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Oct. 31, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:03:22

3879 MGTOW SAVED MY EGGS - Call In Show - October 25th, 2017

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	Hey, hey, hey, everybody!
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	Ooh, we had six great callers tonight, but first, theartoftheargument.com to check out my new book.
	I think you'll really like it.
	You can also get it from audible.com.
	And please, please, to help out the show, you can go to freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Now, Six callers.
	Some great callers tonight.
	The first call of this woman.
	She loves honesty.
	Her boyfriend loves honesty.
	So they say.
	But she complains.
	He tells me little white lies all the time.
	And as the conversation went on, as it turned out, there's one big lie, not white, one big lie right at the center of their relationship, which we unpacked.
	The second caller...
	Had boiled down ethics to three moral rules and wanted to know if that was enough to define morality and would that be enough to govern a free and just society plus abortion.
	The third caller sadly dropped but had a great question regarding the art of the argument.
	How do you connect with people?
	How do you encourage people to be rational?
	How do you present sound arguments in a way that does not rub people the wrong way and alienate them slash annoy them slash create trolls?
	Now, the fourth caller is a woman who loves her boyfriend, but he's MGTOW, men going their own way.
	He doesn't want to get married anymore.
	This was different from when they first started going out.
	So we talked about MGTOW. We talked about what or how things could work with this kind of relationship and what she might be able to do.
	Now, the fifth caller, maybe a little teeth gritting, but really, really important to listen to.
	His wife divorced him because she fell in love with a mutual friend who has sex orgies in the woods.
	And were there any warning signs on what could be done to either avoid or recover from this kind of situation?
	And the sixth caller, an engineering student who is required to take a class about social advocacy and ethics and is dealing with all the associated crazy Marxists.
	And what, oh what, should he do about that?
	So it's a great set of callers.
	Thanks everyone so much for calling in.
	It's a great honor and pleasure and privilege to speak with you about these things.
	Let's start. Alright, well at first today we have Lorraine.
	Lorraine wrote in and said, I myself have a fear of intimacy and have trouble letting my guard down.
	It makes me highly uncomfortable sharing my feelings and letting him know how much I care for him.
	I feel like it gives him power over me.
	I think this will only exacerbate his feelings of inadequacy and we will be stuck in this cycle.
	I know that this is something I need to work on.
	Even though these are little white lies, should I be concerned?
	What should I think of him when he promotes honesty as a virtue yet continues to lie?
	I have been honest throughout our relationship and expect him to do the same.
	Am I looking too far into this?
	Or is this a detrimental clash of values?
	That's from Lorraine. Lorraine, how are you doing tonight?
	Good, thanks. How are you?
	I'm really nervous. Oh, great.
	Well, what a great question.
	You know, what a great question.
	I'm just going over white lies with my daughter these days.
	Let's just put aside the whole racist side.
	I just want to get that out of the way, right up front.
	Yeah, like going to little white people lie.
	But can you give me an example of stuff that you found him falsifying about?
	Yeah, so probably the first one I found out about, he moved from Perth to Melbourne, and he was saying that he had a dog back in Perth that he had to leave behind.
	That's Scotland, right? I'm sorry, just go ahead.
	So he said he had to leave behind his dog that he rescued, and it was really hard for him, and he had to leave it with his mum.
	And then we were going to Perth for me to meet his family.
	And then on the way over, he told me that, look, I didn't rescue that dog.
	It's actually my...
	Mom's fiance's dog.
	Right. Sorry, can I just ask you to back off the mic a little bit?
	Oh, yeah, yeah. Is that better?
	Okay, yeah, better. Okay.
	Another little white lie.
	So he lost a lot of weight and he actually told me, look, you need to like, or if you could nag me about food and just remind me to eat and things like that.
	So I asked him what he ate that day and he reeled off this list of food and I was like, he was like four sandwiches, three cans of baked beans or something ridiculous.
	And I was like, there's no way you ate that.
	Is he currently employed as a forklift truck?
	Is that why he needs these kinds of calories or what?
	So he had, I forgot what it was called, something with his pancreas.
	I think it was pancreatitis and he was in hospital and he didn't eat and he lost a lot of weight.
	Right. Okay, so he said that his dog he had to leave behind was a rescue dog when it wasn't, and he lied about food.
	Yeah, so he said he ate baked beans or something, and I was like, there's no way you ate that, and I actually checked the bin that day.
	Ooh. And there was no baked beans there.
	Ooh. And so I confronted him, and I know it sounds a little weird, but I just, for some reason, I just didn't believe him.
	When I said originally, there's no way you ate all that food, he was like, I can't believe you would question me about something so ridiculous, blah, blah, blah, and got really defensive about it.
	And then when I checked the bin, I was like, hey, there was no baked beans in the bin.
	And then he apologized, and I was like, well, why were you so defensive before?
	I don't understand. Why this even had to be an issue.
	Right, right. So we'll, I mean, I'm sure there's more, but we'll just look at those two.
	Now, I understand the rescue dog thing.
	It makes him look like a nice person.
	Yeah. You know, like I went and rescued a dog and so on.
	So I can understand, again, we're not talking about the ethics, just sort of, I want to understand the practicalities behind this kind of lying.
	Sorry. Yeah. Can I tell you a similar one he told as well?
	Sure. He said back in Perth he had a job as a manager at a retail store.
	And then when we went over to Perth and I met his work friends, I found out that he was never a manager.
	So there's another one, I guess, him trying to, I guess, paint a good image of himself.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	I mean, it's easier to type something on a resume than do something in real life.
	I have a confession to make, people.
	I never worked panning for gold.
	No, I did. I'm just kidding. All right.
	Now, what about the food?
	Why lying about the food? What's the deal with that?
	So I think because he has told me that sometimes he feels the need to lie because he's scared of how I will react.
	No, that's a lie.
	Sorry, I hate to put it that way.
	But that's putting it on you.
	Because when it comes to I was a manager when he wasn't in fact a manager, if you told him you worked at a retail store...
	It's not like you'd say, well, that's it.
	It's over. I'm leaving you, right?
	And here's a plate to the face, right?
	You'd be like, oh, you worked in a retail store.
	So when he tells you that he worked as a manager when he didn't work as a manager, that's not because he's scared of how you'll react.
	He just wants to make himself look better than he feels, right?
	Yeah. I guess with the baked beans one though, maybe he was scared that I guess I'd nag him to eat more.
	So I don't understand that one.
	So he's trying to, well, he lost the weight.
	Is he trying to keep the weight off?
	No, so he wanted to, he wants to gain weight.
	He's really self-conscious about being thin.
	And he's like, just nag me about eating, like just remind me and things like that.
	I eat a lot.
	So, yeah.
	So, I just ask him what he eats in the day to, like, kind of be on his case.
	Just remind him to eat, I guess.
	Because he just doesn't.
	He works? Okay.
	I've got a quick question. How big is the change table when you pull one diaper off, check it for smellies, and put on another one?
	He's asking you to monitor his eating?
	How old is this guy? An issue we have as well is that I do feel like it's quite childish and that I have to baby him a lot.
	Yeah. Right.
	Right. So it's definitely an issue.
	Right. Now, there was a little...
	I just want to take a tiny detour because there seemed to be a certain amount of emotional energy when you said that you eat a lot and you were about to head off somewhere else.
	Was there anything that you wanted to touch on with that?
	Oh, no. I'm just...
	Like, everyone knows that I eat a lot.
	It's like, that's it.
	I just eat high volumes of food.
	So I guess it just wants me to kind of rub off on him.
	Yeah. Do you have a weight issue?
	No. Like, I'm a healthy weight.
	I used to have an eating disorder, but I'm good now.
	The eating disorder, it wouldn't be like you starved yourself for 17 days and then made off with a Turkish wizard, was it?
	Well, yeah. It was binge eating disorder, so I would starve and binge and starve and binge.
	Okay, okay. So that was just a sort of side-by-side thing.
	And how old is the guy?
	He's 27 and I'm 24.
	Right. And how long have you been together?
	Coming up to eight months.
	And what's your, like, do you live together?
	Yes. So I own my house and he's moved from Perth.
	He's just recently moved in with me.
	In my house. In your house.
	Okay, so give me a little bit of the history of how you guys got together, please.
	So we met each other at work.
	In different cities, right? Yeah.
	Oh, no, so he moved from Perth to Melbourne, and he got a job where I work, and that's how we met.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	In another state, you probably, I don't know if you know where Perth and Melbourne are.
	The only thing I know about Melbourne is I had a live album from the police called Crooked Cops many years ago, where it was recorded in Melbourne.
	I'm afraid that's my only association.
	Here in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
	That was when he was riffing on So Lonely.
	But anyway, so when you first met each other, what was it that attracted you to him?
	I guess he seemed rather shy.
	And he seemed, I know it doesn't make any sense, but this is just first impressions.
	Like when we met, I was actually, I guess, part of the hiring process.
	Like I had something to do with it.
	Not that I was his superior or anything.
	We just did like an exercise where I had to pretend to be a customer and kind of grill him a bit.
	And he just seemed, I don't know, attracted to people who are kind of shy.
	Wait, you were attracted to people who were kind of shy?
	Yeah. Right.
	And he just seemed, he just had like a vibe about him that he was really kind and he looked at me in just a really weird way.
	I don't know, it was just, I found it endearing from the get-go.
	So he's looking for a mom and you're looking for a boy?
	I guess so, yeah.
	No, I mean, am I way off?
	I mean, you make a point.
	I know. I'm just wondering if I make a good point or not.
	I guess now that I have the boy, it's like, oh, I need an adult, you know?
	So here's, you know, sometimes I have long information gathering things, but this one I don't think so much, which doesn't mean I'm going to be right about anything, but...
	Have you ever dated someone...
	who you feel could outstrip you or could outgrow you or who would end up doing a lot better than you are?
	Not really.
	I mean, my first boyfriend in high school was a dropkick.
	The second one... Was a what?
	Was a dropkick.
	I don't know what that term means.
	Oh, right. So, he was just scum, pretty much.
	Scum how? He...
	And bear in mind when we were 15 years old he did a heap of drugs and we'd get into fights and like punched a guy that I was just talking to his friends so yeah.
	I'm sorry I just got a call from Australia they need me to dump this call because stereotype.
	So let's pretend you're from Malaysia?
	Kanganika! Albuquerque. Okay, let's go on with the stereotypes.
	Did you also do drugs in your teens?
	No. So he did, but you didn't.
	My late teens, yes, but at this stage we were like 15 or 16.
	And I didn't.
	I love it. I mean, you understand that you're normalizing, right?
	Well, remember, I was only 15, so naturally I was going to be with a druggie, violent guy.
	Lots of 15-year-old people, not with drugs.
	Oh, no. I mean, I did them in my later teens, but with this boyfriend, I was 15 or 16.
	I don't think it's normal to do drugs when you're 15 or 16.
	Okay. And what about other boyfriends?
	How many have you had in total?
	I've only had two prior to this one, and both of them were in high school, so they weren't Really serious relationships.
	Okay, so what's the pastrami boyfriend?
	What's the one between the two slabs of rye?
	Who's the guy in the middle? Ah, okay.
	So he was later on in high school, probably when I was 17 to 18.
	He was a really good guy.
	He was really nice.
	He treated me good. He was school captain, played footy and things like that.
	So I guess he could have outstripped me in terms of, I don't know, achievement.
	Why didn't that one work out?
	I wanted to be single when I turned 18.
	Why? I didn't want to be committed to someone.
	Why? No, I understand that.
	I wanted to be single. Why? I didn't want to be in a relationship.
	Yes, I understand what a synonym is.
	I'm just curious why you didn't want to be in a relationship when you were 18.
	With a guy you say is very nice, successful, has good opportunities and so on, right?
	He was very clingy.
	And possessive. And I guess it put me off towards the end of it.
	And then when I turned 18, I was going out, I was getting attention and...
	You wanted to try that?
	I guess so. Um...
	No, listen, if I'm wrong about something, just a hint as we go forward in this.
	If I'm wrong about something, you can just say, Steph, I don't think so, or I think you're wrong.
	That's not my experience or whatever.
	But the I guess so stuff is like I then get to navigate with blindfolds on.
	So just let me know.
	So how is he clingy and possessive?
	So he went...
	To Bali on a family holiday for two weeks and he would just, I remember him in tears crying before he left because he didn't want to leave me for two weeks and it was a bit too much for me and I'm not a very affectionate person either and he would always just grab onto me pretty much,
	like cling onto me and My friends would refer to him as Glad Rap because he was always just by my side.
	And when I was with my friends, like, he'd text nonstop and always ask what I'm doing and things like that.
	And I guess I thought it was sweet at the beginning that it just became a bit too much.
	And I was immature at the time and I didn't really.
	So wait a second here. Are you saying that there seems to be some kind of pattern where you find a characteristic in a potential boyfriend cute at the beginning, but then it gets on your nerves?
	Yeah. Huh.
	Huh. All right.
	And this is also a child response, right?
	I'm going away for two weeks.
	That's like an attachment disorder.
	That's like, mommy's leaving the room.
	When is the boob milk coming back?
	Right? I mean, that kind of response strikes me as a very young kind of response, right?
