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Sept. 16, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:12:59
3414 Fighting For Limitations - Call In Show - September 9th, 2016

Question 1: [1:39] – “Can I as a black conservative still identify as Alt-Right as I agree with most of what they stand for, but still throw out the philosophies and tenets I don't agree with? How can I fortify my stepdaughter's mind and spirit to be cognizant of the current racial and political climate, but not let it affect her the way it has effected most of her generation?”Question 2: [1:14:47] – “I find society to be in a constant arms race to purchase expansive stuff they don't need. I was reading a lot of articles about minimalism lately and came to the conclusion that wealth is overrated. Most of my happiness in life has come from spending time with my friends, hobbies, or exercising. It is important to have money to satisfy basic needs but I don't see the point of becoming a wage slave to acquire a bunch of leftover cash. We are all going to die naturally around the same age therefore I find time more precious than wealth. Does wealth outweigh the value of time?”Question 3: [1:28:33] - "I am a widowed mother and I know that one day I will have to have a grown up conversation with my daughter about the circumstances which lead to her father's death. Should I tell her the truth? After losing my husband and getting used to raising my daughter on my own, is me staying single is a better option for both of us?"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 everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Oh, what a gamut we ran tonight on the show, ladies and gentlemen.
I think you're really, really going to enjoy it.
A black woman called in.
She's a conservative, and she's trying to figure out where she fits in in the culture, and why there seems to be so little receptivity in certain elements of the black community towards conservatism, and wanted to discuss certain overlooked aspects of black history, particularly in Africa, and it was a really enjoyable...
conversation.
I want to thank her, of course, for calling in.
The next caller was interested in materialism.
Is it bad to be materialistic?
How should we weigh the acquisition of goods versus the conservation of time?
And it's kind of an aesthetic question, but it's one that we deal with kind of every day.
So we had a good chat about that.
And the third caller was a widow.
Her husband died in some pretty tragic circumstances, and she wanted to know when it might be appropriate to tell the truth about what happened to her child.
And we did have a good chat about that.
And she did seem to have some trouble understanding why a man might be hesitant to commit to a woman who already has a child.
So we had a pretty good chat about sexual market value, and I think she gained success.
Some insight, and I think you will too, about that whole process.
So without any further ado, other than to say, please, please drop by freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
And you can of course follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
And you can use our Amazon affiliate link if you've got some shopping to do.
FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
Alright, well up for us today we have V. V wrote in and said, Can I as a black conservative still identify as alt-right as I agree with most of what they stand for, but throw out the philosophies and tenets that I don't agree with?
And how can I fortify my stepdaughter's mind and spirit to be cognizant of the current racial and political climate, but not let it affect her the way it has affected most of her generation?
That's from V, and today is V's birthday, so happy birthday, V. Thank you.
Is it really your birthday?
Yes, actually it is.
Well, I must say, happy birthday to you.
I can't think of a better way to spend it than talking philosophy, so I'm glad you called in.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
All right.
And I also appreciate you giving me such an easy question.
You know, I mean, good Lord, someone give me a tough question once in a while.
It's a very challenging question.
So let me start by asking a couple of questions, of course.
Yeah, that's fine.
Let's start with how you sort of say the current sort of racial climate has affected your daughter and her generation.
What's going on with that?
Well, my stepdaughter, to give you a little background, we're an interracial couple.
I'm white.
I mean, I'm black.
My husband's white and my stepdaughter's white.
We're both veterans, Marine Corps veterans.
She came to recently live with us about two years ago.
She's 16 now.
She'll be 17.
And there is an infection going on with the millennial generation about self-hatred of whiteness and political correctness, which is a very dangerous and disgusting, if you don't mind my saying so, way to look at it.
But it's also an interesting dynamic because Being black, we're brought up with, you know, black pride and black, you know, I'm black and I'm proud and, you know, we have a right to do this.
And the affection also is that white girls like her get picked on by minorities.
Okay, so Hispanic girls think that, oh, you're white, so you think you're all that, you know, things like that.
So I put her in online school.
I'm like, I'm not having that.
So I... I'm teaching her history that she hasn't learned in school.
I make her read a lot.
These are things that she has not been exposed to until she moved in with myself and her father.
And, you know, talked about the truth about slave trade.
As a matter of fact, we actually watched your lecture on the history of the slave trade, which is interesting because I knew this from childhood.
And I also tell her, never let anyone make you feel guilty for being white.
Ever.
Which is of course counterintuitive.
To the narrative, right?
You got, you've always been a victim and black people have done this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, I get the, you're sleeping with white privilege.
Oh, you got a white daughter now, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's just been absolutely.
Oh, that's what people say to you?
You're sleeping with white privilege?
Absolutely, yes.
Wow.
Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
Let's not forget that me and my husband fought for this country to make sure that you can say that stupid crap, but, you know, whatever.
Wow.
And I'm mean, and I did get really mean with someone who called me all kinds of Negro bedwitch, and you know what I said?
And I still don't feel bad.
A Negro bedwitch!
Yes!
A Negro bedwitch?
What the?
V, what the?
You know what?
Now I feel like it's my birthday because I'm learning so much.
What does that mean?
You know what I said?
You're just mad because I had a dad.
Ooh!
Oh.
Oh, dear.
Oh, dear.
Well, that's okay.
You're ex-military, so you can say these things and get away with it, right?
I can say whatever I find.
That's right.
I am.
I'm very blind.
I am.
And...
I'm not, again, I was not brought up like a lot of the African-American culture.
I never really felt included with my own people.
Most of my friends were white or Italian or Arab or, you know, I did grow up.
I'm not going to say white or Italian.
Like Italians are sort of some other category.
But no, I... They are.
They are another category, trust me.
Okay.
Culturally, they are...
So, the scene in True Romance is true.
Anyway, never mind.
It's true.
Keep going.
No, and I didn't mean to put them like that, but their culture, I love their culture.
And, you know, I grew up dealing with different types of people.
So it was like a free type of multiculturalism where you get exposed to other cultures and you make friends with people of other cultures.
We did share the same American values, however.
So there was no identity crisis and it wasn't forced.
Okay.
Had a multiracial, multicultural church.
Had, you know, I went to a mostly, in the beginning in high school, it was mostly white.
And then as time went on, you know, there were other races and cultures that were included in it, but nobody really saw a difference.
I mean, I grew up in the 90s, so it just...
It's baffling now that I have to sit here and tell my white stepdaughter that she should never feel guilty being white.
I never thought I'd be here.
Isn't it strange?
I mean, you know, V, like talking about the pendulum swinging just a little bit too far, right?
Oh, too far.
I never thought that I would see this because when you grew up in the 90s, yeah, there was Black Pride.
Everybody wanted to go back to Africa and so on and so forth.
But you take a look at, you know, the hip-hop videos and the R&B videos.
There were interracial couples in there.
We had movies like Dump Jungles.
You know, it was just one of those things talked about and it was done, but it was never, to me, such a hostile climate as it is now.
And it's so surreal that me as an African-American, that I have to sit here and let her know.
And she understands.
Don't get me wrong.
She's not stupid or ignorant by any means.
I make sure of that.
But it just blows my mind how I have to remind her that it's okay to be white and you don't owe anybody anything.
Right.
Your father and I fought for this country so you get your opportunity.
Not to have someone else make you obligated to give someone else opportunity.
Right.
And it disgusts me.
So, I grew up conservative all my life.
And I did not grow up in a broken home.
I've never been a single mother.
I never...
I was brought up with that kind of black pride identity because it wasn't necessary.
But of course, I grew up in a household where we classify ourselves as Hebrew Israelites, which, you know, I see the Bible as black history.
So here is our culture.
And when I read scripture, it's like, oh my God, if we were kings, look how far we've fallen.
What have we done?
What have we done?
And it blows my mind how...
If we were first in everything, now we're last in everything.
And why?
Because we let somebody, let an ideology, let stupid ideas get into our culture I mean, we've done great things as a race, especially music-wise.
I mean, I'm a jazz musician, too.
I sing jazz.
I play jazz cello.
I've been doing music all my life.
And you look at the contributions and then the literary contributions, the inventions.
Sure, it's not as many as what Europeans have done, but it's there.
And now we are 75% single mother households.
Right.
Right.
We are 80% in prison for the males.
We are one of the highest populations with STIs.
We are the least to graduate high school.
We are the least to be accepted to college.
And the black people that are accepted to Ivy League colleges come from other European countries.
America's not doing so great when it comes to the black population.
And now because I'm married to a white man and I'm saying this, I'm going to be called a Negro bed wench, a coon, whatever.
I've been getting it all my life.
I really don't care.
Is it Auntie Tom?
Does that even come across?
They call me Uncle Tom anyway, so I guess I'm...
I guess I'm transgendered Uncle Tom, I guess.
I'm trying to think of the multiplicities of protected classes you're inhabiting at the moment.
And I'm sorry to pause on this just because I'm fascinated by these kinds.
What does Negro Bedwich actually mean?
Do you want the politically correct PG-13 answer or do you want the rated R adult answer?
What show do you think you're calling into?
Let's pretend we're both in the army and we're both drunk and you can tell me straight up.
A black bitch that fucks a white man and thinks that she's better than everybody else because she got white dick.
There.
Alright.
Alright.
I thought it was some strange vagina sorcery that enraptured white men and made them do your bidding.
Well, that too.
But that's another thing too.
And there is this fantasy of that.
And we also have another phenomenon that African Americans, especially black women, are not admitting to that there is a thing called black flight too.
Because the way we have been acting towards our black men, you can't sit there and say black men Ain't that and then expect a wholesome relationship.
So now black men are leaving and they're going to Brazil and they're going to Europe and they're going to and marrying other women.
Now, this is where I have issue with some of the tenets of the alt-right.
So I'm glad that the second because I do believe that since every other ethnicity and race has a right To celebrate their nationalism, I do not agree that white nationalism is evil.
But there is a voice underneath that's going on right now about race mixing.
And I even watched a video where a YouTuber said that mixed people are glowing as natives.
And I'm sitting here like, really?
Because My ancestors weren't exactly brought here by choice, so I am an American.
There's nothing global about it except my people being globally disseminated.
And the Arabs killed more of us than the Europeans did.
If my husband and I decide to have a child, am I doing a disservice to white nationalism?
Am I doing a disservice to black nationalism?
Am I watering down European culture?
Because that's not what I'm doing this for.
I'm not with a white man because I'm ashamed of my race.
I'm not with a white man because I wasn't accepted by my race.
That had no decision.
It just happened.
And when you believe in scripture, you know, everybody's on the same playing field and judge in the end.
So I'm struggling with the philosophy of, you know, you've got one extreme where the globalist view, where race mixing is good and everybody should be a melting pot, which I do agree, when it's forced like that, no, it's not a good idea, especially when you're mixing with cultures that do not mesh with yours.
But then you have the other side that says you remain separate and not mixed at all.
And if you have mixed children, they don't have a nation.
They don't have an ethnicity to call their own.
They don't have this and that.
And there are some statistics that show that mixed children do have it harder.
But again, it's also with certain cultures, like black men When they have children with white women, unless they go to other countries, and even then, they leave.
And that's their thing.
