March 12, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:54:31
3227 Women Against Anti-Male Bigotry - Call In Show - March 9th, 2016
Question 1: [2:07] – “I've recently stumbled upon an insight as to what the dark ages in Europe were all about. Unlike the mainstream story, Islam conquered the Middle East and North Africa, disrupting the sea commerce which was essential for the European economy and thus the economic and cultural collapse ensued.”“How is it possible that such an important aspect could have been ignored by the mainstream? I've never ever heard anything like this in explaining dark ages, nor did I meet anyone that did. I'm thinking of the huge consequences that this would have on understanding our history - why do you think this history is hidden from us?”Question 2: [47:25] – “It seems to me that misandry presently represents a significant threat to western civilization. If accurate, why are so many people incapable of, or unwilling to, recognize it? Would you be able to suggest some effective means of educating people in the commission of putting an end to it?”Question 3: [1:58:15] – “How do you define "Free Will" and "Determinism," and why do you think Free Will is superior? If Free Will means that a person could have chosen to do something different than what he did, given the same past and laws of nature, then it's difficult for me to believe Free Will is true because I don't understand how that is possible. Thank you for your time.”
So, the first was, you know, dude, what's up with the Dark Ages in Europe?
And, um...
What happened to the Roman Empire?
Why were the Dark Ages A, so dark, and B, so long?
And we had a good old chat about the historical causes of the collapse and the length and extension of that collapse in Western Europe, of course.
I think you'll find some interesting parallels to the present, which I don't think I even need to tease out because they're pretty obvious.
I hope that you find that interesting.
Helpful and interesting.
Second caller, yes, this is one of the greatest callers in the history of the show.
The fact that she's a woman doesn't hurt, but is not the sole reason.
The fact that she's a woman...
Who is outraged against the anti-male hatred currently washing its acidic way through the veins of the West.
Just makes her all the more fantastic.
And I've had a theory as to what personal circumstances lend a woman to be more sympathetic to the plight of men in the West.
And said theory was aptly and ably displayed in the presence of this wonderful, wonderful woman who I had a great, great chat with.
And third, yeah, okay, okay, this was surprising.
Good, surprising, good, but surprising.
And this was a conversation with a determinist.
That was a great pleasure.
A very interesting conversation, a very positive conversation.
I really, really enjoyed the chat.
And if you've not heard some of the stuff I've talked about with regards to free will, It will be, of course, illuminating for you.
And if you have, it will be illuminating for you to hear me have such a positive conversation with a determinist.
So let's get into it.
It was a great show.
Thanks, of course, for your support.
Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
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All right.
Let's get our show on.
Alright, up first is Dan.
Dan wrote in and said, How is it possible that such an important aspect could be ignored by the mainstream?
I've never heard anything like this explaining the Dark Ages, nor did I meet anyone that did.
I'm thinking of the huge consequences this would have on understanding our history.
Why do you think this history is hidden from us?
That's from Dan.
Oh, hey Dan, how you doing?
Hi Stefan, how are you?
Well, thanks.
So, do you want to give any more?
We've got the truth about the Crusades, the presentation we put out just late last year.
For people who want more on this kind of Information, but is there anything in particular that you'd like to add to what you said?
Yeah, sure.
For example, so I remember learning from history lots of stuff about this subject.
And for sure it's well documented already.
I'm not saying anything about that.
But it seems that every time the conclusion to that is That in the year 476, the Western Roman Empire came to an end and the Dark Ages began.
I also found that it's common knowledge today, so maybe it's also what you think or what you know in general.
But also, when you look at the problem, and I just started to study a little bit about it, and it doesn't quite add up with this conclusion.
So my question was, how did we end up with such a conclusion as a general idea about this thing?
Well, I mean, as far as the fall of Rome goes, I obviously don't want to get into a big detailed explanation, but very briefly, I would argue that Islam was certainly one of the factors.
But of course, Islam came along, sorry, let me rephrase that.
Islam, of course, came along long after the fall of Rome.
West of the Western Roman Empire, though of course over in Constantinople on the East it lasted a lot longer.
Yeah, that's correct.
So I don't think we obviously can't say chronologically that Islam was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire.
Islam came along only hundreds of years after the fact.
But what killed Rome in my argument was generic statism, you know, that the...
The republic idea of limited government and free trade and so on did not survive the age of the welfare state and what happened was as the empire was And you can keep an empire if you're willing to have the brutality of deep, deep self-confidence.
In other words, if you're willing to say, "Our way is the best way, everyone else is a barbarian, and we're damn well going to keep everyone in line, and we're going to lose no sleep about it whatsoever.
And if there's a rebellion somewhere, we're going to crush it, and we're going to restore order." And you can keep that high-wire act going for a while, but the moment that you falter, The moment that you lose your self-confidence, then your empire's days are doomed.
And that is a pretty significant thing that occurred within Rome.
And you had the usual suspects, right?
Central control of the currency, debasement of the currency in order to pay for the massive warfare welfare state that occurred.
And of course, a lack of economic progress in Rome, mostly because of the prevalence of Because of the prevalence of slavery, the people who had the most money had the least incentive for labor-saving devices, right?
What is it that grows an economy?
What is it that makes a group wealthy?
Well, what makes a group wealthy is labor-saving devices.
And if the wealthiest and most influential people in society all have slaves, then they don't want to invent labor-saving devices, of course, because that lowers the value of slavery.
They're slaves.
And you don't want something that reduces labor when you are all in in your investment in labor.
I mean, they knew all about the steam engine.
They knew about a bunch of other cool stuff.
But they just never got into the Industrial Revolution.
For the Industrial Revolution to occur, there needs to be a free market in labor.
And wherever there is slavery, there is no free market in labor, of course.
And so they kept having to buy votes by handing out, you know, literally what was called bread and circuses, which was free bread for the poor, and empty reality TV with a lion and eating people style entertainment.
So they had to keep raising the taxes, which meant they had to keep debasing the currency.
As they kept debasing the currency, they kept causing more and more economic dislocation.
People couldn't predict anything.
Interest rates, of course, went up because they were inflating, debating the value of the currency and inflating the prices of everything.
And then what happened was the length of time you had to serve in the Roman army got ridiculous, like 20 years.
You just get conscripted and have to serve in the Roman army.
And so what happened was they could only really get the young men who lived in cities.
You couldn't go to some far-flung country, like a place in the middle of nowhere, some country land and go and pick up people because most times you just – you wouldn't come back even if you tried.
So collecting taxes and scooping up labor for the armies, that all required that people be centralized in cities.
And once people are no longer centralized, Centralized in cities, then big-time statism becomes impossible, or at least it did back then.
So what happened was young people began to move out of the cities.
And, you know, you can sort of look at white flight in Detroit.
You know, Bernie Sanders is like, I don't know what happened to Detroit.
I guess China's producing cheap cars.
Yeah, yeah, Bernie.
So is Japan, and so is Germany, and they're not paying their workers $2 an hour.
What happened in Detroit was there a bunch of race riots in the 60s and the white taxpayers moved out and bingo, bango, bongo, welcome to hellhole North America.
And so when the people move out, the tax base collapses and also you can't scoop up people to use as forced soldiers and so you have to start employing mercenaries.
You have to start hiring the outside barbarians to police your empire.
Ah.
So then what happens is your tax consumption goes up, because instead of being able to enslave the young men, you have to go out and pay other people to be your soldiers.
So at a time when your tax base is collapsing, your tax requirements to pay the barbarians are going up.
And...
The depopulation of the Roman cities was the prequel to the collapse of the Roman economy, and eventually they just couldn't debase the currency anymore.
They couldn't even pretend that this crap, this sea sludge that passed for currency had any value at all, and they could no longer pay the barbarian mercenaries in any coin that the mercenaries would accept, and so the mercenaries just came and We're good to go.
Was obviously pretty important as to why fishing and sea trade and living near the coast, because the pirates that would come and steal and enslave the European population didn't go that far inland, because they were pirates, of course.
And so the fact that the Europeans couldn't do much fishing, the fact that they had to all move inland, the fact that there was no trade, particularly sea trade, was pretty important because what happens, of course, in the absence of trade was pretty important because what happens, of course, in the absence of trade is if there's a famine in a particular area, like half the population will And they can't alleviate the famine by trading elsewhere with others, of course.
So I'm certainly no expert on the degree to which the Islamic incursions into the West maintained the Dark Ages.
I don't know that that's even data you could probably get a hold of very easily.
But certainly after the fall of Rome, it was a fragmented and broken Europe that barely survived the alteration.
And I'm sure that the much better organized and much, of course, more aggressive at that time Islamic conquests were going on.
And that certainly didn't help any kind of restabilization.
Yeah, I agree with most of what you said.
it Actually, it was obvious how The reasons why the Western Roman Empire entered into a decline.
My concern was what happened right after that year where we considered that it was done with it.
So, in 476 they say that the Roman Empire collapsed and there was no longer and the barbarians invaded.
But I don't think that there was quite exactly so.
Why do I say that?
Because If anyone can do just a little research and when you look at what happened in that year is that there was this guy called Odoacer, right?
He was a leader of this tribe, a Germanic tribe, which was working for the Empire.
So I found that on that time it was quite usual that barbarian tribes to work for the Empire and not fight against them.
And it was, they were called Federati, which means that they had a sort of a contract by which the barbarians would, tribes would defend the border of the empire, and the empire would guarantee them some place within the empire where to stay.
So that appears it went quite well.
For quite a while.
By the way, this is where we have the federation word from, from this federati.
And what happened in that year was a political turmoil.
The emperor was overthrown and this guy Odoacer They talked to the new emperor and asked for their right to settle down.
They wanted to settle down in Italy because the Western Roman Empire was kind of running low of provinces.
They were losing them.
The emperor said no.
Odoacer then rebelled and beat the Roman army.
And then he found himself as the master of Rome and the whole Italy.
But the thing is, the peculiar thing about it is, he didn't He didn't savage the city or the peninsula or anything.
He didn't even kill the emperor for that.
He sent the emperor to a lavish villa and he even gave him an annual rent.
Then, he kept the Roman Senate.
He kept the Senate and he took advice from the Senate and he also kept the clergy.
And he never interfered with it.
So he basically kept up everything that he found there.
He even called back the former Roman Emperor, which this guy that he sent away had overthrown.
And he pledged allegiance to the Roman Emperor.
Well, of course, the Emperor was in decline, so the Emperor fell, right?
But my question here is, that doesn't sound like starting the Dark Ages.
So I don't think that it started with this point.
It happened even something else.
So after a couple of years, this new Emperor, poor Emperor died.
Odoacer got very mad at the perpetrators and went there and punished them.
And then he went to the Eastern Roman Emperor and pledged allegiance to the Eastern Roman Emperor.
I mean, this guy was kind of desperate to find the Roman Emperor to pledge allegiance to.
Like, he was really into holding up the Roman Empire, which he couldn't, of course.
But he wasn't against it.
He was for...
Well, no, I mean, they paid him, right?
Well, at that point, nobody was paying him anymore.
I mean, he was in control of Rome and of the whole Italy.
He was doing that out of his own convictions.
I mean, the Roman Emperor by itself was no longer what it used to be.
I mean, the actual power was in the hands of Odwasser guy.
Also, he traded with the foreign provinces still.
We do have some evidence that the trade was going on still.
Okay, so do you mind?
I mean, I appreciate the history lesson, but we do need to get to a question.
Okay.
Well, the question would be, why do we still think that the dark ages started then in 476 and not later on?
Because, as I see, it didn't have any reason to start the dark ages right then.
So I think it started much later when the trade was disrupted inside the whole Mediterranean.
Well, I mean, obviously you're asking me for the motivations of people's historical narratives in a particular period.
I can't possibly tell you that.
I don't know why.
I can give you a sort of big principle as to why European history is described the way that it has been described, certainly since the post-Second World War period.
I can give you a little bit on that, and there may be some value in that.
And I'm going to give you the analogy of the rapper.
Are you ready?
Okay.
Okay.
So give me a good rap name.
Ah, you got me.
Alright, I'll go with my old rap name from earlier in the show, which is Big Chatty Forehead.
In the his house!
So, Big Chatty Forehead, let's say that you don't like hugely working for a living.
And so what you do is you come up to Big Chatty Forehead and you say, hey man, BCF, you know, you know that Your parents ran over my parents and killed them in a car.
Because I got a lot of rap money.
I got grills.
I got the whole deal, right?
And I got female dogs, I got garden implements, I got the whole thing.
And you want some money.
So if you can convince me that my parents did something really bad to your parents, I don't know, ran them over with a car, enslaved them in the third world, stole their resources, man!
Well, if I'm a relatively sensitive human being, then I'm going to feel kind of bad about that.
I'm going to say, oh man, you know, that's terrible.
And they say, well, yeah, you know, and if they'd had, they ran over my parents, and if they had paid out what they were supposed to pay out, you wouldn't have had enough money to go to rap school.
I would have had that money, and I'd be a rich, famous rapper right now, not you, so you owe me, man.
Like, your wealth is totally based on, I don't know why all rappers are stoners, I don't do that many accents come to think of it, I don't know.
I mean, your wealth is totally based upon your parents' exploitation of my parents, man.
Do you owe me?
Okay, well, let's say I feel bad.
Let's say I believe that and I feel bad about it.
So I'm going to be like, okay, man, I'm going to pay for you to go to rap school because I feel bad, man, and my parents never paid off your family for driving over your parents or whatever.
So I send you to rap school.
You know, it takes you a little while to get your groove on, to get your dope rhymes down, and it takes you a little while to assemble your MC Hammer-style retinue, your entourage of people with single syllables in their name who used to run pizza parlors but now can magnificently negotiate with very experienced Hollywood agents.
So...
And then you're like, well, you know, I gotta cut a record, man, so then I pay for you to cut a record.
And then I pay for you to go on tour, and you've got K-Fed everything, just shower you with money because I feel bad that I've got all this big success as a rapper, and you don't because, you know, my parents ran over your parents.
And...
You've got to travel in style.
You've got to get the white suit.
You've got to get the big, weird clock around your chest.
You've got to have parties.
You've got to have the best champagne.
You've got to spend money to make money, dog.
And you've got this whole narrative going.
Well, you're heavily invested in this story.
And because I've accepted the basic premise of the story, that I'm rich because...
My parents hurt your parents or whatever, right?
