April 9, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:14:33
3255 The Making of Stefan Molyneux - Call In Show - April 6th, 2016
Question 1: [2:05] - “The non-aggression principle seems to be the foundation for many of your philosophical and moral arguments. However, would you agree that absolute adherence to this premise could have negative repercussions in a utilitarian sense? Is that even relevant?”Question 2: [1:08:18] - “After going through a breakup with my girlfriend of 2.5 years who I felt was a very amazing virtuous woman, I feel that I overlooked several red flags or found ways to justify them or blame myself for her actions. How can I make sure I don't do this in future relationships - and at what point do you bail?”Question 3: [2:12:24] - “Stefan, I think you're exceptionally skilled at oral communication to a point that is extremely hard to come by. You are very quick in your replies and during your so called 'rants' you are able to create many off the cuff metaphors which are uncannily precise to the point you are making. I understand your very profession definitely plays a part in this, as you are always exercising your verbal ability, but was this something you were always good at by any chance? Was this something you consciously tried to perfect over time?”Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
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Now this was a good and broad set of questions.
The first...
was could there be negative effects to a steadfast application of the non-aggression principle?
In other words, could there be utilitarian or pragmatic negative consequences to consistent application of the non-aggression principle?
And if so, does that invalidate the non-aggression principle?
So we had a good tour Through how the non-aggression principle could work and whether negative consequences can be used to repudiate moral standards.
Second caller, his heart was broken.
He got it shredded by a woman he was going out with for two and a half years, and he thought she was great and virtuous, but then thinking back on when they met, there was some Well, some red flags, to put it mildly, and he wanted to know how can I build a motive virtue around my tender heart so that I can give it in the future without fear of it being broken so badly.
It was a good conversation.
Something very important.
It's a risk that we all face.
A third was an interesting call.
The caller wanted to know how I do that voodoo that I do so well.
How do I do the ranch?
How do I get the analogies and the metaphors?
How did I train myself to do that?
is it innate or was it something I developed is it a muscle or just something basic to my personality and so we talked a lot about the history how I developed my capacity to do what I do and kind of lifted the curtain so people can see what goes into the preparation and execution of the work that I do here at Freedom Main Radio and I don't know if you find it interesting.
Let us know.
I'm happy to talk more about it.
I just want to make sure it's something of interest to people.
So, you know, do you want to see the making of videos?
Well, do you do the DVD extras?
Well, let us know if you like that or not.
And again, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
All right, well, up first today we have William.
William wrote in and said, the non-aggression principle seems to be the foundation for many of your philosophical and moral arguments.
However, would you agree that absolute adherence to this premise could have negative repercussions in a utilitarian sense?
Is that even relevant?
And that's from William.
William of Obscurantism, how are you, my friend?
Hello, Stefan.
So I've watched your videos recently and got a pretty interesting perspective on a lot of matters.
And you introduced me to the non-aggression principle, so I wanted to talk about that today.
So the non-aggression principle or NAP is not just a great way to refresh yourself in the afternoon, but it is you are not morally allowed to initiate the use of violence, the use of force against other people.
The non-aggression principle, aggression defined as the initiation of force.
So you're allowed to respond to self-defense or defensive property, personhood and so on.
Anybody's trying to kidnap your cat, you can release the hounds of doom.
But you are not allowed to initiate force.
So I'm just going to go through your question and see if I can tease some of it apart.
Sure.
Seems to be the foundation for many of your philosophical and moral arguments.
Now when you say seems to be, is that, I'm not sure what they're like, is that uncertain?
I just don't want to make any assumptions.
Okay.
So I'll let you clarify.
Yeah, so for those who don't know, there's a book I've got called Universally Preferable Behavior, a book I wrote.
A universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics.
You can find it at freedomainradio.com slash free.
It's in fact free, although, fdrurl.com slash donations if you like it.
But I go through the arguments as to why.
I've never liked a philosophy that just kind of says, here's where I start.
God exists, and let's just take it from here.
You plant your flag, as a friend of mine said years ago.
You just plant your flag somewhere, and here is my kingdom.
But the way you plant your flag has been attacked as somewhat arbitrary by some postmodernists who themselves are very arbitrary.
But anyway.
So, I've got a rational argument for the non-aggression principle.
Now, what do you mean by absolute adherence to this premise?
What does absolute adherence mean?
Well, I would just assume that if you believe it's a morally correct position to have, then I would assume that you would adhere to it as strongly as possible, and absolute being the upper bound of that adherence.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, it's interesting that you put the word absolute in there.
Oh, okay.
And just so, adherence to this principle, I think generally we can all, all reasonable, decent, empathetic human beings, I know it's not an argument, agree that you should not initiate force against others.
And if you doubt that, you know, go to a playground and watch one kid whack another kid and see, well, oh, don't you, right?
Right.
And that's just the way society works, or at least used to.
Absolute adherence to this premise.
I'm not trying to be a nitpicker here.
I just want to make sure what that means, why you put the word absolute in there.
Because that is one of these very difficult words.
Absolute adherence to this premise.
I would agree it's a difficult sort of, because it's kind of hard to imagine absolute inheritance to anything with just how human nature works and hypocrisy and all these sort of things.
Yeah, you know, lifeboat scenarios, hanging from a flagpole, space aliens, you know, whatever it is, right?
Exactly.
You think someone's going to attack you, but it turns out that they were just trying to take a picture of you with a camera that's shaped like a gun.
Like, you can come up with a whole...
And so I'm just concerned with absolute adherence to this premise because I'm just telling you, if you're on the planet, absolute adherence to gravity, yes.
But if you're on the planet, the moment you say absolute...
All of the nitpicky trolls will come in and try and find some way of unraveling.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to scratch the word absolute and just say adherence, general adherence to this premise.
Sure.
And yeah, I'd like to clarify a little bit on that point.
I actually wrote some notes down, and I watched a recent video that you made about nitpickers specifically.
I believe it was Mr.
X, the infamous Mr.
X. I tried to present some examples to just go after really obscure, extreme, that have no basis in reality sort of examples, and just tried to tear down your belief system.
Just for those who died, your wife is dying.
Exactly.
The doctor with the only cure in the world will not sell it to you, even though you have a trillion dollars.
Do you steal it?
All of this stuff.
We don't have taxation, war, debt, terrible government, schools, a dependent underclass.
Let's worry about imaginary cures in impossible economic situations 500 years in the future.
What a great place and way to spend your moral energy.
Not you, William.
I mean the other nitpicker.
I agree with you.
That was fairly ridiculous.
I did not agree with Mr.
X in that case.
I would like to add a couple of disclaimers.
To just maybe like buffer the question I posed originally.
So I'm not really a strict utilitarian.
I think it has a couple of use of applications in certain scenarios in a general sense.
But I'm not like, that's sort of like, let's kill one person to save five just for like, sort of deny basic human rights just for sort of a societal benefit, like that sort of thing.
I do believe that people have intrinsic rights and shouldn't be property rights and just right to life and that sort of thing.
And they shouldn't be trampled.
So just to clarify that.
And also additionally...
Well, and you know, there are very few actual utilitarians in the world.
The greatest good for the greatest number and so on, the traditional argument or the imaginary scenario, and I'm sorry to interrupt you.
You know this stuff, but we've got a lot of new listeners who need to sort of figure this out.
You've got a streetcar coming, screaming down the tracks.
And on one track, there's a fork, right?
There's a splitter in the track.
On one of them, there's five children tied up.
And on another one, there's an old man coughing up blood.
You know, like, do you throw the switch so that it crushes the children or that it crushes the old?
And you can just make up as many scenarios as you want.
But there really aren't that many utilitarians around anyway that there aren't, you know, there aren't that many antinatalists around because...
I mean, for instance, environmentalists, if they're breathing, they can't claim to be utilitarians, especially if they're in the first world, right?
Because they say the first world is terrible, it consumes so many resources, it's destroying the planet and global warming and so on.
It's like, well, you can kill yourself and then you've saved a bunch of people in the future, perhaps even in the third world, but they don't.
I mean, it's usually just not something that's practical.
It's something that people just use to take other people's stuff and Give them the little sad, pathetic tin metal of honor badge that they can wear around and humiliate themselves in the future.
But that's a general, the greatest good for the greatest number, usually requiring the sacrifice of certain individuals and, more importantly, their property.
So, yeah, I was just talking about sort of greatest good for the greatest number.
Usually, that means taking away someone's property.
Sure.
Yeah, so I guess I just to clarify that I wasn't sort of a strict, one of those few people that you mentioned that are on sort of the fringe.
And again, I just wanted to reiterate that if I say anything to misrepresent your views or stray a little too far from the topic, just go ahead and interrupt me right away and we'll just get back on track.
So I'm just going to run through a couple of quick, simple examples, simple definitions, just sort of on the same page as far as the non-aggression principle.
And then I'll just go into sort of the body of what I wanted to talk about Alright, so I guess, like you said earlier, the non-aggression principle asserts that any initiation of force or threat of force against a person or a person's property is fundamentally immoral.
Is that a correct sort of summation?
Yeah.
Okay.
Alright, so again, you would have the right to self-defense, so you have the right to defend yourself and your own property, obviously.
Well, and it's a universal right.
So you have the right of third party defense as well.
If you're getting attacked, I am legitimate.
It's legitimate for me to defend you, even though I'm not the one being directly attacked, which is how you get sort of third party defense agencies or police or whatever.
Sure.
And so, yeah, so like again, that was actually the second point I was going to make.
So if your friend was being attacked by some sort of stranger or his property was being infringed, he could call you.
And even though that stranger wasn't directly affecting you, you had the right to assist your friend in that case.
Okay, so just to move on to the thesis of what I wanted to talk about today, I think that the non-aggression principle, even though...
You could make arguments that it is moral and it sort of has a noble sentiment to it.
I don't think it would be exactly practical or a thorough solution to life in a modern global society.
Specifically, what I wanted to talk about today was issues of public safety and international relations.
Both of which obviously have a pretty significant impact on our society and human well-being in general.
And I just don't think that the non-aggression principle has sufficient answers for those things.
And I could go into a little more detail momentarily, but if you just have any additional thoughts, you just want to...
Well, I mean, I certainly don't mind looking at limitations of implementation, but let's always keep in mind, compared to what?
Will there be challenges of the consistent application of the NAP? Sure.
But compared to what?
I mean, compared to what's happening in Europe right now, compared to what's happening in America right now, compared to taxation and debt and intergenerational theft and all this kind of like, compared to what?
It's sort of like saying, well, you know, If you stab someone with a needle, that's bad for their health.
It's like, well, okay, but what if it's inoculating them against polio?
Okay, suddenly it doesn't look so bad, right?
So it's important to remember that we're looking at the non-aggression principle relative to the existing statist societies.
So that's just a minor caveat, but I'm happy to hear.
And let's just do one of these at a time.
Sure.
Okay, and also I did make a note about sort of the problem that you faced with other calls in the past of just too many hypotheticals, like in how compared to what, even though they'll criticize your interpretation of what proper society should be, but they don't really have a basic understanding of how corrupt and how...
Yeah, and it's not you, but people as a whole who call in with the nitpickers in particular, they don't know how to have conversations.
For them, a conversation is, I have a giant monologue where I put in 10 arguments in a row, and I don't care whether you accept or have any problems with the earlier ones.
It's just like a big dump.
If you've ever had a neurotic person tell you their problems, it's just a giant dump.
And so, no, I mean, that's fine.
That's why I sort of say, let's take it a step at a time.
Sure.
That's why I have to interrupt people because it's like, okay, if we assume that porpoises are fish and we go from there, it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Why don't you hit me with, which one do you want to do first?
It's actually only just two.
I wanted to be as concise as possible.
To start, I just wanted to know what your opinions are on search warrants and arrest warrants and a probable cause.
Obviously, it's in the interest of the public for suspects of crimes to be investigated.
There's a high likelihood that a suspect could be a criminal or participate in criminal acts that harm the public.
And obviously there are some issues there that there's a risk always that innocent people are going to have their privacy and property violated through these search warrants, even if police go through the legal means through the courts and all these things.
And yeah, I have a couple more notes on that, but if you just have any initial thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them.
Well, okay, so when we're talking about a society founded on the non-aggression principle, we're talking about children who have been raised from birth according to the non-aggression principle.
So what that means is that they've not been hit, they've not been confined, they've not been neglected, they've not been aggressively punished, they haven't even been screamed at.
They certainly have not received threats of confinement or hitting.
When we're talking about the non-aggression principle, there's this approach which we say, or people say, let's take the world as it stands and imagine that everyone consistently practices the non-aggression principle.
But that's not how it's going to work.
The way that the non-aggression principle is going to manifest in society Is through peaceful parenting.
So if we're talking about a society with the consistent application of the non-aggression principle, then we're talking about a society of children raised without either immediate or supernatural threats.
There's no going to hell.
There's no born sinful.
There's no original sin.
There's no demons are going to take you or you have to conform to X, Y, and Z profit.
There's no threat.
And so children grow up breastfed, interacted with, played with, reasoned with.
And so they grow into adulthood with all of the productive tools in their arsenal that they need to be economically successful people.
In society.
So, that's sort of the first part.
Because people say, well, how does the non-aggression principle deal with rampant crime?
It's like, if there's rampant crime, it's because there is not the non-aggression principle as a whole.
It means that rampant crime comes from child abuse.
It comes from harming children and neglecting children and hurting children and then they grow up without.
And the society as a whole letting it happen, which means that children grow up into adults who have no sense of a social contract.
Like, why the hell would I obey society's rules when society let me be treated like crap for years as a kid?
I have no respect for it.
I take what I get.
There's no social contract.
There's no sense of a reason to comply to social rules because the social rules...
Protected only your abusive parents, not you as a child.
So I know this may sound like a bit of a non sequitur, but it is really, really important to understand that when we're talking about a society based on the non-aggression principle, we are talking about children reasoned with, never threatened, never punished, never beaten, never raped, never assaulted, never confined.
How is it that those children are going to grow up?
Well, they're going to grow up joyful, spontaneous, affectionate, They're going to grow up with integrity.
They're going to grow up with assertiveness, with negotiation skills, and with breastfeeding and non-spanking an extra 6 to 10 IQ points, which is hugely significant because the more IQ you have, the less crime you're going to commit.
And so for most people, the idea that you're going to go and steal something, well, first of all, in a high IQ, peaceful parented society, We're going to have economic growth, the life of which has never been seen before, because prior economic revolutions like the Industrial Revolution were built on the ashes of terrible childhoods, as you can sort of read from any Dickens novel, though better childhoods than has occurred prior to the 19th century.
So you're going to have economic growth rates of 10 to 20% per year.
I mean, even South Korea with its brutal child racing and high IQ could achieve 7 or 8% a year for decades.
So there's going to be so much wealth around, so much compassion, so much empathy, so much sympathy, so much generosity, so much capacity for negotiation.
People are barely going to have to work because there'll be great machines.
So that kind of society, I genuinely don't believe that there will be a big issue with, hey, who stole my bike?
It just, to me, wouldn't make any sense.
And this is not just my pie in the sky thinking.
The better a child is treated, the less likely that child is to become a criminal.
So I just, again, I want to sort of give that backdrop of I'm happy to talk about these issues, but it's going to be like people were very frightened of lightning hitting their building until Ben Franklin figured out that he put a giant metal rod on the top and ground it.
You don't have to worry about it anymore.
Now, does that mean people don't get hit by lightning?
They do.
But it's not that common relative to how it used to be, or smallpox after smallpox inoculations, or polio and so on.
They still occasionally may happen, but they're exceedingly rare.
And I just want to get people to understand the before and after the non-aggression principle, which needs to be implemented in parenting before it can ever flourish in society.
So that having been said, let's say that there is, you know, crimes can still happen in a peacefully parented and free society.
Maybe there's some genetic aspects to sociopathy.
I doubt it, but maybe.
Maybe somebody has a brain tumor and their personality goes awry.
Or they get a head injury, a concussion of some kind, and their personality goes awry.
Who knows, right?
So let's say that that can happen.
Well, if you have strong reason to believe that someone has stolen your bike, like you see the wheel ruts going into your neighbor's garage from where your bike was, then...
You can, of course, go to your, we'll call them the DRO, Dispute Resolution Organization.
You call up your DRO and you say, look, my neighbor Jimmy just, you know, I think he's got my bike.