That's what happens.
So, I'm trying to get a balance here on where this is going.
Keep going.
I've got thoughts, but, you know, you've got stuff to get off your chest, and I'm happy to be here, so keep going.
But it just seems to me That I... There's a part of me that's defiant.
It's like I don't have to identify really.
These are my ideas and I don't need anyone to validate them.
I really don't.
But then at the same time, when you explain your position, You've got one or two situations.
You're going to be labeled or you're going to end up labeling yourself.
It's just unavoidable.
You can't just sit there and say, oh, I have these ideas and not grouped them together and have some sort of nomenclature for your philosophy.
It's just not going to happen.
So I'm trying to find the right way to identify myself In the political and philosophical spectrum.
But I don't want it to be a situation where it's like, well, you're the all right.
You know they're not crazy about black people.
Ah, yeah, whatever, you know.
As time went on and I've studied and followed the alt-right, I'm seeing that kind of voice going.
And I'm like, okay, I get white nationalism, but to sit there and have a tenant saying that I may be doing a disservice if I have a mixed child with someone that I love, who I served in the Marines with, come on.
So this is where I'm having some difficulty in finding that balance.
If I didn't have to worry about labels, I really didn't care.
There's a lot to talk about, but is there more that you wanted to add before we dive in?
If there is, I'll add it later if it's possible.
Why do you think you didn't...
You said that your community rejected you, and it seems kind of funny.
Not funny, but it's kind of tragic, right?
I mean, when you're getting V, you're getting all these insults hurled at you for following your heart, right?
For...
Being with the man you love.
And you get all these insults told at you, and then people are like, well, why are you going for the white guy?
It's like, well, he's not insulting me.
How's that for one thing?
Right.
There is a kind of, you know, attack people until they run away, and then complain that they're running away.
You know, it's a little frustrating to hear about, because it's so, it's obvious from the outside what's going on, right?
Right.
And why do you think...
You didn't fit in as much with, I hate to say black culture, like it's just one thing, but you know, like the blacks when you were growing up.
Because I was in the minority of having, not having a broken household.
I was even made fun of for having a father.
Really?
Yeah.
You're not down like us.
What?
You don't have the street status symbol of no father?
That's right.
Wow.
And then...
As I got older, another thing that was strange that I experienced was that I was actually...
Black men were shocked that I didn't have children.
And they assumed that I was gay because I didn't have children.
Wow.
Yeah.
Even though there are a lot of black women who are gay that do have children, but...
In the 90s, not so much.
So, in the early 2000s, not so much.
So, it was a strange dichotomy.
And I think also it's my family history, too.
Because I am a descendant of the oldest freed slave family in the United States.
We are related to George Washington through his nephew.
It's the Quandter family.
And I think my great-aunt, three times removed, was the one that started the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in 1919 at Howard University.
So we got a lot of judges, educators.
Our family history goes back, I think, to 1647.
So you'd be what they call a house Negro.
Am I on my face as far as that goes?
But there's this weird thing, too.
I mean, I guess it's not that weird, but...
Like in the black community where in America, in a lot of the fatherless homes, it seems like nobody gets in trouble for insulting other people's fathers.
But boy, you mention anything about a mom.
Right.
I mean, holy crap.
Holy matriarchy, Batman.
I mean, that's something else.
There's an old joke when I was a kid.
I mean, I grew up in a lot of singles.
Single mom households around.
And when I grew up, it was sort of an old joke, as I said.
Yeah, my dad could beat up your dad.
Like, really?
Right.
So this sort of making – well, making fun of men versus elevating women to beatific status is – it's pretty common, I believe.
I was just reading an interview with Ted Danson for reasons I don't even want to bother getting into.
And he was like, you know, they may think I'm goofy, but then I realized Mary Steenbergen is my wife, so he can't be all bad.
And it's like, dude, you're worth like 70 million bucks.
You've been like a famous actor since I was knee high to a grasshopper.
Yeah.
Self-deprecation among men is a blight in society and it is a great tragedy.
And it arises – I think that self-deprecation of men arises out of a kind of misogyny.
Like, well, I don't want to tell women how great I really am because then they'll feel – I don't know what it is, but anyway.
Well, here's another thing that blows my mind, too, is that, you know, with the feminism, at first, if you read the history of it, let's be honest...
We, I mean, of course we had Sojourner Truth and we had Harriet Tubman and things like that, but like the suffragette movement and then the feminist movement, it really didn't take steam until we were included.
And I find, and there's a lot of Black people that think this who have any common sense, it seems like every single struggle that every protected class has wants to use what our people have been through and equate it.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, preach it.
That is so true.
You know, like, how are you going to say that gay is the new black?
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Right.
But this is what Ann Coulter says, right?
So some Mexicans say, well, you know, we're an oppressed minority and you owe us this and that.
And she's like, you're not black.
No history of slavery with Mexico.
Don't even try.
Oh, yeah, there is a slavery with Mexico.
They owned us.
Right, right, right.
They owned us.
Oh, they forget that.
But that's okay.
Right.
And they will call, here in Arizona, I'm going to tell you right now, they'll call you nigger in a minute.
Really?
Oh, yes.
Oh.
Oh.
Wait, are you saying there's some tensions between the Hispanic and the black community?
I thought it was everybody on Whitey.
Is that?
No, I'm just kidding.
I know.
I had Jared Taylor on the show.
I had to read his books, and I didn't say you have to, and they were good books, but interesting.
Yes.
That's something you really don't see reported because, of course, it breaks the narrative of, you know, white privilege, dominant white racism and all that.
But man, I mean, a bunch of blacks and Hispanics in a school together, you can sell tickets.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, they'll call us that in a minute.
Yeah.
It's just very...
Now, on the East Coast, because, like I said, I live in Arizona now.
In Virginia, on the East Coast, it wasn't like that.
It was kind of really, really weird.
But then you had different kinds of Latin culture.
You had the Cubans.
You had the Venezuelans.
You had the El Salvadorians.
And they all opened up restaurants together and stuff like that.
Whatever.
You know, I used to play at this...
At this place and dance there called the Boston Adams Morgan in DC and the band was made up of a Puerto Rican and El Salvadorian and Cuban or Afro Cuban and it was just like okay whatever everybody danced and everybody played it was a great time so I didn't see you know that kind of separation up and down the East Coast I didn't see that.
I get out here And not only is there separation between minorities amongst Blacks and Hispanics, there's separation between Hispanics.
The Chicanos versus the Mexicans versus the El Salvadorians versus the Peruvians versus the Panamanians.
It's like when people talk about the Asian race or the Oriental race or whatever you want to call it.
Like that's one big blob.
It's like the Chinese and the Japanese.
I mean the rape of Nanking and all that.
There's a lot of resentment there.
There's not one big blob of people.
A lot of different cultural fragmentation within and that's one of the challenges.
Yeah.
Which we try to make all these big blobs in white, black, Hispanic.
My God.
I mean, European, for God's sakes.
What does that even mean?
All the way from the Nordics to the Italians is 16 million different languages.
And the Irish were treated worse.
And I got Irish ancestry, too.
So I knew about the Irish slave trade for years.
I'd be really upset about that if it wasn't my ancestors who were generally treating the Irish worse.
So, yeah.
I got it.
I can't get there.
It's a shame, really, because I like to play that picking card from time to time.
Let me ask you a blunt question.
We're being blunt with each other, right?
Absolutely.
You got family history.
I assume that your parents are hardworking, accomplished people.
They stayed together.
They stayed together until my father passed away from a car accident in 2006.
I'm sorry to hear.
And I miss him dearly.
Right.
Every day.
My sympathies.
And maybe you're just smarter.
Say that again?
Maybe you're just smarter.
Yeah.
You know, you get a family history, illustrious accomplishments.
I'm sure that if you trace your family history back, smart, accomplished, hardworking, dedicated, inspiring people, right?
Yes, and we've traced our family back to one of the tribes in sub-Saharan Africa that actually has Hebraic ancestry.
So I can actually say that I am a Hebrew Israelite.
So my father, when he taught me that, I started understanding our identity through biblical scripture.
And I was like, oh my God, it is black history.
Yeah.
And then it goes right back to what have we done?
Of course, the first shall be last, the last shall be first.
What have we done?
And I think us as a culture, as a race, when we lost that biblical identity, because that was our culture, the moment we lost that and let it go, that's how we were able to be enslaved.
I mean, if you read in scripture how many times The Israelites got enslaved because they decided to embrace other cultures that were not conducive to what they were.
They were enslaved each and every time.
Each and every time.
Persia had them, Arabia had them, Babylon had them, Assyrians had them.
I know a lot of people may not agree with this black Israel stuff, and I'm not of that racist sect of Hebrew Israelites that preach on the street.
I was not brought up that way.
That is not what Christ agrees with.
That's BS. But this is...
I do see it as black history, and I'm seeing the repetition.
And even if it's not true, if you take a look at...
How black culture is now.
We went through the same cycles as the Israelites did then.
We abandoned our dignified culture.
We let in a whole bunch of other stuff that wasn't part of our culture.
And we got enslaved by that culture.
That was an antithesis to ours.
And now...
When you say enslaved by that culture, which one are you talking about?
I'm talking about when black people were In power, when we were kings in Africa, we had dignity, we had an identity, we had pride, we had whole families.
We had, I don't even think in America, I mean, when was the, as recent as the 1950s, what, was it 60% of Black families were two-parent households?
More.
More than that, 80?
New York, 1924.
New York, 1924.
Eighty-five percent.
Eighty-five percent.
Eighty-five goddamn percent.
I mean, you know how heartbreaking that is even more vividly and deeply than I do.
That is so unbelievably heartbreaking.
And what culture did we let in to break that up?
Feminism.
Well, and I made this case before, V, but the welfare state hit blacks the hardest because it gave the worst possible incentives.
Because if it was like, well, it's hardscrabble.
We're starting from nothing.
We were robbed for hundreds of years.
Oh, look, here's some sweet money.
It's going to hit me right now.
I mean, it's like this, you know, the welfare state is like that old thing where you've got this amber that flows, you know, from Jurassic Park.
It flows down the tree, and occasionally it'll just trap these mosquitoes and keep them stuck in there.
The welfare state is kind of like that to me.
Well, here's another thing.
I'm going to give you another perspective on this.
Mm-hmm.
I actually, I went to a convention horror con here with a friend of mine here in Phoenix.
And I talked with Sig Haig.
I met him.
Amazing actor.
Captain Spaulding from House of a Thousand Corpses.
He grew up with black people.
He's Armenian.
And we were having this discussion.
And I said, I just don't understand how...
Because I explained to him my position about, you know, how the Bible is black history.
Concerning our people and how far we've fallen.
It's like, how in the world can we keep doing this again?
And you know what he said?
He said, because when you fight for limitations, you get to keep them.
When you fight for or from limitations?
For.
When you fight for limitations, you get to keep them.
Ooh!
I just got goosebumps on my arm.
That's right.
That's good.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
When you fight for limitations, you get to keep them.
So, now...
You have a situation.
When we talk about integration, I don't think integration was a problem.
I think how we integrated was the problem.
Because we integrated with no power.
In 1924, 80% of black families were two-parent households.
85, I think.
