Feb. 13, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:06:49
3592 Surviving Dystopia - Call In Show - February 8th, 2017
Question 1: [1:14] - “Venezuela is hell; Death, hunger, sickness, and violence are galloping across the entire land. There are no prospects and no safety. Many are still hopeful for a change, but I don't see it happening any time soon because of the level of entrenchment of the regime against an ineffectual opposition. Additionally, most people don't even care to understand why we reached this sorry state. Do you really think the creative, intelligent Venezuelans should remain here to waste their lives?”Question 2: [57:24] - “With a very young daughter, is it better to have her in daycare part time, but living in a better home and neighborhood, or, should I quit my job and move to a smaller home in a neighborhood of less quality but be a stay at home dad?”Question 3: [1:21:13] - “I'm a recent college graduate and landed a job in my field, though I have slowly come to realize that I do not want to pursue it further. Considering the large amount of debt and time I have put into this, it has left me feeling bitter and frustrated. I am acutely aware that my career indecision is now using up valuable time that should be spent building up work skills. I have always felt that the right career lies at the intersection of what you have an aptitude for, what the world needs, and what you enjoy. I just can't seem to get there. In your experience, how did you find the right career and do you have any advice or pitfalls to avoid along the way?”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
Hi everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Show tonight, par excellence.
The first caller is somebody who's calling in from Venezuela, and we had someone call in recently from that socialist falling into hellscape society, and we got another glimpse and a view into what it's like and how it came about.
Very instructive and well worth listening to.
The second caller is Well, I thought he had a problem.
Turned out he didn't quite have the problem that I thought he had.
He wanted to know whether he should put his child in daycare or keep his child in daycare or downsize and stay home.
Turns out he had just a few more options than I thought.
It was an interesting conversation.
Now, the third caller wanted to know, how can I find a career that really satisfies me, sort of intellectually, emotionally, morally...
And you seem to have, I guess, you ever tried riding a bike with the chain not on the spokes?
It's a little bit like that.
Great conversation nonetheless.
Thanks everyone, of course, so much for listening.
Please, please, please come by freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out, to help us out.
So, so important.
We need you, we need you, we need you.
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Alright, up first today we have Jake.
Jake wrote in and said, Venezuela is hell.
Death, hunger, sickness, and violence are galloping across the entire land.
There are no prospects and no safety.
Many are still hopeful for a change, but I don't see it happening anytime soon because of the level of entrenchment of the regime against an ineffectual opposition.
Additionally, most people don't even care to understand why we reached this sorry state.
Do you really think the creative, intelligent Venezuelans should remain here to waste their lives?
That's from Jake.
Hey Jake, how's it going?
Hi Steph.
Hi to everyone listening and watching.
Yeah, welcome to the show.
I'm sorry about the topic.
What's happening for you at the moment?
Well, the latest in the news is that a bunch of news portals were blocked by every single ISB in the country because they were critical to the government.
Funny thing, though, they were blocked by private operators before they were blocked by the state-owned ones.
That is very suspect.
In any case, that's just the most recent The most recent bit of news that I have right now.
If you turn to the back of the newspaper, you're always going to find a bunch of news about murders and deaths and thefts and awful things.
And is it relatively safe where you are?
Define relative.
Define safe.
Define where I am.
I'll let you do those, because you're closer to the ground than I am.
Okay, it is relatively safe in the sense that I'm not expecting anyone to just burst into my house and shoot up the place.
But that is not a possibility.
It's not something that's out of the ordinary.
There are cases where people have gotten into relatively secluded...
I live in a relatively secluded neighborhood, so there are cases where people have gotten into relatively secluded neighborhoods and just...
Invaded a house, a home invasion.
And home invasions here...
See, here's the problem.
There are home invasions in the United States as well.
But usually people survive those because there are pretty stringent laws for things like murder.
Here, the laws are written, but there isn't so much interest in having them enforced.
So people die.
Right, right.
There was, I mean, I had some messages from people from Venezuela.
One person wrote, this is the first video of Stefan's that I will not be able to finish.
Got to 31 minutes before getting too depressed.
I'm Venezuelan born, he said, and have most of my family over there still.
My mother, who is here in the US, speaks with my grandma who is in Venezuela every day.
And the only reason why they are barely surviving is because two of my cousins who work in the airport get a small box of food every week.
Sending anything over in the mail from the US is futile as it will get stolen or not even delivered.
My two cousins had to move in with my grandma because their mothers do not have jobs and can't maintain them.
So they decided to unite and work together to survive and also keep grandma alive.
I can attest everything said by this guest is exactly spot on.
Never has it been this bad.
People that lived in the early 1900s Venezuela had it better.
Let that sink in.
The chances of you getting killed for your possessions is just as high for the chances of you or your family members getting kidnapped and held for ransom.
My mom's best friend, who is in the middle class, has eight cameras around their property.
A shotgun at the ready whilst watching the camera screens from the inside of the house constantly.
The family members swap shifts to do this.
They have a very high wall around their property and every morning they rush into the car and out I tell you all this not to pity me, my family or Venezuela, but to give you a perspective on life that you have no idea how it feels like.
You think you have it bad?
Think again.
Now look on your country and learn from current history.
That was one comment.
And the other one which really struck me was with regards to Venezuela went like this.
When you try to set up a socialist state, but your retarded system fails, but that's okay, because it wasn't real socialism.
So you try again, and your retarded system fails, but that's okay, because it wasn't real socialism.
So you try again and your retarded system fails, but that's okay because it wasn't real socialism. but that's okay because it wasn't real socialism.
And this goes on for a couple of pages.
Yes.
And that is basically human history in a nutshell.
Yes.
So, yeah, I am...
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, that's exactly what it is.
One of the greatest concerns that I see in people who are in the same position as I am, where they can see what is going on in the United States and in Canada and in Europe, is that There is this refusal to acknowledge that the system they're fighting for, like socialism, or they won't call it communism because communism failed and socialism isn't that.
But the system that they're fighting for, which is going to free everyone and end all oppression and redress the evils created by capitalism, this system has been implemented throughout history.
Many, many times.
And Venezuela is proof, is living proof, is current living proof that the system, even at its best, even when it's tried with the best of intentions, has a tendency to devolve into the most horrific experience, the most horrific kind of...
I can't...
Well, it devolves into violence and suffering and hunger and death, and it's just...
There's no stopping it.
It's because of the very nature of the system.
When you give one person the capacity to make decisions over the economic comings and goings of an entire nation, how do you expect that person not to be corrupted?
And let's say he is super virtuous.
How do you expect the super virtuous man to be able to handle the complexity that is presupposed In the economic activity or in the market of an entire nation.
Even if it's, I don't know, you pick 100 people.
Those 100 people are not going to be able to make decisions for 1 million, 2 million people.
It's impossible.
One can barely keep up with the economic decisions of one's own household or with personal economic decisions.
How do you expect somebody to be able to handle millions and millions of transactions and determine what is the best price of whatever?
Without any knowledge, without any experience, without any...
I mean, any group of government bureaucrats, however big and prepared it is, cannot have the experience of being in all economic sectors, in all types of businesses.
They can't.
It's impossible.
Yeah, it's not due to a lack of willpower or a lack of virtue.
You are asking the completely and totally impossible when you want a socialist economy.
When you want a centrally planned, government-controlled economy where government sets prices, where government has nationalized industries, where government sets wages, where government sets working conditions, where government supposedly negotiates on behalf of everyone and sets licenses and all of the central control, all of the central planning.
It is not because people lack virtue.
It is not because people lack good intentions.
It is not because they lack information.
It is impossible!
With no price mechanism, with no supply and demand, it is absolutely completely and totally impossible to get any kind of efficiency going on.
That's correct.
So it's sort of like, think of a soccer game.
And one team, Team C, Team Capitalist, they train, and they train, and they train.
And then they go out and they play.
And they practice the passing, they practice the moves, they know, and they just, they go out and they play.
Now on the other team, Team S, Team Socialism, what they do is they don't really train.
But what happens is there's a coach on the sidelines who's screaming at them the plays they should make while they're trying to play.
Now, clearly, Team S is going to lose every single time, because that's a centrally planned team, where everybody just sits around, or runs around, or whatever it is, and waits.
And the guy says, not just which play, he doesn't just call out the plays, like a football coach or something, but what he says, he says, like, there are, what, 11 players a side in soccer?
So he says, Player 1, I want you to run 20 feet ahead.
Now, Player 2, I want you to run 30 feet to the left.
Now, Player 3, I want you to run 50 feet ahead and then take a sharp left, right?
I mean, it's completely, while he's calling out the plays, Team C has scored three times.
Right?
If you have a passive group of people being centrally organized and planned, it won't work in sports.
It won't work in an army.
If everyone just stands there and waits for the central planner to tell them what to do, it doesn't work in an economy.
It doesn't work.
And the fact that people have been trying this for thousands of years, this is not a new concept.
There's a line in Shakespeare's King Lear.
Where one of the characters says that his goal, his ideal of the socially just system, he said that distribution should undo excess and each man have enough.
That distribution should undo excess and each man have enough, right?
We take from this person, we give to this person.
We take from the rich, we give to the poor.
All that happens is everyone ends up poor and you end up back to Stone Age levels of self-sufficiency, which is where, tragically, Venezuela is heading.
As to why people believe this stuff, I will let you take a swing at it.
Because there's no evidence whatsoever.
The theory, the practice of oligarchical collectivism, as is in 1984, it doesn't work.
It never has worked.
It never will work.
The examples of it not working, and not working catastrophically.
Like it's one thing to put a key in your car and turn it and it doesn't start, right?
Oh, my car is not working.
It's quite another thing to have it freaking blow up in your face.
That's a very, very large amount of not working.
So why do you think people keep getting drawn back into the same old stupid self-destructive bullshit?
Because it's tempting.
Because it's tempting.
That's a tautology.
Why do they do it?
Because they want to do it.
That doesn't add anything.
Why is it tempting?
Here's the thing.
I think I know why this is.
I'm not sure.
I could be proven wrong.
When people first leave their household, when people first start trying to work in the free market, everything to them, they're new.
They have relatively little to offer.
Every opportunity of exchange, it seems to them like other people are putting upon them that they have to give something back.
They feel aggressed.
So there's a bunch of people who have not withstood, who have not powered through that initial phase, and they've placed free trade in the same spectrum as aggression.
So if free trade is in the same spectrum as aggression, well, then it would only be consistent To try to control free trade in order to prevent it becoming aggression, because it's in the same spectrum.
So they feel, since they couldn't cut it, or since they know other people can't cut it, or since they know, I mean, and there are many people who are not going to cut it for a long time, but eventually one's going to grow out of that.
At least that's what I think.
Because everyone, it is my contention that everyone has something of value to offer, and if they don't, they can develop it.
Everyone.
And I think that's a nicer view of the universe, by the way.
In any case, they feel like since it's the same spectrum as aggression, that it has to be controlled.
And the only people who should control aggression is, you know, the government.
The state was created.
I mean, you read Hobbes' Leviathan, you see that it was created exactly for that purpose.
So they try to protect other people or themselves sometimes by having the government intervene.
On their behalf against the folks that they perceive to be the big guy, when in fact they ignore completely the big guy is the government and the little guy is the business owner or the enterprise who's trying to deal with them.
Even though they are much tinier than the enterprise, the big guy is the government.
They completely ignore how much bigger.
And they don't realize that aggression and free trade, it's not a spectrum, it's a toggle.
I mean, free trade is free trade until somebody flashes a gun or somebody lies or somebody tries to do something without the knowledge of the other person, like hide something from the other person.
