go out into the world and we say, well...
	Okay, so I have crazy people around me, but I can't really do anything about it.
	And then we're kind of drawn to fulfill that initial cycle or pattern of helplessness in the face of aggression or dominance or abuse.
	And my suggestion is that the glorious gift that we're given as adults is voluntariness, voluntarism in our relationships.
	That's the thing to aim for the most.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I do think that the fact that I did not grow up in any kind of negotiating environment whatsoever, I think this is why I decided to go to a country like China to work because here there is no negotiation and this is the This was the environment that I was used to, but thankfully I'm not used to that environment anymore.
	It's bothering you now.
	Yeah, I'm unwinding.
	I'm getting unused to it.
	I'm rapidly getting unused to it.
	Which is a good thing.
	Definitely a good thing.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and the fact that you're not used to it and it's bothering you is really clear.
	And bring as much reason into your relationships.
	And the dominance, the win-lose people will just attack or flee, that rationality.
	But the people who stay and are curious, well, they're the people you can start to begin to build your life on.
	You know, there's that old biblical saying, do not build your house on sand, but build it upon rock.
	And the sand is win-lose and the rock is...
	It's win-win.
	And you can't have a happy and peaceful and productive house if you are doomed to be forever in these petty thumb wars of nonsense.
	You know, like people, I can't believe the thing.
	When I was a kid, of course, you know, I grew up in a poor neighborhood, which means a lot of dysfunctional relationships.
	I mean, it's spiritual poverty that ends up in material poverty.
	But it was like, you'd hear people yelling about like, I mean, I saw some movie with Anne Hathaway where there was this contest over who could more efficiently fill the dishwasher.
	You know, dishwashers, it's great that they've stopped people having to do dishes, but the time they save from people not having to do dishes has been entirely consumed by people arguing about the best way to fill up a dishwasher.
	You get like this big time vacuum of, what am I going to do now?
	Oh, I'm just going to repeat my trauma onto other people.
	Trauma ties this whole world.
	And there comes a time, yeah, there comes a time, you know, the real solution to trauma repetition in my humble and, of course, amateur opinion, but the real solution to what I call Simon the Boxer or this idea that if we grow up being dominated, then the only sense of efficacy we find in our life is managing the feelings of being dominated, which means that efficacy results in seeking out people to dominate us in the future so we can feel some sense of power and control.
	But there's this great solution.
	You know, the relationships in my life that have, they don't end with a bang, they end with a whimper.
	Yeah, totally.
	Right, because what happens is, you just, you say, you know what?
	Because I'm going to be dead, I literally and simply cannot ever have this conversation again.
	It's that click moment that you talked about.
	You spend all this time being nice to them until you just don't.
	It's not like with a bang.
	You don't say, I'm never going to talk to you again, or loudly, or something like that.
	You're just like, wait, what?
	I can never have a conversation about how well I'm sweeping the front hallway ever, ever again.
	I can never have a conversation about whether I got all the spots off the glass when I was doing the dishes ever, ever again.
	I cannot have a conversation about how well I have weeded the garden.
	I cannot have a conversation about whether I should go slightly above or slightly below the speed limit.
	I cannot have these petty, useless, stupid, strangling, boring, dusty-brained, empty-hearted conversations ever again.
	I simply can't.
	And that's The click is boredom where you realize that it's going to be a groundhog day of useless, petty, squabbling domination and submission for the rest of your life with nothing to show for it other than a life wasted on petty squabbles.
	I can remember when I was a kid and I hear people screaming around the place.
	You know, the couples yelling and all that.
	Man, the stuff they were yelling about?
	Unbelievable.
	Unbelievable.
	I told you to pick up my shoes.
	You left your jacket in the hallway again.
	And I think it's just the conformity.
	I'm sorry, Steph, I do have class in about 10 minutes, so I have to make this point and then I have to drop off.
	Oh, I see.
	Well, I'm very busy too.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	No, no, I actually have some more questions, but I'm going to call back in the future.
	That I promise.
	But I think that the reason I'm shocked and depressed when I feel that shock and depression come in is...
	I don't want my peers because I want to conform to my peers.
	I want to be accepted.
	And my peers would be like, if they saw me on the losing side of a win-lose, they'll just go, ah, ha, ha, ha, David lost to that person.
	Or if I lost to a teacher or to an authority figure, they'll be like, if I were to ever try to negotiate or reason with them again, they'll be like, yeah, but you still have to listen to the teacher, right?
	Remember that time when that teacher yelled at you and you cowered and stuff like that?
	It's just that My peers are in my mind, too.
	Of course.
	I think that's a really big hurdle because that's all you know, really.
	You've got to surround what you said about the community of philosophers.
	That would be heaven to you and I who are living in the here and now.
	To live, to be in a community of philosophers where people don't think like that.
	Yeah, and where Every submission gets a little easier.
	Or at least a little more predictable.
	And if you've been submitting to someone for 5 or 10 or 20 years, then standing up for yourself becomes a virtual impossibility.
	At least that's been my experience.
	Because they harden, right?
	They harden.
	It's like two carpets that overlap.
	One's got to be on top.
	And one's got to be on bottom.
	And it's not like you're going to rotate them.
	You just unroll them and whichever one's on top is on top and whichever one's on bottom is on bottom.
	Maybe you'll adjust them once and then that's it.
	That's it.
	That's how it stays until you move or you die and somebody gets rid of the carpets.
	And that's the way it is in so many relationships.
	There's a fixed way of being that this is the way things are.
	I am this way and I'm never going to be coached by you and I'm always going to be giving you advice.
	I'm always going to be the more knowledgeable one.
	And what happens then is you're limited because anything you get really good at, when you're in a relationship where somebody is dominating you, anything that you really get good at, the other person doesn't want to have anything to do with.
	Because that's your area of expertise and they have to avoid it.
	Like the plague, because it undermines the historical, I'm the carpet on top stuff.
	Anyway, listen, I know you've got to go to a class, so I hope this has been somewhat helpful.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And don't try and change people into becoming negotiators when they're dominant, especially if they've sort of passed 30 kind of thing.
	Maybe miracles happen, but I think people harden into these roles.
	Good point.
	Thanks for the call, man.
	It was really a great pleasure chatting.
	Thank you for having me on.
	You guys have a good one.
	Bye-bye.
	Alright, well up next is Jamin.
	He writes in and says, Isn't immigration just a form of free trade?
	If the real problem lies in the social programs that entice immigrants to a country, is energy spent fighting immigration misdirected?
	That's from Jamin.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I have some thoughts, but what do you think?
	Well, I know that recently you said that if people argue or disagree about things, If you reduce them to their fundamental principles, the universal principles, usually you can find the path of virtue.
	And if you reduce immigration, I mean, if somebody wants to come across the border and find work and come into a voluntary agreement to pay rent, there's nothing morally wrong with that.
	And the problem seems to come when there's free things that are being given to them.
	And, you know, I mean, I know you've said before It's not really people's fault for wanting to buy politicians because politicians are for sale.
	So, I mean, if free things are being given out, it's not people's fault for wanting to come and get those things.
	It's the people who are giving out those free things at our own expense.
	Those are what are causing the problem.
	Am I off base?
	Well, I mean, there's a lot in what you said.
	Look, I mean, I don't know if you're talking about America, but that's, of course, the most glaring example these days.
	Look, if people, let's say from Mexico, were coming across the border and working hard and getting jobs and so on, immigration would clearly be much less of an issue.
	Clearly.
	Clearly.
	But the fact is that in some immigrant populations, and in particular, of course, I'm thinking about the migrants from the Middle East, you've got 91% of them on food stamps.
	You know, among immigrants, you have 50 to 60% of the families on welfare.
	Now you have a problem.
	And it's funny how everybody looks to the host culture, the host civilization, and says, well, it's just up to you.
	It's like, do you know that if immigrants came across and committed to work hard and didn't do the anchor baby switcheroo and, you know, didn't jump on welfare and so on, then people would be a lot more welcoming.
	I don't know if you've ever had a house guest who's annoying.
	Certainly.
	But...
	But when you're young, if you're like me, like I lived in 18 places over a 10-year period for a variety of reasons, and you're constantly cycling in and out of roommates.
	And some roommates I didn't really care for, other roommates I have remained friends with to this day.
	And so this idea that it's like, well, just open up your house, so to speak, it's like, well, it does have something to do with what the immigrants do.
	And if there were sort of strong and stern lectures...
	What about, you know, so the Mexicans, if the Mexicans, right, let's just give them some power, right?
	Instead of just, you know, voting Democrat, as they generally do, and just going on welfare.
	Like, what if the Mexicans...
	Had this going on, right?
	So some Mexican family comes across the border illegally or something like that.
	And they go to wherever.
	I don't know where they go with a bunch of other Mexicans around and maybe they're there legally or not or whatever, right?
	Now, if these Mexicans sat down with these new arrivals and said, okay, listen, we are guests here and you're not even an invited guest.
	You're kind of living in the...
	In the ducks here, right?
	I mean, so the important thing here is that as Mexicans, we are very much respected and welcomed in this country.
	And the way that we do that is we make sure that we don't go on welfare, because obviously we've not paid into this welfare system, so we make sure we don't go on welfare.
	And we also make sure that we don't aggregate and vote for political advantage against the dominant culture.
	And we educate our own children so that we're not imposing our children's needs on the dominant population because that diverts resources away from their kids and so on, right?
	Because Spanish-speaking and different culture and so on.
	And so if they all sit down and say, okay, well, look, this is the situation.
	We don't like it in Mexico.
	We're coming to America.
	How is it that we can...
	Be the best possible and greatest model citizens, the best possible people in this environment, to the point where people are like, damn, these people are fantastic!
	And they don't pillage the public purse they've never paid into, they don't cause problems, they deal with, if there are any criminals, those people then ship those people back over the border themselves!
	There are situations by which immigrant groups can make themselves extremely positively received and welcome in a host country, in a host environment.
	And the idea that it's just one-sided, like it's only up To the dominant culture in America to like or not like the immigrants, regardless of how the immigrants behave.
	Well, it's nobody's obligation to like anybody.
	I mean, you don't have to like it.
	I mean, it's just a matter of, like, if, for example, The welfare were not available to them.
	But it is.
	Native households are using welfare at a rate of 30%.
	Immigrant households, 51%.
	Illegal immigrant households, 62%.
	More than twice.
	More than twice.
	So, what do you expect?
	I mean, what do people expect?
	Now, if the immigrant household says, well, the last thing we want to do is...
	Is make our presence here discomforting for the majority population.
	You know, the path to citizenship, if you want to call it, that's this big debate, right?
	A path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
	The path to citizenship is stop using the goddamn welfare state.
	Become model minorities.
	Be so undeniably positive and vibrant and appreciative and thankful and positive to American culture...
	The people will be, like, rushing to give you citizenship and take it away from white trash.
	Like, I don't know, right?
	But if you're going to come in and, you know, dump kids on a welfare state and vote against the interests of the majority productive population, well, you know, the...
	The perception that illegal immigrants have in America is not entirely unrelated to the behavior of illegal immigrants.
	And I mean, it's just a stupid example, but I remember once I had a really great debating partner when I was doing debating way back in the day in college, and I went to the Canadian debating finals, which were held in St.
	John's, Newfoundland at the time.
	And I went to stay with a friend of my father's who I actually spent a summer with when I was 16.
	He was a great marine biologist, a lot of fun.
	And we stayed at his place.
	They gave us hotels, but, you know, I chatted with the guy.
	It's like, oh, let's hang out.
	It was nice.
	Before, and...
	We went to the airport to try and leave, and the airport was closed.
	Why?
	Because it's Newfoundland, which means it's pretty much permanently foggy.
	This is the island you have no idea if you have cataracts or not, because it's just the way it is.
	Anyway, so I went back.
	I had to go back to the guy.
	I was very thankful that he had a place.
	There were no hotel chits, right?
	I was very thankful that he had a place for my friend and I to stay.
	Grateful.
	Wonderful.
	Thank you so much.
	This is incredibly kind.
	Over and above and beyond.
	I'm very grateful and very thankful for that.
	I offered to do the dishes and offered, you know, is there anything I can do?
	Like, just be someone who people welcome.
	And right now, I'm not entirely positive about That a lot of the immigrants who are coming in from the Middle East to Europe or from Mexico or wherever, right?
	I'm not entirely positive that they're acting in ways that make the majority of people really happy that they're there.
	Alright.
	I definitely understand that.
