March 11, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:06
3615 Rejecting Philosophy - Call In Show - March, 8th, 2017
Question 1: [2:55] - “Is Hollywood projecting its own dysfunction onto society as a whole? I ask this question in part because a study conducted by the LA Times in 2012 (reference here) indicates the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences represents all that the acting elites rage against, i.e. It’s composed of old, white men who apparently discriminate against women and people of color based on the statistics of nominees and winners over the past 88 years. Hollywood elites chose a career which requires them to work under these conditions and then complain about the world they live in, using their considerable influence to rage against a machine that largely exists in their own back yard. As this condition is nearly non-existent in fly-over, middle America, I’m looking for clarity on this subject as I rage against the Hollywood machine via podcasting to my largely female audience that may be unwittingly influencing their daughters, not by their words, but by their example if they idealize Hollywood and other forms of glamour as the be-all, end-all for the glorious, desirable life. In reality engaged mothers don’t want their daughters to choose a Hollywood career because that life is hard, very hard, and if you want to have a family the hardships are multiplied immeasurably, not only for the woman, but for her children.”Question 2: [33:43] – “With the growing violence in the classroom from the strain of third world immigration what can I do to protect my daughter at school? I'm concerned by the reports of increased bitings, scratches, and attacks on teachers, the men and women who are supposed to be the authority in these institutions. Due to the demands of our jobs, neither my partner or myself have time to home-school. I'm an atheist, but went to a Christian high school, should I start researching Catholic school? How do you educate your children in the modern world?Question 3: [51:31] - “Do you believe that Western Society in general seems in recent years to fail to recognize the value of philosophy, or even intentionally avoids it altogether? Also, how deeply do you think the ramifications of Western Society's seeming unwillingness to utilize philosophy, actually effect particularly the fields of education, science, and the general framework of western society as a whole?”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
Hello, hello, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hey, do you ever wonder if Hollywood is really sexist and racist?
If they criticize the world for vices that they themselves manifest?
Well, a lady and I had a great chat about that very topic itself.
A caller wanted to know also about how do I keep my children safe in the increasing violence in government schools that he thinks has something to do with third world immigration.
It's a great conversation about that.
Do I believe that Western society in general has, in recent years, failed to recognize the value of philosophy or even intentionally avoids it altogether?
Well, that's the kind of big topic, meaty, satellite view history that I really like to get into.
So, boy, did we get into it and deep.
I hope you'll enjoy that call as well.
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Alright, up first today we have Melanie.
Melanie wrote in and said, Is Hollywood projecting its own dysfunction onto society as a whole?
I ask this in part because of a study conducted by the LA Times in 2012 indicating that the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts, and Sciences really represents all that the acting elites claim to be upset about, i.e.
it's composed of old white men who apparently discriminate against women and people of color Based on statistics of nominees and winners over the past 88 years, Hollywood elites choose a career which requires them to work under these conditions and then complain about the world in which they live, using their considerable influence to rage against a machine that largely exists in their own backyard.
As this condition is nearly non-existent in flyover middle America, I'm looking for clarity on the subject as I myself rage against the Hollywood machine via podcasting to my largely female audience that may be unwittingly influencing their daughters, not by words, but by their example if they I'm looking for clarity on the subject as I myself rage against the Hollywood machine via podcasting to my largely female audience that may be unwittingly
In reality, engaged mothers don't want their daughters to choose a Hollywood career because that life is hard.
Very hard.
And if you want to have a family, the hardships are multiplied immeasurably.
Not only for the women, but for her children.
That is from Melanie.
Oh, hey Melanie, how you doing?
I'm doing well, how are you?
I'm alright.
I'm alright.
Why is it that you think that there's sort of racism and sexism on the part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
Is it because women are half the population but not half the nominees for directorate?
I'm going to say I don't know that it actually is.
What I was looking at was their own statistics.
So I don't want to specifically say that they're racist or...
Sexist.
Yeah, sexist.
A lot of the complaints, the mouthpiece of a lot of women comes out of Hollywood and they're complaining about their lack of status, their lack of money, they don't get the roles they want and so on.
It could be true.
It absolutely could be true based on what I'm seeing in this study.
Showing that they're mostly made of men, old men, old white men, actually, is what I saw in that study.
And so there was a protest.
What was that called?
Oscars So White that actually happened.
And I thought, oh, this is just junk.
But then when I looked at it and you start looking at who do they nominate, who wins the awards, who actually makes the choices, who are the people that make up Hollywood...
They really do have, and I'm not saying it's bad what they have, but what I'm saying is that the people in Hollywood are complaining about that white men run everything.
And they live in a world where white men actually run everything.
Sorry to interrupt you for just a sec, but are you saying that older men in the entertainment industry, they're all white, there aren't any Jews?
Is that what you mean?
Uh, I don't know.
I didn't see that statistic in there at all.
Because, as far as I understand it, Jewish men often will not refer to themselves as white.
It comes off sort of a Mike Wallace interview and other things as well.
So, I'm not sure if you...
Like, I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Do you mean sort of white, like European, Anglo-Saxon, or do you mean Jewish or some other group?
Yes, yes.
I didn't realize that...
I didn't realize that Jewish people didn't put themselves in that category.
I think that there are some Jews, as you were too, at the top of the entertainment industry.
I'm just going off my gut sense here.
Now, you probably know of the actress Sydney Poitier, right?
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, he won his Oscar, what, in the early 60s and so on.
So I don't know that racism has increased since then.
I will say that there's been a bit of a cultural divide that has split the races, particularly blacks and whites, in America since then.
And one of those aspects is...
That, you know, he came from Barbados, actually.
He was born in the States, but he grew up in Barbados and may not have had quite as much exposure to some of the more challenging aspects of black culture in America.
You know, this sort of...
Hatred for white America and some of the, again, it's not all of black culture, but there are some portions of it.
So that may be an issue as well.
When it comes to the race and IQ stuff that I've talked about, you know, I'm going to go and assume that being a director or being a writer or being sort of a movie star requires probably significantly above average IQ, particularly in the sort of realm of Writing and directing and so on.
So there are those challenges as well.
And those challenges, sort of statistically, Also hit women as well, because when we're starting to talk about directors and writers and so on, people high up in the movie industry, I think we're talking about significantly high IQ. And according to the research,
we can put links to this in the notes of the show, but according to the research, when you start to get up into very high IQs, you start to get males outnumbering females, you know, 5 to 1, 10 to 1, At the very highest level, over 175 IQ, outnumber females 18 to 1.
And so...
There is that challenge.
