3293 Man Cheats on Virtuous Wife with Virtuous Mistresses - Call In Show - May 17th, 2016
Question 1: [2:53] - “Evolution theory has been touted as ‘fact’ for many a decade now, but I'm not convinced. What if I could provide an alternative explanation that doesn't involve magic, mysticism, or cop-outs like ‘God works in mysterious ways?’ Isn't it possible that creationism, even God himself, could be explained scientifically only given enough knowledge on the subject?”Question 2: [43:12] - “As a man, married to a virtuous amazing sweetheart of a woman, father of 2 beautiful children, I am torn between my desires of habitual womanizing and the responsibility that I have towards my family. My wife wants a faithful loving husband but my sexual desires take me around the world everywhere except her. Is this something that is indefinitely manageable or am I doing worse by staying with her in this double life?”Question 3: [1:41:51] - “I'm a visiting teacher currently working in the most socialist part of France. I'm always asked for my viewpoint on political issues such as gun control, the European migrant crisis, the government and Donald Trump. Despite the fact that I see an overwhelming interest in what I have to say, nobody has ever circled back and accepted my arguments. My question is, why do you think this is?”Question 4: [2:12:55] - “What is masculinity?”Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
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So we have some great callers.
First caller has an alternative theory to evolution.
And you'll see the degree to which we managed to get to that theory and the degree to which he was or, let's say, was not able to admit that he was wrong early on.
Ah, it's so fun to watch defenses in action.
The second caller loves his virtuous wife.
Yeah, it sounds pretty good.
One of the challenges in his life is that he also loves his highly virtuous mistresses and lovers and conquests.
And I think there was a stewardess or two mixed in there as well and wanted to know how he could recover from his addiction to sleeping around on his virtuous wife with his virtuous mistresses.
So we had a pretty in-depth Conversation about that, which I think you will find very instructive and illuminating and I think he got some real good out of what we were talking about.
A teacher in France called in, says, hey, you know, I keep talking to people about reason and evidence and facts and they listen politely but nothing ever seems to change.
They don't really argue back.
They don't ever circle back and talk about things again.
It just vanishes into thin, thin Everest-style air.
And so we talk a little bit about information that we've talked about before in the Death of Reason presentation, but it's really, really important to know when you are casting your seeds on fertile ground or not.
You know, we all have a short amount of time on this planet and we've got a lot to do.
Let's make ourselves as efficient as possible.
We had an absent fourth caller who wanted to ask me about the nature of masculinity.
First thing, punctuality.
He didn't actually show up.
So I talked about how I developed my conception of masculinity.
I came from a single mother household, so it was a little tricky.
But the influences and histories that helped me to define what it is to be a man with a swinging set of castanets, And I think you'll find it helpful.
This is not a definitive philosophical explanation, but more of a personal rumination of the development of my masculine characteristics, and I hope that you will share your thoughts on that topic as well.
So, with no further ado, let's get those castanets clacking.
Alright, up first today we have Eric.
Eric wrote in and said, Evolutionary theory has been touted as fact for many a decade now, but I'm not convinced.
What if I could provide an alternative explanation that doesn't involve magic, mysticism, or cop-outs like God works in mysterious ways?
Isn't it possible that creationism, even God himself, could be explained scientifically, only given enough knowledge on the subject?
That's from Eric.
Well, hello Eric, how you doing?
Hello.
I'm doing alright.
So you want to take down the Dawkins Dennett and Darwin edifice?
Yeah, yeah.
As I said in the question, it's always touted as fact.
In every documentary you watch about various things, particularly when it comes to Paleontological documentaries about dinosaurs and such.
They always assert it as if it's a proven fact, but I've seen all the same evidence, and I just don't buy it.
Hang on, so you're saying that the evidence that it's for evolution you find to be lacking?
Yes.
And what specific areas do you find lacking, if you don't mind me asking?
We'll get to that in a minute.
First, I just want to say that I want to make a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution.
Microevolution, which I typically just simply refer to as adaptation, that definitely has been proven.
That's observable.
Definitely clearly explains variations within a species.
I don't really have any issues with that.
It's the idea that this can lead to macroevolution, which is basically the idea of one species turning into another species that I don't buy.
Okay, and there is, of course, evidence for Species turning into other species which have been observed directly, but do you find that evidence lacking?
Yeah, let's pull out a specific piece of evidence and we'll discuss it.
Alright, so there's this couple, I think it's a couple, and Peter and Rosemary Grant, and they have been studying the finches, which were made famous by Darwin And Darwin,
you know, he said that There would be new species, but if you look at the time it took to go from sort of land mammals, like the hippos are related to the whales, it was like, what, 56 million years or something?
That's quite a long time.
However, there is a new species of finch that has evolved during the time that this couple has been They're Princeton professors.
They have been observing this stuff.
And there has been a...
It's a love match between a medium-beaked ground finch and a cactus finch, things like that.
We're never quite sure that I would ever say a lot in my life.
And they have created what is classified as a new species.
Because, of course, there is a new species.
And there is, of course, like stuff that would evolve gradually.
But, of course, there is interbreeding as well.
And so there is evidence of a new species that has occurred just over 40 years of observation in the Galapagos.
Now, I don't know all the details behind that, so I haven't heard about that, but it sounds to me, it's like, are we sure this is a new species, or is it just simply a new breed?
I mean, we're still talking about a finch.
They may be two different finches, two different types of finch, but the end result is still a finch.
Oh, yeah, of course.
I mean, but it is something that taxomologically is categorized as a new species.
Now, has a finch given birth to a whale?
Well, no.
In fact, there's no way that that could conceivably occur under evolution.
So there are, of course, there's evidence for vestigial prior to human attributes, even on your own body.
It's kind of cool.
Like they've done, you know, a human ear.
I can move my ears a little.
Let me just give you, for those watching the video, There's my ears moving.
We have these muscles around our ears that are left over from when our ears used to be more like the ears of some of earlier species that would move their ears to try and echolocate the direction of sound.
And they've actually put little...
I guess electrical impulse receivers.
Around people's ears, they've played them a sound and they can see that the subconscious is activating the vestigial muscles to move the ear even though the human ear doesn't really move much to find sound anymore.
So that's sort of one example.
Even goosebumps.
Goosebumps are left over from when we had a lot more hair and making the hair stick up would make us warmer and also goosebumps can be activated by fight or flight which makes a creature look larger, you know, the fluffed up Sorry, fluffed up cat or a fluffed up pigeon kind of thing for cold and for intimidation.
There is a tendon in your wrist.
You have to sort of lay it on flat and push your thumb down and so on.
And you can see it.
It is about 10 to 15% of people don't even have this tendon because it was for when we were...
Well, the common ancestor we share with the chimpanzee gave us that extra tendon for grabbing.
And even the ridiculous strength that babies have.
Like there are studies where babies a month old can hold up their whole body weight just by gripping with their fingers.
Certainly not needed in human evolution, but leftover from when we used to swing from trees to trees.
And of course the tail, we grow a tail in embryonic form.
There's a tail with like six or eight Vertebrae that grow out of her tiny fetus butts.
I think we have a title.
And then, of course, those cells are programmed to die off.
And then we end up with that little stubbly thing that every child ends up sitting on too hard at one time or another.
Although there are, of course, occasionally babies that are born still with tails if the mutation doesn't cause the...
And you can sell to die off.
And you can also see, of course, that commonalities between, you know, bats and people and other animals, squirrels and flying squirrels and so on, that during the evolution, they start off as arms and then they turn into bats.
So you can see sort of that factor occurring.
Now the question of whether or not a new species can evolve, they have managed to evolve what would be classified as new species using, you know, fruit flies, which I think we share half of our DNA with, believe it or not.
And Jeff Goldblum, I think a little more, but they have managed to create new species using fruit flies, which have these ridiculously short lifespan, and that's a pretty well suited for that kind of stuff.
So have we seen one species mutate into something in a different classification or category?
Well, no, but of course, we don't have the What is it?
Four billion years to work with that evolution has had.
So that's just some arguments for, but I think you wouldn't want to create an impossible standard.
Like, I have to see something that evolution itself would deny is possible before my eyes in order to accept evolution.
Well, there is the issue with, I mean, a lot of this stuff is supposition.
I mean, you can't really observe that.
Sorry to interrupt you.
You said can't observe that, but I talked about a bunch of stuff.
I'm not sure what you mean.
The – a kind of animal turning into another kind of animal, not just simply another – what's taxonomically – taxonomically.
I know.
It's one of these tough words.
Taxonomically a different species but another kind altogether.
You know, like, for example, supposedly the ancestors of the whales were, you know, land animals.
Obviously, that's clearly a different species.
I mean, that's...
That's not even close.
I mean, that's quite a departure from...
I'm sorry, what's not even close?
The difference between what is supposedly the ancestor to the whale and the modern whale.
Yeah, but they can see steps along the way, right?
So we have noses on the front of our face.
Some of us have noses a little larger.
What's that old joke?
Your nose was on time, but you were five minutes late.
But we have, of course, the...
Two nasal passages on the front of her face.
Some whales have the two nasal passages on the blowhole.
Some, like the dolphins, I think, they have only one, but they then split into two underneath the skull, I think, or going through the skull.
And they can see going back along the fossil path, they can see the drift of this nose from the front.
To the top of the head.
And so there is evidence, you know, every sort of step along the way of turning from a land animal into a sea, a sea mammal.
And there's also scientists, there's three species of wasps that have turned into three new species.
And just, we'll put the sources to all of this.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team found that evolutionary changes in one species of fruit fly trigger the cascade of evolutionary changes in three species of wasps that are predators of the fruit fly.
And again, I understand that they're not turning from wasps into bats, but that would be something that would be denied by Scott Egan, evolutionary biologist at Rice University, co-author of the study said, we tend to think of evolution occurring over millions of years.
What jumped out at me is that a new species can emerge in contemporary time.
And so this is, and now of course, there is a fairly objective definition of species.
I know that there's always a couple of fuzzy areas in just about all definitions involving biology in particular.
But there's fairly clear definitions of species, and when a biologist says it's a new species, he does have to conform to fairly common and objective standards of what a species is.
Hmm.
Back when you were talking about the skulls, though...
Now...
Truth be told, you know, the fossil records, I don't consider them to be that conclusive.
For one thing, you could probably take modern animal skulls, only skulls from existing animals, and arrange them in such a way that it looks like it's progressing from one to the other.
You could probably do that with a cat skull and a human skull.
You know, you work your way up to this, you know, to...
Maybe another skull or maybe a shorter cat skull.
Maybe work your way over to the lemurs and then into the monkeys, the lesser apes and then the greater apes.
Especially if you include more abnormal skulls like, for example, the skulls of people with Down syndrome.
Just that, and put that in a museum display, you'd probably convince, you know, 90% of the people that walk by and look at it.
So...
Sorry, sorry, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
So what you're saying is that there are, like intermediary species, there would be examples of an intermediary species That you could make a case for using contemporary fossils.
So somewhere between sort of a cat and a dog, you could make a case.
Wait.
What was that again?
So what you're saying is that we could take contemporary skulls or bones And we could try and make a case that there exists an animal halfway between a dog and a cat or whatever it would be.
Oh, yeah.
That you would try to make that case.
But you would do so knowing that it was a kind of fraud.
And so the point that you're making is, A, that the scientists would be involved in a kind of fraud with regards to this.
And, you know, there is fraud in science.
So, you know, there is an all human activity.
But at the same time, also, you have to challenge that the earlier species do not exist, right?
Now, since, what is it?
I think 90 or 95 percent, or maybe it's even 98 percent of all creatures that have existed have Died off.
And given that there are about five or six million species in the world at the moment, given that there's been a massive die off.
Clearly, we didn't start with a huge number of species and whittled it down.
what must have happened is we started with a few number of single-celled organisms and so on and then it got more complex so there's been a proliferation of a different set of a greater set of animals and a lot of them have died off for you know ice ages and what comets
and according to Gary Larson smoking for the dinosaurs and things like that so we would have to accept that since a lot of species have the vast majority of things that are alive have died off that there must be something new coming into being Otherwise, we'd start off with, I don't know, what is it?
60 or 70 million different species, and it's been whittled down.
And I don't see how you could possibly start off with 60 or 70 million.
So, and also, of course, there's carbon dating, which allows you to tell how old these fossils are.
And there seems to be very, I mean, it's very much in step with what evolutionary theory would predict in that.
The less complex evolves into the more complex and given that there are intermediary species between, you know, the ancient animals that were the origins of whales and then they can find the intermediate animals and then there are the whales that this follows a pattern of time.
In other words, the whales aren't newer than their ancestors.
So there is quite a lot of cross-checking with regards to evolution in terms of dating.
There is also some issues that I have with dating.
Let's talk about carbon dating for a minute.
Carbon-14, for example, when you date things based on the decay of carbon-14...
You have to make the assumption that carbon-14 always, under any circumstances, will always decay at the same rate.
I'm not entirely certain, you know, if, like, for example, if you've got, you know, a skull that's under, you know, 20 feet of rock versus one that's right out there in the sunlight, you're saying sunlight isn't going to affect the decay?
Or what if it's next to, or at least near enough to, a source of radiation, you know, like, you know, uranium, is that really not going to affect the rate of decay?
And also, if you can use carbon-14 to date things, you know, a lot of times they use it to date things like rock, which I think is just kind of ridiculous.
Because clearly, if you can use it to date it, then that means there must be some way of resetting it.