	Yeah. Okay. So we have three insecure boyfriends, right?
	Mm-hmm. Wait, are you with me?
	Are we in the conversation together?
	Yeah, I agree. Don't go rubber bones on me, Lorraine.
	Do we have three insecure boyfriends?
	So why do you want an insecure boyfriend?
	Because you keep choosing them, right?
	So what would a confident, self-possessed, wise, mature boyfriend Successful on the right track kind of boyfriend.
	Why not someone like that?
	Why do you look for...
	That's why I asked you about when you first met the current guy.
	What were you looking for? And if you're looking for, you know, kind of shy, kind of sweet, you know, that is not a sign of strength.
	You know, sweet is like...
	The word sweet is like the vagina killer.
	I mean, it really is, man.
	It'll dry you up faster than the Kalahari sunstorm because, oh, that's so sweet.
	Oh, you're so sweet.
	It's like, that is not what is sustainable as far as love goes, in my opinion, between men and women, and particularly from a woman to a man.
	Because, I mean, I'm not saying...
	Although Fifty Shades of Grey is about the most popular book in the history of the planet, it's like the modern loin Bible of the feminist brigade, but it is...
	Women want, deep down, right?
	You are maybe drawn a little bit to the sort of shy, stumbling little boy type, but you want someone who's masterful, right?
	I mean, because your eggs, right?
	I mean, we have...
	Penises and vaginas and lust and love and attraction and bonding and all of that to make babies, right?
	That's the whole deal.
	So what do your eggs want?
	Do your eggs want the shy stumbling, tumbling over his words, tripping over his feet, kind of insecure, kind of calling him all the time, making up lies, little lies to make him feel good and then blaming you while I was afraid of you?
	Do you want that? Is that going to be who's going to go out and bring down the saber-toothed tiger and bring your food home for your 12 children?
	Doesn't seem to me that way.
	So you have something that you prefer because it's not threatening to you or it's not challenging to you, but then it drives you kind of crazy maybe because you feel like you aimed too low.
	What do you think? I think you're pretty much spot on.
	I think, to me, it's a security thing in that I know...
	That maybe they can't, like you said earlier, they can't outgrow me.
	Yeah. And that...
	I don't know. Yeah, I guess it's a security thing.
	I know they won't leave me.
	Right. They're safe.
	Yeah. And then they're claustrophobic.
	Yep. You know, it's like...
	I've noticed this among...
	People a lot when I was younger.
	Tell me if this fits you at all, Lorraine, but I've noticed that people, when they meet someone, they scan for dysfunction.
	They scan for dysfunction.
	Because if they scan for dysfunction and they find someone less functional than themselves, then their own lack of function never shows up.
	There's stuff that you need to do to grow in your life, but if you're around people who are less mature than you, you can feel like the mature one without actually having to grow, right?
	I'm not that tall, but if I hang around with Tom Cruise, I'm going to look tall, right?
	I'm not that mature, I've got a lot of growing to do, but if I hang around with even more immature people, then I'm going to feel mature and look mature.
	It's a form of the unearned.
	It's a desire for the unearned.
	I'm not going to make a lot of money, I'm just going to hang around with poorer people so that I'm the rich one.
	And this desire for the unearned, this desire for a feeling of growth relative to somebody who's less functional than you, Is unsustainable.
	Because it'll give you short-term relief, like any drug.
	Oh wow, I feel like I've grown.
	I'm in a relationship. I'm distracted.
	But reality, what is it that old phrase?
	Three things cannot remain hidden for long.
	The sun, the moon, and the truth.
	So what are you scanning for when you meet a guy?
	And why? What are you looking for?
	I mean, they've got to be.
	I... Hope that are somewhere around you, Lorraine, competent, decent, effective men.
	Men of vigor and enthusiasm and ambition and capacity and intelligence and integrity.
	I'm not saying they're a dime a dozen, but this can't be the very best that's around.
	Yeah. I'm sorry.
	I'm just thinking. No, no.
	It's your call. Tell me.
	I mean, forget about what I said.
	Whatever you're thinking about, tell me.
	I guess, like I said, it's just safety and security.
	And that's pretty much what it comes down to.
	I know he won't leave me, and he does treat me good.
	I just don't want to hear any more lies, to be honest.
	It drives me up the wall. And I feel like, I guess, I can fix him.
	Forget all of that fixing crap.
	That's sad. Don't be with someone you have to fix.
	That's terrible. Why are you assuming that he's the one who's telling the most lies in the relationship?
	I guess because I find out about them.
	What do you love about him?
	He is really supportive and encouraging.
	He always tells me He's proud of me.
	He's reliable.
	He makes me laugh.
	We've got similar interests and we're both really attached to our childhoods.
	We have similar views on a lot of things.
	I just connect to him.
	So most of what you're talking about is utility service to you, supportive, encouraging, he makes you laugh, right?
	Mm-hmm. And that's about what he provides to you, not virtues that he has in and of himself.
	Yeah. So what are the virtues that he has in and of himself?
	The moral virtues, the courage, integrity, consistency.
	What is it that you admire about him morally?
	I was actually thinking about this the other day and Like I care about him but I don't know if I admire him.
	Have you told him that you love him?
	Yes. So is he the liar?
	Is his lies about his dog from years past or what he ate and what's in the garbage can and whether he was a manager or not?
	Is that the big lie in the relationship, Lorraine, at the moment?
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, I think I love him.
	Thank you.
	Wait a minute. Are you trying to sell me on the idea that you could love someone without admiring him?
	I guess I'm confused about what the idea of love is.
	I care about him a lot.
	I mean, I'm willing to hear the case.
	It's not what I believe, but I'm certainly not the final answer on any of these things.
	Do you think that you can love someone that you don't respect and admire?
	Sometimes I do, but this thought just came into my head the other day when I was looking at him and I was just like...
	I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how to tell him without crushing him, I guess.
	Because I feel like...
	Tell him what? I know what you want.
	I know what you mean, but just be clear.
	That I don't admire him.
	Right. Do you think that avoiding honesty with your lover because it will crush him, do you think that's going to A, add or B, subtract to your admiration of him?
	B. B, right?
	And how would he change?
	How would his behavior change?
	In order for you to admire him?
	I guess to be more assertive and courageous.
	Like, he's told me that he won't address some of the things that I do wrong, because he's scared, again, of my reaction.
	And when he says that, I don't know- My God, you must be a horrible person to date.
	I'm just kidding. You get an ogre, you know, like, I just, I have a jar in the fridge with the balls and brains of my last two boyfriends.
	Do you feel like contradicting me now, punk?
	Do you? I mean, I know you're not, but...
	And of course, this kind of cowardice is very manipulative, right?
	It's saying, I'm scared of you.
	Don't hurt me. You're dangerous.
	Don't hurt me. And then you're looking at him thinking, well, if I tell him the truth about not admiring him, he's going to be crushed.
	That's because he does this self-flagellation as a means of controlling you.
	It's manipulative, right?
	Yeah. And when I am a bit snappy with him and he calls me out on him, on it, sorry, I actually respect that quite a lot and it makes me more attracted to him, I guess.
	I know. Because he can speak up.
	I know. I know.
	We don't want to be...
	The soft, squishy harbor that a frightened person nestles in to save himself from the dangers and chafing of the world, right?
	We want someone to be with us without being scared of us.
	Because if they're scared of us and they're with us, that makes no sense.
	And if they're not really scared of us, but that they're pretending that they are, then they're very manipulative, which also makes no sense.
	In terms of, like, things that are sustainable, I think.
	So... By withholding this information from him...
	A lot of the time when I bring things up that are bothering me, he'll say, I don't feel like I'm good enough for you and I don't feel like anything's good enough.
	And then I guess it puts me off.
	I'm exhausted already.
	It's exhausting, right?
	Yeah. And you also don't end up getting hurt, right?
	Yeah. When people pull this grenade, I mean, good lord.
	I don't even have a vagina, but it's drying up.
	Because it's silencing someone else.
	When they pull this grenade of, nothing's ever good enough, you're going to leave me, you don't love me.
	You know, it's just like, just talking about an issue here, brother.
	You don't need to pull this whole grenade of self-destruction just to shut me up on something that's not even that big a deal, right?
	Yes, yes. Every time I bring up an issue, he automatically goes to, so do you want to be with me?
	Is this the end? And it is so tiring.
	It frustrates me more than anything.
	And it's controlling and it's manipulative because basically it's saying, Lorraine, shut the hell up.
	I don't want to hear what you have to say.
	I'm going to choose my own insecurities over listening to you.
	Because if I listen to you and you said, I don't like this, I don't like this.
	And he said, okay, you know, that's a good point.
	I can see where you're coming from. Let me see what I can do about this.
	But you know, since we're here, and not as repercussion, whatever, but you know, here's the things.
	Then you negotiate from an honest, both people are there kind of situation, right?
	Yeah. But this, you know, you're not trying to shoot at the guy.
	I mean, you're just bringing up some discontents, but then he collapses inwardly, right?
	And you can't get into it.
	You can't actually get into a tent that just folded over it in itself.
	You just got to kind of poke it with your toe or walk away.
	Yeah, and that's the thing. Every time I bring something up, it automatically comes to that conclusion.
	And he never gives me like, okay, so this is what I'm going to do to work on it or fix it.
	He just gives me the, I'm not sure if you want to be with me.
	I don't feel like I'm good enough.
	And when did this first happen in your relationship?
	I'm trying to pinpoint when...
	I guess maybe four months in, we started to have these recurring discussions where I'd bring something up.
	And had you already moved in together at this point?
	Yes. How long after you met did you move in together?
	A few months.
	But less than four.
	Probably about four, yeah.
	It was probably at that mark.
	And why did you move in together?
	So my roomie just moved out.
	Nope. He doesn't know.
	Nope. It doesn't mean that the boy toy moves in.
	Why did you move in together? Yeah, so, well, I didn't want to live on my own.
	I like to have someone there and I'm a little bit scared on my own.
	And why are you scared on your own?
	I don't know, like just if I hear a bump in the night, you know, I can't really do much to stop an intruder if they come in.
	No, whereas this guy can punch himself in the face and cry that it's all over and you'll be totally fucking safe.
	Yeah. Yeah, it seems ridiculous now.
	You're going to rob me. You're going to break up with me.
	It's all over. Yeah, I don't know.
	I just don't like coming home to an empty house.
	I was on my own for a couple of weeks and I was like, this sucks.
	I want to come home and have someone here and someone to talk to.
	Well, kind of anyone it seems like, right?
	Were there any indications of a lack of personal assertiveness other than the shyness before you moved in together?
	Yes. Yeah.
	But then I thought maybe he's assertive.
	There was this guy at work who was kind of chatting me up and crossing the line a bit.
	So I told my partner what was going on.
	He was like, no, that's not acceptable.
	I'm going to talk to him. And I don't know.
	I just thought, oh, maybe he's assertive after all.
	And did he? Yeah. No, he didn't.
	I told him not to because I don't want any trouble at work.
	Oh, no. Lorraine, you didn't just tell me this story and not know what it means.
	Oh, what? Oh, man.
	Oh, you're gonna kick yourself when I tell you.
	Are you ready? Are you feeling flexible?
	Okay. Lorraine, someone came on to you at work.
	I'm gonna talk to that person because that is unacceptable.
	Please don't. Oh, okay.
	You think that's a sign of assertiveness?
	If he thinks the right thing to do is to talk to the guy who chatted you up at work, what would your opinion have to do with anything?
	Anything.
	Yeah, I really begged him not to though.
	Right, I get that.
	What does that have to do with anything?
	If you beg him not to and then he doesn't, he's just folding to you instead of the other guy.
	If it's the right thing to do, I'm not sure what your opinion would have to do with anything.
	And you would have admired him, even if it had caused trouble, if he had done and followed through on what he said was the right thing to do.
	Whether it is or not, I don't know.
	I don't know the details of the situation.
	But if it's the right thing to do, that's what you do.
	Oh, I don't want you to, honey.
	I don't want you to. Okay. I won't.
	That is not assertive.
	When did you first Doubt or think that You might not be with The superhero of assertiveness I guess I've always had an inkling From the start
	He would be scared to talk about certain things.
	I just felt like I wasn't getting the full picture from him.
	You could tell he was very careful about What he would say and what he would share.
	And he said that he did hold himself back a lot because he just wanted me to like him.
	What he openly said that he held himself back and censored himself because he wanted you to like him.
	When did he say that? Probably a month or two in because I said at the start.
	Oh my god. So a long time before you moved in together, he's saying, no, no, no, I'm not being honest with you because I want you to like me.
	And now you're upset that he's not honest with you because he wants you to like him?
	I just thought if it was comfortable, he'd come out of his shell and it would get better.
	Oh, Lorraine, please listen to people.
	Everyone out there, please listen to people.
	They're not kidding when they tell you who they are.
	They're not kidding when they tell you who they are.
	You think out there on the planet, think of one person in your life that said one thing but turned out to be someone completely different.
	Or who you were able to dial up the opposite characteristics or personality traits when you felt like it.
	Doesn't happen. Everyone tells you who they are.
	And they're not kidding. He's shy.
	He tells you he lies in order to be liked.
	And now, the things that you have brought up to me, the dog, the manager thing, the losing weight, he's lying to be liked.