You know, once you, like if you're looking at disparities in high IQ fields, if you're not going to normalize by IQ, it's easy to think it's nothing but prejudice.
And this, of course, is also related to the fact, the two other factors, of course, that a lot of women will decide to have children and breastfeed and be good moms, which takes them out of that particular race.
And also that men have obviously more testosterone, which can translate into more aggression and ambition and so on.
So my caution is that it can be easy to ascribe racism and sexism to things, but unless you normalize by prevalence within the population of IQ or high IQ in this particular instance, it's hard to know where the facts are, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, it does.
I didn't take that into consideration.
Now, kind of along those lines then, I don't know if it was the same study I was looking at or maybe a different article, the pay gap between the males and females.
Is that going to be along the same lines?
For instance, the feminists like to say 77 cents on the dollar, which is just It's just not true.
But then when you go and you actually look at what the males get paid as opposed to the females in the industry, I think the overall average was like 40 cents on the dollar for female to male ratio.
Are you saying that women are getting paid 40 cents on the dollar for working the equivalent to men?
$0.40 on the dollar.
I got $0.87 on the dollar.
That's CTV News.
$0.77.
$0.77.
$0.91.
$0.79.
I don't see any $0.40.
I've sort of heard the $0.79 or $0.77.
But we've got a whole video presentation about this called The Truth About The Pay Gap.
If you look at overall men and overall women, sure, then women are making three quarters of what men make, but it's sort of a useless comparison until and unless you take into account things like...
Are they both working the same number of hours?
Are they both in the same professions?
Men will often go into more dangerous professions, whereas there's danger pay, you know, like being a logger or a tree cutter and so on, working with Kydro and so on.
Women don't generally show up in those occupations very much, so there's extra money that comes out of it for that.
So there is, you know, once you start, and again, there's the IQ thing at the very highest area.
And, of course, there's women taking time off to have babies, which, you know, I think it's a wonderful thing.
It's not a negative thing at all.
But when you include all of this factor, then women and men make about the same.
I kind of figured it was going to go that way, but my question more centers around the fact that for the average woman living in middle America, going to work, well, actually, maybe not going to work, maybe raising her children at home, and Wanting the best for those children.
We used to discourage our daughters from going to Hollywood because of how difficult it is.
So even if you do, like you say, you have the lower IQ, but even going in there, and you can correct me on this, you know far more about that particular industry than I do, but you go in there and You're like a lamb in a pack of wolves.
The woman that did The Red Pill, she even talked about how you had to be pretty, you had to be sexy, and there's this constant people trying to take advantage of you.
It's part of the culture.
You're talking about Cassie J., who made a movie called The Red Pill, which is actually available digitally, and people should go and watch it.
It's well worth watching.
Yeah, if you want to be a leading man or a leading woman, you generally have to be physically attractive.
This is as true for men as it is for women.
I can't think of many men who are unattractive, who are opening movies and...
Being the lead in a movie.
So there is that level of physical attractiveness.
It depends what kind of actor you want to be.
If you want to be the dashing, heroic, leading man, then sure.
It helps to look like the dashing, heroic, leading man.
If you want to be a character actor, then you can have your own particular looks.
And there are a few actors or actresses who can...
I guess it's not quite open movies, but sort of in leading roles.
I think sort of Kathy Bates can do it, Gene Hackman can do it, who are not sort of traditionally beautiful people.
But for the most part, if the studio has a choice, then they will cast a more attractive person in the role for the simple biological reason that people like to look at attractive people.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
There is a lot of predatory stuff that goes on.
In the movie industry.
Of that, I have no doubt.
But the predation, I think there's been some indication of this being reported by people like Corey Feldman and others.
The predation goes not just male to female, but the predation goes also male to male and may also go female to male as well.
I mean, I certainly, in the world of art, was offered a significant advantage in return for sexual favors.
And...
I didn't ever take anyone up on it, but there is always that aspect of the art world that, yeah, people are going to try and have sex with you in return for offering you an advance in your career.
And, you know, you can actually look.
There are famous actors and actresses who actually got their salt in softcore porn or even harder stuff.
And looking pretty is a great way to...
Yeah, so that's, I guess, you know, as far as me and working with what I'm trying to do with my audience is to I think get mothers to work with their daughters more to reinforce that.
And I'm not saying tell your daughter don't go be in Hollywood or something like that, but when I was growing up, it was highly discouraged because...
You knew that it was going to be predatory in nature.
I mean, it has been throughout history.
As far as I know, even before the motion picture industry, it's like when you were in these traveling shows or just theater or whatever, people were always trying to take advantage of you.
As you said, it's like sexual favors back and forth.
Whoever has the money and the power tries to wield that against you.
And you have to work hard.
You have to want it really badly to...
To really stick with it and make it in that industry, I guess, unless you know somebody.
But that's not something for me that I would want for my daughter and that my mother did not want for me.
We would watch movies.
We loved movies and all those kinds of things.
So we would watch those together and admire the intelligence and the skill and the You know, the beauty and the creation and all of that.
But it was like, you know, that's for them.
It was like a separate thing.
It's like, this is entertainment.
But we live real life over here.
This is what we live, real life.
And what I see today is that the entertainment industry has just encroached so much into what I call normal life.
And tried to normalize what they do.
When in...
My opinion, what they do is not normal.
They were always, you always, in order to do that, you had to step outside of the norm of what Raising children and keeping society going and all of those things required much more than just simple entertainment, although that was a choice, of course, of career that you could make.
But now it's just like encroached into everything and in these people who don't live the same life that most people do.
And even when they portray these lives, they're made up.
They're stories.
And of course, they're always embellished because they're there to entertain.
So I don't even know that people that live in Hollywood or work in entertainment are even aware of how far removed they are from the life that everybody else lives.
I mean, they either, like they themselves, don't live that life.
And then when they portray it, it's not accurately portrayed.
I mean, it becomes about looking good and sounding good.
And J.K. Rowling was recently talking about how wonderful it would be for England to accept more migrants.
And Paul Joseph Watson did a great video looking at, well, where do these people live?
Emma Thompson and JK Rowling and so on.
And, you know, they all live in predominantly white neighborhoods with security guards and Multi-million dollar mansions and big high walls around where they are, so they don't have to deal with any of the problems that migrants might bring to a particular community.
They just can go and pretend to be all caring and nice, and they have no requirement to deal with the resulting problems that would occur from the policies that they're proposing.
So, sure, I mean, they live in a bubble, and they have no idea what.
It's the same thing as true of politicians and the elite, the intelligent as a whole.
