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April 28, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

04:12:57

3666 I Don’t Want To Be A Pirate - Call In Show - April 26th, 2017

Question 1: [2:13] – “Given that energy cannot be created or destroyed, does it not make sense that our essence or soul continues after physical death, and can reincarnate to continue the necessary learning process to advance our understanding of the universe and what might be outside of it? In short: Do you believe in reincarnation? And, would you please elaborate on why you do or do not?”Question 2: [41:58] – “I believe I've heard you mention that courage is the highest virtue. I'm an Evangelical Christian and as such I would make the case that Biblically speaking love is the highest virtue. If you don't believe that love is the highest virtue, why?”Question 3: [1:23:50] – “Being Black and conservative has been a lonely life in my experience. I am 38 now and married, but without children of my own. I was brought up in a 2-parent household with a strong father (God rest his soul) and I was raised not to have children out of wedlock, and to not get involved with any man that had children. I have had many relationships and the only time I had a child I lost him in March of 2015 at 21 weeks and I was married at the time. I still want children and I would like to discuss the underlying issues I have had as a black conservative on why I am having children late. I feel that my conservatism has had a big role in why I have not had a husband nor any children until late in life and would love to expound upon it for it is something that is rarely discussed. Am I doing a disservice now if I want to have children by the time I am 40?”Question 4: [1:47:14] – “Stefan and many callers often talk about teaching philosophy to children. I understand that this is possible and desirable and I can imagine that a 12 year old, for instance, can really benefit from more or less formal education in logic. With my own children being aged 3 and 5 currently, I want to ask Stefan about when and how, ideally, an education in philosophy should begin and proceed?”Question 5: [2:15:04] – “Recently I read an article written by a feminist in which she states that women should not be permitted to raise their children full-time, because "equality." Since we already know that women overwhelmingly prefer to bring up their children as opposed to working outside the home, the argument seems to be that feminism is not about what women want. What possible value, then, does feminism hold for women, if it sacrifices their real preferences for an ideological objective that makes most women miserable? Who benefits? If feminism is not about what women want, is it not utterly worthless, especially to women?”Question 6: [2:37:31] – “I am in a relationship with an incredible woman. She is beautiful, intelligent, virtuous, fun and passionate. She embraces her femininity and respects my masculinity. She supports me in all my endeavors, and relishes being a perfect homemaker. The only problem is that she wants to get married and have children. As soon as I realized that this desire wouldn't go away, I told her that she must proceed with our relationship knowing that those things will never happen. It was very hard for her to accept, but she stayed. The only thing she asked in return was that I keep an open mind. It's been about a year since that conversation, and my opinion regarding children hasn't changed yet I feel her maternal instinct intensifying. It increasingly manifests itself in conversations and daily affairs, and sometimes I can't help but seriously consider letting her go. She's young, but nevertheless she is still on the clock. I love her enough to not deprive her of what I can now see is her greatest value, which is being a mother one day. How can I clear my thinking so I can make the right decision?”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate

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Time	Text
	Hey, hey, hey, everybody.
	Stefan Mullen from Freedom Main Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Please don't forget to listen to this show.
	It's a great one.
	And to go by freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	Please, please, we need your support to do the work that we do.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	First caller.
	Wanted to know, hey, Steph, what do you think of reincarnation, the law of eternal recurrence, and some sort of fragmented disco ball god who shatters himself into eternity and then tries to gather himself back together?
	And we had a little bit of a conversation about that, and then, well, we tripwired a significant rant for me at the end.
	Second caller wanted to know, Steph, why do you think that love is not the highest virtue?
	Why do you keep talking about courage as the highest virtue?
	And you know what?
	She totally changed my mind.
	It was a great, great conversation.
	The third caller is a black conservative who is having trouble having children, and she's close to 40.
	Is it too late?
	And she also talks about the loneliness of being a black conservative, which is something not to be underestimated.
	The fourth caller wanted to know, how on earth do you teach philosophy to three-year-olds and five-year-olds?
	And we had a great conversation about that, as well as school and knowing what the heck is going into your children's minds.
	Fifth caller, a great woman who wanted to know, if feminism is not about what women want, is it not utterly worthless, especially to women?
	I think that's far too kind and charitable an interpretation.
	Of feminism as a whole, so we had a great conversation about that.
	And the sixth caller, ooh, that's a strap-yourself-in kind of call.
	It's a man who says, I've been with this woman for a long time.
	I don't want to have kids.
	She does.
	What should we do?
	And then I invited her in on the conversation after we chatted about things for a while.
	And found out that the story was very, very different from what he had told me.
	Rashomon style, different perspectives.
	Hey, maybe it's the disco god back in the saddle again.
	A great, great call.
	Very instructive.
	Just be patient with that one, I beg you.
	So again, thanks so much for listening.
	Don't forget to follow me on Twitter.
	It's Stefan Molyneux.
	Use the affiliate link fdurl.com slash amazon and freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Alright, well up first tonight we have James.
	James wrote in and said, That's from James.
	So, I mean, I just want to sort of understand where you're coming from here, because it seems like you're making a case for reincarnation.
	You know, energy can't be created or destroyed.
	And so, I guess you're putting the soul in the category of energy, and therefore, since it can't be created or destroyed, it must be eternal.
	And also, you seem to say that there's a necessary learning process that occurs in the universe.
	I wonder if you could just elaborate on those two ideas first.
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	Basically, because, you know, as you've said in a lot of your videos, you know, as philosophy is important because, you know, having ethical standards ultimately makes, you know, life better and kind of makes it a more, you know, basically a more worthwhile process for all of us.
	So, I guess what I imagine...
	Life to be is essentially a school that we all attend in order to develop a standard of ethics and to develop a state of fearlessness so that you can take on experiences without backing down and also learn to have compassion for all living things Which ultimately,
	I think, is a graduation process that continues where basically you're giving more and more energy or more power through an incarnation to do more.
	And then basically recombining with whatever the source of everything is and then maybe possibly starting the whole process all over again.
	So basically, yes, I am making a case that there's I think there's a good chance that that is why we're all here.
	That's why we essentially suffer, or at least experience suffering.
	And I guess, yeah, hopefully, does that kind of point it out a little bit better?
	Yeah, it's one of these answers that raises many more questions than it answers, so to speak.
	So is this directed by a God, this learning, this eternal recurrence?
	I guess the way I see it is a source or God, however you'd want to see it.
	I don't see God as, I guess, a single man in a white beard, but as rather the source of all energy, maybe even the higher being of all of ourselves.
	So essentially I imagine God, being everything, all-powerful, became bored one day essentially and decided to split himself up into trillions and trillions and trillions of pieces.
	And then essentially go through – I guess forget that he is God and then go through a process of relearning that he is until he does once again.
	And I guess you could call that the universe.
	And then he once again relearns that after probably trillions and trillions of years possibly that he is God, recombining all of his trillions of pieces, which I would consider us, cells, animals.
	Basically we all combine once again, realize that we are the source.
	And then after enjoying that for a while, after however long it took to get back to that point, he then redoes it.
	And then just basically experience himself completely.
	Yeah, basically to just do something rather than just be all-powerful.
	because I imagine that would get boring, you know, after some time.
	So, yeah, basically, yeah, there is a God, we are all God, and we are essentially...
	Just pieces or fragments of it that are relearning that experience and we go through this process called life or incarnations until we recombine.
	Alright, I got it.
	So, is this something that you have come up with or is this something that you've read, this hypothesis?
	I think I've come across it in different ways.
	I think...
	Nothing that says it quite exactly as I'm saying it right now, but in different ways, essentially.
	Basically, that's why we reincarnate, and I guess I kind of added a little bit of my own flavor in there to try to get to that point of, why are we here?
	What is our purpose?
	Where did we come from?
	Right, right.
	And how old were you when you first began thinking about this stuff?
	Honestly, pretty young.
	Probably between 10 and 12, but it didn't really come to fruition, I'd say, until I started having lucid dreams, probably in my late teens, where essentially I'd wake up in my dream, realize I was dreaming, and then, you know, when you wake up from that experience, it's kind of a...
	It's kind of jaw-dropping because you're like, well, where was I? How was I conscious inside this dream?
	Because, you know, in a dream, you know, we could say, oh, it's some chemical process.
	You know, maybe just I'm reordering things in my brain.
	Okay, okay.
	You need to be a little bit more succinct.
	I just need...
	Okay, okay.
	You can't give me the essays every time I ask a question.
	Otherwise, I'm going to have to be rude and interrupt.
	And what was your life like when you were 10 or 12, James?
	What was going on in your life, good and bad?
	Oh, gosh.
	Well, you know, essentially kind of growing up, you know, growing up in a large family, three younger sisters, an older brother, you know, playing soccer, you know, going to school, not necessarily feeling, I guess, you know, good things would be, you know, just, I guess, having fun with my family, bad things, not having fun with my family.
	Yeah, I guess, maybe going through, I guess, anything that, you know, same kind of stuff anyone would go through, just, you know.
	So nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary.
	No, no, not really.
	And did you talk about these theories or ideas with your family?
	No, I did not.
	I think I tried to, but it wouldn't be anything that anyone would run with.
	So it wasn't anything that I felt comfortable, I guess, talking about very often.
	So usually what I would...
	I would get it, you know, I would kind of be able to live through the process, you know, with certain movies that I enjoy that seem to cover certain things like that or, you know, or be interested in science and, you know, I guess things like that.
	Well, I don't know that science really has come into much of what you're saying, but we'll get back to that.
	Okay.
	And have you done any drugs or did you do any drugs during this or after, I guess, a little later than this time period or have you done sort of mind-altering substances in your life?
	Yes.
	Well, later on in my late teens, I did use cannabis.
	And then I've tried mushrooms.
	And let's see.
	Let's see.
	And then actually, yeah, that's...
	And then there was a...
	I don't know if you know what that is, but it's DMT, which is essentially dimethyltryptamine, which is basically, I guess, released when you dream.
	And so I've tried that once, but that was way too strong.
	So I guess really cannabis would be the only one that I've used...
	That would fall into that, yeah, psychotropic, kind of mind-altering state.
	Right.
	So with the cannabis and with the mushrooms, what was your frequency of use and how long did it go on for?
	Or is it still going on?
	No, it's not going on anymore, but it was fairly often.
	It was at least once a week that I was using it because being a musician and also kind of having those kind of interests, it ended up kind of falling into that because there was kind of...
	What's the word?
	I guess basically a comfort in that experience, to be honest.
	So, being a musician, you had to do drugs?
	No, I guess what it really was, was I was actually pretty against drugs.
	I was a soccer player, and so I was really not into it.
	Then I joined a band, and a little bit of peer pressure, but obviously I make my own decisions.
	But anyway, a bit of peer pressure.
	But your belief systems would have also made you susceptible to this kind of experience, right?
	Because for you, there's another world out there beyond this world.
	Which in some ways is more true, right?
	This disco ball exploding God that gets bored and disassembles himself and then later reassembles himself and then disassembles himself again when he gets bored and all that.
	So for you, there is a metaphysical, like the nature of reality is such that You don't have a sort of healthy brain that's processing reality in a normal way, just by using your senses, your reason and evidence and stuff.
	There is another realm out there that you can get access to through mind-altering substances.
	They're not messing with a healthy motor.
	They're opening up a more real and deep dimension.
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	Yeah, actually that is.
	That's an interesting way to put it as well.
	And this is one of the problems with metaphysics that may be problematic, is that once you define another world out there, a higher plane of existence, a platonic ideal, an exploding frag god of infinite perspectives, well...
	You can go there.
	And it's not just that you're messing with your perceptions, it's that you're opening the doors of perception.
	Is that Huxley?
	Anyway, it's what Jim Morrison, why he named the band The Doors, right?
	Go through the doors of perception.
	And this is why philosophy is so important.
	Because if you say, well, reason and evidence, evidence of the senses, that's your life working really well, that's your brain working really well, then anything which disturbs that process of accurately perceiving sensual reality, anything which disturbs that process, is like taking a ball-peen anything which disturbs that process, is like taking a ball-peen hammer to your elbow, right?
	I mean, it's bad.
	Elbows working well, take a ball-peen hammer to elbow, elbow not working well.
	And so drugs harm our perception of the sensual world, of the empirical world.
	But if you believe that they're a tunnel through to a real higher reality, then they become a form of self-illumination rather than of self-harm.
	Does that make sense with your experience?
	I think so, actually.
	Yes, it does.
	Right.
	So, whether it is a doorway to a higher realm or whether it is just screwing around with something that's working pretty well to begin with has to do with this question of this other reality.
	Now, the question is, what first gave you the idea of this higher reality?
	Where did it come from?
	And why was it compelling?
	You understand you have an emotional attachment to this idea.
	Now, of course, you know, the fallacy of sunk costs would say that after a decade, decade and a half, or two decades, you don't have to tell me how old you are.
	But after you've made a whole bunch of life decisions, including taking mind-altering drugs, because of a belief in this, you've got sunk costs, as they call it, right?
	Like, you've invested a lot and made some significant life decisions on the existence of this higher realm.
	And so you're invested, but there must be some reason at the beginning why you got this idea of the higher realm and why it resonated with you and excited you and sent you on this particular direction, if that makes sense.
	I think it does.
	I guess the biggest reason was just to understand what we are, where we go, and where we came from.
	Because I guess religion didn't seem to do it for me.
	I didn't seem to resonate with that.
	But essentially, I did.
	I just wanted to know where did I come from?
	Because honestly, our physical bodies didn't seem like enough...
	Enough of an explanation of what we were.
	Okay, so you felt a sense of purpose.
	Was missing.
	A sense of meaning was missing.
	A larger story that you're a part of rather than a self-generated purpose, right?
	So something outside of yourself needed to give you purpose in order for you to have purpose.
	You couldn't generate it yourself.
	You couldn't generate meaning and purpose and efficacy and power within your own life.
	Do you think that this came from an idea of religion, that religion gave you an idea that you were part of a larger story, that you were imbued with purpose from a higher being, but it did not satisfy you when you got into your early teens, and therefore this idea gives you the same purpose?
	And, of course, is a kind of religion, obviously, right?
	I mean, you've got a god.
	You can call it what you want, but it's a supernatural being.
	So, do you think that religion may have made you more susceptible to this idea of this explodey disco god and this higher realm?
	I'd say so.
	I'm not sure if I would have come to the conclusion of a god without having studied religions and come across what they had presented.
	Ultimately, I guess I did kind of come to a conclusion that all religions seem to be right in one way or another.
	I don't think one really hits the nail on the head, but I think they all have a piece of it.
	And I think, you know, yeah, so I guess I built from that.
	So what, for you, was more satisfying with this explanation?
	I assume you were raised Christian, is that fair to say?
	You know, not strictly, but yeah, I guess that's, you know, we went to church a few times.
	I mean, did you go to church?
	Did you guys, I mean, how did that...
	I think we went to church, you know, maybe, you know, five times, and I didn't really enjoy it very much.
	Okay, I'm just going to have to ask you to lean in and cup again, because you're getting quiet.
	No, thank you.
	So, did religion, when you were growing up, impose any obligations?
	Did you have to go help the poor?
	Did you have to read to the blind?
	Did you have to tutor the ignorant?
	Was there anything in the religiosity within your family that gave you any obligations to society as a whole?
	No, it wasn't imposed upon me.
	No, I didn't ask if it was imposed upon you, but did your parents say, well, you know, we have to give to charity because religion, or we have to go man a soup kitchen because religion, or we have to take in strangers off the street because religion?
	Was there any obligation to serve society in any altruistic sense as a result of religion within your family?
	Well, not as a result of religion, but my mom, you know, would definitely impart upon all of us that it was important to be a good person, to You know, to do good for others less fortunate, for sure, that did happen.
	Okay, but it was not in a religious context for her?
	No, no, not at all.
	So who was religious then?
	It was your father?
	Well, I think it was really more, we went to church a few times, mostly because I think my parents wanted to attempt To go to church because that's what you did.
	But neither of my parents were really raised religiously.
	And so I guess I don't think it was anything that they felt they needed to do.
	It was more like a sense of community that didn't end up really panning out from my understanding.
	I haven't really had too many conversations with them.
	I just remember going a few times, going to the class with the other kids.
	Coming out, not really enjoying, you know, when I was actually sitting in the main, you know, in the main hall and listening to what was being said, just kind of thinking, well, this is really boring.
	So there was really no push, yeah, push for religion like most people.
	And I'm sort of trying to understand.
	So you've got a sense of meaning and purpose out of this reincarnation hypothesis of yours, James.
	What obligations has it...
	Given to you, what obligations has...
	Like, for me, philosophy, understanding that I'm good at philosophy, good at communicating philosophy, good at talking about philosophy, good at discussing philosophy, has given me an obligation to try and bring philosophy to the world, right?
	So my pursuit of meaning, my pursuit of virtue, my pursuit of truth has instilled in me a pretty basic training, you know, yelling Southern...
	And I'm curious, having this sense of meaning and purpose, what obligations, if any, has it given to you in the world as a whole?
	I guess I would say to maybe try to inform people that there is a strong possibility that this life that you're experiencing isn't the last one, probably isn't the first, and based on how you decide to live it will affect maybe your next incarnation, as the Buddhists say, with karma, accruing good karma.
	We'll make your next life better.
	Bad karma, you know, worse.
	Or maybe you're suffering because you're paying back karma.
	I guess the real reason, yeah, I wanted to call in was to maybe discuss that.
	Because, yeah, essentially I think it's a good thing.
	I think if we understood that as humans, we would essentially maybe forego a lot of the harm that we do to ourselves and others.
	And how many times...
	A month or a year do you have this conversation with people, if at all?
	And what kind of response do you get?
	I would say, you know, I used to live in Boulder, Colorado.
	I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
	But, you know, stereotypes and cliches do amuse me.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yes, sir.
	Yes, sir.
	No, you're exactly right.
	So when I was there, I had it a bit more than I do now.
	I'm in the UK now.
	But I'd say when I did have it, It'd be maybe 50-50.
	Some people would be open to it.
	Some people would shut it down, which was fine.
	I never tried to force it upon anyone, mostly just to talk about it with people who were actually interested.
	And how often would these conversations occur?
	I'd say once a month.
	Once a month.
	So the grand total of this obligation that this theology has given you, James, is once a month you can talk about something that you really like to talk about.
	Is it safe to say there's not a lot of sacrifice or risk or courage that is required to pursue this higher meaning?
	Well, I think I could be more courageous and try to do it more, but no, I haven't had to.
	But there's no requirement to do it.
	There's no obligation.
	There's no noblesse oblige.
	Like you've seen these shards of godhood floating in the higher universe, and therefore it is absolutely essential that you get people to believe in this, to accept it, to change their lives.
	It's kind of a self-serving story, right?
	It doesn't give you any kind of Socratic obligation to risk things by bringing truth to people in a world that so often hates or attacks the truth, right?
	Yeah, you know, and I guess, yeah, you could say it's probably more of a hobby than a job.
	So where's the meaning?
	If you've got access to truth and you believe that this is true, and it's essential, and it helps the world, and it's really important for people, then aren't you just kind of whistling and strolling by an entire lagoon full of drowning people and not really wanting to get your loafers wet?
	You know what?
	I've actually thought of that quite a few times, and I think in some ways, yes, I am doing that, and that's probably out of my own fear of Because meaning is obligation.
	Purpose is obligation.
	And people, I know, the hackles around the world are going up when I say this, too bad, deal with it or turn me off.
	If you have the truth, guess what?
	You're obligated.
	If you have a fact, particularly if those facts or that truth or those arguments have an effect on the moral character of the world, on people's moral choices, on their happiness, on the spread of virtue in the world, you are obligated.
	Listen, if you're growing a plant, That cures leukemia?
	You don't get to stay home that much.
	Sorry, you gotta get your plant, you gotta put it in a bag, and you gotta go to the hospital.
	Because you have something powerful that cures.
	You can't just keep it for yourself.
	You can't just have a big bag of it in the basement saying, well, I guess if I ever get leukemia, I'm okay.
	No.
	Once you have the truth, you have an obligation.
	Except, James, you have a truth that has no obligation.
	You have a truth that you consider powerful and that you consider essential and necessary to human virtue.
	The truth is we live forever.
	The truth that you say is that we come back to life.
	The truth is that the quality of our existence now, the compassion we generate, the courage we have in the fight, determines how we reincarnate, what we come back with.
	If you keep on this way, with this powerful truth in your breast, this world-shaking, life-changing, moral-enhancing truth...
	And you just have fairly indifferent conversations with it a couple of times a year.
	What are you coming back as?
	That's a really good point.
	That's an excellent point.
	And honestly, maybe there's part of me that wanted to call in to hear that.
	And so I can't argue that at all because I have to agree with you and definitely on a soul level.
	I've tried to have that same conversation with myself about maybe not trying hard enough to at least convey what I do believe.
	So, yeah, so far, it seems to have given you a rather self-serving sense of purpose that carries with it no obligation other than to smoke a couple of doobies once in a while.
	You know, that is not a very soul-scarring, searing, warring, requires infinite amounts of quasi-Aristotelian courage in order to pursue.
	My religion is, well, it gives me a vague sense of purpose, doesn't give me any obligations in the world, and I get to smoke pot.
	Hmm, not the most challenging belief system in the world, but let me ask you this, James.
	How do you know this is true?
	Any of this, what you're arguing for?
	Okay, I guess the only way that I guess there does seem to be some sort of science behind it.
	I'm not sure if you were able to look at the link that I had sent you when I had sent my question in, but basically there is a link to this webpage Kind of talking about Dr.
	Ian Stevenson's work.
	And he had gone through and basically interviewed a lot of children.
	And he was actually, he was, you know, a scientist, you know, and had published many papers before he became interested in Carnation.
	I think he was a psychologist of some sort.
	Anyway, he discovered that a lot of children before the age of, you know, before the age of five or six would tell stories of past lives.
	And when he actually gave them his attention, he was able to find a lot of these things, like they would talk about being a certain person or being of a family, and then he would do the research about the people they were talking about, find them, and then find that there was consistencies in ways that these find them, and then find that there was consistencies in ways that these children shouldn't have known, whether it was from distance or, you know, or a lot
	So basically, being a skeptic himself, he was able to go through and find that a lot of these children would somehow remember experiences from different people that had already passed on, and then have certain things like birthmarks from where that person had been killed.
	Now, in this life, they now have a birthmark in that same place where that person was stabbed or something like that.
	I'm sorry, what was the guy's name again?
	Dr.
	Ian Stevenson.
	Stevenson, yes.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Anyway, so essentially he's gone through a lot of these cases, and I guess he found a lot of them in India.
	A lot of skeptics would say, well, you're probably going through a lot of fraud, and he would agree.
	He would agree that there probably is quite a bit of fraud that's happening where people want to say, I was Cleopatra, blah, blah, blah.
	But he would actually go through and find that even if there were 80% of these were actually frauds, The other 20% are important enough to be like, well, this deviation means that we have something here.
	This means something.
	And so I guess there was even certain cases from another doctor.
	And this one's less verified, but I think it's interesting.
	It was Dr.
	Lash near Syria.
	I guess there was a boy who remembered being killed.
	He remembered where he was buried.
	He remembered where the weapon was buried.
	Apparently, he took the town elders to where his body was buried.
	They found a body buried.
	Then they found a weapon.
	And then he even knew who had killed him.
	And then they faced the perpetrator.
	And then he broke down and basically said that he had done it.
	This is in a book somewhere.
	I can't verify it because I don't know how.
	But I guess it kind of gives...
	A little piece of how this could possibly be occurring, and essentially how to verify it.
	So if that is true, that means that we do reincarnate, or at least some souls reincarnate.
	And if some souls reincarnate, why do they?
