Nov. 13, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:55:46
3496 Word Saladpalooza! - Call In Show - November 11th, 2016
Question 1: [2:16] - “Is the power of institutional propaganda diminished by alternative media in the 21st century?”Question 2: [40:30] - “What does Stefan think about relations between Russia, the United States and West in general? How will they develop now, after Donald J. Trump has been elected President?”Question 3: [1:02:56] - “I am a longtime fan of the show and have found your insights into relationships quite helpful, specifically your emphasis on the importance of shared values. However, what does one do when they have found someone who shares core values but disagrees on other fundamentals like the religious raising of children, where to live, and other future uncertainties?”Question 4: [1:58:20] - “As the media pushes the narrative that Donald Trump creates bullies, I see multiple articles on how to talk to children about the election results. What message would you tell parents to give their children?”Question 5: [2:20:32] – “What do you think of the philosophical idea ‘know thyself?’ Can we formulate an updated model of human identity that starts with classical notions of body/mind/soul, then takes modern ideas into account? What would that look like?”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
Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So do you get your news from the mainstream media or from what is called the alternative media, also known as the potentially honest media?
Well, the first caller wanted to know what the difference was.
Is the mainstream media totally dedicated to propaganda?
Is alternative media free of that?
And we had a great conversation about what's going on in the media, where it's coming from, where it is, and I think where it's going to go.
Now the second is, what is going to happen between Russia and the United States over the next little while?
With Donald Trump, with Vladimir Putin, what is going on?
Is there going to be the great temptation to go into the Middle East, to go into Syria and maybe work with Russia and try and solve some of these problems?
What are the dangers of that?
Now, the third caller says that his girlfriend is not assertive.
She gets pushed around by her mom a lot.
He would really like it if she was more assertive and dealt with this in a more positive and proactive way.
She wasn't available, sadly, to come on the call.
But I think you'll find it interesting the direction I took it.
It's very easy to criticize other people for things you could be doing yourself.
The fourth caller had a question, how can people explain Donald Trump's presidency to children?
It wasn't quite a role play, but it was a very good conversation about that.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
And it's good clarification for adults as well, I think.
Now, the fifth caller seemed to have a lot of And he did really try to arrange them in a way that made sense.
I had some questions about the sense that it made and the actionability of his words.
And I think I was fairly nice, maybe not hugely nice, but I do always try and get people to translate thoughts or ideas into actionable things.
You know, what can you check off and say you did today?
So I had a really enjoyable conversation with that guy.
You might want to check it out on video.
Sort of like the Flat Earth guy.
It was, I think, worth getting the video as well as the audio.
You can get that, of course, at youtube.com slash freedomainradio.
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All right, up first today we have Aaron.
Aaron wrote in and said, Is the power of institutional propaganda diminished by alternative media in the 21st century?
That's from Aaron.
Hello, Aaron.
How are you doing tonight?
Hello, Stefan.
I'm good, cheers, mate.
How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.
I'm flying high, flying wide.
I'll bet you are, I'll bet you are.
A lot of hard work you guys put in, a lot of hard work.
Yes, I'm glad.
And it's always good when the hard work actually pays off in a way that you want.
Because hard work that doesn't kind of sucks.
It sure does, mate.
It sure does.
Thanks for having me on the show, Steph.
I really appreciate it.
My pleasure.
So, Hannah, you know, I was thinking about this sort of today.
And the question for me is, what should we use?
I can always say alternative media and so on.
I don't know that that's...
Quite right.
It's sort of like saying, is the car the alternate horse?
I don't know.
I think it's a separate category.
I think that the real journalism, the real media, the real honesty, the real stuff is going on where there aren't Two major classes of interference between communication and reception.
Number one is advertisers.
And it's not that the advertisers have any sort of particularly negative goals at hand.
But what they do have is, you know, they kind of don't want to ruffle too many feathers.
You know, like if you're an advertiser, you don't really want to ruffle too many feathers.
Yeah.
So there's that challenge.
And we can see that on YouTube.
And again, through nobody's particular fault, people don't want to have their tampon ads in some war analysis or something.
And so there's that aspect where advertisers just don't want to be associated with stuff that's controversial.
And so there's that limitation on what a lot of people feel that they're able to do.
That's one.
Now, another one, of course, is politics, political correctness, and a fear of retaliation from the left.
A fear of retaliation from the left is a significant barrier to a lot of people being honest in what they do and causes a lot of people to self-censor.
And I think, you know, there are lots of people in what I call the alternative media sources who are terrible.
I mean, they're just terrible.
They're as biased, if not more biased.
There are some people in the mainstream media who are honest and forthright and dedicated to what they do.
Not a lot, but some.
So I sort of don't want to say, well, you know, mainstream media is dishonest and alternative media is honest and so on.
There's a lot of propaganda coming out of the alternative media as well.
But I think there's just more capacity for honesty if you want it.
Now, of course, there's a lot of people who don't want honesty.
And there's a lot of growth that's not very possible for people who start off badly.
Like if you start off with a particular message, maybe you outgrow that message after a while.
But of course, the problem is that you've built your audience that way.
And a lot of people seem to have a significant amount of concern about alienating their audience, you know, while peeling away from a core message.
Now, I don't, in fact, I'd be sort of annoyed if my audience wasn't annoyed with me from time to time because I know I get annoyed with myself from time to time as new information comes in.
I'm like, oh, I thought I had this down and I don't.
So I think that there is people who really focus on honesty, on challenging their audience, on following reason and evidence wherever it leads.
And then there are people who are trapped by advertisers, by political correctness, by fear or by an existing audience base that they don't want to alienate.
And I think there's a little bit more of that or a lot more of that in the mainstream media.
But it's not like the alternative media is also lickety splitty honest, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, it does.
I would say kind of, I mean, I've been doing a lot of research recently from looking at, I'm actually a web designer, so we kind of look at, instead of just putting a website together, we have to find our target audience.
And then we sort of stumbled across participatory culture with memes, you know, and how people absorb that.
So, what I was thinking is, I was just reading a book on politics and propaganda, and it was an interesting quote.
And now, when I sort of put all this together, and the field that I'm attempting to work in, shall we say, tough mark here, I tell you.
This quote is, propaganda does not often come marching towards us, waving swastikas and chanting, SIG HELL! Its real power lies in its capacity to conceal itself, to appear neutral, to coalesce completely and invisible with the values and accept power symbols of the given society.
So that made me think with like today, I mean, if that's how propaganda works, we have like today's propaganda from, I mean, could you say alternative media channels are a form of propaganda?
For example, we have mainstream media reports, story through video and images.
Then that sort of creates, I suppose, a natural subconscious thought to the audience, which then creates a public reaction.
And then alternative media then flares up, which in turn can enhance political oppositions to be in power.
For example, Trump.
Does this make sense, where I'm coming from?
No.
It might, but not to me as yet.
So if you could be a bit...
I'm trying to boil it down to a sentence or two.
Okay, sure.
So basically, the idea of the way we look at propaganda...
If we go back, say, to World War II, baptism on fire, I'm sure you're familiar with it.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, hang on.
I don't think you're boiling it down to a sentence or two if we're going back to World War II, so try again, please.
Okay.
Propaganda is about persuading the mass, okay?
Whether it's objective or subjective, is alternative media a form of propaganda?
No, and your definition is too broad, right?
I mean, I attempt to persuade the masses.
Does that mean I'm a propagandist?
Well, no, because I'm subject to reason and evidence.
It's how you know philosophy from propaganda is differentiated by its conformity to reason and evidence in the same way that science...
It's distinct from mysticism because of its conformity to reason and evidence.
So attempting to convince the masses is perfectly fine.
I mean, that's what they're there for, right?
I mean, you know, all specialists attempt to get their knowledge and insights out to non-specialists, which is why people tell you to brush your teeth, you know what I mean?
So wanting to convince the masses is perfectly fine, and that's what I think all responsible intellectuals should be doing, not hiding out in academia, but attempting to convince the masses.
So that's not the definition of propaganda.
And I don't know what the technical definition of propaganda is, but I would say that propaganda is attempting to change people's minds to a particular perspective through grim repetition combined with the threat of negative repercussions for a failure to conform.
And that to me is so you've got repetition, you've got falsehood, and you have punishment for failure to conform.
That to me is...
Because if you have a good argument, you don't need to keep repeating it over and over again, and you certainly don't need to threaten people who don't conform to your argument.
Now, does that mean that there shouldn't be negative consequences for people who fail to respect reason and evidence?
Sure, but let me give you an example, right?
So I had a meal today with some friends, and I was chatting with one of their kids, and she was saying that in school, The day after Donald Trump got elected, that the teachers were just roundly railing against Donald Trump and how bad it was and how terrible it was and a racist and a this and a that and how awful it is.
And, well, a teacher is in a power position with regards to the students.
And so a teacher should not be at all, at all.
It should be wrong.
It's completely wrong for a teacher to forcefully and aggressively push their political opinions down the kids' throats.
I mean, whether it's pro-Donald Trump or pro-Hillary Clinton or whatever, it's not...
It's not an equal position.
It is a position of power and it puts the children in an awkward position, to put it mildly, and it puts the parents in an awkward position because to the parents when I call up the principal and say, hey, why are your teachers propagandizing my kids with this leftist propaganda?
Because, you know, you're concerned that your kids are going to face some sort of negative repercussions.
And so...
That is propaganda.
It's all over the place.
It's really repetitive.
And it's not based on evidence.
It's not based on reason.
And of course, in particular, I think propaganda coalesces around particular political goals or objectives.
So, yeah, I just, I wanted to sort of be, you know, false and misleading information that is aggressively and repetitively opined.
And particularly when you have a captive audience, you know, like in school in particular, the kids are forced to be there, the parents are forced to pay.
And so it's really a captive audience.
And so if you've got the captive audience and there's fears of a negative repercussion for speaking your mind, then you're in the presence of propaganda.
You know, like people...
Disagree with me all the time and that's perfectly fine.
That's natural.
That's healthy and beneficial for me.
So I'm not like, you disagreed with me.
I'm going to find you and mess you up.
I mean, that's not how things go in philosophy.
And so where you feel that there's going to be significant negative repercussions, there's a particular power structure.
And, you know, with the media as well.
I mean, the media...
Mike Cernovich talks about this on his DangerPlay.com website and on Twitter.
The media, I mean, we call it the hoaxing media.
They're beyond propaganda, just straight out hoaxing.
But, you know, reporters for many years have had the power to target people and to write negative things about them and try and destroy their lives.
And there's been almost nothing that people can do about it.
It's the way it works, right?
And that's a lot of Power.
So people feel, okay, well, if I talk about maybe I'm pro-Donald Trump or I'm pro-whatever, well, you know, I'm going to be written about negatively or people are going to contact my employer.
There's negative repercussions.
That's, I think, when you're in the realm of this kind of programming.
And alternative media just doesn't seem to be that interested in this social punishment stuff that goes on.
So those are my sort of thoughts.
And there are honest people in the mainstream media, though I think fewer than there are in the alternative media just because of incentives.
But there certainly is propaganda that keeps coming out from the alternative media.
So I think those are important aspects as well.
I agree.
For example, if propaganda is supposed to be concealed, doesn't...
When, say, these alternative media channels say, no, that's propaganda, that's propaganda, that's propaganda, isn't that a bit too obvious to be propaganda?
Well, no, it depends what you consume.
It depends what you consume.
So if you consume the mainstream media, then...
about Donald Trump.
And just as you did about Brexit, and we're just taking the latest example, it's still fresh and vivid in people's minds.
And so for those of us who are not sort of monopolistic consumers of mainstream media, like I read it because it's partly what I do.
It's my job.
I have to understand what's going on out there.
But most people, they just read the mainstream media, they watch the news, and they go back You can see this in the chattering classes in America and around the world.
How could we have got it so wrong?
It's like blaming reality for not conforming to your fantasies and your expectations.
The mainstream media has not pursued reality, reason and evidence at all in this cycle.
And they have skewed polls and they have presented a monolith of opinion that is now causing a reality break with significant sections of the population.
So if you're in the mainstream media, you're going to push out this narrative that Hillary was winning, that Trump is deplorable, he's negative.
It's just the last vestigial remnants of horrible, hateful white racism and misogyny and phobias and blah, blah, blah that's driving this thing.
So don't worry, Hillary's in the bag and it's going to be a sunny day because it would just be unutterably evil if Donald Trump got it and all of this nonsense, right?
And so people who consume mainstream media garbage like this over and over and over again, this shapes their reality.
I mean, it's not like they're doing their own polls.
It's not like, I mean, probably the most, if you're just out there consuming mainstream media, probably all of your friends are voting for Hillary Clinton or at least not for Donald Trump and share your view.
So you're living in this bubble.
And when you live in this bubble, a bubble is dangerous.
A bubble always pops, and then there's a crash, and then there's a depression, and then there's hysteria, and there's mass upset.
And this is really important.
I remember when I was a kid.
Let me tell you a story about when I was a kid.
It just popped into my head, and I think it's relevant.
It's a story when I was a kid.
A friend of my mother's came over.
I must have been about maybe five years old, four or five years old.
And She was going to go out to bingo.
She came by for dinner or whatever, and she was going to go to bingo.
And she said to me that what I got was that she was going to give me £18.
Now, £18 was like a crazy amount of money back then, obviously for a kid, but it was a huge amount of money, maybe hundreds of dollars now.
And...
That was my understanding that she was going to come back and give me $18 when she won.
I was a little kid.
I didn't really understand much about this.
Now, it turns out when she came back, she gave me five pennies.
You know, I'm expecting 18 pounds.
I'm getting five pennies.
I was inconsolable.
I mean, very upset.
Now, it turns out that what she'd said was if she won the jackpot, if she got straight bingo, I mean, I guess you get the names like a word search or whatever, But if she had won the jackpot, which was like, I don't know, 500 pounds or whatever, then she was gonna give me 18 pounds.
I don't know why it was 18 pounds, but I certainly remember the number very vividly.
So I had this expectation.
She was gonna go out.
She was gonna do this mystery game called Bingo, which as far as I knew was the name of a doggy in the window.
And she was gonna come back and give me 18 pounds.
And she came back and she gave me five pennies.
Well, my expectation and the reality We're not in sync, and I was very upset.
I cried, you know, and I didn't have a tantrum.
I was not getting much of a tantrum kid.
Well, as a teenager, maybe a little bit, but I got really, really upset because that was my expectation, and then when reality crashed into my expectation, it was far lower than I expected.
I had a very strong reaction.
Now, I did, of course, have the excuse of being four or five years old, which, you know, I think is quite important, but that was a huge crash.
Now, the media set up That Hillary Clinton, A, Hillary Clinton was going to win for sure.
And B, if Donald Trump won, it was going to be the worst thing ever to happen in the history of civilization.
You know, like, maybe only slightly behind a giant comet hitting the earth, Lucifer's hammer style.
But that was going to be, right?
So this was the expectation that was set up.
And this is what people were confident about.
And a lot of people, I mean, I've read these things online where people said, well, I thought she...
I thought she was going to win for sure.
The media said she was up so many points and the polls said she was going to win.
So I thought she was going to win for sure.
So I didn't even bother to go and vote.
Now I find out that the polls were all wrong.
The expectation was all wrong.
If I had known it was going to be this bad, I would have gone out and voted.
I feel cheated.
I feel angry.
That's what some people say.
So they're angry.
Of course they're angry at the wrong people, but they're angry anyway.
The second thing is, of course, that people feel that something Mysteriously wrong has happened.
Like, if she was this far ahead, and that's what the media kept telling me, if Hillary was this far ahead and she lost something, some cheating, something has gone on, something bad has happened, something...
I don't need to respect this because I was promised that Hillary was going to win.
That's what all the facts said.
So if Hillary didn't win, it's somehow illegitimate.
I was promised 18 pounds and all I got were five lousy pennies.
Wah, wah, wah!
And...
These expectations are very dangerous.
I mean, the mainstream media, I think, bears a lot of responsibility for the riots that are happening now.
Maybe not directly causally responsible, but they set up this environment where people had these very high expectations and were scared of Donald Trump to the point where, like, now their expectations have crashed and they've realized that they've been lied to because there are other voices out there.
Who, you know, Bill Mitchell, Mike Cernovich, Scott Adams, and other people who correctly, Alex Jones, Diamond and Silk, who correctly anticipated what was going to happen and were accurate.
And these were all people that the mainstream media were crazy, were irrational, were stupid, were right-wing, which I guess means the same thing to a lot of people.
And so what's happening right now in America is there's a massive reality adjustment And it's very wrenching for people who've been propagandized about the election by the mainstream media.
It's very emotionally difficult for them to change that suddenly, to realize how much they'd been manipulated, how much they'd been lied to, how much they'd been propagandized.
Now, of course, some of them are going to run to alternative media outlets that are more left-wing and, again, manipulating reality and making up all of this nonsense and crap and all that stuff.
Because they need that fix, right?
So when you get a break with reality, or a break to reality, right, when your matrix gets shattered, right, one of the big temptations is to try and find the drug of unreality.