For example, if you've got, you know, new lava coming up and you say, okay, this is new lava, this was just formed, you know, or this rock just formed from this lava, you know, obviously this is new.
The lava underneath the Earth has been here for, you know, a ridiculously long period of time.
It's just simply how long has it been in this state.
But even then, if heat, for example, can somehow reset the carbon-14, Well, then what about...
I mean, there's a whole bunch of questions that, I don't know, maybe I just need to talk to a geologist because there's a whole lot of things about this that doesn't really make any sense to me.
And then...
And also, there's other forms of dating using other radioactive isotopes that when you try and date the Earth, you get a date of some four billion years, for example.
Whereas if you use the exact same method with the exact same molecules, for example, in the atmosphere, you get a date of just a couple hundred thousand years.
When you've got these big disparities, And let's not forget the fact that there's what they call out-of-place artifacts, like the Kozo artifact, which is a spark plug that they found inside a rock.
When they initially dated the rock, they thought it was some million years old, but how can that be?
Because there's a spark plug in there.
Well, what I think, at least in regards to that specific artifact, is...
The rock around it didn't take anywhere near as long to form as the scientists claim that it did.
And...
I mean, because for one thing, I do not believe that we had spark plugs, you know, thousands of years ago.
No.
They found a...
You mean like a car spark plug in a rock?
Yes.
Yes.
Inside a rock, and this was supposed to be Thousands of years old, really?
Right.
And it's, like I said, I mean, I don't believe that it was really that old.
I think it was just a mistake in the dating method.
I don't think rocks take nearly as long to form as they claim.
I mean, heck, there are modern timber pilings that have already turned into low ranks of coal.
All right.
I'm just going to read a little bit about this.
It's called the COSO artifact.
This is from a wiki.
It's an object claimed by its discoverers to be a spark plug found encased in a lump of hard clay or rock on February 13th, 1961.
And if a spark plug is encased in a 500,000-year-old geode, this finding would represent a substantial scientific and historical anomaly as spark plugs were invented in the 19th century.
And let's see here.
Following its collection...
Mike Sell destroyed a diamond-edged blade cutting through the rock containing the artifact and discovered the item.
In a letter written to Desert Magazine of Outdoor Southwest, the reader stated that a trained geologist had dated the nodule as at least 500,000 years old and contained a man-made object.
The identity of the alleged trained geologist and means of geological dating were never clarified, nor were the findings ever published in any The nodules surrounding the spark may have accreted in a matter of years or decades as demonstrated by examples of very similar iron or steel artifact bearing nodules which
are discussed and illustrated by Cronin.
So, let's see here.
The location of the COSO artifact is unknown as of 2008.
And so, it was never independently tested.
Nobody has ever found the geologist who's supposed to have tested it.
It was never published.
It can't be found now.
So, I'm sorry.
I just got to call nonsense on this one.
And the fact that, I mean, have you read these criticisms?
Because you're putting it forward like, well, you know, there's a spark plug in a rock.
I mean, have you read these criticisms?
This is what I'm sort of curious about.
Some yes, some no.
I mean, in regards to the, you know, I believe I've actually seen a picture of it.
Or was it just a...
I don't think that's science, though, right?
I saw a picture of something is not the same as establishing its age, right?
Right, but the age...
Obviously is wrong.
I mean, if you logically found a man-made artifact inside a rock that was clearly at least somewhat modern, I mean, what I heard, the claim is that the spark plug that they found was actually dated to the 1930s, because that was consistent with the spark plugs that were produced during that time.
You know, Hang on.
You and I both know what this means.
It means that you have an emotional investment in a particular position, which renders you and lends you to be gullible to whatever supports that position.
And listen, I'm not saying this is a massive criticism.
We all have that, right?
I mean, this is why we need philosophy.
This is why we need science.
This is why we need independent analyses and so on.
Right, but I can say the same of you.
Hang on.
Oh, absolutely.
I just said the same of me.
I absolutely just said the same of me.
But the question is, if you are not engaged in a process where you say, oh, this is COSO artifact, and you bring this up as a disproof of evolution, and it turns out that it was never tested, it's not available, there's no evidence that it was, you know, no...
Independent review of any analysis was put forward.
There's no copy of the analysis that was supposedly done.
It means that you're putting forward things that you're grabbing at, like somebody grabs who's drowning, grabs at whatever, to maintain a particular belief system.
And look, again, we all have that tendency.
I mean, if we didn't have that tendency, we wouldn't need philosophy.
I mean, we wouldn't need nutrition if everything we wanted to eat was the very best healthy thing we could eat.
We need nutrition to guide us away from our desire or our impulses for that which tastes good in the moment, but which may not be good for us in the long run.
And so when you're putting forward arguments like this, and you don't seem to be aware of, you know, it's like one second wiki lookup to look at the challenges, Then what it means is that you don't read stuff that goes against what your particular opinions are, which what it does is it makes you less credible when it comes to having a debate.
Like, I mean, I have some unusual things, right?
I mean, when we talk about ethnic differences in IQ, I get all the experts on to talk about it so that people – and I get experts who believe it's environmental.
I get experts who believe it's more – Genetic.
And I present the whole case because I don't know.
I think it's interesting information.
I think it's explanatory information.
And I think it's information that we really need to help solve social issues.
So when it comes to this kind of stuff, the problem is you've thrown up a lot of, well, I doubt this and I doubt that and so on.
But without any proof.
Like, your doubt is not an argument against things.
Now, my lack of doubt is not an argument for things.
I mean, doubt is not an argument, and certainty is not an argument.
You know, reason and evidence, they are the arguments.
And I'm just telling you, sort of, from thinker to thinker, if you want to come across as more credible when it comes to these debates, you need to have in hand the criticisms of your position— And acknowledge the criticisms of the arguments you're putting forward and then say how you're going to overcome them.
I mean, when I talk to people about, you know, surprising things like voluntary society or anti-spanking or peaceful parenting and so on, I recognize that there are strong arguments that are made and some with, you Roots that are made against my positions.
I have to acknowledge them, I have to incorporate them, and I have to show how I'm going to overcome them.
Because what happens is, if you bring up things like the COSO artifact, either people already agree with you, in which case it's an echo chamber, or people don't agree with you, or are curious about it, or want to know more.
And certainly from my standpoint, if I hear about a spark plug in a half a million seconds, Year old piece of rock, I got to tell you, I'm kind of skeptical.
And if they go and look up and found that it's completely unsubstantiated, then what happens is people of a more reasonable and skeptical and evidence-based mind frame will tend to not want to interact with you in this area.
Give me just a minute to try and explain what I was trying to get at with the Cozo artifact.
Now again, like I said, I put this forward not as an argument to prove that evolution doesn't exist, but as an example of rock not taking as long to form as they claim.
Now, if you were to take a look, they said it was hardened clay, right?
It says in a lump of hard clay or rock.
Right.
Now, if you were to dig in the ground and dig up some clay, I'm sure you could date that clay, and it would probably show something like 500,000 years or whatever it was.
And then you could actually put it in a high-pressure area, put something in it like a chicken bone, And when it hardens into a rock, it's still going to show that it's that old.
But obviously what was inserted into it is not.
And what I'm trying to say is, the fossils that have been found...
I personally believe that it's a similar thing, that the rock around the fossils is not necessarily the same date as the fossils themselves, and it would actually be difficult to prove that.
I acknowledge that it would be difficult to prove that, because when When bones become fossilized, it's basically a form of petrification.
It pulls in the minerals and stuff from the surrounding area, which actually has to happen really quickly or else the thing just decays.
So if it's pulling in minerals from the surrounding soil or rock, sand, whatever it happens to be, you're going to have a more homogenous – when you test it for radiocarbon dating, you're going to have a you're going to have a more homogenous – when you test it for radiocarbon dating, you're going to have a more homogenous result because all
Now, in regards to the layers of the sedimentary rock, I mean, how do fossils form?
As far as I'm aware...
I'm sorry, I just can't get into a discussion of paleontology.
But I do want to point out that this artifact, the COSO artifact, Well, the last known person to possess it was someone named Wallace Lane, one of its discoverers.
InfoJournal reported that the COSA artifact was on display in his home and he was refusing to allow anyone to examine it.
He was offering to sell the artifact, however, his price was $25,000.
And that seems a little bit of a dubious thing.
So if you're bringing this up as an argument against evolution, It's not worth anything.
I mean, and it discredits you.
It discredits you.
That's all I'm pointing out.
And it's a shame because you're a smart guy and you're obviously very interested in this topic and you just need to get the habit of reading things that really oppose your opinion and trying to find a way to incorporate them.
Because if you're going to bring up a spark plug in a piece of clay that no one has examined independently and was trying to be hawked off for $25,000 as some Proof against evolution when you're going against things like the universal genetic code, the fossil record, the genetic commonalities between species, the common traits in embryos, bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
You can see with DDT that there's an evolution on the part of mosquitoes to develop resistance to it and so on.
You can't counter all of that amassed information.
With a 1930s spark plug that's never been examined by anyone.
You understand, like you've got a toothpick against a tsunami and you think that it's an even fight.
Hold on, hold on.
I have not made that claim.
I have not made the claim that this is any kind of proof or anything.
Then why bring it up?
If it's not something to support your argument, why are we even talking about it?
I was moving on to other topics, but you keep coming back to this one.
Right.
Because you brought it up as part of the support for your position.
Okay.
You can't blame me for that.
Like, if you bring up something to support your position, and I find out that it's total nonsense, I do have a right to pause on that.
Right?
I mean, you can't blame me if your position has no validity, right?
I mean, you can if you want, but...
That's not how debate works.
You can't get mad at me for rebutting a piece of nonsense you put forward to support your position, right?
Right.
Let's assume that it is nonsense.
No, no, no.
That's not an assumption.
It is nonsense.
That's not an assumption.
It was never independently verified and the guy tried to sell it and wouldn't let anyone examine it.
Come on.
You can't accept that.
That wasn't the point.
I don't know what that means, but look, Look, if I put something forward to rebut your position and you find out that it's completely unsubstantiated and unverified, I'd want you to tell me too because I don't want to have nonsense in my head.
So this is – This is part of the evolution of arguments, right?
Which is that the fittest arguments should survive.
I'm the predator for the weak baby zebra argument with nine legs and four heads, right?
I mean, it has to be – we have to – we can even apply the principles of evolution and the fittest arguments survive to our very conversation.
You put forward an argument that could not survive reason and evidence and therefore it has been dismantled.
That's the whole point, right?
We want to end up with more facts, reason and evidence in our pocket after our conversation than before, right?
Right.
You know, I didn't intend to really stay on this particular, you know, anecdotal piece of, if you don't want to call it evidence, okay, so it's not evidence.
You know, there are a number of other things that I had intended to talk about, and unfortunately I can't get to those because I keep coming back to this.
I've got other arguments and things that have absolutely nothing to do with the Kozo artifact.
Right.
And what I'm telling you is that your credibility has kind of cratered because you've never bothered to examine a counter argument to this one particular thing.
And we have talked about a bunch of other things and I provided sort of arguments as well.
But in this particular instance, for me, if we're going to have a productive debate, and I mean this in all, you know, friendly and positive and affectionate ways, if we're going to have a positive debate, then if you put forward something that is incorrect, And you're still trying to say, well, if we just call it incorrect, it's incorrect.
It's wrong.
It's wrong.
And if you're not willing to accept that you've not read any counter-arguments, then that means that...
Like if you say to me, well, Steph, this is my emotional position.
I'm really against evolution.
I've read all the stuff that supports my position and I haven't even glanced at stuff that rejects my position.
Well, then we can talk about the emotional attachment, but we can't really discuss the facts then.
But if you hear a fact that goes against your position and you just seem to get frustrated and upset and say that's not the point and won't admit that it's wrong, Then I don't know where we go from here, to be honest.
Because then it's like you want to engage in trade, and we agree to accept gold, and you show up with a water buffalo.
Like, I just don't know how we can do the trade.
But let's do this.
Let's skip this part, because you said that you had an explanation for evolution that did not require or involve magic, which I'm perfectly happy to hear.
That would take a while to explain.
Now, one of the things that I have to admit is in regards to this, you know, for example, the alternate explanations as to the genesis of the world and the genesis of life, you know.
It does involve suppositions that can't be proven.
But personally, I think you could say the exact same thing of the scientific view.
You go back far enough, it's like, okay, where did that come from?
Where did that come from?
You go supposedly from the scientific view all the way back to the Big Bang, and there's still a big mess of questions.
You can't prove it.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
Are you saying that There's nothing about the scientific method that submits to external validation or objective or independent validation?
No.
What I'm saying is that when it comes to the creation of the universe supposedly, or the genesis of the universe I should say, and also the genesis of life, I don't believe that either religion or science Has any undisputable proof.
They have anecdotal evidence at best.
So are you saying that the creation story, just say in the Old Testament, which is clearly anecdotal evidence in that it was written down and somebody thought it was true, but wasn't present?
Obviously at the time, unless you take it as direct transcribing from God, who we can assume was present at the origins of the universe.
Are you saying that the fables or stories in the Old Testament are the same as a scientific examination of the causes?
To a certain extent.
um and it's it's it's not that i say that they're that it's just a load of hogwash because For example, the Big Bang Theory, I can understand how they came to that conclusion.
However, there are some issues with the Big Bang Theory that I don't know.
I guess part of this has to do with all the stuff that I've read about the Big Bang Theory and the expansion of the universe.
