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July 2, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:42:14

3334 The Black Market of Male Achievement – Call In Show – July 1st, 2016

Question 1: [2:16] - “I used to be a hardcore World of Warcraft raider and basically spent over 10 years of my life going through the motions of school and getting home where I could actually finally just be myself and find ''safe haven'' online with a second family playing video games. Having been a part of that community and still following its growth and scope, it worries me that white people and asians are abandoning the ''real world'' in order to develop their online persona where the real world is almost forgotten.”“Over the past two years I went on a quest for self-knowledge and to learn how the world actually works after the harsh realization of how pointless my college degree was. Now I try to bring back that knowledge to my online peer group but there is a clear apathy in regards to what happens to the world and toward themselves.”“I've discovered a lot of my smart close friends that I made online over the years have a very leftist view of the world and either dismiss my arguments, ignore them or attack me whenever I bring it up.”“Those were some of my best friends and if they won't listen to reason and evidence coming from me and just go on with non-argument personal attacks. Should I bring up the subject over and over again or just drop it and move on to make new friends?”Question 2: [1:42:35] - “My fiancé and I are deliberating about having children. While we are currently leaning towards no, we want to make sure that our reasons make sense. What reasons would Stefan give for having children to a couple that, while proponents of peaceful parenting and self-knowledge, believe that happiness and a legacy can be obtained without children?”Question 3: [2:21:27] - “Relating to the Brock Turner case: How is it possible that ‘strong feminists’ reason that when two ‘equals’ get drunk and fool around, that it is the males responsibility to dictate when a woman does or does not know when she wants to have sex? Weren't we all under the impression that feminists believe in ‘my body, my choice?’”Question 4: [3:04:19] - “I am a black atheist living in the south who is a former democrat. I can see the merits and values that religion gives certain people, and the fact I don't agree with the medium in which the message is given is beyond the point. Also I am against big government regulation and think they should be granted so much power given past events. Recently while talking to a close friend I told him that my ideals and views align more with conservative and he immediately told I couldn't because one I am an atheist. Can atheist consider himself a conservative?”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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Time	Text
	Hey, hey, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Hey, did you ever get the thought, does it ever cross your mind, that possibly you might be spending a bit too much time playing video games?
	Well, fear not.
	We have that problem solved for you.
	The first caller is a gamer who spent 10 years as a hardcore World of Warcraft raider.
	Yeah, I didn't really know what it meant either, but he explained it and we had a great conversation.
	about why men in particular are spending so much time these days playing video games.
	So that is one of the most important cultural phenomenon that's going on today and we really got it cold.
	So I hope that you will listen to that and let us know what you think.
	Second couple, in their mid-30s, couldn't figure out, couldn't decide, couldn't make up their minds about whether to have kids or not.
	They like to travel, they want to be entrepreneurs.
	It's obviously not a moral decision, but it is obviously a very important decision.
	So we had a great conversation about that.
	A woman called in about the Brock Turner case, and this is a young man who was charged with a variety of sexual assault crimes because of a drunken incident he had with a woman.
	We talked a little bit about the case, but more so about the media and female responsibility and her frustration about how women are portrayed in these situations.
	And the fourth caller was a fine young black man who is an atheist and used to be more liberal and now is becoming more conservative and just is trying to figure out how he fits in within his own community, within the larger cultural framework, and it was a great conversation with a fine young man.
	So I hope that you will.
	I recognize what an amazing, high-quality, astounding, wonderful conversation is going on through this community, so essential for the world, so essential for the kind of honesty that we really need to fix the future.
	So please help us out, help us out, help us out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	You can also follow me on Twitter at Stephan Molyneux, fdrpodcast.com to share the shows if you'd like them that way.
	Last but not least, please check out our Amazon affiliate link if you're going to do any shopping.
	At FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
	You can, of course, just set that to your homepage or one of your homepages when you open your browser.
	So it'll be right there if you need it.
	Thanks, everyone, so much.
	Let's get it on.
	All right.
	Well, up for today is David.
	And David wrote in with a fairly long email that I thought would be great for him to read himself on the show.
	So welcome to the show, David.
	Thank you so much.
	How's it going?
	Well, thanks.
	Awesome.
	So here's my email.
	I'll just read it from a little document over here.
	It says, I used to be a hardcore World of Warcraft raider and basically spent over 10 years of my life just going through the motions of schools and getting home where I could actually finally just be myself and find safe heaven online with a second family playing video games.
	Having been part of the community Over the past two years, I went on a quest for self-knowledge and to learn how the world actually works after the harsh realization that how of how pointless my college degree was.
	Now, I try to bring back that knowledge to my online peer group, but there is a clear apathy in regards to what happens to the world and towards themselves.
	I've discovered a lot of smart close friends that I made online over the years have a very leftist view of the world and either dismiss my argument, ignore them, or attack me whenever I bring it up.
	I feel like my life is a living example of Plato's King and that I have no friends at all with whom I can relate to anymore unless we talk about video games.
	Do you see a worrying trend of people turning to the internet?
	And anonymously, it provides an order to escape the responsibility toward their heritage and the continuation of their own culture.
	If so, how would a normal person go about trying to educate and bring up people who were sort of stuck into Plato's cave, looking at shadows?
	Those are some of my best friends, or were some of my best friends.
	And if they don't listen to reason and evidence coming from me and just go on with non-argument personal attacks, When I bring up any type of maybe controversial subjects such as my support for Donald Trump or issues that I have with some of the immigration policy of Obama in the United States, although I'm Canadian, they just say like, oh, you're Canadian.
	What would you know about that?
	So anyway, should I bring up the subject over and over again or just drop it and move on to make new friends?
	That's my question.
	Yeah, it's a great topic.
	So that's World of Warcraft, right?
	Now, I've not played it, but my understanding is, watch someone play it, but my understanding is that it's sort of a live computer at Dungeons& Dragons where you can work with other people, do you Snapchat or something built into the game to be able to converse back and forth and plan your strategies and so on, and you level up, you explore new regions, and there's a continual set of expansion packets, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	But the problem that I found with video games, especially with World of Warcraft, is that when the game was released, it was really something that I never experienced before in my life.
	I really had a sense of belonging into it, a huge sense of community.
	You know, some of my best memory really came from that game.
	But as it evolved throughout the years, the developer just started dumbing everything down, making it casual, and kind of ruining their own game, which made a lot of my friends and myself leave the game and look for other options.
	So we found other options, but it seems like whatever game that I choose over the years that I spent playing video games, eventually it just gets crapped down by By the developers.
	And it just slowly falls apart.
	And then when a game falls apart and you have no more interest and you're bored with it, then there's nowhere else to progress, no more purpose into it.
	I just get depressed and watch videos.
	What for you was, I mean, I won't get into my own history.
	I played Dungeons and Dragons for a couple of years in my early teens and really enjoyed it.
	And it's a great game for storytelling, for imagination, for gambling, because it's basically gambling with dice, with a few more science than you'll find in your average casino.
	But yeah, it developed.
	I was a good dungeon master, developed my storytelling, role-playing, and all that kind of stuff.
	And most importantly, it's dirt cheap.
	And when you don't, like, you didn't need a computer, you didn't need, I mean, you don't even need paper, really.
	You can do a lot of it...
	In your imagination.
	And so, you know, once you've spent, you've laid out, I don't know, 40 bucks for books back in the day, you could play for countless hours without spending another dime.
	And so I found when I got into, a friend of mine bought me, it was called Evercrack for a while, Everquest.
	Oh yeah, that's basically the child of World of Warcraft.
	A lot of the developer from Everquest went into World of Warcraft.
	Yeah, it's a precursor, exactly.
	And I remember booting it up, running around a little bit, getting confused and saying, eh, not for me.
	I was more into first-person shooter online, like Unreal Tournament and so on.
	We used to play that when I was head of a development group in the business world.
	And a company I co-founded, we used to stay, sometimes after hours.
	And play Capture the Flag.
	And it was great.
	Because, you know, it was a community, but it was actually people.
	We would all sit around the developer's desk and play that way.
	And it was a lot of fun.
	And so when I tried EverQuest, it was like, I don't know anyone.
	I don't really care to know anyone.
	So I just sort of never played it again.
	And I've never played World of Warcraft.
	I've played some of the Morrowind and Oblivion, the stuff where I guess it's solo, single player and so on, which I thought was fun.
	And...
	But I haven't had the kind of absorption I think that you get in World of Warcraft.
	It's extraordinarily absorbing, right?
	It's like a part-time job.
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	I would say it's even more than a part-time job for some of the players, especially back in the time.
	I would say that, you know, some people can see it as a part-time job, some other people would be called, like, no life, which I would have probably been a part of that, and it is your life.
	So I would...
	So, for example, I rated with some of the best group in the United States.
	I was back in...
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	Sorry to interrupt, David.
	I don't know what rating means.
	Okay, sorry.
	So rating, here's how it goes.
	There's challenges put on by the game.
	So you go into a dungeon, Or a big, grandiose arena, basically.
	And you have a series of boss that you can concur.
	But the thing is, especially back in the days, they made it so hard for anybody to do it that you had to go in there with 40 people.
	So 40 people had to come.
	40?
	Yes, 40 people.
	40 people?
	Yeah.
	Are you kidding me?
	How on earth could you coordinate 40?
	Oh, I guess if they don't have any lives.
	You ready at 2 a.m.?
	Yeah, I'll be ready at 2 a.m.
	Why?
	Am I going to be out raving?
	So 40 co-players, you would all get together?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Wow.
	Every night.
	I would even be in the raiding guild, which they would call it, which was very focused on that, which made us...
	I don't know what raiding guild means.
	Oh, sorry.
	So it's...
	Dumb it down.
	Way down.
	So we're under a banner, basically.
	It's like a group, a tribe, I would say.
	And then you would have maybe 50 people, you know, come into that one group, or maybe 50 to 100 people, per se.
	And then those people would usually play together the game, just maybe on the casual level where you would have experienced those games.
	But then when it came down towards the end game, so the hardest thing to do in the game, you had to coordinate 40 people together.
	So you would put together 40 people, and then you would attack A dungeon, which is the grandiose place you would go into.
	So you had raid leaders, and you had officers, and you had different types of roles that people could take.
	So you had people who took the damage, some people who healed the damage on their teammates, and other people that were doing the damage to the monsters, basically.
	And then you had to coordinate strategies over that.
	So, yeah.
	That's a little bit how it works, and towards the end of the time that I spent that, it was literally, I was going to CEGEP back then, which is basically the school in between high school and university back in Quebec.
	And I would literally go to class for six hours a day and probably play World of Warcraft for the other 10 hours or 12 hours.
	And when I didn't have class, I would just wake up Hop on my computer and go to bed at like 2 in the morning.
	So outside of doing those 40 people raid where we would attack enemies or even fight with other people.
	So we had like 40 peoples of our alliance and then there was the So in World of Warcraft, it's like Alliance and Horde, right?
	The bad guys or the good guys.
	Or not really that way, actually, but it's two allegiance, basically.
	So we were the best group of 40 people on the Alliance side, and then there was the best group of 40 people on the Horde side.
	So we would even contest each other for world objectives.
	So there would be battles that would go on for maybe five, six hours at a time, and things like that.
	And if you die in the battle, at least if you're lower level, you're dead, right?
	I mean, you're done.
	You're gone.
	I mean, you could get resurrected, if I remember right, but you lose a constitution point and resurrection spells were crazy expensive and you couldn't get a hold of them.
	So when you die, is it like a shooter where you die, you respawn in five seconds, you go back in, or if you die, do you die?
	No.
	Well, there's two possible ways.
	When you die and you're into one of those, they call it encounters, so when you fight some of the hardest encounters in the game, which is facing a boss, if you died within your group of 40, you had about, I think if I remember correctly, it was like five opportunities to resurrect someone.
	So in the 40 people, if five people died during one encounter, it was fine.
	You could just resurrect five of them, but there's a lot of mechanics That developers put into the game that are meant to kill you.
	So, you know, move out of this, group up for that, spread out for this, you know, things like that, of that nature.
	So it was about, like, having almost a dance of 40 people around the same objective of defeating the boss and trying to minimize death as much as possible and basically yelling at people that died.
	And is it just the last mechanic questions I have before we get into those?
	Is it...
	I mean, the first-person shooters are twitch fests, right?
	I mean, it's its aim, its accuracy, and so on.
	And then there are other kinds of games, I don't know, what were they, like where it's sort of turn-based.
	And it's not like you shoot your arrow, you don't have to be pointing like you do in Oblivion.
	You just, there's a probability to hit and so on.
	Was it a combination of strategy and TwitchFest, or was it one or the other more?
	Yeah, it's exactly that.
	It's strategy and TwitchFest, I would say, because you had to have the presence of mind to do your ability at the right time in order to avoid a certain mechanic, but you also had to have the proper strategy within your entire group in order to defeat the encounter.
	So some encounters, even with People who rated, as they say, which is just playing the game as a group of 40 people, for months, it would take weeks to months to even defeat one encounter.
	So they would be spending maybe six hours a day just trying to defeat it and not being able to do it because the stars wouldn't align, right?
	Because one mistake could mean the end of the entire group and then everybody would die and then you would just go again and try again, try again, try again, until you actually succeeded.
	So it was both, I would say, definitely.
	Okay, alright.
	And I guess as part of a tribe, you feel this allegiance.
	Like, if they're going in, you don't want to go out because you're part of the tribe.
	You're part of the team, right?
	Well, yeah.
	It's also...
	Well, you know, it's a group of guys basically going to war, almost, in video games, right?
	And it's the same thing when it came down to PvP, which is player versus player.
	Like, what I did as well is PvE, which was what I would explain to you, with either 14 people group or 25 people group.
	But there's also the other side, which is PvP, which was either 10th against 10, Or even sometimes they called it Arena, which was like a 3v3.
	And this would be the same, you know, the same concept where it would be strategy and execution.
	And you would go in together as a team, coordinate your effort to achieve the objective of basically winning.
	So it was a very competitive...
	It's a very competitive...
	Right, and if you win against the monsters, then I guess you get cool stuff, which then levels you up, gives you more power to take on the next monsters.
	And if you play versus players, do you get their equipment if you defeat them?
	No, there would be a ranking system.
	So, you know, for example, if anybody ever played World of Warcraft here, I've been gladiator like four times, which is basically there's a ranking ladder.
	And when you finish top 0.05%, you get the title of gladiator.
	So your character goes around in the game.
	And before your name, say whatever my name was, I would have the title Gladiator.
	But then if you ranked a little bit lower, you could have the title Duelist or Challenger, etc.
	So it would go down that way.
	Then you would have a leaderboard and you can see where you rank yourself up against other players.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And is there any way to make a living at it?
	I mean, I know that you can buy and sell certain items even for real world cash or Bitcoins or whatever.
	But, you know, there are Twitch players like Fatality who are, they go and do tournaments and they win and people watch them play.
	Is there a way to make a living?
	Can you turn it into a job?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	Back in the days when I used to play, there wasn't really any avenue for that, and I never really considered it as something I could pursue.
	But these days, esports, like I play League of Legends as well, it's getting very big.
	Like, just for the statistic, I think in 2008 was season one of League of Legends, and it had about 100,000 viewers or 300,000 viewers during the World Championship.
	And during season three, which was three years later, there was 37 million viewers for the championship, the world championship.
	And then the years...
	Sorry, 37 million viewers online?
	Yes, watching the world championship at one time.
	This game called League of Legends, is that right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	But most of the viewership was coming from Korea and China.
	There was a lot of viewership, although from North America, but it was not surpassing maybe 2 million.
	But it had more view than the NBA final during that year.
	Wow.
	Wow, that is...
	And of course, the people who are broadcasting are, you know, making ads or something and making a fortune, right?
	Yes.
	And then they can play it on YouTube later and so on.
	Okay.
	So what you're basically telling me is I'm clearly in the wrong profession.
	Yeah.
	Forget this philosophy.
	It's time to amp up the jolt caffeine and Red Bull my way to the – anyway, okay.
	All right.
	No, definitely.
	But it's just like any professional sport, right?
	There's one person that makes it for every – I don't know how many who fails, but people who dedicated their life to it and really try to share their craft with other people.
	They're getting, you know, right now, I think today, there's a new game that came out from Blizzard, which is Overwatch, and there's this new player, say Seagull, which he streams on Twitch, and he has over 40,000 viewers at one time during the entire day.
	And then he gets donations, then he gets subscription revenue, and they make bank.
	Absolutely.
	Well, PewDiePie, right?
	Number one on YouTube, as far as I understand it.
	The guy pulls down 10 mil a year.
	It's not my scene.
	I mean, obviously, the guy's skilled at what he does.
	I've watched a couple of it.
	It's not my scene, but there's some clear coin in that, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	You can pull some cheddar.
	All right.
	Now, when you look back at the time that you spent on it, What do you think of the time that you've spent?
	I do.
	I mean, I sometimes look back at, you know, the time I spent.
	I don't regret any of the time I spent playing Dungeons& Dragons.
	I mean, was broke and had good friendships and it was great storytelling.
	It was lots of fun.
	And it wasn't like there were a lot of other options, you know, when I was sort of 14 or 15 to do a lot of other stuff.
	So it was great.
	You know, sometimes I wonder, geez, that I spend maybe too much money, not too much money, too much time playing video games, you know, because they actually say, you know, six months playing video games, you can become a really good guitarist.
	You know, if you sort of take it, you learn another language, if you do other things, but.
	But I also am pleased with, you know, I look back at like, I've written like seven novels, 30 plays, hundreds of poems, 3,300 philosophy.
	I can't look back and say, boy, I've wasted a lot of time, didn't I? I mean, you gotta relax and enjoy yourself and video games can be a fun way.
	Now, I can't do in-depth video games, you know, as a parent and so on, if I can get I don't know, 15 minutes every second night to race through half a level of Doom.
	I'm doing all right, as far as that goes.
	I bought The Witcher 4.
	I have yet to boot it up.
	So, I doubt.
	I mean, what, 200 hours of gameplay?
	That's like 14 years of parenting in terms of the time that you can get.
	But I don't.
	I don't regret it.
	I enjoyed it.
	But when you look back at your sort of 10 years, you know, six years, 8, 10, 12 hours a day at times.
	What do you think of it?
	For some of it, I wouldn't, the majority of it, I don't regret it.
	Because it also got me to where I'm at today.
	But some of it definitely, it's just, I couldn't see another way.
	Like, I was raised, I was born and raised in Quebec.
	So I was French, French school, French parent, French friends, back in Quebec.
	And You know, other than, and we also, I moved about nine times when I was a kid.
	So I kept moving from place to place and losing my friends in real life.
	And then at some point, the big thought that came into my life and came into my thought is like, what's the point of making some friends for myself?
	Because it was before the internet, right?
	If I'm just going to lose them, you know, you move away two hours away or 30 minutes away or whatever, and then you call up your friends and they're like, oh, well, hey, how's it going?
	Yeah, you want to hang out today?
	Well, you can't really, because it's your parent that can drive you.
	So there was nobody for me to hang out around.
	Well, at least if you've got the online community, it doesn't matter where you move, right?
	Exactly.
	So that's the main thing that really drew me into...
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Why so much moving?
	Well, I lived in a little town in Quebec near Montreal, actually.
	It's not very little.
	But the first excuse was, well, the place is not big enough.
	Our place is not big enough.
	So let's move into a bigger place.
	I was like, oh, okay, sure.
	So we move into a bigger place.
	Did you care as a child?
	You know, the reasons that parents give for moving, oftentimes it's like the kids usually, well, oftentimes the kids aren't quite as keen on the reasons, but you know, that's what your parents said, right?
	Yeah, I was not down for moving.
	The excuse that my parents used for me to accept the first move I remember was, well, at least now you're going to be able to invite more than two friends over.
	You're going to be able to invite three or four friends over.
	Not if I have new friends, I'm not.
	No, because I've been at the same thing.
	Like, I think I was about nine or ten, and my mom said, we're going to Canada.
	And I remember asking, why?
	Like, what a random thing to do, you know?
	We've got to be astronauts, and go to Canada.
	And, yeah, I mean, my mom went over to sort of check it out.
	I didn't, and...
	I remember her saying, when I said why, she said, for a new start, a fresh start.
	Now, I have my suspicions as to why she ended up pulling us out of England at that time, which I don't have to get into here.
	But it's kind of weird.
	I wasn't really complaining about anything.
	I didn't have any particular problems with where we were compared to where we could be.
	I didn't really get the whole fresh start thing.
	Although, the year that we came, we took Freddie Leica over from London to New York and then we took a bus up because it was cheaper.
	When we first came to Canada, it was like a crazy snow winter.
	Like, absolutely mental.
	Welcome to Canada!
	I'm sorry?
	Welcome to Canada.
	Enjoy your set.
	Well, I thought it was great.
	Because in England, when snow came, everybody went mental.
	Because it was so rare for there to be, like, I remember, like, twice in my childhood, but, like, thin little layers of dandruff on the ground.
	And it was like, woohoo!
	You know, it's the best thing ever.
	We can go.
	You take out sleds, which nobody knew why you had them, and you try and skate down this...
	Basically, it was grass with frost on it.
	And, you know, you hit a patch which wasn't fried...
	You do your tumbles.