	And he said at the beginning, I lie so people will like me.
	Now, you didn't listen.
	I don't know that that's his fault.
	You know, if it says right there on the packaging, aspartame, you take it home, and you're allergic to aspartame, and it says, this has aspartame, it's big pictures, all big letters everywhere, glowing signs, aspartame.
	You take it home, you put it in your mouth, you're like, hey, wait a minute.
	This might have aspartame in it.
	I'm not feeling very well.
	I can't really blame the packaging.
	Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
	Because you had him move in after he told you he lies to people to get them to like him.
	That's not called negative reinforcement, right?
	Oh, you lie to get people to like you.
	Hey, want to move in and have sex with me?
	Right? That's the ultimate reinforcement.
	Yeah. And you had no problem with it.
	You didn't say, well, no, I can't live with that.
	That can't be.
	No. That is something I can't abide.
	I won't respect. Because you don't.
	I mean, you don't respect someone who lies to be liked, right?
	And did you say anything?
	Did you say that's a deal breaker? Yeah.
	I said it happened one more time.
	That's going to be it. But it keeps happening and I just...
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I'm talking about in the first month or two when he told you this explicitly.
	Did you say that's a deal breaker for me?
	I honestly don't remember.
	Well, one or two possibilities, Lorraine.
	And I'm not trying to be mean. I'd really want to help you not get into the situation again or maybe fix the one you already have.
	Number one, either you told him it was a deal breaker and didn't enforce it.
	Or you didn't tell him it was a deal breaker.
	Either way, you're the liar.
	am.
	I lie to get people to like me.
	Either you say that's not acceptable, but you have to move in and have sex with you anyway, in which case you're lying because you're saying it's not acceptable, but it kind of is.
	Not only is it acceptable, you'll reward it with sex.
	Or you didn't even say that it wasn't acceptable, in which case implicitly there is an acceptance of that behavior.
	And now you're changing the rules.
	Like now you're changing the deal.
	He says, I lie to get people to like me.
	You say, great, move in and let's have sex together.
	And now you're like, you know, I don't like that you lie to people to get them to like you.
	And he's like, but I already said that.
	I said that seven months ago.
	You didn't express any objection then.
	What the hell's the problem?
	You knew this about me.
	Why is the deal changing now?
	And you think he's not assertive?
	Are you kidding me? Are you assertive?
	In your needs and wants and preferences and values?
	I thought I was because, I mean, I say one thing, but you're right.
	I just accept it and I don't, like, there's no point saying it if I'm just going to tolerate it keep happening.
	No, it's worse than that.
	I'm sorry, but he told you within a couple of weeks of meeting you that he lies to get people to like him.
	Right?
	And now you're upset that he lies to get people to like him.
	Wait, can we go back?
	When did he say that?
	What was the example I gave?
	Sorry? My memory is that you said that within a month or so of meeting him, that he told you that he lies to get people to like him.
	So he was holding back because he didn't feel comfortable.
	Sorry, he withheld himself.
	He censored himself.
	He falsified his thoughts.
	Maybe lying by omission or whatever, but who cares, right?
	He falsified in order to get people to like him.
	He pretended to be something other than who he was.
	I'm just going to use lying because it's basically what it is, right?
	Okay. In an intimate relationship.
	You know, you go to a job interview, you dress up nicely.
	You're not like falsifying your entire existence.
	Everybody knows that's the standard, right?
	You dress up to go to a nice restaurant.
	You're not saying, well, I never live in strap pants or anything.
	But when you're in an intimate relationship, if you falsify who you are in order to be liked, that's manipulative and deceptive.
	Now, the interesting thing is, he told you that he falsifies himself in order to be liked.
	Right? So you knew the deal, going in.
	It's not his assertiveness that's the problem, Lorraine.
	It's not his honesty.
	And now, you don't have respect for him.
	Was there a time when you did in the past?
	Yeah. When was that and how did you earn it?
	Like, for example, I remember I went and bought this rug.
	Off a lady, right?
	So I paid her a hundred bucks.
	I put it in the car and I was like, actually, I don't want it.
	Can we take it back to the lady?
	But I was too nervous.
	So yeah, I'm not assertive.
	I'll give you that.
	I'm not assertive because I asked him to call the lady and see if we can give this rug back and get my money back.
	And he was like, yeah, okay, I'll do it.
	And like, I don't know, I guess he just kind of took charge and I was...
	I looked at him, and at that moment, I just thought, I love him.
	I didn't say it, but at that moment, I was just so attracted to him.
	Because he was being assertive, but to some degree, you're swapping parenting each other, right?
	Yeah. I mean, him writing in to save you from a decision that you made, which you're perfectly capable of fixing yourself, is a diminishment of you as well.
	I mean, I wouldn't do something like that if you were not like eight years old.
	I'd be like, you know, I'll come with you, but no, I mean, come on, you've got to be assertive.
	If you don't like it, take it back.
	She can say yes or she can say no, but I'm not going to ride in and pretend that you're helpless to do something because I'm going to lose respect for you.
	I fiercely guard my respect for the people in my life.
	If they're acting in ways that I find disrespectful or that I'm going to end up disrespecting, I tell them about it.
	It doesn't mean I'm right, and they do that with me as well.
	So him riding in and saying, don't you worry, little lady, I'll go get your money back.
	Right? I mean, that's parenting.
	Yeah. Shielding you.
	It's saying, you're not capable, but I'll do it for you.
	Okay, so there was that one moment.
	Was there another time when you admired him?
	And that's more relief than love, just so you know.
	I guess I admired his choice initially when he was telling me about his move interstate.
	Him moving to Melbourne and getting a fresh start and getting away from his dysfunctional family.
	I appreciated that he had the courage to say goodbye to everything he knew and start a new life.
	I guess I thought that move was courageous.
	And how long did he live on his own before he moved in with you?
	So he lived with his friends maybe five months.
	Can I tell you why it's important not to live together?
	Sure. You know that living together is a predictor of the relationship failing.
	It's not 100%, but it certainly raises the risk.
	Because when you live together, you lower your standards.
	Because it's not permanent. The reason why you wait to live together until you're married is that if it's forever, you're going to raise your standards.
	You look at that person and you don't say, in this sort of fuzzy, gooey way, can I live with them for the next couple of weeks, maybe the next couple of months or whatever.
	You look at that person and you say, is this who I want for the next 60 years?
	Now, 60 years, that's quite a long time.
	I mean, that's longer than some cell phone contracts, it feels like, right?
	So 60 years is a long time.
	And so if you have to live with something for 60 years, like if you have to buy a house and you can move anytime you want or you're just renting a place, then you don't really care that much about it.
	But if you have a rule or a law or something which says the next house you buy, you have to live in until you're dead.
	Then you're going to be very, very careful about where you live and what you buy, right?
	If this is the job you have to keep for the rest of your natural-born life, you're going to raise your standards as opposed to it's just a throwaway summer job or something, right?
	Yeah. I mean, what was the plan?
	Do you guys think of getting married, having kids?
	What's the plan? I'd like to get married and have kids in the next few years.
	Well, then what are you doing? But...
	What are you doing with this?
	What are you doing? How old are you again?
	24. 24.
	So what are you doing? What's the plan here?
	How old do you want to be when you have your first child?
	Maybe 27? So you've got three years.
	I'm going to assume you want to be married, right?
	Yep. Is it going to be this guy?
	I'm not sure. You know.
	You know. Come on. Is it going to be this guy?
	No change. No change.
	Don't hold out this bullshit of change.
	You live with people, you accept people as who they are.
	It is profoundly selfish and destructive to be with someone with the expectation that that person will fundamentally change.
	I don't mean grow or learn more wisdom or have more experience or anything like that.
	You know, if you're two people in college, you're both studying physics, of course you're going to grow more in knowledge and values and expertise and all that.
	It's going to be growth. But you don't hang out with someone in physics, you're both in physics, saying, man, I can't wait till they get really interested in women's studies, right?
	Yeah. So he's not going to change.
	He's not going to change.
	Given that he's not going to change, Lorraine, is he the guy who you are going to live together for the next 60 years with and have babies with?
	Is he going to be the father of your children?
	No. So what are you doing?
	You don't have all the time in the world.
	None of us do. Nobody does.
	What do you do and play in-house if you want to actually have a family?
	Because this is messy, right?
	I mean, let's say... I mean, if you can work things out with this guy, great.
	If you can't, it's messy.
	Because you know what happens? We defer.
	And we say, oh, well, you know, it's not that bad.
	We went out last night.
	We had a pretty good time.
	We played pool. We watched a movie.
	We had some laughs. The sax was good.
	So... I'm just going to bump along for a while.
	I'm going to drift along. Things will get better, maybe.
	Things will change. Well, then it's going to be his birthday.
	Then it's Thanksgiving. Ooh, then it's Christmas.
	I don't want to break up and then run at Christmas.
	Do you know how many days can it get sucked under and ground under the caterpillar treads of deferral?
	How much time can pass?
	How much... How many potential moments can be consumed?
	And what that means, of course, is that you get more and more embedded.
	You know, our heart, sadly, follows where we throw our reproductive organs.
	You know, our reproductive organs, you know, like the spies, they want to get over some wall, they shoot up that grappling hook, right?
	Right? Well, we shoot our vaginas, we shoot our penises, and that's where our heart follows, and that's where we get pulled up.
	Except you're tied to it, and it pulls up with a motor.
	You can't do anything about it.
	So what are you doing?
	What's the plan here?
	You're almost a quarter century old.
	If this isn't going to be the guy, what are you doing?
	Because if this isn't the guy...
	Then you need to start getting ready for the next guy.
	And what that means is you need to end this.
	You need to get therapy.
	You need to figure out what you want.
	Because if you just broke up with this guy two months ago and you meet the guy and he says, when was your last relationship?
	And you say, two months ago.
	Do you know what he's going to say? Bye-bye.
	You're not ready. You're not healed.
	You're not over it. You haven't learned the lessons yet.
	And he's going to say, when did this guy move in?
	And you're going to say, you know, 12 to 14 to 16 weeks after we met.
	And the guy, do you think he's going to view that as a wise decision or an unwise decision?
	Unwise.
	So what's he going to think of your judgment?
	Good judgment?
	Or bad judgment?
	it.
	Bad. And there's this weird thing, too.
	I don't know if it's more common among women.
	I've heard it more from women, but it could be equally true for men, Lorraine.
	But there's this weird thing where women will complain about the ex-boyfriend.
	Oh, you know, he told me this about a rescue dog, and he told me this.
	And somehow they think that they're putting him down?
	You know, that's not how it works, right?
	What happens if the guy who could be a good father to your children, what happens to a guy who hears this kind of talk about the ex?
	What does he think? No accountability.
	Well, why would you be with someone like that?
	Why would you invite someone like that to move in with you?
	Why would you have sex with someone like that?
	Ew! I don't want sack of spineless's sloppy seconds!
	This is the guy who was here before me?
	This is the guy whose smell is on your neck?
	No thanks. Like I told this story before, once when I was set up on this date, and this woman was like, oh yeah, my ex-boyfriend ran up $17,000 on my credit card.
	And I was like, well, all I can do is I can offer to pay you for your coffee, and I'm out of here.
	And she was complaining about the guy.
	He was a bad guy. I got it.
	The hell were you doing with him?
	Do you have no capacity to differentiate good guys from bad guys?
	Do you have no commitment to your own values of what you want to look up to and respect?
	You think that the problem in this relationship, Lorraine, is that he lied about the origin of the dog he had to leave behind?
	Do you really think that's the level at which problems are occurring?
	Be with someone who elevates you.
	Be with someone who inspires you.
	Be with someone that makes you a little nervous about whether you match up, about whether you keep up, about whether you measure up.
	You're looking for symbols of safety.
	You're looking for guys who won't challenge you.
	You're looking for something lazy and easy.
	Instead of making a salad, you're just ordering a burger.
	It tastes better.
	It's easier. Sure.
	But is it good for you?
	Definitely not.
	You're going to have kids one day.
	I hope. I think you should.
	I think you're going to have kids one day.
	And your kids are going to judge you by the father they have.
	I'm telling you that straight up right now.
	Your kids, Lorraine, and everyone out there, my friends, your kids are going to judge you by the father they have.
	If they have a father they can admire, if they have a father they look up to, if they have a father they hope to emulate, if they have a father who has authority because he's a good and powerful and robust and courageous and strong man, they're going to say, Mama!
	I kissed the hem of your garment.
	Thank you so much for choosing such a great dad for me.
	And they will understand why you love him because they love him.
	Let's say you have children with this guy.
	What are the kids going to say about him when they're teenagers?
	I don't know.
	Sure you do. They're going to say, I think Dad's kind of a liar.
	I think Dad's pretty insecure.
	I think that Dad tries to manipulate people just to get them to like him because he's kind of scared and he's kind of like a cry bully.
	And every time I try and say I have a problem with Dad, he kind of folds and half cries and...
	Ew. And they're going to look at the dad negatively, but Lorraine, they're going to look at you, at least if I have anything to do with it, not you personally, but they're going to look at you and say, well, you're chosen.
	Yeah. Men propose, women dispose.
	Men say, can I have sex?