85.
And we had our own economy, Black Wall Street.
Mm-hmm.
Which was burnt down and it was rebuilt back up like five days later or five weeks later or something like that.
But something kept creeping in having us believe that we needed validation for some reason.
Someone sold us this lie that we needed to be validated as a race when we were already validated.
Now what do you mean?
What do you mean by validation?
Well, if you have a Culture and a race that has two parent households, and he kept it that way, there is some sort of cultural and ethnic pride that goes with that, right?
Yeah.
You can't sit there and tell me that you have a whole culture of people that stay together, you know, wherever there's some cohesion, some family cohesion in any culture or ethnicity, there's some pride there.
Yeah.
So somebody had to come in and sell us some bullshit that what we were doing wasn't good enough and carry it on a stick, right?
But if you join with us, we will help you and give you back everything your ancestors lost.
Ah, the communists!
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Right!
Right, right.
And that's what happened.
Right.
And I go back to the scriptures again.
That's what happened with the Israelites too.
They were set apart.
They had their own culture.
But somebody sold them the lie that it was better to worship other gods.
And then we got enslaved.
We left our identity behind and we got conquered.
And now we're conquered in so many ways.
Mentally, spiritually, spiritually.
It's horrible.
I mean, even the black Christian church is hurting.
We have more single-parent families in our churches than in white churches.
How does that work?
We believe in the same God.
We believe in the same rules, right?
So how did this happen?
The black church back in the 20s was also the epitome of our culture, and it was a bedrock place.
Of our identity and balance and family.
Now look.
Who sold us this BS? Who told us that?
Who came in and told us that our black men were oppressing us?
What black men were oppressing us, black women?
I'd like to know.
I'm still trying to figure out how white men were oppressing white women anyway.
Yeah.
But I mean...
At least they're telling you guys that, but not all of you guys buy it.
So what made us buy it?
Your race still has more two family households than we do.
So what sold us this BS? And I do believe that it was easier to take our struggle and use it for their own gain.
And they drove it home.
Now, who's they here?
You can call them liberals, communists.
Right, right, right.
People who wanted to destabilize the progress of America and the West.
Correct.
We had our own banks, man.
We had our own car companies.
We had our own salons.
We had our own...
Universities?
I'm sorry, black universities aren't doing so well because it's spread there too.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, white universities.
And, you know, we're both whites and blacks are doing less well than Asians, East Asians, right?
Right.
I mean, the white family is one generation behind the black family in terms of disintegration.
Yeah.
One generation.
And that's what I'm trying to avoid with my stepdaughter.
Right.
Because I don't want that.
No.
No.
I refuse.
I'm not going to sit there and have my oath and swearing duty or her father's oath and swearing duty to the Constitution to be shitted on by the bullshit that's going on right now.
And I am so...
I am angry.
I'm not even pissed off.
I'm just angry.
I've just gotten to the point I might start my own radio show and just start cussing people out because I'm done.
Well, that would not be the worst thing in the world as far as I'm concerned.
No.
All right.
Let me just – because since I got your question, I've been turning it over in my head.
I've been trying to figure out why are white people so annoying?
Why are white people annoying?
Everyone, even white people.
I've got a couple of thoughts.
I'll run by you and let me know what you think.
This is relevant for you, of course, and relevant for your daughter and your husband as well.
White people are annoying because people have very contradictory feelings about white people and white culture.
For instance, apparently white culture is just racist and misogynist and terrible and oppressive.
White people are just terrible all around.
But the moment there's an opening to get to a white country, what does everyone in the world want to do?
They go there?
Yeah.
I mean, imagine.
Just imagine.
Okay, don't imagine I'm dating your daughter.
I was going to use that as an example, but let's not.
I'm not offended.
So let's say that I'm a city of V. There's this...
There's this woman.
Oh, I hate her so much.
She's just terrible.
She's the worst.
She stinks.
She's rude.
She smokes.
She's got BO. She's dumb.
She's a horrible, horrible human being.
I go on and on about this.
Then this woman I've been talking to you about calls me up on the phone and says, Hey, you want to take me out?
I'm like, Yeah!
Oh, thank God!
I get me a V-card.
That's not you, but okay.
I get me a green card to this woman.
I get it.
Right?
I mean, like, how messed up would that be, right?
Right.
I mean, shouldn't from white countries the direction of the flow of human beings be in the entirely opposite direction?
The way they put it, yes.
I mean, when Europeans in the 19th century didn't really like Europe very much, do you know what they did?
They left and came to America and came to Canada and went to Australia, where they still have spiders the size of dinner plates.
Oh, and they have raining spiders, too.
Don't forget that.
I don't know.
I got to sleep tonight.
Okay.
These things just don't.
Please, I beg you.
Now you're a spider witch.
I don't know what that means.
So white people, like everybody bags on the white people.
Apparently, I don't want to say the we, right?
But I mean white people are like the worst people ever.
But then the moment that white people are not guarding their borders with landmines, there's a human tide of everyone trying to get into white countries.
Mm-hmm.
As they say, people vote with their feet, right?
And so there's this ambivalence.
Ambivalence sounds like people are wishy-washy, but the technical meaning is that people have strong opposite feelings.
And so people really hate, a lot of people hate sort of white people, white culture, white countries.
But man, do they want to get in.
And that's weird.
It's just weird to see.
And I'm saying this to white people as well, right?
I mean, if you sort of just think about it, and I know we're not supposed to, but we're going to be honest about these things, right?
It's like, well, I think Iceland would be too cold for me.
So let's say that Iceland says we're handing out some...
Citizenship cards, well, I'm not good.
Nice people, I'm sure, but too cold.
A little too cold for me.
So it's just that there's that aspect of things, which is like – I said this on the show years ago.
It's like white countries are so racist.
All we want to do is see that racist white country up close.
Real close.
Can we come live in there?
Because we just need to – We need to be out in the field for a film for the History Channel and Nova and really see out in the field how racist they are.
So I'm going to pack my family.
I don't want to see it in movies.
I want to see it like 3D. I want to see it up close in person.
So there's that aspect of things.
Now, that's only one of the many annoying things about white people, which is like, White people are terrible.
Let's go live in white people countries.
That makes no sense, right?
I mean, it makes sense economically, which is that if you go to white countries and you can guilt white people into feeling bad about racism, then white people will give you money.
I mean, so it makes sense economically.
But it's just the ideology behind it is all kinds of messed up, right?
Are you ready to get your mind blown, though?
Here's another thing.
White people are racist.
We want to move to their country.
But you make fun of other black people that talk white.
Right.
Right.
White people are racist.
Somehow that is not a racist statement.
All white people are.
All white people have this hugely negative characteristic.
I think that's a self-detonating statement.
It's a horrible game of you're a redneck win.
Right, right.
You're a redneck when you're breathing.
And that's sad.
And, you know, we're laughing, but I also get, I mean, you don't want this to poison your stepdaughter.
I just called you your daughter, right?
Yeah, she's your daughter.
So that's number one.
Number two is that white people have...
Come up with some pretty good stuff about how to run society.
I think that's a fair objective statement.
Let's have some separation of church and state.
Let's have some free market.
Let's have private charity originally rather than government charity.
White people have come up and maybe not the only culture but it's the one where it kind of took off the most.
White people have come up with some really great ways to run countries and that's why people want to go To the white countries.
But here's the challenge.
If you want, like, I don't know, you live in, let's just call it Bangorland or whatever, right?
Let's say you live in Bangorland, which doesn't have free market, separation of church and state, equal rights, whatever it is, equality under the law, the good stuff that has come out of Europe.
So you live in Bangorville or Bangorland, and these ideas are out there for everyone.
They're not copyrighted.
If you want to go to Bangorland and separate church and state, you don't have to pay a fee to whoever first came up with the idea.
It's free.
So the question is, why is everyone leaving Bangorland and coming to America?
Because they're saying, we don't think we can make America in Bangorland, right?
Right.
And that is a confession of a belief in impotence and failure of In being able to achieve what white people have achieved.
In other words, the desire to flee Bangorland and come to America, rather than take the ideas of America and apply them to Bangorland, is to me an act of racism against yourself, against the people in Bangorland.
I can't get it done here, so I need to go there.
This will never take root here, this can't happen here, so I have to go there.
I don't mean all immigration.
I'm just saying that in general, if white people are not nice or not smart or racist or whatever, then don't come to white countries.
Take the best of what white countries have to offer and put them in your own country.
But if you don't think you can do that, that's important.
And I think that there's an element of Hatred against your own country or whatever.
Isn't it kind of like a very, how can I put this?
It's a blatant statement of self-hatred.
You are basically admitting, I can't do this.
Yeah, if it's self-hatred or despair or whatever, but it's definitely a denigration.
They say the first pill costs $10 billion to make.
The second pill costs a buck, right?
I mean the sort of 2,000-year history or 2,500-year history of Western European culture and our tamed estate and all the good stuff of free markets, all the stuff that we've talked about a million times in the show before.
Okay, so that took 2,500 years, but now the evidence is in.
The evidence is pretty clear.
So why come to a racist country when you can make your country have the characteristics of Of the best of that racist country.
In other words, if you come from Bangorland and you take the best of sort of white ideas about government and the free market and law, well, you get wonderful Bangorland with all these great characteristics of white countries, but you don't have all these nasty racist white people around.
So wouldn't that be the best of all possible worlds?
If we were first kings, how did we lose the ability of maintaining our kingship?
If we were royalty, what was done to lose that ability?
You don't just sit there and be like, oh, I don't want to be king anymore.
There's a process, right?
So if we're going to run around here and say we were kings and we were first in everything and we know that, how come we are deficient in copying that?
I think there are two reasons.
There's a philosophical one, and there's a spiritual one.
We'll start with the spiritual one first.
With my belief that, again, the Bible is black history.
You made a covenant with God.
He called you out.
You had to follow a certain set of rules.
Some rules are archaic and draconian, and they were meant for that time.
But there are some rules that are still in play today.
So...
If you are close to a deity that has gone out of his way and said, hey, look, you're my people.
I'm your God.
Let's have a contract.
You break that contract.
You keep breaking it over and over and over.
You can't get mad at God for letting you go.
Free will, right?
So as a people...
We decided to do our own thing.
It started with, hey, we want a king.
God's like, no, you really don't want a king.
I don't want you to be like these other nations who are sacrificing their babies to Moloch.
Just let me be your God.
It's been good so far.
No, we want a king.
Only a king can save us now.
We want to be like everybody else.
So, as a race and as a culture, we decided...
To abandon what was good for us to fit into everybody else.
Again, you sold that lie of you're not sufficient unless you're like everybody else.
So there's that lie.
The philosophical reason is when you forget where you come from, you forget the road to go back there.
We lost the map.
We lost the breadcrumbs.
We wandered into the woods.
We're done.
We forgot where our house was.
We forgot where our standing was.
We forgot our values.
We basically over generations, when you keep abandoning principles and applying new ones that are foreign, By the time you're in the fifth, sixth, seventh generation, you're not going to remember how to get back to where your ancestors were.
And you're going to keep choosing what you know.
And then when someone comes in and says, hey, this is not exactly the way it was supposed to be done.
Let me show you how it's supposed to be done.