And Charles Murray has a whole book about this called Losing Ground, about how there's this amazing scoop that goes through communities and gets the high IQ people, sends them off to Ivy League colleges, gets them ensconced in think tanks and Washington and other places where they're kept away from the riffraff and the hoi polloi.
They end up with these lives where they have nothing to do with anything to do with real life or real people.
It's like Elton John many years ago saying about Freddie Mercury, you think he knows what a pint of milk goes for, darling?
Ridiculous, right?
He has no idea of these things.
And it is a trouble.
It is a challenge to...
To try and get the elites to care about the average people and the average lives that were in there.
But in my experience, the people who go into the theater world, the people who go into the acting world, in order to be a vessel to be filled by another person's personality, you generally have to be pretty empty yourself.
And, you know, these people, I remember they could deliver the most thrilling Shakespearean speeches and then you try to talk to them about anything in the world and they have almost nothing to say whatsoever.
Actors are generally very disappointing to see be interviewed.
I mean, just look at Edward Norton as a great actor and see the guy interview and it's like he's trying to bang two syllables out with three pieces of string cheese.
And So, we thrill to the personalities they portray on screen, but individually they tend to be, at least in general, a lot less rich in personality than they appear to us.
And it is a problem when it comes to what kind of people want to get into that world.
And, of course, if you're a beautiful woman and you have some acting talent or some abilities in that direction, then you probably do want to go to Hollywood.
Or what is it they used to say in the Seinfeld?
Model, actress, spokeswoman, whatever.
Just some talking head.
And some of these women are very bright and some of these women are very articulate and have wonderful things to say.
But, frankly, a lot of time it's vanity.
And the feeling that – I had a line in a book I wrote some years ago now, a novel.
This woman said that she was born beautiful and she said she wanted to put her beauty to work for her like a glistening slave.
And yeah, if you have physical beauty, particularly in this modern era, you have wonderful capacities to be looked at and admired and wanted and lusted after.
And that's a very heady and powerful experience for people.
I'm sure men and women alike, maybe a little bit more so for women.
So yeah, it is a challenging environment to retain your integrity.
And I think in general, particularly in the movie realm, things get flattened out so much.
I mean, movies are so ridiculously expensive to make because the government has lined up all these unions and everything.
The movies are so ridiculously expensive to make that you have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
You can't have a script that requires an IQ of 110 or above to really enjoy and appreciate.
And so you end up with these fairly low rent movies full of lots of bangs and cliches and all this kind of stuff.
And nothing particularly challenging for anyone.
And that's because you need a worldwide distribution.
You need it to be something that can be easily translated into a foreign language so that the subtitles can work or the overdubs can work elsewhere.
Which means no particular Western focus or no particular philosophical focus.
You can't talk about any deep issues about anything.
And so this hollowing out of movies has...
Well, it's made scripts really boring.
And, you know, I can't imagine an actress pick up a script for, I don't know, like a Jack Reacher movie or something and say, oh, I can't wait to deliver these silvery, psychedelic, wonderful syllables of depth and complexion and complexity.
And so, I think it's...
Maybe there's a little bit more in the theatre world, although I was just thinking the other day, when I was in theatre school, my writing teacher...
Socrates took me to a play that he really wanted to expand my thinking about theatre.
Because one of the first exercises that I had at theatre school in the playwriting, the first year I just did the acting classes, but the second year I did also the acting classes and the playwriting classes.
And I adapted the Apology, Plato's Apology, right?
The end speeches of Socrates, I adapted those to the stage.
And he was like, oh, he wasn't satisfied with that, and he showed me how he would rewrite them.
And I was like, oh, I don't like the way you've rewritten.
I think they're terrible.
So we really didn't get much of a oomph going along.
But he took me to a play where he wanted to sort of expand my mind, and here's what real theater is, and here's what's really going on.
And it was so horrible.
It was such a horrible play.
It was horrible people Disturbed, weird, horrible.
Did I say horrible?
Something like that.
Just weird, disturbed people.
And I just, like, it was like this assault on rationality and integrity.
And I just, I'm like, I just, I said, I can't, I can't.
I got up halfway through and I walked home and I listened to Good Rockin' at Midnight by the Honey Drippers over and over just to clean my mind from this garbage, this filth, this mess, this muck.
And I don't remember the name of the play or the playwright, but I just remember so vividly thinking...
That is not theater.
That is an asylum.
And not an asylum of crazy, but an asylum of ugliness.
And I think there is a lot of that stuff in the art world.
I mean, maybe it's just because I'm getting older, but I don't find the comedy as funny anymore.
And I've been watching Breakfast at Tiffany's.
I watched it many, many years ago.
And there was something about it that I remember that I always wanted to re-watch it and it showed up somewhere.
So I've been re-watching it.
And it's like, yeah, horrible people doing horrible things.
Sure, they're pretty.
They are pretty.
And that's the only non-horrible thing about them.
So did you ever find out what...
I guess the thing that comes to my mind when someone says, this is really, really great, and you go and you have...
I've had similar situations where I'm just like, "No, this is depraved," or whatever.
So did you ever find out?
What did he find valuable about it?
I didn't ask.
Artists rarely can tell you.
This is something that Socrates says...
In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates says that he thought that the artists and the poets would know the wisdom of the language they produced.
So he would go to the artists and the poets, the writers, and he would ask them to explain what happened in their language that gave them wisdom and so on.
And he said that universally they had no clue.
So he said, I had to accept that art was kind of a...
Like a sort of a geister or an eruption of talent that the artist is incomprehensible about.
But I will say this.
I mean, I just knew that we weren't going to be able to meet common ground when it came to artistic endeavors.
If you do want to look into someone's soul, you look at the art they enjoy.
You look at the...
The movies, the music, and so on, that they're drawn to.
And you will learn a lot about that person.
It doesn't mean you'll know them forever.
I mean, Side 3 of The Wall was an album I listened to for about a year in my teenage years, every night before I went to sleep.
Got a little black book with my poems in.
Anyway, but that was during a troubled time in my life.
And now the music I listen to is different, more peppy and more classical for the most part.
But yeah, I mean, art is a window into the soul of a person.
And you can learn a lot.
It's a Rosh Hash test to ask people what they like, what kind of art they like.
You'll learn a lot about them.
That kind of brings me back around to what originally concerns me is that when I'm working with women and they're working with their daughters, I guess I'm looking for your thoughts on, well, you have a daughter,
so your thoughts on if she says, you know, I really want to go to Hollywood or I want to, I don't know, something that for me where I go, you know, I just cringe inside like, okay, so you're really talented at that and you're really beautiful and all that, but look, do you understand what the life is actually going to be like?