	And I guess if any of them reincarnate, that shows that it's possible, which I think lends to the possibility that, yes, that's what we do.
	Basically, when we exist.
	We don't just live one life and then call it quits or disappear for that matter, but we continue to exist beyond our physical bodies and then have other experiences afterwards.
	Right.
	Now, have you looked up any of the skeptical rebuttals to Stevenson's method?
	I guess, you know, specifically, I haven't gone through any of his, yeah, I guess, rebuttals to any of his actual information.
	No, I haven't gone through anything specific like that.
	Dude!
	What do you mean you haven't?
	Well, yeah.
	No, yeah.
	Oh, come on.
	Come on.
	You can't say, well, I've now crossed over and I've accepted reincarnation and soul and past lives and disco gods and all of that.
	And the Stevenson fellow, I haven't looked up any rebuttals to anything that he came up with.
	I'll give you a few.
	I'll give you a few.
	But this shows confirmation bias, right?
	You want this to be true.
	And therefore, you've read some of this stuff, and he gave you that goosebump of confirmation bias.
	Ooh, it's got to be true.
	I'll agree with you there.
	Okay, so just so people understand this, right?
	So, he worked with translators in countries, and he didn't really know much about the countries.
	He certainly didn't understand the language.
	So, you know, asking anyone is tough enough, but asking children is particularly tricky, right?
	True.
	A quote, interviewer bias is the central driving force in the creation of suggestive interviews, right?
	I don't know if you remember, I think it was in the 80s, there were supposed to be all of these satanic cults operating out of daycares, and they had kids who just, oh yeah, oh, this happened, and that, and so, you know.
	So this is a challenge, right?
	So questioning children and adults via a translator is another level, or another layer of uncertainty.
	Most of his interviews took places in countries where reincarnation is an accepted belief, right?
	So this is not a null hypothesis situation.
	So what?
	So, there's something called the null hypothesis, right?
	What is the null hypothesis of this?
	So, he said, well, I want to go out and find these past life experience stories and confirm them.
	And so, let's say he got rumors or heard about a past life experience story and could not confirm it.
	So, what does that mean?
	Does that mean it's false?
	No, it just means he goes on to the next one and he collects a whole bunch of them and says, ah, this is the case.
	So, What could he ever experience or interview or what information could he gather that would disconfirm this reincarnation hypothesis?
	Well, nothing.
	And therefore, there's no null hypothesis and therefore it is all confirmation bias, right?
	There is, of course, alternative non-paranormal explanations for his data, right?
	And so critics can say, well, children's fantasies, like imaginary playmates and so on, are to some degree shaped by parents and peers through questions and suggestions.
	You hear as a kid, of course, stories about people who died or crimes in the village or things like that.
	So this can all re-emerge during these kinds of questions.
	And so this...
	Is a problem, right?
	He's working with translators in cultures that already believe in reincarnation.
	He himself wants to believe that this is true, and children are generally very keen on pleasing authority figures, and so they're going to cough up information that's going to be in confirmation with what the authority figures want.
	And what's the point?
	He wanted this to be true.
	He went in and interviewed people and then he wrote it up knowing very clearly we know that he wanted all of this to be true.
	And that is not a credible basis by which we can think that reincarnation is somehow proven.
	He himself admitted he hadn't provided compelling evidence for reincarnation and that is important, right?
	So one of the things he noticed was that reincarnation stories tended to revolve around violent deaths rather than peaceful deaths.
	Well, because they leave more of an imprint in the psyche of the sort of collective psyche of the family.
	Violent deaths are more likely to be reported in the media, retold in stories across the sort of local region and so on.
	And so the chances that a child is going to hear about that kind of violent story as opposed to Peaceful stories is much more likely that that's going to happen.
	And older children and adults, he found, generally forget what they reported as children.
	And so it is...
	This is...
	I mean, this is a crazy guy's crazy hobby.
	This has nothing to do with scientific proof.
	And, of course, he took a lot of mind-altering drugs himself.
	And, well, that might have an impact on one's dedication to rational objectivity.
	But, of course, you wanted to believe it.
	He wanted to believe it.
	So this is not...
	This is not why you believe, right?
	You didn't sort of have a neutral opinion and be really, really impressed with the Stevenson Fellows' dedication to the scientific method.
	You wanted to believe, and so you grabbed something, you know, like a drowning belief, like a drowning man just grabs at whatever it can to stay afloat.
	And so you grabbed at this stuff in order to confirm your own pre-existing beliefs, and that is a real shame.
	Now, Either because he didn't like where this is going or because he's got a bad connection.
	We have tragically lost the James.
	But I will tell you what I think about reincarnation.
	It's false.
	It's not even, like, maybe true.
	It's false.
	We do not have a soul.
	We do not come back to life.
	We are magic meat.
	The only magic is consciousness which we have yet to fully understand and which we may of course never fully understand.
	And so no, I don't believe in reincarnation at all.
	I don't have any memories of past lives.
	There's no evidence that people have any memories of past lives.
	There's anecdotes, which, you know, and there's children being questioned in foreign languages by guys who've done lots of drugs, and that's all nonsense.
	We can't possibly have that as a standard of belief.
	Now, why did we take this call?
	Why did I want to take this call?
	Well, for a number of reasons.
	Number one, I am sick and tired.
	So sick and goddamn tired of people masturbating their little belief systems that provide no obligation for them whatsoever.
	You know, the world is in a dangerous place.
	The world is kind of in a crisis right now.
	And people mucking about with am I going to come back as a dung beetle or a phoenix is bullshit.
	Get off your ass, put down your bong, and do something to save the world because it bloody well needs it right now.
	I am sick and tired of this me-ism, this vague, kind of mystical, otherworldly, other reality.
	You don't have to help the poor.
	You don't have to tutor the ignorant.
	You don't have to heal the sick.
	You don't even have to shovel anyone's goddamn driveway.
	All you have to do is take a hit, listen to some Floyd, and think about crystals in another dimension that could be you in another life.
	In another set of circumstances.
	Oh, man.
	It's lazy.
	It's self-indulgent.
	It's boring.
	It's bullshit.
	And let me tell you something.
	When it comes up, when this me-ism, this flaccid, oh, I get meaning with no obligation, I get purpose with not actually having to do a goddamn thing.
	When this vague, fuzzy, cloudy, self-worshipping, self-excusing, do-nothing bullshit comes When it runs up against a relatively muscular belief system like Islam, well, I don't think it's going to last very long at all.
	So I'm sick and tired of this stuff.
	Stop trying to get meaning from bullshit.
	Stop trying to get purpose from a cloud of marijuana smoke.
	For God's sakes, shake it off, people.
	Snap out of it.
	Shake it off.
	You know, you're inheriting freedoms from people who didn't get them by hitting the bong at every conceivable opportunity.
	What are you, Nick and freaks and geeks?
	For God's sakes, stop air drumming.
	Stop staring at your lava lamps and listening to Moog synthesizers in the dark, for God's sakes.
	Wake up.
	Snap out of it.
	This is the life you have.
	Nothing else.
	Nothing else is coming.
	No afterlife, no resurrection, no reincarnation, no heaven, no hell.
	Nothing is coming.
	What you have is now.
	What you have is today.
	What you have is breath.
	In and out and in and out.
	And do you know what that means?
	That's too less that you have to live.
	It may be grains of sand on a beach.
	It may be logs in a pile.
	It may be four more you don't even know.
	You might have as many breaths left as legs of a spider.
	That's all you're going to get.
	All you're going to get is what you make, what you reason, what you think, and what you will.
	What you will.
	Nothing outside is going to bungee in and give you meaning.
	Nothing outside is going to bungee in and excuse you for pitifully wasting your life.
	Nothing and no one is coming to make everything better, to make it all right, to make it all work out for the best.
	You know who's coming?
	Let me tell you who's coming.
	Who's coming is bad people who want to rule over you.
	And you can snort all the crap you want to short-circuit your brain, and you can stare at disco lights through a chandelier.
	It will not stop.
	One bad person...
	From putting his boot or heel on your fucking neck.
	Not one person would be stopped by your deluded fantasies of otherworldly escapism.
	It's cowardly.
	It's ridiculous.
	It's embarrassing.
	It's retarded.
	And I apologize for that.
	That is an insult to retarded people.
	So that's why I asked, how do you know any of this is true?
	And the answer is you don't.
	But it serves your distraction, and it serves your avoidance, and it serves your emptiness.
	It serves your laziness, and it serves your cowardice.
	You know, we're up here on the wall trying to save the world.
	You know what we need?
	We don't need people bullshitting about gods who disassemble themselves and then reassemble themselves in shards of bullshit.
	It's not what we need right now.
	What we need is hardy souls up here, polishing the rhetorical weapons and handing us the intellectual ammo.
	That's what we need up here.
	Because the hordes are coming from within and from without.
	We need to fight.
	And I'm sick and tired of people masturbating these stupid fantasies and thinking that they're doing anything to help the world.
	All they're doing is Is excusing themselves for squandering the gifts that were handed to them by much, much tougher people.
	So shake it off, step out of the smoke, and help us on the wall, for God's sakes!
	All right, let's move on to the next caller.
	Up next, we have Heather.
	Heather wrote in and said, I believe I've heard you mention that courage is the highest virtue.
	I'm an evangelical Christian, and as such, I would like to make the case that, biblically speaking, love is the highest virtue.
	If you don't believe that love is the highest virtue, why?
	That's from Heather.
	Hey, Heather, how are you doing tonight?
	I'm pretty good, thanks.
	How are you?
	I'm very well, thank you.
	Very well.
	So, tell me about what the Bible says about love and the case for the higher virtue.
	Sure.
	I think it's important to define the term because the New Testament was written in Greek, and they have four words for love where we only have the one.
	So, they have the word storge, which is sort of a warm, fuzzy feeling.
	It's a love of kinship and natural affection for some people.
	Or something.
	When we say, I love pizza or I love my dog, this is the one we're using.
	There's Eros, which is an emotional love.
	If you love somebody so much that you feel your heart will explode, that would be Eros.
	And it's platonic, too.
	There's Phileo, which is an intellectual love, which is a love that Jesus has for his church and a love that Christians are supposed to have for each other.
	And then there's agape, which is a love of the will, and it's not based on the merit of the one who is loved, and it desires the highest good.
	And in 1 Corinthians, Paul defines it for us, agape for us, saying it's patient, it's kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking.
	It's not easily angered.
	It keeps no record of wrongs, does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and never fails.
	And that's a pretty daunting list, but that's how he defines it.
	So, I would say that if you're looking through the lens of love at people, and you're desiring their highest good, then you must be You must be courageous.
	You must speak the truth in love.
	And if you love God the way, you know, with that love too, then you must speak His truth as well.
	All right.
	Is it hard to do that?
	Yes.
	And why?
	Why is it hard to do that?
	That's a pretty long list, you know.
	It's something that's definitely a work in progress.
	I have to keep trying to do that.
	No, but why is it hard?
	Why is it hard to speak the truth in love?
	Right.
	Why is it hard to speak the truth?
	I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I know it's hard to speak.
	In your understanding or in your argument, Heather, why is it hard to speak the truth?
	Oh, just...
	I mean, it's not much of a virtue if it's easy, right?
	No, it certainly is not.
	And it definitely pushes me outside of my comfort zone to do that.
	But I have to.
	So, yeah, no, it's hard because you're going to...
	Why is it hard?
	What's the opposition?
	What's the resistance?
	There's a fair amount of hostility towards hearing the truth from people, especially if it's including the fact that...
	How they're living may not be right or what they're doing may be wrong or dangerous.
	And to be able to stand and say how you're living and what you're doing is wrong or could be better.
	Well, especially in this feel-good, hedonistic planet of self-gratification, right?
	The moment you tell people to curb their lusts, to curb their impulses, to manage their emotions, to think in the long term, to not succumb to the hedonistic nerve-tickling of the everyday sensuality, well, you're just square.
	What, you don't like to have fun?
	You know, like all this kind of stuff, right?
	Oh, exactly.
	Yeah, there is a lot of hostility towards speaking this kind of love, right?
	Oh, definitely.
	And when you get to the idea that the word agape is an act of the will and that we're supposed to Apply that even to our enemies, that makes it even harder because they're sort of definitionally unlovable in a way.
	So it's very difficult to not only be able to say that to them and not only speak the truth to them, but to try to see them with God's eyes and through the eyes of love, especially if they're doing something or being something that's very unlovable.
	To even want to tell them can be difficult.
	Can you give me an example of a person that is agape, would require you to attempt to love, to will the love for that person?
	Give me the most negative characteristics or behaviors or qualities that would be the very toughest to love under this dictum.
	Someone who's done something to my kids.
	That would be the hardest for me.
	Like a pedophile?
	Oh yeah, that would be one of those situations where I would say that the grace of God would have to help me through that one.
	Okay, so let's talk about that.
	So a man, or a woman, but let's just say, like a man who has raped your children, that the challenge would be then for you to love that person?
	To love him with that kind of love, yes.
	How would that be possible?
	It's possible because it's an act of the will.
	So I would want what was best for him, which would be that he would become saved.
	I would not...
	Also, wanting what is best for him would mean that it would be necessary for him to face justice, too, because it's not good for somebody to do something awful like that.
	So you would still turn him into the police?
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, yes.
	You should not.
	I think it's in...
	So the police wouldn't be able to love him.
	They would have to punish him, right?
	Punishment is not antithetical to love.
	God is a God of justice.
	It says, three things are required of you, O man, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
	So, absolving people from the consequences of their actions is not loving at all, not even a little bit.
	I mean, when my children do something wrong, I, you know, I require them to, I help them to do better.
	And, you know, fortunately, I have kids that are pretty wonderful, so they don't Require anything harsh, but sometimes if you do something really horrible, you have to face a really horrible consequence, and that's...
	Isn't one of those consequences that you go to hell, right?
	That you have committed a crime, a moral crime, so heinous that certainly in the Catholic, as you know, there's a difference between a mortal and a venal sin.
	A venal sin you can atone for, right?
	A couple of Hail Marys and some clinks of coins somewhere.
	But the mortal sins you cannot...
	I'm not Catholic.
	No, I understand that.
	But there are sins, other not, that guarantee you passage to hell for which you may not gain forgiveness from God.
	Only blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
	And if you do that one, you are walking away and you don't want to fix it.
	So there's one.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	So there's blaspheming the Holy Spirit, at which point, I'm not saying everything that you believe, right?
	Because we just have to go with the general idea.
	There's either no access to heaven, which can be The same as hell in some formulations.
	There is some form of limbo, or there is hell itself, right?
	Yes.
	So, blaspheme in the Holy Spirit means that the punishment is eternal.
	There is no real capacity for forgiveness or release, unless, of course, you want to count, you know, the return of Jesus who goes down, lets everyone out of hell, and so on.
	But, you know, for all intents and purposes, it's kind of a forever punishment.
	So, in that situation, love would seem to be antithetical to eternal punishment, is that fair to say?
	Not really, no.
	There are only two options for us.
	We can love God, or we can walk away from God.
	I mean, this is according to the Christian faith, obviously.
	That's all I can speak to in this one.
	Our decision of what we're going to do while we're here is going to determine what's going to happen to us afterwards.
	If we don't love God, if we don't want to be around Him, He's not going to make us stay in His presence.
	This is not what I'm asking, though.
	Unless you're taking a roundabout way to get what I'm asking at, in which case, I apologize, continue, but...
	If God will not forgive somebody who's blasphemed the Holy Spirit, then I'm not sure how loving your enemies is a virtue that we should describe to human beings if God at times won't forgive.
	God will not burden us with His presence for eternity if we don't want Him.
	And to be with Him When we've rejected Him is worse than being away from Him.
	But because all good things have their source in God, because He is light and love and hope and beauty and goodness, if we're not with Him and we're away from Him, we're away from all those things too.
	So part of what hell is in a lot of A sense is that we're separated from God because we decided to be separated from God and we're absent all of the good traits of God because he's...
	You know, I understand all of that.
	I understand that.
	But my question is, if you go to hell for blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven, which is a permanent sin, then even if you're sorry because you're in hell, God doesn't forgive you and let you into heaven, right?
	No, I don't think you would be sorry.
	I think part of that one is if you get to the point where you do that, you just don't care anymore.
	If you are repentant of any sin, if you come back to God and you say, I'm sorry, please forgive me, God, it says that He is faithful and just to God.
	Forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
	So if we come back to Him, if we want to come back, we can.
	We've got this life to do it in, but if we want to come back, we can.
	No, but what about afterwards?
	What if you, afterwards, you've done something terrible, you go to hell, you realize God is real, you did bad things, it's really painful, it's horrible down there, you're really, really sorry, and you really regret what it is that you did that put you in hell.
	What happens then?
	I don't think you have the capacity to do that once you're there.
	Okay, so it's a one-way ticket as far as that goes, and there is no forgiveness after death.
	Is that right?
	If you go to heaven?
	There is no forgiveness because you will not want to.
	You will not want it.
	So you lose your free will after you die?
	Yeah, you do.
	Okay.
	In that instance, not if you're going to heaven, but I think that all of the parts of you that were good are gone.
	You're just left...
	Okay, okay, so all the parts of you that are good are gone, therefore you don't love?
	Right.
	Okay, so you don't love people who aren't virtuous, or in whom all virtue is gone?
	Now?
	You mean right now?
	Are you sure?
	Well, we can't tell that.
	I don't know by looking at somebody whether or not all vestiges of virtue are gone.
	I have no idea.
	You know, certainly a lot of their behavior might indicate that, but I don't know that.
	I can't look into their soul.
	Right.
	Okay, so you have to love the potential for virtue within them.
	But after they die, certainly God will—there's no more free will, and therefore the punishment is permanent, right?
	Right.
	I think I... I'm not trying to catch you out here.
	I'm just trying to sort of map the ideas here.
	I understand.
	No, to say that there's no more free will would be wrong.
	I spoke, I misspoke on that.
	It's that you will not want to.
	You won't want to.
	To be in God's presence would be terrible.
	You can't say that while someone's alive, you can't tell what they're going to do because they have free will.
	But then they still have free will after they die, but you can 100% tell what they're going to do.
	In this case, I think so.
	We've got to be logical, at least try, right?
	This is a philosophy show, right?
	You're not the last caller.
	You can't just say stuff, right?
	So...
	Whenever anybody's had a confrontation with God in the Bible, the difference between themselves and God becomes very apparent.
	So when Job meets with God and God just starts questioning him, he says, you know, gird yourself up like a man and I will question you.
	And he just begins this whole line of questioning that's very powerful.
	Where were you when I set the earth in motion?
	Where were you when I laid its foundations?
	And he just goes on and on.
	And at the very end, Job, after being questioned by God, says, Surely I spoke of things too wonderful for me to understand.
	I see myself for what I am, and I repent in sackcloth and ashes.
	When Isaiah had a confrontation with God, he's brought into the throne room of God, and he sees God in all of his majesty, and just what he is just comes into sharp focus compared to The perfection and the holiness of God.
	And he says, woe is me, I'm an unclean man of unclean lips.
	When the children of Israel are out at Mount Sinai, God starts to talk to them in his own voice.
	And they're terrified just because it's so overwhelming and so powerful that they say, please don't do this anymore.
	Send Moses up.
	When we are next to God, when we see him, When we're confronted with, you know, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, holy beings, and we're not covered by Jesus' blood, it's just too overwhelming.
	We would not be able to...
	It would be worse to be with Him than to be away from Him.
	It would be worse to be with Him.
	All right.
	So, let me ask you this, Heather.
	And again, I'm not trying to play gotcha.
	Like, I'm genuinely curious, and I want to sort of understand this.
	Sure.
	Let's say that...
	Some guy says, my wife really loves me, but she set fire to me last night in my bed.
	We would be a little bit skeptical about that love, right?
	Yes, oh yeah.
	Yeah, because love has to have some actions that are correlated to love.
	And for that to be the case, we have to be able to empirically differentiate.
	Actions based on love versus actions based on indifference or anger or hatred.
	They have to be different in some manner.
	Oh, definitely.
	Okay.
	So if someone assaults your child and you're really angry, then you're going to call the police.
	The police are going to come over.
	They're really angry, let's say.
	And they haul them off to jail.
	The judge is really angry and gives him 20 years in prison, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yes.
	Now...
	If exactly the same things happen, but you call it love, I'm not sure what that word means.
	In other words, if the actions...
	Like, if I love someone, I'll give them a kiss.
	If I hate someone, I won't.
	My actions change based on the feelings that I have.
	Whether they're rational or not, right?
	But if exactly the same sequence happens to the child rapist...
	Whether people hate him and are angry at him, or whether they love him in this erape kind of way, I'm not sure what it means to say that you love someone if your actions are identical to what they would be if you hated that person.
	You would desire their highest good.
	So through this all, you would want them to come to know Jesus as their savior.
	But that doesn't mean we are let off the hook from one of the consequences to our actions.
	And that doesn't mean that I don't experience anger and have to manage it.
	I mean, that's a real thing.
	And aside from Eros, which is not really talked about, and I guess Sorge, which is only mentioned as people not having it, none of these are really emotional loves.
	This is something that you choose to do.
	So I can choose to look at him and go, I am fuming with you.
	This is the emotion that I'm feeling.
	But I can decide that I will forgive you and I will allow you, I will pray for you and Talk to you about what it means to be a Christian.
	But it's a choice.
	So this question of forgiveness is very, very important.
	I mean, obviously, it's foundational to a lot of the beliefs that you have and a lot of the beliefs that I have.
	We certainly share that in common.
	So let me give you an example and then I'll turn it back to you.
	So many years ago, I was going to meet a friend of mine at a particular location.
	At 7 o'clock, we were going to go to a concert.
	And I went to the location, and he wasn't there, and he wasn't there, and he wasn't there.
	This is before cell phones.
	This is way back in the day.
	Right, yeah.
	So eventually, I called his house from a payphone, and he was home.
	And I said, well, where have you been?
	And he said, well, I came to meet you, but you weren't there.
	And I waited, and I waited, and I just eventually went home because you weren't there.
	And I'm like, well, I'm here.
	I'm in the place.
	Anyway, so to make a long story short, I pulled out the piece of paper, and I'd written down the wrong intersection.
	You know, intersection is two streets.
	One of them was right.
	The other one was incorrect.
	So I was actually in the wrong place.
	Now, before, I was angry at him because I thought that he had flaked on me or that he'd made a mistake.
	But then when I realized I had made the mistake, my anger dissolved, and I apologized like crazy, because I'd messed up his chance to see at least the opening band in the concert we were going to, right?
	And so I moved from...
	Being upset with this person and feeling they were in my debt to apologizing to that person and feeling that I was in his debt because something changed, right?
	I mean, you could say I forgave him or whatever, but you understand, right?
	Yep, I do.
	Or, you know, if he'd gotten to the wrong place and he's like, oh man, I'm totally sorry.
	And if it was like the first time, it wasn't like, you know, every other time that we tried to get together, something weird happened or whatever.
	So there's...
	Forgiveness that comes out of a change in circumstances, a change in behavior.
	And if you run a store and somebody steals, I don't know, a fruit salad from your grocery store or something...
	And, you know, they come back the next day and they're like, I'm really, really sorry.
	You know, here's five times the price.
	I'm never going to do it again.
	You know, now here's my face.
	You know, you can watch me every time I'm in the store.
	I totally apologize.
	And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, then they've done something to earn being forgiven, right?
	I think that's fair restitution for what has gone on.
	And so...
	There has to be some difference, I would say, between people who have done something to earn forgiveness from you versus people who, you know, continue to spit in your face, who say, oh yeah, you know, I would do it again if I had a moment's chance, you know, sucks to be you, eh-heh, can't catch me, na-na-na-na-boo-boo.