	But I just remember the snow drifts.
	They get the machines, the snow plows, in the parking lots of the mall.
	Back then, there was a mall near where we lived.
	I think it's gone now.
	And they would make these...
	They'd push all the snow off the...
	Just these giant...
	I could jump up the top and jump down and...
	I remember you could pick up these 99 cent death sleds.
	They weren't sleds.
	They were called magic carpets in that it's a miracle if you survive because you can't steer a damn thing.
	You just basically rotate until a tree hoves into view and then you cross your fingers and hope to live.
	But, yeah, because I didn't have any money for...
	And I got some secondhand skates and sort of learned how to skate and all that.
	But it was fantastic.
	Just in terms of...
	One thing I love about Canada is you actually get some distinct seasons.
	And people are like, bring the beard back!
	It's like, sorry, my beard is just another casualty of global warming.
	Because I can't do a beard in 33 degree temperature.
	The sweat drips.
	It's gross.
	It's ants and sweat all around your jowls.
	So...
	But yeah, it's like, why?
	And then we moved, yeah, I mean, we moved a lot, just trying to find a place that was the right size.
	And it is, you know, you get, and for me, I got kind of apathetic, you know, it's like, ah, someplace new, you know, we're living here, we're living there.
	I was in grade eight, and then I was in grade six, and it's like, ah.
	Anyway, the wind blows, man.
	Whatever is going to happen, I feel like I'm being dragged behind, like a guy dragging you behind a truck, you know, in a gravel road.
	Yeah, wherever we're going, we'll go.
	So, I don't want to sort of make this about me, and I don't want to put my experience on yours, David, but it's just like this moving stuff.
	It's like, for the parents, it seems like a really, really important thing.
	It's a little tougher to sell to the kids.
	I remember the day we were leaving our apartment, or flat, as it was in England.
	I just remember looking out the window.
	We had a great view of the city.
	I just remember looking out the window, just saying, well, I just felt Helpless.
	You know, now we're going here and then maybe we'll be going somewhere else.
	I don't know.
	Maybe we'll end up in Tahiti.
	I don't know.
	Actually, that would have been cool too.
	You know, that's a really good way to put it, feeling helpless.
	And I think that's what I, you know, when I was playing video games for so many years, it's almost like I felt helpless that I was going to lose my friends no matter what, just because we literally moved every two years.
	So I would go to a school, make a bunch of new friends, new circle, et cetera, and then we move away.
	And then we go to a new place, make a bunch of friends, move away.
	So the only stability that I had and the only control I had over my life was when I was online, right?
	Because that's where I was a raid leader.
	And I had a completely different personality.
	So in real life, I would be this timid guy who had like social anxiety and would not really speak up.
	And I was really fat as well.
	So I was like 310 pounds.
	I'm sorry, what now?
	What age were you?
	310?
	In my late teens, I'd say.
	Well, I mean, I guess the old World of Warcraft, I sort of get the feeling, not to put it too coarsely, David, but the higher your level, the wider your butt.
	Because you have to spend that much time sitting, right?
	I mean, that's the way it is, right?
	Not a lot of guys doing World of Warcraft on a treadmill, right?
	Yeah, and the other thing is that, like, I was not educated about how to eat properly, right?
	My parents didn't necessarily eat all that well, and then my father always made me feel guilty that I was, you know, looking in the fridge or looking in the pantry, so at night I would just get back up and go eat some more, then go back to playing video games, and that just reinforced my social anxiety and my feelings.
	That's like a sumo diet, right?
	Like the sumo wrestlers, they will eat massive amounts of fat and then go to sleep, right?
	Yeah.
	Just because they want to be able to accumulate as much fat on their bodies or size or girth on their bodies as possible.
	And yeah, that is rough.
	And it becomes sort of a vicious cycle, right?
	Because you have the social anxiety and therefore you don't participate in sports or games or going out and biking with people or whatever.
	You stay home.
	And that makes you gain weight if you're not exercising and eating too much.
	And it's going to be bad for you no matter what, right?
	Sitting is the new smoking.
	So that further feeds towards you being avoidant of people, which has you stay home, which has you gain more weight, which has you be more avoidant, like that cycle, right?
	Yeah.
	And I used to also play tennis and go snowboarding and play a little hockey when I was a kid.
	And I was really good at all three of those.
	But then as soon as video games got into my life and I decided just to make friends online because there was no stability in real life, That's where I started gaining a lot of weight, which I've mostly lost now, so I'm feeling good.
	Good for you, man.
	That's an incredible thing.
	People who haven't had to go through the process of losing weight, A, it's a hell of a thing to do, and B, it's a hell of a thing to maintain.
	You've got to change everything.
	You can't ever go back.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's always there.
	You never get rid of it.
	Same thing with an addiction to video games.
	I don't play nearly as much video games as I used to play.
	I'm way more involved into actually real life, which I see almost a little bit as a game.
	As I've said in my email, I discovered one day that basically I knew nothing about the world.
	It was like a harsh realization that my brain was just...
	Do you remember the moment?
	What happened in particular?
	Yeah, actually, I do remember the moment.
	I was already quite far in my fitness journey, so I lost maybe like 100 pounds.
	But then I saw a post, a random post from this guy on Reddit called the Elfie Gamer.
	And he said, because the main motivation for losing my weight before is because I fell in love with this girl online.
	So that was my first motivation to start losing some weight.
	Wait, like an actual verified girl?
	Yeah, I've actually had two girlfriends online.
	Those were my two first girlfriends, an actual verified girl.
	Okay, just checking.
	Yeah.
	And so I lost weight because of that.
	And then I read that post from this guy and he said, well, you know, I lost all this weight, but I realized that it was not really what I was needing.
	What I was needing is some brain training.
	So I had to start going and read some books, do some push through my fear barriers and things like that.
	And then I went on to, you know, I've read a lot of books.
	I've encountered many channels, such as Elliot Ault's channel, through which I found you, actually.
	I found your channel through his when you did that.
	I like Elliot.
	I like Elliot.
	Yeah, he's a great guy.
	It takes a confident man to put your bubble head next to that hunkasaurus, but I'm willing to do it.
	It's for the cause, man.
	It's for the cause.
	As long as we're not doing gun magic.
	Well, okay, so let's...
	Let's start digging into what's going on culturally.
	Because, I mean, I think that's the real question.
	I really, really appreciate the background, and it's good to get that kind of perspective.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Men want to achieve things in the world.
	Men want to, need to, desperate to achieve real things in the world.
	Now, David, achieving things in the real world involves conflict.
	With others.
	And if you want to do something, you usually need a team.
	And if you have a team, there's going to be conflicts within the team.
	If you get your team and there's some other team who's competing with you for the same thing or opposed to you for that thing, you need unity within the team and you need to be able to accept win-lose conflict with the other team, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, this is not World of Warcraft stuff, although that's involved.
	So men must learn to handle conflict, disagreement, to be leaders or followers.
	It doesn't hugely matter one way or the other.
	But it's win-lose for some things in the world.
	Like if you have a business and you're responding to a request for proposal...
	And if you get the job, then the other businesses don't get the job.
	So you win, and they lose.
	Next time maybe they'll win, you lose.
	So you need to be comfortable with conflict as a man.
	In fact, the whole point of civilization, the only reason we have a civilization, is because men are willing to...
	To engage in conflict.
	And I don't mean fighting and punching away.
	I mean, that's not civilization.
	That's barbarity.
	But what I mean is that men have to, for there to be civilization built or maintained or in any way sustainable, men have to not just be allowed but encouraged to go out and compete and fight to win.
	Now, my question is, Why is that going into video games for so many men rather than the real world?
	Honestly, I think it's it's just the structures are almost like the games are made to create those kind of conflicts while the educational system People might find this in sports, right?
	You might be a football player and you might find it in those kind of avenues.
	But most of life, unless you go into sports and entrepreneurship, and most of the people that I've been around so far in my life, like you said, it's very easy for them to avoid conflict because they're just scared of everything, everyone and everything, always.
	Right now, I live in Vancouver and I've approached some of my best friends to come and Maybe start something with.
	You're just going from one socialist capital of Canada to another.
	I think I'm going to leave the paradise of Quebec and I'm going to go to BC, which is California for Canada.
	That might have not been the best.
	I love mountains, so that's in my reasoning.
	I love hiking and I love Oh, yeah.
	I was just watching Mike Cernovich.
	He's up in Alaska.
	He went there to hang with Milo.
	And the mountains, the pictures, the hikes, I'm like, I must go.
	I must go and look up on my hands.
	Okay, so men want to go out and conquer the world.
	And conquering the world means making other people uncomfortable.
	That's just the way things are.
	Oh, look, I just invested $100 trillion in a horse and bike.
	What?
	Oh, someone invented the car.
	Son of a bitch!
	You know?
	You know, I've just invested all of my money into 300 board modem technology.
	Oh, someone came up with 9600 board.
	Son of a bitch!
	I mean, every single time, this constant turnover that occurs in civilization, just when you get comfortable, just when you think you've got it nailed, just when you think you've cornered the market, boom!
	There's a sea change, something happens, something changes, and your Teledon terminal is worthless.
	And that is something that...
	Men understand, and there's women who do it too, but I'm just talking guy to guy, right?
	Men kind of understand that we're supposed to go out there elbowing the hell out of the world.
	Fighting for what we want, fighting for what we believe in, fighting for productivity, fighting for our vision, fighting for our passion.
	We're going to go out there, we're going to elbow the world, and people are going to get annoyed.
	And men...
	In general, are fine with that.
	Okay, people are going to get annoyed.
	I mean, one day, and that day may be in the near or distant future, somebody may be annoyed by something I say.
	It's possible.
	Don't laugh, man.
	Tell me, David.
	I know it sounds crazy, but it's possible.
	But that's what men do.
	We go out and we screw stuff up.
	We mess stuff up.
	We kick up We kick over the umbrellas.
	We go and, you know, we just do all of this stuff.
	And that's where civilization comes from.
	Yeah, well, you know, Stefan, that's also why I moved to Vancouver, because I went from Quebec to Vancouver, and now I'm heading to California, because it's basically the hub for video games.
	It's the hub for esports, which is the industry in which I want to work and maybe, you know, shake some people out of this.
	Of this addiction that I've not necessarily suffered from, but I was into for a big part of my life because it's not a good place to be at.
	You know, it has its peak, it has its high moment, but it's like there's a big crash as well for every hike that you get.
	Okay, we're going.
	I'm not letting you drag me off into the resume.
	We're going to stay on the cultural stuff because that's the original question.
	That's where we want to stay, right?
	Why weren't you out there in the world?
	This is not a criticism because you know how many hundreds of millions of men are stuck in this, don't go out and elbow the world.
	Don't go out, kick over the sandcastle of history.
	Don't go out and innovate.
	Don't go out and annoy.
	Don't go out and piss people off.
	But stay home in a structured environment where you get to feel like you're doing something.
	Right?
	Video games are to achievement as porn is to sex.
	Right?
	You're never going to make a family out of pornography, right?
	All you're going to do is, I don't know, up the demand for wet wipes.
	And you're never going to achieve anything for the most part in the real world by playing video games.
	And this is not to say that video games are bad.
	I mean, I play them.
	They're fun.
	But the question is, why have they displaced men going out into the world and doing stuff and annoying people?
	That's a really good question.
	My hypothesis would be, well at least for me in my experience, was that I could not see achievement done in school and I could not see it even in sports.
	Everybody won and it's almost like, I don't know, I couldn't find it anywhere else.
	That's the only place I could find it back in the days.
	Alright, I'm going to give you the answer.
	Sure.
	But first, just give me one second.
	I have to close the door to the studio because it's not going to be a quiet answer.
	R.I.P. headphone users.
	Thanks.
	All right.
	So, David.
	Yes.
	Why are men...
	Not out there in the world.
	Listen, we only have civilization because men were willing to disturb the living crap out of nature.
	Sorry, tree, you're in the way.
	Now you're a log cabin.
	Sorry, river, you need to be damned because I need the water somewhere else.
	Massive human beaver moving stuff all over the place, right?
	Sorry, field, I need a place to park my car.
	And then you get annoying Joni Mitchell songs that stay stuck in your head like brain fevers.
	So...
	The only reason we have a civilization of any kind is because we're willing to go and disturb and annoy and disrupt nature.
	And the only reason we have...
	Human rights is because we're willing to go and disturb and annoy the aristocracy, the kings, the entrenched interests.
	The only reason we have the separation of church and state is because we're willing to go and annoy the shit out of the clergy and the kings because of that unholy deal, right?
	The kings say to the clergy, hey man, I tell you what, you tell everyone that I'm appointed by God and to disobey me is the same as disobeying God and they'll go to hell and I'll give you a monopoly on religious instruction.
	Good deal?
	Good deal.
	And that deal worked for about, I don't know, a billion years of human history until men came along, boom!
	Shouldered things out of the way and said, sorry boys, we've got to break you up.
	It's Rico Act for Freedom.
	Bye-bye.
	And we pried apart the church and state and opened up some freedom.
	The whole freedom of speech thing.
	Freedom of speech is desperately claiming and demanding the right to annoy people.
	Not because you just wake up and want to annoy people.
	Although that's actually quite a nice bonus.
	But because it's essential.
	Because we cannot guide human life, human existence, and we cannot have a civilization if we are not willing to annoy people.
	Now, David, when you were growing up, were you allowed to annoy people?
	No.
	Right.
	And that, my friend, is how you and I and approximately everyone in the West who used to have balls, that, my friend, is how we got snipped.
	You understand?
	That's how we got neutered.
	Oh, oh, oh, what you're saying makes people uncomfortable.
	That's bad.
	You shouldn't do that.
	I'm upset.
	I'm offended.
	I'm offended.
	Well, how can you say such a thing?
	Not an argument!
	People, troglodytes!
	Ladies, not an argument.
	Not an argument.
	And the powers that be, which for the raising of children is the women these days in the West, the powers that be, the women Decided, basically, to say, well, it's true that discomfort has given us civilization,
	but you see, now that we have civilization, now that we've got air conditioning, now that we've got sweatshop labored on Hermes handbags, now that we've got comfortable cars, now that we've got roads, now that nature has been tamed and lashed and bound at our feet,
	Now that we have all of the civilization that allowing for discomfort has provided, well, let's not have the discomfort anymore, shall we?
	Let's ban discomfort.
	Let's rage against discomfort.
	Let's trash anybody who makes other people uncomfortable.
	Let's go to the lowest common denominator of rank leftist hysteria and shut the conversation down!
	Jam that toilet plunger down the throat of anybody who dares to tell an uncomfortable truth because discomfort apparently is more important than civilization.
	Oh, did you not save for your old age?
	That's fine.
	We can borrow on the collateral of the unborn and stuff money down your gullet.
	Oh, oh, did you not take care of your health at all and did you not really buy any health insurance?
	Well, that's fine.
	Don't worry.
	We'll put in a giant socialist system so you're going to get health care no matter what.
	Oh, did you not save any money for when you were unemployed?
	No problem!
	Unemployment insurance.
	Don't ever feel uncomfortable.
	Don't ever be an example to other people of what not to do.
	We got it.
	We got you back.
	We got you covered.
	All we have to do is imagine and pretend in our minds, in our retarded cleavage, that We can somehow ban discomfort without also banning civilization, which is nothing more or less than the capacity to tolerate and welcome discomfort.
	So you, David, and your friends were not allowed To make people uncomfortable.
	In school, in your family, in your social circles.
	Ooh, no, no, no.
	We can't really talk about that.
	That's not...
	We can't talk about that.
	That's...
	Oh, no, no.
	Let's get back to sports.
	Let's get back to inane, stupid politics.
	Let's get back to discussing what was on TV. The weather.
	No discomfort.
	No discomfort.
	This is the social justice warrior.
	The leftist stuff, the hammer that sticks up gets nailed down.
	The tall poppy gets slashed by the sword.
	Don't stick out.
	Don't make anyone uncomfortable.
	Don't tell truths that make people upset.
	What are colloquially called on the internet hate facts.
	They're facts.
	But somehow it's hate speech to tell the truth.
	And people, once you take that decision to try to banish discomfort, and all government programs can be seen as inverted pyramids resting on that pinprick, blood-soaked point that crushes the human spirit called attempting to ban discomfort.
	Oh, ladies, did you marry a drunk?
	That's all right.
	We'll have prohibition and we'll get rid of all the alcohol in the known universe and you won't have to worry about your man being drunk anymore and you won't have to be uncomfortable that you made a bad decision now, will you?
	Oh, does your kid get addicted to drugs?
	Well, it's got nothing to do with your bad parenting, perhaps.
	Don't worry, we'll just ban all the drugs.
	We just ban all...
	Oh, ladies, did you get pregnant outside of wedlock?
	Not to worry.
	We got you covered.
	We'll go and tie this man down and extract money from his esophagus with a hoover until he basically is turned inside out.
	Then we'll throw him in jail and call him a deadbeat dad.
	Plus, you'll get welfare.
	You'll get food stamps.
	You'll get subsidized housing.
	We'll get government education.
	Don't worry about it.
	We got you covered.
	Because, you know, we wouldn't want you feeling uncomfortable, would you?
	Now, if you're a kid, at least back in the day when I was a kid, if you're a kid, And you don't study for a test, guess what?
	You fail.
	But see, that's only for children, because children don't vote, you see.
	Adults vote, and adults will always vote, well, a lot of adults will vote to take away any negative consequences of their bad decisions.
	Remove my discomfort!
	You can't have that, and civilization too.
	Because what'll happen is, women, as a whole, are far less comfortable with conflict than men.
	And so when women begin to dominate the social discourse, tons of exceptions.
	I get it.
	No work.
	But when women as a whole tend to dominate the social discussions, then who's upset and who's offended is all that matters.
	It doesn't matter whether something is true or false.
	All that matters is whether someone's bothered by it.
	Whether someone's upset by something, you say.
	Whether someone feels hurt by something you've said.
	Now, the fact that men have been called evil patriarchs and cisgendered scum and white people have been called race, that doesn't matter!
	Because white males apparently were just giant robots of evil who can't be touched by words.
	But other groups, no, no, you see, their offense is all that matters.
	Them being offended, that's all we guide ourselves by.
	The little ping pong, the little pinball, bing, bing, bing, you're bouncing around.
	Oh, this person got upset.
	Oh, this person got upset.
	Oh, this...
	Oh, don't...
	I'm upset.
	I'm upset.
	That's all you got.
	And in this battle, it's always been going on, right?
	There are people who want things to stay the same.
	Those are the entrenched interests in society, the power groups, whatever size.
	The people who want things to stay the same.
	and the people who want things to progress and in this there are two categories there are people who want the basic moral rules to stay the same don't initiate force and keep your word and in that framework They're very happy for things to progress.
	You know, it's funny how people say, oh, there are conservatives and conservatives want things to stay the same.
	No, they don't.
	No, because conservatives are generally into the free market and in the free market, things change all the time.
	They change more rapidly than in any other system.
	They are incredibly into progress.
	They just say that we have to have the structure of the basic moral rules that should stay the same.
	And on the left, they say, oh, we're progressives.
	It's like, well, you all want to stifle the free market, which reduces progressive – well, reduces progress.
	So you're actually – they're conservatives of the free market, and they are progressives in all the wrong way in that they want basic moral rules to change, which is bad.
	Because, you know, if you change from the non-aggression principle to the aggression principle, that's bad!
	So they are very conservative when it comes to the free market because they basically want to freeze everything.
	And then they're progressive in all the things that don't make any sense to progress on because the non-aggression principle is all you need.
	Whereas the conservatives are very progressive when it comes to the free market, but very conservative in that we don't want to mess with the basics of human morality that has served societies, at least at the private level, for thousands of years.
	We want to evolve beyond marriage!
	Well, can you do that without taking money from me?
	No!
	Okay, well then, you don't want things to evolve, you just want to break things and have me pay for it so that you get more...
	Power.
	So you had, David, a life Where you got to disrupt things in the game.
	You got to beat the monsters.
	If you were playing PvP, you got to beat other players.
	You got to progress.
	And you had teamwork, right?
	And sometimes that teamwork would require conflict resolution, right?
	You get into fights with other people.
	Oh, you should have done this.
	You should have healed me there.
	You were supposed to go around this way.
	You didn't.
	And there's conflict and you try it again and so on, right?
	So you're exercising all the things that are foundational to civilization existing and progressing.
	But...
	You were doing it in a virtual way because when you get out there in the world and you say basic facts that are scientifically, biologically, genetically, factually, logically, philosophically, empirically true, what happens?
	People are upset.
	I'm so upset.
	I can't take it.
	It made me cry.
	And that's fine, except everyone just backs away.
	Oh, no.
	David upset someone.
	David is bad.
	David is a bad person.
	David really made someone upset.
	And therefore, it's not that the upset person needs to put on their big girl panties and grow the hell up.
	No.
	David needs to stop what he's doing.
	Because the foundational rule of our society is only white and Asian males can be made upset.
	They are the sacrificial Jesus lambs to her.
	Gores over the tender, broken feelings of every self-hysterical, proclaimed group in the known universe.
	White and Asian males must be neutered, must be de-balled.
	We can shit all over them as much as we want.
	But the moment that they object to their status and bring some basic facts to the equation, they are bad, bad, bad people.