And they're having the same kind of temper tantrum that I had when I got five pennies instead of 18 pounds, because I'd misunderstood the sequence of what was going to happen, or maybe it wasn't explained that well to me, I was only four or five.
So, So, propaganda is very, it's an addictive substance, and breaking from it is hard, like any other drug, right?
Unreality gives you positive reinforcement, because unreality lets you make up the reality that you want, right?
And in the reality that the mainstream media wanted, Donald Trump was just straight out evil, and Hillary Clinton was wonderful, and was going to win.
Now, rather than deal with the facts, they promoted the fantasy, and And sold the fantasy.
But, you know, they're just a drug dealer, right?
A drug dealer's got nothing to do unless there's people who want the drug.
And so lots of people wanted that drug.
Donald Trump is evil.
Hillary Clinton's going to win.
It's in the bag.
No problem.
Blah-de-blah-de-blah.
And they just set up this easy thing where, and I was reading this stuff in newspapers, like, I cannot comprehend how Donald Trump has any support whatsoever.
So he's so evil.
He makes fun of disabled people.
Right?
And so there's the drug dealer, and then there's the drug users, and they're in a symbiotic relationship.
And when the drug runs out, and they've run out of unreality, they ran out of unreality this week on Tuesday.
They ran out of unreality because Donald Trump got elected.
They ran out of unreality.
So the drug, no longer available.
It's done.
Now, people can go and try and get cheap substitutes in the alternative media.
People tell them it was all rigged, or that, you know, America is much more evil and racist than anyone thought.
Angry white people, I know.
But yeah, the mainstream media is, they're out of the drug, and so people are having withdrawals.
And this is a very, this is existential withdrawal.
It's not like your body just needs heroin or needs to, whatever it is, right?
But this is an existential withdrawal, which is, why were people lying to me?
Why did I want their lies?
What am I gonna do without these lies?
What have I not processed that's important?
And some people will take the honorable route and say, okay, well, the unreality drug is not available anymore, so I'm going to figure out what I did wrong, how to fix it, how to be better.
And other people are just going to burn shit down.
I mean, what can I say, right?
I mean, some people are going to thrash around in their withdrawal apoplexy and their DTs, and they're just going to burn down neighborhoods, and that's going to be their temper tantrum.
You know, like a four-year-old...
Wildly disappointed with a giant can of kerosene and who's six feet tall.
So that's my sort of thought about propaganda with regards to the mainstream media, how dangerous and how addictive it is.
But the wonderful thing is that there is now significant alternatives to propaganda, and that's why it's more obvious.
It's not obvious to people who just consume the same stuff, right?
If you just go to the same websites every day and you just don't read anything else, okay, well then, But then you're making the choice to be uninformed.
Everybody knows there's a multiplicity of opinions.
Like, people who knew that there was Donald Trump, knew that there was a great deal of support for him, knew that he beat out 17 other contenders to be the Republican nominee.
They knew that he was very popular, and they had a choice.
They had a choice.
They could say, well, he's just popular because there are nasty, evil people, and he's nasty, and he's evil, and la-la-la-la-la, hands in the ears, I reject reality, I'm not going to be curious, I'm not going to find any facts.
Well, Or they could say, well, he's popular.
That's an interesting, troubling for me, but interesting social phenomenon.
I really better explore why it is.
And of course, if they explore why it is, why he's popular, well, then they're going to find out some facts and they're going to start to understand what's going on.
I understand why Hillary Clinton was popular.
I mean, I really do.
And I fully get it.
It's not a mystery to me.
And so, yeah, people have this choice.
Now, if you just say, well, anybody who disagrees with me is evil, well, you get You don't have to explore any alternative viewpoints, even though these people probably say they really like diversity.
They only like exactly the same opinions about diversity that they have, which is not really diverse.
But you get to just be self-righteous and be right and be moral and everyone who hates you is evil.
You know, there's this funny meme floating around, everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler, a leftist guide to online political discussions.
And it's true.
I mean, this is basically, you can just explode an incoherent Rage and contempt and have all of that moral self-posturing and everyone who hates you or everyone who dislikes you, everyone who disagrees with you, everyone who differs from you is just evil.
And that's your addiction.
That's your drug of choice.
But it's, you know, if Hillary gets in, well, you get that drug for another four years, don't you?
And if Hillary doesn't get in, then you're suddenly cut off.
So like all of these strategies, it's quite a big risk.
And in this case, it just didn't pay off.
And I mean, that's good.
It's healthy for people.
You know, it's good to not win.
You know, it's healthy to not get what you want.
That's what's called character.
You don't need character.
If everything goes your way, you need character for when things don't go your way, when you lose.
And we can see the character of the people who've lost because it's being amply revealed.
Here's where I'm done, sort of my little intro bit, but if you want to add in your thoughts, please feel free.
Yeah, no, that's really interesting.
But I was thinking, I mean, apparently, are you familiar with the alternative media channel RT, Russia Today?
Yeah, I've been on it a couple of times.
Yeah, I see often other alternative media channels, they reference them quite a lot.
Well, apparently, they're actually funded by the federal budget of Russia, which I suppose in a way is an institutional type state.
And it just makes me wonder what other sources of media out there are actually run.
You mean like the BBC? Well exactly, sure.
Oh yeah, there's lots.
Publicly funded media is all over the place.
Here in Canada we have the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
And I think PBS gets a significant amount of government money in the States and political ad campaigns and all that.
So yeah, I mean, it's all over the world.
And it's not just the media, like the news.
I mean, the arts.
And one of the massive, massive, massive catastrophic mistakes that the West has made is to allow government funding of the arts.
The moment you have government funding of the arts, you have soft censorship, de facto censorship.
Because you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
So the grand artistic tradition of criticizing the government has vanished from the West.
I don't mean to underplay, or this may sound hyper, but it's absolutely true.
The grand tradition of criticizing government as a whole, as an institution, of keeping checks on its power, has vanished from the West.
And that's because so much artistic So many artistic endeavors are dependent on either state's funding directly, or they're dependent upon unions that are gaining enormous benefits from the state.
And so, there used to be a wonderful tradition in the West of artists criticizing state power, and they provided a significant check.
You always need a plan B. Plan A is the fourth estate, right?
The media is supposed to, newspapers are supposed to control the size of the state, but that's all gone by the wayside since they all went leftist.
Now they only care about the size of the state when there's right-wingers in power.
They love the state when there's left-wingers in power, which is what happened to the anti-war movement after Obama got in.
Gone, baby, gone.
And so artists have backed away from criticizing the state.
Unless the state is...
Owned or controlled by somebody on the right, in which case they will attack the state.
But really, they're just attacking the right.
They're not attacking the state.
And so this has been a huge disaster.
And I can't tell you, like, I have enough contempt for academics who are hiding out in the bushels and the reeds of state power.
But the artists are even worse.
And I know this having spent some time in the art world, in theatre school, in the theatre community and so on.
Relentless leftists.
Of course they are.
Of course they are.
Because leftists will want to spend more money on the arts.
So, of course they're going to be leftists.
And this has corrupted the entire social discourse in the West.
And people don't understand that.
Just how much social discourse has been corrupted.
And artistic discourse, you know, politics is downstream from culture.
And culture is made by the arts.
And the arts are enslaved to the government.
And this is why governments keep growing.
I mean, government schools have a lot to do with it as well, obviously.
And I've talked about that before.
But the corruption of the artistic community is virtually uniform and virtually complete.
I mean, if you go back to like, I don't know, some old Michael Keaton movie called Pacific Heights to have any kind of property rights message about anything.
I mean, it's insane.
I mean, when was the last time you saw a mainstream movie criticizing taxation or even showing that taxation is a difficult thing?
No.
See, when families go through hardship in American movies, it's always because those nasty, evil capitalist insurance companies have raised their insurance or they can't get healthcare.
It's always some damn problem at the free market.
When was the last time you said, oh man, you know, the government got in, the Democrats got in, they just jacked up our taxes.
What are we going to do?
What do we have to cut?
Do we have to cut summer camp for the kids?
Do we have to move to a smaller house?
We can't afford these taxes.
When was the last time you saw anything like that in a movie?
But these are conversations that happen hundreds of millions of times around America every single year.
People just complaining about taxes, upset about taxes.
When have you seen a Hollywood movie complaining about taxes?
No, no!
Radioactive lizards from outer space?
Yes.
Taxes?
Right?
So this is pure propaganda.
As soon as artists get their money from the state, as soon as artists get their money from the state or are dependent upon the state, For getting anything done, like Hollywood is totally dependent.
Oh, why are there so many leftists in Hollywood?
Because the unions control the movie-making industry.
You can't make a movie without appeasing the unions, and the unions are dependent on state power.
And of course you get a lot of tax breaks, and you get a lot of subsidies and all that from the state.
So the moment that the arts are dependent on the state, all you're going to get is propaganda.
Like literally the next day.
It's lunatic how this is not talked about more.
But yeah.
And of course this is not even a mention of People who invest, I don't know, Carla Slim wanted to do, invest a couple of hundred million dollars in the New York Times, which was very pro-Hillary.
Well, after Donald Trump got in, Carla Slim lost $5 billion.
Okay, so he spent less than one-tenth of that in an attempt to maintain the $5 billion value, and this is like day three of the potential Trump presidency, so...
You know, he invested a couple hundred million in the hopes of saving at least five billion.
That's a pretty good investment, particularly given how close the election ended up being.
And so, yeah, Jeff Bezos from Amazon owns the Washington Post.
And you have to face the market.
And this...
I mean, of course, the Washington Post faces the market.
I just want to make sure I'm clear about this.
The New York Times faces the market, but they're in the business of making news.
They're in the business of making narrative.
They're not in the business of reporting facts.
This is really, really important.
When you're in the business of reporting facts and investigating what's actually important in the world and what's really going on for real, for factual stuff, right?
The stuff that goes on at Gateway Pundit and Got News and other people that we've had on the show who I respect their dedication to reason and evidence.
Well, then you're getting the facts and you're delivering them to the people.
But delivering a narrative to the people, that's what most of the mainstream media is all about.
And that's why when the narrative breaks down and reality intrudes, because non-matrix inhabitants like Donald Trump supporters are colliding against the You know, opium-laced late Chinese empire addicts of unreality, you get this kind of hysteria.
So, lots of government-sponsored media, but the government-sponsored, controlled, and influenced art, to me, is even more important than the media, even though if it were to change, it would take a lot longer to turn around.
Okay, yeah, wow.
For example, Stefan, if I like your channel and something's reported by mainstream media and then I research it, the thing is that algorithms will take over on social media platforms or alternate media channels, whatever, and that sort of subconsciously plants thoughts, does it not, into the user.
So once you're sort of already trapped in there, the algorithms within the internet are feeding you these thoughts, I suppose, in a way.
So what's to say that, you know, governments or whatever states or anything aren't pumping concealed propaganda within, say, advertisements?
Sorry, you mean that you like a bunch of stuff on Facebook and then Facebook serves you up similar things to look at in the future?
Is that what you mean?
Yeah, sure.
So, you know, I follow you, I subscribe, and then I get all sort of different types of channels come up relative to what you do.
So, obviously, the same with Facebook, the same with Twitter, and the same with YouTube.
I don't think it's propaganda to say, you know, like if you're on Netflix and you just watched, I don't know, Freaky Friday, then it might suggest The Parent Trap or whatever, right?
So, you know, advertisers do want to figure out, you know, where you are and what you're doing and how they can appeal to you.
And...
I've no problem.
That to me is not propaganda.
That's just, you know, if you like this band, well, you probably like this band too.
That's not propaganda in particular.
It is easy for people to get caught into these ideological loops.
But, you know, the much more important thing, and again, I'm not saying you're ignoring it, but most people do.
Oh, government schools.
I mean, they trap you for six hours a day.
There are negative repercussions, or at least fear negative repercussions for nonconformity, a heavy socialist element.
I mean, these kids, these teachers are all dependent upon state power.
I mean, even teachers in Canada are constantly railing against Donald Trump.
Why?
Because if Donald Trump gets in, I'm sorry, when Donald Trump gets in, if he's able to do what Reagan promised but never achieved, get rid of the Department of Education, if he's able to Give charter schools, if you're able to give parent choice, vouchers, whatever you – well, then competition is going to come into the government schools and the shitty teachers are going to get flushed down the toilet.
And of course, you know, if you're a shitty teacher and you don't want to up your game, then you hate Donald Trump unconsciously because he's threatening your job security.
You see, you don't have enough self-knowledge to know that you being a shitty teacher is what is threatening your job security.
You sucking the life out of kids is threatening your job security.
You having power over those children and frightening their parents with potential negative consequences.
You being a dusty chalk lined troll basically outlined like a body chalk outline on the death of children's opportunities to reason.
The fact that you suck and could improve if maybe you'd look at yourself in the mirror and say, I suck.
I should not suck.
I should suck less.
Thank you for the wet fish of reality coming.
Smack!
Shacking away from Donald Trump.
Oh wow, why am I scared of Donald Trump?
What's so terrible about him?
Oh yeah, school choice vouchers.
Wow, I might lose my job if there's choice in parents.
If parents are forced to pay for me and forced to send their kids to me, I'm actually going to be a decent goddamn teacher.
No!
Donald Trump is evil.
Donald Trump is racist.
Bullshit.
They're just afraid of reality, afraid of consequences, afraid of choice.
Afraid of choice.
Afraid of choice.
These are the same people who said, you know, I can't believe, I can't believe we disenfranchised blacks.
Didn't even give them the vote.
And women, women didn't get the vote.
Women couldn't choose where political power went.
Blast couldn't choose where political power went.
Yeah, that was terrible stuff.
Terrible stuff.
So how about you give parents the right to vote with vouchers?
How their children's education goes.
Oh, no!
That's evil!
See, the disenfranchisement of blacks in the past, totally evil.
Disenfranchisement of parents in the present through forced payment for government education, but no choice, no options, no competition.
Oh, that's totally great.
Fantastic.
See, it's all the past disenfranchisement is bad.
Present disenfranchisement is fantastic.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And of course, you know, we've talked to people who are pursuing this.
Maybe they'll get back on it.
I'm sure they will when the Supreme Court gets realigned, Trumpified.
You know, should teachers be forced to pay union dues, 90% of which, when it goes to political contributions, goes to the Democrat Party, when the teachers may not be Democrats?
Of course that's wrong.
Of course that's wrong.
But...
If Donald Trump gets in and succeeds, then the political power of the unions is going to be crippled, I believe, and bad teachers are going to get fired, and good teachers are going to make more money, and bad administrators are going to get fired, and good administrators are going to make more money, and if we care a damn about children or the future or anything like that, we should all be cheering that.
And of course, there are teachers who suck.
And we've all had them.
We've all had them in our faces.
There are teachers who suck.
Of course they're going to dislike it.
I mean, yes.
You know, if I'm at a karaoke contest and Freddie Mercury steps up, I don't want to hate him.
I'll be like, yeah, here's the mic, man.
Good for you.
But no, I mean, it's...
It's inevitable.
The propaganda that goes on in government schools.
Terrible.
I mean, you talk about how artists get owned by the government when the government pays their bills.
Well, with teachers, it's bad.
It's as bad.
And at least you have a choice to consume shitty government art.
You don't have a choice to pay for it.
You do have a choice to consume it.
Most people don't have a choice but to consume shitty government education from shitty government teachers.
But if it works well in the U.S., well, it may spread a little.
All right, man.
I'm going to move on to the next caller, but thank you very much for your question.
It's very excellent.
Most excellent.
No, thank you very much for having me, Stefan.
Really appreciate that.
My pleasure.
Thanks for the question.
Thanks.
Bye.
Hey, Mark.
How are you doing?
Hello, Stefan.
I'm fine.
Thank you.
I'm glad that you have me.
It's a pleasure.
Up next, we have Mark.
Mark wrote in and said, What does Stefan think about relations between Russia and the United States, and the West in general?
How will they develop now after Donald Trump is elected President of the United States?
That's from Mark.
So, relations with Russia.
It's a big question.
Now, my first impulse is to say I don't want the American government to have, quote, relations with anyone.
With anyone.
You get STDs.
Status transmitted diseases.
Because what do I want?
Well, of course, I want for people to trade back and forth.
Russians have nice vodka.
People in America still write books about the free market.
So, you know, there could be trade.
Drunkenness for Austrian economics.
I don't know.
So people should trade, and I'd love it if the governments barely talked to each other.
So that is sort of my first thought, which is don't have relations with Russia.
Just leave each other alone.
Focus on your own internal issues.
Both countries focus on fixing things within your own population.
Don't deal with each other.
Don't work with each other.
Just stay away from each other and let the people in your countries trade back and forth as they see fit.
That's sort of my first thought about all of this stuff.
Now, the great temptation of American-Russian relations is Syria, is the Middle East, is all of this stuff that's going on.
As you probably know, and I've talked about this in The Truth About World War III, The American government is funding the rebels against Assad and the leader of Syria.
And the Russians are fighting with the government troops.
This is where the big flashpoint is Hillary's no-fly zone.
It could lead to a genuine no-fly zone in that all of the airplanes and human beings have been melted to the surface of the planet and can't really get up there anymore.