	Can I move in? Can we get married?
	And women say, yes or no.
	You are the gatekeeper. And as the gatekeeper, you have responsibility.
	The fundamental responsibility for the formation of the family lies with the woman.
	You want to be ready for the guy.
	Okay.
	Not the druggy guy, not the clingy guy, not the lying guy.
	You want to be ready for the guy.
	That means training yourself.
	That means not indulging in the junk food of subpar pseudo relationships.
	Be stern with yourself.
	You want to win the race?
	Don't eat a polo pasta right beforehand.
	Train. Get ready.
	Prepare. And then when you meet the guy, you'll be ready.
	And you'll be someone he can admire and you'll be in the capacity or in the position in life to find him admirable and to find him exciting and to find him really, really sexy.
	Yeah. All right.
	Yeah. All right.
	Well, let me know how it goes.
	I really, really appreciate the call.
	And I certainly wish you the very best going forward.
	Thanks, Steph. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
	Alright, up next we have Patrick.
	Patrick wrote in and said, Are three moral rules generally sufficient to define morality and govern a free and just society?
	One, don't steal, respect the fruit of labor, i.e.
	property. Two, don't lie, keep your word, i.e.
	contracts. Three, don't initiate aggression against others, don't murder, rape, assault, etc.
	And, does such morality only apply to conscious life?
	That's from Patrick. Hey Patrick, how you doing?
	I'm well, Stéphane. How are you?
	I'm well, thanks. So, I guess my first question is, well, why should I care about the moral rules that you have defined?
	Well, the reason I came to you with this question is because I've been listening to you for a good while, and I've tried to summarize what I've learned, and it always came back to those three things.
	Like, if you don't do...
	Stealing, lying, and initiating aggression, then it's obviously you're doing something moral in a, well, let's say, human society.
	So would you agree with that?
	I like the rules, don't get me wrong.
	I mean, I like the rules, but the problem is that how have you proven anything?
	Because there are lots of people who don't benefit from those rules.
	Like Hugo Chavez.
	The guy who was in charge of Venezuela for quite some time who died I think in 2006 from cancer.
	Hugo Chavez's daughter I think is worth somewhere north of four billion dollars.
	Look at how much money Yasser Arafat died with.
	Look at how much money Castro has been able to accumulate.
	Look at all the rich Nazis who retired to South America with their ill-gotten gains.
	So, as far as gaining resources and therefore having the ability to have more children, there are people, I mean, look at how much money Barack Obama is making.
	Look at how much money the Clintons have accumulated.
	And tell me how these rules benefit them.
	Well, I think it could be argued that stealing is not necessarily one of their rules.
	First of all, they go to government, so that should say it all right there.
	Well, no, because if the allegations about...
	And $145 million going to the Clinton Foundation as a result of the sign-off on the 20% to the Russian government corporation for America's uranium.
	If that deal is true, then that is corruption, that is taking bribes, that is stealing, that is the whole deal.
	I mean, if Hillary Clinton is worth so much that people pay her a quarter million dollars, $300,000, $400,000 for her speeches, why the hell couldn't she get anyone to show up when she was giving speeches for free while running for a politician, right? Running to be president.
	I mean, if you too can charge $50,000 to do a private concert or probably more than that, then if they give a free concert In Central Park, do you think people are going to show up?
	Of course they are. Simon and Garfunkel gave a free concert in Central Park and it was completely and utterly and ridiculously crowded.
	I agree with you. I mean, do you agree with those three or am I missing something else?
	No, no, no, you're missing the point.
	Help me understand, Patrick, if I can make hundreds of millions of dollars by bypassing these rules, why wouldn't I? Yeah, you're right.
	I mean, I think it's in the self-interest of people to, like you said in some other podcasts, if you can steal and that's the best scenario and you can get away with it, that's a perfectly valid survival strategy.
	Right, because a free and just society is going to benefit some people and it's going to severely disadvantage other people.
	Right, the liars and the cheats who currently are hiding out.
	In the state, right?
	Through the giant orange sonar of Donald Trump, we are getting a pretty good map of the deep state.
	And we're getting a pretty good map of the corruptions involved in the deep state.
	And so, these people have all, for decades, been pillaging and raping the body politics, sometimes figuratively, sometimes it seems like literally.
	And they want to do it and they want to keep doing it and they desperately don't want to be caught.
	Right. And this is a significant portion of the population and it is a very skilled and intelligent and resourceful section of the population.
	So you can come up with these rules.
	It's sort of like, well, this is a great way to play Dungeons and Dragons.
	This is going to result in a fair and just and equitable and enjoyable game.
	And people saying, I don't want to play Dungeons& Dragons.
	Well, what do you do?
	People say, yeah, these are nice rules, but I'm going to be paid $100 million for breaking these rules, and I'm never going to get caught.
	In fact, I'm going to be praised.
	I'm going to end up on a postage stamp.
	Fucking Che Guevara ends up on a postage stamp in Ireland.
	Christ almighty, it's supposed to be the Emerald Isle, not the Commie Red Isle.
	Well, look, in China. So, I mean...
	But so, why people...
	And some people will say, oh, yeah, this is great.
	Absolutely. These are all great rules.
	We need a government to enforce them, and I'm going to be in control of that government.
	Right? So, my question is, I mean, if you're making up these rules, why should people bother to abide by them?
	I mean, people who already don't want to steal and don't like lying and don't want to initiate aggression against others, they're going to be cheering your way.
	But how many people is that?
	I don't know. Yeah, I think you're right.
	I mean, there's always this big challenge, especially when there's a central planning system.
	Like you made the point so well in so many podcasts, the people that are attracted to this are going to go there and try to, for lack of a better word, mill the system for their advantage.
	But in theory, if I try to summarize Uh, moral philosophy, would those three rules be relevant to like a guideline?
	Patrick, this is my point. This is not moral philosophy.
	You're just listing off stuff that you like.
	Right. Right? This is like making a list.
	You know, like if I went to you and I said, Patrick, I've got a really great business plan.
	It's a three point business plan.
	Number one, make a great product.
	Number two, get it to market.
	Number three, make a lot of money.
	How much are you going to invest in my business?
	It's kind of general. Yeah, so here's my wish list that is not philosophy.
	It's a checklist. It's like a grocery list of stuff that you like.
	And this is why, I mean, I've written this whole book called Universally Preferable Behavior because there is this issue.
	Which is you can say, oh, well, if you don't steal, you'll be happier.
	It's like, nope, these people are clearly happier stealing and making huge amounts of money.
	There are sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, malignant narcissists.
	There are lots of nasty people in the world who don't have empathy, who are happy.
	There are sadists. There are people out there who are happy taking your money and watching you squirm.
	Hell, they'll grab your purse out of your hand and they'd circle back so they could watch you cry if they could, if they knew they wouldn't get caught.
	And these people... What are they going to care about these rules?
	You say, well, it's going to make you happy.
	Like, nope, stealing makes me happy.
	Nope, being corrupt makes me happy.
	Yeah, I think you're right.
	I get a thrill out of my illicit behavior.
	It's profitable, it's fun, and these are the people that we have to deal with if we're going to be moralists.
	And making a checklist of things you like isn't going to do it.
	So, the question was less about what makes people happy, but rather, you know, if we have to try and summarize, and I know you understand, but just try to clarify.
	I got no problem with the rules. I like the rules.
	I like the rules. Okay.
	But they're only going to convert the converted already.
	Okay. And what do you mean when you say such morality is only going to apply to conscious life?
	What do you mean? Well, here's where it becomes a bit more difficult.
	Because I heard you talk in the past about animals, animal rights, and I thought it was very interesting.
	You had mentioned something like, well, morality doesn't apply to animals, which is fine.
	I understand. The application of moral rules would be, and I guess I'm extrapolating here, would be just for life which is conscious.
	So if we discovered that, let's say, dolphins are conscious, then we would extend Moral rules to that species as well.
	Oh, so when you say conscious, I mean, dolphins are conscious.
	We can tell when they're awake or asleep.
	So, you mean...
	self-conscious um rationally capable of rational and abstract thought capable of understanding a contract capable of reasoning capable of determining the tangible consequences of abstract actions and so on right so basically being part of the rational framework of society that would be what you're looking at and yes morality
	as a an abstract argument only applies to and we are only responsible for enforcing it against entities that themselves are capable of rational processing and And we all understand this. I mean, if somebody is genuinely insane, we may confine them, but we would not do so for moral reasons.
	We would do so for reasons of personal safety.
	Like if they go around killing people because they're insane and they think that those people are demons out to...
	Whatever, they're completely insane.
	We will confine them for safety, but we would not call that person evil.
	And the same thing if somebody is mentally handicapped to the point where their IQ is like, I don't know, 40 or 50 or whatever, and they engage in an act of violence, we would not consider that Bernie Madoff levels of self-responsibility.
	So morality only applies to rational actors, people capable of rational action.
	And that doesn't mean that we have no moral obligations towards animals.
	I mean, we should not be cruel towards animals.
	We should not torture them and so on.
	And there's arguments I've gone into for about that.
	But yes, in order for...
	You know, if you get a dolphin to splash...
	On a contract, you don't get to enforce that contract against the dolphin, right?
	Because the dolphin doesn't understand.
	The contract has no way of understanding the concepts involved.
	We have no methodology for communicating concepts to dolphins or receiving them back, which doesn't mean dolphins don't have any intelligence.
	They certainly do. You should see them go in a whirlpool pattern to hunt some fish.
	It's very conscious, very planned.
	But they don't have abstract consciousness, at least that we can identify and communicate with, so they would not be responsible for an abstract, universal, rational framework such as morality.
	If they don't have the capacity to process that in any meaningful way with us.
	Right, and I put the two questions together, because the relationship to the three rules that I've just laid out, very simplified rules, but still, you know, if we...
	For example, I had a discussion with the lawyer, and this is legal, this is not legal, why?
	Well, at the root of the law, The morality should be quite important for any law system.
	So if you got crazy laws that are not based at some level into those things, like you have to, like positive obligations, like you mentioned many times, instead of negative obligations like these three, then it could be flivorous.
	I mean, it could be some rules that don't really make sense.
	It's just a preferential The relation between conscious life is something quite complicated and you know I'm not saying I'm qualified at all to talk about this but I thought it was quite interesting to bring to you because there is a subject which you have not I haven't really clarified yet,
	which is the subject of abortion.
	And for myself, I'm not sure on which side I am, but I still lack the reason and evidence to understand fully how, you know, a fetus versus a baby, let's take the traditional...
	Sorry, I've done a bunch of shows on abortion.
	Is it something that you haven't seen, or is it something that you haven't understood, or is it something where you feel my reasoning is incomplete?
	Maybe to some level, yes, I would like maybe a further...
	No, I'll tell you what, because I don't want to recreate shows here.
	Basically, I don't like abortion.
	I do think that it is a potential human being.
	But the solution to me is not necessarily certainly not the heavy hand of the state to punish.
	The solution is to end the welfare state.
	The solution is to allow for the purchase and sale of babies.
	Yes, you can meme that all you want.
	I'm going to stand by it. Because a baby would rather be bought than dead.
	A baby would rather be paid for than sawn into little pieces and dumped in a garbage bag.
	And so if we allow for the purchasing of babies, so some woman has a baby, it's unwanted, and someone comes along and says, I'll give you $50,000 to bring that baby to term.
	Beautiful. We have taken the baby from an irresponsible environment to a responsible environment in that we assume that somebody who has that amount of money, who is properly vetted and not some creep, that we allow a market in these things.
	We allow for this kind of occurrence to keep babies alive.
	So there's lots of things that we can do in a free market.
	That is going to deal with the problem of abortion long before we drag women and put them in jail.
	Plus, of course, social ostracism and an understanding of, like, once we just stop listening to this stupid lie that it just happened, right?
	I mean, no. It's a specific irresponsibility.
	17 different forms of birth control for women, a couple for men, and it is just irresponsibility.
	And... So once we get social ostracism, once we don't have a welfare state to pay for all of this stuff, and once we allow people to buy babies, the problem of abortion will largely cease to be a particular issue, and we'll cross that bridge afterwards when we get to it.
	All right. Thanks, Patrick, for your call.
	I appreciate it. Let's move on to the next caller.
	Alright, up next we have Adi.
	He wrote in and said,"...I just finished Stefan's book The Art of the Argument on Audible and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I appreciate such a much-needed work for today's moral and ethical decay.
	In the book, Stefan expresses the importance of committing oneself to reason and evidence, which I cannot agree more.
	Sophistry is a disease that is rotting the foundation of society." I see a dilemma in this crusade against sophistry.
	When communicating, people in general rarely connect purely on an intellectual, logical, and rational level.
	In all my education, training, and book reading in the 11 years of my adult life, I've learned that to truly connect with people, you do need to appeal not only to their logic, but also to their emotions, and when necessary, to their ethics slash values.
	If we ignore this advice, we run the risk of alienating our audience, an error Jimmy Carter made when running against Ronald Reagan.
	I believe this may be a topic missed in the art of the argument, and I would like to ask Stefan how he would propose to connect with people while giving a sound argument that is presented in a way that does not rub people the wrong way and alienate them.