At that point, it becomes aggression, but it's not a spectrum, it's a toggle.
That's one possibility that I've always considered.
I guess the other thing is when you flash the possibility to millions of people and you say, well, look, just give us the power and we'll create conditions that are more appealing to you, more beneficial to you.
People sign up.
People sign up because they externalize.
People externalize, which is another childish impulse, by the way.
People externalize and they think, well, the fault must lie outside of me.
I'm not doing well.
All I have to do is just give power to the people who are going to change the things that are making me fail and they will fix my life for me.
Inevitably, it never happens.
So the person who comes along who offers more, even more of that, they go along with that person and so on and so forth until Small, you know, government controls devolve into full-fledged socialism, and then that devolves into, you know, what we have.
That's one, another possibility.
Right.
Go on.
Oh, well, no.
That, I guess it's, it is sad that there are so many people who have not Develop the level of maturity that is necessary in order to make political choices.
And that is one of the reasons why.
I think we are seeing so much.
We're seeing the popularity of these movements just continue to hold, at the very least, in spite of the evidence.
I think it's immaturity on the part of the people who offer it and the people who want it and the people who vote for it.
I think.
And the worst part is, in the end, it all just, it turns out much worse.
I mean, they say that capitalism is, it contaminates the environment, pollutes the environment.
Well, you can look at Russia, you know, after the Iron Curtain fell and see all the towns, complete towns that were deserted, something like 20% or 15%, I don't know, 15 or 20% of the Of the territory in Russia, now I'm sure that includes Chernobyl, but of the territory in Russia was polluted beyond recovery.
It's still not recovered.
Supposedly it helps people.
Socialism is going to help people be able to afford better housing, better, more food.
And you look at Venezuela and you see people making long, huge, eight, nine hour long lines.
In front of supermarkets or government markets from three or two in the morning until the next afternoon to buy like a tiny amount like a bag of rice and some plantains and everything is much more expensive.
There are products that are oh that is another thing it's it's so It's so sneaky.
There are two exchange rates in Venezuela.
One of the exchange rates is the official exchange rate, which is something like 10 dollars, 10 believers per dollar.
There are not two, there are five actually, but I'm just going to focus on these two.
So everything that is basic needs is supposedly made at that rate.
Like if you're an importer of food, you have a right to buy dollars at that rate so you can import food and then sell it for less.
So you buy, I don't know, something costs a dollar.
You use 10 bolivres to buy it, and then you sell it for $1.50.
So you charge 15 bolivres, okay?
That's the official exchange rate.
There are a bunch of other exchange rates, and then there's a black market rate.
Now, the problem is when you're actually going to buy dollars for whatever need you might have, and there's a bunch of stuff that you can't find in the country that you have to buy outside of the country, in Colombia, or have someone bring it to you who's traveling from somewhere.
When you go there, you have to go at the black market rate because official dollars are difficult, if not impossible to find.
You have to be really, really chummy with government folks in order to buy at that rate.
So that one is at almost 4,000 bolivars per dollar.
So that's 400 times the amount.
So what the government does is, well, you know, at 10 bolivars per dollar, I mean, if you calculate the minimum wage, it's something like $3,000 a month.
It's one of the highest, if not the highest, in the entire continent.
But these poor people, they can't always find food.
There isn't enough food at the government rate.
Most of the food is imported by people who have no access to these special dollars.
They have to buy at black market rates.
So when they go buy food, they have to buy 400 times the price.
So the actual minimum wage is 400 times less than what the government reports.
Was that clear?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes, it is.
What else?
I mean, I'm just...
To me, it's...
I don't think one of the main contentions for which I wrote to you was that having people remain here, and people just won't acknowledge it here.
And that's one of the things that makes me the angriest.
You say, well, that's socialism for you.
They're like, no, this isn't socialism.
It's just that these people perverted that, come on, no, no, no, no, no.
We need a system of free trade.
And like, yeah, but free trade is bad.
Why?
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows.
Oh, because people exploit other people.
Oh, thank you.
That's not happening now, isn't it?
So I see people here.
It's very difficult.
Nobody reads.
Nobody reads.
Yeah, nobody reads.
The worst thing you can do is open a bookstore here because you're definitely going to fail.
I've seen a bunch of bookstores close.
In the last 15 years, 15 to 20 years, they've just disappeared.
Only the big ones remain, but I have a theory that's because they also sell board games.
Nobody knows anything about when this has been tried and when it has failed before.
You talk about Russia, you talk about Poland, you talk about Croatia, you talk about all the countries in the communist bloc, you talk about China and how they are Communist in name only.
And nobody knows anything about that at all.
Nobody reads political philosophy.
They don't know why it's important for powers to not be concentrated in one person.
They don't know why the president should not be able to tell the Supreme Court what to do or why the president should not be able to tell Congress what to do or why it's illegal for the Supreme Court to annul acts of Congress just because the president said they should.
What everyone does know is that something has to change.
That's one of the things you hear most often.
And the other thing that you hear very often is we need to improve the way we see the world.
We need to change our mentality.
But there is no alternative offered to what that change has to be.
And there is no real definition of mentality.
I mean, people have to realize that they have to take responsibility for their own lives.
You hear that.
That is good.
That is one of the things that you hear that I like hearing.
But then you talk to that politician who said, and you say, okay, fair enough.
So that means that as soon as you're in power, I expect all the government programs are just going to be I'm like, oh my, okay.
So if I take your political party and I make a dent, like a cut, it's the same color as the one that's in power.
Inside, it's just as red.
So people leave.
Prepared people, people who are intelligent and who have the means and people who have something to offer, they leave because there's nothing to do here, Stefan.
It's a desert.
It's a desert.
There are few, very few people who have found a way to make it work.
Most professionals have left.
They've left and they've gone to Spain, Australia, United States, Canada.
Brazil, which is doing very, very well, although no one will admit to it.
I did hear you once say something about war-torn countries in the Middle East.
It wasn't that context.
You said intelligent people should remain in order to fix the countries once the crisis was passed.
But I think it's inevitable to stop Intelligent people from leaving because it's the prisoner's...
it's game theory.
It's the prisoner's dilemma.
If everybody stays, everything is fine.
But if the person next to you leaves and you stay, you're just...
you're screwed.
So you have a choice.
Do you want to leave or do you want to stay?
It's not going to be as fun leaving and sacrificing your home, your entire nation, but it's preferable to staying here and having everyone else leave and then You end up in the gutter.
Literally.
Like I've seen people dead in a gutter on my way to university.
Like on the street lying dead.
Because it was early in the morning.
Because it was 6 in the morning and I was going to university early and I just passed a person by and there he was, you know, just lying there on top of a puddle of congealed blood.
That's what you see in the street.
You also see shootouts.
I was also trapped in a shootout in the freeway once.
That's not normal stuff.
Right.
Right.
Do you know anyone who's still around who's smart?
Yeah, there are plenty of people.
There are plenty of people.
Although, not as many as before, but there are a few smart cookies left around here, yeah.
But very, very few.
Very few, Stefan.
And they don't like to get involved in politics because that's dangerous.
Right. Right. Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you sharing that.
I'm going to tell you a couple of my thoughts about it and see if it makes any sense.
All right.
Get comfy.
I'll tell you what I'm done.
Sure, sure, go ahead.
So Venezuela has been clocked as an average IQ of 84 in the population.
Now, this is in the past when there were more smart people around.
So it may have slid down from there, down below that.
It may be in the low 80s.
It may be lower than that.
I mean, if I had to guess, it would probably be low 80s.
And that's bad.
Because there's IQ in the mental age, right?
Like how old are you emotionally or how old are you in terms of compared to people with an average intelligence of 100 or whatever?
And I don't know the answer to that with regards to sort of low 80s.
But I'm going to guess between 12 and 14 years old.
So, as far as sort of mental development goes, significant portions of Venezuela are stuck at 12 to 14 years of age.
Now, do you think you can run a sophisticated modern economy and a republic and a constitutionally limited democracy with people with the mental age of 12 to 14 year olds?
Of course not.
Of course not.
And this is why Dr.
Helmuth Nyborg, who's been on this show, says when IQ dips below 90, you don't have a democracy anymore.
Now, the great tragedy about all of this, and there are so many great tragedies about this, but the great tragedy about all of this is that when socialism takes hold of a country, and it is a form of totalitarianism, I mean, Socialism has a much nicer sound to it than totalitarianism, but it is a form of totalitarianism.
What happens is the smart people leave.
They can see which way the wind is blowing and that a black blood soaked wind is coming in from the sea of collectivism.
And they leave.
And then what happens is you start running into significant problems like who's left to teach your children?
Well, the smart people have gone, so you have less intelligent people teaching your children.
Who's left to grow the food?
Grow the food and distribute the food.
Well, the smarter people have gone, so you've got to rely on less intelligent people to grow and to ship the food from place to place.
Now, smart people...
Know that corruption doesn't pay in the long run.
You might get a little bit in the here and now, but you also have smart people in the police force and smart people in the judiciary and smart people in the jury pool.
So you might get caught and you might get prosecuted, but basically you know that if the country becomes corrupt, everything's going to turn to shit.
So people of like average intelligence and above in general don't get that much involved in corruption that way.
Because once you get a bunch of idiots running the country, and once you get a bunch of idiots in charge of the food distribution system, as this guy's pointing out, stuff just gets stolen.
And then you start to get an escalating problem.
Because a bunch of people start stealing stuff, and then you start running out of food.
And then you don't have enough food for your kids, which could cause developmental delays, could cause a lack of You know, all of that good mother's milk and good nutrition and stimulating environment and so on, that seems to have something to do with helping with IQ. People also get short-tempered, they get angry, they get abusive maybe with their kids, they hit them more, which also shaves down your IQ. You see this kind of death spiral, right?
As people start stealing from the common good, which always happens in socialism, always 100% guaranteed, always going to be the way.
People start stealing in a socialist environment, which creates shortages.
Now once you get shortages, more people start stealing.
It becomes desperate.
Because it's one thing to steal to get more, it's another thing to steal because you don't have enough.
So more and more people start stealing.
As more and more people start stealing, fewer and fewer people end up producing.
So there's less to go around, which means more people steal, which means fewer people produce, which means there's less to go around.
So corruption goes from a moral choice to almost a physical necessity.
If I want to eat, I have to take what's in front of me.
Because if I don't, the next guy will.
He'll eat.
I won't.
And that's the end of the story.
Now...
If you have a mental age of 12, 13, 14, 15 years old...
Socialism seems more correct because it's like the family.
The family runs on socialist principles in that from each according to their ability to each according to their need, right?
I can make the money, my daughter can't, so I pay for her.
So that all...
Makes perfect sense when you're in a family.
Now, it's not socialist because it's not coercive, but nonetheless, that is the reality.
So if you have a population that remains somewhat childlike, even when they reach their full maturity, then socialism is just going to make sense to them as a whole, right?
Now, the other thing too, which is why I keep circling back to this IQ issue, is that I have no doubt at the moment that there are Environmental factors significantly depressing IQ in the Venezuelan population.
And that's horrible and that's tragic.
But even if everything was perfect, which it was, more or less, right?
I mean, in terms of where it was 300 years ago, Venezuela, up until a couple of decades ago, was doing relatively well.
And the problem with that aspect of things is that When you have a lower IQ population, in other words, even if things were ideal in terms of development and in terms of nutrition and so on, you know, 60 to 80% of IQ appears to be hereditary.
The later on you go in life, the more hereditary it appears to be.