But there is this great temptation that Trump may have.
To join with Russia, and I think he wants to, to join with Russia to deal with ISIS. And it's tempting.
I get it.
It's really tempting.
Let's just go in there and just get this ugly group in the Middle East.
We could just go in there with the military and we're going to fix it.
Well, let's just see how this has worked before.
This is just off the top of my head.
Well, they overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran, and what was it, 53, 52, 53, 1953, and installed the Shah, and he wasn't very popular, and fundamentalist clerics took over Ayatollah Khomeini and so on, and Iran has been a giant, ugly, vicious problem.
Not so Persian and Zoroastrian anymore ever since.
Sudan Hussein.
Sudan Hussein was, of course, a bad guy, and he was.
And you're going to go in and fix all of that, right?
Go in and fix it.
We tried, you know, Gulf War in the 90s tried it when they attacked Kuwait.
And how did that work out?
Well, he got back into power, and then 9-11 happened, which we'll get to in a second, and then go and attack again.
And then America was in there for, I don't know, what, 11 or 12 years.
Pulled out!
Power vacuum.
Boom!
In comes ISIS. Do you really think going back in again is going to solve the problem?
Ooh, let's use the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to take down the Russian Empire because Russia invaded the graveyard of empires known as Afghanistan.
So let's train them on how to shoot down a $25 million MiG jet with a $20,000 Stinger missile.
Economic imbalance is going to take down the Russian economy.
Boom!
Done!
Oh, wait, the Taliban?
That's what we get next?
Okay, well, we're going to take care of the Taliban, except now, after 13 years of war, the Taliban control more land mass in Afghanistan than they did in 2001.
So, that hasn't really been working out very well now, has it?
Oh, I've got a great idea.
Let's arm rebels who say they want to fight against the government in Syria...
Oh, did they turn out to be Al-Qaeda and ISIS? Did we actually end up founding and funding and arming ISIS? Oh, okay.
Well, that didn't work out very well, now did it?
Maybe we'll just help people overthrow the Libyan dictator, Gaddafi.
Oh, did that cause the entire collapse of Libya and a massive internal struggle?
Oh, I know.
Maybe we can help the Arab Spring.
Oh, did we end up funding the Muslim Brotherhood who took over in Egypt and then there had to be a violent revolution to overthrow those lunatics?
Oh, I mean...
I've made this case before.
I'll make it very briefly.
Let's go help the allies in World War I. Oh, did we give them so much additional strength on the land that they ended up crushing Germany.
Germany tried to provoke a revolution in Russia and succeeded to get rid of their Eastern Front War.
Then you get 70 years of communism.
Tens of millions of people killed.
Cold War.
And the allies with the additional strength of the American army in 1917 to 1918 were able to crush the Germans so effectively that they could impose a brutal treaty of Versailles, which some people think was part of a trigger to World War II. So the one thing that needs to be learned from these histories is that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
They don't know.
Like, they may know immediately what we're going to go in and we're going to bomb ISIS, we're going to do this, we're going to, you know, fix this, we're going to take back Fallujah, we're going to liberate this, that, the other, right?
But what happens afterwards?
Nobody can predict.
They don't know.
War is a government program.
Should be as limited and minimal as possible.
In other words, if somebody's invading you or just about to invade you, go for it.
You know?
If Saddam Hussein is able to command a giant armada of destroyers and aircraft carriers to go to America and they're sailing across the, I guess, Atlantic it would be or Pacific.
I don't know which way they'd come.
Atlantic, I guess, through the Mediterranean.
Well, then, OK, fine.
Then send your bombers out and bomb the ships or whatever.
But the idea that you're going to go out with your army and arm people and fund people and destroy this and blow up that and fix that and install this government and bribe these people and sell arms to these people and don't sell arms to these other people and you're going to get anything other than an endless tsunami of blowback.
That's always going to happen.
It's always going to happen.
The law of unintended consequences, the law of blowback, the law of you don't know what the hell you're doing is foundational.
And it's really tempting.
We just go in there, we'll fix ISIS. Well, then what?
Who are you going to...
You're either going to go in directly with ground troops again.
Really?
We just...
You know, America just spent 13 years doing that with Saddam Hussein.
Now they're going to go back in?
Then how long are you going to stay?
Then what?
How long are you going to stay?
Because you're gonna kill a whole bunch of people.
Those people have brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, cousins, second cousins, probably all married to each other.
Bummer.
And you're gonna get blowback.
The other thing too is that there's no question, no question whatsoever, that there are ISIS cells in the West.
To imagine otherwise would be to delude yourself beyond all reason.
And so, yeah, we're going to go and attack ISIS. Okay, well, then ISIS is going to attack you with the people already in the borders.
Are you going to be okay with that?
Is the population, oh, let's go get ISIS. Okay, well, what if your kid gets blown up or run down in a truck or shot in a nightclub?
You okay with that?
Is that all right with you?
That's what's going to happen.
It may happen anyway, but it sure as hell is going to happen faster and more often if ISIS gets attacked.
Is everyone willing to make those sacrifices?
Are you willing to lose a leg for this stuff?
And the invade everyone, invite everyone?
Not going to work out.
People who say, well, let's take out ISIS, are they willing to...
Submit to the terrorist attacks that are going to occur in the West because of it?
And are they willing to have the government expand its powers domestically, increase spying, increased surveillance of the local population, which is going to catch everyone except the intended victims, right?
Of course, right?
I mean, because political correctness, you won't be able to do any targeting.
Well, maybe you will under Trump.
I don't know.
But in general, that's not been the case.
So...
If you're willing to have your leg blown off or to have your kid run down by a white truck in a Paris street or gunned down in a nightclub or shot in a...
Surprisingly Islamocentric occasion of workplace violence, then okay, at least you have integrity.
You're willing to have loved ones die for the sake of taking out ISIS. But if you have some reservation about that, and I sure as hell don't want anyone around me or anyone in that matter to die just to take out ISIS, because what's going to happen afterwards?
We already took out what we're called a bunch of assholes in the Middle East, and what happened?
Well, a lot of these people died, a lot of their friends, their relatives, their infrastructure, their sanitation systems, their hospital healthcare systems, the medical delivery systems, the food supply systems, all got destroyed.
And you can look at my video, Iraq, 10 years of hell, for more on this.
And then what?
And then what?
So you've killed a whole bunch of, let's say, oh, all crazy EV people, we killed them all.
Then what?
Then what?
Well, the last time America pulled out is when you got ISIS, plus the fact that they were arming them and all.
So I have a different vision about how America and Russia could handle things in the Middle East.
Go home.
Close your borders.
Go home.
Close your borders.
Stop selling arms to people in the Middle East.
Hell, stop selling arms anywhere.
Stop selling arms all around the world.
Just stop doing it.
You don't know what you're doing.
I know there's blood and profit in it, but it is literally dismantling and undoing the world as a whole.
And just stop selling weapons to people in the Middle East.
Stop subsidizing the governments.
Just stop it.
That is really, really important.
And I know, I know, it's a whole military-industrial complex of morally compromised people who need their paychecks and pensions and benefits, but don't you think that it could at least be argued it's a little bit of a high cost?
Stop selling arms.
Stop selling subsidies.
Stop manipulating the political process.
Stop overthrowing governments.
And stop taking money, too.
Let's have a complete cessation of government-to-government blood trade.
It's just a particular thought.
And you have primitive societies which should be poor, because primitive societies in general are poor, but you have primitive societies who happen to win the lottery Of squished ancient tree trunk juice, right?
They got the oil.
We got the money.
And whenever these things get together, very bad things seem to occur.
Now, it's pretty easy to fix this.
Just allow for the oil production in Western countries.
Pretty easy.
Yeah, fracking may have some negative outcomes.
But one of those negative outcomes isn't World War III, so I'm willing to take my chances with a bit of smog, as opposed to a lot of radiation.
I can put on a mask to deal with smog.
I can move.
Not much I can do with lethal rays of radiation.
Allow for drilling!
Oil!
Wherever there's oil!
Pipelines!
Drill the hell out of it!
I want the Arctic to look like Swiss cheese.
Because it's better than...
You know that global warming that melts the polar ice caps really quickly because of nuclear strikes?
That seems to me...
That's global warming that's relatively instantaneous.
Boom!
Oh!
Turns out we're not going to get an inch of rising water.
There's a giant tsunami of molten glacier radioactive water bearing down on me.
Ah!
I guess some potential ground contamination over 50 years doesn't seem like such a bad deal now, does it?
Get out of the Middle East.
Get out of...
The world!
Let Americans trade with the world, not governments sell arms to the world.
Go home, stay home, and develop your own energy sources, which means stop funding all this bullshit, hippy-dippy, bird-killing wind and solar and crap like that.
No!
No!
The world is robbing carbon from us.
The nature is robbing carbon from us.
It's all going into the ground.
Let's liberate it back into the atmosphere so that we can grow wonderful plants and feed the world rather than bomb the world and arm it.
Let's arm them with plowshares, not swords.
Let's arm them with shovels, not shivs.
So I don't want the American government to work with Russia and I don't want them to work with any government.
I want them to get out of the way.
I want them to stay home.
I want to stop this vicious, ridiculous, world-destroying arms trade and apologize.
Say mistakes were made.
We made them, the government.
Terrible things were done.
We're going to prosecute people for war crimes to make sure it never happens again.
Because, uh, why didn't Obama prosecute George W. Bush for war crimes?
Because, you know, he didn't want that toy taken away from the presidency, now did he?
So I don't want America to work with Russia.
I want America and Russians, Americans and Russians, like the civilians, to have great relationships.
Go visit each other's countries, go learn each other's language, go trade, have fun.
But government to government, the less done, the better.
Foreign policy is a government program.
Peace in the Middle East is a government program.
We can see how all of that works.
Peace in the Middle East has brought destruction to the Middle East and destruction to Europe.
So that's my particular thoughts about it.
It's a great temptation.
That is a great temptation.
We've got this giant military.
It's a pretty small enemy.
Let's just go in and take them out.
This is going to be the war to end all wars.
Well, it was no more true in First World War than it is now.
So that's the end of my rant.
I'm happy to hear what you think.
Well, yeah, I'm pretty much happy...
Here in Russia, we are very happy with Trump's victory because his rhetoric is different from Hillary's war monitoring.
The deal breaker for me, the final one, was when she announced that there will be a no-fly zone in Syria and that she had the case for it.
So, usually in Russia, we support Democrats because Republicans aren't.
Warlike, they want to stop Russia or whatever.
McCain was saying something like that.
Romney was saying this.
So we usually like Democrats, but this time it was totally different.
So we're very, very happy with Trump in the office.
And, you know, the regressives are saying that Hillary got more votes, so the system is rigged, and that the Electoral College should actually redistribute the votes in favor of Hillary.
I think that happened several times during the American history.
So, is there any chance that Trump may not really become the president that the electoral votes, he won't get them, and you'll end up having Clinton?
Well, that won't be a country if that happens.
I mean, that won't be a country.
I mean, there'll be...
There'll be uprisings, in my view.
There would be civil war.
I mean, if that would happen, if they were to take away such a clear electoral victory from Trump, then, I mean, I guess Hillary would inherit a smoldering wreckage of a formerly tenuously unified country.
So, yeah, anything's possible.
I don't think it's going to happen.
See, the elites that are in control of America...
Not the politicians, but the elites who are in control of America, they recognize that the cow is dying, and they need someone to save the cow so they can keep getting milk and meat.
They don't want the livestock to die off.
You've got to keep the livestock running.
You've got to keep them alive.
No point being a farmer of a bunch of corpses.
So they know the system is running out.
So the elites, in my particular opinion, this has nothing to do with Donald Trump's integrity, but my particular opinion, the elites...
They're not that dissatisfied with Donald Trump because Donald Trump is going to go in and resurrect the American economy to the point where there'll be a tax base again and they know they can do the math.
They're not the elites because they're dumb.
They can count.
They know that it can't last the way it is.
And if Hillary had gotten in, America would have been done in five to ten years.
Done.
Like, unrecoverable.
And the economy would go Venezuela.
But...
Trump gets in and his energy and his principles and his understanding of trade and his understanding of negotiation and of the market and his lifetime of customer-focused stuff.
He's going to resurrect the American economy and the elites are like, good!
As vampires, we don't want the livestock to run out of blood.
And I think that this is gonna buy enough time for America to get back on his feet to the point where they can begin actually challenging the elites, who sort of run things from behind who sort of run things from behind the curtains.
So the fact that Hillary Clinton has conceded, I don't think there's really much to talk about.
And I don't think there's, I mean, there's nobody pushing for it.
Okay, it's gonna be a bunch of people who are gonna, I don't know, gonna sign a bunch of petitions and so on, but who's fighting for it?
And you know, it's interesting, just sort of by the by, and let me sort of drop this in here.
People have been asking me, well, why didn't the...
Because, you know, some of the states were close.
Why didn't the Democrats want any recounts?
Hmm.
It's a very interesting question.
Well, one, of course, is that the electoral college votes were so disparate that...
But I think the other reason why they don't want the recounts is...
I gotta tell you, I think that if the Democrats push for a lot of recounts and a closer examination of the voting system that happened this week, I think for sure that a lot of corruption would be exposed on the part of Democrats...
I don't think they want that revealed.
I don't think they want that to be coming out at this moment.
So, no, I don't think.
And, you know, they're still counting.
There's still six or seven million of the votes to count.
Trump may end up winning the popular vote, too.
We'll see.
You know, you look at the map.
Look at the...
I mean, even the states where Hillary won, even the regions where Hillary won, it was still a sea of red and a couple of blue spots.
Now, those blue spots happen to be heavily populated and heavily weighted and so on.
But, I mean, as the Twitter joke I made, as America is so embarrassed of Hillary Clinton, the whole country is turning red.
So, if they tried to overturn that, you know...
I had some anxiety about...
Whether the Democrats were going to try and contest the election.
But once she conceded, I mean, people can...
Yell all they want.
My friend, while we were having the meal, he showed me on his phone a picture of the electoral map outcome, picture of the election outcome by state before the protests, picture of it after the protests.
And I was like, wait a minute.
Oh, right.
They're exactly the same.
Right?
So I don't think we have to worry too much about that.
And, you know, just for everyone out there, because this is another by the by, thanks for this platform, just for everyone out there, Who are like, I'm already second-guessing Trump's...
Who he's thinking of for this position?
Who he's thinking of...
Relax.
Relax.
If you voted for the guy, trust the guy.
Give him some breathing room.
Stop double-checking every time he takes a step.
Could have stepped there.
Could have stepped there.
What's going to happen to this?
You voted for the guy, trust the guy.
You know, I mean, if you voted for the guy, you believe in the guy, he's the expert.
Let him do his thing.
Don't start to, well, he hasn't repealed Obamacare yet.
It's like, you know, he's not president yet.
And look, he's going to face a lot of opposition from within the party.
They're going to try and co-opt him, right?
The rhinos, the Republicans, the name only.
They're going to try and co-opt him.
They're going to try and bring him over to the dark side and all of that.
And I don't think he's going to be particularly tempted.
But, you know, we'll all be out there breathing down his neck if he starts to drift.
But, you know, the guy is still...
Months away from being president, he's just putting together...
Well, Christie's off the transition team, now it's Pence, which I can't help but view as a relatively good thing.
But, you know, give the man some breathing room.
He's still examining his options, still starting to make suggestions.
And you're going to go crazy if you try and second-guess this guy for the next four years.
Everything you do, we're going to be done better, we're going to be different.
Just, you know, when you have an expert and you trust your expert, you know, I try not to correct my dentist when she's doing her thing, so...
Thanks for the call.
I'm going to move on to the next caller.
Really, really appreciate the question.
I hope that my comments were helpful, and I appreciate your time.
Thank you very much.
Up next, we have Caleb.
Caleb wrote in and said, I'm a longtime fan of the show and have found your insights into relationships quite helpful, specifically your emphasis on the importance of shared values.
However, what does one do when they found someone who shares core values but disagrees on other fundamentals, like the religious raising of children, where to live, and other future uncertainties?
That's from Caleb.
Hey, Steph.
Hey, Caleb.
How you doing?
Oh, it's great.
Doing pretty good.
Not perfect, but Christmas came early, I'll say that.
I hear you.
I hear you.
It's just perfect.
Just things are going to get.
Yeah.
So...
Is this a personal thing with you?
Is this more abstract?
I mean, how are we going to approach this, empirically or theoretically?
Maybe a bit of both.
It is very personal.
It's between me and my girlfriend.
We met about a year ago.
There's a bit of an age gap.
I'm 23, she's 27, not too much.
But we've just been having trouble communicating in our relationship.
And Is she around?
Can we talk to her too?
No, she's not here right now.
But mostly on the religious thing is one point, and then also we've had questions on if we should move further away.
She wants to live close to her parents.
I'd like to move closer to the city.
So we're just having some disagreements, and mostly the issue is how do we communicate more openly and honestly without having so much of the friction.
Hmm.
Right.
Okay, so I'll give you a sort of theoretical overview of how I think this stuff can work, and then you can tell me if it makes sense.
As far as core values go, yes.