Then, of course, I'm going to feel like I've got to even it out.
I've got to give it back.
I've got to smooth it out.
Egalitarian up that mofo, right?
And so, eventually, of course, and it's usually not that long, you find that it's a lot easier to just kind of hang around my pool, maybe write down some rap lyrics, get some rays, listen to some music, have some sex, drink some beer.
And...
I start to be like, I don't know, man.
I don't know if you're doing a whole lot of actual music here.
It seems like you're just kind of lounging around my pool.
It's like, hey, man, who are you to talk?
Your parents drove over my parents.
Don't you feel bad about that?
Yeah, I do.
I really feel bad about that.
It's okay.
I'm sorry.
Why don't you go cut another 8-track or whatever you're doing at the moment?
And then more and more of your friends show up.
It's like, woo-hoo!
Big pool party at Big Chatty Foreheads Mansion, baby!
Don't bring a thing except your banana hammock speedos and you'll be all set to roll.
And then I start dating some woman and the woman is kind of stepping over the broken beer bottles around the pool and the passed out Kato Kaelin style house guests and She kind of comes up to me and says, hey babe, I think these people are just kind of parasites on you.
Like, I don't, you know, they're not producing anything.
They're not doing any work.
They're just sucking down your liquor and peeing in your pool.
Like, I don't want these people in, right?
Don't want these people around.
Don't think you're doing them.
Oh man, but you know, my parents drove over.
Their parents.
It's like, yeah, okay.
A, that's not your fault.
And B... When does this stop?
Right?
And have you actually checked the facts of the story?
Have you gone and checked the police report?
Have you actually verified this story about how bad your ancestors were and how much they pillaged all these other people?
Now, the guy who's the aspiring rapper may be outside listening to this conversation.
And he's going to get kind of anxious and kind of angry.
And he's going to start Iago-style poison-earing me about my new girlfriend.
Because, you know, if she gets her way, well, this rapper dude is going to get thrown out on his butt along with his layabout, do-nothing friends.
And he's going to have to go get some kind of real job.
And it's not like he's been spending the last couple of years polishing up his resume with very hireable skill sets.
So he's going to start to really get down on me about this girl.
And he's going to start manipulating me and trying to get all my virtues, you know, will you trust me, man?
Like, you know, I've been working hard and, you know, I'm trying to do my best and, you know, but it was so hard when I was growing up because your parents drove over my parents and I didn't have parents and I didn't have money and all right.
Because he's adapted himself to a parasitical lifestyle based upon a story that I have accepted about how bad my accumulation of wealth is and how much I owe these people, right?
These other people.
And so this narrative is really at the core of it.
And my guilt is at the core of this massive wealth transfer.
Now, If I do actually start looking up some facts, you know, and I go and find out about my, quote, friend's parents, right?
And I actually go and find out, like, you know what?
My parents never did run over his parents.
It never happened.
Never happened.
His parents got drunk and were attacked by geese when they broke into a golf course.
And fell into a pond and drowned.
And my parents had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Okay.
So this is pretty horrendous.
And I'm going to go from a feeling of significant guilt and obligation, bottomless obligation really, I'm going to go from wanting to provide A whole bunch of resources to this person.
But once I find out the facts, there's a huge, huge bounce back, a huge backlash within my heart.
Like, you son of a bitch.
You made up this whole story to prey upon my sympathy, and you've just been pillaging me senseless, relying on my good nature, right?
And I've talked about this as the Anglo-Saxon pop, which I've talked about before.
And...
I'm going to team up with this woman.
I'm going to call the cops.
I'm going to get you out of my house.
I'm going to cut you off.
Cold rage replaces all of the former guilty sympathy that was going on.
And so there's two things.
That these parasites can't have around me.
Number one is any kind of support.
Anyone who walks in and says, whoa, slaps me around the forehead and says, dude, what are you doing?
These people just laying around sucking up your liquor and peeing in your pool?
What are you doing?
Right, number one, I can't have any support around me.
I must be continually isolated, verbally abused, made to feel guilty, and intimidated.
Intimidated at all times.
And the second thing is I cannot ever have an accurate history of my family, because if I actually do have an accurate history of my family, then I'm going to find out that I've been lied to, that my parents weren't bad, that they actually provided benefits to people rather than harmed them, and that this is all just one big manipulative story, like a proboscis going in my ear, sucking out my brain juice in the future of my own kids in order to pay a bunch of layabouts to do nothing with their day all day.
And so, when it comes to looking at history, then it's very simple.
European history, white history, Western history.
It's all very simple, and it must just conform that there must never be any support for white people throughout history, right?
There must always be bad.
There must always have been exploiters and pillagers and conquistadors and just terrible, terrible people all around.
There can't be any support, and they must have done such unfathomable crimes against the rest of humanity that The obligation can never be paid off.
And the wealth that Western societies accumulated cannot have been generated by the free market.
It can't be generated by hard work.
It can't be generated by focus, integrity, dedication, and all that.
It must always and forever have only ever been accumulated by stealing from other people.
Because we all remember how enormously valuable oil was In the 16th century.
It wasn't Western technology that turned oil into a valuable resource by the internal combustion engine requiring it for fueling the planet.
It has to be that...
The West is wealthy because it stole everything from everyone else.
It has to be that there are intergenerational crimes that are transmitted, and even though I, who've never been an imperialist, I must now sacrifice my children for what my forefathers are supposed to have done.
And all of this together, this isolation, this verbal abuse, this lying about history, Has only one purpose to it, which is that if you can get into the head and verbally abuse a rich guy and tell him that he owes you, then if he's got any kind of decent conscience, he's going to feel bad and he's going to pay you.
He's going to pay you.
And so asking why this particular approach is taken is like asking why do hookers give blowjobs to guys they don't like?
Because money.
Because white Western guilt about colonialism, about slavery, and blah, blah, blah, right?
White people will pay for it if they believe the lies that their ancestors were bad and exploited and the only reason they're wealthy is because their ancestors exploited other people and so on.
So they will give money and resources and time and effort and technology and they'll transfer it all.
Transfer it all.
But it's just, follow the money.
If you can abuse people and lie to them about their history, it's the same thing with original sin, right?
I mean, original sin was the argument that you're bad because of what your ancestors did, so give the priests lots of money and your children.
So, it is a kind of weird compliment to Europeans, right?
That this approach works on Europeans.
You know, I mean, the European slave trade, as I've talked about before, was tiny, tiny relative to the Muslim slave trade.
But nobody talks to the Muslims about their slave trade because in general, they don't care.
They don't have the conscience.
They don't have the, you know, as soon as the white Western European nations fought tooth and nail to end slavery, what the world says, what the rest of the world basically said was, oh, I think the Europeans have just told us exactly what they feel bad about, which is slavery.
So let's start turning the screws about slavery.
And then they'll pay up because they've already told us what they feel bad about because they already spent a lot of time and blood and treasure to end slavery, which means that they've told us they feel bad about slavery.
So we can start hitting them about slavery and they'll pay us because they feel bad.
Because the rest of the world, what the hell did they care about slavery?
They didn't care about it enough to end it.
In fact, they fought tooth and nail for the Europeans against the Europeans who were trying to end it.
The rest of the world doesn't feel...
Bad about slavery.
Certainly hasn't seemed to be since.
And so that's...
History is just this giant bag of verbal abuse that people beat Europeans over their head with so that Europeans feel bad and pay up.
It is a new religion.
It's pretty much identical to all the other religions where they tell you you're bad, they provoke AK-selected anxiety, and then they will take your money to relieve the pressure of that anxiety.
Just a little bit, give you a little relief from it, and then they'll let it fall again, and it's like your guy finds you trapped in the woods under a log, and he'll lift the log a little bit.
If you give him 50 bucks, then he'll let it back down again, lift you a little bit, give him 50 bucks, and you're just stuck there for the rest of your natural-born existence.
So, it's just all about the money.
Nothing to do with any facts or empirical evidence or objectivity or concern for the victims of Western imperialism.
It's just, you know, make white people feel bad and they'll give you money to stop calling them racist or sexist or misogynistic or phobic this or phobic that.
And it's not, you know...
It's not really the fault of everyone else, you know?
I mean, the fault is with the Europeans.
The fault is with the Europeans, you know?
Like, people post about, oh, the Jews doing this and Jews doing that.
There's a great line from the newsroom where the guy says, well, the Jews are in control of a lot of the media.
And the guy says, but not by force of arms.
And that's a really, really good point.
You know, if...
If you feel that there's excessive Jewish control of the public narrative, then go counter that narrative and damn the consequences.
Oh, they might call me bad names.
Okay.
Well, if you're that afraid of being called bad names, then you're unworthy of the sacrifices of your ancestors who had to face and brave a hell of a lot more than bad names to achieve the civilization that we treasure and cherish.
And so, you know, if...
If I leave $50 in $5 bills on a park bench and come back the next day and they're gone, okay, yeah.
Whoever took them was not great, but come on.
Does anybody really expect anything different to happen?
And so if Europeans are going to listen to all of this twaddle about how bad their ancestors were, yeah.
And then pay, like if you pay your verbal abusers money to stop verbally abusing you, then of course, A, they never will, and B, it's your fault!
You know, there was, I think it was in the...
I'm trying to remember his name.
The Duke of Marlborough, I think, was Churchill's father.
But anyway, there was this guy in the past, too specific about it, 19th century, I think.
And some newspaper got a hold of his love letters.
You know, back at a time when love letters were like, I don't know, goat porn or something.
And the newspaper said, you know, do such and such for us.
Or the guy said, do such or I'm going to send you the papers.
It wasn't the newspaper.
Some guy got a hold of his letters and said, I'm going to have the newspaper publish them.
And then you're going to feel really embarrassed.
And the nobleman said, publish and be damned.
Publish and be damned.
That's the only way to break the cycle of this verbal abuse.
Except it's going to happen.
Except people are going to call you terrible names.
And...
Don't care.
Don't care about it as best you can.
And it's the least amount of sacrifice that has been asked of just about anybody throughout human history.
And so...
You know, because people say, oh, well, you know, the Native...
And I've been prayed to a lot of this.
I was indoctrinated the same as everyone else, so I understand.
So the Native Americans?
Well, you know, the Western people came over and destroyed the entire country and culture.
Well, the Native Americans...
Had these blindly repetitive societies.
They did the same thing every single generation.
Very little change in their technologies, in their tool sets, over thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
Okay, so they didn't have the challenge of having their culture overturned internally, right?
Like the creative destruction of capitalism or sort of modern art and culture where Prejudices are overturned, and there's this continual attack upon complacency, and the bourgeois sensibilities are constantly being plowed under by the new round of bespectacled thinning-haired hipsters, and so on.
And it's upsetting and difficult for people.
You know, I mean, when you have a society where nothing changes, the old have a lot of value, because they have the most experience in all the stuff that never changed.
But if you have a society where things are changing all the time, Then the old become less valuable.
I mean, we all understand that the old hunter among the Inuit is the guy you want to go talk to if you have a hunting problem.
But your grandmother is not who you're going to go to if you're having trouble figuring out which way to swipe in Tinder.
At least, let's hope not.
And so in a society where there's little change, the old have much more value.
And in a society where there's lots of change, the old have less value.
And so the old people resist change because if change doesn't occur, then their value is maintained.
Their social capital is maintained.
So the old people resist change coming in because it undermines their social value and makes them look like they can't They don't know how to set up a POP3 server and an email client, right?
Which, you know, everybody these days who's under the age of 10 learned how to do before they learned how to not crap themselves down the leg as babies.
And so the old ruled and I would imagine fairly viciously suppressed the young and tradition in that good old fiddler on the roof way became their god.
Nothing changed.
The same thing happened to some degree in Chinese society, Japanese society, and so on.
A lot of technology, very little change.
And they got all of that comfort for thousands of years.
Nothing really had to change.
Everybody knew what was going on.
The old people never had to be challenged.
And then they get their asses kicked by people who come over who've gone through a lot of revolutions and a lot of change and are willing to challenge their elders.
So, okay, if you're kind of lazy, don't want to reinvigorate your culture, don't want to challenge your elders, then you're going to get these stupid-ass photocopied generations, you're going to get no progress, and then any other culture that is more, you know, critical, more willing to undermine the assumptions of the culture and so on, they're going to come over and they're going to kick your ass!
And they're going to win!
And that's the price you pay In terms of social evolution or social Darwinism, that's the price you pay for complacency.
That's the price you pay for not challenging your elders.
That's the price you pay for not thinking for yourself.
So you're going to get your ass kicked by people whose cultures at least accept that.
Very few cultures encourage it, but at least accept it to some degree.
So...
I don't know.
White people have just got to stop feeling guilty.
I mean, I know easier said than done.
I get that.
Europeans just got to stop feeling guilty.
Got to stop feeling guilty.
There is no rational standard by which one would single out Western European civilization as worse than any other civilization.
And it's got nothing to do with who's better or worse.
Fundamentally, it just has to do with A, who's got the money, and B, who's willing to part with it if you make them feel guilty.
And an entire narrative has grown up like a bunch of seeds dropped in a big pile of horse dung.
A whole narrative has grown up, which is not history at all.
It's just a vast collection of verbal abuse that is designed to be hurled at people until they pay you money to stop.
Don't you feel bad about Jim Crow?
Okay, good.
Then O.J. Simpson goes free.
You just have to stop and say, judge me individually or get lost.
All right, that's the end of that rant.
Does that make any sense at all?
Yes, it does.
Actually, I hope that the truth will help us get rid of the guilt feeling, don't you think?
Well, yeah, I mean, sorry to interrupt, but the truth isn't going to magically do anything.
It has to be just a matter of willpower.
Yeah, that too.
You know, don't you feel bad about slavery, white man?
Yeah, I guess I'm glad that white people ended it, aren't you?
Yeah, that's an example of using the truth, right?
Yeah.
Don't you feel bad about Jim Crow laws?
It's like, yeah, they're really terrible.
Jim Crow laws are really terrible.
I'm sure glad that white people ended them.
And what do you think about all the African countries that are now busily suppressing and killing a lot of the whites?
You know, there were, what, six race laws under apartheid, and now there are hundreds and hundreds of race laws under the black leadership?
Yeah, you know, don't you feel bad about X? Yeah, I'm sure glad it was ended.
By who?
Well, usually white people.