This is your day-to-day life.
And so often when we're working, especially with young people, you can say these words over and over and over again, but until you step to that door and you actually have the experience, it doesn't really register.
Yeah.
I don't think my daughter is going to be particularly interested in that.
Her interests run elsewhere.
But I would say that to speak other people's words is not that big a deal.
I mean, it's a singular talent, and I know to be believable and so on.
But if you listen to most actors explain their craft, I mean, you'll get, you know, some people are into Stanislavski or some people who do the Utterhagen method and so on, method actors and so on.
But a lot of actors are just like, I don't know, I just stand here and I look this way and I do that and, you know, that kind of thing.
Kind of, never had a lesson.
Yeah, so I would say, do you want to spend your life speaking other people's words?
It seems like kind of an empty thing to me.
And, you know, I would sort of point out, you know, I mentioned this on the show before, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, you know, wrote a good film in Good Will Hunting.
And then what?
I'm going to be on Mars.
I'm going to be accused of a murder.
I'm going to be a beefed up guy who punches people.
And it's just like, what a sacrifice.
What a mess.
You know, those guys used to...
I mean, they started off with this big splash and doing an intelligent film.
And it's like, why would you then just want to become an action hero?
I don't know.
I don't really understand the life.
It's not...
You know, why not do stuff where it's your words?
Your words.
I mean, Bourne Identity?
Seriously?
Come on, the guy's got nine words in the whole film, and eight of them are...
So, I don't know, it's just kind of weird to me, but, you know, I've never been...
I've never had those temptations, but why don't you just write your own stuff and write great stuff, write powerful stuff.
So, yeah, if you can write a great script, then I would say, sure.
But if you just want to go there, be pretty, and speak other people's words...
I don't know.
It just seems like an unsatisfying life in many ways.
Okay.
Yeah, so that's a much better approach, I think.
I mean, can you imagine if I'd spent my life speaking other people's words?
What a waste.
I'm sorry.
I have a lot of my own that are pretty important, so it just...
What a waste.
Right.
Well, there...
I don't know.
I know that there is talent there.
There is...
You know...
They're good mimics.
Yeah.
But also there is...
I mean, a lot of celebrities have narcissistic tendencies, right?
So just think.
So to be able to act as if no one's there, in your mind, you have to have some barrier to other people being there.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, so you're doing some love scene, a sex scene or something.
Like, not a porn scene, but like a sex scene in a movie.
Yeah.
And there are like 20 guys standing around, right?
You've got the lighting guy, the gaff, the grip, the cameraman, the director, the writer, maybe whatever, right?
The writer who wrote...
So you're having this passionate sexual scene, and you have to have the audience believe that the audience isn't there, right?
You have to act as if there's no one there.
That's a weird thing because it's counter-reality, right?
There are 40 people standing around you, right?
But you have to pretend like there's no one there.
Right.
And what kind of personality is so able to convince themselves that there's no one there but them?
That other people don't exist?
That other people can be wished out of existence so convincingly?
I don't know that that's always the healthiest kind of personality.
Yeah.
Now, stage, I think, though, would be a little bit different.
And dance?
No, it's the same thing.
But you're performing to an audience.
Well, not if you're acting.
Okay.
No, I mean, if you're acting, well, first of all, I mean, if you're acting in a theater production, it's weird because you have to use the big voice so everyone in the back can hear you while you're having an intimate conversation.
I remember one of the actors I was working with when we toured Stratford and in In Stratford, we were there for a couple of days, so only 10 plays.
It was very cool, because, you know, it's classics.
But we stood on the stage in Stratford, and there's like a magic spot, which the acoustics have been designed, that if you stand there and you speak, you know, even if you speak relatively quietly, you can be heard quite easily throughout the audience.
But, you know, you're having an intimate conversation with someone And if the acoustics aren't just perfect, you have to use your big voice so everyone can hear you.
So you're basically yelling at someone while pretending you're murmuring at them.
I mean, it's all very weird when you think about it.
And maybe I overthought it or whatever, but it is just a weird kind of dissociation that happens.
And the best acting is when you don't believe that the audience is there.
You just wish...
Dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of people out of the equation.
Like, I mean, if you're a singer in a band and you're singing to the crowd, right?
And you see some of the great performances like, you know, Freddie Mercury at Live Aid or Michael Hutchins in excess at Wembley and so on.
Like some of the great, like they're playing with the audience.
They're working with the audience.
They're singing back.
They're doing a back and forth with the audience.
So they know the audience is there.
Yeah.
Right?
So they can work with that.
But if you're an actor, you kind of have to pretend that the audience isn't there.
And if you're on stage, then you have to pretend the audience isn't there, but you're speaking this loudly just because.
You know, like it's a very complicated kind of dissociation that occurs.
Yeah.
I don't have any experience with that one.
I remember the actor saying to one of the directors who was on the tour with us, he's like, it's just weird.
You're in the back.
You're trying to moan to someone.
You're going to be really loud.
Everyone can hear.
He's like, yeah, well, that's the job.
That's a joke.
Oh, and you have to pretend that something's new when you've been rehearsing it for two months.
But the same show's been on Broadway for years.
Well, no, I mean, if it's you, right?
I mean, there was a, I don't know if it's probably not, it's probably not running anymore, but there used to be a show called The Mousetrap.
Running in Toronto, I've been running for like 26 years, and sometimes there have been similar people that have played the same role for years, and boom, you have to be surprised every time.
So it's just, it's wild.
And yeah, it is talent.
Yeah.
But a lot of times, of course, people who have a very good connection with the audience don't have a good connection with the people in their lives, like the individuals in their lives.
If you can play to 3,000 people, it doesn't mean you can have a conversation with any one person at all.
Anyway, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I really do appreciate the chance to talk about this stuff.
Thanks for the call very much.
Thank you.
Thank you for your insight.
Alright, up next we have James.
James wrote in and said, With the growing violence in the classroom from the strain of third world immigration, what can I do to protect my daughter at school?
I'm concerned by the reports of increased bitings, scratchings, and attacks on teachers, the men and women who are supposed to be the authority in these institutions.
Specifically, there is a story of a girl getting choked with her necklace by a Syrian migrant in Nova Scotia and the sexual assault that took place in Fredericton High.
As we've all seen in Europe, there is plenty of room where this can and will get worse.
Due to the demands of our jobs, neither my partner or myself have the time to homeschool.