And if there are genetic limitations on IQ, as there seem to be for the Venezuelan population and for other populations around the world, they can't do as well as Japan.
Sorry.
Can't do as well as China.
Can't do as well as Western Europe.
Because you're more than a standard deviation down from Western Europe at 84.
And you're more than a standard deviation down from Japan.
And you're more than two standard deviations down from Ashkenazi Jews, particularly in the language realm.
115.
So you're just not going to be able to do as well.
Now, I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you just can't do as well as people around you.
Has that ever happened to you in your life?
Not really.
Lucky man.
Yeah, go ahead.
I mean, it has happened, but because I have...
I'm not a sharpshooter, and I don't think I ever will be an excellent sharpshooter because I can't see very well.
But when it comes to, you know, in terms of labor or even up to a point, even physical ability, I've been able to fend for myself really well.
And I always end up picking it up.
I've been tested.
Well, that's good.
I'm sorry to hear about your eyesight.
You're a very lucky person as far as that goes.
I mean, the number of things where I have felt deficient in my life, I couldn't even list them all just sort of off the top of my head.
Math was a struggle for me.
Now, that was partly because math is one of the things where you need to do homework, and homework for math requires concentration.
Now, my house was so chaotic and so violent and so brutal.
I could not concentrate at home.
On the other hand, reading was, particularly reading fiction, was escapism for me from the brutalities of home life.
So for me, language, I was always way ahead in language.
Like when I was in grade eight, in other words, when I was 13, 12 or 13, I was moved up five years and put in a grade 13 or for 18-year-olds writing class.
So I was like 12 or 13 and I was like in an 18-year-old class for...
I've always got lots of positive feedback.
My essays would be read out to class.
And this even happened in college and university as well.
So writing, no problem.
Oral communications, no problem.
Because, you know, being away from home a lot, you end up chatting a lot with friends, right?
You're sitting staring at computers, or you're staring at video games, or you're staring at the TV, or whatever, or maybe you're reading alone.
But when you're out with friends, you're negotiating all the time, and none of us really had homes we liked to be in, so we were always roaming around and negotiating and chatting, which is why, and debating, right?
I mean, I remember an hour and a half, I think it was, something like that.
We were sitting out back of the Dumb Mills Mall, now defunct, I think, trying to come up with a name for our bike gang.
All negotiating and thinking and planning.
Same thing happened with Dungeons and Dragons, which is a giant storytelling with gambling elements.
But anyway.
So, for me, the things that I was bad at, I'm also bad at memorization.
I mean, it's funny because I have, you know, one of the biggest shows we did last year was The Fall of Rome, which was a great production and I'm very, very pleased with it.
And, yeah, I took a course in Roman history in college.
Yeah.
Giant 2001 Space Odyssey sucking sound because it was all about, well, memorize this and memorize that.
And this emperor was followed by this emperor and this with the years.
And I'm not great at that.
I can sort of jam stuff into my head, but facts and dates and places...
Not for me.
And it's funny because when I played a Shakespearean lead, I could memorize it with very little difficulty, right?
I mean, so for poetry goes, but dates and places, it's not my wheelhouse.
It's not my bag.
And science, I was okay.
It's a lot of memorization in science.
So that was like scientific method, theory, the philosophical aspects.
I'm down with that, but...
I don't have any particular skill sets in a wide variety of things.
Now, computers, I got it really well and understood it really well.
And, yeah, I remember having to rewrite essays in science and so on.
And I remember there was this woman, a nice girl.
She played cello.
And, you know, I remember the teacher gave me, oh, you know, read this girl's essay on plant development or whatever it is and try and do something like that.
So with me, I have very good strengths and very deep weaknesses when it comes to sort of intellectual ability.
When it came to music, I like to sing and I have a sort of OK sort of amateur Broadway kind of voice.
But the real singers, I just couldn't keep up with them.
And of course, I liked, like most people did, the Peter Gabriels, the Stings, the Phil Collins, more the tenors, and I'm more of a baritone.
So I wasn't really great at that.
And when it came to acting, I was okay.
For me, it's much better to have my own words than it is for me to fill myself with usually words I find distasteful from other people and then spew them out as if they're authentic to me.
Maybe I'm not hollow enough or maybe just lack that particular talent to go all the way.
But when I was in theater school, I was far from the best actor in the class.
And, you know, in theater school, there was also the singing contest and all of that.
So there were challenges.
Dancing, you know, I liked to dance, danced a lot when I was younger.
As far as learning dance steps and so on, not my wheelhouse at all.
I sort of go on and on.
But there's stuff, I always knew I was going to be great at something.
I knew beyond a shadow of doubt, I was going to be great at something in my life.
And I tried many things, acting, writing, entrepreneur, playwriting, poetry, poetry.
And all that kind of stuff.
Now, this is my thing, baby.
This is my bag.
Papa's got a brand new bag.
And this is what I'm born to do, what I'm supposed to be doing, what I'm all about, what I'll never get tired of.
And the reason I'm saying all of this is that I think most people think that they're going to end up being good at something.
But the problem is, if you have an IQ of 84, You're not going to be good at anything, fundamentally.
I mean, you'll be okay at some stuff, a few things.
I mean, you learn some basic skills and you might be fine in a sort of low to middle rent job or whatever, but you're just not going to be great at anything.
Now, that's a real blow to the tribe.
You know, one of the great challenges of multiculturalism is you run into tribes where, on average, they make you look sucky.
It's just the way it is.
I mean, people go nuts about this with Jewish influences here and there.
They're really, really good, particularly at language-based stuff and creative stuff and comedy and so on.
So, you know, go compete, but the reality is that it's going to be a challenge.
Same thing with blacks and certain kinds of sports.
Same thing with East Asians, right, Chinese, Japanese, Asians, with...
Mathematical models, 3D manipulation, engineering and stuff like that.
So if you have particular skill sets that aren't – and the whites are really good at creativity and all that kind of stuff, you know, it's – Decent intelligence, high testosterone, and all that kind of stuff seems to be what helps propel the Western societies and the individualism, which is both our blessing and our curse at the same time.
So the reason I'm saying all of this is that when cultures become aware of each other, which we're not really designed to do.
Like, we're designed to kind of live cheek by jowl with other tribes.
Maybe a little bit of trade here and there.
There will be a few people who might float back and forth between these tribes.
But basically, it's kind of an uneasy peace between tribes throughout most of our evolution.
And when things got rough, well, things got rough.
I mean, people would just, they'd have war.
And so we're not designed to blend in with other cultures.
This sort of giant modern experiment that's been going on for the last 50 years of trying to get, you know, races, ethnicities, cultures, religions, and so on to just all jam into the same geographical area.
Try and manage them under the same laws for a significant period of time and not have it break down into basically a cultural warfare.
Like religious warfare is when the government controls religion, then every group tries to grab control of the government to impose its view of religion on every other group.
But the culture wars occurs the same way, except when government controls culture, which it does through government schools, which it does through subsidizing the arts, which it does through academia.
When government controls culture, every group wants to gain control of the government so that it can impose its culture on other people.
And the Marxists and the relativists and the leftists have been very successful at that over the past 60 or 70 years.
So...
When we run into other cultures, generally what would happen historically is we either do this sort of uneasy side-by-side, live cheek-by-jowl with each other, maybe a little bit of blending, and this sort of happened with the Germanic tribes and the Romans and the late Roman Empire, or one conquers the other, like Genghis Khan style.
But there's not this sort of let's hang out and stare at each other from across this divide of biology and IQ and culture and religion and history, genetics and so on, right?
And so when you have...
Lower IQ populations.
Forget about the genetics and the environment.
Let's just say that this is what it is.
If you have lower IQ populations, and nobody talks about IQ, the bell curve, nobody talks about it, you create this giant void of incomprehension and resentment and frustration and hostility.
And what happens is, people in Venezuela look at America in particular, or Europe, And they say, basically, those white devil gringo bastards.
Because they don't understand the IQ gap.
Nobody talks about it.
Marxists have to suppress it, right?
Because they want to create this fantasy that everything's environmental and IQ is genetic then, or has genetic components.
They can't sustain that fantasy.
So they look at America.
They look at Europe.
And they're incredibly frustrated.
And they're incredibly angry.
Incredibly angry.
And, I mean, I've seen these messages.
We've had these messages.
I've had these messages over the years.
You know, blacks looking at presentations.
Angry.
You white devils.
You've stolen everything from us.
And I understand it.
I really, I understand it.
I'm not saying I sympathize with it, but I understand where it comes from.
They're only rich because we're poor.
They stole from us.
And that's why we can't compete.
That money was made from my daddy's blood.
And yes, there has been predation and there has been, no question, no question, but the West did not get rich through predation because predation has been occurring all throughout human history.
And only really since the 18th century in the West has productivity gone up 70 times, has the workday halved and has lifespan doubled.
And I mean, this is not, it's not stealing.
And So there's this giant market of, we're going to explain to you why your culture is poor, why your economy is poor, why your people are poor.
We're going to explain it to you, but we're not going to reference anything to do with IQ. We're not going to reference anything to do with the bell curve.
We're not going to reference anything to do with anything.
We're going to pretend everyone's exactly the same.
Everyone's directly and completely and totally equal.
And therefore, the only reason you're not doing badly is because of environmental problems and because of Predation largely from white people.
I mean, that's the general story that's sold to people around the world who can't seem to get into the saddle of Western style or even now India style or China style or Japan style or South Korean style or Vietnamese or Cambodian style wealth accumulation, right?
So, in other words, wherever there aren't whites and East Asians and Jews...
There's big problems.
So people will come and say, well, it's because of your environment, because you don't have the food and you don't have the medicine and blah, blah, blah, right?
And so what happens is then people say, well, if we give you stuff, you are going to become wealthy, just like Europe.
Even though Europe did not become wealthy because space aliens came and gave them stuff.
But this is the story that is given around the world, right?
And the story is that if we give you Money.
Then we're going to solve these environmental problems and you'll end up being just smart, just like East Asians, just like Jews, just like whites.
And so trillions of dollars are poured into the third world in an attempt to ameliorate the problems of environmental deficiencies, maybe producing lower IQs and so on, or dysfunctional societies.
And what happens?
Well, we know what happens.
People have a lot more kids, right?
Yay!
It's this Malthusian problem, right, that food production goes up in a linear fashion, but human production or production of humans goes up in an exponential fashion and it crosses over and so on, right?
So, pouring trillions of dollars into the third world...
All it's done is made lots more people in the third world, which is a huge problem because it's incredibly cruel, right?
Because when that money runs out, as it will eventually, I mean, you can't keep printing and creating money and borrowing money forever.
When that money runs out, the cruelty that's going to be visited upon people in the third world is going to stagger our imagination.
It's going to stagger our conception of the kind of evil that we have done in this supposed help, which is all about virtue signaling and making ourselves feel good in the moment and denying the The basic fact of human biodiversity.
I have incredible feelings of kindness and benevolence and generosity towards people in the third world, which is exactly why we should never have been pursuing the policies that we're pursuing, which is going to cause untold amounts of suffering relatively soon, I'm guaranteed.
So that's the one answer.
The other answer is that the whites, the East Asians, the Jews, they all stole from you!
Stole from you!
Right?
So when When you pour trillion dollars in the third world, the third world doesn't really get better.
In fact, in some ways it gets worse.
Then the backup explanation is, you were robbed!
You were stolen from, and they're still exploiting you, and they're still right.
And this creates a resentment towards the free market.
And it's easy to sell to lower IQ groups the idea that smarter people are just exploiting them, otherwise they'd be exactly the same.