There wasn't a whole lot of...
Not a whole lot of Inuits storming around the world making sure that the slave trade ended, right?
I mean, so...
Because this idea is like, well, you're supposed to feel bad about Jim Crow.
You're supposed to recognize that all of your money came from...
The suppression of blacks under Jim Crow, and that's why you're rich and the blacks are poor, so give black people money!
Ridiculous argument.
That's a ridiculous argument.
I understand why the argument is made.
Because, you know, it's easier to guilt people into giving you money than it is to go out and make your own.
I get that.
But the idea that exploitation is the source of wealth?
Oh my god.
If exploitation was a source of wealth, the Soviet Union would have made it to Alpha Centauri within the first nine minutes of its existence.
Exploitation never bred wealth.
Capitalism had to survive slavery.
It had to end slavery in order to flourish because slavery inhibits, as we talked about earlier, the spread of labor-saving devices.
So, you just have to, you know, the whole goal is like, okay, I'm going to make you feel guilty about something.
And therefore, you've got to give money to people who I represent.
It's like, you know, I'm just not interested in shakedowns.
I'm willing to have, you know, discussions with people about good and bad things throughout history.
It just can't ever have as its end goal the transfer of money from one group to another by government force.
I mean, because then when that's the end goal...
Then it has as much relationship to rational discussion as roofying does to a date.
I mean, nothing to do with it at all.
I just don't get involved or engaged, certainly in my personal life, in discussions with people who are trying to pick the locks of white guilt in order to get resources.
It's like, meh.
If I'm supposed to feel collectively guilty for what white people have done, then I will take my cue from other groups.
White people have been doing it for a couple of generations now.
I'm done with it.
I'm completely done with it.
I think I will let other groups.
The moment that the Muslims in Saudi Arabia say we really feel bad for...
Being Muslims in Saudi Arabia, we feel really guilty for all of the women we've oppressed, and we feel really guilty for all the heads of atheists or agnostics we've cut off, and we feel really guilty for the barbaric medieval practice of hacking off people's limbs under accusations of thievery and so on.
I'll just wait for them to say, wow, we've really got a lot of Saudi Muslim guilt.
And I just, I don't know.
The moment that there's this big...
The Native Americans are like, well, we really, really feel bad for all the scalping we did.
We feel really terrible.
We're going to put up a big wig museum of all the stuff we stole and we feel really bad about it.
And the moment that the illegal immigrant community in America says, well, we really feel bad for all the identity theft.
We really feel bad for...
We feel really guilty about taking all this money out of a system that we never paid into because it's pretty exploitive and it's pretty harmful for everyone else and...
You know, when the women say, well, we really feel bad for the female superiority cult of feminism and we really feel bad for the fact that we called men...
Rape culture addicts and patriarchs and sexists and male chauvinist pigs and we really feel bad for the imbalance that men go to jail for much longer sentences than women do even for the same crime and we really feel terrible for the fact that men have had to shoulder virtually all of the workplace deaths and that men's jobs are much more hazardous and we really feel bad for all of the Really,
really terrible stuff that's gone on in the family courts and we feel so guilty and bad and all that.
And I'm just obviously off the top of my head, this could kind of go on and on and on.
But as far as being a white person goes, I'm just so completely done and bored with it all.
And if anybody wants to start, it's like, yeah, you guys go ahead.
You know, are blacks in America going to ever feel really bad for their disproportionate use of welfare and massively increased crime rates?
Well, you know, that could be arguably a little bit more directly impactful on society at the moment than slavery from a couple of hundred years ago.
But I don't think it's about to happen, so I'm just not that interested.
Anyway, listen, thanks for your call, man.
I appreciate it.
I'm going to move on to the next question, but yeah, good for bringing it up.
Alright, up next is Jenna.
Jenna writes in and says, It seems to me that misandry represents a significant threat to Western civilization.
If accurate, why are so many people incapable of, or unwilling to, simply recognize it?
Would you be able to suggest some effective means of educating people in the commission of putting an end to misandry?
That's from Jenna.
Hello, Jenna.
I heard this collective shiver of excitement from the MGTOW listeners from coast to coast, so I appreciate you calling in and I appreciate that question.
Do you want to expand on it some more?
Oh, gosh.
You know, I'm just going to apologize in advance because this is probably going to be very rambling.
My mind is going in so many different directions.
You probably just heard my last, I don't know if you heard my last 40 minutes, but if you want to ramble, I am Glass House Not Throwing Stones guy.
Oh, wonderful.
Okay, basically, when I imagine the fall of Western civilization, which I do a lot on account of I'm a realist and I'm observant, I kind of picture a civilization so weakened by the mental and physical degendering of men that another much less desirable and Unabashedly misogynistic society that still has men in it just sort of easily takes
us down.
I think we're ripe for plucking and I am really beginning to wonder if this is how it ends.
Go on.
Well, I guess this kind of started, I was on Facebook The day that National Post broke a story about a certain neo-masculinity personality who was planning a Canadian tour.
And this guy had written what I viewed as a satirical piece about legalizing rape on private property.
And as you might expect, there were numerous comments in the vein of blocking this person from speaking anywhere in Canada.
And so I made a remark about His right to free speech, as well as the right of men to assemble and listen to what he had to say.
And my attack was basically that I not only believed the piece to be satire, but also that I thought it had been written, at least to some extent, as a response to the misandry infecting Western society, and that the men who wished to gather and listen to his speech were likely also wanting to do so because of said misandry, right?
And this resulted in responses from some feminists, but not any sort of intelligent responses.
I was declared a bad Canadian, a horrible human being, a deplorable person.
These are quotes.
And so the next thing I sought to do was clarify my position.
And I was still trying to pursue a productive discussion.
And the next thing I knew, you know, the post was down, the comments were down, which I assume is the Facebook police doing their thing that they do.
But, you know, I had a lot more to say about it, and I actually wanted to engage some women on the subject, because woven into that particular piece of writing, there were some pretty solid ideas, I thought, That women would be, you know, smart to pick up on and try to work with.
Like, considering a woman's own agency in preventing harm from coming to her.
And I guess, like, self-respect, which would likely result in receiving respect from men.
Like, these are not popular notions.
I'm aware of that.
I'm a student, actually, at a Canadian university.
And, unfortunately, I know all too well that we're deterring women from protecting themselves, as if to make the point that it is absolutely, you know, unequivocally the responsibility of men to ensure that rape does not happen.
But, and again, unpopular as this may be at the moment, that is not the most pragmatic angle from which to approach the problem of rape, at least in my view.
And, you know, this whole idea going on right now that a woman can flaunt her sexuality before men, and men are exclusively responsible for making certain that, you know, affirmative consent is going on,
and to the point that, say, I don't know, the launch sequence has been activated and Presumably it's incumbent on the guy to listen for her to mutter no and be prepared to throw her across the room to make sure that he isn't somewhere he's supposed to be.
It's painfully ridiculous to me.
I mean, I can't be the only woman who thinks this, but I am not hearing this anywhere from anyone else.
And it's deeply alarming to me.
Yeah, no, I certainly agree with that.
Sounds like you've got more to say.
Well, if I hear the words patriarchy, privilege, or internalized misogyny again, I'm going to throat punch someone, I swear.
You know, if you're in a Canadian university, you might not be in the best place in the world to avoid those terms.
I know.
I know.
Bunker in Texas, maybe.
But...
And it all just seems tied in with all the other things that I find so creepy that the left hates.
Like, nationalism is a completely dirty word.
I'm taking a political science course this semester, actually, which I refer to as Socialism 101, because it's bad.
It's really bad.
But anyway...
The instructor was kind of railing on Hungary yesterday, actually.
Oh, because Hungary is putting some limits on the migrants or trying to?
Yes, and their despicable nationalism, like how dare they have ideas about how they want their country to be.
And it was just so depressing.
Does he have any idea of the degree to which Hungary was sacrificed itself historically to try and keep medieval Islam out of Europe?
Doubtful.
You've got to be clear, though.
It's not nationalism that's bad.
It's only white nationalism that's bad.
This is the thing that needs to be broken down when you're talking to leftists.
Is that they have no problem with nationalism as long as it's not white nationalism.
Because leftists need to be able to carve up white countries and hand them out to third worlders for votes.
That's how they get power.
Is they bring people in and then take money from the local taxpayers and give it to the immigrants.
This isn't how immigration used to work.
It used to be, you know, pay as you go and used to be much more beneficial and helpful to everyone back in the day.
But white nationalism interferes with the free flow of tax money to leftists to hand out in return to votes to third worlders.
So, of course, they're going to have a problem with it.
It messes up their whole business model.
Does he know that?
No, no, he doesn't know that.
But, you know, it's not like the snake has to know the difference between a bird and a mammal to get its lunch.
It's all instinct.
I mean, the biological difference.
It doesn't need to know the definition.
Definitional differences between a bird and a mammal to get its lunch.
It's got all these instincts that have developed.
And the same thing with the left.
Okay, because I've been trying to figure out if these people actually believe what they're saying, or if they're just foot soldiers for some kind of a movement that they want to see take.
Does that make sense?
Like, I've never been able to quite figure out.
In general, they're useful idiots.
They don't really think about much at all.
I mean, you could ask, you know, I mean, I'm not saying you would or should, but, you know, theoretically, if this guy was calling into this show, I would ask him and say, wow, you know, you must really, really hate the Japanese.
Because the Japanese barely allow any migrants to come in, and you must really hate the Saudis, who have more in common with the Syrian.
They're the same brand of Islam.
They don't let them come in.
They've got a million spots in their tent cities, which they have for their religious festivals, and the Saudis are not letting this...
Like, tell me how you have railed against these other countries, not least of all is Israel, these other countries in the Middle East who have not let these...
Like, you must have really, really railed against the Japanese and the Saudis and the...
Twenty-odd Muslim countries just in the immediate vicinity that could be taking these people in who aren't.
You must really be railing against those people.
And you just get this deer-in-the-headlights, farted-in-my-own-mouth look.
Because I guarantee you this guy has not written articles railing against Japanese people and Saudi Arabian people and people from Qatar and people from Israel and so on.
Because that is a kind of nationalism that doesn't even show up on his radar as something to oppose because it's not white nationalism.
Those are not white countries.
But the moment...
That a white country, such as Hungary, says, whoa, whoa, whoa!
Historical enemy alert!
Not good!
Danger, Will Robinson!
Well, then, these moral heroes pile on vicious anti-white racism, racism against white people, because no one's ever going to get upset with them about that.
The moment somebody says, I'm an anti-racist, All they're saying is, I'm anti-white!
Because that's what racism always means.
I had a call a while back ago with a guy.
Where, you know, he's like, I want to talk about racism in America.
It's like, wow, do you mean the Pacific Islanders against the Hispanics?
Or do you mean the Hispanics against the blacks?
Or do you mean, like, what are we talking about?
Oh no, it's whites against blacks.
Like, of course it is!
Because whenever you want to talk about racism, you only forever want to talk about white people, which means you're a useless idiot with no principles.
And you're just, people have just figured out that that's the word you yell at white people.
Like, you yell mortal sin at Catholic people and they'll throw coins at you.
And if you throw racism at white people, they'll throw money and resources, which the left then scoops up and uses to buy their way into power by getting votes.
Okay.
This call's happening at a good time, because I have a back class tomorrow, and Tuesdays we're not allowed to talk, and Thursdays are discussion days.
So...
You could ask the guy, who are the countries in the neighborhood that have taken note of few refugees and are you railing against them?
It's not an unreasonable question and it's not even innately a hostile question.
I'm just curious.
Right.
You won't even know.
One of the first classes, he made a comment that He thinks where he stands politically.
And I mean, this guy is, he has a PhD in history.
I mean, he's much smarter than I am, question mark.
But he says, I think my political philosophy aligns most closely with Sweden, except for the xenophobia.
And I wanted so badly to say You know, is xenophobia, if they really are mass-raping your population, but, you know, you can just get yourself branded, you know, a right-wing nut.
Well, no, I mean, my question, my comment would be, so if xenophobia is a fear of the other, then do you view Islam as xenophobic?
Like, a desire to subjugate the other, hostility towards the other.
Would you consider the writings in the Quran and in the Hadiths, would you consider them to be xenophobic in that category?
And he either would have to say, no, Islam is wonderfully inclusive, in which case, I mean, I don't even know what you say to people like that.
Or he'd have to come up with some contortion.
Because again, remember, xenophobia only and forever applies to white people.
Like, you could ask him and you'd say, well, what do you think of South Korea in terms of xenophobia?
South Korea is like more than 99% racially homogenous.
Japan, hugely racially homogenous.
Why they don't have a lot of 9-11s, because those people would show up a little bit, right?
And so, I would ask him, would you consider something like South Korea, which is more than 99% racially homogenous, would you consider them xenophobic?
Because they clearly don't want a whole bunch of non-South Koreans living there.
And he won't have any answer, because xenophobia only applies to white countries and to any white person who has some philosophical issues with a very other hostile culture, like Islam, It only and forever applies to white people.
It is not a universal term.
It is a term of anti-white racism.
Okay.
Huh.
I'm not saying you should bring this up in your class, by the way.
No, no, no.
I hear that.
But I am the sort of person who will say things that...
People don't want to hear?
I would just ask the questions and be alert to the answers.
Okay.
Because when it comes to accepting other countries and other cultures and other religions, white countries are without a doubt by far the least xenophobic cultures in the history of the world.
And certainly by far the least xenophobic cultures than exist.
I mean, try going to emigrate to Mexico.
Just try.
Just try.
Try going to get Mexican citizenship.
I mean, good luck, right?
I mean, it's virtually impossible.
Tell me which other countries allow for anchor babies.
None.
None.
I mean, virtually none.
And so the idea, of course, you know, you don't want to be virtuous in a corrupt world if you have a government, right?
Because the moment you're virtuous in a corrupt world, everyone says, oh, you really care about that virtue?
Well, we're going to turn the thumbscrews in until you cough up gold by torturing you about this virtue.
Wow.
You know, if you go to your average, I don't know, go to your average Muslim in the Middle East and say, you know, you are very pro-Muslim.
You're very into Islam.
You really think that Islam is superior.
And they're like, yep.
Right?
And if you go to your average Japanese voter and say, you know, your policies seem to be very pro-Japanese and they seem to be very Japanese-centric and you don't seem to be enacting a lot of policies that go against the interest of the Japanese.