	How could we modulate our logic arguments on an emotional slash ethics slash values carrier signal using signal communication terms so we may connect with people on the deepest levels and be more effective in expressing the argument?
	That's from Adi. Hey Adi, how's it going?
	Are you there, Adi? Is it gone?
	Hello? Can you hear me?
	All right. Well, I'll just answer it and we can move on.
	So do you need to connect with people's emotions?
	Yes, you do. But you have to be careful not to end up in the realm of sophistry in attempting to appeal to people's emotions.
	You want to unite reason with evidence.
	Sure, be passionate, be compelling, be invested, be emotional.
	But don't put the emotion first.
	The emotion cannot be that which leads the interaction.
	Emotions are not tools of cognition.
	They're good instinctual sniffers, in a sense.
	They're evidence, potential evidence without conclusive proof.
	So I am concerned a little bit, though, about people who say, how can I speak about truth and virtue, reason and evidence in a way that's not going to offend or upset people?
	Nope! Not going to happen.
	It's like, how can I play football in a way that I never get it bumpy or an owie?
	Nope. The game is that you're going to rub people the wrong way.
	The game is that to be effective in leading people towards virtue, you are inevitably going to end up stomping on the feet and interfering with the values and the profits of bad people.
	I just did a show with Tom Woods.
	I think it's going to come out Friday.
	This is October 27th, 2017, where I go into this in more detail, so just touch on it here.
	But I'm concerned that you're trying to find some magic key that's going to allow you to spread reason and evidence without annoying people, without...
	And you are, because there are bad people in the world, and when you're a good person spreading virtue, it interferes with the interests of bad people, and they're going to get mad, and there's no amount of touching on their emotions that's going to help or fix or solve that.
	And, you know, if you're introducing the car, the people who make the horse and buggy are not going to be very happy.
	Well, how do I invent a car without annoying the horse and buggy people?
	Well, you can't.
	And they're going to have to be left in the dust.
	And the people who don't get on board with reason and evidence are going to have to be left in the dust after a certain amount of patient encouragement.
	So just, you know, I'm concerned that you're trying to set up some kind of framework here where it's going to be relatively cost-free to speak about philosophy to the world.
	And I don't think that is a wise idea.
	Because then what happens is, here's what happens.
	If you say, if you have the belief or the illusion that there's some magic combination of reason and evidence and emotion and passion and charisma, if you believe there's some magic source, Some spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down to everyone.
	Then every time you fail or get blowback, you're going to focus on yourself and what you did wrong.
	Well, I should have done that. Maybe I should have been more passionate or maybe I didn't listen to this.
	No. Stop trying to manage both sides of the conversation.
	Forget how you're landing for everyone.
	Speak passionately.
	Speak honestly. Speak with concern and care and reason and evidence.
	And where it lands, it lands.
	How can I have a song that's going to appeal to everyone?
	Well, I guess that's maybe a little bit more common, but certainly not around the world.
	But focus more on your relationship to your truth, to the truth, and less on your relationship to the audience, and I think then you'll hit the maximum number of people that you can meet, and you'll also be modeling a kind of courage that people need to see in the world.
	So I hope that helps. Did you get connected at some point?
	No. All right, so let's move on to the next caller, but thanks for the question.
	Alright, up next we have Amanda.
	Amanda wrote in and said, He identifies with the MGTOW movement,
	and although he will acknowledge that I am a good, loyal woman, he still thinks that Nawalt is a myth, and that all women will eventually turn into an Awalt.
	He is the kind of person who introduces me to Ayn Rand, Freedom Aid Radio, and Objectivism, so it breaks my heart to see that he sees no value in family or partnership.
	We separated for about a month and are now in a last-ditch trowel phase for a temporary amount of time.
	He told me that his endgame is me and all he wants is me.
	I'm afraid that he means by that is he wants a perpetual girlfriend, not a wife or partner.
	We are going to counseling and he has significantly slowed down on drinking, but even with these things, he can't seem to let go of the MGTOW perspective.
	Living in a society where women use and abuse men through our current legal system has created the MGTOW movement.
	My life goal is marriage and children, but my partner sees these things as surrendering his freedom and property rights.
	How do I as a woman prove to my partner that now Walt and I never would screw him over or use the broken legal system against him?
	Women have far more power than they should, but that doesn't mean my values will ever let me screw over a man.
	How do I prove my values and show that I am wife material?
	That's from Amanda. Hey Amanda, how are you doing tonight?
	I'm good. I'm nervous.
	Thanks for the opportunity of being here.
	Sure, sure. Okay, just to unpack things for a little bit.
	So MGTOW is an acronym for Men Going Their Own Way.
	And very briefly, it is a movement of men who believe, and I think not unjustly so, that it is far too dangerous to involve The state in your relationships with women, and that means no cohabitation, at least certainly to the point where it might lead to common law, and no marriage.
	Because that gives the woman the power of the state and her whims, which can combine to destroy a man's savings, to destroy a man's relationship with his children, to destroy a man's life.
	And because women hold this grenade called state power in the family court system, it is too dangerous.
	Self-destructive, potentially, to get married or to cohabitate.
	Some date, some don't, and so on.
	There's the MGTOW monks, and then there's others who date.
	And there is, of course, NAWALT, N-A-W-A-L-T. That stands for not all women are like that, right?
	And so there, of course, are men who've grown up seeing their fathers.
	When they were children, they saw their fathers destroyed.
	By their moms, the family court systems and so on, or had an uncle or a friend or a cousin, brother who you destroyed.
	And women say, well, not all women are like that.
	And the argument is, well, women change, men can change.
	I mean, everyone who gets married hopefully thinks it's going to last and go well.
	And women may get seduced by the power that they hold over the man.
	And it is a fundamentally unequal relationship because the woman can say, well, I can push a button.
	And destroy your life.
	And you can't be in a situation of egalitarian negotiation with people who can do that and power corrupts.
	And so even if there is a woman out there, according to this perspective, who doesn't display these characteristics, there is, of course, no guarantee that she's not going to end up with a feminist co-worker who's going to talk her into that kind of stuff.
	And it's too risky.
	Have I given that perspective some justice, Amanda?
	Yeah, I'm actually on MGTOW's website if you want me to read their short little paragraph of what they say they are.
	Okay, yeah, if it's short, I think that's fine.
	Okay. Men going their own way is a statement of self-ownership where modern man preserves and protects his own sovereignty above all else.
	It is the manifestification of one word, no, ejecting silly preconceptions and cultural definitions of what a man is, looking to no one else for social cues, refusing to bow, serve, and kneel for the opportunity to be treated like a disposable utility, and living according to his own best interests in a world which would rather he didn't.
	Now, just remember, though, of course, I mean, that's...
	Pleasant sounding, but not particularly substantial.
	And there is no leader.
	I mean, this is a spontaneous movement of men also who seem to be disappointed by the basic fact that they say women don't love men in the way that men love women.
	And women need a man for his resources.
	And therefore, there's always this possibility of trading up, of getting a better man and so on.
	And I don't know.
	I mean, of course women love men for their resources.
	There is virtue involved if that happens and so on, but of course women, quote, love men for their resources because male and female and biological and attachment is all based upon having children and children need resources.
	So men love women to some degree for sexual access and women love men to some degree for access to resources.
	And one of the imbalances is that women can go to the state and For resources, but men cannot go to the state for sexual access, right?
	They can't even pay for sexual access in many places because prostitution is illegal or at least problematic, or even if it's not illegal, it can be reputationally problematic.
	So anyway, I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	There's lots of places that you can go on the web.
	Just do a search for MGTOW channels in...
	On YouTube, and you can find a bunch of them, and yeah, I think they're well worth listening to, and well worth listening to the arguments.
	I won't sort of give my whole thing about it right now, but there is a little bit that I need to ask, or want to ask, before we get into more details, if that's alright?
	Okay. Drinking.
	Question mark. It's been bad.
	It's been bad. And I actually, since writing into you, we've decided to end our relationship.
	Oh dear, flatlined in the ambulance.
	I'm sorry to hear that. That's a shame.
	Or maybe it's not. I don't know.
	But go on. Yeah, so we're both in counseling.
	We're going to work out the best way to separate permanently since we've been together so long and really are a codependent relationship.
	Wait, wait. Do you mean codependent like you both are involved in each other's lives?
	Or do you mean codependent like the psychological term of dysfunction?
	Dysfunction. Okay, got it.
	I just wanted to double check.
	Yeah, so I recently started, we actually started at the beginning of it together, real-time relationships.
	And, you know, we're fucking Bruce and Sheila, so I'll just put that out there.
	Oh, from real-time relationships, yeah, yeah.
	Yep, to the T. So, just to give you that.
	But yeah, the drinking has been bad.
	How much are we talking?
	What are we talking about here? I've once seen him drink 30 beers in a night.
	30 beers in a night?
	And... Refuse to stop.
	But on average, I'd say 12 to 17 daily.
	He's a big guy. I guess so.
	And how long has he been doing this for?
	It's gotten worse over the last two years, but for the whole six years.
	So this guy who drinks, what, a dozen to 20 beers sometimes a day?
	He thinks the big problem in his life is the family court system?
	What am I missing here?
	In the last month that we've been together, he's dropped down to some days not drinking at all, which is a huge thing, and keeping it around five to seven.
	And there's been a huge personality change.
	He did try, and I think that counseling has done him good.
	But, yeah, the drinking's an issue.
	A big issue. The main issue.
	What are you doing with a guy who's drunk all the time?
	Six years?
	I would say that I am just as broken as he is.
	But I recognize that I'm broken, and now I want to fix myself and...
	And get to a place where I can be a mother and a wife.
	All right. I have a title for this show.
	Are you ready, Amanda? No.
	Let me know when you're ready. It's coming either way.
	I'm kidding. Amanda, this is the title for the show.
	Are you ready? Okay.
	MGTOW SAVED MY EGGS! Can you imagine if you've gotten pregnant by this guy with his...
	Oh no, we haven't had kids.
	With his 18 beers a day or whatever and you got pregnant with this guy?
	The fact that he went MGTOW was like your future eggs punching him in the nads because they're hanging sopping wet like a piñata in the rain from too much mead.
	You should create a shrine to the MGTOW movement for saving you from lashing your life to a sodden alcoholic wreck like this guy.
	No offense. Yeah.
	He's a good person.
	No, no, no, no. That's been damaged.
	Please don't start with the commercials, Amanda.
	You've listened to the show for a while, but beyond that, right?
	Right. And I did write down what his virtues and values were beforehand.
	I don't care what his virtues and values are.
	The fact that he's spending his life and his money and his existence as a sodden, drunken, dissociated mess while listening to this show.
	How long has he listened to my show for?
	Five years. Five years.
	So he can't claim to not be knowledgeable about the relationship between child abuse and alcoholism, right?
	Right. And he's taken the AC test.
	He won't tell me what his score is, but he's taken it.
	Oh, so honesty and openness would not be listed under his virtues, I'm guessing.
	No. Yeah, why would you, his lover of six years, need to know what his childhood was like when you're suffering from the effects of his alcoholism?
	Sure. Why would he care?
	So he knows that his alcoholism probably has a lot to do with his childhood abuse.
	I assume that there was childhood abuse.
	And he also knows that personal therapy can be a wonderful way.
	To deal with this. And he also knows, since he's been listening to the show for about half its length, its total length, he also knows he could have called into this show any time.
	Over the past five years, any time he could have called in and we could have had a nice, juicy, hopefully not too drunken conversation about his life.
	He had access to resources.
	He had access to knowledge.
	He had access to all the kinds of connections that are so rare for people to understand who come from abusive histories.
	And what did he do with all of this knowledge and all of these opportunities?
	What did he do with them, Amanda?
	Nothing. And me calling in is actually what...
	Put the nail in the coffin, so...
	Wait, he listens to this show, but the fact that you were calling in was the end of the relationship?
	Yep. Well, then there's two acronyms you need to name your children after.
	One is NAWALT. No, sorry.
	One is MGTOW. I guess another one is NAWALT. And the third one is FDR. Because if FDR helped get you out of this, I'm not going to cry a lot of tears into my coffee.
	Okay. Did you still want this guy?
	How long have you listened to the show for?
	About two years.
	I feel like the paths are equally as hard of me finding someone else or trying to make things work with him.
	It's hard. The last month that we've been together after, you know, we broke up for a month and now we've been back together.
	And, you know, the conditions for us getting back together was him going to counseling and to cut back on the drinking.
	And it's been the best month that we've ever had.
	Are you guys together or not? I thought you'd broken up.
	We're going to break up. We have a set date.
	So we're working out and counseling how to best permanently do it.
	Why wouldn't he call in with you, Amanda?
	He feels this is a huge violation of his privacy.
	Does he listen to call-in shows?
	Yeah. He told me that...
	Oh, so he listens to call-in shows, so he's fine with violations of other people's privacy, but his own is bad, right?
	He'll profit from other people being honest and open about the difficulties, challenges, and opportunities in their lives, and he'll consume that.
	But, for you to talk to someone, well, that's just a violation of his privacy.
	I mean, I can understand, like, I can understand, like, if he thinks that this is some bad deal for the people talking about it, but then he shouldn't be listening to the show, should he?
	That's very logical.
	Well, that's what you do when you're not drunk all the time.