And then you sit there and you're like, no, I don't want to do it that way.
You don't like change.
This is what I've always done.
This is how it's always been.
And blah.
So we've forgotten.
How our ancestors did it.
And I can sit there and talk about how they did it, but if you're not in an environment where that kind of thinking is taught to you, because, you know, early tribes, you know, people learned by word of mouth, by oral traditions and things like that.
And out of a lot of cultures, ours as Black people, we lost Our identity with that, we lost our way.
And you're not going to remember, and you're not going to know how.
So it doesn't make sense to me to sit there and scream to everybody else, we were kings, when you don't even know how to be a king yourself.
But I mean, I've heard this before, and obviously I'm no expert on this, but Sub-Saharan Africa.
I don't think that there's been a lot of advanced stuff going on there.
No.
Right?
I mean, Africa is like saying Europe, right?
It's bigger than Europe.
It's a big, complex place.
But I think the sub-Saharan Africa thing...
It's sort of like the aboriginals out in Australia.
For whatever reason, they didn't get to the sort of Roman civilization stuff and all that for a variety of reasons.
I don't think anybody knows exactly why.
But if there's information I don't have about that, please feel free to let me know.
But I think if we talk about – I think Egypt and so on is a different matter.
But I think Saharan Africa never got too far.
Actually, there's a minority.
It's called the Lemba tribe.
And the Lemba tribe in the 80s, this was actually special on NOVA, where they were a sub-Saharan tribal African group that actually followed Hebraic teachings for a couple of millennia, actually.
There's a few tribes, and they are now integrated into the I think we're good to go.
I don't know how long ago it was.
I want to say about 20 years ago, maybe, that they did DNA testing and they're showing that, yeah, they are genetically Jews, but it's a minority.
And what happens when you have an advanced culture, an advanced microcosm that is surrounded by an environment that's not advancing?
They leave.
This is the immigration stuff that we just talked about.
So they went to Israel.
They didn't stay in Sub-Saharan.
There are some that are still there, but some that are still there, they're still in an isolated community and they have their own advances, but it's not one of those things that the advancement is spreading out through Sub-Saharan Africa.
And most of them left.
Most of them are in Or if they stay, they stay inward-looking, right?
Right.
Marry among themselves.
That's right.
Okay.
They marry among themselves, which is what a lot of white nationalists are talking about.
So that's why I'm like, I get it.
Well, the world is not about to run out of white people, but white people's numbers are going down significantly.
And apparently it's only polar bears, right?
Yeah.
And what happens when advanced people goes down?
We saw the fall of Rome.
Yeah, yeah.
That was devastating.
Yeah, so let's move, and I appreciate this is a great, great overview, but let's move to your daughter in particular.
Very well.
All right.
And again, I really appreciate you spending some time on your birthday with me.
It's a great honor.
I appreciate that.
No problem.
I think that there are cultures, and it's not ethnicities.
But there are cultures that have adapted to the welfare state that I think have adapted so much to the welfare state that the transition out of the welfare state would be very tough, very tough.
I think because of that – and everybody knows the math.
It can't continue.
$20 trillion in debt?
Come on.
It can't continue.
And so everybody knows that there's a change coming, and there's a drug, and the drug is government money.
Government created, government transferred, government borrowed, government printed, government offered money.
And it's like a drug, right?
And when people, if you've been on a drug for two days, it's one thing to quit.
If you've been on a drug for 20 years, Or three or four generations.
It's a very different thing.
And I think that the relationship that I sort of see, and it's not a perfect analogy, but it's the closest I could get to, is that if a woman has kind of let herself become fat and lazy and doesn't cook and You know, is too tired and lethargic to even have sex.
You know, just has become an unappealing mate.
And her husband, she knows.
His eyes are wandering, right?
There's no amount of mirrored sunglasses enough to...
The subtle turn of the head, you know, some woman walks by.
And she knows, I think, deep down in her heart, that this can't last.
At some point, he's just going to wake up, look over her, and say...
Now, let's further imagine that we're not in a world of alimony and child support and half of everything you own and all that sort of stuff.
And maybe they're just dating.
I don't know.
But she's living there.
And she's dependent on him.
Well, she has two choices, right?
She can either up her own game.
She can either increase her sexual market value by becoming a better girlfriend or a better wife so that he's attracted to her again.
Or...
She can attempt to pull him down, to destroy him, to reduce his sexual market value by constantly nagging and insulting him and saying he's worthless and trash and lazy and a terrible husband so that he feels so bad about himself that he doesn't have the confidence to go out and maybe find someone else.
I think there are two strains in every community that has become dependent on the state.
And one of them is like, guys, we've got to pull it together.
We've got to start doing the stuff that we used to do that works because all this new stuff is not working.
And that is the encouraging and challenging and sometimes confrontational side of every community.
Trying to rouse people into...
What was that phrase that that man said that gave me goosebumps?
If you fight for limitations, you get to keep them.
Right.
So they're saying, look, it can't all be racism.
It can't all be sexism.
It can't all be whatever because things were better in the past when these things were obviously worse.
But there's another group which wants to keep the game going.
I think that white people are on the receiving end of a lot of abuse.
I mean, the idea of white privilege.
How's your daughter experiencing her white privilege, V? She never has, to tell you the truth.
As a matter of fact...
The privilege is to be insulted, to be attacked, to be condemned.
And not just by the students, but by the teachers, by the culture, by the movies.
Right.
Everything.
Right.
Everything.
Where the fuck is that privilege?
There is no privilege.
I mean, and I'm going to put it out there right now...
You know, my husband has PTSD. He's a felon.
And, of course, it all relates to his PTSD. Of course, we've gotten counseling.
We know what it is.
We deal with it, right?
And then we have a situation where, you know, my daughter, her mother, horrible.
Just horrible.
Just horrible.
I'm not trying to put her out there like that because I know that's her mom.
But let's just say she was not a good person.
She did not take care of her.
It was my mother-in-law that took care of her.
And my daughter had emotional problems.
And her mom thought it was best for her to be with her father.
And now that her father is in a stable relationship and in a stable marriage, we get along great.
My mother-in-law and I were close.
And she's like, I think she'll be good with you.
Now, you're talking to someone that has never had a child out of wedlock, never raised a child.
And I'm like, okay.
And I give her what my father gave me.
I don't think it would have been possible if I didn't have a father.
I was closer to my father than I was to my mother, even though I grew up in a two-parent household.
It's very close.
So, my father taught me, never let a man control you.
That includes him taking care of you.
Women don't get taught that.
What's wrong with the man taking care of you?
We have a notion as women that men are supposed to pay all the bills and we're supposed to benefit from that and that's it and that's all.
Treat men like cash cows because they're the men.
They're supposed to earn all the money and we don't have to contribute anything.
My father saw that kind of thinking as a way of slavery.
And it is, if you take a look at...
You mean, it sounds like slavery of the man.
Do you mean slavery of the woman?
It can be slavery of the woman, too, because think about it.
If you never learn how to be independent, if you never learn how to be a self-sufficient female and have a balance on how men and women...
Compliment and can help each other.
Is that not slavery?
It's the same thing.
It's dependence.
I mean, it's dependence.
No, it's slavery.
It's slavery.
Because most women...
I mean, come on.
Right now, everybody's getting useless degrees.
How many women are in engineering jobs right now?
How many female architects do we have that are building bridges?
How many females are actually sitting there dealing with microbiology and curing diseases?
How many?
You know, stuff that actually enables our society to survive?
Well, I'll tell you this.
It's very few of the women who are complaining about a lack of female representation in STEM fields are actually taking courses in STEM fields.
Right!
There's this mindset that there is misogyny, but you're not even breaking into areas that would benefit independence and actual harmony between the sexes.
Yeah, but I mean...
Women get pregnant and oftentimes will want to go and raise their children.
I mean, that's just, you know, don't blame me.
That's Mother Nature, right?
She's the one who gave the womb, egg, and sperm distribution.
And so when it comes to, you know, just in terms of the rational allocation of resources in society, if you have the choice, let's just say you want to train, society has to train someone to be a doctor, right?
Someone has to cure the sick.
And society has the choice between a young man and a young woman.
Well, guaranteed, at least with current technology, the young man is not going to get pregnant.
Fairly guaranteed that he's not going to end up as a single father.
And he's not going to – and if his wife gets pregnant and she has kids, it's very unlikely that he's going to say, well, that's it.
I'm quitting to stay home because his wife is going to be breastfeeding and his wife is going to be up all night and she's – right?
As a society, to invest your scarce and precious resources because every doctor you make, that's it.
That's the doctor you've made.
There's not a backup doctor.
You don't get to make two for the price of one.
Every doctor you make.
Now, if you're a society that's rational, in other words, you're driven by sort of market incentives rather than political correctness, as a society, you're going to sit there and say, you know what?
We're getting more work out of the guy than the woman.
Now, there may be women who don't want to have kids or who absolutely are going to, you know, 12 minutes after giving birth, going to hop back into the operating room and start slicing and dicing.
But on average, on average, you're going to get much more engineering out of a male engineer.
You're going to get much more medicine out of a male doctor.
You're going to get much more lawyering out of a male lawyer.
And that's not misogyny.
This is just facts.
No, but what I mean is the mindset now is we are having women that feel that they're owed everything.
They don't want to have kids and they're getting useless degrees.
So you're not propagating a family.
You're not...
You're free from consequences, you know what I mean?
If you get knocked up, the state pays for it.
So you don't have any accountability for those consequences.
You're not learning how to be a stay-at-home mom.
I'm not talking about the women that got it.
I'm talking about the women, which would include my daughter, that are brought up that Man is supposed to pay for everything.
If he cheats on you, he's supposed to get alimony.
You don't have to have kids.
He can't make you have kids.
If you do have kids, staying at home is the worst thing you can do because you're under slavery.
No.
You're propagating a species.
You're creating life.
A male engineer only gets to create a bridge.
Right.
So, the slavery I'm talking about is the slavery that I don't have to account for anything.
Right.
And that's what I'm talking about.
But that slavery requires the state to go and take a whole bunch of stuff at gunpoint from other people, right?
So it's a very predatory kind of slavery.
And, you know, it's the comments that sort of young men are making.
Let me just finish.
The comments that young men are making these days, which is sort of like, ah, hello, fine young lady.
You'd be interested in going out on a date?
Ah, okay, maybe we should think about what our life might be like together.
Okay, so you've just spent four years being taught about how I am a misogynistic, rapey scumbag.
And you're $50,000 in student debt and you work at Starbucks.
I think I'll pass.
I mean one of the tragic things is the degree to which higher education is just stripping sexual market value off people left, right and center by putting them in resentful, high indoctrination, low wage occupations with massive amounts of debt.
I mean it's killing the birth rate.
And on top of that, that's the slavery my father was talking about.
Because if you are not making yourself marketable and you feel that everything is entitled to you because you are a woman, yes, the man is in slavery, but you are in slavery too.
My father wasn't just talking about individual men.
He was also talking about the man, the government.
You know how they call it in the 70s.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, gender studies?
What?!
Tell me someone who is making a median average decent five to six, decent five to six figure income in a gender studies degree.
The professors?
