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April 20, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:30:19

3264 The Danger of Being a Single Mom - Call In Show - April 15th, 2016

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	I hope you're doing well.
	Really, really good set of callers tonight.
	A great show.
	We started off with a single mom who wanted to...
	Oh wait, hang on, sorry.
	Baby's crying.
	We then went into tipping, the philosophy and economics behind tipping.
	And for those interested, some of my stories from my days as a waiter, we returned to a single mom call and had a great chat with a single mom about everything that led to what...
	is occurring for her in her life and what she can do to help her son grow up healthy and strong.
	And then we talked about atheism and then We had a call about how honest should you be in business with customers, with managers, and maybe even with co-workers.
	It's a bit of a fine line.
	And last but not least, we talked about what can we do to save Lebanon and Lebanese people from a very active thinker in Lebanon.
	And we talked a little bit about the history and the culture and what, if anything, could be done.
	Freedominradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	FDRurl.com slash Amazon.
	Just make it one of your starting homepages.
	You know you shop.
	You know it'll help us.
	FDRpodcast.com and like, subscribe, and share everything you can get your hands on.
	Erica wrote and said, I am a single mother of a two year old.
	The statistics show that children raised in houses with single moms do less well than those raised to a happily married couple.
	Is there anything I can do or focus my parenting on to ensure my son grows into an adult with the least problems possible?
	That's from Erica.
	Erica, do you have access to a time machine?
	That's the first question I need to get.
	Unfortunately, I don't.
	The creationist we had on recently wanted to...
	I can't remember.
	What did he refer it to?
	Is it Mike?
	Do you remember?
	Oh, I don't know, but it was brilliant.
	I loved it.
	It was something because it was like, I'll accept evolution if I had a time dilation Panty or something like that anyway.
	So sorry, Erica, for tangenting off right at the beginning.
	I normally wait at least 30 seconds, but welcome to the show.
	Thanks for calling in.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for having me.
	So for the background, I'm not going to, you know, the truth about single moms is a presentation and I've got a bunch of presentation on single moms.
	So, you know, except that for those who are new to this conversation, except that the outcomes are bad in general, not for everyone.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I'm the child of a single mom, right?
	So the outcomes are bad, but your question is, what can I do?
	But I have a question, and I'm sure you know what it is, right?
	No, I don't.
	Well, as the talking head song goes, how did I get here?
	How did you become a single mom, Erica?
	Well, I was...
	I was with a guy, and we...
	Okay.
	I'm with you so far, I believe, with one exception, Mary, that you were with a guy.
	Yes.
	And, I mean, looking in the relationship, looking back, there were a lot of red flags right off the start, but we ended up in somewhat of a long-term relationship.
	What does that mean?
	Because you're young, so I don't know what long-term means anymore.
	Is that like a long weekend these days?
	I don't know what does that mean.
	Three days.
	No, somewhat long-term.
	Do you want to take time?
	Do you want to take a moment?
	If your kid's up, don't feel like you got...
	We can pause.
	We can edit.
	Don't worry about that.
	You can?
	Okay.
	Yeah, he just walked in.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Take time.
	Listen, the first thing is go deal with your kid, not this call.
	Do you want us to come back if we take another caller?
	Do you want us to wait?
	Sure, would that work?
	Okay, yeah.
	I'll remember where we are.
	I'm happy if you take time with your kid.
	We'll come back on this.
	Alright, yes.
	I'll go put him back to bed and I'll be back when I'm done.
	Okay, thank you.
	Yeah, get the duct tape and then we'll continue.
	Alright, well up next is Nick.
	Nick wrote in and said, Steph, please apply rationality to the social convention known as tipping in America.
	Waiters, valets, taxis, delivery guy.
	In my opinion, it's the least universalized standard ever.
	And I feel like I surf every time I conform to this standard.
	You feel what?
	Surf?
	Or surf?
	I feel like I surf every time.
	Sorry, I'm a surf.
	Ah, I feel like I am a surf every time I can form another standard.
	Because surfing sounds fun.
	Body surfing is fun.
	I've never actually surfed with a surfboard because I like my head still attached to my body.
	But body surfing is great, at least until you sand away your chest hair.
	But that's a topic for another time.
	The average service I tip is 20%.
	Great service is 25%.
	And crappy service is 10% to 15%.
	Should I be tipping more people who aren't covered by the standard convention, like Steve Martin and My Blue Heaven?
	That's from Nick.
	Hi, Nick.
	How are you doing?
	I'm real well.
	Good to speak with you, Steph.
	You know, it's a fun question.
	I was a waiter for a number of years as a teenager.
	And, you know, I will sometimes say this to waiters now.
	Because when I was a waiter, people didn't pay at the table, right?
	Now, like I say to waiters now, you know what they do?
	They bring the machine to you, right?
	And you got your card or whatever it is.
	And you put your card in, and they stand there while you enter the tip, right?
	Right.
	And now, I didn't have that hovering head of peroxide doom floating around me, glaring at me while I entered the tip.
	Before, you could just put your tip in and escape before anybody knew what was happening, right?
	I mean, because you'd be gone, right?
	You're out in the parking lot by the time they look and say, what?
	You stiffed me enough, right?
	Right.
	So, waiters, I just wanted to mention, waiters have got it a lot easier now.
	It's more like being a bellhop because don't you feel conscious of tipping when the waiter is standing right there with that big, beady, grabby, sore on eye staring at you as you enter your tip?
	That's a different planet than it used to be.
	Oh, yeah, and God forbid it's like a pretty girl and then you're instantly like, oh, whatever it is, I'm going to double it.
	You've got some eggs for sale.
	Yeah, no, I get it.
	Let me impress you with my tipping.
	And then maybe you'll take more than a tip.
	So, yeah, no, it's a different planet.
	I know what you mean about tipping.
	And...
	I don't know if you know the, let me bore you with the history of it.
	Do you know what TIPS actually stands for, according to what I know?
	I've obviously verified it independently.
	But TIPS stands for TIPS, to ensure prompt service.
	Now, it should be TEPs, but to ensure prompt service.
	So what would happen is before you would sit down at the restaurant table, you would give the waiter a tip, and then the waiter would pay more attention to you and bring you your food faster and refill your water and all that kind of stuff.
	So it was originally something you paid before, To get better service.
	That's my understanding of it.
	And if it's an urban myth, I'm sure 8 million people will tell me in the comments.
	But that's my understanding of it.
	And then it changed.
	I have no idea why.
	And then it became something you did after the fact.
	Now, it's different if you are in...
	In a sort of repetitive sort of situation, like you go to that restaurant every week.
	But if you're just passing through and so on, obviously there are no negative consequences to it.
	But I do love the idea of tipping because when people say, well, who would pay for something if you didn't have to?
	You know, like national defense or roads or whatever it is, right?
	Again, a free society without a government, a stateless society.
	Who would pay if you didn't have to?
	And I'm like, I think like it's everything in my life prepared me for this conversation, not just you, but this whole deal, free domain radio philosophy, this show, voluntarism, the whole deal.
	Because I lived on tips.
	You know, this is back in the day when a coin meant something.
	So, like, by the...
	I remember at one restaurant, we had to wear these aprons, and you'd sort of shuffle your tips into your apron.
	And, like, by the end of the night, you sound like an army of chainmail-clad knights, because you've got this giant bag of...
	It's like you've got these udders of coins floating around, which you then cash in.
	And, yeah, so back in the day...
	I had to live on tips.
	Now, full circle, I live on tips.
	To ensure prompt StephBot, please go to freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	I could trust that I could live on tips as a philosopher because I lived on tips as a waiter.
	In Canada, I can't remember.
	It was like $1.50 an hour.
	It was nothing.
	You had to be pleasant.
	You had to be positive.
	I started at a pizza place and I ended up at a really high-end seafood restaurant.
	I could describe a profiterole enough to make a statue's mouth water.
	I mean, I could really do that well.
	And, you know, at the high-end restaurant, it was really nice because I got to see people who'd really made some coins.
	Like, I remember one guy came in, I guess, with his girlfriend, and he just hit it big in the stock market or something, and he's like, just get me your most expensive bottle of champagne.
	I'm like, dude, it's $750.
	He's like, I don't care.
	Just get me your most expensive bottle of champagne.
	And, uh...
	Can I tell you?
	No, it's too embarrassing.
	He never finished it.
	Are you kidding me?
	He finished most of it.
	I'm not saying I went in there like with a Hoover and a straw, but yeah, he didn't finish it.
	And I was like, I wonder what that tastes like.
	And it's like, actually, that's pretty good.
	I'm not 750 bucks back in the day.
	That's like a lot more now.
	But it was pretty good.
	Anyway, I won't bore you with all my waitering stories.
	But it is one of these things where it's a convention and people do it.
	They don't have to.
	Particularly if they're passing through.
	They're never going to see these people again.
	Particularly if there is...
	So if they're passing through...
	And in the back of the day when you'd be long gone before the waiter even saw it.
	And...
	You know...
	I remember at the pizza place there was a kids party and it was like an insane kids party.
	I mean they basically just cherry bombed all the pies and there was like pizza on the wall and stuff and that's a drag because when you're cleaning that up you're not serving and getting more tips.
	And I remember it was like $85 and it was a $1.70 tip because I guess they just didn't bring enough money or something like that.
	And those people were like, I was coming over and I was like Moses with the Red Sea because I was coming over as they were leaving and they were all, I guess they were embarrassed or whatever.
	And they just fled.
	And actually people were just laughing like, oh my God, you got $1.70 and you got to clean that up?
	You know, because waiters are all about the solidarity.
	Solidarity for other waiters.
	But it's a cool thing because people will pay for something they actually don't have to.
	And if they don't pay, they get cheaper meals, right?
	Because meals are cheaper because customers pay part of the salary.
	The majority of the salary of the waiter comes from the customer.
	So if nobody tipped, then the restaurants would have to increase the The price of the meals to cover the fact that the waiters would now need to earn like $15 an hour rather than a couple of bucks an hour plus tips.
	So the fact that people tip, people say, well, it's adding to the cost of my meal.
	It's like, no, it's not.
	Because if you didn't tip, if nobody tipped, the cost of the meal would just be higher.
	So it kind of all comes out in the wash.
	And what's also interesting is that as far as the free rider problem goes, every individual has an incentive to not tip, right?
	Because they're getting cheaper service You get a cheaper meal in a restaurant.
	Your meal is 10 or 20% cheaper because people tip, right?
	Right.
	And so everyone has an incentive to not tip because they then get subsidized meals from everyone else who does tip.
	But virtually everyone tips, even if they never come back, even if they can be well out in the parking lot before anyone finds a tip.
	Just about everyone.
	Now, I was a very good waiter, so I mean, I got lots of tips.
	But just about everyone Tipped.
	And tips.
	And so this idea, well, who would pay for national defense on the roads?
	And it's like, I've been there.
	What's funny is that 98% of my customers tipped when I was a waiter, merely bringing them food and telling them a few engaging stories.
	98% of my customers tipped when all I did was bring them food.
	I bring rationality, philosophy, and enlightenment to the planet.
	And 2% of people tip, right?
	Just people who actually pay, who watch the show.
	So it's just kind of like, wow, you know, I shouldn't be serving up philosophy.
	I should be giving you a pizza and then you'd tip me for sure.
	But just because I'm only giving you philosophy that saves civilization and possibly even your future happiness and your wealth and your security and, you know, all I'm doing is saving civilization.
	So, you know, maybe if I was bringing you a profiterol, I would get a tip and maybe some leftover $750 bottle of champagne.
	Oh my gosh.
	Right.
	So should you tip?
	Yeah, you should tip because otherwise you're a free rider in the same way that people, yeah, if you're listening to these shows and enjoying these shows, you should damn well donate to the show because otherwise you're relying on everyone else.
	Well, I shouldn't say you're relying on the eight other people on the planet who have a conscience.
	So, yeah, I think it's interesting and it's a fascinating example of something that seriously shouldn't work but does.
	Really interesting perspective, you know?
	I didn't anticipate that would be your response.
	I mean, the fact that if you didn't tip, the cost of the meal would be increased and so it would be passed along.
	Someone's got to pay the waiters.
	And if it's not you, it's going to be the restaurant owner and he's not going to take it out of his profits because restaurants made like $4 for every million.
	Restaurants is like very thin margins for a lot of restaurants, right?
	And, yeah, someone's got to pay for the waiter.
	And, you know, until those Japanese robot sex waiters come over with a profiterole at the hand job, I mean, you've got to pay for the waiters.
	Can't wait.
	Maybe you could combine the two.
	No.
	It's right.
	Maybe, you know.
	Anyway.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, I think it's one of these things that's kind of – it's fair.
	And it totally indicates – I mean, if – If something as unimportant as being a waiter can rely on convention and tipping, I think something as important as national defense, though of course maybe not.
	Philosophy can rely on that too.
	Oh, completely.
	And really, I mean, the ostracism more comes from your date.
	You know, like if you don't tip, like your girl, it doesn't matter how engaged you are over the conversation, you're not going home with her.
	I knew for sure that I had to give a great date experience to the guy, otherwise my tip would be lower.
	I couldn't be too charming, because I couldn't crank up the accent, I couldn't do my witticisms or whatever.
	I couldn't outshine the guy.
	I had to defer to him and raise his sexual market value with regards to his date, because if If I did raise his sexual market value, then he would tip more because he wants to show off and, you know, maybe there's a bit of gratitude that I'm actually not backstabbing him for a woman as most men tend to do.
	Ah, an attractive lady is setting me against another man.
	On which of his testicles should I hack first?
	So, yeah.
	Although, you know, you also know the guys who, if they're covering up what they're writing, You know it's not going to be a good tip.
	You know, if the girl can't see what he's writing, if he's not like, hey, look at this, I'm giving this guy a whole wheel of my cheddar cash.
	If he's covering it up like he's kind of hunched over, you just know it's really, really bad.
	Oh, totally.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, I mean, I don't want to, again, go on with all these waiters.
	I did it for years and it was a lot of fun in a lot of ways.
	And, you know, great exercise and, you know, you get to think on your feet and you get to handle stress.
	You know, it's like one place I worked, they had a timer on the table and you had to get the drinks and the food out within five minutes.
	And it was basically like...
	Have you seen those pitching machines like in baseball?
	They'll just hurl balls at you?
	Right.
	And you just gotta hit them, right?
	Totally.
	This is basically what the kitchen was.
	It was like a pizza cannon.
	You know, like...
	You gotta catch a spit and you just...
	You go and you frisbee it out to the guy and you had to take the order, ring the order in, get the drinks, get the food within five minutes or it was free.
	And if it's free, not only does the restaurant lose out, But you don't get a tip.
	Nobody tips on free, right?
	I'll give you 15% of nothing.
	Yeah, I never heard that joke before.
	Thanks.
	I really enjoyed rubbing my face and the fact that it was five minutes.
	And you know, you get these people, they're completely insane for free, you know, and I'm not going to talk about the gender female, but they're just, you know, so it would be like, 10, 9, 8, 7.
	Because they had the counter right there and they were counting down to you and the restaurant getting screwed so that they could get a little bit of money.
	Stressful.
	Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
	It also taught me something, waitering taught me something about being unionized as well, because I was only unionized at one place.
	Where I wasn't unionized, I got free meals, I got a free uniform, and a bunch of other goodies, right?
	Where it was unionized, I had to pay for my uniform, and I had to pay for my meal, and I got no other benefits.
	Wow, right.
	So that just taught me that I don't think that unions are getting me a better deal than the free market.
	Like, the non-unionized place was way better than the unionized place.
	And it also, you know, I mean, there are the busboys as well.
	They don't get tips directly, but everyone coughs in.
	And that was an honor system, right?
	Nobody sat there and counted your money because you would take 10% of your tips and throw it into the jar for the busboys, right?
	And the busboys are essential, but they're not essential to any—you don't get your own busboy, right?
	They're not essential to any particular waiter.
	They're just the guys who just go out and scoop up stuff and, you know, bring it all back to the kitchen and all that so that it's a faster turnaround.
	And that was a complete honor system, and it worked perfectly.
	I think the entire time that I was a waiter, there was only one person who was ever accused of not putting the full amount in.
	And that's, you know, hundreds.
	Anyway, so I guess, yeah, me and Karen Strom with our restaurant stories or whatever.
	But it is another example where the tipping is the honor system and the busboys is the honor system and they all worked just fine.
	And so the idea we can't run a society without governments pointing guns and nobody's going to get paid and everyone's going to be a free rider, it's like, have you eaten at a damn restaurant?
	Like, do you live in any empirical reality whatsoever?
	Yeah, fantastic case study.
	I mean, in the context of UPB, I mean, it's still aesthetically preferable, I presume.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, because it's not the initiation of force to not do it, right?
	Yeah, and you can still legitimately ostracize people for not doing it, though, right?
	I, yeah, that's a, I've never heard of a restaurant banning a bad tipper or a non-tipper.
	But like, I've heard of my, you know, girl dates banning me from, I don't know if that falls within the context of being ostracized.
	Oh wait, you mean like if you don't tip the waiter, they won't go to bed with you?
	Is that what you mean?
	Sorry, well no, it's more like the community at large, like, Which community?
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I mean like...
	Yeah, the...
	Girls won't...
	Like women, you know, you think about like what women promote is maintained and what they reject, you know, doesn't occur.
	And women universally kind of don't go for guys that don't tip.
	They ostracize men that don't tip.
	Right.
	Right.
	And that's interesting.
	Why do you think that is?
	Because theoretically...
	Theoretically, if the man doesn't tip, he has more money to spend on the woman.
	So why would she ostracize him for not tipping?
	Are you thinking?
	Or did we lose our connection?
	Oh, sorry.
	Yeah, I was...
	Sorry.
	No, a less expendable...
	Well, so he would have more expendable income, but I mean, in the way they use, you know, expensive cars to show that they've got money to burn...
	It could be like, you know, you have less extra resources, would be my first thought.
	What do you think about that?
	I think that's, yeah, I think that's good.
	Now the difference is though that if the woman is in the sports car, then she's basically, she's publicly displaying the value of the golden vagina, right?
	Right.
	My sports car is Maserati-worthy.
	Sorry, my eggs are Maserati-worthy.
	But this is not a public display.
	I mean, it's relatively private, at least when I was, you know, the guy wasn't standing over.
	So it's interesting, why would a woman want a man to tip?
	Because that's one less dessert or drink than that he could buy her.
	Some...
	Some social concern?
	Some altruistic?
	It's almost like pathological altruism almost.
	No, no, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I can't go with...
	I don't think it's ever that nice.
	Okay.
	Well, what's your theory?
	I don't know.
	I'm just thinking here.
	I think...
	I think it's an investment that she expects to pay off, or to pay out over time.
	So if the man tips, she knows that partly he's tipping because of her high sexual market value.
	So it's an indication that he's manipulable for money.
	Okay, that resonates.
	Yeah.
	Because, I mean, why else?