And he'll say, yes, I agree with you.
I don't understand why that's a problem.
And you know what I think he would throw back at me?
I think he would say that because we're so privileged that we're held to a higher standard.
That's what I think he would say.
And I don't know how to respond to that.
So hang on.
But Japan has a higher per capita income than a lot of the Western countries, so they would be held to an even higher standard.
South Korea has a very high standard of living relative to the countries around it.
So why is it only the white countries who are held to a higher standard?
And of course, the people who make the most money in white countries are either Ashkenazi Jews or East Asians, right?
Japanese and Chinese immigrants or natives.
And so surely they should be held to the very highest standard as the wealthiest.
And of course, Israel has the highest standard of living in its own neighborhood.
So surely they should be held to a far higher standard than those around.
So even if he says there's some higher standard, greater wealth, higher standard correlation, he's still not applying it even remotely consistently around the world.
Hmm.
Yeah, there's a lot of Japan is super racist going around too.
So...
Oh, in your school?
Oh, yeah.
You know what?
It's difficult in a liberal cosm to make any arguments because they sort of anticipate anything you might want to say that makes sense, and they just kind of pre-take it down right from the beginning.
You know what I mean?
Oh, so they do actually say that the Japanese are very racist.
Is that right?
Yeah, and that it's going to destroy their society because now they don't have enough people and not enough births and things like this.
Well, you know, I've got to admire them for some level of consistency then.
I guess that's pretty cool.
That was certainly never around when I was younger, but I guess maybe they've heard that question a bunch and have had to concede that racists other than white people can be racist.
Yeah, I mean, nor when I was, you know, when I went...
to university the first time around, but yeah, it's a pretty popular notion now.
But anyway, I'm just wondering if people in general really want to live in a society not only in which a man doesn't seem to pay a woman a compliment or,
you know, genuinely fearful about taking us to bed or whatever, But also where our men are weak, pathetic, girly boys, either emotionally or mentally, or quite literally, having hacked off their junk and made the transition to the superior state of femaleness or whatever.
And the ones who are left have no means and no desire to protect us.
I can't believe that that's what we're gunning for.
Right.
And I don't understand it.
And nobody will listen to you if you want to talk about it.
Right.
I mean, it sounds old-fashioned, but I want to live in a society where men are good to women and women are good to men.
And, you know, if I'm jammed up, a man who doesn't even know me will want to, you know, help me out or protect me.
or, you know, where men desire to protect ladies and ladies desire to be nice.
And it now occurs to me that I'm sounding like a Jane Austen novel.
I'm not trying to be...
No, no, listen, don't denigrate your own particular preferences, though.
They're very reasonable reasons why you'd want that.
I mean, it's not Leave It to Beaver Town, it's not Jane Austen novels.
There are some very practical and sensible and healthy reasons as to why you would want that.
And I just wanted to caution you from...
In a sense, mocking or teasing your own perspective.
Okay, okay.
Thank you for that.
Because I really do believe that healthy civilizations are a balance of men and women and all that that implies.
And we're different.
You know, I'm not saying women shouldn't, you know...
The way people behave, you would think that they'd revoke our vote or something.
It's It's absolutely ridiculous.
They're making issues where there are no issues, at least not anymore.
And all the while, people are ignoring the real issues, which are that...
I mean, I know men who are just tapping out.
They're just like, you know what?
Hell with it.
Screw all of you.
So they're doing what?
Like, they are just mentally and emotionally tapping out.
Yeah.
They've given up.
Oh, you mean like bailing on relationships with women, do you mean?
Yeah, on women, period.
Like, they're just going to hole up in a cave.
And at the same time, Western governments seem hell-bent on importing hordes of men who are actually misogynist, who actually consider women as playthings and property or less valuable than dirt.
And it's terrifying because we're getting this influx of, like, alpha men or whatever.
And our men are, you know, transitioning to women or just basically, you know, probably hating us.
And why wouldn't they?
Well, no, but men can not be women.
All that men can be is not men.
Right?
You say, oh, you know, girly men.
I guess here are a lot of this sort of stuff.
All the men are like women.
No, they're not.
Because men cannot be women.
Men can only be not men.
Any more than, like, a man can't give birth, a man can't breastfeed, like a man can't, you know, have six years of hot flashes in the 50s.
I mean, this is...
Men can only be not men.
They can't become women.
Oh, I understand that, but I think the problem is more mental, right?
I mean, if you're a guy who won't, you know, say something because, you know...
If women actually scare you, you're not helping.
You know what I mean?
It's not helping the situation.
No, it's not.
Men are not scared of women.
No, no.
Men are scared of the state.
Men are not scared of women as a whole.
I mean, all due respect, you know, your upper body strength is usually not much to push in a strong screen door.
It's the state that men are scared of.
It's the power of the state combined with unstable elements within certain sections of women.
That men are scared of family courts.
Men are scared of rape accusations.
This is what I mean.
Yeah, but it's not women that men are scared of.
It's the state.
Well, I forgive the...
And there's good reason to be scared of the state, right?
Yeah, but that is what I meant, right?
I mean, men are not allowed to...
Like, anything is sexual harassment or rape, or, you know, you're going to get your kids taken away, or you're going to go broke trying to pay this woman off.
For no apparent reason, because she's a cow, you know what I mean?
Like, understandably, men are...
You know, if I was a man, I would...
It would probably give me pause before I pissed off a woman, because our society is getting so matriarchal, or whatever...
No, it's statriarchal.
It's, you know, again, matriarchal.
There's always been a matriarchy.
I mean, women have always raised babies to toddlerhood, at least usually up to the age of six or seven historically.
So there's always been a matriarchy, and women have always had enormous amounts of influence over society.
You know that old phrase, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
But you combine the matriarchy, which is traditional, with the power of the state, and it short-circuits capacities and possibilities for men.
And this is at the same time when...
It's at the same time that not only has it become more dangerous to date women in the West, but not dating women has become far more enjoyable.
You know, video games and pornography and Netflix and, you know, gyms and sports and excess wealth and 50-inch televisions and so on.
I mean, I used to think because sometimes people just got married and had kids because...
It's boring.
You know, it's kind of boring.
There's not that much to do with your life otherwise.
But now, you know, there's cheap travel, there's extreme sports, there's, you know, I mean, really kind of lots of cool stuff that you can do if you don't settle down a lot more than there used to be.
And of course, now that, again, there's pretty much no prohibitions on sexual masturbation and pornography, so it's not like, I gotta get married because I want to have an orgasm.
I mean, that's like...
That's done and dusted usually before most guys have brushed their teeth in the morning, I imagine.
So you've got these two things happening at the same time that it's more scary to date women and it's a lot more fun to not date women.
And, you know, the last thing that used to...
I think the last barrier to go was if you don't have a girlfriend, then you're kind of a loser.
But I think that's changing a lot now.
Now, I think guys with girlfriends...
Particularly young, like guys in their late teens, early 20s, guys with steady girlfriends are seen as kind of not cool domesticated guys.
You're not a magnificent steer out there in the wilderness.
You're just a gelded bull who's like wandering around looking for the perfect soft serve yogurt at the mall with your girlfriend.
And so this idea that, well, you know, you're a loser if you don't have a girlfriend, I think that's kind of changed a lot as well.
And so I think once that goes away, I don't think there'll be anybody.
And of course, the other thing too is that because taxes are so high, largely to pay for all of the single moms who couldn't keep their legs crossed or a decent guy around, because taxes are so high, having kids is a whole lot less fun than it used to be because if you want to have any kind of decent lifestyle for your kids, that means usually two parents working.
And that means that you really don't get to spend that much time with your kids and enjoy a relaxed and secure family life anyway.
So, yeah, all of it is coming together where it's just, you know, there's a reason why this birth rate is collapsing.
But my point is it's not good.
Like, it's not a way to build a healthy society.
Agreed.
Agreed, but it's good for some.
At the heart of it, though, I feel like I'm concerned with the collapse of Western civilization as we know it.
This is what terrifies me.
Wait, sorry, are you thinking of that as a future instance?
Well, I mean, at the moment, I don't feel like I'm going to sleep with my rifle.
Jenna, it already collapsed.
It already collapsed.
Ontario, where I live, has five times the debt per capita of California.
And now they're talking about this woman who's in charge, she's bringing in the basic income?
Like you just get paid for nothing?
I mean, Western civilization, as you think about it, as I think about it, already collapsed.
And it did decades ago.
That's why everyone's in so much debt.
You know, it's like if I get fired from my job three years ago, and I'm now $500,000 in debt, do I get to say, well, I'm concerned about the end of my career?
It's like, no, your career ended years ago, and that's why you're racking up all this debt?
The Western civilization, it's done!
Gone!
That's all in the rear view.
We've got to build something new, but the idea that the collapse is to come?
No, it's all...
I mean, the body's dead, the blood is still pumping, but that's just because the arteries haven't caught up with the brain death.
So how do we build this new thing then?
Like, if we have nothing...
You gotta...
I mean, let me give you very briefly about this, because I was thinking about this all day with your question.
Okay, so you know about the Soviet Union, right?
You say this is your second time in college, right?
You know about the Soviet Union.
Now, in the Soviet Union, there were restaurants, and the waiters, and the cooks, and the managers, and they all got paid whether people showed up or not, and whether people liked their food or not, right?
Yes.
Now, with that configuration of economic incentives, or lack of economic incentives, was there any point lecturing The Soviet restaurant owners and waiters, was there any point lecturing them on quality?
No.
No, they get paid either way.
And quality is more work.
Quality is harder.
When there's a particular set of economic incentives set up, lecturing people is worse than useless.
It actually injects a kind of false hope into a system for which there is no hope.
The only way to improve the quality of the food or the decor or the service in a communist restaurant is for it to not be a communist restaurant anymore, to introduce voluntarism, choice, free market principles into the situation.
There's no other way to do it.
So you can sort of say, well, men should step up, or women should be nicer, or, you know, all of the things that would be nice.
But while the current economic incentives are set up the way they're set up, why?
You know, if the waiter doesn't get paid anymore for better food, why is he going to go and fight and get up really early in the morning and go and make sure he's got the best quality bread and the freshest peas and make sure they're cooked at just the right temperature to be super?
Why?
He can just show up and shovel whatever pig slop he wants at these people.
He gets paid either way.
You're asking for quality in the absence of voluntarism.
I'm not.
I'm asking, how do we get the volunteerism from here?
Well, the only way to improve...
The Soviet Union had to...
The government had to stop paying the waiters.
And the customers had to stop paying the waiters.
That was the only way for the quality to improve.
In other words, once there was choice in the interaction, well, then you had to go out and win business with other people competing up and down the street to get...
The dollars of the people who might want to eat at a restaurant.
And so the only way for women to start valuing men more is exactly the same as why would a waiter value his customer more?
Because the customer doesn't have to pay him.
And the only way to get women to value men more is for the men to not be forced to pay for women anymore.
So how does that happen?
Well, which means no welfare, no free healthcare, no kids paid for.
I mean, it all has to go.
It all has to go.
And how do we get it gone?
I mean, it's out of money.
I mean, we have to wait for economic reality to catch up with socialist illusion.
I mean, it's already totally done.
I mean, Canada's debt is enormous and inefficiencies are...
So the government's gonna run out of money.
The government's gonna run out of money.
And then what'll happen is...
Women will kick and scream and get really angry and stomp and shout and protest and so on.
Okay, but temper tantrums don't magically change numbers, right?
Otherwise, I'd yell at a math test and be a genius.
Right.
And so then what will happen is women won't be able to get stuff from the government because the government's out of money, and then they'll start having to be nice to men.
Right.
I mean, they'll just make that transition before.
It's not a big deal.
It'll happen.
It'll be annoying to people for a week or two and then they'll be like, oh man, this is actually a lot nicer than it used to be.
So, you know, government will run out of money and women aren't just going to sit there and starve to death, right?
I mean, you know, if they've got two kids or whatever, then they'll just have to find some guy to help pay their bills and they'll have to be super nice to that guy so he sticks around in the same way that...
When the government stops paying the waiters, the waiters have to start producing and providing really good service to the customers if they want those customers to come back.
And quality of everything will go up.
But I don't think there's any point lecturing people at the moment about men should do this and women should do that.
It's like, while the economic incentives are the way they are, I mean, you're just shouting into the wind.
So I think what I'm hearing is, first of all, it has to get worse before it can get better.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's the case.
So we have, you know, some, like, terrible things to look forward to.
There's, you know, no way around that.
What, worse than now?
You know, at the moment, I'm not afraid of being caught in the middle of a Taharouzh circle.
I would like to think that we could maybe stop that from happening.
But, you know, it appears that governments are hell-bent on...
I don't know.
I don't know what their aim is.
Like, Germany.
Do they want civil war?
Is that the deal?
No, no, no, no.
Germany is quite simple.
Germany is quite simple.
It's that women don't like the sight of blood.
That's all.
I mean, women don't, you know, I mean, if they turned back these boats that were coming over from North Africa, right across the Mediterranean, if they turned these boats back, and people just come out and started swarming the shores, they'd have to round them up at gunpoint.
And if people attacked, they'd have to shoot, right?
And then the women all over the world are like, oh, look, they're shooting, they're blinding.
Okay, well, then let them walk all over you.
I mean, there's no other choice.
You either enforce your borders, which means using force to prevent people from coming in, enforcing the laws or whatever, which women in particular don't like.
And generally women can afford to be sentimental because they're not the ones drafted to go and fight in these wars should things go awry, which they probably will.
But, um...
Women don't like to see the guns of the state, which, paradoxically, women are more and more relying upon for their income and security, right?
Women don't like to see the guns of the state drawn.
Men understand the guns of the state.
Men understand that the state is an agency of violence.
You understand it, to your eternal credit.
But they don't like to see...
They want to get their check...
They want to get their money from the government.
They want to get their free education.
They don't want to see how it's collected.
They don't want to see guns.
They don't want to see prisons.
Ew!
Ew!
They don't want to see where the money's coming from.
So they don't want to see the power of the state in the same way that a mafia wife doesn't want to show up at a hit job, right?
She doesn't want to see it.
She doesn't want to see where the money, where Tony Soprano's money is coming.
She doesn't want to see that.
She wants to go shopping.
She wants to do her thing.
She wants to go to church.