I'm an atheist but went to a Christian high school.
Should I start researching Catholic school?
How do you educate your children in the modern world?
That's from James.
Hi, James.
How are you doing tonight?
I'm doing pretty well.
Thanks for having me on.
My pleasure.
Do you and your partner make a lot of money?
So my career is just getting started.
It's just getting off the ground now.
I'm working in communications, but my partner, she's a geotechnical engineer.
But English is her second language, so the time She was working in Nova Scotia.
She wasn't getting paid as much because she wasn't able to write out the detailed reports required for an engineering job.
So she was getting paid a little bit less than what her background merits.
Your career just getting started, why not take a couple of years to raise your daughter at least until she's like four or five before starting your career?
Well, she's hoping to sort of do that.
She's sort of hoping to take a step back from work and I'm sort of going to take on the role of primary breadwinner.
And how old is your daughter?
She's six months.
And is she being breastfed?
Yeah.
So your wife is still off work?
Yeah, she's off work till August.
Till August, alright.
And then what?
What's your plan?
So she lives right next to her parents, so they're going to help us out with daycare and babysitting.
And she's going to hold her job And just sort of start taking less hours in the winter and then hopefully switch over to...
She's applying to federal jobs which give a lot more leeway with how much time you want to put in and offer up a lot more free time options.
Oh, so she wants a government job?
Yeah.
Joining the public sector One thing I should mention about my question there I referenced the Chronicle Herald article there which was the girl in elementary school getting choked by the Syrian migrant with her chain so that actually got retracted Due
to a public outcry, basically saying that it was unverified allegations with regards to the story.
So that's part of the reason why I put it in here, is because we've sort of seen overseas An omission of facts.
Oh yeah, no, because of course I remember that when it came to rape allegations against young men in colleges, that all the media said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on.
It's true that a stripper accused the...
The young men at the lacrosse team at Duke University, it's true that a young woman accused them of sexual assault, but, you know, it's unverified.
We can't go with that.
It's the same thing with the Rolling Stone.
Oh, wait, no, that's the exact opposite of what happened.
So it's just a little bit of a double standard.
Yeah, exactly.
And the thing that's interesting is Mr.
LaRue, who is a school board member here in Nova Scotia, when he was interviewed, About this specific story, I think his response is quite telling.
He said they reported there was nothing they could connect from an incident that happened at school that was related to what was in the paper.
They were quite shocked at the details of what was in there.
Some of it was quite sensational.
He goes on and he estimates that upwards of 35 to 40 students, maybe even 50 newcomers, have joined the student population, which numbered 299 last September.
And finally, he says that even if there's conflict in our schools, What we're talking about are young kids, kids who are between the ages of 5 and 12.
We're talking about kids who are learning what it means to get along with other members of society.
So no matter where these problems come from, we need to deal with them in the classroom.
Yeah, that's sort of a vague non-statement or anything like that, but okay.
Yeah, so they want to cover this stuff up.
If this did happen, they don't want to investigate it.
Do you know whatever happened with the investigation?
No, this was basically the final update on the story.
But obviously, in the course of this happening and this phone call, we also had the West Edmonton Mall sex assault at the water park, which I believe was five or six women.
Yeah, so...
Just the reality on the ground really...
Troubles me.
I mean, just looking overseas in Europe where I've spent some time traveling myself and really enjoyed.
Nowadays, I recommend that people don't travel alone in Europe, especially in certain parts.
And it's I mean, the fact is, it's like 54% of Swedish women are afraid to go outside and go out alone at night sort of thing.
They're dyeing their hair black.
I think one of the most disturbing interviews was at a school in Germany with a Muslim boy, and he basically...
Was saying, yeah, we fight the Germans.
We fight the Germans.
They're pussies.
They're pussies.
And the man behind the camera is asking him, well, do the German kids fight back?
And he's like, no, no, they don't fight back.
They're nothing.
They're worthless.
They're kaffar.
I mean, it's just...
I mean, it's sick.
And, I mean...
Once you have a kid...
You start thinking about your own childhood.
And I was given the amazing gift of a safe childhood that was fulfilling.
It was safe.
It was an environment that fostered learning that encouraged achievement.
Yeah, government schools have been getting bad for a while.
And the migrants may have something to do with it.
But of course, there's all the stuff around drugging kids, in particular boys.
There's dysfunctional kids that have been in daycare since they were 12 minutes old and stuff like that.
So yeah, there are...
Government schools are a bad, bad environment.
Bad, bad environment for your children.
So you have to find an option, right?
And what about your grandparents homeschooling the child?
Well, they're sort of simple folk.
He's an ex-trucker and the mom's sort of like a homemaker.
Like, he built his own house with his own hands and stuff.
He's got sort of a different set of wisdom or knowledge.
But with regards to, like, sciences and maths and stuff, I just don't think they'd be up to the task, so to speak.
So, but you could educate your child for at least some portion of her childhood if you wanted to, right?
Yes, I would.
So that's a possibility, of course.
You can find a private school.
And if you're low on money, you can ask for scholarship programs.
You can work half-time.
You can have your child be taken care of by tutors.
Your child can be with your grandparents in the morning and in the afternoon.
You can come home and educate her.
You have lots and lots of opportunities and possibilities.
If your wife is making good money, then you can stay home and take care of your daughter.
There's tons of things.
And I appreciate this call, because it comes down to this, right?
That your daughter's safety, security, and happiness comes first.
And whether they're migrants or not in government schools, they're not a good place for your daughter to be.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I mean, obviously, the problems that already existed there are just exacerbated by...
By this immigration problem.
Could be that those challenges just make the decision a little bit easier.
Yeah, and I don't think it's moving on from just specific education, just more safety out and about in the world, outside of a classroom environment.
How do I help create A situation where my daughter can sort of experience the beauty of the outside world where she can grow, learn, and adapt while at the same time balancing the real dangers that exist in the world and being truthful as to where these dangers exist most.
Well, you keep her safe from risk as long as possible.
I mean, that doesn't mean that she doesn't experience any risk at all, right?
You can't type Pillows around her and have her never get a skinned knee, right?
So you take her out and you give her exposure to reasonable amounts of risk.
And then as soon as she's able, you give her the opportunity to manage her own risks and all that kind of good stuff.
And that's what you work with with your child.
But as long as you have, like, the only thing I would suggest...
Around this, and this is sort of a basic principle as a whole, James, is that your daughter's safety and security comes first.
And if you get that, and it sounds like you get that, but if you get that, how you go about achieving that is less important than that's the important thing.
That's the center of your decision-making, right?