	But my fundamental argument is that the fact that the welfare exists in the first place is actually the core problem.
	And if it didn't, then they would have to find jobs, and they would have to pay their own way, and therefore they would have skin in the game when making government decisions.
	But there is the welfare.
	Understandably.
	The thing it wasn't is like, well, you know, if gravity was opposite, we could all fly to the moon.
	There is the welfare, and what that means is that you are getting a self-selected group of people coming into the country.
	And we can see from the numbers, illegal immigrants, more than twice the welfare consumption.
	And do you think that's all there is?
	Perhaps even more.
	Almost twice the welfare consumption.
	And so there is a welfare state, which means certain kinds of people are being attracted to that particular situation.
	Of course, not all.
	And, as a result, you have people who are more dependent on the welfare state than the domestic or legal population.
	So what are they going to vote for?
	They're going to vote for more welfare state.
	Right?
	So saying, well, you know, if we get rid of the welfare state, then the illegal immigrants will do hamana, hamana, hamana.
	It's like, well, the reality is, because people follow incentives, if enough people come in who take the welfare state at twice The household per capita population or twice the household ratio of the general population.
	If those people are coming in and digging themselves into the welfare state and voting, they'll vote for policies that extend and expand that welfare state.
	So the idea that, well, you know, if we didn't have the welfare state, then these immigrants would be different.
	The problem is that statistically, the more illegal immigrants who come into the country in America, The more intractable the welfare state becomes.
	Alright, well, my thought was, you know, I mean, we should be fighting that instead of specifically fighting, I mean, because We are justified in trying to fight against the...
	I mean, we're acting in self-defense of our own property when we fight against the welfare state.
	Yes, but do you understand that the immigrants as a whole, the illegal immigrants as a whole, are on the opposite side of you?
	That's fine.
	I mean, they don't have a right to take our property, though.
	No, no, no.
	You're not understanding.
	If you want to fight against the welfare state...
	The more illegal immigrants who come into the country, the less chance you have to get rid of the welfare state.
	All right.
	So, I mean, because it seems like the only way to stop immigrants from coming into the country is to have men with guns preventing them from coming into the country.
	Right.
	So, I mean, that's fundamentally opposed to, you know, it's not a virtuous way to go about handling a situation is to point men with guns.
	And people who are, you know, mostly trying to, you know, I mean, the ones that are trying to, you know, initiate free trade and they're out there.
	Well, but what I'm saying is that government programs lead to more government programs.
	I mean, this has been a very common reality of public choice theory and Austrian economic theory, that one government program leads to another government program.
	You didn't used to have to control immigration nearly as much, if at all, when there was no welfare state.
	Because people were allowed the right of disassociation in the past.
	That is the most fundamental right that is being robbed of people.
	And this is the entire root of the cause of the problem of the welfare state and of immigration.
	Okay, yeah.
	That's kind of what I would say.
	So if someone comes in, like, let's say...
	That you are some hateful bigot.
	Not you.
	Let's say that someone is some hateful bigot.
	Okay, so they have the right to not hire Mexicans or they have the right to not hire redheaded gay people or whoever they happen to be prejudiced against, right?
	Sure.
	Sure.
	And we have no problem with that fundamentally.
	The whole point of affirmative action is don't hire white people, particularly white men.
	Right?
	So we have no problem with disassociation, with ostracism, with rejection.
	But because of the welfare state and because of government schools and because of all of the problems of the commons, right?
	The welfare state is just another giant problem of the commons.
	But because of all of this, because people do not have the right to discriminate, because people must be forced to pay for other people whose practices and habits they may strongly disagree with.
	And this happens across all levels of the political spectrum.
	You know, Catholics are forced to pay for abortion, although they fight against it, and atheists are forced to pay for certain religious practices, particularly tax deductibility of churches and so on, and people who are environmentalists are forced to pay for roads, and people who are vegans are forced to pay for meat subsidies and all of this other stuff that goes wildly against everyone's conscience.
	And a culture...
	Has to work through rejection.
	I know this is so foreign a concept, maybe not to you, but just to other people.
	Culture, fundamentally, is the power of ostracism.
	And I mean by this beneficial culture, not delusory culture or whatever, which is sort of a differentiation I've come to over the last year or two.
	And so, if you don't have the capacity to reject people, Then you inevitably have to pile more and more government guns into the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise within society.
	And the right to reject is the only alternative to government power that exists and will ever, ever exist.
	The right to reject, the right to ostracize, the right to say no.
	So if you live in a little town And a family falls on hard times, you'll give them some help.
	You'll sympathize.
	But you'll be aware that you don't want to create dependence.
	Right?
	Charity is like morphine.
	Yeah, it's good in an extremity, but it's not something you want to end up really habituated to.
	Otherwise, you end up as Martha Henry in a Stratford play.
	Long day's journey in tonight.
	Everyone should read it.
	But, so in this small town...
	Everybody kind of knows each other and they'll help each other out.
	But then if they feel that they're being abused, if they feel that people are just not working when they could or, you know, the guy just takes the charity and goes down to the pub and drinks all day and has a blast and plays pool and foosball and air hockey and stuff, right?
	Well, then people are going to be like, no, no, no, no, no.
	That's not what this is for.
	This is for people who need help, not for people who don't feel like working.
	So you have the right of ostracism.
	You have the right...
	To give people charity and you have the right to withdraw it if they offend your sensibilities.
	Now the degree to which government comes in and crowds that out is the degree to which people forget that that works incredibly well because we're a social and tribal species and we need each other to survive and therefore ostracism is very powerful because it signifies either individual rejection from a tribe which usually meant death or gene death insofar as if the women all reject you you can't have kids and your genes die with you.
	And so the welfare state breaks the benevolent power of ostracism, which would be how a free society would self-regulate immigration.
	Let's say there was, I'm not going to, no statistics to back anything up in particular, but let's just say there were a population of green-haired people who lived next to where your society lived.
	And, you know, these greenhead people would come into your society and they were just really difficult.
	They fought.
	They drank.
	They fathered illegitimate children.
	They kept crowding on your private and voluntary charities.
	And they had weird rituals where they nailed goat hides to trees.
	They littered like crazy.
	They They played Creedence Clearwater Revival at 2 o'clock in the morning at Volume 11.
	They were just universally not great, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, if you have the right to ostracize, great.
	Then people will come flowing into your society, and people won't want to rent them a room, and people won't want to sell them groceries, and people won't, like, then they've got to go home.
	You can't survive without the voluntary participation of people in a civilized society, or any society for that matter.
	And so by breaking the power of ostracism, we end up with a wildly escalating and oscillating series of pendulum-style exaggerated government responses.
	Oh, because there's a welfare state.
	Well, now we need control over the immigration of the borders and we've got to round people up and send them out.
	It's like, and I get it.
	Yeah, if you didn't have the welfare state, but the problem is these people are generally voting for the welfare state, like four to one.
	So, please understand, I don't have any policy answers.
	Everyone's like, yeah, well, what's your answer?
	I'm not into short-term policy answers any more than a nutritionist is really great at giving you a tracheotomy.
	That's not my business.
	My business is to point out the moral problems with all the solutions.
	People say, ah, well, you see, but it's the initiation of force to prevent people from coming across A country border and so on.
	Yeah, okay.
	But it's the initiation of force when they get here and go on welfare.
	And it's the initiation of force largely against children and the unborn who are going to be responsible for the massive debts that these people are incurring through the welfare state and through the printing of money and through the selling of bonds and through the deferral of debt payments.
	So there's no answer that's moral in this situation.
	Yeah, I guess that was kind of what my question was.
	How do we justify that because people are pointing guns at us and saying, give us your money so that we can give it to the other people, therefore we need to point guns at other people?
	It seems really hard to justify.
	Where do you draw the line?
	But you see, you need to go and talk.
	I don't know why people are bothering so much about America in this situation.
	I mean, you know that guns in a giant wall is what keeps Israel, Israel, right?
	And you know that if you try to emigrate to Mexico, they'll basically stick you in a giant confetti can and fire you back over whatever border you came from.
	And if you want to try and go and emigrate into Japan, right, they will tie you to the bottom of a boat and send you back over the Sargasso Sea.
	Right?
	So, it's weird to me that since all countries are highly restrictive in their immigration policies, for the most part, except for the Western countries, they're pretty open.
	And only the Western countries get criticized for their immigration policies.
	You never, ever, ever see, well, okay, you know, there's a porous border on the south of America, but heaven's sakes, I mean, God, do you know that in Israel, they're paying the North African...
	Jewish population to leave the country and to take birth control.
	And so this idea that somehow we've got to really focus our exquisitely sensitive moral outrage on the most porous border in the world, you could argue.
	If you're not currently on the run from the American government, if Sarah Palin is not hot on your trail with a Goddamn blow dart and a blow torch and a spear-fishing gun, aka, if you're not Edward Snowden, yeah, kind of tough to immigrate into Russia.
	So this idea that we've got this exquisite moral sensitivity when it comes to America, I mean, we just got to be honest and say, well, it's not so much the borders, I just don't like, I don't want to run the risk of being called racist.
	Well, it's not really that for me.
	Personally, I see a border as an artificial line that protects us from competition.
	Because we have import taxes, which protect us from having to compete with other countries, and then we have a line that says, if you cross this, you're not supposed to come and work in our country, therefore we don't have to compete with the workers from those countries.
	And, you know, I mean, fundamentally, in a, you know, a purely voluntary society, that line wouldn't exist.
	I don't know why you're saying the same thing over and over again, like I've not said anything whatsoever.
	Of course these imaginary lines don't exist.
	I mean, yeah, but you're just saying the same thing over and over again, right?
	Well, that's what I'm saying.
	You're talking to an anarchist, so I accept that these...
	My question is, where's your outrage against Israel?
	Much, much more strict border controls than anything could ever be imagined in the European countries or in the North American countries.
	I have a lot of problems with Israel.
	Okay, so do you have a lot of problems with Mexico's very strict immigration policies?
	Certainly.
	Okay, good.
	Well, then I would just suggest, you know, in sort of the interest of fairness, that you spend a little bit of time talking about, say, the non-white countries.
	Because it just seems a little bit, because white people are kind of sensitive and they kind of care about multiculturalism and so on, it just kind of seems like everybody's picking on the white countries.
	I've got to be frank with you.
	I mean, I'm just telling you.
	This is how it appears to me.
	I'm not saying this is sort of fundamental proof to all of this.
	But white countries are the most porous and accept the most immigrants of any countries around the world.
	And it is generally only the white countries that people bitch out about immigration and borders.
	You understand that there's no proportionality to your criticisms if you're going to focus on the Mexican-American border and America's attempts to stem the flow of illegal immigration, that there's no proportionality.
	To this.
	Like, literally, you're stepping over someone strangling a hobo in order to get angry at somebody who might be double-parked and claiming that you're somehow being objectively moral in your outrage.
	Wow.
	That's a fair point.
	I mean, try any country.
	Try going to emigrate to South Korea.
	Try going to emigrate permanently to China.
	Way, way more restrictive.
	The Western countries accept by far the most immigrants.
	And I swear to God, it's like the whole world is simply training sensitive people to stop being sensitive.
	Because right now, I've got to tell you, right now, it pretty much seems that everyone's banging on the white people and on the white countries.
	And dogging on the white people and the white countries.
	Why?
	Not out of any objective moral sense, because when it comes to immigration, white countries would be the ones you would criticize the least out of all of history.
	But simply because it works.
	And because the white people tug their forelocks and bow down and say, okay, I'll give away the entire culture, the whole history, just don't call me a racist.
	Right?
	If you have any objective moral outrage towards Borders and immigration and efforts to protect the way of life of the host country.
	The last countries you would ever talk about would be North American and European countries.
	Ever.
	Because they are so far at the bottom of the list.
	of unjust immigration policies or unfair by any standard by the initiation of force.
	They are so far down on the list that the fact that they're always getting picked on despite the fact that they are by far the most generous countries to emigrate to legally or illegally makes no sense whatsoever and it just looks like picking on people who are sensitive to the issue.
	I mean if you go and talk to Japan and say hey Japan You need to take in 800,000 Muslims.
	You know what they say to you?
	Well, certainly we don't have a right to tell somebody they need to do something.
	You're not understanding what I'm saying.
	If you go to Japanese people or the Japanese government and say, you all need to take in 800,000 Muslims.
	They'd oppose it.
	They would laugh at you.
	Yeah.
	In fact, the Eastern European countries who labored under Muslim rule, under the Ottomans and other countries who labored under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, they're saying, back off.