And, of course, they'll go knock on the door and they'll ask Jimmy.
And if Jimmy says, come, have a look, I don't care, right?
Fine.
If Jimmy doesn't want them to come in, then they have to escalate.
So they have to look for probable cause.
And then if they do, well, Jimmy's going to be covered by a DRO. Everybody has to be in a free society, at least until such time as there's no crime that makes it economically justifiable to even have one.
But Jimmy will be covered by a DRO, and in his contract for the DRO, it will be that it is not in the contract to deny a formal legitimate request for a search of your property.
And of course, they'll want to minimize it as much as possible because people will want the least possible chance to have their property, so it's just inconvenience or whatever.
But that will be the case.
So you have to be covered by a DRO to have contracts, to have electricity, to be able to buy things, to be able to trade, to travel, whatever it is.
You have to be covered by these mutually supportive contracts.
And so in that contract, there will be standards set out for When a DRO person can come into your property to search and it has to go through some process, some independent third-party review, not probably wildly dissimilar from a court system where probable cause is established.
And that is really, really important to understand.
Now, if they find the bike, then that's one thing, right?
And if they don't find it, then the DRO will...
We'll pay you $100.
If there's a false entry to your property, like they think there's probable cause but turns out they're wrong, then there'll be a cash penalty which the DRO will pay, which will be the incentive they have to not make false Accusations, or enter your property under false pretenses, and it'll make sure, and that would come out of the party who said, yes, you should go in, right?
So there would be a lot of economic incentives to make sure that these things don't happen, right?
There's this famous thing that cops say a lot of times, you know, like they'll do something terrible, and then the cops will just say, so sue the city, get five million dollars, what do I care?
Go get rich.
Fine.
Because they're not paying it themselves, individually, right?
So, once you make people economically liable for incorrect or bad decisions, then that's the limitation on the bad decisions.
So, that would be my guess as to how it would probably work.
Again, but I don't consider it a big...
Getting insurance against crime in a free society is like an atheist society...
Being offered demonic possession insurance, I just don't really think it'll be a big issue, but that would be my guess as to how it would work.
Okay, so basically, so you think that once the non-aggression principle will be implemented from a childhood level into the household, the crime won't be as big of an issue.
However, this was interesting that I hadn't really understood from your previous videos that you do think that in a free society, under your conditions, warrants and probable cause would still Have a place and there would be an organization to carry that out as like similar to how the police does today, right?
Well, yeah, with the exception that individuals would be liable for bad information.
Yeah, and also, yeah.
What are the negative repercussions for the cops these days if they do something wrong and go into the wrong house?
Oh, sorry, sue if you want, but it's going to come out of your taxpayers' money anyway.
So, yeah, I mean, you certainly need some mechanism by which The dispute resolution organization's ability to enter your property is limited.
Your home is your castle.
You need it to be secure from unwanted and unwarranted intrusion.
So there needs to be a process in place by which somebody has to say, look, here's why I think it should go in and those people need to review what's going on.
And if there's incorrect information, there needs to be a penalty.
That would be my guess.
I mean, that's what I would like to see in a contract if I wanted to keep my property secure from unwarranted entrance.
Understandable.
That pretty much covers that specific topic that I want to talk about.
I'll move on to international alliances.
Could they exist under the non-aggression principle?
For sure.
Business organizations will do business with other business organizations across the sea, on the other side of the world.
There will be lots of agreements, I would assume.
If someone wants to go and build a hotel in the base of a volcano in New Zealand, call it Hobbit Town, then they'll probably need to get a whole bunch of contracts from one place to another and leases and all of that.
So yeah, there would be lots of international contracts.
Sure, but as far as governments are concerned, so if you were an international ally with another country, I know using the word government is kind of strange here because we're talking about an anarcho-capitalist society.
But I'll just use that just for sort of clarity, I guess.
No, I don't.
You know, it's sort of like saying, okay, let's assume everyone's an atheist.
Where do they go to church?
It's like, hmm.
You can't use...
Just for those who don't know, the government is an agency which...
has the legal right, in fact the obligation to initiate the use of force in a geographical area and therefore according to voluntarist philosophy and I think according to decent philosophy the government is a violation of the non-aggression principle because it can initiate force to get revenue and compel obedience when no force is being initiated against the individuals who call themselves the government.
So no, we can't talk about a government in this scenario.
Okay, so what term would you like to use?
Is it like a council?
Why don't you tell me what the contract is?
So basically just international alliances on the basis of protection.
So if your ally was invaded by a neighboring country, Would you, under the non-aggression principle, be able to go and defend them?
And is that just a natural extension of if your friend had their house broken into, you could go and assist them with that matter?
Is that a linear...
Oh, yeah.
So you would have Bob's defense agency, and I go into this in the free books, Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy, which you can get again at freedomainradio.com slash free.
So there is a defense agency, and I imagine it would have something to do with, I would still, you know, I'd still be willing to pay a few bucks a year to have some agency capable of detecting and preventing giant asteroids from pulling a Lucifer's hammer and destroying the planet.
That would be, you know, that would be handy.
You know, there ain't a roof strong enough to keep down a quarter ton of black hole plunging into the planet or something.
Yeah, I mean, or space alien attack, or, you know, I've said a million times before, they'll come with mauls, not missiles.
But, yeah, I mean, so I would be happy if there was an international team.
I think it would be great if there was an international team that monitored climate and air quality and looked for any early warning signs of overuse of particular resources or underuse of other resources.
I personally would be happy to fund something that looked for signs of intelligent life in the former...
Well, it would be a giant museum of horror called Washington in the future, but out there, you know, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, which ran my screensaver in the 90s, or I used my screensaver to help them calculate that.
I think that would be cool, and...
If there was, you know, the whole world isn't going to immediately become obviously a peaceful parenting stateless society or anything.
So there may still be dangerous areas around and I would be happy to have, you know, with other free societies, mutual defense agreements and that would be up to each defense agency to sell to its members.
You know, like, and that would be the limiting factor is that the members would have to Understand and appreciate the case.
Now, a free society will naturally have affinity for other free societies and recognize that there could be a domino effect if one goes down and the other goes down.
So I could certainly see how mutually beneficial and mutually agreed upon arrangements for common defense of geographical areas would be, you know, whatever you can sell to the population, you can implement.
And they certainly wouldn't be a violation of the non-aggression principle because it would be a free contract to defend another region voluntarily.
I could certainly see how agencies whose job it was to provide common defense would perhaps have lots of interlocking agreements with other agencies.
You know like cell phones?
You can go to Hawaii and use your cell phone if you're from British Columbia because they have these overlapping agreements that And certainly a very, very strong case could be made and very easy to make that the wider the defense net, the more secure the individual is who's paying for it.
Interesting.
Yeah, it's interesting you brought in extraterrestrials into the conversation.
I wasn't expecting that.
But yeah, so I was kind of a little more concerned around terrestrial matters, and especially matters where the, let's say, just take the United States, for example.
As you know, we've been involved in a fair amount of wars and conflicts over the past couple of years, past couple of decades, actually.
And when there's a scenario where there's two countries fighting Is it always a violation of the non-aggression principle for your nation to involve itself in it?
Even if you have a noble purpose or if you believe you could remedy the situation in any way?
Or would there have to be some precedent before you could enter that conflict in any capacity?
Again, if you're going to start talking about state actions, then my issue is with the initiation of force that the state depends on to fund itself.
I see.
Right.
Control of the currency and, of course, the draft, right?
I mean, the draft is one of the worst and most vicious enslavements that can possibly happen.
To a human being.
You know, it's funny how in America, draft dodger is still considered to be a significant pejorative.
He evaded his duty to draft dodger.
Yet the slaves who escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad up to Canada are considered brave and heroic for avoiding that kind of slavery.
The kind of slavery where you have to pick cotton while horrifying enough is still not as bad as the kind of slavery where you get your legs blown off and have to shoot people and get cholera in the jungle.
So, yeah, the ethics of once a government is involved, the ethics of what a government does is like asking me, well, how should the mugger who stole your $100 spend that money?
It's like, I'd like it if he didn't steal the money.
I don't care really what happens after that.
Sure.
I don't think the draft has been utilized in the United States, just for an example, since Vietnam.
Yeah, but that's not because governments got more moral.
Oh, I understand.
That's because the draft doesn't work.
That's because modern deployments are so lengthy and so brutal that the reason the Vietnam War fundamentally ended was that the American military was falling apart.
The enlisted men were shooting their officers.
They were dissolving.
They were drug addicts.
I mean, the brutality on the human psyche in the Vietnam War was so extreme.
And the reason they did that, of course, was because the training camp got a lot more brutal because I think it's a significant majority.
Our soldiers in the Second World War never fired at the enemy.
Like 70, 75, 80% depending on where you count and what statistics you believe.
But a significant majority of Second World War soldiers didn't shoot at the enemy.
I mean, you know, a couple of nutbags in there who did, but most people didn't.
So what they did was they said, well, we've got to really make training, basic training, a lot more brutal and vicious.
We've got to break these people down and we have to build them back up again in our own image.
And so the draft was entering into a death cult brain shredding indoctrination program that left people permanently disabled psychologically even if they never took a scratch physically.
More similar to what was going on in the First World War where the trench warfare was creating a huge amount of mental health issues to put it mildly which they first described to just shell shock but you know very brave people just would get would shoot themselves in the hand rather than go back to war and they thought that something was wrong with their brain because the brain had been Hurt in a concussion-style way by shell shock.
And so the draft was ended because it was not producing the kind of soldiers that could sustain these ghastly, incredibly lengthy imperialistic wars.
In fact, I knew a guy relatively recently.
I knew a man.
And he was on...
SSRIs for PTSD from Vietnam.
And one of the SSRIs apparently, according to the reports, caused a stroke in him.
And he almost died.
And he's sort of slowly recovering.
And I was explaining this to my daughter and I said, the great tragedy is that he never took a bullet in Vietnam.
But 40 years later, the war still almost killed him.
Yeah, the draft has been pulled back, but that's just because they found it cheaper and better to draft your money and spend it on Blackwater than to draft people directly.
I just really wanted to give that brief overview to To my newer listeners.
Sure, yeah.
So, again, I'm sorry for your friend.
I hope he's doing better.
And, yeah, I'm not here to defend sort of every single military engagement that the United States specifically has engaged in, especially Vietnam, I guess.
But as far as the military is concerned today, the United States military is composed of volunteers.
So when you have situations...
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, that's not accurate.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to interrupt you right away.
Please, please, please interrupt me.
No, they're not volunteers.
Volunteers don't get paid, right?
If I'm a volunteer fireman, I don't say I need a decent paycheck and a lifetime pension.
I mean, the volunteer, you know, the candy stripers in the hospital are not pulling down surgeon salaries, right?
So they're not volunteers.
Oh, not volunteers.
But the point I was trying to make is that they decide to join the military, is what I wanted to say.
Yeah, I mean you certainly could say that they decided to join the US military.
Huge amounts of government school propaganda along with media propaganda about the glories of war has tilted their Perspectives just a little bit.
The fact that they're paid also.
And the fact that a lot of opportunities for lower to middle class kids have been eviscerated by the mass exodus.
50,000 manufacturing jobs a month have left the US for the past decade or decade and a half.
So, yeah, I mean, of course, you could say, you know, they joined voluntarily, but...
You could argue that they're propagandized, bribed, and cornered by a lack of other opportunities.
But I'm just sort of...
But you're right.
Technically, they have to go and sign on the dotted line themselves.
Sure.
Okay.
So if you take an example like the first Gulf War in Kuwait, that's sort of like an extension of the previous simple example you used where your friend's house got broken into and he's asking for help.
So in that scenario...
Sorry.
Sorry.
Again, sorry to interrupt.
I... I don't think that's how the first Gulf War started.
The first Gulf War started because Kuwait was grabbing Iraq's oil, drilling sideways, and Saddam Hussein said to the American representative, said, listen, I'm going to go and stop them from doing it.
Is that okay?
And the guy said, sure.
And so he then went to go and get his oil back, and then America...
Betrayed him, stabbed him in the back and invaded everything.
I mean, that was a terrible, terrible piece of international history, in my opinion.
Okay, well I guess with that interpretation, this example wouldn't be as relevant.
But I guess we could maybe elaborate a little bit on nation building and assistance with that sort of thing.
I know what your opinion is on that.
Should countries, or I won't say the word government, but sort of these corporations that you're talking about that will sort of cooperate on an international level to keep the world safe, should they involve themselves in countries that are developing and trying to get should they involve themselves in countries that are developing and trying to get up on And if so, what should be the extent of that involvement?
Well, trade, obviously, right?
I mean, you trade with countries or geographical regions for the mutual benefit of both parties.
I mean, that would be the idea that you go in and blow up their infrastructure and kill their leaders and this is just going to make the place a paradise.
Yeah.
It doesn't work, right?
I mean, you...
You have mutually beneficial trade with the area, and that is going to raise the standard of living.
It's going to raise the nutritional intake, which is going to raise the IQ to the degree that it can be raised.
It is going to give better infrastructure, which reduces disease.
All of these things, the trade as a whole, will be hugely beneficial to everyone in the country who can be benefited.
And that's how international stuff should occur.
And of course, you don't need a government.
It's the exact opposite.
They put a blockade on...
Iraq, right?
In the 90s, there was a US-UK blockade that has reportedly led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, just the children alone.
And if trade had occurred in that region, then...
The society as a whole would be far better off, and there would have been a sort of slow and steady improvement in the conditions.
And of course, Iraq, largely secular, as late as the 1950s, early 1960s, largely secular women could go to school, becoming more and more westernized, and then the U.S. and the U.K. intervened and destroyed Iraq.
The progress and radicalized the country and now it's just a smoking psychotic ruin like a little portal opened up to a combination of medievalism and hell itself.
Let's say that there is some capacity for nation building in some alternate universe given how difficult and complicated the process would be the last people you'd ever expect or wish to give the power to try it would be governments who make money whether it succeeds or fails.
Sure, that's understandable.
I guess to counter that slightly, there's always the risk of sort of corruption, I guess, in these sort of corporations where profits are sort of prioritized over the rights of individual people.
But I've seen in previous videos where you stipulated how that wouldn't be as severe of an issue.
But if you want to address that possibly in this context.
Okay, well give me an example.
Well, for example, you could take Nestle.
As far as water rights in Africa, there's been several allegations and evidence that they've caused severe harm to the environments in those regions and also assassinated certain leaders that have opposed their manners of business.
So, perhaps if you want to address that.
Nestle has The only thing I've heard about Nestle is that they sold powdered milk in regions where the water had problems, purity problems.
And so the moms would mix the powdered milk with the water and the babies would get sick.
I've not heard about the assassination attempts from Nestle.
Sure.
Do you think there's no attempt at collusion between Nestle and governing organizations?
I know we're going back to governments again.
Keep governments out of the equation.
Just give me a real world scenario.
Not one that I have to look up because I have no idea what happened with Nestle.
Give me something.
Let's say that you're the evil business owner and you want to start cheating and defrauding Your employees.
How would you go about doing that?
Oh, no.
I'm not just talking about the employees.
I'm talking about just there's a certain conflict of interest that I think could exist in a free society where corporations and these sort of conglomerate organizations that aren't elected by the people exist and have a real effect on society.
Wait, wait.
Corporations are not elected by the people.
You mean like they're not responsible to the people?
Well, sure.
I mean, I guess not in the same way that the classic government would be.
Well, in a far better way, in that if the people don't like what they're doing, they just don't buy from them.
You can't do that with government.
You can't say, I'm not pleased with the quality of government schools, so I'm just not going to buy from government schools.
I'm not pleased with the quality of police protection.
I don't like the war on drugs.
I don't like the war on prostitution.
I think these are mostly women and men who've had terrible childhoods who are acting out that victimization.
So you can't choose to not buy government services.
That's completely unresponsive.
And even if people do stop buying government services, the government can just borrow and print more money and wait them out, right?
And so, I mean, the idea that corporations or companies which don't have the power of state to force people I find that a jaw-dropping statement to be honest.
Okay, so I guess like the, again, the counterpoint to that would be sort of how monopolies function and how they could monopolize resources and these sort of things.
But I have seen, I've seen it.
Okay, so obviously, hang on.
It's just for other people, right?
Because, I mean, it's like you're like the ABCs of everything I've had to rebut for the past 3,000 years, it feels like.