	It's not a public display like a Maserati, right?
	The hot chicken, the Maserati.
	She's like, yeah, I'm all that, right?
	And I'm going to end up in a Taylor Swift commercial or a video commercial.
	Yeah.
	No, it's like you say when they start swooning and buying all these ridiculous stuff and the teddy bears and being all soft.
	It shows that they've really got their hooks into them.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Of course, I mean, the male sex drive is by some estimates three times that of the female sex drive.
	And so, of course, that gives women incredible negotiating strength in a relationship.
	And because they can hold off and Not feel uncomfortable.
	There's no blue ovaries, right?
	Blue balls, but no blue ovaries.
	Right.
	And so, yeah, so I think that the woman wants to see how much does he want to impress me?
	Which means how much do I have my ovaries in his wallet rooting around and, you know, hosing things up, right?
	Right.
	That's interesting.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, I'm surprised I didn't think about it.
	Yeah, it's totally intuitive that you say it.
	Of course.
	Because knowing the degree to which the man has gone, has been dicknapped, is really, really important.
	Dicknapped, that's it.
	I'm going to keep using that word until it catches on because it's really just so helpful.
	So, yeah, I would say that probably has something to do with it.
	It also tends to be a pretty white phenomenon.
	You know, now that we've insulted women, let's continue these years.
	It's a pretty white phenomenon.
	So, there's a survey at 100 restaurant servers across America.
	He said the 34% thought that blacks were very bad tippers.
	An additional 36% thought that black patrons were below average tippers, right?
	And what percentage thought that white customers were average or above average tippers, do you think?
	80?
	Or 75?
	Higher!
	It's 98% of waiters surveyed believe that white customers were average or above average tippers.
	I mean, that's me.
	I mean, I pay the most taxes and probably tip more than anybody.
	Yeah, listen, I mean, for you, for me, bad service is a zero tip.
	I mean, I'm not, right?
	So you're nice at 10%, but I'll go above and beyond for great service.
	Like, I'm a kind of guy, I'll go fill out a customer card saying, this guy was fantastic.
	I'll go talk to people who are in charge saying, I really had a great experience with this person.
	They really, you know, keep on to them, hang on to them.
	They're great.
	So I will...
	Oh, sorry, 1,000 servers.
	Not, yeah, 1,000 restaurant servers from across the nation, so it's pretty wide.
	So, you know, if it's above and beyond service for me, I will really try and make not just the person but the manager aware of how great this person was.
	I'll go online and fill out surveys for great, like, and mention the person by name and all that because I really, really wonder.
	But if it's bad service, I mean, you'll get nothing.
	Not a thin dime out of me.
	And by bad service, I don't mean slow food, because I know that's not the waiter's fault.
	Right.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	But you'll do a zero tip?
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	You know, I just don't have the strength, yeah, for that.
	No, no, no.
	You know what it is?
	is, it's important information for the restaurant to have.
	It is important information for the restaurant to have.
	Because if it's a bad waiter, the restaurant should know.
	And if the waiter is complaining about low tips, that's important information.
	I'm not going to go and say, I think you should fire that waiter, but I'm going to do zero tip, right?
	Maybe the waiter's in the wrong profession.
	Maybe they should be in some other profession where they, you know, don't, maybe are not quite as customer focused or whatever.
	Right.
	But if the waiter, and by that, I mean, it's not that busy.
	And my food comes cold.
	See, if your food comes late and hot, that's the kitchen's fault.
	But if the food comes late and cold, that's the waiter's fault.
	If it's not that busy, right?
	Right.
	So if the food comes late and cold, I mean, I'll send it back because I'm not paying for bad food.
	I hate wasting food.
	Don't get me wrong.
	Wasting food for me is like pulling out my own toenails with a cat's ass.
	Like, it's just really, really unpleasant.
	And so, but I'll do it just because I'm not paying for something that's clammy and especially if it's pasta with a sauce.
	Like, warm, like...
	Like, cold Alfredo sauce, I mean, man, life, that's just horrible.
	So, and I'm, yeah, I'm not going to leave a penny.
	Like, to me, that's really passive-aggressive.
	But I'll do a zero, and I'm not going to say why, because if they don't know why, then they shouldn't be awake, right?
	I mean, your food would...
	And also, like, if it's not that busy, and they don't come by and ask you how your food is, they don't come and refill your water, because, you know, I'm...
	I generally will try not to buy anything...
	Try not to buy drinks at a restaurant.
	Water's fine.
	And if they don't ask you if you want dessert and if there's anything...
	If they're not just part of your general...
	If they're just resentfully bringing you your cold food, then no, I'm not going to pay a penny.
	Because that's bad.
	And people need that feedback.
	Imagine if there was some guy at karaoke who wasn't that great and everyone encouraged him to be a singer.
	That's not very helpful.
	I mean, that's going to have him waste a lot of time, energy, and money, and all that.
	Or imagine if Michelle Fields had a pretty innocuous interaction with one of Trump's people, and then a whole bunch of really annoying people convinced her to file charges and wasted a huge amount of police time.
	And then imagine that she didn't even tell the police or told the police she hadn't touched Donald Trump, when according to the prosecutor, there's clear video evidence that she did.
	Like, let's say all that happened.
	What a huge waste of time, energy, and resources, or whatever.
	Yeah, you know, give people the facts.
	You know, if they're great, yeah, give them 25%.
	And if they're not great, if they're average, yeah, give them 15%.
	But if they're really bad, and that's rare, I mean, it's rare, but if they're really bad, you've got to give them the facts.
	You've got to give them the facts.
	There's the consistent principle.
	I feel you.
	Yeah.
	All right, man.
	I got to move on to the next caller.
	Was this helpful?
	Oh, really helpful.
	Thanks so much.
	All right.
	Absolutely.
	So if you're a waiter out there and I'm getting you some more tips, freedomaderadio.com slash donate.
	And thanks.
	It's a great call.
	Oh, thank you.
	Bye.
	All right.
	Welcome back to the show, Erica.
	Hi.
	Thank you.
	Now, so you just put your son down.
	Now I'm tired.
	No, I'm kidding.
	All right.
	So you were talking about Being a single mom because you had been with a man, dot, dot, dot.
	And then you were talking about red flags.
	So what were some of the red flags about the guy?
	Some of the red flags.
	So I guess the first one would have been that he mostly talked about himself and didn't really start to get to know me until much later into the relationship.
	Also a lot of other things.
	So the whole...
	No, no.
	Don't be shy.
	You know what?
	Sometimes you've got to show people your scars so they don't jump into the rocks, right?
	Right, right.
	So, what are the other things?
	So, we...
	Yeah, like the whole...
	The reason why it fell apart was that he was also dating somebody else at the same time.
	So, there was a lot of, you know, red flags of it.
	The lies.
	But it was like, oh, I have to work overtime.
	Or, oh, I can't go here because I don't want to do that.
	Or...
	So we didn't really do much outside of the house for obvious reasons now.
	Because he was afraid you might run into one of his other girlfriends?
	Exactly, right.
	And how many other girlfriends did he have, Erica?
	Just one.
	Oh, just one.
	Just one, yeah.
	So me and another girlfriend at the same time.
	Anything else?
	What was his employment status?
	He was employed.
	He had a good job.
	No, no, no, no, no, no details.
	I'm sorry, we just try and keep personal details out of it.
	Okay.
	So he had a, let's just say he had a good government job, a secure government job.
	Exactly, yes.
	But let's just say, because we'll cut out the actual job problem, but let's just say that it's a job that you could not succeed at if you had an excess of empathy and compassion, right?
	Correct, yep.
	He was part of a state machinery of punishment that, you know, doesn't always make the best and most loving fathers.
	Right.
	Yes, you're right.
	Okay.
	Did he have any substance abuse problems?
	No.
	Well, I mean, he was a gym rat, so he had used previously steroids, but nothing.
	Was he pretty?
	He was, yes.
	Okay.
	So you got the love and feeling when he was around?
	I did, yes.
	Okay, okay.
	And how old were you when you met him?
	I was 28.
	All right.
	And a similar age?
	Well, he told me he was 38, but he was in fact a little older.
	How much older?
	So he's...
	He was 16 years older than me, instead of 10.
	Oh, wow.
	Yeah.
	So, your madam said he was 38, but he was in fact 44.
	Right.
	And when did you find out his actual age?
	I found out after my son was born, when we were going through the courts to work out custody and And all that stuff.
	He had put his actual date of birth on those documents, so that's how I found out.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	And how long were you together before you got pregnant?
	We were together about a year and a half.
	And were you married when you got pregnant?
	No, I was not married.
	So why did you get pregnant?
	We were not careful.
	No, no, come on.
	Oh, please, let's not have the same conversation every time.
	I know, I know.
	This is not lightning from the clear blue sky.
	There's very specific stuff you have to do to get pregnant, and it's pretty easy to not get pregnant.
	Correct.
	So, why did you get pregnant?
	Well, yeah, so he...
	I was not on birth control.
	He actually was the one who...
	He really wanted children, and that was kind of attractive to me, so I... I mean, I didn't want them then with him, but we were not as careful as we should have been.
	Okay.
	You're just going to make me ask the question again, and I'm going to keep asking it until you give me the answer.
	Why did you have a child?
	Why did you get pregnant?
	Why did I get pregnant?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I... You know, it's a big choice, right?
	It is.
	It's a huge choice.
	If you don't even know why you have a baby, I don't know if you're competent to raise one.
	I mean, you've got to have some idea why you decided to get pregnant.
	Okay.
	Or do the steps where it can happen, right?
	Where it can happen.
	Yeah, I mean, I... At the point where I was in my life, I mean, it was in my late 20s, I hadn't met anybody, and my relationships were not...
	Like, I just kept having failed relationship after failed relationship, and...
	I didn't have the best loving family growing up so I feel like I was always just, I just was craving love and to love something and that's, I think that played a big role in my choice to have the baby was that I saw it as like I can love and be loved and, you know, do the best that I can in raising this child.
	So for you.
	Right.
	Well, for me and to give myself to.
	To fulfill your needs, to fill the hole in your heart from your family and your relationships that weren't great, right?
	Right.
	So it didn't just happen.
	You wanted to fulfill yourself emotionally by having a child who would love you, right?
	Right.
	And a child can't leave you, right?
	Correct.
	Right.
	You had all these failed relationships, and then you had a failed relationship with your baby daddy, and they've left, but the child can't leave, right?
	Right, yeah.
	The child's trapped with you, just as my daughter is trapped with me.
	It's not a negative towards you.
	It's the ABC. It's the accidental biological cage that children are born into.
	Right, yeah.
	So why did your relationships fail before, Erica?
	I think it was...
	I mean, ever since I had my son, I've gone through, you know, a whole self-knowledge journey, so I'm still learning, but I was raised by a very, I guess, narcissistic mother who...
	And there was a lot of residual issues from being raised by her that kind of carried into my relationships, and I just...
	I didn't know it at the time to really see it while I was in the relationship.
	Because, you know, people who have that tendency, they use other people for their own emotional needs, right?
	Right, exactly.
	You know, like having a baby to feel loved, right?
	Right, yep, you're right.
	Alright.
	Not calling you a narcissist, just so you know.
	I'm just saying that that tendency which you inherited, to some degree, we all do, right, from our parents.
	Personalities are contagious and pretty much parental personalities are invasive, invasively contagious.
	But that would be a template that you had.
	And what was it about your mom that you viewed as narcissistic?
	Everything was about herself and it was all about how, not about us, it was how other people viewed her.
	Right?
	So, just never really caring about our needs, just caring about how it made her feel, or how it made her look to the public.
	So she always has...
	Right.
	Right, yeah.
	So you were trophy kids, right?
	You had to make mommy look good.
	Exactly.
	Right.
	Clean up, people are coming.
	Right, I know.
	Yes.
	And your dad?
	My dad, so my mom and dad separated when I was...
	I was only about four or so and he was Air Force so he never really lived in the same city as we did and he lived quite far away so we only saw him basically we flew down for summer and Christmas time and that's pretty much it.
	So twice a year since I was about six years old that I saw him.
	Why did your mom not live with your dad?
	I'm not sure I understand that.
	So they divorced.
	Oh!
	Yeah, sorry.
	How old were you when they divorced?
	About four.
	You were four?
	Mm-hmm.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	And why did they divorce?
	My father was not happy.
	And he started to see the narcissistic side of her.
	And he, I mean, he cheated on her.
	I was waiting to get to the cheating because you put up with the guy who cheated on you, right?
	Which means that this is the template you come from, right?
	Correct, yeah.
	So he was cheating and that was the final.
	The end.
	So he was cheating on your mom with you a couple of years old, right?
	Correct, yeah.
	Okay.
	And were they living together at the time?
	They were, yes.
	Do you know how long he was cheating for?
	No, I don't know.
	Do you know if he cheated with multiple partners?
	Yes, he did.
	Right.
	And was he good-looking?
	Yes.
	And he was fit too, right?
	Because he's in the Air Force.
	He was, yes.
	He was fit.
	Yeah.
	So he's an exercising, good-looking guy who cheats.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	I never put that together, but yes.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	No, I didn't.
	All right.
	All right.
	Alcoholic or drug user?
	Tell me about that.
	My father?
	Well, you said you lived with an alcoholic.
	I'm just looking at your adverse childhood experience score.
	You lived with an alcoholic or drug user?
	Yeah, so my brother.
	He fell into drugs and alcohol when he was a teenager.
	Fell into?
	Well...
	This is like you just getting pregnant.
	Right.
	Self-ownership is not just a concept that justifies property rights.
	It's a sort of foundational principle.
	Right.
	Right.
	So what did he choose to do?
	What did he do?
	It doesn't mean I don't have sympathy, but you know.
	Right.
	No, he was a heavy, heavy drinker.
	He ended up going to AA to get clean.
	He also did, I mean, I don't know exactly what his drug of choice was, but he was on drugs as well.
	And I think it was the result of our mother and the role model that we had.
	Growing up.
	Again, that's dominoes, right?
	Right.
	I don't mean to nag you on this, right?
	I know I am and I'm going to continue to do so.
	It was the same with the last single mom who called in, not that it's a blend, right?
	But the reason being that, Erica, what I admire most about you calling in is that you're trying to break the cycle.
	Right.
	Right?
	I mean, even if we say that there probably were some pretty selfish reasons to have your son, you're saying, how can it be different?
	Right?
	So let's say he's there because of a pattern of history that you inherited from your mom.
	At least you're saying, how can I change course?
	Exactly.
	Right?
	Which means that you're not letting things happen to you.
	You're trying to have yourself make something happen.
	Right.
	But that means, sorry, but that means that you have to change your language, Erica, about everything.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Your past, your brother, your mother, your father, your boyfriend, your everything.
	If you're taking choice, which I incredibly admire, if you're taking choice, self-ownership and responsibility deep into your heart and using it to guide yourself to better choices, And you're doing it, like not just talking about it, you know, next week I'm going to exercise myself.
	Until then I'm just an echo of history.
	But next week, trust me, I'm going to get on those stilts of self-knowledge.
	You're actually doing it.
	That means it can be done.
	You're choosing to do it.
	That means it can be done.
	That means everyone else could have done it.
	Right.
	You have to change your language about everything.
	Everything and everyone.
	Otherwise, you're going to be like a candle in a hurricane.
	Whoosh, gone.
	You have to reorient yourself.
	It's not just, oh, I'm going to start taking ownership for myself.
	Great.
	Fantastic.
	I hugely applaud that.
	That's a break in the chain.
	That's a break in the cycle.
	You are fixing a cycle of dysfunction that's gone back about 4 billion years.
	You know, your ancestors were probably irresponsible protozoa, right?
	And mine too.
	So, you know, you could take the self-ownership.
	But that means you have to change yourself.
	The way you think about people and their choices.
	Nothing happens to anyone.
	That's where you start.
	Are there exceptions that you can imagine?
	Absolutely.
	Have I heard of one in this conversation?
	No.
	You start with nothing happens to anyone.
	Everyone is responsible for everything.
	Start there.
	Because that's the opposite.
	Obviously, it's somewhere in the middle, right, over time, but you have to start with the opposite.
	You don't start with the middle if you want to end up in the middle, if that makes sense, right?
	Right.
	So, you have to give the self-ownership that you're taking on in your mind, you have to apply to yourself in the past, to your boyfriend, to your mom, your dad, your brother, your ex-boyfriends, you in the past, everything.
	Does that make sense?
	It does, it does, yes.
	Okay, that's why I'm going to keep nagging.
	Because it's the only way to hang on to it.
	Because, look, you're young enough to have women like it before you say enough, right?
	Yeah, thank you for adding that.
	You're young enough that you can fix things to a large degree, right?
	There are people in your life, and you don't have to tell me who they are, I just know because you're a human being, but there are people in your life, Erica, for whom it is much too late to save lives.
	To fix things, to turn things around, right?
	Right.
	And those people spent every single waking moment of every single day imagining and pretending that things just happened to them.
	You know, well, why did you divorce dad?
	Well, he cheated on me.
	Right.
	It just, his cheating happened to me and that happened to end the marriage.
	It just, it all, it just, he did it.
	Right?
	Did you have any role?
	No.
	No.
	He just, you know, I was a good wife.
	He just, you know, he bad me good.
	He bad me good.
	He bad me good.
	And then people create this religion of perfection and project all of the negatives onto others.
	That is the fundamental matrix that most people in the world live in.
	It's just this mad magic of individual perfection.
	And for them, it's too late to do what you're doing.
	Because you're doing it when your son is two.
	And, you know, obviously you started before.
	This is the beginning.
	This call, right, is the manifestation of another process, right?
	Pursuing self-knowledge and, as you say, a journey of self-knowledge, right?
	Right.
	So you're doing it at your age when your son is two.
	Fantastic.
	Good for you.
	But there are many, many people in your life for whom it is far too late.
	And they will strongly resist, though usually not overtly but covertly, they will strongly resist.
	You take the helm of your own life, when they've been dandelion fluff anyway, the wind blows, soulless robots of circumstance their whole life, they'll hate it when you grab the reins of your own life.
	Because they've just been dragged by a bunch of impulsive horses their whole lives.
	And that's why you have to go to the opposite extreme and assume everyone is responsible for everything.
	Nothing happens to anyone.
	Because you're going to get a lot of undertow, I'm imagining, from the people in your life for whom it is too late to change.
	Right.
	That's just something to be aware of.
	Maybe I'm wrong.
	I'm just...
	Keep your wits about you with regards to that.
	Okay.
	Yeah, no, I think you're right.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I think you're very right.
	All right.
	So what happened with the dad?
	How did it end or why did it end?
	So I found out that he was seeing this other woman when I was three months pregnant at the time.
	And that was the end after that.
	When you look back from three months prior, do you see signs of infidelity before?
	I do, yes.
	I do.
	I definitely do.
	Well, working a lot of overtime was one clue.
	Hiding his phone or not really leaving his phone out In the open.
	And when confronted, it was, oh, it was...