Because there's a vanity puncturing.
This is one of the great dangers of vanity puncturing.
I mean, you mean...
Imagine, you know, we think we're so great as a species, but imagine some space aliens come down and they're like, oh my god, you guys still have governments?
How savage!
You guys still lock people up?
You guys still hit your children?
I mean, you're like apes.
You're like, oh, this is horrifying and horrible.
What a vanity blow it would be for us as a species.
And people take this stuff very, very, very personally.
I mean, look at the way Jorge Ramos talks about Latinos and Hispanics and how much he loves La Raza.
I mean, they're very, very proud.
As a black guy I was listening to online the other day was saying, he's got an IQ of 141 and was talking about his...
Understanding, growing understanding of race realism.
And he was saying, you know, black people take being black very seriously, right?
And it's hard when the group that you're in, whether it's the human race with morally advanced space aliens, I am from the future, or some other, it's hard on the vanity.
It causes a collapse in ego structure, which is tough enough to deal with when you're an adult, right?
Well...
It's very tough when you're younger.
When I was younger and I ran crashing into my limitations, it's tough.
It's hard.
So, this is very fertile ground for people to come in and, say, develop things like socialism.
Because people look at the free markets of the West relative to South America, relative to Africa and other places.
People look at the free markets of the West and they say, well, that's a lot of wealth.
Now, can they create and sustain a free market environment?
Well, a free market environment requires significant intelligence to understand, right?
That the value of predation is pretty obvious and pretty immediate.
The value of establishing property rights and establishing contracts and establishing an economy free from government interference.
I mean, this is all very high concept.
You've got to look over the horizon.
You've got to defer gratification.
This is all higher intelligence stuff.
You know, I don't say this like the West is so smart that we're hanging on to it.
I mean, we're handing it out piecemeal as it stands.
And so when people come along and say, well, the free market exploits you.
You're poor because you're exploited.
Not, you're poor because at the moment you have an average IQ of 84 in the country.
So you're poor.
Sorry.
It wasn't like the Japanese came over and And stole your IQ with a straw, right?
I mean, it's just, it's the way it is.
You know, I mean, it is the way it is.
You know, if the pygmies get really angry that they're not in the NBA, you can point out that pygmies tend to be, I don't know what, four or five feet tall, and that's not a great attribute for being in the NBA and so on.
But it's hard to tell people that.
You know, it's very disappointing.
It's very challenging.
And that is...
Very fertile ground.
Wherever we refuse to tell the truth, when a truth is necessary, like whenever we refuse to tell a truth and the truth is necessary, the truth is essential, all that happens is people come in and substitute something else for the truth.
Like whenever we don't talk about the truth of human development, human biodiversity and so on, what happens is other people come in and lie and create resentment and cause problems.
And I think there's nothing to be scared of with human biodiversity.
There's nothing to be scared of with the IQ stuff and so on.
It just needs to be accepted because if it's not accepted, you're going to create exactly the kinds of disasters that we see happening around the world in many countries at the moment.
The disasters that are occurring in Venezuela and are only going to get worse from here.
As we see a civilization that functioned relatively well before spiraling down into this medieval corruption and brutality, this is...
So I think that there's a wide variety of combination of things.
Sort of understanding the bell curve, understanding IQ doesn't solve everything, of course, right?
But it is pretty necessary for us to understand there's a pretty key component of what's going on around the world.
If we don't understand it, if we continue to reject it, the problems are still there.
The disparities and the divergences are still there.
It doesn't get rid of them if we refuse to talk about these issues.
All that happens is our refusal to discuss basic facts that have been recognized for a hundred years and that are recognized by all erudite professionals in the field that the American Psychological Association has clearly recognized the bell curve issues.
If we fail to discuss them, We just create a wide, fertile ground for people to come in and lie about the causes of human inequality and lie about the causes of poverty.
And that makes things far, far, far worse.
If you care about the poor, we need to talk about this.
So those are sort of my thoughts, and let me know what you think.
Well, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Really, you hit the nail on the head with everything.
There are just a bunch of examples from your earlier comments about people stealing food and aggression rising, people with lower IQ mistreating their children and having a bunch of kids.
These are all things that are part of that vicious cycle that you talked about at the beginning, and I can see them.
I mean, I know people with very, very low IQs, I don't think they really have an aspiration to anything as lofty as being good at something.
That's not been my experience, though.
But I see it.
I see it.
And you pretty much hit the nail on the head with every comment.
I will apologize for interrupting you earlier.
And I just want to make clear that I'm not without my weaknesses.
I've never felt inadequate around people around me because there are very few people who...
I mean, there are pretty good and solid professionals here.
But here's the thing.
And one thing that I think could help bring people out of this mindset that is so destructive and so negative is you don't have to feel inadequate.
You don't have to feel like you're less than somebody just because you don't have the same amount of skill at something.
Skill is something that is acquired through rigorous practice.
And if that isn't your thing, then you can do something else at which you will be very good at.
That feeling is foreign, actually, to me.
And I wish it were foreign to more people, but it isn't.
On that note, I think that in terms of one of the things that you mentioned was that you can't mix cultures.
And I'm beginning to think more and more that intelligent people, well, not intelligent, but let's just create a group.
It's a group of people that has intelligent and hardworking, assiduous people.
That group of people share a common culture around the world.
And that common culture is usually very pro-capitalist.
That common culture is usually very pro-hard work, pro-capitalist.
Pro-freedom, free trade, you know, freedom to be able to deal with other people without coercion.
And I think that if we realize that that in itself is a culture.
The other day, Trump was doing Trump's inauguration speech.
He said, patriotism is going to unite us.
Well, yeah, that helps.
That does help within the borders of the country, but if you're going to be dealing with people from outside the country, which is inevitable, I think that it would be a good idea to try and promote that culture, the culture of the hard-working and the intelligent and the driven and the culture of not wanting something that is unearned or that you have not Something
that you haven't given something in exchange for.
I have a thousand notes.
You've had me for an hour and you have four callers.
This show is going to be really long if we stay on.
That's a good point.
Listen, I appreciate the call.
I'm glad that you are in a secure place.
Feel free to call back in any time and thank you for letting me have my monologue.
Thanks a lot for the call and let's move on to the next caller.
Awesome.
Up next, we have Kyle.
Kyle wrote in and said, With a very young daughter, is it better to have her in daycare part-time but living in a better home and neighborhood, or should I quit my job and move to a smaller home in a neighborhood of less quality but be a stay-at-home dad?
That's from Kyle.
Oh, Kyle.
Oh, Kyle.
I'm well, thanks.
How are you doing?
I'm very well, thank you.
Do you...
Do you really mean that question?
Do you really not know how I'm going to answer that question?
No, I absolutely know how you're going to answer that question.
What would Stefan say?
Just get the bracelet.
Well, it was actually a question that Mike asked on a previous show that really got me thinking about it when he asked the question about what is your top priority?
And obviously my top priority in the morning when I wake up is my daughter.
Go on.
Sorry, that sounds like you haven't finished your sentence.
At that point, everything else is second to that.
My only thing I'm really wrestling in is that we live in a very nice neighborhood.
As we speak, it's dark out.
I'm walking the dog.
All the neighbors are very good.
If I were to leave my job and only rely on my wife's income, we would move to a much more I'm sorry to interrupt.
I don't quite understand.
Are you saying that every place that's cheap to live is crime-ridden?
Have you ever heard of this place they call...
The country.
Have you ever heard of...
You can see for miles.
The sky is an ungodly blue bowl of lovely cloudiness.
There are low trees around.
There may be dirt roads, and those dirt roads may not be plowed that well in the wintertime.
But, lo, there is a place out there where you can smell something other than the farts of cars and the rotting of food that is left out back of the Chinese stores.
I'm just telling you, there's a wonderful place out there.
Very low crime, very cheap, clean air not so many people Some call it paradise.
Well, I mean, the Cessna's in the shop right now, so my wife's commute from the country might be a little bit longer, maybe about two, three hours back and forth from where we live to where her job is.
She works in the city, in a very large metropolitan city.
So, I mean, part of it's that.
We're kind of constricted by her job, at least.
So, she can't get anything that involves telecommuting, she can't get anything which involves working remotely, and she can't shift to any other place?
She's been looking for a new job for about two years, and she's an accounts payable supervisor, which, if you know anything about accounts payable, being the supervisor is the top of the food chain.
She would love to get into finance, but Everybody wants experience.
She's gone on probably 25, 30 interviews.
Everybody loves her.
They just do not like her lack of experience.
So right now, where she is is kind of where she is.
Is she right downtown?
Yes, downtown, part of the city.
Okay, yeah, you don't have to say where, but okay, so it's not like you're in some suburb where you could range out to the country and still have not too brutal a commute.
Well, no, we live in the suburbs, but She already has a pretty hefty commute into the city.
Right, right.
And are you saying that there's no place where you can move that's cheaper?
And it's not permanent, right?
I mean, it's just while your kids are young, right?
Listen, parenting is all about the first five years.
That's all that matters.
The rest of it is just tidying up.
You know, you ever bake a cake from scratch?
I mean, not one of these, like, add powders and pretend you're on a spaceship or something.
Like, you ever bake a cake from scratch?
Me, personally, no.
I'm not really the cake-bacon type.
Okay.
Well, if you bake a cake from scratch, it's all in the beginning.
If you put too much of the wrong stuff, too much vanilla, you put too much stuff wrong in the beginning, it doesn't matter what you do after that.
It's going to take, well, let's just leave it in the oven a little longer.
Well, let's just put some more icing on.
Forget it.
It doesn't matter.
It's all in the beginning of things that matter.
So we're just talking the first five years.
First five years.
Not exiled forever.
I want to go to Siberia for the rest of your life.
A couple of years where you can be home with your daughter to create that bond, to create the stability in that personality, to allow her to develop in the shadow of parental bonds and love and affection and connection and play.
And then you can...
She becomes bulletproof.
She becomes like a transformer.
She's invulnerable.
She's super child because she's got that dedicated bond.
And now after that, you can enlist her in the army.
I'm just kidding, right?
But after that, you can move back, things like that.
It's the first five years that matter.
After that, if you've baked the cake right, it doesn't matter how you shape the icing, right?
You can add a little more, a little less.
It's still going to taste pretty much the same.
So you are baking the cake, you've got the ingredients, they're in the bowl, you're mixing them up, and you've got to get this part right, because if you get this part wrong, it doesn't matter what you add later, and if you get this part right, it doesn't matter what you add later.
So this is the baking the child's brain phase.
Get the recipe right, get the involvement right, so no one's talking forever, right?
I mean, did you go to college?
I did.
Okay.
Did you live like a hobo when you were in college?
I know I did.
I did.
I did, I did.
I had a roommate in my room.
I slept in a room with a guy.
We were in the same room.
That's how tight things were for me in college.
I remember, oh man, one winter in Montreal.
It's cold as a witch's tit, let me tell you.
Cold as a feminist heart.
And I... One winter I was so broke that I barely turned on the heat.
Now, Montreal gets to like minus 20, minus 30.
It's horrible.
You wake up in the morning and you can see your breath.
You've got to bundle yourself up in like 19 sweaters.
And it actually turns out it was a complete waste of time because I got the first bill and I was like, well, this is really high.
I can't afford this.
And it turns out that they actually calculate your bill not based on your current usage but based on some weird-ass guesstimate from the previous person's usage.
So it was completely useless for me to be that cold for that long.
But anyway...
Or you know what's great about being a student when you're broke is you have no easy way to get groceries.