	Those people, like, would you have a different response to those two people when it came to forgiveness, right?
	Somebody who genuinely was sorry and attempted to earn back your trust and so on, versus somebody who, you know, was sneering at you and jeering you and saying they'd do it again if they could get a chance.
	I mean, because it seems to me to pay the person who is not sorry the same good, which is forgiveness, as the person who's genuinely contrite and wants to be forgiven and is doing necessary steps to be forgiven.
	To give them both forgiveness seems to me unjust, because it's paying people with the same coin who are performing opposite actions.
	So, it would depend on whether we're talking about God or whether we're talking about us.
	You know, I think it's in one of the Gospels where I think it's Peter that says to Jesus, if someone sins against me, how many times do I have to forgive them?
	Seven times.
	And Jesus says, no, 70 times seven.
	And we only have to go on what they say.
	Now, it's important to know that forgiveness doesn't mean that you don't have boundaries.
	I mean, part of...
	Part of love would be love always protects.
	So even if a pedophile had asked for forgiveness from me, He still wouldn't be around my children.
	My first job would be to protect them.
	Okay, so if somebody was a good person to your children, you would love them for that virtue and you would let them spend time with your children.
	If somebody was a bad person to your children, you would not let them spend time around your children.
	So you're treating someone differently that you love versus someone who's harmed your children.
	There's a difference in action, but you're saying the same emotion should dominate, but the actions should be different.
	That's not an emotion.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It's that it's an act of the will.
	It's a decision.
	And there are priorities.
	The act of your will is different.
	Because in one instance, the guy who's good to your kids gets to hang out with your kids, and the guy who's bad to your kids doesn't.
	So your act of will, in terms of what you're allowing, is opposite.
	Access versus no access.
	That's right, but that's because my priorities are for the people who are innocent who need protecting over the person who does horrible things.
	Right, so your love of your children causes you to keep the bad person away from your children.
	Right.
	So the love of your children takes precedence over your judgment of the bad actions of the bad person.
	Right.
	Okay, good.
	So you love your children, and so you spend time with them and you protect them.
	But the bad person you keep away from your children.
	So your actions are opposite.
	Yeah, it's not necessarily the same for everybody.
	Empirically, you're doing the opposite thing, right?
	You're protecting your children and keeping them close, and then you're keeping this guy away.
	You could say it's, again, to protect your children.
	But to protect your children, you keep them close, keep them close to you.
	Whereas to protect your children, you keep this other guy, this nasty guy, away from them, right?
	So your actions are the opposite.
	But you're saying that the concept, this Arapi, is the same?
	Yes.
	Yeah, it's not necessarily one size fits all.
	You know, it's complex.
	It's a very complex thing.
	Let me ask you this.
	Sure.
	I mean, it's easier to keep...
	The mean man away from your children if you don't like him.
	Because your emotions are like uncomplicated.
	He's toxic.
	He's a bad guy.
	He's a nasty guy.
	So I'm going to keep him away from my kids.
	So your anger and hostility towards the child abuser...
	Serves to protect your children, right?
	Certainly if you claim to love him and you claim to want the very best for him and you love God within him or you love the virtue of the soul within him or whatever, it's going to be more complicated and confusing and challenging to keep him away from your children, right?
	Because you have a positive emotion towards him.
	Whereas if you just have a plain negative hostile emotion towards him, it's going to be far easier to keep him away from your children because it's not complicated.
	It's not ambivalent.
	The agape is not an emotion.
	Our emotions are what they are, and it's really what we do with them that's important.
	When I say what's best for him in this case, what's best for him would be that he comes to repentance and comes to know Jesus.
	That's what's best for him.
	It's a very well-defined thing that's best for him.
	And that justice is served.
	That he has to face the consequences of his actions because it's really bad for people to do horrible things and not face a consequence.
	But there's not an emotion attached to this one.
	That is just an I have decided.
	It is a pure act of will.
	I am going to want to do this.
	But you understand love is generally perceived to be an emotional experience, right?
	Yes.
	Oh, it definitely is.
	That's why we have to break it out.
	That's why you have to break out what the Bible's saying.
	With that particular word, because it's so foreign to how we think.
	With us, love is always attached to emotion, but with this word that's used over and over again, there is not an emotion attached to it.
	It is a decision.
	All right.
	Let me pretend to be a preacher for a moment, if you don't mind, because I'll tell you what.
	I mean, I appreciate this elucidation.
	It's very, very helpful to me, and I think you've explained it very well.
	Thank you.
	But let me tell you how the word I think.
	I really am.
	Okay.
	I'm sorry?
	Okay.
	I said, I'm trying.
	No, doing great.
	Doing really well.
	And it's a challenging topic, and I appreciate the clarity you're bringing to it.
	So here's, if I were a preacher, and I don't know, do you want like reasonable Protestant preacher or fiery Baptist preacher?
	What's your particular preference?
	I have a reasonable Protestant preacher.
	Okay, so I'll be my sonorous self then.
	Okay.
	So this is my belief about love and courage, and I'm going to try and put it in the context of what we're talking about, because I want to honor what you're bringing to the conversation, which is great stuff.
	Okay.
	So I would say this.
	I would say, Heather, if telling the truth is hard because people are hostile towards the truth, if telling the truth is necessary to bring them to Jesus, if telling the truth is necessary to bring them to God, if criticizing...
	Their way for materialistic, sinful, Satanist behavior is necessary to bring them to God.
	And if the reason why it's hard to tell the truth is not primarily because of the hostility of others, but of our own cowardice to speak the truth.
	The reason a bowling ball is hard to lift is not just because of the weight of the bowling ball, but because we haven't exercised and made our muscles strong.
	If we've exercised and made our muscles strong, then we can lift the bowling ball.
	If we are weak and have these spaghetti arms, then we can't lift the bowling ball.
	But that's not the fault of the bowling ball.
	That's the fault of our failure to train and become stronger.
	So if virtue spreads through speaking the truth about Jesus, speaking the truth about God, And if the reason you don't want to do it is because you're afraid, not because of the hostility, that's just the way to the bowling ball, but because you are afraid, then the primary virtue that you need is courage.
	You have the love, you have love of Jesus, you have love of God, you have love of your fellow man, to even have the idea to approach them with the good news, right?
	To have even the idea to approach people with With Jesus and salvation and heaven and God.
	So you already have the love.
	You have love of God, love of Jesus, love of the Holy Spirit.
	You have love of your fellow man.
	You have love of the truth.
	You have love of virtue.
	You have all of that.
	You're overflowing with it.
	But if you lack courage, your love will not manifest itself in a way that saves souls.
	Absolutely.
	So this is why I would say that courage is the highest virtue once you have love.
	Now, love is not a virtue if it only exists within your own heart and your own mind.
	It does not at all spread in the world.
	Because that's selfish.
	That's keeping your knowledge of salvation to yourself.
	It's like having a cure in a time of a disease and only keeping it for yourself.
	That is selfish.
	So in order to go forth in the world and bring people the good news of Jesus, You must first and foremost have courage.
	And that's why I would say that courage is important.
	Courage also is to love God despite sacrifices, to love Jesus despite discomfort, to love heaven despite the temptations of this world.
	All of that requires courage.
	And this does not mean love is unimportant, but it means that I would put courage first and foremost.
	And, Heather, I would put this particularly for you.
	Particularly for you.
	Heather, would you say...
	That women in general find it easier to love or easier to be courageous?
	Easier to love.
	Right.
	So for you, Heather, you focus on love being the highest virtue.
	Why?
	Because it's easier for you.
	Now, does God want it to be easy for you?
	Now, don't get me wrong.
	Men find it a lot easier to have courage sometimes than to love.
	Right?
	This is why there are these two virtues.
	For women, the focus should be on courage, because love is what comes most easy.
	For men, the focus should be on love, because courage is what comes most easy.
	But it is the hardest virtues, it is the most thorny climb, that gets you to the highest place.
	So for you, to focus on love, which comes easier, is a way of bypassing or avoiding the great challenge which women have, which the world desperately needs, which is for women to have courage, rather than love.
	May I interject something?
	No, that was the end, so...
	Oh, okay.
	Yes.
	Without the basis of love, I wouldn't...
	And without the basis of my beliefs and the belief that love is the thing that...
	The way I view people through that lens, I wouldn't necessarily have a reason to be courageous.
	I would...
	If I didn't care...
	Or if I didn't love them, why would I say anything to them?
	Why would I bother?
	Well, because if Christ had kept his knowledge of heaven and if Christ had kept his knowledge of God to himself, in other words, if he'd had love without courage, you would never have become a Christian.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And I am not saying at all, at all at all, that courage is not absolutely important.
	It is crucial.
	I'm just saying that my starting point would be that the reason that I am being courageous, and just so you know, this is terrifying for me, so I'm being really courageous right now.
	I don't mean good that it's terrifying for you, I mean good that we're having the conversation.
	Trust me, I've just made about 8 million atheist heads explode by having this conversation in the way that I'm doing it anyway, so we're both there in the same place, so go ahead.
	Thank you so much for letting me.
	But no, my pastor says you've got to step outside your comfort zone, and I was thinking today that I'm like 30,000 feet above my comfort zone, and I can see the neighborhood, but I don't know which one is my zone.
	That's how far outside my comfort zone I am at the moment.
	So anyway, I think that the courage is a result of the love.
	So can I ask you a question?
	Please.
	It's certainly the only thing.
	Okay.
	Would you say that a person who straps on an explosive vest and walks into a crowded building, believing that he is doing something for his God,
	knowing that he's going to press a button and fly into bits and be all over the room, Would you say that he was courageous when he was doing that, that that took courage to do?
	Philosophically speaking, no, not at all.
	Quite the opposite.
	That this is an act of cowardice and self-abandonment.
	That the only thing that you have to bring to human society is shrapnel, is a confession of impotence in the realm of virtue and thought and philosophy.
	That the best that you can do is turn yourself into an exploding bag of meat.
	So no, I do not believe that it is courageous.
	The real courage is to stand for the truth against the mob.
	That is where virtue comes from.
	And the fundamental question that you and I are batting back and forth, Heather, is, is virtue an experience internal, or is it an action in the world?
	And this is the two differences, right?
	Because love is an experience within...
	The soul within the mind, within the body, right?
	Wherever we want to place that.
	So if the highest virtue is an experience, then sure, love.
	Because courage is action.
	Courage is not a passive state.
	And I'm not saying love is entirely a passive state.
	But you can experience the virtue of love without lifting a finger.
	But the question of courage has to do with action in the world.
	resistance, you're not lifting anything, you're not getting any stronger.
	And so the question is, and it's a big question that's more, more than just the sort of framework that we're talking about, is virtue something that you experience or is virtue something that you do in the world?
	In other words, the traditional difference between wisdom and action is that wisdom is a state of mind and action is a state of body, state of being, a state of doing really.
	And Now, if the highest virtue has to manifest in the world, then it must be courage, because courage is that which allows virtue to manifest in the world.
	If the highest virtue is love, then that's all you kind of need to be good, and you can get the icing on the cake called courage and action.
	But I think since religion, particularly Christianity...
	Relied, only exists because of action, only exists because of the courage of Jesus, then I would say that since your only capacity to get into heaven is the result not of Jesus' internal state, but his external actions, right?
	His Sermon on the Mount, his whipping of the money changers, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his communication to all of the people around him about...
	The arguments that he brought to bear on the planet.
	Since the only reason that there is your capacity, the only reason or the only way you have capacity to enter heaven is the result of the courage of Jesus rather than the experience of Jesus, I would say that I would put it a little higher than love itself.
	Again, but courage uninformed by love is often bravado or braggadocio and often destructive.
	Well, one of the things about love Biblical love, anyway, that's mentioned is that it is an action.
	If you are not doing things that are loving, then you are not loving.
	It says that it's the passage in Matthew where Jesus has separated the nations of the sheep with the nations of the goat, and he asks them one question.
	What did you do When you saw the least of these in need.
	Did you give them a cup of water?
	Did you give them your cloak?
	Did you feed them?
	Did you take care of them?
	And what side they're on and God's response to them matters about what they did.
	If you don't act on your love, it's meaningless.
	You must show that through what you do.
	If I say I'm a Christian and I never help anybody and I never actually give to somebody or I never volunteer my time or I never do anything, then my love is just this silly little concept in my head.
	It's not a real thing.
	It's not real love.
	Until you do it.
	It says, you know, Jesus on the cross, it says, you know, that God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners.
	Christ died for us.
	Like, that is the demonstration of his love.
	It's not an internal thing.
	You must make it external or else it doesn't matter.
	Right.
	And so since, for me, virtue is what you do.
	And it's not, it's a subset of what you do, obviously, right?
	You wipe your nose, not necessarily virtuous.
	And there are certainly actions that you can take, you know, strangling a kitten or whatever, that's not virtuous.
	But virtue is a subset of action defined by wisdom and courage, right?
	Wisdom plus courage together produces actions which are virtuous.
	Now if, and this goes, this is, you know, just so everyone out there knows that what Heather and I are talking about is a fundamental question within Christianity and has been from the very beginning, right?
	Is it deeds or faith that gets you into heaven?
	Oh, but James answers that.
	James answers that.
	It's faith that gets you into heaven, but James says, you know, faith without works is dead.
	Show me your faith by your works.
	You're not earning your way in there, but if you really believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and you really have accepted Him as Lord, it's going to show up in your life.
	You're going to Maybe we're talking about two sides of the same coin here, because for me, to love truth, to love virtue, to love philosophy is what motivates me to act.
	It's what I use as the bellows to heat the fire of my courage to overcome the obstacles and the hostilities, the lies, the slanders, the accusations, all of the crap that goes on in the world when you shoot a giant flare of truth into a dark and stormy sky.
	You are very courageous.
	I'm sorry?
	I said you are very courageous.
	I'm impressed with your courage, Stefan.
	Thank you.
	And I think that, so maybe it's a yin and yang thing in that the more we love virtue, the more we can manifest our commitment to virtue and courageous action in the world.
	And so maybe these are two sides of the same coin, and maybe you've just convinced me that not that courage is the highest virtue, But that is a combination of wisdom, or I would call it wisdom, you would call it love, for the difference between theology and philosophy.
	But yeah, I think you made an excellent case that one can be courageous without necessarily being virtuous.
	And you can certainly, but can you be virtuous without being courageous?
	Well, certainly not if you define virtue as action.
	Because virtue will always be opposed in a darkening world, in a, you know, you would call it satanic, and I would call it an irrational world, anti-rational world.
	So, very, very good set of points, and you've given me a lot to chew over, and I really appreciate you bringing this stuff up.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	I appreciate you talking to me about it.
	All right.
	Thanks, Heather.
	I will keep everyone posted about what I'm all this over.
	I never want to say, ah, I got a lot to think about.
	And then, ooh, look, something shiny.
	I'm going to have a power bar.
	Right.
	I promise you, I'm going to keep on this in my head.
	And I will, either we'll be back or I'll talk about what I've thought about over the next couple of days.
	So I really appreciate you bringing this up.
	It's a very, very good set of arguments.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	I appreciate it.
	All right.
	Thanks, Heather.
	I appreciate your time.
	Bye-bye.
	All right.
	Up next, we have V. V wrote in and said, Being black and conservative has been a lonely life in my experience.
	I am 38 now and married but without children of my own.
	I was brought up in a two-parent household with a strong father, God rest his soul, and was raised not to have children out of wedlock and not to get involved with any man that had children.
	I have had many relationships, and the only time I had a child, I lost him in March of 2015, at 21 weeks, and I was married at the time.
	I still want children and I would like to discuss the underlying issues I've had as a black conservative on why I'm having children so late.
	I feel that my conservatism has had a big role in why I have not had a husband nor any children until late in life and would love to expound upon it for it is something that is rarely discussed.
	Am I doing a disservice now if I want to have children by the time I am 40?
	That is from V. Oh hey V, how are you doing tonight?
	Very well.
	Thank you.
	Very well.
	I am, first of all, sorry, sorry, sorry to hear about the child that you lost in 2015 at 21 weeks.
	That's so hard.
	So hard.
	And I really, really want to extend my sympathies for that.
	That's a very, very difficult situation.
	Was it a miscarriage?
	Is that what happened?
	Yeah.
	Well, actually, it was a premature birth.
	What happened was, is that my blood was too thick.
	So thank God we found out What the issue is.
	So when I want to get pregnant next time, I will have to take blood thinners.
	We just didn't know.
	And I was passing big clots and I did not understand and then I felt the contractions.
	So what they were trying to do is stop the contractions so I can wait another three weeks and have a viable birth at 24 weeks.
	And then we would continue from there, but my body just couldn't do it, so I had to give birth.
	I'm so sorry.
	I mean, it's a brutal thing to experience because it is the greatest joy that turns into the greatest disappointment.
	I'm so sorry.
	Yes.
	Well, thank you.
	But what weathered the storm, of course, is my faith in the Lord and knowing what is going on because 60% don't know why it happened.
	I at least have an answer.
	So now we have a solution to what happened and how to remedy that situation the next time.
	Right.
	It is funny, eh?
	Like you spend half your life trying not to get pregnant and then half your life trying to get pregnant and it's stressful either way sometimes, right?
	Absolutely.
	And like I said in my question, And we've talked about this, like, because I talked to you on my birthday, September 9th.
	I remember.
	I remember.
	And, you know, I had my stepdaughter.
	Well, she moved back with her grandma.
	She didn't want to be in Arizona anymore.
	She missed home, and I'm not going to make her homesick, so she moved back with grandma.
	But, you know, we still, she, you know, and she was around when we suffered that loss, so...
	We were all experiencing that.
	But I do believe that I made a conscious decision a long time ago that I was not going to procreate with someone that did not understand nor respect my values and did not have values that would better society.
	I said before in our last conversation that when my father taught me, he's like, don't let any man control you.
	As time went on and I started meditating on this, it's like, wait a minute.
	He's not just talking about, oh, man, control me and tell me what to do.
	No, he was also meaning don't let the government control you, but don't let men who...
	Who see the government as a savior to control you either.
	Yeah, don't let a man or the man control you, right?
	Right.
	And so, when I look back on it, a lot of the men that I had relationships with, the biggest stark difference was my political views.
	I am not a person that believes in black struggle.
	I am not the person that believes that the white man kept us down and they're still keeping us down.
	And the very ones that did keep us down are the very damn party that they still voted for.
	Why would I want to marry a man that's in mental slavery?
	Why would I want to have children with someone like that?
	Right.
	I mean, of course, because, you know, if black men, if there's a black man out there who just, you know, hates white people, hates white culture, hates white countries and is living in one, his odds of success got a thing going to go down just a smidge.
	And that's going to be a tough person to be dependent on if you want to stay home and raise kids, right?
	Right.
	And so I, you know, and I was brought up, you know, Yes, you know, get your career and things like that, but the career that I want to do, and now I'm going to school for audio engineering, it is kind of, it's hard and it's easy to have a family with that.
	Especially, I want to do broadcast and audiobooks.
	I kind of want to do what you do.
	You know, it's nothing now to set up your own studio in your house and actually start a show and things of that nature.
	No, it's massively expensive.
	freedominradio.com slash donate.
	No, okay.
	I do remember what a pleasing voice you have.
	So yeah, you should certainly take a swing at that if you want.
	Yes, donate the stuff on show.
	Seriously, especially with YouTube.
	I'm trying to make you, what, family friendly?
	What the hell is that?
	That's not family friendly at all.
	I am good family friendly.
	Always have been.
	Bad families, not bad.
	Yeah, not according to, not so much to corporate, because you tell the truth and stuff, they don't like that.
	And I think that's had a huge impact on my relationships.
	Because, quite frankly...
	I am going to tell you how it is.
	I will debate you and I will win because you're wrong.
	Here's some data.
	Here's some empirical evidence.
	And you can't cut me with ad hominins and anecdotes.
	It either, the data's there or it's not.
	The word bed wench is not an argument.
	No!
	I remember that from last time.
	Negro bed wench!
	I remember that.
	Burned in my brain in ways and places I can scarce describe.
	Oh my god!
	So tell me a little bit about, because, you know, I pay attention to everything that people write, but when you say being black and conservative has been a lonely life in my experience, right?
	And your husband's white and your daughter's white and hopefully your children-to-be will be a good blend, but what is the loneliness?
	You know, anybody who's not a cliche, anybody who's Original.
	Vanity.
	Who's not vain.
	Vanity is just a fear of appearing original, as Nietzsche says.
	So, anyone who thinks for themselves, there is a loneliness involved in it.
	And what has that been like for you, and how has it shown up in your life?
	Oh, the typical stuff that we talked about before, I'm not black enough.
	You know, if you notice, because we talk about, you know, you talk about multiculturalism.
	And I can tell you that multiculturalism does not work because if you are not part of the culture that you are born in, you're not going to have that culture at all.
	Muslims stick together.
	Hispanics stick together.
	Jehovah's Witnesses stick together.
	The Jews stick together.
	The Italians stick together.
	Okay?
	So when you have this The community has this meaning of what it means to be Italian, what it means to be Jewish.
	I think the Italian thing is a deep appreciation of brickwork.
	That's the...
	That's the only thing that I can really, really describe and hairy fingers.
	But anyway, and sorry to interrupt, but this is the funny thing, of course, because, you know, if you're black and you're conservative, somehow you're not black enough because to be black means to be a Democrat, right?
	But then when people say, make any collective judgments about blacks, it's like, well, no, no, you got to treat us as individuals.
	It's like, well, why don't you all treat each other as individuals that you can be all over the political spectrum and still be fully black?
	Why does black have to be a political identity?
	And then the moment anyone says anything about black political Well, that's just racism.
	It's like, I can't win in this game!
	You know what kills me?
	And I just had this conversation with one of my fellow students at school, like how he was sitting there and he was talking about these Hispanic cops who were friends of his.
	And they were talking about how they agreed with Trump.
	And, you know, he said, I had to bite my tongue because, you know, Trump is racist.
	I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
	I said, so you found it confusing that Mexicans thought that Trump was doing the right thing dealing with immigration.
	Let me ask you something.
	I said, so you got a problem with Trump being racist, quote unquote.
	But do they have Black History Month in Mexico?
	Right.
	Do they have black memorials to the black slaves that they brought over to pick their sugar cane in Cuba?
	Dominican Republic Brazil Brazil Saudi Arabia.
	How many black people are in high political power in South America?
	Don't worry, I'll wait.
	If I'm wrong, y'all can write in the comments.
	I don't know a black Mexican mayor.
	Do you?
	I can't say that I do.
	Okay, so why are you gonna come over to my fucking country and talk about how racist Trump is when y'all ain't done not even an eighth of what American people have done for black people?
	Well, the other thing, too, that sort of struck me about this sort of the Hispanic or Mestizo immigration into America, and this is true for all of the people who come from different ethnicities who come to America, is that keeping America the way it is is respecting their choice, right?
	I mean, people come from Mexico to America because they don't Want to be in Mexico.
	And so if you turn America into Mexico, you've just shafted their entire sacrifice.
	You have just completely skewered everything that they fought to escape from, and you've returned them back to a kind of prison that they've really spent, you know, teeth and fingernails clawing their way out of, particularly if they've come across illegally, which again, I don't agree with and all that.
	But it is respecting the preferences and choices and sacrifice of immigrants to retain the culture that they sacrificed so hard to get to.
	You know, if your dinghy is drowning and you fight your way across shark-infested waters to get to a boat, you don't want them to drill a giant hole in the bottom of that boat and sink it too because you kind of got there because it wasn't in the water.
	Anyway, so I just want to sort of mention that, but go ahead.
	What blows my mind, too, is when they're like, we are a nation of immigrants.