I mean, she didn't choose you as parents.
You chose to become parents, and you're choosing to keep her, which is great.
And I wouldn't refer to...
For grandparents, babysitters, they'll be primary caregivers, but that seems to be just fine for children's development.
As long as they have a stable, loving primary caregiver or caregivers, they'll do fine.
And so I appreciate that you're not going to dump her in daycare and all this sort of terrible stuff.
But, yeah, just whatever she needs, that's what you provide.
And there are times when she'll need a longer leash, so to speak.
She'll need to be able to go out and make her own mistakes and explore the world on her own and all that.
But, yeah.
Just keep the risks and dangers of the world that are beyond anyone's ability to control as far away from her as possible so that she can develop a sense of security in the world, which she can then bring to the world, even if the world can be an insecure place at times.
It's nice if we can bring that level of security to the world, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
Part of what happened for my own personal sense of safety was...
I actually got robbed at knife point when I was 16 by a heroin addict who was two weeks out of prison.
And it was quite a violating experience, to say the least, to sort of have your mortal coil hanging in the balance in such a way that I was just wondering,
is there a way to realistically empower her with martial arts or self-defense classes, or is that taking it a step too far?
Well, I would say if you keep her in a safe environment.
I mean, there's nothing rhyming in martial arts or whatever.
I have an ambivalent relationship.
I like the stretching and the exercise and so on.
But do you think martial arts would have helped you with the guy with the knife?
Well, obviously compliance was the right way to go.
But if I had sort of control of my body or felt more in control of the adrenaline that was coursing through my system...
I would have definitely felt like I could have dealt with the situation with less stress involved, I guess.
Instead of this sort of blank stare of not really processing what's happening.
Yeah, I mean, as somebody who's a heroin addict, I assume is in a desperate enough position that they're willing to do just about anything.
If they're two weeks out of prison and they're robbing someone at knife point, I assume that that is a pretty dangerous position to be in.
And even if you're a good martial artist, I mean, if that guy's good with a knife, it's a challenge.
No, I mean, I was marked in England when I was a kid.
I was 11, shortly.
No, I was 11, just shortly before we left to come to Canada.
Here's the money.
What can I tell you?
I mean, I'm not going to wear a lifelong scarf for the sake of 50 pence.
But anyway, so I'm sorry that you had that experience.
That is very scary.
And of course, in particular, at that age.
But obviously, you don't want to let it color your entire life's experience.
And...
For your daughter, you have to just recognize that she's going to be weaker than the men.
And despite what Star Wars tells you, the idea that 98-pound women can give 200-pound guys regular ass kickings, it's a dangerous notion.
And I think in some cases, it can be a deadly notion.
And so whether martial arts is the way to go, I don't know.
Again, for the exercise and all of that, it's not bad to get the exercise.
And maybe there's a Community of like-minded people that she can work with or be part of, but it's not very realistic to say that, unless your daughter is, you know, Ronda Rousey, to say, hey, you want to fight your way out of situations.
Well, and the self-defense laws in Canada are quite strict, and there's definitely a lack of force multipliers like tasers and pepper sprays and...
Weapons permits and stuff that would possibly change the situation for a woman or an elderly person.
Yeah, I would just try and keep her in a safe neighborhood and, you know, stay close.
That would be my suggestion.
And you do have, you know, with your wife's income and your income, you do have some options.
But yeah, as long as it's, you know, keep her out of the clutches of government schools, I think is the best way to go.
And however you work to achieve that, you'll be able to...
To figure out.
You know, there's an old cartoon I remember from when I was a kid.
It was a guy in a business meeting staring at a boardroom and it says, remember, Hannibal got elephants over the Alps.
With that in mind, someone come up with a solution.
And if you have your daughter's safety and security and happiness at the center of all your decision-making, I think it will go nicely from there.
So thanks a lot for the call.
I appreciate it.
We'll move on to the next caller, but I hope things go all right.
Thanks a lot, Stefan.
Right up next we have David.
David wrote in and said, Do you believe that Western society in general seems in recent years to fail to recognize the value of philosophy or even intentionally avoids it altogether?
Also, how deeply do you think the ramifications of Western society's seeming unwillingness to utilize philosophy actually affect particularly the fields of education, science, and the general framework of Western society as a whole?
That's from David.
Hi, David.
How are you doing tonight?
I'm doing pretty well.
Thanks for having me on the show.
My pleasure.
My pleasure.
Well, you've given me a good opportunity to rant.
When do you think Western society as a whole did recognize the value of philosophy?
I can't think of any particular time since probably, you know, that I can think of off the top of my head, the 1700s, maybe 1800s.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I think philosophy, as I've talked about before, philosophy does hold a particular challenge to the powers that be.
And principles are very helpful if they create wealth for the powers that be to use, right?
So the free market...
Created a lot of wealth, which allowed the size and power of the state and the parasitical classes to grow, to feed off the productivity of the Industrial Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and so on, and post.
And so when philosophers confine themselves to principles that increase wealth alone in society, then they are tolerated, sometimes praised by the powers that be.
On the other hand when philosophers begin to really lay down some serious principles that can encroach upon the authority of the powers that be Well, then suddenly they're not quite so popular.
And so there is an ambivalent relationship.
Societies that have known no philosophy at all, you know, tend to live at a sort of bare subsistence level and don't really go anywhere and don't really grow and have this sort of photocopied Stone Age day from here to eternity.
But to challenge the existing social...
Mores, the existing social beliefs, the existing social superstitions, allows for society to progress, but creates distant winners and immediate losers.
And that's the big challenge in this context, in the context of philosophy.
The people who gain from philosophy tend to be kind of far down the road, but the people who lose from philosophy lose right now.
Right now.
And, you know, in order to build the house, the trees have to lose.
You have to Tear them down in order to dig the foundation and build the house.
So, society, the rulers like philosophers for the productivity they can bring to the masses, but they don't like philosophers for the principles and the empowerment of universality of morality that they can bring to the masses.
So, as far as, you know, whether, as you sort of asking, Western society in general fails to recognize the value of philosophy, well, Smart people are a threat to the rulers.
Rulers tend to become less smart.
Over time.
And this isn't just true because of inbreeding in like the royal families and so on.
But rulers just tend to become less smart over time because rulers will often set up government education.
Government education dumbs people down and therefore you need less intelligent people as rulers.
The rulers get dumbed down after time, after time as well.
And they then look very skeptically and warily from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Like if you think you're smart and then it turns out you then are in the room with a smart person.
But you only think you're smart, and then you're in the room with a smart person, you're very quickly exposed.