Yeah, at the Ivy League level, but not at the regular university level.
And they're with these teacher unions too, so...
I'm sure they got benefits, but it's really nothing to...
It's not a profession that expands to anything.
Because all you're doing is...
All you can do is be a teacher or a professor or a community organizer.
To train other professional community organizers who train other professionals.
They're not branching out into anything else.
They can't take those skill set to a corporate situation to be a CEO because capitalism is bad.
You see what I mean?
You're not giving them any room to grow anywhere.
It's just a linear straight line with a dead end.
And your retirement after your tenure is done isn't anything.
Now what are you going to do?
That's the slavery I'm talking about.
And it first starts to me, or the way my father taught me, is when you feel entitled, you are enslaving yourself because it does turn into dependence.
And irrational dependence is slavery.
This is irrational.
Yeah, I would say almost anti-rational.
You know, the great tragedy of these lefty indoctrination degrees It's not even so much the conclusions that people come to.
It's the fact that they're not taught how to think.
They're instead bullied and instructed on conclusions.
You must believe this or you're a bad person.
Well, that's worse than religion and far worse than the worst aspects of religion because religion will provide you a path to salvation and religion will give you moral rules that are, at least in Christianity, based upon love your neighbor and if your enemy asks you to walk a mile, walk two miles with him and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
But this lefty, brittle, hysterical indoctrination stuff really churns out some very, very broken people.
And that to me is the greatest tragedy.
It's not even the student debt or the terrible ideas that they have.
It's the fact that they've just been bullied and bribed into having all of these conclusions with no methodology, no reason, no evidence for how to get there.
And once you teach people to wed conclusions rather than the process of thinking, of investigating, of exploring, of debating, Then what happens is opposite perspectives become mortal enemies.
And that's what you see with all this stuff going on at the colleges these days where so-and-so comes to speak.
I think Milo Yiannopoulos is resuming his college tour and the usual hysteria is going to, oh, it's hate speech.
It's like, no, no, speech can't hate.
And if there are people out there full of hate, for heaven's sakes, let them speak so that everyone can see.
You know, I kind of wish that we had that kind of required debate like Solon, who made it illegal to not have discourse.
Because, and that goes right back to, again, the black culture.
We lost our breadcrumbs because we were taught this, and now we don't know what the real thing is, and then you get indoctrinated.
It goes right back to that.
And I never thought that I would say to my own daughter, yeah, I know you want to become a writer and stuff, but I'm not sure if I want you to go to college.
You don't need to go to college to be a writer.
Yeah.
No, no.
But she wants a degree.
She wants a degree.
She wants a creative writing degree.
She wants to, you know, and I was like, I get that.
But I never thought that I would be like, are you sure?
No, no.
I mean, I would argue that.
And I, of course, I never took creative writing in college.
I did some playwriting when I was at the National Theatre School.
And I did another private short course.
But I think that it's actively harmful to try and do anything creative in university these days because it's so rigidly lefty.
I mean, she's going to be taught what to write and how to write, and then she's going to say, well, you have to have this diversity and you have to have this proportion.
And it's like her creativity is going to get bowled over, I would argue, in a college writing course because they're teaching you how to become a propagandist, not how to follow your bliss.
And so she can...
Just stop writing.
That's a beautiful thing.
Oh, I made her, yeah, I make her read the classics.
She hates it because she's just like, I don't make it!
And I'm like, please read it, write, whatever.
She's working on a story now.
And I write, too.
And I'm actually, I said, go to a technical school.
Like, in October, I'm going to school for audio engineering, and we get certification for Pearl Tools and things like that.
It seems like certifications are the best way to go because those classes are so streamlined, you don't have time for all the other BS. Yeah, that's it.
And you've got to take the test, study the test, pay that money.
If you fail, you've got to put out more money.
Yeah, that tends to make you want to pay attention, doesn't it?
But if she just starts writing, she can just write and publish.
I mean, that's the amazing thing about the internet.
Anyone can be a writer these days and you don't need an agent.
In fact, agents...
And that whole traditional publishing thing, like the average book sells like, what, 500, 1,000 copies, maybe 2,000 copies.
A bestseller is like 5,000 copies.
And if you get on the top of the New York Times list, you might sell, I don't know, 30,000 or 40,000 copies.
Dear Lord, I mean, my books are downloaded 100,000, 150,000 times a month.
A month, not a year, a month.
And I dropped money into courses, which gave me access to agents, and I worked with agents for a while, and it's just like, oh, forget it, I'm just going to go do it.
And I'm having that conversation with her right now.
And, you know, like, you take a couple of courses at a community college right down the road, that's no big deal.
You're just taking courses, right?
You're streamlining that education.
But, you know, it's kind of like, ugh.
Yeah, I think if there's any way you can – I mean this is just I think a basic common sense thing that if there's any way you can do what you want to do in life without going to college, don't go to college.
I mean if you want to be a doctor or an engineer, then you've got to go jump through the hoops.
But if there is any way to do – and the funny thing is that that's how it used to be.
Like a very, very small number of people used to go to college and the number of colleges was very small at the universities because it was supposed to be for the elite of the elite.
And now we've just got giant sluices of people going in there.
And we all know the bell curve of intelligence.
If you're just going to let more and more people into college, all you've got to do is lower and lower your standards.
And so you're getting a worse education for a higher price.
And the price of college just over the past couple of decades has gone up faster than food, faster than gas, faster than healthcare.
It's like crazy expensive.
Because there is this myth that's constantly repeated.
You've got to go to college.
You've got to get a college degree.
You know, the people I read on the internet who I find, you know, interesting and stimulating, for the most part, I have no idea what their education is.
I could care less.
Yeah.
True.
But they throw that in your face, though.
You can't speak on that because you haven't studied.
And you can't, you know, possibly have that opinion because you can't...
Ah, shut up.
Yeah, and, you know, I mean, I think for the most part, the internet is tired of that stuff.
You're a white male!
Yeah, I think that's another word in there, if I remember rightly.
Listen, V, I've got to move on with the next caller, but I want to say happy birthday again.
Thank you for a most, most enjoyable chat.
You're welcome back anytime.
I do give my best to your daughter and to your husband.
I'm very sorry to hear about his PTSD. That is a very, very tough situation.
It's getting better.
I hope you guys are getting the help that you need.
Oh yeah, we are.
It's getting better, especially with the VA now that's probably going to get the crackdown because we're here in Phoenix.
Well, I'm in Mesa, but where the 40 veterans have passed away.
Due to neglect of the VA, but now it's improving.
Good.
All right.
All the best.
Happy birthday.
My best to your family.
Thanks again for a truly delightful conversation.
All right.
You have a great night.
Good night.
Bye-bye.
Alright, well up next is Ali.
Ali wrote in and said, It is important to have money to satisfy basic needs, but I don't see the point of becoming a wage slave to acquire a bunch of leftover cash.
We are all going to die naturally around the same age, therefore I find time more precious than wealth.
Does wealth outweigh the value of time?
That's from Ali.
Well hey Ali, how are you doing tonight?
I'm doing alright Stefan, how are you doing?
I'm doing well, thank you, I'm doing well.
Were you a materialistic person?
Were you raised around materialistic people?
Well, my mom is a huge saver, and she would always cut out all the coupons and always spend within her means, kind of because she had to.
She didn't have too much financial support later on after she had me.
So I kind of got like the whole savvy saving money thing from her.
But it accelerated more once I started listening to people online and reading about minimalism and coming to the conclusion, like, you know what?
You don't need all this supposed luxury junk, is what I call it, because the most important thing in life I find to be is people.
That's something that...
One person I follow on YouTube, Aaron Clary, he's always saying the most important thing in life is other people.
That's something that money cannot replace.
Right.
Well, I mean, obviously you need the bare necessities of life to enjoy and to have time, right?
And money will give you freedom to do things that you otherwise obviously wouldn't be able to do without money.
But the...
The saving versus spending thing is a very important element of life to really grasp and be decisive about.
It's sort of like a pendulum in life.
There are times when you're young, if you go to college or whatever, You save and then you spend.
You save money to go to college or at least your parents do hopefully.
You spend money in college and then you get a job.
For most people, I was always never wealthier than when I got my first real job out of college because I was living the college lifestyle but I was making decent money for the first time ever.
The gap between income and expenses was really wide at that time.
And so then you save when you – hopefully you don't spend all that.
You save your money and then maybe you spend a little bit getting married.
Maybe you're going to spend more when you have kids and so on.
But the sort of saving and spending pendulum, it's usually not something you can do in a fixed way like, oh, I'm just going to save now.
I'm going to spend now.
But it is important to know the rhythms of saving and spending in life and neither be afraid of saving or of spending where necessary.
To make money, you have to spend money in many ways, right?
I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, of course, you invest in your business.
But even if not, right, you've got to have a nice suit if you're, I don't know, probably not the case anymore.
Wear some sort of mesh thong if you go work at some high tech company or whatever.
But I do think that when people – I mean it's an old cliché.
When people pursue material goods at the expense of their relationships, that rarely seems like a very wise choice at all.
At the same time though, when people pursue relationships at the expense of accumulating resources, that is not wise either and that – I think it's one of these Aristotelian mean things.
You've got relationships on one side and you've got income or material stuff on the other side.
You do need both and there are times where relationships will be more important.
There are times where you've got to go and work the bellows of your productivity so that you can make money.
I think that trying to stay on one side or the other of that pendulum is not probably a very good idea.
I think it's hard to make a hard and fast rule about it.
I mean, in the extremes, obviously, right?
In the extremes where people just save, save, save, and never spend, that just seems a bit too aesthetic of the people who splurge without.
Like, have you ever had a friend, or maybe this happened to you too, Ali, but have you ever had a friend where They meet a girl, or if it's a girl, they meet a guy, and they just dive into each other.
I don't just mean sexually, but they cocoon.
You don't hear from them for weeks.
They're just night and day with each other, and they're just merging and fusing and whispering childhood stories under the covers and all that kind of stuff.
That, to me, is maybe a little bit heavy on the relationship side and a little bit not heavy on the productivity side.
On the other hand, there's of course the workaholics, right?
The guys who go to work and barely see their kids and barely see their wives and so on.
And clearly that's too much on the work side and not enough on the relationship side.
So I think it's a balance and it's hard to get a hard and fast rule outside of the extremes.
Yeah, I find money as more of a need to acquire basic resources.
Such as food, clothing, shelter.
I don't think anyone's going to deny that.
But it's the excess wealth, if you think about it.
You're spending all this time trying to make all this money that you may never even spend because we're all going to die at a certain age and that money, you can't use it anymore, obviously, because you're dead.
So, instead of investing so much time into making a whole bunch of money you will never spend, why not work for whatever you need and then the rest of the time pursue whatever makes you happy, such as hobbies, traveling, etc., friendships?
Well, you know, I know the argument, like, you can't take it with you and so on, but that's sort of like saying, why read books because you can't read books after you're dead?
I mean, if you have kids, of course, you give your money to your children.
And that is a great way of having the legacy continue and making your children's lives a little easier and all kinds of good stuff like that.
And if you work hard and create jobs for people, then of course you've helped add to the wealth of the world and created jobs which have helped people I can hear your
argument as well.