	My ancestors, we were brought over here not by our choice.
	We're not immigrants.
	We were slaves.
	Immigration denotes choice.
	So for you to come and ride our coattails about the black struggle, which is another thing the Democrat Party always does, you know, everybody always wants to ride on our struggle all the time, whether it's gay rights or immigration.
	They always use us as the post, right?
	But they don't do a damn thing for us.
	And this type of opinion has cost me a lot of dick, okay?
	Well, this is what Ann Coulter says, right?
	When the Mexicans start complaining about racism and white privilege, and she says, sorry, you're not black.
	We don't owe you that.
	Right.
	But you have no problem riding on my boat, though.
	Right.
	And then turn around, and it blew my mind when that Muslim mayor decided to call moderate Muslims or Muslims who don't want, you know, radical Islam to take over the world Uncle Tom.
	I'm like, what the fuck?
	Rick, what?
	Like, oh, here we go.
	There they go, using our stuff again.
	Now, that's what I call cultural appropriation, and you don't hear that getting called.
	It's a bit more important than who's got dreads on today.
	Anyway.
	I'm saying, like, no, that's cultural appropriation.
	How are you going to use...
	Uncle Tom, and first of all, Uncle Tom was a good person.
	He wasn't a sellout, but people don't read.
	But it's these strong opinions that I have that I think subconsciously has made me wait until the right person came along to procreate with.
	Now I know, I know, we're supposed to have children at a younger age, but at the same time, I would rather risk having a child at an older age with the right person than to procreate just because my biological clock is ticking to make up for the falling birth rate that we have in the United States.
	Yeah, I was 42.
	I've had to produce a good one.
	I was 42.
	And not by choice, you know, this is just the way things worked out.
	But yeah, it's way better, way better having a child later on, assuming, you know, healthy and all that, but it's way better having a child later on with the right person.
	The best is, you know, child when you're young with the right person.
	Next best is child when you're older with the right person.
	And then no children at all, and then children with the really wrong person is the most disastrous situation at all from what I've seen.
	And it's disastrous for society because when you're married, you know, You're going to either take on your spouse's ideals or they're going to take on yours.
	And usually I find that the worst ideals are more influential than the best ones.
	And I just don't feel like sitting there living with someone who can't see that that can't be red-pilled.
	I can't do it.
	I just, I can't.
	Oh, I couldn't spend the rest of my life biting my tongue and chewing on my lip.
	No way!
	Being afraid to watch the news or watch any TV or get any information coming into the household because you're going to end up on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
	In other words, the sane and the insane end of the political spectrum.
	And for more on this, you know, just so we can skip past this part, people could just check out the recent video, Help!
	I'm Dating a Social Justice Warrior, which...
	Oh, God.
	I saw that video, too.
	Listen to the guys who know Philippine women.
	Anyway, so as far as if you want to have kids by the time you're 40, you know the risks.
	I don't have to tell you.
	There are some elevated risks.
	I don't know if they're different for blacks than for whites.
	Obviously, I was entirely racist and only looked up whites when I was sort of working on this kind of stuff.
	So, you know, obviously talk about that with your doctor and check it out.
	I have genetics on my side with that because a lot of my family on both sides of my father and my mother's side, the average age of people having children is 40 anyway.
	Really?
	Maybe the conservatism in your family just comes from a late bake scenario.
	Yeah.
	The later you start the bread, the more it comes out with a Reagan hairdo.
	So, no, it's fine.
	I mean, you have more of an extra responsibility, as you know, to sort of stay healthy, stay fit.
	I remember hearing about this from you in the past.
	I don't think that's going to be a big issue, you know.
	But, you know, my daughter's like, hey, Dad, let's go rock climbing today.
	And I'm like, sure, okay, let's strap in and go rock climbing.
	And that's just why my hands have become praying mantis claws.
	But so, yeah, just stay healthy, eat well, keep your weight down, stay limber.
	I stretch every day and you just have to, you know.
	And I do have to get...
	I do have to get better and get back into exercising mode because I have gained weight.
	I haven't lost it.
	Postpartum depression is a real thing and a lot of it is the baby weight.
	When you lose a child like that, it does take a lot out of you.
	It does.
	It does.
	You can get back that.
	Again, you'll have that out of love for your child.
	You want to stay fit.
	You want to stay healthy.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, and, you know, one thing that I didn't really expect so much, V, is that I really want to show off for my daughter.
	I mean, how sad is that?
	I'm supposed to be the authoritative figure.
	It's like, Daddy's being cool.
	But, like, there was this rope ladder that she's like, Dad, climb the rope ladder.
	I'm like, well, do I have to?
	I don't want to do it.
	I don't want to be a pirate.
	But...
	So, and of course, you know, there's this hot young thing holding the bottom of the rope ladder so that it doesn't swing too much.
	There's my daughter saying, go, Dad, go!
	And, you know, I basically half-severed my arms with rope burns just trying to get up this thing because it's like, there's no way I'm going to fail at this with my daughter watching.
	You know, so you kind of got to prepare yourself for these Olympics of vanity.
	And I just, I don't want to be the, well, my dad can't do that because he's a half a century old thing.
	I don't want to be that, you know?
	I don't want to be like Emmanuel Macron's wife, you know?
	Whatever she does, whatever babies she slathers the blood out of in order to keep that ridiculous Barbie hairdo going, I don't know what's going on with that, but I just, I can't be that dad, you know?
	It's like, what's that?
	It's an Eddie Murphy bit about the guy, you don't want to be that guy in the club, you know, the guy in the club who's just getting a bit long in the tooth, a bit too Danny Glover in the club, and it's the same thing with parenting, so if you stay fit, I think it's fine.
	Yeah, but it was just interesting to think about it.
	It's like I was reflecting back, and I was looking at it, and it was like, oh my god, I haven't really had a relationship with someone that really understood or accepted where I'm coming from.
	Like, for instance, I know we talk about IQ. I know that there are outliers in every race.
	And I was always made fun of for being the smart one, and everybody knew that I was the smart one.
	Teachers, everybody, you know.
	And it wasn't something that I showed off or anything of that nature.
	And I'm very well read.
	And, you know, I get backlash for even being succinct in expressing my opinions.
	Like, right now, while listening to your other callers, I was actually arguing about, you know, The scientific method.
	And somebody made the statement saying that we didn't have the scientific method a thousand years ago.
	I'm like, what?
	What are you talking about?
	If we're talking Western scientific method, you're right.
	But there was always people who analyzed and checked data and tested for Empirical evidence of many things.
	And, you know, I had this person, I guess he was, from what I saw, he was black in his photo in the comments section.
	And it was like, you're on that white man bullshit.
	I'm like, what the, what?
	What?
	We're having a conversation about the scientific method.
	How is it that I am on some quote-unquote, what science is white now?
	Hello?
	Yeah, no.
	I mean, the only thing that's white about science is the fact that they're suntan lotion.
	That's all I can give you.
	That was wrong, Stefan.
	Was it so wrong?
	Was it so wrong?
	Trust me, I'm Irish, man.
	We can't venture out of a cave without like SPF 9000.
	It's just the way it is.
	But I've never really had these like...
	I love to debate.
	I love discourse.
	I love research.
	I'll sit there.
	I want to have a big-ass suitcase of facts for anything that I want to talk about.
	Well, actually, it says this, and you can go over here and find it here.
	I'll even give you the website, the source.
	I source everything that I talk about.
	But when I have that experience with my own people, Most of the times it's like they call me bougie or I'm being white or you're Miss Know-It-All or you're this and you're that.
	And it's like, okay, well, why would I want to procreate with people who think that I am less than because I don't identify with the stereotype in which you contradictorily protest against but yet want to uphold at the same time?
	Well, I mean, it's heartbreaking, right?
	It's like, well, V, you have reason and evidence and good arguments and you're thinking clearly and critically.
	That's acting white.
	It's like, this is not exactly breaking a lot of stereotypes, guys.
	Can we not have this as a standard?
	This is a terrible thing to do.
	Exactly.
	Or they're like, you're not down with the black struggle.
	I don't want to struggle!
	Why would I want to do that?
	I want a badge of honor for struggling?
	I went to the Marines, dude.
	I struggled at nothing for my country.
	I'm good.
	I don't need to be like, well, now I gotta fight for our struggle that we put ourselves in the last 50 years.
	Yeah, I don't remember any fundamental law that was passed that demanded that the black community have a 73% out of wedlock birth rate.
	Yeah, that's shit.
	I don't remember the white man putting a gun to your head to let Jay Kwan knock you up.
	Just saying.
	Listen, V, I appreciate the call.
	I got to move on to other callers.
	But in my view, I mean, what am I going to say?
	I'm a 42-year-old first-time father, so...
	Yeah, go for it.
	You know, go for it, like, now.
	Because, you know, time's ticking away.
	But, yeah, if you can, get into it, get busy, get birthing, because it's fantastic, and you're certainly not too old.
	Thank you.
	I feel better now.
	Yay!
	Excellent.
	Well, thanks, V. I hope to talk again.
	Let us know how it goes, and we're going to move on to the next caller.
	All right, my dear.
	Take care.
	Bye.
	Alright, up next we have Arthur.
	Arthur wrote in and said, Stefan, many callers often talk about teaching philosophy to children.
	I understand that this is possible and desirable, and I can imagine that a 12-year-old, for instance, can really benefit from more or less formal education in logic.
	With my own children being aged three and five currently, I want to ask Stefan about when and how, ideally, an education and philosophy should begin and proceed.
	That's from Arthur.
	Well, hey, how you doing, man?
	Not bad, thanks, Steve.
	Excellent, excellent.
	How are things going with your kids and language skills and sort of thinking as it is so far?
	Well, they're developing really well.
	My son, five-year-old son, is really intelligent, starting to learn to read.
	They have great language skills and they really bounce off each other.
	And his younger sister, aged three, is really trying to do everything that her brother can.
	So she's quite competitive.
	And, you know, they've been able to ask questions about the world since they were Two years old.
	And yeah, so there's no problems along those lines, for which I'm very thankful.
	Good.
	And as far as philosophy goes, I mean, I can ask questions or I can sort of give you my brain dump, whichever you prefer.
	Yeah, ask me some questions.
	Okay, and how have you been sort of managing what they learn and how they learn so far?
	Well, I try to spend quite a bit of time with them and I try where I can to explain what we're doing and why.
	Not always successful in that and I'd like to do more of that.
	And, you know, I try not to expose them to TV shows that have the wrong message, that type of thing.
	They both attended Play Centre, which is, because we're in New Zealand, it's a bit different from what I gather Play Centre in Canada is like, from comments that you've made in past shows.
	But that's kind of a parent-led education.
	Then they're also attending kindergarten, and now my son is at a state school.
	Which, you know, probably not as bad as in some other countries, but still makes me worry a little bit.
	So, yeah, and trying to talk to them about, you know, why we do the things we do in our family and trying to give them some sort of sense of, you know, making decisions in accordance with your beliefs.
	And what is the state school like?
	Well, it's a highly multicultural school, which, you know, having listened to your show, I don't see that necessarily as a virtue in itself.
	But it's actually, we had a choice of two schools, and one of them is run by this sort of very formidable, intimidating woman who They have nothing to do with the kindergarten where my kids went right next door.
	They don't seem to be very interested in getting people to come to their school.
	I mean, you know, the bums on seats will be supplied by, you know, state zoning laws and that sort of thing.
	So why do they need to bother to reach out?
	In this other primary school, there are a lot of immigrants and there are a lot of People there, you know, in fact, it's quite a challenge for me going along and there's this kind of sea of hijabs at times.
	So, you know, you could argue that it's not even that multicultural, but it kind of reflects the suburb where we live.
	And the principal of the school is very sort of engaged in making sure that, you know, the kids Learn what they're supposed to learn, that they do sports at lunchtime, and that, you know, as far as possible, people get along.
	So it seems to be, of its type, it seems to be a very good school.
	And is it, sorry to, if you can just remind me, is it the boy who's five or the girl who's five?
	The boy is five.
	The boy is five.
	All right.
	And does he like it?
	Yeah, he does.
	I actually, I spoke to him about, you know, would you like to change schools?
	Just testing things out.
	And he said, but what about my friends?
	And, you know, that's a big issue.
	A consideration for kids is being around their friends.
	Is your wife at home?
	Does she work?
	Yeah, she's at home, thank God.
	So why are your kids in school if your wife is at home?
	Well, we don't really have...
	I mean, we've got another baby on the way, and I work outside of the home quite a lot.
	So...
	Homeschooling would be really difficult.
	Sorry, why would homeschooling be really difficult?
	Well, we're just not really set up for it.
	We don't know that much about it.
	It's not something outside of a small sort of Christian community that Many people in New Zealand do.
	Wait, you're calling into this show claiming that conformity to general standards is the excuse?
	No, no, not at all.
	It's just that, you know, at this stage, my son's education would take a bit of a dip in terms of quality, at least initially, if we were to do homeschooling.
	How do you know?
	I know that, well...
	I'm not trying to be mean.
	I'm not trying to corner you.
	You say this very certainty.
	Have you sat in on your kid's school?
	Have you figured out what's being taught?
	Have you figured out the manner in which it's being taught?
	Have you figured out the values that are being instilled?
	How do you know what he's learning?
	Have you gone through it all?
	I can see his progress in reading and maths that's been really good.
	I can see that at least.
	I have been to the class during the day to pick him up, that sort of thing.
	No, no, no.
	I mean, sit in.
	You should be able to sit in on the class if you want, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Or your wife could, right?
	Because you're handing your kid over to these people for what, six, seven hours a day?
	Yeah.
	Well, look, I'll tell you what.
	At this very moment with him attending school, you know, there don't appear to be big problems with that.
	But I'm just thinking, you know, his teacher's really nice.
	I've spoken to her.
	She, you know, I've seen she's got good sort of authority within the class and is really helpful.
	And I'm really pleased with all of that.
	But I'm just thinking, well, you know, there's another few years to go of schooling.
	And it's not just all about, you know, well, he's happy there for the meantime.
	So, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Listen, it's just something to think about, and you really do need to know what's being taught to your son.
	You know how early these messages can get snuck in about, you know, girls are cool and boys are rough and, you know, there's no such thing as better or worse cultural values, everything's relative and so on, which is one of the great problems with multiculturalism is you just can't teach anyone any damn values because whatever values you teach is going to offend some other groups.
	So you've got to have this emptied out, hollow, semi-nihilistic, pragmatic nonsense that's fostered in a mere...
	It's inculcation of useless skills as a whole.
	And, you know, you go to Catholic school, you get taught a lot about virtue and values and truth and honor and goodness and so on.
	Agree or disagree, at least there's some damn center gravity of virtue that the education orbits around.
	But when you get too many cross-culturists in a particular educational environment, everything has to get stripped out.
	And usually all that's left is a vague hostility towards patriarchy and endless accusations of racism, right?
	Because it's the big problem with multicultural societies.
	Multicultural societies have huge problems in a status environment no matter what.
	But one of the biggest problems is everyone says, let's have a multicultural society...
	Which seems to involve calling white people racist all the time.
	And it's like, well, you can't have both.
	You can't have a successful functioning multicultural society at the same time as you want to call people racist all the time.
	And of course, you know, we all know what racist means.
	Racist means racist.
	White people are racist.
	No one.
	Nothing else, right?
	So I'm not saying that's happening necessarily when he's five.
	I'm not saying it's not, because, you know, this is very much embedded.
	I don't know.
	You need to look also at what it's like in New Zealand for what kind of education a teacher's getting.
	Are they getting all of this lefty indoctrination like they are in Canada and America and other places?
	Because if they are, then you're getting a socialist, a lefty, somebody who's into, you know, fantasies of patriarchy and white racism and all that.
	That's who's going to be instructing your son.
	And whether it's explicit or implicit, implicit in some ways is even worse, that may be part of what's going to be poured, in a sense, into your son's brain.
	And that is just something you need to be very aware of.
	Don't just sort of say, well, you know, the school seems fine, and, you know, toodles, off he goes.
	Um...
	I think it's really important to figure out what's being taught, what are the values that are being taught, and what are the messages that are being put across?
	Is he allowed to be proud of his culture?
	Is he allowed to be proud of his ethnicity?
	Is he allowed to be proud of being a boy?
	I don't know, but the odds aren't particularly great that it will go that way.
	Yeah, I know what you're saying, and I've sort of thought, well, if it ever comes down to You know, that he's told not to be proud of being a boy or being his ethnicity, then, you know, that'll be that.
	And then there'll be some changes made.
	And then I'm thinking, you know, you mentioned Catholic school.
	Unfortunately, the local Catholic school gives sort of an hour of homework per night to five-year-olds.
	So, you know, it feels...
	As if we're sort of squeezed in between those things in a way that's, you know, one of them might be better than the other in one way, but certainly, you know, giving a lot of homework to kids of that age particularly, I think, is important.
	Useless and potentially damaging.
	Homework is a massive scam.
	It does nothing whatsoever to improve skill sets among children.
	And it's been a while since I've looked into this, so maybe there's new stuff.
	But it's not that long ago that I last looked into all of this.
	There's no correlation between the amount of homework given and the amount of progress that children make in particular subjects.
	None whatsoever.
	Homework is a way of...
	Blaming the children and blaming the parents for teachers sucking like a vacuum.
	You know, because they give impossible, hard-to-follow, ridiculous amounts of homework, and then when the kids fail to thrive and progress, they say, well, you know, it's because they're not doing their homework.
	It's just a big cover for, you know, crappy schools and crappy curriculum and bad teachers.
	And it's another way that the government gets to interfere in your home life and in your family life.
	So that, I think, is...
	It's pretty important.
	So I'm not a fan of homework.
	I think it's a ridiculous amount of intrusion.
	You know, when you become an adult, unless you're some jet-setting executive, you know, you have your work.
	You don't bring half the factory home with you to work at night.
	It is an intrusion into home life.
	It causes a huge amount of conflict and anxiety for kids and parents.
	You know, have you done your homework?
	You know, some long weekend, right?
	Everyone's like, oh, I'm going to get home and do my homework Thursday night.
	Yeah.
	Same thing Monday night or Sunday night.
	I've got to do my homework.
	So that is not...
	I'm not a huge fan for all of that.
	Now, maybe if they control for IQ, we could find out more, a little bit more about homework.
	But to me, it's like you have the kids for seven hours a day.
	You're paid $10,000 to $15,000 to $20,000 a year per pupil.
	Maybe you could actually teach them while you have them and not demand that they have to go home and do stuff.
	Or, you know, what you should be as teachers is you should be really good enough as teachers that you shouldn't have to assign homework.
	The kids should be enthusiastic to do the work just because it's so exciting, just because it's so interesting, just because they're so curious and want to master it themselves.
	But...
	Forcing kids to do stuff is because they're not motivated and they're not motivated because the teachers are bad and they don't understand the purpose of why they're learning particular algebraic formulas or having to memorize.
	I can't remember when I was a kid I had to draw the maps of all the futile demands in England.
	Why?
	Why am I doing this?
	It's ridiculous, right?
	So, yeah, don't just dump them in there and say, well, I'm going to wait and see if there's any damage being done.
	Be proactive and figure out what's going on in the classes.
	And yeah, you know, the question is not, do you want to transfer to another school, right?
	The question, Arthur, is, would you like to be home with mommy?
	Or would you rather be at school?
	That's the real choice question.
	Because, of course, you know, bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
	I mean, if he's already got friends and a sense of social predictability and knows his teachers and knows what's expected of him, why on earth would he want to go to a new school?
	It doesn't make any...
	So saying he's happy because you're giving him another state school or private school alternative is not the same as giving him a real choice.
	The real choice is...
	Do you want to be at school or do you want to be at home?
	Being at home doesn't mean that your wife has to take on all the educational burdens.
	Of course not.
	She can get a tutor in for, you know, a short amount of time.
	Because when you think about it, and I'm sure you remember this from your own education, Arthur, but...
	The amount of time you're actually learning stuff in the seven hours that you're in school, particularly when you're five, the amount of time that you're actually learning something of value and getting individual attention, you know, I'm guessing, I don't know, but I'm guessing that your kid with, you know, half an hour to 45 minutes a day of one-on-one tutoring time, which really isn't that expensive, is going to get as much, if not more, in terms of advancing his skills as lasing about this place for seven hours a day.
	Well, perhaps you're right.
	And perhaps before confronting my wife with the idea of, hey, would you like to homeschool the kids, which sort of just sounds like a lot of work that she doesn't know that much about, I'm thinking, well, I need to go and scope out not only his school, but the local homeschooling networks to see What it's like and what would that actually mean as well?
	She knows.
	I mean, your kid's not a 14-year-old physics genius, right?
	I mean, teaching kids the basics at that age is not that complicated.
	Yeah, that's right.
	It's not.
	You need some kind of guidance and curriculum, of course, but, you know, The value of being able to go, oh, look, it's the, you know, the let's tolerate LGBTQ people but not tolerate straight people part of the curriculum.
	I think we'll just gloss right over that.
	That's quite valuable from my point of view.
	Yes.
	So as far as, and I just wanted to point something out because I said, is he allowed to be proud of his ethnicity?
	I don't mean that he should take pride simply for his ethnicity.
	It's just that if he's the only ethnicity that's not allowed to have pride, that's an implicit criticism.
	So yeah, we can strip all ethnicities of any capacity for pride in their own heritage, or we can allow everyone, but if it's the only kid singled out, that's unfair.
	That's sort of what I meant by that.
	So as far as teaching philosophy goes...
	The first thing, of course, that the way you do it is the same way that you've taught them everything else, which is just consistently practicing it around them.
	I'm sure your kids are going through this phase where you have no idea where they're getting all their words from.
	It's not like you've taught them every word.
	They just have a whole bunch of words that just seem to magically sprout in their brains from weird dust particles full of syllables in the air.
	So the way that you teach philosophy to begin with is you teach sort of integrity and honesty and honor and dignity and all of that by modeling that behavior.
	You know, never ever make a promise to your children that you don't keep.
	I mean, barring ridiculous circumstances and so on.
	Just, you know, I've said this before.
	When my daughter was very young, I was going to go down to give a speech in New Hampshire.
	We stopped at a...
	Um, motel, and she was dying to try the pool, and we had to leave pretty early in the morning to make it for my speech, and I said, don't worry, I'll get up in the morning and we'll go to the pool, I promise, blah blah blah, right?
	She went to sleep in the morning, it's cold, it's raining, it's windy, and you know what we did?
	We got up and we went to the pool.
	Because, you know, it's not something I really wanted to do at all, but it's better than the alternative, which is she doesn't know whether she can trust what I say.
	So just be that clear, be that consistent, and make sure that you keep your word in that way and tell them the truth.
	And if you're not going to tell them the truth, explicitly tell them you're not going to tell the truth.
	What does this mean?
	I'm not telling you right now.
	When you get older, right?
	What is, you know, what is this story about?
	Well, not appropriate, you know, figure it out when you get older.
	And that'll bother them, but at least you're honest about not telling them something in particular that you don't want to tell them at the time.
	And so modeling that kind of consistent behavior, that kind of moral and honorable and decent behavior, that is how you primarily are transferring philosophy to kids.
	And I also wanted to mention as well that the best way to teach your kids...
	The value of debate is to give in to them when they out-argue you.
	So that way, debate has a purpose.
	There's no point teaching kids abstract stuff.
	What they want is for stuff they can use to get what they want in the here and now.
	And so when my daughter, as she did from a fairly early age, would catch me in a contradiction, would point out something that I had said earlier would win a debate with me, I folded.
	I folded like a cheap suit dropped from a hanger.
	I mean, and I would give her what she wanted because she had out-argued me or she'd remembered something or she'd pointed out a contradiction or something like that.