	I want my privacy.
	I like my privacy.
	So there were signs.
	Definitely signs.
	But he's a pretty good liar.
	I have to say he's...
	I don't know if it's culture as well.
	He was born in the Dominican.
	Moved here when he was 20.
	He...
	He worked at a hotel, so that was also a clue.
	So he worked at a hotel in the Dominican and married a tourist to come to Canada.
	Wait, so you met him while you were a tourist in the Dominican?
	No, no, no.
	I met him in Canada.
	But he had married somebody previously, was divorced from her, but he came to Canada that way.
	Oh, so his first wife?
	Mm-hmm.
	Correct.
	Was a tourist.
	And do you know why they split up?
	I only have his version.
	I don't know exactly why.
	But he said that they just grew apart and...
	Don't you wish you could get, like, the resume?
	I absolutely...
	Not written by him, but written...
	Like, I just...
	It would be great if there was some cosmic law that said you get 10 minutes phone call with every prior lover.
	I think, yes, I would love that because it would make things a lot easier.
	Right.
	So he's black?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And how long had he been divorced when you guys got together?
	About 10 years.
	Okay.
	And how long had he been single, assuming that he was, when you guys got together?
	He said he was single for a couple years.
	Ah.
	And do you believe him?
	No, I don't.
	No, I found out after the fact that the woman that he was also seeing alongside with me, she had been an on-and-off girlfriend for many years.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Why do you think that you would marry so far outside your culture?
	Sorry, Mary, why would you get involved and have a child with someone so far outside your own culture?
	And again, I'm not specifically talking race, but relationships are tough enough, right?
	They are, yeah.
	And if you have totally different backgrounds, totally different cultures, perhaps different religions, it's adding weight to an already precarious inverted pyramid, so to speak.
	True.
	I think what really attracted me to that culture was their value of family.
	So you're with somebody and it feels like you're part of their family, right?
	Which I never really had much of a family growing up, so it was kind of...
	That's what was really attractive to me, was the family.
	Uh...
	I'm having a little trouble understanding this and I'm just, you know, coming from it.
	We just met, right?
	So I'm happy to be corrected all over the place, right?
	Okay.
	Single motherhood in the Dominican Republic, as far as I understand it, is really, really high.
	Right.
	It is.
	Yeah, you're right.
	I mean, the culture is, it's a father-absent culture, right?
	Okay.
	Well, isn't it?
	I think so.
	I assume you know more about the Dominican culture than I do.
	As for those statistics, I'm not sure.
	These things might be worth looking in.
	If you're going to go cross-cultural, you might want to find out more about the culture you're marrying into.
	Okay.
	I mean, black people plus a welfare state does not add up to committed fathers in general.
	We know that, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And I assume there's a welfare state in the Dominican Republic and there's a black population, which means that, again, Mike, if you can check it out, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's somewhat central, somewhat single mother centric, right?
	So 1.5 million women in the Dominican Republic are.
	Are single moms.
	35% of the homes, so 90% are women.
	So it's not as bad as it is in America, which is higher.
	I think it's almost twice or about twice.
	But it's high, right?
	Certainly relative to white culture, it's high in terms of single motherhood, right?
	Right.
	And...
	So, if you're going to get married into a culture where there's a strong prevalence of single motherhood, at least relative to your own culture, I'm not sure that I get the whole family orientation thing.
	Do you mean like his in-laws?
	Because he wasn't committed to a family, right?
	I mean, he's screwing other girls.
	While you're pregnant.
	That's not...
	Like when you say, well, it's the strong family values, it's like, well, I, you know, I don't know what that means exactly, but I sure as hell know what it doesn't mean.
	And what it doesn't mean is sleeping around on your pregnant wife or girlfriend.
	It also doesn't mean knocking her up before you get her married.
	Right.
	So help me understand the family values that you're talking about.
	I guess, I mean, so he's got a lot of brothers and sisters, and I mean...
	But now that you pointed out, so yeah, he was not raised by his mother.
	His mother left.
	He was raised by his grandparents.
	And then both his mother and father had...
	Where was his father?
	Pardon?
	Where was his father?
	His father met another woman and had another family, so he kind of discarded the first family.
	What?
	Hang on.
	Oh my god.
	Please, please tell me you're not taking me in some inverse twilight zone of what family values actually are, right?
	No.
	Like, I know we're laughing about it, but this is pretty grim stuff, right?
	It is.
	No, absolutely.
	Yes.
	Okay, so his father created another family.
	Right.
	Obviously meant sleeping around on his wife, his pregnant wife.
	I don't even know if they, were they married?
	Uh, I'm not sure.
	Okay.
	Excellent.
	Um, So this is a complete pattern, right?
	So when you talk about these strong family values, I don't know what you're talking about.
	Because if his father created a separate family and then bailed, and then he's screwing around with another woman, and then the relationship ends, where the hell are these family values you're talking about?
	Well, maybe I don't mean values, but like I said, so he's got a lot of brothers and sisters as a result, and they just...
	It was nice to feel a part of the family.
	Okay, so you feel that the family cared about you?
	I did, yes.
	Okay, so if the family cared about you, do you think any of them knew that your boyfriend was stepping out?
	That I'm not sure.
	They said they did not.
	Okay, and what did they do when they found out?
	Did they disown him?
	Did they kick his ass to the curb?
	Did they say they're never going to talk to him again?
	You've hurt the mother of your child irrevocably.
	This is unbelievable, horrible, humiliating, brutal stuff.
	Did they force him to go to therapy?
	Did they force him to do the right thing?
	Did they force him to be a decent human being and an even remotely palatable partner?
	What did they do when they found out that he'd done this horrible thing?
	If they care about you so much and your son.
	Right.
	What did they do?
	I mean, I have his version of this, which I don't know how much I can trust, but there were some people who were very, very upset by what he did, and they did speak to him.
	He did and has been trying every once in a while to fix things, but it's just...
	Between me and him, but everything is so broken, so I couldn't go back there.
	But there have been a few people who have watched him.
	How pretty was he?
	Tell me, is this like Ty Diggs?
	What are we talking here?
	No, he wasn't.
	Physically, he was very fit from going to the gym, but Face-wise, if he wasn't as fit, he wouldn't be as good-looking.
	Because you're pretty.
	Thank you.
	Right?
	I mean, I've got a picture here.
	Thank you.
	A very, very nice-looking young lady.
	Thanks.
	So...
	Help me to understand.
	I mean, the culture is not family-friendly.
	You understand, looking back, that you were choosing this outcome.
	I think so, yeah.
	This was inevitable.
	You being a single mom, him being an uninvolved dad, you wanting to be part of this great family community.
	How's that working out now?
	Not so good.
	They basically abandoned you?
	Yes.
	Yep.
	They got the upgrade and off they move, right?
	Right.
	So it didn't work out.
	No.
	And in fact, it is reproduced.
	Everything that happened when you were young.
	Yep.
	You are living everything that happened when you were young again.
	Exactly.
	Unfaithful dad.
	Distant dad.
	Family fragmentation.
	Family breakup.
	End of the relationship of the couple who made the child.
	Betrayal.
	Infidelity.
	And you didn't even get the family.
	Exactly.
	Yep.
	You got love-bombed by this family.
	Mm-hmm.
	I did.
	There we go.
	Okay.
	I thought those numbers were a little low.
	Mike, would you like to fill us in?
	Because you were like, 35%.
	I'm like, no way.
	Okay, so births outside of marriage, it's 63% in the Dominican Republic.
	For perspective, Mexico is 55%, so it's worse than Mexico.
	In the US, it's 41%.
	Not so much with the family values in Dominican Republic.
	Wow.
	Let me just check here.
	I want to check something here.
	Now, keep in mind, births outside of marriage doesn't include cohabitating parents and such, which is why the other number is different.
	It was 35% of the homes are single-parent homes.
	Yeah, but marriages are more stable.
	I'm just pointing it out, because we had the previous data.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So, you could have...
	That's more than twice the rate of whites.
	Right.
	Right?
	Right.
	And so, by going to the Dominican Republic, you went to a culture that had a very high likelihood of producing the result that you're now living with, and that will get into the finances I assume a lot of other people have to pay for.
	And if you had stayed closer to your own culture, then...
	So, not only did you go to a culture that...
	Is very bad for commitment and very bad for marriage and stability.
	But you also went to a guy who's a divorced guy whose dad screwed around on his...
	It's a whole parallel...
	You couldn't have designed it in a tragic way if you'd been like a...
	If you'd literally been the architect of your own future and you'd wanted this, you couldn't have found a better way of producing it, if that makes sense.
	If that makes sense, yes.
	What did your friends and family say about you dating this guy from this not family-stable or family-friendly culture?
	Well, he met my family.
	They loved him.
	I mean, he's very charismatic so kind of captured everybody's approval.
	My friends Also, they liked him as well.
	So your friends and your family are terrible judges of character?
	Apparently, yeah.
	And so am I. Well, I mean, there was a lot of evidence here, right?
	This was not brain surgery.
	This wasn't like he literally was a brain surgeon but then turned out to have this...
	So they're really terrible, right?
	They are, yeah.
	And just so we get some perspective here, like, if you want a stable family, look at the stats of the cultures that people are coming from.
	This is not, I mean, I'm sorry because you were never told this, right?
	And to be fair, I was never told this either, right?
	And I'm sorry that, but, you know, let's just have a look.
	Just some very, very quick numbers here, right?
	Non-marital birth, births outside of wedlock.
	74% in Colombia, 70% in Paraguay.
	Hey!
	Yay!
	Catholicism!
	69% in Peru, 63% in the Dominican Republic, 58% in Argentina, 55% in Mexico.
	Wow.
	Do you know what that rate is in Japan?
	I do not.
	1.4%.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	In Israel, 3.1%.
	In China, 5.6%.
	Wow.
	74% versus 1.4% from Colombia to Japan.
	And people tell me ethnicity and culture, it's all a social construct.
	It's nothing.
	It's flu.
	No.
	If you want a stable marriage, look at the culture you're dating.
	um mike if you could do me a favor and just look it up what it was in america say in 1950s if you can check that out right prior to the welfare state decaying all of this crap right you But if...
	And this is, look, I mean, this is for you in the future, right?
	I mean...
	We're going to have another relationship, right?
	I hope so.
	I don't know.
	So this is the smart stuff that you need to start thinking about, right?
	Right.
	You need to look at the IQ of the culture.
	You need to look at the habits and practices.
	And all of this stuff is like three minutes on Google, right?
	This is not, you have to go and Battle scimitar-wielding flying monkeys in some horrible Aztec ritual.
	Couple of minutes.
	Oh, you're from the Dominican Republic.
	Let me see what kind of culture you're coming from.
	Let me see the family stability.
	Let me see the commitment.
	And again, this doesn't mean that there's no exceptions.
	These are all trends.
	Right.
	But I guess that's the thing you always hope that you're going to be...
	If you're playing with a child's life, if you're playing...
	Because your son's going to grow up and he's going to ask you these questions.
	Mm-hmm.
	He's going to say, I have to grow up without a father, and that sucks.
	It sucks in so many different ways.
	I grew up without a father, so I can speak from the heart here.
	He's going to look at you, Erica, and he's going to say, you chose that I grew up without a dad.
	And you're like, well...
	It was three minutes on Google to find out the facts of the risks I was taking, or 30 seconds of listening to this guy's history.
	But on the other hand, the guy did a lot of crunches.
	Man, he had some sexy abs.
	- Yeah. - And these are, so these are gonna be the tough questions and this is why you're calling in, right?
	Because you're going to need some answers to these tough questions, right?
	Exactly, yes.
	He's going to have some challenges as a biracial kid, right?
	He is, yes.
	I mean, this is another choice which if you're going to date and if you...
	Well, date, who cares, right?
	But if you're going to marry or if you're going to have a kid with somebody of another race, the kids...
	You're handing a burden to the kids.
	And, you know, some of the kids are going to turn out fine, obviously, statistically, but it's a challenge because they're not sure where they belong.
	Higher incidence of mental health issues and all that, right?
	So...
	That is something to be aware of, and I assume that you didn't know any of that prior.
	I mean, about the biracial, that was something I didn't think of.
	And you shouldn't have to.
	It should be just talked about.
	Like, everyone freaks out about whether there's BPA in baby bottles because, oh my goodness, it might be vaguely negative.
	And, oh my goodness, children and their posture with the tablets.
	And, oh my goodness, wearable technology has radio.
	People freak.
	And where is the concern for this?
	I mean, this is information people should have.
	Right.
	No, you're right.
	So, I mean, you know, but there's this whole, you know, anyway, we've gone through all this before.
	There's all this propaganda about all this stuff.
	You know, facts are basically gone, right?
	From this stuff.
	Prior to the welfare state, 6% among whites.
	6%, wow.
	6%.
	Wow.
	And that's tripled to 18%.
	Children living with mother only, 2010.
	So, you know, obviously if a fine young Japanese gentleman is not available, right?
	I mean, you've got to go through these numbers.
	We do this, you know, this inductive reasoning all the time.
	This is just your basic, what are the odds?
	What are the probabilities?
	Right.
	And that's going to be a challenge, right?
	So, You didn't know really at the time why you became a single mom.
	You know why you decided to become pregnant, which is that you wanted love.
	Right.
	And stability.
	And a purpose, would that be fair to say?
	And a purpose, yes.
	Absolutely.
	Because I assume that you weren't, you know, splitting the atom or, you know, neither am I, right?
	But I mean, you didn't have some job that was really fulfilling and gave you a future and all that, right?
	Right.
	No, I didn't.
	And...
	So this was going to give your life shape and purpose and content and richness and all that, right?
	Right, yes.
	And how's the plan going?
	Well, I mean, it's definitely given me purpose and...
	It does that.
	What am I doing today?
	I don't know, but it's going to be starting pretty damn early.
	Exactly, yes.
	I'm never bored anymore.
	Yeah.
	Oh no, you are.
	Of course you are.
	He's a toddler.
	I mean, it's going to be...
	You're never not busy.
	I'm never not busy.
	Exactly.
	Yeah, so you're always doing something.
	But I mean, I've been there.
	I was a stay-at-home dad with a toddler.
	Right.
	I mean, it's filled in a void for sure.
	And I mean, I love him to pieces.
	And I... I really discovered a lot about myself after he was born.
	I can't say, given a time machine, that I wouldn't do it over again.
	It's always tough, of course, because if you do it over, you wouldn't have the kid you have.
	You'd be with someone else.
	But you would like to have a husband who was there to help, right?
	Absolutely, yes.
	I would love to have a husband.
	I really would love to have A loving relationship, which I mean, I don't have time right now.
	I don't have time to date.
	And I mean, I listened to your podcast on single moms and dating a single mom.
	And that's exactly, I don't have time.
	I don't have, you know, anything to give to anybody else right now.
	But hopefully, eventually, I can get there.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	Male influences in your boy's life going forward.
	Someone's got to step in if you want to give him the best chance.
	And please understand, I'm no expert.
	These are just my thoughts, right?
	Right.
	Nothing about what I'm saying is absolute.
	These are just thoughts that I have.
	You know that, but I just wanted to remind everyone.
	Who is going to be stepping into the Missing penis silhouette.
	Who's going to be stepping in to take over?
	You can't teach him how to be a man.
	You cannot teach him how to be a man.
	All you have at the moment is an example of a woman who made some mistakes.
	And obviously some good things too, right?
	He's going to be happy that he's alive and so on.
	But you're not giving him at the moment the best example of what women have to offer and you're not giving him any example of what men have to offer.
	Right.
	He does see his father once a week for the day.
	So his father is in his life a little bit.
	And it's paying the debt?
	Pardon?
	Is he paying?
	He is, yes.
	He does pay support.
	And is it reasonable?
	Yeah, it's reasonable.
	And it's steady and...
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Denny, like, no issues.
	Yeah, he pays for part of daycare as well.
	Daycare.
	Okay, well, we'll get back to daycare.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So, who is going to be backup dad?
	And is there a granddad, or is there, I guess, I don't know if any elders in his family are getting involved in his dad's family, is getting involved, or...
	So, no, my father lives far away.
	My brother is around, but he isn't the best male role model you can give a boy, I guess.
	Yeah, I get that.
	And so, really, there's nobody else.
	His father passed away a few years back, and the rest of his family are kind of all over the world, so...
	Nobody really close by, so he doesn't have anybody else.
	Well, that's a deficiency to be aware of, right?
	Right, yeah.
	Because women can do wonderful things.
	You all can drink milk and make milk, which is a lot more than I can do, as far as that goes.
	I'm all taps and no plumbing.
	But you cannot teach him how to be a man.
	Right, yeah, you're right.
	And you are not, at the moment and for the foreseeable future, you are not able to give your son the lived, empirical, continual evidence of an adult relationship.
	Kids, they don't learn how to love by being loved.
	They learn how to love by watching their parents love each other.
	Okay.
	Because that's the love they're going to need to reproduce when they get older.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right.
	He's never going to be a toddler again.
	Like after he's done being a toddler, he's going to grow up, going to go through latency, puberty, become an adult.
	The love that he's going to need as an adult is going to be the love that he's not seeing between you and a happy husband.
	Because that's what he's going to reproduce or need to reproduce.
	So there's this big gaping void as he's growing up, which is how do adults work on their relationships?
	How do they resolve disputes?
	How do they deal with blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And that's something I always thought.
	If I show him love, then he will know love.
	No.
	He will know the love of a god.
	He will not know the love of a mortal.
	Because you're a god to him.
	So maternal love is not philosophical love or rational love.
	Maternal love is religious love.
	Okay.
	And I assume you don't want him to become a monk.
	No, I don't.
	So that is very important to understand.
	And I'm not trying to beat you up with facts, or at least my theories or opinions.
	What I'm trying to do is point out here are the challenges.
	Right.
	No, I appreciate it.
	You loving him is not going to teach him how to negotiate with his wife.
	Right.
	Right.
	Now, you're negotiating with him, and I assume, I don't have to nag you about peaceful parenting, like I assume you're on board with the no spanking and no yelling.
	Absolutely, I've been, yeah.
	Fantastic.
	I kissed the hem of your garment.
	That's beautiful.
	That's beautiful.
	But, so you're negotiating, but you're negotiating with the ultimate authority of parenthood.
	And when he gets older, negotiating with girlfriends and with friends.
	He's not going to see two equals negotiating, so he's not going to be able to internalize how to negotiate with equals.
	I mean, my daughter sees my wife and I negotiating.
	And so, anyway.
	So, that is, I think, another challenge.
	A lack of male role models.
	And also, I mean, as far as the father goes, I mean, I guess it's good that he's seeing his dad.
	But the challenge is...
	Do you want him to become his dad?
	Right?
	So, you know, all personalities are contagious and parental personalities are rapidly contagious.
	And that's, yeah, absolutely.
	That's my fear.
	At the same time, you can't say anything negative about his dad.
	Right.
	Right?