I really wish I could talk to an astrophysicist, because I've got some questions about that that I just can't seem to be able to rectify.
It doesn't matter how many...
Documentaries I watch or how many science blogs I read or anything like that, they just don't explain.
For example, the redshift thing.
They determined that the universe was expanding, not only that the universe was expanding, but the universe was accelerating based on the redshift of distant galaxies.
Now, that seems all well and fine.
It's like, okay, it's redshifted.
That means it's expanding.
Okay, that's a perfectly reasonable assumption.
But then they say that the universe's expansion is accelerating because the galaxies that are further out are redshifted more.
But that doesn't make any sense to me.
Because the galaxies that are further out, their light is coming from further and further into the past, back when, if the Big Bang was correct, back when you would have expected them to have been moving faster.
So how do you quite...
I mean, how do you justify that stance, the universe is expanding, the expansion is accelerating, based on that?
Now, if they had said that the universe is accelerating because our measurements now are different than the measurements that we first took all those years ago, that would...
That would be proof.
I'd be like, okay, fine.
That's perfectly acceptable.
But they don't say that.
Like I said, these are, you know, what if...
I'm no expert on this, but my understanding is that if there was a Big Bang, and I don't think that's the final answer in physics these days, then of course the matter that is furthest away from the Big Bang we would assume to have traveled faster, right?
Like, I mean, if you...
Drop a watermelon from, you know, a letterman style, if you drop a watermelon from the top of a building, then the shrapnel or pieces of watermelon that end up the furthest away from the point of impact would be the ones that were traveling the fastest at the point of impact.
So...
Again, I've got to move on to the next caller because we thought we were going to talk more about evolution.
I'm certainly not going to dig into the physics of this, but I appreciate your time and I appreciate your effort and interest in this.
I've assumed some reading on the theories of science.
I think comparing science to Genesis is going to be tricky for a lot of people to accept, but I certainly appreciate the call.
Well, I didn't get to the stuff that I wanted to, but...
Oh, well.
I invited you to, but you wanted to talk about the Big Bang.
All right, let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, up next is Alex.
He wrote in and said, I do my best to live my two lives, keep my family happy, and myself happy.
Is this something that is manageable, or am I doing worse by staying with her in this double life?
That's from Alex.
Hey Alex, that's quite a question.
Are you currently calling from a seedy hotel room?
Well, I'm somewhere abroad right now.
That's why we're having some connection issues at the moment.
But no, it's not easy.
It's always upscale.
Good to speak with you finally, Stefan.
I've been listening to your podcast for years now.
I've been struggling with this issue for quite some time.
Do you want me to just give a little bit of an intro and then we can go to the discussion?
I'm happy to hear.
Okay, so I'm married eight years ago to an absolutely wonderful person.
We met, we married very shortly after our first meeting.
It was sort of, I felt the positive energy and she was just absolutely a sweetheart.
We were married like within three months.
Then she was pregnant with my son, first child.
A couple of months later after that, things went very fast in that regard.
But, I mean, on the whole, I would say that I've had a very pleasant marriage.
She's an absolutely wonderful person, and that's what makes me feel really guilty.
Everything's been very smooth.
Well, basically, I mean, six months into the marriage, I started cheating because at the time of wanting to get married or, you know, having met her, there was another person who I was also dating, and she would have been the choice I would have gone for had that girl said yes.
Simply because I think I'm very materialistic and superficial and I go by what visually attracts me more than what you know the heart should you know basically there's a selection of the heart and there's a selection from the eyes and I generally have a tendency of going for what attracts me through the eyes.
Fortunately I didn't marry that girl but she stepped into my life six months later you know I had sort of closed her out and she said hey listen you want to meet and then you know obviously the It started with her, and then basically it's just been, I don't know if I'll say downhill or uphill or whatever, but it's basically been on six months into my marriage.
Not until, let's say two years ago, I hadn't conceived.
I said, okay, I can live this life, double life, whatever, but then basically I met someone else who I had a very, very compatible relationship with, and she was equally virtuous, but also, you know, Let's say, attractive in the sense, in the way that I like it.
And my wife is very attractive as well.
I mean, she's a Russian, and she's an attractive girl, lady.
Fortunately, her physique, her jeans, everything's good.
So the thing is, I've just lost the...
I've just lost the...
What is it?
Like, she could do whatever hotness kind of thing to turn me on, but it just basically doesn't get me, and it's just like...
I don't know if it's a sense of adventure that I go for other women, or if it's the sense of variety, or I don't know what it is, but that's basically, I'm just a habitual womanizer.
I do have kids.
I feel, I mean, it's not an obligation where I feel like, oh my God, I'm in prison obligation.
It's I love my kids.
I love my family.
I can't imagine leaving my wife because that would disrupt the The household, the way that the kids are being raised, my presence in that house when we wake up in the morning, you know, with the kids running around, with their mother there, with me there as a father.
So I can't imagine it any other way, and I wouldn't do this to my kids.
And I've been raised in a household where my parents are together, for better or for worse, but I mean, overall, they've made it work.
And yeah, it's really tough.
I mean, sometimes I think, okay, you know, my problems are my problems, and I should...
Just live with my issues until maybe at some point in time where my testosterone levels go down or something, and I'll just be maybe more calm and more happier.
Because when it comes to happiness, if I come, if I think about it, if I talk about spiritual happiness or happiness in the heart, in terms of peace, in terms of trust, in terms of, you know, look, she has full access to all my, you know, like basically like she's got She's so cautious with the way that she spends the money that I earn.
I'm the only bread earner in the house, and I provide for the family.
I do really well in terms of the money that I make.
My kids go to private school, et cetera, whatever, and she lives well.
But she's not the kind of woman who abuses that opportunity or the money that I make.
She'll take $1 and convert it into $100.
I take $100 and probably make it a little bit less than that.
So I absolutely trust her with everything, anything I have with her jointly and obviously in a trust for my kids.
So, yeah, I mean, I'm really torn.
I don't see myself changing because I love the womanizing.
I love the adventure of it.
You know, whether it's on flights, I, you know, get numbers of air hostesses and meet up with them somewhere else later or whether, you know, the passenger sitting next to me or whether it's checking into a hotel, the girl who's checking me in.
It's just basically on all the time.
I'm on the run or I don't know if it's a game or whatever you want to call it.
It's all the time, you know.
Wherever I see an attractive woman and an opportunity, I'll go for it.
I don't know.
So basically, that's a brief intro to my situation.
Yes, you've certainly been dick-napped, right?
In that, obviously, your dick is kind of your water dowser to the closest moist hole, right?
Right, right.
I mean, unfortunately, over the years, I mean, as of, okay, so maybe another context to this would be that, obviously, when I was growing up, I, you know, I was maybe an average looking guy.
But at some stage of later teens, I blossomed into, you know, I was working out and all that.
And then, you know, because I was an average looking guy, I had to focus more on having a good personality.
So fortunately, I'm very lucky that I wasn't You know, born beautiful because maybe I might have been much more superficial then.
So I have depth, you know, in that sense.
And I'm very self-conscious, self-critical, et cetera.
Like, you know, I'm always, like, analyzing myself.
So I understand what my strengths and weaknesses are.
But definitely being more successful as the older I've gotten.
I'm 34 now.
You know, it has also, being fit and being successful, it attracts a lot of women to me as well.
It's not like I have to...
I'm very chauvinistic in some ways, in many ways, and a gentleman.
And I think that alpha male thing also really, really attracts a lot of women to me.
And I can't turn them down.
I mean, if someone that is attractive...
And, you know, basically back in the days when I was like 16, obviously I wasn't, you know, with girls that were model-like, but now I, you know, most of them, the standard keeps going up and up and up, and I'm at a level where it's getting unreal, but that standard, obviously, then there's a difference between eight and nines of girls that I hook up with, and then my wife, who I would give that a maybe seven, like, you know, six, seven, somewhere there, I would put myself at somewhere close to like seven to eight.
But yeah, I mean, it controls me.
And I don't know if I want to give up that control because this is my pastime.
This is like my hobby.
Right.
Does your wife know you cheat?
So, she found stuff here and there.
As long as I give her a convincing story at that point in time, so she found emails or text messages or photos and this and that.
So as long as I give a convincing story, she doesn't...
Getting too much stuff or she doesn't force the sort of conclusion on it, but she's busted me with multiple things many times.
The relationship that I had two years ago was for two years, and that was the first time that I actually said to her when she found out about it, because she actually felt some physical sort of difference in terms of my relationship.
Um, approach to her maybe, um, because I have, I'm very, um, verbally, let's say intimate with her.
Like I'm not intimate, but affectionate.
Um, I'm verbally very affectionate and very caring and loving in the way that I speak with her and how I treat her and everything.
And I think she felt some sort of, um, distance, um, when I came back and, and, and, you know, so she got into my phone, um, and then she found, you know, chats and everything.
So then at that point in time with that particular girl who I was very serious with, you know, I took my position.
I said, yeah, she's there.
She's in my life.
And, you know, this is serious, etc.
And then I had the whole year of 2015 was like living hell.
We were on the verge of a divorce because she said that, I don't want to be with you because of all of this.
Eventually, I just sort of let the second person go.
Basically, I've let her go because I just told her that, listen, my kids are too small and especially my daughter, but also my son.
But I don't even know if I could, even if they were older, I'm not sure if I would be able to leave them anyway.
Because the impact, I just don't want them to be impacted by it.
And not that I'm unhappy with my wife.
Like, on a day-to-day basis, waking up with her and spending the day with her, there's a very strong peace of mind which a lot of girls just don't give.
You know, whether it be from a monetary perspective or whatever.
Like, women are like, you know, some women are very, very, for lack of a better word, they're leachish.
Whether it would be in terms of emotions or whether it would be in terms of finance or whatever it is.
I'm not a big spender on women.
I spend wisely.
So I definitely do my, what I call the dollar per, whatever.
I'll leave that alone.
But yeah, she definitely backed up on it after I made it clear to her that I wasn't with the second person.
And so she's not been on my case, but it comes up every now and then.
But no, she gives me my space.
Alright, so Alex, the thing that jumped out at me there was you said 2015 was living hell.
Yes.
So, what you're doing is dangerous.
I mean, it could cost you your family, right?
Yes, yes.
So, there is obviously somewhat of a self-destructive element in all of this, right?
Definitely.
Did your father have any issues with womanizing?
Now, it's very interesting dynamics at home.
My mom is the one who, she was a businesswoman, my father is a professional, so she wore the pants in the house and she's a very, very dominating woman.
So, in the ACE score or something, My father rarely ever, like, you know, on the rare occasion where there was some really, really big thing, he would just give me a slap here and there.
But he's never been very pushy.
He's never been physical.
But my mom has been, on the whole, much more physical when I was growing up.
But at the same time, because she was pushy, she would always sort of be monitoring me 360 and making sure that I was heading in the right direction, so to speak.
And if I am successful today, I would have to give her credit for that because, for example, education, sending me to private schools or private universities, if it weren't for her, she started her business because she could send us to good schools, and if it weren't for the money that she made and that she paid for my education, etc., which is what brought me where I am, I wouldn't be where I am today.
So there is definitely, it's a weird situation where like she's been that kind of, you know, because I listen to all those stuff like peaceful parenting and everything.
I definitely don't, I've never hit my son or, you know, there's maybe some verbal stuff, but I'm even trying to improve myself from the peaceful parenting videos on that so that I don't get aggressive with him at all, even verbally and try to negotiate.
But no, there is absolutely no spanking of my kids at all.
But yeah, I got spanked.
I got spanked.
Slapped would be common.
Sometimes, as I got a little bit older, sometimes, depending on the situation, where I did some really big mess-ups, it would be maybe with shoes and some other household items that you could grab.
Right.
You've got to slow down your explanations and really try and focus on what it is I'm saying, Alex.
Okay.
Because otherwise it's going to take forever.
So did your father have any issues with womanizing?
No, not that I know of.
My mom is absolutely possessive, uber jealous and controlling.
She would even get pissed off at him for watching news anchors who are hot.
Like if he was watching news and the new anchor was hot, she would be like, what the fuck are you watching?
I know why you're watching this and that.
So, no, no, absolutely not.
Right.
So, she very strongly controlled and was hostile towards any potential sexual interest he might have, even on someone in television, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Even if any of her friends would compliment him about how nice of a guy he is, she would then later have an argument with him about that.
And he would say, what the hell can I do?
You know, like if somebody wants to say something, you know, like stuff like that.
Yeah, so he's always tiptoeing around on, what do you call this, glass floor or something?
Ice?
Something like that.
Yeah, tiptoeing, walking on broken glass.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
Right.
And did your mother have any issues with affairs?
No, no, no.
She's very religious and conservative, no.
Okay, okay, that's fine, that's fine.
So if your mother says, thou shalt not, very strongly and in a way that I would imagine would be quite humiliating for your father, like you can't watch this news anchor because she's pretty, you can't get a compliment from my friends, that's pretty humiliating towards your dad, is that fair to say?
That is 100% humiliating, and actually, in fact, to be honest with you, she even humiliates my father right in front of other people.
Oh yeah, no, I get it.
I get it.
So, this, I would assume, bothered you growing up?
Definitely.
Like, I guess when I would have to listen to it, then it would make me angry, yes.
Right, right.
So...
If your perception is a possibility, I don't obviously know the answers to these things, but one possibility, Alex, is that the degree to which you saw your mother control even any theoretically sexual impulses on the part of your father, you may be rebelling a little bit too much in the other direction.