But if you have a problem with monopolies, then you have a problem with the state, because the state is the ultimate monopoly.
And it has not ever been shown, to my knowledge, How a predatory monopoly can develop in a free market.
Because a predatory monopoly is one that gets 100% market share, jacks up the prices, and somehow people don't buy from overseas, they don't buy from other companies, they don't find substitutes, they don't simply reduce their consumption of a particular good or service.
You can kind of get a monopoly in a weird way.
Like if you want to go to a town with 80 people and you open up the only convenience store, okay, you have a monopoly.
But it's not really a very powerful monopoly now, is it?
So, yeah.
So, I mean, this monopoly idea, you know, the idea that we need a big, giant monopoly armed with nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers to protect us from the only...
Convenience store in town.
I mean, talk about killing a tiny problem.
Oh no, that might be a red ant crawling towards me.
Call in the nuclear weapons.
I mean, not the best way to solve it.
But let's go back to corruption, right?
So corruption means that you are getting more money than what?
Corruption would be around getting more money from your customers.
So what do you do?
Do you reduce the quality of the services that you're providing to them?
Do you increase prices beyond what the services and a small profit would allow?
I mean, how do you get more money from your customers?
Explain that to me, please.
Well, I guess corruption, I kind of just put that word in there.
That's more probably applicable to governments because they need to, within government, I guess, in a classical sense, there's sort of social contract.
And if they go after personal interests.
Social contract?
Is that something you've signed?
I got a cell phone contract.
I don't have a social contract.
Sure, I guess the implication of a social contract is where that corruption surfaces, where if there's a violation of that, like with a government official making a deal with a corporation that might be not in the best interest of the people, that could be deemed corruption.
And I guess that corruption in the In the perfectly corporate world, I guess, just purely industrial world.
No, but just step through it.
Like, I mean, if you want to have corruption in a government, that's pretty easy.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
The whole Federal Reserve System is corruption.
I mean, instead of no taxation without representation, you borrow, you print, or you can just raise taxes and whatever, right?
It's easy for governments to get more money out of people.
That's basically all they do.
But for a company, and I don't know if you've got a lot of business experience, but I've now been 20 years an entrepreneur, you can't just go out and get more money.
Because corruption, by definition, is economically inefficient.
If it's as economically efficient as possible, then it's not corrupt.
I mean, that's, I think, almost praxeologically true.
And so, when you're talking about corruption, you're talking about economic inefficiency in a Purely voluntary free market environment.
Well, if you're economically inefficient, then you have to charge more or provide worse services or both.
Now, if you charge more or you provide worse services, then you will be out-competed by other people who will take your market share.
And because this danger...
I mean, a corporation isn't just...
One guy in a Hitler mustache and a monocle like Mr.
Burns ordering things around.
I mean, Mr.
Burns doesn't, I don't know, I haven't watched The Simpsons much, but I don't think he has like a board of directors or a shareholder representatives or shareholder meetings.
There are huge numbers of checks and balances in corporate entities.
And again, I'm not talking now.
Now it's all junky capitalism and corrupt as hell, but that's because of state power.
But If you are...
I've been at the CXO level.
I've been on boards.
I've gone to shareholder meetings.
I've, you know, been part of the process of taking a company public.
There is a huge amount and a huge number of checks and balances.
So if some CEO wants to start doing something corrupt, he's going to have to get it past his board.
And his board is going to have to get it past the shareholders.
And all of those people are interested in the long-term viability of the company.
And so if the CEO does something that exposes the corporation to a significant loss in value, then he's going to get sued.
And if he did something illegal, then he's gonna get jailed, and then when he gets out, he's gonna get sued, right?
I mean, that's how it's going to work.
And if the board allows it to happen, they'll all get sued by the shareholders.
And so there is, you know, the checks and balances.
And the customers, of course, are the ultimate arbiters, because if the customers don't like what the corporation is doing, they'll take their business elsewhere.
So in this situation, in this environment, You have thousands of people whose direct economic interest is in the maintenance of the organization's economic value.
This doesn't even count the employees who probably also want a job tomorrow.
Or they don't see their entire board and executive get frog marched out in handcuffs.
You know, Bud Fox style.
So, there's a huge amount of checks and balances Against corruption, against screwing your customers for fun and profit.
Does that mean it'll never happen?
Who cares?
It's the best that can conceive.
Economic self-interest plus overlapping concerns plus checks and balances that compete.
Of course the corporation wants to make more money.
Of course they do.
And of course the customers want to pay less money.
Of course they do.
If someone offers me a Maserati for a dollar, I'm all up in that biatch.
And so, the fact that you have opposing interests is perfectly fine.
That's natural.
But the fact is, other than voluntarism, there is no way to manage and control corruption because, you know, it's the oldest argument in the book.
Who watches the watchers?
Well, we're going to set up a government to make sure that no one's corrupt.
Does that government have a monopoly on power?
Yes.
Well, what stops the government from getting corrupt?
Somalia?
I mean, it doesn't work.
The idea that you have one final magic bucket of force in society and you throw all of your problems into that magic bucket of force and out they come, that's like saying, well, I can't figure out ethics, so I'm going to have a magic god in the sky and his commandments magically make things ethical.
It is not an answer.
The government is an answer to nothing.
The government solves nothing.
The government is where we put things we can't figure out and think we've solved the problem.
And it's exactly the same as people saying, I don't know where the universe came from, so God did it.
That is not an answer.
And I don't know how roads are going to be built.
I don't know how corruption is going to be fought.
I don't know how policing should work.
I don't know either.
I don't know either.
So what?
I don't know how a cell phone should be built.
I sure as hell know, though, the government shouldn't build them.
Wow, that was a lot to take in.
But yeah, so I guess the issue that I had as far as my interpretation of what you were talking about is, like for example, at the beginning of this conversation we were talking about warrants and how there was going to be sort of a council or sort of organization that would handle that.
So I guess like people can't sort of see a difference between government agencies and that sort of agency that you would produce that would handle Well, okay, but that's easy to answer.
Number one, they cannot compel you to consume their services.
Number two, they cannot compel other people into not competing with them.
They can't force you to consume their services, and they can't prevent competition, and that's the only thing that keeps them honest in the long run.
Okay, so you just apply the free market principles and there'd be sort of a competition for like the best prize for the best service for all those government services that we have today would be transferred into that format.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah, and if you wanted to never have your home entered into, Maybe, you know, maybe you're not doing anything wrong.
Maybe you're just a hoarder who's embarrassed, you know, whatever it is, right?
If you go to your DRO and you say, listen, I really want, you know, I need to have a DRO contract to basically survive and exist and flourish in this society, or I want to have one, but I never ever want to be subject to any searches, right?
Well, DRO will say fine.
That will be an extra $500 a month.
I see.
You mean if you want to not have any of that, that's fine.
I mean, they will offer it for you.
And the reason they'll have to charge you more is because if somebody says that you stole the car and you're the guy who doesn't want anyone coming into his house or garage or property, then the DRO has to go buy this guy a new car without coming to search your house.
So they have to have a disincentive and to cover the cost of whatever negative consequences might accrue from them not being able to enter your property.
You can do all of that.
I'm sure.
I mean, you probably couldn't do it with regards to things like rape and murder and assault and all of that.
But yeah, I mean, I could certainly see how that could be an offering.
I mean, that's kind of a big elephant in the room, wouldn't you say?
Rape and murder and assault?
Like, how would you investigate somebody that decided not to sign the DRO contract like you said?
No, no DRO would allow that.
You can't get a DRO to cover you for, I want to be able to kill at will.
Nobody else would deal with that DRO. You've got a guy here who can kill at will?
I'm out of here.
That would never be supported.
Nobody would ever do business with that DRO. Essentially, there wouldn't be an enforcement.
It would just be the whole population would just isolate that person and turn against them.
Make it just impossible for them to sort of exist if they didn't comply?
Well, yeah, I don't know exactly how the compliance would work, of course.
I mean, there could be six million different ways of doing it.
But again, murderers come from vicious, brutal child abuse combined with the warrior gene, combined with God knows what happened to that person growing up.
And again, we're talking about a society where children are almost universally raised according to peaceful parenting standards, And therefore, murder would be literally, I imagine once in a decade, there might be a murder.
And I am, you know, which is what, like six minutes in Chicago?
So I'm willing to take my chances.
Sure, I understand.
But I know this is sort of a smallish part.
I know that overall you would like to implement the non-aggression principle in a general sense.
But as far as these small fringe...
I'm not trying to be nitpicky again.
But isn't that sort of begging the question, circular reasoning?
If you don't enforce...
You're not going to enforce that they would have to sign it.
You're not going to enforce that they would have to sign it, but then there would still be...
Things that they couldn't do, such as murder, rape, and assault, but then what would be the incentive to...
You know where I'm going here?
No, not a clue.
Sorry, I'm just trying to clarify this, because you just brought this up recently.
So...
So they do not sign, they don't have to sign this DRO contract if they don't want to be investigated for, I don't know, suspicion of stealing or these sort of things.
No, what I'm saying is that if you wanted to be excluded from certain relatively innocuous things, like if somebody accuses me of a theft less than $50, I don't want people in my house.
Okay, that'll be an extra $25 a month or whatever it's going to be, right?
Yeah.
But if, you know, if somebody says, I've dragged their dead body into someone's dead body into my garage, well, no, you don't get to stay.
Like, no one's going to accept a DRO that lets you off that, right?
Exactly.
But no one's going to accept that.
But when you say nobody's going to accept that, like the enforcement You say there's no governing body, like government.
I know that's not a good word to use here, but there's no government to sort of enforce that with force, like you said.
But you say that that would be resolved by non-aggression principle being part of childhood?
No, no, no.
There could be any number of options, and I'll just give you two possible scenarios.
So let's say a guy named Bob is accused of raping someone.
Well, in the contract, the DRO says, if you're accused of rape and we go past the probable cause and we get a search warrant or whatever that would be called, we get to come into your property.
You cannot bar us from your property.
That's the contract you've signed.
Now, if Bob then shoots at the people coming to execute a legitimate search warrant, he is initiating force so they can use force against him.
In the same way that if I steal something of yours and you come to get it, I mean, going through whatever proper channels, I can't say, well, it was self-defense, right?
Like, if I grab your wife and pull her over the fence and I'm dragging her towards a wood chipper, you know, Fargo style, And then it's not trespassing for you to come onto the property and it certainly isn't trespassing for you to use whatever force necessary to prevent me from dropping your wife into the wood chipper.
And so you have a contract.
Like if I rent a car and I refuse to give the car back and then the cops come to get the car back, I can't shoot at them and say, well, you're just on my property.
It's like, no, you borrowed something, a car, you didn't return it, so...
We get to repostyle it back, right?
So you have a contract which says, under certain conditions, the DRO agents can come into your house.
And if you then try to claim self-defense, you're initiating force because you're violating contract.
And so they do have the right to use force against you.
But I bet they won't.
And do you know why?
Because force...
Is very dangerous.
I know that's a bit of a ridiculous thing to say.
But force is very dangerous.
Force is very unpredictable.
And so most, I think, 99.999 times out of 100, the DRO will use one of the annoying cliches of the left.
Shut it down!
You know, we're fascists.
Shut it down.
And what they'll do is they'll say, okay, we are going to put some agents outside your house.
And we are turning off the electricity.
And we are turning off the water.
And we are going to play loud music.
You know, whatever.
Noriega style, right?
They're going to just make it impossible for you to survive in your environment.
And maybe they'll have to wait a week.
Maybe they'll have to wait two weeks.
But I bet you they'll do that rather than go in guns blazing and...
See what happens then.
You may have booby-trapped the whole place.
You might have a giant bomb there.
People are just going to wait it out.
And so, you will be, and of course, you will be unable to use the road, because the road is privately owned, and in these situations, the road company will say, no, we don't want a guy driving away from a murder scene on our roads.
No, and then we're liable, right?
So, you're hemmed in.
You know, when you think about it, the number of people whose goods and services, and the amount of goods and services you consume on any given day, are enormous.
Enormous.
It just takes a power outage in winter for you to figure out how dependent you are on modern technology.
They can legitimately use force if you're violating contract with them, but I'm certain that what they will do instead is...
Ostracize and isolate you economically so that you can't survive in your environment.
And let's say you can survive for six months or let's say you can survive for a year.
Okay, they know where you are.
You sure as hell are contained.
You're not going out and raping anyone else.
So if you choose to put yourself in a prison called your own home...
And, you know, put tablets in your pee so you can drink it, and maybe you've stored up a whole bunch of food and water pellets or whatever it is, but you're still contained.
You know, the fact is you've just sentenced yourself to house arrest rather than go through a process, and eventually you're going to get a toothache.
You're going to have to come out.
I see.
So that would be sort of the resolution to the situation where somebody doesn't sign or refuses to sign that sort of DRO contract, correct?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
I didn't talk about anyone who refused to sign a DRO contract.
Oh, we were talking about the contract here, correct?
No, violation of contract they've already signed.
So, yeah, there was a violation of the contract.
What do you mean by refuse to sign?
That's a whole different environment.
Oh, okay.
Well, yeah, so you were talking about two examples, correct?
Was that both of them or just the first one?
These were two solutions, which is that, yes, they can go in and use force if you're breaking contract, just as a rental agency can use force to get the car back that you rented from them and refused to return.
So that's number one, but they won't because they'll Contain you until you surrender.
Sure.
So I was just talking about the situation where somebody refuses to sign the contract and then commits one of these egregious acts such as rape or murder.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Okay.
All right.
So how do they refuse to sign a contract and survive in a society?
Because if you want to buy a house, you have to have a DRO. If you want to have any interaction, you want to buy groceries, you want to drive on a road, you want to get gas.
You want to get electricity delivered to your house.
I mean, you want to rent anything or buy anything or trade with anyone, then you're going to need one of these contracts because that's the only way that people can be secure that you are part of the civilized standards of society.
And so, of course, your parents, you'll need a contract to send your kids to school.
And so when you graduate, you'll inherit one, so to speak, from good behavior in the school.
And so it's not like life insurance which is optional.
These contracts are how you interact in a civilized society.
Now, in the long run, it may be the case, and I think it probably will be the case, that after a couple of generations of peaceful parenting, the contracts themselves will wither away.
I know that sounds like under communism the state will wither away.
But they will wither away because everybody will be decent, kind, and honest.
And there really will be an unnecessary overhead.
This would be more of a transitional area.
But no, I mean, you can't...
If there's risk, right?
I mean, why would you not want to sign a contract?
It's going to be very cheap, particularly if you're honest.
And after a while, like if you buy insurance, after a while it becomes free because you've just paid enough, they've got enough assets to pay out of interest.
So it's going to be very cheap.
The only people who wouldn't want a DRO contract would be the people Who intend to commit a crime?
So who is going to want to have anything to do with these people?
And they will be liable if they do.
So if you deliver electricity and water and sell a gun to someone who goes and commits a crime, if they don't have a DRO contract, which you'd know because it'd be like one little ping back, Then you would be liable for selling to somebody not governed by social rules.
Nobody would do it.
There's no way to survive in an economically complex society, which is any society where you're not off living on your own in some godforsaken nothing mystery more wood scenario.
There's simply no way to survive and you can't do it.
Just think of not interacting with anyone economically for a week and you wouldn't survive.
So, yeah, everyone's gonna have a contract until the contracts wither away.
I understand.
Okay, that clarifies it for me.
So I guess just to conclude a little bit, is there any sort of non-aggression principle-based legislation that you would like to see introduced to sort of society at the moment using our current structures?
Because I know this would probably be a gradual process to implement this ideology into society as we know it currently.
So what would be your first step sort of Well, you know, I don't think it's going to come about through legislation.
There are only two pieces of legislation that tempt me, and I don't know what I'm going to do with this, but there are only two pieces of legislation that I find tempting.
Number one, of course, is a ban on the child abuse known as spanking, or the ban on circumcision, which is the unnecessary mutilation of the male penis, as you know.
So I'm tempted by that.
And there have been some of these legislative advancements in certain countries in Europe and so on.
Those are the only two that I'm vaguely tempted by, but I have to sort of grip my teeth and say, well, whatever the state does, it's going to mess it up.
So I don't think that it's going to work to do that.
But no, it's really around just reasoning with people.
I want to convince people that the non-aggression principle applies to parenting first and foremost and applies to all of your relationships.