	And men can fight, but men can't fight alone.
	Right?
	You can go into the world of Warcraft Raider mode if you've got 40 friends.
	Would you go in alone?
	No.
	No!
	Of course not!
	That would be suicide.
	You won't make it.
	Won't make it.
	Won't make it.
	And so now we have a society Which is...
	It's the tyranny of offense.
	It's not Big Brother is watching you.
	It's Big Sister is teary-eyed.
	Yeah.
	Big Sister is upset.
	And all the white knights and everybody just comes crowding around and says, you bastard.
	You upset.
	X, Y, or Z. Therefore, you must change.
	Because you are mere water.
	And they, they're upset.
	It's the giant rock in the middle of the stream.
	And you must find a way around the rock.
	You are the only variable that can change.
	They cannot change because feels...
	They feel they cannot change.
	They must not change.
	You must change.
	You must change.
	And the tragic and ironic thing about this, David, the black, black, black, black comedy of all of this is that everyone says to white males and Asian males, this is what they say.
	You must change your behavior because other people are upset.
	Because other people feel bad, you must change your behavior.
	How am I going to get you to change your behavior?
	Why?
	By making you feel really, really, really bad.
	Right?
	Calling you a patriarch, calling you a sexist, calling you a misogynist, calling you a racist.
	You must change!
	You cannot make anyone else feel bad, and the way we're going to get you to never make anyone else feel bad is to put the SJW thumbscrews right up your urethra, right into your balls.
	We're going to torture you with social attack and condemnation so that you don't make anyone feel bad.
	To which the logical rejoiner is, wait a minute, if making people feel bad is bad, how is it that making white and Asian males feel bad is not bad?
	It's patriarchal even to ask that question.
	This is how insane our society has become.
	Sorry, I went all full beluga there for a moment, but it's how I feel.
	This is how mad our society has become.
	Think of 40 men.
	Ten years!
	You people could have built a city, for God's sakes!
	You understand?
	Yeah.
	You could have built a continent!
	You could have cured cancer!
	You could have tamed lightning!
	You could have built solar panels that land on my forehead that power the planet!
	But no.
	You sat home, gained weight, picked up digital souvenirs, and let society fall in soft folds of estrogen-laced despair.
	I'm not criticizing.
	Oh, you're absolutely right.
	What could you guys have done if you decided to start a company, if you decided to start an online presence, if you decided to start a Breitbart, if you decided to start something that fought all of this madness, all of that energy, all of that focus, all of that teamwork, all of that courage?
	If you had gotten together to fight the failings of civilization, what might you have done?
	Yeah, that's where my main question lies as well.
	Because I've approached a lot of my friends that literally have played video games basically their entire life, and I've approached them with some argument or some discussion, and all I get is either complete apathy, like you don't even want to talk about it or hear about it, they just brush it off,
	or I get attack from people who are leftists, or I get mild interest, very mild, but like, A lot of women in the American Revolution.
	I know there was one who made a flag, so we'll count sewing.
	A lot of women in the American...
	A lot of founding aunts.
	No.
	No, there's nothing wrong with it.
	It's just the way things are.
	Women have made very powerful arguments for freedom.
	Again, I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand and others who've made those cases.
	But why is it that men are the ones...
	Who have to be banished from social discourse?
	Why?
	Why is it men who have to be driven into the basement?
	Why is it men who have to be content with imaginary platonic digital scraps of success?
	Why is it white and Asian men in particular who must be silenced?
	You know, I'll tell you something, man.
	You know what you always hear?
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	We're here to give women a voice!
	Because apparently all they do is make hissing sounds before feminists go...
	Feminism comes along...
	Right?
	We're here to give women a voice!
	Apparently the only way that feminists can give women a voice is saying shut up to every man on the planet!
	Oh, so you're not giving them a voice, you're giving them my voice!
	I'm the one who's got to shut up.
	So they have a voice?
	That's not them having a voice.
	That's them stealing a voice.
	If you can only have a voice by making other people shut up, you're not a feminist.
	You're a tyrant.
	Oh, they've got to have their voice.
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	But if you bring up anything to criticize things, Well, they're not so keen on everyone having a voice.
	Oh well, they're not the first women in history to say that free speech means I get to keep talking and you don't.
	You know that old joke when a woman sits down and says, we need to talk?
	What does she really mean?
	You're going to listen.
	So true.
	We need to talk.
	no no I need to talk so this is where men are driven into Thank you.
	Video games have become the black market of male achievement.
	You understand?
	Like, when they screw up the economy, and they put in price controls, and screw up the currency and so on, there's a black market, which operates below and outside the legal framework.
	And video games...
	And useless, stupid human tricks.
	Look!
	I can flip a skateboard four times before it lands.
	Great!
	Can you save civilization?
	No!
	Why?
	My knees hurt.
	Okay.
	Good job.
	Good job.
	You know how quickly I can solve a Rubik's Cube?
	I'm really good at breakdancing.
	My ping-pong is spectacular.
	Yeah, anything to do with fighting evil?
	No!
	Same thing if you look at lifting weights.
	I lift this big stone!
	Oh, congrats.
	I can't achieve anything in the real world.
	Because for men to achieve something means to offend and annoy people.
	Sorry, ladies.
	That's just the way it is.
	Balls bounce on fragile things.
	That's just the way we roll.
	Chest hair is really scrubby to the fine china Of historical aspirations and edifices.
	Men shoulder their way through all the delicacies that have been developed throughout society, like, I don't know, a black bull hopped up on cocaine doing break dancing in a china shop.
	That's just the way men work.
	We're big, we're broad-shouldered, we move things around, we pick things up, we break things, we don't make the bed, and we build civilization.
	There's a reason you have a bed, and it's because men don't make the bed!
	We're out there making something new, creating something new, annoying the powers that be.
	No!
	Can't have that in the modern world.
	Men, shut up.
	Stop it.
	Making people uncomfortable.
	Making people...
	I'm crying.
	And men, if I may be so bold as to speak for our gently swaying castanet crew, men in general, Say this.
	If no one's crying, nothing's improving.
	If no one's upset, nothing's being built.
	Try going out to nature with an axe and not disturbing nature at all.
	You never get a house.
	You get a house because you're willing to disturb nature.
	If nature is not upset at you being there, you don't get any shelter.
	You understand?
	If nobody's crying, nothing is improving.
	If nobody's upset, no progress is being made.
	I had cancer.
	Do you know what I wanted from the medicine?
	I wanted the medicine to kill the cancer cells.
	To fuck them up, to kick them down the alley, to put poison arrows in their brain and shoot their spines out with high-powered artillery.
	I wanted my cancer to cry, to fail, to die, to be really, really upset.
	Can you imagine me going to the oncologist saying, yeah, I really want to be cured of the cancer, but, but, let me just point something out to you.
	I don't want the cancer to be affected in any way negatively whatsoever.
	Sorry.
	It's just, you know, I'm a cancer conservationist.
	That's just, that's how I roll.
	I'm very, very concerned with all things I'm a, uh, a can-segan?
	I just, uh, And can you imagine?
	I really want civilization.
	Give me, I don't know, let's say condos that go 100 stories up into the sky.
	Give me those giant vertical ice cube trays of perfectly sanitized, clean-watered, temperature-controlled cubicles of infinite human comfort.
	Give me all of those!
	But don't disturb nature at all.
	Ah!
	I would love for there to be cell phones, but here's the thing.
	I don't want any of the makers of rotary dial phones to be upset or inconvenienced or lose any money in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.
	Come on.
	They've got mouths to feed.
	It's not their fault.
	Their kids need to go to college.
	Really want progress.
	Don't want anyone to be disturbed or upset by progress.
	Well, pick one, ladies and gentlemen.
	You can pick no one being upset, which is stagnation and decay, or you can allow people to be upset, which is why we have civilization, why we have any remnants of human freedom, why we have some political rights, why we have the separation of church and state, why we have the remnants of a free market, why we have some freedom of speech left.
	It's because We know, deep down, if you ain't upset, if nobody's crying, nothing is getting done, nothing is getting built, nothing is getting improved.
	Human progress is a rocket ship powered by human tears.
	Human frowns, human upset, human bankruptcies.
	Bankruptcies release tied up capital, To go to more productive uses.
	We step up the staircase to a better life, to a more civilized life, to a more free life.
	We step up that staircase On crying faces.
	I'm sorry.
	It's just the way it is.
	And if you want progress in the world without bothering anyone, all you're telling me is you don't want progress.
	And when you don't have progress, guess what, everybody?
	You don't stay still.
	It's a rocket.
	There's never an orbit.
	And people say, well, I don't know.
	We're 1738 feet off the ground.
	I think that's good enough.
	Let's turn off the rockets.
	Well, David, what happens then?
	Crashes down.
	I feel like if you just take an example of, say, Uber getting banned in Vancouver, it's like government.
	It's like, oh, no, the taxi drivers are getting upset.
	Let's ban this.
	Let's do more regulation, more.
	It's just, it's almost non-stop.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Immigration.
	Yeah.
	Well, the people who want to come and live in the West, they're going to be upset if we say no.
	Justin Trudeau and his...
	His nice hair, though.
	His tiny George Michael short shorts out for a run with the Mexican president.
	Yeah, let's drop all visa requirements.
	What could go wrong?
	I don't want to upset anyone.
	The magazine in Canada.
	Oh, Canadian stories.
	There's all these little tiny pictures of Canadians on the front of the magazine.
	And I'm just curious, scanning through.
	Oh, yeah, here we go.
	Minority, female, female, minority, old person, female, minority.
	Oh, there's a white male.
	Oh, no, that's not a white male.
	And it's all just what you expect.
	Because, of course, if they actually had a person.
	Who built Canada?
	Who built America?
	White males.
	White males!
	So we can't acknowledge that.
	I can't admit that because...
	So, we have this lift-off because we allow people to be upset, offended, mad, angry.
	We allow them to experience substantial losses.
	Boom!
	Up we go.
	And the people are like, well, you know, there's a lot of shaking, and we are consuming a lot of fuel, so let's turn it off.
	When you turn off civilization, you don't get civilization in orbit.
	You get a crash to barbarism.
	Hey, Rome, how did that work for you?
	Not particularly well.
	So, you guys were out there achieving things virtually.
	Building things virtually.
	Conquering evil virtually.
	Because you were neutered From being able to do that in the real world.
	You know what they said when I was a kid?
	Maybe they said it when you were a kid, too.
	I remember...
	Oh, man.
	We used to play...
	It's now called Dodgeball, which I guess is the politically correct name for what it actually was.
	It was called Murderball.
	Did you ever play that?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	In French, it's Bon Chassard.
	Well...
	So, you know, it's one thing to play that when you're, I don't know, 25 or whatever it is, right?
	But when you're like 13, you know there's this bell curve of...
	Of skills.
	...puberty, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	So, like, some kids still look like they're 8, you know, when they're 12 or 13.
	And other kids, I'm not going to say exclusively the Mediterranean kids, but let's just say the Mediterranean kids...
	You know, they had to shave the back of their fingers already and they could basically wrap their giant dragon meat slabs around the ball and pick it up with one hand.
	You know, whereas the other kids are like...
	Smurfs for the basketball, right?
	And these guys pick up the ball and it's like they'd swing and throw and it's like boom!
	You know, you'd get dents in that weird painted concrete brick thing that is the back of every gym, at least when I was a kid.
	And then there are the stoners in Murderball, right?
	So the stoners are the guys who have, I don't know, the reflexes of your average man in a coma.
	And they're just sort of wandering back and forth like the ducks in a bing bing, the ducks in those games that they play at fairs.
	And the Mediterranean hairy fingered kids pick them up and it's like a howitzer.
	It's like a mortar.
	And I just remember like there was one guy.
	It was the stoner.
	No reflexes.
	Gets hit in the balls, goes down, and you just hear, oh, man.
	And every guy, you know, like, you feel it, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	You see that happen to another man, and you're like, well, that's it for that, Gene Poole.
	I can't concentrate.
	I can't even look at it.
	I can't watch.
	Like, you feel that.
	You feel that in your, deep in your secret places.
	But that was when I was a kid.
	And Murderball, you know, you were a fat kid maybe a little bit later.
	But, you know, until puberty, I was a small kid until puberty hit.
	Then I got, you know, I'm almost six foot and 195.
	And, you know, fairly solid, I guess.
	But before, like when I was 12 to 13, it was like a big change for me.
	You know, it was like, boom!
	You know, like I got a foot and I just, it was crazy, right?
	And you know, you just, you spend your, you know what it's like, you spend your whole day just looking for food, like a Like a fish or like a bear like about to turn in for the winter.
	So my only – like before, like 12 with Motorball, I just hide behind the fat kids.
	You know, like I'm like the Enterprise with a gas giant.
	I hide the fat kid because, you know, just – because the fat kids aren't moving that fast, so they're going to get hit.
	And they're not moving so fast that you can't shadow them, right?
	So just – sorry.
	I mean, I would just lodge in behind.
	A fat kid and wait there.
	Now, when the fat kid went down, then you just had to go to the next fat kid.
	And eventually, I was pretty fast.
	I got really good reflexes.
	So eventually, it would just be me.
	And there's no way that I could possibly get the ball in time without getting my head creamed.
	And it was, you know, they were hard balls.
	They were people throwing it wicked fast.
	And you could really get yourself a knock.
	And I just remember getting once just boom, you know, right.
	Fortunately, it hit like the cheekbones.
	Now, I'm no Elizabeth Warren, but you know, I got some cheekbones.
	And it was just like, it literally is like a horse kicking you full on in the side of the head.
	And I think it felt like I obviously know, it felt like I actually, I was jumping, got hit in the head.
	It felt like I spun.
	It was that hard.
	I spun around like a rag doll down on the ground and I'm checking to see if my eyeball is stuck to the wood.
	I get up and we had this, and it was a cliche out of The Simpsons, you know, this Scottish gym teacher who always, always smelt of like the vilest tobacco weed that you could possibly imagine.
	Like if you fed, I don't know, if you fed tobacco to a vampire bat and it shatted out, that's what this guy would be chewing.
	And so he like breathed these fumes of like this completely evil, like why would anyone ever do this?
	Like why would anyone ever chew this vile stuff?
	He'd breathe it into you and say, ah, walk it off.
	Walk it off.
	You ever get that?
	Walk it off.
	How does that help my head?
	I was hit in the head, spun around by a rag doll because one of these hairy, web-handed, hairy-fingered Mediterranean guys basically tried to decapitate me with a medicine ball.
	How is walking it off?
	But that's all the sympathy you got.
	Walk it off.
	Walk it off, kid.
	You'll be fine, you know?
	And he would occasionally, he would reach in to check your teeth.
	Which was like being invaded by, I guess, worm babies from Frank Herbert's Dune or something.
	It was so disgusting.
	It was like filthy Scottish tobacco maggots are drilling their way through my gums.
	And it's like, he did it so roughly.
	It's like, well, my teeth were fine before you checked on them.
	And now they're embedded in your Scottish god-awful yellow hands.
	But that's what it was for when we were kids.
	And then every now and then, oh my god, this is so awful.
	We used to divide.
	This was in junior high.
	We used to divide.
	The boys would get wrestling.
	And the girls would get dance.
	And again, you know, 12 or 13, there's that, you know, basically it's like watching a hobbit go up to Jabba the Hutt when you would go to these Mediterranean kids.
	And, you know, every now and then there'd just be this awful crunching sound as some big, heavy giant flopped onto some prepubescent kid who was still waiting for the curly bits to sprout.
	And, you know, walk it off.
	My arm should never, ever, ever be in this position.
	But it was all just, you know, check your teeth, walk it off, walk it off.
	But every now and then, if there'd be a gap, you'd watch the girls go and dance, right?
	And they would all be, you know, floating along and frilling along.
	And every now and then, one of the girls would stumble a little.
	And all the women would rush out.
	Are you okay?
	Can I get you anything?
	Do you need an ice pack?
	Would you like to take a break?
	Do you need me to rub?
	I can rub your feet.
	Is there anything?
	Do you want to go and see the nurse?
	You can take a lie down for a bit.
	The guys are like, walk it off!
	And the women are like, oh, can I help you with anything?
	Anything!
	And it's like, they failed dancing!
	They didn't have a giant Italian man beast fall on their heads!
	Yeah.
	And so, I just, it's a different, I don't know if it was the same because you're younger, but when I was a kid, it was just, it was not even close to the same.
	You know, shot to the head, you know, assuming that nothing is actually impaled in your head at the time.
	Walk it off.
	And the kids are like, the little girls are like, I think I stubbed my finger on a butterfly.
	Are you okay?
	So, I don't know.
	Maybe it's just the way I was raised, but...
	Walk it off.
	You know, that's sort of an important thing in society.
	And I think men are more prone to that.
	You know, you can say it's the disposable male and so on.
	And I get all of that.
	And that's not an invalid criticism.
	But nonetheless, if you want civilization, you need guys who are going to walk it off.
	You don't need women who need ice packs because they stumbled while doing the dance of the sugar plum fairies.
	Yeah, but you see, when you see Walk It Off, I can totally relate to that, say, in video games, people or guys in general, you know, I used to be what they call like a nerd rager, so I would yell at people quite a lot, actually.
	And they would take the criticism or walk it off or argue with me or whatever.
	But now, whenever I bring up any argument in real life, it's like it doesn't even connect to anything in their brain.
	They're just not...
	They're not there.
	Like, they don't give a fuck.
	Well, their only experience is with porn, and you're trying to give them a handjob.
	Metaphorically.
	Right?
	I mean, there's porn addiction, as far as I understand it, where if a man or a woman has only ever had sexual experiences with pornography, it can...
	They may lose the ability to respond to a genuine sexual encounter, right?
	And so, if they have...
	All of this virtual accomplishment and you're saying, hey, enough of the porn.
	Let's have real sex and fuck up the world.
	And they're like, I don't know.
	I have no response to that because...
	Anime has stolen my erection.
	You see, there's two paths that I see actually.
	Anime has stolen my erection?
	Anyway, sorry, go on.
	I'm not saying that.
	But there's two paths that I see most frequently and actually mostly one path is that guys that have been like highly invested in video games, I would talk to them and say, let's go do some really cool shit.
	Let's do something out of our life.
	Let's create something big.
	Let's influence people.
	Let's bring value to people in a big way.
	They might be excited by my enthusiasm and be like, yeah, let's do it.
	And then like a day later, they're like, ah, you know what?
	I'm just going to go back over there.
	And then that's the main thing that I see.
	Otherwise, it's just they find this one girl they cherish, and then they just become the better male in the relationship.
	And they basically cut all their friends off, and they just go to their job, which they hate, and go back home to their girl where they just watch TV. Basically, what my parents were doing for most of their life, I'd say.
	You have almost no social interaction with anybody else.
	You're not working towards any type of goal.
	You have this undumped This dumb job, like I have one of my friends that works as a hydralist for the government, like drawing maps and he just has this girl and that's it.
	So it almost goes from like video game to the girl and then to the grave.
	That is a depressing trilogy.
	Video game, girl, grave.
	I liked it until the last book, then not quite so much.
	Right.
	And when you say they'd be the beta male, what do you mean by that?
	Well, I mean, they're just...
	They always want to...
	They want to please their girl like they would want to please their mother.
	It feels like they never went through any type of...
	You know, when you study a little bit of masculinity, you see like the ritual of initiation, those kind of process that might have been going through all the, you know, the mythology and the normal rhythm to becoming a man.
	It's like they've never went through the tribulation and the trials of becoming a man, which meant they just kept being a kid their entire life and replacing their mom with their girlfriend and literally replacing their school and their teachers with the government and their boss.
	Well, listen, I mean, to be fair to mothers, there are a lot of mothers out there who will, say, walk it off to their sons and will slap them upside the head if they become that codependent and weak, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	So they're not replacing their moms with their girlfriend.
	They're replacing a particular kind of mom with a girlfriend, right?
	Yeah.
	And, you know, men...
	Want the hot girl who doesn't know she's hot, right?
	You know, the librarian shakes out her hair and takes off her glasses.
	It's like, you are a vision, you know?
	Like Superman was just totally not good looking with those glasses on, right?
	I mean, man alive.
	Christopher Reeve, the guy who played Superman when I was a kid, like...
	Like, a staggeringly good-looking guy.
	Like, there is no angle at which that guy isn't someone you want to carve a statue of.
	Especially, you know, he's one of these guys.
	You know, some guys, when they get...
	A bit beardy.
	They just kind of look scuzzy.
	But this guy is just like, I'm going to strike the match of civilization off the side of your manly beard.
	It just works really...
	And he was just a great, great looking guy and a good actor and all that, although obviously he had significant insecurities and a tragic end.
	But it's like...
	The men want the female equivalent of Clark Kent, right?
	Like some woman who's just unbelievably hot and has no idea whatsoever.
	Because then you get the hotness, which is the high status, but you don't get the competition, right?
	Yeah.
	Because if you have Angelina Jolie, when she was younger, I guess lots of men would want to date her and did, right?
	But if you're not Brad Pitt, well, there's a significant chance she's going to hypergamy her way up your chest and step on your head to get to the next Higher up on the food chain.
	And so men want the woman who's really good-looking for the status and for the hotness, but they don't want her to know that she's good-looking, so they want all of the ingredients of hypergamy without actual hypergamy, right?