In other words, self-restraint on the part of you...
With regards to your sexuality, might put you into the henpecked category of your father, possibly in your own mind.
Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, definitely.
I agree, I mean, that could be, but the other side of this would be Why is it that I sexually don't feel any attraction for arousal?
I mean, mainly it's the arousal part, that I don't feel any arousal for my wife, which, logically speaking, when I look at her, there's no reason for me not to.
So, yeah.
Well, I don't know, obviously, the answer to that in any particular way, but let's see if we can circle around and get Anywhere with regards to this.
Did you promise to be faithful to your wife in the marriage vows?
Did I? Sorry, what?
Did you promise to be faithful to your wife in your marriage vows?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
Yeah.
All right.
And you are, of course, lying to her or falsifying your existence, right?
Yes.
But the, I guess the way that I see it is when I, so I define faithfulness, I mean, obviously it's my definition of, I guess this is how I've kind of like asked myself this question and maybe how I explained this to her as well, is that when I say faithfulness, it's not leaving her, you know, it's not leaving her with the children and not being there.
Okay, I'm sorry, I need to take over more.
You are falsifying your existence when you're with your wife, right?
Because there'll be times when you're thinking about your affairs, or you're concerned if she's seen your phone, or you're concerned if there's evidence or whatever, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Okay, so when you're with your wife, there's significant portions of your personality that are not only not present, but kind of like anti-present.
Like you can't bring yourself, your life, your travels, your exploits, your affairs, you can't bring any of that into your household, so you're kind of there, not there at the same time, right?
Yes, yes.
And of course, you are creating Situations that will cause your wife massive amounts of pain and may destroy your family.
And so you need to falsify your existence with regards to your wife as a means of protecting her from the behavior that you've done that's hurtful, right?
Correct.
100%.
Now, I don't think...
That sexual attraction is possible towards someone you feel guilty about, someone that you are manipulating, someone that you're not present with, and someone with whom you have to falsify significant portions of your existence.
That's the price of falsifying, of hiding what you're doing and who you are from your wife, right?
Why is that?
Because I lie to everybody.
Like, I mean, if I might be with some other girls, I might lie to them about some other stuff, but it doesn't...
Yeah, but you never promised to tell them the truth, right?
You never made a vow.
They're not the mothers of your children, right?
They're not someone you claim as wonderful, virtuous people.
And, of course, do they know you're married when they cheat with you?
Well, previously I used to lie about it, but now I've been more and more open and honest, and it seems that more and more women are accepting of it.
Okay.
Okay.
So the women don't care the degree to which they're threatening your marriage, the degree to which they'd be hurting your wife.
They don't particularly care about that because you do sit-ups or you're confident or you make money or whatever it is that they're finding attractive about you, right?
So the women are only interested in their own pleasure regardless of the consequences to your wife.
You are only interested in your own pleasure regardless of the consequences to your wife.
So you have more in common in a lot of ways with the women you're sleeping with outside your marriage than the woman you don't feel attracted to inside your marriage.
Right, right.
So given that you have more in common with them, it seems that this...
Follow my own selfish pleasure regardless of the destructive impacts on other people which they don't claim to love, i.e.
your wife, but you do.
Given that this is your way of being to pursue selfish pleasures at the expense of the love, trust, and intimacy with the woman in your life, then this is the same thing you have in common with the women you have affairs with, but you don't have that in common with your wife, who I assume is not Out there banging the gardener while you're on a business trip, right?
Right, right, sure.
Right, so you have more in common with your mistresses than you do with your wife, so it would seem to me somewhat inevitable that you'd have more sexual compatibility with them than with your wife.
Now, there's another factor to this which I sort of have recently kind of, I guess, sensed, which is that I find women who are...
So, it...
I don't know what the word would be, but maybe like perversion.
So women who are sluttier, let's say, I find them to be more attractive than virtuous women in some ways.
Like, I don't know why.
So hang on.
So do you have this sort of virgin whore dichotomy?
I don't know if you come out of a Catholic background, but it's not unknown that the mother of my children is a saint and she's virtuous and she's And there's a sort of asexual or even antisexual element to the promotion of virtue among women,
whereas these down-and-dirty, good-to-go girls are darkly slutty and so on, and therefore would be terrible mothers but are great for a role in the, hey, is that something that you may have in your mind?
Yes, I think that's exactly what I have in mind.
Because I think that as my wife, especially when she got pregnant and the time after she delivered, I think the sexuality aspect of it went less and less.
And then I do definitely see her as an amazing mother and an angel and all that.
Those kind of feelings are definitely there.
So the dichotomy that you mentioned, I think I definitely do have that issue.
And who did you mention who was very religious?
Right, yeah, my mother, yeah.
Your mother was very religious, right?
Yes, yes.
And do you think that may have had an effect on how you view women and sexuality?
As in...
Not being attracted to the religious woman type of angel?
No, as in, I wouldn't sully the mother of my children with my fiendish and dark desires because she is the pure chalice and vessel of my loins and their products and all that, right?
There's only rough trade.
There's no high trade.
Right, right.
So, yeah, there is that connection.
Right, right.
Well, I mean, I think it's probably fair to say that you may be on a challenging path, right?
I mean, outside of the ethics of keeping your word and being honest with your wife and all of that, you, of course, are courting a variety of dangers, right?
I mean, a woman could get pregnant.
Even if you take precautions, a woman could get pregnant, right?
Right.
You could get a sexually transmitted disease.
Correct.
You could end up with a bunny boiler on your tail, right?
Insofar as you may end up hooking up with some woman who's very unstable.
Yes.
And, you know, there was that movie Fatal Attraction, the old saying was, it scared the pants on American men.
Scared the pants off, scared the pants on.
And so you are taking some pretty significant risks that may snowball out of your control, despite your best intentions.
Right, right.
So now the question goes to the other side.
So let's say if the easier solution is, of course, that I reform myself and I'm able to sort of fix the situation and I'm able to be more faithful.
Now, the other side of it is that, let's say, if I'm not able to do all of that and I say, okay, the honest path out of this would be to let her live her life and maybe find someone who would be whatever she wants No, no, no, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Are you saying, Alex, that one of the paths out of this situation is to deprive your children of a full-time father?
What do you think I'm going to say to that?
Right, yeah, no.
I mean, I... Coked up rabbit in
an infinite hutch of baby oil.
I mean, you don't have the right.
You don't have the right to put your family at risk to this degree.
You don't have the right to deprive your children of a father.
You don't have the right to put your children and your wife and yourself through the emotional ringer.
Of what may happen if things are discovered and divorce, you know, at the hands of a justly angry woman and what that would do to...
I mean, it's not just the family stability in the future, it's during the entire process of the divorce, everything that's going on, everything that would be happening to you emotionally and so on.
You...
You want to think about getting old, being old, right?
I mean...
If you spend more time with your wife and around your kids, your testosterone, as far as I understand, it does diminish.
It's dose-dependent with kid time, so that's one possibility.
It will diminish over time.
And what will happen is, you'll look back and you'll think, well, the sexual memories weren't that exciting, but the not having a family is really noticeable as you get older, right?
I mean, and so on.
And certainly, if you blow up your entire family structure because of these affairs, your kids at some point, whether now or later, will probably know.
What happened, right?
Right, right.
And they will not look upon you positively, to put it mildly, right?
Sure.
And that means that you are facing significant isolation in middle-aged later age, and you know, you've got probably 50 years still to go, unless you get some truly demonic, spine-scouring cross-rot.
And...
When you get older, your sexual impulses will have diminished.
Your sexual memories will have faded, but the potential absence of your wife and grandchildren and all of that in your life will be tough.
And it'll be tough to get that alpha cockiness back after you've been dragged ass backwards through family court system.
So you really are risking it all for the sake of bullshit squirts with low-rent women.
I mean, I do, at least in one case, but often I do meet women who could potentially be the person that I could be with.
No, you don't.
No, no, no.
Sorry, Alex, you don't.
Because if they're interested in getting involved with a married man, a father, then they're not.
Right.
They're not.
No sane woman who has any options whatsoever wants to sign up as a low-rent harem addition to a guy that the only way she's going to end up with you is if you get divorced, in which case you're on the hook for alimony, for child support, forever, probably.
I don't know where you live.
Don't tell me.
But...
She won't get you as you are now.
She'll get you after...
The divorce lawyers have been through with you, right?
So she's not...
Any sensible woman is going to say, well, no, this guy is married.
He obviously is a womanizer.
He's been a womanizer, you know, seven and a half years.
You've been cheating on your wife.
And so they know that you're a womanizer.
You're very unlikely to settle down with anyone you're having an affair with because you've had a whole bunch of affairs already and haven't settled down with those women.
And that the process of settling down We'll be time-consuming, expensive, and you're going to be financially crippled for quite some time in the future.
So why on earth would any sensible woman want that when she could go find some single guy and settle down without the complication of angry or bitter ex-wives and alimony and child support taking away family resources and the complications of stepchildren?
Like, what sensible woman would want that?
Right.
I mean, obviously, option one of finding someone without any of that is a whole lot more sensible, definitely.
But it seems there's a dearth of like, you know, relatively, I guess, good looking, successful and intelligent, you know, mix of good personality and character kind of guys.
Hang on, Alex, you can't seriously, seriously be telling me or complaining to me about the lack of quality women you're sleeping with outside of marriage?
Come on.
That was not a serious statement, I hope, right?
It seems they're having a hard time finding guys that, as a result of which, When I've been with them, and these are girls from good households, you know?
Oh, come on.
First of all, what are you now?
I mean, you're sleeping with them.
But secondly, one of the reasons that they're having trouble finding decent guys is they're going for your unavailable self-destructive alphaness rather than quality guys who are available for them.
They're going for the same shallow vanity arm candy that you are.
Right.
You know, it's like somebody who keeps applying to work in gas stations saying, I'm having trouble finding a job that's not involving a gas station.
It's like, well, where are you applying?
Only at gas stations.
Huh.
I think we may have found some of the problem.
I'm having, I'm finding, I'm finding it's really trouble, I'm finding it's a lot of trouble to try, it's really troubling and difficult to find a quality guy while I'm sleeping with a married man because he's pretty.
Yeah, of course.
Of course you are, because you're not learning how to have stable long-term relationships.
I'm talking this from the woman's standpoint.
You know, if I ever met a woman who said, oh yeah, no, I just got out of a relationship where I was sleeping with a married guy with kids, you know what I'd say?
Right.
I think I remember your story.
I would say nothing, because there would be a Steph-shaped hole in the wall leading away from that woman.
Right, right.
You don't see the degree to which you are in the sub-sub-basement.
Dante and hell of human interactions.
Because it's become normalized for you.
And because there's a sort of male peacock preening vanity in, well, you know, I don't try.
It just happens to me.
Bullshit.
You have signals out there all the time.
I bet you are flirting all the time.
I bet you are giving women the eye all the time.
It doesn't just happen to you.
You are actively spraying pheronomes like Pepe Le Pure chasing after a cat.
I mean, you are a cloud of sexual neediness, I would imagine, in your interactions with women.
Now, that doesn't mean they don't have agency.
Of course they do.
But the idea that you're just walking down the aisle, and wouldn't you know it, these stewardesses are just Throwing their numbers in your lap.
Come on.
You're smiling.
You're charming.
You're winking.
You're whatever, right?
You're twerking.
Yeah, that's it.
You're twerking.
You're twerking in first class.
That is irresistible for...
Anyway, I haven't dated in a while, as you can tell.
Right, right.
No, I mean, that's true.
But some of them are so delusional because in some instances, at least in a very recent instance, there was someone who knew that I was dating, I was married and dating someone else who I just recently maybe finished off the relationship and she started off seeing me and her objective was to get rid of both of them.
And be the only one.
In my head, I was thinking, talking to my friend, and I was like, what is this girl even thinking?
I mean, is she out of her mind?
Is this the high-quality women that you say you're having affairs with, these delusional manipulators?
Not this particular one.
Not this particular one, yeah.
The others are high-quality women who sleep with the fathers of children.
- Yes, one of them was definitely a very nice personality, virtuous person, except for my-- - No!
Virtuous people don't break up other people's marriages.
I lied to her.
I told her I was separated when I met her, and then gradually I told her more and more.
But by that time, I think she was more attached.
So that was the evolution of it.
Or is she not virtuous because she accepted it even so?
I don't know.
I don't know what you said.
I don't know what she believed.
But she stayed with you after she found out you were married and a father, right?
Yes, she stayed.
Even though you had lied to her about being even married, let alone a father.
Yes.
Okay, so she was willing to be lied to to get involved and to stay in an affair with someone who was married with children.
Yes.
You've really, really got to give your compass a little tap because I think it's not pointing north when you want to go north.
What happens if you don't cheat?
What's your life like if you don't cheat?
I feel bored.
I mean, except for when I'm with my kids.
I absolutely enjoy when they're around me.
They can take up my time and you know, when I'm back home, I'm spending time with them.
And I absolutely love being with them.
And I honestly, like, I don't even get much time to...
Even when I have someone that I could possibly be seeing or I've committed to seeing and then I have to tell them, I'm sorry, it's too late.
I'm tired.
I got to go to sleep.
I'll maybe see you tomorrow.
You know, so they definitely engage me in a way that...
And then the happiness that I have from being with them and doing things with them.
But still, the inner beast is there.