You do not allow Or encourage or submit to or enact the initiation of force in your relationships.
It's going to spread that way, and that way we outgrow the state.
The state becomes progressively more unnecessary over time as people become more decent, honorable, kind, courageous, and virtuous.
So no, for me, it is entirely a philosophical exercise, not an exercise in state advocacy.
As far as getting to a state, the society goes in the long run.
Yeah, so I guess that would be sort of like the ultimate paradox.
Like the non-aggression principle, it would just be sort of a paradox for the government to institute it because obviously it's violating non-aggression principle.
Is that a sort of fair assessment?
Well, no, but sorry, with regards to the spanking.
Oh, okay.
Well, the spanking is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
So having a law against spanking is at least having a law against a violation of the non-aggression principle.
Sure.
Like, say, taking drugs or not paying your taxes or whatever, which are not in that category.
Yeah, those are the only two things that I'm sort of tempted by.
I have some sympathy to A place like Israel, you know, they build a wall and they shoot people who try to get over, which I don't like, but the alternative seems far worse.
So I have some sympathy towards that aspect of things.
Whatever can allow a philosophical conversation to continue, I'm very keen on.
And there are, of course, certain elements in society.
If they take over, well, that's it for philosophy.
So I guess I want to maintain my market share of the mind.
Sure.
So just as a sort of a concluding statement, so if people wanted to sort of implement your ideas on a more On a grand scale, they shouldn't go through the typical channels through sort of referendums or ballots.
They should just start in the home, like you said, with raising their children in a certain way and just try to start a business and implement these and create communities.
Well, I try not to tell people what to do.
I make the arguments and let people do what they want from there.
But just, you know, you have this relentlessly...
There's a relentless gravity well, William, of subjectivism.
If people want to implement my ideas, it's like, no, this is not like a decorating channel.
I'm making a case.
People can either find a way that the case is false, or they can accept it, but they can't just describe them as my ideas.
Anyway, I'm going to move on to the next caller.
It's been a long chat, but I do appreciate it.
These are interesting questions to revisit.
Thanks a lot for the call, and let's move on!
All right, thank you.
Alright, well up next is Jonathan.
Jonathan wrote in and said, After going through a breakup with my girlfriend of two and a half years with what I felt was a very virtuous woman, I feel I overlooked several red flags or found ways to justify them or blame myself for her actions.
How can I be sure I don't do this in future relationships?
And at what point do you bail?
That's from Jonathan.
At what point do I bail?
I guess about an hour or 20 minutes from the last call, but how are you doing, Jonathan?
Hey, Stefan.
How you doing?
Good.
What are the red flags?
Tell me about the red flags.
Well, red flags...
The most obvious ones are probably gonna be...
No, no, no, no, no.
Not the theoretical ones.
The ones in Your Last Girlfriend.
Yeah, definitely.
Debt, money management, savings, broken home, and a lot of the stuff that goes along with that emotionally.
Wait, so hang on.
So she was in debt?
When you met her?
Yeah, kind of excessive.
Sorry, my testicles just ended up where my nipples are.
Okay, so debt, yeah, big warning sign.
Money management, I guess, related to debt, right?
I mean, there's sensible debt, right?
I mean, there's buying a house, you know, which can be sensible debt.
Certain kinds of education can be sensible debt.
Absolutely.
But, so she had debt, and what was bad about her money management?
Just really not ever putting herself in a position to work towards getting it paid off or make progress towards it.
It was always, you know, excessive spending and things of that sort.
So money management would be kind of one of the red flags there.
But more so I was kind of looking...
But what does she spend her money on?
Experiences, traveling.
It wasn't so much that she...
I guess I'm actually very financially responsible and try to set myself up for the future.
It just wasn't something that she really seemed to be on board with.
She had roughly around $60,000 worth of debt.
Some of it was school.
What?
Yeah, so...
$60,000 worth of debt?
Yeah.
Did you meet her when she was first driving a sailboat up Main Street?
That's $60,000 in debt!
Oh my god!
Yeah, and most of...
I once cut a first date short when I found out the woman was $16,000 in debt.
I'm like, oh yeah, bye!
Yeah, so...
I didn't...
The relationship kind of started as a friendship, and then it kind of developed into something more.
So it wasn't something that...
Okay, hang on, hang on.
Before we get that, 60K in debt.
How pretty was she?
I would say...
I mean, she was a 10 to me, but from the outside...
Okay, that's fine.
You're not banging her with someone else's dick, so it's only your dick that counts, right?
All right, so I'd say an 8 for...
No, no, you got a 10.
She's a 10 for you, right?
Yep.
Okay.
So she's a 10, and that's probably why she's able to get $60,000 in debt and call up Tom Likas and say, I can't believe what suckers men are.
Did you know her debt situation while you were still friends?
Yes.
I'd say about six months, four to six months in, it became apparent.
I started really taking notice of a lot of the way she spent her money and You know, things like that, so.
But you didn't know how much she was in debt?
I can't remember exactly when I, you know, we had that discussion, but yeah, it was pretty shocking.
Did you have your penis in your ear when she was telling you?
Because I've got to tell you, if I was interested in a woman and I heard 60K in debt, I think I'd remember exactly when my penis shriveled and the outie became an innie.
Yeah, yeah.
But, hmm.
All right.
And I assume she was working, but she was just spending more than she was saving?
Yeah, and she really, I mean, we were together two and a half years, and she wasn't really making very much for all the way up until probably four months prior to us breaking up.
And, I mean, I subsidized a lot of her living expenses and things of that sort.
You didn't?
Yeah, I definitely did.
Okay, man.
Okay, bite the bullet.
How much are you at?
I couldn't even tell you.
Give me a guesstimate, man.
I mean, two and a half years, probably 20 grand or so.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
All right.
And how often did you have sex?
Pretty often, I would say four to five times a week.
Okay.
So four to five times a week.
Let's just say that's 200 times in the year.
What's 200 into 20,000?
Couldn't tell you.
100?
Yep.
All right.
And let's say you were together for, well, were you having sex for two years?
Yeah, yeah.
We're pretty active.
All right.
So 50 bucks a pop.
Yeah.
The further I distance myself from this relationship, it becomes more apparent and stuff.
Mike, can you check my math?
Because whenever I do this stuff on the fly, it usually sucks.
Now, given that you may have been paying less for blowjoining, so you're out $20,000 of after-tax money, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so it's like 30 grand or whatever it is of pre-tax money.
Yeah.
And what percentage of your annual salary is that?
30 grand gross?
30 grand?
I mean, I make about 100 a year, so 30%.
All right.
Okay.
So yeah, three or four months worth of income was poured into this, let's just say financial hole to double the meaning.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry, Mike.
He spent $20,000 on the woman.
They were together two years and had sex four times a week.
All right.
How did, like, how did you end up paying for her?
Did she ask you just like, here's a bill, can you give me something?
No, no.
Like, how did that work?
Nothing like that.
It was more, you know, anything we did.
I was always, in trips we take, go out to eat, you know, presents.
I mean, not, she's, I didn't spend a lot of money on presents.
It was more like traveling.
Once she moved in with me, I guess she moved in January of last year, January of 2015, and I paid for almost everything for living expenses.
So she contributed a very minimal amount, but whatever she contributed ended up...
Spent it on her in other ways.
Sorry, we got $48.08 a pop.
Thanks.
So that's your ka-ching for the nut bust.
I just wanted to let you know that.
So what that means is that you're $48 bad in bed.
Anyway, just kidding.
All right.
So, vacations and then living expenses when you decided to move in together.
And you decided to move in together when she couldn't afford to live with you.
No, she always...
No, I mean, she had her own...
Residents.
And she usually did the roommate situation.
So she'd always have a roommate prior to us living together.
So she cut her living expenses that way.
So she had, you know, minimal living expenses because she always shared them with someone.
Right.
Okay.
Tell me about the virtues that you described.
You said a very amazing, virtuous person.
Woman.
Give me a list of the virtues, if you could, please, my friend.
Yeah, she was a very compassionate person.
She did several mission trips to help.
I'm sorry, what now?
She did mission trips to help.
Like Mormon stuff?
No, like to Somalia to help children.
But how did she do mission trips?
I'm not sure what that means.
It was before we were together.
I know she went to Somalia and some other countries in Africa to help children and build schools.
No, but how?
Was it through what?
Do you remember?
Don't give me the name, but was it through religion?
Yes, through her church, correct.
Oh, church.
Okay.
But she wasn't Mormon?
No, no.
Okay.
What was she?
Just Christian.
Oh, okay.
All right.
So she went to Somalia.
All right.
Anything else?
Yeah, I mean, she had a...
She had a very...
She's a very honest person.
Like I said, very compassionate.
hardworking.
Yeah, I mean...
I think the reason, like, if I could give a little bit of a backstory, if you don't mind.
I'm not sure I want to go there yet, if that's right, Jonathan.
I'm sorry to sound all kinds of Mussolini-style conversation, but I just wanted to figure out if I can, because there's some things that don't quite make sense to me, and I'm sure that's just my limitations, but if we could pause on those, I'm happy to hear the backstory in a sec.
Is that okay?
Yeah, sounds good.
All right.
Compassionate.
Compassionate.
Getting into debt that you can't pay back is not compassionate.
That's stealing.
Right?
So I'm having a little trouble seeing the compassionate.
I mean, when she's 60K in debt, and, you know, given that she didn't start making much money until later on in your relationship, and given that you were subsidizing her anyway, I don't see how that's compassionate.
Because if she can't pay the debt back, then she's basically stealing from other people who are going to have to cover up Her debt, are going to have to cover for her debt by being charged more in interest and fees for whatever they're doing, right?
As far as honest goes, certainly if you're borrowing money, you can't pay back.
That is not compassionate, and that certainly is dishonest.
Because there's kind of a good faith agreement that if you borrow money, you can pay it back.
And if she can't pay it back, that's dishonest.
She maintained the ability to pay it back.
It's just that she was making very minimal payments on things and not really making any headway towards it is what my issue was.
That it wasn't a real big priority for her to make headway or get it paid off.
No, I get that.
I get that.
She was not paying off the debt.
Right.
I mean, yeah, you can make minimum payments.
Let's say she makes minimum payments until she's dead.
Yeah.
Well, she's never paid off the debt, right?
Yeah.
And so, also, when...
Did she offer to pay you back for the money that you were spending on her?
No.
Does that seem compassionate to you?
No.
No.
Do you think that it's honest?
Do you think that it's honest?
Okay, when she moved in with you, did she say, I need you to pay?
And by the way, I'm not going to take the money I saved by you paying and use it to pay off any principal on my debt.
Or did it just kind of happen that you paid?
Or was it an honest arrangement up front?
It was an honest arrangement up front as far as us agreeing like she would pay like $500 a month.
But it was, you know, it's my house.
Nothing's in her name.
Everything's on my name.
So she just basically, I guess, was kind of like...
Similar to like a rent situation, but you know, she was my girlfriend.
Well, no, it wasn't similar to a rent situation unless you regularly get banged by your tenants, right?
Because isn't that what made it economically viable for you?
In other words, if some If one of your aunt's fat sisters wanted to come and live in your house, you probably would not have said yes.
But if you had said yes, for whatever reason, you wouldn't have charged her $500, right?
Right.
Okay.
Elderly Asian gentleman, according to WKRP, right?
Man, I've got some obscure references today.
But anyway, so the difference was the sex, right?
Yes.
So she was subsidized.
She got cash.
Directly or indirectly as a result of polishing your bishop, right?
Yes I mean, I definitely don't want to make it sound like that's what our relationship consisted of exclusively.
No, no, no, I'm not saying it did.
I'm just saying that if the only reason you were subsidizing her was the sexual relationship, then that's a key component of the calculation, right?
You are subsidizing her because she's having sex with you, and if she was just a friend, And by that I mean a friend that you weren't planning on having sex with or didn't want to have sex with.
You would not have made that deal.
The difference in the deal was the sex.
Right.
And that is...
I don't think wildly virtuous.
Like, again, I reorient you here, right, Jonathan?
I mean, you kind of got a little dicknapped here, right?
Yeah.
As we say, you got kidnapped by your dick.
And so, basically, you're paying her for sex.
In other words, you're subsidizing her so that she'll live with you, go on vacation with you, and have sex with you.
Yeah.
I mean, when I wrote that question into you, I mean, it was just a few days out from from us splitting up and kind of having some dark nights and stuff.
So since a month and a half, two months has gone by since then, I've definitely emotionally distanced myself from the relationship and started to see a lot of.
OK, you just really jumped out of the conversation here, right?
OK.
Right, but we're talking about something very important that is, I don't think, something you had realized before we were talking, and now you're just trying to take me off into fogland, right?
If I'm wrong in my characterization, I'm perfectly happy to be corrected, Jonathan, but I can't see it any other way.
And I'm not saying it's the only thing.
You had cuddles and watched movies and long romantic walks on the beach or whatever and enjoyed each other's company and so on.
But as a man with money, you have got to get this straight, right?
Do not pay for sex.
Do not subsidize sex.
Do not give women breaks for sex.
Don't pay for women with the hopes of having sex.
Do not pay for sexual access.
You didn't violate any moral commandments here.
Everything's voluntary.
It doesn't make you a bad person at all.
Like, I'm not trying to morally...
There's no violation of the non-aggression principle here.
Everything's perfectly voluntary.
Everything's perfectly voluntary.
I'm talking about protecting your assets in the future.
Right.
Because if there's a woman around who is willing to trade sex for resources, You are going to end up, I guess, being dragged ass backwards through the family court system and end up with like one sock.
Yeah.
And a gremlin.
Stefan, I think...
I mean...
Like, that's one of the reasons I called in is due to the fact that, you know, I've listened to you for over a year and I really...
Envy your relationship and how you speak of it with your wife and your daughter.
And that's what I want.
And I'm definitely, you know, listening to some of your stuff as far as, you know, why men don't want to get married nowadays and things of that sort.
Scares the hell out of me.
My wife, she wouldn't, I couldn't even pay for dinner.
Right?
That's just a matter of self-respect.
For you and for the woman, right?
Yeah.
And I want you to have a great relationship.
I do.
And I don't want you to feel bad about what happened.
We've all done it.
Right?
You know, I'm not...
I'm in here with you, man.
I'm right down in the trenches with you.
I've done it.
Just about every guy who's listening has done it.
And...
It's fine, for me, it's fine if there's income inequalities in a relationship.
There almost always is.
Nobody makes exactly the same, right?
Yes, there was.
Yeah, so, but in the absence of a serious commitment, and in the absence of the woman making up for consuming more of your resources, not with sex, that degrades the act of sexuality to make it gold-based.
So, what caused the breakup?
So, what caused the breakup is basically her being unhappy.
Her biggest complaint on me was that I almost unknowingly invalidate her feelings a great deal.
As open to her emotional needs.
And I'm...
Like, I'm a pretty...
Sorry to drop.
What I would say, these are generalized complaints that women have that I can never figure out.
But can you give me a specific...
You don't have to get into, obviously, big detail, but it's a sort of specific example of where she felt you had invalidated her feelings.
Again, I'm never really sure what that means, but what was an example?
Okay, so I'll make this as concise as possible.
We were...
This past Christmas, we were trying to go to see my family.
We had it all planned.
My family's already met her.
She bought gifts.
We bought gifts for my family.
We're going down there.
And on the trip down there, we got all packed up.
We're ready to go take off.
We're driving down there.
And like 45 minutes into the trip, I didn't have something in the truck that we bought as a gift.
And she got upset about it.
Wait, sorry.
You didn't pack something that she'd bought prior as a gift for your family?
Correct.
Yeah.
Okay.
And she got...
And sorry, you had bought it or she had bought it?
She had bought it.
And why was it your job to put it in the car?
I don't know.
It's kind of important, right?
Yeah.
We'll get to, I guess, save that for a little bit later as far as my complaints on her.
That would definitely be one of them is lack of responsibility.
No, like if I buy a present and I want to give it to someone, it's my job to put it in the car, right?
Right.
I mean, if I say to my wife, did you put it in the car?
And she says, yes, and she didn't, then, you know, but it's still my job to check.
It's my gift, right?
Yes.
Okay, so go on.
So, she ended up getting upset with me, and...
I told her...
And did she...
Sorry to interrupt.
Did she blow one little problem into some giant analogy for the entire relationship?
Correct.