	Go to Mexico and say, you need to open your borders to everyone else.
	They'll laugh at you.
	And so if you are really concerned about the initiation of force to protect the geographical area, the last place you would go to criticize would be Western countries.
	White countries.
	Well, for now, white countries.
	I mean, it would make no sense.
	It would make no sense at all.
	You're basically like saying, well, I'm really against alcoholism, and there are 14 guys ODing and dying from alcohol poisoning in a gutter, and you're stepping over for one guy who's having his first sherry of the week and knocking it out of his hand and screaming outrage.
	Well, I mean, we have the most control over what we do in America.
	I mean, we can not send money to Israel, and that would probably...
	You know, help that a lot.
	Ah, you see.
	Okay, fine.
	So now you're looking for efficacy.
	You're saying, well, you know, this is where we have the most control.
	Okay, then fine.
	Then say that and say it's got nothing to do with principles.
	Well, I mean, also...
	I'm just nagging the people who are stuck in my house.
	It's got nothing to do with principles.
	Because if you're saying, well, we have to do that which is most effective, that which works the best, and it's not about principle, then you have to accept that a population that consumes welfare at more than twice the rate of the domestic population is not people that you want in if you want to get rid of the welfare state.
	Because now we're talking about effect and control.
	If you want the U.S. voters to ever reject the welfare state, you've got to keep illegal immigrants from Mexico and from central and southern countries.
	America out of the country if all you're doing is focusing on effect and control and that which can be achieved.
	And if you're not throwing out principle, then the Western countries should nowhere be on your list of things to criticize because they're so far down the list of egregious control principles.
	of foreigners coming into a country.
	If you're with principle, you go yell at North Korea, you go yell at Russia, you go yell at Japan, and you go do all of that shit.
	And then in, you know, 500 years you can come and nag European countries and North American countries.
	If you're into principle, then you've got to focus on those who are most egregiously violating the principle.
	And if you're not into principle, then you've got to keep the illegal immigrants out because the effect will be that you'll never get rid of the welfare state.
	Well, based on the principle, yes, okay, we never get rid of the welfare state, but if we were able to get rid of the welfare state first, and then only had high-quality immigrants coming in because we're not giving them free things, so the ones that are willing to work, willing to volunteer, and we have the capability to ostracize them, Then we benefit as a country because we compete.
	But you're fairytailing.
	You're standing beneath a giant dam that is cracking and bursting with water overhead and is about to drown and deluge your entire town.
	And you're saying, well, you see, if there was no water on the other side of the dam, this would be an entirely different situation.
	Yes.
	It is an ideology.
	A non-existent situation because we've got to deal with the fact of what's happening.
	It is an ideology, but should we not pursue the ideology?
	I mean, that's where we want to be eventually.
	Okay, you tell me.
	Tell me how you get rid—and look, I'm open to this, right?
	I mean, if there's something I haven't thought of, Lord knows that's more than possible.
	Tell me, please, how do you get people to vote away the welfare state who are more than twice as likely as the domestic population to be dependent on the welfare state?
	I suppose you don't.
	Well, it's more than suppose.
	Until there's like an economic collapse because of the weight of the whole system.
	Right.
	And then the economic collapse happens and you have a whole bunch of low-skilled, no-work-ethic people in the country who get disproportionately hit by the end of the gravy train.
	And then what happens?
	When the government runs out of money, do you want more people on welfare or fewer people on welfare in the country?
	Nobody on welfare.
	No, you're not hearing.
	This is like, what if there was no water on the other side of the dam?
	When the government runs out of money, would you rather have more or fewer people on the welfare state?
	Fewer.
	Okay.
	So then we're in agreement.
	As far as the, again, I'm not talking policy.
	I'm just talking about the practicalities of the situation.
	I don't do political policy.
	What I'm saying is that if, since the government is going to run out of money, and if you agree that it's better to have fewer people dependent on the welfare state in the country when the government runs out of money, then that's a case to be made for blocking illegal immigration.
	Now, if you want the government to run out of money quicker, then that's a case for, yeah, let's bring them all in.
	I mean, yeah, it's a fair point.
	People say, oh, well, Steph, you've got to have your principles.
	It's the initiation of force to prevent people from coming across the border.
	There's no moral answer to this situation because the initiation of force is going to happen no matter what.
	This is not a situation where you can come up with an ethical answer.
	Because you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
	There's initiation of force if people come across the border and go disproportionately on welfare.
	That is the initiation of force against the domestic population.
	And it's the initiation of force to prevent them from coming in.
	Yay, statism!
	This is why I'm an anarchist, because otherwise you end up with these constant no-win situations where everyone's around bleating about, well, let's do the right thing.
	It's not possible to do the right thing in this environment.
	This is why statism is so toxic.
	But we can look at the consequences of various decisions for sure.
	We can certainly say it's generally worse for For the country, when the government runs out of money, if there are more people on welfare, which is a strike one against illegal immigration from South of America.
	And strike two is that, given that illegal immigrants don't seem to have much trouble voting, they're going to continue to vote for it.
	A path to citizenship is a path to more and more people coming in for the welfare state, which will bankrupt the country, which will be ghastly.
	See, when a crisis hits a country, People of a common culture will pull together.
	Now please understand, I'm not talking about the ideal 500 years in the future if we all work really bloody hard kind of world that we could have.
	I'm talking about the world that exists right now.
	Right now, human beings are fundamentally tribal.
	And when the shit hits the fan, the more culturally diverse a country, the worse it will be.
	Because it's one thing to sacrifice for your own tribe, which most Human societies are very willing to do.
	It's one thing to sacrifice for your own tribe.
	It's another thing to be forced to sacrifice your tribe for someone else's.
	People might get mad at me about this because, I don't know, they hate evolution.
	Evolution fundamentally is preference for gene proximity.
	That's all it is.
	Without preference for gene proximity, evolution doesn't work.
	We would not be here.
	Nothing would be here.
	No one would be here.
	The primordial soup would still be single-celled organisms having the worst orgy known to biology.
	Gene proximity is foundational to evolution.
	If you don't prefer your own genes and the genes who are similar to you, evolution in no way, shape, or form works.
	And that primitive aspect To human nature, which I have warned about repeatedly in this show, particularly when it comes to the European migrant crisis.
	It's buried by a lot of nicey-nicey stuff.
	Ooh, I like sombreros, and guacamole is tasty, and oh my, don't I love a good curry?
	And I do too.
	Absolutely.
	Music and food does not redeem the rest of it, as far as multiculturalism goes.
	But when the shit hits the fan...
	People will go.
	Ferocious.
	Gene proximity preference.
	Whether it's rational or not.
	Listen, when the Germans felt that the Jews, who were not gene proximity people, when the Germans felt that the Jews were taking over their country and stabbed them in the back through the Balfour Declaration at the end of World War I and were bringing communism into the country and like when they...
	Right?
	I'm not saying it's right!
	I'm just saying, these are the facts of biology.
	You know, Siegfried or Roy, or whichever one got attacked by that tiger, had that tiger for, I don't know, 10, 20 years?
	You know what?
	It's still a tiger.
	You know, my daughter was like, Dad, can we get a wolf for a pet?
	No!
	Why?
	It's always going to be a wolf, and it doesn't have the 6,000 years of neoteny infantilization that the breeding of wolves into dogs has had.
	No, we can't.
	Because when push comes to shove, it's still a wolf and it's still a tiger.
	And human beings are tribal predators.
	And you can push it down a lot and you can shame people or it doesn't get rid of human nature.
	It just bottles it up until it comes out in ways that are Shocking and ugly to anybody who doesn't know the first damn thing about biology and history.
	So, if we want to begin to limit the power of the state, and we wish to do this in a multicultural environment, we're going to have to pick one.
	Because people say, oh, you know, the northern, the Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Denmark, they're all so successful.
	Well, okay, maybe they're successful because they're gene homogenous to a large degree, or were until relatively recently, because it's really hard to shame people from outside your tribe.
	I mean, I was talking about that with the first caller, right?
	It's really hard to shame people outside of your tribe.
	And we can think of six million different evolutionary reasons why this would be the case.
	And listen, I think it's one of the great tragedies of life.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I mean, you know, the kumbaya, we're all in this together.
	There's no such thing as ethnic differences.
	There's no such thing as genetic differences.
	Man, I wish that were the case.
	God damn.
	I wish that, you know, when Kathy Reichs from Bones looked at a corpse, she said, I don't know, male or female, Caucasian, Asian, Tosh, I have no idea.
	Nope.
	One glance.
	And the skeletons are different.
	And I would like it if it wasn't the case.
	But, you know, if witches were horses, beggars would write.
	We have to deal with what is.
	And the process of dismantling the state is going to be enormously impeded by significant multiculturalism.
	And by multiculturalism, again, I'm not talking about I like this flute and you like that didgeridoo.
	I'm talking about very foundational differences about...
	The role of the state in society.
	And like it or not, it is Western society that has led the way, for the most part, in general, both theoretically and practically, has led the way in diminishing the power of the state.
	There was no Mexican Revolution that ended up with a tiny government as in 1776.
	I have skepticism about some aspects of the story.
	It's not particularly important right now.
	There was a theoretical framework that culminated in that.
	In that, if you look at the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution, it was night and day.
	If you look at the difference between the American Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917, night and day.
	You know, white, candy-ass, overly freckled, blue-eyed, blonde, Western European dudes in general are the ones who have dragged mankind kicking and screaming to the altar of small government.
	Not Mexico.
	Not Nicaragua.
	Not Panama.
	Not South Korea, not Japan.
	It's just the reality.
	You can't wish it away, because you can, but then you're just driving blind, flying blind.
	And it's hard enough even to get people who've got a strong cultural tradition of small government to even talk about small government, let alone no government.
	That's true.
	But I don't know.
	I mean, I went down to Brazil a couple of years ago, gave some speeches, some wonderful Brazilians down there.
	Loved chatting with them, loved meeting with them.
	Big libertarian movement in Brazil?
	No.
	This is not even getting into IQ differences.
	So, you know, I have the idealistic side and I have the side that wants to live in the platonic world of Perfect ethics and winsome choices that aren't ungodly compromises.
	I do and I have that aspect and that's the part of me, that's the part of my brain that I ferociously exercise during the writing of books like universally preferable behavior or practical anarchy or everyday anarchy.
	That is the crystalline abstraction and goal and destination of where we want to go and how we want to live.
	In the future.
	And then there's another side of me, which is a kick-ass, it's cold outside, get me a sweater, Lockean empiricist.
	Which is, okay, that is the crystalline perfect platonic structure of where we want to get to in the future.
	And here's where we are now.
	And in the future, after the dam bursts, maybe there won't be water on the other side of the dam, but right now there is.
	And if we ignore it, All we do is drown.
	I've got to move on to the next caller, but I really, really appreciate your call.
	Alright, thank you.
	Thanks, man.
	Alright, well up next is Daniel.
	Daniel writes in and says, If an 11-year-old boy shoots and kills his 8-year-old neighbor girl because she would not let him see her new puppy, should the father of the boy be sent to prison for murder?
	This is an actual event that happened just a few days ago and was the topic on our local talk radio station.
	Assuming the boy is otherwise quote-unquote normal, in general I think he should be put away for good unless he's taking some sort of SSRI drugs.
	Perhaps the father has been a bad parent, but also perhaps not and the kid just went crazy.
	My position is the father should not legally be held responsible for his child's actions.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, I read about this.
	Do you want to mention anything more just to sort of flesh it out for people who may not have Google at their fingertips?
	Well, it's been about a month by now, and I have been emotionally calmed down after listening to the talk radio show discuss this.
	All the callers calling in had their opinion.
	They're generally all saying the same thing, and I was really passionate on the subject, and I wanted to talk to you that day and hear your opinion, just to have someone else.
	Normally, you and I agree on Practically everything, and the fact that I was invited to talk to you today, I'm a little bit nervous that you're up for a debate.
	Well, maybe we'll agree, right?
	Who knows?
	Perhaps we'll agree, yes, I'm hoping.
	But either way, I'm very happy to be here.
	I'm glad you invited me, and thank you very much.
	So the little boy...
	I wanted to see the little girl's puppy.
	She said no.
	And then, what, did he go home and get a gun?
	Was it premeditated?
	I mean, I assume he didn't have a gun on him or something.
	Well, this is a trailer home park, and they have some videos you can watch online to see the window.
	She was shot through the window.
	He was inside the trailer, and she was outside with the puppy, one of her girlfriends.