And he's saying to me...
Come on, when are we going to go do this?
When are we going to go do this, you know?
No, no, I don't know, but I will accept that you have...
Listen, this is a very, very important thing.
I don't know if you have an addiction.
I'd characterize it that way.
I mean, what do I know?
I'm just a podcaster, but I would characterize it that way.
To me, the primary problem of addiction...
Is that it is redefined within the mind as something positive, as something cool, right?
So, you know, let's say you're a drug addict.
Well, you might, you might theoretically say that it was allowing you to explore other dimensions and become a more broad-minded and open-minded person.
Now, once you put the plus on it, it becomes almost impossible to fight the addiction because the addiction is to something positive.
Yes.
You know, if you love exercising and exercising, and the exercise you do is really good for you, and you love doing it, and you tell yourself and you accept and understand that it's really good for you, why would you ever stop?
Right.
Right now, if you are addicted to chocolate or something that in excess is bad for you, And you're getting teeth, you know, gum abscesses and tooth decay and you're pre-diabetic and, you know, whatever it is, right?
Well, you have the addiction to chocolate, but at least you say it's not good.
You know, like cigarette smoking.
You know, why couldn't Ayn Rand quit cigarette smoking?
Because she made it analogous to the life of the mind and to be cool and, you know, the ember on the cigarette is the same as the spark of thought in a man's mind, right?
Now, I mean...
The bummer with smoking is it does seem to be quite good at helping people, you know, focus and concentrate and all that kind of cool stuff.
And her, you know, her addiction to speed and nicotine, which gave her a significant burst of creativity and then 40 years of not too much creativity.
But the problem is that you, I know, I think I know, Alex, where you're coming from with this, that you view this as something to be Something to brag about.
You view this as something to be proud of.
You view this as something that's cool.
And when you listen back to this, particularly the introduction, which I was listening to, of course, as I always try to do, very, very carefully, you view this as something that makes you cooler, as something that makes you better, as something that makes you different, as something that makes you, as you said, an alpha.
Right?
Now I would significantly disagree with your characterization of an alpha as a family-threatening male whore who sticks his penis in crazy women.
That to me is not an alpha.
That is not an alpha.
That is not an alpha.
A man who ends up alone with his wife and children possibly hating him?
A man who lies to women to get them into bed?
That's not an alpha.
An alpha, if we're going to use this phrase, Alex, an alpha is someone who is unabashedly and unapologetically himself.
It is not alpha to lie to everyone in your life.
That is the life of a manipulative coward.
It is not Alpha to falsify your existence to the mother of your children and to your children.
To lie, to get women into bed.
Oh, I'm separated.
Oh, well, no, I was actually, I was not.
I was lying.
Right?
And Alpha does not have to falsify everything about himself in order to prop up sexual insecurity with endless conquests that only make the problem worse.
An alpha is himself.
And an alpha will not surrender his truth to mere pressure.
An alpha will not surrender his capacity to tell the truth to base, biological, neurotic, insecure lusts.
An alpha plants his feet firmly and deeply like the roots of an oak going to the center of the earth.
An alpha plants his feet deeply and firmly into the earth and stands before the storm of disapproval To cry the truth to the very heavens.
And this is not what you are doing.
You are falsifying most of your existence and praising it as somehow strong.
Agreed.
Agreed.
But as long as you think that this is alpha behavior, then there's no way to talk you out of this.
Because if I try to talk you out of this, Alex, what you're going to hear is, I'm telling you to be a beta.
I'm telling you to be...
What are the phrases?
A mangina, a white knight, whatever it is, right?
I'm telling you to retreat from your manly crag of sexual conquests and be merely faithful.
I'm telling you to step down from your orbit of hyper-masculinity and become something less.
And that, as long as you have...
The idea or the argument in your mind and in your heart or in your balls that what you're doing is somehow powerful or strong or conquest-based or whatever it is.
I don't think there's any chance for you to talk to yourself.
No one voluntarily says, I'm going to weaken myself and lower myself from that which I consider good for the sake of what?
You can deprive yourself of something you enjoy in order to feel weaker, in order to feel more beta, in order to...
So as long as you've got your behavior constellated in your mind in a particular way...
And if that particular way is a huge net positive for you, this is how a man acts, this is how an alpha acts, how on earth can you reject something that is both massively praised within your own mind and physically enjoyable in your own body?
You can't.
Right.
And you can't restrain yourself based upon the knowledge of how it's going to affect those around you, right?
Right.
I mean, it's not reality right now, so yeah.
Yeah, and so the reconfiguration of your view of what you're doing, my argument would be, is the only way to approach this with any chance of success.
I mean, look, I think we can agree that if you could find the same degree of sexual satisfaction and happiness and intimacy and love with your wife in your marriage, if you could...
Flick a switch and have that happen.
You'd do it, right?
That would be the best thing ever.
Right.
Okay, now if that's the best thing ever, you have to start reconfiguring what you're doing.
You're lying to your wife, you're lying to your children, you're lying to women, you're manipulating them, you're falsifying your existence.
You're humiliating yourself.
You think you've escaped your father's humiliation by doing what you're doing?
Well, my mother wouldn't let him look at a hot woman on TV. Because that was humiliating.
But you haven't escaped it.
You haven't.
You've embodied it.
The humiliation of your life choices at the moment is both potential in that if it costs you your family and your fortune, it's brutal.
But it's also not, it's actual.
It's not just potential.
It's actual in that honest you can't get laid.
You understand?
Yes.
Honest Alex is a monk, right?
Because if Alex is honest with his wife, he don't get laid.
Maybe never again by her.
If Alex is honest with these women, he don't get laid.
So honest Alex can't get laid.
Yeah, I mean, the one that I'm, where it comes to honesty, the one that I'm only concerned about, and I've been more honest, let's say, with women lately, and it seems that Surprisingly, they're way more accepting of a married man than I ever thought that they would be, but it's my wife who I would never ever could face her and say the honesty about who I am in this regard.
I would be too ashamed and I know that the pain that it would cause her, just yeah, that's something that I couldn't, I wouldn't want.
But this means that you're dating worse and worse women.
Because if you had to lie to women and say you were separated before, and now you can tell them the truth that you're a father and a husband and they're still happy to sleep with you, means that you're going down the staircase of Dante and Hell with regards to female quality.
That you're really going to a bottom-feeding situation here where women are so lost, so codependent, so insecure, so whatever, so lack of empathy for your wife and children.
I mean, you're going down...
The irony in all of this is that if we look at it superficially, what I've found is that the more attractive the women are, the more accepting that they are of these kind of things.
And it's just a contradiction that I never previously thought would exist.
You mean the prettier they are, the lower standards they have?
In this regard, yes.
No, they still have standards.
The only standard they care about is, are you pretty?
I mean, they still have standards.
They're unholy, shallow, narcissistic, empty, materialistic standards of mere physical attractiveness, regardless of soul ugliness.
Because most of them, the way they see it is that they want to just say, they feel that they can replace my wife at some point in time.
That's the way that they...
Sort of everyone, you know, sort of comes into it.
Right, and can they?
I mean, I know you thought about it, but do you think they reasonably can?
Because replacing your wife is impossible, because your wife is married to you prior to you being divorced from your wife.
You understand?
Yes.
Right, so if they want to step into the position of your wife, they can't, because they're not the mother of your children.
Yes, absolutely not.
Your wife has your money undiluted by child support and alimony.
This is what's so crazy about what these women are pretending to think.
There is no chance for them to step into, ladies.
If you're out there and you've been orbiting Alex's, you know, I view your penis as like an Amish hand pump that brings up water that's almost worn down to a toothpick because so many people have been cranking on it.
But if you are around this highly punished carousel of a penis, you will never, ever, ever get to be Alex's wife.
This is true for women who orbit men looking to replace the matriarch of the family.
You will never, ever be able to step into that position.
Oh yeah, you look at that house.
Oh wow, Alex has got a nice house.
Shimmy, shimmy, shimmy, shimmy.
Alex has got a really nice house.
You know, it'd be great if I could just, you know, elbow that little lady out there who's in there right now.
You know, maybe find some place to...
Put the kids, you know, maybe hanging by a coat rack in a garden shed or something.
And I could just move into that house and I could redecorate it.
And basically I'd be the new queen.
The queen is dead.
Long live the queen.
That will never, ever happen, ladies.
Because when that woman leaves, she's taking the house with her.
You don't ever get to live in Alex's wife's house.
Because if Alex gets divorced, he ain't keeping the house.
And he ain't keeping much else.
And he ain't keeping you either.
That's the tragedy.
He ain't keeping you either.
So women who can't see that.
The last part of it's probably true because, you know, one of the things that I do find is that it's worth like a six month period to a year maximum that the effect of whoever I maybe knew wears off and sort of it becomes the mundane, boring situation that I might have been with anyone else.
There is a chemical addiction, as far as I understand it, in the brain, right?
It's been six months, right?
The endorphins and happy joy juice of new romance are kicking around, basically just enough time for you to get pregnant and bond over a child.
And then all of that diminishes, right?
The bonding chemicals in the brain that make us become attached to who we're having sex with, they're supposed to last...
Now, why don't they just last forever and ever and ever?
Because your body only has so much of this stuff it can to deliver to your brain safely, which is why crowding it out with drugs is a bad idea.
So, in my, obviously, amateur opinion, the reason why...
The romance hormones get replaced with the child hormones is because the purpose of romance is to produce a child.
So what you're supposed to do is bond with your partner and then get married or whatever, have a child, and then by the time the child comes along, the bonding hormones cause you to bond with your child and through that, of course, continue the bond with the mother of your children.
The problem is you're spraying all this stuff outside the family, which is why you can't find that bond inside the family, right?
Right, right.
I mean, financially, I don't think that, obviously, like, you know, my kids and her, being the mother of my wife, I would never change the way that they live.
But I don't think that if I were to get divorced, that my status of how I live and everything else would change significantly.
So I'm not too concerned about that point, but it's just something that, you know, my heart definitely is where my home is, and my home is where my kids are.
And the mother of my kids is the woman who psychologically is my home.
Wait, are you saying that if you get divorced, your wife is dependent upon you, so you will be responsible?
I don't know where you are, and don't tell me.
Right, right.
But I would assume that if you get divorced, that you will no longer be living with your wife, so you'll have to maintain two households instead of one.
Sure, sure.
You will have certainly additional wear and tear on the car driving back and forth.
You will also not be able to live in a tiny place.
You can't go get some bachelor apartment.
Because your kids are going to spend time with you and you can't stick them on a shelf to sleep.
So you're going to have to have two reasonably comfortable domiciles and you're going to have to keep your wife in the manner to which she has become accustomed since when you were the sole provider and living with them.
So they say two can live as cheaply as one.
I don't know about that.
But certainly two houses ain't as cheap as one.
Or two homes ain't as cheap as one.
And so I don't know how you can say, I mean, unless you're a trillionaire, and again, I don't really want to care about the amount of assets that you have, but I think it's a little tricky to say there'll be no financial impact on me fundamentally if I get divorced, because I think that that just goes into the category of basic math for me.
No, of course, there are some, but it's not, you know, I've already calculated with...
All of the implications of that.
So I found that considering what I do have and everything, it's not substantially significant.
It would obviously, definitely there is an expense to it.
It's not free of charge, let's say.
But that is not the consideration as a result of which I leave or stay.
The reason why I can't leave or Or morally or even emotionally don't leave.
It's because of the children waking up to a house where their father's not there.
You know, I wake up in that house and they run into the bed and I wouldn't be there.
I wouldn't be there in the morning unless, you know, then I pick them up.
So that part of it just psychologically does not resonate with me.
All right, then what I'll tell you, what I'll tell you, what I'll tell you, Alex, is that in some ways I don't think you're there anyway.
Right.
Because you're falsifying your existence within the four walls of your own home.
That's true.
How much more present can you be with your family if you don't have to lie?
Yeah, I mean, I think if I absolutely wasn't doing any of that, then yeah.
A lot of the times I'm away.
I know that.
I'm not present in the moment with the kids all the time because I get bored.
I'm like, okay, when are we going to get done with this?
So that I could sort of do my thing.
Yeah, and of course, your loyalties are outside the family.
Boy, don't I sound like I'm in a Scorsese picture.
But your loyalties are outside the family, your desires are outside the family, and your penis is dragging you down the road in pursuit of pretty women who can't rationally assess their own self-interest.
Right, right, for sure.
So I think the strongest point that I take from this, which I think I completely agree with you on, is that I really have to sit down and redefine the things that I see as positive today as a result of which this is what attracts me to it and redefine them correctly so that they're in line with the best interest of everyone involved with regards to my family.
But then, I mean, do you know anything about This process?
I mean, is this like hypnotherapy?
Or what would you suggest with regards to that?
Or is it just...
Oh, I don't...
Like, I can't...
I mean, I think that maybe...
I don't know if you're a sex addict, but it might not be a bad idea to...
See if you can find a reputable person to assess what challenges you may be dealing with.
Listen, the process of unwinding this life is so far beyond my scope that you might as well be asking me to measure the core temperature of Betelgeuse, right?
So all I can do is present to you some perspectives and moral arguments.
It's a philosophy show, right?
Not an addiction show.
So all I can do is present to you some moral arguments and perspectives that hopefully will at least jolt you out of some of the historical perspectives that I think are not massively sustainable in your mind.
How you go about unwinding this and how about you go changing this is a job for a therapist.