I know that I Got some wealth towards my college savings from one of my grandparents, so I can see why passing it on can really help people within your family or maybe young people outside of your family who you just have good relationships with.
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, my very first personal computer I got with a tiny inheritance from my grandmother, and it was helpful.
It got me to start programming better and all that kind of stuff, so...
Yeah, I mean, if you don't have kids, then there's not who you're going.
I guess you can leave your money to a charity and all that, which is, you know, it's good stuff and it can be helpful.
Or maybe you can put it into a fund for entrepreneurs so that they can start their businesses or whatever.
But yeah, if you don't have kids, then I think that accumulating a lot of resources makes just a little bit less sense.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And furthermore, I think that, you know, going back to my email, the most happiness I ever got out of life so far, and I haven't been alive for too long, obviously, but it's from either with my friends or bike riding or traveling,
you know, towards pretty cool spots and socializing with Many of my good friends.
So it wasn't exactly from making money.
Making money was more of a way to make sure that I have something to fall back on in case I need it.
More like a security fund.
But it's just a way to get certain material resources.
Yes.
Yes, absolutely.
And that makes perfect sense given your stage in life and given your preferences in life.
That's exactly what I would expect.
But you want to make sure that you don't turn your particular life circumstances and life choices – a young man doesn't want to have kids.
You want to make sure you don't turn that into – A virtue, right?
I mean, it's your particular preference based on where you are in life and where you want to go in life, but try not to translate that into, well, the way that my life circumstances benefit me, or what is most beneficial or appropriate to my own life choices is somehow a universal virtue.
Yeah.
You know, like you say, well, I want to invest more in relationships than in money-making.
Okay, that...
That makes good sense because you're not going to – your wife is not pregnant.
You don't need to buy a house and a crib.
So it makes perfect sense for you not to focus that much on it.
But then to say – and I'm not saying you would.
But you want to make sure you don't try and extrapolate life choices or life circumstances into a universal value because that is to say that your life choices and life circumstances have something to do with morals and they don't.
I mean, obviously, if you were thinking of strangling kittens or whatever, that would have something to do with morals.
But as to whether you focus more on relationships or whether you focus more on money-making, these are not moral choices.
There may be certain aesthetics involved, but it's not like either is a violation of the non-aggression principle, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it was more of a, because I'm not like, from a standpoint, like, oh, you know, you don't need shelter, so I'm not going to buy a house.
I find being homeless, you know, you save money that way.
Or some of these, you know, a crazy saver is like, okay, I'm going to eat out of a dumpster instead of going to the grocery store because, you know, I'll save money.
Yeah, will you though?
I mean, eating out of a dumpster, you're probably just going to get sick and have to spend it on a doctor pill or whatever, right?
So, yeah, I mean, different strokes for different folks.
You know, it's a...
It's a good motto and a great Sly and the Family Stone song, Everyday People.
Aretha Franklin does a version of that that will give you goosebumps.
But anyway, yeah, I mean if this is your life circumstance, this is what you want, then great.
But it doesn't mean that other people – if some guy wants to buy a 10,000 square foot house, more power to him.
Go for it.
I mean if that's what makes you go.
And remember too, a lot of people are better at money-making than they are at relationships.
Yeah.
And if you are better at relationships than money making, you know, great.
But again, try not to make it into a virtue.
Yeah.
I guess my perspective now is to find a good, preferably a good balance between, you know, having the social life, having, you know, having happiness within my life and while not being so financially insecure Finding the good balance between socializing,
spending time with people you love and appreciate, and then making sure that you have that way to acquire resources to help you live an easier, stress-free life.
Yeah.
Money problems are stressful.
Yeah.
Very stressful.
It's hard to be relaxed and enjoy Your friendships, if you're trying to figure out how to pay the rent.
Yeah, it's a balance.
Anyway, I think that's all I had to say about it, if there's anything else you wanted to add.
I know when I've repeated the same argument fourth time, it's usually good to move on to the next thing.
I think we hit all the points I wanted to talk about, and thanks a lot for you and Michael taking my call, and I really love your show.
And keep up the great work that you're doing, Stefan.
Well, thanks, Ali.
That's very kind, and I very much enjoyed the chat.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Alright, up next we have Emily.
Emily wrote in and said, I'm a widowed mother and I know that one day I will have to have a grown-up conversation with my daughter about the circumstances which led to her father's death.
Should I tell her the truth?
After losing my husband and getting used to raising my daughter on my own, is me staying single a better option for both of us?
That's from Emily.
Hi Emily, how are you doing?
Hi, I'm fine.
How are you?
I'm well, thank you.
I'm well, thank you.
Is it recent?
No, nine years ago, almost nine years ago.
All right, all right.
Well, I don't, I mean, this is not really a philosophical question, more of an aesthetics or relational question.
Does your daughter, doesn't know the circumstances of her father's death?
No, she doesn't.
She's 10 now and, I mean, she knows that he's gone, but she doesn't know She knows only the things that are suitable to her age right now.
As she grows, she will have a lot of questions.
I don't exactly know how to go about it.
Should I tell her everything?
I mean, she could always learn the truth from someone else, and I think that's worse than hearing it from me, but I actually don't know what's worse.
And is it, you don't have to get into the details, but is it because the details of your husband's death or the circumstances of your husband's death would be upsetting or traumatic?
Yeah, they will definitely have impact on her and they will definitely change the perception that she might have had.
She never got to know him.
She was one when he passed away, so she doesn't know him and whatever image that I'm trying to create right now of him It's going to be changed and the way she looks at me is going to be changed and her whole perspective of the world might be changed.
I don't know.
Right, right, right.
Well, I mean, obviously I wouldn't burden her.
It's sort of a tautology.
I mean, but don't burden her with something prior to her capacity to process it.
And I think in general, the later, the better for these kinds of things.
So basically, should I wait for her to come with the questions and then tell her?
I mean, that would be my approach.
Unless, of course, you're seeing any dysfunction.
Unless there's some kind of dysfunction that is manifesting, in which case it may be better to know.
But I'm, you know, with regards to kids and sort of age-appropriate...
Information, I'm very much one to err on the side of minimize it until you find out differently, until the child has significant questions or there's some dysfunctional behavior that's manifesting that might be in some way related.
Then I'd sort of dive in, but I think holding off the longer, the better.
It would be my approach.
And the other thing that I'm thinking about is that I could always have the option of not telling her the things exactly as they were or maybe not telling her all of the information and basically presenting it in a different way that will be shielding her from the things that she might hear and people might say.
So I don't know if I should do that as a parent.
I obviously feel like I should Try and protect her from anything that might happen.
So a part of me really feels like I should maybe present the situation in a different way, which is going to be easier for her to hear it, to accept it.
No, I wouldn't do that myself.
Because if you misrepresent something, which basically you'd lie to her about something, right?
Yeah.
If you misrepresent something, that is a very big deal.
About something this important.
This is not like a little white lie or something.
I would definitely not tell her something that she's going to find out about at some point down the road that you told her something that was not true about something so important.
I think that would be a big challenge in the relationship.
If it's just the two of you, you want to really protect that relationship as much as possible.
And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, I will talk about this when you get older.
You know, not every question demands an answer immediately.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with saying, nope, this is not something I want to talk about with you now.
I'm a parent and it's something that we will discuss when you're older.
I guess my biggest fear is that after she learns about her father and after she learns those things, this might change her behavior if she's, let's say, a teenager or something like that and that's another thing that I want to avoid somehow.
Right.
Well, the way to keep her on track when she's a teenager is Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
That's when you've really had the most impact, like the first couple of years as a parent.
After that, yeah, there's course corrections, there's adjustments and so on, but the majority of it is done early and now you're sort of in between that and the teenage years.
So keep the lines of communication open, keep honest, keep grounded, keep authentic, keep curious, practice all of the peaceful parenting virtues.
From that standpoint, that's the best thing you can do.
If you've done the foundation right, then the house doesn't blow over.
If you have concerns about where she's at, it's not going to be that five years down the road she finds out something about her father and it all falls apart.
It's the work that you're doing now that's laying that foundation brick by brick, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it's basically, I mean, my fear is I'm imagining it going like that.
She hears from someone because there are people that not only know the story but have their ways of You know, using words that are presenting the story in a very awful way.
So my fear is that one day one of her schoolmates or someone that I knew from before knows bits and pieces of the story.
They maybe don't even know me well enough or didn't know her father at all, but of course they feel the freedom to say stuff and my fear is that someone will just come up to her because people love to go into each other's business and someone may say something to her and this hearing from someone else may have a It won't be an easy thing to hear, especially from someone else.
And it takes only one word for someone to say, just one single word and everything.
And I'm sorry, that's a very tough situation to be in.
I really sympathize with that.
It's a very tough situation because you sort of don't know where the next thing is going to come from.
But I will say this, certainly with the people who know, you can say, listen, I'm not going to talk about this with her until she's, I don't know, 16 or whatever, whatever the age is going to be.
So please don't mention anything about it.
Right?
So, I mean, that will, at least with the people you can trust in your family and friendships, that will hopefully deal with that issue.
Yeah, the people that I trust, they're okay.
The ones that I don't trust and still know the stuff, they're the ones that I'm concerned about.
Because everyone that I trust, I told them exactly that.
I told them, you know, and they agree.
They're fine.
But there's still a lot of people that they won't do it because they're concerned about her and they will do it.
Right.
Well, you know, it's funny because, I mean, I get the difficult thing, right?
Because if nobody tells her, Then it's better to wait.
But if somebody tells her, the argument would be, then it's better that she heard it from you first with all of the context.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Well, certainly it should come from you rather than from someone else.
And it should come as part of a long conversation rather than, I don't know, some taunt in a schoolyard.
Yeah.
The only thing I can suggest is you're going to have to weigh the risk.
If you tell her yourself early, then it's a lot to put on her.
If you don't tell her but somebody else tells her, then that's a real challenge as well.
I think you're going to have to just gauge the probabilities there.
The longer you can hold it off, the better.
Certainly, if this gets blurted out by someone else, that would be not great.
Yeah, I have gone through both of the possibilities in my mind.
I was also thinking of waiting, but then again I don't want people.
But I am hoping that by then she would know that the only person who can actually speak about her father in that way would be me, because no one else knew him the way I did.
So hopefully she will be able to realize that by then.
I'm hoping that she will be old enough to realize that by then.
Right.
Look, there's no particularly good answer.
It's a gamble, right?
If you don't tell her and nobody else tells her and you get to tell her when she's older, yay!
You know, good call.
If you don't tell her and somebody else tells her, then that's more of a problem.
But, yeah, again, because the only thing I'd say is if there are people you really don't trust who you think might say something even after you tell them not to...
It may not be the very wisest thing to have those people around your daughter on a regular basis, but that's obviously something for you to decide.
I sympathize.
It's a very, very difficult choice to make because we're talking about probabilities.
There's no clear answer, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, all I can do is like consider.
Yeah, okay.
I will have to think.
Well, hopefully I'll have some more time to think about it.
And I guess the other thing is, the other part of my question is, as I said, it's been nine years almost since her father passed away.
And in that time, I only had like one sort of thing.
Long term relationship didn't go very well.