That's exactly what she did.
Boy, I've never heard that before from a woman.
Never!
You've got the very first woman who blows some tiny little incident into some giant analogy for the entire relationship.
Works herself up into an entire frenzy and destroys everything because...
Yeah.
Tiny little nothing.
That's exactly correct.
That's exactly what happened.
And basically, I remained very calm.
That's one of the things I've really worked on a lot since my last relationship.
And I remained calm, talked to her, and she just wasn't hearing anything.
She basically decided, she's like, I'm not going to go on this trip to turn around.
And I'm like, this is crazy.
We're not going to ruin our holidays over this minor little thing.
We're already like an hour away from my house where we left.
And ends up blowing up and she decides, like, take me back, whatever.
So I end up turning around, bringing her back.
Well, you drove all the way back?
Was there no side of the road?
I don't understand that at all.
Drove her all the way back?
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't going to leave her on the side.
You are a very nice young man.
Well, drove her back, left her here, and I didn't talk to her.
I ended up leaving, and I drove to Texas by myself, and didn't talk to her the entire week of Christmas.
Didn't know if I was still in a relationship.
Wait, was she living with you?
Wasn't she at your house?
Yes, she was.
But I took off.
And I had no communication with her that entire week of Christmas.
Didn't call or text me on Christmas Day.
And I don't know.
It just, to me, was really disrespectful to my family that had already, you know, were planning on seeing her, looking forward to seeing her, bought gifts for her.
No, listen, I mean, you can say it's insane.
Yes.
It's literally mental.
And look, I've known a few men who can do this, but I've never known an entity on the planet other than a woman who can...
Whip herself, like talk herself up into such a giant frenzy that there's literally, it's like watching somebody take one step up and end up shooting into orbit.
You know, it's like, I'm going to crank myself up.
I'm going to keep talking myself.
I'm going to keep escalating.
I'm going to, and there's no restraint.
There's no end to it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just like kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom.
Like thermonuclear.
Thermonuclear from like almost nothing.
And I've known a number of women who can pull that off.
And man, if you could harness women's capacity to talk themselves into pointless outrage, we'd never be short of energy in this or any future civilization.
Hmm.
Yeah, you're right.
How did the calm thing work out for you?
Uh...
Well, that's one of the things.
Yeah, it didn't.
It didn't at all.
It didn't help.
It was unable to contain her insane, irrational wrath.
Correct.
Right?
I mean, and guys do this.
Like, when women are escalating, they'll just...
Keep reasonable.
Honey, I just need to...
And it doesn't work.
Yeah, and I used to, like in my previous relationships, like I would escalate with them.
I would, you know, it would upset me.
I would, you know, whatever.
And then we'd get into, you know, raising our voices and things of that sort.
But not in this relationship.
I did, you know, but to your point, it did no good.
Well, all that meant is you dragged on the suffering longer.
Yeah.
Because you ended up breaking up anyway.
Yeah.
But you sure got to drag on the suffering longer.
Yeah, this capacity to talk yourself into a tantrum is a very, very dangerous characteristic in anyone, but particularly very dangerous characteristic in anyone, but particularly a woman that you're sleeping with.
Because it means she's got no empirical reality to ground herself.
She lives in a world of self-definitional subjectivist language.
You know, and this is, you know, this characteristic or this habit is one of the reasons why guys get falsely accused of sexual assault and rape.
I'm not putting you anywhere close to this category, just in general.
There's some woman, you know, she goes and has sex with a guy.
She wants to get with him.
She wants to be his girlfriend.
And it turns out he was just using her for sex.
And then she hangs around with people who were like, you know, that's assault.
Like, you know that's rape, right?
You know you've got to go and you've got to...
You know, they just talk her up, and she's got no, like, grounding or observing ego, or is this sane?
Is this sane, what I'm doing?
How upset I'm getting over someone forgot a present, so I'm gonna spend Christmas alone!
Like, that's insane!
Yeah.
But she was very virtuous, I hear.
That's escalating, that's abusive, right?
Yes.
Yeah, I would definitely.
I think it was actually one of your shows that you used the term emotional abuse.
And when you said that, I was like, man, I had, I guess, never been exposed to that term before.
And I wouldn't have thought just being a guy, like, thinking, you know, like, this is emotionally abusive.
But when you said that in one of your shows, I was like, man, that is spot on to, you know, the way she acts.
Did your family know she was in debt?
Yes.
I mean, my mom and one of my uncles that I talked to.
Yes.
And how was this before you guys got together?
Did you know she was in debt before you got together romantically?
Yes.
Yeah.
Before we became like official boyfriend, girlfriend.
Yeah.
And did your family know that you were getting together with a woman $60,000 in debt who didn't have any plans for paying it off?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, dude, why?
What did they say about it?
Nothing.
Why?
Don't they care about you?
Come on!
That's like, hey, Mom, I'm just going to go walk into this helicopter blade like I'm in a movie with Harrison Ford.
Okay, have fun!
Wear a hat!
I mean, what, so were you going to identify the eyeball bits?
Why wouldn't your family, like, chain themselves to your nutsack and not let you go that way?
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, my family, you know, my parents specifically have pretty much let me...
You know, we didn't have a lot of...
Them telling me what to do growing up, they pretty much let me do what I wanted and never really...
I mean, they gave me direction, but they didn't tell me, you know, this is the path you need to go down or whatever the case is, kind of let me find my own way.
And I guess that carried over here as well.
I guess, I don't know if they...
And what's their thinking behind that?
I really couldn't tell you.
Is it a philosophy, like unparenting, or is it indifference?
No, I never felt indifference.
I mean, they definitely cared a great deal for me, loved me growing up.
Well, hang on, hang on.
But they didn't give you any particular instruction on how to survive in a complex world?
Not relationship-wise.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, relationships are kind of important, aren't they?
Yes.
What is the quality of your parents' relationship?
They were together 25 years.
They got divorced when I was 18.
But, I mean, I would have to say that, you know, you know, the majority of their relationship survived due to the fact that they had me and my brother for as long as it did, just due to the fact that, I mean, like, it wasn't a relationship, you know, growing up, it wasn't a relationship that made me want to get married.
That's for sure.
Why?
Just a lot of arguing and fighting and things of that sort.
Not great conflict resolution, not great working as a team to resolve issues.
So what kind of fighting?
What are we talking about?
Nothing physical.
You know, arguments over different things.
They didn't really argue a lot in front of us, but, you know, you could tell like the energy was tense, you know, when they were fighting or something like that.
And do you know what they fought about?
I mean, the surface level of what they...
I mean, I know financial stuff was...
A large issue.
I mean, I really...
It was never like cheating or infidelity or anything like that.
It was...
So money.
And what would they fight about with regards to money?
My dad, I know, spends money excessively.
My mom is definitely the more financially responsible one.
My dad does a lot of impulse purchases, things of that sort.
That probably shouldn't have been made at times growing up.
Right.
I mean, he makes pretty good money, but he also spends pretty much almost all of it.
So it kind of doesn't...
So your mother would know the stress of being with someone who's a spendthrift like this woman you were going to get involved in, right?
Correct.
So why wouldn't she give you the benefit of her experience and that which probably caused her the most suffering in her adult life and help you?
I really...
You know, you'd be $20,000 richer at least and, you know, one crack in your heart less, right?
Yeah.
I think...
I think I can answer your question, but I have to give you just a little bit of backstory on that.
Yeah, just don't give me any geography.
Just keep it as generic as possible.
Sure.
So...
My previous relationship, we met on a work trip.
We lived in different states.
After doing the long-distance thing for about 10 months, my girlfriend at the time moved...
To be with me, after two years, we ended up moving back to where she originally was from, had a house built, and right before we're going to close on the house, we ended up breaking up.
And she ended up leaving me.
At this point, I was already committed to my job.
I had a really good job up here where I'm at now.
And, um, I was having a really difficult time, um, just due to the fact that I'm really close with a lot of my family and I had no family and up here where I'm at, uh, like 1500 miles away and didn't have, uh, Really, very many friends, just some people I knew from work, but not a lot of friends that were into, you know, things I do or whatever.
And so I was basically having a really difficult time being alone.
And that's actually kind of what put me on the path to, I'm thankful for the experience now, because that's actually what put me on the path to Really diving into psychology and relationships and learning everything I could about communication and philosophy and self-knowledge and things of that sort.
And I met the girl we're talking about.
Shortly after, just actually three, four weeks after me and my previous girlfriend broke up.
And at the time, I knew I was not ready to enter another relationship.
I was really still hung up on my last one.
And we kind of started out as friends, just hanging out.
And we hung out all the time.
And that's what ended up developing after several months.
To answer your question about my mom, I think my mom saw that she was really there for me or helping me get through this difficult time where I really didn't have too many other people to be around up here.
I don't know if that helps you at all.
No.
No, no, it doesn't.
It's a nice story, but the idea that your mom would have you enter into a financially destructive and emotionally destructive relationship with a woman who turned out to be kind of escalating verbal abuser because it would make you happier and better.
Sorry, I can't buy what you're selling.
I guess it's a nice story, but that's not.
If that's the answer, that's a terrible answer, in my opinion.
Okay.
I mean, you wouldn't.
When you hear it sort of repeated back, well, you know, this very sexy woman is really heavily in debt and is going to prey on my son financially and, you know, she's really emotionally volatile, kind of verbally abusive, but hey, he needs someone right now and it's not going to be me, so it might as well be this.
And again, I'm not saying she's a terrible person, but that's not...
That's the thing is she really wasn't while we were friends.
It wasn't until we became romantically involved...
Several months later that I was, you know, already emotionally invested in the relationship that I started to see a lot of tendencies, yeah.
Of course, look, I mean, of course, the first page on your kid's workbook is always neatest and then it gets sloppier.
When you're just dating or when you're just friends with someone and they're interested in you, of course they're going to be on their best behavior, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course, you know, it's like saying, well, you were in a tux at the wedding, and now it's four months later, why aren't you in a tux?
It's like, you know, that was for the wedding.
I was dressed up for that, right?
It's not how I'm going to dress every day.
So the idea, like, this is why once you're involved with someone, you've already handed over your power.
Right.
There is an exquisite vulnerability for men and for women in getting sexually involved.
I mean, unless you're just some heartless sociopath or something, obviously not you, but there's an exquisite vulnerability, which is why you look for the signs of stability and good decision-making and empathy and maturity and responsibility and wisdom.
You look for those signs before you have sex, because if you've got Half a shrunken hobbit heart or more, by the time you're having sex, your dick is like the icebreaker dragging your heart behind.
Yeah.
I didn't fart on my first date.
Right?
Clinch!
No, I'm not eating Indian.
Right, so...
Yeah, of course people are on their best behavior before you get together.
That's why you have to look clearly for the signs.
Yeah.
Now you said that your parents fought verbally, though not physically, but this is what happened with this girl too, right?
Yes.
I mean, this woman, she was in the car and she was screaming at you, yelling at you, or berating you, escalating.
And it was verbal, not physical, which mirrors your parents to some degree, right?
Yes.
So here's the thing.
This is my big advice for you, Jonathan.
Here we come to le meat of le matter.
And this is your big takeaway for what it's worth.
Our greatest vulnerabilities occur in this way.
The sins that the people around us were guilty of, they cannot warn us against.
That is where our greatest vulnerability is.
Hmm.
The sins of our parents that they have not acknowledged and worked through and therapized and processed and all that, but the sins of our parents are the dysfunctions they cannot warn us about because they have committed them themselves and therefore they cannot warn us about people who manifest the dysfunctions our parents have not acknowledged.
So if you want to know where your greatest danger is with women, and this is true for men and women and all kinds of dating, you look at your parents, you look at their dysfunction, and that is what you're susceptible to, because that is what they cannot warn you against, because they did it themselves.
So, I mean, if you had gone...
To your...
Like, so, let's say you were my son.
And you came to me and you told me this story about...
You know, your girlfriend bought a present and was supposed to come down for Christmas.
But she ended up not packing the present.
She blamed you.
She escalated.
She yelled.
She screamed.
She called your names.
You had to drive her back and she hasn't contacted you since.
What would my feedback to you be about that?
Yeah, you need to be done with her.
And I'm sorry.
And why would I, as your father, apologize to you, Jonathan?
For modeling the behavior?
Yeah, number one.
Although I, as your father, would not have modeled that behavior.
But I would apologize to you.
Do you want to take another one?
No.
Because it's my job, as your father, to keep you safe.
Always.
Not when you're 5.
Not when you're 10.
Not when you're 15 or 40 or 50.
Always.
It is my job to keep you safe.
I childproof the house.
I put little barriers on the change table so you didn't roll off when I was changing your diaper.
I put training wheels on your bicycle.
I held you when you learned how to skate.
I didn't throw you into a deep pond to figure out whether you could swim or not.
Gave you swimming lessons, took you to the doctor, got you inoculated.
It is my job to keep you safe.
When you were a child, you don't know that tumbling down the stairs can really hurt you.
So I baby-proof it.
All the things that are new to you, it is my job to keep you safe.
And if you get involved in a bad relationship, that's on me.
Because I have 30 or 40 years life experience that you don't have.
And it is my job to keep you safe.
And if you, my son, end up in an abusive relationship, I, as a father, As a protector, have failed.
terribly and your friends and and everyone like if people your mom your aunts your uncles your grandparents it is their job Jonathan to keep you safe
And there are predatory women out there in the world who can shred your life like a handful of feta in a mechanized cheese grater.
They will strip you bare.
You're going to be like a cow in the Amazon with a flurry of red water and piranha teeth.
It is a dangerous world out there for men these days.
On campus, in divorce court, on dates, everywhere, there are dangerous women, unstable women with the full force of law, the police, the courts, the state behind them, and they can disassemble you like a kid throwing poorly made Lego against a wall.
And it is your relatives, your friends, your families, all of our responsibility to keep each other safe.
And it is true for women as well.
There are predatory, nasty, gross, using, STD-inflicted men out there who pretend to be one thing but actually be another.
And it is our job to keep each other safe.
And I don't know This used to be very well known in society.
Read 19th century now.
I mean, one of the big courses I took when I was taking English literature was the rise of the novel, where I got to read, you know, the really, really early novels, Maul Flanders and Pamela.
And it used to be well known that young people were hormone-crazed, dick-napped idiots.
I was.
You are.
Your kids will be.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It is a joyful body surf down the white, photo, sperm-drenched, can't-bend-my-sheets excitement of youth.
But we penis-proof our children when they're adolescents and young for the same reason that we baby-proof our house when they're younger.
And it used to be well known in society that it is up to the elders to manage the sexual impulses of the young to make sure that it doesn't lead them off a cliff, break their heart, get them diseased, get someone pregnant, get them accused of some godforsaken crime where there's no evidence but you're doomed anyway, get them in jail, get them with alimony or child support payments for the next 20 years, make sure they don't trip on a vagina and fall into baby jail.
It's the job of the elder generation to keep the children safe.
And the boomers just said, nah, forget it.
Oh, they'll be fine.
I'm gonna be hands-off.
Nah, they'll find their way.
And it's not just your parents.
My mom was the same way.
The parents of my friends were the same way.
They just shrugged it all off.
They forwent the most essential responsibility of parents of adult children, which is to keep them safe from their own hormonally driven impulses.
The more attractive the woman, the more the parents need to cock block and ask stern questions and really fight to have you understand the danger that you're putting yourself in.
Yeah.
You know, if this woman had been 10% more unstable, your life could have taken an entirely different course.
Like a very bad one.
I don't want that to happen to you.
So, your parents have got 25 or 30 years of experience.
They need to keep you safe.
I know falling down the stairs is bad for my daughter and bad for me.
My daughter, when she's three months old and crawling around, doesn't know that.
So it's my job to keep her safe.
And so if you're interested in getting into a relationship with a woman, your parents should be all over that.
Tell me more.
What else?
What else?
What's her family like?
What are her finances like?
What are her prospects like?
What are her past relationships like?
Why did she break up before?
Why is she still on the market?
What is your plan together?
Oh, you're living together?
Well, once you start living together, man, God, it depends on where you are, but you can very quickly be considered married.
Yeah.
Married!
It's a year in some places.
Boom!
You are wed.
And now, if you break up, she can hit you from here to eternity for just about everything you've got.
Oops!
She got pregnant.
Oh boy.
It is a very risky situation.
In the world, at the moment, with the state.
Doing the reach around.