Go buy her new Hermes handbag.
She doesn't want to know what state power actually is.
That's unconscionable to me.
In order to maintain the boundaries of the country, guns have got to be pulled out.
Well, yes.
But women don't want to see that.
But how can, I mean, there are some women who can be logical and reasonable, and how can you look back on history and think?
It's a fantasy.
Like, you have to be aware that sometimes these less desirable things are necessary.
You don't have to be in love with the idea, but surely women are capable of seeing that these things are necessary.
No, look, I accept that.
You accept that.
But the majority of European women are still voting left, are still voting for open borders.
They're showing up with, here's candy for you, lovely migrants, here's hugs.
And they can afford to be sentimental because they've been shielded from reality by the power of the state for so long.
They're insane.
Deeply detached from...
The history of Europe versus Islam deeply detached from reality.
Because the state has been pandering them for generations now.
Well, that's gross.
But I mean, it does go a long way to explaining why I, you know, can't seem to link up with a woman who will actually talk about things.
So I shouldn't be surprised, but I just thought maybe, you know, because I'm sort of in this liberal, you know, I just thought that maybe there's something else going on somewhere else.
I'll give you a hint, at least one that came from my history, Jenna, and it's very brief and you can tell me if this makes any sense to you.
All of the women I most admire were always despised by other women.
Right.
It's true!
It's absolutely true.
The women I really respect and admire, and there have been many of them, who've contributed enormously to my intellectual development.
Other women hate them so much.
And you know what?
I am not trying to win any popularity contest.
I don't care if you like me, but I would like to think that we can reason.
That we can have a discussion about important things.
And you can think I'm a bitch at the end of it.
That's fine.
But You know, that to me is such a not-helpful term.
And I've always disliked the fact that, you know, a guy thumps on the table and he's just like a strong, assertive guy, but a woman thumps on the table and she's a shrill bitch.
Like, I just think that women can be as tough-minded and as strong as men.
And, you know, bitch is one of these words that I've just never found particularly helpful.
And in fact, it has always, to me, diminished some of the great power that women are capable of.
But, you know...
Because it's, you know, when a man calls another man, are you going to make you my bitch?
You know, you're a bitch.
It's like, I don't know.
It's just, I don't know.
That's one of the, I kind of agree with feminists on this, just that it's really a diminishing word to the essential role that women have to play in making the world a better place.
Sorry, go ahead.
Again, I apologize if my terminology is offensive or out of line, but I am really just referring to other women.
I mean, believe it or not, there are almost no men who think I'm a bitch.
But there are a lot of women who do.
Well, let me ask you this, though.
I mean, let me play, test my theory on you.
What was or is your relationship like with your father?
Excellent.
Well, I appreciate you, because now that's one more in the Steph was right...
Because I've said that for women to really care about men, they have to have been raised by a father who loves them and who they love and who they have a good relationship with.
And that way when they hear men being dissed or attacked or whatever, then it goes against the grain of their relationship with the man who raised them.
And if you hear patriarchy and you've got a loving father, then it just doesn't fit with you, right?
Yes, it just doesn't make much sense.
And I know that there are men who are terrible fathers, and I can appreciate the suffering that this has caused to women.
I just don't think it's particularly productive to, you know, take the tack that, you know, men are horrible and patriarchal.
No matter what kind of father you have, it's not productive.
No, but it's more believable if you've not had a man around.
I mean, we think we can all understand that if someone says, all black people are X, we can assume that they don't have any particularly great relationships with any individual blacks in their life.
Otherwise, they'd have a sort of basic empirical pushback to the idea that all blacks are X, right?
Because they would know someone who – especially if X was negative because they'd know – right?
Like can you imagine some white guy saying, you know, all blacks are criminals, right?
And it turns out that he was raised and has a wonderful relationship with his black stepfather.
That wouldn't make any sense, right?
Because you know an individual, great, loving, mature, wise black man, so you couldn't ever say all blacks because you emotionally wouldn't have a connection, right?
And so in order to have the patriarchy, you have to have a lot of...
Women who are raised not around men.
The patriarchy is what rushes in and feeds from the single mother planet, right?
Where the girls are just, they're not raised knowing any quality men because quality men don't spend a lot of time around single moms.
If you've got any sexual market value, you're not trawling in the low-rent trailer park planet of single moms.
And so they're around a bunch of trashy men.
They never really get to know them.
And so it's easier to think that men are generally negative if you're raised with negative specimens of masculinity or you never really get close to love.
But if you have love for a man as a woman, then how could you end up with this negative view of men?
Like, it wouldn't make any sense.
When people talk about patriarchy, all they're talking about is...
I have never been loved by a man, and I have never loved a man.
It's a confession that their mother was not only a bad mother, but a bad partner to bad men.
It's just a confession of not having had quality men in your life, which fundamentally is your mom's decision.
Okay, so, but by that theory, Ben, every female professor I've had I mean, perhaps they're just following the script that's given them.
But short of that, none of them had good men in their life ever.
That's kind of hard to believe.
They may have had good men in their life, but it would be too late.
In other words, if they were raised...
I don't know if you've known any single moms, but single moms are pretty bitter towards men.
And single moms don't like to...
Let's just say, take an excess of personal responsibility as to how they ended up single moms, right?
Because I do videos on single moms, and some of them are quite popular.
And, you know, you scroll through the comments once in a while, and you'll just see the same thing, the same bleated over and over again, you know?
Well, he was a great guy.
It wasn't my fault.
I got pregnant by accident.
I didn't have an abortion.
She changed.
He just turned out he was great at the beginning, and then he just turned out to be this drug addict, right?
They just won't take ownership.
They won't say, I chose the wrong man, and now society has to pay for my terrible decision forever and ever and ever, right?
I have now become a resource vampire because I couldn't get a quality man to knock me up and stick around.
And so they don't take ownership for it.
So if single moms don't take ownership, then they must blame men.
If you get enough embittered single moms all yelling about how bad men are, Well, it's not that hard to extract a general principle of patriarchy out of all of that venomous, piled-up estrogen-based hatred.
And this is why when you get a lot of single moms, you get radical feminism and male hatred and so on, because they're basically...
The feminists are acting out the rage of the single moms.
Rather than saying...
Mom, you screwed up.
You banged the wrong guy.
Maybe you hoped you'd get to keep him around because you were pregnant, but you either had sex with a bad man, or you had sex with a good man, but you were such a terrible human being that he had to flee your vindictive ass.
Right?
Right.
And this is why I'm promoting female responsibility So that we can diminish misandry, the hatred of men.
Because when women start taking responsibility, then men proportionally get blamed less.
But it also elevates women.
Yeah, of course, it's treating women like they've always said they wanted to be treated, like equals.
Right, being accountable, you know, and like what you were saying about, you know, Soviet quality or lack thereof.
Why would you do your best?
Why would you want to make food that actually, you know, is edible?
Well, because there's satisfaction in that.
And this is how we derive most of our satisfaction is in our work.
And nothing feels better than, you know, An honesty is work.
You did your best.
You made someone smile.
You helped someone out.
I mean, nothing is more satisfying than that, I think.
Yeah, certainly tweaking truth isn't pro, like anti-GMO people has its satisfactions.
But I think also women are going to be kind of surprised when they hit the gas on shame, shaming men, and nothing happens.
Because men have been so ridiculously shamed.
For the past couple of generations, that they're burnt out.
Like, you can't shame that much.
You can make them afraid, but you can't shame them.
Like, you've probably heard just how bad slavery was.
And by that, of course, I mean only Western European slavery, right?
Of course.
But have you ever...
Has it ever...
It's been described to you that slavery served women a lot.
Slavery was like the mall of its time, and we all know that malls are like 98% catering to women, and the 2% of stores that aren't are just there so that women can shop lumber by dropping their man off at a radio shack, right?
Yeah.
So why were there so many cotton slaves?
I mean, do men really have that many cotton outfits, right?
I mean, you know, guys, it's like, give me some tree bark and some duct tape and I'm good to go out, right?
Right.
So a lot of slavery was driven to satisfy the preferences of women.
Does anyone ever talk about women's role in the demand side of the slavery equation?
No.
No, of course not.
Of course not.
So, that's just one example out of six million, right?
Oh, you see, war.
War is really bad.
Anyone ever talk about the fact that women will sleep with guys in uniform and will sexually shun guys who don't go to war?
Hey, that might have something to do with it.
The cycle of violence.
How about if women stop having sex with guys who are violent?
How about that?
Would that help the planet just a little bit?
No, no, but it's all just male violence.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that the ultimate reward is sexuality.
There's nothing else that matches that, because anything that doesn't dies at that generation.
And that when women are throwing their hoo-hoos at guys who are violent, they are fundamentally hitting the gas on the cycle of violence in society.
But you'll never...
Sorry, go ahead.
I agree so, so hard with that.
And I was just thinking of this whole rape on campus thing that has been so, you know, in the media or whatever.
And it just occurred to me that the best thing that you could do as a college girl is send a market signal by not showing up at the frat parties to send the message that you're not interested in being raped.
I mean, how long would those, it wouldn't take them long to figure it out when there were no chicks showing up at their shindigs, right?
That would just sort itself right out, I think.
Well, it is you know, it is a challenge.
Since chaperoning and sexual restraint, which is really the foundation of civilization as a whole, when that all fell apart in the 60s, it became a real challenge.
And I really get the challenge for women as far as this goes, which is that the woman wants to attract the best man that she can.
And...
The unfortunate thing is that when you want to attract the best man that you can, you're also going to attract other men that you don't want to attract, right?
I mean, if you're going to go out dressed to the nines to get the most attractive man or the best man interested in you, you're also going to get a bunch of other men who are going to, right?
And so it's a challenge, and I... I wish you could put out the plate of honey and only get the one bumblebee you want and not all the flies.
But, you know, that's unfortunately not the way the world works, which is why there used to be a lot of structure around sexuality, because it's hard.
And, of course, there used to be...
The idea used to be around that overt sexual displays were cheating.
I mean, among women, right?
I mean, the Grease musical, right, where there's like the Sandy who's conservatively dressed and then there's the Sandy who looks like she's got two sacks of seal meat strapped to her legs, her pants are on so tight, right?
that it used to be that if you would overtly display your sexual assets, right, tits and ass or whatever, then that was considered to be a mark of insecurity, a mark of cheating in the game.
You know, like putting some addictive substance in your pasta and calling yourself a great cook because people want to come back for more, that's kind of cheating, right?
But I think that's kind of gone by the wayside.
And now, I think that there is a little bit, I mean, you're on campus and I'm not, but I think there is a little bit of a race to the bottom that is occurring these days, wherein more and more overt displays of sexuality are being flaunted.
And that is, I won't say it's a dangerous game to play, because, I mean, women are safer on campus than they are just about any other place.
Across the world or throughout history.
I mean, rates on campus are lower than they are even in the general population, so it's very safe, but it's kind of a cheapening.
You know, if you've got to flash a lot of money for anyone to come out to dinner with you, and you've got to offer to buy them dinner or two, all you're doing is saying that you're not, you don't really think that you can be a good...
Enough friend or attract a good enough friend that somebody would be there without you paying them.
And if women are flaunting a lot of sexuality, what they're saying is they don't think they're that interesting or have that much to offer other than, you know, the various adornments, bulges and holes that God gave them.
And that to me is just a great confession of insecurity.
And of course, there are a lot of the guys who grew up with single moms as well are very intimidated by the women who've got good relationship with their fathers.
Because women who have good relationships with their fathers are case-elected.
I don't know if you've done this gene wars thing that I've been talking about.
I actually, I listened to that.
I haven't checked out any of the woman stuff, more of the political stuff, but the gene stuff caught my attention, yeah.
Right, so you would be more case-selected having a close relationship with your father, which means that a man would not...
Like, the man has to have some quality to attract your attention, right?
I mean, he can't just be some generically empty six-packed stud muffin from the Jersey Shore or something, so...
And so the low-rent guys also like the spawn of single moms because they just have to look good, they don't have to be good.
And so there's a lot of sexual politics and sexual market value going on in this stuff.
But yeah, I mean, it's not going to be long before men are just giving up.
I mean, a lot of them are, of course, just giving up on women, and it's hard to argue against that given the risk.
That is going on.
And given the impossibility of proving consent anymore.
I mean, the danger, of course, for men who are not married, maybe it's the case for men who are unhappily married too, I guess.
But, you know, you can go and have sex with a woman on campus.
And it can be...
Consensual.
To as much knowledge as you can possibly have of the matter.
But if she claims it's not later, your life is destroyed.
In other words, let's say that she sleeps with you, some sort of fatal attraction kind of thing.
You sleep together and it's relatively okay, maybe you're just not that good in bed, or maybe she wakes up and regrets it the next day, or maybe she really wants you to be her boyfriend, but you're just not into having her as a girlfriend or whatever.
If she should fall into the wrong group and say anything that happened, and then somebody can talk her into the fact that maybe it wasn't consensual, and maybe it was bad, and maybe it was rape, and oh man, I mean, you're toast.
You're toast.
I mean, your life is literally destroyed.
There is no way to play this game for men.
There is no safe way to mate.
There is no safe way to mate.
That is true.
There is no safe way to mate.
And maybe it happens three years from now.
You know, maybe it happens when she takes some radical feminist course.
And maybe everyone's just sitting around talking about, and maybe she mentions something, and maybe everybody fixes their beady little eyes on her, and, you know, they then have her act out all that rage against their absent dads.
Who knows?
Who knows?
It can be...
What was it?
Gian Gomeschi?
He had to save his emails from 13 years ago.
And, okay...
In this culture of, you know, everybody, Fifty Shades of Grey, it's all the rage or whatever, and, you know, I know lots of people who are into whatever, I don't know, the whole whips and chains and nipple clips and stuff like that.
Not my deal, but how, when we're, our society is saying that everything's a go, you know, there's no holds barred, With sex, nothing is sick, nothing is deviant, nothing is perverse.
It's all good to go.
How do you...
How can you tell anymore?
The waters are too muddy.
But the standard used to be...
I'm no lawyer, right?
But my understanding is the standard sort of used to be that if there's no evidence of any physical aggression...
No bruises, no tears, no ripped clothing.
If there's no sign of any physical aggression or any struggle, then you can't proceed.
Yeah, but that's impossible now because there will be evidence that it looks like you got beat up because that's what you're into or whatever.