	And that way, it was of value for her.
	To listen to my every syllable, to watch my every mood, you know, all that kind of stuff.
	Or when I would say something, this is the curse of these three unholy words, right?
	So when I would say something that was not a particularly good reason as to why we couldn't do something, she'd just say, Dad, not an argument.
	And, you know, if I wasn't making an argument, I'd say, you know what, you're absolutely correct.
	Let me try that again, and let's keep working at it until we figure out something that makes sense for both of us.
	So, when you give kids, you know, if you want to teach them how to use, I don't know, a robot arm, then hang candy at a medium height so they can use it to grab it.
	You know, if it's something material that they can use to help get what they want, then they will be very interested in learning it.
	So, teach them the value of philosophy by modeling it and then by allowing them to use it At your expense to their advantage and they will just naturally adopt that kind of stuff because it works for them.
	It gives them a practical benefit in the here and now.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	It certainly does.
	And I think it dovetails quite nicely with a realization I had recently through doing the Jordan Peterson self-authoring program because I'm a professional and, you know, I've I've got a career and I've got a business in that profession and that's all going really well.
	And it was fascinating for me when I sat down to do the self-authoring and think about my ideal future and all of that sort of stuff.
	It was all about my kids.
	And, you know, there was some stuff that I kind of do a lot of effort towards in my life that wasn't on my list of goals.
	And I thought, my goodness, I'm I'm expending energy here.
	Maybe I need to be more focused on my kids.
	And then, of course, the self-authoring program says, what are you going to do about this goal that you have?
	And that was really interesting because I thought, well, I want to be the type of father where the kids want to respect me and want to hang out with me and want to take on board my good qualities and ask me questions.
	By being a nice guy to them.
	You know, kind of like what you've said about being in a relationship.
	How do you make that work?
	Well, you do your best to be a good person.
	And I think that, you know, what you've been saying to me about modelling things is very good advice.
	And I recently did a parenting course and that was really great.
	And they said some stuff that Really made me prick up my ears.
	They said, you know, what about family values?
	And we eat fish, but we don't eat meat.
	And my kids never...
	I mean, they go to a buffet or something.
	They could eat meat.
	I'm not going to...
	It's their choice.
	I don't police it.
	If some adult puts meat on their plate, I'll say, no, we don't eat that.
	But...
	They could go and get sausages from the barbecue with their cousins if they wanted to.
	I'm not going to tell them off.
	And yet that's a value that they've adopted for themselves.
	And I'm just thinking that's something that we're explicit about with them, but it's really the implicit watching what their parents eat and occasionally talking about it.
	And kids really do absorb Parental values.
	And if we think that they're going wrong in life, we need to look at ourselves first.
	Right.
	The other thing that's true as well is that rather than having your children ask you whether they can do something or whether they can have something, and then you saying yes or no, which either makes them passive or argumentative in a negative way.
	You know, if my daughter says, I want to do X or I want to have X, it's like, yeah, make the case.
	I'm Tell me why.
	Convince me.
	Sell me on what it is that you want to do.
	And that gives them the challenge and the reward of making a good case.
	Now, again, at three, that's more tricky, but certainly at five, you can start to do that kind of stuff.
	I think that just give them whatever you can do to give their will and their language skills and their reasoning skills traction to the point where they can use it like caterpillar treads to get what they want, to get where they want to go.
	That is going to implicitly teach them the value of thinking critically, of assembling an argument, of bringing reason and evidence to get what they want.
	And then they will immediately, you know, like if you want to change a light bulb, you need to...
	Get on a chair.
	So you get the chair.
	You don't have to be told that the chair is really valuable.
	You just use it to get what you want.
	And you want to make a philosophy, a methodology they can use to get what they want, within reason, of course, or according to reason.
	And that, I think, is the best way to do it.
	Yeah, I kind of had the sense that explaining to them that, you know, there was Aristotle, and he lived thousands of years ago, and he invented...
	Eudaimonism, which is, you know, acting in accordance with what you know to be excellent.
	This doesn't seem like a great starting point for teaching kids about philosophy and that's not what I meant.
	So, yeah, what you're suggesting about having some really long conversations and instead of moving on from, you know, I want this to know and then moving on to the parents' agenda, Just dwelling on what the child wants and why they want it and how they're going to get it.
	Yeah, that seems like a great idea for me.
	It'll be a massive shifting of gears just because of my own personality and the way that I tend to do things.
	I'm really willing to do it though because I see the benefit.
	It's becoming more and more necessary as my son You know, they throw up new challenges every five minutes.
	We're about to have a third one.
	So I've really started to think about being a parent and your idea of modeling things.
	Well, yeah, what am I modeling that I don't want to model is a really good question, too.
	Thank you very much for those suggestions and thank you for the suggestion about going into the school and seeing if I'm really okay with what's being taught.
	I do have to say that New Zealand is a place where I don't know anyone who demands to be called stupid pronouns.
	I think most people who want to talk about race start from a point of view of it's important for everyone to be proud of who they are And, you know, but there's no guarantee that it's going to stay like that.
	Right.
	Okay, well, I'm glad that helps.
	Let us know how it goes, and let's move on to the next caller.
	Thanks very much.
	Thank you.
	All right, up next we have Jenna.
	Jenna wrote in and said, Recently, I read an article by a feminist in which she states that women should not be permitted to raise their children full-time because of, quote, equality, end quote.
	Since we already know that women overwhelmingly prefer to bring up their children as opposed to working outside the home, the argument seems to be that feminism is not about what women want.
	What possible value then does feminism hold for women if it sacrifices their real preferences for an ideological objective that makes most women miserable?
	Who benefits?
	If feminism is not about what women want, is it not utterly worthless, especially to women?
	That's from Jenna.
	Hey Jenna, how you doing?
	I'm well, how are you?
	I'm well, I'm well.
	Do you want to expand on your thesis?
	Because, you know, once you uncork that genie in my brain, it's the kind of stuff to stuff it back in the bottle.
	I could fill in some background where I am right now, but...
	Okay, I study at a university in Western Canada, and I have recently come out, for lack of a better word, as...
	I'm anti-Marxist and anti-feminist and by that I mean in my papers and during the lectures.
	I'm an English student at the moment and recently I wrote a piece of fiction for a class which was flagrantly anti-feminist as well as anti-Islam and anti-Marxist.
	And that led to some feedback from my prof, as you might expect, which led to a meeting in her office, wherein I was defending my point of view that contemporary feminism is a valueless movement that seeks to subjugate not only men, but women.
	And her point of view was that what I was describing was a very fringe movement.
	But I don't believe that.
	Well, wait, wait.
	Her rebuttal to your arguments was that what you're describing is a fringe movement?
	That's not an argument.
	I mean, I can call anything a fringe movement if I want, right?
	Well, I mean, her point, I guess, was, you know, they're there.
	It's Most people aren't like that and that's really on the, you know, that kind of trash was being said in the 80s when I was in graduate school and this is nothing new and, you know, it's not going anywhere.
	So again, no arguments whatsoever.
	No.
	Okay.
	Just wanted to point that out for everyone, but I'm sure you noticed it, but go ahead.
	Well, it's...
	Because people tend not to engage me with an argument.
	I'm ready to have one.
	I'm just, I'm raring to go.
	I'm waiting for your book to come out, The Art of the Argument, you know, so that I can, and yeah, no one wants to, you know, really talk about it.
	Well, this is why, you know, when you don't teach people how to think, they end up having to be conformist or blind rebels, and they can't engage in arguments.
	And so they just have to pour themselves like liquid into any fashionable ideological container.
	I mean, this conformity is driven by a lack, the lack of individuation that results from people just not basically being able to think differently.
	So, yeah, ideologues and propagandists all love a society that doesn't teach kids how to think, and it quickly hardens into this anti-argument stance where people don't even know that they're not making an argument, and that's a very strange world to be in when you do know what it is.
	Right, and especially since one of her remarks, it's a piece of fiction, but, you know, every book is an argument, and One of her points was that it was polemic.
	And I think, well, everything that we study at this institution is a polemic against traditional values.
	So why can't I write a polemic?
	I don't know.
	I just, you know, I just tell you, Jennifer, when you said one of her remarks, I just thought it was R-E-M-A-R-X. Remarks, you know, like, remarks again.
	Remarks, let's remarks this.
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, and polemic, again, calling something a polemic is not an argument.
	I'm sorry?
	I said I am marked for expulsion.
	Right, right.
	That was just a bad joke.
	Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Well, no, no, you.
	Okay.
	Yeah, so I looked up a little bit.
	I couldn't find the argument that women shouldn't be allowed.
	I'm sorry.
	So women should not be allowed to stay home with their children because we're all about female choice.
	But, you know, 43% of women who are like well-educated and high achievers, 43% of them leave their jobs when they have kids.
	43%.
	But apparently the wage gap is a complete mystery.
	Yeah.
	I'm not working.
	I'm home taking care of my kids.
	So, as far as why women should not be permitted to raise their children full-time, well, there are career women who are not married.
	Maybe they don't want to get married.
	Maybe they don't want to have kids.
	And one of the reasons they want to drive women into the workforce is they cannot compete with men who have wives at home.
	Because men who have wives at home have women to handle the finances, pay the bills, raise the kids.
	They have an equal partner in running the household.
	Therefore, they're much more available for work and travel and all this kind of stuff.
	And especially if it's a single mom.
	A single mom can't possibly compete with a man who has a wife or a wife who has a husband if the husband's staying home and so on.
	So, of course, women want, like feminists and other people, they want to drive women into the workforce because it cripples the competition.
	I mean, it's just a resource gathering stuff, right?
	The other thing, too, is that women, as you point out, housewife has received so much negative stereotypes and denigrations throughout the last couple of decades.
	And now housewife means, you know, like, you know, a fat, slovenly woman with her hair in rollers, a housecoat of indifferent cleanliness, who's baking some Twinkies for the kids while...
	Talking on the phone and flicking her cigarette ash in her coffee cup, right?
	I mean, this is sort of the cliche.
	Somehow there are warts involved as well.
	But the reality is that housewives are the happiest women on the planet in the West, almost without any close second.
	I mean, it's enormously fulfilling.
	It's enormously—and, you know, I'm a househusband in many ways, so I get it.
	I understand.
	It's a pretty great life, especially after labor-saving devices came in.
	You know, this is the crab of it.
	It really wasn't that much fun being a housewife when you had to take the clothes down to the river and beat them against a rock to clean them.
	You know, that was really terrible.
	Hard work, like a woman's work is never done.
	Night and day, morning till dusk, especially when you had a lot of kids, right?
	Once you had fewer kids and labor-saving devices came into the household, man, being a housewife is pretty sweet.
	It's a pretty good life.
	Kids are off in school all day.
	You can have some coffee, chat with your neighbors, have some tea cake and have a book club.
	It's a pretty great life in a lot of ways.
	And it's just, you know, I don't know why all these women came along and said, wait a minute, we smell female happiness and contentment somewhere.
	Ooh, time to get in there and rile them up and make them unhappy with their happiness.
	And it's like, oh man.
	Since the dawn of time, women have been having kids, dying in childbirth and doing endless amounts of housework, morning, noon, and night, and cooking and cleaning and child raising and so on.
	And then finally, for about 10 years, they had a pretty good at home.
	And then the feminists come along and say, oh, you're not really happy.
	You just think you're happy.
	You just think you're enjoying yourself.
	You just think these suburbs are good.
	You just think your husband loves you.
	You're really trapped and enslaved.
	Oh, yeah, that's right.
	Because when I go to an all-inclusive resort, which I haven't done For a while, when I go to an all-inclusive resort, I totally feel like a prisoner.
	So it is just, to me, pretty sad.
	But I understand that they don't want children being raised by their moms, because then there are a lot of women out there who are happy, right?
	If women are unhappy, then they're more likely to seek political solutions.
	You know, you don't go to the emergency when you're full of the glow of health.
	When you've got, I don't know, half a tennis racket sticking through your ass, then sure, you're off to the emergency.
	But in the same way that the priesthood had to make you unhappy and damn you in order to offer you salvation, What does feminism have to offer happy and contented and fulfilled women?
	Which is why feminism is like this Iago attempting to prick and deflate any apparitions of human happiness that appear in the female heart.
	They've got to go in there and say, oh, that's not real happiness.
	Oh, you're dependent on a man.
	Oh, that's not...
	You should be out there.
	You should exercise your mind.
	Why are you just...
	Oh, you spend your whole life driving around kids and cooking like some slave.
	Why don't you get some nanny to do it?
	You're a tiny, educated, intelligent woman.
	You've got to go out there, discontent, discontent, discontent, And, you know, maybe you can tell me why, but it seems to me that it's pretty easy to make women discontent.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, it's like, what was wrong with, you know, suburbs and a working husband and enough kids to make you happy and enough money to be comfortable?
	And why are women so peculiarly upsetable when it comes to just people coming along and whispering in their ears like, You think you're happy, but you're really not.
	And they're like, wow, you know, maybe I'm not.
	Does that make any sense?
	Like, it seems something quite common.
	Well, it does.
	And a few things occur to me.
	And one of them is that, you know, you said that these women are...
	Are convincing women that this is not what you want.
	But according to this article written by an Australian writer or journalist or something, it's worse than that.
	They're telling them, don't care what you want.
	You need to be represented in the workforce.
	And it's not fair to women who can't afford to stay home with their kids and have to work.
	Those were sort of her points.
	These women hate women.
	Well, the question is, why don't these women have a husband to take care of them?
	Why do they have to go to work?
	And this is the old question around what we really need is affordable and high-quality daycare.
	No!
	No!
	No, no, that's not what you need.
	Maybe what you want, maybe what the feminists want.
	But no, no, I mean, that's so insane.
	No, they've wiped out the ideal of family life, and then they try to, they're looking in the wrong direction for how to fix it, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	It's like wiping out the parking lot at the university where I attend to encourage people to seek out other methods of transportation rather than fixing the bus system so that someone will want to take it.
	It's ridiculous.
	Well, how about having fewer students in the university so they don't need these giant classrooms that are environmentally unfriendly as a whole?
	But no, it's not about women's happiness.
	Right.
	And that's not even complicated, and I'm sure you know these statistics, but this is, as feminism has taken root, and it's not feminism, it's socialism, it's Marxism, that's all it is.
	Okay.
	It's Marxism in comfortable shoes.
	That's all it is.
	Nothing to do with women.
	And we know that because looking at the election in France, you have this woman, Marine Le Pen, who's supported by the majority of French women and who could be the very first female head, female president in France, a break through the glass ceiling, a huge feminist triumph.
	And the feminists hate her.
	And they hate the French women who are voting for her.
	Why?
	Because she's not a Marxist.
	She's a socialist economically, but she's for closed borders and French sovereignty, and that goes against the international obsessions of Marxism and leftism.
	So, no, they don't.
	I mean, go talk to a feminist, a feminist, like a...
	General academic feminists.
	Go talk to that feminist about Ayn Rand.
	Go talk to that feminist about Ann Coulter.
	Go talk to that feminist about Michelle Malkin.
	Go talk to that feminist about Margaret Thatcher.
	Go talk to that feminist about...
	And they'll hate those women.
	Sarah Palin.
	They'll hate those women.
	Why?
	Because they're not on the left.
	It's got nothing to do with women and everything to do with programming women to be leftists, which is why you're not getting an argument when you're not towing the literal party line, the party line.
	So, I mean, we know this because as more and more of this toxic feminism has seeped into the mindset of men and women in the West, women have become progressively more and more unhappy.
	This is not me making stuff up.
	The statistics, the data is very clear.
	Every single decade that feminism lasts, women get unhappier and unhappier and unhappier and unhappier.
	They don't give a rat's ass and a half about women, about female happiness.
	It's about using women as levers by which to undo the foundations of the Western civilization that protects women.
	It's about using women as egg-based bioweapons against the freedoms of the West.
	It is about using women, weaponizing women against men so that you destroy the relations between the genders, so that white birth rates go down, so that men are terrified to get married, so...
	I mean, it's got nothing to do with what women want.
	women in general in the West don't say, for instance, really want to live under Sharia law.
	I think, I hope...
	I hope!
	I think some men might be thinking about it these days.
	But anyway, that's a topic for another time.
	But yeah, I mean, it's not about anything to do with female happiness or female empowerment or anything like that.
	It's always and forever just using susceptible women in order to buy a weapon, destroy the foundations of Western culture and Western civilization and the free market.
	That's all it's about.
	Okay, so Steph, Has it always been?
	I mean, why do I care?
	Why do I care what it's been, what it was 100 years ago?
	Was there a time when the resources in society grew to the point where women could legitimately have political and economic equality to men?
	Sure.
	But that was happening anyway.
	I mean, that was happening anyway.
	What...
	Was it needed?
	Was it needed at one time?
	This is what I'm trying to figure out.
	Was a giant government program needed?
	No, of course not.
	Equality before the law?
	Sure.
	But equality before the law, like, so women had virtually no capacity to participate in the free market in any, you know, managerial role or anything like that.
	Why?
	Because all they did was have kids.
	Like, I'm sorry, that's just the way nature is.
	Nine months of pregnancy, breastfeeding, more pregnancy, no control over fertility, and religions that say have kids, no birth control, right?
	So women had nothing but babies.
	Now, upper-class women, different story and so on, but that was like one-tenth of one-tenth of one-percent of the population sometimes.
	So what on earth was the point?
	I mean, I asked myself, what the hell is the point of educating all of these women when almost half of them just leave their jobs anyway?
	Right?
	What's the point?
	I mean, it's because we have all of this fiat currency that we can allow women to LARP as men.
	It's ridiculous, right?
	Because if you only have...
	You can only have two hunters in the tribe that have to go roaming across the landscape and they have to try and bring down woolly mammoths with willpower and toothpicks.
	You can only have two hunters in the tribe.
	Jenna, are you going to choose men or women in the past?
	I'm going to choose men.
	If I'm ever in a burning building, I mean, I want whoever is rushing toward my third story window to have blood type testosterone.
	But I'm pragmatic.
	Right.
	And also, at a time where you actually had to swing a sword, you wanted men to be the fighters because most women could barely lift the damn sword.
	And couldn't march around in armor.
	Like now, it's joystick-based drone crap.
	Sure, you can have women in there, but that's not because of equality.
	It's just because physical strength and endurance is no longer essential or necessary for some aspects of warfare.
	And so it wasn't that there was this big giant oppression.
	It's like, sorry, Women had to have babies, and they had to breastfeed, and they were debilitated from that, and they were weakened by that, and there was risk that they would die through that process, you know, and that's tragic.
	Sure as hell isn't the fault of men.
	You can blame Mother Nature, but apparently she's a woman too, and not much of a feminist, I might add.
	So, it wasn't anything to do with oppression.
	So, sure, when we get all of this, you know, the latex condoms are invented in the 19th century.
	Before that was like sheep's bladders or something like that.
	And although in Afghanistan, often it seems to be goats, according to recent drone footage, but...
	So, when women could get control over their fertility, when there were extra resources, when you didn't have to pump out five times the number of kids you wanted to survive because so many of them died in childbirth, when you had some wealth, some medicine, some control over fertility, sure, great, that liberates women and men from this endless cycle of just having to get and have and bury kids.
	But it wasn't, you know, just that was happening in and of itself.
	You know, did it need to be pushed forward a little bit politically?
	Oh, sure, I've got no problem with that whatsoever.
	I mean, I don't care particularly.
	It was going to happen anyway.
	How was it going to happen?
	How was what going to happen?
	How was it going to happen anyway?
	The equality under the law, women having the right to own property and have a job or whatever?
	Well, because men defer to women.
	And if women want it and it's possible, men will provide it.
	Okay.
	I mean, at least in the West, not so much other cultures, but, you know, if it's possible, then Western men will generally try to provide it because it's a voluntary marrying scenario.
	And men want the highest quality women that they can get a hold of.
	And so, yeah.
	And of course, as health improved, then women tended to live longer than men, and therefore women would inherit a lot of property, right?
	So when women didn't outlive men because a lot of them would die in childbirth and so on, then it didn't make much sense to give women a whole bunch of property rights because they couldn't go out and sign a lot of...
	Contracts or own a lot of property because they were having kids and then dying.
	But when medicine improved, then women could live longer.
	And then generally, as you know, women outlive men.
	Apparently nagging is the same as being a vampire.
	I'm kidding.
	I'm kidding.
	So women outlive men, and therefore women were accumulating a lot of property.
	And therefore, of course, they needed equality under the law when it came to contracts and disposition of property and all that kind of stuff.
	It makes sense, and that's how things go.
	And so it was going to happen anyway.
	It was already in the process of happening.
	I mean, I think it was Wyoming that first offered female suffrage because they wanted to, you know, it was a bit of a sausage fest out there, and they wanted to attract more women.
	So it was happening anyway.
	You didn't need some big giant movement to make it happen.
	And this is always the case with this kind of stuff.
	Like the environment was being cleaned up long before there was environmentalism.
	Health and safety was being implemented in the free market long before there was OSHA and stuff like that.
	I mean, they all just come along and pretend that they're creating a wave that they're actually just riding.
	That's sort of inevitable.
	And if you look at the cost of it, let's say that without the feminist movement, it might have taken another decade or two.
	For these equalities to be achieved, okay, but at least you wouldn't have the giant crap show that's followed.
	You know, with massive family court interventions, with men fleeing marriage, men fleeing, being parents, men going MGTOW, men freaking out about watching the smoking crater of their father's lives that occurred after their mothers called in the airstrike of state power on, you know, formerly somewhat robust testicular situations.
	So it is, you know, I'd rather, I'm a bit of a slow and steady guy, like I'd rather get it a little bit later and not have it turn to crap.
	Case selected.
	Yeah, yeah, I guess that's that deferral of gratification thing.
	Although I will tell you, I was not born case-elected.
	I was born in an entirely R-selected environment.
	No men around, butch women, promiscuity all over the place.
	So I was definitely R-programmed.
	It's just that philosophy can turn that around if you let it.
	Okay.
	Did I lose you?
	We were about to say something else.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	All right.
	I think we're done anyway if we want to move on to the next call.
	From the form?
	I don't...
	I'm sorry, Jenna.
	You're coming and going.
	Sorry, Jenna.
	Call back in if there's something else you want to chat about.
	Really appreciate the conversation.
	A great pleasure.
	So thanks for the call.
	Alright, up next we have Nick.
	Nick wrote in and said, I am in a relationship with an incredible woman.
	She is beautiful, intelligent, virtuous, fun, and passionate.
	She embraces her femininity and respects my masculinity.
	She supports me in all my endeavors and relishes being a perfect homemaker.
	The only problem is that she wants to get married and have children.
	As soon as I realized that this desire wouldn't go away, I told her that she must proceed with our relationship, knowing that those things will never happen.
	It was very hard for her to accept, but she stayed.
	The only thing she asked in return was that I keep an open mind.
	It's been about a year since that conversation, and my opinion regarding children hasn't changed, yet I feel her maternal instinct intensifying.
	It increasingly manifests itself in conversations and daily affairs, and sometimes I can't help but seriously consider letting her go.
	She's young, but nonetheless is still on the clock.
	I love her enough not to deprive her of what I can now see is her greatest value, which is being a mother one day.
	How can I clear my thinking so that I can make the right decision?
	That's from Nick.
	Hey Nick, how you doing?
	Hey Stefan, I'm good, how are you?
	Is she around?
	Uh, oh, she is actually.
	Is she listening?
	She just got back home from work.
	She's not listening right now, but I told her that, uh...
	It was possible that you'd probably want to have her join the conversation.
	Yeah, I want to talk to you a bit first, but if she's around and if she'd be open to it, I'd love to chat with her as well.