	Get some logic out.
	And listen, I have a particular distaste for drinking as a whole.
	Certainly excessive drinking.
	It's not like I never have a light beer or something like that.
	But I have a particular distaste and hostility towards it.
	And so I sympathize with the addiction.
	But if a young man who's into Ayn Rand, this show, objectivism, who has not just the rationality of objectivism, but the self-knowledge and sensitivity to internal states and child abuse that comes out of Free Domain Radio...
	I don't think he's got a lot of excuses as to doing the best he can with the knowledge he has.
	I don't think that really fits myself.
	I mean, you know him, I don't.
	Yeah, he's not doing the best he can.
	He's an extremely intelligent person and I think the most frustrating thing is seeing the potential in someone and them just piss it away.
	And I can't...
	I've accepted that I can't heal him.
	I can't help him no amount of time, no amount of money, no amount of love.
	I can't do that.
	And so... How long...
	Sorry to interrupt, but how long has he been drinking for?
	I mean, before you knew him?
	You met when he was 26.
	How long had he had an alcohol problem before that that you know of or that you've been able to establish?
	Um... So he was disowned by his parents at a young age, and then his brother got him an apartment at a late teenage, and I think he started drinking around then.
	Like 18, 19 kind of thing?
	That's what I would guess, yeah.
	Okay, so let's say 18.
	He's now 32, give or take, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	Right. So that's 14 years, right?
	Wow. 14 years of unbelievable alcohol toxicity, of unbelievable health damage, of unbelievable amounts of sugar through the system, of...
	Emotional avoidance.
	You know, when people drink, this is all just my opinion, I think that there's some validity to it, but just take this as my opinion.
	I believe that when people are addicts, their emotional growth stops.
	Because all they do is deal with their addiction.
	All they do is look for money to pay for their addiction.
	All they do is indulge in their addiction or recover from their addiction and whenever they encounter an uncomfortable feeling within themselves, what do they do?
	They dive into their addiction.
	And then their addiction overpowers, because of the negative results of being addicted, their addiction then overpowers the original unease that they had, the original anxiety or depression or rage or suicidal thoughts or whatever's going on.
	Then the addiction overwhelms it and the original emotions that gave rise to the addiction get drowned under the addiction.
	So no progress is made in dealing with internal issues.
	People just take a drug.
	It's a circle. Or drink a beer.
	And they cease to grow.
	And so here we've got 14 years of a guy who's pounded unbelievable amounts of suds back through his esophagus and has not emotionally grown, I would guess.
	And is, I assume, not well off.
	I mean, alcoholism is one crushingly expensive thing.
	Addiction as well, right?
	I mean, if he's... He's financially stable.
	He's a very high-functioning alcoholic.
	I mean, he's a really intelligent guy.
	Oh, so he's got money, he's got savings, he's got resources?
	Yeah. Wow.
	That's amazing. That is impressive.
	And I guess some people process alcohol.
	I mean, I can't even have two beers.
	So... It's mind-blowing.
	But his success doesn't matter because it...
	It doesn't bring him happiness.
	It doesn't propel him into the future.
	He just kind of exists.
	And I don't want to just exist.
	I want to move forward and be happy.
	And Ayn Rand said, man's highest moral purpose is his own happiness.
	And I want that to be my purpose now.
	Oh yeah, no, this would have been, I'm telling you, Amanda, good for you for not at least getting pregnant.
	This would have been a terrible man to have children with.
	I mean, if he's not even honest enough to tell you what his adverse childhood experience score was, and you've known him for six years, and he's still, what, cutting back on drinking?
	I'm sorry, if you're a 20 beer a day guy, I don't think cutting back is the answer.
	You gotta stop. And that's tough.
	It's a tough thing to do.
	To stop cold turkey from that kind of addiction is very...
	I mean, it should not be done, I think, without a doctor's help.
	I mean, it can be very toxic.
	Yeah. So...
	I'm sorry that the relationship was there.
	I'm not sorry that the relationship is ending.
	At all. And I don't think that there was much of a relationship, because his relationship was with his addiction, and your relationship was with your avoidance of his addiction and whatever addictions you have.
	And I'm glad that you're both in therapy, and I certainly wish the best for you both, but I'm glad the bridge I thought should break got broken on the journey to talking.
	It's probably the most healthiest thing.
	It's hard, but... It is hard, but it certainly beats the alternative.
	All right. Well, thanks very much.
	I appreciate the feedback.
	Well, not the feedback. I appreciate you sharing this.
	And again, this will be very helpful to other people.
	Say, oh, it's a violation of privacy and so on.
	Well, first of all, you're anonymous anyway.
	And secondly... We can speak and should speak honestly and openly about our lives because life is short and intimacy is going to bring us together and give us the strength to face what needs to be faced in the years to come.
	So thank you very much for your call.
	I certainly wish you the very best.
	And do, you know, offer my encouragement to your ex-boyfriend or your soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.
	You know, I mean, it's not too late, but I'm glad that he's in therapy.
	And my advice would be, with the aid of a doctor, get down to zero and never touch this stuff again.
	It's a real poison self.
	All right. Thanks very much.
	I appreciate that. And let's move on to the next caller.
	Alright, up next we have Logan.
	Logan wrote in and said, My wife divorced me because she fell in love with a mutual friend, and after almost two years, they are now moving in together, and the man is increasingly involved in the lives of my two daughters.
	How can I bring myself to resolve the lingering, intense resentment and animosity towards a person whom I thought was my friend, but played a part in breaking up my family?
	That's from Logan. Logan.
	Oh my god, how you doing, man?
	Hey, yeah, can you hear me?
	I can hear you just fine.
	I can hear you just fine. If you can indulge me, tell me the story, my God.
	Okay, well, I mean, hey, first off, I'd like to say it's a real pleasure and honor to talk to you.
	I first discovered you after my divorce.
	You know, I wish I had discovered you before my divorce, but, you know, anyway.
	Yeah, I mean, what I'm afraid of is rambling too long to bore your listeners, but I hope you can guide my conversation to where it would be helpful for you and your listeners.
	So about two years ago, I got divorced.
	Basically, my wife was more distant and distant, and she...
	We had our differences, and she told me I wasn't fulfilling her needs.
	Eventually, I got a private eye to follow her around, and I knew she was going to this guy's house a lot for quote-unquote orchestra practice.
	I discovered that she was kind of intimate with this guy who I thought was a friend, and I legitimately thought was a friend.
	Before we got divorced, he...
	He had got divorced maybe like six or seven or eight years earlier and I was literally in my driveway consoling him about his divorce so I did not think that he would be the person to do that to me but apparently that didn't pan out the way that I thought.
	I assumed a lot of things and You know what they say when you assume.
	So, yeah, I'm sorry.
	If you have any questions to ask me, go ahead.
	Were you close to this man?
	Let's call him Bob. Were you close to Bob?
	Well, yeah, I consider him a friend.
	He came over to my house.
	I stayed up with him having some drinks and chatting about philosophy and politics and whatever.
	I knew him for years.
	Like I said, when he was going through his divorce, I specifically remember times where he was over in my house and he was out in his driveway.
	Sorry, in my driveway.
	He was in his car and I was standing out there and I was kind of, you know, I was consoling him.
	He was going through emotions that I went through.
	So he knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of this stuff, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah, so that's kind of the thing about this is that I did not expect this specifically from him.
	And so how long were you married with your wife?
	10 years. And how long were you together before that?
	Before we were married? Yeah.
	Well, let's see.
	I met her in 2000.
	So three years? No, no, because you've been separated.
	Well, yeah, we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
	How long were you boyfriend and girlfriend before you got married and engaged?
	A couple of years? Well, sorry, let me explain.
	I feel like I need to be completely open with you.
	We were boyfriend and girlfriend for like a year or two, and I proposed to her with a diamond ring and everything, and then she accepted it.
	And then she, before I went to grad school, she told me like she wanted to break up with me.
	So I kind of just left it at that.
	And then like a year later, she called me out of the blue and said she wanted to be friends.
	And then after that, you know, we kind of got back together and then I proposed to her again.
	So she left the fucking other guy, right?
	Yes, yeah. No, I mean, we can be frank, right?
	We're talking about basic biology shit, right?
	I mean, so you proposed to this woman, you were engaged to her, she dumped you to fuck another guy, it didn't work out, and then she got you back.
	How pretty is this woman?
	You know what? I knew you were going to ask that, because I've listened to you enough, and I'm smart, so I, like, she's not, like, at the time, she was maybe, like, a seven max.
	Like, I don't, It's frustrating for me because I knew you were going to ask that.
	No, listen. A seven is perfectly respectable if you're low, too.
	Sure, yeah. Not everyone gets a 10, right?
	I mean, that's the nature of the bell curve.
	Over the years, we were married and she did not take care of herself.
	She doesn't exercise.
	To this day, she doesn't exercise or anything like that.
	I have specifically exercised and taken care of myself.
	Other than treating your friends as a hobby horse, I suppose.
	Yeah, so sure, yeah.
	So, okay. So, why would you take her back?
	She left you to go fuck another guy.
	Why would you take her back?
	Oh, man. And listen, I'm not trying to get you to kick your younger self.
	I mean, the reason, like, is your past, you know, being able to go back and fix this.
	But there are guys out there listening to this, men and women out there, who are going to look at exactly these same kinds of issues.
	Yeah, you're exactly right.
	And that's part of the reason that I wanted to call in was because I knew that – I know that what I'm going through is exactly what young men who were like me as my younger self are going through and that I wanted to express myself as maybe a warning or some advice to some of them.
	Why did you take her back?
	Look, to this day, I think my self-esteem regarding women is very low.
	At the time, I actually never had a girlfriend until her.
	I mean, when she broke up with me, I think I did the right thing, which I basically just walked away from her and never spoke to her again.
	I didn't hear from her literally until a year later.
	Yeah. So had she done this thing, and I've actually experienced this myself, did she do this thing where she was superior, you needed to be with her, or you were a loser?
	Did she give you that kind of vagina cult thing where this is the very best place to be, and if you don't get with this, then you're somehow a loser, and you'll be compromised, and you'll never get with anyone?
	Like, did you have something in your head...
	Around her being some sort of platonic ideal?
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it was like I thought of myself as necessarily a loser, but...
	I mean, that was probably part of it, but I... I mean, listen, Stefan, I never had a girlfriend...
	Ever, until her. What did your family say?
	This woman who left you to go fuck some other guy after you gave her a ring, I hope you got the ring back, did, like, what did they say when you said, oh yeah, no, Eve is slithering back into her lives, and they'd be like, you know, get a hammer.
	You know, I mean, what did your family say?
	What did your friends say? You know, it's funny, like, I specifically remember one friend who was my friend to this day, like, he said he was very skeptical of the whole thing.
	And he's great.
	I'm thankful for him.
	My brother was skeptical at the time.
	I guess I should have listened to him.
	I don't know. Did he say, don't do it?
	I can't say that specifically, but I remember him being very skeptical of...
	Her coming back and him saying, you know, that's not a good idea.
	I got that vibe from him.
	It's been a while.
	Sorry, just to mention to guys out there, stop vibing, start talking.
	You know, listen, vagina can pull more weight than a freight train, as the old saying goes.
	And a man who is...
	Horpnotized. Hypnotized by a whore.
	They're horpnotized. A man who's horpnotized is not thinking straight.
	He literally, his head is bathed in endorphins.
	He's not thinking straight.
	There is a sexual spell that is cast over women.
	That is cast by women over men, which is like being drunk.
	You don't let a friend, you don't let a relative, you don't let anyone drive drunk.
	And you don't let men in your life make foundational decisions when they're pussy drunk.
	You just don't do it.
	You don't do it.
	If you have to slap them on the nads, if you have to hit them with a cucumber, if you have to move them to Tahiti and tie them in a tiger pit, you do something!
	You do something to break the hypnosis.
	You have to. This is what we owe each other.
	As men. You know, women have their own female in-group preferences.
	There are in-group preferences all over the place.
	The blacks have their in-group preferences.
	Japanese people, Jews have their own in-group preferences.
	It's time for men to have some in-group damn preferences and to watch each other's back and help each other.
	If a man is hypnotized, slap him!
	Give him and build a wall between him and his thought!
	It's what you need to do. It's what you've got to do.
	Go on. I mean, well, I would say, since I'm talking to you, I realize, I mean, if I told you about this woman's background, you would probably have an aneurysm.
	A couple of warning flags in the old ATV. Yeah, I mean, her father cheated on her mother.
	You know, and as we had a relationship, like, eventually, like, her brother, her older brother, like, her older brother's wife, like, divorced him.
	So they were definitely kind of- Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Sorry. Just so people are clear, the fact that her father cheated, her mother cheated on her father, is that right?
	No, no. Father, sorry. The fact that her father cheated on her mother is not the fundamental issue.
	It's not the substantial issue.
	Well, that's why...
	Sorry, let me just...
	I was just pausing for a breath.
	The fundamental issue is what are her thoughts and feelings about her father cheating on her mother?
	Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
	That's why I never, ever even conceived of her...
	I mean, essentially, I feel like she cheated on me, even though I don't know 100% for sure.
	I'm pretty sure. Wait, wait, wait.