	And he had, I'm assuming...
	Through the window, can I see her puppy?
	And she said no.
	And then, within seconds, I guess, the shot went through the window and hit her and killed her.
	And on the videos you're doing online, you can see the broken window and the reporters walking around the yard outside the trailer.
	That's about all they're saying.
	So, as far as was it premeditated, if it happened, as the reporters say, the gun would have been close by.
	The sheriff's report in what's published online says that the gun was kept in a closet, unlocked.
	And that's what a lot of the people were hitting on.
	A lot of the callers in the local talk radio show here were talking about that fact.
	My father should be in prison just for keeping the gun locked.
	We can set up all kinds of different scenarios, but anything more, I would just be taking guesses.
	Right, right.
	And you said most people who were called into the radio show had similar opinions, and what were their opinions?
	Most of them would be calling in because they were angry that the boy had access, I hate that word, access to a firearm and that firearms should all be locked.
	The father is totally responsible.
	He should not even have a gun in the house with children there.
	And a lot of the anti-gun people were doing most of the calling in.
	I'd say out of the 15 callers in the afternoon, Only two, I was one of them, called in and basically said, look, you know, there are, you know, unfortunate incidents like this when you have a, you know, society with guns, you know, and you only have a few minutes to talk, but this doesn't, you know, this one event doesn't mean you're better off without any guns.
	Oh, no, no, of course not.
	No, I mean, I, you know, I get that.
	This is not a gun control thing.
	Issue for me.
	The question more fundamentally is, who should be charged?
	Yeah, a lot of people weren't even talking about the boy.
	No questions were asked.
	Was he mentally stable?
	Were there previous incidents?
	Clearly, he wasn't mentally stable.
	If he feels that if he can't get a puppy, he can shoot a gun.
	Whether he aimed or not, I don't know.
	But the reality is that If you have, you know, let's just take the kid out of the situation for a moment.
	So let's say that I have a dog and I torture the dog and I starve the dog and I beat the dog and I chain the dog up and I freak the dog out.
	And then I turn the dog loose into a playground and the dog bites the kid, who's responsible?
	Well, that's what's going through my head.
	You know, I can think of scenarios where I would want to personally kill the father if he trained the kid to kill, you know, in that manner.
	But, you know, most likely, and this is just a guess, you know, the kid is just a nutcase.
	Wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
	Where do you jump to the kid's just a nutcase?
	That doesn't explain anything.
	How do you know he's a nutcase?
	Well, he did nutty things.
	Well, that's a tautology, right?
	I mean, so he does nutty things and you call him a nutcase, but you haven't, you haven't, Added anything to the equation, right?
	That's correct.
	My first thoughts are, and I put myself in a situation, if my kid were to do something like that, I feel that I've been responsible, but I would get the same treatment from the callers.
	I would be, you know, hearing, you're a bad father, you're a bad, you know, person, and this society shouldn't have left the guns unlocked, and, you know, I've done everything...
	Well, again, let's stay off the guns for a second, because that's a sort of separate issue.
	Right.
	But...
	Maybe he was a bad father.
	Right, and I mentioned it.
	Maybe he was.
	Now, if he was a bad father, I mean, if he tortured and brutalized and, you know, let's just take ridiculous extremes that are obviously purely theoretical, you know, like if he pimped his kid out to pedophiles for five bucks in a six-pack, then clearly, you know, the kid was driven crazy by endless amounts of abuse.
	And as a result...
	Then the father would be responsible for the actions of the child, right?
	I agree with that.
	And that doesn't mean that you can let the kid free either.
	That's another problem I have.
	I don't know how this is solved in terms of, you know, is there any amount of therapy or whatever it is that could...
	I don't know.
	I mean, that would be for recidivists and criminal psychologists and all that to figure out.
	I don't know.
	But...
	Yeah, you would have to do a significant investigation into how the child was treated, right?
	You would immediately freeze the crime scene and you would go in and you would look for evidence of abuse.
	And you would check out the medical records of the kid and see if he'd ended up in hospital with unexpected or unexplained broken bones.
	and you would check to see whether the kid was in school and you'd talk to the teachers and you'd talk to...
	And if the child had a history of violence, then the father is responsible.
	Because if my dog goes crazy and bites people in my house, and I know that, then I let that kid out unsupervised.
	Let that dog out unsupervised.
	Yeah, I know that my dog is violent.
	I let that dog go run around in a playground.
	Even if I didn't cause the violence of the dog.
	Let's just say the dog has a brain tumor.
	It's eating away its neofrontal cortex or whatever the hell keeps dogs from turning into wolves, and he's gone all wolfy.
	He's gone full lycanthrope, right?
	So if I know that the dog is violent and bites people, even if I didn't cause it, I'm still responsible for releasing it into a playground, right?
	Boy, I can't argue with anything you've said, but none of the callers calling in would, you know, elaborate like that.
	It was just, boy, jump on that gun issue and assume that the father...
	I mean, but you're 100% right.
	Everything you just laid out, I agree with.
	If the kid had some...
	I'm sorry.
	The only way that the father could not be charged, in my humble opinion, or whatever the equivalent would be in a free society, but the only way that the father would not be charged would be if it turned out that the child had some sudden onset undiagnosed personality disorder.
	Altering medical condition.
	Again, some brain tumor or whatever it was.
	Some lesion, some hemorrhage, some aneurysm that cut off whatever and lost a seed of reasoning and became feral.
	If there was some completely undiagnosed, no history of violence, then it's like, wow, that's terrible.
	You had epilepsy right at the cliff edge and you fell off.
	That's really tragic and awful all around.
	But that would be the case.
	And I consider that to be so highly unlikely.
	That, you know, it's like saying, well, you know, I don't need to save any money because I'm just going to play the lottery.
	I mean, yeah, it could be, but I wouldn't put any money on it at all.
	People don't just shoot people.
	Motorists don't just pop, oh, had a bad day, got out of bed on the wrong side, and next thing you know, I'm shooting people, right?
	I mean...
	I did a video a couple of years ago called How to Make a Monster, which went into the history of a mall shooter in the US and everything that led up.
	You know, we did it with Dylann Roof and we did it with Elliot Rodger and we've done it with a bunch of other shooters.
	They don't just appear out of nowhere.
	Got a whole free audio book written by Lloyd DeMoss.
	It's called The Origins of War in Child Abuse, which you can get at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	This does not come out of nowhere.
	You know, there is something called the warrior gene.
	We're just working on a presentation about that.
	And the warrior gene is associated with...
	I won't get into the mechanics of it, but it's associated with significantly higher levels of aggression.
	And if you combine the warrior gene with good parenting, well...
	You get a nice person who may be a little bit more assertive than normal, but that's okay.
	We can have people with three balls walking around to society.
	They still have a place to sit.
	However, if you take people who have particularly the two-repeat version of this gene, if you take those kids and you expose them to child abuse, they are ten times more likely to become aggressive.
	If you don't have these genes, And you are exposed to child abuse, you don't become that aggressive, right?
	I mean, I hope this explains some mysteries to people as to why, you know, my brother and I went through the same childhood, but he became like this criminal and I became a non-criminal.
	Well...
	Some of it has to do with the luck of the draw genetically.
	Maybe he had this double allele of the warrior gene, which meant that if he's exposed to child abuse, he's got a ten times higher likelihood to become aggressive.
	And maybe you didn't have this, so no amount of child abuse was going to turn you that way.
	But this shouldn't be considered determinism.
	At all, because nobody knows ahead of time.
	You know, some people can smoke like chimneys their whole lives and never get sick.
	Other people have like 12 cigarettes and their head explodes, right?
	Some people can eat really badly and be overweight and live to be like 80.
	And other people drop dead of a heart attack when they're running their 14th marathon at the age of 12.
	I don't know, right?
	So we don't know ahead of time, which is why we have to deal with things ethically.
	So I would, you know, again, if I was a betting man...
	And I can't because betting is too much fun.
	I have to stay away from the tables.
	But if I was a betting man, the amount of money that I'd put on some undiagnosed sudden onset medical condition that turned the kid feral, I wouldn't put one thin dime of somebody else's money on that.
	I'd be almost certain that we would look at the parenting.
	But the fact that there are...
	Remotely unlikely scenarios where it is possible.
	Maybe he had a friend that got him hooked on crack cocaine at age 11.
	There are possibilities.
	Wait, hang on.
	Are you saying that's got nothing to do with parenting?
	It has a lot to do.
	I mean, actually, I'm very much from the point of view that the whole problem with America is the lack of parenting.
	I think you got down to having a good set of parents in the house 90% of America's promise would go away.
	I'm an engineer.
	There are possibilities.
	Just the fact, I got so angry that day that everyone was calling in without discussing it like you've just laid out.
	That, yeah, 99.9% of the chances this is going to be a result of some kind of abuse or unhealthy situation that the kid's been put in at home.
	But, boy, why not mention that?
	They immediately went to the guns, and that got me angry.
	So I immediately would take the opposite stance.
	Well, maybe it's It's possible that it was just maybe he was influenced by friends at school or abused by a teacher or another person in the community that got him this way.
	Not likely.
	Look, that's still the parent's responsibility.
	It's still the parent's responsibility.
	You're in charge of your children's mental health until they turn 18.
	You are in charge of your children's mental health until they turn 18.
	It doesn't matter.
	Or some kid got him addicted to cocaine.
	It's like, well, why the hell is he interested in cocaine to begin with?
	Why the hell is that kid around?
	Why doesn't the parent know that this is a bad kid?
	Why doesn't the parent know that the kid's on drugs?
	Why doesn't...
	Oh, he got abused by a teacher.
	Well, why didn't he come home and say to his parents, I was abused by a teacher.
	You got to do something.
	And why don't the parents move heaven and earth, do whatever it takes to keep...
	The kid out of the power, control, or orbit of their teacher.
	Like, I'm sorry, there's nothing that can happen.
	The parents are in charge of the mental health of the child until the child is an adult.
	So there's some outside influence that could happen.
	Sorry, you're the parent.
	You're the filter.
	You're the person who is responsible for keeping your kids safe.
	Well, why does it end when it's 18?
	You know, why not...
	Whatever the adult thing is, because at some point there's moral autonomy, right?
	At some point you graduate from grade 3 and you go to grade 4.
	You don't stay in grade 3 forever and you don't stay in moral dependence forever.
	Is this personal to you in some way?
	No, not at all.
	Okay, just wanted to check.
	Because you seem to be bothered by some of this perspective.
	Yeah, the last point you brought up, you know, when you turn this magical age of 18, all of a sudden, boop, all the rules change.
	Or it's like an adopted son versus a, you know, maternal son versus maybe a guardian situation.
	You know, all these...
	You're all still responsible.
	Listen, let's say that there's some kid who had fetal alcohol syndrome and has...
	I think one of the kids of one of the prime ministers of Canada, Jean Chrétien, he adopted a kid, if I remember rightly.
	This is off the top of my head, so please go and check it yourself if you're more interested.
	Kid had fetal alcohol syndrome, got into lots of trouble.
	Okay.
	Kid has fetal alcohol syndrome, and he's going to get into lots of trouble, which means that you as a parent are responsible for that child's damage in society because you know that he can be dangerous.
	Which means, like it or not, you have to be out there with your kid when he's playing with other kids and hovering over and making sure he doesn't get too aggressive.
	I mean, that's the job.
	Mike checked and said that the boy came from a family with six children.
	They cannot say if he had any mental problems right now, but DCS is investigating.
	But we won't know for some time, and we may never know.
	Because, you know, you're not one of them, but there are a lot of guilty parents out there.
	Who don't like this idea.
	And when the kids go off the rails, which to some degree, you know, you can listen to some of my interviews with the experts for some other perspective, but to some degree, kids who go off the rails, I believe, go off the rails as a result of child abuse.
	And is it all kids?
	I don't know.
	Is everyone who goes to jail guilty?
	Well, far from it, even by current legal standards.
	But I don't know.
	But that's the first place to look.
	And a lot of times when people start to talk about...
	The parents of shooters, it's weird.
	They're portrayed as victims.
	It just happened to them.
	They had a bad seed.
	Or maybe this is what religion does for some people, is abusive parents get to blame.
	I'm not saying you.
	I'm not saying you're abusive.
	I'm not saying you would take this approach, of course, right?
	But, you know, some parents take the, well, you see, he was a great kid, but the devil, the devil made him do it.
	But the reality is that if the kid goes off the rails, somebody was driving the train.