	Wanting to trade up.
	So they want the hot girl without competition.
	So they'll obviously go to subgenres, right?
	The hottest girl at...
	Comic-Con.
	Hottest girl in the goth club.
	Hottest girl online.
	Hottest girl in the Dungeons& Dragons club or whatever, right?
	But in the same way, women, a lot of times, will want a man they can control because it makes them feel like they're in charge and it makes them feel secure.
	And so they will want to emasculate a man so that they don't face competition from other women.
	Because if they're dating Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt has lots of options.
	And you can see a lot of alpha orbiters, right?
	Like the women who are, they're playing the hottery, right?
	They want the hottest guy They throw the V-cannon at him, they throw the vagina at him, hoping to tie him down with that, but that doesn't work anymore because it doesn't come with marriage like it used to.
	So they want the hot guy, but they don't want competition.
	And so just as the man wants the hot woman who doesn't know she's hot, the woman wants to break the beta so he still looks good and still has that high status, but he's broken so that he's going to be less appealing to other women in terms of competition.
	And that tension, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just the way that biology works.
	Uh, works.
	Uh, we all want the hottest person we can possibly get, but we don't want someone so hot that they're never going to stick around with us because especially for women, that would be kind of a disaster.
	And so, and of course, you know, the old be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, uh, which is that, um, uh, women in general end up hot because they know they're hot and they know that it's going to pay off really well for them to go to the gym and get the bubble butt and the hourglass figure or whatever is, is in these days.
	And so if a woman is hot, it's because she knows she's hot.
	And women who don't know that they're hot are dangerous, if they're hot, because it means they're crazy.
	Because evolution has very finely tuned our sensibilities to know just what our sexual market value is.
	And to aim a little high, to risk it and aim high, and I spent my whole life aiming high when it came to sexual market value, and I'm glad I did.
	But women know exactly.
	There's an old line from Streetcar Named Desire where Blanche Dubois says, "Oh, do you think I look pretty in this light?" And Stanley Kowalski says, "I never met a woman yet who didn't know exactly how attractive she was objectively." And a lot of women give themselves a lot more credit than is due.
	And women always know how attractive they are because that's exactly what nature has inclined them to understand.
	And of course, they're going to aim a little high.
	So they want to aim high, put the grappling hooks up the giant penis of alphanus, and then try and climb it and bring it down.
	But then if they bring it down, well, guess what?
	They're like the dog who's chasing the car, finally caught it, doesn't want it, can't eat it.
	Right?
	So it's like, hey, back me an alpha.
	I have ground him down into a Gollum-styled, ball-less nothing.
	He's gross.
	Yeah.
	So what are you going to do in the real world, my friend?
	Because I'll tell you this.
	If we don't do something, we're all fucked.
	If men don't do something, we are all fucked.
	Now, you don't have a kid, it sounds like I do.
	So, my scope and span for, like, wanting things to work is a little bit more than my own life.
	The more of us who are out there, the more encouraging it is for others.
	Yes, the first one of us are going to take some arrows.
	Yes, okay, you know, we're the only ones moving in no man's land.
	Literally no man's land, although you can, I guess, no balls land.
	So we're the only people moving in no man's land, so we're a little easy to call an airstrike in, but we, you know, we stagger on, we shake ourself off, we brush off the shrapnel, and on we go, because they are fundamentally only words these days.
	And the more of us who are out there and doing stuff, you know, writing, making speeches, encouraging people, mentoring people, whatever it's going to be.
	It could be as simple as starting a company or whatever it's going to be.
	It doesn't matter, right?
	Write a book, anything.
	Well, it's a bit like you said, right?
	It's be a hero...
	So it's be a hero, promote a hero, or get out of the way.
	And I don't think it's even an option to get out of the way when you have the kind of knowledge that absolutely needs to be shared with other people.
	So now it's about finding the people that you can go and conquer the dungeon with, those 40 people.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, dude.
	No, you can start by yourself.
	No, listen.
	We don't need more virtual enemies to be slaughtered.
	Like society as a whole does not need another bunch of ambitious men draining away their vital juices by skull-screwing their imaginations online.
	We need people out there in the real world doing good things.
	You know, I'm not talking about online.
	That's the thing.
	I'm talking about spreading deals.
	So you're trying to get people out of their basements and into the street, right?
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	Is it working?
	Not yet.
	Not so far.
	Then stop.
	Okay.
	We don't have time for you to go around trying to herd indifferent people into some sort of phalanx when they won't even come out of the basement and strap on a sword.
	Metaphorically, you know, you're just postponing you doing something.
	We need to go out and do things So that other people can be inspired and follow us out.
	You can't go round people up from the basements.
	You gotta go out, get yourself a tan, get yourself a girl, get yourself a parade, and they'll be like, oh, something's going on outside, maybe I can go check it out.
	You don't have time.
	Yeah.
	No, absolutely.
	Let me ask you this.
	You like this show, right?
	I do.
	Hopefully you like this actual show that we're talking to, right?
	Yes.
	So tell me, David, how do you think this show would be doing if I waited for the permission of my friends to do it?
	Terribly.
	It wouldn't be happening.
	What do you think my friends back in the day, what do you think they thought of me saying, you know what, I'm going to go save the world with a philosophy show and it's going to be the biggest and the greatest and the most magnificent conversation this world has ever seen and will ever see.
	What do you think they said?
	They said, you're insane.
	Right.
	And that's basically why I don't really have any more friends anymore.
	I don't have any friends anymore because I know there's...
	I got to do my part and then prove to them that the ideas, the principles that I can live my life, you know, around and the values that I can uphold in my life are really what can carry me towards.
	No, go get things done in the world and your better friends will find you.
	I have better friends now than I did before I started this show.
	Because basically my friends mostly ignored that I was doing a show, never discussed anything about it, and certainly would never entertain any conversations about my ambitions for the show.
	And they would try to...
	Like, if they'd said, you're crazy, that would have been a huge improvement.
	That's not how you get opposed.
	You don't get opposed by people saying, you're crazy, you're maniacal, you're megalomaniacal, you're whatever, right?
	That's fine.
	I can live with that.
	The way that people oppose you is not with a snarl, but a yawn.
	With a shrug.
	With indifference.
	Yeah, you're doing some podcasting.
	I'm glad it's working out for you.
	Now, listen, what do you guys want to get for dinner?
	That's how you are opposed.
	Not with anybody who actually comes at you with anything critical or negative or destructive.
	The way that you get opposed, this is the way your passion ends.
	Not with a bang, but a whimper.
	Because they're trying to infect you with a tiny, inconsequential view of yourself that is going to undercut every single thing that you try to achieve.
	They are sort of turning the base of your skyscraper into ash so that it just kind of leans and creaks and collapses in on itself.
	And they say, whoa, that was weird.
	Well, you gave it a try.
	You know, why not?
	Why not give it a try?
	Now, you could go and do something sensible.
	So their indifference is the opposition.
	Your enemies are not those who fight you.
	They are your strength.
	You can't wrestle ghosts.
	People who strain themselves against you make you better, make you stronger, make you leaner, make you more concentrated.
	You can only be as good as As your opponents.
	In any game.
	In any conflict.
	These people are not fighting you.
	It's even worse.
	They are ignoring you.
	They are undermining you.
	that is the much more fundamental opposition to what you're doing than anybody who gets angry.
	And they're saying to you deep down, and maybe you're saying this to yourself, to be perfectly blunt, I will do something great when people agree with me and support me.
	Right?
	When people get engaged in my mere conversation, when I have the permission of those around me, I will do something great.
	But that's not how it works.
	How it works is, and I think I can say this with some credibility now, how it works, David, is this.
	You do not ask for permission from those who were around when you were small, when you were inconsequential, when you were too frightened, perhaps, to do anything, when you did sense the giant opposition that turns out to be much smaller when you stand up.
	You know, we're all lying down.
	With a tennis ball on her face saying, that's bigger than the sun!
	That's bigger than the moon!
	Then you stand up and it rolls off you like, oh, it's just a little tennis ball.
	And that's why when you're supine, when you're comatose, opposition looks enormous!
	It blocks out the very sky!
	Everybody looks tall if you're looking up their skirt.
	I mean their Roman skirt, you know, manly stuff.
	Yeah.
	But you stand up and you get perspective.
	Everybody who was around for those 10 years, David, that you were a World of Warcraft raider, they're already comfortable and invested in you being small and inconsequential.
	Why?
	How do I know that?
	Because they are as well.
	Yeah, and because they didn't say to you, okay, okay, listen, we've been playing for like three months.
	Let's do something real.
	I'm not comfortable.
	Like, they're all perfectly comfortable, happy, invested in you as you were.
	This is the great challenge of change in your life.
	Everybody who was around before is invested in how you were before you grew.
	They're comfortable with that.
	That is the relationship.
	That's what they want out of you.
	You grow.
	You change.
	You are willing to confront the world on its inequalities and its inequities and its iniquities and its evil.
	A guy who goes into you, who goes into business with you to open a restaurant, he invests half a million dollars in opening this restaurant with you.
	You're in the restaurant for a year.
	It's, you know, within 6 to 12 months of breaking even and he might get some money back.
	And you say, hey, I think I want to turn this into a trampoline-based jump zone.
	What's he going to say?
	He's going to say, the hell you are.
	I got into business with you for a restaurant.
	We opened a restaurant.
	You cannot just go and turn it into a trampoline-based jump zone for kids now.
	If I wanted that, I would have invested in that instead of a restaurant.
	I'm here for the restaurant.
	And the relationships you have before you grow and do something with your life They're all people who've invested in who you were, not who you will be, who you could be, who you were, which wasn't much of anything, right?
	Right.
	Other than one of 40 people useful to have when defeating a digital dinosaur.
	Hmm.
	You were pixels and utility.
	That's Who you were for them.
	When you say, let's be great!
	It echoes.
	Sorry?
	It echoes.
	What do you mean?
	Well, when you go and you say, let's be great, it just echoes until there's coal.
	There's no, there's no, there's nothing that comes back.
	Right.
	You're changing the deal when the social contract has already been signed, sealed, and delivered for 10 years, right?
	Try that with your mortgage company.
	Here you go.
	Get a 20-year mortgage and after 10 years say, ah, I think I'm going to pay you with chickens and I think I'm going to turn the upstairs into a zoo.
	Sorry, we have a contract.
	You can't do that.
	They're a nice chicken though.
	Doesn't matter.
	Everything that you have, every relationship you have, has a vast swath of unspoken contractual obligations.
	Mutually supporting structures, scaffolding, if you will, around the entire relationship, usually which means I'm in it for continuity.
	You know, when I go see Finding Dory, I don't want it to change.
	I mean, I want to be surprised, but I don't want it to turn into a giant dinosaur-eating babies movie.
	You want some continuity in your social contracts.
	And if you've set up a 10-year social contract called, we do nothing with our lives, but we pretend we do, we get the dopamine substitute of imaginary victories over actually doing things in the real world, that's your contract!
	You can't just go and change your contract without talking about it.
	I guess I could phone up the bank and say, let's not really change my mortgage, but I can't just change it and send them a bunch of chickens and wonder why they're getting upset.
	You are changing the social contract you have with these people, but you're trying to do it implicitly.
	What you have to do if you want these relationships is you've got to say, holy shit, are we ever not getting stuff done with our life?
	It's really beginning to bother me.
	When you think about the amount of time, my friend, you spend playing video games rather than achieving anything in the real world, right?
	And then let's say that tomorrow they say, shit, man, you're really right.
	This is a giant waste of time while civilization crumbles and falls around us.
	We are lotus eaters.
	Yeah, but how did you get to that point, though?
	Or do you not try?
	I don't know.
	It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter because you can't control that.
	You can bring it up.
	But there's no greater paralysis in this world than trying to control the reactions of others.
	Yeah.
	How many days or weeks or months or years do I sit in my garden looking at a tree that I have to move if I think I can move it with my mind?
	Move, tree!
	I'm concentrating!
	I think I felt it move a moment.
	I think it wobbled.
	Okay, I had to try it again, right?
	Get a shovel.
	Get a shovel, start to dig deep.
	But you can't control the reactions of other people.
	You put information out there, they'll do what they're going to do with it.
	But my friend, David, I'm begging you, I'm on my knees here.
	Even if you got someone tomorrow to start waking up, you're still two years ahead.
	Mm-hmm.
	You're still two years ahead.
	Yeah.
	So, if you've been studying Japanese full-time for two years and you finally get someone else to start maybe taking a vague interest in learning Japanese, how long is it going to be before you can have a conversation with that person in Japanese?
	Years.
	What you need to do is be out there, not trying to get people to follow you down a path you started two years ago, but to go out there, do great things in the world, and find people at the same level or who are ahead of you.
	If you spend all your time trying to convince other people to learn Japanese rather than continuing to speak conversational Japanese with people who speak it as well as you or better...
	You're just losing traction.
	You're losing ground.
	You're losing expertise and competence.
	You must be a leader at the moment.
	And if you're trying to drum up Enough support that you might not feel isolated, exposed, alone, vulnerable.
	It won't work.
	That's how society doesn't change.
	It waits for people to get a sufficient mass.
	It waits for people to get sufficient agreement, sufficient support.
	40 people with them.
	That's all before the age of the internet and digital media.
	Now you can find your friends, you can find your crew, you can find your 40 people if you want them.
	Easily.
	Easily.
	You just have to be visible.
	Which means you have to do things other than ask your friends to join you on a quest they have no interest in.
	And even if they decided to start tomorrow, let's say you say to me, Steph, I really want you to start playing World of Warcraft with me.
	I'd be like, eh, I'm pretty busy.
	I don't really think I'm going to have time for that.
	And you keep sort of goading me, encouraging me, come play World of Warcraft, right?
	And you've got 10 years in, right?
	So you've got, like, a little infinity symbol next to your character's level or whatever, and I'm like, great!
	I'll start level one!
	How long till we fight together?
	Yeah.
	You understand?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So.
	Stop treading water.
	Stop killing time.
	You know, right?
	You know that's not going to lead anywhere.
	You just avoid what needs to be done.
	Right?
	Now, instead of playing video games, you're trying to play video gamers.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, completely.
	But, I mean, I've started, but it's not like...
	It's been like a split a little bit, like trying to pull people behind me, just trying to get the people that I used to know, but at some point, you just got to let it go and find new people.
	You know, it would be great, you know, if you want to form a beautiful acapella singing group, It would be wonderful if all the people you grew up with had beautiful singing voices and were the right combination of soprano and altar and tenor and baritone and bass and all that.
	And they all wanted to quit their jobs and go tour the world singing barbershop quartet songs and so on.
	But seriously, if you have a beautiful voice and you want to start a singing group that's all acapella, guess what?
	You ain't gonna find it among your friends.
	The odds of that are ridiculously tiny, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Alright.
	So I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I really, really appreciate it.
	Yeah, thank you so much.
	Helpful for you.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you so much, Stefan.
	Keep us posted, man, and thank you so much.
	Please keep going with your show.
	It's amazing.
	Alright, up next we have Brigitte and Adam.
	They wrote in and said, My fiancé and I are deliberating about having children.
	Well, we're currently leaning towards no.
	We want to make sure that we have good reasons, both for and against, that we have both considered.
	What reasons would Stefan give for having children to a couple that, while proponents of peaceful parenting and self-knowledge, believe that happiness and a legacy can be obtained without having children?
	That's from Brigitte and Adam.
	Alright, Brigitte and Adam.
	Nice to chat with you guys.
	Um...
	What are your reasons for having kids?
	So basically what we've talked about is we're kind of in the camp where we think you should have a really good reason for having kids versus just having reasons to not have them.
	And the best one that we've come up with in the for camp would be You want to watch a child grow and develop and develop a personality and find their interests and passions and help them pursue them.
	That's not necessarily how we feel, but that's what we think is the best reason to have kids.
	Right.
	It's a lot of fun.
	It's a lot of fun.
	I mean, last night I was having dinner with my daughter.
	And we had messy food.
	Doesn't really matter what, but we had messy food.
	And I was just saying to her, I said, you know, this is what we call not first date food.
	And she figured out why, because it's messy and all that, right?
	So we were going through a whole list of all the foods that would be really bad to eat on a first date.
	She won with raw ostrich egg.
	I gotta tell you, that is the very best that you could possibly come up with.
	And then I just took a giant bite of my...
	My food, I had all this goo all over my face and I just chased her around the house trying to kiss her.
	Anyway, so it is a huge amount of fun.
	So that is, that's one of the not quite so philosophical.
	I mean, I think you get that with peaceful parenting a lot more, obviously, that kind of fun and that trust and all that.
	But it is, it's an enormous amount of fun.
	So that part is important to understand, if that makes any sense.
	There is, of course, the joy, and it truly is a glorious thing to see, as I've said before, like a personality coming out of a baby and rising up into the world.
	It's like watching Atlantis come up out of the ocean.
	The biggest baby is somewhat undifferentiated, and then you see the personalities coming out, sometimes within a couple of days or a couple of weeks, and then you sort of see that whole progress.
	And it is remarkable and astounding.
	I mean, I wish I could do more kids, but that's not in the cards.
	Because I'm curious, you know, I mean, how much of it is my parenting and how much of it is genetics?
	And it's a little tough to tell that with one kid.
	Not much of a control group.
	So, okay, so, I mean, we've talked a little bit about some of the pluses.
	What are the minuses?
	Yeah, I think the kind of standard stuff, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort.
	Obviously, the first couple of years, it's the first year you're not sleeping much.
	We kind of look at it, it's an 18-year at least commitment, day in, day out.
	You kind of give up some freedom.
	You can't just be traveling when you want or starting things when you want.
	Your time is not really yours.
	You know, you're giving your time to someone else.
	So, pros and cons.
	Would you guys be sleeping with a lot of other people if you weren't with each other?
	No.
	No?
	No.
	Why, you both look like trolls?
	I mean, what's the story there?
	No, I don't think so.
	I think we both kind of figured out that, you know, one night stands and stuff is less fun than being in a relationship.
	Oh, so you found that by restricting your freedoms, you were happier.
	Huh!
	Isn't that interesting?
	Yeah, we've actually talked about this one as well.
	All right, well, yes, but not with me.
	No, no, that's why we're here.
	Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, unless you're clocking on at 310 like the last caller, I assume that there's foods that you don't eat a lot of because it'll make you fat, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so you find that by restricting your freedom to eat whatever you want, you end up with the freedom to, say, live on a continual basis rather than, you know, have a heart attack or something, right?
	Right.
	I'm sure heroin's a lot of fun.
	You know, there's a reason why people sell their babies for it.
	And so, you know, I'm willing to restrict my freedom, not have heroin, to enjoy all the life benefits that come from not taking heroin.
	So the idea that there's a restriction in freedom Is not a particularly good argument as to why not have kids, because especially if you're in a committed monogamous relationship, you've already given up your freedom for the sake of a significant benefit anyway, right?
	True.
	The way I kind of look at it, though, is like you're saying, you're giving up freedom, but it also is a lot of fun, but you can't know that, how you're going to experience it in advance, and you can't...
	There's no backseeds, you know?
	You can't say, oh, I tried being...
	What do you mean?
	Hang on.
	What do you mean you can't know...
	How you're going to experience parenthood before you have it?
	Right.
	Like, you don't know if it's really going to bring you the joy you may think it will.
	Well, if you're into peaceful parenting, I think you can know, right?
	I mean, of course, there could be medical complications.
	I mean, there's all these risks.
	But you guys are in love.
	One of you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, maybe even during the show if something comes through the wall, right?
	So with every commitment, every expansion of your heart comes The risk of the guillotine of accidents cutting off your happiness.
	So that's, you know, you can't avoid that.
	And even if you don't love, then you don't get that growth anyway.
	But if you're into peaceful parenting, that gives you by far the best chance to have a fun relationship with your kids because, you know, you're not hitting them or punishing them and so on.
	So you're negotiating and reasoning and they love you.
	For it.
	You know, I mean, the natural state of children in a peaceful relationship with their parents is unbelievable love and attachment.
	I had to come down to the show with my daughter hanging on to my leg because she wanted me to stay up and keep playing.
	And so did I. But nonetheless, I'm restricting my freedom to play with my daughter so that I can do a show.
	Get some cheddar.
	freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
	So you can know with each other.
	Let me ask you this.
	Do you guys...
	How long have you been a couple?
	Two years.
	Plus we dated a couple years prior to that.
	So you're going to get married.
	You're engaged, right?
	Yeah.
	Do you think in five years you're going to hate each other?
	No.
	How do you know?
	Because we've kind of built this years-long communication and we're here because of it.
	Not in spite of it.
	Okay.
	And...
	With parenting, you know, because you have these principles in your relationship, you have certainty about how the future of that relationship is going to be, and that's why you're willing to commit for your life, right?
	But with parenting, you have the same principles, so you're going to have the same amount of fun.
	Or, you know, you can predict...
	That you're going to have a significant amount.
	It doesn't mean no conflict or anything like that, but that's not, I mean, no conflict is not healthy either.
	But I don't sort of sit there tomorrow saying, gee, I wonder if my daughter is going to find me a positive influence in her life tomorrow, right?
	I mean, it's not, there's no doubt about that.