	Cheated on you when? Back in the day?
	I mean, probably like two years ago, like around the time of the divorce.
	I'm sorry, I'm confused.
	Didn't you hire a private eye to track this woman to her, what did you call them, orchestra rehearsals or something?
	And then didn't he find out that they were having sex?
	Well, yeah, yeah. That was after we had decided that we were going to eventually do this.
	Oh, yeah. But, I mean, whether she actually had sex with the guy or not, you may never know.
	But, clearly, it was an emotional affair.
	Clearly, she had some place to land when she jumped, right?
	Yeah, I'm 100% certain.
	I'm certain it was at least a year before that actually happened.
	Sorry to interrupt, but were you in any kind of vulnerable or weakened position at this point in the marriage or at this point in your life?
	Had you lost a job? Did you have health issues?
	Were you anxious or worried about something?
	Was there an ill parent?
	Was there something that...
	Brought you down to some degree or another or was taking your energy or strength out of the relationship?
	That's an interesting question.
	I would say no, because around the time this happened, I I actually became the department head at the company I'm working at.
	Was there anything in this other man's life that gave him any kind of propulsion up to something higher or better?
	No, I don't.
	That's the thing. I don't know.
	I know he worked two or three random jobs.
	He participated in burns.
	I don't know if you know what those are.
	No. Burns. I've never been to one, but the only thing I know from him is that it's people going out and secluded the woods and And having free orgies and drugs and stuff like that.
	He's a wood orgy elf guy?
	Yeah, basically, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Look, you sound surprised.
	I'm... I'm surprised.
	Listen, I mean, I had a guy who told me – I had a guy on the show telling me it's possible that a woman can have a baby with a tree.
	So, the shit that surprises me now, I don't even know what it is anymore.
	So, is this guy like some deranged scusple or what?
	No, he's – I mean, I guess I could call him a scuzzball.
	He was fun enough to be a friend.
	He was my friend, but I... Did you know about the wood orgy shit?
	Oh, yeah. I would be in the car with him alone.
	He'd be like, oh, yeah. He'd be telling me about it.
	He'd be like, I think you'd like it a lot.
	I'm like, okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	This guy is saying to you as a married man, come join me for infinite wood fuckery.
	No, no, no. Stop laughing about this shit, man.
	This is serious stuff.
	This guy in your car, you are a married father, and he's saying, join me in crazy baby oil druid sex with hedgehogs.
	I mean, this was his invitation.
	This was his plan for you?
	I'm sorry. The way you phrase it, I'm… Yeah, sorry.
	I know. But seriously, this is the friend.
	He's saying to you, you're a married guy.
	Come to me for orgies in the woods.
	Well, he didn't… You'd enjoy it?
	But he said you should come to this place or whatever.
	Like, he didn't say, like, you should come have an orgy, but he… But he said, like, you should come to the burn and see what it's all about.
	Oh, come watch the orgy.
	Because that's totally appropriate for a father and a husband.
	Yeah, you don't have to come to the murder.
	But maybe you can watch the murder. How's that?
	Well, maybe, I mean, I guess, I guess, are you, are you implying that I should have been very wary of this guy?
	Maybe I should have, yeah. I mean, he wasn't like that.
	I don't care.
	Well, when we bought the dog, he wasn't biting the children.
	I don't care. When the dog starts biting the children, you do something.
	When did he go nuts?
	Oh, I mean, I don't remember.
	He was always nuts, kind of nuts.
	I don't know. Okay, see, this is the basic reality of life.
	Mm-hmm. This is the basic reality of life, and this everybody needs to understand.
	If you have crazy people in your life, one of two things will happen.
	You'll make them sane, which as yet remains only a theoretical, or two, they'll make people in your life insane.
	Sanity and insanity are competing viruses in the brain.
	A man is known by the company he keeps.
	If you want to know something about people, look at their three or four closest relationships, right?
	What the fuck is this guy doing in your life?
	Was he around your daughters?
	Oh, God. I mean, not that much, but I mean, I... I mean, what kind of example is he giving?
	Who knows what the hell he's going to say to them?
	No, no, yeah, yeah, you're right.
	I mean, when you say that, it's kind of like, like, he didn't...
	It's almost like he lived a double life, you know?
	No, no. Listen, you've got to stop justifying this shit, man.
	This was a bad... You can't have crazy people in your life.
	I'm telling you... I mean, you can, but this is the kind of shit that's going to go down.
	So are you saying that if somebody...
	If somebody professes something that isn't, I don't know, like a hint or an inkling of something they do away from you that maybe isn't to your approval, but they intentionally don't.
	Now you're giving me the Puritan hat.
	Are you saying, Steph, can you please wear this Puritan hat of intolerance?
	Listen, have you heard the R versus K stuff?
	Yes, absolutely. Okay.
	So, druggy, nudie, druid orgies in the woods.
	Would you say that's a little on the R-selected side?
	Yes. I'm not saying, do they listen to a musician you disapprove of?
	I'm saying, are they so fucking crazy that they're shagging with random people in the woods?
	That's not just a little off the beaten path, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I did not know that at the time, but you're exactly right, yeah.
	Well, okay, but if you didn't know that at the time, that meant that you didn't know much about the person.
	Look, it's one thing to do that kind of shit if you're a Bilderberg meeting attendee running the world, but this guy I'm going to assume is not in that exalted satanic clan, right?
	Yeah, so what you're telling me, I mean, I'm accepting that, but that doesn't relieve me of anxiety of what I have to deal with him now.
	Oh, no, no, I get it.
	No, I get it. Like, sawdust in the ass wood fucker is around your kids.
	Yeah, yeah. And this is why I'm focusing on this, because you need to wake up to this, because this is your challenge now, right?
	So don't tell me that your wife fell in love with this lunatic.
	It's not love. Right?
	Okay. Well, I'm saying, I said that specifically because that's what she told me and I was very incredulous when she told me, but I'm sorry.
	Go ahead. Go ahead. What in your wife's nature?
	Is responding to this crazy shit.
	You know her, right? Good 12 years, 13 years that you've known her.
	Minus the year that she was off fucking the other guy.
	But why is she enamored of this?
	And what the hell is it in her judgment, man, that she thinks this is a great guy to have around your kids?
	I, well, first off, right now, I don't think that she's specifically thinking about my kids anymore. I don't think that she's specifically thinking about my kids I'm guessing not.
	Right now.
	And it guilts me to say that because of things that I've done in the recent months.
	I've been through a lot of shit in the past four months, basically, but...
	How long have they been confirmed together?
	I know that there's a certain amount of time beforehand.
	She told me when we were discussing our divorce that she was going to wait one year before she made her relationship with Emma Vischel.
	And she did.
	And after one year, you know, I guess they became official.
	And that's kind of when I started.
	That's when she introduced them to my daughter's lives.
	And that's when I started hearing more and more from my daughters about this guy.
	And that's what has kind of been very shocking to me.
	What have you been hearing from your daughters?
	Well, specifically, in the recent two or three weeks, my ex-wife called me to tell me that they were moving in together.
	It doesn't make me jealous.
	I don't want anything to do with her at all.
	Obviously, I think she's kind of a terrible person, or she at least at the very minimum made a terrible mistake.
	To get divorced, but she told me they were moving in together and that she was going to start including him in events such as my daughter's birthdays where he would show up and events where I would possibly be in the same...
	Does she know about this wood orgy stuff?
	Oh, yeah, yes. Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
	They're both musicians, orchestra people.
	I don't know what you would say.
	Your sex life in your marriage, was she satisfied, do you think?
	I'm sorry. I'm laughing because I suspected you would ask that.
	Sure. What I have to say is that, from my point of view, it was abysmal.
	It was absolutely fucking abysmal.
	I know that I bought a box of 50 condoms from Costco after we were married.
	Maybe a year after we were married.
	I would say in nine years, there was probably 15 of them left.
	So if you do the math, it's like one out of every four months or something.
	You have sex once every four months in marriage?
	What was it like before you got married?
	It was a little bit better.
	What, like once every two months?
	You know, it's hard for me to say.
	I mean, yeah.
	I mean, yeah. I mean, look, some people – sorry to interrupt.
	Some people just have a low sex drive.
	I mean, was this something that – No, like I have a – I think I have a pretty normal sex drive.
	That was probably one of the things she was probably very frustrated with in our marriage was that I was very dissatisfied with how the frequency of sex – Wait, I'm trying to think, man.
	Dude, she's a seven who doesn't fuck?
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
	And she left you to have sex with another man before you got married after you were engaged?
	And she doesn't have sex with you?
	Yeah, I mean, we actually never...
	Actually, we didn't have sex on our honeymoon.
	You didn't have sex? A week on a cruise, we did not have sex on our honeymoon.
	Why? Did you not initiate?
	Why? Oh, I initiated.
	And yeah, I wish just...
	I mean, look, this is what contributes to my view of myself as some loser, like beta cuck, like whatever.
	No, no, no. You must have had that before to think that this is somehow okay.
	Like for a woman to...
	If you get married and then the woman withdraws sex, that's exactly the same as getting married, allegorically speaking.
	It's the same as getting married and then the man saying, I'm keeping all my money for myself and not paying a penny.
	Yeah, I mean, you're right.
	It's funny you mention that, because that's exactly how I felt when she wanted to get divorced, was where I was like, how fucking ungrateful can you be that I provided this life for you, where I make six figures and you just want to leave it?
	Like, what? Okay, anyway.
	But that's, yeah. Well, I mean, so what would happen when you would...
	I mean, hard to say like initiate sex.
	I mean, you're standing beside George H.W. Bush in a wheelchair, but what I mean is when you would initiate the behavior that had the potential to lead towards sex, what would happen?
	It was standard bullshit.
	Like, I'm tired. I don't feel like it.
	I'm not in a good mood. Whatever.
	Anything and everything. Yeah.
	How were you guys getting along on your honeymoon?
	It's got to be kind of tense.
	I mean, on the honeymoon, it was fine.
	Look, I don't know, Stefan, because I was young.
	I'm going to say this, I was young and naive.
	Oh, I don't think you can blame a bad sex life on being young.
	Quite the opposite, in fact.
	Yeah, I mean, it was very frustrating for me.
	For me personally, it was frustrating because I thought we should be fucking like rabbits, right?
	Like, we should be We should be fucking like rabbits, but we weren't, so...
	But beforehand, right?
	Before you got married, you were having sex once every month or two, right?
	Yeah, we actually didn't live in the same...
	I lived in...
	Okay, don't give me the geographical details, man.
	I lived in the north, we lived like...
	Yeah, but that just means that when you're together, you...
	Yeah, yeah. That was kind of how it was.
	Do you think she may have had affairs when you were long distance?
	I don't think so.
	I have no reason to think that.
	I can't rule it out, but I don't think so now.
	You basically married her knowing or having the explicit indications ahead of time that it was basically going to be a brother and sister relationship, right?
	A brother and sister relationship.
	Can you elaborate on that?
	No sex. No.
	Or a lesbian relationship, right?
	Because women don't initiate that much, so lesbians are famously sexless.
	Apparently, half the internet is completely lying about all of that.
	I guess I can't...
	Well, you married her without dealing with the no sex issue, right?
	Yes, in hindsight, it's so obvious to me, but in the moment, and this is part of my present frustration with my life, is that I, at the time, it was kind of like I was, you know, it was kind of like I was, like my parents were religious.
	It's kind of like, you know, you shouldn't have sex until you're married.
	You know, you go to college, you go to high school health class and you're like, oh, you know, sex is bad.
	Like, don't get pregnant, blah, blah, blah.
	And so I kind of assumed in my head that, like, no, like a hesitancy.
	But didn't you talk to her about... Expectations of sexual activity in the marriage.
	I mean, not...
	Not specifically.
	No, you didn't. No.
	Right, let's... I mean, and I'm not...
	Not specifically out of kind of like, you know, like whatever passive aggressive instances where I try to initiate sex.
	No, but she was willing to have sex before marriage because you did have sex before marriage.
	Did you say to her, well, we're having sex once every month or two.
	I want more sex when we get married.
	I mean, in terms of making your needs, your preferences known and having that be a standard.
	No, I did not do that.
	Right.
	So you married her with the knowledge that there was going to be virtually no sex.
	Because there was no sex before marriage, pretty much, and you hadn't talked about it.
	Well, like I'm saying, in hindsight, when you say that, it makes sense.
	But at the time, I... I had the expectation that it would be different.
	I was thinking, yeah, we're going to be fucking like rabbits.
	Okay, but after the honeymoon, it was very clear that you weren't going to have sex in the marriage.
	Well, it was very worrisome, yes.
	And so, then what?
	Why not just say, well, I'm sorry, I thought we were going to have sex in the marriage.
	We're on a honeymoon. We haven't had sex.
	I'm going to go annul this son of a bitch.
	I mean, I never thought of it that way.
	I thought that...
	Were you signing up for A Sexless Life, right?
	Basically, yeah. I thought that...
	I mean, even as close to maybe four years ago, like six years into the marriage, I thought, okay, well, I guess this is what marriage is, and I've signed up for this.
	And there are quite a few marriages that are like this.
	I mean, you're not alone at all.
	That's what I have to... You're not alone in being alone.
	Yeah, I thought that...