In order to have a successful relationship, you need to have core values.
Integrity, honesty, virtue, what they all mean.
Of course, these things can be redefined by anybody who wants to manipulate you, but...
How are you going to resolve conflicts?
Do you emotionally bully?
Do you escalate?
Do you name call?
All of these things have to be off the table in order for you to have a successful relationship.
And focus on reason and evidence as your methodology.
It's not just for philosophy or abstract things.
It's for, you know, love and, you know, all of the relationships that involve trying to start the fire of the next generation with the squishy bits of today.
And so when you talk about, you know, should you live closer to her parents?
Should you live closer to town and so on?
Why does she want to live closer to her parents?
Well, she has a very close relationship with her mother.
Her father is a bit more independent.
I think he could be more comfortable with the idea.
But she's never left home.
She's 27.
She's a public school teacher.
She's working on her master's degree right now.
And she's never actually left home.
And her mom's very, I would say, almost codependent with her.
And so if she were to move further away, it would be very...
There would be a lot of difficulty there.
She's not totally opposed to the idea, but anytime I bring up the conversation, there's a lot of tension there.
And it's just really difficult.
Right, so what you're saying is that the mom is closer to the daughter than she is to the father.
I would say she's close to both her parents, but her and her mom have...
No, no, no, no.
The mom is closer to her daughter than the mom is to her husband.
Yes, yes.
There's actually a bit of...
They don't have the best relationship.
I wouldn't say they're on the verge of anything drastic, but there's a lot of tension in their relationship.
Right.
Right, so how long do you know how long this has been going on?
And I've got to tell you, I have a personal basic bias, hopefully somewhat rational, against parents who promote a child to the substitute spouse position.
You know, the parents should be close to each other, and of course they should be close to the children too.
But a relationship with the child should not substitute for a relationship with the spouse.
In other words, if you're not getting along with your spouse, it's really wrong, wrong to...
Merge or mesh or fuse with your children.
They're not there to supply your adult relationship needs.
They're not there to become your spouse.
And it bothers me a lot because I've seen significant cost in people when I grew up with.
Their lives were crippled.
Crippled.
Because the mom was lonely, you see.
And the mom had no one to talk to.
And the mom needed them.
And there's such an imbalance of power in the mother-child relationship.
That if the mother wants to feed off the child, the mother can do so and the child is virtually helpless.
My mother needs me.
I'm my mother's best friend.
I can't go out and have a life of my own.
I can't move out.
I can't move away.
I can't be myself.
I can't have my own adult life because my mother needs me.
No!
Bad parenting!
Bad parenting!
Your job as a parent is to Be the bow and the string that pulls back the arrow of your child's life and launches them into the world.
Your goal is to make them independent.
It doesn't mean you can't be close.
It doesn't mean you can't love each other to death when you're adults.
But your job is to be the launchpad that gets them into the world.
Launches them away from you.
Go away.
Get away.
Get out into the world.
If my daughter's still living at home when she's 27...
Bad job, Dad, unless we are living in, you know, the alternate universe where Hillary Clinton got in and life is a Fallout 4 game with no capacity to turn it off.
So, I'm just, you know, maybe I'm going too far in this and tell me what you think, but if she's still living at home at 27, what?
She's got a job.
Okay, it's a government job, but she's got a job.
Why is she still living at home at 27?
Why, if she's...
Let me see if I can put it to you this way.
Your mom is her past.
You are her future.
If you guys are going to get married, get together, have kids, or be the father for children, you're the future.
Mom's the past.
Doesn't mean mom can't be around and be wonderfully helpful when you're raising the kids and be a wonderful part of your family, but mom is in the rear view and you are in the coming soon to an ovary near you, right?
Mr.
Sperm is moving in!
Let's kick out nine pounds of baby fun.
So, So the fact that there's this tension means that her mother needs her.
Needs her!
And this is very unhealthy, in my opinion.
You can tell me where I go astray.
I'll shut up in a second.
If I'm way off base, just let me know.
It's your facts, my hypothesis, right?
Of course.
So the mom needs her.
And she can't...
The girlfriend, your girlfriend, can't have much of a will of her own because the mother's need is so basic and so palpable that she's hanging on.
She's hanging on.
A friend of mine I grew up with, his mom got divorced, never remarried.
Every night, it's like, I've made you dinner.
Come on over.
I've made you dinner.
Come.
I don't know how to work this TV. Can you help me?
I need to find this channel.
Oh, just stay and watch.
Stay and sit and watch the show with me.
Let's have a game of cards.
And if he ever wanted to get up, oh, stay!
I've got no one else to talk to.
Stay, I'm lonely.
Stay.
I'll make you some ice cream.
I'll make you some pie.
Let's cook together.
Right?
That's vampiric.
That's vampiric because it's about the mom's needs.
Mom needs.
Company the mom needs.
And she won't go out into the free market of adult relationships and get it.
She's got to feed off the kid.
Which is not a free market relationship.
Love families.
Happy family, man.
I'm not pretending to myself that it's a free market relationship.
Meeting my wife was a free market relationship.
My daughter, she's stuck.
She's got no choice.
She's stuck, which is why I have to be the best with her than with anyone.
So, she's still living at home.
She's 27.
And she's afraid to move away from her mom.
Well, we've talked about it, and recently we had a conversation.
Her sister lives about two hours away, and she has said that if she could live closer to her sister, she would be more comfortable with the idea of moving away.
We have addressed everything you're saying is right, and it is something I worry about, that if we live close, her mom probably would try to constantly, oh, come over to the house, come hang out.
And I'm not opposed to that, but I keep telling her, you know, when we get married, it's going to be our life.
It's going to be our future.
And, you know, we can go see your parents and we can hang out there, but we can't cohabitate with them.
So she is open to the idea of moving away.
I guess it is a bit difficult for her, and we don't really know how we're going to handle the situation.
I mean, that's just one point of contention we've been having.
I mean, the religious thing is obviously another one.
So, yeah, so she's religious, right?
Yeah, she's a Christian.
Right, and you are what?
I would say I'm agnostic with Christian leanings, if that makes any sense at all.
Yeah, no, it makes sense.
My spectrum has widened considerably over the last few years, so yeah, okay, it makes sense.
And so, of course, you as adults, you can...
You can make your own choices.
Would she be comfortable raising the children with a knowledge of religion and a knowledge of Christianity and a knowledge of the virtues of Christianity, but leave it to them as adults to choose what they believed in?
Yes, and that's where the contention comes in.
We've had a lot of conversations about this.
I'm totally okay.
I love all the Christian values and principles.
I like all that stuff.
For me, though, it is about letting the children make their own decisions.
I see it as coercion if you were to try to teach them at such a young age that...
It almost becomes ingrained in them to where they can't think for themselves outside of it.
So there was one thing that we talked about, and it was that when we first got together, she wanted to baptize the kids.
And when I said, well, I don't see that as right, because...
It's not a contract that they can enter into.
If they want to get older and become a Christian, be baptized, I think that'd be a wonderful thing.
I'd have no problem with it.
But then she said, well, my family wouldn't like it if we didn't baptize the children.
And I don't know that if she's still holding on to that position very strongly, but at first it was a very difficult thing for us when we would talk about it.
Well, I'm sorry.
I'm a little confused.
So I thought that maybe she wanted the children to be baptized because if they're not baptized and they die, they're going to hell as far as at some point.
I don't know how, age of reason or whatever it is, right?
But it's not because of any particular religious faith that she wants the children baptized.
It's because mommy and daddy wouldn't like it if they weren't.
She wants to raise children Christian, but I don't think baptism is totally a big thing to her.
She said that she wants to take the children.
Okay, no, no.
What I said was she wants the children to be baptized because her mommy and daddy wouldn't like it if the children weren't baptized.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, there's a value problem there, right?
Which is, I would sort of respect her more, a lot more, if she's like, no, I genuinely believe that they need to be baptized so that the demonology of original sin can be washed away from them and they can enter the kingdom of heaven should they pass prematurely or whatever, to be safe from demons.
At least she's got a belief system that supports it.
If she's 27 and, like, well, mommy and daddy wouldn't like it, come on.
Is this how you want things to be?
Is this how you're gonna live your life?
What her mommy and daddy like and don't like?
No, and that's a lot of what our attention comes down to as far as moving and the religious thing.
I know that she's a very, you know, she's very religious and she believes it wholeheartedly, but yeah, I bring up a lot.
Are we going to live our lives based on what your parents say?
You know, recently we took a trip to D.C. and her parents said, oh, it's a dangerous city.
Traffic's bad.
Oh, you've got to watch out for this, this, this.
And then she was like, she called me on the phone and she was almost crying and I said, We can't live the life that they want us to live.
We have to live our life.
And how did that go?
Well, I think that when I talk to her about it, she agrees with me and she understands it.
I feel like since she's lived with them for so long, she still has this holding on to it that it's amazing.
Logically, she agrees with it, but then emotionally, it's difficult for her to try to process it, if that makes any sense.
And how do you think the relationship that she has with her mother and her father, I suppose, but it sounds like the mother more so, how do you think that her relationship with her mother is going to influence how she is as a mother herself, if you guys have kids?
How do you mean that?
Well, one's relationship with one's mother is without a significant amount of work and self-reflection and possibly talk therapy, one's relationship with one's mother, in particular for a woman who's going to be a mother, is the primary predictor of how she's going to be with her children, right?
The best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
And if she normalizes or is fine with what her mother has done, then that's how she's going to be as a mom to your children.
Yes, I understand what you're saying.
That's something I've thought about.
And that's mainly my biggest concern is, is she going to be like this with our children?
Is she going to be very overbearing with our children?
Is she going to give our children the space to have their own ideas and to make their own decisions?
I have faith that she can do that, and I have faith that she is that kind of person.
What do you mean you have faith?
Well, if she doesn't realize that there may be some unhealthy aspects of her relationship with her mother, she's for sure going to reproduce them.
We have to criticize something in order to do something differently.
Right.
We have to have a realistic perspective of something in order to do something differently, right?
So, I mean, your faith, I mean, you don't have to guess.
If she thinks that it's healthy...
What's happening with her mother and herself, then she's going to do exactly that with the kids.
I mean, 99 times out of 100 almost for certain, right?
So does she think that there's anything that could be improved or anything that may be dysfunctional in her relationship with her mother?
I would say she's not totally opposed to examining things that are dysfunctional.
She does say that she's too codependent with her.
She's admitted to that.
She's admitted that her mom can be too overbearing.
And she has said that she does need to move on and kind of create her own life.
So she's admitted...
Okay, so, yeah, yeah.
And so, no, I mean, whether she needs to move away or not, I don't know.
But how is she going to deal with her mother being, as she says, overbearing or codependent?
How is that going to be dealt with?
I don't think we know how we will deal with it.
No, no, not a we.
No, no.
Her mom.
I'm sorry.
Don't you start owning this stuff, man.
You're the boyfriend.
You're not the therapist, right?
Neither am I, right?
This is her job to fix, right?
No, you're right.
You're right.
I don't know.
That's something I could ask her.
I don't think that she has a plan for that.
Well, then, you know, a failure to plan is planning to fail, right, as the old saying goes.
So if she has identified dysfunctions in her relationship with her mother, the question is, what's she going to do about them?
And if she's like, well, I don't know, well, then it's just words, right?
No, you're right.
So I guess, I mean, I don't really have any advice to offer to her, and I don't know, I've never been in that sort of situation, so I really wouldn't even know what to tell her if she were to ask me what she could do.
Well, what do you see that may be dysfunctional in the relationship between your girlfriend and her mother?
What do you see that could be improved?
I think that if she would try to be more independent and not be so concerned with what her mother thinks, like, not be so concerned with what is, you know, what does mom want me to do and be more concerned with being her own independent person.
A big thing with her is she doesn't assert herself a lot.
She kind of goes along to get along a lot of the time.
And I think...
And you like that?
Sometimes it's a good thing, but for the most part, I want her, like, you know, like, with me and her...
I'll be asserting myself.
I'm a very assertive person, so I'll be asserting myself in a situation.
And then she'll just go along with everything.
And then I'll start to notice that she's frustrated or unhappy or aggravated.
And it starts to aggravate me because, you know, how am I supposed to read your mind?
How am I supposed to know what you want to do in a situation if you're not expressing it to me?
And she's begun to do it a bit more.
She's asserted herself more since we've been together.
But I don't think she's still at the point where she could just be her own independent person.
Okay, so why are you dating her?
I'm not saying you shouldn't.
I'm just curious, right?
I mean, if this is who she is, right, she's codependent with her mom and her mom's overbearing and she doesn't express her own opinions and she goes along to get along and she kind of doesn't exist in a way as far as her own individuation and personhood goes, so...
If you're assertive, and I assume that you value assertiveness as a good thing, you value it as a virtue or at least a positive habit, so why are you into somebody who's so not there?
I guess it's a lot of other values that she has.
She's a very honest person.
She has integrity.
She values hard work.
We have a lot of the same political views.
Not that politics are...
Totally important, but that's basically a value system.
So there is a lot of stuff in terms of that that I like about her.
Okay, so give me an example of her integrity.
Okay, so if you ask her to be somewhere on time, she'll be there.
If you ask her to do something, she'll do it.
She always gives her word.
Oh, no, no, no.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
She's on time and obeys orders?
What is she, a Marine?
I don't mean obeys orders, but...
You tell her to do something and she'll do it?
What, do you train her with a newspaper?
I'm sorry, it just struck me as kind of funny.
Go on.
Maybe I'm not expressing myself right.
I just asked for examples of integrity and you said she's on time and she'll do what you tell her to.
She's just a person that you can always rely on.
She's a very caring person.
So we drop her the integrity thing?
Okay, give me an example of how she's caring.
I'm not saying she's not.
I just want to know what the examples are.
Right, right.
Caring, she always goes out of her way to help someone.
If she sees someone in need, she's always there to help them.
I mean, she's always been there for me.
She's always been there for other people.
And she's a very...
I don't know.
Sorry.
I don't know.
If she's not honest with you about her needs and preferences, how is she there for you?
Being there for you means that she's fully present as a person with her own thoughts, her own minds, her own opinions, her own perspectives, and a willingness to be honest and open about who she is and what she prefers.
That's, to me, being there for someone.
Right?
It's not putting a Band-Aid on them if they get a boo-boo, right?
So...
What does it mean when you say she's there for you?
What does that mean to you?
I guess emotionally, she's helped me out in financial situations.
She's helped me out.
I've been through a lot of stuff recently between getting to work and stuff of that nature.
I would say mostly the emotional stuff.
You can talk to her and tell her things and she does give you feedback on things.
She just made me feel like I have a very supportive person in my life.
How has she supported you financially?
Just between, she loaned me a couple hundred dollars one time that I paid back for her because I had a problem with bills.
She's helped me.
I've had to get a car before.
She's driven me to get the car.
She's driven me to work in between cars.
That sort of thing financially.
And getting you to work on time, I'm not sure what that means.
Well, I have a job that I have to get to, and in the morning she picks me up and drives me there, and then I get a ride home.
So she's helpful.
Yeah.
But isn't that kind of the problem?
That she's putting your needs there, and she's just there to help you, just like she is with her mom, and where are her needs?
And you're exactly right, and that's something that I want...
I wish for her to assert herself more.
You know, what are your needs?
And she has improved since we've been together, but mostly with her mom and when anytime that we're in a situation where she doesn't like what we're doing, I wish that she would just tell me what it is she wants.
And I wish that she would stand up to her mom a bit more and, you know, tell her, you know, I don't want to do this or this is, you know, this is the path I want to choose.
And what, in what way would you like to see her or in what context or in what topics would you like to see her stand up to her mom more?
Well, mostly on, you know, the moving thing is a big one because we both talked about it and we would like to move closer to her sister.
I don't think that she would be totally, in the end, I think that she would be fine with going through with it, but it's not a conversation she's had with her mom.
You know, she's never sat down and had a conversation about it.
She kind of, when she's really, for the most part, she's avoided the topic with her mom.
I know she's discussed it with her dad a bit, but with her mom, she doesn't really discuss that topic.
What's with the sister?
It's like she doesn't know how to swim and she's going from one flotation device to another.
I leave my mom and I gotta get to my sister.
Why the sister?
Right.
Well, she has relatives at least I think she doesn't want to move very far away from her family.
She doesn't want to spend three hours to have to travel to see her family.
She doesn't want to have that kind of lifestyle.
And I'm fine with that because when we have grandkids, I want the grandkids to be able to see their grandparents.
I know what you're going to say there.
What am I going to say?
Well, you're going to say that, you know, do I want my grandkids to see their grandmother if she's very overbearing?
No, that's not what I'm going to say, although it's fine that you're thinking that.
My question is, Caleb, you keep talking about her family.
No, no, no.
No, no.
That's her family of origin.
When you get married and you have kids with a Caleb, you're the family.
That's not the family.
They're the in-laws.
Now they'll still be her parents and all that and it's fine, but you're the family.
You're the home.
Not them.
Does that make sense?
That makes total sense.
I agree with that.
So, if she doesn't change at all, if she doesn't become assertive, if she doesn't stand up to her mother, if she doesn't Whatever, right?