If that smart person has any sort of confidence and is willing to shine a light down the emptiness where your arguments should be.
So, the rulers end up more and more hostile towards philosophers as time goes along.
And so what do they do?
Well, one thing the rulers have, of course, is money.
They have money and they have power.
It's stolen, but they have it anyway.
They have money and their power.
So what do they want to do?
Well, they want to get the smart people and rope them into easy jobs where they don't criticize the rulers.
And this is the academic system, and to a smaller degree, the media system, because I don't think people in the media are particularly bright or, as Mike Cernovich has pointed out, hardworking.
So you get smart people To take the goodies, to take the monopoly, to take the power, to take the authority.
Think of the university system, the PhD system, the professor system.
You can't be fired after you get tenure, and you really can't be fired.
You don't have to work that much.
You get paid ridiculously high for the amount of work that you do.
I've heard professors bragging about making $150,000 American a year.
This is a couple of years ago.
And only having to work a couple of hours a week, you know, months and months off in the summer, sabbaticals, travel tours, oh, let's go someplace cool for a conference, right?
And all you have to do is not change anything, right?
They lure you into the cave of the gold, and then they seal it up so you can't get out to the people anymore.
Now, the internet has changed that, right?
Talk to the people, steadfastly eschew and avoid and reject the temptations of power.
I mean, integrity is pretty easy for the most part.
Integrity means just not wanting power.
So I think Western society has roped in people who can think, people who are smart, and they've bribed them with cheap gold and permanent inconsequentiality.
And I think, though, that people are beginning to recognize that it's not working out very well to deny Reason and evidence to deny basic principles and universality is not working out very well at all.
So I think that there is a respect that is growing towards philosophy and towards philosophers in the West.
Just what do people want from philosophers?
Well, it's the same thing they want from nutritionists.
Give me something I can use.
Give me something I can use.
That's what people want from philosophers.
Give me principles I can live by.
Give me Arguments that I can deploy give me evidence that I can use to improve my life.
And academics don't have to do any of that.
Academics are in the business of selling tickets to inconsequentiality through the PhD program rather than providing value to the people who are forced to fund them.
So if a philosopher comes along or a bunch of philosophers come along Who can actually synthesize principles and provide them in a digestible way for people to actually use?
Well, I think then there's a conflict in that the philosophers are providing value to the public, but by providing value to the public, they're providing threats to the powers that be.
And that tension is a challenge and has always been, although it is pretty much...
About as safe as it's ever been in history to be a philosopher these days.
Does that help at all?
Somewhat.
I mean, it helps.
It does address, I think, at least the causality of why they don't.
I mean, I realize that it has to do with the whole adoption of progressive modernism and relativism and all of that.
And those are the Um, tools that they've kind of been using for the last, you know, 100, 200 years or whatever to justify the insanity that's going on now where, you know, everybody, everything, the only thing that's true is what I believe in my own head, you know, nonsense.
And I guess another, you know, and if I may, another thing that I wonder at times is, you know, when did we forget that, you know, actually being able to understand and kind You know, conceptually grasp what, you know, the meaning of things to actually be able to know stuff and to, you know, actually be able to lay down, lay out and say, okay, here's the things that we know, and then move with that.
I'm like, when, when did we decide or, you know, reach this higher point of learning where suddenly that not knowing anything is somehow a, you know, progress.
And I'm sure it goes to a degree of exactly what you're talking about, where people in power don't want anybody to know anything.
Well, no, but hang on.
So smart people tend to be humble, which is how they become knowledgeable, right?
Every step forward in knowledge is an admission that you didn't know before you knew.
And so, you know, why do we have science?
Because people said, well, we don't know how the universe works.
I'm pretty sure it's not sitting on the back of a turtle, and I'm pretty sure that it's not a giant culinary bowl at night that's put over the world where the stars shine through or the sunlight shines through.
So they just say, I don't know.
I don't know.
And I think it was the guy who figured out fishing, who sat there with his fiancée at a park.
She said, those stars are so pretty.
And he said, yeah, and I'm the only person in the world who knows why they burn.
Because he hadn't published it.
And so it's one thing to be smart, but to be smart means to be humble.
So this whole relativism thing...
It's designed to appeal to the humility of intelligent people.
Intelligent people, right?
And so when they say, well, there's nothing that's true and everything's relative and this and that, that doesn't land on the IQ 90 minus people.
It lands on the smart people and it paralyzes them because they're like, oh, I wonder if that's true.
I wonder if everything is relative.
Well, there are lots of different cultures around the world and they all do seem to believe different things, right?
But what it does is it takes away the certainty that That smart people have, which they achieve through humility and through doubt and through insecurity, it takes away that certainty, the hard-won certainty that comes from questioning your basic beliefs and rebuilding things from scratch, like the UPB stuff that I've worked on for many years.
But it's not a consistent position, right?
If everything's relative, if people genuinely believe, oh, everything's relative, there's nothing true, there's nothing right, there's nothing wrong, everything's culture and so on, then why would racism be a bad thing?
Why would sexism be a bad thing?
Why would any of these sort of isms or the phobias or whatever, why would they be bad things?
Everything's relative.
You can't say everything's relative and then there's good and bad things.
It's completely, talking out of both sides of your mouth, it's a completely self-contradictory position.
And how is it resolved?
Well, it's resolved because you've taught smart people That radical skepticism, that Humean skepticism, that nothing is true skepticism, that, you know, Socrates was supposed to be skeptical.
Oh, I know nothing.
I know.
It's nonsense.
He knew a lot of stuff, and he talked about it a lot in the dialogues, at least from what we got from Plato.
So what you do when you say everything's relative is you disarm smart people with doubt.
But less intelligent people don't have doubt.
They just know.
And so it's a way of...
Disabling the strong so that the weak can overrun them.
There's radical skepticism.
Because nobody goes to Black Lives Matter protests and says, well, everything's relative.
There's nothing good or bad.
There's no such thing as racism may exist, but we can't judge it as good or bad.
They're not doing that!
Nobody goes out to raging anti-fascist people and say, well, you know, fascism is just one way of looking at the world, there's no good, there's no bad.
They don't do that, right?
They don't go to rioting less intelligent people or people with less coherent world viewpoints, no matter how intelligent they are.
Like, people who are really dug into their viewpoints, they don't go to those people.
And say, well, everything's relative and you can't be certain and you don't know.
They don't go to those people because what are those people going to do?
Ramble on for hours.
Well, if you're lucky, right?
They might be fairly aggressive, right?