I remember biking with groceries on a bike In the snow, during a snowstorm, in traffic, with, you know, the plastic bags hanging from my bike.
And don't turn too quickly or they're going to go into the spokes.
But you can get coupons from the student newspaper where it's two-for-one subs.
Thank you, Subplace of the Gods, for my two-for-one subs.
Because you can take them home, you can freeze them, you can thaw them.
You can eat them, and it's good eating.
You can really pile that stuff high.
You can also get a hot dog with a side salad if you just put enough stuff on top.
Anyway, enough stories of my poverty-stricken student years.
But you downgraded for your education, right?
I assume that you came from a more comfortable place living with your parents, and then as a student you lived like a hobo, and then you've upgraded since, right?
So you already know what it's like to downgrade.
It's not that bad.
No, it's not that bad, but I downgraded.
I went through all that.
So that I could provide this very sort of privileged life for my family, for my daughter.
And so now it kind of seems like, well, you know, the past 10 years, well, to hell with them.
All bullshit.
Now, you know, stay at home and bake cakes.
Well, what do you think your daughter wants?
A bigger house or a present father?
Let me get into some of the specifics of this, too, because she's only in daycare two days a week.
I work four 10-hour shifts, so three days a week, it's me and her.
My in-law or my mother watch her one day a week, and my wife has her pretty much exclusively the last day.
So she is only in daycare two out of seven days, and it's a private daycare.
How old is she?
She's seven months old.
Seven months old?
I know.
So you say only two days a week.
How do you think, Kyle, a seven-month-old experiences a day in daycare?
From her time sense.
Forget about yours, while it's only a certain portion of it.
What is it like for her in her sense of time and connection?
It's got to be absolutely...
Dramatic.
Brutal.
She thinks you're never coming back, I think.
I am left in a snowbank by my parents.
I sure hope there aren't any bears around.
I see these older kids who get dropped off at daycare, and when their parents are taking them in, you'd think they were sending them off to fight the Germans or something.
The kids are screaming and yelling and clawing.
And it's like, no, just don't leave me.
But if you think of evolution, think of evolution.
Why would, in evolutionary terms, when everyone's around and they're all hunter-gatherers and they can sit around on their asses and pick their noses because they've just hunted or whatever, one parent's always around.
Why would parents be, in a tribal situation, why would parents be handing off children to a stranger?
What would cause that in a hunter-gatherer society?
Some sort of illness, war, sickness.
Yeah, let's just say a complete freaking disaster.
Some complete freaking disaster.
Why would you be handing off your children?
Because daddy's drowning on the Titanic.
I'm going to hand you to strangers.
Because we're both ill and we're going to go off into the forest to die.
Because we're going off to war.
Because things are on fire.
Because there's plague, pestilence, famine, destruction, rains from the sky, frozen frogs landing on our forehead.
Disaster.
Old Testament loop we're stuck in.
You know, God hates us and wants to freeze the Jews and he thinks we're the Egyptians and things are just going from bad to worse.
So, of course, when parents hand off children, children are going to freak out because nothing short of a disaster from an evolutionary standpoint would trigger such behavior.
And you're not telling me anything?
I don't know.
How is your daughter when she's dropped off?
Oh, she's very young.
I mean, she's happy to be awake, I suppose.
I mean, she doesn't cry or anything, really.
And how is she when you come to pick her up?
Oh, she's ecstatic.
Face lights up, and she just, you know, she thinks she just won the lottery.
Right.
Right.
That's the thing.
I know what you're saying is 100% true.
I just, you know, the petty, humanistic side of me just wants to not go through all the sort of sacrifice and pain and everything I'm going to have to go through, but I know...
How much do you pay?
Sorry, before we get to the Your existential angst.
How much are you paying for daycare?
$75 every day, two days a week, about $150 a week.
So $600 a month or so, right?
Yeah.
All right.
And you're in a, like, what, 20%, 40%, 30% tax bracket?
Yeah, yeah.
Right, okay.
I'm in the highest.
Okay, so you have to make a little over $1,000 before taxes to pay for the daycare, right?
Yes.
And how much bank are you pulling a month?
I mean, what are you making in a month if you're working two days a week?
If I'm working two days a week?
Well, I mean, I'm very well paid hourly.
Depends on, you know, overtime.
Maybe two days a week, maybe about $2,000-ish.
So half of your money before taxes is going to the daycare, right?
Yes.
Oh, sorry.
Did you say $2,000 a week?
No, that's about...
If I'm working two days, full two-hour days, I'm about...
Wait, what do you mean full two-hour days?
What do you mean?
No, so if I'm working two full days at an hourly rate, probably those two days, about $2,000.
$1,000 a day.
A week or a month?
Two days.
So you make $1,000 a day?
Roughly.
And that's how many hours?
It can be 18 hours.
18 hours, okay.
What do you do out of curiosity?
I work in a very high-risk line, like high-tension lines, hazard pay, $50, $60 hour kind of stuff, I pay.
All right, so when you're gone, you're really gone, right?
So if you're making $50, yeah, you're making $50 an hour.
There's a storm coming where I live today.
I'm on call.
If I go in...
Since I'm technically not supposed to be working tomorrow, it'll be time and a half.
I could be there for 18, 20 hours.
It would be a tremendous amount of money.
Right.
Right.
Okay, I got it.
So I understand.
Because you're unionized and all that, right?
And is it government work?
No, it's a private company, but it's subsidized by the government heavily.
Okay, got it.
Got it.
Got it.
All right.
Okay, so you are making a significant amount more.
There is, of course, the high-risk danger element.
People, I assume, don't get injured too much, right?
Three people died last year.
Out of how many people?
145.
Okay.
That's just my shop.
Yeah, I got it.
I got it.
So there's that aspect, too, that you might end up someplace new.
It just might not be a place in a cheaper neighborhood.
It might be a pine box in the earth, right?
Correct.
Or the hospital.
Or, yes.
Right.
The hospital.
Now, they do have these things in the country, too, right?
Right.
This requirement.
In fact, in the country, as far as I understand it, in the country, power outages can be a fairly significant problem because people are so stretched out, right?
Yes.
So you could get a job in the country, right?
Yes.
Now, if you get a job in the country, and you're able to make $2,000 a week, and you don't need to pay for daycare because your wife's home, and you're still only working two days a week, what is wrong with that?
Well, that's...
I would still be working four days a week.
I mean, you have certain hours you have to meet.
My example...
No, no, hang on.
Hang on.
You said you're working two days a week now.
No, that's what I earn in two days.
I work four 10-hour days plus overtime.
So I work 40 hours a week.
They're just trimmed into four days instead of five days, plus there's a dramatic amount of overtime.
Oh, sorry.
So if you're on a poll...
And the job's not fixed.
And it's, you know, quitting time.
You don't get to come off the pole.
You stay until you're done.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you stay until you're done.
Okay.
So, but if you're pulling home $8,000 a month, that is like, okay, let's say you're $10,000 a month.
Okay, so you're booking 120 large a year.
Before taxes, yes.
That is more than enough.
I mean, that is way more than you need to comfortably live in the country and your wife wouldn't have to have a commute at all?
This is true.
But then, I mean, you don't just walk into, hey guys, I'd like a job in your shop.
Why don't you make a spot for me?
And these are very, I mean, even though it's very dangerous, they're very highly desirable jobs.
Right, but you said your wife couldn't get the job because she lacked experience.
You have a lot of experience, and there are fewer people living in the country, so don't throw up these artificial barriers when you haven't even looked into it.
Did I just give you a new possibility, a new idea?
No, you did.
Okay, so the first thing you did was tell me why it was impossible.
You're wrong, and it's annoying.
Sorry, I apologize.
Okay, I mean, just be open.
It's a possibility.
Yes.
It's a possibility.
Correct.
You say, hey, I'm super skilled, super experienced, willing to work hard, and I'm available, and see what happens, right?
Right.
Well, and I think part of my issue also has been I've been approaching a situation from I would be the one to stay home because in 5, 10, 6 years, I could pick up right where I left off doing the same job, whereas my wife, if she left her job, you know, it would be much harder for her to get back into...
That sort of position.
So, you're right.
But why?
She could stay, you know, hang on, hang on.
How do you know?
I don't know.
She knows her work.
She could stay educated.
She might be able to get something part-time that's remote.
I mean, I'm sure that there are people in the country who also need their books done or accounts payable or whatever.
So, again, you guys just have this conclusion that things can't be done.
Okay, who makes more money?
You or your wife?
I make money money.
Right.
And your jobs are more portable and so on.
Your job skills are more portable.
So it would make sense for you to work and for her to stay home.
Correct.
But then again, you also have the, hey, Kyle went to work and didn't come home from work because he got electrocuted and died aspect of it.
But you're doing that anyway.
You're right.
I don't understand.
If that's an issue, then why do you have this job in the first place?
Because of the money.
Okay, so let's, you know, I don't agree with the risk of the job, but, you know, everyone has their own particular preferences, but, you know, the work needs to be done and so on, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
So, do you think that your wife would not want to stay home?
I know that she would.
Yeah, I absolutely know that she would.
So, your wife wants to stay home.
You can easily afford it.
It makes much more sense financially.
Yeah.
There are what-ifs there.
I mean, it's not that simple.
It would take a dramatic amount.
I'd have to find a position in an open shop someplace.
And I'm not trying to throw up artificial barriers.
I'm just being logistics of the situation.
No, no, no.
You're trying to give me answers to questions you haven't even thought of until tonight.
So don't – everything you say is crap.
Sorry.
Right?
You need to explore.
You need to look into it.
Yes.
Right?
You don't know.
You don't know.
There could be a job that's perfect for you.
You don't know.
Now, of course, there is something – I don't know where your wife's politics are or her gender things are.
But there is something – A woman who quits her job has to really trust you.
Plus, for God's sakes, get some life insurance.
But anyway, a woman who quits her job and depends on you, she really has to trust you.
Yes.
Right?
So if your marriage is rock solid and stable, then you'll be fine with that.
But here's the thing, Kyle.
You have a child.
I do.
So it's not up to you anymore.
That's the beautiful thing about being a parent is your priorities just get set for you.
It's not up to you anymore.
I mean, I'm telling you this, your daughter is going to grow up and she's going to listen.
She might even listen to this particular show, right?
And she's going to hear me trying to convince you or your wife to stay home and be a full-time parent, which is basically to be a parent, right?
Yes.
You have become a parent, which means that your priorities are set for you.
You have given up your free will.
It's like you're trying to live like half a parent or a parent with no particular interference in my lifestyle.
Forget it.
It doesn't work.
That's not the job of a parent.
The job of the parent is to wake up in the morning and say, what is the best thing for my child?
And that doesn't mean you don't become an individual and it doesn't mean you surrender to everything and it doesn't mean you give that child everything.
Of course not, right?
Because that's not the best thing for the child, right?
And the best thing for your child is to have a stay-at-home parent.
Don't shoot the messenger.
That just appears to be the basic facts of the situation.
The best thing for your child, the best thing for your daughter is for you or your wife to stay home with her for the first couple of years.
And you're like, well, but how can I maintain where we live and how can we maintain our careers and how we can...
Simple answer, you can't.
You can't.
Not if you want what's best for your daughter, in my humble opinion.
You can't.
You're trying to have your cake and eat it too, right?
You're trying to say, well, I really like the stability and intimacy of getting married, but how can I do that and still date as many women as I want?
It's like, mm-mm, this is an either-or situation.
This is binary.
This is binary.
You have The kind of problems and what you consider limitations, Kyle, that approximately 99.9999999 infinity percent of people throughout history and in many ways across the world would love to have.