And if you have to, like, jump from proximity to family to proximity to family or whatever, it limits your options to some degree moving in this big, wide, wonderful world.
If she doesn't do these things, Caleb, is that going to be okay with you?
In other words, if you give up wanting her to change fundamentally.
You're going to give up.
Well, I don't think you should be in relationships with people wanting them to change fundamentally.
I'm telling you that right now.
If there are fundamental things that you can't live with in someone, don't try and change them.
Don't try and fix them.
Don't try and remake them in the image of what you want.
That's not fair.
You love people for who they are.
I've never asked my wife to change anything fundamental about herself.
Why would I? She's fantastic.
She's perfect.
I don't want her to change.
So that's my question.
If she's not going to change, Caleb, are you okay with that?
Is this enough for you?
Is this what you want?
Because the fantasy of change is a fantasy.
People don't change fundamentally.
You know, I had a guy, I mentioned this in a show the other week, I had a guy, I used to hang out at his place after school when I was in grade seven or eight, so just decades and decades ago, right?
And He said, you know, and I haven't talked to him in, man, 36 or 37 years.
And he said, you know, I was watching a YouTube video and it went on to autoplay.
I wasn't even looking at the screen.
I'm like, that's Steph.
He knew the cadence.
He knew the tone.
He knew the energy.
He knew the focus.
He knew all of the stuff.
And he sent me a message to say hi.
So how much have I changed in 36 years?
Well, according to the people who have not met me in a while, who I run into again, I'm the same guy.
So if she's not going to change, because, you know, we can say, okay, well, I'll wait at this bus stop as long as this bus comes along.
And if the bus has changed, you can spend a lot of time waiting at a bus stop called the relationship for change that ain't going to come.
She's 27.
She's 27 years old.
This is who she is.
This is who she is.
If you're hanging around waiting for some fundamental change, I think you're hanging around in vain, which is why I'm asking you the question.
Can you live with her as she is?
Do you love her as she is?
Is she the woman for you, for the rest of your life, as the mother of your children, as she is?
I think I could live with the assertiveness, the level of assertiveness.
The lack of assertiveness.
Yes, yes.
I think I could live with that.
One issue for me is the religious thing.
I wonder if we are at fundamental odds with that.
Well, because that's not up to you, right?
Right, exactly.
Because that's around children.
So you can choose what you want to live with, you can't choose what your children live with, right?
Now, a religious mom who's a Christian is better than a nihilist mom or a leftist mom or a social justice warrior, a feminist lunatic head mom.
So, you know, I get that there's definitely worse things out there.
But my concern is that you're basically living with your girlfriend or you'll be living with your wife, but you'll be really married to the mom.
Because if the mom's calling the shots, then, let me tell you this, the age difference between you and your real wife, quite a bit more than a couple of years.
No, you're right.
Is there any sort of conversation that I could have with her to kind of get to the core of all this, to get to some...
With who?
With the mom?
No, with my girlfriend.
Oh, no, you've got to go to the mom.
Right.
No, I mean, look, if she lacks assertiveness with her mom, then, I mean, I guess you could go to your girlfriend.
I don't think it's going to go very far.
You've got to sit down with the mom.
What would I bring up with her?
Just having the conversation on her asking her not to be so...
I mean, I wouldn't say controlling to her face, but...
Why not?
Don't you want to model assertiveness to your girlfriend?
Or are you scared of the mom too?
Well, I just don't know how well it would go over.
I think you know exactly how well it would go over.
So you want your girlfriend to do something that you're not willing to do.
That's a good point.
You want your girlfriend who has been raised by her mother to do something that you're not comfortable doing with the mom.
Don't you think that's a little...
Let's just say that there seem to be some different standards at play here, right?
No.
I mean, you have much less reason to be scared of her mom than she does because her mom didn't raise you, right?
No, you're right.
You're right.
I shouldn't have any reason to fear standing up.
Well, no, you can have some reason to fear.
I'm not saying the opposite of over-caution is complete recklessness.
Of course, there's some reason to be anxious about it, but you can't really ask other people, your girlfriend, to do something that you won't do because it's too scary, right?
I mean, that's like, here, honey, here's the baseball baguette.
You go see if there's an intruder downstairs, right?
I mean, sorry, you're a dude.
That's your job.
That's a very excellent point.
Now, if you're too scared to be honest with the mom, now, I don't know what honesty with the mom looks like.
I don't know because I don't know the relationship.
Maybe it looks something like, okay, we got a problem.
You know, you're pretty, really bossy with the girlfriend, and it kind of gets on my nerves, and maybe I'm wrong about that, but it feels like, you know, she said that there's kind of this codependence thing, there's this clingy thing, you know, maybe there's this bit where you're like clinging to your daughter because you've got problems with your husband, and that's not really fair for her.
She's 27, you know, she's not really going to have much of a life.
She's afraid to move away.
She feels you need her too much.
You know, we're kind of in competition.
I'm the future, you're the past, and You know, I want to have a great relationship with you.
We're going to have kids and I want them to know their grandparents and all of that.
But man, oh man.
I mean, it's a tussle right now.
And I feel like you kind of eclipse my girlfriend's personality.
I want to get married to her.
I don't really want to get married to you.
You already have a husband, even though you may not be getting along.
That's your business to work on, not mine.
And so we're kind of at war over the soul of your daughter.
And I'd like to figure out something we could do about it because...
It's not working for her or for me.
Maybe it works for you in some weird way, but it's not working for her and it's not working for me and, you know, we need to have a frank discussion about it.
No, you're right.
The best course of action would be to have a really open and honest discussion with her about it, just directly.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I think so.
I think so.
And maybe it'll go really well and maybe it will be a huge example for your girlfriend.
Or maybe it won't go really well, and maybe your potential mother-in-law will be revealed as a petty domestic tyrant and a bully, in which case it's probably better to know when you're 23 than 43 and jumping off a fucking cliff.
Yeah.
You know, put things on the line.
Talk to people.
Be face-to-face, be front, be assertive.
God, it saves so much time and energy.
It's something that I'm actually pretty good at, but I guess in this area, I've kind of backed off a bit.
Kind of?
What do you mean?
You've backed off it completely and totally, and you've put the entire onus on your girlfriend.
You're right.
You're the man.
Be the man.
Be the leader.
Yeah.
Honey, can you go confront your mom for me?
She's making me uncomfortable.
Come on.
No, that's an excellent point.
She'll love you for it, man.
I'm telling you that.
She really will.
Well, I actually don't disagree with you there.
I think that in a way she would like it.
I think that it's very emotionally uncomfortable for her to think about it, but ultimately it...
I mean, I don't know.
I shouldn't put words in her mouth, but I think that it is something that she would want.
Good.
Okay.
Well, that's...
If you have an issue with people, be honest, right?
Be direct.
Be a leader.
Be a man.
If you're a woman and you want to do it, then be a woman.
But be an adult about it.
I know you're 23 and this is a mother-in-law, a potential mother-in-law, and maybe she's a bit of a bully and all of that.
But, you know, if she's calling the shots and you're not even married, you are never going to get a chance to be the leader in your own family.
Yeah, and that's a big issue for me.
Really, when it comes to that, that's the crux of the issue for me.
I don't want to feel that way.
Yeah, men, be in charge.
God.
You know, and listen, I sympathize, and I'm not trying to count up, I'm not, oh my goodness, you should have known this.
I mean, I didn't know any of this stuff when I was your age, so I say this with sympathy, and just from the pinnacle of my half-century experience, but just stop complaining and be in charge.
What's the worst that can happen?
Well, you can get yelled and people can say, we hate you and we can't believe you were honest with us.
We can't believe you were open with us.
We can't believe you honestly expressed your deep concerns out of care for our relationship.
Okay, well then you know where you stand.
Don't be around people who won't let you be a leader.
Don't be around people who won't let you be honest.
Don't be around people you're scared to be yourself with.
You spend your entire life like a haunted house whose ghost is being driven out by a relentless exorcism of petty bullying and bullying from an old woman.
I guess she's not old if you're that young, but come on.
This is what I want to say to men as a whole.
Just step up and be leaders.
Be leaders.
That's what the world needs.
That's what the West needs.
Go be assertive.
You want to be assertive?
I'm good at being assertive.
Go be assertive.
And if she's a ball-busting mom-in-law who's going to grind your testicles down to a fine witchy dust, good to know now.
Good to know now.
You don't want to find it out later.
I'll guarantee you that.
And you sure as hell don't want your son or your sons or your daughters growing up seeing you be bossed around by wizened crones, right?
Well, I can't be honest because, you know, grandma's coming over and I can't be honest and I can't be direct.
You don't want them to see that.
You don't want to look in the mirror and see that, right?
Right.
I guess it's funny because now that you've pointed all this out, this is exactly how my family would have tried to treat me in our relationships.
But for some reason, I completely rejected that and stood up to them.
But now I've kind of found myself in a situation where I've kind of fallen into it.
Well, this is what I want to say, Caleb, is that this is sort of the point I'm sort of driving at when I'm trying to map the outside exteriors and inlets of this relationship.
When you're with someone in a romantic relationship, this is to everyone in the world, when you're with someone, they're a jigsaw puzzle piece, and you're a jigsaw puzzle piece, and you fit together.
And what we do is we look at the other person, we say, well, I see the contours of their jigsaw puzzle piece, but we don't look at ourselves and say, okay, well, why am I with this person?
How do our jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together?
Where is their outline?
My promontory and vice versa, right?
Insert your own sexual references here.
We can all be mature enough to move on from that.
But we see other people's oddly shaped personalities and we think, well, you know, I'm a straight line.
They're a bit curvy.
I'll just, you know, pull the ends and straighten them out.
Nope.
That's not how it works.
You fit together with her.
And it works for you mostly because of your prior history.
Why?
Because you're young.
And you haven't done a huge amount of work on self-knowledge.
Otherwise, you would have been working on this kind of stuff already.
And it's not, you know, 23, I understand.
I'm not trying to criticize.
It's just a basic reality that there's a reason why you're with her.
And part of it may have to do with the fact that she lent you a couple of hundred bucks and drives you to work on time.
But you can get that from a bank and an Uber driver.
That's not necessarily someone you...
Found an entire life with.
But there's a reason why you fit into this situation.
And there's a reason why you have a blind spot.
Because the whole time, Caleb, you're telling me, my girlfriend needs to be assertive with her mom.
It's like, hmm?
Really?
Really?
You're very good at assertiveness, but you think the girlfriend needs to be assertive with the mom.
Well, why not you?
And that's important, right?
But you didn't see that.
You think it's all about her.
And that's important, right?
You're there for a reason.
And part of the reason is why you thought it all had to be her, not you.
And also because you're not used to seeing men take a leadership role in families, right?
I mean, her mom runs the family, right?
Her mom runs the family.
And the dad wears no pants, the mom wears the pants.
I can virtually guarantee you that you're not used to seeing male assertiveness.
You know, why do people love this show so much?
A, my singing.
B, I think they like seeing positive and benevolent male assertiveness that's not mean or abusive or destructive or anything like that.
So I can guarantee you, not knowing your history, but tell me if I'm wrong.
I mean, you did not grow up seeing solid and clear and healthy male assertiveness.
No, it was very aggressive and just mean.
Right.
So for you, male aggression is mean.
And this is how a lot of people see male aggression.
Right?
I mean, as I've said this before and I'll say it again, there are two forces that need to be harnessed and focused in a positive way for society to To progress and to be good and to be healthy and for civilization to occur.
Number one, two forces that need to be civilized.
Number one, Male aggression.
Number two, female vanity.
Both these things need to be recognized and harnessed for the good of society.
And we've gone crazy on female vanity.
I mean, you can't say anything negative about women without misogynist.
You can't criticize women at all because female vanity is the ultimate bubble.
And it actually drives a lot of economic bubbles as well as this big giant bubble of female vanity.
Dare I say, the size of an enormous boob!
But there's this big, giant female vanity thing.
Girls are special.
Girls are wonderful.
Girls are sensitive.
Girls are great.
Girls can do everything that a man can do.
Girls can be wonder women.
They can be superheroes.
They can be soldiers.
And boys, they smell.
And they masturbate.
And they're coarse.
And they're rough.
And they're...
Right?
I mean, it's...
Female vanity has been swollen to such a ridiculous degree that it is literally the planet.
I'm waiting for the planet to just start orbiting it.
You know, it's like the new center of the solar system is female vanity.
And that's because...
You know, with the vote, male politicians and female politicians will endlessly appeal to female vanity, and female teachers who lack self-criticism will endlessly prefer and appeal to girl vanity, girl power, girl vanity, right?
And male aggression has been completely demonized to the point where men are spineless and broken, and society's not going to be fixed by anything other than men becoming more assertive and I dare say, I don't want to say aggressive because that sounds like hit people or anything, but just men need to stand up and stop taking shit from society.
Sorry, you have to.
There's no other way.
It's not going to come from outside.
No spaceship is going to come down and reattach your penis and grow a spine out of it and give some weight to your balls.
I know it's man up and I know it sucks, but this is the way of the world.
Sorry.
Men are going to just have to stand up and take leadership roles in society again.
And fuck the people who don't like it.
Sorry.
That's just the way it is.
Because we see what's happening in Europe.
And if you don't want that to happen here, I don't know, maybe some people do.
You see what's happening in Europe?
This is what happens.
When...
Women alone run the show.
It's terrible.
Patriarchy, my ass, right?
You think you got patriarchal privilege?
Just go out and try being assertive and see how that works.
He's making me scared.
He's in my safe space.
Just look at Donald Trump.
He's an assertive guy out there telling it like it is.
People are blowing things up and fainting and screaming and having panic attacks.
It's like, oh yeah, all kinds of male privilege going on with that.
But yeah, sorry.
It sucks, but this is the way it has to be.
Men have got to stand up and they've got to stop being leaders in society again.
And fuck the people who don't like it.
It's too bad, right?
I mean, you're going to just have to stand up.
You're too differential.
Oh, well, you know, I don't want to upset this person.
I don't want to upset this person.
This woman might get upset.
Sorry, we're men.
I don't care about people getting upset.
That's the glory of being a man.
Women care about people being upset.
And I think that's a wonderful thing.
Don't get me wrong.
The yin and the yang of the male and the female is a beautiful thing.
We fit together perfectly.
But no, sorry.
I'm a man.
I'm focused on facts.
You know why?
Because when you're raising babies in the village in the teepee, it really matters whether other people like you or not.
It really matters.
So if the woman in the next tent doesn't want to take care of your kids because she doesn't like you, okay, your life gets a little bit more complicated.
When one kid runs away, you need some other woman to take care of you.
So yeah, feelings really matter.
Getting along with people really matter.
People liking you really matters, evolutionarily speaking, when you're a woman.
I get it.
That's important.
You know what doesn't matter?
You know what doesn't care about your feelings?
A fucking grizzly bear does not care about your feelings.
Ooh, you know what else doesn't care about your feelings?
Falling off a cliff.
You know, doesn't care about your feelings because you were chasing a gazelle and you weren't looking ahead fast enough.
Ooh, you know what else doesn't care about your feelings?
Tripping and breaking your leg in a gopher hole because you weren't stepping carefully enough.
And then what people do is they just club you on the head because you're too heavy to carry back to camp.
You know what else doesn't care about your feelings?
War!
War doesn't care about your feelings.
Oh, that other tribe is coming over and they want to steal your women and they want to steal your food.
Okay.
I don't care whether they like me or not.
I'm still going to try and stick them through the head with a spear because that's my women and that's my food and that's my tent and you can't have it.
I don't know why that accent shows up, but it does.
So men have got to stop caring about other people's feelings.
We already have a gender for that and that gender is not yours.
They care about people's feelings and it's a beautiful thing.
That's why there are Hallmark cards.
You show me a man alive who, if there was no Hallmark card in the world, woke up one morning and said, hey.
You know what we really need?
We really need a whole bunch of people to be employed making sparkly art and shitty poems so I can tell other people how I feel about them.
Doesn't exist.
Doesn't exist.
Malls, as I've said a million times, I mean, they wouldn't exist.
Be a hardware store and a computer store and a stereo store.
I guess not stereo store anymore, but that's all there would be.
So we already have a whole group of people who really, really care about other people's feelings, and I think it's wonderful.
That's why there are florists.
That's why there are gift baskets.
You show me a guy who's like, hey, can't head over there without a gift basket.
You know, unless your gift basket is a six-pack and a fistful of porn.
I don't know what that means.
This doesn't make any sense, right?
We already have.
It's like men saying, well, you know, we've really got to learn how to give birth.
Like, no.
No, no, no, no.
We already have a whole gender who already knows how to give birth.
We don't do that.
They've got it covered.
And it's a beautiful thing.
It's a beautiful thing.
Well, it is for me because I'm not the one giving birth and shitting out a wall of balance through my nose sideways with heels on.
So...
We already care about other people's feelings.
What if they don't like me?
What if they get mad at me?
No, no, no, no.
We're men.
That's not our real house.
That's not our job.
Our job is to talk facts, truth, reason, evidence, things that are, not things that feel.
Bring reality to people.
Bring facts to people because that's what we're about.