	And it either happened over time, in which case the parent is responsible for the protection of the other children in the neighborhood, or it happened really suddenly, which is very, very unusual.
	And, you know, I mean, with all the shooters we've looked into, yeah, there were signs, to say the least, right?
	Yeah, I bet you there were signs.
	And I'm sure that 99.9.
	I feel vulnerable when I think about it from the way you've laid it out.
	Say my child turns 17 and I refuse to let them do something and then for revenge want to send dad to jail, they go out and do something crazy.
	That's not going to happen out of nowhere.
	I'm telling you.
	I'm telling you.
	That doesn't...
	Okay, teenagers, you know, they're not always making the very best decisions in the world and so on.
	But this does not just happen out of nowhere.
	You keep the lines of communication open.
	You are available to help problem solve.
	You are a genuine, warm, and safe and motivating inspiration to virtue and communication in their lives.
	And you give them as much flexibility and freedom as you can.
	And you're there to support them and be a soft place for them to land.
	They're not going to say...
	Oh, I'm mad at Dad because he wouldn't do X, Y, and Z, so I'm going to just go out and commit a crime.
	Right?
	Come on.
	Look, and you're a smart guy too, and, you know, like it or not, the sweet spot for criminality is between 80 and 90 IQ. Tragically.
	And again, most people who have 80 to 90 IQ, perfectly peaceful.
	And there's certainly criminals elsewhere in the intelligence spectrum.
	But the cluster of criminality is around 80 to 90 IQ. And, you know, obviously that's significantly genetic, though not entirely.
	And, you know, if you've got smart kids and you've been a decent parent, not perfect, who knows what that even means.
	But if you've got smart kids and you've been a decent parent, it's not going to happen.
	Yeah, I don't really feel vulnerable.
	But in a way, it's...
	But talk to your kids about your vulnerabilities.
	Don't wait for anything to happen.
	In my suggestion, if you can't be open within your family, who can you be open with?
	If you can't talk to your family about your hopes and fears, who can you talk to?
	Sit down with your kids.
	If you've got a son who's in his teenage years, sit down with him and say...
	Can I tell you the crazy thought that's been rolling round and round in my head?
	It's driving me crazy.
	Like the idea that you're just going to suddenly go off the rails is terrifying to me.
	I look at these other parents, these other kids.
	Where are you at?
	You don't have to comfort me or anything because I'm still the dad.
	I'm just being charged.
	But I really wanted to be honest about some of the fears that I have about you.
	Some of my friends growing up, who I assumed had normal, healthy homes, You know, went off the rails, and I'm like, wow, that came out of nowhere.
	Boy, I've seen a couple of my friends go through that.
	It seems as though it could happen to the best of poems.
	But maybe, you know, maybe I didn't know the circumstances of their home life, just their, you know, facade at school.
	Well, of course, the parents, if the parents are, and this is not, right, I get that this is sort of a circular argument, but the motive is very clear, that if the parents were abusive, Then they have every incentive to portray themselves as innocent in this matter.
	I mean, every significant incentive from every conceivable angle.
	But I don't believe...
	I've been having conversations with Mike Cross about this years ago.
	I don't believe that if you see a kid with a broken arm, something or someone broke it.
	He didn't just wake up with it spontaneously shattered.
	And if there's a kid with a broken mind, something or someone shattered it.
	Now, obviously, if you have some god-awful bone-eating cancer or something like that, then yeah, you've got to...
	But that's very rare.
	I think that the mind is broken by people.
	And there are exceptions.
	You can't make a blanket statement about it.
	Yeah, I tend to do that.
	I tend to, when I hear the word, is it possible, you know, on a test in college, is it possible, you know, well, geez, in an animated cartoon, anything is possible.
	So I get put off guard or, you know, tilted one way as soon as I hear that.
	And, you know, it is very remotely, it's not likely, I've never run into it in my life where a scenario like this turns out to be a freak.
	You know, there's something not underlying, like a bad abusive home or something.
	You're right, but when I hear the, you know, the word, is it possible that this kid had an otherwise normal home life and just went crazy?
	Well, yeah, but I agree with everything you've said.
	I don't have...
	But even if they went crazy, it's still the parents' responsibility, right?
	You don't just, as a parent, you don't get to say, well, my kid's acting erratically and is, you know, skinning rabbits and, you know, stapling them to little girls' dresses and he's keying cars and, you know, he's peeing in people's Cheerios and you say, well, you know, I guess we just got a bad kid.
	You've still got to do something, right?
	You're still responsible for the safety of other people in your kid's environment.
	Yeah, I'm saying it.
	They have a tumor.
	They woke up one morning and had a cancerous tumor that caused their brain to malfunction.
	That's Yeah, I gotta tell you, I've looked into this stuff for many years.
	Many years.
	And, you know, obviously I'm not an expert, but I've not found one case where some kid went haywire and what do you know, they had a brain tumor.
	Not found one.
	I'm sure it's out there.
	Haven't found one.
	You know, I mean...
	You know, when you hear someone died of lung cancer, you think smoker, right?
	Although, you know, what is it?
	A couple of percentage points of lung cancers are not caused by smoking.
	Andy Kaufman died of that, if I remember rightly.
	He wasn't a smoker.
	So, you know, you hear lung cancer, you think smoker.
	Doesn't mean you're 100% right, but it's not a bad first guess.
	And, you know, you can look at my interview with Dr.
	Kevin Beaver.
	We had some great criminologists on this show.
	I've never seen the, well, you know, remember that 25% of criminals have brain lesions and brain tumors.
	Like, there's nothing like that.
	There's no...
	Well, it's not that, whatever it is, right?
	I think it's a combination, and this is not more than I think.
	The evidence is, my friend, that it's a combination of bad parenting and unfortunate genes.
	And bomb in the brain, you know, people can go through that sequence of presentations, still some of the most important stuff I've ever done.
	But it's a combination of bad environment plus bad genes.
	And because we don't know the genes of our kid, we need to provide the best possible environment.
	You know, be shitty if you...
	Oh, my kid doesn't have any of the warrior...
	Let's take a simple example.
	My kid doesn't have any of the warrior genes, so I don't need to give a shit about them.
	I can hit them all over the place, and I can push them downstairs, and they're never going to become criminals.
	I almost don't want parents to know this stuff, so to speak, right?
	You know, it's like, don't test for the warrior gene.
	And please, this is not a one-size-fits-all explanation for everything to do with this stuff.
	But you don't know what kind of kid you're going to have.
	You don't know what random pop-ups you're getting in the genetics sphere.
	You don't know the interaction between environment, genetics, and epigenetics that's going to have an effect on your kid.
	And so you have to act prudently.
	You have to act.
	We need morality because we don't know the future.
	Right?
	I mean, if somebody knew...
	Had this kind of George Burns situation, that Garden Dome slash comedian who smoked cigars every day and lived to be like 100 or something like that.
	Okay, well, if you know you're going to live to be 100, then I guess you feel more comfortable not quitting smoking cigars.
	Unlike Freud, who smoked like 20 cigars a day and had unbelievably horrifying and repetitive cancers that ate up his face and jaw and all that, he should have quit.
	People said to him, you know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
	I hate that phrase.
	Oh, I hate that phrase.
	Because it was told by a liar.
	Because people said to Freud, well, if you're so into self-knowledge and you're such a healer and you're so good at knowing what makes people tick, why are you still so hopelessly addicted to cigars?
	What do they represent to you?
	And he said, well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
	It's not.
	And of all the people who would say that, A man involved in an incredibly self-destructive habit that mutilated, wounded, and killed him.
	Yeah.
	That's not just a cigar.
	Anytime you talk about anything deep that might be around people, they can wave this Freudian, oh, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
	Don't overthink things.
	Don't think so deep, man.
	Just relax and enjoy.
	Sometimes a cigar is a little.
	The few phrases I'd scrub from the English language if I could, and one of them would be, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
	Well, tell that to Monica Lewinsky.
	Anyway, sorry, you were going to say?
	I've never uttered that phrase.
	I've heard it several times.
	I've never used it myself.
	Yeah, it's whenever you get close to people's emotional defenses, they pull out this Freudian avoidance mechanism.
	Anyway.
	Do you mind if I get to the next caller?
	I really appreciate the call, and I appreciate your passion for these issues, and I hope that you'll have a chat with your kids, because I'm sure they'll do fine.
	I appreciate your time.
	I really do.
	Thank you very much.
	Thanks, man.
	Great pleasure.
	Bye-bye.
	Alright, well up next is Omar.
	Omar wrote in and said, why is learning certain pickup artist skills, such as how to talk to women you think is attractive, bad if for some guys you genuinely were only capable of sabotaging yourself without them?
	That's from Omar.
	Hello.
	Right.
	Hi, Omar.
	How you doing?
	I'm doing great.
	How about yourself?
	Good.
	I'm doing good because I have no idea what language means.
	I'm doing well.
	Thank you.
	Hopefully I'm doing good too.
	But I'm doing well.
	So, are you shy around girls you're attracted to?
	Well, not anymore.
	I used to be...
	I used to not even be able to look at them in the eyes.
	Like, if I liked them, I couldn't...
	Is there any other dits?
	Is that...
	No, no, no, no.
	Like, I wouldn't talk to them and I... You see through these nipples, right?
	I mean, this is...
	No, I wouldn't even have the courage to even say hi to them in the morning.
	You know, when I was going to school, I'd just walk into the classroom, talk to all the ones that I didn't like, and wish I could.
	Now, why do you wish you could?
	I'm going to make the case that I think male shyness, Omar, is highly underrated.
	But anyway, tell me, so why did you wish you could?
	So I could get to know them, go out with them, I guess.
	And why did you want to go out with them?
	Not women as a whole, but these women in particular.
	Because they were attractive.
	Physically attractive.
	Right.
	They were pretty.
	Maybe your shyness was your brain trying to stop your penis from killing you.
	Hmm.
	Maybe it's a bad idea to want to go out with a woman just because she's pretty.
	Maybe that's a terrible idea.
	Maybe your shyness is your virtue saying, steer clear of the high cheekboned acid vagina that's going to eat you alive.
	Maybe, but I do recall the times that I might have started liking a girl that I didn't find as much As attractive as, let's say, girl A, I find her extremely attractive, but I never talk to her.
	And then girl B, I find reasonably attractive, but I don't like her.
	And then after a while of talking to her, I like her.
	And at that moment, the girl stops liking me because I shifted my mindset towards her.
	I'm sorry.
	I was doing well until about halfway through it, so if you can run me through that scenario again.
	Okay, sorry.
	I didn't rehearse this part at all, so I'm going to have a hard time.
	Okay, so in the past, what happened...
	Just think of me as a totally hot chick.
	Do you want to know what I'm wearing?
	No.
	A smile?
	A smile and a diaphragm.
	Anyway, it's very cool.
	Oh my god.
	Okay, so what would happen to me in the past is there would be girls that I liked for who they are and I just hung out with them.
	And you weren't shy with them?
	Not when I didn't have the intention of Escalating the relationship.
	I don't know how to say that.
	You know, when you were in the friend zone with them, you weren't shy.
	Exactly.
	Right?
	Okay.
	Got it.
	And then when your penis rose, your confidence fell, right?
	Yeah.
	All of a sudden, I would start acting in really dumb ways and just pushing them away, basically.
	And did you ever have experienced, Omar, when you were a kid, of seeing any self-destructive Aspects or elements to male sexuality?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm sure I did, yes.
	Not that I can remember.
	I don't know.
	You sound theoretically like, have you ever seen a cloud?
	I'm sure I did.
	I can't remember any.
	Right?
	So, and I'm asking, so did you ever see a guy who dated the wrong girl and ended up in some god-awful breakup or some god-awful divorce or who got a stalker or, you know, whatever, right?
	I mean, just the girl, they broke up and then she's like, dissed him to all the friends or like, did you ever see when you were growing up somebody who got dicknapped and then it just went from bad to worse?
	In other words, they followed their sexual desires and impulses and it just went bad.
	Well, you could say pretty much everybody around me.
	All right.
	So they had PTSD, which is post-traumatic sex disorder, which is, you know, they dipped their wick in crazy and went up in flames, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, everybody really seems to have a lot of issues around where I live.
	Just in general, everybody I meet seems to have incredible issues that seem to not really...
	Like, they just have problems, you know what I mean?
	Like...
	No, I don't know what you mean.
	Issues and problems are so generic.
	It's like they're carbon-based life forms.
	You know what I mean?
	Kind of, but I'm not sure how it advances what we're chatting about.