So if I were in your shoes, then I would look up somebody who may have some experience with Compulsive affairs, sexual addiction, whatever, and go and talk to that person and have them give you some sort of assessment or evaluation and figure out what you can do from here.
Like, I have no idea how you actually go about changing this, but I would certainly make the case that there's a strong argument to be made that changing it might not be the worst idea in the world.
No, I mean, ideally, if I'm able to fix this, then it would be the best thing in my life if I could do that to myself.
Because you know what it does?
It does distract me from all the other...
Like, for example, my career is very lucrative financially, but I'm not satisfied in the place that I'm working with people that I work with.
And I want to do something of my own.
But, you know, I'm so, like, comfortable doing what I'm doing so that I don't put the energies towards finding what I would like to do and take that risk and jump.
Because then I feel that, okay, if I did take that risk and jump, at a middle period of time, like, I would definitely have to sort of, you know, there would be a sort of, well, not getting the regular income that I do get.
And so I'd have to, you know, I think I wouldn't take that risk because I'm living very comfortably.
But yeah, if I was just absolutely focused on myself and my future and things that I'm passionate about and my family and all of that, then I know that I would reorient a lot of my energies, which go towards this stuff, towards rediscovering what I want to do for the rest of my life, or maybe at least even being happy with the stuff that I do.
It does take up a lot of energy, for sure.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, and this is what I'm saying to you, I assume, is exactly what you called me to hear, right?
Yeah.
I mean, deep down, nothing I'm saying is a big surprise to you, right?
No, it's not.
Definitely not.
No.
But yeah, I mean, the part that I loved is that there's some definitional definition issues in the way that I see the perspective, life is perspective, you know, and the perspective is wrong.
And that's because some certain core things are not defined correctly.
And there might be that rebellion element to it as well.
I mean, there is definitely the rebellion element to it as well, in general.
I am very rebellious towards my mother.
Yes.
And, you know, there was a rebellion in Russia in 1917 to overthrow the Tsar, and what they got through that rebellion was something almost infinitely worse.
So, okay, well, that's all I had to say.
I appreciate the call-in.
I appreciate the honesty.
And please drop us a line if you get a chance.
Let us know how it's going.
And I wish you the very best.
And I appreciate the call.
Thank you, Stefan.
Thank you, Mike.
Take care, Alex.
Take care.
Alright, up next is James.
He wrote in and said, Well, hello, James.
How are you doing?
Hello.
I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm well, thanks.
So I don't want to, you know, we just did this call recently about this.
I don't really want to get into the content of your arguments, but rather the form.
Like you have a conversation with people.
Maybe you think it's like a boomerang, like it's supposed to go and then, you know, come back.
But that's not what's happening for you, right?
Like you have these conversations and there's little to nothing that comes back.
Is that fair to say?
Yes, but there's also the fact that I don't approach people on these issues.
In fact, here, people ask me about, well, yeah, I'm asked for my viewpoint, basically.
People are always wondering what I have to say, and...
They know very well at the school that I have a very different viewpoint than pretty much anybody they're ever going to hear.
And so my students and even the other teachers, they're constantly asking me if gun control would be one issue.
They were doing less than...
Last month on gun control, and I was asked to come and visit a different class than one I don't usually work with, just because they wanted to talk to me about, you know, I think people should have guns.
I think you understand.
Yes.
And so I try to circle back and I say, well, is it a convincing argument?
What do you think?
And...
I just always get a no.
A couple of times I've gotten an even more annoying answer, which is some of my students have told me.
They like the argument and they said they could agree with me if they weren't French.
They say they would understand and they would probably agree if they were born in America like I was, which is really annoying.
Yeah, and it doesn't bode well for the concept of multiculturalism in France, which, again, we don't have to get into in any significant degree.
But if you're saying, well, I can't possibly agree with your non-French position because I wasn't born where you are, well, that's...
And it's also saying that there's no bridge that reason and evidence can cross between different perspectives, right?
Yeah.
Well, the thing that annoys me is because it's like my students telling me, okay, we would agree with you if we weren't ourselves.
It doesn't make sense.
If I was talking to somebody different, they would agree with me.
Yeah, and it's as helpful a tautology as I would speak Japanese if I could speak Japanese.
And it also is sort of an insult to you because it says that your arguments...
Do not arise from a reasoned and empirical review of the available evidence and arguments, but rather, James, that your perspectives merely arise from cultural proximity.
It also denies the basic fact that there's a very significant debate in America about gun control, right?
So saying, well, you know, all Americans agree with you about gun control shows a shocking lack of curiosity or understanding of the complexity of I mean, if everyone in America would agree about gun control, why is there a debate about gun control in America?
That's interesting.
I never brought up that particular point before the school year ended, but that is interesting because a lot of French people are very interested in current events and Politics.
And so we use those sort of related texts and news stories in class a lot for our English classes.
And so they read the anti-gun viewpoint a lot from American writers in class.
And then I'm asked to come in and give the opposite side.
So I'm not sure if they're Maybe they think it's a British person speaking it.
I'm not entirely sure.
No, I would assume that there's a radical disconnect between ideas and actions in their mind.
So if I was a historian of religion or an anthropologist, let's say anthropologist.
So if I was an anthropologist and I was studying the two perspectives of tribes who lived 3,000 years ago, One thought that the moon was made of green cheese, and the other one thought that the moon was a giant aspirin.
Well, first of all, we'd have an interesting anomaly in aspirin 3,000 years ago.
But would I care to resolve this dispute?
What do you mean?
Resolve the dispute of people 3,000 years ago?
They'd be dead.
Right.
In other words, my view of the disagreement would have no practical consequences and wouldn't matter.
Right?
So, and I just use that as an analogy to the degree to which people think that they don't have, they either think that ideas don't affect actions, in other words, you can believe whatever you want, and you're going to act about the same, in which case, why bother changing people's ideas?
Or they accept that people's beliefs change their actions, but they don't think that anyone is open to reason and evidence, so why would you bother having a debate with anyone?
Right.
Or it could be both, I guess.
But they clearly do not believe that arguments and facts and evidence and debates and interactions can change people's minds.
Now...
There is that little thing called projection, right?
Which is, I would assume, that they're actually just talking about themselves rather than talking about other people.
What they're confessing to you is my mind.
Can't be changed by reason and evidence, so it's interesting what you say, but it has as much relevance to me as disputes about the nature of the moon from the Mayans versus the Incans from 3,000 years ago.
Now, the other thing, sorry, the other thing, too, which I wanted to mention just before I stop here is that a lot of people who are very into reason and evidence, in other words, those of us who keep civilization functioning and growing, those of us who are into reason and evidence very often mistake the purpose of the mind.
And we think that the purpose of the mind, because that's our tendency or our bent or what we've committed ourselves to, we think that the mind...
It has the purpose or the task of discovering the truth.
That's what the mind is for.
And this is not true.
We know this ties back to the first caller.
As neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga pointed out, quote, What we always must keep in mind is that our brains have been sculpted by evolution to enable us to make better decisions that increase our reproductive success.
Our brain's job description is to get its genes into the next generation.
And there's a very significant appeal that a lot of thinkers have to unfalsifiability.
Unfalsifiability.
In other words, positions which can't be falsified or for which falsifiability can be rejected.
And a recent study on the appeal of unfalsifiability noted, quote, Suggest that unfalsifiability may be a dangerous force in society at large, though it might benefit individuals psychologically or groups socially.
Unfalsifiability might also lead people and societies to continually make truth-defying decisions.
To the extent that the success of a society largely depends on its ability to respect good data and change behavior accordingly, a devotion not just to ideas but to testing those ideas is necessary for the welfare and improvement Of the society.
And it is true, and we can see this, you know, I've just been researching Venezuela for a presentation on that.
And we can see that for certain people in the ruling elite in Venezuela, the allegations go that they've siphoned off massive amounts of money from the socialized system, and that they've made a fortune.
And yet for the individual now who cannot get a hold of medicine or food or electricity, which, you know, when it's 100 degrees at night can kind of be helpful if you want to get any sleep.
For the society as a whole, irrationality is destructive, but for particular individuals it can be enormously profitable.
And this, you know, this is the problem of the state.
It's concentrated benefit and diffuse costs.
So, the question is, what is the sexual success of a dedication to truth?
What is the sexual success of a dedication to truth?
And what is it in your neck of the woods?
Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, not high.
About the same as everywhere, but That brings me back to my question is because the behavior is very different.
I think it's possibly the fact that France is such an echo chamber that they've never met anybody like me before, even people that had this position prior that usually the people that get accepted into this program are usually women, usually socialists.
I was an oddball at my university's French program.
But I found it odd that the fact that unlike American leftists, they really want to listen to me.
They just don't accept it.
And I found that bizarre.
But neither do they reject it.
Isn't the problem that it goes into a vacuum, right?
Right.
And I thought maybe it's...
I did think maybe that they just can't socially accept what I'm saying.
Maybe that's it and maybe they're still letting it stew in their head and it'll come out later.
I'm not sure.
So maybe it's just not socially acceptable to think that people should be allowed to have guns or that the migrants need to go home.
I don't know.
Or maybe they just really don't care.
If they didn't care, they wouldn't ask me.
It's confusing.
Well, no, and look, I mean, you obviously got to France, so you flew in a plane, right?
Uh-huh.
Do you know much about how the plane works?
No.
No?
No, I know a little bit, but certainly no engineer.
Yeah, a little bit.
So why do you not know why the plane flies?
It's not necessary.
Right.
Right, because other people have taken care of that.
So you don't need to know why the plane flies because other people have done it.
Now, everything that is built requires maintenance.
You know, if you ever want to really goose yourself with some scary numbers, look at the unfunded liabilities in the infrastructure around the West.
Oh, yeah.
That's brutal, right?
And if you were going to get on an airplane and you read somewhere that the airplane has not received any maintenance in five years, what would you do?
I would not get on that airplane.
You would not get on that airplane, right?
You would not get on that airplane.
And freedom is something that is built in times of great extremity and great distress and great hope and great passion and often Conflict of significant depth and breadth.
And they really have to know how to build the plane.
Because they're the first ones to fly it.
Now, after the plane's been flying for a while and it hasn't been maintained, you know, it'll still fly.
It'll still fly until it doesn't.
And then, the screaming.
Oh, the screaming.
And so, in the West, we've had freedoms...
And no war, for the most part, for 60, 70 years now.
The wars, of course, have been waged murderously and brutally and disastrously in the Middle East and other places.
And why would they need to know how the plane flies when they think it's just going to last forever?
And why would they bother maintaining something that they believe needs no maintenance?
And so it becomes very abstract because there's nothing that's needed from their ideas to maintain that which they treasure.
They assume that their freedoms exist like physics, like weather.
Right.
I remember having a discussion with a couple of students about this, and I made the point that they didn't understand that.
You know, white Western European society makes up like 8% of the world's population and that the majority of the world does not live like we do.
It's a ridiculously small number.
And if you, you know, redefine what's normal, what's normal for us is not what's normal for other people.
Yeah, and people want the fruits of freedom.
They don't want the process of freedom.
In the same way they want money like the fruits of labor, they don't want the labor.
And it is natural.
You know, in a state society, particularly when state has control of education, it is natural to lie to people.
And they say...
That an expansion of the state is an expansion of freedom and security and all these things.
And they say, don't worry, the government's going to take care of it and everything will be fine because you're giving power to the government and the government is your friend.
And, you know, we bond like ducks.
We bond with whatever we grew up with and we bond with the state because the state raises us more so oftentimes even than our parents or teachers interact with us a lot of times or at least in control of our lives more so than it seems parents sometimes, particularly if they're both working.
It is just a lesson that needs to be learned tragically repetitively at least until I you know my dream comes true in hundreds of years and there's a stateless and free society.
Okay.
And the masses say, we want you to reason with us, but then when somebody tries to reason with them with facts and evidence, they get...
Triggered.
They get angry.
In the lead up to the 2004 US presidential election, a group of neuroscientists decided to examine how the brains of partisans responded to the information that portrayed either George Bush or John Kerry in a negative light.
Fervent Democrats and Republicans were presented with 18 sets of contradictory statements, six by Bush, six by Kerry, and another six by politically neutral male figures like Tom Hanks.
When asked to rate how contradictory they perceived those statements to be, Democrats had no trouble identifying Bush's contradictions but ignored or downplayed Kerry's inconsistencies.
The inverse was observed for Republicans.
In other words, they didn't perceive significant contradictions in their party's candidate.
While interestingly, both groups had no trouble identifying contradictions made by the politically neutral.
Figures.
The lead researcher described the results of the brain scans.
Quote, The brain registers the conflict between data and desire and begins to search for ways to turn off that spigot of unpleasant emotion.
We know that the brain largely succeeded in this effort as partisans mostly denied that they had perceived any conflict between their candidates' words and deeds.
Not only did the brain manage to shut down distress through faulty reasoning, but it did so quickly.
The neural circuits charged with the regulation of emotional states seemed to recruit beliefs that eliminated the distress and conflict partisans had experienced when they confronted unpleasant realities.
And this all seemed to happen with little involvement of the neural circuits normally involved in reasoning.
But the political brain, they said, and we'll put a link to this in the show notes, but the political brain also did something we didn't predict.
Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on.
The partisan brain didn't seem satisfied in just feeling better.
It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning.
These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their fix, giving new meaning to the term political junkie, right?
So the brain reinforces irrational conclusions that serve emotional needs.