Oh yeah, no, so there could be that for sure, but I mean, you can't injure somebody else in Canada even with their consent, like legally, unless it's hockey or boxing or tattoos or something like that.
There's some exceptions.
But the way it used to work is, no sign of violence, we have to assume that it's consensual.
And if there's no sign of violence or no witnesses...
Like people who heard him threatening you on the other side of the dorm door or whatever it is, right?
That used to be the standard.
For the simple reason that if there's no physical evidence, it becomes he says, she said, which can never rise to beyond reasonable doubt, which is like 90 to 95%, right?
You can only ever get words canceling each other out.
And so a man who had sexual relations with a woman where no signs of violence were there Was relatively secure that she couldn't come after him, but this is no longer the case.
Now there can be absolutely no sign of physical aggression.
She can beg him to come out for brunch the next day, she can pursue him, she can stalk him, she can send him flowers, she can do anything that indicates consensual sexual activity, his life can still be destroyed.
Yes.
And all civilizations require that men are willing to sacrifice themselves to protect their women.
That is the very essence of civilization, because all tribes where that wasn't the case would be taken over by more aggressive men from other tribes.
And so one of the reasons why it's important that men like women is that should push come to shove, come to bayonets, women are going to ask men to do some very dangerous things to protect them, right?
Yes.
And if the men don't like the women, they're not going to do it.
And I've read stuff online and I've seen videos where basically guys, what they do is they take an example of some guy.
He saw some woman getting beaten up or some woman who's, you know, was getting mugged or whatever.
And the guy rushed in to help her.
And maybe the guy got stabbed or, you know, maybe he got killed or whatever the guy was rushing in to help the woman.
And a lot of the guys online are basically saying, what an idiot.
Like, what a ridiculously stupid way to throw away your life for nothing.
Right.
And this is exactly what I'm saying.
Exactly.
I want to live in a society where men don't feel that way, because women are worth protecting, if that makes sense.
Right.
And that's how you take down a society.
And this is what's happening in Europe, and this is what is happening now in Canada.
Where the government under Trudeau, what are they going to take?
200,000, 300,000 more migrants?
This is how you take down a society, is you give lots of power to unpleasant women, and you sacrifice the interests of enough men through family courts, through alimony, through child support, through massive taxation to support the single mom state, you name it.
You make women progressively less and less appealing and more and more dangerous to men, and then the men won't lift a finger to protect the society when other men come in to take it over.
It's a genius way of bringing down a civilization that has the strongest military the world has ever known.
I mean, the Western military with the weapons of mass destruction and so on.
Unbeatable, except from within.
And that is the genius of what has happened to Western civilization, is that men, you know, after the Cologne attacks, right?
I mean, all these women getting grabbed and groped in Germany on New Year's Eve.
And of course, a lot of people, a lot of the men and the women, and women in particular, are like, well, where are the men to defend these women?
Why don't they do something?
Why don't they say something?
And the men are saying, okay, well...
What special privileges do we get in return for exposing ourselves to that kind of risk?
I totally get that that's what's happening.
That is not lost on me.
You can take away all men's privileges.
You can take away all men's respect.
You can take away all and any deference to men's competence, necessity, and strength, and protectiveness.
You can take away all of that.
And at the same time, you completely strip men of the incentive to protect their societies.
And it's going to have to get really, really unpleasant.
I'm sorry?
Why would Trudeau want to take us there?
I don't get that.
Because he was raised by a crazy feminist and a distant dad.
Because he's a single mom, crazy single mom kid.
He doesn't have what you have, Jenna, with your father.
But he still doesn't want to, you know, he doesn't want his wife to be at the center of a Tahriru circle, presumably.
No, but he won't.
He won't.
They've got protection.
They've got gated community.
They're fine.
You know, like all the people who want diversity, they don't live in those diverse neighborhoods.
Do you think Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are going to retire to downtown Detroit?
Come on!
That's for other people.
It's for people who can't afford to get out of those situations.
The rich, the powerful, they're all in their gated communities.
They've got their private jets.
They've got their security details.
They've got their state-of-the-art security systems.
They're not in diverse neighborhoods with everyone else.
They're the first people to go.
Well, I mean, so did the czar, but, you know, eventually it didn't work out so well for him.
Yeah, no, that's true.
That's a good point.
And look, I mean, I hope none of this comes to pass.
I think it will.
But when you think of the Jews, of course, the Jews, you know, whatever stories go back and forth, the Jews at some point, bad enough stuff happened that they said, okay, we have to have our own country.
That's the never again.
Enough bad stuff accumulated and they're like, okay, fuck it, we've got to have our own country.
And for Europeans, there's this massive experiment going on and if it goes as badly as science seems to indicate that it's going to go, then there'll be really, really terrible stuff happening and then hopefully the lesson will be learned and we'll get back to a freer society.
Because all of this government stuff, this welfare state, it's all massive social engineering.
And, you know, we'll go back to a free society and there will be some more awareness of the fact that intolerant cultures don't mix with tolerant cultures.
I mean, the fact that this even needs to be said is so ridiculous.
You know, I repeat this and I have been repeating it for years because I don't expect people to listen, but they'll listen after the disaster.
Intolerant cultures do not mix with tolerant cultures.
And if you want to bring another culture into your culture, and it is an intolerant culture, well, you're doomed.
And a welfare state plus IQ-divergent populations don't mix at all.
Don't mix at all.
And in fact, that's a recipe for civil war in the long run.
Yes.
Absolutely.
I agree.
Oh, boy.
Well, I'm not really less depressed, except to the end that I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy or paranoid, but...
No, and look, I appreciate what you're doing.
I mean, if there were more women like you, we'd have little to fear from anything, or anyone, or any culture, if there were more women like you.
And it's not just you if there were more fathers like your father.
And if there were more moms who chose to have kids with fathers like your father.
I mean, you're part of a whole beautiful sociogenetic virtue cluster of excellence, right?
I mean, you can write that in your next Mother's Day card if you want, right?
I'll quote you.
Yeah, if there were more women out there like you, then it would be...
You know, only women can police women.
Men cannot police women.
Only women can police women.
And that's true, I think.
Women can police men to some degree because, right, they hold the eggs.
The moment that men try to police women, you just get called sexist and misogynist and nobody listens to you and the women all cluck together and support each other and get to wave you off and humiliate you and shame you.
Men can't police women fundamentally.
And certainly when I was growing up, when I was very young, it was the female brigade of enforcement that everybody was really concerned about.
And if there were...
More women like yourself out there, it would be a different world.
And I can't tell you just how much I appreciate what you're doing.
Well, thank you for that.
It's not really a choice.
I see this pretty black and white.
And call me ladies.
Like, let's...
Let's do something.
Alright.
If you want to get in touch, we can certainly forward you anything if you're interested.
Will you maybe call back in and let us know how it goes with your prof?
I would love to do that.
Okay.
A real, real pleasure chatting with you, Jenna.
Thanks so much for calling in.
Thanks, Pat.
Take care.
Good night.
Alright, up next is Jeffrey.
Jeffrey wrote in and said, How do you define free will and determinism, and why do you think free will is superior?
If free will means that a person could have chosen to do something different than what he did, given the same past and laws of nature, then it's difficult for me to believe free will is true, because I don't understand how that is possible.
Thank you for your time.
That's from Jeffrey.
Hello Jeff, how are you doing?
Hey Stefan, doing good, how are you?
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
So, yeah, I apologize for bringing this up because I know you've talked about it so many times and hopefully it doesn't annoy you too much.
No, it's fine.
It's fine.
I don't, you know, I don't mind the topics.
I've just...
I've noticed, I'm not going to prejudge this conversation, Jeff, but I've noticed that certain topics tend to bring out certain types of people, some of whom I get along with better than others, so I'm not going to prejudge this conversation.
Don't worry about the topic, let's just, you know, we'll work to be respectful with each other and it'll be fun.
Yeah, that's what I want.
Okay, good, good.
Okay, do you want me to start asking questions?
Do you want to make more of the case that you want to make?
No, just a comment.
I think we should maybe begin by defining our terms, which I think is half the battle most of the time.
So, yeah.
Okay, I've got a whole three-part series on Free Will.
I don't know if you've watched it, but...
I've seen, I've heard some of your shows on Free Will vs.
Determinism, and that's partly the reason why I'm calling, because I haven't been...
Satisfied in general with how the conversations have gone, that's not really like a criticism of you or the callers.
Actually, maybe it is.
But it's not like a hard criticism.
I'm not saying, you know, the people that have called haven't represented it.
Okay, let's stop talking about other people.
It's too boring.
So for me, free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions with an ideal standard.
That's all it really comes down to.
Of course, we have this capacity within our mind to extract essences, what Aristotle would call essences or concepts, to extract relevant extensions of existing principles.
You know, like, we can see three coconuts, we can extract the number three and apply it to a whole bunch of other things, like sums.
And we have the capacity to compare potential actions to...
Universal standards.
And that is a choice we can make.
And that's really, to me, all that free will has to do with.
And I'm not going to go into all of the backstory and the arguments as to why, because people can just do a search for the free will series, where I go into all of this in great detail.
But that's the definition that I'm working with.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you, because I've seen many different kinds of definitions for free will.
And I actually thought you were the kind that thought free will is the ability to do otherwise.
So it sounds like it's a little different from that.
Well, and sorry, just so people understand what that means in practical terms, when someone says, is this true?
Then they're comparing something to an ideal standard called truth.
Mm-hmm.
And the proposed action in this case would be the analysis required to figure out whether something was true or false.
So, yeah, that's...
I had to find something that was particular to human beings and our conceptual abilities or abilities to compare proposed actions with ideal standards that seems to be uniquely human and I didn't want to include something which you could bribe a dog to do kind of thing.
So, anyway, go ahead.
So, it seems like you're in the camp of...
I mean, I'm just reading from a category that I have written down.
Rational deliberation.
So the fact that we have reason, that we can compare our desires with our ability to reason, and we can compare our values with what we would like to happen.
That kind of thing is free will to you.
Yes, and it's not equally distributed among the population, and it's also not automatic.
So the example would be if you have...
If you want to eat well, if you want to eat in a healthy way, you can't just eat whatever tastes good, right?
Because there's a lot that, you know, is not good for you that tastes really good.
Now, if you steadfastly avoid reading anything about nutrition or digestion or anything like that, then you kind of don't have any ideal standard with which to compare what you're going to eat with what would actually be good for you.
So if you steadfastly refuse and avoid knowledge, Then your free will doesn't really kick in because you don't have an ideal standard to compare any potential behavior to or even a higher standard or a better standard to compare your behavior to.
So when you are studying things, when you are learning things, free will isn't just like you've got a kidney, you know, and you have a kidney and you have free will.
I mean, it is a...
A muscle or a capacity that is very little present in babies, if at all, and can become more and more developed.
Through greater knowledge, right?
So lots of people didn't quit smoking because they thought smoking was not bad for you.
And then I think it was in the 60s when it was finally accepted that smoking was bad for you.
Then the ideal standard changed.
Now that didn't mean that everyone's behavior changed immediately.
But the ideal standard changed.
The ideal standard was, yeah, smoke if you like it or whatever.
Now the ideal standard was smoking is bad for you, you shouldn't smoke.
And so as you pursue knowledge, and this is why to me philosophy is very important, if you wish to have choices in this world, you need to have the more accurate and better and more consistent ideal standards.
And so free will, since it does have this compare potential actions or decisions to an ideal standard, the more accurate, the more comprehensive, the more detailed your ideal standards are, The more you have free will, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
You're not a slave to your desires or decisions that others make for you.
You're sort of trying to...
Ideal standards or the value of them, and if you're just going to live a light of brute animal impulse, or you're Hunter S. Thompson, then you have no discernible free will.
I mean, in that you can...
I remember years and years and years ago, I'd occasionally go to a karaoke bar, and there was a guy who was diabetic in it.
And he worked on a...
A cruise ship.
And I guess at one point he didn't want to work on a cruise ship anymore.
And he ate a whole chocolate cake.
Just ate like a whole...
And of course he had to helicopter it and, you know, get to a hospital and I don't know what they'd replace his entire pancreas or something, but...
So, you know, that guy was not exactly pursuing self-knowledge and wasn't assertive enough to make a decision because he didn't want to work on the cruise ship maybe anymore, just ate a chocolate cake and left that way.
It's not really free will, so to speak.
That's a life of just sort of reacting to things like a pinball bouncing off, right?
So free will is to some degree choice and willpower.
Yeah.
But, and it's not, you know, and can be earned.
And other people can help you with free will by, you know, like if I put arguments out that are easy to understand for people and compelling enough that they can see the value of those arguments in their own life and so on, then they can, you know, I'm extending and empowering their free will.
Okay.
One thing I'd like to ask is how you feel about incompatibilism, which means That free will requires that you have more than one feature open to you.
And it sounds like you might be a compatibilist, so I'll elaborate a little more.
If the past is the same and the laws of nature are the same, it seems like there's only one path open to you.
Which doesn't mean you don't make choices, it's just that you don't choose to make...
Your choices are approximate causes instead of ultimate causes.
Meaning, you know, if someone gets shot, you don't say the bullet killed him, you say the guy killed him.
But in the incompatibilist view, it goes back much further.
It's the guy killed him and he killed him because of these circumstances, these genes, this past, whatever.
So like dominoes, right?
Dominoes go back forever until the beginning of time.
Yeah.
And I know that has implications with moral responsibility and all that, but is your view sort of that that's true and free will is different from having more than one future open to you?
Or is it different?
Well, I don't know what some of those technical terms means.
I'm pretty sure I can't pass out having more than one future open to you.
But what I would say is that I cannot get logically to the position where the human mind is a more complex version of a rock rolling down a hill.
Right now, a rock rolling down a hill is not choosing where it lands.
We can't predict exactly where it's going to land, but that doesn't mean that it has a choice.
I mean, we simply don't know all of the factors.
It bounces, it brushes against this piece of heather, it falls down into this gully, it splashes into this pond.
So we don't know exactly where it's going to land.
But the fact that its final position is indeterminate at any point until it gets there doesn't mean that it has choice.
And clearly, a rock rolling down a hill is mere matter and natural forces acting on matter.
And...
So, yeah, I mean, the fact that human behavior is unpredictable doesn't, to me, mean that there's such a thing as free will.