These are first world problems.
Well, I may end up having to live on only $120,000 a year in the country with a beautiful wife and daughter.
And, good lord, you understand how many people would kill to have these kinds of problems?
You chose to have a child.
You chose to be a parent.
So be a parent.
We've paid a lot of money to have a child.
Organize your life around what's best for your daughter.
And of course, if you have the setup, right, where you can work and your wife can stay home, then you can have more children.
You can have five children.
You can have ten children if you want.
Certainly in the country, $120,000 is like $12 billion a year.
You basically can buy Trump Tower in the country for $120,000 a year.
I think that's U.S. too, so that's about...
13 billion Canadian.
Anyway, so yeah, you just have to make those decisions.
Explore, figure out what you can do, talk about things with your wife.
But I'm telling you, man, this time when they're young, I know you're home.
Someone's home with her five days a week.
It's great.
It's great.
I don't want to minimize or pretend you didn't say that, but you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I mean, if you have other kids, which I hope you will, I mean, give some siblings over, then You will have that opportunity again.
But the opportunity to be home all the time with your child is just, it's so amazing and it's so wonderful and it is such a gift that I can't imagine anything, once you get there and once you understand what that's like and once you understand what it's like to not have the stress of two people working, of two people commuting, of two people having to do all this stuff, you'll look back and you'll say, man, the only thing I can't figure out is why we didn't do this sooner.
So I hope that that makes sense.
Thanks very much for your call and let's move on to the next caller.
Up next we have Jake.
Jake wrote in and said, I've always felt that the right career lies at the intersection of what you have an aptitude for,
what the world needs, and what you enjoy.
I just can't seem to get there.
In your experience, how did you find the right career, and do you have any advice or suggestions on how to avoid pitfalls along the way?
That's from Jake.
Hey Jake, how you doing?
Hey Steph, doing well.
How are you?
Good, thank you.
Do you want to tell me what field you're in?
I'd say it's business related.
And what don't you like about it?
It's hard to say.
There are a lot of parts that I do like about it.
I like the daily challenge.
It just...
I guess my gut feeling is that it just doesn't seem right.
And the thing is, I'm not 100% sure.
Maybe it is the right thing for me.
I just haven't really maybe found my rhythm.
It's more doubt than anything.
I must confess that I'm not sure exactly what you mean or even approximately what you mean when you say you haven't found your rhythm.
Unless you're a drummer or a DJ, I don't know what you mean.
I'd say it just doesn't...
For example, when you talk about how doing your call-in show, you feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
So yeah, there are things that I like about it.
But in terms of all the...
Sorry to interrupt, but I found this when I was 40.
So I'm not saying wait that long or anything.
But I always loved talking about philosophy and self-knowledge and history and art and literature and all that kind of stuff.
So for me, I had something I was enormously enthusiastic about.
It was just kind of hard to...
Monetize it prior to what I'm doing now.
And so is there something that you have in your life that you're wildly enthusiastic about that you don't know how to monetize?
or are you missing the enthusiasm in general?
That's a good question.
I think the length of the answer is the answer.
Yeah, maybe it's the...
I am interested in a lot of different areas.
I think that's maybe...
No, no, that's not...
No, no, no.
Let's be efficient here, right?
Let's be efficient.
Is there something you're wildly enthusiastic about that you don't know how to monetize, or is there nothing you're in particular wildly enthusiastic about at the moment?
Yeah.
I think maybe, yeah, I'm not wildly.
Wild enthusiasm is kind of hard to miss in one's personality.
You know what I mean?
It's like if there's a 9,000 watt bulb in your room and I say, is there a light in your room?
You don't kind of look around, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you're missing enthusiasm as a whole.
I'm not trying to corner you.
I'm just trying to sort of understand.
Because if you know, if you have something you're wildly enthusiastic about but you don't know how to monetize it, that's one thing.
But if you don't have any enthusiasms, then where are you going to go from here?
Maybe this is the most enthusiastic you can be.
Right.
Yeah.
I'd say I have some general areas that I'm interested in, but no, not exactly, not wildly passionate about in the way that you're saying.
So I guess, no.
So what's the thing that you're most passionate about?
Most passionate?
I guess that's the problem.
I do have an interest in finance, and that's what I majored in.
Oh, no.
No, you didn't just say.
What are you most passionate about?
I have an interest in finances, which is the field, which I really want to get out of because it's so boring.
Oh, Jake.
Jake!
I need to send a tiny electrical storm to hit your nads with something.
But anyway, go on.
Yeah, I was just going to say, yeah, I am interested in it.
It's just...
No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to try and resurrect your love of finance and I'm not going to participate in that part of the conversation.
Did you know anyone when you were growing up who was enthusiastic about stuff?
I was growing up.
Yeah, like, was there anyone around who was like, I love collecting stamps with bugbears on them.
I live for that.
I mean, whatever.
I mean, anything that, like, someone was, was there anyone enthusiastic about anything when you were growing up?
Ooh, I'd have to say no.
Okay, so you don't have, you don't have any exposure to enthusiasm.
This just may be a language you don't speak, like ancient Aramaic or something, right?
Yeah, maybe.
Well, what do you mean maybe?
I thought you just said that there wasn't anyone who you knew who was enthusiastic about anything.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
And why?
So maybe you're not missing anything.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you know, this old story, right?
And it's kind of a cliche, and it's a bit anti-male.
But anyway, there's this old story about some guy who, you know, his girlfriend wants to get married.
And, you know, they're like 25 or whatever.
And he's like, no, I don't really want to get married.
And she's like, why?
And he's like, well, you know, let's say we get married.
And let's say we have a whole gaggle of kids.
We love them.
They love us.
And they grow up.
And then they have a whole bunch of grandkids.
You know, we're celebrating a life together, and we're walking along the beach, and I'm 80, and, you know, the sun's setting, and it's beautiful out.
Let's just say that there's some guy there with a hot tub, and he's got a whole bunch of, like, Hawaiian Tropics bikini models in the hot tub, and they see me walking along the beach, and I'm 80, and they say, hey, why don't you come and sit in this hot tub with these Hawaiian Tropic bikini models, and I'll have to say no, because I'm married.
So he's holding out for some big penthouse fantasy that won't ever happen, but that's why he doesn't want to get married and have all these wonderful things.
So maybe you have this standard of satisfaction that is not realistic.
I see.
Let me ask you something that's going to sound unrelated, but I think it is.
Related, that is.
Okay.
When you were growing up in school, and in school in particular, were you ever told that you did a really bad job?
I'd say it was always just a letter grade.
Yeah, like, you know, good try.
It's all right, you know, maybe it could have been a tiny bit better, but, you know, good effort, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah.
Right.
In other words, you were taught by a lot of women, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah, because when you get women in charge of raising children, do you know what happens?
Everybody gets a participation trophy, right?
Because I asked this of a kid, actually not even that long ago, I was asking, you know, and I was saying, well, what's your school like?
And do you have any male teachers?
Well, we did have one male teacher, but he's not around anymore.
Music teacher.
And...
So it's female.
Female teachers, right?
Yeah.
Have they ever told you that you've done a bad job on something?
No!
You know, no!
It's like, have they ever poured boiling oil down to repel the Huns who are attacking the school?
No!
God, what a crazy question, right?
Everyone gets a trophy.
Everyone gets a participation.
Nobody does a really terrible job, right?
Yeah.
Enthusiasm is kind of like the high you get from the bounce.
In other words, if you can't fail, you can't win.
If you can't be really bad at something, you can't be really good at something because you don't really know the difference.
You're kind of just, you know, swimming away along the middle like a fish that has to stay within two feet of the thermocline, right?
Yes.
And so it's really, really important To tell children when they're doing something badly that they're doing something badly.
Now, women's brains are kind of wired that they have a very negative response to negative stimuli, right?
They find it, women, and this is true as a whole, there's lots of exceptions, but women as a whole find it very hard when a child has done a pretty bad drawing and the child comes up and says, what do you think of the drawing?
What do the parents, what do the moms say?
Oh, it's beautiful.
Ah, lovely.
I love these colors, right?
Yeah.
Do you know what I say?
That's really bad.
I don't like it.
No, I don't.
Well, why?
What's wrong with it?
No, I don't like this.
I don't like this.
You know, and I've seen you do better, and right?
Fine, I'll go do another one, right?
And what comes back is a better picture.
And then I can honestly say, I like that.
That's good.
That's good.
Here's what I like about it, right?
Mm-hmm.
So you were denied the lows of failure and thus you were denied the highs of success because you live in the goopy middle vacuum of female indifference to failure and success.
I mean, women fundamentally know they can't fail.
They won't be allowed to fail because they're too valuable to society, eggs.
Oh, did you have sex with the wrong guy?
Fine, here's a government-sponsored abortion.
Oh, did you have sex with the wrong guy?
You want to keep the baby?
Okay, fine.
Here's all the money in the known universe.
Here's enough money that would have kept a medieval village flourishing for 100 years.
We'll give it to you in one month.
Because you're...
So women can't fundamentally fail.
Women don't have the same kind of spur for success.
They kind of drift around the middle.
Plus, of course, women have this IQ curve, right?
The bell curve for women looks like a penis.
The bell curve for men looks like a flattened boob, right?
So women kind of in the middle, they don't usually know people who are that spectacular or that bad off, right?
They kind of know a lot of stuff in the middle, which is why women tend to be egalitarians, because egalitarianism is kind of what women are all about based on the sort of statistics and the bell curve, right?
Women, you don't find many of them homeless and you don't find many of them In the corner offices or, you know, being geniuses of various science and arts disciplines.
So women kind of float around the middle.
There aren't that many highs and lows.
And men or boys generally get exposure to people who are amazing at stuff and men who are terrible at stuff.
I mean, I played sports all the way through my youth and my teenage years.
And there were guys who were fantastic at it.
And there were some things I was pretty good at, too.
I'm fantastic at hitting a ball.
Man, I can do that blindfolded, like cracking one to just way to the moon and beyond.
And I used to hang out and play with kids.
And, you know, there's always that kid who's really...
And maybe there's more than one.
Just bad.
Like, they move around like there's some random bunch of invisible dolphins pulling at their every limb on a string, right?
Like some weird epileptic Geppetto is making the move or something, right?
And, you know, they're always like the Les Nesman guys who are trying to catch the ball out there in the outfield, and the ball always seems to come straight past their glove.
From the sun, you know, and it will often land straight on that little metal divot that's on the top of a baseball cap and leave like a semi-permanent impression.
That's how you know them.
The Mark of Cain.
They are terrible at sports.
Did you know kids like that?
Yeah, definitely.
I always did okay.
I was, you know, it wasn't too bad.
I kind of, kind of was...
You're in the middle.
Yeah.
You're in the middle.
This is what we're talking about, right?
But you saw exposure, right?
Like, it's not a huge surprise for you that really great people, really great guys at sports get paid a lot of money, right?
Because you see the difference, right?
Right.
When you were growing up.
The kids who were really fantastic at sports are the kids who were mad at sports, right?
I've seen this, like, with little kids learning to skate.
I mean, some little kids, like, you know, the 10th lesson, they're still wobbling around, right?
And some of them are just, like, they've just turned into these, like, jetpack narwhals on ice.
You know, off they go, right?
Hey, look, I'm skating backwards.
And the moms are all fainting, right?
And the guys are like, yeah, good, good for you.
So this spread of abilities among boys is much wider than it is among girls, which is why three-quarters of, or more, I think it's three-quarters or four-fifths of the psychotropics assigned to children are assigned to boys.