	Yeah, she's a little nervous, but she'll come if ever need be.
	Okay, yeah.
	Why don't you want to have kids?
	Why don't?
	Well, there's a lot of reasons why I don't want to have kids.
	But the bulk of it pretty much comes down to short-term and long-term reasons.
	In the short term, I mean, I don't want to have children, but if I did want to have a child, my girlfriend would definitely be staying at home to raise it.
	There's no way I'm putting the kids in daycare.
	And so, therefore, I'd be supporting two people plus myself.
	And I don't want to allocate any time and resources to a family when there's so many other things I want to accomplish.
	Like what?
	What do you want to accomplish?
	There's a lot of entrepreneurial endeavours that are currently underway and that have been underway.
	So you'd rather have money than children?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Why does it have to be one or the other?
	Are you saying that all wealthy people, like no wealthy people have children?
	No, I'm saying that having kids right now would be capping my potential at the knees.
	Why?
	Well, can you picture yourself having done your IPO while being a dad?
	I mean, there were fathers doing this stuff.
	I mean, do you think that...
	I would be magically better if I didn't have children at the moment.
	Children can be a great motivator for these kinds of things as well.
	Children can help you push through some of that resistance because, you know, certainly what I do now is very much informed by the fact that I'm a father and it gives me a commitment and a focus and a clarity and a passion and a courage that I wouldn't have otherwise.
	Right.
	I guess another major factor, another major contributing factor would be Whenever I do gigs, I am surrounded by a lot of dads and they just seem so burnt out and 50% of the time, for the lack of a better word, unhappy.
	And I can't picture myself arriving home and having the second shift start, you know, the routine, the homework, the...
	The bathing, the this, the that, and then having my own time at 11pm and then passing out and starting out the whole thing all over again the next day.
	But your wife would be home, right?
	Does she want to stay home with kids?
	Oh yeah.
	Oh yeah.
	Okay, so that would be mostly her job and you'd get most of the fun stuff.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's hard to explain.
	I really feel like having kids right now would be capping my potential at the knees.
	I mean, there's so much resource allocation that I want to hand out towards other things.
	I mean, those are mostly the short-term reasons, but the long-term reasons, once I've achieved financial independence, and I still don't know if I want kids, but once I've achieved that financial independence, I've never known I've never known what it's like to be completely financially free.
	And knowing myself, I'll probably be driven to accomplish even more.
	And I'll probably end up seeing the children as obstacles.
	And that's not something I'd want to burden on anyone.
	Sort of that resentment.
	Was your father an entrepreneur?
	At some point he was.
	And what happened?
	Well, he was a national karate champion.
	Yeah, he represented Canada.
	No, he wasn't.
	Yeah, he represented Canada for seven years.
	No, no, no, you're mistaken about that.
	Nick, he can't possibly have been a national karate champion.
	Do you know why?
	Uh...
	No.
	Because he was a father.
	And therefore all of his ambitions were capped off at the knees.
	So you must be completely mistaken.
	Maybe he faked it.
	Maybe it was an animatronic version of your father.
	Maybe it was a hologram.
	Or maybe all of the footage and the trophies were invented.
	But he can't possibly have been a national karate champion because he had kids and therefore he was crippled.
	Oh, he didn't have kids.
	Oh, he didn't have kids.
	So he achieved his goals.
	And how old was he when he became a father?
	He was 30.
	He was 30 when he became a father.
	I'm the oldest of four and he had me at 30.
	Okay.
	And then what happened to his life?
	He started his own dojo with my mom.
	They were both karate champions.
	And yeah, he grew his school.
	He was pretty successful.
	No, he didn't.
	He can't possibly have done that for the aforementioned reasons, right?
	He had children.
	Therefore, he can't possibly have grown his own dojo being a successful entrepreneur.
	Well, the dojo was set up by then.
	Yeah, but he ran it, right?
	He grew it.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So how could he possibly have done that if he had children?
	He found a way.
	Oh, isn't that interesting?
	He found a way.
	Yes.
	And your mother, did she stay home with you guys?
	Or did she work also with your father?
	Or both?
	Running a dojo allowed him to alternate a lot.
	So he would stay home and play with us and do things with us sometimes.
	And then sometimes it was my mom.
	Right.
	Most of the time it was my dad because the dojo allowed him a lot of flexibility.
	And my mom had some part-time work elsewhere sometimes.
	Okay.
	So your parents didn't even have the luxury that you have, which is having a permanent full-time stay-at-home mother and homemaker, right?
	They didn't?
	They didn't have because they were both working, whereas your wife is going to stay home, right?
	Yes.
	So you're actually in a better position to grow a business than your parents were who grew a business.
	Are you a lot less competent than your parents?
	Is that the problem?
	Even with the support of a wife at home, you can't make an entrepreneurial thing work very well, but your parents, both of them working, were able to do it with four children.
	Maybe they're just a lot more competent than you, in which case, maybe you shouldn't be an entrepreneur.
	Does that make sense?
	I understand.
	I wouldn't say that.
	I would just...
	I rebut that by saying that I'm trying to get the most favorable math, if that makes sense, resource-wise, economic-wise.
	And the second kids come into the mix, then the math isn't as favorable.
	So if you were to talk to your parents and they were to say, well, our dojo business could be twice as big if our four children didn't exist.
	Do you think that they would say, well, it would be way better to have a bigger dojo or more dojos in our franchise rather than having four human beings we love and who we are loved by?
	That it would be way better to have other people's kids be taught karate more than have our own kids.
	Do you think they would say that that's a good deal?
	It would probably...
	I've grown bigger without us, but then again, my mom insisted on having kids, so I don't know if...
	So it's impossible to tell.
	No, but do you think they regret you existing because they could have had more dojos?
	Oh, uh...
	No, I wouldn't say that.
	So they prefer having children to having more material success, if that was the trade-off, right?
	Have you asked them?
	That's a tough call, man.
	I had to...
	Not in that sort of weighing one side or the other type of framing, no.
	Why not?
	I mean, this is a pretty big and important question that you have, right?
	And if your parents were entrepreneurs who also had a happy and successful family, I assume that it's happy and successful, you speak very positively of them, but if your parents were entrepreneurs who in their late 20s and early 30s had both a thriving business and a family when both of them were working, wouldn't they be the people to ask if What the values were and what the decisions were and what they regret and what they're happy about and what they wish they'd done differently.
	I mean, you have entrepreneurs who are parents right there in the house.
	They raised you and they're available a phone call away and you've never asked them about this.
	I'm confused.
	The family's broken up, Steph.
	It's not doing well.
	Oh, when did that happen?
	My parents were divorced, but I did have the conversation with my dad regarding kids, and he pretty much told me, he's like, you know, I asked him the question when I was 25, and he said, you know, when I was your age, I wasn't anywhere near thinking about having kids.
	He told me that around his late 20s, right before he turned 30, he sort of His perspective sort of shifted and he felt like he wanted to leave something behind and pass things on.
	And that instinct that he described so vividly never really swept over me.
	But we did have that conversation.
	So he's happy that he had children rather than more money.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And how much...
	But I feel like I'm different than him in that way.
	Well, but if you've already come to conclusions that you can't have an entrepreneurial life and children, then you have a false dichotomy going on, right?
	Let me put it to you in terms that probably are more clear, because this is kind of bound up in history for you.
	Mm-hmm.
	If you believed that you could only have great sex with a variety of partners, and if you believed that having the same partner meant your sex got boring and stale and repetitive and uninspiring and scarce, then you would have what's called a false dichotomy.
	If you want great sex, you can't settle down.
	If you settle down, you'll get bad sex infrequently, right?
	That's called a false dichotomy, and that's an impossible choice.
	I understand that.
	But if you say, okay, well, I can have the best sex with someone I settle down with, then that removes that false dichotomy.
	So if you say, well, I can't be successful if I have a family, then you have to choose one or the other, then of course that's going to have an effect on how you feel and what's going to kind of wash over you, so to speak, right?
	No, I understand that it's doable.
	I don't reject the idea that it's doable.
	It's just I'm trying to boost my odds as much as I can.
	Well, and that's another false dichotomy, which is to say you're a better entrepreneur if you don't have children.
	I don't agree with that.
	I don't think that's true.
	I think that having children can really sharpen your skills as an entrepreneur, can make you more ambitious, can make you more driven.
	So I reject that dichotomy as well.
	But let me ask you this.
	Listen, I hope I'm not being a total jerk.
	I'm not trying to be at all, but I appreciate you being this clear about the conversation.
	No, Steph, don't hold back.
	I want this, and this has been looming in my head for a long time, and this is good.
	How much, and you don't have to give me detailed figures, but how much are you making as an entrepreneur at the moment?
	Well, at the moment, they're mostly ventures that are in.
	I mean, I did.
	I'm doing.
	I'm self-employed at the moment.
	You're already fogging me, bro.
	How much are you pulling home at your age as an entrepreneur at the moment?
	Is it zero?
	Is it close to zero?
	What is it?
	Just under six figures.
	Okay, so you're making sort of $80,000, $90,000 a year as an entrepreneur at the moment?
	Self-employed, yes, with other Other parallel projects going on.
	And how many hours a week are you working?
	Anywhere between 10 and 16.
	Oh, a week?
	Well, 10 and 16 hours a day.
	So I guess sometimes I take a day off.
	Over 100, I say I'm dedicating to all my ventures.
	Alright, so let's do some math.
	I'm gonna give you 80k a year.
	Okay, hang on a sec.
	So let's just say you take some time off.
	So let's just say instead of 100, say 80, right?
	Okay.
	80 hours a week times 52.
	So you're working 4100 hours a year, right?
	Okay.
	So you're making 19 bucks an hour.
	$19.50 an hour.
	Yes.
	But like I said, some of the...
	Yeah.
	So as far as being an entrepreneur goes, you're not doing very well.
	But a lot of that is learning.
	Dude, you're in your late 20s.
	And as an entrepreneur, you're making normalized $41,000 a year.
	I mean, with regular hours, right?
	Yeah.
	Except you've got crazy hours and you're making 19 bucks and change an hour.
	And I'm not criticizing, I'm just, this is the basic math, right?
	Right.
	So that's not very good.
	And I don't mean to be annoying, pull my experience, but, you know, by the time I was your age, I'd already started and grown a software company.
	So I'm comparing it to that.
	And the reason I'm saying all of this is not to try and make you feel bad or anything like that.
	But if you're looking at a big pot of gold, you know, well, if I just work for another couple of years, I could make five million dollars or something like that, right?
	Well, then I'd be like, okay.
	But how long have you been doing this entrepreneurial stuff?
	Well, I co-founded a video production company three years ago, and me and my partner had a falling out, so I ended up selling all my shares.
	not doing entrepreneur, like when was the last time that you had, that your source of income was solely a regular old paycheck job? - Four, three years ago.
	Four years ago?
	Okay, so you didn't do entrepreneurial stuff before the age of 25, is that right?
	No.
	Okay.
	So four years into it, you're making 19 bucks an hour.
	Yes.
	I don't know that it's kids that are holding you back.
	Four years into it, you should be making more than 19 bucks an hour, in my humble opinion.
	Fair enough.
	You can get out of high school and make 19 bucks an hour.
	You know that, right?
	Yes.
	So you've got four years in.
	You're working crazy hours.
	You're hurting your health.
	It's got to have an effect on your relationship with your girlfriend, right?
	I mean, you're just not there a lot.
	I mean, you are there.
	You're freaking exhausted, right?
	So you're burning yourself out.
	You've got no relationship with your girlfriend.
	You don't want to have kids for 19 bucks an hour?
	And that's optimistic.
	That's assuming you're only doing 80 hours a week.
	If you're doing 100 hours a week, it's even worse.
	The income portion of what I'm doing right now is 40 hours a week.
	The side ventures are things like I'm developing a board game, so that obviously doesn't pay.
	We're doing a lot of play tests and a lot of this.
	It's all development.
	But if you're working 100 hours a week, you're making 15 bucks an hour.
	That's less than a waiter.
	No, I'm not saying that some of this stuff may pay off.
	I get that.
	But how long have you been working these crazy hours?
	Has it been since you're 25?
	27.
	Okay, so two or three years, you've been working 80 to 100 hours a week to make yourself $15 to $19 an hour.
	You understand?
	That's not good.
	I'm not criticizing.
	This is the basic math, right?
	I understand.
	I just don't get why you're taking into account things that are in development.
	Okay, when are these things going to pay off?
	What's your business plan?
	What's your marketing plan?
	What's your paperwork?
	I mean, if I were an investor and I were to ask you for all of these things, I mean, are you just white-knuckling and grit-teething your way through massive amounts of work and calling yourself an entrepreneur?
	I mean, when is this stuff going to pay off?
	What's the math?
	What's the ROI? When is all of this stuff going to happen?
	And how are you going to know if it's working in the right direction or you're just doing a blinding amount of work and crossing your fingers?
	Well, I'm on the cusp of purchasing a rental property.
	That's to get the passive income streams going.
	And the board game is a creative venture.
	It's something I'm working on with former colleagues.
	There's creative cinematic content that I'm starting to develop on YouTube that revolve around a lot of the topics covered on your show.
	But you did not answer my question.
	How long have you been working on the board game?
	Just under a year.
	And...
	When is it going to start generating income?
	It'll be released this summer, and developing on how the Kickstarter campaign goes could be pretty quick.
	So, what are your projected sales?
	What is your market research?
	What is the competition like?
	Like, what is the market size like?
	I don't have any figures for you, Steph.
	Thank you.
	But you've been working on it for a year, right?
	And again, I'm not trying to be a jerk, right?
	I appreciate the questions.
	This is good grilling.
	It's been only development.
	You've been doing all the fun stuff and none of the work.
	I mean, you've been doing a lot of work.
	Don't get me wrong here, right?
	But it's like, yeah, it's kind of cool to work on a board game and we're going to try and sell it.
	I mean, how are you going to sell it?
	Is it going to go...
	I don't know about board games.
	I mean, is there a place...
	Kindle for books that you can sell board games?
	Well, it's currently entered in a contest, and we've gone past the first two filtering stages, and then if we make it past the next one, then that puts us into contact with publishers.
	And then from that point, they could ask for 10,000 units, and then that's...
	No, but they're not going to ask you for 10,000 units unless they see a business plan, unless they see...
	The market share you expect to get and how you expect to get it and production costs and competition analysis and so on.
	And ideally, they would really like to see experience in the field, right?
	I mean, is this a contest that goes on every year?
	Yes.
	And have you talked to people who won the contest in the past and found out how it went for them?
	Yes, we went to a convention and got some good tips from the ones that were successful.
	And they're making good money off it?
	Half of them are.
	Well, for half of them, it's given them a platform to develop more stuff and then it starts becoming profitable because you're not going to make crazy bank on your first game.
	So it's a year and a half until you can even potentially sell it, and then you have to find, I assume, six months to find out whether it's at all successful, and then what, do you work for another year and a half before you can start to make some real money?
	So we're talking, what, three or four years before you start making some real money?
	With the board game, yeah.
	What do you think of that?
	I have the time and resources that allow me to...
	No, you don't have the time.
	Not if you're working 100 hours a week or 80 hours a week.
	You don't have the time.
	Because, I mean, doesn't your girlfriend want to see you?
	Oh, she sees me.
	When you're not working 100 hours a week?
	Yes.
	Yeah, when I'm...
	Not working.
	Well, we just took a trip to go.
	I went to go visit the in-laws for the first time.
	It was a good three weeks, and I devoted all that time to her.
	I mean, I make up for it.
	Right.
	So you might be giving up being a father, having children, keeping the love of your life, this woman who wants children, for a board game that might pay off Potentially, in three or four years.
	Does that seem like a good trade to you?
	Well, it's real estate investments that I'm going to be making soon.
	I've saved up a lot of money.
	Yeah, but real estate investments aren't going to need quite as much time as a board game, right?
	Well, if I'm doing all this stuff myself, they will.
	But if you're doing all the stuff yourself, then it's not very profitable.
	I mean, if you're out there unclogging toilets and changing light bulbs, then you're not making...
	That's not being a very good entrepreneur.
	Right?
	The whole point of how...
	You said it's a passive income stream.
	A passive income stream means you don't have to go over there and do all the work.
	Well, it's not 100% passive, but I've spoken to a lot of people that own rental properties and they pretty much say, like, if you want to make...
	If the thing's going to be profitable, you can't be calling contractors all the time.
	You've got to learn the basic stuff and then call contractors when it's needed.
	And then eventually you get a big enough, you get enough units where you can hire a property manager.
	But obviously I can't start there.
	Well, I don't know much about property management, but I certainly know that when I lived in, I grew up in apartments in England and in Canada. I grew up in apartments in England and in Canada.
	And we sure as hell never called the owners.
	ever.
	It was always a superintendent.
	It was always somebody else.
	Local.
	And how long is it going to take for you to learn how to fix things and run things in a building, like the plumbing, the electrical, the whatever?
	I mean, isn't that going to be a massive amount of work?
	Oh, yeah.
	But I can shadow people that are doing it.
	And, you know, I'm driven and it's...
	Wait, so people are already doing it, so you're paying them to do it?
	No, I mean, owners that I know.
	People that own either triplexes or four units or six units.
	Oh, so you're going to do unpaid work following them while they make money so that you can get a passive income stream by doing their work?
	Well, I got to learn it because, you know, it helps you negotiate with contractors when you can analyze the job that needs to be done.
	And it's all, you know, things that need to be taken into account if you're going to be getting into this kind of stuff.
	Well, no, I mean, alternatively, you could develop relationships with contractors that you trust, right?
	And that way you don't have to figure out everyone's job in order to feel secure that you're getting a decent deal.
	Yeah, it's a constant balancing act.
	That's true.
	Is your father giving you advice on any of this entrepreneurial stuff?
	He's encouraging me.
	He sees that I'm driven.
	He sees that I'm motivated.
	He gave us a really good work ethic growing up, so he's proud.
	And he thinks that you're making sensible decisions with your time.
	Does he know that you're making between 15 and 19 bucks an hour after a couple of years in the game?
	Has he asked for business plans and sales projections and competitive analysis and all this kind of stuff?
	I fail to see how the 19 bucks an hour is fair.
	The revenue-generating part of what I'm doing is 40 hours a week.
	The board game is to satisfy my creative craving.
	I'm an artist.
	I work in the film industry, so that's sort of a side project.
	It's a passion project.
	And the real estate stuff, I've crunched the numbers and it does make sense.
	But the $19 an hour, I mean, I'm making $42 an hour at the creative gigs I'm doing at the moment.
	Wait, sorry, you're making $42 an hour as a consultant or a contractor, is that right?
	Or as a paid, like, salaried employee?
	Contractor.
	Okay, so you could actually be making more than $80,000 a year just working 37 and a half hours a week doing the work that you're doing as a contractor, right?
	Yes.
	So being an entrepreneur is cutting your income in half?
	At the moment, yes.
	And it has been for the last couple of years?
	Well, this is something I've embarked on since I'm 27.
	I've made the decision to do this at 27.
	I've pretty much learned all the ins and outs of my industry, and I'm ready to use that as a stepping stone to move on to bigger and better things.
	So you say you want to be an entrepreneur to make money, but right now being an entrepreneur...
	I'm sorry?
	I mean, the entrepreneurial stuff is things, the major, the most of the payoff of that It's going to be in the years to come.
	I'm putting things in place right now.
	No, I don't think you are.
	I'm sorry to be annoying.
	I really, really don't think you are.
	This is my sort of, I've been an entrepreneur for, oh gosh, I guess a little over, I don't know, a quarter of a century now.
	Yeah, almost a quarter of a century.
	So this is what I would say to you.
	Let's go back in time to when you were 25, right?
	Now, what were you making hourly when you were 25?
	I was 25, probably 30.
	Okay, okay, so let's, and now you're making 42, right?
	Yeah.
	So let's split the difference and just say 30, 36 bucks an hour, right?
	Why split the difference?
	Because we have to account for the fact that you were making 35 then and 42 now, so we can't say that you were making 42 the whole time, right?
	Sure, okay.
	Because we're trying to figure out how much money you could have saved if you were working as much as you are now, but making 37 bucks an hour, right?
	Well, when I co-founded the video production company, I was making 120 an hour.
	But that business flamed out because of conflicts with the partner, right?
	Yes.
	So we'll talk about the reliable income that you can count on, right?
	Okay.
	Okay, so let's say that you decide to work.
	Again, we'll go back to sort of 80 hours, right?
	So 80 hours a week on average.
	80 hours a week on average times 52 weeks in a year.
	Give us 4,160 hours.
	Let's times that by 37 hours.
	So you could have been making $154,000 a year over the past three years or so on average.
	Rather than the 60 to 70 to 80, right?
	So if we subtract, say, $70,000 a year from that, then it has cost you $84,000 to do this entrepreneurial stuff over the past couple of years.
	If we multiply that by three years, you're out over a quarter million dollars.
	By pursuing this entrepreneurial stuff rather than taking the same amount of time you've been pouring into the entrepreneurial stuff and working at your $37 on average an hour job, right?
	So it's cost you, given the work that you've done, it's cost you a quarter million dollars.
	I wouldn't be growing my knowledge.
	Yeah, that doesn't put any food on the table.
	Growing knowledge in how to build a board game that might pay off potentially in five years.
	I mean, what would you do if you had a quarter million dollars now?
	That's more than it costs to raise an entire kid.
	If you had a quarter million dollars now...
	You could buy a rental property or at least put a big down payment on it.
	You could invest that money.
	You could have bought Bitcoin three years ago.
	Whatever, right?
	So if you had an extra quarter million dollars, and again, this is all outside of taxes and all, but you're paying taxes either way, right?
	So this is sort of my question.
	Your goal is to make money, but you left a quarter million dollars on the table.
	I took a risk.
	I did take a risk.
	And that risk cost you a quarter million plus, right?
	Yes.
	So the problem is not whether you have kids or not.
	The problem is you're not making great decisions when it comes to being an entrepreneur, right?
	You started a business, it flamed out because of conflicts, and you don't seem to have much paperwork or analysis done for your board game, and I don't know what else.
	You've got some YouTube channel you might start and so on.
	So you're going to start a YouTube channel.
	When YouTube is pulling monetization from everyone who has even remotely controversial opinions.
	You spell kittens with three Ts and suddenly that's like KKK and you demonetize, right?
	And so the YouTube channel...
	Imagine throwing kids into that five-year mix though.
	No, no, you're not.
	You're not understanding what I'm saying.
	Okay.
	All right, let's go.
	Let's go forward in time.
	So let's say that you can make...
	$45 an hour going forward, right?
	Your pay is going to increase over time, right?
	Yes.
	So let's say you're going back to 80 hours a week times 45 times 52.
	So we're talking close to $190,000 a year that you could make if you wanted to put the same amount of time into your hourly salary as you are into your entrepreneurial stuff, right?
	Let's multiply that by three years.
	So that's $561,000 that you're leaving on the table to some degree.
	I mean, you'll still be making some of that, right?
	Because you're working maybe 40 hours a week or whatever, right?
	Yeah, we'll divide that by two.
	So $281,000 is what you are leaving on the table by pursuing this entrepreneurial stuff if it doesn't pay off versus just working an hourly rate, right?
	Right.
	I mean, Paul Joseph Watson has 900,000 subscribers, which it took him many, many years to build up.
	And he's making...
	$26 a day, $23 a day, $30 a day.
	I don't think YouTube is kind of the money-making machine that a lot of people think that it is.
	There were obviously ways to make money in the past, but if you're going to do anything based on what I do, then you're not likely to be monetized.
	So it's going to be brutal for you that way.
	I think I've allowed myself to do those creative ventures because of the time factor.