It rewards it with significant biochemical positive outcomes.
It's a tough thing to fight with mere data.
You know, every drug addict knows that the drug addiction is not good for them, not healthy.
But it's very tough.
And that's even when they accept that it's really bad and not healthy.
But when people view, this is the addiction, right?
When people view their addictions as positive, and this is all reinforced with their biochemical system in the brain, man, it's tough.
Right.
Now, you mentioned just a moment ago that you would say that people bond with the state because it raises them, especially with the school system here.
And I would like to make a...
Sorry, and daycare and pre-K and all that, right?
Yeah, away from their parents.
Well, just from my own observation, working with high schoolers here, they...
And we've had discussions about this in class.
I've asked them, do you feel represented by the government?
Do you feel like it has your interests at heart?
And nobody has ever told me that they actually feel like the government has their best interest in mind, that they're just being used.
However, especially among young people that feel this way, they're overwhelmingly socialist, and so it's probably more Accurate to say.
It's like fighting over the gun in the room.
There's only one.
You know, everybody wants it.
You've said that before.
Yeah.
Well, if, you know, and if they feel that the government doesn't represent their views, then again, it comes back to this Aztecs versus the Mayans arguing about what the moon is made of.
Yeah.
It's not something anybody wants to get involved in.
It's not going to change anything.
Yeah.
My students, they all feel politically powerless.
Yeah.
You know, I guess rightfully so, because they are.
Well, yeah, that's pretty hard.
I mean, you can go public and you can write blogs and you can do videos and so on trying to put forward particular arguments.
But, you know, that may budge a few people here and there.
But, yeah, individually, voters, as we know, numerically, don't really have much effect.
Well, yeah, we know that.
But there's a difference.
In American culture, people think voting matters.
There are more people in America that feel like their vote matters and that they have political influence.
Right?
That would be the difference.
Whereas people here just feel completely powerless and that it doesn't matter.
Well, I think that, again, the current election cycle does seem to be There's just seem to be more of a choice now.
Now, of course, the choice in Europe is what are euphemistically called the far-right parties.
But I don't feel that they, you know, it doesn't seem like people in Europe feel like they have much choice.
And also, I think people tend to get more interested in politics when they are disastrous in their society.
And...
I don't think that in Europe that that's hit as yet.
Now you could argue it hasn't really hit that much in America as well either.
But there is some argument to be made that there is some...
I mean, let's say you get Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders.
I don't think anyone's going to think that the U.S. government is going to be identical which one gets in.
Whereas I don't know much of the spread of...
The political parties in Europe, I mean, I know that there's some spread, but I don't think that they feel that there is as much as there is in America, particularly during this election cycle.
Right.
And, you know, it is one of these self-fulfilling prophecies, right?
I mean, it's like what Henry Ford said, you know, although he had some problematic positions.
He did say, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
Right.
I mean, if you don't think you're going to have any effect on society, guess what?
You're not going to have any effect on society.
Imagine if Donald Trump says, I don't know that I could be elected president.
I don't know.
That seems hard.
I don't want to do that.
The world would look completely different right now.
Well, and you were mentioning Jeb versus Hillary, right?
Oh, just in the context of, you know, if the choices are Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders, everyone's aware that there are some stark differences there.
If it's Jeb versus Hillary Clinton, frankly, they're pretty much just the same.
It's the establishment line.
You're going to get all the trade policies that big business wants.
The banks will be very, very happy.
And they might give lip service to a couple conservative versus liberal issues, but nothing fundamentally is going to change from the typical status quo in American politics over the course of the last several decades.
That's how things are still here.
In fact, last year we had the regional election, which is why I mentioned that this area is the most socialist.
I live in the western part of France, and the northwest and the southwest vote overwhelmingly socialist.
But as the National Front Party, which is what they call the far right, which is, you know, it's just socialist, but, you know, they're wanting to control the borders.
Well, since they were having the regional elections for local government, there are two parties, the Socialist Party and what's called the Republican Party, which isn't like the American Republican Party.
And the socialists pulled out of areas where it was a close race with the Republicans and the Republicans did the same, so they would keep their same districts in order to consolidate the vote so that people would vote against the National Front. so they would keep their same districts in order to It's so corrupt.
Well, the other thing that's important to remember when we're talking about the far right in Europe is that they, again, I haven't.
haven't studied these platforms in detail, but what I have seen is that they generally accept everything that the left does, but they want borders.
So in other words, what people are saying is that prior to the EU, every government in Europe was a far right government, because that's all they were doing is doing exactly the same thing, but controlling their borders.
And so that argument, oh, these far right parties is like, okay, so prior to the EU and the Schengen Agreement, was every single government in Europe a far right party?
Or how were they characterized?
Well, there was left and there was right.
Mostly left, but a little bit of right.
So all it does is rewind the clock 20 years with all the same social programs in place.
But border control.
And that was not far right, 20 or whenever it was that these various countries joined.
It was not characterized as far right back then, but anyway.
Well, the rhetoric is because it's – even if the border controls between European countries were reestablished, it would be relatively easy for Europeans to travel back and forth.
You know, French people to Belgium, people to the UK or whatever.
It is characterized as a racial issue because they want to control the borders because of the migration, as they call it.
And so they think the problem with Hitler's National Socialist government wasn't that it was socialist, it's that it's nationalist.
Right.
Yeah, because certainly communism is a more international movement.
Well, I think we have answered my questions.
Is there anything that you would like to...
You know, ask me that I could maybe provide insight on the situation.
No, I think that's great.
You know, I'd still keep doing what you're doing.
No, I'm leaving very soon.
No, but I mean, wherever you go, because you're planting seeds, right?
I mean, you don't, you know, if you want a cucumber, you don't plant your seed right before dinner, right?
You've got to plant and it grows later.
And, you know, keep putting your ideas and arguments, perspectives out, and Either, you know, we're proven wrong about any potential disasters, which would be lovely, would be delightful, or we're proven right, in which case our credibility goes up.
And I guess people can watch the trailers for the Angry Birds movie for more on this.
All right.
Thanks for calling in, though.
I appreciate the chat.
Quickly.
Hello?
Yes.
I mentioned that, so this is the area that I would consider the most socialist, and that I also mentioned that this area has the fewest migrants.
Does that surprise you?
I'm sorry, say again?
Okay, so I mentioned that the western region of France, particularly the northwest where I'm at, votes overwhelmingly socialist.
I've only met one person that didn't like the socialist, and it's because she lived 10 years in America.
So I would say that this is probably their It's like saying California's Democrat, you know, it's not going to change.
Right.
Overwhelmingly so.
Would it surprise you to say that, unlike California in the United States, that this area has taken the fewest migrants?
No, it wouldn't hugely surprise me as a whole.
Okay.
Because, well, it's a very different situation to what's going on in America, whereas the leftists, they don't listen to you.
They don't change their opinion, but they ask for it.
And at the same time, they don't want the migrants coming here.
It's a lot easier to be multicultural from a distance.
I mean, that's true as well in America, where a lot of the elites end up in these very gated communities while preaching religion.
Multiculturalism to everything else.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah, we had the guy on, a Jewish fella, a month or two enough ago where he was talking about multiculturalism as a value and a virtue.
And when we started talking about bringing down the walls in Israel and allowing multiculturalism to swarm in, he was not quite as comfortable.
Yeah, I remember him.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, so it is natural that It's easier to virtue signal from a distance when there's no particular consequences to you.
I can certainly understand.
That seems kind of inevitable.
Well, if you don't own a business, I want everyone's wages to go up.
You own a business, boy, I'm going to have to pay out more.
My profits are going to get cut.
It's going to be a little tough.
I'm going to have to lay people off.
You have a different perspective when it's other people doing stuff compared to yourself.
Yeah, and I mean, if you don't run a business that...
It employs less skilled people than talking about raising the minimum wage, you know?
If you've got no skin in the game, I mean, I just...
It's not a universal thing because there's lots of exceptions.
But if you've got no skin in the game, I find it a little tough to take people seriously.
Like, I think X or Y or Z should happen.
And if nobody has anything to lose through that, it's just a little hard to, you know, It's a little hard to take what they're saying seriously because they don't know the other side because they have no skin in the game.
I think healthcare should be free.
Are you becoming a doctor, offering your services for free?
No!
Shut up!
Shut up right now!
Yeah, no, I mean, I'd like people...
I'd like every sick person to get healthcare.
So what?
I mean, I'll go you one better.
I'd like solar radiation to change so that no one ever gets sick.
I'd like all bacteria, except for the helpful ones that help us to digest food, I'd like all bacteria to be banished from the world.
I'd like unicorns to take the place of cars, because unicorns can drink sunlight and therefore are the perfect solar-powered flight machines.
I want, I want to say, I mean, a tantrum of moral posturing is no substitute for critical thought.
All right, well, thanks for the call, man.
I appreciate it.
Mike, do we have Uno von Morio?
Well, up next we were going to have Harold, but Harold isn't here.
Harold no-showed.
But if you would like to comment on this question, Steph, it's pretty basic, pretty simple.
And the question is, what is masculinity?
Masculinity is showing up when you have a call.
What is masculinity?
Yeah, like I'll do a few minutes on that.
I was thinking about this since Mike sent in the question.
So, my daughter, my lovely, charming, wonderful daughter.
So, the other day, I was talking to her about a single mom with a son.
And she said, a single mom with a son?
How's she going to teach him about violence?
Now, I thought that was pretty funny.
What she meant was, you know, roughhousing, you know, because she and I do roughhousing, which is generally a male thing to do in the household.
And I remember being at a party, a kid's party, years ago, before my daughter was even born.
And...
You know, the girls were active, right?
It's not like they're all doing imaginary tea party sets, but the girls were active and the kids knew me and the girls were like, you know, come and play X with us, which I'm always happy to do.
And then, but the boys, you know, grabbed the big foam blocks and charged at me going, you know, that's their, that's their introduction to hi.
And Roughhousing is one of these interesting things with regards to parenting in that it teaches children limits and strength and restraint and self-control and so on, which I think is particularly important for boys.
Boys, and these are all big generalizations, and I also accept that these are generalizations largely culled from my own childhood, so they may have shifted and probably have over time, but this is the stuff that I recall.
Boys Must learn two things to succeed in boy town.
Number one, compete hard.
Compete hard.
Try to win.
Work hard to be the best that you can at whatever.
You know, whether it's a video game or whether it's sports or whether it's chess or maybe a competition among them athletes.
Work hard to win.
And then, when you have won, be gracious.
Mike, you had this in hockey, right?
What does everyone do at the beginning and end of a hockey game?
Well, especially playoffs, which tend to be a bit more heated.
I had this in tournaments that I played in.
Certainly, it's that way in the pros after the seven-game series where you're fighting for your survival to move on.
Hopefully, you can race the Stanley Cup.
Everyone lines up and shakes hands.
Taps gloves as they walk by.
As, you know, the people that you were checking into the boards and high-sticking, I don't know, five minutes prior.
Now you've shown them a respect for a hard-fought game.
Right.
And did you know many sucky losers?
They're around, right?
There would be the ones that, like, I'm going to stand in the line because I'm supposed to stand in the line, but I'm not actually going to, like, put out my hand and shake it.
I'm just going to, you know, go in the line of people and sit there with a sourpuss on my face.
There's always a few.
And normally they're on the losing side as opposed to the winning side, oddly enough.
The winners are very happy to congratulate Liz.
Yeah, congratulations, you suck.
Right.
And, um...
The other thing...
So you've got to compete hard, you want to win, and then you have to be gracious.
And you can't, I don't know what was called over here in the colonies, but you don't rub people's faces in it, you don't brag, you don't crow over it.
I don't know, what would it be called here when you become a jerky winner?
Oh, Ronda Rousey?
No, um...
I'm sure there's a term, but nothing's immediately coming to mind right now.
The odd thing is that at least 40% of the time I ask Mike any random question, he just says Ronda Rousey.
So I don't know what that means, but Ronda should probably be alerted.
So you have to play hard and then you have to be relatively friendly afterwards.
And that's an important thing because it says that competition is very important, but competition should not destroy relationships.
And this capacity to oppose each other yet remain friendly is the one thing I think that is most missing from public debates these days.
Because, you know, this hypersensitivity, this safe spaces and trigger warnings and all this kind of stuff, it's the idea that if you disagree with someone, you must be bitter mortal enemies to the death, right?
You can't fight hard and then shake hands.
And I remember Ayn Rand was writing about this in one of her nonfiction books about how There was some debate about important things and the men shook hands on the way off the stage.
She found this horrible, horrifying, right?
It is a bit of a male perspective and it's kind of tough how you can really strongly disagree with someone and still respect their perspective.
And look, it's something that I'm continuing to work on as I grow.
But there's significant punishments to either crowing winners or sucky losers.
You know, like the people who throw...
The Xbox controller, because the Xbox controller is broken.
And if you're a parent, the kids will blame things in the environment for what went wrong.
And very occasionally, there might be a bug in the computer program.
But for the most part, you just did something wrong.
And that's why it didn't work out.
So with regards to masculinity, like I think about sort of, I look at sort of what's missing.
And this capacity for significant conflict combined with a reasonably friendly respect for your opponent, both before and afterwards.
Like, don't give a quarter during the debate, but don't hold on to the combat before and afterwards, I think is important.
And that comes a lot from male competition.
There's a lot more collaborative play among girls and a lot more competitive play among boys.