They tamp down the edges of both sides.
So when you were growing up, you were, I think it is really tragic, you were Not exposed to failure, and therefore did not gain, I would assume, as much appreciation for success.
I hated, my daughter was asking me about this today, I hated boarding school in many ways, for reasons I won't even bother getting into right now.
I think they're fairly obvious, just read some Orwell.
But one thing they were not shy about, because it was like, it was like a testosterone-heavy environment.
It was like wall-to-wall dudes.
There was a girls' school, but it was separate from the boys' school.
And The male teachers, maybe because there just weren't that many women, there was one woman, the music teacher.
But the men, if you did a bad job, do you know what they said?
What?
What do you think?
Oh, that was what they would probably joke around with them a little bit.
No.
If you did a bad job in an all-male boarding school, do you know what the teacher said?
Oh yeah, they would tell you you're doing a bad job.
You did a bad job.
Do it again.
That's terrible.
That's just terrible.
I remember we had to produce a family tree.
And I, you know, did it out of my memory and so on.
And it was just like in the bottom right.
You know, I didn't even fill up the whole piece of paper.
And he was like, wow, your presentation skills are terrible.
What's that doing down in the bottom corner like that?
You got a whole big piece of paper here and you just use the bottom corner?
How the hell are people supposed to see that?
Right?
Yeah, let's keep piling on.
Yeah, well, it's not piling on.
It's being honest.
Now, when I did something really good, great.
You know, like I wrote a short story about life in a medieval village.
I wanted to be a Freeman.
I remember very clearly, I called it the Village of Folder.
I didn't have that great an imagination.
I did for, not for names.
I'm still bad at coming up with names for characters in books.
But there was a, I can't believe all this stuff that's dredged up and now kept in the world forever.
But anyway, there was a...
A bunch of cubbyholes.
And in one, we kept the class folders, right?
For things you know.
And so, ah, the village of Folder!
It's just the word I saw, right?
It's like when my daughter was little and she had to name one of her imaginary pet snakes.
She'd just look around.
Tree!
Window!
Door!
Okay.
And that's, you know, the name's just directly in front of her.
So I guess it's like how certain natives would have named their kids.
Welfare office.
Copy fluid.
Anyway.
So, yeah, when I was growing up in this masculine, heavy environment, and this is, I think, why I can bring some of this stuff to some of the lost boys in the world, is, no, I was told, that's bad.
I remember, you know, I liked Sting a lot, and he's just way too high for most mortal men to sing, except for maybe a slightly castrated John Anderson.
But, yeah, people made fun of me in the yearbook.
I was known for my bone-scraping war cry of Roxanne.
I still remember that phrase from many, many years.
You go to the Don Mills High School yearbook from, I don't know, 83 or 84, whenever the hell it was.
Known for his bone-scraping war cry, Roxanne.
Because, you know, I was in a garage band, and it was not pretty.
But, yeah.
So, when you're bad at stuff, dudes will say, you suck.
You're bad.
You're not good at this, right?
And you will kind of be whittled out and excluded.
So you either have to up your game or you have to live with being excluded, right?
And this is kind of taken away from boys these days because we live in this, you know, gynocentric school boom where everyone gets a trophy and nobody really fails and nobody really succeeds and it's all pretty...
Pretty rough.
So it could be that you just don't have strong inclinations to stuff.
But it could also be that because you lived in this sort of narcoleptic morphine womb of female enthusiasm for everything.
And you see this, you know, all the time.
You see this all the time.
Because, you know, I spend a lot of time around moms because I'm usually the only pair of dangly bits in the room.
And...
The moms are like, yay!
Good job!
You know, especially when kids are very little.
And look, it's great.
I love it.
I love women for that.
I think it's fantastic.
Yay!
You did it!
Good job!
Yay!
The kids are like, yay!
You know, and it's great.
And it's completely retarded after a certain period of time, right?
It's like this old saying that women raise good toddlers...
And children and men raise good adults.
And this is, you know, partly the infantilization of boys that occurs in a gynocentric educational system or gynocentric social system called female suffrage, end of Rome democracy.
But...
This may be something that you have not had that much exposure to, of really being bad at stuff and being openly and clearly told that you're bad at stuff, which kind of shocks you into upping your game.
And once you've had that shock, right, like, wow, this is what I sound like when I sing?
Once you have that shock, then you go take your singing lessons, you figure out whatever you can do to sort of become better.
And you get the shock of loss, the shock of, wow, I'm...
I'm not that good, right?
I'm really not that good.
And then you become better at something because you care about it and you're shocked that you're bad and it feels bad, feels bad, man.
It hurts to be bad at stuff.
So you work hard to become better at it and then you go, wow, I really enjoyed getting better at this.
So now you keep going.
Like I don't have this shock every day where I sort of Oh no, I'm terrible at this.
Because now I know that the joy of continuous improvement is its own reward, right?
The pursuit of eudomania or the Aristotelian idea of excellence, of the pursuit of excellence.
That's its own reward.
And I'm constantly boring, Mike, with how I want to improve the show and do things differently and do things better and be more courageous and take more risks and high-wire acts that the show represents.
So you may have just been drugged with the emptiness of the middle.
And maybe there's something in you that recognizes that something kind of masculine was taken away from you if this is what happened.
That something kind of masculine was taken away from you with this nothingness of the middle of the, yay, good job!
But that's not, I was just reading this thing about how millennials are like really shocked when they get to the workplace.
Really shocked when they get to the workplace.
Because the bosses aren't like, yay, good job, everyone gets a trophy.
They're like, you suck, you're fired.
Because the bosses, they can't screw around.
It's their business, right?
If you keep delivering the pizzas cold, you're not delivering the pizzas for long, right?
You've got to get better or get gone.
And it's a real shock.
And so that was sort of my question about whether you felt the real sting of the deep suckage that produces greatness.
Right, yeah.
I'd say early on in my life, I would say no.
That was pretty much absent, probably mostly because of a lack of male influence.
And then later on, once I got into my teen years and started working little odd jobs, yeah, that's when I kind of got the shock of that, I would say.
But, you know, obviously, like what you're saying is Yeah, it makes you stronger after a while, and you kind of crave it eventually.
But yeah, it was funny how you were talking about IQ earlier, because I actually looked up...
You know how they have a scale of IQ, and then they have some places they'll put suggested...
Yeah.
It was kind of funny because I was just looking the other day and I found out my IQ just from a couple tests.
But I think it's pretty spot on because it stayed pretty steady and I've tried a couple of them.
It was just funny because I looked it up and the suggested profession was exactly what I'm doing.
So...
Sorry, what was your IQ? Nothing spectacular.
It kind of hovered around 110.
So a little bit above, but nothing to write home about.
Yeah, so that's good.
I mean, that's like college level and maybe not necessarily graduate school.
But, okay, just, I don't, you know, wherever you took these tests, I think they do have to be administered by a trained professional and interpreted.
Anyway, the online tests, I think, are mostly garbage.
But anyway, so...
My suggestion would be this, that you should try and expose yourself to a wide variety of things.
Did you play a lot of video games growing up?
Yes, yeah.
Right.
Do you think that may have cost you some stuff?
Yeah, I think it has.
And I do look back at how much time was wasted, just kind of pissed away.
And yeah, I would say that's one of my big regrets.
And you said you weren't growing up with much of a male influence.
Did you mean that in school or are you talking more at home or what?
Oh, I guess both.
Both.
Yeah.
And why at home were you a single mom?
Um, I was just kind of, uh, I guess a total broken family situation.
Um, it's, it's, it's a long story with my parents getting divorced and a custody battle with some other family members.
Uh, Wait, what?
A custody battle over you?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't mean...
I don't mean...
That shock in my voice is not, what, over you?
You're not worth fighting for.
I just mean, you said custody battle with other family members.
What do you mean?
Like, not between your mom and dad?
Uh, yeah.
So, yeah, it was...
With my mom and dad and then with my grandparents just because there was some questioning as to whether or not my parents are well suited to actually raise us.
Did your grandparents try to get your parents declared unfair parents?
I don't know.
I don't know if you could phrase it right like that, but...
Yeah, I guess so.
They eventually got custody of us.
Your grandparents got custody?
Yes, yeah.
Why?
I guess...
I could get into it, but just a lot of...
Just some alcoholism and...
I guess mental health issues.
Wow.
Man, I'm sorry to hear about that.
That is rough and a half.
Wow.
Wow.
And what were your grandparents like in terms of raising you?
How old were you when this happened?
Oh, this is all before I could remember or maybe just on the cusp of starting to remember things.
Like three or four kind of thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And did your parents have much involvement with your life after you went with your grandparents?
A little bit here and there.
My dad had us every other weekend, and then my mom saw us more often.
Who's the most passionate person?
And I don't mean this like passionate good, because passionate can also be, I love me drinking and gambling and hot ladies with...
Tramps, dams.
But who's the most passionate person that you knew growing up, Jake?
I'd say maybe my aunt and my grandmother, maybe.
Maybe.
Well, if your parents had drinking problems, wouldn't they be fairly passionate about alcohol?
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, if you choose alcohol over your own children, I think it's fair to say you're quite passionate about the alcohol.
Yeah, that's true.
And it could be.
This is obviously rank hypothesis time, so anything that doesn't fit with your sensibilities, you could just toss out the window, Jake.
But I've known people who've grown up In environments where the passions of those around them are extremely destructive.
And the destruction and the passion become conflated in the minds of the people in that environment.
And they're like, wow, if that's what passion looks like, if that's what enthusiasm looks like, I don't want any part of it.
Emotions Enthusiasm, dedication, commitment, passion, which, you know, all sound like good things, but it's 50-50.
It can be good things, and they can also be extremely bad things.
You know, paranoid people are extremely committed to their theories.
Victims are extremely passionately committed to their victimhood.
Right, I mean, I don't mean real victims, you know, I mean pseudo-victims, right?
I married him and he just turned out to be...
Right, right?
And so it's possible, I wonder if it's possible, if you're having trouble with enthusiasm, whether you associate emotions with insanity or passion or dedication with destabilizing factors.
And maybe recoil from enthusiasm as a mark of madness.
It might be.
It's not that uncommon.
Sorry to interrupt.
But when I get really passionate in certain videos, do you know what people half the time say?
He crazy.
They view passion and enthusiasm and dedication as like the mock of mental cane branded into your forehead by the deep lords of insanity.
Yeah.
Yeah, I can see how people could jump to that conclusion there.
Thank you.
I understand what it's like to look at enthusiasm.
Crazy people, very enthusiastic.
You know, a guy on a street corner really, really believes that the end of the world is nigh.
Really believes.
He's all in, man.
He's all in.
Like, he didn't even wash his hair.
He didn't wash his clothes.
He doesn't shave.
He's got that weird thick hair that homeless people have that makes young, balding guys jealous and think, well, would I trade that for homelessness, that kind of hair?
Maybe I can probably get back into some place.
I can't get the hair back, but anyway.
So crazy people are committed.
They're like all in.
And if your parents preferred something other than you guys to the point where they lost you and your siblings, that is not a healthy kind of commitment, but it's a lot of commitment.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, just from you saying that, I could think of some situations where there could be some enthusiasm and where I have to sort of rebut that with...
I have to somehow, I guess, counterbalance it with my own personality, in a way.
Sorry, I'm not sure if that makes sense.
No, you're spacing out a little bit, right?
Because I'm being enthusiastic, not manipulatively, but I'm not exactly holding back.
I'm being enthusiastic because I also want to see how you respond to enthusiasm and you kind of space out, right?
Yes.