	If I'm being honest, I've allowed myself to take on those creative ventures because, you know, they satisfy the artist in me and the real estate stuff and the stream of income that I'm actually creating.
	That's like the moneymaker cash cow moving forward.
	Sure, but if you want to satisfy your creative side, why does it need to cost you the equivalent of a full-time job extra every year?
	That's not satisfying your creative side.
	That's being a slave to financial delusion, in my humble opinion.
	I mean, you can have a creative outlet all you want.
	Listen, I worked full-time and I did a podcast on the side.
	I worked full-time and I wrote novels on the side.
	I worked full-time and I wrote plays.
	I mean, you can have a hobby which satisfies your creative side.
	And trust me, when you have kids, your creative side is going to be, if you have kids, your creative side is going to be satisfied pretty quickly.
	But that's what I'm doing.
	I'm working full-time and having those things on the side.
	That's what I'm doing.
	Yes, but...
	But it's eclipsing the love of your girlfriend and the potential future of your family.
	So your creative side is costing you money.
	It's not making you money.
	And it might cost you your relationship, and it might cost you the chance to be a father.
	Right?
	She's going to leave you, right?
	She wants to be...
	Well, she said she wouldn't.
	Okay, well, we'll talk to her in a sec, right?
	Yeah.
	So she doesn't work, right?
	Yes, she does.
	Oh, she works now, right?
	But she'd quit if you had kids?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And I'd actually be in favor of that.
	Yeah, and I assume she would be as well, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	So she wants to be with you to the point where she's willing to give up being a mom?
	Yes.
	Huh.
	It's wild.
	Well, maybe you guys just don't really want to have kids that much.
	But if you don't want to have kids, just don't tell me it's because of all of this money-making stuff that you want to do, because it's not making any money.
	In fact, it's costing you a huge amount of money.
	It might cost you your entire relationship if she decides that she wants to have kids.
	Is she sort of your age?
	She's young.
	She's 23.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	That's why she doesn't have that on-the-clock feeling, but the maternal instinct does manifest itself.
	But I do think that I have more value to offer with the projects I have coming.
	You might, but the only way you're going to be a successful entrepreneur is the way that people win the lottery.
	It's going to be purely by accident because your planning and your paperwork is woefully deficient.
	I'm just telling you that as an experienced entrepreneur.
	I mean, if I was an investor, I'd just say, good luck with that.
	You don't have a clue what you're doing.
	I'm just telling you that straight up, right?
	I mean, that's my experience.
	But Nick, let me ask you this.
	It's a good reality check.
	It is a good reality check, and you need to, you know...
	Being a creative person is...
	A lot more number crunching and a lot more market research and a lot more figuring things out than most people like to imagine.
	I mean, I remember making a film many years ago.
	It was a finalist in the Hollywood Film Festival and didn't make it to the Oscars.
	But nonetheless, it was a good film.
	And I remember going to see a speech from a director, a famous director.
	I won't mention his name.
	And the director said this.
	He said, this is what it's like to be a director.
	You wait for a year for the right script to come along.
	You wait for another year for the people you want to work with to be available.
	You spend another six months scouting locations.
	You spend another three months getting everyone arranged, getting everyone together, getting everyone rehearsed, getting everyone ready to shoot.
	And then you're finally, after a couple of years of getting ready to make a movie, you're standing there, and your cameraman comes up to you and says, we've only got time for one shot.
	We're losing the light.
	LAUGHTER This doesn't even mention all the financing you have to do.
	All of the investors you have to get in place.
	I mean, it's crazy.
	And it comes down to like five minutes where you've got to capture magic like lightning in a bottle.
	The amount of work that I have to do to produce a podcast is ridiculous.
	Sort of reminds me of what...
	I think Dr.
	Phil was making some joke about this where I think one of his parents was saying, Well, what do you do?
	You're only on an hour a day.
	What do you do with the rest of the time?
	It's like, but for him to do that hour takes a staggering amount of work.
	So, here's my concern, Nick.
	I'm...
	I don't think you have the right skill sets around you to help you succeed.
	I don't think you have the people who say, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great to be creative.
	It's wonderful to be creative, but here's the things that you need to do to have the greatest chance of success.
	You need to plan.
	You need to have your spreadsheets.
	You need to have your drop-dead dates.
	You need to have your measurables.
	If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
	You need to have a standard of failure.
	Very, very important when you're an entrepreneur.
	Like, you know, you see dogs, they're chasing after a car, right?
	At some point, they figure out that they can't catch it.
	And do you know what they do?
	They stop, they drop their legs, and they turn and go home, right?
	How do you know when you failed?
	Knowing when you failed...
	Or what standard you will use to test whether you failed is an essential part of being an entrepreneur.
	You have to know when to stop pouring good time and good money after bad.
	You have to have that standard.
	Otherwise, things drift along, things bump along, and if you do happen to succeed, it will be entirely accidental, which means you're very unlikely to be able to capitalize on that success.
	And it also means that it's almost impossible for you to reproduce it.
	And the success of what I've done here is not just because I get in front of a microphone and talk about whatever's on my mind.
	I mean, it's just a lot of planning, a lot of figuring things out, a lot of research, a lot of conversations, a lot of spreadsheets.
	I mean, it's important.
	You have to know what you're doing.
	Success, as you know, is 90% Perspiration and 10% inspiration.
	Now, you want all the inspiration stuff, which means that it's very unlikely.
	Even if you are successful, that you'll be able to maintain and sustain that success, which is maybe what happened with the last video thing you were doing and making $120 an hour.
	It flamed out because you were making money.
	But you didn't have a plan.
	And if you're surrounded by people who also don't have a plan, maybe you can be the big creative guy, but you need someone out there.
	You need the Wozniak to your jobs.
	You need someone out there who's going to rein you in and keep you focused and who at least is going to do the grunt work of figuring out how things are going to happen.
	Because if everyone's just in there for the creative stuff, you're very unlikely to succeed.
	It's like golfing, blindfolded.
	Sure, you'll sink a putt once in a while, but you never win a game.
	And so if you don't have people out there who are asking you these tough questions and who are making sure that you're making sensible decisions, you're just going to be in this workaholic blur of the now.
	And if you do happen to trip randomly over a piece of diamond, you're not going to be able to hold on to it for long because you don't have the structure, you don't have the planning, you don't have the methodology, the systems in place to make sure that success can be grown and maintained accordingly.
	And replicate it because, you know, you're not going to write the next Monopoly, odds are.
	And even the guy who wrote Monopoly didn't make a success of it, ended up being bought out.
	And there was other people who made a success out of it.
	And he made like 500 bucks for the whole damn thing.
	So reproducibility is really important.
	Structure is really important.
	Planning is really important.
	Paperwork is really important.
	So here's my concern, Nick.
	And, you know, take this as annoying older entrepreneur guy telling you this.
	This is my prediction, and it's a heartbreaking prediction.
	I think you're going to end up neither as an entrepreneur, nor a wealthy man, nor a husband, nor a father.
	My concern is that the way you're heading, you're not going to get anything you want.
	And I'm committed to doing my best to try and help you get what you want.
	But that means telling you that you don't have any systems, you don't have any plan.
	You're just pouring massive amounts of work into a variety of things, keeping your fingers crossed.
	And you're not treasuring your time.
	You're not valuing your time.
	You're not putting a dollar value, a price value on your time.
	You're just working and working and working and working.
	You know, if you're a farmer, you don't just sort of randomly run around the woods throwing seeds.
	You can do that for 18 hours a day, and it's a lot of work.
	You've got to climb through all the bushes.
	You've got to throw all these seeds out.
	You're just not going to get a lot of food out of it.
	And you say, well, I've worked really hard as a farmer.
	It's like, well, you worked hard, but did you work smart?
	Did you get your right crops?
	Did you put in your fertilizer?
	Did you dig down the holes?
	Did you put up the scarecrow?
	Did you cover everything over?
	Did you make sure there was enough irrigation?
	Did you do all the smart stuff, which means you can actually work less but get way more food out of things?
	There's an old rude saying that I remember when I first got into the entrepreneurial world.
	And it's rude and it's coarse, but it's instructive.
	There's an old bull and there's a young bull at the top of the hill.
	And at the bottom are all of these cows.
	And the young bull says, Let's go!
	Let's go!
	I'm running down the hill and I'm going to bang a cow.
	I'm going to go right now and I'm going to run and I'm going to charge and I'm going to work and I'm going to sprint and I'm going to bang a cow.
	And the old bull says, you want to run down a hill and bang a cow?
	He's like, yes!
	Bull says, no.
	That's not what you want to do.
	Let me tell you what you want to do.
	You want to walk down the hill and bang all of them.
	Because if you go too fast...
	If you're in a rush.
	If you just pour work in.
	If you don't plan.
	If you're not patient.
	If you don't take things slowly.
	Methodically.
	Methodically.
	Sorry.
	Brain fraud.
	Methodically.
	Patiently.
	Persistently.
	You don't get what you want in life.
	And I don't think...
	I'm not a betting man, but if I was, Nick, I would say that the way you're going, you're not going to get the girl, you're not going to get the fatherhood, you're not going to get the wealth, you're not going to get the entrepreneur stuff.
	And that would be obviously the worst thing ever, right?
	Yeah.
	So if you wanted, I mean, I'm not saying you have to be a father.
	You can't tell people that kind of stuff, right?
	But if you are going to work this hard, be skeptical.
	Be critical.
	Get someone who knows what the hell they're doing in an entrepreneurial situation to come in and really give you advice.
	And be skeptical towards your own plans.
	The number of show ideas I throw out is ridiculous.
	I saw a video from way back in the day.
	You know, the only real Aerosmith album I know is Pump.
	It's a great album.
	There goes my old girlfriend.
	A great song.
	Anyway, creepy guys, but a great song.
	And I saw some documentary on it once.
	And they're like, oh, you know, we've just come up with all these names for these albums.
	We have no idea, you know.
	You get really desperate, you know.
	Like Inspector No.
	9.
	I'm sure that's somewhere in there because it's something I saw on a shoebox has.
	Inspected by Inspector No.
	9.
	Let's make that the album cover.
	And so, right?
	And it is a lot of work.
	And you need people.
	And you can see, you know, in this documentary, it's probably worth watching.
	Janie's Got a Gun, which is, I guess, one of Steve Tyler's most famous songs, or at least it used to be.
	They have this producer in there who looks completely dweeby, like too dweeby to be a dungeon master.
	And Steve Tyler's like, oh, this is the beginning.
	Do you like it?
	Do you really like it?
	I can't tell.
	Do you like it?
	He's really messed up and nervous and insecure about this song that turns out to be not just a hit, but a pretty powerful piece of music.
	And there's just a lot of preparation.
	And there's a lot of work.
	Everybody wants to rush up on stage and start singing.
	But how much work do you have to do beforehand?
	And you want to get out there, be an entrepreneur, make lots of money.
	But I think without the planning, without the structure, without the skepticism, I don't know how it's going to happen.
	Or if it does, I don't know how it's going to be sustained.
	And I don't want you to end up in a situation like you did with your last venture that was successful, which blew apart, right?
	Yeah, I appreciate the feedback.
	There's a lot less interpersonal conflict when you're following the paperwork.
	You know, everyone agree on this plan.
	We've all worked on this plan.
	Does everyone agree on this plan?
	Then there's a lot less conflict when things go...
	When things...
	When you get the hiccups and eruptions that you always do as an entrepreneur, there's just fewer conflicts because everyone's agreed on the plan.
	It doesn't mean no conflicts, but at least you've got some place to refer back to.
	Mm-hmm.
	Does she want to talk to me at all, or...?
	Oh, you want to come?
	Oh, seriously?
	Yeah, you're on.
	What's her name?
	Hi, Stefan.
	How are you doing?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing?
	I'm all right.
	I've been nervous.
	I never thought I would actually speak with you.
	I think you're tired now.
	Wait till I talk for a while.
	Just kidding.
	Can I give you a name?
	Do you want to just give me a nonsense name or a real name or just a first name is fine?
	I'll give you my name.
	My name is Dayani.
	All right.
	I'm pretty white for that.
	Dayani?
	You can call Dayani if you want.
	If you don't mind.
	I'm sure I'll swallow half my tongue if I try that too often, so I appreciate your patience with that.
	That's all right.
	I'm used to it.
	So, Dayani, how much do you want to be a mom?
	Like one to ten.
	Very badly.
	Very badly.
	That's by far my biggest dream.
	So is it like 10 out of your life's goals and ambitions?
	Yeah.
	If he doesn't want to have kids at all, are you going to stay with him?
	Would you give up kids to be with him?
	It's a long life.
	I know.
	I'm sorry, I'm getting a bit emotional.
	That's good.
	I got no problem with that.
	So we talked about it previously, and...
	The thing is, I always knew I wanted to have family, but I never thought I would, because I thought that's not for everyone, and I wasn't blessed with it.
	I'm Catholic, I apologize if I use words like that, but I just thought it wasn't for me.
	And ever since I met him, I started imagining that it could actually be possible to have these things.
	And at the beginning of the relationship, he actually used to talk about it with me.
	For a good first year of relationships, we used to talk about kids and we used to talk about marriage and all this kind of stuff.
	And he seemed enthusiastic about it as well.
	Like, I mean, we used to go out a lot and used to travel quite a bit.
	And we always took a lot of videos of it.
	And we used to start videos by saying things like Gabriel, Alice, that was supposed to be our kids' names.
	Oh, that's when mom and dad do our first mat.
	It's the first time doing this and that.
	And after any of that, he just...
	He sat down with me, had a conversation.
	He said he didn't want to mislead me and he never saw himself having kids.
	And that was...
	Sorry, Diane, how long was that after you started going out that this changed?
	About a year, I would say.
	About a year.
	So that was like a year and a half ago or so.
	Did he sort of say, I might not want to have kids?
	Or did he say, did he go from, I want to have kids to, I don't want to have kids?
	He went from most likely we will have kids.
	We never even said we're gonna have kids.
	We just used to talk about kids.
	For me, it was just a given.
	At this point, he never said, oh, I want to have kids.
	We just talked like, well, we have kids.
	That was just it.
	When we have kids, this and that.
	And we used to talk about how they would look like and their names and the sports they would play together and the things we would do as a family.
	And he went from that to just talking about it less and less and less gradually.
	At some day, he just stood out with me and he said he probably would never want you to have kids.
	He won't say it's impossible because we never know what's going to happen tomorrow, but it's very, very unlikely to happen.
	I said you should proceed with the relationship knowing that you'll never have kids with him.
	You said most likely.
	No, you never said never.
	But anyhow, that was the first conversation and after that we had some other conversations about it and he kept saying the same thing.
	And for a while I actually thought about leaving and I told him because I couldn't imagine myself never being a mom.
	But at the same time I couldn't imagine myself having kids with anyone else either.
	Because I definitely don't want to be a single mom.
	That's for sure.
	Nick, can you hear me?
	Yeah, I can hear you.
	I'm sorry.
	Am I too far from the rest of the world?
	No, no.
	I don't know if Nick can hear me if I've got headphones on or what.
	No, no.
	I took the headphones off.
	Okay.
	Nick, you know you didn't mention this part, right?
	That you had said to Diane for a year and a half that you wanted to have kids.
	No, it was...
	It was like, hey, you know, look at that kid.
	Oh, you know, that could be...
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Don't even...
	Nick, you did not say that you led Diane on for a year and a half, talking positively about having kids.
	You never mentioned that the entire hour that we've been talking, and you certainly didn't mention it in the message that you sent to us.
	It was never said in a serious tone.
	Oh, for God's sake...
	What do you mean it was never said?
	Are you talking about the names of your future children, but you were kidding?
	It was a lot of...
	You know how sometimes the idea is better than the reality?
	It's just like it's a playful thing.
	It's a playful thing to dangle children in front of a woman who desperately wants to have children, but it's just kind of plainful and not serious?
	I don't quite follow.
	But when I found out that she was in it for real, that's when I made it absolutely clear, because I thought we could have...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	You talked about...
	Hang on, hang on.
	You talked about what your future kids would look like, but you didn't think she was in it for real?
	No, because at 21, you can be abstract about these things.
	I'd done it before.
	It was no problem.
	So you talked about wanting to have kids, and she believed you.
	I mean, Diane, you thought it was serious, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	So, you must have talked about it in a way.
	I mean, I'm going to respect Diane's intelligence enough to know that she knows the difference between when a man is joking and when he's not.
	So, Nick, you talked about having kids in a way that she thought was serious.
	Not imminent, right, but serious.
	Did you know that she knew it was serious or thought it was serious?
	The second I realized that this was misleading, I cleared it up.
	I'm really confused here.
	You talk positively about having children.
	You talk about their names.
	You talk about what they're going to look like.
	And then you seem surprised that she took you seriously.
	It's never been an issue with dating in the past.
	The people that know me...
	It's a vibe I give off.
	I'm not a family man type of person.
	And it's just...
	No, no.
	You were talking about, I mean, unless Diane's mistaken, which I don't think she is, but you were talking about the names of your kids, what they were going to look like, which is completely leading her on as to you want to have kids, right?
	You understand that, right?
	I understand that, but we've had this talk before.
	It's been cleared up.
	It sounds hazy right now talking about it, but we've had this discussion.
	Diane, was it hazy for you for the first year and a half that he wanted to have kids?
	Was it like kind of a maybe or was it just a, well, we're in sync with that?
	Sorry, I'm sorry, I just made your motion.
	Could you repeat the question, please?
	Because I was counting my head.
	Sure, no problem.
	For the first year and a half, when he was talking about the names of the kids and what they were going to look like, You didn't have any doubt, if I understand this correctly, you didn't have any doubt that he wanted to have kids, right?
	With you.
	No, I was certain that we would have kids.
	I never thought they would be right away.
	I always thought it would be like maybe five, seven years from now, but that would eventually happen.
	I never thought he was ready to be a father.
	But I thought he thought about the idea and that was exciting to him, even if I wasn't a far, far away preacher, but there still was something that he would like to try at some point in his life with me.
	So that's pretty much it, I guess.
	And I know I asked before if it changed dramatically, like it went from yes to no.
	Did it change suddenly?
	Like, was it just sort of one day where it's like, No, that was really as I, I don't know if you could understand before, but I tried to say was that, that we would eventually talk about it last and last and last.
	Oh yeah.
	Sorry.
	You did mention that.
	Right.
	And, and after a while, he just sat down with me and he openly spoke about it.
	And then he said, uh, it was very unlikely that we would ever have kids.
	And, uh, ever since that day, we talked about it several other times.
	And for a while I really considered living because I couldn't see myself not being a mother, but at the same time I decided to stay simply because I didn't see myself having kids with another man either.
	Because I want my kids to have a father.
	I don't want to be a single mom, that's for sure.
	And second, I want my kids to remind me of their father at the same time.
	I don't want to have kids And see traces of them, it doesn't matter if it's their looks, or is their personality, or is their, I don't know, the accent, or the way they walk, or simply if they, I'm sorry, I don't want to see me, but if not, it's more enough, or I don't even know.
	They don't place me, like, something I don't like about their father that I see in them.
	Because even the things that I don't like about Nick, when I think about seeing those traces in a child, I think I will...
	Yeah, pissed about it, but I'll find it funny at the same time because it will remind me of him, you understand?
	And when I picture myself having kids with other men that don't look like a man I love, don't look like a man I appreciate, that have personality traits that are attached to somebody that I'm not in love with, I feel like I would still love my kids, but I wouldn't be as good as a mom, and I don't want to be a mom if I can't be the best mother I can possibly be, you understand?
	So at the same time that I thought about leaving and maybe being single for a while and then meeting new people and maybe end up marrying and having kids with them.
	That was not possible because I didn't see myself in front of other people and I didn't see myself marrying other people and having their kids because, I don't know, I just couldn't.
	So that's why I decided to stay because in my mind it was like...
	I don't want to say last of two years because it's not even I'm very happy with him, don't get me wrong, but I don't think...
	I would ever be complete without being a mom.
	And I don't think I would ever be complete either being married and having kids with someone else.
	You understand?
	I do, I do.
	Now, it's a pretty important question though, Diane.
	Would you have started dating Nick if you would have known that he didn't want to have children?
	Honestly...
	Honestly, I don't know because when I started dating, I wasn't looking forward to dating whatsoever.
	I had just gotten out from a previous relationship like maybe five months earlier and I was still pre-hang up to my ex.
	So I have known Nick for the exact five months before I started dating and we became good friends, at least I thought we were good friends.
	You know, throwing hits on me and then eventually I was like, no, that's a very good guy.
	And the 13-hour card in the last one because he wasn't that much of a nice guy.
	And I just tried.
	And a couple months in, I really, really, really felt they played in love with him.
	And the ideas of children were already there, because even before, when it was Matt, I know by that time I knew it was a joke, but one of my very first conversations he said as a joke that our kids would look like very well, like they would look like models because, let's see, I'm mixing, he's mixing, he just said they look like models.
	So in my mind, In that context, the more we started dating, the more we started talking about our future together, I never thought it was possible that we would never have kids.
	But sometimes our friends, it's very complicated.
	I really am not sure.
	Maybe if we started dating before my ex and I knew from the beginning that he never wanted to have kids.
	Since I was actually thinking about my future and thinking about having a relationship and maybe forming a family, maybe no, I wouldn't have started dating him.
	But when I started dating him, I wasn't thinking about having a family, I wasn't thinking about...
	But it wouldn't have gotten serious, right?
	Yeah, I was not looking for anything serious.
	I just wanted to kind of restart my life slowly, you know, one thing at a time.
	I was not really in that vibe back then, so I don't know.
	Do you miss him, Diane, when he works these crazy hours?
	If I miss him?
	Yeah, he was saying that he's working, like I know that you just had the three weeks.
	Of course I miss him.
	I text him all the time and say I miss him.
	Little cute emotions.
	Yeah, of course I miss him.
	But I understand and I'm supportive of it and he knows it.
	I know he's working hard to beat our future and I'm very proud of him for that.
	So yes, I miss him, but it's understandable.
	Because if he became a father, I mean, he might very well not be there.
	I mean, I've known women who have very, very workaholic husbands or fathers to their children, and they tell me they feel like single moms.
	I mean, they don't have the same financial worries necessarily that single moms have.
	But as far as their husbands or the father of their children's involvement in their children's lives...
	They feel like single moms.
	I understand that.
	I honestly don't think that I would feel like a single mom, first of all, because I would not be.
	And second, because he's not there often, but when he is, he's very present.
	I don't know if that makes any sense, but he makes up for it, as he said himself.
	So I don't think that would be a big of a problem.
	And I would understand, once again, that he's doing this for the family.
	So that would be very appreciated.
	Do you think that your children would rather have, I mean, if they love their father, they would rather have their father around more than less, right?
	So you could sort of make that choice about whether you're willing to have him work that hard away from the family.
	But what do you think your children would want the most in a father?
	Of course, the kids would prefer a father that's more present, but as himself, if he doesn't work as hard and I don't work as hard, we're going to live in a cardboard box.
	So I don't want a father that's present all the time either, but it's not providing for their family because unfortunately...
	No, I mean, of course.
	Can I make a guess here, guys?
	Sure.
	Are you both very attractive people physically?
	I find myself very pretty, but I don't know.
	We're nines.
	Yeah.
	We're cute.
	Right.
	Is there any concern that you have, Diane, that you might not be able to find as attractive a man to be the father of your children?
	No.
	That's going to sound cocky, but I have been proposed to six or seven times in my lifetime by supposed best friends that would just find love with me and propose to me.
	That's really not the case.
	I know I would find several other men to start a life with.
	And I'm not saying there's any reason to not feel this way, but tell me what is so special about Nick that you would be willing to give up what you call your biggest dream, which is to be a mom, in order to be with him.