And that's my fundamental question.
Why didn't people keep you safe, Jonathan?
And if your answer is, my mom thought it would be great for me, that is not the answer.
And my guess would be that the answer is that your parents cannot teach you about the wrong people to date because they didn't have a great marriage.
And they would be admitting to themselves the wrong people to date or the wrong way to have a relationship.
Can your parents say it is absolutely unacceptable for a woman to be yelling at you over a trifle?
Can either of your parents say that given how they behaved?
No.
Of course not.
Of course not.
And that is the grave danger of having people with significant dysfunctions around you that is unacknowledged, untalked about.
That's why I tell people you've got issues.
Go talk to your parents.
Because that keeps you safe in the world.
If you know that people aren't going to be able to save you from the sins they themselves have committed, then you can be conscious of it.
But this flying blind, she's hot.
Lead on, McDick, I'll follow the way.
Man, I am...
I'm anxious for you.
And not just for you, but an entire generation of young men who are flying very blind at very high speed in very high mountains.
Yeah.
What are you thinking?
thinking what are you feeling brother?
Well first off you're absolutely right.
Thank you.
The perspective of the stuff you just mentioned regarding my mom and my parents' relationship growing up is spot on, and that's definitely...
patterned in my relationships.
I don't know.
I think it was like, like I said, since I've had a little bit of time since she's been gone now, I see like it was not only emotional abuse, it was also like emotionally manipulative because she would I would always end up finding a way to make it my fault.
And that's the thing I think I struggle with right now the most.
It's like, why couldn't I see this in the moment or when it was happening?
Did your parents ever apologize?
To each other?
To each other?
To you for the disruption, for the conflict, for the fighting?
Nothing comes to mind really as far as me thinking.
So that's why you don't expect to...
You don't expect...
You don't expect apologies for the same reason I don't speak Japanese.
Didn't grow up with it.
Yeah.
And women know that.
Men too, I don't know, I've not dated men, but women know that.
They know a man...
Who is willing to take on their dysfunction and always end up in the wrong.
Because she'll hold out and it will be difficult for you.
She'll hold out, she'll be cold, she'll slam doors until you take on the dysfunction, the burden, you apologize, you're in the wrong, and then she will forgive you.
Right?
Yep, that's exactly how it went down.
Like complete lack of responsibility on On anything on her part.
Like never, like even the whole Christmas thing, like not an apology, not an apology to my family, like nothing.
And I would imagine that you had to explain to your family why this fine young lady wasn't with you.
Yeah.
And did they?
Did they tell you to run from the dangerous exploding eggs of doom?
No, they...
I mean, they were pretty shocked and upset as far as her not coming, but as far as telling me, you know, what actions to take or anything, no.
And I mean, I didn't expect them to, because that's just not...
Well, they could have given you a responsible Christmas present called Protection of Your Heart, but...
Did your girlfriend or your ex, did she call you names?
No.
Did she use pejoratives against you?
Stupid, selfish, whatever.
Selfish, yeah.
Not stupid or nothing degrading or anything like that.
I guess that was one of her gripes.
I had selfish tendencies.
So you're paying the bills.
But you're selfish.
Yeah.
Got it.
Did she know that your parents had a lot of strong verbal conflicts when you were growing up?
Yeah.
Yeah, we talked about that.
And then...
Okay, so she knew that you...
Sorry to interrupt.
But she knew that you were vulnerable...
To verbal escalations because you had grown up with it and it was very unpleasant for you, right?
Yes.
And so what did she do with the knowledge that there's very little more painful for you than verbal escalation in a relationship?
Use that.
Right.
So don't tell me how fucking compassionate and virtuous she is, okay?
Okay.
You don't take people's broken history and use it to sharpen the glass you cut them with.
Once you are vulnerable with someone and you tell them what hurt you as a child, if they ever use that against you...
Well, they can do it.
Just don't tell me that she went to Somalia and was a great fucking person.
Sorry for the language, but...
I just...
I can't...
I can't accept that as a characterization.
I mean, she hurt you.
Right?
Yeah.
And she knew exactly what would hurt you the most and did it.
No, no, no.
You've got to rescue that word virtue from your heart, my man.
Yeah.
What's going on?
No, you're just...
You're just right.
It's one of the reasons I've listened to your show so much is just due to the fact that you make me question a lot of my own thoughts or ways I look at things.
That's why I called you.
Right.
Like I knew there was, I think like...
one of the reasons I think I was like really patient with her is like she was going through some stuff she hadn't dealt with prior to, you know, us getting together and that she still hasn't dealt with.
And, um, She was going to get married and on her wedding day back in 2010, the guy she was going to marry basically called her as she was getting her hair done and was like, I can't do this.
And I think that that was something that really...
It's traumatized her that she's never dealt with.
She was in college at the time and took off for five and a half months study abroad.
It's basically her running away.
And I don't know if that's exactly where it started, but that's something she did throughout our entire relationship was anytime we had any issue or whatever, she'd be gone.
She'd leave home.
Or she, you know, once we moved in together, she would threaten to leave.
And that threatening of the security of the relationship is something that, you know, really hurt me and really...
I don't know.
Yeah.
Prevented me, I guess, from really fully trusting her.
Right.
Right.
And threatening to end a relationship is...
In my opinion, I mean, this is...
And look, this is with all due sympathy to the positive qualities that these women had.
But I, you know, when people know what hurts you and then they continue to do it.
And it can happen, right?
But then you call, oh, I'm so sorry, you know, like this is the one thing that you told me was the toughest thing for you.
I did it, I feel...
You know, it can happen, but if there's no apology, then...
Anyway.
So, you know, this is all due respect to the positive qualities that these women had.
But...
If...
If someone threatens to end a relationship, like in a fundamental way, like X or we're done, that to me is kind of the end of the relationship.
With maybe a few exceptions, but because it's saying that there's no more negotiation now, there's just threats, the threat.
Yeah.
Well, Steph, I think I've definitely – I mean even before our phone call here right now, like I – as more time goes on, I just reflect on this and –
And this was already the conclusion that I came to, you know.
When it first happened, I was, like, really didn't want it.
I wanted to work on our relationship or go to counseling and she actually agreed to go to counseling and then decided she wasn't willing to do it after she told me she was and then ended our relationship shortly after that.
Yeah, it can sort of It's like when you have a bright light and you close your eyes, you can still see it for a little while.
After the threat, the relationship can stagger on, but I think that the foundation has been taken out.
Yeah.
And I think one of the reasons she didn't want to go to counseling or anything is due to the fact that I don't think she really was too interested in seeing anything that she had done.
Done wrong or could have done better.
Because it's always like I'm not happy and on me to fix it or on me to change it or something.
Right.
So...
I think that for you to get to a good therapist, and a male therapist might be the way to go, but I think for you to get to a good therapist, just so you can see the warning signs, so that, you know, and particularly if you're interested in a woman, if you have a relationship with a therapist, they know your history, you can always go for a refresher, right?
You'll go, you know, for a week or two if you're interested in dating someone and go over the details and go over the warning signs and go over the facts so that you can feel I'm more secure in your attraction to someone because I don't want you to get the sense that your attraction to someone is a form of masochism,
you know, that it's going to go badly and it's, you know, like if you have trust in that, if you have trust in your capacity to choose someone who, you know, nobody's perfect and we all make mistakes, but who is going to be reasonable in the long run and is going to be able to circle back and say, I did something wrong.
I apologize.
Here's what I'm going to do to make it better.
And, you know, when you find someone like that, marry them.
Get them off the market in some manner.
But you can do it.
Yeah.
All right, Steph.
Well, I think that's all I had for you this evening.
All right.
Keep us posted, all right?
I appreciate your time.
You're very welcome.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Great to chat.
Thank you.
Up next, we have Victor.
Victor wrote in and said, I understand your very profession definitely plays a part in this, as you are always exercising your verbal ability.
But was this something you were always good at by chance?
Was this something you consciously tried to perfect over time?
I'm asking as I want to improve my communication ability to the extent that is possible.
I'd be very thankful for any advice you could give in this area.
That's from Victor.
Hey, Victor.
How are you doing?
Hi, Stefan.
I'm good.
How are you?
Very well, thank you.
It's a great question.
And it's sort of a lift the lid or open the curtain to see how it is that I do what I do.
And for some creative processes, there doesn't seem to be much of a process except practice.
I'm thinking about, you know, one of the most perfect short songs in the world, in my opinion, is a crazy little thing called Love by Queen.
Which Freddie Mercury was sitting in a bath in Hamburg and the tune just popped into his head, you know, or an example of one of the most famous songs and one of the most covered songs and thousands of covers of the song Yesterday, written by Paul McCartney and I guess polished a little by John Lennon.
And Paul McCartney dreamt of the tune and just wrote down some nonsense lyrics, you know, Ham and eggs.
Oh, my dear, you have got lovely legs.
That's what he sort of wrote down.
And then he obviously made the lyrics slightly better.
And he kept playing it to everyone saying, you've heard this song before.
Like, I didn't just write.
And he couldn't believe that he'd made it up.
And...
So for some, but of course, you know, as Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, they spent years playing eight hours a day in Hamburg and got very good at this.
So, you know, a huge amount of practice will give you that quote kind of inspiration.
I was not born with the metaphor expression capacity.
Look, we all have the capacity for metaphors because we do it every night when we dream.
I mean, every night our brain manufactures the most astounding...
Metaphors, analogies, stories, images, whatever you want to call them.
And, you know, they have been called the royal road to the unconscious.
And I think that there's great value in that.
But I do think that I have worked on developing it.
So I went to...
I was on radio in college, but not really much of anything there.
Just introducing songs and stuff.
But when I went to theater school...
And I did a lot of acting.
But when I went to theater school, we did a lot of improv.
And it was hard for me, you know, kind of tight-ass white guy from England or whatever.
I mean, it was kind of hard for me to sort of relax and get all Dudley Moore on that kind of improv.
But it helped a lot and I got better at it over time.
And I did find that sometimes I was able to tap into this very uncertain well geister.
You know, like I'd dance all over the place trying to find it.
Then I'd step on something and some language would come up and that would be very helpful.
But by this time, I'd written a lot of poetry.
I started writing poetry when I started writing my first novel.
I wrote my first short story when I was 6.
I started writing my first novel when I was 11.
And I wrote plays, novels, poetry throughout my youth and into my 20s.
I adapted Turgenev's Fathers and Sons for the stage, called it Seduction, and put it on, directed and produced it in Toronto.
And wrote and produced a movie, a short movie, which is actually on the channel.
It's called After.
And, of course, I took a lot of, you know, a lot of voice training and a lot of the acting training has helped in terms of, you know, committing to what it is that I'm doing in the moment.
But for me, it's always still a little bit nerve-wracking to do stuff.
It is a very, very complicated dance because there's a lot of...
It's not like one language stream pops up.
There is...
A bunch of different language streams.
So the way you can sort of think about it is if you're sitting in a crowded restaurant, let's say whoever you dig onto the washroom, you can hear this hubbub, but if you want, you can focus on a particular conversation and then you can focus on another particular conversation or you can just let it all dissolve into a hubbub.
So when I'm sort of in the zone when it comes to language creation and production, There is a variety of conversations that are going on in my mind, a variety of sort of languages, language eruptions that are going on in my mind.
I have to kind of pick which one is going to work out well.
And I sometimes, you know, people, I rarely script what I do.
Which, you know, sometimes saves time and sometimes it doesn't.
But what I will often do is I often will want a good closing statement and I'll often just continue until I get a good closing statement that pops into my head.
And I try to continue with, you know, content so I'm not just like a helicopter circling waiting to land.
But it is still nerve-wracking because I sit there and if I have something that I'm obviously very passionate about that's very important, that is, you know, if something happens that is very newsworthy or very, you know, the last one I think was the Brussels terrorist attack.
I mean I have a sort of a little ritual like I'll sort of sit there and say like I summon Churchill and Shakespeare and Dickens and like anybody else who I can think would be a great speaker and you know I need the spirit of Socrates I need whatever grandiloquence can arrive to me from the ether because you know not that I'm expecting to summon ghosts but it's a way of priming the unconscious to give you great value.
And then I just commit to what it is that I'm going to produce and I trust that the dance I take through the conversations in the cafe that I'm going to pick up the language that is going to impact people the most and I try to be as honest and open and vulnerable and To honestly express what I think and feel.
There has been a lot of practice, you know, I've obviously done thousands and thousands of shows and a whole bunch of public speaking and, you know, I've acted in plays and done a year and a half of improv and all that.
So there is a certain amount of training that has gone into it.
But most fundamentally, as I talked about in a video on this channel about effective public speaking, I am not important in the equation.
And, you know, for a guy who has a camera pointed at him with nothing else around, I know that sounds odd to people, but it is genuinely the case.
What I care about is introducing thought to people.
I care about introducing ideas to people.
Now, if you have two friends, you think they'd be a good couple.
And you introduce them to each other.
You're not thinking about yourself.
You're thinking about whether they're getting along, how they're enjoying each other's company and so on.
And the same thing is true for me.
I have ideas or I have thoughts or arguments, evidence and so on.
I wish to introduce that to the audience.
I don't want them to think about me.
I want them to think about the ideas or the arguments that I'm giving to them.
Because that's what they can take away.
That's what they can carry with them is the arguments, the reasons, the evidence, the philosophy that I can bring to people.
So I want to be a sort of a clear pane of glass through which people can see unobstructed thought.
And that means that I have to get out of the way of the conversation.
And people, you know, will occasionally say, oh, he loves the sound of his own voice or ego-driven and so on.
And they miss the entire point, which is I'm a guy in a white room in Canada.
And people are going to go off and go about their day.
And they're not going to worry whether I enjoyed my lunch.
Or, you know, whether I've had four too many coffees in the last hour.
They're not.
Me, as an individual, I'm just some guy.
That doesn't impact on their lives or thoughts.
I shouldn't.
Any more than the life of someone in Paris I'm sitting there obsessing about.
But what I do want is...
For the ideas that I can bring to them to have those ideas stick in the minds of people because they can carry the ideas, the arguments, the evidence, the facts, the experts who come on this show and talk about what is important to them and what they have learned and studying and can communicate.
That's what can stick with people.
The philosophy that I produce can stick with people I don't want them to think about me other than, you know, maybe that was a great way to get philosophy across from me, but I want the methodology and the process to stay with people after they finish watching what it is that I do.
In other words, I want them to forget about me and to remember the ideas because that's where philosophy is going to live, not in them thinking about me.
But rather in them having the ideas, the methodology, the process begin to embed itself in their minds so that they can begin the process of learning how to think more clearly.
Exactly.
I think it's very important to help them how to get the point across in the most effective way.
And sometimes when you use your metaphors and you're very fast and quick in your responses, the form with which you communicate It really helps you to send the message.
And that's something I think is really important for everyone.
English is actually not my first language, so I might have a bit of trouble expressing myself.
But I really think that your ability to communicate your ideas is basically your most important assets that you could have.
And I really think the metaphor you gave, the cafe metaphor with Random streams of consciousness going on around you.
That is something that I can relate to very much.
And to me, the difficulty is in identifying which of these streams of consciousness to pursue further and not to get lost in all the connecting ideas that pop up during a conversation or during a speech or something in that sense.
But I guess it does come with practice and I don't know if this is an ability that came to you more prominently after you started doing your show, because I know on your shows you do this very frequently.
During day-to-day life it's hard to actually, at least in my job, I spend a lot of time not actually engaging with people and discussing ideas.
So most of my life, I'm actually in a more of an introspective mode.
I'm working more introspectively, so it's difficult.
I actually managed to be good at internalizing information.
So I'm good at listening to things, listening to ideas and being good at judging them and the validity of those ideas and how they are, how logically connected they are, how well connected they are.
But I'm not so good at doing the other direction of information from inside out.
So it's just something that I'm not very used to doing.
But that, I think, is driven by love.
And, I mean, it may sound hackneyed or something, but there's two things.
I think the first thing that people probably get, if they're authentic themselves, is that I don't have a persona.
Like, you know, the extreme example of Stephen Colbert Playing that right wing parody of some right wing host, right?
I mean, that's clearly a persona.
And there are lots of people in the public sphere who, you know, the way they are on stage, you can't imagine sort of sitting across a dinner table and Having that person.
But, you know, I get a lot of comments like, you know, I'd love to have dinner with you.