Yes, you do.
Yes, you do.
Right.
So this is what you're like in the presence of enthusiasm.
You dissociate.
And I would assume that's because of some history where enthusiasm is dangerous to you or to others.
Yeah, maybe that's right.
And video games play into that, right?
Video games...
I mean, they're fun, don't get me wrong, and I play them from time to time, but they kind of holler you out a little bit, right?
It's not like they...
You maybe get a little frustration, a little tense, but it's not like wonder, beauty, depth, excitement, and it's not a rich human experience to play a video game.
It's fun, but it's, you know, it's fun like sugar is fun.
You know, it's okay in small doses, but, you know, it can really rot your fangs, which is, you know, pretty important for men to have some teeth, right?
It can rot your fangs if overindulged in.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's, uh, yeah, just to imagine all the better things that you could do with your time.
It just kind of, uh, uh, kind of a bummer, but, uh, but yeah, it's, it is kind of an escape from, um, Oh yeah, no, and there's nothing wrong with those escapes when necessary.
Like, you know, when I was 11 or maybe 12, a friend and I completed Ultima 3 all the way, baby!
All the way!
Ultima 3.
And what does that mean now?
What was it?
A couple of months ago, I ended up, I was just, it popped into my head and I looked at, you can find videos of old video games online, right?
I mean, you can probably find, go to GOG or whatever and find them and probably install and run them.
Some Atari emulator from the Atari 800 that I first had.
It was my first computer.
But I went back and it's like, yeah, I spent a lot of time doing that.
And now what?
What do I have in the real world?
What do I have to hang on my wall?
What do I have to show for myself, right?
In six months, you can learn to play guitar pretty competently.
But no, you finished Ultima 3, which you can't play in a concert, right?
Is that a side-scroller?
It's a top-down.
It was just a top-down Dungeons& Dragons kind of game.
Okay, gotcha.
Yeah.
But yeah, side-scroll, like the button mashes, where it's like the crazy timing.
You just have this kind of weird tension and frustration and, you know, some sense of satisfaction, but it fades pretty quickly.
But it's just a giant out-of-body experience, video games for the most part.
They're just sucking your brain out through your nose and spraying it across a bunch of agitated pixels, and it doesn't add up to squat in your life.
And, you know, video games, they can do a little bit of hand-eye coordination help, and they can do some strategy stuff and all that, but they are...
They are massive time sinks, and they don't give much back to your life that you can have moving forward.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, and in terms of careers, I know for a lot of people it's a long kind of winding road, but I guess you said that it was more a matter of technology and not a matter of passion in what you want to do.
You're not going to fall into something you really care about.
You have to really care about something and then you make it happen.
This was my concern, sort of the passivity, right?
So how much in debt are you at the moment?
Yeah, that's another frustration.
Because about 40 grand, I've knocked it down to, I'd say, about 30.
I've only been working for about a year.
But I'm working on knocking it down.
Wait, wait.
You've been working for a year.
You've knocked it from 40 down to 38?
Yeah, I'd say so.
So at this rate, you're down in 20 years?
Depending on it.
Hopefully, I'll get some raises along the way.
But yeah, when you do the math, when I did the math on it, I'm just...
It's not exactly worth all that debt.
It's definitely more than I would have been making, but, like, I was just thinking, like, I probably could have gotten, like, you know, a basic retail job and have become maybe a manager or something and then worked for four years.
At least I wouldn't be in this, you know, under this pile of debt, you know?
Well, yeah, and, of course, if you've got a lot of brains and talent and you join an organization and they recognize that, they'll pay you to go to school.
Right.
You know, like, you don't have to just say, well, I know what I want to do for the next 30 or 40 years, so I'm going to go to school.
I mean, you could just go get a job and prove your ability.
And if you're smart and you work hard and you've got potential...
I mean, they'll pay for you to get.
They'll have classes there.
I mean, you go to Walmart, they've got classes right there in the back that you can do training on and you can improve your skills and you can move up.
They're desperate.
You know, competent people are so fucking rare in this world that if you show that you're competent and enthusiastic, man, the world is your oyster.
Talk to me about unemployment or difficulty.
The world is your oyster if you can just be good at stuff and show up and be enthusiastic and take on more than Other people, the world will beat a path to your door.
You are the better mousetrap that everyone's been waiting for.
And I'm sorry that you're 40 grand in debt for something that you're not even enjoying doing.
That's pretty rough.
I'll tell you this.
You go for some other job.
You need to be aware of some of the challenges, right?
You go to some other job.
Let's say you go to a job in retail and they say, well, show me your resume.
Like, oh, you got a degree in finance.
It's like, well, what are you doing here?
It's like, I didn't really like finance.
And...
That doesn't speak to good decision-making to begin with because then the boss is going to be like, well, maybe you won't like this either, right?
Maybe I'm going to invest in you and you won't like this either.
Or maybe, you know, now you've got a finance degree, you're too smart to work here and you're going to get bored or whatever.
Or another thing that is important to know when you're going for a job and you have a lot of debt that's not related to the field you're getting the job in is the employer is going to say, okay, this guy needs extra pay because he's got this big debt.
So he comes with a salaried requirement that doesn't benefit my business.
Right?
And so that's a challenge as well.
So I just, you know, I'm sorry, you know, that there is such a college cult, right?
It's the college cult, right?
You got to go to college.
You got to go to college.
If you don't go to college, disaster will occur and so on.
And, you know, I think that that was true in the past.
And I think it's still true for things where you can't do the job if you don't go to college and can't be a doctor.
But certainly in the arts, again, business, I don't know what the hell's going on in the business world these days and business degrees.
In the arts, it's a disaster.
I mean, you stay away from college the way you'd stay away from Chernobyl, as far as what it does to your brain and your relationships.
I mean, they'll turn you inside out.
They'll turn you against people who really care about you and you have a lot in common with.
They'll just program you with all this Marxist garbage and turn you into a horror freak show, golem-laced shadow of your former self that went in as a decent person and came out as a social justice warrior, ninja head, doomed to a life of dissatisfaction and destruction.
That, to me, is that you couldn't pay me enough money to send my daughter into an arts degree.
Like, it just would be an insane and horrifying and repulsive thing to do.
Plus, with the internet now, you've got good teachers.
I'm watching Jordan Peterson these days.
I mean, you've got amazing teachers, great storytellers, deep insights, very stimulating.
You don't need to pay for all of that.
I mean, you can learn on the job.
You can cast about and find what you're really enthusiastic about and then hit the, you know, hit the metal, hit the gas.
When you're there, there's so much to do.
Stay away, particularly if you're a white male, stay away from college these days.
In my opinion, it's an entirely toxic and useless and irrelevant environment.
Plus, of course, it's become so female-centric, you know, so many women, and it's become so I cluttered it up with people who are substandard intellectually.
I'm not talking about women in particular.
They're just, you know, in general, the standards have lowered because the number of people going in has gone up enormously.
And the teachers are a suspect, to put it mildly, and you're in danger, right?
I mean, you can get accused of god-awful Sexual crimes with no real defense and no due process and no capacity to show up with a lawyer to defend yourself and no capacity to confront your accuser and you're in this politically correct witch hunt against white males.
I mean, to me, it is a viciously and virulently toxic environment that I'd pay 40 grand to stay away from, let alone pay 40 grand to attend.
Now, I understand this.
The business world, you probably weren't exposed to quite as much of that lefty programming crap as possible.
Did you, like when you were taking the College courses, did you feel that it wasn't for you when you were going through it?
I'd say in terms of lefty nonsense, it wasn't too bad.
I went to school out in the country.
It was kind of a little college out in the boonies, so it was kind of old school.
In terms of that social justice stuff, I didn't get too much of that.
I enjoyed the classes.
I thought they were pretty interesting.
I enjoyed the professors.
I had a lot of back and forth with them, even after class.
I think part of it is too, in the past it was so much cheaper.
And the math really did make a lot more sense.
So I think, you know, now at this point, you know, people would think, oh, well, it made sense when I was growing up, you know, my kids, my nieces, my nephews should just go to college.
But they don't really sit down and make that recalculation and assess the changes that have happened recently.
Sorry, go ahead.
It's funny.
My job, it's not in finance, but it's kind of a stepping stone into a lot of different areas in the company.
A lot of people started out in my position.
But it's funny because my degree, I think it helped me get the job for sure.
But I was just thinking the other day, I was like, you know what, I bet I could have, if I was just really persistent and I bet I could have just talked my way in, even if I didn't have a degree.
It would have been hard, but I think I could have, regardless of the degree.
I don't think that was the...
I'm not sure if that was...
It might have tipped me over the edge, but I'm not sure if that was a big factor, honestly.
Right, and you weren't told the truth about a lot of this stuff, and I'm sorry.
You know, you have some stuff to be angry about.
Yeah, it's a little bit frustrating sometimes, but, you know, with some of the other callers, you know, living in Venezuela and stuff, I just try to, you know, put it in perspective and, you know, it could be a lot worse.
Right, like the dog in hell.
This is fine.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah, so that would be my suggestion cost about, but I wouldn't make any big changes in my life until I found my passion.
I wouldn't just, okay, well, I'll try something new and see if I'm interested in that.
I mean, that's...
You know, you define your values, and then you find someone who matches those values.
If you want to get married or have friendships or whatever, you just hang out with random people and see if they work out, right?
Same thing with careers.
So, yeah, I mean, obviously I can't tell you what to be passionate about.
I certainly have found mine.
I found it pretty early, but again, I had to wait almost 30 years to be able to do it full-time.
So, actually, no more than that, really.
So...
I would keep chipping away at this debt.
You know, debt is a real beast.
That's a real beast to have.
It really limits, you know, limits choices, limits options, limits negotiation capacity.
So I would work hard to try and bring down that debt as much as humanly possible and as quickly as humanly possible if you can overpay, if you can, you know, live in a van until it's, you know, paid out.
You don't want this thing hanging around for decades because it's going to influence and affect your life decisions for a long time.
Yeah, I think you've got some stuff to be upset about.
I always recommend therapy when you've come from a dysfunctional history like you have.
So if you want to think about that, I think it would be a well worthwhile investment.
It might actually give you the kind of initiative and enthusiasm that will more than pay for itself over time.
But yeah, this is a challenge.
We get this question a lot.
People saying, I don't know really what to be enthusiastic about.
But, you know, meditate on what we talked about, or at least what I talked about, about a female-centric world and How it kind of hollows out and just populates everyone in this neutral middle, this beige, and whether there may be buried deep down within you some enthusiasms that haven't been given scope as yet in this life.
And if you can tap into those, the path becomes Pretty clear, you know, as Nietzsche said, give a man why he can bear almost any how.
Once you know what you want to do, you'll move heaven and earth to get there.
But finding that thing can be a challenge.
And if you can't find it anywhere, I would look back in history to see if maybe there was an enthusiasm that was squelched or something that failed to develop because you were in a non-enthusiasm-prone, which is a failure-prone environment.
Can't tell you that you suck, can never tell you that you're great with any credibility.
Or maybe you just don't have a lot of energy that way.
You know, everyone's different.
In which case, you know, after you've explored all of this stuff, if you can't find anything, I think you'll have more contentment with where you are and not think this sort of grass is greener on the other side of the fence stuff.
Does that help at all?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll really think about what Which direction I want to head in before I make that leap.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't assume that just some new thing is going to generate enthusiasm.
You know, you can't start a fire on wet wood.
You've got to dry it out first.
So thanks very much for the call.
Thanks everyone for calling in tonight.
Always a great pleasure to chat with you all.
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