	Because when, I don't know, it doesn't sound like you're prone to this, Erica, but this is something that single moms do often.
	A lot.
	And it's devastating.
	It's that they badmouth the father.
	And they badmouth the father to the son.
	Who's half the father.
	They think they're insulting someone who's not in the room.
	God!
	Oh, he's such a deadbeat.
	It's like...
	I'm half him.
	And the idea that you can insult...
	The husband of your child without insulting yourself.
	Your dad was such a loser.
	Who banged him?
	Who had a child with him?
	Who dated him?
	What are you doing?
	Again, I don't get the sense that this is your approach.
	No, it definitely isn't.
	But here's the challenge.
	Sorry.
	You go ahead.
	I'll remember my point.
	Go ahead.
	Okay, no.
	I just wanted to say...
	I mean, I've been struggling with how to address those questions when they do come, and I'll just tell you what my approach I've been thinking of is just to be completely honest as to what happened in an age-appropriate way without bad-mouthing is my...
	Well, that's a challenge though, right?
	Because what are you going to say?
	Well, he was sleeping around on another woman when I was pregnant with you.
	Right.
	That's a, you know, what, that's, those are facts, how they're going to make him feel about him and you, because he's going to judge you more than he's going to judge his dad, because everybody knows, and it takes a lot of education to forget this, a lot of indoctrination to forget this, who is the gatekeeper of sex, Erica?
	Who chooses whether sex happens or not?
	The woman, hands down.
	The woman.
	Yeah.
	The woman is, hands down, depends.
	Anyway, the woman is the gatekeeper of sex, right?
	Right, yes.
	And so, when he finds out that you made a bad choice of potential father, he's obviously going to hold his father to some degree responsible, but he's going to hold you more responsible because you're the gatekeeper.
	Right.
	Right?
	But what if I spoke to him about my mistakes and why I did those things?
	Would that...
	That will certainly help.
	Okay.
	That will certainly help.
	I hope that if you play him this conversation, it will help.
	That's, yeah.
	At some point, you know, when he's 50 or something, right?
	But this, yeah, I mean, obviously we need to be frank and self-ownership and all that and...
	So here's the challenge, right?
	Which is that you don't want him to turn into his dad, but you can't badmouth his dad, but he's exposed to his dad.
	Right.
	So that, I have no idea how to solve it.
	I have no idea.
	But those are just issues that are going to be there.
	Is that he's going to naturally gravitate towards his father.
	You can't warn him against gravitating towards his father because that's badmouthing the dad.
	But at the same time, you don't want him to gravitate to some of the less...
	Positive habits of his dad, right?
	Right, yeah, exactly.
	So, that's a challenge.
	And I don't know what the answer to that is, other than you need to be aware of it as a challenge.
	Okay.
	As far as his culture goes, I mean, obviously he's got the Dominican side and he's got the Whatever your side is, non-Dominican.
	We're French-Canadian on my side.
	Oh, French-Canadian and Dominican.
	And Dominican, yeah.
	Wow, that's a melting pot.
	So what's going to happen with regards to that?
	Is his father going to take over his Dominican culture and you're doing the French-Canadian culture?
	Yeah.
	His father hasn't really, I mean, he wanted to teach him Spanish and all that, but it hasn't really been happening.
	Culture-wise, I'm not sure.
	I mean, I'd like him to be...
	Yeah, if you can't commit to your wife or your girlfriend for being a dad and you can't commit to your son for being a dad, you probably can't commit to teaching Spanish.
	I'm okay with that as a dumb outset.
	But yeah, I mean, I would like him to learn about both sides.
	For sure.
	And I'll do as much as I can for the Dominican side and the French-Canadian side.
	I mean, he...
	Yeah.
	Like you said, as a biracial child, he needs to really understand where he comes from.
	And that's another challenge for me, is to give him those lessons and where he comes from and all that.
	So I... Yes.
	Yeah.
	Average IQ in Canada is about 100.
	Average IQ in Dominican?
	Yep.
	What do you got?
	I'm going to go with 90. - Bye.
	82.
	82, okay.
	I mean my son is, so far, I mean he's only, he's two and a half.
	But he's far surpassed every milestone and he's pretty intelligent.
	So I think...
	Physically he will.
	Like physically he will.
	Because blacks mature physically much faster than whites and whites mature physically faster than East Asians.
	Blacks can lift their heads sooner, they walk sooner, they roll over sooner, they run sooner.
	I mean, they develop very fast physically.
	And, you know, look, I mean, this may be nothing.
	Yep.
	Maybe nothing whatsoever.
	And if there is going to be anything to do with ethnicity and IQ, it's not going to kick in probably until he's in his early to mid-teens.
	Okay.
	And this is just something way in the back of your mind.
	Mm-hmm.
	Keep abreast of where the research is in this area.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	With any luck, it's 100% cultural, everything's going to be perfectly fine, but if there are genetic components to it, then statistically he's likely to be between you and your husband.
	Now, maybe your husband's super smart, maybe the regression to the mean isn't going to kick in, who knows, right?
	But if in his early teens he's struggling, that's something to be aware of, and maybe you can get him extra help, or whatever it is, right?
	These are just things to be aware of.
	And hopefully it will come to nothing, but this is just something to be aware of.
	And, you know, I will say this to people as a whole, you know, if you're dating, look into ethnicity and IQ. Maybe it's nothing, but it's People go for genetic testing to find out if there are any potential problems and so on.
	And this is an area until we get more clear science.
	And it is really frustrating that the science is so hobnailed from progressing in this area because of political correctness and general leftist superstition about the complete egalitarian nature of wildly disparate environmental regions and its effects on human evolution and so on anyway.
	It is frustrating that we can't get any more clear information, but it is something that may be worth remembering if he runs into any challenges, which again won't happen for probably 10 years or more.
	But if it does kick in later, that's something to be aware of.
	Just keep abreast of the research and hopefully it will all turn out to be nothing.
	But that's another minor thing that I wanted to mention.
	Okay, yeah, that's great.
	And...
	Yeah, so with regards to dating, that is a big challenge, right?
	Yes.
	How are you doing without dating?
	I mean, it's a lonely business, right?
	It is.
	I mean, it's very lonely.
	I mean, my evenings consist of putting him to bed, and then I'm here by myself.
	But at the same time, I want to date, but I don't feel anywhere ready to date.
	And that's a challenge, too, because you want to date.
	You obviously don't want to expose him to...
	lower quality guys exactly but i think it's pretty clear that a higher quality guy generally will not get involved with a single mom right right exactly and that's my fear on average in general there are exceptions but you know in terms of setting realistic expectations you're less of a catch than you were three years ago right correct yes Because you come with a big time sink and you come with expenses and you come with, you know, I mean, just the whole thing I've talked about before, so.
	Right, yes.
	And I've listened to those podcasts, so.
	Okay, so you don't want to have low-quality guys around him, but high-quality guys probably aren't going to, like, say, well, you know, you're a nice person and you're a smart person, but, you know, this is a bit too...
	A bit too complicated.
	And I understand.
	Guys want to put their resources into their own kits, right?
	Unless they're completely man-gined up into turbo-feminists by whatever goes on, right?
	And so that is a challenge.
	And the danger of that is that if you avoid dating because you can't get a quality man that you don't want to have around your son, the great...
	The danger of that, in my humble opinion, Erica, is that you're going to turn your son into your boyfriend.
	Right, right.
	Right, because he's going to want to, as he gets older, you know, particularly around sort of seven or eight years old, he's going to go, like he's going to, like right now, like you're it, right?
	I mean, you're like the only mountain he wants to climb, the only sun that rises in his world, like you're...
	You're the shizznizzle, dizzle, or whatever, I don't know.
	But you're the thing, right?
	Right, yeah.
	And that's going to last for another couple of years, and then do you know where he's going to go?
	Peers, peers, peers.
	Right.
	Oh, yeah, and I know...
	Because we don't mate with our parents, we mate with our peers.
	So around latency, kids start to focus on their peers, and mom is like, yeah, okay, I'm hungry, right?
	Right.
	You know, as opposed to let's sing songs together and hold hands, right?
	Right.
	And so when he starts to focus on his peers, that's, you know, your kids will love you, but then they'll break your heart because, you know, the nature's designing them to go horizontal, not vertical, right?
	Right, yes.
	But you know what I mean, right?
	And I'm dreading that day, yes.
	I mean, right now it's, yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, but then at the same time I'm thinking, well, maybe I Enjoy these years with him, and then once he hits those stages, then that would be a good time to start dating.
	But at that point, I mean, I'll be past my fertile years, potentially.
	Yeah, pretty much, right?
	Pretty much.
	Like another five years, that's going to be, I don't want to give out your age, but that's going to be basically past you with your history, being able to competently evaluate a guy enough to have another kid.
	That's probably going to start getting into kids with nine heads territory, right?
	Correct, yes.
	All right.
	Well, and the other thing, too, is that if you start dating when your son is seven, then...
	He's still got another 10 years in the house and he's in no way can be disciplined by the boyfriend, right?
	After the age of five, as far as I understand it, if you're not around before the age of five, you can never be the primary disciplinarian.
	And I use that word advisedly, right?
	Obviously, I know I'm a witch, right?
	But, you know, he's because you're not my dad is what he's going to say.
	And so what kind of guy is going to want to get involved in being around A kid that he has no particular influence over.
	Because that's a very difficult position to be in, right?
	Right.
	For a guy.
	Yeah.
	Because there are going to be times when the kid's going to need to listen to him because you're busy, not around, or whatever.
	But the kid's not likely to listen to him because the early credibility and bond has not been set up, right?
	Right.
	So it's...
	It's tricky.
	And this is the tragedy of the whole situation, which is that you had a kid to have love and you're getting it to some degree, although it would be a lot easier and better if you had a husband in the picture.
	But it kind of, you know, pay me now, pay me later kind of thing, right?
	Which is that he also is going to keep, most likely his presence is going to keep a quality adult relationship at bay for a long time.
	Right, yeah.
	And there will be times, because you're a human being, where you're going to resent him for that.
	You know, there's going to be some hot guy, or some guy who is just a really great person, or whatever it is, right?
	And you're going to be like, well, I can flirt with him a bit, but the moment he finds...
	Like, you know what I mean?
	The moment he finds out I have a kid, then...
	Yeah, I feel like that every day when...
	It's amazing when you have a kid, nobody really pays attention to you, but if I'm at work and on my lunch or something, right?
	Tell me about it.
	I don't do lunch, really, but tell me about what it's like being you, made up to go to work, and what happened?
	Well, no.
	It's different.
	I always have a hard time transitioning from mommy to Work at lunch me.
	You know, people look at you differently when you don't have a kid attached to you.
	But I, yeah, I'm pretty closed off because I don't want to, it's like, okay, he's just going to find out I have a kid and, you know, run the other way.
	So I try not to kind of, I guess, put myself out there.
	At all.
	Well, like me, you probably don't toss your hair that much anymore.
	Just kidding.
	That's a joke.
	That was really bad.
	Yeah, it was really bad.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	See, and this is what happens.
	I used to be funnier, but then I became a dad.
	And the dad...
	Like, I used to be able to dance, too.
	I became a dad.
	And now it's just like I'm poking at my legs with a...
	I'm poking at my numb legs with a electrified broomstick.
	So...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, so you were greedy, right?
	And you wanted the love in the moment and you were like, to hell with them, the torpedoes, to hell with the consequences.
	I'm going to get this purpose.
	I'm going to get this love.
	Right.
	But it takes a lot of love out of your life, particularly as time goes forward.
	Right now, right?
	I mean, but as time goes forward.
	And that's the great challenge, is that you had him to some degree for your needs, Erica.
	And then those are the needs that you're going to have to confront and sacrifice as he moves forward.
	Because particularly this combo, I know that the plural of me is not data or facts, but I will tell you this.
	The single sons of single moms scenario is particularly risky.
	Right.
	Because the low sexual market value that you have with a kid means that you're going to be lonely.
	And when you're lonely, you're going to want As you were, lonely and without purpose, you had a kid.
	Now, lonely and without purpose, you're going to want to hold on to him.
	Yeah, that's very true.
	For your needs, right?
	Because it's now going to be lonelier because you have him.
	It means you can't as easily get into a quality adult relationship, right?
	Right.
	Yep.
	And your urge is going to be To keep him young, to keep him close.
	Because it's tough.
	Otherwise.
	I absolutely have that urge.
	And right now, he's two.
	That fusion, that oneness, is I assume pretty good, right?
	But it's going to be tough.
	And you're going to have to resist the urge when he wants to go out with his friends and you're lonely.
	You go have fun.
	Mommy will be fine.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm not saying you do it that way, but you know what I mean.
	That is going to be tough.
	That is going to be a tough thing to resist.
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	And maybe that means you can get female friends.
	I know it's not the same as having a husband, but I'm sure you do, but there's mothers groups or whatever that you can commiserate over the kids leaving orbit or whatever as they get older.
	Right, yes, true.
	Alright, so that's basically the end of my hopefully not too adult lecture.
	Is there anything that you'd like to ask?
	No, I think we've pretty much covered everything.
	Thank you very much.
	Oh, and just one other thing, Erica.
	I do blow the kiss of respect and admiration for you calling in.
	I mean, was it much fun to look forward to?
	I was very nervous.
	Yes, but I was very much looking forward to it.
	I heard your podcast on single mothers, so I wasn't sure what to expect with this.
	But yes, thank you.
	It was fantastic.
	Oh, so helpful and useful.
	Okay, good.
	Yeah, very helpful.
	Well, I mean, you're doing what a lot of single moms don't do, right?
	I mean, you're not leeching off the taxpayer six different ways from Sunday, right?
	No, and that's, I mean, I own my own house.
	I've got my job.
	I mean, I would love to be a stay-at-home mom, but the reality is that I can't be.
	But no, I'm not leeching off of...
	And that means, you know, how old was your son when he went into daycare?
	So he was 12 months.
	I'm in Canada, so he had a year of mat leave.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	So that's good.
	I mean, so it wasn't like three months or three weeks or something, right?
	Right.
	So, you know, as far as good decisions you've made since your son was born?
	It's hard to think how it could have been improved, right?
	Right.
	And that's, I mean, I... Your bed's not a conveyor belt of seedy guys.
	And, you know, you're responsible.
	You've got him in a quality daycare.
	You're working.
	You know, he's got some relationship with his dad who's paying some money.
	You're not on the tax...
	Like, as far as, you know, making the best of the situation, it's pretty close to tops, in my opinion.
	Thank you.
	That's, yeah.
	I appreciate it.
	I've been...
	I've been trying hard, and since I found out I was pregnant, and going forward, I breastfed.
	I did everything that I could to do it right, and it's been hard since he hit the toddler years because I've got my own inner mother, as you've talked in other podcasts, that I struggle with sometimes, and I get frustrated, but your podcast is...
	Rose, setting fire to the child!
	It's my morning ritual.
	Stuart Smiley has mine as his, and I'm just kidding.
	It is tough, right?
	Because especially when they get older, and they get their will, and they get a moral sense, and when they're babies, they fart in your face, and they're so cute, smelly, but cute, right?
	But when they get older, right?
	A baby that drools on you is very different than a child who spits at you.
	Not that that's ever happened to me, but that's just an analogy of sort of saying that it becomes...
	They say it's the terrible twos, and what that means is it's the terrible resurrection of the parental all alters twos, because now that they're defiant, and also people's...
	My memories start earlier, but a lot of people's memories start around two or three, so they can remember being babies, which means that in this interaction, You are your son and you are your mother, right?
	Exactly.
	Your son is you and you are your mother and that's where the stuff tends to zoom up.
	Exactly.
	I think a lot more.
	It did, yes.
	And the transition from, I mean, when he was a baby and it was answer every single need that he had, that was easy for me.
	And then when it became to, you know, when he became a toddler, that was a lot more challenging.
	But I've listened to a lot of your parenting podcasts and that's I play your voice in my head.
	Well, that's, you know, that is, I mean, it's a wonderful thing to hear.
	I really appreciate that.
	I don't even need to be on the computer to be speaking to people.
	That's lovely.
	And the other thing, too, like I've said this to my daughter, I said, you know, listen, you know, it's chore time, honey, because, you know, when you were a baby, you didn't have to do anything.
	That was our job.
	But our job is to prepare you for being in adulthood.
	Unless you want to remain in diapers your whole life, you've got to get, you know, start lifting your end of the Of the beam, right?
	I mean, so, and that is, you know, babies are never lazy, but kids sure can't be, right?
	And so, reminding her that, you know, I said, this is, you know, it is going to come as a shock to you that you have to do stuff around the house.
	Trust me, it comes as a shock to me every day because I feel I should be royalty and other people should be doing this for me.
	I have to brush my own teeth.
	What am I, a surf?
	Good heavens.
	What's this wipe my own armpit once a week?
	Anyway, so...
	It is tough in that transition where, you know, it ain't so cute when they just won't take their stuff into the kitchen even after you ask them four times, you know, or ten times sometimes, right?
	Right, yeah.
	Or it's like, you need to tidy up these toys.
	No, I'll come back and play with them later.
	It's like, I fell for that the last 350 times.
	You know, fool me once.
	Yeah.
	Fool me 351 times, I'm going to invade it.
	Anyway, so there's a big set, a series of transitions.
	And it is very different.
	And, you know, the cuteness and there's no negotiation with babies.
	No.
	But man, you know, so there's no boundaries with babies.
	You're just one big blob.
	And you even more so than a dad.
	But, I mean, they're just like one person.
	It's like one people who don't sleep.
	The Siamese twins with two boobs, one head, and no sleep.
	Yeah.
	When they get older, there's a lot of negotiation.
	And that's when the parental stuff, I think, kicks in for a lot more people.
	So your awareness of that is fantastic.
	So listen, I mean, of all the single moms around, your son is very lucky to have you.
	Thank you.
	And you should be very proud of the work that you're doing to break the cycle.
	Thank you so much.
	Okay.
	Will you let us know how it's going?
	I will, yes, absolutely.
	Alright.
	Okay, well, I hope it works out, and let's move on to the next caller.
	Alright, well, up next will be Aaron, and Aaron wrote to me today.
	We published a video, Why I Was Wrong About Atheism, and some people had a pretty strong reaction to it.
	As a day?
	Aaron initially had a strong reaction to it, but took a nap, and is feeling a little differently now, but figured it'd be fun if he could pop on and share his experience with us.
	So welcome to the show, Aaron.
	Uh, hello, hello, guys.
	Hello, Stefan.
	Can you hear me?
	I can.
	In fact, it sounds like you're deep-throating the mic.
	If you can back off a tiny smidge, that would be excellent.
	Not a problem, sir.
	Okay, so...
	So, when you had your nap, did you get...
	Did you have any religious visions that changed your perspective or basically just cooled your brain a bit?
	No, no.
	What it was is in the beginning of the video, you clearly stated that, um, um, 70% of your statistic you gave was 70% with, uh, of these leftists and stuff and then pretty much went on with your video Oh, hang on, hang on.