I'd love to have a beer with you.
And it's lovely.
It's lovely to hear.
I don't have a persona.
I think Dennis Miller, you know, he's got that sort of cheesy, grinning persona of giggliness and all that.
And I just can't imagine, you know, like having a conversation with him privately.
I think that people get that I don't have a persona.
And this question of public and private is very important to people in the sphere.
Again, Freddie Mercury was saying, you know, people...
They come and chat with me and they think I'm going to be this big, grand, powerful person like I am on stage, but that's just a persona.
I'm actually quite shy.
I like to gossip.
Same thing with Kevin Spacey, who just says he loves to sit in hotel rooms and gossip about other actors.
He's not, you know, this sort of big, powerful, meaty slice of Southern manhood that he plays in various things.
So this question between sort of the public and private persona, I sort of made a very conscious decision early on that I wasn't going to have a persona.
I was going to be who I was.
And I wasn't going to have patterns of speech that were going to be different than what I would say in general conversations.
That I was going to attempt to be, or just be, as natural and as clear as I could.
And it takes time.
It takes time to get comfortable with that.
You know, like right now, you're a person, but I'm looking at a camera and I have a little thing in my ear which I wouldn't be doing.
And I remember Sean Hannity once saying, you know, it took him forever to get comfortable with a camera.
I didn't find that quite as much.
But I think that people get a sense that...
Well, Mike, you saw me and then met me.
And was there any letdown or like, whoa...
Who's this guy compared to the guy?
I've met quite a few people that I've watched previously, you know, quote-unquote celebrities and such, and even had chances to sit down with certain celebrities and, you know, people that I've listened to for a long time.
And I had only been listening to the show for like six months or so before I ended up meeting you, Steph.
And you are as advertised.
You're pretty much the same person.
There's not an act.
There's not some type of persona.
Whereas when I've met other people...
Oh my god.
I've had some horrendous experiences meeting people that's like, oh man, you're great.
I love your stuff.
And then it's like, oh, you're actually a dick in real life.
Boy, that's quite a bit different than what I was expecting.
That's funny because, yeah, I don't know.
I get the sense that you're being very authentic in the way you communicate.
And I've been listening to your show for a couple of years now.
And you actually get the sense that you know the person just because you can actually feel that what you're doing is not scripted.
So it's something that comes from your authentic self in a way.
So it's hard to mask.
And also, if you're also not scripted, Creating a persona, as you put it, you're in a way specializing yourself more without having to distract yourself with different personalities that you have to turn on and off as you're trying to put your point across.
Yeah, and it certainly has not escaped my attention over the years, Victor, that A lot of people will know, if they listen to the show a lot, a lot of people will know more about me than they will know about people in their own lives.
Yeah.
Because I have talked a lot about my history and my childhood and I've I brought my dreams out and said, here's what I think they mean.
And, you know, the How a Man's Heart is Murdered talked about, you know, some of the challenges that I faced as a man in a female multiverse growing up.
And so, given how much I've talked about myself, and my history is not an off topic, and I can't ask people to be honest and vulnerable with me without being honest and vulnerable in return.
That would be exploitive.
So it is definitely, I think, true for a lot of people who listen to the show that they know more about me than they do about anyone that they know face-to-face.
Hopefully that invites people to have the same level of honesty with the people in their lives, but that certainly is an issue.
I think this is a symptom of you not trying to protect your ego in a way, as you put it before.
Your only focus is on putting the information across, your philosophy across.
and not try to protect yourself in a way so you're being much more authentic and expressive and I think there are certain impediments to effective communication and one of a very big one in my view is exactly like being worried with what you should talk about what you shouldn't talk about what image you're putting across to other people of yourself about yourself and This
is something that's also very admirable on your part.
I feel that's not much of your concern, and your biggest concern is with the content of what you're saying.
That's also one of the things that I see in what you do that helps with the way you put across information.
I know that for myself, and I hope that this comes across, it was what I was touching on earlier, is that I am Very much driven by love, by love of the world, love of its possibilities, love of people, love of everything that we're capable of achieving if we let go of our fears and we face our demons,
we deal with our histories, we learn about ourselves, we subject our mere opinions and scar tissue to the healing knife of reason and evidence.
I am incredibly driven by this Maddening.
So close yet so far possibility of how the world could be.
How families could be.
How parenting could be.
How society could be.
How productivity and prosperity could be.
How little we need screaming and fighting and yelling and conflicts and wars.
It's so close in my mind.
I already live there.
So I'm sort of sending this back to people saying this is where we can get to.
I love so much what human beings are capable of and you know my one of my challenges is to remember that the frustration that I feel when people don't reach even for their own potentiality don't run away from the truth that I have to be patient
with people who reject that which is great for them and which if they accept it would make their lives more difficult for a while but make the world much better in the long run.
And I genuinely love talking to people, people who agree with me, people who disagree with me, people who are frustrating, people who are inspiring, people who are energizing.
You know, I'll chat with waiters in restaurants.
I'll chat with people behind counters.
I, you know, I mean, I'll do goofy things like down in Niagara Falls with Mike and everyone else there.
And there's this big giant fudge shop and it's wall-to-wall fudge.
So naturally I go in and say, do you guys have any fudge?
I mean, it's stupid and it's ridiculous, but it gives a smile behind the counter because you can see that.
But does he not eye English?
I love when we're hanging out and you go through a drive-thru.
Somehow you make drive-through interactions entertaining.
Yeah, I mean, if you can bring a little bit of excitement and happiness to, you know, what is a pretty boring job, you know, why not?
Why not?
It doesn't do me any harm.
And, you know, my daughter's still young enough that she's not mortified by it, which is going to happen in a couple of years, I'm sure.
But I do have, you know, it's a great, you know, I say this on the show, it's a great privilege to be able to talk to the world in this way.
It absolutely is a great privilege.
You know, I have access to the secrets of people's lives and their thoughts and their feelings.
That is an extraordinary gift.
And that's part of what I love about the world.
And people can say, well, how can you keep going?
There's such opposition.
But, but...
It is glorious to have these conversations, and these conversations will be here forever.
Guiding the world forever.
I think of the works of Aristotle in particular that were lost.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
His prose was supposed to be better than Plato's, and Plato is a master of prose.
And all we have from Aristotle are his notes and his students' notes, and they've kind of been assembled together, and they're still glorious.
And we have all of these conversations for the world forever.
That's an incredible gift to give to people, raising the bar of what people can talk about, of how they can interact, of how they can reveal, of how they can have disagreements and yet remain civil, of how they can get angry without being abusive, of how they can be assertive without erasing the other person,
of how they can speak the truth of their own experience Without dominating or having to dominate the other person the examples that we have back and forth in this conversation is a glorious gift to the world and We give gifts to those we love and I love the world for what it can be and Which doesn't mean I hate it for what it is.
I certainly get frustrated from time to time and I think that's entirely appropriate.
Because if you care about something, then you care about its absence.
If you love someone, you miss them when they're gone.
And if you love reason and evidence and truth and philosophy and virtue, then you're gonna miss them when they're gone.
And it is important.
The world gets more and more in urgent need of reason and evidence and philosophy.
It is natural to feel frustrated, even though I have the great gift of this technology to bring 160, 170 million downloads and views of philosophy over the last 10 years and accelerating as we go forward even faster.
We're just almost at 5.2 million video views a month.
That is...
Because I love the world.
And I love what the world can be.
And I hate those who stand in opposition to what the world can be.
I want to reason with them.
I want to bring them around.
But I will not spend the rest of my life begging people sat against me for permission to pass.
I must walk through them.
I must walk through them so that we can all get to the world we truly deserve to live in.
Yeah, I really think for you to achieve what you have achieved, you have to have a very strong underlying mission that really gives you the motivation to break through all these barriers that we have.
Well, who else?
Do you know of anyone else who's having this kind of conversation at this kind of level with this variety of topics?
No, no, I don't.
I wish I did, but I don't.
I wish I did too.
I don't like having Monopoly on the future because that means that it's up to me and you and the supporters of this show and no one else.
I would love it if I could look to the left or the right and see all these other people coming up over the trenches.
Yeah, let's take the future!
Echo, echo, echo.
You know, I got hand puppets as companions sometimes.
And I know that the supporters and there's Mike and other people I love and who love me who are there to support what it is that I do.
And that's what makes it fundamentally possible.
But that's why I can't...
You know, if you're the only person who can help in this way, and again, if other people can send me to the shows where we talk about All of the topics that we talk about, self-knowledge and philosophy and ethics and epistemology, metaphysics, history, child-rearing, GMO, 9-11, science, history.
I mean, you could go, I could do like an hour of all the topics that we've talked about in this show.
And I don't Who else is doing this breadth and this depth of topics?
Nobody that I know of.
And as I said, this is the greatest show in the world and will always be the greatest show in the world because every show that comes afterwards will have this show as a template.
And I believe that.
And, you know, people can call me crazy, but then they have to find me something that's like it before that is as good or better, in which case I'll seed that.
But I believe that.
With great power, with great ability, comes great responsibility, I believe.
And this doesn't mean I'm forced to.
It's not a violation of the non-aggression principle.
But if I have a unique ability with the listeners, with the supporters, if I have a unique ability to reach the world in the most important way to help it avoid some of the self-destructive path that it's on, and if it is only me who is doing it in this breadth and depth of a format then I don't mean to sound all kinds of deterministic but if there's no one else who
can do what I do and what I do is essential what we all together do is essential what is my choice?
what is my choice?
to be given these gifts I can simply use them to make my own life better and happier which I could Or I can use them to make a real difference in the world.
And all of the gifts that I have inherited have come from people who chose the benefit of mankind over the benefit of their own immediate happiness.
And I think it would be difficult for me to live with myself if I had this ability and this capability and used it to benefit only my own happiness with no thought to the betterment of the planet.
Yeah, I think it's...
I understand your position.
Yeah, it's very admirable that you're, in a way, you're giving so much, you're putting so much of your personal energy into something that is so important for the whole civilization.
In a way...
And certainly the bad people are not shy of energy or commitment or dedication.
Exactly, exactly.
You know, there are...
Groups and regions that I disagree with who, you know, get up at dawn and give their money to the causes that they believe in and instruct their children, I think, somewhat ferociously in the edicts that they believe are right and have multi-century plans for a world tournament.
Like, they're not short of energy.
And so, you know, it is a little bit like Gandalf-Balrog Bridge situation, but...
They're not shy on energy, focus, and dedication for the aims that they wish to achieve.
And if I can't at least match that in my own frail personage, I don't see how there's a chance to win.
Exactly.
On my part, it's very clear to me that Every time I listen to your conversations, every time I see you discussing topics or arguing with someone else and having debates,
to me it's very clear the logic that you're following and it's very clear when someone breaks that line of logic and I can really sense that and to me I have like an intuitive grasp of the truth in a way and I hear you explaining it in a way that I'm like, wow, I could never create this type of clear and concise explanation of the truth.
But I can have an intuitive grasp of what it is.
And maybe if I can sit down, I can actually write a coherent explanation, but I need more time to think and process the words that I'm using.
So I can't actually identify what is the logic, but it's hard to express.
I want to do, in a way, it's a smaller impact, but I want to do my part.
And how effectively I can do that part depends on how well I'm able to communicate.
And maybe that's why I was asking about your, I don't know, maybe your practical steps Maybe something in retrospect you didn't do conscientiously or it was more of the path that you took, but the steps that you took that gave you some of your ability.
I might not have the time or the ability.
No, but it's an old quote from Nietzsche.
Give a man a why and he can bear almost any how.
And if you have enough of a motivation, you will find a way to get it done.
So you're asking me, how do I do it?
And the only thing that I can tell you is, if you love it enough, you will achieve it.
You know, if you want to play cello in Carnegie Hall, and that's what you wake up for.
That's all you really care about.
You'll go to the dentist.
So your teeth look good when you play cello at Carnegie Hall.
If you love that vision of you playing cello at Carnegie Hall, then you will find a way to do it.
It is all in the desire.
From the desire comes the commitment.
From the commitment comes the practice.
From the practice comes the ability.
And from the love comes Comes the connection.
Yeah, we talk about this sometimes, Mike, right?
You have the most bizarre accumulation of experiences that have come together to make you perfect for what you do right now.
Oh, we're going to talk about global warming.
Well, Steph has done climate modeling previously.
You've done computer modeling involving environmental type stuff.
So you have experience to talk about that.
Oh, you're involved in a...
Preparing a company for a public offering.
So you can talk about your experience in that area.
You've done lots of voice training.
You've done lots of acting training.
You've researched philosophy extensively.
Lots of business experience.
And on the ability to communicate, on that part, you've done acting.
You've done...
Improv.
But that's something that helps with your fluidity.
But on the depth of your communication, you've done something that helps with the depth.
You've done novels.
You wrote novels.
Something that helps with the metaphors that you're very quick at giving.
I was on the debating team in college the first year I did it.
I came in sixth in all of Canada.
And that's with opinions that nobody liked, as you can imagine, in Socialist Canada.
So, yeah, lots and I did lots of debate prep and all of that.
So, yeah, a lot of stuff has come together for this, the package that you see and hear before you.
And also, you know, stupid little things like I think the fact that I have a vague Tour of the Colony's accent doesn't hurt.
The fact that I did a graduate degree, it's not the end of the world as far as this goes.
The fact that I have a relatively pleasant and flexible voice.
When I was younger, I wanted a better singing voice, but singers don't tend to make very good speakers because their voices, especially if they're tenors or whatever.
And so I have a good...
Flexible vocal instruments, you know, relatively pleasant to look at and just, you know, a variety of good teeth, you know, just silly things that don't hurt.
You know, if I were Chessy McChesterson, I'm sure that would help even or, though perhaps not with the bald speckled head, but...
Yeah, and, you know, willingness and pleasure in making fun of myself and not taking myself too seriously while at the same time having the capacity for great seriousness when it matters.
That is something that, you know, I hate to bring Bill Cosby into this talk, but I remember this from years ago that he was Bill Cosby, of course, played this Dr.
Huxable, this funny guy.
But...
Once someone was talking about the son who was drug addicted and I remember Bill Cosby's face was like incredibly serious and I thought how powerful that is that his face is so serious at a time when he's in the same Show where he's a comedian in general or how he's so serious and so yeah a lot of you know a lot of sort of planets aligned and and you know I was very early on out of the gate you know I was doing part well I actually wrote about I wrote about podcasting years and years and years before it
became a thing right so I wrote the God of Atheists years and years before I became a podcaster when there was no podcasting there was no YouTube I talked about a guy uploading videos and talking to the world with great speeches.
The fact that I have a technical background helped very much at the beginning when I had coding to do to get everything up and running.
The fact that I did a lot of sales when I was in the business world has really helped in terms of being able to listen and communicate and help people define issues and solve them.
You almost couldn't design or build A sort of better conglomeration of unprepared and accidental skill sets.
The fact that I worked up north for an aggregate of about a year and a half or a little bit more in a tent, I got to read the Bible cover to cover.
There were no tablets, no computers.
We had a radio, but...
There was a guy who just loved country and western.
And now, from Houston, we're going to be playing the top 850 country and western songs of all time.
Please don't.
No.
So, I didn't.
I just put my headphones on and listened to the police.
And so, I had a chance just up there to read and read and read and read and read.
And that was, you know, whereas now, I guess people bring up tablets and play games.
Maybe I would have back then, too.
There is, you know, if I want to go and talk about Bitcoin, boom!
You know, I understand databases.
I understand data sharing.
I, you know, I want to talk about fiat currency and its effects on the stock market.
Well, I worked at a stock trading company as my first job as a computer programmer, so really got to see it from the inside.
So there is a lot of stuff that has kind of come together.
Which wouldn't have happened if like a couple of these things weren't present, it wouldn't have worked.
So, I don't know, luckily accumulate experiences that, you know, that's not a very, but if you have, you know, where there's a will, there's a way.
It's an old cliche, but it's very true.
If you love the world enough to want to help it, despite the fact that it hates you for helping it, that's the challenge, right?
I mean, if you're a nurse coming in with morphine, people are like, yay, great, yay, great, you know?
Thank you for the morphine, you know, if they're in pain.
And even people that got to get a root canal or something, they at least understand that it's necessary and, you know, that they'll be better off in the long run and so on.
But if you're a philosopher, you're coming in and people feel that you're, or they imagine or think, they experience that you're creating problems by identifying them.