	Sorry, I have a way of just assuming everybody already knows what I'm talking about.
	So what you were talking about with one of your previous callers about people arguing about the dumbest things in the world, like who left the jacket in the wrong place.
	Right.
	So yeah, that's the kind of things that I saw around the houses.
	Okay, so penis carries a heavy burden.
	Penis pays a heavy price, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	No, and I saw this when I was growing up.
	I'm trying to put my experience onto yours, but I grew up in the matriarchal manner.
	There's a whole bunch of pretty low-rent single moms, and any of the guys who were around were Not the apex of male quality, to put it as nicely as possible.
	And they were just pussy beggars, right?
	And so the idea that male sexual desire is a very dangerous force for a man, well, that's an important thing to know, right?
	I mean, we have this kind of thing.
	It's like sociopaths are training us in self-confidence.
	Well, you've got to bust through your terror and you've got to break through your anxiety and any fears or inhibitions you have, just push through them.
	Ignore them.
	Step over them like bodies on a careless street.
	Push on through.
	Just get what you want.
	Don't let any fear hold you back.
	Fear is actually very, very helpful in this world.
	And the idea that We should not feel anxiety or caution or apprehension or downright terror when in the presence of women whose mere physical attractiveness is what is motivating us.
	Well, that's crazy, man.
	That's when you should be on DEFCON infinity, on high, high alert.
	And again, it's not because attractive women are bad fundamentally or anything like that, but...
	Particularly when they're young and they're at the height of their sexual market value.
	Well, they have a lot of power.
	And there are some people that power does not corrupt as much, but they're usually not 17.
	So what I'm saying is that when you get sexually attracted to a woman, your caution and concern...
	Might be very healthy.
	If you've seen male sexuality wreck men before.
	Oh, I don't even know how to respond to this, to be honest.
	See, there's a theory.
	There's a theory.
	I don't know how true it is, but I'll tell you the theory.
	And the theory goes something like this.
	That women do not fall in love with a man.
	The way that a man falls in love with a woman.
	And let's talk about Billy Joel.
	We don't talk about BJ's enough on this show.
	Let's talk about Billy Joel.
	So Billy Joel, have you ever heard the song Uptown Girl?
	No, I'm not.
	Oh, come on.
	Seriously?
	Uptown girl, you've been living in your uptown world.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, you know the one, right?
	So, Billy Joel.
	Nice enough guy, but he looks like a cross between an undertaker and a basset hound.
	A great singer.
	Like, fantastic singer.
	Great pianist and all that.
	So, in...
	In the video, and I'm sure you can catch this on YouTube, but in the video for Uptown Girl, Uptown Girl is a song he wrote for Christie Brinkley, who was like the top supermodel, I don't know, the 80s or whatever the hell he put that Innocent Man album I think he came out of.
	And in this, he's like, he's singing, he's dancing, he's chasing after her, he's offering her things and so on.
	And what's she doing?
	Why?
	She's walking.
	So he's got to have a great singing voice and lots of money.
	He's written her whole dedicated song.
	He's got a whole production company.
	He's got his dancers.
	He's chasing after her.
	And she brings a walk to the table, right?
	I mean, you see this compensation factor, right?
	Uh-huh, yeah.
	His job is to perform.
	Her job is to look pretty.
	Yeah, his job is to bring, like, me plus, plus, plus.
	And she brings, I'm pretty.
	Right?
	I'm sure there's other things to her.
	I'm just talking about the video, right?
	I mean...
	And I don't know about you, and you can certainly share with me, Omar, your experiences, but when I was younger, while I fell in love, I went insane.
	I went insane.
	I felt like this yearning inside of me, this desire for connection, this hunger for completion, like I fell hard.
	And I'm not alone in that.
	I had a question.
	How long did it take you to fall in love with someone?
	Well, I mean, now that I've been joyfully married for 13 years, I'd say it's a little bit different.
	But when I was younger, maybe two, three months.
	Okay, okay.
	Sorry, indeed.
	I mean, the yearning and all of that, like, the yearning was so strong.
	And, you know, if you look at male accomplishments, men are driven by such mad ambition, crazy ambition.
	It's a form of sexual display.
	It's a mating display, right?
	You know, for women, tools of the trade are a makeup shop, and for a man, it's petroleum engineering college or whatever.
	It's everything.
	So, a man goes crazy for a woman.
	And there's lots of philosophers throughout history and artists and so on who have likened romantic love to a form of madness.
	To a form of madness.
	Now, a woman cannot afford that, biologically.
	Because for a woman, falling head over heels in love, in lust, we should probably say.
	This is both for men and for women.
	But for a woman to fall head over heels in lust throughout most of our evolution as a species prior to the welfare state was sometimes literally suicide.
	Because if she got pregnant by the wrong guy, that was it for her.
	That was it.
	She could be cast out.
	And so men fall head over heels in love, but women calculate.
	Because a man is trying to get access to fertile healthy eggs, but a woman is trying to get access to 20 years worth of massive resources.
	So a man will fall head over heels in love, And it is a very dangerous state of mind to be in.
	Because the woman is not doing that.
	Again, we're talking prior to the welfare state.
	The woman is calculating.
	And she should be.
	This is not a cynical or negative view of women.
	This is just the inevitable biological effects of the wildly disproportionate investment and costs for childbearing between men and women.
	And so...
	The value that a young woman brings to a young man is immediate and obvious.
	Facial symmetry, hip-to-waist ratio, right amount of subcutaneous fat, lustrous hair, clear skin, white teeth, whatever it is, right?
	All that indicate genetic fitness and fertility, right?
	Right there.
	Boom.
	Don't have to gamble on it.
	Don't have to wait that maybe it's going to come around later.
	Boom!
	Right there.
	Uh-huh.
	And so the balls are like, Go get him, tiger!
	Get him, get him, get him, get him, right?
	But the women can't afford that enthusiasm.
	The women are putting their eggs on the table and saying, in return, I need at least a quarter century of 90% of your resources.
	And those resources better be significant.
	And a woman feels more pride the more resources her eggs can command.
	And that's exactly how it should be.
	This is not a complaint in any way, shape, or form.
	It's just the reality.
	And I've asked before, did anyone ever expect George Clooney to marry Melissa McCarthy?
	Or Amy Schumer?
	No.
	George Clooney is going to marry Emile or whatever her name is, right?
	This lustrous-haired grasshopper with a law degree, right?
	And The amount of resources that a woman's beauty can command is something that she takes great interest in.
	And just as men try to present themselves as sometimes better than they are, more wealthy or with more potential than they are, the woman will try to present herself as more fertile and more attractive as she is.
	And it's this game.
	And it's a very serious game because it's why we're all here and why we've evolved.
	And so when a man falls in love, he loses his mind.
	Because he should.
	Because the woman is the one who's supposed to say yes or no.
	This is why I criticize single moms.
	It takes two to tango.
	No, it doesn't.
	It's a man's job to propose, and it's the woman's job to say yes or no.
	I mean, sexuality, right?
	Marriage, whatever, right?
	And so...
	Sorry.
	So, are you saying I should fall head over heels over a woman?
	No, you will.
	Like it or not?
	Okay.
	I wish.
	That'd be nice.
	No, you will.
	You will.
	And if you're sensible...
	See, in the past, a man could fall head over heels in love with a woman, and he could trust the woman to be his brain.
	Right?
	I've been talking prior to birth control, prior to the welfare state.
	And it's no accident that the welfare state came along right after birth control.
	But, um...
	So the man could fall head over heels in love and pursue the woman with all the mad magic of his desire and he could rely on the woman to say yes or no.
	Right?
	And that's fine.
	That's natural and that's how it should be.
	Now when the welfare state comes along, it's a whole different situation.
	And when family court comes along and alimony and child support and you name it, all that comes along.
	Because then what happens is the woman has lost Almost all of her biological incentives and desire to say no.
	Or not until you've put a ring on it, right?
	So she gets married.
	She gets commitment from the man.
	So the woman's standards could be lower.
	The man can have sex with her.
	She can get pregnant.
	In the past, she would have said no and gritted her teeth and crossed her legs until she got the commitment from the man to marry her.
	But now he can get her pregnant in his mad feverish state of romantic and sexual desire and then his life is over.
	Right?
	The welfare state plus family court, alimony, child support, you name it, feminism to a large degree, has made a man's sexuality incredibly dangerous to him.
	Because if he sleeps with the wrong woman, his life can be destroyed.
	And formally, it was the woman's life who was destroyed if she slept with the wrong person, so she gritted her teeth and said no.
	Now, men have not evolved to grit their teeth and say no, right?
	And studies have confirmed this many, many times.
	Some attractive guy walks up to a bunch of women in a bar and offers gratuitous sex, and, you know, most of them say no.
	The exact opposite happens.
	Most of the guys say yes.
	Men have not evolved to self-restraint sexually.
	It's not a winning, productive strategy.
	A reproductive strategy.
	But women evolved to restrain themselves sexually in order to grant fertility only to the man who was willing to commit to providing resources for the next 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years.
	But now a man's sexuality is uninhibited by the woman's skepticism and the woman's capacity to grit her teeth and say no until she has a commitment.
	So men are designed to Put on the mating display and to rush and to write poems and to be Cyrano de Bergerac and to found companies and to buy ridiculous cars and all that.
	The men all do the mating display and it's the woman's job historically to say no until she finds the guy who's going to bring her the right stuff, at least according to her.
	Best estimation, right?
	Because the man's fertility is taken for granted.
	The woman's fertility is immediately obvious and evident, but the man's future productivity is a dice roll, right?
	Maybe he'll be a CEO. Maybe he'll get carpal tunnel syndrome and not, or whatever, right?
	Maybe he'll become a drunk.
	Maybe he'll run away.
	Maybe he'll whatever, right?
	So the woman has to have...
	This is why I want to say...
	During the initial flush of romance, the man is head over heels, but the woman still retains some calculating element.
	And that's how it should be.
	And so, in the current situation and environment, a man's sexuality...
	In the past, there was the danger of the shotgun wedding, right?
	Like, you got the girl pregnant, and then the community forced you to marry the girl, right?
	And that was dangerous.
	But now, it's even worse.
	Because now...
	The woman can run to the state and take all your money for the next 20 years or more.
	And you don't even get some of the comforts of married life.
	And so it's interesting to me that male caution around sexuality, male fear of women has grown as the unjust power of women has grown through the state, And then you get this pickup artistry that is supposed to overcome this caution and fear that men have towards their own sexuality.
	And my argument is, no, I don't think you should.
	Okay, but...
	So, if you didn't work on your anxiety...
	How would you get together with a woman that was, in fact, what do you call her?
	I forget what the term was.
	A high-quality woman?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so...
	Okay, so if you're afraid, or if I'm afraid, and I can't even look at the girl that I like in the eyes enough, or even...
	No, that's because she's dangerous.
	That's because she's dangerous because it's when sexuality comes along.
	And what that means is that, and again, we can say paranoid.
	I don't think that's the case necessarily.
	I wouldn't even go there to begin with.
	But you are not getting signals of security and safety back from the women you're attracted to.
	Which means women are in their calculating mode and therefore cannot be vulnerable and surrender to the possibility of love.
	Okay.
	Now, if you meet a woman who has the wisdom, the self-knowledge, the intelligence, the whatever, the X factor, that allows her to be open and vulnerable and willing to admit her attraction to you, Then she's not using her sexuality.
	For young women, sexuality is an enormous power.
	A staggering, mind-bending power that men literally cannot conceive of.
	And it's very hard for young women to not use that power.
	So, you know, men have this fantasy of the librarian, right?
	The sexy librarian.
	No, it's a very, very common fantasy, right?
	That, you know, she takes off her glasses and shakes down her hair and, you know, next thing you know, she's...
	I wouldn't be bad.
	But that's a very tempting fantasy, right?
	Because there's a woman who is not willing to blind a man with...
	Her sexuality.
	There's a woman who is not going to use her sexuality to bone scrape the living intelligence out of a man, but is willing to get to know him as a person.
	It doesn't mean she won't be sexual.
	It doesn't mean she's not a sexual being.
	It means that there's a woman who respects a man enough to not daze him with her physical appeal.
	Okay.
	Like Jessica Rabbit, it's not, it's so R. R for rabbit.
	But so a woman who's, you know, all made up and looking, or it doesn't have to be makeup or whatever, just doing whatever she can to enhance her attractiveness and is trying to be as physically attractive as possible and so on.
	She almost by definition is not looking for a quality guy because she's speaking to the penis and not to the brain.