	And, oh, I wonder if we're going to enjoy ourselves if we spend the day together tomorrow.
	I know we are.
	So, that, you know, when you have the principles, that's as certain as you can get in relationships, right?
	I'd say so.
	I'm willing to accept all that, but that doesn't motivate me to want to have a child or be a parent.
	The idea that it may be a lot of fun doesn't necessarily mean I couldn't be doing more fun things not as a parent.
	Like what?
	Starting a business.
	I launched one in February.
	I'm really into that.
	I still have a full-time day job.
	We travel a lot.
	We're going to be moving actually back to her home country next year.
	She's looking to get into the real estate and do her own design.
	She's an interior designer.
	So there's a lot of, you know, I guess professional career stuff that we're interested to do.
	And we kind of take to heart that you can't be great at both, can't have a great career and be a great parent, even though we'd actually both be able to work from home.
	So we have a lot of time to be available.
	If you're both able to work from home, that certainly gives you a lot more flexibility.
	But of course it's going to cut into, right?
	One is going to be only so many hours in a day or whatever, right?
	Exactly.
	Okay, so you want to design what?
	Just talking to Brigitte, you want to design other people's houses rather than fill your own with life?
	I mean, it just seems like not much of a comparison, right?
	I mean, so other people's houses are going to look nice, and yours is going to get old and decrepit without any new life in it.
	I mean...
	Can you really get that much satisfaction out of tidying up other people's houses and making their other living spaces good for the next 30 years?
	Valid point.
	I think that's why we're on a call.
	Yeah, because whatever you're excited about now, we know what we're all like.
	Ooh, I'm really excited about this thing now.
	And in a year or two, eh, it's all right.
	Well, what if that's the same thing with parenting?
	Well, no, because parenting changes, right?
	Parenting grows.
	You're actually growing.
	You know, redecorating other people's places and spaces is going to be the same now in 20 years as it is tomorrow, fundamentally, right?
	I mean, you'll get better at it, you'll learn more about it and so on, but it's still the same kind of thing, right?
	Whereas parenting, a human being is growing from a blob which poops green into something which can ride bikes and have philosophical discussions with you and read books and do all kinds of amazing things.
	So there's a growth aspect of it as well, right?
	And travel.
	Oh, yeah, you can travel.
	You can go to new places.
	Sure.
	Okay, I get it.
	But, you know, with a kid, you're in a new place every day because they're different, they're growing, they're Challenging you.
	They're challenging themselves.
	You're learning more about them.
	They're learning more about you.
	So you get to travel with another person in a relationship with another person.
	That's important.
	And, you know, you can go traveling with kids.
	You know, like I worked once with a guy who said he loved to sail ships, like yachts or whatever, right?
	And small, right?
	Not big stuff, right?
	And he said, you know, I got tired of working a couple of years ago, and I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to pull my kids out of school, and we're going to spend a year and a half sailing around the Barbados and other areas around that, right?
	And so he did.
	Pulled his kids out of school, they homeschooled them on the boat, and that's what he did for a year or a year and a half.
	Kids loved it.
	I think they were happy to get back after a while, but, you know, had a great time.
	So if you want to go traveling with your kids, if you want to do all those kinds, you can do all that.
	There's no...
	No reason why you can't?
	I mean, obviously, the experience of traveling with the kids is different than just traveling with the two of you.
	So, I mean, like, yeah, you can do a lot of the same stuff.
	It just changes the kind of dynamic of the situation.
	So, again, like, I don't know if you would...
	You're saying you would enjoy it if you're, you know, in a peaceful party and you have the best chance, but you kind of don't know how it's going to turn out for you.
	What do you mean?
	I'm not sure what that means.
	So, like, I guess one way I can try and describe it is...
	Kind of quote that I said, you'll love your kids if you have them.
	You'll definitely will, but it doesn't mean you'll love your life with your kids in it.
	A lot of people really, truly love their oops babies or accident babies.
	That doesn't mean they enjoy all the hardship, responsibility that came with it that they weren't looking to have.
	The kid could be a great experience, but you still may be missing a lot of other stuff in your life that you could have done otherwise.
	It's like, do you regret if you do it, or do you regret if you don't do it?
	Wow, you can complicate some stuff.
	So, look, I mean, you guys are with each other, and could you be doing different things if you weren't with each other?
	Sure.
	I mean, I'm sure there are times when your schedules make it difficult to travel because the other person has to work, and if you were just on your own, you could just go travel and go wherever you wanted, be no negotiations, have all that freedom, right?
	But it's better with the other person, right?
	So, you can go and travel with kids, and kids like travel.
	And, you know, I mean, this travel thing, don't get me wrong, I like to travel, I've been to a lot of places, but...
	So what?
	You've been to a lot of places.
	So what?
	You've seen some new things.
	So what?
	You guys gotta start thinking from your deathbed backwards.
	I don't mean to goose you, but you are gonna die.
	And likely before you die, you're going to spend quite some time not well.
	Now, you go places, you'll have some memories and you'll have some travel snaps.
	You can print them out on your laser printer or whatever.
	And one of you is going to die before the other.
	Most likely it's going to be you, Adam.
	Statistically.
	Because male privilege.
	But let's say, since I'm talking to you, Adam, let's say that Brigitte is the one who dies first.
	And then you're alone for like five or ten years or whatever, right?
	Okay, well, you're old, so you may not be doing a huge amount of hiking and traveling.
	You might be infirm.
	You might have weaknesses or challenges in your life and your body.
	Infirm.
	There's some writer who said, oh yeah, I always wanted to write a novel about how, like a comedy novel about getting old, but now I'm old.
	I really don't find it so damn funny.
	And so you're going to have a whole bunch of Pictures on your computer are printed out.
	Are you going to just have them...
	You're going to prop up your little Polaroids of everywhere you've been around your couch and say, well, sure beats having people here.
	I mean...
	I can prop up photos of Brigitte.
	That's a comforting thought.
	We listened to your other podcast the other day.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	But hopefully, Brigitte, her picture is not the same as her.
	Hopefully, it's better having her there like a real live person than a picture.
	That's my point.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Even if you're really close with your kids, it doesn't mean they can always be around to help you as well when you're old.
	I mean, they're a presence in your life, of course.
	False dichotomy.
	No, no, no.
	You guys have listened to this show for a while.
	We're not going down false dichotomy lane.
	Always going to be there to help you with everything.
	Of course not, right?
	Okay.
	That's like saying, well, Brigitte, I'm willing to get married to you, but only if you service my every single immediate need whenever I want it, no matter what.
	Bit of a false dichotomy there, right?
	Okay.
	So, don't do that.
	Don't, like, come on.
	We gotta elevate our conversation beyond this false dichotomy.
	They will be around because they love you.
	And they will be around because they'll have grandkids who can come and fill your life with happiness and joy and give you the satisfaction of having created new life, brought new life, brought new people, created great people who can help the world in this life.
	And as you get older, your house will be filled with people and laughter and joy and presence and connection.
	Or you can prop up some pictures of places you went 30 years ago and stare at one dusty-ass phone that never rings.
	We spend a long time being old these days.
	We spend a long time being old.
	Like, I'm going to be 50 this year.
	I could get another 40, 45 years out of this deal.
	You know, we spend, what is the average life expectancy in the 80s these days?
	That's 50 years.
	Can you do 50 years of travel and not get bored?
	Can you do 50 years of redecorating and not get bored?
	And, you know, as you guys get older, it could be even longer.
	It could be into your 90s or more.
	We spend a long time, after we're retired, we spend a long time being old.
	And you won't have your strength, you won't have as much flexibility, you won't have as much health, you won't be as robust.
	You'll be worried about climbing down the steps of the Acropolis in the rain, because if you slip, you get to spend six months in the hospital!
	And get some dinosaur bone inserted up your ass so you can walk again.
	I don't know, I'm not a doctor, but I think that's how it works.
	You might be close.
	Okay.
	But we spend a long time being old.
	And what are you going to do with all the stuff you make?
	So let's say, Adam, you create some great business.
	And then you get old.
	And then what?
	You sell it, you fold it, it's gone.
	You get a kid, they love what you do, you're all trumping up that joint, right?
	You can hand over your business to your kids.
	You could.
	I guess what I'm feeling is that, listening to what you just described, it's almost like having a kid is hedging your bets against being lonely when you get older, which you may very well be.
	But it's like, if you do this, you'll get this utility out of the work you put in.
	But to me, in my head, that doesn't seem like a good reason to have a kid.
	Then why the hell are you getting married?
	Aren't you hedging yourself against loneliness?
	No, it's because you enjoy the relationship.
	You're hedging against loneliness when you get old with Pregitta because you enjoy each other's company.
	It's the same thing with kids.
	You don't have kids, ignore them, and then demand and stomp your feet and demand that they take care of you when you get old.
	They want to come over because they care about you and they love you and they want to spend as much time with you as possible before you die.
	It's not this cold, calculated, robotic utility of dry, mutual utility.
	Because, I mean, you...
	Everything that you're talking about could equally be described as your future marital relationship.
	Oh, it's just, we get married as a hedge against getting lonely when we get old.
	It's like, no, because you love each other, you love spending time together, so you're going to stay together when you get old because you love each other.
	It's the same thing with kids.
	We're not at why.
	This is all nonsense, right?
	We're not at why you don't want to have kids.
	Okay, let's dig to the root of it.
	First of all, both of you, are you happy that your parents decided to have kids?
	It's definitely good to be alive.
	It's good to be alive, right?
	Good to be alive.
	You are very, very happy that your parents had kids.
	Now, let's go back...
	30-odd years, right?
	Can I jump in real quick?
	No, let me finish this part, then it's all yours.
	Let's go back 36-odd years, 35-odd years, and let's pretend I'm having this conversation with your parents.
	This exact same conversation.
	They're calling me up and saying, well, I don't know if we want to have kids.
	I mean...
	And now your life hangs in the balance.
	Your life hangs in what I say to your parents 36 years ago.
	What do you want me to say?
	Go ahead, Kim.
	For God's sake, have children.
	I want to draw breath.
	People need their houses immaculate.
	There's places that I could leave footprints on in Thailand that otherwise will have no footprints, or at least not mine.
	Please, Steph, convince my parents to have children.
	Yeah, but if they didn't have children, we wouldn't be here to complain or ask the questions, so...
	Dude, oh my god.
	Oh my god.
	Come on.
	Go with me in this part of the conversation.
	Okay.
	Do you like being alive, Adam?
	Yes, I am.
	Okay, good.
	Then you would want me, if you had the choice, to be alive or not be alive.
	I know it's a theoretical, but you're a smart guy.
	You listen to the show.
	You can handle it.
	You want me to convince your parents to have kids?
	Right?
	Because you prefer existence to non-existence.
	So, 36 years from now, let's do a real-time pendulum from 36 in the past to 36 years from now.
	Am I talking to anyone?
	Well, if I'm talking to anyone, it's because I was able to convince you guys to look into the possibility of having kids.
	Your parents had those sleepless nights.
	Your mom's boobs sagged just a little bit more.
	They got that little rubbery pooch, that silver lines of stretch marks that comes to women who've had children.
	And they nursed you through your colds and your flus.
	And they spent money on you and they took you to noisy, arcadey places that they would never have been otherwise.
	And they played Monopoly when they probably didn't really want to, but had fun anyway.
	So you drew deep from the well of kindness of human parental involvement.
	And you're very happy that all that happened, right?
	But now you don't want to pay it forward.
	Now you don't want to create life even though you're incredibly happy that your life was created.
	Now if you said, well, Steph, the reason that we don't want to have kids It's because we want to start a giant movement to make the world better.
	We want to travel the world, preaching peaceful parenting in all the language which we can effortlessly muster like the ancient explorer, Richard Burton.
	We're going to go and create these great things.
	We're going to do wonderful things in the world.
	We're going to do amazing things in the world.
	We're going to do powerful, passionate, moral, good, great goalie things in the world.
	Yeah!
	That's good stuff!
	But instead is, I like to travel and decorate.
	That's not enough!
	It's not that it's not enough for me.
	I'm telling you, it's not going to be enough for you.
	Well, I mean, one thing we have talked about, we have been kind of evangelizing with peaceful parenting and all the government day stuff to our friends who are soon to be pregnant or currently pregnant and stuff.
	So we've been kind of brainstorming how we could, when we move, start getting it out on a wider scale in a country that really could use it.
	But again, We don't know if we'll succeed, and maybe, you know, just having a plan to do that is not enough, and you could try and do that and be a parent concurrently, where you kind of, you know, are trying to attack it from two angles.
	Well, if you want to help people out with peaceful parenting, do you think you'll have more credibility if, A, you have children, or, B, you don't?
	You know, we've actually talked about that, too.
	And the thing I tell Brigitte is that As far as your show goes, practically none of the listeners have ever met your daughter, but we've all been convinced by the arguments, science, and the stuff that you and others are talking about, but I've never seen your living proof either, but I don't need to see that.
	I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying or what you mean.
	Okay, so you're talking about if you had living proof in the example to show people the efficacy of the approach, right?
	Well, no, but I have a ring of credibility because I have, I mean, you don't need to film me with my daughter, because I have that ring of credibility simply because I am a father.
	I mean, you can't fake that, right?
	I know whereof I speak because I've lived it.
	Like when I say place principles of virtue above historical relationships, Yeah, I've lived it.
	There's some stuff you can't fake, right?
	If you've done it and you talk about it, it has that authenticity to it.
	Even if you were not a father and you were still saying all the same stuff you were saying, I think it would be just as valid.
	Yeah, no, it's just that you will have that lived experience.
	You know, we tend to take marital advice from people who are married.
	We tend to take diet advice from people who've lost weight.
	We tend to take parenting advice from people who've had the experience of parenting.
	It's not, you know, of course you can, but it's just, you know.
	Now, I mean, you sort of, there's this sleeplessness and so on, that's not guaranteed.
	I mean, some kids sleep through the night, and for some, you know, a lot of families, it's not that big a deal.
	And, yeah, there's a couple of years where they're kind of, I think what Dave Barry calls them, the death magnets when they're young, and you've got to supervise a lot.
	But, you know, that passes relatively quickly.
	And...
	They get pretty self-sufficient pretty quickly.
	And then certainly at the end of the latency period, at least according to friends I'm chatting with, you know, the kids are in their early teens and so on.
	Yeah, they're off at friends' places and doing their own thing quite a bit.
	So it's not this massive time sink forever that goes on with parenting.
	You know, I mean, I'm still able to do hundreds of shows a year.
	And I'm a stay-at-home dad.
	So yeah, We can work all these things out.
	It's all manageable.
	It's all doable.
	Lots of people on the planet and all those people had to be raised through infancy and breastfed, hopefully, and all that kind of stuff.
	So it's not like you're being asked to make the Taj Mahal in a rainstorm out of sugar cubes.
	Right.
	Well, we are still waiting for that parenting book, though.
	No, you're not.
	Come on.
	No, you're not.
	I'm just kidding.
	No, you're not.
	Nice try.
	So we do have another question.
	It's Brigitte's question.
	She remembered hearing in an earlier podcast that when you were younger, before you met your wife, you weren't interested in marriage and you weren't interested in having kids.
	Is that fair to say?
	It certainly wasn't something I was sort of any fundamental way opposed to, but it wasn't like, ooh, got to find that woman and have kids.
	So no, I wasn't either against it nor in hot pursuit of it.
	Okay, so could you step us through what made you go into the affirmative, have children, and go through it?
	Because I think that's kind of where we are.
	We're not totally opposed to it.
	We're not totally for it.
	it.
	So what was your experience?
	My wife's heart is just too big for just me.
	I mean, it's too big.
	It's too passionate.
	It's too powerful.
	And I'm like a sunspot against it.
	So, and I wanted to see her as a parent.
	And it is a beautiful thing to see.
	That there are aspects of your partner's life and heart and passion and virtue that will be completely invisible to you in the absence of children.
	Because you see a whole different side of someone.
	I mean, she's not treating you like a kid, I hope, but treating a child of hers.
	You get to see an aspect or a whole foundational component to her being that is indescribably beautiful.
	And your admiration for her will go up enormously as you see her navigate parenting, as hers will for you as you navigate parenting.
	It's not something that takes away.
	You guys are looking at all the stuff that, oh, well, you know, you're going to sleep and it could cost some money and might travel less and so on.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But I mean, there's nothing.
	It's nothing compared to what you get.
	There's this old story that there's this myth these days.
	Men are just unwilling to commit.
	It's all nonsense.
	Men are afraid of women plus feminism plus the state.
	And the women are less appealing in many ways.
	At least Western women are...
	People complain about that.
	But the story from women is like, well, you won't commit to me because...
	After we get married and we have a lifetime of love and laughter and tears and children and grandchildren and we're walking down the beach in our 70s or our 80s hand in gnarled hand, lifetime of satisfaction and love and care and connection behind us, there's going to be a whole bunch of Hawaii tropic bikini models who are going to bite him into a hot tub and he just can't go.
	Perfect.
	It is a very good deal what you get out of having kids.
	You will have made life.
	You'll be like Dr.
	Frankenstein.
	You know, they have these incredible, it's alive!
	You know, I remember seeing some movie where they, I don't know, some arm and they, it was cheesy black and white special effects.
	They grew the monster or the person just from the arm and it's like, it's alive!
	I've made life!
	It's like, yeah, it's as easy as screwing, right?
	You are...
	It's science fact.
	Not science fiction.
	Science fact.
	You can make life.
	And that life can take delight in your existence.
	You can take delight in that life's existence.
	You will create more life.
	And more life.
	And more life.
	And the four billion year journey of the DNA from the first single-celled organisms or whatever the hell happened in that primordial soup through to you.
	I mean, if you're a part of a For a billion-year relay race, do you really want to fumble and drop it?
	Because you want to do some travel, which you can do anyway.
	Because you want to decorate some places, which you can do anyway.
	Because you want to start a business, which in time you can do anyway.
	And not only will you get to start the business anyway, you get to hand it to someone too.
	Later.
	And it's not, oh, will you be threatened with loneliness?
	These are facts.
	If you're smoking and I say, well, that's going to raise your chances of lung cancer a couple of thousand times.
	Are you threatening me with lung cancer?
	No, I'm talking about consequences.
	You don't have kids so that you won't be lonely.
	But if you don't have kids, you probably will be.
	And that's a pretty bad way.
	To end your life.
	And look at the beginning of the movie Up.
	There's a reason why people look at that and cry.
	But it is a consequence that one of you will die before the other.
	And you'll kind of be too old.
	Do you guys make a lot of friends in your 30s?
	A lot of new friends?
	Not really, right?
	You know, it happens.
	But it's, you know...
	It's not really that...
	It's not like you're all in school and hanging out and got endless amounts of time to...
	Talk about whether atoms are really tiny solar systems.
	You are not making many new friends because you're getting older.
	Think it's going to be any easier when you're 70?
	Hey, let's learn about each other.
	Oh, did he die again?
	All right.
	Well, plus we're not making new friends because we're listening to your show and we're into logic and reason.
	We're losing some friends.
	We're losing a lot of friends.
	Well, technically you're not losing friends.
	We're losing people that used to be called friends.
	Right.
	Right.
	So that's, you know, that's another reason to have kids because you're not in the collective Borg goo, right?
	I mean, if you're not going to join the general tropes of the tribe, make your own tribe.
	It's going to be even worse for you guys, right?
	You won't be able to just join a bocce ball league and talk about how evil Trump is.
	Whatever, right?
	I mean, whatever's going to be going on in a couple of decades...
	Or next decade or whatever.
	It's, you know, if you're individuated, you kind of got to make your tribe rather than joining one.
	Why?
	because you're individuated.
	So was the fact that you wanted to see your wife as a parent the primary reason or one of the main reasons that you went into parenting?
	Yeah, and just a recognition that when you have someone you love, you want to see as many aspects of them as you can.
	And there was also, of course, a sort of basic recognition that The people I've known who didn't have kids when they get older, it's rough.
	It's rough.
	Most of the people we know who are old had kids, right?
	Because they're part of our family, our extended family.
	So most of the people we know who are old have kids.
	We don't really know the people who are old who don't have kids because they're lonely.
	Good point.
	Thank you.
	Gotcha.
	And here's the problem, right?
	Here's the challenge, right?
	You guys got to decide now.
	Given your ages, right?
	Right.
	You got to decide like tonight.
	Yeah.
	I've given up with philosophy.
	We're just going to do sex tapes now.
	Sorry.
	And I'm sorry you guys have to be, you know, it's for a good cause.
	Obviously help with philosophy.
	But here's the thing.
	You said that before, so I think you're gravitating towards that.
	Yeah, no, I'm, you know, I can read the marketing signs on the internet.
	But here's the thing.
	By the time you realize that you should have had kids, you can't have kids.
	So let's say in, you know, sort of seven or five or six years, you're like, ah, you know, I started this business, it's good, you know, I'm enjoying it, but, you know, I've still got a quarter century till I retire, and then I've still got a quarter century to live after that.
	I don't know that Work and whatever the hell we do when we're not working, I don't know that that's really going to be that satisfying for me.
	So by the time you figure out maybe that you want to have kids, well, then you're in your 40s and it's kind of past due, right?
	Right?
	So you kind of have to decide to have kids at a time when it feels like a sacrifice because by the time it feels more desirable, you're too old to have kids.