We have feelings.
Sure, we have feelings in the way that, I don't know, some women have thoughts.
They're there.
They just shouldn't necessarily dominate everything that we do.
We already have a gender.
More susceptible to emotion.
And that's a beautiful thing.
We need the gender a little bit more susceptible to rationality and objectivity.
And that's a beautiful thing too.
So stop trying to be women.
Be men.
We already have women doing a much better job being women than men could ever be.
So let them have that monopoly.
They've got that monopoly.
Let them have it.
And be men, for God's sakes, or we're all doomed!
All right, that's it for me.
Anything you wanted to add?
Yeah, so I think I'm getting to what you're saying now.
And it does make a lot of sense with my past.
You know, my past, I had my father, my grandfather, and then the grandparents, which were all women.
And it was basically...
Wait, your grandfather was a woman?
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm sorry.
No, I had my grandfather, my father, and then two other grandparents that were women.
So two grandmothers.
That's not the problem.
No, no, no.
I'm getting to that.
So, growing up, it was avoid the men because they were not healthy males.
And that's actually why I appreciated your show a lot.
They were just very overly aggressive.
There was no reasoning with them.
Wait, wait, wait.
The women said avoid the men.
Hang on.
No, no, no.
I'm saying I avoided the men.
And then it was appeased the women.
But the women chose the men.
No, no, you're right.
You're right.
They totally chose them, and that's totally on them.
I don't resolve any blame from them.
But I'm saying...
I mean, let me tell you this, ladies, just as a, you know...
If you reward bad men with sex, you're not going to get fewer bad men in the world because that's the ultimate reward.
Sex, fertility, reproduction, children, you are choosing the entire male gene pool.
Let me just interrupt you for a sec here because this is really, really important for people to understand.
Men are the way they are because women had sex with our forefathers.
That's why men are the way that they are.
You understand?
Women can't complain about men because men have evolved precisely because of what women want.
Because it was not a primordial fundamental rape fest throughout most of human history, at least in the West.
It's kind of been voluntary for a long time.
Rape has been illegal pretty much for all of recorded Western history.
So men are the way men are because you fucked our grandfathers, because you fucked our forefathers.
That's why men are the way they are.
Because men who were different didn't get fucked and didn't reproduce their DNA died off.
Women have shaped men with their loins like a man making a beautiful pot out of clay.
Every little contour, every little thing is entirely there because women found it sexually attractive enough to screw till the cows came home.
So I don't understand when women say we don't like a particular aspect of masculinity because the male...
Mindset, the male emotional set, the male physical set, everything is completely and totally defined by who women fucked in the past.
That's all that defines what a man is.
Because there's no possible way for a man's gene to survive a woman's lack of desire to sexually reproduce it.
All the genes flourish because that's what women loved, that's what women married, that's what women had sex with, and that's The children that the women raised.
Women have completely chosen and formed who men are, how we operate, how we deal with things.
The man who just sat around writing poems and crying all the time didn't get fucked a lot.
Why?
Because he couldn't give you any meat.
Couldn't bring home any of the bacon.
Couldn't build a shelter.
Couldn't fight off a grizzly.
Couldn't provide you with the resources you need because you're disabled constantly with babies.
So I have no clue why, how is it remotely possible for any rational human being, or maybe I'm stretching, how is it possible for women to complain about how men are?
When the history of women saying yes to men's penises has precisely down to the genetic level defined exactly how men are.
What you say yes to is what you have created.
And women throughout history have said yes to all of the traits that men now possess in the here and now.
But now, like evil priests, a lot of women are sort of trying to implant men with this original sin called manhood.
Manhood is bad.
Manhood is not helpful.
Manhood is too aggressive.
Manhood is not feels enough.
Manhood is negative, negative, negative, negative.
Well, don't talk to me.
Talk to all your women going back who screwed the guys who made me who I am.
Not my fault, baby.
All we are is made by the women, by the loins of women.
Right?
If you want to know what a man is, a man is a piece of clay shaped by a giant rotating vagina.
That's what a man is.
And that's all a man has been throughout history.
Women choose and men propose.
Men propose, women dispose.
Men say, can we have sex?
Can we have a family?
Can we have children?
And women say, heeny, meeny, miny, moe.
That's the guy I like.
And they say that for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
And that's who men have become.
We are who we are because exactly women chose us to be this way.
We have evolved because of women's preferences.
We are a shadow cast by the yes or no of the infinite vagina.
It is the eggs that have made us who we are.
Access to eggs or denial of eggs has shaped us fundamentally as men to be what we are!
Don't complain about the choices of all the women throughout history.
And what they have produced.
You can get mad at the women.
You can say, well, the women should have chosen men with more feels or less upper body strength or less body hair or less body odor or women should have chosen men who were less objective, less rational, less swayed by their emotions.
Well, so what then?
Your complaint is with women in the past and who they fucked.
It's not with men who've been produced as a result of all of that.
God, be who you are.
Who we are is exactly what women wanted.
It's who they fucked.
That's what they chose men to become, by who they had sex with and whose children they raised.
Be confident in your masculinity.
It is the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
It's exactly what women want.
Be a man!
That's what we're here for.
That's what we've been shaped for.
That's what women want.
And the fact they say they don't want it is just kind of a funny part of the game.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
Yeah, that all makes perfect sense.
So...
Yeah, and what I've been getting the sense of in this whole conversation is that I consider myself assertive, but I've only been assertive in areas where it was convenient.
So I don't know if you use this term, but you said that I sounded like I was a bully to my girlfriend, like I kind of ordered her around a bit.
No, I never said that.
You said one of her virtues is that she'd do what you tell her to.
I didn't say you bullied her.
Yes, that's what I mean.
So it's easy for me to be assertive with her because she isn't assertive.
But then when it comes to being assertive with someone where there could be a repercussion or there could be a pushback, I've chosen not to be assertive in those situations.
Well, so you're assertive where assertiveness isn't necessary, right?
Exactly.
In other words, I can say, listen, I'm a very strong guy because I can lift a feather.
It's like, no.
It's true strong guys can lift a feather, but lifting a feather itself does not make you a strong guy.
So you've said, I'm assertive with people who aren't assertive back.
Well, that's not being assertive.
Assertive is where you're facing resistance, right?
Exactly.
Yes, that's exactly what I mean.
So I guess that's the problem for me then is that I'm not being assertive.
You're not.
Yeah, exactly.
No, you're not.
And asking your girlfriend to somehow free herself from her attachy, codependent mom, be the leader in the family.
Make it happen.
Femininity is something that is summoned by strong masculine men.
And I mean, you know, good femininity, not sort of the cliched thing, but...
Got a problem with feminism.
You know, and I've said this before, only women can fix feminism.
I don't particularly believe that anymore.
I've sort of had an evolution in my thinking, and I'll sort of get into why another time.
But no, I mean, I'm sorry, guys.
We have to be what women have shaped us into being.
That's the yin and the yang of male and female.
And...
Apologizing for masculinity is going to be the end of everything civilized, and we have to reclaim it and just be unapologetically masculine.
I mean, what is our choice?
I mean, we can't change it, so we might as well embrace it and love it.
And the people who hate it, you know, great.
You know, I'm a dude.
I don't have to care what you feel.
That's one of the privileges of being a man.
Right.
All right, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but do let us know how it goes if you decide to take on the She-Dragon.
It's an old lion from Monty Python.
You can't see it, but you'll see it on the video.
You ever see him?
My mother-in-law, you ever see how she makes toast?
Ha!
Ha!
Anyway, you'll see that in the video, but thanks for the call.
I appreciate it, and let's move on to the next caller.
Thank you so much, Steph.
It means a lot.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Up next we have Brian.
Brian wrote in and said, As the media pushes the narrative that Trump creates bullies, I see multiple articles on how to talk to children about the election results.
What message would you tell parents to give their children about Donald Trump?
That's from Brian.
Hi Brian, how you doing?
Very well.
Good.
I'm sorry you have the remnants of my voice after that last rant, but we'll see if we can get through in one piece.
Do you have kids yourself, or is this kids you might be talking to, or is this real theory?
It's mostly theory.
I just see it, you know, people who have kids asking the question, and I don't have a great answer because I don't have kids myself, but I thought you may have something to offer on the subject.
Yeah, my daughter had her first political interaction.
Hey, welcome to the world, honey.
Sorry, it is the way it is.
But yeah, some kid she knew from one of her activities was like...
Isn't it terrible that Donald Trump got in?
And my daughter was like, eh.
You know, it's like, you know, do we really have to get into this right now?
And, you know, I don't tell her Donald Trump good or bad.
I give her the facts as clearly as I see them.
And she's always free and welcome, in fact, to disagree with me.
And I don't want to tell her what to think and, you know, provide the information and all that.
So what should...
Parents tell their kids about Donald Trump.
Give me sort of an age you think that this conversation should be occurring at.
Good question.
Well, the thought first occurred to me, it was actually a kindergarten teacher on Facebook who I happen to be friends with in high school.
I hadn't talked to her probably since high school, but she asked, you know, to my Trump-supporting friends, what do I tell them in kindergarten when there's It's about Trump.
And, you know, telling them Hillary was worse isn't going to work.
My guess is she's a Hillary supporter, but I didn't have a good answer when I saw the question.
Obviously, there's plenty of lies out there, but...
Yeah, I wouldn't say that kindergarten is a really good age at which to be talking about geopolitics, economics, and identity politics.
So, maybe a little premature...
But let's assume that the kids are older.
So, I mean, the first thing you do with anyone when you want to try and talk to them about a topic is you ask them what they know about it already.
Right?
So, you would say to a child, well, what have you been told about Donald Trump already?
And it's important.
You don't say, what do you know about Donald Trump?
Because kids...
Usually wouldn't know about these things.
The question is not, what do you know about Donald Trump?
The question is, what have you been told about Donald Trump?
And that is the first question.
Now, I don't know.
I mean, I assume that they've been told, oh, he's a racist or whatever, all this kind of garbage that people say to kids, which is really manipulative and abusive.
It's horrible, horrible, horrible.
To just give kids moral conclusions rather than teach them reasoning or facts or anything like that.
I mean, it's...
That's truly hideous.
I really, really can't emphasize this enough.
And it has nothing to do with being pro-Donald Trump or pro-Hillary Clinton.
It's as wrong to be...
To say Hillary Clinton is a bad person and she's a warmonger and this.
I mean, that doesn't teach anything to kids other than...
Here's some bullshit labels you can attach to people you don't like so that you can pretend you've got some knowledge.
And that is...
Horribly irresponsible and wrong.
You should not be teaching children your own biases or conclusions.
No matter what you're for or against, you should be giving children facts and evidence and teaching them how to think for themselves.
That's the important thing.
You know, bullying them with, well, only a bad person would support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or only good people support Donald Trump or Hillary.
I mean, that's just Terrible.
I mean, it's really horrible.
And it's using children.
It's intimidating children.
It's manipulating children.
And they're pretty helpless and they're pretty dependent.
So that's a bullying, horrible, destructive, propagandistic thing to do that is incredibly harmful, not just to children, but to the rest of us who are going to have to live in the world.
Those children are going to grow up to inhabit.
So stop doing that.
I don't care what your political beliefs are.
Stop attaching positive and negative labels.
Two people and then using the emotional and manipulation and bullying and crap like that to pretend that you're doing anything other than propagandizing.
So that would sort of be my first thing.
So you might have a little unpacking to do if you ask kids what they know about Donald Trump and what they know is all false and nonsense and lies and so on.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I see, you know, you type it into a search engine, you get Ten results all kind of saying the same thing.
Well, assure your kids that the world isn't all racist and sexist.
That sounds very objective.
It sounds like you're giving kids the facts.
Kids don't understand racism, right?
I mean, it's wrong.
I mean, just wrong.
And racism is a very complicated phenomenon.
It's a very complicated phenomenon.
I mean, so is it wrong?
For blacks to have their own pro-black groups?
Well, most people would say no.
Is it wrong for La Raza to exist?
The race, right?
For particular advocacy for particular groups of Mestizos or Hispanics.
Is that wrong?
Is it wrong for there to be a Japanese advocacy group in a non-Japanese country?
And most people would say, well, no, I mean, fine, right?
Is it wrong for there to be white adversaries?
Oh, it's racist!
Immediately, right?
Is it okay to be a proud black man?
Well, sure, I guess.
I mean, is it okay to be a proud Irishman?
Yeah.
Is it okay to be a proud white person?
No!
That's white supremacy, right?
I mean, racism is a very complicated topic.
And as adults, there's so much bullshit that flies around the very concept of racism that even trying to explain it to adults is...
Usually completely ridiculous in terms of facts or consistency or anything like that.
So racism is not a phrase or a concept or a word that should be discussed with children until I would say they're older.
I don't know exactly when, but early teens and so on.
And it is something that needs to be understood.
So...
The way that I would explain Donald Trump would be something like this.
I would say that for a long time, there were...
No, actually, I wouldn't start that.
I would ask you questions.
Okay.
So I would sort of ask, like, do you ever know someone who gets really upset when you talk about certain things?
And maybe they do, right?
And say, okay, well, should those things not be talked about because they upset someone?
Like if it's not mean to someone, right?
If it's just facts, right?
Let's say that you have a friend who's really sensitive around animals, right?
And let's say you have a hamster that dies and you're sad and you come and people say, why are you sad?
And you say, well, my hamster died.
And people say, I don't want to hear that.
It makes me so sad.
Stop talking about your dead hamster.
Right?
Is that fair?
And I think most kids would say, well, I'm sorry that she's upset, but does that mean I'm not allowed to talk about my hamster dying and being sad because this person is upset?
I mean, they can move to another area, they can do something else, right?
I mean, I don't know why their upset would be me not being able to talk about my hamster dying and being sad, right?
I mean, that seems kind of weird, particularly if a lot of people are perfectly fine with it, but just like one person is really upset with it, that doesn't make a huge amount of sense.
So, the fact that someone's upset doesn't mean that other people can't talk about stuff.
Now, for a long time, though, this is not what people believed.
People believed that if someone was upset, you shouldn't talk about certain things.
But these things are important.
They're sort of big person topics, but they're important to talk about.
And so, for instance, you know, most kids know that there's kind of a difference between boys and girls.
Not all boys and all girls, but there's kind of a difference between boys and girls.
And this is an important question in society.
Are there differences between boys and girls?
And one of the reasons is that, in general, women, when they grow up, make a little bit less money than men.
And some people say this is because...
The world is just unfair and men hate women and won't pay them enough money or whatever.
And other people say, well, you know, women have babies.
They're out of the workforce.
They take different school courses.
Some of them get into learning things that don't make a lot of money, whereas boys go into engineering, math, physics, economics and stuff where there's more potential to make money.
So there are differences between men and women in society.
And whether it's because of meanness or whether it's because there are different choices being made is kind of important.
Because if it's meanness, like men just don't pay women because they're mean.
Men are mean and think women can't do a good job even when women can do a good job.
If it's meanness, then we need to fix it, right?
We need to fight it.
We need to find ways to minimize, like have less meanness in the world.
But...
If women make less money because they work less or because they take time off to have kids and so on, then it's not meanness.
It's just what people are choosing, right?
Like if I choose to work a part-time job, it's not fair for me to make as much money as someone who chooses to work a full-time job, right?
Just as it's not fair if you're a kid, if you study really hard for the test and your friend doesn't study hard for the test, is it fair to take some of your marks and give it to that person?
Well, no.
They did badly and you did well because you studied and they didn't.
And that's not unfair.
That's just the result of different choices.
So we have to make decisions about whether things are because of meanness or because of choices or because of other things.
This is just beyond people's control.
Like a lot of people want to play basketball, but usually you have to be pretty tall to play basketball.
And the fact is there are not a lot of short people in basketball.
But that's not because the people who run basketball teams just hate short people.
It's because if you're tall, you can get to that hoop better, you can keep the ball above the other person, you can run faster because your legs are longer, and, you know, lots of cool things you can do.
So, tall people in basketball, that's not the result of meanness, that's the result of, that's the way the game is, right?
It's just the way, not a lot of blind people in baseball.
It's not because they hate blind people, it's just you need to be able to see the ball!
Anyway, you understand that, right?
So, in adulthood, There's kind of a conflict between two groups.
Now, one group says all differences between different groups, tall people, short people, black people, white people, boys, men and women, that all the differences are the result of meanness.
And other people say, well, yeah, there's some meanness in the world, but a lot of these things are not the result of meanness, but the result of different choices or different characteristics, different like tall people and short people in basketball and so on.
Not everyone is as smart as each other, right?
Some people are super smart, some people are in the middle, and some people are not smart.
And there's a little bit that can be done, but not a huge amount that can be done to fix that.
It's just the way their brains are.
So there's this conflict in these two groups.
And one group says, all differences result from meanness.
And another group says, there's some meanness, but a lot of the differences result from not meanness, whether it's just the way people are, or whether it's the choices they make.
It's not all meanness, right?
And so, these two groups have been at war for a long time.
Now, for the last long time, decades, right, since I was a knee-high to a grasshopper, for a long time, who's been in charge are the people who say all differences come from meanness.