	You know, like there's this old cliche, it's like, hey, my eyes are up here.
	It's like, well, then why aren't your tits out?
	If you're wearing some low-cut dress, the man's going to look at your cleavage.
	Then to get offended and upset is so manipulative, right?
	So I failed to see how learning how to not be Afraid of talking to people in general, too, you could say, would be a bad thing.
	I mean, I understand why we have...
	You didn't tell me you're afraid of talking to people in general.
	You said very clearly that you're fine with women until you're sexually attracted to them.
	Well, I would say I was...
	Back then, I was also afraid of standing out in general.
	I was a shy person, but definitely a lot more shy.
	But how do you know it was shy?
	Maybe you were in a dangerous environment.
	I mean, there do seem to be some genetic elements to shyness and all that, but shyness also may be a greater sensitivity to a dangerous environment, right?
	Like, if there's some rustling sound in the deep undergrowth when I'm camping, I don't say, well, I'm shy to go and explore, right?
	I'm scared to go and explore, because it could be something dangerous, right?
	But should we deal with a fear?
	Because the problem is how I dealt with the fear back in the day, which was to avoid any contact at all.
	Maybe that saved you.
	Maybe right now you'd be living in a Lada, you know, in a bridge down by the river, right?
	I mean, maybe you'd have been raped by the family court system.
	Maybe you'd have, you know, two kids with two horrible manipulative women.
	I'm just, I'm just, it's a possibility.
	Yes, of course.
	Maybe your caution saved you.
	Yeah, I could have, you know...
	Because it's the woman's job.
	Look, a woman with any intelligence and sensitivity knows this about men.
	A woman with any intelligence and sensitivity knows this about men.
	And therefore, a good woman, what will she do?
	She will help you to feel at ease.
	When we are in uncharted territory, it's nice when someone tells us where we are, right?
	You know, like the blind guy on the subway really appreciates it when the crackle, snorky, borky speaker spits out the next station, right?
	When we don't know where we are, it's nice to have an update, right?
	And so a woman who is of quality...
	We'll know your shyness, we'll see your shyness, and we'll work to put you at ease.
	You see?
	You see that what I'm talking about here, Omar, is the degree to which I want you to raise your standards for women.
	I bet you, did it ever cross your mind that it's partly the woman's job to put you at your ease?
	Uh, yeah.
	Oh, you did?
	You have thought of that before?
	Not then, now, yeah.
	Like right now?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Now it's...
	I mean, it's changed...
	I've changed a lot since the beginning of when I... I had a lot of fear.
	Where now...
	When I talk to a woman...
	First, I... I know I probably shouldn't do it, but...
	I... My first criteria for being...
	For even considering something with somebody...
	With a woman...
	Is...
	Or okay, no.
	I mean...
	Okay, yes, I'll just say it because that's the truth.
	So I look for beauty first.
	And then once I find it, or not necessarily extreme, but just enough to please me visually.
	Once I find it, then I speak to her to try to see what her mind is like, because it is, I understand, it's incredibly important.
	To find somebody that you can speak to about more than just the last part.
	Because divorce is so incredibly dangerous for men.
	Men die like flies after they get divorced.
	There are high levels of suicide.
	Divorce is incredibly dangerous for men.
	Which is why the requirement for female virtue has gone up so enormously.
	Because women have so much more power now to destroy a man's life than they ever had in the past.
	And so, I mean, because we have marriage is a government program these days, right?
	And men are like the captive livestock and women have all the power in general.
	I think what Halle Berry has to pay alimony to one of her exes A couple of, like, 10,000, 15,000 a month, and she's fighting it like crazy.
	But in general, women have such an enormous power under the current system.
	And because of that, you really, really need a virtuous woman.
	Absolutely.
	And so for you to say, well, I'm looking at beauty first, well, you really think that's the way to go?
	Well, it's kind of like...
	Okay, so let's say you're looking for a car.
	And you want an efficient car that's not going to leave you stranded on the street.
	So first you want to make sure the car has wheels and an engine.
	I'm not sure if this analogy is correct.
	I think that you are going in the wrong direction.
	I think you know that, right?
	Because you're just saying, well, I don't know.
	Has it got a great spoiler?
	It's got a great spoiler.
	I don't know.
	Maybe I can bolt some wheels onto it later.
	I don't know.
	I just think it's too hard to try to find out whether every single person in the world is...
	Oh, man.
	You are just trying to annoy the living shit out of me now.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Come on.
	It's just a little too difficult to try and figure out whether every single person is the world, how virtuous they are down to 14 decimal places.
	Come on.
	That's not what we're talking about here, right?
	Well, what I'm trying to say is I'm definitely not trying to annoy you, though.
	I might be...
	I usually misspeak, though.
	Sometimes unintended consequences.
	But it's a bit of a false...
	Like when I say it's important to look at virtue, and then you say, well...
	It's impossible to judge the virtue of every human being on the planet.
	You get that that's, you know, you might want to make a little bit more money so you have more financial freedom.
	Well, it's impossible for me to own every single piece of currency the world over and all of the gems and gold and diamonds and bitcoins.
	It's like, that's not what I mean.
	You know what I mean?
	Like you're creating such an exaggerated response that it's annoying, right?
	Because it means that you're bothered by what I'm saying, but you're not being honest about it.
	Well, I'm sorry.
	If I am annoyed, I'm not even fully aware of it.
	No, I know.
	I'm making you aware.
	But no, you want the pretty girl, right?
	And the nice one.
	And the nice girl.
	I get that.
	And look, I'm not saying the two are always opposites.
	They're hard to find.
	Well, if you want the hot girl, you have to be the rich guy.
	Bye.
	And you have to stay the rich guy, and you better hope that she doesn't get bored of you or another richer guy comes along.
	Because if you're going to choose a woman by her fertility, then she is going to choose you for your resources.
	You understand?
	Because you can't say, well, I'm going to judge the woman by her sexual market value, which is fertility.
	And good eggs.
	All beauty is just a marker for good eggs, right?
	So I'm going to choose a woman for her fertility markers, but I don't want her to choose me for my resource markers.
	But if you're going to have that standard and say, well, fuck virtue, I'm just going to go with base biological advantage, then most likely...
	She is going to do exactly the same thing.
	That's the bargain.
	If you're going to head for pretty, she's going to head for your resources.
	And that's one thing if it's just her, but she's going to come with a whole army of lawyers over time if that's the way she decides to play it.
	And you are not going to have a fun rest of the planet.
	Well, I wouldn't...
	Oh, crap.
	I'm trying to stay on track.
	Oh, no, no.
	I mean, depends on where you...
	No, not for the United States, no.
	Okay, so you're not rich?
	No.
	Not yet.
	So you don't have the excess resources that historically would be that which buys physical beauty on the woman's part, right?
	Not in this country, no.
	So you're an ugly woman.
	Who wants a hot guy?
	In the United States, yes.
	If we're just talking about base biological sexual market value, a poor guy is an ugly woman.
	What would you consider well-off?
	Well, if you...
	Okay.
	out of 1 to 10, what level of physical attraction do you want?
	As long as it's paired with a very...
	No, no, no.
	You said you look for looks.
	So don't give me this, like, virtue backstop thing.
	The first thing you notice is the woman's beauty.
	What do you want?
	Ten.
	One to ten.
	I'm sorry?
	10.
	Sorry, I didn't...
	Okay, a 10.
	Now, a 10 is not 9 to 10.
	I assume a 10 is the upper end of 10.
	So you're looking at one woman out of 100, right?
	Yeah.
	Realistically, more and less than that, but yeah.
	Let's just say, just to start, right?
	So you want a one percenter, right?
	Yeah.
	Mike, could you do me a wee favor?
	Could you look up for me what the average income is for the top 1% of American earners?
	I believe it's about $150,000 or more.
	And that's not counting assets that they've accumulated over time.
	Average annual income, $717,000.
	What?
	Oh, maybe I'm thinking top 10%.
	Okay, so the top 1% is almost three quarters of a million dollars a year, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Is that right, Mike?
	Yeah, average annual income of the top 1% of the population, $717,000.
	Okay, so $750 would be three-quarters of a million.
	We'll just say $700,000 a year.
	So in terms of the resources that a man can bring to having kids, the top 1% of resource bringers can legitimately ask for the top 1% of physical beauty on the part of a woman because beauty for resources is the traditional reality, right?
	And so if you want the top 1% of women, you better be in the top 1% of earners.
	Okay.
	And the top 1%, not only do they have incomes of over $700,000 a year, they have assets of $8.4 million on average.
	Are you sitting on that kind of coin?
	Not yet.
	Not yet.
	Come on, really.
	Yeah, I'm going to work.
	I was working towards it.
	Right.
	How long do you think it's going to be until you're making $700,000 a year with $8 million plus in assets?
	Maybe five...
	If I really, really, really start working on it, which I'm trying to, maybe five years.
	In five years, you hope to be happy, $8.5 million?
	No, maybe not.
	No, probably more like ten years.
	I mean, if it...
	Unless I find something more lucrative or my current idea works out better than I think it will.
	Okay, yeah.
	I'm not one to say no to a dream.
	You know, I'm just a plucky little podcaster with a dream of changing the world.
	So I'm not going to say no to a dream, but that's a pretty ambitious dream, right?
	Uh, I mean, I, I guess it's, it doesn't seem that ambitious.
	is It is.
	I mean, if in 10 years you want to be worth $8.5 million and making $700,000 a year, first of all, if you make $700,000 a year starting now and going on for 10 years, okay, you've made $7 million, but that's pre-tax, pre-living expenses.
	I mean, you'd have to be making $2 plus million a year to even get close to what we're talking about.
	And, you know, making $2 million a year, that's, what, $10,000 an hour?
	Yeah, that's...
	It's quite ambitious.
	Okay, I mean, I don't know.
	It's not impossible, but I'm just saying, I wouldn't want you to end up disappointed if you haven't done the math.
	Now, if you just want one of the top 10% of attractiveness in women, again, if you're just going by base biological realities, then you've got to be, it's a lot less stressful, right?
	Because the top 10%, to be in the top 10% of American earners, you have to be making $140,000 a year.
	Wait, can I put a...
	Significantly less than 719.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	So, okay.
	I like to aim for 10, right?
	But, for example, the girl that I've liked the most in my life, which probably is pretty funny, I didn't actually have a relationship with.
	I'd say, as far as looks are concerned, Was probably about a seven on what I like to call the international scale.
	But what was special about her was actually her personality.
	And why did you marry her?
	Marry her?
	No, I didn't marry her.
	No, why didn't you marry her, I said.
	Oh, why didn't I marry her?
	Because she didn't like me enough and I... More specifically, the reason I think...
	She didn't marry me because I was not confident enough or mature enough when I met her.
	She is four years older than me.
	I look for beauty.
	Kind of the same way that if I was, again, sorry if I make a bad analogy, in the same way that I look for a car, I look for the fastest one first, but if I find one that's not as fast, for example, a Tesla, not as fast as a Ferrari at top speed, but I still prefer the Tesla over the Ferrari because of a lot of other things.
	I would say that...
	Okay, and I'm asking, can you afford, like, are you just looking at cars you can't afford?
	Like, if a woman called in, like, seriously, like, this is what you need to understand, man.
	If a woman called in, Omar, and said to me, I want a guy who's worth eight and a half million dollars and who makes at least $719,000 a year, what do you think I would say?
	Sorry, who asked for that?
	A woman calls in, right, and she says, I look for money first.
	Yes.
	And I want a guy who's worth $8.5 million in assets and who makes at least $719,000 a year because I look for money first.
	What would I say?
	I don't want to guess.
	I don't know.
	What would you say?
	What would you say?
	Some woman says that to you.
	You know what, Omar?
	I look for money first.
	I'll look for the personality afterwards.
	I'll look for a ka-ching ka-ching.
	I'll look for cash first, baby.
	The guy doesn't have $8.5 million in assets and $719,000 a year in income?
	Fuck him.
	I don't care.
	I don't want to have anything to do with that loser.
	What would you say?
	I'd tell her that probably the guy that makes that much money wouldn't be interested in her for that mindset.
	And you know what else you'd say?
	What?
	That's pretty horrible.
	Like, you're a pretty horrible human being.
	And I'm not saying...
	That part of you is not pleasant.
	Because look...
	And what if she said, oh, and by the way, the guy also has to have inherited his money.
	I don't want anyone who has to actually work for it.
	God, then he'll be gone a lot.
	I don't want some workaholic guy.