And another thing I think that's important, Mike, did you ever hear this phrase when you were in sports?
Walk it off!
Yeah, once or twice.
Skate it off!
You know, just jam that finger back in the glove.
I'm sure it'll reattach somehow.
But for me, like I remember this a whole bunch of times.
When I was in junior high school, we had this...
I mean, it was a caricature right out of The Simpsons, like this Scottish gym teacher who chewed tobacco during...
This is, I guess, bad.
I don't know if you still can.
Probably can.
You know, the shop teacher always had a haze of cigarette smoke, of wacky tobacco smoke around him.
In addition to a missing digit, normally, the shop.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
They call him Stumpy Von Bladesaw.
But with...
With this guy, I remember wrestling was the big thing.
This is back when things were more gender specific.
They carved the gym into two halves, and the girls took dance, and the boys took, you know, forehead to the crotch wrestling.
And I just remember flipping out and just cracking my head.
Like, when you get that metallic taste, it's almost like blood.
You feel like, man, did I bump my head so hard that blood is oozing from my gums?
And I just remember this guy, like, groping it around my head with his, like, yellow tobacco-stained fingers, breathing his diesel fumes of chewing tobacco into my mouth, and, you know, literally, like, walk it off.
It's like, walk it off, it's my head.
Anyway, so there is a certain amount of, if you still have the same number of limbs after the incident as before, the magic walk it off stuff seems to be pretty, fairly key.
How would that have worked with the dance instructors on the other side of the gymnasium?
Oh, I assume that's just, float it off.
The state will take care of you.
So, I mean, that's sort of walk-it-off stuff where you're not supposed to dwell particularly on your own discomforts.
And, you know, it wasn't crazy, right?
When I ran into it, I was, you know, the game when you're a kid.
This is back in England.
When you're a kid, I was in the schoolyard.
And...
You know, when people are chasing you, the last thing you want to do is keep running when they've stopped chasing you because that looks just ridiculous, right?
So you have to, when someone's chasing you in a game of tag or whatever we were playing, you have to look back, see if they're gaining, see, you know, measure your output and all that.
And I just, I kept looking back too much because I couldn't see if the person was still chasing me.
Looked back a little too much, a little too long, and then said hello to my good friend, Mr.
Wrought Iron Fence.
Who gave me a little kiss right there in the bridge of the nose, right between the eyes, a little bit below between the eyes.
Apparently, I think that's the thinnest skin in your whole body.
And man, I tell you that, if you break that skin, I mean, it's like cherry bomb of ketchup.
It's quite the bleeder.
And I had to go to, they couldn't stitch it because the skin was too thin, but I did go and get these little white strips and all that in the hospital.
So, you know, they did, you know, if it was really bad, they'd take you to hospital.
But for the most part, it was just kind of walking off.
I think there was that aspect of stuff that's tough.
Now, it can get to the point where men then just disregard their own needs and preferences and all of that.
And I think that's pretty bad.
So there is a sort of an extension of that that is a problem which starts to get into the territory of male disposability.
But I think what's happened is that some of that walk-it-off stuff You know, tobacco, breath, rubbing your gums, you're fine.
You know, I don't know if women can, little girls can do that, but the idea that that may have extended, it seems to have vanished a lot from boys without necessarily, I thought it may have been better to extend it more to girls.
So I think, you know, fairness, toughness, commitment, forgiveness, right?
I mean, if somebody beats you in a game, you shake hands and, you know, you in a sense forgive them for beating you and nobody wants to I remember playing...
I played a lot of tennis when I was a kid.
We used to get up early and go to play tennis before school, even in the weekdays, because we had to climb over the fence.
It was locked.
We had to climb over the fence to go, because they didn't charge you.
We didn't have much money to play.
Of course, we grew up really poor, but we would climb over the fence and play in the morning before school.
And that way we didn't have to pay whatever it was to use the courts, because there was no one there at that time.
And...
Every now and then there'd be the kid who would throw his racket and, you know, jump out, like the true McEnroe, right?
I mean, I don't know, before he mellowed out a little bit of age or whatever, but...
That was always, like, embarrassing.
You know, like, the emotions being some sort of compelling reason for something was never very believable in those situations.
And I think that was strongly discouraged and nobody wanted to play with those kids.
In the same way, you know, the weasel kids who were, like, called timeout just because you were about to catch them when you were playing a tank or whatever it was.
Or, you know, you're playing war and you clearly shoot someone.
With your stick.
It was just pretend, right?
If you could see them, you called their name, right?
And they're like, you missed!
Off they run.
So there was this constant, because we all, we didn't have any structure, right?
When I was growing up, we didn't have, you know, now for a lot of kids, it's like structured play dates, or you go to Playdium or Chuck E. Cheese, and it's all very structured.
But when I was a kid, you just went out into the neighborhood, you found kids to play with, and you self-organized something to do.
With no money.
And no cars.
Occasionally we get on the bus and go somewhere, but that was rare-ish.
And so you had to do a lot of negotiating.
Sometimes it felt like we did more negotiating on what to play than doing any actual playing, but we did a lot of that negotiation.
And then the rules, how did you enforce the rules?
Well, I mean, this is like, in hindsight, this is one of the reasons why I think anarchism or voluntarism kind of came to me later in life, was that You'd set up these games and there would be no adults, there'd be no referees, there'd be no umpires.
You had to enforce the rules horizontally.
And the way that you enforced the rules was you didn't play with the kids who cheated.
And then, you know, every now and then you'd let them play again and if they'd stop cheating, that's fine.
But you would ostracize the kids who would cheat.
Now, you wouldn't necessarily throw them out the moment they cheated, but you'd complain about it.
And if they didn't change, all that would happen is you wouldn't invite them around the next time.
Or you'd have lookouts, and if that kid came along, everybody would go somewhere else.
Now, I wasn't that kid.
I was actually pretty good at following those kinds of rules.
But just seeing how all of those rules were enforced without a central authority, without an authority of any kind.
But how those rules were enforced, the games were defined and the rules were enforced horizontally.
I think that used to be a lot more common in childhood as a whole.
And now, because everything's very structured and usually quite expensive, I think it's tougher for people to think that rules can be enforced without a central authority.
And that's...
Mostly I was playing with boys.
In fact, I would say almost exclusively...
I mean, I went to an all-boys school, in boarding school.
It was a...
It was a boy and girl school, and occasionally there'd be a little crossover, but they were separate walls, separate dormitories and all that.
So...
And I, you know, I actually had male teachers.
In fact, I only had one female teacher.
Teacher.
The music teacher.
And a very nice lady.
She didn't get married to one of the teachers.
I don't know.
The guys all had these giant...
I guess they were dark brown shades to wear indoors that went on in the 70s.
Mustaches and stuff.
But...
I had a lot of male teachers.
I played a lot with boys.
Almost exclusively with boys.
And...
That, I think, is one of the reasons why, when I talk to some of the younger listeners here, there sometimes is a little bit more of a gap, culturally, because I think they, you know, grew up with a lot of female influences, right?
Like, I was raised by a single mom, but I did also go to boarding school and mostly played with boys and had mostly male teachers for significant portions of my childhood, at least until I came to Canada.
Even when I came to Canada, there were a lot more, I think, male teachers back in the day than there are now, at least for the younger kids.
So I think a lot of the spontaneous self-organization, the glorious anarchy of a bunch of kids out there with no money and lots of time, You know, particularly in the summers.
You know, I mean, the summers, man, it's stretched from here to eternity when it came to getting things done.
And because we all grew up poor and nobody's family had a car, at least when I was in England, you just had to figure out stuff to do locally.
And, you know, this was like you go to garbage dumps and you get pram wheels and you nail together your go-karts and you, you know, you end up with the bike that has like Different sized handlebars on each side and seven different colors, you know, that Adam Sandler car song.
So a lot of that sort of Creativity and resourcefulness, we would build these tree houses out of stuff we just basically hijacked from garbage dumps and stuff.
And we'd build, like dig tunnels and just make stuff that was kind of cool and all that.
So I think some of that sort of spontaneous self-organization was much more common.
And again, I don't know what was going on on the girls' side because I almost always played with the boys.
But I think some of that...
Spontaneous self-organization, which is really the essence.
You have to believe that that's how society works.
You have to believe that's how society can work.
Not just for a voluntary or anarchic society.
You have to believe that's how society will work just to have a free society.
That spontaneous self-organization and the horizontal enforcement of rules is the way society can work.
Now, that's the way my whole society worked for good chunks of my childhood.
So I think I find it easy to accept that I can work in a free market because I lived in a sort of free play market when I was growing up.
And I think that aspect of masculinity has been diminished.
Those are sort of fairness, toughness, these things I noted down, sports, this walk-it-off stuff, forgiveness, and spontaneous self-organization.
Ostracism.
I think ostracism is easier for boys than it is for girls.
With girls, the ostracism seems to be more permanent.
With boys, the ostracism is until you play better.
You know, like if you're a sucky player, then nobody will play with you, but they're open to playing with you again in the future if you're going to conform, right?
And that comes from the sort of...
Competitiveness followed by the handshaking, right?
We're enemies, in a sense, while we're playing.
It's win-lose, but that shouldn't interfere with our win-win capacity for friendship.
So I think that temporary ostracism to enforce play norms or social norms or fairness norms, I think, is really, really important.
And I think a lot of that stuff is missing.
The nudging of temporary ostracism That can run society and certainly ran our society when we were kids.
You know, if it can run kids, it should be able to run adults.
Now, how we embrace masculine values again, that is a...
I'm going to think about that because I'm going to need to make a separate conversation about that.
It's going to be tough to do it without at least elevating them.
And the listener was talking about Trump.
And, you know, Donald Trump embodies a lot of masculine values, you know.
What was it, Mike?
You were talking about that New York Times article that was supposed to be some grave insult.
Because Trump was saying, well, you know, I gotta leave because I've got a hot date with the Victoria's Secret model.
And this was portrayed as somehow really negative to Trump.
Whereas, of course, a lot of the guys in the world are like, well, that sounds pretty good.
Yes, the attempted hit pieces on Donald Trump are failing miserably.
The Donald Trump with his bikini model swimsuit parties, all the men are going to hate him because of this, of course.
Yes, yes.
Who likes a guy with, the only guy I don't like who has bikini swimsuit model parties is the guy who didn't invite me, you know, when I was single.
And there's many women that wish they could have attended these bikini swimsuit parties to hang out with the alpha male Donald Trump.
You know what a boss Donald Trump is?
That's why you should never support him.
It's like, I don't think that this is translating too well to a lot of male ears.
Do you know he would regularly inspect the lineup of bikini clad women in the Miss Universe contest?
And people are like, you know, I'm inspecting meat in a plant.
Yeah.
Similar.
So, you know, if I could switch jobs, well, I... What a monster making the people that are, you know, in Miss America competitions and evaluating them based on their looks.
Shocking.
Shocking.
That's almost like running an auto mechanic store and evaluating your employees and their ability to fix cars.
For Christ's sake.
Beyond shocking.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it is interesting.
And...
The ability of people to withstand or to rise above and even profit from negative sentiments, I think that's important.
When I was a kid, I have fairly decent, I would say, leadership qualities.
And when I was a kid, when I would try and get people to do what I wanted them to do, Well, you'd make your case and you'd make it as enthusiastically as possible.
But what would happen is there was other kids who had different ideas about what we should do.
And if you get your way, they grudgingly come along and resent you for winning, you know, and eventually, hopefully, they'll, you know, relax and enjoy.
And there are times when you lose and you, I want to do this, now we're going to do that.
But just being able to stand people's disapproval of you in order to get what you want, in order to get what you think is right or fun or the best, I mean, I think that's largely, again, these hyper-structured environments, I think, have diminished that to some degree.
And eating out, of course, as well, right?
I mean, when you eat out, one of the great benefits for families is everyone can usually order their own meal rather than having a sip from the common pot.
And so a lot of those things have changed.
And, you know, masculinity has been...
Viewed as this vague or sometimes not so vague environmental toxin for quite a long time.
And like all of these pendulums that have swung too far, are there things to be criticized in masculinity?
Absolutely.
You know, there's a lot of enrichment that can come from feminine qualities and other qualities in the gender spectrum that is great.
But the idea that it's somehow innately toxic and, you know, this Girl, good, boy, bad mantra that's been chanted in a lot of places for the last couple of decades.
Pendulum has swung too far.
And, of course, we don't want it to swing back too far.
I like this pendulum swinging thing.
It sounds very masculine.
Here I am, stepping backwards and forwards on a trampoline.
But...
Yeah, we're hoping, you know, with reason and evidence, you hope to arrest that swing somewhere in the middle so it's more stable.
But I think those are the things that I sort of mulled over.
And fundamentally, the desire to protect.
The desire to create and to protect.
That is really the analogy for countries and civilizations, right?
You create a country, you create a civilization, and then you desire to protect it.
Protection is foundational to masculinity.
Because, you know, I can't make a baby, but I can protect.
A baby.
And, you know, that's as good as in certain situations.
And so when I look at societies that seem to be bereft of protection, I look at the state of masculinity.
And I would assume that where the society is without defenses or protections, masculinity has been attacked.
For quite some time.
And so I would say that these are some of the areas where I think we could explore the value of these particular ethics and approaches and see how they could be beneficial to society, because I think the absence can be pretty catastrophic.
Is there anything you wanted to add to that, Mike?
Oh, great summary.
All right.
Well, thanks everyone so much for listening and for watching, of course.
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