We don't know where the rock is going to land exactly.
Maybe if we knew all the variables, we would, but we'd probably be unable to process them in real time anyway, so we wouldn't be fast enough.
Or another very sort of complex system, which I've compared it to before, is the weather.
We don't know exactly what, you know, how many raindrops are going to fall in northern Maine tomorrow.
We might know if it's raining or not within, you know, 70 to 80% probability and so on.
But there's this very complex system called the weather.
And I don't...
I can't logically get to the place where the human mind is like the weather.
Like it's a very, very complex system that's not predictable, but it's merely atoms and energy acting upon each other with no...
We don't say the rain cloud decides to rain.
It just, you know, hits a certain set of characteristics and the rain...
It comes down and people start singing.
So I would say that rocks falling downhill, the weather and so on, these are all complex systems, the outcome of which cannot be known for sure ahead of time, but I can't get to the place where that's consciousness.
Right.
And I think you've described consciousness as a manifestation of matter.
Is that right?
Well, I mean, consciousness is an effect of particular kinds of matter, right?
The actual human brain.
Consciousness is an effect of the human mind.
And the reason why...
And again, the reason why I can't...
I can't treat human consciousness as a phenomenon like rocks falling down a hill or the weather.
For the simple reason that...
I can't take it seriously.
It sounds like a terrible argument.
I feel the same way.
I can't treat other people with the same respect or the same behavior toward weather or a rock.
When I was in theater school, I played a character in King Lear.
And of course, in King Lear, I wasn't King Lear.
But, as the guy who guided the other guy's eyes out, yummy, evil guy.
But in King Lear, King Lear has this big argument with a storm.
And that's how you know he's crazy.
He's arguing with the weather.
And so the problem with people who say human consciousness is just like everything else in the universe is that they never ever act that way.
They don't say, I could drive over to my friend's house and have a conversation, or I could go and have a conversation with the weather.
They say, well, human consciousness is just like everything else in the universe, however, they never act that way.
Like, if I thought a tree was inhabited by the ghost of my grandmother, If I genuinely thought that, I would go and talk to the tree, right?
Because it wouldn't just be a tree.
It would be a tree with a ghost, right?
Who I would have a conversation with.
Now, if I then accepted the logical, empirical reality that it was just a tree, there was no ghost of my grandmother in it, then clearly my behavior would change.
There's no ghost in the tree, and therefore going to talk to the tree would now be crazy.
Because there's no consciousness in the tree.
It's just matter and energy, right?
Right.
However, when you talk to a person, you can change what the person is thinking.
Whereas with the weather, you can't change the weather by talking to it.
Well, first of all, you don't know that.
Because even the fact that you're exhaling 40,000 parts per billion of CO2 might affect in some butterfly effect way.
It might affect the weather on the other side of the world three days from now.
You don't know that for sure.
You're talking to the rain and it suddenly stops or anything like that.
There's no response from it right away.
Well, no, I understand that.
And that's why I say human consciousness, if we only treat...
Human consciousness, if we treat human consciousness as fundamentally different from everything else in the universe, then we can't say human consciousness is just like everything else in the universe.
That makes no sense at all.
Like, that's like me standing in front of a thousand pies saying they're all identical, but I'm only going to eat pie 998 because the rest of them are pure poison.
Well, which is it?
If they're all identical, it shouldn't matter which pie I eat.
And if I'm gonna say one is healthy and the rest are dangerous, I can't say that they're all identical.
So the people who believe that the human mind is like a robot or like just a series of dominoes that are very complex, but if they're gonna say that the human mind, human consciousness, is just like everything else in the universe, but only ever talk to people, Then that makes no sense.
Like the fact that I enjoy having conversations with people, the fact that I enjoy having debates with people, and the fact that I would consider it crazy to have a conversation with the weather or a rock falling down a hill or a computer or a robot or whatever, like that would be crazy.
Means that, well that has very significant implications for me in terms of how I actually view consciousness.
And I actually view human consciousness.
It's fundamentally different from everything else in the universe because that's how I treat it.
That's why when dogs email Mike, he's like, sorry, Fido, you can't come on the show.
It's kind of a human-centric show.
So I find that interesting in a good way.
It makes me think.
It seems to me, similar to a robot saying to another robot...
So you're saying that I'm like a carnivore plant.
You know, we just respond to the fly getting into my mouth and that makes me close my mouth.
I do consider consciousness special.
At the same time, I consider it made of the same stuff as everything else and following the same laws as everything else.
I agree with that.
Yeah, there's no magic, right?
I mean, you can't just say, because this is the religious approach, is that what's different about human beings is the ghost in the tree, right?
And I can't, I mean, magic is never an answer.
But the fact that Atoms don't possess free will, but that the human consciousness possesses free will.
I don't know what the hiccup is with regards to that.
Okay.
I mean, because there's no atom that's alive.
Right?
There's no atom that's alive, and yet, if you get a certain number of atoms together with a certain particular biochemical sequence or status going on, then you have an animal who is alive.
Now, none of its atoms are alive, but the animal is alive.
And so, none of my individual atoms within my brain have free will, so what?
I mean, but the aggregation of them in a particular configuration, it's emergent property, right?
It's the The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And anybody who argues against that must accept that they're not actually living because none of their atoms are living.
Okay.
So it's a certain respect and appreciation that we should have for consciousness.
However, it is still made of the same stuff as everything else.
So it's more of an attitude thing than...
No, it's just an acceptance that if you treat something as a singular entity, you can't then claim it's the same as everything else.
And if you would only ever talk to a human being, you can't say human consciousness is the same as everything else.
It's the same in a way.
It's not the same in another way.
It's the same insofar as it only has one path to go to.
It's not the same in many other ways.
I don't know what that means.
Jeff, I only have one path to go to?
How many roads must the brain work?
It's the same as far as where the atoms go and all that, how they interact with each other.
There's only one way that could have happened.
Wait, no, no, no, no.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
I think you might be slipping determinism in here.
Okay.
What do you mean there's only one way it could have happened?
How do you know?
That's just as far as I know.
Atoms can only...
Actually, no, you have a good point because...
Doesn't quantum physics call that into question?
Maybe that's...
Is that where you're going?
Well, I can't conceivably explain the mechanisms by which human consciousness operates and seemingly violates the laws of physics, right?
I mean, nobody knows, and you don't need to know any more than...
It wasn't like before biologists understood the mechanics of life, nothing was alive, right?
I mean, you don't need to know the biomechanics that produce free will in human consciousness in order to philosophically defend it.
I mean, I'm a philosopher, not a scientist, so I don't need the biology.
I simply need the logical and rational consistency.
But no, I don't believe that, of course, as somebody who accepts free will, I don't accept that all the operations of consciousness are dominoes being affected by Prior operations of consciousness and that basically we have no more choice about our actions than a planet does in its orbit.
I mean, to me, we understand the planet doesn't choose to be where it is from the sun.
It's just centrifugal forces and gravity hopefully create some sort of stability in its orbit, but it's not chosen.
These are all the operations of prior matter and energy interactions that produce something, but there's no choice involved.
Right, there's no choice.
It isn't But isn't free will more than just being able to choose?
Like you said, your conception of it is being able to choose and reason.
Whereas animals can choose.
They don't have free will because they can't reason the way we can and compare desires and values and all that.
And consequences as well.
Really, we don't need free will if we don't ever think of the consequences of our actions.
Okay.
That makes sense.
So it's not connected to causation, because if it's part of the causation argument, as in you could have done something else, then it would come down to saying that there could have been another future that could have happened.
And that's sort of a different argument, isn't it?
I'm not sure, because you've brought this up a couple of times, Jeff, I'm not sure what it means really when you say another future.
Do you mean like spider legs, you know, you choose one spider leg and the others all vanish because you haven't gone down the other tunnels of time?
I'm not trying to diminish what you're saying, I'm trying to understand what you mean.
I guess one way to put it, hopefully it I think this might be okay.
So if you go back in time like 10 minutes, would we say the same things?
Because of the way everything in the universe was ordered and because of the way the laws of nature work?
I'm not sure what...
I mean, that's an impossible experiment to run, right?
Right.
So what would it?
Thought experiment.
It might not be the best.
But you'll never...
That's neither science nor philosophy, right?
I mean, you can't go back in time 10 minutes, because you'd either go back in time 10 minutes knowing that you were going back in time 10 minutes, in which case you're not the same person you were 10 minutes ago, because you know you're going back in time 10 minutes, or you're going back in time like you're just rewinding a movie, and every other...
And then it's sort of definitionally true that you would have done the same thing.
Every other variation, like, there'd be no variations whatsoever, so you would have Expect the same thing.
Otherwise, what we're saying is free will is random, right?
Because that's the way that people try and get around the determinism of matter and energy, is they say, well, random things, but free will, philosophically speaking, free will can't be random.
Otherwise, our genes have free will through random mutations, and I think we'd have a tough time maintaining that.
Yeah, so maybe causation is not the best way to look at it.
Because even with randomness, you can have In your conception, you can still have free will.
And I accept your conception of free will.
I agree with that.
Well, hang on, hang on.
Under randomness, you can still have free will?
I'm not sure what that means.
So even if atoms can't be predicted, even if the motion of everything can't be predicted, even if the future of objects can't be predicted, people can still reason and make choices and compare desires people can still reason and make choices and compare desires and values.
So your conception of free will actually makes a lot of sense.
It's just not based on the causation argument.
I want to put it in a way that doesn't make me sound like I'm repeating myself.
Oh, darn.
Over 3,000 shows.
Don't worry about that, man.
If you were worried about that, I'd never be able to step in front of a mic again.
Um, so, okay.
Um, you know how you've said before, you've asked people, why are you trying to convince me of something you believe the future is determined?
I'm just curious if you could...
Explain that thought.
I mean, if you agree with my assessment of what you're saying.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly can't understand people who say that I'm a robot, and then they try and change my mind.
I mean, that makes no sense.
If I say, you're just like a television, well, I don't yell at the television.
I mean, because I don't have debates with the television, and in fact, we would accept that somebody who regularly has debates with the television Is crazy, right?
Mm-hmm.
So it seems like because you have the capacity to reason and weigh arguments, that is enough for free will.
The fact that you're receptive to ideas and to changing your mind and that kind of thing.
No, no, it's not.
Sorry.
Mm-hmm.
My particular philosophical approach is because I'm a relentless empiricist, right?
Empiricism trumps everything, just as it does in science.
I don't care that much about people's abstract arguments.
I only care about what they're doing in the moment.
And if we can solve philosophical problems with appeal to what people are actually doing in the moment, that's incredibly efficient, right?
Yeah.
So if somebody says to me, Steph, you don't exist.
Well...
You have to assume that I do exist, right?
So we can, in order to tell me I don't, you have to assume that I do.
Or if they say, language has no meaning.
Well, you're just using the fact that language has meaning to try and convey that language has no meaning.
Or if people say to me, there's no such thing as self-ownership, but they're exercising ownership over their own body in order to produce the argument that there's no such thing as self-ownership.
So many philosophical conundrums can be solved, boom, in the moment, easily.
Well, not emotionally easily, but intellectually, it's dead simple.
You don't need to appeal to abstract arguments.
So if somebody says to me, Steph, you cannot change your mind, And that's not my opinion already.
They're trying to change my mind.
It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
All I have to do is look at what the person is actually doing at the moment, in the moment, and literally 95 or 99% of big giant philosophical conundrums can be eliminated simply by looking at the empirical actions of people in the moment and unpacking the assumptions built into what they're exactly doing.
So, do you think determinism implies that you cannot change your mind in an argument?
Well, can a rock change its mind?
But humans aren't rocks.
Okay, but determinism is...
Dominoes with no interruption from the origins of the universe until the last flame out or whatever is going to end it all, right?
And so there is no capacity to change one's mind because mind itself is a subjective illusion.
We may think that we have the capacity to change our mind, but that's like thinking that Epilepsy is the result of demonic possession, right?
I mean, it's a false belief based upon the delusion of a ghost in the body, right?
And so the determinist position is that our minds are unfolding in their actions in the same way that a rock rolls down a hill, a drop of rain goes down a window glass, Or that a comet goes around the sun.
These are all operations of blind matter and energy and the principles thereof operating on each other with no choice in the matter whatsoever and that the human mind, because it is subject to all the same laws and there's no magic pixie dust in the human mind, there's no ghost in the machine, there's no spirit, there's no soul, there's no God's finger in there poking around and typing your future out.
And so the human mind, given that we cannot cloak it in magic to give it free will, must be subject to all of the same processes of matter and energy of everything else in the universe, and we cannot create a special exception in the human mind called free will unless we're just willing to create magic, ghosts, the soul, and faith, which is decidedly anti-scientific.
And so that to me would be...
Something like the argument for determinism.
Yeah, I didn't think you would come to that conclusion because I don't see it that way.
For example, if you are determined to become a great bodybuilder, it's not like you can just be idle and then become a great bodybuilder in the future without doing all the work.
I guess some of the Greeks describe it as being co-fated to do everything in between to being a great bodybuilder.
Sorry, as being what?
Co-fated?
So all the steps in between, for example, working out and doing your schedule and all that, you're fated to do all those little things as well.
And then you become a great bodybuilder.
So to bring that back to changing your mind, If you were determined to change your mind during a certain conversation, it was also determined that you were going to think about the other person's arguments.
You were going to consider their inputs.
You can say you were going to consider how you feel, how you think, whatever.
I still don't understand exactly how that's incompatible with Changing your mind.
I'm not saying we are robots, but a robot could change his mind if another robot knows something that the other robot doesn't.
Wait, wait.
A robot could change his mind?
Robots don't have minds.
No, I know.
I'm saying if we think of a robot that has The mental capacity of a human, which might never happen.
No, no, no, no.
Then just say person.
You can't just say, well, let's create a robot that's exactly like a person and think it's somehow...
It's either exactly like a person, in which case let's call it a person or...
It's probably better to use people.
If one person has information that another person doesn't, it seems reasonable that that would help the other person change their mind if they're reasonable, if they're going to think about this new information, how that affects their lives, etc.
I maybe clarify a little bit more how that could not have been...
No, just before you do, Jeff, just...
So tell me, if you're more into determinism, what changes?
What changes?
See, if I accepted determinism...
I would no longer need willpower.
I would no longer need clarity.