	I want a guy who's going to come and drape me in diamonds, and is going to drape me in fur, and is going to give me iPad shoes to wear, and that's the guy.
	But I don't want him to have to go to work for it.
	I want this all to be trust fund stuff.
	Well, what I would realistically tell her is go ahead, go and try to find that, but I don't know.
	Sorry.
	Only if you hated her.
	And do you know why I include inherited?
	No.
	Because women do not earn, in general, their beauty.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	Because beauty, physical beauty, I mean, yeah, okay, women work at it, right?
	I mean, models don't eat and exercise every second month whether they need it or not.
	And so, yeah, but in terms of facial structure and lustrous hair and at least the capacity to have a great figure, I mean, a lot of women are like their bags of potatoes.
	You know, some women are hourglass figures and some women are like this freakish Marilyn Monroe one in a billion kind of figure.
	But, you know, it's like what Rosie O'Donnell says in some movie, you know, guys want big tits and a small ass, you know.
	You don't get both.
	You want a big tits, you generally get a big ass.
	And there are, of course, a few freaks, right, where women have, like, tiny waists and giant tits, and they have the full complement of everything, like great hair, great, you know, whatever, right, great eye, great smile, great teeth, great figure, great face, great, like the whole, right, the Jennifer Garner package, right?
	But they're famous people.
	I mean, I like Jeffrey Goddard.
	They're famous because they're freaks.
	Because they won the genetic lottery.
	And so if the woman says, well, I want the guy to have inherited, you're saying, I want a woman who is that rare, that beautiful, didn't earn it, and is uncorrupted by it.
	So I want this guy who's worth $8.5 million, makes $719,000 a year.
	I want him to have inherited this money, and I want him to have a great work ethic and be completely unaffected by all the money he's inherited.
	Do you see that you're starting to get a little bit on the low end of the probability scale at this point?
	Because I want this woman to be hot, but also virtuous and completely unaffected by her hotness, even though she accidentally inherited it and is at the very height of her sexual power.
	I want this guy who's born super rich and has a great work ethic, is completely unaffected by his wealth, and has eight and a half million dollars in the bank, right?
	I mean, you get that this is like, God, this is what drives women insane.
	And I get it.
	I agree with it.
	I'm not going to let you go, hey, Omar, good luck with that, because, you know, I want my listeners to breed.
	But no, I'm not going to say, oh yeah, you know, go do that plan, right?
	Uh-huh.
	So what should I aim for?
	What do you think I should aim for?
	The beauty that you're after will fade.
	You know that, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	The beauty that you're after will fade.
	And the beauty...
	Beauty is for fucking.
	Virtue is for family.
	Right?
	If you want a happy life, have a virtuous woman.
	It's not the only thing.
	It's necessary, but not sufficient.
	Uh-huh.
	But you aim for virtue.
	I do aim for virtue.
	No.
	Come on, man.
	I aim for virtue in the unlikely places.
	Ours look for hotness.
	K's look for fitness.
	Right?
	R's look for hotness.
	K's look for fitness.
	R's look for hotness.
	K's look for compatibility.
	R's look for attractiveness, high sexual market value, because it's not someone you're going to have to live in.
	Rabbits don't live together.
	Wolves do.
	Rabbits don't pair bond.
	Wolves do.
	Rabbits fuck and feast.
	And wolves train and practice and hunt and instruct their children and nuzzle each other and take care of each other when they're sick and make sure that the food gets shared and they've got this whole complex social organizational thing go.
	If you want to be a K, if you want to be a high-functioning, virtuous, dedicated, committed husband and father, then you go.
	Not for hotness, but for fitness.
	You go for compatibility.
	You go for virtue.
	Because your dick gets tired of pretty fast, but your heart never gets tired of virtue.
	Aim for the long term.
	Expand your time horizon.
	And maybe you get the two together.
	I don't know much about Amal Clooney.
	You know, she's obviously a pretty top lawyer.
	I think Edward Snowden is one of her clients, customers.
	Sorry, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.
	He's fighting against extradition and She's helping him, and she's a very attractive woman, and obviously very skilled and very intelligent and very able in her field, and maybe have lots of other virtues that, you know, whatever, right?
	And it's not like George Clooney would have trouble finding some empty-headed hot woman to have sex with.
	I mean, he is George Clooney, and therefore he has got this decaying patrician hotness, silver foxiness, but, you know, he managed to find the package, but That's because he's super rich and super handsome and super famous.
	I mean, he did date Stacey Keebler, to be fair, who I believe is a long-legged queen of the elves.
	I'm not sure.
	I know she's got the cookies involved somewhere.
	But yeah, Stacey Keebler, who was on Dancing with the Stars, and I believe before that was involved in wrestling in some fashion.
	I think she was a central tunnel support because she's that tall.
	And...
	So, yeah, but who he settled down with was, you know, he went for beauty and brains and so on.
	But I would say that, you know, shyness may be that it's not that, you know, oh, you know, you're setting your sights too high.
	No, you're setting your sights too low.
	God, aiming at just beauty is totally setting your sights too low.
	Oh, you know, she's tall and she's pretty and she's hot and she's...
	That is totally setting your sights too low.
	That's rabbit reproduction, not wolf commitment.
	Can I interject real quick?
	Yeah.
	Maybe I didn't explain myself correctly, but if I see a really, really hot girl and she is really stupid, I generally don't talk to her.
	As in, I might talk to her and then I find out she's retarded.
	Or just maybe not retarded.
	Just not ambitious or just, you know, doesn't have the light bulb on.
	I get it.
	It's low quality for whatever reason based upon whatever you're looking for, right?
	Yeah, I do want to clarify.
	I get that.
	And look, when I'm calling someone out on their shallowness, I usually will get the, I'm not really that shallow speech.
	And I get that.
	I understand that.
	And I, you know, you can backpedal all you want.
	And I'm talking partly to you, Omar, but I'm, of course, talking to a lot of other men and women.
	There are lots of fantastic women who are incredibly frustrated that jerks keep throwing themselves and smashing themselves on the rocks of ice queen pretty idiots.
	There's nothing more frustrating for a good solid woman who hasn't been blessed with winning the genetic lottery of high cheekbones and tits the point in the same direction.
	There's nothing more frustrating than really high quality women watching guys step on their faces in order to get to the idiot ice queen Perfect body woman, right?
	So, I'm not just talking to you, and I'm not trying to put you in this category of, you know, insanely ridiculous standards and blah blah.
	I mean, I get that I'm making a strong case here because I'm not just talking to you.
	I'm talking to you.
	I'm playing for mankind, right?
	Like, I'm talking to everyone, and there's other guys out there who need this kind of Backslap across the face, right?
	You know, guys need a punch in the nads to reorient themselves away from the haughty gravity wells of majestic masculine self-destruction.
	So I'm not trying to put you in this category and saying this is all you are.
	I'm just pointing out that what you call shyness, I call potential self-preservation.
	Well, I can't even say what I would do now because I almost don't even feel any...
	Yeah, I don't like that.
	I know.
	It's actually pretty funny because one of the best feelings ever was getting over the fear.
	Yeah, and I'm not saying go back to being paranoid and terrified of everything that is missing the dangly bits.
	I'm just saying that the overcoming of fear is not the achievement of wisdom, and it certainly is not the achievement of strength.
	Fear is a highly underrated emotion.
	Fear and anger are the two highly underrated emotions in the modern world.
	I mentioned the movie Inside Out.
	Watch it.
	Fear and anger are ridiculous and dangerous and never helpful.
	And so this reality that the summit of wisdom is the overcoming of all cautionary emotions You know, not good.
	You know, there was a...
	I mentioned this years ago on the show.
	I read these books.
	The Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson many years ago.
	And he was a leper.
	And he had no sensation, of course, in his extremities.
	And he had to do what was called a VSE, a visual search of extremities, to find out if he'd injured himself because he couldn't feel it.
	Lack of sensation is extremely dangerous in general.
	And again, I'm not saying that you've become some person immune to all human emotions like...
	Some hottie-chasing sex robot of imminent doom.
	But what I am saying is that I think that more respect for caution is important.
	And there are, I'm sure, there are very hardworking guys out there who inherited $10 million, who have a great work ethic, and are wonderful people, and virtuous people, and so on.
	It's just that they would very much be an outlier in that situation.
	And what you're looking for may be...
	What you're looking for may be so rare that you're going to end up dissatisfied no matter what.
	Like I remember I watched a movie called The Fisher King many years ago.
	And with Christine Baranski and Jeff Bridges.
	And I do remember seeing Robert Williams' penis.
	I don't think that was a dream.
	And the movie was fairly incoherent, although there was some Christine Lottie was in it.
	I think she was great.
	Can I say something that you said that made me laugh?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Right now, you said you're sure there's some people that inherit a lot of money and are still hard-working people.
	Have you seen the video of Donald Trump where he says that he had a really hard upbringing and that he grew up in the Bronx and his dad gave him a small loan of a million dollars?
	Well, you know, in his world, maybe that's hard scrabble.
	I'm sorry.
	Wall Street coal miner's daughter.
	I don't know.
	Maybe that is.
	I'm sorry.
	That's why I was laughing while you were talking.
	You reminded me of that.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Continue.
	But, you know, to be fair, I mean, Donald Trump has worked extremely hard.
	And he's very able, right?
	I mean...
	Wharton School of Business is not for the faint of mind.
	And, you know, he has been very successful.
	Yeah, he got a step up.
	But so what?
	I mean, people who are very handsome get a step up genetically as well, right?
	People who just have born with great brains, they get a step up.
	And a lot of that is genetic as well.
	So whether you inherit the money or the genes, I don't think it hugely matters.
	I mean, some people are just born with advantages, right?
	I mean, and some people are not.
	People who are born, like Celine Dionne, Was born with an incredible singing voice for middle-of-the-road pop.
	And that's a huge advantage.
	So yeah, Donald Trump inherited some money and the face of an orange lumberjack of business excellence.
	But the point is, back to the Fisher King.
	In the Fisher King, there's a throwaway scene where there's this incredibly beautiful young blonde woman who's reading Nietzsche.
	I don't know when the hell that movie was made, like 25 years ago or something like that.
	And I still remember exactly how that woman looked.
	She was sitting behind a desk in some office, and she was incredibly hot and reading Nietzsche.
	Now, why would I remember that?
	Well, for obvious reasons, right?
	But that's very much an outlier.
	And...
	So what I'm pointing out is that it's the R environment and the R in you and the R culture that has you pointing yourself at the hotties.
	And I wouldn't necessarily say that your goal is to overcome your caution with regards to these women and simply not have any concern or fear or anxiety around them.
	I would say that...
	Uh, that's where you should have some reasonably high levels of caution.
	And, um, I would invite you to look at women who, who's, who, who your attraction will be more sustainable, right?
	You know, if you, you know, look at a hottie, then, then look at her mom, right?
	And that's, you know, you'd be surprised how quickly that might show up in your life, you know, that, that change, right?
	And, um, So, you know, my caution against physical beauty is as old as time, and, you know, people get upset about it, like I'm taking away their toy.
	It's like, no, I'm taking away your religion.
	I'm taking away your delusion.
	I'm taking away that which is most dangerous.
	If you can find a virtuous woman who you also find incredibly hot, fantastic, you know, but you hunt for the horses that are there, not for the unicorns you've heard about.
	Are you saying women are like horses?
	Oh my god.
	No.
	Pretty women aren't like horses.
	Horses have utility.
	Anyway.
	So anyway, that's just my two cents on it.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, the reason...
	I'm sorry.
	It really annoys me when I... I can't put my idea up.
	No, listen, take it Cosmo, roll it up, and hit yourself in the dick with it until you become a verse.
	That's all I'm saying.
	You know, put a 1985 Christy Brinkley swimsuit on a taser and hit yourself in the junk until your eyeballs smoke, and you'll be amazed how quickly you'll find love after that.
	Wait, what?
	Can you repeat that?
	No, you can listen to it in the show after.
	All right, I've got to close off the show.
	I think that was the last caller, and I really, really, of course, appreciate hugely Thank you so much for what are truly treasured conversations for me.
	I know I'm sometimes glib and I'm sometimes annoying and maybe even condescending.
	I don't mean to be.
	I don't know, maybe I do.
	But I really do...
	It is a deep honor and a privilege to be able to speak to you about things that are this important to you and this important to the world.
	I treasure these conversations every week.
	They are a highlight of my week, second only to finding yet another freckle in the giant biodome that covers the world called my head.
	So, thanks everyone so much.
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