I find it difficult to connect with people and potential partners.
I don't know if I should change the life that we have going on with my daughter.
Obviously, if I am going out with someone new, this is going to change things between me and her.
I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just wait until she's Or grown up and not even bother meeting new people.
Well, I mean, if you did wait until she was grown up, I mean, would that be very difficult?
I don't know.
Because it depends.
If you meet the right guy, it'll get more difficult.
And if you don't, it won't be, right?
Again, it's one of these probability things, right?
Yeah, no, it's just like I feel like on some level I am doing it without realizing it.
I'm actually, part of me sort of has decided that because I don't know, I don't find it.
I can't understand why relationships are not working out for me, apart from, you know, Hang on, hang on.
I mean, I obviously speak for these guys, but you can understand why a man would not want to pour his resources into another man's child, right?
Well, that's the thing.
It's not like I meet them and the first thing I expect from them is to pour their resources and things like that.
I mean...
No, no, no.
I understand that.
But if a man is looking down the future, if he's looking into the future, right?
If, you know, men...
Can afford to raise maybe two children.
Men can afford to raise two children.
If a man gets involved with a woman who already has a child, then to some degree, he's minus one child.
You're plus one child, he's minus one child.
I'm not saying he'd have to pay for everything and all that, but in terms of the resources.
Also, of course, a woman who's single is going to have more savings.
Because she's not spent a lot of money on her child, right?
I mean, you know kids are pretty pricey.
And so a man who gets together with a woman who doesn't have a child, well, she's got a lot more savings and he's not going to...
He's going to pull money into his...
Together, they're going to pull money into their own children rather than the man pouring money into your child and not having the resources that you would have had if you didn't have the child.
So it's not...
That the guys are just judging you as being a particular kind of person.
It's just a basic calculation.
Yeah, it comes to money.
Well, the thing is that I don't actually focus on the material side so much because the way I see it basically is if someone is at that point, they want to have a serious relationship and they want to have a child, they would be aiming to get towards the point in life where I am at right now.
So, I don't think about the financial side so much because when people are fine together, they find ways to work that out.
This is the way I see it.
And I understand that, I understand, but I think that there are other aspects to a relationship that's just the material or financial side.
And the truth is that I never got to even to that stage to a relationship with anyone that we had to actually think about that.
And so...
Right, but also just in terms of getting to know a woman, right?
I mean, if the woman has a child, it's much more complicated, right?
Because somebody has to take care of the child while you're out on a date or getting to know each other, right?
You just...
You can't just go away for the weekend.
You can't go drive down the coast and go body surfing in Malibu or whatever because you've got a child.
No, I have grandparents both sides, so I could do that.
And also other girls, they work, so they could be even busier than I am.
I can get myself free whenever necessary, so that's not something that is stopping me, holding me back.
Well, that's okay, and that's obviously a plus, but...
What happens then, for me, what would happen is I'd say, okay, well, I can go away with you for the weekend, but that means that you're not spending time with your daughter, right?
So I'm taking you away from your daughter in order to spend time with me.
And again, if there's a woman without a child, that's just not part of the calculation.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but just you seem to be sort of a little bewildered as to why guys weren't, why they had a problem, right?
No, the thing is that I was in that relationship that I mentioned that lasted about a year.
Actually, there was actually never a problem.
This is why I don't understand it.
It was the relationship for me didn't differ in any way as me as a parent as to relationships that I had before as me when I wasn't a parent.
Basically, I was able to keep a good balance between everything and it wasn't The easiest thing at first, but I was able to do it.
So from my point of view, I wasn't able to understand what is the big deal for the guy.
Because actually the guy that was with me, he didn't really feel any difference in the relationship with me apart from meeting a lovely girl, my daughter.
So this is why I didn't understand it.
It wasn't like...
I don't know.
And also I understand the financial side, but I have met so many guys, my brother included.
And they would have a younger, well not younger, but a girl my age, but let's say without a daughter, And they would be fine paying for her manicure, for her going to the hairdresser and all of those things.
And actually when my brother told me about it, it worked out the amount of money that was a lot more than anyone has ever helped me with in my life.
So this was something that got me thinking.
I just couldn't understand the whole concept.
How are the guys finding problems to be with me?
They have to pay for my kid, but if they Well, I wouldn't actually let them pay for my daughter anything at the beginning, at least.
But they're okay with going out with someone and paying for manicure and all those things and fake tan or whatever.
I don't even know.
Or jewelry and things like that.
So this was something that I just don't understand.
You don't understand why a man would buy a woman jewelry but not want to pay for your kid?
Well, it's not like...
The thing is that...
It's not like I would even ask for the same amount of money for someone to help me.
For example, let's say that he pays, I don't know, something for a hairdresser and what I might need help with my daughter is like one-fourth of that price.
I don't understand why would they make a big deal about that and the other thing will be okay.
Well, I don't know, but my guess would be that men buy presents for women for sex, right?
Okay, well, I still don't get it.
But no man wants to buy a present for your daughter so that you'll sleep with him.
No, it's not like they're giving you presents either.
If you buy earrings for a woman, I don't know.
I mean, I'm just guessing.
It's not my particular approach to things, but this is sort of as far as I understand it.
Well, no.
I mean, the example that I was thinking about were people that are already in serious relationships.
So it's not like just because they're...
Well, obviously, they want to maintain the relationship, but I'm talking about things that they're paying for regularly.
So manicure twice a month, hairdresser, whatever, how many times a month.
Things like this, it all sum up a lot more, to be a lot more as...
If, let's say, I was in a relationship with someone, I would not even...
Think of accepting that amount of money from them.
Right, right.
Well, the other thing too is that if you were, this is a silly way to put it, but if you were dating a guy and he kept showing you pictures of his ex-girlfriend, what would you think?
Well, I would have to look at her.
I don't know if she's good-looking.
I would say she's good-looking.
No, but what would you think if the guy kept showing you pictures of his ex-girlfriend?
Here's another picture of my ex-girlfriend.
Here's another picture of my ex-girlfriend.
Oh, look, here's my ex-girlfriend in a bikini.
Oh, here's another picture of my ex-girlfriend.
Yeah, more than five times might be annoying.
It would be a little odd, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so if you're a single mom, a widow in this case, and what happens is a man comes along and every time he sees your daughter, he remembers that you were with another man, you had sex with another man, and this is the product.
Really?
Yeah.
That's how I see it?
Well, I don't know if it's obsessive, but that is a reminder that you loved someone else, that you married someone else, that you had a child with someone else, and so on.
And it's just a constant reminder that you're not first in line, so to speak.
Yeah, but it's a bit strange for me to even understand that, because They know that this person is gone.
He's not...
He doesn't exist anymore.
Except he does it away, right?
My daughter, yeah.
Yeah, I never thought of that.
I don't know what it's like from the guys.
I don't know, yeah.
Never thought of that.
I mean, it's a constant reminder of...
A man you loved and married and slept with and had a life with before.
And it's not your fault.
It's not your daughter's fault.
It's just...
It's there.
Yeah, but it's not like...
It's not exactly like showing a picture of my ex.
It's not the same thing.
It's more vivid.
It's more vivid.
No, but it's something that you can accept into your life.
It's like the ex-girlfriend.
No, I don't want to accept her or her image into my life.
But my daughter is also part of me.
It's not just my ex.
It's just part of me.
No, absolutely.
Your daughter is part of you and he's part of your ex-husband.
He's just not part of the boyfriend.
You're always outside that circle.
You're always, as the guy, I guess for the woman too, if it's a stepdad, or sorry, a woman too, if it's a single father, but yeah, there's you and your daughter and the ghost, and you're never going to be in that circle in the same way.
Now, I mean, this is not to say those families, the sort of blended families, they could work in all of that, but I'm just saying, it is...
I'm just telling you this is probably some of the reasons as to why some of the men might have some trouble.
Are you saying basically that even if I put in a lot of effort to make the person feel included, they will still have this, as in they will feel like that no matter what I do?
Well, I can't speak as to what people will and won't feel and how much effort you put in.
But biologically, it's you, your daughter, and your ex-husband.
Until maybe I have a child with him and then you'll be more balanced?
I don't understand.
Well, the whole point of romance is the getting of children, right?
The whole point of having a sex drive, sex organs, romance, dating, buying people tans and manicures, haircuts and all that.
It's all to make children, right?
Okay.
And men want to have their own children.
And women want to have their own children because that's how we are biologically...
That's how we evolved biologically.
Like any person or any genetic predisposition to not want your own children would very, very quickly get bred out of the gene pool, right?
A preference for one's own children is foundational to us being biological organisms.
And...
So, for a man to say, well, I want to put my resources into another man's children, it's not impossible, and I'm not saying it could never work, but you seem to, like, be confused about why it was difficult.
Well, I'm telling you why it's difficult.
Because men want to have their own children.
Because that's what our genes tell us to do.
But me having a child doesn't stand in the way of me having his child.
It certainly does.
That if he only wants to have one kid.
If he wants to have three or four, I don't understand why there should be a problem.
Well, no.
Let's say he's got enough resources for two children, right?
Okay.
So some of those resources are going to go to your daughter, which is less for his other children.
I mean, I'm not saying it's like that you take his money.
I'm just saying if you imagine yourself without a daughter or without a child, then if you...
If you get married to a man and you have two children, then 100% of his resources are going into 100% of his children, right?
And if you have a child and then you have another child, well, first of all, you have this kind of odd family where one child is going to be, I don't know, 10 years old or 12 years old and then you have a baby.
So you have a big gap in the siblings already, and then they're half siblings, and whether that matters or not, who knows, right?
But, you know, when one kid is six, the other kid's going to be driving a car, you know?
I mean, how is that going?
I mean, you kind of want siblings somewhat close together in age, right?
So that they can sort of go through those things together, right?
Are you basically saying that I missed my chance?
I'm not saying that you've missed your chance.
None of what I'm saying should be interpreted as you have no chance of dating or no chance.
Because earlier, and I hope you'll listen back to this, earlier you were saying, apparently it's a problem for guys that I have a kid and so on, and I'm just trying to explain it to you so that you can be sensitive to what a man might be thinking or feeling, right?
Because if you have this approach like, well, it should make absolutely no difference that I have a kid because there are grandparents, that doesn't show a lot of, I think, alertness or awareness about what the man might be thinking or feeling.
And the man might deny all of this.
The man might not think that this is appropriate to say and all of this.
But...
Biologically, I think it's fairly unassailable that we want to put our own resources into our own children.
And again, this doesn't mean any of this is impossible, but I think you need to be aware of the challenges so you can at least address them at some point.
Yeah, I didn't see things this way.
The way I saw it also is I see other couples and people that's...
I don't want to say it because I don't want it to sound like I'm comparing the two things, but...
People in far more complicated situations that don't find it so difficult to get into relationships and somehow things are working for them.
And sometimes I'm looking at them and I'm thinking, how is it working for them?
You mean if they have more kids or...
No, completely different things.
Completely different things, but that will be more difficult for a partner to accept.
And still they have partners that accept them the way they are.
Right.
Well...
I mean, if you want to lower your standards, you can probably date anyone, right?
So I can't possibly speak as to what other people are – I can only talk with you, Emily, right?