That you're pointing at them and saying illness and making them ill by pointing, you know, like you're an enemy to them.
Because the problems that philosophy deals with, Are multi-generational.
They're a long ways down the road.
And so wrenching my perspective back to current events at the moment is really discombobulating and a little strange because I've been dealing with long-term issues, you know, peaceful parenting and multi-generational change for so long that, you know, being yanked down into the time slice of a presidential election is a little disconcerting to put it mildly.
So...
So, like, I was just thinking about this today.
I was thinking about this today.
Literally, I was thinking, like, well, you know, there's all these messes happening in Europe, and there's messes happening in America, and, you know, things that are potentially culture-terminating.
And it's just, cars are driving by, and, you know, the sun is in the sky, and the birds are flying from tree to tree, and it's like...
But if you see around the corner over the horizon, you see what's coming, you know, until...
Until the horde arrive at your doorstep, there are only rumors of them.
And so the problem is that you talk about issues that are so far down the road for people that they might actually outlive them.
And if they don't have kids, to some degree, it's like, well, you know, I had fun on Call of Duty.
And so when you are coming and pointing out issues that have a long time slice but need to be dealt with now...
You know, like a doctor saying to a 20-year-old, don't smoke, because, you know, when you're Leonard Nimoy's age, right?
Even if you quit, right?
Emphysema.
And so it's so far down.
At least that's affecting the individual, but this is collective.
So if you're pointing out issues so far in the future, That we do need to act now to deal with them.
People feel like you're creating problems that they can't see, and they resent you for it.
And this is why you're a fearmonger, you're a doomsayer, the end is nigh.
People have been saying that for 10,000 years.
And so that is, you have to love the world enough to help it, though it hates you for helping it, and views the help as hurtful.
That is the great challenge, and that's why there are few philosophers.
Yeah, I understand Everything you're saying and the way you you talk about all the different things that you've been through that Made you who you are today and that all these experiences in some way Get give you the ability to perform very well what you're doing today I think That is not much of luck in a way that it's similar to if you see the Stanford speech
by Steve Jobs.
He talks about how he did a random walk throughout his life and later connected the dots retrospectively in a way that how he applied these different things that he learned throughout his life that seemed random at first, but in a way he made good use of them later on.
I was just chatting with someone the other day about how I can absolutely, completely, totally understand how people end up believing in a God and a guiding light and everything happens for a reason.
Because if, you know, when you've been the recipient of some skilled and some coincidental set of circumstances that have led you to a place that you love being, it's easy to look back and say, well, there was a guiding hand, you know, this can't all have just been accidental.
It's like I can completely, completely and totally understand.
let Jesus take the microphone, so to speak.
I let the Spirit of God speak through me.
I am here as an agent of God's will.
And that's, of course, how they get the strength, right, to do some of the challenging things, which atheists don't often seem to get the strength to do.
And so I can really, really understand.
And I was thinking, like, if I had that belief system as a whole, how I could completely, like, not creepy Ted Cruz dad style, but I could completely understand the susceptibility to the idea that, yeah, everything happened to bring me to this place.
It's Things that I disliked intensely at the time were incredibly valuable for giving me the chance to...
To do what I'm doing in the way that I'm doing it.
But I see it as a way of...
It's like a natural process.
It's like similar to how the market works.
It's a natural process that we will try to fit our circumstances to the best of our abilities.
And after the fact, you can look back and say, oh, my abilities are in such a way and I fit them really well in my life and what I'm doing right now.
And you can look back and think of all the things that you've done that gave you the abilities that you have now and you think, wow, that was so lucky.
But you wouldn't be in that specific circumstance doing what you're doing now if you hadn't done that.
But maybe you would be doing something else that you'd be looking back and thinking, wow, how lucky I was to have done all of these things that gave me the abilities for what I'm doing right now.
Right.
The underlying thing is that you...
You had some sort of shift or some sort of...
Because many people do many different things, but most of them do them in a kind of aimless and hypnotic state.
Not hypnotic, like...
Not with much passion.
A reactive state, like they see an opportunity.
This is what Dave Barry says, you know, how did you become the singer of the rock band?
And like, oh yeah, I hurt my leg and I was being wheeled through the hospital and I was screaming at the top of my lungs.
And then there was a guy who played guitar and he hurt me.
He's like, wow, I bet you that guy would be a great heavy metal.
This is like how things happen to people.
And I've certainly, that's been my experience with some things.
Take the opportunities.
Yeah.
I'm not a good one for saying no to opportunity.
I'm very much a big one for give it a try and see how it works.
And of course, if I had been given the choice, I wouldn't be doing this.
And that's what's so fascinating about this.
Like, if I'd been given the choice when I was younger, first I wanted to be, well, just a variety of things.
I was going to be a writer, a professor, actor, novelist, maybe a poet.
Then I was going to be an entrepreneur, a business executive.
And I did, you know, a lot of those things.
But I wasn't like, hey, I can't wait for the technology to be invented so that I can annoy the whole world by being the modern Socratic gadfly.
It was never part of my particular ambition.
I wanted to be a novelist until I realized, as I've said before, that people loved my novels but would never buy them.
Because what's upstream from art?
Well, as Andrew Breitbart says, politics is downstream from culture, but philosophy is upstream.
From culture and the culture was not able to handle the art I was creating because it did not have the philosophical principles that lined up with the culture art is philosophy embodied in emotional and Empirically emotional terms for the masses right and it's values that are used to program philosophy into the Hearts of people who aren't strong on the mind thing and so The
thing, too, is, you know, taking risks and taking stands helps build credibility.
And a lot of people don't want to take stands on stuff.
And they don't want to take stands on things that are unpopular.
And, you know, when I take a stand that, you know, a lot of libertarians, the police are always bad, wrong, and corrupt, and evil, right?
So when I review facts for, you know...
Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman thing for the Mike Brown stuff.
Well, I'll take a stand.
And events, in a lot of ways, because I try to be as empirical as possible, events prove that I'm right.
And having that kind of dedication, you'll lose some false friends along the way, but you'll gain genuine friends as you keep rolling forward, as people realize, you know, I said there wasn't going to be an economic recovery.
Oh, well, unemployment.
No, there's not been an economic recovery.
As long as the debt continues to increase, there's no...
Anyway, it's not that.
So, I mean, this is sort of one of six million stands that I've taken where I think we've been pretty validated.
You know, Ebola won't kill the world.
You know, there's things that we've taken stands on that make sense.
And so, all of these things...
Have worked out.
And having done this night and day for 10 years, it would be terrible if I wasn't decent.
I mean, that would just be, you know, I'm still playing chopsticks after 10 years of practicing on the piano for 12 hours a day.
Well, maybe you should find some other, you know, some other keyboards to tickle, like typing or something like that.
So, yeah, it is a wild and wacky occupation.
And I think that...
It's hard for me to think of a philosopher who also went out and influenced millions of people in the world to think more clearly.
It's been a long time since there's been a public philosopher.
Now, you could say maybe Ayn Rand to some degree, Bertrand Russell to some degree, but for a variety of reasons they, I don't think, quite hit the mark as far as Genuine change that can be measured.
You know, we're out there talking and people have stopped hitting their children and people have gotten out of toxic relationships and people have married and they have fallen in love and they have had children and the relationships are beautiful because they're listening to philosophy and they're pursuing self-knowledge and they're getting therapy and all the stuff that we talk about here.
That is usually not the province of philosophy, because philosophy tries to devolve itself to mere abstractions, which don't have the power to move the world.
But we take the abstractions and put them into the practice of everyday life.
And that, I think, is the big difference.
And I don't know other philosophers who have been able to do that.
It's partly the technology.
It's partly some...
Approaches that I've taken and of course it's a lot to do with the fact that we actually do have the freedom to speak about challenging issues Which you know people like Aristotle and Socrates didn't at all one didn't much yeah, was there like because I I noticed that, okay, you've done a variety of different things, but it's like you're always striving to do something great, and you're always striving to do your best.
You never settled.
You were always like...
Was there a time when you weren't like that?
Was it a shift that happened in your life, or were you always...
Objective oriented and like trying like being very Motivated and striving to achieve what you what you your larger vision of oh, I I have for I have for many years Victor believed that But for decades I believe that I have something of great value to offer the world that that I did not Doubt I mean,
I I remember when I was Dating a woman and she said, what do you want to do with your life?
I said, well, I want there to be three great communicators or three great writers or three great wordsmiths.
Shakespeare, Dickens, Molyneux.
That's what I... And she said, well, that's a crazy ambition.
It's like, it certainly is.
Absolutely.
It's a completely crazy ambition.
And that is the kind of ambition I'm happy to fail at.
You know, I don't want to be, hey, I came in...
Twelve thousandths in terms of human communication.
If you aim low, I mean, if you fail aiming low, that's terrible.
You know, that's terrible.
If you fail at aiming low, that's terrible.
If you succeed at aiming low, it's all right.
But, you know, you kind of know you're aimed low.
Yeah, I agree.
If you aim ridiculously high, if you fail at that, great!
You know, I mean, at least you didn't fail because you aimed low.
And if you actually succeed at what you aim the highest at, thank God above you aimed high.
Yeah.
Because for me, it's very interesting because you've...
I've never heard you talk in depth about your family past, but as far as I've heard or listened to a few of your shows where you mentioned some things about it, it was not a very nurturing family environment, not very supportive, but you still managed to go after your larger vision of reality.
Even though there weren't many people around when you were younger that supported you.
Was this like striving presence inside you since you were very young?
Yeah.
Now, to be fair, my mother was supportive of my writing.
She would read what I wrote, and when I wrote a novel about the First World War, she supplied me the language that the German soldiers were going to be speaking in particular scenes.
My mother was supportive of my writing in that she would read it and give her thoughts.
Now, she comes from a family of writers, so she was pleased that that had continued.
My uncle won a prize for the best poem in Germany one year.
I mean, just quite important stuff.
And so my mother was supportive, but it didn't actually help me that much.
It was nice that somebody was listening, but the problem is that I didn't have respect for much of her stability overall.
So, you know, it was like the crazy person liking your art.
It's like, well, it's nice, but it's also not that nice.
But this, of course, was the great challenge of my youth.
Which was, you know, I felt like I had this giant bag of kaleidoscopic coke-addled, truth-telling ferrets bundled up in my heart all chewing their way to get out through the ventricles.
And I knew that I wanted to try and achieve great things, but I was with a community and a group.
Eye-rolling, and oh, don't you think you're so precious, and everyone's a snowflake, and like, just so cynical.
So...
Aim for nothing and you won't ever be disappointed.
And I get why some of the life circumstances of the people I grew up with would have that, but nobody had any powerful ambition.
Nobody had any significant drive.
And there was a lot of...
The tall poppy gets cut down, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
It was almost Japanese.
It's don't think big, don't aim big, don't try to be big.
And...
Breaking through that, you know, eventually it was like, if you get a nuclear submarine firing a big enough missile, I don't care how thick the ice is, it's heading into space.
And for me, the ambitions grew to the point where I had to hide them.
You know, like I had some filthy name in a filthy black book buried in someone's drawer who committed suicide.
Like I had to just hide everything about what I wanted to do and then sneak back and Have greatness in my own mind that I kept, you know, like sheltering a tiny candle in an icy hurricane.
I had to hide what I wanted from everyone around me.
And then I realized at some point, I think I literally woke up and went, like, if I'm going to achieve something great...
I can't be guilty.
I can't hide it.
I can't pretend I don't want this.
I can't roll my eyes at the audacity of people who just think they're so great.
It's like, well, no, actually, I think I'm pretty great, so I want to do great things, and I want to do amazing things, and I can't be around.
These soul-sucking Empty-futured, play small, stay small vampires of all human possibility.
Like I just, it's the choice.
I can stay small and I can live down.
There, you know, it's the good bill hunting question.
I can stay small and I can go down.
Or I can break through.
I can break through.
And I also knew that breaking through and to achieve what I wanted to achieve in this world...
That I was doing them a kindness by leaving them behind.
Because it would have been very, very painful for them.
And I also, you know, I like to keep good memories of people as best I can.
And I also knew that if I stayed around these people and really full flourished and was honest about my ambitions and my successes and what I wanted to achieve, that things would get ugly.
And I wanted to keep the good memories.
And knowing that if I was going to stick around, I was going to do stuff that things were going to get ugly.
And they were going to try and tear me down.
And they were going to try and ignore me.
And they were going to just pretend that nothing was happening.
And like, well, I guess if you want to try.
But, I mean, who were you to...
Right, you know, this kind of stuff, right?
And if I pushed it and continued, and if God helped me, I was successful at it, they would unconsciously, or consciously even that, they would try and pull me down.
No doubt.
I've never been more like no doubt of that at all.
And I didn't want that for them or for me.
If you can take yourself out of a situation where your continued presence will cause people to do irrevocably bad things, it's kind of cruel to stick around and burden them with that bad behavior.
And so it was a kindness to us both for me to break out of that particular orbit because my responsibility is not to the pettiness of my former friends.
My responsibility is to what I love, my family, the world, the future, the freedom and power and grace that we're all capable of if we will it and surrender our prejudices to reason and evidence enough.
That's good, Stefan.
Yeah, it's very inspiring.
Your story is very inspiring to me.
I think it's...
I don't know.
I think it's very admirable, the path that you took, how much you strive for that, and I hope I can...
Use that inspiration to try to achieve the most that I have to achieve during my life as well.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And it's important to remember that all who are friends with the future are lonely in the present.
I don't mean individually, but just in terms of the wider sphere of society.
That all who are friends of the future Make enemies in the present.
Because a happier future can only be achieved at the expense of wrong-thinking people in the here and now.
What is it that philosophers always get accused of?
What are the two things philosophers always get accused of when they run awry in society?
Number one, they are accused of not believing in the gods of the city.
Not surrendering their judgment to the irrational faith and prejudice and whim worship of the masses.
Now, the gods of the city may not be divinities.
They may just be the irrationalities of the city.
It may be the belief in statism.
It may be belief in feminism.
It may be the belief that hitting your children is whatever it's going to be.
Not Believing in the gods of the city is number one and number two the second thing that philosophers are always accused of is corrupting the young and what that means is because society is corrupt philosophers are accused of corrupting the young because they give the young the tools to resist the corruption of their elders which the elders project as corruption onto the children and onto the philosopher so those two things you know if you're not being accused of disbelieving in the gods of the city You're
a misogynist.
You're a racist.
Whatever the gods of the city are, whatever irrational, hypersensitive, social justice warrior nonsense is currently floating around the ether, if you're not accused of disbelieving in the gods of the city and you're not accused of corrupting the young, go back and start again because you're on the wrong path.
All right?
All right.
Well, thanks, Victor.
I wasn't sure whether people are interested in lifting the lid behind what goes on here, but I don't mind talking about it.
And I certainly ask enough people about their thoughts and motivations that I can't exactly consider it wrong to be asked about them myself.
Yeah, I always thought about this, and I always thought it was funny that nobody actually showed up and started asking more about The whole process that you went through and how, yeah, opening the lid of Stefan Molyneux.
And I thought I'd have to do it myself then.
Well, look, I mean, again, I'm not a closed book, you know.
I mean, if I rely on people's donations, I'm not going to hide, you know, my thoughts and feelings about everything that's going on.
So, you know, if people are interested in this, you know, please, you know, we'll put this on YouTube.
Leave it in the comments below.
We'll check them out.
And if you are interested in this kind of stuff, I am, you know, happy to share.
You know, you own me, people.
I am your render philosopher.
And, you know, put the coin slot in my ear and I will cough up a few hairballs of truth, as many as I can.
So, yeah, if people are interested, I'm certainly happy to talk more about it.
It doesn't have to be, you know, in a call-in show.
I can just do solo casts about it.
But if people do want to know what's going on behind the scenes, you know, the making of, so to speak, I am, can't get that mechanical shark to work.
But I'm certainly happy to share it.
And thanks a lot for your question.
I hope that people find it interesting and helpful.
Hopefully motivate.
I'm sure they will.
And I just want to apologize for my English.
Don't even think about it.
Yeah, it's kind of ironic that I'm talking about communicating.
Nobody has to apologize.
Listen, until I get fluent in another language, nobody has to apologize on this show for their English because your English is way better than me In anything other than COBOL84. So, thanks everyone so much for calling in.
Thanks so much for listening.
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