	70% of leftists is meaningless to other people.
	The video is why I was wrong about atheism, and we'll put a link at the low bar, but it was that 70% of atheists lean pretty significantly to the left and want big government to tell everyone what to do.
	And I was just pointing out that if you're against the rational authority, then running from God to the state is like running from bad to worse.
	Yes, exactly.
	And...
	There you go.
	70% of atheists.
	You know, that statistic number I wasn't too familiar with.
	Um, the thing is, is I don't have a community or people I know with, or I don't communicate with other really atheists.
	I just see a lot of videos online, uh, place.
	And I just see arguments that, uh, pretty much people post online, pretty much like Richard Dawkins and like, uh, places like atheist experience.
	And even earlier videos, uh, you, you might've posted, uh, Oh no, sorry.
	All the Red Room stuff, that's an evil twin.
	I've since had him tracked down and shipped off planet.
	You currently see him in the background of The Martian.
	No, of course.
	I get all of that and all of the atheist experience, Dawkins and so on.
	All people I've listened to, all people whose media I've consumed, books I've read, like them a lot.
	So these are all people.
	And with regards to their philosophical arguments, with regards to atheism and religion and so on, You know, can't generally fault them.
	And so the frustration, and I'm sorry because I won't, I'll just let you get on in a sec, but the frustration for me is people say, well, you see, it could just be that the atheists are more intelligent and that's why they're both atheists and socialists.
	It's like, okay, fine.
	I'm with you.
	So maybe that's the case.
	I'm not saying it is, but maybe it is.
	The test for that would be, okay, let's expose atheists to arguments for a voluntary society, for a stateless society.
	And if they're so intelligent and they came by their atheism through a process of rigorous rationality, then they should be very open to, and in fact, very receptive for the exact same reasons to arguments for a smaller or no government, and they're not in general.
	Which means it's not a factor of intelligence at all, but rather prejudice.
	And, you know, when I was paying attention more to the video, seen it a second time, slept on it, And I'm like, you know, I don't associate myself with that 70% leftist, you know, these feely people that, and like what you're saying, these people that want big government.
	And I can only go through my anecdotal experience and what I've seen through, you know, growing up.
	And my experience, because I don't associate with other atheists, to me, these leftist people in the college era, Screaming for big government, calling for like Bernie Sanders and all this crazy stuff.
	To me, these seem like new, like fraudulent, fake atheists.
	I don't know what this new bandwagon is of people.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I don't believe it's new, but new to me.
	But it just doesn't seem like these are true atheists.
	It just seems like people that just are just, I don't Third wave feminism movement, it just seems like it's just somebody that just wants something to bitch about, and the religious people is a group that they just want to shut down or do whatever.
	Well, no, this is because religion is a competitor to the expansion of state power that a lot of atheists want.
	It's like a rival mafia gang, so to speak.
	I mean, although in many ways nicer because it's a mafia gang that doesn't use force, but guilt, which I can survive, right?
	And so it's not that the atheists, these lefty atheists, and I actually think the number is far higher than 70%, but we can talk about that perhaps later.
	But it's not like they just, well, you know, I reject irrational, unjust authority.
	I reject bullying.
	I reject, you know, like Richard Dawkins said that religious instruction is child abuse.
	And I can certainly understand that if you're talking about demons haunting the bedroom of the children and, you know, whatever.
	That's like hell.
	I mean, that's abuse.
	I'm not backing off on that for a second.
	However, if religious indoctrination is child abuse...
	What about the statist indoctrination of government schools?
	You know, let's just talk about it.
	I mean, at least the religious people aren't forcing the children into the schools and aren't forcing people to pay for the indoctrination.
	How many objective facts are people getting about the state from government schools?
	Well, no more objective facts that they get about atheism in churches.
	But at least the church remains somewhat voluntary.
	So, irrational...
	Abusive, unjust authority.
	Okay, let's start talking about government.
	But they simply won't go there.
	And that tells me that they don't care about reason and evidence.
	They don't care about unjust, brutal authority.
	What they care about is eliminating a competitor to their expansion of state power.
	And that is the church.
	Exactly.
	And, you know, everything you said about, you know, big government...
	The forced redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to non-taxpayers.
	I mean, the only thing I had through my subjective experience was that most of the people I know that want big government, that want free handouts...
	Okay, in my family, I grew up...
	My mother had every social program she could name, SSI, food stamps.
	um, uh, WIC, everything literally.
	And then, um, she even had me and my brother, um, pretend to be.
	Oh, and let's not forget, sorry, let's not forget government schools are a welfare program as well because richer people can afford private schools.
	And so it is another form of the welfare state and one of the biggest and most dangerous because at least you don't get as much propaganda with, uh, food stamps.
	And, you know, and I agree, I agree with you because when I was in public school, I felt like I didn't belong with With everybody on the same narrative that the teachers, especially in my history class, was being proposed.
	I mean, they liked the idea of, you know, oh, you don't want illegal immigrants in your country?
	You're a racist.
	You don't want to hand out food stamps and give money to people that aren't well off as you?
	You're a racist.
	You're a bigot.
	Just throwing labels at me and throwing words at me to try to offend me.
	And I'm like, Those words don't...
	You're not going to hurt me with those words.
	So...
	Well, and sorry, the other thing too...
	No, no, no, continue.
	You were just in the middle of a thought.
	I can hold mine.
	Go ahead.
	So, the way I looked at myself is...
	You know, I didn't have a political party.
	I recently voted for Trump.
	I'm out of Massachusetts.
	And the only thing I kind of disagree on with Trump is...
	I mean, I'm not entirely sure because I didn't clearly listen.
	It's just...
	He's pro-life, but from what I know, from the little gist I've got, he would stop abortions or something like that.
	I mean, I'm pretty well versed on everything else he talks about, and I agree with just about everything else.
	I just believe women should have the choice to have abortions up to the legal cutoff time period.
	I don't know what that is, at least three or four months or something.
	I don't know what tribe masters, but whatever the legal limit is, I agree with.
	I wouldn't want women to have their abortion rights taken away.
	And that's the only thing.
	I'm not too familiar.
	I haven't researched on what he truly feels about that, but that's the only...
	No, I mean, so he was asked a theoretical question.
	The theoretical question, I think it came from Chris Matthews.
	And Trump is normally better.
	But, you know, I mean...
	What, is he 69, 68 years old?
	Yeah, he's...
	I mean, he's been...
	He's like four hours of sleep and, I mean, although he's got, I think, one of those weird Clinton-esque genetic things where he can survive and flourish on that little sleep.
	But anyway...
	So, he was asked, you know...
	How would you handle abortion if it was illegal?
	And it's a big hypothetical.
	I mean, Roe v.
	Wade is, you know, women are the majority voters, and he was just asked a hypothetical question, and, you know, well, there would have to be some kind of sanction.
	It's like, well, of course, if something is illegal, you know?
	No, I agree.
	If it's illegal, You know, it's like, you know, the people who wanted to abolish slavery and say, okay, well, if you abolish slavery, how would you punish people who were slave owners?
	It's like, well, there'd be a sanction because it's now not legal to have a slave.
	And so, you know, if you want to stop people from driving those newfangled cars too fast on the road, would you have a speed limit?
	Yes.
	And what would the punishment be for exceeding that speed limit?
	Well, I don't know, maybe a fine or something, but it'd have to be some kind of sanction.
	Otherwise, it's not a law.
	There's no punishment.
	It's not a law.
	It's just a vague suggestion, you know, like...
	Don't wear white after Labor Day.
	Yes.
	No, I agree with that totally.
	I just wasn't sure because I didn't listen to that specifically part of his arguments when he brought it up.
	Because I usually don't listen to the one-on-ones.
	I work a lot of hours during the day.
	So the...
	Overnights, I mean.
	Anyway, so I was just...
	Wondering if he was against trying to stop abortions, period.
	No, no, no.
	Look, sorry.
	He said that nothing's going to change on abortion.
	Oh, okay, then.
	It settled.
	It was a pure hypothetical.
	He wasn't like, the day after I get into power, it's going to be beheading women who are even suspected of abortion.
	He's not like some Saudi prince out there, right?
	I mean, he was just answering a theoretical.
	And, of course, whether you...
	Whether you agree with him or not, you at least have to understand the logic that if people wish to make abortion illegal, illegal means there are punishments for breaking the law.
	You can't make something illegal and have no punishment.
	The whole point of illegal is the government punishes, right?
	Right now, it's like saying, well, I want the war on drugs, but I never want to ever punish anyone who takes drugs.
	Or who buys drugs.
	I only want to punish the drug dealers.
	Because his follow-up response was, well, we'd punish the doctors, not the women seeking the abortions.
	And he can't deal with the real issues when it comes to abortion.
	The real issue is, of course, the problem with abortion is the problem of the disintegration of marriage.
	Because the fact is that I would imagine that a lot of people who get abortion, a lot of women who get abortions are single moms and whatever, right?
	So the disintegration of marriage is a huge problem.
	The fact that there's a welfare state is a huge problem.
	The fact that it's subsidized by governments is a huge problem.
	The fact that you can't buy a baby, for God's sakes, it's a huge problem.
	It's a huge problem.
	There are so many couples out there who want children and all of these abortions are happening.
	Why?
	Because the couples can't buy the children.
	I mean, that's insane.
	I say, well, you know, that's human trafficking.
	Yes, but at least they're not ending up in landfills.
	You know, at least they're not ending up as medical waste, for God's sakes.
	You know, I mean, oh, it's dehumanizing to buy a child.
	It's like, yes, okay, fine.
	Is it more or less dehumanizing than killing an unborn baby?
	I've got to think that's very much the definition of dehumanizing in that it is no longer a human being.
	being it is a dead piece of tissue.
	So, and there's a bunch of other things that would help with regards to abortion and all of that.
	But, you know, because we've got this weird twisted system, abortion is a big problem and big, sort of very expensive.
	But what happened, of course, was that women freaked out that they may not have access to cheap and easy abortions.
	I mean, that's, you know, because, you know, with only 16 or 17 different methods of birth control to pick from, apparently, you know, and again, you know, if a woman's choice, you know, okay, fine, fine.
	Let's say that there's a woman's choice.
	Well, what about the man's choice?
	If the woman can choose to have or not have the child, if she can choose to have or not have Have the title of motherhood.
	If she could choose to be or not to be a mother, why can the man not choose to be or not to be a father?
	Why is there not a form which the man can sign which says, I didn't want the pregnancy, I'm terminating my parental responsibility, if the woman wants to raise the child, it's her choice, but I'm out of the picture, and I relinquish all my parental rights and responsibilities.
	And there's nothing like that in law.
	So if we're all into, you know, my womb, my choice, great.
	My ball's my choice.
	Right?
	But because that's inconceivable.
	Right?
	Because what women want is the right to have a baby and force a man to pay for it if he's not married or whatever.
	She wants that, right?
	It's like, okay, well, that's...
	Horrible.
	I mean, that's enslaving someone because you want to have a baby.
	That's literally enslaving someone's money for the next 20 or so years.
	So women, you know, it's the usual double standard that is so ridiculously prevalent that if there's not a double standard, you just know there's no feminism around.
	I mean, that's just, you know, why are they so freaked out about rape on campus?
	as well because if they can convince young white males not to go to college campuses then they have fewer people to compete with and also then there's more spots for women and minorities which the left likes and so just drive them off drive them off right and minorities, which the left likes.
	And so just drive them off, drive them off, right?
	Why are they so concerned about the completely non-existent rape culture among whites and then don't care at all about the rape culture in the Middle East?
	It's because they can get money from white males in their own country by shaming and blaming and attacking and slandering, but they can't get money from Arabs in the Middle East, so they don't care about that.
	It's not the shakedown.
	You know, it's like, why is the Italian mafia not doing a shakedown at some restaurant in Somalia Well, because it's a long way away and they can't get the money from them, so they go to the neighborhood.
	Anyway, I don't want to go all on that.
	But this Trump thing about abortion, I mean, it's just one of these...
	No, no, I understand.
	It's just one of these things that women freak out because somebody...
	And even the Republicans freaked out.
	Like, oh, we never wanted to sanction women.
	It's like, do you people not know what illegal means?
	Like, come on.
	I mean, there's pandering to women.
	This has just become completely ridiculous.
	I mean, you're treating women like these hysterical infants now.
	Yeah.
	Even the slightest shred of truth or reality.
	But anyway, sorry, go on.
	No, no, no, no.
	You know, I could talk to you forever about everything you just said because I agree with everything you said.
	Everything you said...
	I agree with the only thing I was like kind of jumpy is I didn't pay attention to this.
	I guess I must be an extreme minority of an atheist because and the thing is is I don't want big government.
	I hate the redistribution of taxes.
	I don't like this.
	Like I hate this thing going on where all my buddies want this Bernie.
	Oh, free college, free this, free that.
	Bernie's just going to charge the 1%.
	And it's like the 1% If you just increase the taxes on the 1%, they're just going to ship more jobs overseas, put more businesses overseas, and they got the lawyers and the know-how to get by any increased tax or do whatever.
	Then what's going to happen is Bernie realized he can't get it from the 1%, so it's going to go around to the working class that's going to get their taxes increased to pay for the people who just want to sit around on their behinds and not do anything all day.
	I got people in my family...
	You know what I mean?
	My mom helped my aunt and all these other people in my family.
	They all literally collect all benefits and programs.
	And I saw that growing up.
	And I didn't want that for myself.
	Wait, sorry.
	Was it mostly the women who were collecting the benefits?
	Yes, all women.
	Never heard of that before.
	Never heard that women like free stuff from good-looking guys called politicians.
	Never heard that before.
	And you know, because of the thing that...
	What kind of angered me that I realized older is women do not teach their boys the behavior of how females like to manipulate men for resources and money.
	Of course they don't.
	Of course they don't.
	Magicians don't teach their audience their tricks, of course, and they can't be magicians.
	My sister and my mother were well versed in that when I was younger and they would communicate with each other My mother would help my daughter date specific guys that own businesses and try to exploit money from them and do things and me sitting off in La La Land not knowing what's going on and oh man,
	it's just a headache and I just came out of a 10 year long relationship of just getting my brain screwed over by being leeched off of by my ex-girlfriend and it's just nuts.
	What happened with the end of your I'm sorry to hear that, 10 years.
	No, no, I'm glad.
	I mean, the thing was, is like, you know, I initially went out with, back when I was like 18 or so, I went out with, through a friend, I was introduced to a Cambodian Asian girl.
	I don't want to throw names on or anything like that, but anyway, so met her, and when I At the first, because of her parent, they kind of have an in-group preference for their children to date within their own race.
	So, for like the first year or so, it was kind of like...
	Try that as a white person.
	See how far you can.
	Oh!
	Oh!
	You're white.
	You're totally racist.
	The world's against you.
	And that was an issue I had with her.
	But they just have cultural pride in their heritage.
	Yeah, but if you're white, you cannot have cultural pride.
	You cannot have any of that.
	You're deemed a racist.
	Still waiting for this white privilege afterburner to kick in and not just blow up my chair.
	And, you know, she became one of these feminine Tumblr feminists that's always yelling at me about...
	White privilege.
	I'm sorry, I don't know what Tumblr is.
	Was she living in a washing machine?
	What does that mean?
	Tumblr feminist?
	I'm not too familiar with it.
	It's some kind of a page or a website where people share their ideas, but a lot of these politically lefties that we were talking about infamously and majority feminists go on there and spread their ideas and propaganda.
	I've never particularly been on it, so I don't have first-hand experience on it.
	But that's where she got a lot of her rhetoric and was spewing things at me.
	And, you know, I work like 12, 13 hours a day overnight.
	And when I get home, I have to just pretty much...
	I had to just do whatever the hell she said so I could get some sleep in order to get back to work.
	You know what I mean?
	So it was just all the stress of like...
	Anyways, to get back to what was happening with her, you know, I... So after a year of...
	Sneaking around, seeing her.
	Mom, like, all of a sudden, like, caught on that, you know, that she was seeing a guy.
	She saw me.
	Long story short, they seen that I wasn't a bad guy.
	By the way, I'm Puerto Rican and half white, but I look Spanish, obviously.
	What an afro.
	I envy your tanning capacity.
	Yeah.
	That's all I've got to say on that.
	So, when he got to know me, the mother got to know me, realized I wasn't I guess, a bad guy or whatever her impressions were of whatever other people are.
	And I got introduced to the family.
	Now, when I got introduced to the family, she was a great girl.
	Cooked, cleaned, did everything.
	Seemed like a great family person.
	I, by the way, was never big with my family.
	I was kind of off the side doing my own thing.
	I've always been kind of like a loner.
	I was like into my room playing video games or hanging out with my buddies and I started away from family drama because...
	Sorry, I'm looking at the subtitles of your movie, and by loner, I think you just mean smarter, don't you?
	And I'd just seen what was going on.
	And, you know, with my stepfather, my mother was always bashing him and putting him down and saying, oh, he's evil, he's that.
	And, you know, I'd seen the guy, and I only have my mom's point of view to go by because he wouldn't say anything.
	And...
	My mom would leave to Dominican Republic, go to vacations and stuff, and she even met a boyfriend down there.
	So he knew of all this, like her leaving for months at a time when I was a child.
	She had a boyfriend while she was married to your stepdad?
	Yes, she did.
	And even married him down there while she was married to my stepfather here.
	Is that legal?
	It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter.
	So she was married over there, married here.
	Stepfather here knew about the situation.
	He kind of, like, you know, withdrew.
	I mean, he just...
	He went, like, a little bit crazy angry at a moment.
	Pointed a shotgun at me, my brother and sister, and then had us point the gun at him and put our fingers on the trigger and say, squeeze, squeeze.
	And we all squeezed, but...
	And then he took it and stuff, took the shotgun, showed that it was empty.
	And he's like, oh, now I have something against one of you.
	I'm tired of your mother leaving all the time.
	Because my mother would leave to the Dominican Republic for months at a time.
	And at that time, she was building a home down there.
	And my brother and sister, because they liked the idea of going to a country without legal age limits on anything, they'd go down there.
	We were like, what, between 9 to 12 ages, maybe a little younger.
	They'd go down there, drink, smoke, party.
	Do what they got to do.
	And I'm like, you know that money you paid for them to go down there and those playing tickets?
	I'll take a PlayStation instead and I'll just sit home.
	I don't want to deal with that.
	You know, so all these years they painted him as the bad guy.
	But then, so what happened is he, after that shotgun incident, during that time, he wasn't paying the mortgage while my mom was out on her shenanigans for months.
	Long story short, when she came back, after a good eight to seven months, we were getting a notice of foreclosure.
	We had a pretty decent home, very cheap mortgage, three-bedroom.
	It was only a $500 a month mortgage.
	At that time, my mom was a CNA, my stepfather was a truck driver, an over-the-road driver.
	They were making pretty damn good money compared to the expenses they had.