	That's the challenge.
	I understand where you guys are coming from.
	That's the challenge.
	Right?
	Right.
	Right now, you're like, we're young.
	We're healthy.
	We have money.
	We have opportunities.
	We have plans.
	We're going to do all these cool things.
	So I don't know.
	But I guarantee you, virtually guarantee you, that you're going to end up not being as satisfied with your life plans as you want.
	You'll be like, man, we really should have had kids.
	But by the time that realization hits, boom.
	It's too old.
	Too late.
	Of course you have to have kids when you're young and vital and have lots of plans because that's the way nature makes the eggs, right?
	And the sperm to some degree.
	Right.
	Of course it's a bit of a leap.
	Because if you wait to find out whether your business is going to pan out or whether you're going to love redecorating other people's apartments or houses for the rest of your life, if you're going to wait for all of that, if you come up snake eyes and really wish you'd had kids, then it's too late.
	And that is a long time to regret something like that.
	Right.
	Right.
	And please, God.
	Please, God, let smart people have babies.
	Please, God.
	Please, God, let smart people have babies.
	Listen, obviously it's your choice.
	I don't even need to tell you that.
	I'm just giving you arguments, which is a perspective.
	I can't tell you whether to have kids or not, and it would be meaningless for me even to try to do that.
	I'm just saying very passionately, please, dear Lord Zeus above, Give sex dreams to people.
	I don't care if it's nocturnal emissions and a turkey baster with your ghostly fingertips.
	Please, God, let some smart people have some children.
	What happens if smart people don't breed well in captivity?
	Well, once you know that, you have a choice, because you're not just reacting, right?
	We are leaving, so hopefully going to a more free place.
	Hopefully to a place with less captivity.
	Yep.
	All right.
	That's working my bellows to your naughty bits.
	So I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I hope you'll let us know how it goes.
	And I think you know where I stand or which position I'm in.
	Yes.
	You can do the legs up thing if you like and let us know what you choose, all right?
	All right.
	Thanks a lot.
	Thank you so much.
	You're welcome.
	Bye-bye.
	Alright, up next is Jessica.
	Jessica wrote in and said,"...relating most recently to the Brock Turner case, how is it possible that these quote-unquote strong feminists seem to leave out integrity and honor, which I believe are the mortar of all good men, and reason that when two equals get drunk and fool around,
	that it is the male's responsibility to dictate when a woman does or does not know when she wants to have sex?" Weren't we all under the impression that feminists believe in my body, my choice?
	That's from Jessica.
	Thank you, Jessica, for the kind of calls that get me in trouble.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Troublemaker.
	Troublemaker!
	I'm sorry.
	I'm not sorry.
	No, it's a good call.
	It's a good call.
	It's my body, my choice.
	My vocal cords, my choice.
	Okay, do you mind if I just sort of mention a little bit about the Brock?
	Sure.
	Turner case, just so people know what we're talking about.
	Okay, so here we go.
	This was filed in 2015 and was charged in 2015.
	The trial started March 14, 2016.
	It was decided March 30, 2016.
	The indictment in 2015...
	Was rape of an intoxicated person, rape of an unconscious person, assault with intent to rape an intoxicated person, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.
	And the two, the charges one and two, rape of an intoxicated person, rape of an unconscious person, were withdrawn by prosecution, and count three, four, and five, Were considered to be...
	He was guilty.
	He was found guilty of this.
	This is Brock Turner.
	So he's, I think, 19 at the time.
	He was a very good swimmer.
	And he was at Stanford University, a student athlete.
	And what happened was, as far as I've been sort of able to ascertain, and if you know anything that corrects this, please let us know.
	He met this woman at a party and they were both ridiculously drunk, like insanely drunk.
	She was three times over the legal limit at the point where like you can stop breathing, your organs can shut down, like you are at a near fatal dose of alcohol.
	He was twice over the legal limit.
	And basically what happened was he said that they were kissing and he fingered her vagina.
	And then he stopped kissing her because he wanted to get up and throw up.
	So clearly this was not a Kodak moment of romance, to put it mildly.
	And at some point, they had left the party.
	She slipped down some hill.
	They were out back of a dumpster.
	He was kissing her.
	He got up to throw up.
	And at some point, it seems like she obviously just passed out, right?
	Just really passed out.
	And then a couple of Swedish bicyclists were biking by at one o'clock in the morning and they basically said, what are you doing?
	And he ran off.
	They tackled him and then they tried to resuscitate the woman.
	She was taken to hospital.
	They tried every 15 minutes to resuscitate her.
	She was so drunk at the time that what happened was it took her three hours to regain consciousness.
	She had no memory of what happened.
	They did a swab test, a DNA test, a rape kit test.
	And the reason why the rape charges were withdrawn is that there was no penile penetration according to the DNA. And in California, rape is defined as a male forcibly penetrating a woman or I guess a man with his penis, which is why women can't be charged with rape in California because of male privilege unless she's helping a man rape another woman.
	And she woke up.
	She had no memory.
	Of anything that had happened.
	There were no witnesses, as far as I understand it, who knew exactly what happened.
	The young man said, oh, you know, I don't have much experience with alcohol and so on, therefore I didn't really know as much what I was doing.
	Unfortunately, evidence from his cell phone texts in the year prior to his arrest, well, he had extensively discussed his use of alcohol and drugs, smoked cannabis and hash oil, and in 2014, the...
	The guilty party, the man, was arrested on campus for underage drinking.
	And one of the reasons why this is so known is that he got a sentence of six months.
	So the prosecution, I think, was asking for, I think, six years.
	He could have got a maximum of ten years, I think.
	And he was given six months and...
	Um, it's expected, I guess, with good behavior that he will be, um, only in for three months.
	Now, he's got three years probation, which means if he violates his probation, he goes back for, I don't know, it's like 14 years or something crazy.
	And, um, He also was kicked out of school, and he was kicked off the swim team.
	He was hoping to go, I think, to the Olympics, swim for America, and basically, that's never going to happen.
	He's got to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, and I think his neighbors get informed wherever he moves.
	I don't know exactly what the rules are in California, but it is a...
	A fairly big deal.
	Now, people call him a rapist, which I believe, again, I'm no lawyer, is technically not correct, because it was not a rape, because his penis did not go into her vagina, but apparently he said he fingered her vagina, there was some kissing, and that's his story, and nobody, of course, knows exactly what happened.
	It was a tragic situation all around, the level of alcohol, the amount of alcohol was truly staggering.
	Is that sort of how you understand the situation to have been?
	Did I miss anything or get things mostly right?
	For the most part, yes.
	There's a lot of...
	The story kept changing as far as minor details, but very important details, such as...
	If you look hard enough you can find other sources of evidence where either the woman was unable to recall anything that had happened and then in other sources she was able to recall at least wanting resistance which It
	kept changing, but what I was unhappy with the most was the fact that he was completely responsible for the incident, 100%.
	Despite the fact that both had really high levels of alcohol, I think his was.17 and hers was.20.
	22 to 26.
	His twice over, hers three times over the legal limit.
	But the whole case was based on the fact that he was responsible, even though he was incredibly intoxicated.
	He was responsible all around for not...
	Making sure that she was fully consenting up until the moment that she did pass out with him.
	It's like a witch hunt for him, it seems, that he needs to go to jail forever.
	He needs to be charged to the fullest extent of the law, despite that there's so much circumstantial evidence.
	Right.
	So, yes, I think you're right about the blood alcohol levels.
	So his story, this is from Wikipedia.
	So he says, after his arrest, Turner, the young man, told police that he and the victim drank beer together, danced, and kissed at the party, and both mutually agreed to go back to his room.
	Turner stated that the victim slipped on a slope behind a wooden shed, and Turner got down to the ground, and they started kissing each other.
	Turner said he then asked her if she wanted him to finger her, to which she said yes.
	He stated that he fingered her for a minute as they were kissing, then they started dry humping.
	nauseous and told her he needed to vomit.
	Oh, God, so gross.
	Turner said he got up and started to walk away to throw up and heard another person saying something to him which he could not understand, then heard the same person talking to another person in a foreign language.
	I guess this is a Swedish bicyclist.
	They grabbed him.
	However, Turner said he broke away but was quickly tackled.
	Prosecuting attorney and the victim have both alleged that Turner's narrative during trial testimony was fabricated.
	The prosecutor argued to the jury that, quote, he's able to write the script because she has no memory.
	But just because he wrote the script doesn't mean that knowledgeable jurors have to believe it.
	The victim described Turner's testimony as presenting, quote, a strange new story that almost sounded like a poorly written young adult novel.
	It's a god-awful situation all around.
	One also has to wonder, and again, I just...
	Do these as mental exercises, but Jessica, let me know what you think.
	If the victims had been reversed, right?
	So, in other words, if it had been a man and a woman, and the man had been more drunk, and the woman said, well, we were kissing, and then he asked for a handjob, so I started masturbating him, and then I had to get up and throw up, and so on.
	And then, right, they were dry humping, and then, you know, people came along.
	Would she get charged with Sexual assault?
	I personally, I highly doubt that.
	I highly doubt that there would be a man who would feel he was assaulted as rare as that could probably be just by itself, just by the nature of things.
	Even if maybe under normal circumstances a man Might not have wanted to get in that situation behind a dumpster.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a male, so I can't speak from experience.
	But I just find it...
	I just highly doubt this wouldn't even have made the news at all.
	If the genders had been reversed.
	Yeah, if he wanted to charge.
	That's assuming if he felt that he was being taken advantage of.
	Or if it was two men, I don't think it would have gotten this far.
	Or two women.
	But the fact that it was a female victim and you have a successful young white male, then yes, it did get blown up the way that it did.
	Right.
	I was certainly surprised to hear him referred to as a rapist and found out that he'd not been convicted of that, but of a different offense.
	You know, one of the things that is important is do people drink too much?
	Yeah.
	You know, I hate to sound all kinds of old-fashioned, but dear God, it is mental how much students drink.
	It's completely insane.
	Well, where is just the personal responsibility?
	That's what I want to know.
	I mean, I'm not...
	I'm all for people going out, having a good time, having some drinks, but where is the personal responsibility?
	If he needs to be responsible for not ensuring that she was able to consent, where is her, just in being fair, because justice is supposed to be blind, it's not supposed to see a woman and a man, it's supposed to see two individuals.
	And if we are being fair, where is the responsibility that you drank so much that you do not remember anything that happened to you at all?
	And apparently, according to one source, it wasn't the first time that that's happened.
	She had told the police that there had been several times throughout her college life that She had gotten blackout drunk.
	And so she was aware that that's a thing that happens.
	It wasn't just, oh, I don't know, I just got really drunk and I can't believe that I don't remember anything.
	But apparently it's a history where she's well aware that she can get completely blackout drunk.
	So I just find it very odd or just unfair that there is no...
	Even level of responsibility for the two individuals that are in this case.
	Sorry to interrupt, but the way that I would analogize it, and this is an imperfect analogy, but the way that I would analogize it to some degree is, let's say that both of these people got behind the wheel of a car while this drunk and crashed into each other.
	And let's say that the woman crashed because she passed out behind the wheel of a car.
	Well, we would not say that if these two drunk drivers crashed into each other, that only the man was responsible.
	We would say they were both acting crazy irresponsible and getting that drunk at a party.
	I mean, she's 22.
	It wasn't like her first moment with alcohol.
	And even if it was, I mean, come on, don't drink that much.
	It's not, you know, it's not that complicated to not drink that much.
	And so...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, just to sustain that much, that level of alcohol, because when she woke up in the hospital, I believe her alcohol content in her blood was 0.12.
	No, sorry, it says here, sorry to interrupt, hours after she was hospitalized, the victim's blood was tested.
	Her blood alcohol content at the time of the assault was estimated to have been 0.24 I assume, obviously, it was a little lower after her body metabolized some of it over the couple of hours.
	Yeah.
	Well, in her letter, she says that she drank, you know, she's able to account for X amount of drinks, but that doesn't quite add up considering how many drinks you have to have just to get to that level of alcohol in your blood.
	I can't really find where they said what time they arrived at the party, but she drank before she went to the party.
	She gets to the party and is there for several hours and then around 1am is when the incident happened.
	So there are several hours where she either constantly drank or stopped drinking and then binge drank for however long.
	Either way, she got her blood level up to 0.24.
	Which is potentially fatal.
	Like, that's how much alcohol that is.
	I mean, she could seriously have overdosed and died, as far as I understand it, from that level of alcoholism, or that level of alcohol consumption.
	And...
	You know, and so now he's supposed to figure out exactly, and I would assume she knew he was drunk, right?
	He was so drunk that he was about to throw up.
	And throwing up while, I mean, that takes a lot of drinks to throw up.
	You know, a sort of young fit man and so on.
	So she left with him.
	She was so drunk she didn't know what was going on.
	He was so drunk that he's trying to kiss her and then he throws up.
	And I mean, it's just a god-awful situation all around.
	And, you know, I mean, clearly these are situations where prevention is better than some sort of, quote, justice after the fact.
	But you can't say that.
	You're not allowed to say that.
	Because as many times...
	I'm not popular for saying it, but I'm allowed to say it.
	No, exactly, because that's the reason why I did receive a fair amount of backlash for defending the...
	Not him in particular, but just the fairness of the...
	Of the trial itself, because I didn't even really know too much about the case until I saw it blowing up all over social media whenever he was sentenced.
	Well, it fits a narrative, which is, you know, privileged white kids are rape addicts on campus, right?
	I mean, it fits that kind of narrative.
	Let me give you some numbers here, right?
	I mean, this is incredible how much drinking is going on.
	On campus.
	Now, the last time I got drunk, I was 21.
	It was at an after-cast party when we finished closing.
	I did two weeks of playing Macbeth.
	And I had the spins.
	I didn't throw up.
	And that was like, that's it.
	I mean, I'm like, I've been drunk maybe four times in my life and not once in almost 30 years.
	But in 20 years.
	30 years.
	Anyway, so...
	According to a national survey, almost 60% of US college students aged 18 to 22 drank alcohol in the past month.
	Almost two out of three of them engaged in binge drinking during that same time frame.
	And it's crazy.
	Do you know how many college students die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including car crashes, every year?
	I can imagine.
	It's 1,825.
	That's a lot of people.
	Getting drunk isn't that much fun, unless you're just surrounded by idiots, in which case survival, I guess.
	Now, almost 700,000 students are assaulted by another student who's been drinking.
	Almost one in four college students report academic consequences from drinking, including missing class, falling behind in class, doing poorly on exams or papers, or receiving a lower grade overall.
	About 20% of college students meet the criteria for an alcohol use disorder.
	It's mental.
	Just how much drinking...
	And there's this new thing, apparently, where the kids get together and decide not to eat anything so the alcohol will hit them more strongly.
	drinking bugs me Well, I think there should have been more focus on that, just like more of a safety issue that, hey, I mean, look what happens whenever you get so blackout drunk that, I mean, I do feel bad that the girl was unaware.
	I couldn't imagine waking up in a hospital and And having someone explain to me how I was found and that we need to check to see if you have...
	that you might have a sexually transmitted disease because we don't know exactly what happened.
	Or could be pregnant, right?
	Yeah, or anything.
	But I just couldn't personally think to just fully...
	Place the blame on the other party.
	Because at some point, she did consent to be with this guy.
	You mean because she left?
	Yeah, because they left together.
	So...
	But, I mean...
	Well, I don't know how she doesn't have responsibility, but he does.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, if you're going to be fair...
	They were both crazy drunk.
	They both need to be held responsible to the same amount.
	He was being held responsible for not...
	Making sure every five seconds that she was fully conscious and aware of what was going on.
	Because I can only imagine that the situation was that they went outside.
	They fell, or she fell, whatever.
	And they decided to fool around behind this dumpster.
	And they're both intoxicated.
	Him...
	She's obviously a little bit more intoxicated than he is, but during this...
	But he doesn't know that in the moment.
	It's not like he's giving her a breathalyzer and they're checking their numbers, right?
	No, but they're holding him responsible for doing it, for an intoxicated person being responsible for another intoxicated person, the blind leaning the blind, and saying, hey, it's your fault.
	And there's no proof.
	No, there's no heart evidence.
	There was no, according to DNA, no penis and vagina, no bruises, no tears, no cuts, no scrapes, no nothing.
	And so he was, to my knowledge, he was the only witness who could say what happened.
	I cannot for the life of me imagine outside of politics, outside of gender politics and all this, I can't imagine how it's possible to establish beyond a reasonable doubt His guilt.
	Like, I just, I can't imagine how that's possible.
	And this is why we should work to prevent these kinds of situations.
	The he said, she said stuff can't ever go beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Reasonable doubt has to be like, what, 90, 95% certainty of what happened?
	Yeah.
	She's out cold.
	He's saying what happened.
	There's no witnesses.
	Sorry, you can't get to beyond reasonable doubt.
	And I'm guessing that what happened was, and it's kind of like the way that Marilyn Mosby's case appears to be falling apart against the six officers who she claimed were responsible for Freddie Gray's death.
	It's politics!
	Because if they said, look, it's a god-awful situation.
	He's throwing up.
	They're out back of a dunster.
	She's passed out.
	I mean, it's god-awful.
	They're both blind drunk beyond words.
	And let's work to educate kids on alcohol so this kind of stuff doesn't happen as much.
	Oh, it's because he's privileged.
	It's because he's white.
	It's because he's an athlete.
	It's because he's successful.
	He's got a life going on for him.
	And that just seems what the left loves to see, is to see someone who's doing well, who, of course, fits their narrative, the white male.
	It's just like...
	Just reminds me so much of just a Salem witch trial where they're just saying, burn them, burn them.
	It's the evil guy.
	Look what he did.
	See, this is more proof that the rape culture we live in, the white privilege, this is all it is.
	And they get to blow it up however they want and no one gets to stop them from doing it because the fact is that technically He wasn't a rapist by even California law.
	He did technically fall under forcible sexual penetration of an intoxicated person.
	With a foreign object, which apparently was his finger.
	I mean, it wasn't some alien probe.
	That's if you could prove.
	That all hinged on if you could prove that she did not consent.
	She doesn't remember.
	There isn't a reasonable area to say Oh, okay.
	She clearly did not give consent.
	I mean, she was showing consent by leaving the party with him.
	Well, I'm sorry.
	And this is why, you know, clearly a man or a woman who gets dragged, you know, some guy jumps out from the bushes, drags, beats them up, holds a knife to their throat, forcibly rapes that man or woman.
	Clearly, the injuries mean no consent.
	Clearly, I mean, that's why they do these kinds of tests to find out if there's anal or vaginal tearing.
	So clearly, a woman or a man who's been beaten up by a rapist, who's, you know, a knife cut on the throat or, you know, vaginal or anal tearing, clearly that's not consent because you can't consent to that.
	Yeah.
	And even if you do consent to a violent rape, it's still, as far as I understand it, you can't consent to injure yourself outside of like tattoos and hockey and boxing and stuff like that.
	And so where there is no witness, where one person is apparently passed out, does he know that?
	I don't know.
	They're kissing and he's dizzy.
	Well, it's just silly that they expect him to be responsible for making sure that You know, they go off the argument that she was too drunk to consent, that she was unable to.
	But then clearly he was too drunk to consent as well, right?
	Yeah, but they're not being fair.
	That's what makes me so angry about the case, is that Okay, well, if we're saying that she's unable to consent, why doesn't he get some leeway with that as far as the outcry?
	Because you know as well as I know, Jessica, because the whole point is to make women frightened of men so they run to the government.
	That's all.
	You keep women frightened of men.
	And somehow this is rape culture, even though whatever was going on was interrupted by two men who intervened and chased the guy down and kept him there or whatever.
	The whole point is simply to make women frightened of men so that if they're going to have kids, they're going to have kids out of wedlock.
	They're going to choose bad men, and therefore they're going to be dependent on the state.
	It's just this big, usual, crappy, democratic vote-buying stuff where they're trying to make as many people dependent on the state as possible, and the best way to do that is to destroy and poison and toxify relations between men and women.
	Yeah.
	I mean, to, I don't know, to kiss a woman without her consent because she's too drunk?
	Yeah, I mean, that's not good.
	But if he was that drunk, then she kissing him is kissing him without his consent because he can't give consent because he's twice over the legal limit for driving.
	But this doesn't matter because the whole point has nothing to do with justice.
	It's about demonizing men, alienating women, making them scared, making them frightened.
	And so the feminists will say, women are really at grave danger on campuses when technically it's one of the safest places for women to be.
	Ah, there's a patriarchy that's really violent against women, whereas the safest place for a woman to be is in a stable, committed, long-term relationship with a man.
	That's the safest place for her to be, particularly if it's marriage.
	But of course, they don't want women to be safe.
	They want women to be scared.
	That way, the women will run to big daddy government to protect them from all the mean patriarchs out there.
	And you'll end up with more and more people dependent on the state, more and more dysfunctionality between men and women.
	And the smartest men will stop breeding, which means that you get a more compliant herd.
	And also, it just helps with that narrative that women aren't responsible in general.
	For anything.
	Just really anything as long as it involves another man.
	Especially a white male in particular.
	They had been pushing forever their campus rape hysteria.
	And finally they got something that kind of resembles what they've been talking about.