Not what other people are doing.
But – and can I tell you something as well?
This is just sort of my particular perspective, Emily, but I think it's really tragic that this stuff is not talked about more.
And that's why I'm so glad we're having this conversation.
These are not final answers, it's just my particular thoughts and perspectives, but there is a big silence on these topics in society because people want to not upset women, right?
I mean, I know what we're talking about is upsetting to you, right?
No, really.
I'm actually glad.
You're right.
I don't hear those things.
I want to hear those things.
You should hear these things.
Yeah, you should hear these things.
Let me just see here.
I'm going to look something up for a second here because I was watching a movie the other day.
What was it called?
It was called...
It should be my list here.
Ah, The Rebound.
Oh yeah, I've seen it with Catherine Zeta-Jones.
That's right.
Yeah, it's a good movie.
I'm not going to say it's just because of her I was watching it, but...
Me too.
Me too.
But, okay, so you remember the movie, right?
Sort of.
There was like a young guy, she used to have two kids, something like that.
It was supposed to be rebound, but it turned out into something serious.
Was that the movie?
Yeah, so this woman leaves her husband, and she has two kids.
And there's this brilliant, wonderful, dedicated...
Great with kids nanny.
Mm-hmm.
He's this very smart, well-educated Jewish guy who just really wants to be her nanny.
Yeah, I remember the movie now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
So she's got to do a lot of work, and she's staying late, and the whole world is just bending around the basic reality.
She gets some genius who just wants to be her nanny, don't you know?
Mm-hmm.
And it's just, her kids immediately love him, there's no discipline problems, the kids don't seem to be at all traumatized from this sudden, wrenching divorce.
Yeah.
And it's like this complete gynocentric fantasy of, well, I'm going to get a divorce, and then there's going to be this wonderful, brilliant Jewish guy who's going to take care of my kids, and he's just going to want to be my friend, and I'm never going to seem to have to ever pay him, and he's willing to stay up late, and all of this.
And it's just like, oh my, okay, maybe if you're Catherine Tita Jones, you can get some brilliant guy to pay your name.
I don't know.
I will work on that.
Yeah, but, I mean...
And the guy's parents.
Yeah.
The nanny's parents were like, you know, you have a degree.
You could get a job in finance.
You're like, what are you, nanny?
Right, but this is the fantasy is that for, now listen, this woman decided to get divorced.
And you did not decide to become a single mother.
I mean, I'm not, right?
Because people always get that confused.
Oh, well, what if I'm a widow?
Single mom's like, nope, you're a widow.
So I'm not putting you in the same category.
But society has a very tough time saying to women, well, if you decide to get divorced, it's going to be hard.
If you decide to, or if you end up with raising a child, society is going to have to do a lot.
I mean, in terms of just like welfare and money and resources and government education and, I mean, chasing down the guy for every last nickel of alimony you can extract from his twitching hide, whatever, right?
And there's not...
I don't think there's a lot of honest conversations because...
Men are so used to just doing things to make women feel better and, oh, it's going to be all right and don't worry, a magical genius Jewish nanny will appear.
You see, this woman, she doesn't divorce and go on welfare.
She doesn't divorce and drag this guy through a family court.
She doesn't divorce and take half of his...
I mean, she just goes off and gets a job, and then society just magically aligns itself around her.
Now, again, if you're a very beautiful person like Catherine Zeta-Jones, I guess maybe that happens.
Even then, I don't know, realistically.
Right.
So, I'm not trying to say it's impossible, but what I'm trying to say is that men Men need to stop white knighting.
Men need to be honest with women.
Men need to say, you know what?
A kid is a big negative.
And it's not because he dislikes your daughter and it's not because he dislikes you.
It's biology.
You know, the reason that he would want to be in a romantic relationship for you is because of biology.
And it's the exact same biology.
And it doesn't mean it's only biological, you understand, right?
It's values and love and all that.
I get all of that.
But it's also because It's the same biology is what would make him want to have his own child, not putting his resources into raising another man's child instead of his own.
That's too selfless.
And men have really been trained into this kind of selflessness.
I don't like it.
I think it's not honest.
I think it's not honest.
It would be helpful.
It definitely would be helpful because many times I just don't know.
I really don't know what's going on through the guy's mind.
But this got me thinking.
Everything that you said, I will be thinking about it a lot more.
But it also, right now, it got me thinking, where does that leave me?
It's like I've been on this rollercoaster called my life and What am I supposed to do now, really?
Just accept things the way they are?
And the guys are always going to be not okay with that?
And, like, I don't know.
Well, I mean...
It's...
Having a child is to any man who is aware of these things and isn't totally cucked by the media and by the gynocracy and everything to just do everything to serve women and all of that, right?
right any man who is aware and honest with self is gonna say you know I like children I like your child, but I wish you came without a child.
Now, what that means is not that you're doomed, but what it means is that you have a minus in your sexual market value.
And you either then have to accept a man who's got a minus in his sexual market value, or you have to find some way to increase your sexual market value in some other way to compensate for it.
What would be a way to increase my value, that type of value?
What would be a way to increase your sexual market value?
Yeah.
Well, um.
Bull job?
I don't know.
Yeah, that's right.
Just show up with knee pads and a watermelon.
I don't know where the watermelon fits in.
No, because I think that's just basically using sex, a sexual market value, and that's not right.
Sex is to cement companionship and to create the pair bonding that helps to raise kids.
It's not just, you know, I'm going to Daze you with sexual access into having greater value because what'll happen is you'll feel cheap and he'll feel...
What can I actually do?
Because I have thought about that as well.
I have tried the other option, lowering my standards and going for a guy.
The guy that I was dating actually was someone who had not one, but a few minuses.
Unfortunately, even in that situation, he still felt like his value is higher than mine.
Once that started happening, I just couldn't take it anymore.
The second certain men that have this thing that the second they know that you know that your value is low, they will push you and they will make you feel even smaller.
He's using the fact that I'm a parent and he's always twisting it and showing it in a way like I'm always going to be less than him.
I'm always going to be not as desirable because I am a married mother and that's it.
He's always going to be better than me no matter what.
Always more women are going to be with me.
Don't do that again.
Yeah, don't do that again.
Because, I mean, that's cruel, right?
And what you're describing is very cruel.
And don't do that again.
I mean, for me, I think that the way to raise your sexual market value, there's a number of things that you can do.
Number one, of course, and I've seen your picture, you're attractive and all of that, and I'm sure you're healthy and all of that, but, you know, more exercise is always a plus, I think.
And also, Be an absolutely great person, right?
That to me is the ultimate sexual market value.
Just be a great person.
Be positive, enthusiastic, curious, empathetic, helpful, and raise your standards of how you behave with people.
I mean, it's a pretty good thing to do, I think, as a whole in general.
I am working on both those things.
Right.
So just be so great that he's like, you know what?
You have a kid, but you're such a great person.
I'm in.
I don't know how that would work as compared to other people.
I mean, I don't want to say that I'm great, but I definitely see that how in many, many other people that I've met, if you are, you can see that I have done a lot to improve myself and I have grown a lot more than other people.
No, no, listen, listen, you know, I don't give me an advertisement for yourself.
I know the circumstances.
I'm trying to say it.
Hang on, hang on.
Let me finish.
Let me finish.
Yeah.
I know the circumstances of your first husband's death, and you also just told me that you were with a guy who put you down.
Yeah.
Right?
Also earlier, you had no idea as to why a man might view you having a kid as a negative.
You have a ways to go, as we all do, right?
But you have a ways to go in terms of being the ultimate partner, right?
Because I'll tell you this.
This is, to me, just dating 101, Emily.
If I went on a date with you and I found out that you had been with a guy for a year who put you down, that would be a big red flag.
Well, he wasn't doing it the whole time.
I mean, he basically started doing it at the end of the relationship because at the beginning he was all his best behavior.
No, this is where people are being honest with you, Emily.
People don't just suddenly change towards the end of a relationship.
They don't just suddenly become different people.
They don't become new people.
They don't switch personalities.
Right?
I guarantee you that this man you were dating If he's as cruel as you say, it didn't just come out of nowhere.
It was there earlier.
Maybe you didn't see the signs.
Maybe there was something else going on that blinded you to it.
But if you were to say to me, well, my excuse for being with a guy who was cruel is that he was fine and then he became cruel, I would be like, well, people don't really change that fundamentally.
And so either you didn't notice it or you're not telling me the truth.
There was a long period of time when, because I haven't been with anyone for five years, so for a long, long time I was just wondering whether I'm just not taking things out of proportion, because for five years I pretty much forgot how a relationship should go and what is normal and what is not normal, so when he was saying these things that I'm wrong, I actually had to really ask myself, am I being wrong in expecting those things?
Am I being wrong in thinking those things?
So there were a few months when I was just really wondering and I didn't have anyone who was in a similar situation to us because most of the people that I know with, they are dating, they are dating.
No one had like this huge gap and didn't remember what it's like to be dating.
But then I would hear, Emily, I would hear that you have two sets of grandparents, right?
Yeah.
So do you not tell them about the man that you're going out with for a year?
Well, that's the thing.
I change countries, so in each country I have one.
Oh, come on!
Are you telling me they don't have the internet?
There's no Skype, there's no phone?
Come on!
Oh, I... No, it's like...
The parents of my husband, I couldn't talk to them about those kind of things.
It wasn't...
But your parents?
My parents, they were in a different country at the time, so I talked to them about it, but not a lot.
Right.
Right.
Right, so that would be another red flag for me, which is that you ended up in a relationship, I don't know if abuse is too strong a word, but you were badly treated in a relationship, and there didn't seem to be anybody who was there to set you straight or to give you a better perspective.
Well, my brother, yeah, my brother actually, he was, because I was sharing a lot with my brother, because he just felt more comfortable, so he was...
It really helped me to make the decision to just end the relationship with that person.
Well, I'm giving you some potential red flags.
You could be a better person to date.
I could be a better person to date.
There's always more that we could do.
But if you're going to – like if you ask me how to raise your sexual market value and I give you some suggestions and then you give me a whole series of excuses, I can tell you that's one way you could raise your sexual market value would be if people are giving you feedback, don't make excuses.
That doesn't mean you have to agree with them.
No, I do agree with you that it wasn't.
But if you stop making excuses, then it doesn't sound like you're into getting much feedback and that may not be optimum dating value.
I understand.
I was just doing it in some sort of automatic way.
I didn't really realize that I was doing that.
No, no, I get it.
I get it.
So that's, you know, it's not always fun to get feedback that is not always perfectly flattering.
But it is important, right?
Trust me, I get lots of feedback.
I get lots of feedback on this planet, and it's not all flattering.
But, you know, that's how we...
How we improve.
If people give us good feedback that's helpful, then we improve because we listen to it.
If people give us really terrible feedback that's negative, then we have other choices when it comes to those relationships.
Those would be my suggestions.
Okay, I'll move on to the last caller.
Thank you so much for the call.
Thank you.
Emily, I really do sympathize with the choices and the situation that you're in.
It is a difficult situation, and I hope that our conversation was helpful to some degree.
It was.
It was.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you everyone so much for these wonderful conversations which I look forward to so much every week.
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Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful weekend.
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