	But because of the stress he was going through, We started doing drugs, not paying the mortgage, yada, yada.
	We lost our home.
	This was when I was about 16.
	And then I left.
	Then I just had so much, like, I just seen what was going on.
	Plus, when my mom was around, it was always about drama.
	Who did this?
	Who did that?
	She always looked for an argument.
	It's like with these women, they just look to start illogical, irrational arguments and not even try to, like, logically, like, solve something or, like, just, like, Put petty things to the side and just be like, okay, it wasn't a big deal.
	Let's just continue on.
	But it had to be hitting and all this crazy stuff and yada, yada, yada.
	And I was just like, that's why when I started working as soon as I was 18, I moved out as soon as I could.
	And I didn't want to be on the welfare state and all this stuff that my mother was trying to keep me on so she could keep getting a cash flow of checks and stuff.
	And so back to when we lost the home.
	Um, I moved out with my sister in a one-bedroom apartment.
	I mean, she was grateful for one year, for my 11th grade year.
	I got kicked out when we lost our house my 10th grade year, 11th grade year.
	For that year, I moved in with my sister and, um, older sister, by the way.
	And, um, so what happened is I lived with her and, um, I got one of my first jobs at a local Six Flags and was making probably, after paying bus rides and stuff to get there, I was making maybe like $30 a week and this was only a summer job.
	My sister seen me coming home at $30, $40 and wanted rent money.
	And I'm like, hey, look, this is enough money for me to just get some snacks, but I'll give you something or whatever.
	Well, in the meantime, since I was underage, my mother was still collecting all these Benefits and programs, moved, came back, moved with my stepfather to a one-bedroom apartment with my younger brother, my younger sister, it was a studio apartment, one younger brother,
	younger sister, my stepfather and her living, four people, and actually my older uncle, five people living in a small studio apartment in another town while she was collecting these government benefits for me, like SSI and whatnot, but giving nothing to my sister and To help her support me.
	So she was taking her frustration out on me, yelling at me, getting angry at me.
	And when, luckily, I made it through my 11th grade year, she kicked me out of her home in the summer that I was going to my senior year because she wanted to invite some guy that lived off the street that would promise her $100 a month rent.
	So then I moved into that studio with The five people, me being number six and all my friends I'd known and grown up with and stuff because I moved to a different town and all the people I'd grown up with, I didn't know anybody in this new town I moved into and I didn't care.
	I felt disconnected to everybody.
	I was angry at the situation that I was put in and I did what I had to do.
	I did I continued my school work.
	And the funny thing is, when I had my transcripts transferred over to the new school I went to, they realized that, wow, the class I was in, there was about 385 students, I believe, around there.
	And with me never really trying and never having any kind of parental support, I was the top 12 in grades.
	And granted, I never tried to do anything and just work was just...
	It came so naturally easy to me.
	And it was public school.
	They never really challenged anybody there.
	So they assumed that I was going to go to college and all this stuff, but I had so much negative, pent-up feelings that I'm just like, whatever.
	I don't think I'm going to go because I know my family didn't have money or anything.
	So I continued with that year at that school, just doing what I could.
	Since it was senior year, I didn't have to do much.
	Um, just drifted through.
	Prom came through.
	My mother was all starting to feel nostalgic.
	Oh, the first son in the family is going to graduate.
	The first person in the family going to graduate high school.
	Nobody's done it before.
	All of a sudden, she started feeling like she was, she contributed to, like, my success or anything.
	You know what I mean?
	And tried to be like, oh, okay.
	Let's buy a yearbook.
	All of a sudden, like, um...
	I'm willing to pay up for little things, memorabilia for that senior year.
	Because granted, all these years, even in that senior year, I felt embarrassed because I was in ROTC and there was an outside trip, not trip, but an event where they had barbecue and stuff.
	All you had to pay was $4.
	I'm the only one that didn't have the $4 out of the entire class.
	And I had to pretend to be the cool guy That didn't want to pay the $4, and I just sat down in class for the half day with my head down on my desk because I couldn't afford the $4.
	They offered me to just join in anyways, but I'm like, I live on principle.
	I'm like, no, I didn't pay the $4.
	I don't want to join in on the festivities.
	You know, I felt my parents should have given me the money when I've asked.
	And I only ask maybe once, twice the most.
	I don't pressure things like my brother and sister does and nag.
	Either you want to do something for me, help me out, or you don't.
	I'm not going to make an issue or hold it against you or argue with it.
	No, but I mean, what you're doing is sensible, right?
	I mean, and it goes, I think, all the way back to you wanting the PlayStation rather than going to go drink and smoke at the age of 10 in the Dominican Republic.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You're smart.
	You understand the costs and benefits spread over time.
	You have integrity.
	You have purpose.
	You have some drive.
	I mean, you're smart.
	So that's when you say loner.
	When people say loner, I just say smarter, right?
	It's not quite a rhyme, but it's not the worst.
	I just felt like I didn't belong because the way they thought, the way they wanted to do things, it was like, I don't know, like living with this girlfriend who That I live with.
	I took care of her.
	When I moved in with her, she completely changed 360.
	Didn't want to do anything.
	Didn't want to leave the house.
	Became AT social with her parents and didn't want to see her parents because all of a sudden she didn't have to deal with all the responsibilities she had.
	So it was like, okay, she didn't want to cook, clean, do anything.
	Granted, I'm overworking night shift warehouse job doing a lot of hours and I'm Coming in, and I'm making sure all the bills are paid.
	I'm extremely responsible and stuff.
	Very high credit score.
	Everything's good.
	I've never been late in any bills and stuff.
	So I'm paying everything, making sure there's food, but she just sits around the house, not wanting to do anything.
	Then gets in this dispute about, oh, well, you need to do 50-50 of the work.
	And I'm like, I'm providing...
	I'm paying all the bills.
	And I was even willing to bend to do 50-50 of the work.
	But when I started to lift my finger to do 50-50, she wouldn't provide that of her 50.
	And then all that, you know, between work and being overwhelmed with having to do all these chores, it's like I'd start work at 7 p.m.
	I'd come home around 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock in the morning lifting beer kegs all night for a local beer distributor.
	My back's hurt.
	I'm hurt.
	I'm sore.
	I'm hurt.
	And I got to get back to work by 7 o'clock the same day in the afternoon.
	And sleeping during the day, you never get as much rest as you do at night.
	It's not right.
	It doesn't feel right with all the noise and everything going on.
	So I get home.
	All of a sudden, she didn't cook, so she's hungry.
	I didn't eat anything because I'm hungry.
	So now when I get home, I have to go out, look for something for her to eat.
	She doesn't like breakfast food, so I have to wait till noontime till places that serve lunch foods open up.
	And I have to go out every day to go get her lunch foods and dinner foods and, you know, all this other stuff.
	And all these years of just her nagging me and just me just being a fool, dealing with the nagging just so I could have a decent amount of sleep.
	And the only reason mainly I did it was because I didn't have my family to go back to to live with or, you know, someone to help me.
	Because what my mother, she was at this time, she was...
	Well, I have to go back to explain this.
	That boyfriend, that husband my mother married in Dominican Republic, a few years after the situation where we lost our house, they were having their little marital disputes and stuff like that because the men down there have this mindset of whatever the woman buys is theirs.
	They're, like, possessive.
	Even though my mother was financially supporting him and paying for the house and everything like that, He twouted around like it was his and stuff like that.
	And I guess they have this possessive attitude down there about like, you know, it doesn't matter.
	She paid for it.
	I'm the man, you know?
	So what happened was she found out because obviously she comes back to the States for half the year or more and then goes back down there.
	He obviously cheated on my mother with his son who he had from a previous relationship with my mother.
	With her, who was a prostitute down there, he caught HIV. Okay, hang on, hang on.
	So, listen, I mean, we kind of hit a geister here of talking, right?
	And I fully understand why.
	Right?
	Why do you think you're telling me all of this?
	I don't mind that you're telling me.
	I mean, I appreciate that you're telling me.
	Why do you think you're telling me all this?
	Because honestly...
	It's not a criticism.
	No, no, I understand it.
	My opinion is because I really have no one to talk to.
	I have no one to really vent this out to, and it's really frustrating.
	So I feel like I'd have to do a 20-hour show with you because it's just between my atheism and everything.
	You're a man lost in the desert for a week, finally hitting an oasis, right?
	Right?
	I mean, this is stuff that's been bouncing around in your head for decades.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm the asshole and stuff.
	When I moved out, It's like...
	No, no.
	I'm not going back into the story.
	I mean, I'm happy to have heard.
	But I know that it could be a 20-hour show and you'd still have more to say.
	And I obviously can't accommodate that, though I'd like to.
	No, no, no.
	But no, listen.
	You've got to get around smarter people, my friend.
	You have to.
	You just spent 10 years with this entitled woman.
	Mm-hmm.
	Who, you know, you're paying all the bills.
	You're working double shifts.
	You're trying to get some sleep during the day.
	And she's like, I don't like breakfast food.
	So I'm not going to go eat breakfast.
	It's like, are you kidding me?
	Are you kidding me?
	Where's my foot rub?
	Right?
	So you don't have anyone around who's warning you about that.
	You don't have anyone around who's understanding your history, who's sympathetic, who's listening.
	Right?
	You are over full of terrible tales because you're around terrible people, in my humble opinion.
	Right?
	Definitely.
	I mean, the people who are all on welfare, they're probably not starting off that smart, and welfare sure as hell doesn't create any incentive to get better.
	No.
	Right?
	They're stuck.
	I mean, the idea...
	They laugh at people who work.
	They're suckers, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	They do.
	So...
	The people that you're around, we can never be stronger than our weakest relationship.
	We can never be more courageous than our most cowardly relationship.
	We can never be smarter than our least intelligent relationship.
	So I think the desperation of revelation that you have in telling your story, which I hugely sympathize with, But, I can also see why you would get angry.
	Because these people around you are religious, right?
	Like, angry at my video.
	So, I mean, I understand that too.
	I don't blame you for it all.
	And, yeah, all these people, like, you know, these big government...
	To me, I associated those with these religious people.
	Because the people in my known circle that want big government were the religious people.
	But, you know, I need to broaden my horizons.
	I don't know other atheists...
	And I see this movement and I try to debate with people, especially people posting these irrational, leftist, cleverly clipped edits of like, oh, this is what Donald Trump said.
	It's like, watch his entire debate.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like, I don't know.
	I try to have logical discourse with people and a lot of people, with my co-workers, I work with a lot of illegal immigrants.
	And yeah, they are illegal and they're here on overstayed visas and Crossed the border where they paid coyotes a substantial fee of up to $10,000.
	A lot of them are my friends.
	I have no issue with them, and I tell them straight in their face.
	It's like, yeah, you deserve to be deported because what you did is illegal.
	And a few of my friends...
	To be fair, they're working a hell of a lot more than your family.
	Definitely.
	I agree.
	I agree.
	And you know what I mean?
	And that's why I don't really...
	I see all sides of the issue.
	I mean, like...
	No, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I've got a bunch of other callers.
	I can't get into illegal immigration, though I'd love to.
	Listen, this is not the end of our conversation.
	It's the fact that I can't get much longer here.
	Call back in again, and we'll talk again.
	And you obviously have a unique, on-the-ground perspective of this stuff.
	But here's the thing, right?
	So the atheists who watch my video...
	Are going to have the same reaction that the libertarians are going to have when I talked about the against me argument, which is that if people around you want laws that oppose your conscience, then they want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them.
	And that's just a basic fact.
	I mean, people get mad at me, like, shoot the messenger.
	It's like, find a way to disprove the argument and...
	Or shut up, right?
	So with atheists pointing out the fact that leftists infiltrate and destroy everything.
	Termites, in a lot of ways.
	Not the individuals, just the philosophy and how it's enacted.
	And whether atheism grew out of leftism, and there's some strong arguments that it did, or whether atheism has attracted leftists, doesn't really matter.
	The fact is now that atheism is riddled with leftists and social justice warriors and hysterics and all this kind of stuff.
	And atheists need to clean house.
	They need to clean house.
	They need to say, oh, you're against irrational authority.
	Let's...
	You know, Milo Yiannopoulos the other day was on a show.
	Good to know he's back.
	And he was, oh, atheism is so boring.
	And...
	Yeah, I get that.
	How many times can you say there is no God?
	How about we move on to something a little bit more pressing, which is The collapse of Western civilization as the result of rampant runaway statism.
	It is not the migrants.
	It is the governments that are destroying Western civilization.
	It is the governments that are destroying Western civilization.
	And if people had taken a stand 10 years ago when I urged them to, or 8 years ago when I urged them to, we'd be in a whole different place right now, but they didn't.
	And so libertarians need to look in the mirror and say, well, why didn't I? Why didn't I take the stand?
	Why didn't I confront people In my relationships with the evils that they promote, why didn't I do it?
	Why did I just get mad at Steph for pointing it out?
	Well, you didn't do it, and this is the results, which is that European civilization may fall.
	And if we had raised this as an issue, the coercive nature of the state, by bringing it up in our personal relationships, it would have become front-page news, everybody would be informed, and everybody would at least have a framework for understanding what the hell is going wrong in Europe.
	That's the alternate history if people had listened to me.
	Close to a decade ago now.
	But, everybody makes their choices.
	All I can do is make the best case I can.
	After that, all you can do is cook a healthy meal.
	You can't force people to eat it.
	They can go back to the junk food of compliance and conformity if they want.
	So, atheists don't want the personal challenges in their community any more than libertarians want the personal challenges in their community.
	that it sort of needs to be done.
	So yeah, there are gonna be people who are upset, but pointing out that there's a lot of socialism in atheism, and socialism is destroying the West, and therefore atheists who accept socialism are more dangerous to the West than Christians.
	You know, again, I'm happy to be argued out of the perspective.
	I never said this is 100% absolutely proven hypothesis.
	No, this isn't an approach.
	These are questions that we need to collectively ask as a community.
	But you need to get, my friend, to a community of people you can talk to.
	And when you come out of this kind of history...
	These are kind of most of the people that you know.
	And it's pretty rough.
	It's pretty heartbreaking.
	And this is why you're sort of grabbing at my ear like a drowning man at a log, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean that in no critical way whatsoever.
	I fully understand it.
	But you need to start expanding your horizons and the people that you spend time with, in my opinion, because, I mean, you've got a lot of stored up stuff to talk about and you don't have any ears in the vicinity.
	And I would love to continue to be the ear in your vicinity, but I have to move on to the next caller.
	But I really appreciate the call in and I appreciate you sharing what you shared.
	Definitely.
	Hope to call back very soon.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	Nate wrote in and said, In a list of complaints to my manager, the client noted my lack of knowledge about this task.
	My manager then advised me to withhold communications of a lack of knowledge and instead to communicate with the client that I would look into any event I didn't have knowledge about.
	I feel emotionally uncomfortable with this criticism.
	I wonder if I'm reacting against valid criticism or if there is a valid contradiction between openness and honesty and consciously modifying my response to clients on this issue.
	I further question the workplace principle of openness and honesty as I recognize the degree to which I withhold my emotional experience when communicating with clients, i.e.
	I don't communicate my frustration.
	I'm thinking I can no longer claim that openness and honesty is a company principle, but rather a company guideline with exceptions.
	Any thoughts or feelings?
	Thank you for taking the time to look into this.
	That is from Nate.
	Ah, Nate.
	How much you remind me how little I sometimes miss the corporate world.
	Hey, Steph.
	Hi.
	Your sort of thoughts and feelings?
	So can you give me...
	Don't give me any, obviously, industry-specific details or geography, but can you give me a sense of the kind of conversation that you had?
	Yeah, the...
	Well, the client had a list of grievances and sent those to my manager.
	And then, of course, the manager called me into his office and...
	Oh, no, no, sorry.
	I meant the conversation you had with the client.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	It was just a simple question from the client.
	Had this equipment been reset...
	And I said, I don't know.
	Basically like that.
	I don't know.
	I don't like scripts.
	I don't like censoring what I say to the client.
	I try and limit that as much as possible.
	And it always bothers me when there's some sort of script or something like that.
	Whatever you do, don't admit a lack of information if you're honestly missing the information, right?
	Right.
	And what do you think of the client?
	Well, I do remote support, and so that was my first interaction with the client.
	I feel you should have an entirely different kind of accent, but maybe that's just my experience with remote support as a whole.
	But it's not necessarily the very best thing for the client to say, hey, you know, this is all the complaints I have about what was one single interaction with you?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Right.
	And what were the other complaints?
	Were there any complaints that you felt were valid?
	Well, that was the only complaint for my part.
	I'm a level two, and so a level one was also part of the interaction.
	And there were some complaints with the level one as well, if that makes sense.
	It doesn't, but if you can help me understand it a bit more, I'd be happy.
	The level one initially takes the call from the client, and we have a lot of clients too, and spends minimal time troubleshooting the issue, and if the level one can't resolve it, then I get the escalation.
	Right.
	So it's like with your ISP, have you rebooted the router?
	Have you checked that all of the cables are secure?
	Yes!
	I just called you people and you hung up on me.
	I can't do it all again.
	So you're the level two.
	Okay.
	And so this client had a variety of issues with you, one of which is you said, I don't know if the equipment's been reset.
	Right.
	Now, that's honest, but obviously incomplete and doesn't add much to the client's sense of security, if that makes sense.
	Sure.
	Right?
	So, I mean, I'm sure that, you know, good customer service is something like, I don't know, but I can check for you and get back to you by such and such a day.
	You obviously don't want to be just like, nope, don't know.
	Awkward pause, awkward pause, right?
	That's not, I'm sure that's not how it went down, though.
	Right.
	I don't recall it verbatim, but I don't think so.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And were there any other complaints that the client had that you felt were valid?
	No, that was the only complaint for me.
	Oh, I thought you said he sent a list of complaints.
	The others were for the level one.
	Okay, sorry, sorry.
	And so your boss said, whatever you do, don't tell the client the truth?
	Or did he say, maybe you can massage it more gently or say, I'll get back to you momentarily or something like that?
	Yeah, he recognized that I'm an honest person, but then he said, but next time, do this.
	And what was the next time's suggestion?
	Next time, don't admit that you don't know, but say that I'll look into that.
	Yeah, I mean, to anybody with half a brain, that's exactly the same thing, right?
	You know, like if I say, do you know how to get to Timbuktu, and someone says, I'll look into that, they're telling me they don't know, right?
	but okay so he's looking for slightly different information right right and what are your what's your sort of what are my thoughts and feelings about it Do you have a specific question about the issue?
	Well, I know it's kind of on the fuzzy edge and kind of in the weeds.
	It's just been stuck in my mind, I guess, trying to find some clarity, specific question.
	Are you just basically bothered by the fact that you can't be as honest as you want to be?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Well, trust me, I'm not sure who can always be as honest as they want to be.
	I mean, I have a job which is basically tell the truth and shame the devil.
	And, yeah, you know, when I'm honest about stuff, people sometimes get pretty upset.