	And have just taken it and ran with it.
	And I'm just so shocked at how few people I've seen say, hey, can we be reasonable for a second here?
	Can we show that, hey, like, not everything is as it seems.
	A lot of people thought he was an actual rapist, like a man who stalked, a sober man who stalked A woman who was unable to defend herself dragged her behind a dumpster, raped her.
	Two brave men came along and saved her or tried to save her.
	That's just how they made it appear.
	When in fact, it was very circumstantial.
	It was extremely circumstantial and very little evidence.
	And this kid I mean, it's very possible that he did know.
	It's possible.
	I could be wrong.
	But it is just as possible that he is completely innocent of the crime as much as he could be responsible for it.
	Well, innocence or guilt, I mean, these are absolute terms, and all we have is probability.
	Right?
	And, you know, if feminists, of course, are very concerned, about the safety and security of women well i think they'd be talking about some middle eastern societies a little bit more than white male western societies and um they also would be critical of lesbians right i mean um center for disease control this is from 2010 lifetime prevalence of rape physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner victimization
	prevalence of 43.8 percent for lesbians 43.8%.
	Homosexual men, 26%.
	And heterosexual men, 29%.
	Heterosexual women, 35%.
	So it's higher.
	Bisexual women, highest at 61.1%.
	But there's more of this kind of abuse in lesbian relationships than heterosexual relationships.
	Why aren't they talking about that?
	If they really can care.
	Safety of women.
	Because that doesn't fit the narrative, right?
	Now, what's your, you know, let's get deep.
	What are your thoughts and feelings about being put into the category of no agency female?
	I mean, this is going to extrapolate to women as a whole.
	I mean, how does that feel for you?
	What do you mean by that exactly?
	Well...
	This argument that's being put forward by people who are supposed to be claiming to empower women, talking about women of victims and so on, as a woman, I mean, that has a stronger impact, I think, even, I mean, as a father, I mean, I don't want my daughter hearing all of this.
	You're a victim stuff her whole life.
	But what's it like for you to live in this culture where women are portrayed as these helpless, Victorian, couch-fainting, get-the-smelling-salts victims of massive forces beyond their control?
	It's funny that you say that because I... I've talked to my boyfriend with this a lot.
	This case in particular, just because of...
	I just feel like I'm the only one saying, hey, wait, maybe it's not a witch.
	Maybe it's a person.
	And we can't prove that this man isn't a witch by throwing him in the water and seeing if he drowns or not.
	It just feels the same way and I told him I told my boyfriend that I almost feel like the way things have been going as far as the strong feminist movement the all men are evil movement is that you're as angry as it makes me that you're doing this you're just proving the fact that Women
	probably just need to stay at home because we can't take care of ourselves.
	We have to depend on other men to be responsible for themselves because we have no control over what happens.
	And that's what they're doing.
	That infuriates me because I know that to not be true, me personally, because If I put myself in a situation that could be dangerous, part of that's on me.
	That's why we lock our doors at night.
	That's why you lock up your car.
	That's why our cars have alarms.
	There's a certain amount of preventative responsibility that anyone with half a brain can take to avoid any of a situation like this where you have a girl with No memory.
	And another kid bearing the full responsibility of being accused of rape and is sentenced and will have to live the rest of his life with being a sex offender.
	And he'll never be able to pick up his kids from school.
	Oh, his life is destroyed.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I hate to say it.
	I mean, I hate to say it.
	It's a pretty strong statement.
	Now, Jessica, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	No, go ahead.
	You gave me a very strong intellectual argument, but I was asking about your feelings.
	I just, no, just, I mean, again, I feel very, I don't feel empowered at all.
	I try to be fair as much as I can, personally.
	Fair is not a feeling.
	Trying is not a feeling.
	Empowerment is not a feeling.
	What is your reptile brain saying about all this stuff?
	What's your gut?
	Mostly, I'm angry.
	Okay, so now we get some feelings.
	Tell me, because this is really abstract stuff for a lot of people.
	What's it doing to your lizard brain?
	What's it doing to your gut?
	Let rip, baby!
	If anything, I feel in defensive mode for men, because me as a person, I am a very protective type of person, anyone.
	There's been several cases where I... No, no, no, no!
	We did the intellectual stuff!
	Tell me your feelings!
	No, it puts me in...
	I feel defensive.
	I feel like I have to defend...
	I feel like I'm defending white males because they're being bullied and I end up standing in that way Over and over again because of what's being thrown at me.
	Honestly, I just feel defensive of men in general.
	Okay, so when we feel that we want to protect someone who's being bullied, what emotion is driving us to do that?
	I mean, besides anger, I guess Honestly, I can only really put with anger.
	Anger's fine.
	Let me try this approach.
	Let's say that you got to speak to either the feminists or women as a whole.
	Because you're very passionate about this, but it's very bottled up.
	And the reason I'm not trying to go fishing for your feelings, it's just that...
	Well, I'm trying to stay fair without getting emotionally involved.
	No, no, get emotionally involved.
	Right?
	I mean, passion wins these kinds of conflicts.
	Passion wins these kinds of conflicts.
	What is it that you think women are doing that's harmful?
	The feminists in particular, with this political...
	Because it's not feminism, it's just Marxism, right?
	But...
	What is it that you think that...
	What are they doing?
	What would you like to tell them about what they're doing to women and their perception of security and autonomy and agency?
	Well, just if you want equality, you're not doing it right.
	What you're looking for is equity, I'm guessing, or what you feel is equity.
	But you're saying while you're doing it, it's for equality.
	It's what's right.
	And you're not.
	You're regressing...
	Women in general by how you handle things.
	And I'm sick of saying it.
	I know there's plenty of other women who feel the same way.
	But I'm tired of being...
	And it's like a hive mindset too.
	If I have anything contrary to say about it, I'm not for women.
	I'm against women because I'm trying to treat men and women fairly.
	Whenever I have an opinion about something, I'm trying to be fair.
	But because that doesn't fit with what they're saying, I'm against women.
	I don't have women's best interests at heart as a woman.
	I just feel like Women in general are being regressed because of things like this, the rape culture, the you're sexist for saying I look pretty today kind of BS, you know?
	Oh yeah, no, every time the phrase blame the victim is used, some feminist troll has an orgasm somewhere.
	That is a great tragedy because...
	Or you're a rape apologist too.
	Oh, yeah.
	Isn't that lovely?
	Yeah, which is awesome.
	That's a phrase that really invites further discussion, nothing extremist.
	I mean, rape apology, blame the victim, that's all Godwin's law.
	Like, the first person to mention the Nazis is loses.
	And the first person to immediately go to racism, rape apologist, misogyny, patriarchy.
	I mean, you've just lost.
	Like, to me, and I think people are waking up to this point now that this kind of just verbal airstrikes, it's just a confession of intellectual impotence and an inability to handle a recent debate.
	So hopefully that is...
	The tide is beginning to turn because Lord knows it's been a long time coming.
	Well, thank God for that.
	Especially what makes me upset is because I feel on a day-to-day basis, going about our daily lives, there have been plenty of situations where I have taken a step forward to resolve it,
	whereas any of my Liberal friends or social justice warrior friends would be too timid and meek to do anything to write a situation where either somebody was being assaulted or even sexually assaulted.
	You literally would not have the balls to do it.
	But you can sit on your computer and you can Type up all this anger and all this righteous anger that people tend to have.
	Sorry to interrupt, but women are going to need men sooner or later because there's just no way this fiat currency system is going to continue.
	So women are going to need men sooner or later.
	And, you know, the great tragedy is that men might just not want to do it anymore.
	And men are sick of it, too.
	I mean, you know, obviously they can't and if they can't say anything about it, otherwise it's just Male tears.
	I mean, I see it all the time.
	The white knights need to really like and respect femininity in order to step in to help women when the government runs out of money.
	And this, of course, is also part of the chaos that's being sowed in the world, that when the government runs out of money, guess what?
	Single moms and women who are dependent, and they're going to need men.
	And if men don't like women, Or men feel that the women have just kind of jerked them around collectively again as a whole, then it'd be like, yeah, you know, sorry, the white knight stuff, that well is run dry.
	And that's going to be a huge challenge.
	So listen, Jessica, to move on to the last caller.
	Thanks so much for calling in.
	Share your frustration with the stripping of agency and the fact that it doesn't seem to be that people are noticing it very much.
	And there is this hive mind.
	Like if you just challenge this woman's narrative or you challenge the justice of what's going on in the legal system, then somehow you just want women to be raped behind dumpsters.
	And it's like, no, we don't!
	We don't want women to be raped behind dumpsters.
	That's why we're trying to talk about moral agency.
	And that's why...
	If there is the he said, she said stuff, no evidence, no witnesses and so on, don't get into those situations.
	Prevention is the key.
	But if women are just victims, then there's nothing...
	Here's the challenge of being a victim.
	Being a victim means there's nothing you can do to change it.
	Being a victim means there's nothing you could have done to prevent it.
	And the more we tell women there's nothing you can do to prevent any of these situations, the more we are going to guarantee these kinds of situations reoccurring.
	And that's what we want to try and prevent.
	So...
	Thanks very much, Jessica.
	Great chat.
	You're welcome to call back anytime, and let's move on.
	Thank you.
	Have a great day.
	All right, up next is Jason.
	Jason wrote in and said, I am a black atheist living in the South who is a former Democrat.
	Even though I am an atheist, I can see the merits and values that religion gives certain people.
	I don't agree with the medium in which the message is given, but that is beyond the point.
	I am also against big government regulation, because I don't think they should be granted so much power just going on past events.
	Recently, while listening to a close friend, I told him that my ideals and views align more closely with conservatives, and he immediately told me that I couldn't be one because I'm an atheist.
	So my question to you is, can an atheist consider himself a conservative?
	That's from Jason.
	Hey Jason, how you doing?
	Hey, what's up, Stefan?
	My spirits!
	The lighting in my studio.
	My happiness at chatting with you.
	So, wow, you really are breaking some ranks here, aren't you, brother?
	It's very cool.
	So, tell me, were you raised religious?
	How did you get on the atheist bandwagon?
	Yeah, I was raised Baptist.
	But my parents, I was raised with my father.
	Like, my dad pretty much raised me and my brother by himself.
	I know, breaking even more stereotypes.
	Single dad.
	Holy God.
	I know.
	Does he not know how to read statistics?
	I know.
	And then my dad was pretty, he was kind of like, he was religious, but he was pretty nonchalant about it.
	And my grandma was really the one who kind of like drove us to like be in Sunday school and everything and to get baptized.
	And then my dad, he kind of made me become an atheist because when we were kids, he always kind of made us study and become educated and always question things.
	And when I was a teenager, I just pretty much started questioning religion.
	And I didn't really find it that logical.
	So I kind of started the path of becoming an atheist.
	And then when I was in college, I dated a pastor's daughter.
	And that kind of just even drove me even further to it.
	You're the guy in the song.
	Okay, now I know.
	Now I know.
	Married a preacher's daughter.
	All right.
	So, wait, you married a...
	Sorry, you dated a pastor's daughter.
	Was that like a serious relationship?
	Yeah, it was when I was a freshman in college, and it lasted like three and a half years.
	Wow.
	Yeah, I know.
	Did she know you were an atheist?
	Yeah, she hated it.
	She kept trying to convert me.
	Dude, dude, I gotta ask you, Jason, how good looking are you?
	Um, I'm okay.
	I mean, I think the main thing is that, like, what helps me get girls is, like, I am, I'm very, I wouldn't, I would be considered, I guess, smart.
	And then I am pretty, I think I have pretty good confidence when I'm talking to girls.
	Okay, yeah, because, I mean, for the pastor's daughter to go out with an atheist, man, you've got to have something in your back pocket, so to speak.
	So, maybe your front pocket, I don't know.
	But, um, all right.
	Um, what happened at the end of it?
	Were you guys thinking of going further, or?
	Um, I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, we thought about it.
	Cause I mean, we also had like a pregnancy scare too.
	So that really made us like really think about like making it like become married.
	And I mean, we really cared for each other a lot, but it was just like, it was kind of like the religion thing was a big part of it.
	And then also just, um, my like certain views I had to kind of start a lot of arguments too.
	Sorry, the which views?
	My ex-girlfriend, she was Hispanic.
	My views on immigration and stuff like that.
	Wait, did she have Hispanic in-group preferences by any chance?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	And then she was also Hispanic and she was pretty racist towards other people because at our university, it's very diverse and we have Muslims, Indians, Asians, foreign exchange students.
	She was very racist towards Asians for the most part.
	Wait, do you mean Indians or like Chinese and...
	Indians.
	Oh, Indians.
	Okay, yeah.
	The Asian thing is always kind of confusing.
	I like the categories where I don't have to remember geography.
	East Asian.
	I don't know.
	Is that right?
	Who knows?
	That's why, you know, Oriental was still okay.
	So she was a racist towards Indians and...
	So things kind of petered out.
	And, you know, it's true.
	You know, I was in a relationship.
	I wasn't dating her exactly.
	We were kind of hanging out a lot together.
	And, you know, she was a nice young lady and all that.
	But Christian and...
	I just, you know, my argument was, you know, if we ever were to get together, I mean, you could be Christian.
	I mean, but the kids would have to decide for themselves.
	And she's like, nope, got to raise him in the church.
	I know, that was a problem with my relationship.
	So, you went from religious, Baptist-y, and then you went to atheism.
	Now, the former Democrat, did the Democrat stuff kind of coincide with the atheism to come before or later?
	Actually, the Democrat came like a year ago.
	Because, I mean, before...
	And then I started...
	Because, I mean...
	I'm a science major, and one thing they always teach us, kind of like gospel, I guess, is to always question things, always question both sides, always question how they got their data, how they got their evidence.
	And then I just started looking at both sides, liberals on the left, and just the points they were making.
	Before, I was very pro-Black Lives Matter.
	When I was growing up, I think I was kind of racist towards white people, too, because the things I was taught growing up black and the things they would tell me about white people and the things I would see in the media and just think that white people were just oppressing us.
	Then I just started thinking about it and thinking about, what are the real issues that are affecting black people?
	Why are black people behind?
	It just kind of changed my views on everything.
	Oh, so, like, white people wake up and, you know, your life goal is, like, tan badly and oppress blacks, right?
	That's, that's, this is, this is all we do.
	We just, like, this is written on our mirrors, you know, make sure you oppress people who look different from you today, or you just haven't earned your lack of melatonin.
	Anyway.
	Make sure to stay true, too.
	Melatonin.
	So, okay.
	Well, I'm certainly glad that you're over that, and I appreciate that we're able to have this conversation.
	So, you went Democrat, right?
	Was it, you said about a year ago?
	Yes, like, yeah, because I used to, like, at first I used to support Bernie Sanders, then his whole thing, then I just saw, like, the Bernie Sanders people, what they do, and then kind of, like, his message, and it was just, oh my god.
	So, yeah.
	And then, then, See, then you're really crossing into, you know, virgin territory for everyone, right?
	Not just because you're black.
	I mean, I don't care about that.
	But, you know, the atheist who rejects leftism, let me tell you something.
	It can be a little bit of a lonely caravan across a pretty white desert.
	Tell me about it.
	So how did the Democrat stuff begin to crumble away?
	I mean, you sort of said, looked into Bernie Sanders, oh my God, but, you know, let's unpack those syllables just a little bit.
	How did that begin to, like, crumble down for you?
	My view is how they use black people as their little slave puppy or attack doll, just to get votes.
	And also used as like, hey, I'm not racist, I got the black people behind me, so you guys should be behind me too.
	And it's like, I feel like it's just counterproductive for, like, my people.
	Just the whole thing that Democrats preach to them and promise them.
	Just pretty much promise them free shit.
	You don't have to work hard.
	You don't have to try.
	You don't have to earn anything.
	Just fucking sit on your ass and we'll give you stuff.
	Sorry if I curse.
	I'm sorry.
	That's fine.
	But yeah.
	Yeah, that's the least trouble I have with the stuff you're describing.
	The swear word is the least.
	Right, but didn't you know that the only Uncle Toms are on the right?
	Maybe you're not aware of this, Jason.
	Clearly I'm going to have to instruct you on how to be black because you're just not getting it right.
	I know, like, I saw, like, one of my friends posted something, and it said, like, I don't support everything Donald Trump, like, stands for, or he says.
	Not everything he stands for, just everything he says.
	But, I mean, I think he's a lesser evil.
	But one thing they said was, Donald Trump was never considered a racist until he was, like, Running against Democrats.
	And that's what I feel like with black people.
	I feel like it's these hardwired responses they have if you don't agree with them.
	And it's these barriers you gotta get over.
	It's like the first barrier is, first they call you a racist.
	But if you're black, they can't say that.
	So they have to say you're Uncle Tom, or you're not informed on black culture, or you're not black enough.
	Oh, you're an Oreo.
	Is that still used or am I, like, way out of date?
	Seriously, because I'm light-skinned and I have, like, curly hair.
	I don't look full black.
	You don't know how much shit I got growing up from black people.
	Like, I think it's kind of crazy.
	Okay, wait, wait, wait.
	The fact is, Jason, I have no idea what kind of shit you went through when you were growing up from black people, obviously not being a light-skinned, somewhat black person myself.
	But what do you mean?
	So what happened with you growing up with black people?
	Like, okay...
	Because one thing I always hear black people talk about is that we need more educated black people.
	We need more black people doctors.
	And I'm a biology major trying to be a doctor.
	But growing up, it's like the most racism I ever received from other black people saying that, oh, you're not really black.
	You're not full black.
	You don't look black.
	Why is your hair like that?
	Or, like, me and my friends, like, we were pretty nerdy, and I was like, oh, you guys are making grades, you guys are fucking nerds, you're losers, ha ha ha ha ha, look at you trying to pass your test.
	And I was like, are you serious?
	Wait, that was the insult?
	Look at you trying to pass your test?
	Oh, you're kidding me!
	Oh, Jason, don't make me cry, like, right here in the show.
	What are you, just trying to, like, pass a test?
	That's the big insult?
	Yeah.
	It was just from other black people, too.
	I was like, Jesus Christ.
	But okay.
	And because we went through a little emo phase, we listened to rock music and stuff, and that shit, too.
	Like, oh, you're not listening to rap.
	Well, you have to listen to rap and fail your test.
	It's like a cultural thing.
	You're not black enough because it looks like you might succeed.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, God.
	Oh, no.
	It's mandatory to have a fucking sleeve tattoo.
	And most of your pictures, you've got to flip off.
	A what tattoo?
	Like a sleeve, like your whole arm tatted out.
	Again, tattoos and stuff.
	Oh, right, right.
	Okay.
	I knew that.
	Sorry.
	I just forgot my hood origins for a moment.
	I'm back now.
	Wait, I can't do that with a British accent, can I? I can't do that with a white accent.
	All right.
	Oh, man, that's rough.
	That's rough.
	Now, the friends that you said were nerdy, were they like other blacks hiding out from...
	Yeah, they were pretty...
	...who didn't want you to succeed?
	They were like your typical black anime fan who was into video games and stuff, too.
	Wow.
	I mean, obviously, this is coming from your peers.
	Was there any, like, were their parents, like, you know, good for you?
	And, you know, if you could talk to my son, or was it, like, totally, like, yeah!
	He looks like he might pass a test.
	Let's get him!
	Oh, no, not really from the parents.
	I didn't really, like, talk to their parents.
	He's like, yeah.
	Right.
	Well, I'm sorry about that.
	That's fine.
	It's whatever.
	No, it's not.
	It sucks.
	It sucks.
	Come on.
	It would have been nicer to have a little bit more community support, wouldn't you say?
	Yeah, but I mean, the definition of community, I don't know if you could qualify the black community as a community, but yeah.
	Okay.
	I'm willing to kick over this rock and see what's underneath it.
	Why wouldn't we call it a black community?
	I have some idea, but obviously I'm not going to guess.
	Usually they have certain goals, they have certain ideas.
	Like, they work together to help each other, and I feel...
	Like, shared values kind of thing?
	Yeah, I don't feel like the...
	I mean, I think you touched on this in one of your other videos, and you had, like, a woman on, talking about, like, the fall of black people, and yeah, like, I don't think we really work towards each other.
	You either, you break down...
	It's just like we just attack each other, and we break each other down, and it's just like...
	It's kind of like a feeding frenzy, like, with it.
	Is there...
	Is there danger in that?
	I mean, physical danger.
	I mean, obviously there's some scorn and some sort of tearing you down emotionally or intellectually.
	Was there any physical danger in that?
	In other words, did you fear that if you sort of went against the not exactly highest standards in the black community that you might be physically attacked as well?
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, yeah.
	I mean, I feel like one thing I noticed is, like, usually if they have no point to make, they get aggressive and they, like, violently, like, they get in your face and try to attack you.
	But, I mean, I don't know.
	It's just how it was, where I was growing up at.
	I mean, fights were pretty normal at our school, and altercations and stuff.
	And those are some real fights, right?
	The two anime kids swatting each other in the face like butterflies, right?
	Yeah, there were multiple times the freaking cops threw tear gas at us at the cafeteria.
	Tear gas?
	Yeah, I know.
	I think that cop was kind of an asshole.
	He threw tear gas at us.
	I know one time he jacked a kid up by his throat on one of the doors.