I mean, and even if it's smart people, but the smart people who are politically advantageous to the left, right?
So does anyone go out to gay pride parades and says, well, you know, Homophobia is just another choice.
It's neither good nor bad nor right nor wrong.
They don't.
They do any of that stuff.
They don't do any of that stuff.
They only and forever try to disarm smart people who have the self-doubt that comes with native intelligence.
They don't go to groups that are just kind of certain and dogmatic.
And, you know, this occurs on all parts of the spectrum, and of course, everywhere in politics and so on.
They just don't go to people who are brutally certain and try and talk them out of their certainty.
No, no, no.
It's just the smart people that they want to talk out of their certainty.
So that is, I think that's an It's nothing to do with any real particular dedication to radical skepticism.
It's just a way of trying to screw with the minds of smart people to get them out of the way.
I dare say that might actually, I mean, for those who are less intelligent, it might actually be giving them too much credit.
And that I think it may even be more just that it's an opportunity that they can try and use to basically justify any viewpoint they choose to hold.
Because, hey, well, there's nothing wrong with that, and you can't prove it, basically.
I don't understand what you mean.
Rather necessarily than them trying to intentionally disable the smart and intelligent people, I think it may even be more just that they use the relativism and all of that as basically just their trump card to, hey, you can't argue anything with any certainty because you can't prove that I'm wrong.
There's no way to prove anything anymore.
So they can hold any view they want on anything they want, and there's no way you can really talk them out of it, or argue them out of it, unless you can get them to stop trying to defend the indefensible.
Well, except that they don't go to more aggressive groups and tell them that they're wrong because there's nothing to be certain.
They go to the most reasonable people and try and disarm them.
They don't go to the people who are more aggressive.
Again, they don't go to Antifa and say, well, who are you to say that fascism is...
It's bad.
You know, everything's relative.
They don't go to those groups.
They don't go to dangerous groups.
They don't go to more aggressive groups.
They just go to all the nice people and all that.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I guess maybe it would be easier if I said it, that they use it more as a self-defense tool, too, so that they can hold whatever position they want.
And if anyone tries to dissuade them or to convince them otherwise...
Right, right.
Yeah, I think that's possible for sure.
And philosophers, you know, we know our history of philosophy and the number of philosophers who were persecuted by their societies.
It's a long list.
It's a long list.
And recognizing that it is a...
It is an extreme sport.
It is a risky operation, I guess you could say.
That is something to be aware of as well.
And philosophers have to be content with future fame rather than present approval, necessarily.
And since it's, you know, literally in a time like this, you're literally fighting the entire tide of, you know, Popular culture, you know, most of our civilization, basically.
Well, there is that, too.
But again, with the internet, it's a lot easier to find support and to reach like-minded people, or just minded people, and that is the great comfort.
Yeah, and if there's time, I mean, the second part of my question, I wanted to try and focus particularly on anything that...
People who are using that sort of mentality to make their decisions based upon that anything that they decide based on that presupposition that everything is relative should then automatically, to a degree at least, be suspect.
I don't know that there's any foundation from which they can actually make their decision that can be rooted into reality, ultimately.
Well, I mean, it's sort of like determinism in that you bungee yourself right out of the conversation.
You know, it's the old, nothing is certain.
It's like, well, is that a certain statement?
If it's not, then nothing can be said by that person.
Because they're making a universal claim which they won't accept as universal.
Okay, then you have to go and read Logic 101 and come back and start again.
And if they say, well, of course, yes, I am absolutely certain that nothing is certain, then they've just...
Self-contradicted themselves, and if they say, well, I'm absolutely certain that nothing is certain, and the only exception that nothing is certain is the certainty that nothing is certain, then, you know, they've created two arbitrary categories called certainty and non-certainty, and...
No attempt to reconcile them in a rational manner.
So those kinds of statements are very easy to rebut, but they tend to really enrage sophists and con men and people who want to confuse you so they can rifle through your money bags and get what they want.
So it is when people pull the old nothing is certain stuff, and I've had people try and pull their nonsense on me over the years.
It's very easy to rebut.
It's not an intellectual challenge.
It's more of an emotional challenge, you know, when you push back against people who are trying to beat you with the dead fish of their own incomprehensibility.
Well, they usually fold pretty quickly or start maneuvering or start jellying all over the place and so on.
And if you try to sort of corner them and get some facts out of them, well, I guess some people think you're being mean.
It's like, no, I'm just trying to get to the facts, just trying to find out the facts.
So, yeah, I would say that the people who bring that radical relativism to the table...
Sam Harris writes about this in a book of his called The Moral Landscape.
About how, you know, people will say, well, you know, nothing is true and everything's relative and so on.
He would get this at science conference or atheist conference.
And they'd say, well, he'd say, well, doesn't that make you less courageous in your fight for truth and virtue?
And they'd say, no, no, no, no, right?
And then they'd end up justifying the most barbaric practices on the grounds of cultural relativism and so on.
Yeah, I mean, he finds it horrifying to his credit, as do I.
It is a very ugly and silly perspective.
It's sort of like saying, I mean, it should disqualify the entire field of intellectual inquiry.
If you cannot come to universal and absolute conclusions, what is the point?
Then it just becomes a battle of opinion against opinions.
And when you're in a battle of opinion against opinions, the lowest personality type, the most primitive personality type tends to win.
And I mean, I feel like, and maybe it's just the way I feel, but I feel like that, you know, the card everyone likes to play whenever they, you know, bring that card to the table is, oh no, science is completely, you know, that's totally different.
And they'll use, you know, Einstein's theory of relativity as the justification as if that has anything to do with what they're talking about.
Oh, yeah.
The theory of relativity has nothing to do with moral relativism in any way, shape, or form.
But I guess the word is similar, so people think that it does.
No, it's crazy.
Well, Einstein proved that everything is relative.
It's like, yes, but not morally.
It's not a moral theory.
It's a physics theory, not a philosophical argument.
Anyway, it's just silly, but people like to grab at this stuff because, well...
Dumb people like to feel that they're smart by invoking the great shaggy-haired one of physics genius.
So I guess what can I say about that other than I don't know how to have conversations with people like that, because they tend to get very aggressive when you point out that they have no idea what they're talking about.
Or super defensive, and just like you said, they jelly and blubber all over everywhere, and it's just like, this is a total and complete waste of time.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't like to play tennis with people who throw jello at me.
It's not a sport that I wish to engage in.
Anyway, thanks very much for the call.
Thanks, everyone, for your calls tonight.
A great pleasure to chat with you all.
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