	Because you don't actually get to be with him that much.
	This is what I can't quite understand, right?
	And I'm just looking at this from the outside, and I'm just a guy on the internet, so don't take anything I'm saying seriously.
	These are just questions popping into my head.
	But Diane...
	You say that you'd be willing to give up being a mom in order to be with Nick, but Nick's working 100 hours a week.
	Or 80 hours a week.
	You don't get to be with him that much anyway.
	No, but honestly, it depends.
	Some weeks are worse than others, some weeks I really don't see him, but when it's regular weeks, if I can call it that way, half of his home he can do it from, half of his work he can do it from home.
	So even if I'm not there besides him, cuddling or whatever, or I don't know, watching a movie or anything together, I can still...
	We come every now and then and have a kid and we'll talk and we have our meals together, we have dinner together and usually like he studies a lot but he will bring his books to bed and I'll bring my own books to bed and we'll read side by side and we will cuddle every now and then too and every other night we just don't do anything.
	We don't watch movies, we don't read, we don't study, we don't do anything.
	We just stay in bed before we fall asleep for like a good hour and a half and we just talk.
	And that's at least twice a week, I would say, in average.
	Okay, so you do see him somewhat.
	But how do you feel, right?
	Because you got kind of emotional earlier, and I wanted to sort of figure that one out.
	How do you feel about this change from talking about how wonderful your kids are going to look and what their names are going to be to...
	I've heard two things.
	He says, I don't want to have kids at all.
	But you say, he says it's very unlikely that you're going to have kids.
	So I don't know if it's not at all or very unlikely, which are two very different things.
	One is kind of more tortuous than the other.
	The other one is more clear.
	He says it's like a 95% chance we won't have kids.
	And is that true, Nick?
	Is it still a small chance you might want to have kids?
	Well, in order to hedge...
	Her getting her hopes up, I said she should proceed with the relationship knowing that I will not be giving her children.
	I said I wouldn't be ruling it out, but she should.
	It's so little that she should proceed telling herself that it won't happen.
	So that's 0%.
	You might as well have had your balls shot off in a war, right?
	Let me get 0% chance for kids.
	That's what you want Diane to understand, right?
	Yeah.
	No, I was going to go get snipped, but then it would have...
	It would have felt like real zero percent.
	She's seen an interview with Cernovich saying that he picked up chicks at the club until he was like 35 before he settled down and became a dad.
	So I guess that sort of plays in her mind when she sees all these great dads telling how when they were younger they didn't want to have anything to do with it.
	Yes, but I think that Mike changed when he met the woman, as did I. I mean, I was never a dying-to-become-a-dad kind of guy, but when I met the right...
	But you guys have already known each other for years, so it's not like you're just going to meet the right person and change your mind.
	In fact, it seems like you were more open to having kids...
	Before you had spent more time with Diane, which is a painful thing to sort of recognize or realize, but that's not the pattern.
	I just want to be clear, Diane, that's not the pattern.
	I don't know about Mike's story, but I can tell you for myself, that's not the pattern that happened with me.
	When I met the woman who became my wife, then I wanted to become a father, and I became very desperate to become a father.
	It wasn't that years after telling her I wanted to become a father, years later saying...
	I don't, right?
	When I met the woman, I went from eh to yes.
	But he's gone from yes to no over the time that he's known you.
	It was never yes.
	Before her, before her, it was never yes.
	From what he told me and his family as well and friends, he never ever wanted to have kids.
	And then when he started going out, he started talking about kids.
	That was the very first time all his friends that would hear him talk about it would be very, very surprised.
	They would be very, very surprised that we moved in together because they never talked about kids.
	But he could have been playing you.
	You understand that, right?
	And, you know, Nick, no disrespect, but I'm a guy too, right?
	He could have been playing you.
	He could have been telling you what you want to hear so that you'd get committed to him.
	I understand that's possible, but that's really...
	I never thought he would.
	And to this day, I don't think that's what he did.
	At least I hope that's not what he did.
	I never meant to convey that seriously.
	No, Nick, Nick.
	No, no, no, no.
	That's not an answer, man.
	Come on.
	You can't tell the woman who desperately wants to become a mom...
	Here are the baby names.
	Here's what our kids are going to look like.
	They're going to be beautiful.
	They're going to be like models because we're both mixed.
	It's going to be fantastic.
	We're God's Photoshop.
	But I never meant it seriously.
	You can't.
	I mean, that's not believable in any way, shape, or form.
	Come on.
	If you would have been in the room, you would have picked up on it.
	I mean, it's really...
	Are you saying that Diane doesn't have any idea when you're making a joke about...
	Are you making a joke about what she most desperately wants in life to the point where she believes it?
	But she just doesn't figure out that you're only joking?
	I think because it was so deeply rooted in her, it made her want to believe it.
	And you didn't know that enough about her to not make those jokes.
	You didn't know that she really, really wanted it.
	You didn't know that she was so desperate to have children with you in particular that you thought it would just be a fine subject for a joke that she believed for years.
	She believed for years.
	It wasn't for a year.
	It was for less than a year.
	For the full year.
	It was for less than a year.
	A year.
	Let's just make it a year.
	I don't want to argue about the days on either side.
	That's not the point.
	Okay, what counts is that the second I saw that she was really convinced, I cleared it up.
	Oh man, this is just gross.
	You're not being honest here.
	I'm telling you that.
	And this makes me think, in my own opinion, right, just me, that this is a game for you, that you are playing her.
	You can't talk about baby names and what your kids are going to look like and have her believe it for a year and then just say, nope, just kidding!
	You just misunderstood me, honey.
	Come on.
	It's never been a problem, Steph.
	What do you mean it's never been a problem?
	It's never been a problem in the past.
	Dating's changed.
	You say, I love you within 10 seconds, and then it's like, ha, ha, ha.
	It's very surface-level cinematic picturing.
	It's like, oh, you're going to be the mom of my kids.
	There's context to this.
	So you just said it.
	Every other girl you ever dated?
	So that's what I am?
	Is that what I am?
	No, I hate porn!
	Anyhow...
	I know you're bad right now, and honestly, I always care when you're bad, but right now I don't care because I don't even know anything anymore.
	I mean, it's painful for you, Diane, right?
	And hearing that it was just supposed to be some kind of joke doesn't solve the problem, right?
	Because when you talked about it earlier, I mean, it was really a strong feeling for you, right?
	That you believed this.
	Yes.
	And you invested your heart and your mind and your life into this.
	And it's kind of like an insult to injury to say, well, you know, maybe she's just not smart enough to know when I'm joking or something.
	That's not a reasonable way to deal with the problem, in my opinion.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I mean, you kind of got in deep with Nick, right?
	I mean, in terms of your heart and you were planning a future.
	Yeah, and I know it's down the road and so on.
	But, you know, you plan to get to Vegas before you get to Vegas.
	But you know you're heading to Vegas, right?
	You're not heading to some other place, right?
	So you kind of got yourself aligned and you got your heart into this...
	For a life together, for a family together, for kids together, for that, right?
	That's what your understanding was, at least for a year, of where things were heading, right?
	And then, like, rug out from under you, right?
	Yeah.
	And how do you feel about that?
	It's very, very painful.
	It's very confusing.
	It's very devastating.
	It's very disappointing.
	It's very...
	Unsearching is very, I don't even know what other items to use.
	I really, really thought at some point that maybe he just didn't love me anymore.
	That's why he didn't talk about that kind of stuff anymore.
	It made me really insecure.
	But eventually I stopped thinking that because as I said before, it was not that he wanted to have kids before me and then it changed.
	That's not true.
	Everybody always says he never wanted to have kids and he would always make fun of people that had kids and I would say, oh, I don't know, this other friend of ours is going to become like, I don't really, oh yeah, so poor him, that sucks, his life is over, whatever.
	But since he started dating, he wouldn't be like this anymore because it's not with me.
	And then it changed it all back within a year.
	So I just thought maybe because he was selling his shares in his company and other things were changing.
	The financial aspect of it is really important to him, which is understandable.
	So maybe that played into it as well.
	Or that he simply wasn't as intimate.
	But then I stopped thinking that he wasn't as intimate before because we would get deeper in our relationship.
	We have been living together for a year already by then, but the way we were relating to each other was changing as well in a very positive way.
	His ways with me were changing too in a very very positive way.
	And I said himself just recently went to my country and he met my entire family.
	And that was a very, first of all, that was a very expensive trip.
	He denied some other gigs to go do it, which he never does.
	He never denies anything.
	I'm sorry, just out of curiosity, where is your country?
	I am Brazilian.
	Brazilian.
	Okay, sorry, go ahead.
	And he still keeps in touch with my entire family pretty much, at least once a week, especially my nephew.
	My nephew is actually the only other person in my family that can speak a little bit of English.
	He's nine years old.
	It's surprisingly great with him.
	We spent like three weeks and a half in Brazil and they were together all the time.
	They were like best pals and he calls him Uncle Nick and said like Uncle Nick is the best uncle in the world and they spent all the time.
	They game together.
	They talk about videos together because he had a little YouTube channel.
	No, Nick is very charming, right?
	Nick is very charming when he wants to be.
	Yeah, like my nephew has this thing that's really really hard to convince him to eat because he has tons of allergies so he was just not eating a lot and when he does it's just like he feels kind of sick so it's really hard to convince him to eat and Even for his mother, even for me, even for anyone in the family, but Nick somehow would make him meet within 10 minutes.
	That was amazing.
	Everybody said he was good with such a great dad, and he would just kind of smile on the side.
	And when he's around his best friend's kid as well, he's great with her.
	And he seems to have fun with them, and he seems to, whenever he watches little movies, there's like a father and son, not girls online, but especially a father and son thing, he gets emotion about it, and he says that's a cool part of being a dad, but...
	That's just the only good part and the bad part that doesn't make up for it.
	So that's why, too, he sees this kid, I don't know, I won't say it, often I would be lying, but every now and then he sees a father and a son doing something he thinks that's pretty amazing, but then he says, oh, but that's just the nice part, but after they come home, the kid's gonna cry and do this and that, and that's just not what I want for me.
	And that hurts, every time he says that, that hurts, I even ask him just like, Don't say anything at all.
	Okay, but let me ask you this, Diane.
	Yeah, sorry.
	I understand it's very frustrating, very confusing.
	I really, really understand that.
	But let me ask you this.
	Yes.
	Do you think it's possible that if you were, somehow, to have children with Nick, that Nick might say or do things That would cause his children to believe something, to put their trust in what he said, to accept what he was saying as a promise, as a commitment.
	And this might go on for quite some time.
	But then later, that he would say, oh, you misunderstood me.
	I was only kidding.
	I wasn't serious.
	It didn't really matter.
	I don't want to do it.
	I never wanted to do it.
	Honestly, that's the only aspect he ever let me down.
	Everything he ever said he would do, he always did, and he still does.
	That's the very first and only time he ever let me down when it comes to kids, but everything else he ever said he would do for me and for us, which is, I don't want to get into details, but he has done a lot, quite a bit.
	No, but this is the one that matters, right?
	The most.
	You probably would trade one of those other ones where he changed his mind for him not changing his mind on this one, right?
	Yes, sir, but I just really think that I may be misleading myself, I don't know, but I honestly think that once he achieves his financial security and once he grows older and more mature, He will see that even parts that he thinks are bad parts of being a father are actually very prevalent as well.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Sorry, Diane.
	You at 23 are saying that Nick in his late 20s, once he grows up and becomes more mature?
	Yes, because I believe...
	He's like more than half a decade older than you.
	And don't be in a relationship with someone because you want them to change in some fundamental way.
	I'm sorry, I'll be quiet in a sec.
	You can waste a lot of years, Diane, crossing your fingers, hoping someone's going to change, and it gives them a lot of power over you.
	Don't be in a relationship with someone, in my opinion, because you think they're fundamentally going to change.
	Like, I can't date a woman who's a Zoroastrian or a Rastafarian and saying, well, as soon as she becomes a Christian or an atheist or whatever, I'm there, right?
	I don't think I'm expecting him to change.
	I'm expecting him to grow older.
	I think people get to a certain stage of their life in different times.
	And I just think he's not there yet.
	I'm not saying he's ever going to be.
	He may as well never be.
	But I believe it's possible.
	And that's why I say that's one reason.
	But he's telling you very clearly...
	To make your decisions like he's already snipped.
	And he can't be unsnipped, right?
	He's saying to you, make your decision like I'm never, ever going to give you children.
	You are never going to be a mother with me.
	Ever.
	I understand that, but there's other things too that he had said before that will never change, and they have changed.
	And I think that's everyone.
	I think people change their minds as they grow older.
	I don't want him to change the person he is.
	I just, I hope and expect that as he...
	And what if you're wrong, Diane?
	Diane, what if you're wrong?
	What if I'm wrong?
	Will you be willing to live childless?
	To never be a mother?
	To never hold your baby?
	To never breastfeed?
	To never help your child learn how to walk?
	To never buy those little booties?
	To never change a diaper?
	To never breastfeed?
	Will you be willing to give all of that up If you're wrong about him and he is right about...
	Look, he's in his late 20s, right?
	He's not like 14 trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life.
	I mean, he's already an adult.
	His brain has matured four or five years ago.
	So that's my question.
	Will you be willing to live with a motherless existence, never being a mother for the next 70, 80 years, not being a mother, not being a grandmother, not being a great-grandmother, having none of that...
	I honestly don't see myself having babies with anyone else.
	I really don't.
	That's the thing.
	I thought about leaving.
	I told him about it at least two or three times.
	And I almost did.
	But then again, I think, okay, why am I doing this?
	Because I want to be a mother.
	Okay.
	So I'm going to find someone else and have their kids.
	And I don't...
	It doesn't...
	It doesn't fill the hole inside my heart either, because I had the opportunities and I have at least a couple very good men there, even if I don't talk to them anymore, but I know they're still there and they would be willing to take me tomorrow if I wanted to.
	And these are men that They're in their late 20s, early 30s, they have a good age, they have quite a bit of money, and they're very into me, they come from good families, and they would be wanting to knock me up tomorrow,
	and that's great, but when I imagine my life with them and having their babies, yes, I would be happy to be a mom, but I don't know, I may be wrong, I may be mistaken, maybe I have to snap out of it, but I don't see myself being complete either because I want to see the resemblance between the father of my kids and my kids.
	I'm not saying, look, I don't know whether you guys should stay together or not, but it could be some new guy.
	It doesn't have to be one of the guys from the past.
	I mean, that's a false dichotomy.
	That's a false choice, right?
	Saying, well, it either has to be Nick or one of the guys who proposed to me in the past.
	I mean, you're a young woman.
	You're an attractive woman.
	I mean, you could have options, right?
	Yes, I know, but...
	It's very hard for me to really...
	I don't know.
	I can easily talk to other people.
	I can be very outgoing and make friends easily and stuff if I really want to.
	But it's hard for me to really trust someone and to really deeply, honestly care for that person and devote myself to that person.
	Like, I had one serious relationship before Nick.
	But how do you trust Nick?
	He said he wanted to have kids, and now he says he was only joking for that year.
	That's...
	That's...
	Yeah, that has shaken my trust, but at least...
	At least I... The thing is, I don't honestly know if he was really joking.
	It was really...
	No, I don't think he was joking at all.
	I really didn't think he was joking.
	However, if he says he was...
	I don't think joking is the proper...
	The proper way to call it, he likes to say, see what's in the movie industry, he said himself.
	And he says it's like watching something but just like the best part of the movie and you don't see all the hustle that I went through to get there.
	So he really said it as that and for him it's okay to imagine a lot of stuff regarding life just like that.
	And I kind of knew of him but I never thought that was one of these things.
	No, I don't think it was.
	I don't think it was either.
	But listen, guys, I mean, I certainly wish you the very best.
	And I hope that you'll continue to have conversations about this stuff.
	Nick, I mean, I've just met you, so I apologize.
	I just, I have a tough time sort of getting that it was just a joke the whole time.
	And can I ask you one last question, please?
	I hate to go down like that.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Do you honestly think I should leave?
	I don't...
	I don't ever feel comfortable telling people what to do.
	But I'll tell you what I would feel in this situation.
	And I think I would feel very angry.
	I would feel very angry at being led along, right?
	I don't know what the phrase is that the kids use these days, but when I was a kid, it was like leading a woman on, right?
	Oh, I really, really want to get married.
	I'd love to get married.
	I'd love to get married.
	And then, you know, when she's accepted all of this, and then you say, well, actually, no, I was only kidding.
	But she's already moved in.
	She's already committed.
	She's already introduced you to her family.
	She's already embedded.
	She's already given you her heart and all of that.
	And then saying, oh, no, I was just kidding.
	I never want to get married.
	I was only kidding about that.
	I would be very angry and hurt, but more angry at being led along, at being told that this was the state of mind and then finding out not only that the state of mind has changed, which can happen, but also that I was kind of being blamed for being dumb enough to think that this person was telling the truth but also that I was kind of being blamed for being dumb enough to think that this person was telling the truth when they were only joking, you So I think as far as the anger goes, that's how I would feel.
	And to me, it has to do with the honesty that comes out of someone when this kind of problem comes up, right?
	So when a man comes up to you and says, let's go out, and you say, well, I want to be a mom, and he's like, oh, this is like Fantastic.
	You know, our kids will be beautiful, and here's what their names will be, and here's what they're going to look like, and I can't wait to be a dad, and blah, blah, blah.
	And this goes on for a year.
	You know that women, when a woman has sex with a man, there's this chemical bonding that happens.
	And it's monogamy, right?
	He's the one.
	It's something that happens.
	And I think men kind of know this.
	And, you know, women know about men's sort of sexual infatuation and so on, but particularly when a woman makes love to a man, particularly repetitively, she bonds.
	She bonds.
	And then it becomes hard to think of other men.
	And that's good if you're compatible and you're going to be together for your whole life.
	You kind of want to have that monogamy, because otherwise things get messy, complicated, ugly, and divorcey.
	So I think that...
	Either he did feel that he wanted kids and then changed his mind, in which case he should say, I changed my mind.
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	I led you on.
	I was sincere at the time.
	Something's changed.
	And that gives you a choice, right?
	Or he was playing you, right?
	Like he was telling you what you wanted to hear.
	Oh, yeah, kids.
	Oh, wonderful.
	Oh, yeah.
	Here's what they're going to look like and so on.
	In which case, you know, I think you've got...
	Do you personally think he was playing me?
	Do you think that currently, like today, just listening to us right now, do you think he's serious about me?
	I can't answer whether he was playing you for sure, but I can tell you I personally don't believe the I was only joking about having kids for a year.
	I mean, I don't believe that at all.
	Again, I mean, I'm not in a relationship with the guy, and this is just my outside perspective, but I don't think that a lot of really frank stuff I don't think you're silly.
	I think that if it's your biggest desire and the man's telling you he's going to provide it to you, I don't think he gets to later say...
	Psych!
	Just kidding.
	I don't think that's fair or reasonable.
	So I think that you should listen to him.
	If it is your biggest dream and he says he's not going to make you a mom, I think you should listen to him.
	I mean, he's being very honest, at least as far as this goes, that I think you should treat the relationship as if he's had a vasectomy, as if he's been snipped and he's unable to bear children.
	So you think he's never ever gonna, that it's impossible, he ever change his mind?
	Like just coming to men in general, you think men are ever like that and then later on in life they change or that doesn't happen very often?
	Well, I mean, you can save your money or you can play the lottery, right?
	Now, if you say to me, well, Steph, can you guarantee me that I'm never gonna win the lottery?
	I'm gonna say, well, no, I can't guarantee that you're never gonna win the lottery, but I still don't think it's a good idea to just play the lottery.
	I mean, sure, it's possible that he could wake up tomorrow and say, I desperately want children.
	It's possible.
	I understand, Adam.
	So what you're saying is that this doesn't happen very often that men, until a certain point of their lives, they don't want kids, and then afterwards, they want kids.
	That's not very...
	Well, when he tells you that he's not going to give you children, when he tells you he doesn't want to have children, when he tells me he doesn't want to have children, when he neglects to tell me that he told you for a year that he did desperately want to have children, which is kind of important, which I've already mentioned, it's not very honest to me, just listen to him.
	He's telling you the truth.
	He's telling you the truth.
	You are not going to become a mother.
	Now, you can sit here and you can say, okay, well, maybe in a couple of years, and maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, right?
	But that's going to be torture for you.
	And hugely risky.
	And as you know, Diane, you're at the peak of attractiveness for a woman, right?
	If you wait until you're in your mid to late 20s, it's just going to be tougher.
	The good guys are going to be gone, right?
	Because the good guys get snapped up pretty quickly.
	And so let's say you're 28 or 29 and you finally realize that he's not going to give you kids or whatever.
	And then you go out into the dating market, who's left?
	You're older, you have less attractiveness, you have more urgency because you're getting older and your eggs are getting older, and there are a few good men around.
	You understand, it's not risk-free to stay.
	There's a lot of risks in staying.
	I understand that at the moment, but this last question, I swear I'll let you go.
	Sorry to bother you so much.
	Do you think this man is serious about me, Stefan?
	I'm sorry, do you say that again?
	Do you think this man is serious about me?
	Do you think this is my fault?
	That if I was another woman, if I was maybe good enough or different, I don't know, he would maybe want to have kids with me?
	Do you think I may be the problem?
	Not exactly the problem, because he never wanted before me, as far as I know, as far as his family told me, his family told me, but you think that maybe if he cared more about me, he would think about being a dad?
	I don't know.
	I don't know that.
	But I will say this, Diane, that if I had to go out on a limb and guess about...
	I think Nick, a very smart guy and a very hardworking guy and lots that there is there to look positively upon.
	But I think that Nick tries to get the best out of a situation in the moment.
	And this is what I talked to him about with regards to the board game and other entrepreneurial stuff.
	Nick tries to get the best...
	Sort of solution in the moment.
	And not necessarily thinking about the long term, about the options and so on.
	So I don't think it's your fault, but I think you do have a lot of information.
	And I think you have enough information to make a decision.
	And I don't think, you know, there's an old saying when I grew up, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
	We can't go through life just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best, particularly when we have very clear information.
	And I am sorry that...
	This challenge of wanting to have kids has come to be such a central part, but it's very important.
	It's very, very important.
	I mean, if you're going to have a life without kids, that's not what you want as far as I understand it.
	You really, really want to become a mom, and he's telling you it's not going to happen with him.
	So you have to have that choice.
	If he's some completely wonderful guy who's staggeringly great in every way, then I could maybe understand not wanting to have kids.
	But if he's telling you, oh, I was never serious about having kids anyway, I have a tough time seeing that perfect wonderfulness myself.
	And we also do know, as I mentioned, that there's this chemical bonding that happens for women when they make love to men.
	And so, I don't know.
	I mean, whether you should stay or whether you should go is not a decision that you should defer to someone else.
	You should really look inside your own heart.
	And he does say, and I listen to what Nick says, right?
	He says, and this is the quote, I love her enough to not deprive her of what I can now see as her greatest value, which is being a mother one day.
	So, if you want to be a mother, he wants you to leave.
	If you want to be a mother, he's not going to give you children.
	And he has said to me very openly and I don't think it's changed.
	Nick, correct me if I'm wrong.
	I love her enough to not deprive her of what I can now see as her greatest value, which is being a mother one day.
	If you want to be a mother, he's telling you, you have to go.
	Nick, am I wrong about that?
	No.
	Okay.
	So that's about as clear, I think, as anything can be made.
	And when I say clear, Diane, I certainly don't mean easy, but clear.
	All right.
	All right.
	Thanks for your time.
	Thanks, guys, very much.
	I appreciate your call.
	I appreciate your honesty.
	And I hope that this has been helpful.
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