I would no longer need philosophical principles because everything that I would do would be exactly what I was destined to do.
I would have no choice in the matter.
So my behavior would change if I became a determinist.
Now, of course, people would say, no, if you really became a determinist, then whatever, you would be...
Your behavior would change deterministically.
But my choices would change.
And I would also no longer be able to admire anyone.
Right?
Like, if we look at Michelangelo's sculptures, we can say, well, that's beautiful stuff.
However, if the wind has turned a cloud into something that looks vaguely like an elephant, we don't say, ooh, great sculpting wind, right?
That's just natural forces.
So...
Admiration would vanish.
Love would vanish.
Respect, virtue, choice, good, evil, philosophy, all eradicated.
All would be revealed as mere religious superstition in believing in a ghost in a tree that isn't there.
Yeah, and I don't want to believe that.
Hang on, hang on.
So this is what I... And also, I would give up trying to change other people's minds, because when we have knowledge, it should change our behavior for the better, especially if it's such fundamental knowledge that there's no such thing as choice, or right or wrong, or truth or error, or good or bad, or virtue or vice, or...
It would have to change...
And so here's my question to determinists, and I've been asking this for years, and I never get an answer because there fundamentally isn't one, I think, which is this.
What changes?
Like, let's say that I convinced you of my position, right?
What would change in what you do in the world?
So I would agree with I would agree with your first the first part of free will, which is weighing desires and reason.
This seems to be a second part, which is you can't choose to choose because choices are okay.
Choices are compatible with determinism.
You can choose, but you don't choose what you choose.
I hope I'm not being too abstract.
I don't know what any of that means.
Choices are okay in determinism.
I don't think that's really the case.
If something is predetermined, then clearly it doesn't have a choice.
So like an animal or like a skunk can make a choice based on what it believes, how it's going to achieve its objectives.
It just doesn't Like, it was going to make that choice.
I don't want to talk about skunks.
Come on, we're trying to confine it to free will, which we've already talked about as a human characteristic.
So, the reason I said you don't choose what you choose is because that's what Sometimes it's viewed as free will, and I think that's where we are right now.
Okay, let's get back to this.
And I'm trying to be confrontational here.
I genuinely want to know, I've told you what would change if I accepted determinism, which is just about everything in my life would change.
What changes?
What changes?
Because my experience has been that determinists, they call me up and they want to change my mind.
They want me to compare my current thought processes about free will and change them to the higher and more practical or accurate truth of determinism.
And I'm not trying to do that.
No, no, I get that.
But the reason that I... I think that's kind of cheesy.
It's like, okay, so you get to call yourself a determinist, but you get to do everything that a person who accepts free will does.
You get to argue, you get to debate, there's truth, there's falsehood, there's better state of mind, people should conform to the truth, they should reject errors.
It's like, okay, then I'm a determinist too, because I'm doing exactly what you're doing.
I'm just calling it a different name.
Like if you say, I've really got to head north, right?
And you point in a particular direction, right?
You point to a mountain and say, I've got to head north, right?
And then I say to you, actually, that's due south, and I break out my compass and I show you the whole deal, right?
And you just head off that anyway, saying, well, I still want to head north, and you head that way.
Well, you know you're not heading...
So, in other words, it doesn't make any difference.
What you call it, you're heading to the mountain.
And so, I've yet to come across a determinist, for obvious reasons, Who has given up trying to change anyone's mind because he's a determinist.
Because those people would never call into my show, right?
Because it wouldn't make any sense, right?
Maybe there are a whole bunch of them out there who've given up trying to change people's minds.
I have respect for that.
Because at least then your beliefs mean something and they will change your behavior in some manner.
And that's why I'm asking...
Let's say you came, I don't know this, you can't choose what you choose, I don't know, maybe it's one too many layers from my little brain or whatever, but what changes?
Let's say that mental exercise, if you accepted everything that I'm saying, would anything in your life change?
In other words, your perspective on determinism, which is not the same as mine, what practical effects does your difference of opinion have for me In what you do in the world.
That's why I want to understand better what you mean by free will.
I think this is a different kind of free will than what we started with.
Because I agreed with your first definition of free will.
And this other free will is we are making choices that are different from Well, if we make choices that are different from everything else, because we have reason, because we can weigh values and all that, if that's the difference, then I accept that.
I already agree with you.
So we don't have any particular difference of opinion, which is why we're kind of doing the same thing and having a conversation or a debate, right?
Yeah.
And I was just asking about the causation part of the free will camp.
Which is a bit different from that.
Which is...
It's hard to understand.
I think it's a lot more abstract and maybe that's why it doesn't make as much sense.
Because it's hard to grasp what exactly people mean when they hold these views.
So I think we generally agree on the fact that consciousness is special.
We have free will in so far as we can weigh these desires and values and reason about how our life should be and that sort of thing.
But yeah, I think maybe it's not as important to determine whether there is like one future or two futures we could have and that's sort of argument.
Can I ask you another question?
Yeah, go ahead.
How's your life?
Pretty good, I think.
What do you like about it?
I like the fact that there's always something new for me to learn and always another way I can better myself.
Yeah, that's part of it.
You don't sound overly happy to me.
Kind of monotone?
Yeah, well, I'm kind of monotone in general.
And I'm actually working on being more vivacious and that kind of thing.
So that's one of the parts that I'm trying to improve about myself.
Wait, this is you being more vivacious?
Wait, I almost wish you'd called in before you'd made that choice.
I could compare.
No, I'm obviously not there yet, but I'm trying.
And do you have...
I mean, you don't have to answer any of this.
I'm just kind of curious.
Is there something that you've done in your life that you consider a moral regret?
Hmm.
As in, like, violation of rights?
No, it doesn't have to be.
Like, you know, when I was a teenager, I... I kissed another girl when I was dating a girl and I felt really bad about that and it was the wrong thing to do and all that.
But was that a rights violation?
It was certainly slimy and dishonest with the caveat that at least I fessed up and took my lumps and all that but learned better.
I'm just curious.
What, like if there is, and again, you don't have to answer anything, I'm just curious if there's anything, or if there's been anything in your life which you have as a sort of ethical regret.
I don't mean, you know, clubbed a homeless guy with a baby seal or anything.
Yeah, I think we've, I mean, we all have things like that, but one that comes to mind, which is just random, to answer your question, is like, well, not completely random, it's obviously on point, but it just came to me that when I was little, my father One of my friends came over to visit, and I don't know why, maybe we got into an argument.
And he threw my chihuahua into a little pool of water, and he was fine afterward, but I felt really bad for the chihuahua.
And then I just started hitting him really hard.
And I feel bad about that.
I think that was immoral.
So yeah, there are things in my life like that.
And when did the questions of determinism first arise for you?
Probably when I started listening to your show and you started talking about it with listeners.
So maybe one or two years ago, I hadn't really thought of it as an important question in the past.
Right.
All right.
Alright.
Yeah, I mean, I just, I've never, it's just an emotional thing, so it's not sort of philosophically content-rich, so to speak, but I just, I've always had a concern that people who are heavy into determinism,
and I'm not saying you're right, I mean, I've enjoyed the chat, and I'm not saying you're along these lines, so this is not directed specifically at you, but The more hardcore determinists and so on.
Like, why would choice be such a threat unless you'd made some really bad choices?
Like, why would free will and the...
It's not free will that matters.
What matters is moral responsibility.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
And so my question has always been, if people are really, really hostile towards the idea of moral responsibility, Why?
Why would they be so hostile to the idea of moral responsibility?
And I would assume, again, I'm not talking about you here, Jeff, but I would assume, absent any other information, I would assume that it's because a bad conscience is awakened in them through the concept of moral responsibility, and there's something that they've done that they can't live with.
Or maybe a lot of things they've done that they can't live with.
And so they turn themselves into a robot because their conscience has become a predator within them.
And that is not, you understand, that is not an argument and that is not conclusive, but you've heard the conversations I've had with some people where they get explosively angry with regards to Moral responsibility.
And I just can't imagine somebody with a decent conscience who would get that angry over the concept of moral responsibility or why they would be so fiendishly devoted to the idea that there's no such thing as moral responsibility.
And if you co-join the defensiveness with the rage, with the irrationality of their perspective and an inability to introspect and ask themselves, what am I doing?
Because when I say, well, we can solve 99% of philosophical conflicts, it can be solved through introspection and through a logical analysis of what you're doing in the moment.
The people who can't do that must be people for whom introspection is a dance through a landmine of a bad conscience.
And they like to get abstract because the alternative, which is to know thyself.
Socrates' first commandment is know thyself.
And I think that had something to do with the fact that if you know yourself and you understand what you're doing in a conversation, in a debate, in an argument or whatever, you know all of the premises that are embedded in you actually having that conversation with someone.
Then you can solve most of what you're having a conflict about, but people who are very strongly resistant to introspection, I would assume, do so because they know deep down what they're going to find if they examine their own mind, their own heart, their own conscience,
and they're running in the opposite direction but calling it some deterministic principle, because they've lost their humanity, losing their free will, which really is your humanity, Doesn't really mean much, if that makes sense.
And again, I'm not referring to you specifically here.
I just wanted to sort of...
No, but it's good for you to mention that because it's something to keep in mind that maybe I should avoid...
I don't know.
I intuitively reject any mention that moral responsibility doesn't exist.
I consider myself a pretty introspective person.
Like earlier today, I was...
I felt...
Uncomfortable until I apologize to someone who said something I said was a little rude.
I do have these intuitions and I'm very comfortable taking more responsibility for my actions.
I think it's enriching to my life.
Yeah, and this is probably why we were able to have a very enjoyable conversation about a topic which drives a lot of people straight up the wall.
Yeah, but it's good to keep in mind that Not to maybe...
Or just to keep that in mind so I don't pursue it out of a subconscious desire to reduce the moral responsibility of my actions.
That's, you know...
Yeah, because of course people who start dipping their toe into the deterministic pool naturally are going to lower their moral standards.
I mean, you have to.
It would make no sense otherwise.
And so my concern is that people who start...
Dabbling in determinism are going to lower their moral standards, maybe do things that they wouldn't otherwise have done.
And then what happens is they're kind of wedded to it now.
Because they've invested bad behavior into a bad set of ideas.
And then pulling away from those ideas is going to reveal the naked ferocity of their bad conscience against themselves.
And I'm sort of, and again, I know it's a slippery slope argument, but I think there's Good empirical reasons and psychological reasons as to why this can occur.
That people say, well, you know, it's like people who get into relativism.
You know, nothing's good or bad, everything's equal.
It's okay, well then they go and do a whole bunch of self-indulgent stuff.
And then what happens is any kind of moral absolutism kind of becomes their enemy because...
It will ally with their bad conscience and make them feel bad, which is why when you talk about moral responsibility, objective virtues, objective value, objective truth, it's a great way to flip the light on and see who's got a bad conscience, because the people who react in the most hostile fashion to objective truth,
objective virtue, objective reality, I'm saying determinism and relativism in particular...
Are very, very dangerous toys.
I think because they, you know, if you're wrong, like if you lower your moral standards and do, I'm not saying, not you in particular, but if people lower their moral standards because of relativism and determinism, and then they do bad things or irresponsible things that hurt people and not even for a good cause.
You know, you hurt people if you're helping someone through rehab, you're going to be very, at least for a good cause.
You hurt people, mean, selfish, nasty stuff.
And then, if they try to pull back from the softening of moral resolve, which is always associated with determinism and with relativism, it's really, really hard to come back.
Yeah.
Really hard to come back.
And that's my concern, that it is a slippery slope for people to say, let's see what's down here.
Last forever.
And I think that can be tragic.
And that's one of the reasons why I'm very strong in sort of pushing back against this stuff.
There's certain things, like you don't experiment with absinthe.
This stuff can kill your brain or like one dose of ecstasy can permanently damage your brain.
And it's like, you just don't do it.
Don't go down the path.
Don't go down the road.
That's my particular approach.
And, you know, again, there are good reasons for it, but that's why I was sort of curious about that stuff.
Yeah, and determinism of free will is more like a puzzle that's keeping me entertained right now.
It wasn't something I'm super into.
I have sort of an analytical mind, so I need these puzzles to keep me entertained.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for the call.
I really, really appreciate it.
Certainly one of the more enjoyable conversations about free will versus determinism, and that's probably because there's much more that we agree on than disagree, which I appreciate the call.
And again, feel free to call in if you disagree with the things I'm putting forward.
I always like to have a rousing debate, and I particularly value...
How it trains people in the discomfort of seeing conflict.
We put out these debates and people are like, oh Steph, you were so mean.
Steph, you said these terrible things.
And this is not you.
But when people interrupt me when I'm trying to make a point, then I'm going to get annoyed at them for interrupting me.
But if they then make five points in a row and don't give me a chance to respond, I'm going to have to keep interrupting them so I get a chance to respond.
And then people always say...
Well, Steph, you interrupted him as much as either.
It's like, not the same situation.
Not the same circumstances.
But it's good for people to see conflict occurring.
Everybody's alive.
Nobody died.
You know, nobody's hiring hitmen.
You know, it's all, you know, it's contentious and we get upset and, you know, but these are important topics to talk about.
And so it helps the audience member, just as being exposed to ideas that run counter to your belief system.
You know, like I thought environment was very, very big.
In terms of the outcome of intelligence, and I keep running up against these people who are really good experts in their field, who tell me that environment, particularly when people get older, doesn't really seem to have much to do with intelligence at all.
Or even certain pretty basic aspects of the personality.
Yeah, goes against what I believed for many years.
That's healthy.
That's good.
Be exposed to opposing ideas and be exposed to conflict without freaking out.
That is really, really important.
Civilization is the capacity to be exposed to conflict without freaking out because that freak out, you know, if you can't control your own emotions, you always end up having to control other people.
And so, yeah, I'm glad you called in and, you know, I'm glad to have these debates with people.
It doesn't cause me to lose sleep.
I'm happy to have the conversations.
It is enjoyable.
It doesn't matter if I get angry, you know, it doesn't, you know, get abusive or anything.
It doesn't matter if the other person gets angry.
It's totally fine.
People gotta not be such little girls about this stuff.
Although little girls are actually pretty good at handling conflict, from my experience.
Yeah.
Thanks very much for your call.
Thanks for everyone who called in and who is going to call in and continue the world's greatest conversation ever.
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