	And even though that's sort of in the job description.
	So, I don't know that there's a place you can go where you can be ideally honest that's not like in a personal relationship.
	Right.
	It's not a personal relationship.
	It's a workplace environment.
	I'm there to do the job, to provide value.
	But you're there to provide value to people who are mostly insane.
	Yeah.
	This is probably what's bothering you.
	It's not so much, well, my boss is asking me to tell a little white lie.
	That's not the biggest moral issue that any of us have to deal with.
	But you are customer facing, as am I, right?
	As is Mike and so on.
	And customer facing, you know, this show, the audience that we have is a lot more robust than the general population.
	You know, they're like the hardened criminals.
	They're not like the new accountant coming in, clutching his imaginary briefcase because he stole money from clients and somebody's going to make him his girlfriend or whatever, right?
	And so, like in this conversation, but even this, I have to temper what I'm going to say.
	Even to this audience sometimes, I have to ease them in a little.
	Lube it up a little, you could say.
	Like a gentleman.
	So, I, you know, In my personal relationships, I'm about as frank as Frank can be.
	I'm more frank than Sinatra.
	But when you're facing the planet as a whole, they're like a bunch of fairly confused and angry apes who are frightened by flashlights.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and it's a vulnerable thing, I think, to say that I don't know, right?
	I was in the military for a while, and I went through the training, and to say I don't know was not an acceptable answer.
	I guess it was weak.
	It leaves you open to attack.
	Well, yeah.
	So listen, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I don't know.
	Have you seen videos where I ask for donations?
	Have you ever strolled through the sewage river of comments from some people underneath?
	E-begging, you faggot!
	Why don't you get a real job?
	Yeah, yeah, because my job is so fucking easy that it's not a real job.
	I'm going to show up in a Mark Knopfler song, I think.
	So when you ask for something, you are...
	You're making yourself vulnerable.
	You are giving people power over you.
	You know what it's like.
	You go and ask a woman out and the more you like her, the more you're scared she's going to say no.
	And the more attractive she is, the more cold-hearted you have to appear.
	So when you want something in this world, you go for a job, you go to ask a woman out on a date, you ask someone to buy a product or accept your service offerings, and you are immediately putting that person in a position of power over you, right?
	Because they have the capacity to say to you yes or no.
	And how do most people handle power?
	It's an opportunity.
	It's an opportunity to inflict harm that they suffered at the hands of people who had power over them, parents or teachers or whoever it was, right?
	And it's a chance for them to, you know, disgorge all of the stored up venom sacs of early trauma.
	Not everyone, right?
	But in general, when You are in a situation where someone's paying you or you want something from someone or you want a date or whatever, then you are in a position of submission, of supplication, so to speak, right?
	And in this situation, you're offering your services.
	And...
	In general, my guess would be that when you honestly say you don't know, a person who has a good level of self-knowledge and is comfortable with their own personality and choices, they're going to say, well, I appreciate that, you know, just let me know when you get the facts and all that, right?
	And you will, and it's a perfectly normal interaction.
	On the other hand, someone who themselves has no capacity to admit that they don't know something, and this is a lot of people in business, If you have no capacity to admit that you don't know something, then when someone else comes along and honestly admits that they don't know something, What are your feelings about it?
	When you show a courage that a coward lacks and they have power over you, how do they react?
	Thank you.
	Are you still with me?
	Freak out.
	Yeah, you gotta give me, you know, this is a show, right?
	So you gotta not give me these pauses, right?
	I'm not trying to trick you or anything, but I keep thinking we've been disconnected or something.
	Yeah, so when you display courage that a coward lacks and that coward has power over you, he will punish you for having courage and acting, right?
	Because the coward experiences the presence of a courageous person as an insult to his history, right?
	You understand?
	Right.
	So, it's a deep and complicated thing, and I have the luxury of having hour-plus conversations with people about all of this stuff where I can sort of dig in and figure out sometimes where it's coming from in their mind and heart and history.
	You're not really going to have much of that opportunity.
	When you are in a business situation, right?
	Tell me about your child.
	It's not going to go down overly well.
	But it's less upsetting to, like when you're aware of the mechanics that are occurring in these kinds of interactions, it's a lot less upsetting to experience them.
	Right, so like when I ask people to donate time or money to what it is that we're doing here, freedomainradio.com slash donate, I'm fully aware that this is going to give cowardly bullies the opportunity To attempt to lord it over me, right?
	I mean, it's natural.
	It's inevitable.
	Especially on the internet, you know, everyone's got keyboard courage and, you know, they say the kind of things they'd never say to somebody my size or my personality face to face.
	And so, knowing that going in, it's not a surprise.
	And, of course, the reality is, what does it say about me?
	Nothing.
	What does it say about the other person?
	Well, that they're traumatized and cowardly and mean, you know, and no self-knowledge and all of that.
	And that this is the level of powerlessness that they actually have in their own life.
	When you have self-knowledge, it's really hard to understand just what life is like for people who don't have self-knowledge.
	How powerless they really are.
	Self-knowledge gives you superhero powers.
	And a lack of self-knowledge renders you impotent, ineffective, powerless.
	And when I ask for something online, I'm aware that a lot of frustrated and horrible and powerless people are going to look at me asking for something and Try and exercise the brutality of their own histories upon me.
	It's inevitable.
	But why would I let little people stop me?
	A brave man can't falter in the face of cowards, otherwise he has no right to claim the mantle of bravery, of courage.
	We can be stopped by giants.
	We cannot be stopped by mice.
	We can't.
	I mean, that's natural.
	And certainly in this life, You will always never get 100% of the things you don't ask for, right?
	If you don't ask for something, you won't get it, guaranteed.
	If you never ask that woman out, she's never going out with you.
	If you never ask for someone to be a friend, well, maybe it'll sort of happen that way, but most of the things, if you never go in and say, I want a job and put your resume in, you're never going to get that job.
	And so, recognizing that we need to ask for things in this world if we want to get anything done, and I have an obligation to virtue, to philosophy, which means that the idea of being stopped by People who call me some loser, e-beggar, bald spotty, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Step aside, we've got work to do.
	And so, if you are committed to something bigger, and in your career you can be, right?
	I mean, you can have a long-term goal.
	Maybe independence, maybe starting your own business, maybe having enough money to get your FU award and retire, or whatever it is, right?
	You have some big goal, a bigger picture.
	And knowing ahead of time that When you express a deficiency, there's a power vacuum that is inhabited by trolls.
	It sounds like this customer is kind of like a troll, right?
	And so you know it's going to happen.
	You know it's going to happen.
	It's not a shock.
	It's not a surprise.
	So you keep moving.
	And there are going to be Customers like this.
	And you're not in a position as yet in your career where you can fire customers.
	I've mentioned this before.
	One of the most influential things I read in the business world was in Harvard Business Review when I was 20.
	Yeah, I was that guy.
	And it was about firing your customers.
	Sometimes 90% of your support budget is spent on 10% of your customers.
	And you really have to make sure that you don't just say, you know, the customer is always right.
	And We've got to keep all of our customers no matter what, but you have to review the spending you have on customers and figure out which ones you want to keep and which ones you don't want to keep.
	Because you want to reward good customers with better service and deny good service to bad customers, A, because it's not profitable, and B, because that's not really very nice to the good customers, right?
	And it's not really fair.
	So if you know all of that stuff, then I think it's a lot easier to And, of course, if you're spending a lot of your time around reasonable people, then it can, of course, be a little bit startling to be around the troll muggles that infest the planet to some degree.
	And you'll run into them in business from time to time, for sure.
	Does that help at all?
	Yes, yes, thank you.
	All right.
	Okay, well, I hope it works out.
	And let us know how it goes, if there's anything else we can do to help.
	And let's move on to the next caller.
	I appreciate your stuff.
	Thank you.
	Alright, well Patrick will be next.
	He wrote in and said, I was born and lived 13 years in Canada until we moved with my family to Lebanon.
	The culture clash hit me straight in the face.
	I'm currently 23, 10 years later, and I still can't get along with some of the locals.
	These days I'm getting the urge to change others.
	Is it really possible to, and to which extent?
	That's from Patrick.
	Hello, Patrick.
	How are you doing?
	Hello, Stefan.
	Glad to be on your show.
	Nice to chat with you.
	How are you today?
	Amazing.
	Good, good.
	All right.
	I mean, this is sketchy for a tighty-whitey like me.
	So what, like over here in Afghanistan, is there anything you wanted to add to sort of the comments or questions that you had to fill me in a little more?
	Well, basically...
	To brief you up on this situation, it will take time.
	So I thought of doing it in a step-by-step manner.
	First of all, I will brief you on my situation, then I will brief you on the Lebanese mentality, then basically on the situation of the country, and then we could discuss what I mean by change.
	Well, I'm comfortable and ready for you to begin.
	Okay, so like I said in the introduction, 13 years ago I moved to Lebanon with my family.
	My father was an aerospace engineer in Canada.
	And then he was investing in Lebanon from time to time to build a house.
	And then when the house got built, we moved to Lebanon.
	First year I got pretty surprised by the Sorry, I'm stressed a bit.
	English is not my modern term.
	You're doing well.
	And I'm sorry, just if you pause for a sec, do you mind if I ask what your ethnicity is?
	I'm Canadian.
	Caucasian.
	No, no, I get that.
	But are you white?
	I'm just curious, because Patrick is...
	Caucasian.
	Caucasian, okay.
	Because Patrick is an Irish name, and it just sounds like you've traveled around, and I just want to get a bit of perspective on that.
	Okay.
	Sorry, continue.
	And listen, don't worry about your language.
	Listen, I tell you this, Patrick, and I've said this to other callers too, I'm so bad with non-computer foreign languages.
	Like, give me another computer language, I can learn my 15th by now or something, right?
	But I'm so bad at learning non-English languages, and I've tried German and French and so on, barely competent, that anybody who's not a native speaker in English, who speaks to me in English, you already have my massive admiration.
	I mean, English is a tricky language as well, to put it mildly, so don't worry about that.
	You're doing great.
	Fair enough, fair enough.
	Thank you.
	Okay, like I said, like the Americans investing in Mexico to build a house and live off of low taxes when they retire, my father was investing in Lebanon from time to time, and obviously he was paying taxes in Canada.
	And he had a six-figure income.
	So, he had a pretty good income and then he built a sort of villa in Lebanon and we moved there 13 years ago with the whole family.
	Why Lebanon?
	I mean, just throw a dartboard at a globe or was there family history there or what?
	Okay, so my father is Lebanese and my mother is Canadian.
	Okay.
	So, it was sort of like his dream to move back here.
	And I'll sort of deal with the situation in the country later because there was war when he moved to Canada.
	So in 1975 there was the civil war in Lebanon.
	And he moved a bit before the civil war because his father was giving him an opportunity for work.
	And then he studied in Canada for his whole life and then he continued working there.
	So basically, he lived around 20 years in Canada, or 25 years.
	Okay, then we moved to Lebanon.
	And as I found out, it wasn't as extremist as I thought.
	Because on the multimedia, they always give you this impression that the Middle East is this sort of country here.
	Where women are wearing burqa and there's always terrorism.
	Those sort of things.
	Okay, so in my conversation today, what I'd like to do is shed light on what is really happening in the mind of people around here.
	I'm going to give a unique insight, a unique analysis on the situation and mentalities.
	And sort of like give like the cycle of what is happening inside the mind of people.
	So first of all, I got here.
	What strikes me?
	No desert.
	We live on a mountain chain.
	It's very green.
	People in the same family don't get married.
	That's a cliché.
	Oh, like the cousin marriages?
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's a cliché.
	Lebanon also has a fairly Christian history too, right?
	Indeed, indeed.
	It's 45% Christian, I think.
	Yeah, it's 45% Christian.
	I'll get to that later, too.
	There are rarely women wearing burqa.
	The hijab is not everywhere, but it's like 10% of women are wearing the hijab.
	It's the veil in front of the face.
	We have beaches, a lot of beaches.
	Women are wearing bikinis, they are nightclubs.
	Again, that's when the multimedia outside Lebanon are giving a cliché view of the country, they're always saying that, like, Lebanon, it's the Paris of the Middle East.
	But that's very, very cliché.
	I'm just starting with the good part, because I'll get to the bad part later.
	Women go to school and university, so there's education.
	But before I left Canada, I thought it would be something completely different.
	The weather is amazing.
	The nature is amazing.
	The mountain chain is amazing.
	The sea is amazing.
	We have snow.
	And the food is great.
	Historical science is great too.
	So basically, the country itself is fabulous.
	But everything that involves people is fabulous.
	I'll talk to you about that.
	Okay, so you have anything to add after the intro?
	No, I'll hold off on what I wanted to add about the people after you talk about the people, so go ahead.
	Okay.
	So after the intro, I want to talk about the Lebanese mentality.
	And then after the Lebanese mentality, I'll deal with the environment, because it's obviously related.
	One affects the other, and the other affects the other.
	Okay, so you had a series about R versus K mentalities.
	And when I was watching it, I thought about Lebanon, obviously, and I thought, are Lebanese more R than K? And then you said at the beginning of the introduction that men used to live in the hunter-gatherer society as hunters.
	And when they ran out of food, they left the hunter society because of fight.
	And they went to live in the coldest climates to be a gatherer and more like a gardener.
	That's what we say.
	Yeah, farmers.
	But yeah.
	Farmers, okay.
	And to focus on long-term investment and thinking about the future.
	So how I see Lebanon and the step of moving from this hunter-gatherer to farmer, they're still in the fight, if we want to say it.
	So...
	The sentence I would use to qualify Lebanese is impatient opportunistic exploiter.
	What was the first word?
	Impatient.
	Impatient.
	Opportunistic exploiter.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	First of all, it's all in the mentality Lebanese have a superiority complex.
	They want to be their own leader.
	They want to be in front of the pack.
	Like those old hunters.
	They want to show others that they're in the front.
	Look at me.
	But they also have that group psychology.
	They're bunched together in a chaotic way.
	So they want to appear in front of the pack and that they know everything.
	But in fact, they have a very...
	Restricted knowledge of things.
	They have a local knowledge of things.
	They have so much of a local knowledge that they copy their peers.
	They want to appear in front of others, but by copying their peers, like if someone has a shiny widget or something, a sort of behavior that appears in the front, they want to copy that, even if it's very, very bad in a moral way.
	So what does it lead to?
	A society with people with bad behavior.
	For example, I made a website about Explorable Explanation.
	Explorable Explanation is a way of explaining something to someone by letting him explore a subject.
	So I made a website to try to explain to people why the traffic in Lebanon People driving cars were really bad drivers.
	So, an example is, if there's a red light, because we have traffic light, if there's a red light, people will pass the red light if they see no one around them.
	If they see someone wearing fancy clothes, they'll wear fancy clothes.
	Fancy cars, they'll try to get fancy cars, even if they get in-depth.
	Okay, also, one thing That's a special thing about Middle Eastern countries and immigration.
	If you want to migrate to Lebanon, you need someone called the kafir.
	Kafir means a master.
	You need someone and the country that will accept you so you're able to work here.
	Anything that happens in the country, like if the If you kill someone, it's the employer that will be responsible for you.
	So they got also that superiority complex from those laws.
	If you have anything to add, you can cut me at any moment.
	No, no, listen, I mean, I've never lived in Lebanon, so I'm happy to hear.
	Please keep going.
	Okay.
	So...
	Like I said, if something happens, if the employee does something bad, it's the employer that's responsible for him.
	So that gives them a superiority complex.
	But basically, everyone that's not Lebanese and Lebanon is treated like a slave.
	Literally.
	Like, they won't talk to you directly.
	They will talk to your superior.
	But not slave as slave.
	Like...
	We have a lot of Filipinos in Lebanon, but they don't work as waiters or in big companies.
	What they do, their only job is to clean houses.
	They don't do anything else.
	So people have this stereotype that if someone is a Filipino, he's a house cleaner.
	Okay, but this is really weird when the people are slaves themselves.
	They're slaves to their superiority complex by following other people.
	Right, right.
	So they follow morals, the tyrant morals, just for the appurtenance of the group.
	They want to be in the group.
	And when they're faced with reality, like someone tells them, no, you live in this situation, the situation which I'll talk about later when I finish the talk about the mentality, They'll go against this opinion.
	It's completely hypocrite.
	Right.
	They think of themselves too highly.
	And there was an example of that to a destructive level recently.
	There was a newspaper, Saudi Arabian newspaper, that released a caricature about Lebanon showing how it's It's kind of the slave of Saudi Arabia because the main funds of Lebanon come from Saudi Arabia.
	What was the response from the people?
	A group of people, a guy called Pierre Khashash and his friend went to the offices of the newspaper and they attacked them.
	They literally went to the office.
	By the way, you mean physically attacked them?
	Not physically.
	They threw paper around.
	They threw their paper and computers around.
	So still better than people protesting Donald Trump.
	Okay, still much more civilized than that.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Okay.
	So I have a friend who wrote an article about it and he said, it is an attack to the last piece of dignity that we as Lebanese have, giving us an image of barbaric who can take differing opinions, who think fists are the proper response to speech, who think that chaos is more appropriate than order, and who think that our dignity is restored with violence, not with honor.
	Okay, so I'm currently working on a book about evolutionary psychology, and there's a section I'm going to talk about that.
	When people are faced with the difference of opinion, they usually go into the state of bump in the brain.
	Yeah, I mean, obviously you want to differentiate by IQ here, right?
	I invite people on my show all the time who I disagree with.
	And that's because I'm comfortable having those conversations, and I flatter myself perhaps in thinking that I'm going to do quite well in those interactions, and so I don't mind that.
	But people who don't have much intelligence, when they come across a contrary opinion, it highlights two things.
	It highlights their lack of ability, and it highlights their vanity.
	Dumb people, less intelligent people, and I'll tell you later why I'm mentioning all of this, but less intelligent people spend their whole lives thinking they're great and avoiding anything that might challenge that hypothesis, to put it mildly, right?
	I mean, the number of times that I've been in a coffee shop or a bar, you know, I've been talking with someone and this person just has all the answers.
	It's just like this, period, you know, and, you know, It turns out that they're a waiter someplace.
	And it's like, okay, you've got these great answers.
	Why don't you start writing articles?
	Why don't you put yourself out there in the public sphere?
	Why don't you write a book?
	Why don't you do something that is getting...
	No.
	Right?
	No, he wants to be a big fish in a little pond.
	And it is like the villain of Mice and Men, like Steinbeck's novel, the guy who's short and really, really touchy, really hypersensitive.
	And less intelligent people attack Contrary ideas, not because they can't handle them.
	I mean, there's tons of things I can't handle.
	You know, I can't handle Ronda Rousey in a ring.
	So guess what?
	I don't get with Ronda Rousey.
	I couldn't handle Ronda Rousey out of the ring.
	I mean, I couldn't handle Ronda Rousey in a thumb wrestling contest, right?
	And so there's tons of things I can't handle.