	What did your parents say about this culture that you were...
	I wouldn't say in, but was around.
	I mean, my dad, he's just very nonchalant and just chill about everything.
	When I told him I was atheist, he was pretty chill about it.
	And when I told him how I don't really agree with Black Lives Matter, he was pretty chill about it.
	He was just kind of more open to my ideas.
	Because he knows that when I make decisions, I think about it critically.
	I just don't go into motion or anything.
	And then my mom is pretty much, like, just her typical, like, she just makes, like, excuses and apologizes for everything that black people do.
	And she doesn't really hold them accountable for anything.
	So, yeah.
	What do you mean?
	Like, I mean...
	Give me examples.
	Like, just, like, with the whole, like...
	I think one time I was talking to her about, like, the Michael Brown case...
	And I was just telling her about how, like, I think they made a fair ruling on that case.
	And she was just pretty much just going into, like, oh, that's not true.
	Like, cops always abuse us or oppress us.
	Or, like, black people, or we're still recovering from slavery.
	Or just stuff like that.
	And it's just, oh my god.
	Like, seriously.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So she sort of, because of historical injustices and so on, like, the standards of behavior and so on are kind of lower, right?
	Yeah, well, she's just pretty much taking an excuse, like, the reason why black people act this way, or the reason, like, we're not succeeding is because of X, or yada yada yada, just stuff like that.
	And X, I'm going to guess, tell me if I'm wrong, Jason, but is X kind of like external factors?
	Like it's not like, well, you know, we could put more of an emphasis on education.
	We could work on keeping families together more.
	We could raise aspirations for, say, passing a test.
	Is it always the outside the black community stuff or is there stuff within the black community where they'd say, you know, we could work on this, right?
	Yeah.
	It's always outside.
	It's always.
	Oh, man!
	I was hoping you weren't going to tell me that.
	Oh, come on!
	Jason, let's rewind it.
	Just lie to me, okay?
	I'll give you five bucks.
	Just lie to me.
	I'll be happy about it.
	Right.
	It's the white devil, Stefan.
	The white devil.
	Apparently, I have that reputation.
	But...
	So...
	Former Democrat, and now the question is around conservatism.
	So tell me what you mean by conservative.
	It's one of these stretchy phrases, but what does it mean to you, Jason?
	I don't really want big government regulations.
	I don't really want people telling me what to do.
	I don't want people getting into my business, for the most part.
	And that's pretty much what I get out of it, the way I see it.
	I don't really even tie it to religion, though.
	I mean, yes, I'm atheist, but I mean, I don't see religion as like Christianity.
	I don't see it as a really bad thing.
	It can be used bad.
	Right.
	There's lots of things in Christianity I would agree with, and fortunately, Christians have focused on a lot of the things that I agree with, particularly in America.
	Somewhat lately, you know, a little bit less of the sort of kill gay stuff from the Old Testament, a little bit more love thy neighbor stuff from the New Testament, which is obviously the Christian, Christ in Christianity is pretty important as far as that goes.
	So why do you think it's attractive to you?
	I mean, obviously, I mean, good intellectual arguments, which we could go back and forth on.
	But I find it interesting.
	I mean, you're a young man, you came from a different perspective.
	Was there something like emotionally compelling about The sort of free market stuff, smaller government stuff.
	As you say, I like the way you put it.
	I don't want people in my business.
	Was there something emotionally when you came across these ideas that drew you to it?
	Or was it mostly the intellectual arguments that won you over?
	A little bit of both.
	The way I see it, a lot of the points that they make that I agree with, or a lot of conservatives that I follow, I don't agree with all their points, but the main idea and goal, I agree with it.
	Yeah, but that's not the emotional side.
	So was it mostly, like, because, I mean, I'll just tell you for myself, Jason, like, one of the things that really drew me to small government, to no government, to free market and stuff, is that...
	I treasure self-ownership.
	I want to be 150% responsible for who I am and what I do because that's the only way I can legitimately earn pride.
	We all have that temptation to ascribe failures, almost never successes, to ascribe failures to an external source.
	It's a great temptation because it gives us this short-term emotional relief of not self-criticizing, of not self-attacking for mistakes That we might have made.
	Oh, you know, I'm just a leaf tossed in the stream of other people's prejudices and so I'm going to externalize the causes of my failures.
	Really tempting, but I recognize the danger in that, which is that if you do that, you then can't claim success and pride in your success.
	So I don't want to give away an inch of failure because I want to take 150% pride in my successes.
	And I know it's just one big dial.
	If you dial up irresponsibility, you dial down pride.
	They work in opposite things.
	And I want all of that self-responsibility, and I hugely treasure and fiercely guard We're good to go.
	to do something.
	I want to have the moral pride of sovereign consciousness.
	I'm going to make the decisions.
	I'm going to succeed or fail.
	I've got nobody to blame but myself.
	I'm going to be a good person and I'm going to earn it.
	And it's going to be something that I dedicate myself to.
	I'm not going to blame others.
	I'm not going to praise others.
	It is my sovereign ship of self that I'm going to sail into the glorious sunrise of a good life.
	And the degree to which the government forces me to go here and forces me to go there and threatens me with this and bribes me with that and bullies me with the other is the degree to which my self-ownership, my conscience is all just shattered.
	And spun away.
	And that has always really, really bothered me because I get one life, and I don't know how long it's going to be, but I damn well don't want to be ordered around because I lose the most precious part of myself, which is my moral pride.
	You couldn't say any better.
	But yeah.
	Wait, I'm going to start again and try.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	That's a beluga.
	Yeah, for the most part.
	And then, like, just seeing how, like, the result of, like, just trusting the government to do the right things or to do the regulations and just how it just all falls apart.
	And it just is pretty much counterproductive.
	Now, do you mind if I ask you to completely betray your heritage?
	Would it be alright if I just dip into that?
	It's not your heritage.
	Anyway.
	Go for it.
	Well, I mean...
	There are theories out there, and this is from economists of every ethnicity, but there are theories out there, Jason, of course, that says that, you know, as you say, you know, we promise you free shit and all that.
	I mean, do you think that this stuff has done as much damage to the black community as some people fear it has?
	I think it's, like, one of the main driving forces today that's hurting black people.
	And this in the false narrative that's being preached.
	You mean the, like, white devils keeping you down kind of stuff?
	Right, right, right.
	Okay, so can you, yeah, what damage do you think it's doing?
	And, you know, it's tough for, I'm in Canada, I can't really see it, but what would you reveal if, you know, if I asked, what's the damage being done?
	Well, I think it's just, pretty much, it's just a whole bunch of bad incentives.
	It's incentivizing people to be lazy, not to work hard, not to strive to be successful or anything.
	Because, I mean, like, just for instance, like, my mom, she grew up pretty poor, and now, like, I mean, she pretty much gave up her family and gave up being a part of me and my brother's life growing up to focus on her career.
	And now she makes really good money.
	And she's taxed out the ass for it.
	And then my cousin...
	And then I have a cousin...
	That is a category, right?
	There's like a category, just a super rich...
	Out the ass.
	Pretty much.
	And then I have a cousin who's like probably like seven years older than me.
	And she has no college degree.
	She has like three kids.
	And pretty much she lives on government housing.
	And she's living in a house that's like twice as big as my mom's house.
	And everything is given to her.
	Like everything.
	Her whole house is furniture.
	She has all these things just because the government is giving to her.
	Because she doesn't have a job and she has kids.
	And if she gets married, then the government gives less to her, right?
	Yeah, I know.
	And it's in the sense of not to get married.
	Right.
	And, you know, it is, as you know, pretty brutal in the black community, right?
	The kids growing up, you know this better than I do, but the kids growing up without dads and how much challenge...
	They have just, you know, they're growing up without dads.
	They don't know how to be men instinctively just by having a man around.
	And then they're told that, you know, their whole society, the whole structure and hierarchy in their society just hates their guts and wants to oppress them and keep them down.
	It's like, man, you couldn't create a witchery brew of failure more if you tried.
	I know.
	And I really see it too, like when I look, when I think about like my dad, because like, I mean, my dad's like the best I could ever ask for, like everything he's done for us.
	I pretty much have been working his ass off since we were kids, and he pretty much erased us as a single dad.
	And then I look at how some of my friends who didn't have dads, how they turned out.
	Or I have a stepbrother, and he didn't have a dad, and all he had was his mom.
	And then he had my dad.
	But it was like whenever he would do anything bad and my dad would try to reprimand him, his mom would like just get angry and try to stop it and make excuses for him.
	And now he's just pretty much like a man child who's like almost gonna be 30 and he has a kid who's like about to be in middle school who has like no support from his father, no really support from his grandparents and it's just it's just crazy.
	Does he have a job?
	No, he's collecting unemployment.
	He's been unemployed for, I think, a year now or something.
	I don't even know.
	I don't even try to ask about it because it just pisses me off.
	What happened to his, dare I say it, baby mama?
	What happened to the mother of his kid?
	They're both fuck-ups.
	I mean, the mom, I don't even know what she's doing.
	I think she was in school at one point, but I don't think she's even in school anymore.
	But pretty much, he has no really stable father or mother figure.
	And they kind of just handed him over to his grandparents to raise him.
	Yeah, now that's not uncommon, right?
	Yeah, it's very common.
	It's very common.
	I mean, especially if the dad's in jail or something like that and, you know, if the mom has any kind of substance abuse, not to overly, you know, stereotype or whatever, but I read about this a lot, you know, especially with the kids, the black kids who end up in trouble with the law, you know, it's like parents AWOL, but man, some grandparents stepped in and it's...
	Another thing, I mean, just like with stereotypes, I mean, it gets to a point where I just, like, is it really bad to call it a stereotype if a large percentage of it is actually true, if a large percentage of this group is actually, like, living up to it?
	I think if you acknowledge the exceptions, I think we do have to generalize, right?
	I know what I'm saying, but the exception, like, I mean, just like, I had this argument, like, recently, like, a black person, when I said that, like, like, we're not that educated, we're not that smart, like, we're not, I mean, like, we're not doing much, like, as a whole.
	He said, yes, but they're all black people that are smart and educated.
	I was like, yes, but that's a minority in a minority.
	I'm just saying, like, it's a minority and minority.
	And, like, I mean, I feel like if we look at other, like, racists and minorities, I mean, we should look at Asians.
	Asians are fucking killing the game.
	They're killing it.
	They're the best.
	I'm obviously completely terrified of them as well, because they will be our eventual overlords.
	And I'm actually getting more comfortable with that as time goes along.
	So I'm just kidding.
	No, Asians are killing it.
	And...
	You know, the income and the IQ stuff, I mean, they are beating the pants off the rest of us.
	So, you know, I'm with you there.
	And I admire that.
	I mean, some of it is maybe biological, but man, that culture is...
	You know, they don't screw around when it comes to advancing in education and having high aspirations, right?
	I know.
	Just like, I think, in one of your videos, you said that, like, what if there was a group that couldn't make any excuses?
	All they had to do was succeed.
	I think that's the result of Asians.
	They can't make any excuses.
	All they can do is succeed.
	And they come from a culture where they praise hard work and education.
	Right, and their families stay together, and they, you know, I think they're still a little harsh on their kids, although they're a lot easier on their kids than the black community is.
	I mean, tell me, I mean, you know, the studies that I've read about black community is, you know, pretty heavy hand used in raising these kids a lot.
	With beatings?
	I mean, yeah, me and my brother, our dad, he did like whoop us and stuff.
	I don't know, I feel like my dad was like, I feel like he's a...
	Like a minority, I guess, in that.
	Because, I mean, he was a very, like, he was a very, like, loving and caring.
	And I remember times when he would whoop us, but after he would whoop us, he would tell us why, and he would actually be sad.
	I remember times he would cry after whooping us because he said he hated doing it.
	He was just trying to teach us right from wrong.
	But, yeah.
	Well, I was reading the other day that, you know, to give your dad some slack here, I was reading the other day that about 65% of parents, if they had a better solution than weapon, that's what they do.
	And that actually gave me quite a bit of comfort that at least there are a lot of parents out there who are like, well, this is all I know.
	I think this is the best.
	But if someone can come up with something better, man, I'm all ears.
	And I really like hearing that because it also helps motivate me to do the stuff that I do to get the peaceful parenting message out because it means that if people can hear better options, almost two-thirds of people are open to it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, of course you could be an atheist and a conservative because I think that as far as the free market goes, it's a rational position.
	The free market simply says that self-ownership and property rights are universal, which means that there shouldn't be one tiny little group of people who can order everyone else around at the point of a gun.
	You can't create this tiny minority of people or small minority of people Who can use all the force they want in the universe, whereas everyone else has to respect property rights and the non-aggression principle.
	So all with regards to the free market stuff, all it is is consistency and universalism, right?
	Which, you know, as a scientist, it's kind of key.
	If you've got a theory that's not universal, It ain't science, right?
	And so I think it's a consistent position to be pro-free market.
	It's a consistent position.
	I think atheism is a consistent position.
	I am, of course, warming to some of the cultural necessity and moral necessity of religion, and in particular Christianity, not because it's necessarily superior to the other religions, but It certainly is the one that's embedded in the West the most, and we do need something to get us up our asses and get us defending our culture.
	So I think, yeah, it would be kind of weird if you were into consistency in science, you were into consistency in universalism, in your atheism, and then suddenly you just created this giant exception in the realm of economics.
	So no, not only do I think it's possible with regards to conservatism and the free market, I think it's an absolutely admirable commitment to consistency.
	I feel like with capitalism, I feel like there's one place where race doesn't really matter.
	All that matters is just making money and being the best.
	Yes, I think that's true.
	And, you know, the great tragedy of race relations now is the degree to which it's all run by the government and funded by the government, which is all about creating divisions and setting us against each other and all this kind of crap.
	Like, with regards to race, I was just thinking about this today, you know, obviously think about the cause and try and sort out some kind of coherent conversation before I chat with you, Jason.
	I was just thinking today about how, like you know how, I don't mean to sort of pick on your mom, but you know how you were talking about like Michael Brown.
	You think, okay, it's a decent, you know, it's a decent verdict given the facts and so on.
	And then your mom like rushes in with like, well, you know, but you know, slavery and different standards, right?
	Different standards.
	You know, I think we'd all get along a hell of a lot better if we just all had the same standards.
	In other words, that people didn't have one standard for white people, which for the black community can sometimes be kind of negative, and then people didn't have another standard for the black community, which, you know, whites and blacks, I think it's really tragic, you know, that old phrase, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
	If we just had one standard for everyone, I think we'd feel that things are kind of fair.
	And I think we'd all get along a lot better.
	But people don't like it when there are different standards for different groups.
	Because the people who have lower standards feel that it's kind of justified.
	The people who have higher standards sometimes feel ripped off.
	And I mean this with regards to your mom as well.
	Like she can't be that happy working her butt off and then paying massive amounts of taxes so they can be scooped up and handed over to your stepbrother and, you know, the mess he's making.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	And then I'm I had this conversation with someone recently recently recently with all my friends on social media they were going crazy over the whole Jesse Williams speech that he made on BET and they were talking about we need black equality and stuff and then I just simply said if you guys want black equality it needs to be equal for everyone because we have privilege We have affirmative action.
	We have scholarships geared towards us.
	We have programs targeting just us.
	And I just told one of my friends, could you imagine just growing up white and having an unstable family, growing up dirt poor, having a single parent, and then you go to college and there's no scholarships good for you.
	You have to compete with everyone in your pool.
	And then I was like, oh, I never thought about it that way.
	Seriously, I think it's just crazy.
	Dude, you're a fucking hero.
	You know that, right?
	You're a fucking hero.
	I'm telling you straight up, man.
	That is a great thing to say, in my opinion, right?
	It jolts people into thinking things differently.
	It takes them out of their narrative, right?
	I know.
	Seriously, before, I never even thought about it until I came to college and I met one of my friends and he's white.
	He grew up dirt poor.
	He has a shitty family.
	His dad committed suicide.
	His brother committed suicide.
	His mom's very unstable.
	And now he couldn't even graduate with us because he was so in debt that he couldn't continue.
	That he had to drop out of school and go work.
	Just to pay off his debt, just to come back and get him more debt, just to graduate.
	And it's just...
	I know.
	And then it's like, dude, he won't get any pity or any excuses because he's white.
	And he's just in this shitty situation.
	I mean, the fact that he's lazy too doesn't help.
	But I mean...
	Oh, no.
	You know, listen.
	Oh, come on, man.
	If a guy has a childhood like that, I think lazy might not be.
	He might just be stressed and traumatized from his history, right?
	I mean, that's some harsh stuff.
	Seriously, he's in the STEM field with me.
	He's an engineer major.
	He's one of the smartest people I know.
	Dude, it just sucks that he can't...
	I was lucky enough...
	I have some college debt, but compared to everyone else, my college debt is pretty low.
	One reason is because...
	I paid for most of it because I work all the fucking time.
	And then I got a scholarship in science, but it was a scholarship that was geared towards black people.
	Black people in science.
	It's not that much competition for black people in science.
	Just saying.
	I feel like when I've got that scholarship, if it included everyone, including the Asians, the Indians, and everyone, I don't think I would have got it then.
	But because it was just only for black people.
	None of us.
	Look, Jesse.
	Sorry, Jason.
	None of us are going to college if it includes the Asians.
	Yeah.
	I know!
	So wait, so the scholarship that you got was targeted for black young men and women in the STEM field, is that right?
	Yes.
	Well, there's some privilege, right?
	I'm benefiting from it, but I can admit and acknowledge that it's fucking wrong.
	It's not right.
	Right.
	Well, or at least you can say that there could be some criticism of it that people could understand and say it's automatically white privileges, you know, may be a little premature.
	Because recently, the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action, said they're going to revisit it in 25 years.
	It's like, well...
	That's a whole bunch of Asian kids and white kids who aren't going to get into college.
	I know.
	And it's hard to sell privilege to people who are excluded from the institutions that their forefathers founded, however fairly or unfairly, because people want to hit certain numbers.
	Yeah, it's a tough case to make that it's a lot of privilege on the other side of the fence, so to speak.
	I know.
	Just thinking about this stuff, it's just very annoying.
	It gives me a headache after a while.
	Seriously, I was arguing with one of my friends.
	I was arguing with someone, and his point he was trying to make is why we need reparations.
	And I was like, are you serious?
	Seriously, we need reparations.
	We already have all this shit, and you want more shit.
	To add to the shit we have.
	But okay.
	Yeah.
	How's free stuff been working out for every community that's tried it?
	You know, there's old stories about, and it's not a black-white thing, there's old stories about how When the Irish came across, you know, I can say this because I'm half Irish, but anyway, Irish shield.
	But when the Irish came across, they decided to go into government and they decided to go into the priesthood and they decided to go into being cops and all that kind of stuff.
	And they, you know, got into politics and they tried to jig as much money towards the Irish community and so on.
	It's a big, you know, broad brush stuff, but it really happened that way.
	Whereas the Japanese, when they came across, they really had nothing to do with government and nothing to do with the state and so on.
	And they just, you know, worked like crazy.
	And what happened was, of course, Japanese income took off and Irish income just kind of stagnated.
	And, you know, the fact that when people attach themselves to the state, they just don't tend to do well.
	Maybe a little bit in the short run they do better, but in the long run it's quite a mess.
	And, yeah, I just, I gotta tell you, you know, the idea of any group getting massive amounts of government money and thinking they're going to be better off, it's like, hey, more free heroin for your eyeball.
	I just don't think it's going to be good.
	It's like they've never heard of the natives.
	Exactly.
	I think one of your recent podcasts, you talked about how Native Americans weren't even native to here.
	They came from Siberia or somewhere.
	Yeah, and of course, the interesting thing, as I'm sure you're aware of, is that the blacks in America have the highest per capita income of blacks in the world.
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, Haiti's been largely free of colonial dependence for like 400 years.
	And it's, you know, it's not exactly a paradise.
	I know.
	So, yeah, it's, you know, these challenges are going to be with us for a while.
	I, you know, hugely appreciate these kinds of conversations.
	You know, we want to have honest conversations about race.
	And I really like the fact that we can have these kinds of conversations.
	It's what I was always taught we were supposed to have, so I'm glad we actually can have them.
	And I really appreciate that the work that you're doing, you know, in your community to talk about people, your thoughts, your experience, your focus on the free market.
	I mean, I think it's going to really help people to just, you know, we all get into this kind of groove, you know, the way that we think, the way that we look at the world.
	And I love the stuff that helps you jump the tracks.
	And if you're out there doing that, which you are, Jason, that's like some great stuff.
	And I really appreciate what you're doing.
	Thanks, Stefan.
	But I mean, I think I'm just the minority in a minority.
	Like, seriously.
	Yeah, but that's why we've got to work to spread our ideas as wide as possible.
	And so, you know, you keep doing what you're doing, I'll keep doing what I'm doing, and we'll meet in the middle.
	Yeah, hopefully.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, Jason.
	I appreciate it.
	Thanks, everyone, so much for this excellent, exciting, wonderful conversation that we have here.
	It's a wonderful part of my week.
	And you can go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
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	Follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux, fdrpodcasts.com to help share the shows.
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	And I really, really appreciate that, as I dare say the future will as well.
	So have yourselves a great, great evening, everyone.

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