And they have tried to fix...
All of these problems, these differences, and I shouldn't say problems, these differences between men and women, they've tried to fix them with laws.
They've tried to say, well, if women are paid less, it's bad.
And therefore, we've got to force people to pay women more because the people who are paying women less are just mean and you're not allowed to be mean.
And so they've tried to make rules where people can like pay big fines or go to jails if they break these rules.
They've tried to fix all these differences between people With policemen, with laws, with jails, with courts.
And you know what?
A lot of these problems have gotten worse as a result of trying to fix them with police and courts and jails and laws and all of that kind of stuff.
So if it was just meanness, like if shoplifting is legal, like going to take a candy bar from a store, if that's legal, no punishment, then maybe a lot of people will.
Go steal candy.
It's not stealing if it's legal.
Just go here and go free candy, right?
Stores go out of business, but anyway.
Whereas if they then pass a law and say, okay, well, stealing from a store, stealing a candy bar is mean, therefore it's going to be illegal, well, you'd expect there to be less stealing, right?
Less stealing from candy.
And so if the people who say all differences between groups results from meanness, and then they make meanness illegal, then you would expect the differences to Become less, right?
For people to sort of even out.
But in a lot of cases, these differences became worse.
Worse.
Now, the people who say that the differences aren't the result of meanness say, well, if you try and fix a mean problem, you think it's a mean problem, but it's not a mean problem, then you're the mean one, right?
Because you're passing laws and throwing people in jail for things that they're doing that's not the result of meanness, but the result of just different choices and different things happening in society and different tall and short people in basketball and so on.
And so they say, and there's been this war.
Now, the people who say everything is mean, all is meanness, what they do is they say anyone who doubts that it's meanness, who says maybe it's choice or maybe it's just people being different, those people are also bad.
And maybe some of them should go to jail and maybe some of them should not be allowed to speak.
And it's gotten really tense.
And for a long, long, long time, the mean machine, the mean brigade, the people who say all differences are meanness, they've been in charge and they...
I think a lot of people think they've got kind of mean themselves.
Like they're destroying people's lives.
They're getting people fired.
They just think anybody who says maybe it's not all meanness is just a terrible person and needs to be attacked.
And they've done some pretty mean things themselves.
So...
And the problems aren't getting solved.
In fact, the problems are getting worse.
The more they say, it's all meanness, and we've got to fix it with police and courts, and we're going to throw people and get people fired, and no one can say this, and no one can say that, and it's mean to even question whether it's meanness, people get tired of it.
Because people want the problems to be solved, if they can be solved.
And if people say, well, we're solving a problem, and that problem is actually getting worse, well, people get frustrated.
You know, like if you, let's say you have a rash, And you go to a doctor.
You say, I got this rash.
The doctor says, oh, I got a cream for that.
And you put the cream on.
And then the next day you wake up and the rash is double in size.
You can go back to the doctor.
The doctor says, oh, yeah, that's the way it reacts to the cream.
Just add more cream.
Next day, four times it's like your whole arm.
He says, oh, well, you know, just keep working at it.
It's flaring up, you know, but don't worry.
If you weren't taking the cream, it wouldn't be your whole arm.
It'd be your whole body.
And maybe even your pets and your neighbors too.
So this cream is keeping it good.
And you keep adding the cream and it keeps getting worse and it gets more itchy and then it starts bleeding.
And then at some point you're like, I don't think this medicine is working.
I'm going to throw you in jail if you question this medicine.
I'm going to get the cops to come and arrest you and throw you in jail if you don't think this medicine is the right thing.
It's like, but my whole body is red and I'm bleeding and I'm itching and I'm, ah, I can't sleep and I can't concentrate and even my eyes are red.
It gets really frustrating when you think something isn't working, but you might get thrown in jail, or you might get fired, or some bad things might happen.
Your friends might think you're a terrible person for saying, well, I think this medicine is making my rash worse.
This is not good medicine.
This is bad medicine.
It's not medicine at all.
So people who were really frustrated at everyone who said all the differences between groups are just based on meanness, they got tired of not being able to talk about what they thought, of not being able to have a voice in the debate about meanness versus different choices.
And not all differences are the result of choices, and there is meanness.
So it's not one or the other completely, but somewhere in the middle for sure.
And so more and more rules, more and more controls, more and more bullying, more and more people scared they might go to jail or lose their job or whatever it is for speaking their thoughts and wanting to solve problems.
Well, Donald Trump came along and said, you know what?
It's not all meanness.
That there are some differences that are important.
And we don't get anywhere by pretending that That everything is just meanness.
It's called political correctness, right?
Where you have to say that all differences between groups is the result of meanness, and we need the government to go fix it with courts and police and all that.
And Donald Trump came along and said, well, the problems are getting worse.
Not being able to talk about these problems is not helping.
Now we're flying blind, now we're driving blind.
And he got really...
Frustrated.
And he was really angry at all the people who were threatening everyone else for just talking about differences between groups.
And there's other things that he's talking about, but this is the one where I think people have the most problems.
And he said, look, we've got really serious problems to solve here, and we're not solving them by pretending that the only difference that ever happens is meanness.
Now, the people who believe all differences are meanness think he's a terrible person.
Because...
That's the rule, right?
The rule is if everything is meanness, then saying it's not meanness is mean, right?
Like if you see someone bullying another kid and you say, oh, that's not bullying.
He's a nice kid.
He's a good friend, right?
Then you're kind of part of the bullying and you're not a great person because you're not saying it's bullying when it's bullying.
So the people who think everything is meanness, well, they think Donald Trump is a really, really bad person.
But the other people who say, well, the mean people, the people who say everything is meanness, they've been in charge of society for like 40 years or 50 years and these problems are only getting worse.
My rash is now, it is my pets and my neighbors who have it too and this cream is giving it to my lawn as well.
Lawn is getting red and itchy.
So there's lots of people who think we need something different.
We need something that is, we need to be able to explore why certain things are going wrong in society.
And we can't just create this magic wand called everyone's mean.
It's all meanness.
It's all meanness.
And because people have been trying that for like 40 or 50 years and the problems in a lot of ways are just getting worse.
So people wanted different ways to try and solve these problems.
So some people like Donald Trump because of that.
Some people like Donald Trump for other reasons, too, which we can get into another time.
But I think that's why you hear, well, Donald Trump hates women or is racist or, you know, because different groups do differently well or differently badly.
And some of it may be meanness, but a lot of it is not.
And we still need to explore why so that we can solve these problems.
Or if we can't solve them, at least accept that differences between groups doesn't mean...
That everyone's mean and everyone hates everyone because, you know, we need to explore why.
And so I think this war between people who say, well, differences could be the result of choice or other things we can't control, whereas the people who say all differences are the result of meanness, it's a conflict.
And right now, the people who've been in charge, the mean brigade, have been in charge for 50 years, they don't like someone else coming along and saying, maybe you're wrong.
Maybe there's other solutions, other things we can do to explore.
And people are frustrated about it and you know there's other things like people moving to the country and all that.
And of course if there's no differences then everyone can move to the country and anybody who has any problems with that is just a mean person.
If there are differences between groups then there may be good reasons to be cautious about how many different people move to a country.
These are just questions that need to be asked and answered and people got tired of being told they were just mean and bad for even asking these questions and So a lot of people got behind that.
And I, you know, I personally, I think that it's good to be able to ask these questions and find out whether it's meanness or other things that is the cause of some of these differences between groups.
And we don't know the answer, I think, as yet.
I don't think it can be all meanness, because if it was all meanness, then the problems would be getting better.
You know, normally if you think you have a solution and you apply the solution, but things get worse, you gotta question whether you have the right solution, and I think that's behind a lot of what is going on.
And so that's sort of I would obviously stop with a lot of questions and analogies and ask them if they followed it.
But that would be my sort of what you could say about Donald Trump to kids to sort of give some perspective and without demonizing either side or whatever.
But does that make any sense?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I follow that.
Well, I'll quit when I'm ahead then and move on to the next call.
All right, sounds good.
Thank you.
Alright, up next we have A Voice.
A Voice wrote in and said, What do you think about the philosophical idea, know thyself?
Can we formulate an updated model of human identity that starts with classical notions of mind, body, soul, that takes modern ideas into account?
What would that look like?
That's from A Voice.
Well, okay.
So I guess my first question is, what does it mean to you, the ancient Socratic admonition of know thyself?
What does it mean?
What do you think he was talking about when he said the first rule is to know yourself?
Well, first of all, I believe it was an inscription on the temple of Apollo and Delphi.
So it's pre-Socratic, but I'm sure Socrates picked it up and ran with it.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
It's important to be self-reflective, develop self-awareness, define who I am so that I know myself and my limitations.
That way I can better know you and others.
So this is a very prominent idea throughout all of, I believe, Greek and Roman thought.
So that's what it means to me, know thyself.
Can you give me a little bit more details other than the etymology of the concept?
Well, I believe that we can look to Juvenal, the satire number 10.
At the end he says, if you don't mind me reading just a little bit here, it says, you should pray for a healthy mind and a healthy body.
And so that gives us a clue right there.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death and deems length of days the least of nature's gifts, that can endure any kind of toil, that knows neither wrath nor desire, and thinks the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself, for assuredly the only road to a life of peace is virtue.
So this reads almost like how to be a man, right?
and A healthy mind will exist in a healthy body.
So the self is definitely made up of body, soul, and what we've always heard about is body, mind, soul.
And that's a good start.
I just think it's incomplete because we're neglecting the emotional aspect of life, which is part of the human experience even if it has been.
Maybe it should be suppressed.
But we've also developed fields of psychology and sociology, all of these which are part of the human experience that make up the contours of who we are, male and female, everybody, really.
It's the human experience, and they have not been included in this model.
And so I believe it's time to update this model on human identity.
Yeah, I mean, that's a...
I know when you were reading, it's just, you know, this is just a lot of positive adjectives.
I think, I'll tell you sort of what I understand by the admonition to know thyself, and you can see if it makes any sense for you.
Okay.
So there are certain things about ourself which we don't need to explore.
We simply know.
If I stub my toe, I get an ow.
And I don't need to, huh, I wonder what that sensation is like, ow, stub my toe.
I'm conditioning my foot to not do that again.
And if a bear jumps out at me in the woods, I feel fight or flight.
You know, like these are not things I need to sort of explore about myself.
And in the same way, if I find something beautiful, a sunset or a painting or a person virtue, I don't usually need to plumb the depths of my psyche to figure out why I find something beautiful, unless what I find beautiful is, I don't know, ghost spirit cooking and decapitated heads and eating fake people next to Lady Gaga.
Then I might want to have a look and say, why do I find these things beautiful?
I'm crazy.
So...
There are certain things, a lot of things we don't need to sort of figure out, you know, if I feel lust, if I feel hungry, if I feel thirsty, you know, these are sort of the base emotions.
I don't think we need to figure out, you know, go have sex, have food, have drink, whatever, right?
And so I think there's a lot of things we don't really need.
So the question is, what does it mean to know yourself and why is it important since so much of what we know is, or what we experience is automatic.
We can't open our eyes, usually, and not see.
So I think the question is why, well, what we need to know about ourselves Is our biases.
Our confirmation biases, our predilection for things that accord with our own pre-existing worldview.
That's what we need to know, because that's where we're going to get tripped up.
And we will always get tripped up, thinking it's a tricky business and, you know, this sort of We're looking for 2.0, which we're hoping to upgrade through this very program.
Hey, it's nice how I use the television program or web program with the idea of programming.
Anyway, it's a nice little dual use of the word.
So, it's our biases.
Now, the question is, why is it difficult for us to examine our biases?
Why is it difficult?
Well, we're not born biased.
We're born Not tabula rasa exactly, because we have all these instincts in the lizard brain and the monkey brain and all that, but we are born without moral content, which is why, you know, if you're raised in a Muslim country, you're most likely to become a Muslim.
If you're raised in a Christian country, you become a Christian, and so on, right?
And we have choices later on, but particularly when we're kids.
So the question is, why is it difficult for us to examine our own biases?
Why do we need a commandment or an admonition to know thyself?
Well, because...
The biases are implanted in us by our culture, by our society, our teachers, our elders, our priests, our politicians, or whatever, opinion makers.
And the question then is, why are the biases given to us, or why are the perspectives given to us?
Is it because they're true, or is it because they're of benefit to us, or is it because they're of benefit to others?
And for almost all of human history, and still in most places across the world, Beliefs are implanted into children for the convenience of others, for the convenience of people who have power, for the convenience of priests, for the convenience of parents who themselves have these same biases but don't think they're biases as long as they can inflict them on their children.
They normalize them by reinflicting them on their children, so they're not biases, they're just facts.
And so children have beliefs imprinted and implanted and often forced on them, bullied, right?
Come to church or else, or you've got to go to school and you've got to believe this and you've got to believe that and only bad children would believe this.
And so children have conclusions, perspectives, beliefs imprinted upon them in aggressive and often abusive ways.
And It's very painful, emotionally very painful, to examine the biases implanted in us by our culture, our priests, our parents, our teachers, and so on.
And it is something that evolution has trained us not to do.
Because for most of human history, for most of our evolution, beliefs in a tribe didn't change much at all.
And to question or oppose the beliefs based upon some drive for objectivity would cause enormous anxiety because In a tribe of delusions, objectivity crushes your sexual market value.
It kills it completely.
Okay.
Right, I mean, so hang on, hang on, let me finish and then it's all yours.
So, we are evolutionarily trained against objectivity in the realm of ethics and in the realm of politics, so to speak, the tribal politics.
However, and this is particularly true for men, if you reject too much objectivity, you can't hunt, you can't fight, you can't do anything useful.
You know, think of the Indian Swami cross-legged on top of a mountain.
Well, those genes ain't doing much reproducing now, are they?
They're not doing much of bringing meat and milk and veggies to...
So if you go too far out of reality, you can't function as a provider.
So men have this tension between subjectivity in the social or familial or tribal realm with objectivity in the hunting and warfare realm.
And so this is the tension, right?
And we've gone way too far into the feminine world of subjectivity and way too far away from the masculine world of objectivity, which I sort of talked about a little bit earlier in some incoherent rant about Hallmark cards.
But anyway.
So...
Know thyself means that if you really, really do want to understand your biases, then you need to understand that you were programmed for the convenience of others.
You were programmed for the convenience of the powers that be, whether they're priests or parents or politicians or whatever.
It doesn't really matter.
The principle remains the same.
That you were trained like a pet or trained like a livestock to fear The electricity in a fence that isn't electrified, to fear a freedom that you would actually love.
You fear it as something fearful, terrible, terrible.
And so it's very painful to say, to look at your society, to look at your parents and say, well, Maybe without conscious intention or doesn't really matter, but they programmed me with falsehoods for their own convenience to serve me up as a tribal piece of tax livestock for the powers that be.
That's a very painful and difficult thing to experience, to go through.
And it is a dangerous thing to talk about and it's a dangerous thing to experience because that's the matrix, right?
The matrix are the false beliefs fed into you.
Usually by your parents, but now increasingly by daycare workers and teachers and so on as the state has taken over more and more the raising of children.
But it is a very painful thing to go through.
So you need to know yourself because you need to know how and why you were lied to.
And then you have to find a way to embrace the truth without also embracing the black nihilistic bitter rage of having been lied to.
And having had your desire for goodness and conformity and bond and unity with your elders used against you to turn you into a form of tax and warfare or breeding livestock for the powers to be.
So I think we have to know ourselves because without knowing our biases, we cannot achieve the truth.
And the reason why it has to be a philosophical commandment is it's painful as hell and disorienting as hell and disruptive as hell to your life.
I mean, if all of your relationships are founded on delusion, when you achieve the truth, your relationships are revealed as themselves delusions.
And that's the fundamental matrix that falls away from people who go for the ideals, who go for the truth, who go for the objectivity, who go for the facts.
Your relationships are based on illusions and either they come with you to the truth or your entire relationships are revealed as delusions and you have to face difficult, difficult choices.
So that's my sort of thought about self-knowledge, why it's important, why it's difficult and why we need to be reminded of its importance.
Does that make any sense?
Sure.
Yeah, it does.
Now, I agree.
The truth will set you free.
I hear you saying that loud and clear.
And I believe that free will and self-realization also play a role, though.
When I hear you talk, it's very much we are imposed upon by outside authority and people, parents, government, etc.
Can achieve a certain level of objectivity and divorce themselves from that influence and simply define, you know, this was an influence, but I don't have to let it dictate my thoughts, actions, and behavior and so on.
In other words, so there's got to be a room for free will.
And the ability to figure things out in spite of influences.
When I hear you talk, Stefan, I definitely hear a huge emphasis on reason and facts.
And what about the flip side of that?
What about the importance or is there an emotional intelligence, feelings?
And is it just feminine or are there...
Purely rational women or, the flip side, purely emotional men that you've experienced.
Oh, come on.
Oh, man.
You can't be bell-curving me, man.
Come on.
Well, there's both.
When I say that women tend to be more emotional and men tend to be more rational, you can't possibly – you're too smart a guy to say, are you saying there's not one rational woman or one – come on.