	So I know that and I know what my strengths and my weaknesses are.
	So I work with With what God gave me, right?
	But less intelligent people, they attack contrary opinions because they can't handle them and because of the Dunning-Kruger effect where people who aren't intelligent think they're much smarter than they are.
	And it's very tough if you're not intelligent to recognize that you're not intelligent.
	Because with lower intelligence comes greater vanity, which is why the smartest people tend to be quite humble and tend not to like ordering people around because, you know, as I've talked about when it comes to voluntarism and all that, I don't tell people what to do.
	I'm a smart man.
	I'm a wise man.
	I've got the biggest philosophy show in the world.
	I'm still not telling people what to do because what is it I first say to people?
	I'm an amateur.
	I don't know what I'm talking about.
	These are just my opinions.
	I can't tell you what to do.
	I am humble.
	When it comes to telling people what to do because I can't possibly drink deep of the cup of life that somebody else has lived for 20 or 30 or 40 or more years in an hour or half an hour or whatever.
	So I am not certain how the poor should be taken care of.
	I am not certain how roads should be built.
	I'm not certain how national defense or currency.
	I don't know.
	And people say, well, what's your solution?
	No!
	The whole point of having brains is recognizing the limitations of having brains.
	People who are short on brains think they're very tall on knowledge.
	And the more arrogant somebody is in terms of, it's just like this, this is the answer, this is what we should do, it should go like this, do this, do that, period.
	Right?
	Then the less intelligent they are.
	And so This is probably why.
	I mean, this is why you see with lower IQ cultures or geographies this attack on different opinions because there's certainty combined with ignorance.
	And certainty and ignorance are pretty much two sides of the same coin.
	I don't mean certainty about principles.
	I mean certainty about specific solutions for other people.
	Just do this and everything will be great.
	And this is why I'm much more into thou shalt not rather than thou shalt.
	I have no problem saying to someone, don't steal, don't kill, don't rape, don't assault.
	After that, I'm kind of, I run out of things to do pretty quickly.
	You know, stay on your side of the knife and we're totally fine.
	And have your knife stay on the outside of my ribs and we're, you know, whatever you want to do with that is fine after that.
	So...
	So when people aren't interested in free speech, and you see this on American university campuses, right?
	I mean, American university campuses have opened the floodgates to a not-so-intelligent set of populations.
	And if you look at the makeup of the social justice warriors, it's not hard to figure out who they are.
	They've opened up their floodgates to less intelligent people and so less intelligent people are absolutely certain that they're right and absolutely certain that everyone who disagrees with them is evil and absolutely certain that they know exactly what needs to be said, exactly what needs to be done and anyone who disagrees with them is just completely immoral.
	And that's just what happens is when you let the barbarians into the gates, you don't have Rome anymore.
	You don't have a Senate.
	You have, you know, a screeching red-faced set fire to the couch as mob rule.
	I'm not characterizing all of Lebanon, of course, in that way.
	And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, you say that people don't marry within their family.
	Well, no, they do.
	Obviously not everyone.
	And, you know, if you're from a more intelligent country, Family, then clearly, right?
	And, you know, if your parents are coming from different regions or ethnicities or histories, then of course they didn't.
	But the hard data about Lebanon is pretty clear.
	And the hard data is this, that 42% of the marriages are blood-related.
	42% of the marriages are blood-related.
	That is hard data.
	Now, what's not quite so hard data, but probably is not far off, is, and probably largely as a result of the fact that 42% of the marriages are consanguine or blood-related marriages, that the average IQ in Lebanon is about 82.
	And that is very low.
	So, I'm happy to, you know, please continue.
	I just wanted to give that perspective to sort of people, at least from, you know, I obviously can't follow you in the travelogue, but I can give you some principles behind it.
	Yeah, but most of the blood-related marriages and weddings are done in the poor regions.
	I'll talk about segregation later.
	Of course, low IQ people prefer blood marriages because they can't get high IQ mates.
	So of course they're going to prefer low IQ. Just like insecure men like third world immigrants coming in because they have very high sexual market value relative to the third world immigrants as compared to the cheerleader in high school or something.
	And so, for sure, poor people like consanguineous marriages, especially if they're arranged consanguineous marriages, because then they don't have to test their sexual market value in the open marketplace.
	And so, because they can't compete with the high IQ people when it comes to marriage, they prefer blood-related marriages, which means that they're most likely all going to stay dull, right?
	Low IQ, because that's what happens.
	Okay, let's mention something.
	What I said in the introduction, like, I didn't meet people that had consanguine marriage weddings.
	It means I didn't see them directly.
	It also means that there is a huge segregation in Lebanon.
	Oh, yeah.
	Lebanon is quite apartheid, right?
	With regards to the Palestinians?
	I'll talk to that about later.
	Okay, okay.
	You go ahead.
	Let me lecture you on.
	You are the conduit from Lebanon to the audience, not me to Wiki, so go ahead.
	Okay, so I talked about the superiority complex.
	Now I'll talk about the do-or-die mentality.
	We're still in the post-war period, or actually war in quotes.
	So people are in a situation of stress.
	So they are under the effect of cortisol, the hormone of stress.
	And you know the effect of cortisol on children.
	If children are exposed to cortisol when they're very young, for a long period of time, their brain development is lower.
	They are more aggressive, more violent.
	They don't follow orders.
	They vandalize.
	But it also affects the happiness of people.
	It makes them cling to material stuff.
	And when people are not happy, happiness is related to success, to status, and to the way of living.
	Less intelligent people measure themselves against other people rather than their own potentiality or to objective values or virtues.
	And this makes them even more the slaves, right?
	So there's an expression you probably remember from your time in Canada called keeping up with the Joneses, which is, you know, well, the neighbors just bought a nicer car, so now we have to go and buy a nicer car.
	And the neighbors put in a swimming pool, now we have to put in a swimming pool because we're competing with And who are they looking up to?
	The politicians.
	And who are they?
	War criminals.
	I mean, in England, it's the same thing with regards to the royalty, right?
	At least it used to be.
	I don't know if it's probably not quite so much.
	I don't think a lot of people living in Brixton from Somali descent are very interested in what Prince Harry is up to these days.
	But yeah, it is terrible.
	They take the wrong role models and spend their lives running after these people who morally are probably fairly reprehensible, to put it mildly.
	Running after pain and misery.
	So poor people spend time raising their statuses, they stress, and stress itself lowers their status and their happiness.
	They cling to their phones, their jobs, they drive fast, they're angry.
	And this angriness makes children more stressed, and stress makes brains smaller and makes children more violent.
	And these cycles continue.
	But all in all, it's just a feeling to hide insecurity.
	And they just want to belong to the group.
	They see everything as a personal attack.
	They react with emotions.
	They just want to show that they're better than anyone else.
	Now, a note on status.
	As I said, I'm writing a book about evolutionary psychology.
	And status itself, related to the hunter-gatherer society, used to be a matter of life and death.
	And when you lose status, you have a bunch of emotions that emerge in the person.
	Envy, fear...
	If they repress the feeling, they look down on themselves to accept that they're lower than someone else.
	And if it's in the same field as the other person, like for example, if you're in the computer business and someone is better than you in the computer business, then you calibrate your status against him.
	You will feel angry about that.
	Angry at what he does, and this anger can convert itself to violence.
	And that's what's happening here.
	Now, what do you mean, how is that manifesting, this violence?
	It's in the way people react to show their status.
	They do it in a provocative manner.
	Let's say someone is driving on the highway.
	And someone's driving a bit slower, he will start to flash the light as if it's a shotgun or AK-47.
	Then he will cut him off and he will honk a lot.
	That's just an example.
	Right.
	One time it happened to me and the guy almost hit me.
	They do it on purpose.
	Just to show that they're superior in an animal way, if I can say.
	Rustic way.
	Okay, but this feeling of...
	What happens when Lebanese go outside?
	In Lebanon, there are no taxes.
	When you get rich, you get really rich.
	And you get arrogant.
	But when you go outside Lebanon and you have those mentality of going ahead of people and you're better, it's very good at the entrepreneurship business.
	Because other Westerners are less likely to go against you.
	They're more civilized, if I can say.
	But the Lebanese passport is restricted a bit, so people usually travel to Saudi Arabia, and that's the link between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
	The main income.
	So smart people leave the country, and they come back rich.
	They come back with big heads, and they think they are very high.
	And you talk with any university students, you tell them what you want to do, they want to work abroad and come back, bring money to the country.
	Which is wrong in some ways.
	Okay, you have a note?
	You mean wrong how?
	What do you mean?
	Wrong as in, they go work a normal job outside, but they don't invest in the other country, they come back and They come back with big hats.
	That's the issue.
	Because in Lebanon there are no taxes, so it's a tax heaven.
	They invest here, so...
	You get what I mean?
	Yeah, I understand.
	So the people that stay and don't go abroad, they abuse the system.
	The people that stay and that are smart, they abuse the minority that is stupid.
	Smart surrounded by them, it equals corruption.
	Now, can you just, sorry to interrupt, I'm a little confused when you say there's no taxes in Lebanon.
	It's very, very, very low.
	Personal income tax, 20%, 15% corporate tax, 10% sales tax, 23.5% social security tax.
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	Maybe lower, obviously, than other places, but it's not no tax.
	I mean on the goods.
	Oh, no sales tax, you mean?
	Yeah.
	Well, here we got this 10% sales tax.
	Maybe people don't pay it as much as they should, but it seems to be definitely there.
	Yeah, but it's not added when you pay.
	It's already...
	Oh, it's built in?
	Yeah.
	Alright.
	Okay, I don't want to confuse you with some sort of tax-free society, which I've talked about in the past.
	I just want people to get confused about that.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Do I have anything to add?
	Let's just see here.
	So, let's see.
	Yeah, free market, not great in Lebanon, right?
	I mean...
	No, we have a lot of monopoly.
	Yeah, 59.5, it's 98th in the world, just above Indonesia, and just below Bhutan, right?
	So, not a very...
	Not a very free economy.
	And again, that's a lower IQ population.
	That's where you can end up.
	Because it takes a high IQ population to appreciate the long-term value of the free market.
	Because introducing free market reforms is tough in the short run and beneficial in the long run.
	And so I... Yeah.
	I mean, so if it's a low IQ environment, until the IQ is raised, I mean, the economy is not going to improve.
	And given that nobody knows how to raise IQ, that's one of these grim truths about life that, you know, you have to accept if you want to grow up.
	I don't mean you, just other people and so on.
	But, sorry, go ahead.
	Okay.
	I want to talk about segregation and sectarianism.
	Sectarianism is when you separate the population...
	Depending on the religion.
	Okay, in Lebanon, religion is politic.
	It's completely tight.
	And the laws, they are things related to religion.
	So basically, during the 1975 civil war, the country got divided by religion.
	The Christians were in the mountain region, the Shia Muslims on the borders, and the Sunni probably everywhere.
	But when you think about it, people don't look at the religion as a religion.
	They look at it as an appartenance to a group, as a political group.
	Because when you vote for a leader, you don't vote for him, you vote for his religion.
	So when you want to take place in the Parliament, you don't take place for the ideology, you take place for your religion.
	So it's a way of manipulating the country, if I can say.
	Okay, that's a sort of segregation.
	Second segregation is the segregation of wealth.
	Poor and rich.
	On the borders, we have very poor people on the borders across Syria.
	They are so poor, the only way for them to live is to go in the army.
	They go in the army, they die.
	And we have the big brains, what they do.
	Or they leave, they bring money.
	And they have extremely good education and super big houses.
	And they think of themselves highly.
	And we have those other kinds that they don't leave the country and they abuse the system.
	So basically, you combine the two and you get a pretty messed up situation.
	Also, to add to that, there is a bit of sexual repression in Lebanon.
	And I watched your video about an article related to this.
	And sexual repression is related to less number of personalities because you have less freedom, so less personality.
	In a stricter society, you have more people that are alike.
	Like in China, people look the same.
	That was the bit about segregation.
	Okay.
	Now, if you have a question, if you're going to do a book, I don't want you to obviously read the book on my show.
	If you have a question, I'm happy to answer, but otherwise I'm probably going to have to move on.
	Okay.
	So, change.
	Like you've heard, I'm spending time with crazy and dangerous people around me.
	Their personalities are socially transmitted disease.
	We turn like the people we surround ourselves with.
	What should we do in this situation?
	I try to get people to listen.
	People won't listen.
	It's so deep in their blood.
	You can't change others.
	You can't change the status of others.
	Who can you change?
	Can you change children and this kind of society?
	No.
	No, because if you change children, then you end up colliding with the interests of their parents who don't want them to change, and you will lose access to the children.
	I mean, if you were a teacher and you wanted to go and teach people philosophy, the kids' philosophy, the kids would go home and say, hey, teachers, teach me all this great new wonderful stuff, and what happened, right?
	The parents will get you fired, and you won't be there anymore, and they'll just reassert control over their kids.
	Then who should be targeted?
	The people of opinions?
	Well, why is it your job to fix Lebanon?
	Maybe I'm missing something here, but why don't you just find a place where you can enjoy the culture that is rather than trying to wrestle to improve the intelligence of an IQ82 country?
	Where half the people marry their cousins.
	I mean, I don't know why.
	Unless you can find, I don't know, some serum to increase intelligence.
	I mean, nobody knows how to increase intelligence.
	So, I don't know.
	I mean, I think you're kind of, as they say, tilting at windmills here, like from Don Quixote, right?
	Like you're not...
	I don't think there's a plan here that has a chance of working.
	Like you've said in the past, integrity at the moment is extremely costly.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, you can't do more than the internet, my friend, right?
	I mean, the internet and people have access to the entire canon of Western philosophy, of self-knowledge, of wisdom accumulated through the ages from all cultures.
	It's right at the tip of their phone.
	And...
	You know, if you were to say, well, to make the world more egalitarian, to make the world more peaceful, to make the world better, to make the world share more values, what I'm going to do is find a way to virtually for free get the sum total of the world's knowledge into the palm of every human being in the world in their own language.
	Right?
	And that's already been achieved for the most part.
	And so, if that was your goal and you sweated blood to achieve it, well, you would have by now achieved it.
	and there are no or few external formal barriers to the acquisition of knowledge for anyone who has the internet.
	Now, I know, right, there's translation issues, and some internets are censored and so on.
	And, you know, I've said to people, you know, stay and fight, but that's in high IQ countries, right?
	I mean, then stay and fight, right?
	But, you know, casting your pearls before swine, I mean, what happens, right?
	So, yeah, my suggestion would be that you find a culture that is closer to what you want and what you value and go and work to make that culture even better, right?
	If you want to be a basketball coach, you don't Take the little guy from Game of Thrones and work him really hard, right?
	I mean, if you want to be a singing coach and you want to get someone to the top level of the singing profession, you don't take Harvey Feinstein.
	You don't take people with weird, rowdy voices and try and get them to sing opera, right?
	I mean, you get the best possible opera.
	And...
	Go forward with that, right?
	I mean, you get the best and make it better.
	You don't try and get the crap and make it good.
	Now, I've talked with Syrians, they should be staying and fighting, but that's because it's actually a war.
	You're not talking about martial combat here, right?
	You're talking about bringing reason to a cousin marriage, low IQ population.
	And that's, man, I mean, it's not going to work.
	Indeed.
	You need at least an IQ in the low 90s to even have a remotely functioning democracy.
	And if you really want to help the world, as I've said before, we need to admit this IQ disparity across the world.
	We need to put our resources into figuring out how to close the gap if there's genetics involved.
	If there's not genetics involved, we're totally hosed.
	People say, oh, if it's genetics, it's fixable.
	If it's genetics, there's a possibility of being able to fix it.
	If...
	It's not genetic but culture.
	Well, then there's nothing you can do because low IQ cultures resist smart people coming in and giving them better tools because of the vanity and insecurity of having low IQ. They just reject it every single time.
	And the benefits that accrue to a low IQ population in a free society, the benefits that accrue are beyond their time horizon of planning.
	And so it's not, you know, you're asking me what you can do when...
	Well, I would say get yourself to a place where your gifts will be appreciated.
	Okay, so the answer to what percentage of your life should be spent to share virtue depends on the country.
	Lebanon, zero!
	I'm trying not to be a determinist here, but we have to place our resources where they have the most value.
	And if you have a fat Chinese guy or a lean Kenyan who wants you to coach them in running, take the lean Kenyan.
	That's what's going to...
	The guy's going to go far.
	And...
	If you want to coach the world, you don't just grab random people and just start barking good suggestions at them.
	You find people who are motivated, who have some sort of natural ability, who don't have, I don't know, huge weight issues.
	You know, like there's no ballet coach that's going to pick me out of a lineup and say, yes, that man.
	He's almost 50.
	He can't touch his toes.
	And he has the rhythm of an epileptic seagull flying into a propeller.
	So, he's the guy I want to work with.
	And it's like, no, go work with some young Nadia Kamenichi wannabe so that your teaching skills are going to get the most traction.
	Okay.
	But it's pretty doom.
	Well, but recognizing where things aren't going to work is very, very important, right?
	I mean, if...
	If you're heading in the wrong direction in the woods, don't you want someone to tell you?
	Of course you do, right?
	You could come to Canada and talk about the refugee crisis and give some very useful perspective.
	Like, if you bring these people to Canada, all you're going to get is a slice of Lebanon in Canada.
	You're not going to get people who are going to become Canadians.
	Okay, makes sense.
	So yeah, there's a lot that you have to offer.
	But you might want to be around some more I've seen this in other cultures as well.
	The culture is defined by vanity because there are so many low IQ people around.
	They end up wanting to just lord it over the less intelligent people, which is a pretty pitiful thing to be doing.
	So you can't even reach the high IQ people because they're consumed by the vanity of the entire cultural environment they grew up in.
	So you need to choose carefully who you're targeting.
	Someone that is at least able to listen and understand.
	If you've got a helicopter called intelligence that you want to land safely, Find some solid ground.
	You know, this hovering over a swamp and crossing your fingers, you're just going to run out of gas at some point and there's going to be a ball of flame and instant sunburn.
	Yeah, this summer I'm taking vacations in Quebec, Canada.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Go to Quebec and try to get them to not be rabid socialists constantly threatening Canada with a divorce to shake down the rest of the population.
	That might be interesting.
	That might be a worthwhile thing to be doing because, you know, lots of smart people in Quebec.
	I lived there for four years, so I can talk about that.
	So, yeah, that would be my suggestion.
	Fair enough.
	It's the bomb in the brain.
	Yeah, it's the bomb in the brain, and you need access to the wiring to diffuse it, and IQ82 country, you're probably not going to get anywhere close.
	All right, and move on to the next caller, but thank you very much.
	If you get your book out, let us know, and we can maybe push it out to see if we can get some eyeballs to you, but I appreciate the call.
	Thanks everyone so much for calling in.
	Thank you for keeping this show sparkling, effervescent, and as tasty as a 25-year-old $750 bottle of champagne.
	Look at that.
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