I mean, if I say that girls are generally shorter than boys, are you saying – Are there no girls that are taller than...
Okay, and I agree.
If you want to stay in this conversation, you've got to drop that.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Because we're too smart for that.
Okay, good.
So there is, it seems to me, a duality.
This is one of the dualities of the human experience.
It's the rational and emotional.
There's a lot of words that we use, in English at least, to describe these two aspects that are really almost polar opposites.
And...
You could think of them as a continuum and everybody experiences both of these, some more weighted in the rational and some more maybe weighted in the emotional side of this spectrum.
But maybe men have suppressed that emotional side through the ages because even, as I mentioned this juvenile quote, he doesn't talk about emotions.
He doesn't talk about the heart.
Later in...
Throughout Western literature, you'll hear a lot more about the heart and the importance of the emotions and so on.
But what I would like to suggest is that there really is mind and heart.
There is the rational and the emotional.
Those two together are awareness.
And we can add awareness.
Things like intuition and gut.
Hunch is part of that feeling aspect that is pre-cerebral, as you mentioned.
But those two are there.
That's part of the human experience.
And I think more men who get in touch with that emotional part of their experience and understand it, they won't have to maybe...
Sorry, hang on a sec.
Why do you think men have this big emotional life that is repressed?
Are you saying that men are the same as women but repressed?
Because evolution, as you understand, would likely have given different emotional apparatuses to women and to men because women and men have very different roles to play in the continuation of the species, evolutionarily speaking, right?
right, that the women were the nurturers and the women required the fields and the tribal get-togethers and the support of the other women in the tribe, which is why women tend to focus more on verbal abuse and bullying and so on.
Whereas men would have teamwork for the sake of the goal of bringing down the beast that they were hunting, right?
Women is taking care of the domestic animals, want to keep animals alive.
The hunters want actually animals to die.
So there are going to be different emotional apparatus that would be developed.
It's not like men and women are the same, but women are suppressing their more rational side, but men are suppressing their more emotional side.
I don't think that I have an emotional side that I'm repressing.
And I don't think that after we've got like 50 years of men being increasingly raised by women and exposed to nothing but women through daycare teachers and through teachers as a whole and single moms and this fascism of the fields that is enveloped and is strangling the lifeblood out of male masculinity, I don't think that men need any more getting in touch with your feeling stuff.
I think getting in touch with your balls might not be a bad particular thing for men to be doing either.
I agree.
I don't think that there's a lot of – I don't think men need to be more encouraged to get in touch with their feelings.
I think men need to be more encouraged to get in touch with their masculinity.
But they need to be aware that they have this aspect.
It's part of the human experience and so it's there.
What?
Yeah.
Do you think men don't know they have – do you think men genuinely don't know they have feelings?
Do you think men are like, I am a robot.
I am a battery.
I have no feelings whatsoever.
Do you really think that men don't think they have any feelings?
That's like saying, would you go to a woman and would you say, well, a woman needs to understand that occasionally she might have a rational thought that she needs to express, right?
I mean, you're very good at wanting to say to men, you need to embrace an emotional side that's repressed within you.
Would you go to women and say you need to embrace a rational side that you're repressing and you need to understand that you have the capacity for rational thought?
Have you ever said that to a woman?
Only with my defenses up, with a quick arm to block or blow, you know?
But you'd feel more anxious about saying that to a woman than talking to me about males' feels, right?
Yeah.
In other words, if we take this idea that men are more rational and women are more emotional...
Then you can say, well, men need to get in touch with their emotionality, need to recognize that they have feelings, but you know, and I know, that you're not out there saying this in public to women.
Women, you need to get in touch with your rational side and understand that you have the potential for rational thought.
I mean, come on.
No, I agree with you, so I don't even...
So why are you talking to men?
Why aren't you out there talking to women about their rational side?
Oh, I do.
I do, believe me.
I don't believe you.
I don't believe you.
Part of the issue really is something like the loss of the western frontier.
You know, they're really – in the modern age, there is no big unknown – there's no testing ground as obvious at least as the western frontier.
The grizzlies have been subdued.
You know, you can't go out there and – And kill a grizzly and show what a man you are.
You know, once 118 elements in the periodic table have been discovered.
Okay, I need you to get to the point because this is all very obvious stuff.
Yeah, there's no frontier.
Yeah, well, the point is it's hard to be heroic when so much of the low-hanging fruit of heroism, the obvious, has been done.
What the hell does having to kill a grizzly have to do with heroism?
I don't understand.
I mean, civilization didn't occur because men killed grizzly bears.
I mean, men throughout history have killed predators, but you only get Western civilization in the West.
You only get egalitarianism, equality under the law, free markets, science, rational medicine.
I mean, everyone kills predators around the world.
I mean, bears kill bears.
You know, I mean, like a lion will take down a gazelle.
That doesn't mean that the lion gets to open an art gallery.
I mean, what the hell does killing predators have to do with civilization?
The whole point of masculinity...
It's a commitment to truth and reason and objectivity and going against these sort of squid-like, hideous emotional manipulations that are like alien-like trying to land on your face and lay the egg of hyper-feminized madness in your belly until it comes out of your chest like you're in a Ridley Scott movie.
So, you know, the frontier is always there.
It's the frontier of truth, the frontier of confronting society with its irrationality, the frontier of Of bringing reality to a deluded population.
That's what built civilization, not just, you don't kill a bear and up sprouts the Eiffel Tower from its bloody grave.
One's more subtle than the other, right?
So the new modern age, you've got to be more nuanced and subtle.
You can't just do these obvious acts of heroism and be celebrated for doing that.
It's much more subtle now.
I mean, that's just the nature of Of modernity.
We've tackled a lot of the big problems.
We've brought ourselves to this age where there's plenty...
Okay, so what are the brave things that you're up to in terms of fixing things in the world?
Where can I find your courage online to do?
Because you've obviously thought a lot about the need for courage, the need for improving things, the need...
You can't just be all talk, right?
So where can I find your brave stuff online?
Oh...
Usually I'm writing on the New York Times comments, but I do need to put out something.
But I would like to...
No, but you said you've been confronting women about their lack of rationality in ways that I would not count as being too extreme.
So where have you done that?
Have you done that anywhere publicly?
New York Times comments also, you know, with my friends and family.
But I don't...
That's your frontier?
No, that's not my grizzly.
Actually, my grizzly is really this model, this new model of human identity that takes into account...
Oh, come on!
We don't need a new model of human identity.
We need people bringing reason and evidence to the masses and not in the comment section of the New York Times.
No, this newer updated model will...
Help accomplish that.
It's a missing puzzle piece.
We don't have a full accounting of who we are.
That's part of the problem.
It's defining who we are as men, as women.
Okay, tell me your plan for making the world better.
I'm sounding skeptical because I am, but I'm open-minded.
Please tell me, and please don't take too long, but tell me how you're going to graduate from typing dinky comments in the New York Times to saving the human condition with your new plan.
Go ahead.
Okay, it's not a new plan necessarily, but what it is is a model.
So the model is three axes, mind and heart, body and soul, self and others.
These are three dualities.
Mind and heart is really...
No, no, no, you're missing Ben and Jerry's, yin and yang.
No, no, no, no.
No, I'm just kidding.
Come on, you're familiar with the...
No, you've just given me synonyms or antonyms or whatever, so give me an action plan, right?
Well, the action plan is to...
Lay out the contours of human experience, which includes...
What?
Okay, how do I do that after I finish my breakfast cereal?
Ah, what I'm up to today, honey, is I'm going to eat some Weetabix and then lay out the contours of the human condition.
How do I know when I'm done?
I'm out of contours and I have a condition.
I don't know.
Just tell me.
Tell me what you do, not what you can describe in ways that I don't even know what it is.
As I say, there's three dualities.
Mind and heart, which is No!
No!
If I don't understand you the first time, repeating it again does not help me to understand it.
You understand?
If I say, and you say, I don't understand it, you need to tell me what to do.
There is a point where language cannot thoroughly explain.
It does the best that it can, but the essential thing is beyond language.
So we throw the words and the models at a problem the best we know how.
Oh, so you have a great solution, but it can't be communicated in human language.
It can be, to the best of my ability.
I have a great product that can't be made in human dimensions.
It can't be made in this dimension.
It's an updated body, mind, soul.
Okay, but what does that mean?
What do you do?
What do you do with it?
What do you do with that?
You define yourself one side at a time, one aspect at a time.
You realize that you're part...
Okay, so how do I define myself one side or aspect at a time?
What does that mean?
Well, you have a body.
You define your body.
You have skin color.
You have a gender.
You have skills and abilities with your body.
You have the opposite of that.
You have a soul.
That's your spiritual aspect, what you believe, what you have faith in.
Okay, so what do I do?
I've got an inventory.
Now what do I do?
Well, I'm...
You've got to keep going.
You have a mind with the ability to reason.
You have the emotional side, a heart with the ability to feel.
Then you have your esteem and ego, that's yourself.
Finally, you have relationships with others, community, society.
Altogether, this is your true self.
This is simply a model of human identity.
Where's the value in this?
It tells you the sides that need to be balanced.
When you say we need to have a balanced life, you balance these dualities.
Okay, so after I've shaped the contours of the human condition, it's time for me to balance the dualities?
Right.
And now what?
That's how you live a moral...
Do I actually do anything with this or am I just like playing mental pong back and forth with a bunch of adjectives?
I mean, what do I do with all of this in the world to make the world better?
You don't overemphasize reason over emotion.
You don't emphasize self over others.
No.
When I say what do I do, don't tell me what I don't.
What do I do?
Saying what I don't do is not telling me what I do.
You take...
How do I fix this broken arm?
Well, you don't run into a tree, and you don't jump off a cliff, and you don't have an ice cream.
It's like, no, no, doctor, tell me what I do.
No, what I don't do.
You take others into account when you're trying to define self, when you're trying to determine best action or behavior for self.
Oh, so when I define my nipples, I also have to include your nipples.
No, because you said take an inventory of my body.
So it needs to be collective nipple fest, right?
There's the nipples of everyone in the room, maybe everyone in the block.
Just a lot of little nipply dimples that I need to take into account when I'm defining myself.
I don't know how we got from philosophy to nipples, but...
I'm just trying to figure out what I do.
What do I count?
Am I counting nipples, nipple hairs, nose hairs, freckles?
I mean, when I'm taking an inventory of myself, but I have to include other people's bodies.
So basically, I'm cataloging all of the outsides and insides of everyone in the world.
But when I'm done that, I can do something productive and useful.
You go from the specific to the general, you know?
Sure.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to go from the general to the specific because that would be unclear.
But go ahead.
Yeah, so...
It's a way of thinking about one's life and how to stay balanced, healthy, and it's a holistic approach.
I mean, I'm just naming some other sides.
And how would I know if I'm unbalanced, if you don't mind me asking?
Because balance sounds good.
We want to be balanced rather than unbalanced, and we want to be healthy rather than unhealthy in the same way that profit is better than loss.
But I don't just wander around business boardrooms saying profit is better than loss because that would be the statement of an idiot and there's no plan involved in that.
But how would I know if I'm out of balance or unbalanced?
Okay, along the self and others spectrum, if you have no sense of self and you're completely giving yourself away, you're not being assertive, then maybe you're too far over in the others' side of the equation.
Or the reverse of that could be if you have no friends and you're narcissistic, you're too far over to the self side of the spectrum and you need to start taking other people and history into account.
Mind, heart, same thing.
I'm sure you're familiar with good and bad music.
Bad music might lack a certain emotive element, whereas good music is a nice balance of hitting the right notes but hitting them in a musical or emotive way.
Body and soul, same thing.
Overly concerned with your body and forget about the development of the spiritual aspect of your life, whatever that means to somebody.
It could mean whatever it wants.
But go ahead.
But it does mean more than it's belief.
It's what you believe in.
And I'm not talking religion.
There's no ritual.
There's no text.
There's no priesthood.
Religion has structure and has moral demands for you to act in the world.
So you're definitely not talking about religion.
So go ahead.
So body and soul need to be balanced.
And together that is your...
Your foundation being.
Mind and heart need to be balanced, and that is your awareness.
And then self and others is psychology and sociology.
Your ego, but also mixed with – balanced with relationships with other people.
Okay, so let's say I'm in a situation in society where somebody wants the government to tax me to pay for his – Addiction, right?
Or his irresponsibility.
He doesn't want to work and he wants the government to tax me.
Where's the ideal balance between his desire to want to use the government to tax me to subsidize his lazy lifestyle and me wanting to keep the fruits of my own labor for me to apply it to my own family or to a charity or whoever I find worthy of it?
Where does the balance lie in that particular challenge in society?
You know, that's going to be situational.
There's the individual situation, which has to be taken into account, and then the larger community and societal level that would have to be taken into account.
Okay, let me make it—sorry, because this is getting—I don't know what situational means in that.
Let's get a little bit more basic.
Let's say that I'm a man, and let's say that another man wants to have anal sex with me against my will.
How do we balance these two particular situations?
Absolutely.
Violation of your person, your body.
That's an infringement on your rights and your pursuit of happiness.
And if he wants to steal my money, then clearly that's wrong.
That's not situational.
That's like, okay, so if he wants to steal my money through the state, that's also wrong.
I'm a free market guy.
Okay, so that's not situational.
Because you just said it was, but it's not situational.
On the other hand, yeah, I don't want to be told I have to give the money away.
I wouldn't mind helping somebody out, you know?
Sure, you don't want to be forced, right?
Because if it's consensual, if it's voluntary, then it's like lovemaking, and if it's not, it's rape.
And so if I want to help somebody voluntarily, then it's charity, and if they want to take my money by force, either directly or through the state, then that's a violation of property rights and it's immoral.
About consent.
So there's a lot of stuff that's not about balance, that's not situational, that's going wrong in the world.
Initiation of the use of force through taxation, redistribution of income according to the guns of the state where they throw you in jail if you don't pay your taxes.
So it seems to me that there's a lot of stuff to be done that doesn't have anything to do with balance but is actually out there advocating for more moral interactions, more voluntary interactions rather than coerced interactions.
So wouldn't it be more valuable or more useful to speak less about balance and to deal with the major evils in the world?
Like if we lived 200 years ago and there was slavery and we both said slavery was immoral, I don't know that preaching mind-body balance and that you'd want to say, well, slavery is wrong and we should really not have slavery.
That's an immoral thing, rather than some goopy, subjective, balance-y thing that I can't figure out, but seems to involve nipples, at least from my perspective.
No, I love the idea of cold, hard facts and reason-solving the problem.
Right.
We're talking now really more about men evolving and not to be great hunters and gatherers, but really to be more nuanced and understand their role in society.
I'm speaking specifically to the men feminists left behind, for example, an article in the New York Times from Saturday that talks about men not evolving.
Women have evolved.
We've left you behind.
It's time for you to evolve or you won't – you can't expect – Women have evolved.
This is what the article says.
So this is what the article says.
Women have not evolved.
Women have evolved because they're still relying upon men to provide them.
Men pay for government.
Women don't pay for government.
Men pay for government collectively.
It is the taxes that men pay that create the government that allows women to oppress men through gynocentric political platforms.
So women have devolved in that they used to be reliant upon men, but at least they had to provide services in return for men, like keeping a house, raising kids, and working and whatever they did.
Women are just exploiting men because they're taking stuff from men through the power of the state without providing any services in return.
They've turned from a mutually beneficial partnership into economic vampires as a whole.
There are lots of exceptions, but the idea that this is some sort of evolution to me is ridiculous.
Do you really think it's that asymmetric?
It's that unbalanced now?
Men and women, the whole gender struggle is really that asymmetric at this point?
You mean statistically?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, there's a study done in New Zealand, I think it was, where women, just on average, just as adults, get $150,000 more out of the government than they pay in.
And men are contributing the taxes as a gender and women are stripping the taxes from the government.
Men are paying for the government and for all the benefits that women receive from the government.
And it is entirely lopsided.
It's entirely predatory on the part of the females as a whole.
Individuals, of course, different.
But, yeah, statistically, it's a basic fact that men pay for the government.
Women use the government to oppress and strip resources from men without any concomitant resource provision in return.
And that is not progress.
That is a rank regression to a much more primitive form of exploitation.
It's a form of aristocracy, of course, gynocracy.
Okay, well – I can't argue with you then.
No, I do appreciate your feedback and what you have to say, and I've been following you for quite a while.
Try and follow a little closer, if you don't mind.
I think I'd appreciate that.
But thanks very much for the call.
I appreciate it.
You know it is good to bring your ideas to skeptical audiences and to people who are going to ask you to tighten them up a little and toughen them up a little and put them from the platonic abstract of adjectives into things that can be done In the real world.
So I hope you appreciate me pushing you back as far as that goes.
But I do appreciate the call.
It was enlightening and interesting for me, if not downright entertaining.
So thanks a lot for your call.
Mike, do we have another call?
That's it for tonight, Steph.
Whoa!
No way we did.
Five callers?
Six?
Two hours?
Three.
Three hours!
Damn, I'm getting so efficient.
I could almost run Donald Trump's campaign.
So, thanks everyone so much for listening.
Of course, you know.
You know the way it goes.
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