	And I... Yeah, I mean, it's funny.
	You mentioned this, and I specifically remember the first time I ever saw you on video was where you were kind of telling a guy...
	How to profess himself to a woman or something.
	And I... I didn't even know it was you at the time.
	But I remember the video.
	And I remember kind of trying to express those opinions to her.
	And her just not really understanding that I wanted to have sex.
	And that was probably like for...
	Does she have a history in her childhood of any sexual dysfunction that you know of?
	Not her specifically.
	But I know that her mother...
	Had some sort of sexual abuse in the form that her mother's father exposed himself to her mother.
	But I'm not sure what that has to do with her.
	Or if she even knows about it.
	I don't know. You mean the mother told you but not her own daughter?
	The mother told me...
	Actually, the mother told me...
	When we were going through our divorce, I went to her mother's house...
	It was when I very, very first suspected something was going on.
	I was kind of like, okay, this is actually very serious.
	What's going on?
	So I went to her mother's house and spoke to her mother in person.
	And her mother, for whatever reason, confessed that fact to me.
	That her mother's father exposed herself.
	to her.
	So I get...
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Did anyone in your circle, did anyone know that you were in a sexist marriage?
	No.
	I mean, that's not something that I was comfortable talking about or even I was ignorant.
	I just... No, no, it's fine.
	Just give me the short. I don't need the full story, just like a no.
	Did you talk to anyone...
	Hang on. Did you talk to anyone before you got married about the sexless relationship?
	No, no. Because, I mean, you know, if you've earned it, you deserve to have...
	A lover in your life who can't keep her hands off you.
	That's important.
	That's important for marriage.
	That's important for any relationship.
	That's important for love.
	That's important for knowing that you're attractive.
	A marriage is a romantic relationship.
	It's not a platonic relationship.
	It's not a sibling relationship.
	It's not a professional relationship.
	It is a romantic relationship and romance means sex.
	Yeah, I completely agree.
	I did not fully realize that at the time.
	Well, no. She fell in lust with a guy who was sexually crazy.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. And so she was not- Turned on...
	It's not that she doesn't have the...
	I assume that they have a sexual relationship, and I assume, given his proclivities, that it's more often than once every couple of months.
	Yeah, I mean, I know for a fact...
	I'll tell you this.
	I mean, as much as this hurts, when we were...
	One of the several nights, we were arguing about our divorce and what was going to happen.
	Like, she said that...
	She said, come on, you have to admit the sex wasn't that great.
	And that... I mean, I don't know...
	Look, I'm like, part of me is kind of like, what the fuck?
	Like, we pretty much never had sex, so how can you even say that?
	But at the same time, it's very emasculating to where, like, I, you know, she says that to me, she leaves me.
	You know, I basically, you know, I'm like, I don't know what a good metaphor is, but I'm like a lion that has all its hair pulled off.
	Like, I'm... Wait, so she's saying that the sex wasn't that great with you.
	Does that mean that she's sort of implying that the sex is better with him?
	Well, yeah. Yeah, that's how I took it.
	Yeah, and that was after I know that she had sex with him.
	Well, he's got some experience. He may have a few tricks.
	He may have some moves. Yeah.
	Yeah. I don't know why she said that.
	Like, I don't know that it was completely true.
	No, it was completely true that your sex life was terrible.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely. And if your sex life...
	I mean, the sex can't have been that good for her if she didn't want to have it.
	Sure. I'm not blaming you.
	I'm just... This is a basic fact, right?
	That's a fact, yeah. You're right.
	That's a fact. Did you think about or experiment with...
	Because, you know, I mean, I hate to talk about this about your ex, but if we're going to be perfectly frank and base hairy mammals, this guy's got a freak on that your ex-wife really likes, right?
	Uh... She hasn't specifically said that, but apparently that must be the case because that's the type of guy he is.
	So yeah. So he's got some kind of freak going on that really gets her going.
	When your sex life was bad, and I'm sure you did, right?
	But did you go through all of the possibilities of, well, why don't I try this?
	Or maybe there's this approach, or maybe I'll learn this skill, or whatever it is.
	Like, did you try anything like that?
	I mean, that's a lot of pronouns.
	I'm going to say yes, because I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, but look, it was 10 years.
	You tried a lot of different things, I guess, to break the logic.
	Look, I'm horny to this day.
	I'm 30 years old. I'm horny right now.
	I mean, not right now, but I— I understand.
	Look, yeah, I mean, I have a sex drive.
	I don't know whether it's normal or abnormal, but yeah, look, if I could right now, I would go out with a 22-year-old and date her and do whatever I wanted.
	So the question was, did you try different strategies for kindling things in the bedroom that weren't working?
	Yes. It basically got to a point where I would say other than the sex we were very happy in the marriage for about five years until she basically got fired from her job and then we had our first child and then after we had our first child maybe like I forget.
	It was maybe like three or six months after we had our first child.
	Like, I mean, she...
	Like, that was the height of our frequency of sex.
	And it was like twice a week.
	And I was... Dude, I was like living it up.
	I was just like, oh my god, this is crazy.
	Like, how can we... Yeah, so...
	I mean, twice a week, I mean, maybe that's not that much.
	But at the time, yeah, it was like a lot.
	I was kind of like, you know, that's great.
	Yeah. And then basically after that, it just plummeted.
	And there was literally a time...
	Let me think.
	There was literally a year span where I decided, I said, I'm not even going to initiate sex for an entire year.
	And I'm just going to see what happens.
	And that actually happened.
	And then after a year...
	I did not initiate sex for a year.
	No, but what actually happened? Did she initiate and end up initiating?
	No, no, no, no sex for an entire year.
	And then I after about after over a little over a year, like I initiated sex and she blew me off and I completely like I think you might want to rephrase that.
	Okay, go ahead. I'm listening.
	I'm listening. No, you said she blew you off.
	I'm just saying that just for the sake of clarity, you might want to rephrase that.
	I'm sorry. No, she – well, she did not blow me.
	She – Yeah, she said no sex.
	Now, do you think that – I mean, do you think she wasn't having sex with anyone that whole time that she wasn't having sex with you?
	I mean, she clearly has a sex drive of this guy's.
	Apparently, I don't know.
	Stefan, I don't know.
	I have no idea.
	It could have been a year before you divorced.
	It could have been three years.
	I literally have no idea.
	I don't know. I just did not think that that would happen to me, basically.
	I had the assumption that I was a good person and that You know, blah, blah, blah.
	I was worthy. I was going to meet my soulmate and everything was going to be, you know, white picket fences and, you know, everything was going to be fine.
	And yeah, so I just did not think that.
	I don't know. I mean, you could be right.
	I have no idea. Well, you're lingering intense resentment and animosity towards the person you say whom I thought was my friend but played a part in breaking up my family.
	This is a tough one, man.
	This is a very, very tough one.
	And you're probably not going to like what I have to say, but that's all right.
	We don't have to part.
	We don't have to part as friends.
	I just hope that I can be helpful.
	Sure. I will say, can I, for a second, I've been going to therapy for, you know, off and on for two years, about two years since we've been divorced.
	And, um, I'm on my third therapist right now, and it's been very frustrating for me because I've gone through a lot of changes since then.
	I've come out to my parents as an atheist, and it's produced a lot of anxiety, I'll say that, dealing with my parents.
	Did your parents have any concerns about you marrying this woman?
	They did, but I'm not sure that they expressed it as much as maybe if they had more concerns.
	I'm either going to get straight answers out of you or I'm not, because all of this Weasley stuff is driving me fucking crazy.
	Sure, I'm sorry. Okay, did they tell you not to marry this woman if they had concerns about her?
	No. Okay, so they had you wander into a marriage that has broken your heart and shattered your family and is putting your relationship and your children with your children in jeopardy because now they're in like woodfucker territory.
	Yeah. But they, with their wisdom and their supposed love for you, their concern for you did not manifest in helping you avoid what I think in hindsight other than your love for your children was the worst mistake of your adult life.
	They just let you go straight into those blades, right?
	And your concern is hurting their feelings because you're an atheist?
	No, stop laughing.
	Sorry, sorry. This is important stuff.
	You're right. Your concern is that you might upset them?
	You were young and hypnotized.
	It was their job as parents to keep you safe.
	Did they childproof the home when you were growing up?
	Did they let you play with steak knives, matches?
	No. It's their job to keep you safe.
	It's all of our jobs to keep each other safe, because we all know how susceptible we can be to sexual hypnosis.
	So they have a hand, and a significant hand, in the destruction and disasters that have overtaken your marriage.
	If they saw the danger ahead of time and they did nothing, it's time for you not to overcome your resentments, but to embrace them.
	You need to get angry.
	People let you wander into this.
	Your wife strung you along. Your friend betrayed you.
	Your friend stole your woman.
	Your friend is now going to be parenting your kids maybe as much if not more than you are.
	You've been shoved aside.
	Get angry.
	Stop laughing. Well, yeah.
	No, I mean, I'm sorry.
	I'm like, I'm laughing, but I mean, you...
	No, you're right. You're eliciting the emotions that I bury.
	I literally...
	I've had to deal with emotions towards my ex-wife since we've been divorced because we...
	No, no, stop intellectualizing and describing.
	Go back to the emotions that I was invoking when I said, don't overcome your anger.
	I mean, don't do anything violent, but don't overcome your anger.
	I've had to deal with certain emotions, but the emotions that I've had to deal with towards this guy who I thought was my friend...
	I'm not even sure.
	She deserves, I guess, 95% of what happened, right?
	But he certainly deserves part of the blame, right?
	I mean, I guess. He deserves part of the blame?
	He deserves a lot of the blame.
	I wish he would have fucking told me.
	I wish he would have said...
	The problem is not that he didn't tell you.
	Listen, listen. Man, the problem is not that he didn't tell you.
	The problem is that you had someone in your life who stole and fucked your wife.
	You had someone in your life who's so disorganized, he's having sex with random strangers in the wood.
	Yeah. The problem is not that he didn't tell you he was fucking your wife.
	The problem was that you had this guy around at all.
	The problem is you need to start exerting your willpower on this situation.
	I mean, so what does that mean from going here on out?
	I mean, does that mean that...
	This guy is an enemy!
	Yeah, but so how, I mean, do I tell my daughter?
	He's a betrayer. Do I tell my daughters that?
	I mean, would I say to my daughters?
	No, no, no, so you're immediately going into what you should do.
	That is a way of paralyzing the feelings that you need to get in touch with.
	Well, I could have these feelings, but what are the consequences?
	What should I do? What's my roadmap?
	What's my list of to-dos? Fuck that.
	Grab your balls and get angry.
	If it means yelling in your pillow, if it means writing a book about a safe falling on a friend who betrays you, talk about it with yourself.
	Talk about it with people in your life.
	Don't laugh about it.
	And don't say the problem with betrayal is you weren't informed in a timely manner.
	Don't do anything violent.
	Don't do anything destructive.
	Of course not. But you, avoiding these feelings, has not helped.
	You saying, well that's it, I'm not going to initiate sex for a year, didn't help.
	This passive-aggressive withdrawal shit is not helping.
	You got shoved aside and another man is shitting where you used to sit.
	And you're laughing about it.
	And you're saying, what should I do?
	Get angry. Get angry at yourself for missing the signs.
	Get angry at the people around you for not giving you the warning.
	Get angry at your friend for betraying you.
	Get angry at your wife for betraying you.
	You don't have to do anything.
	Please don't do anything. Just have the feelings.
	Feelings, let me tell you this, man.
	Feelings are a kind of magic.
	You know who gets bullied?
	The people who aren't rooted in their feelings, who aren't rooted in their gut, who aren't rooted in their bodies, who don't have strength and project strength.
	Those are the people who get pushed around, disrespected, bullied, and betrayed.
	I'm sorry to say this, man, and I hate to be the one who has to say it to you, but you need to know it now because you've got another 50 years on this planet that can change.
	But everybody around you, I think, my friend, senses that you are a pushover, that you will back off, that you will disconnect, that you will enable whatever they want to do.
	This guy knew he could come in and take your wife, the mother of your children, Bang her six waves from Sunday.
	And what were you going to do about it?
	And I'm not saying go punch the guy.
	I understand, right? But he knew that you weren't going to react in any substantial manner.
	You weren't going to fight for her.
	You weren't going to win. You weren't going to find ways to make his life uncomfortable in perfectly legal manner.
	You weren't going to confront him.
	At his job. See, if a man's trying to take your wife, to me, everything that's legal is permissible.
	You gotta go and confront him in front of the conductor of the orchestra.
	Yeah. Then you can do that.
	It's free speech.
	But what, I mean, I guess I... But what did you do?
	What can I say is that I... I didn't know.
	I did not think that that would happen to me.
	It was inconceivable to me, is what I'm trying to say.
	I say that, and I'm throwing that out there.
	Okay, but now it's conceivable to you.
	First of all, I think accepting a sexless marriage is a recipe for disaster.
	Unless you both are like just asexual people.
	Unless neither of you want to fuck.
	Okay. That's fine.
	You know, there are people who have this bell curve of sexual desire, right?
	Yeah. You know, on the one hand, there's really people who are Japanese young people, really kind of asexual.
	Then there's people in the middle.
	And then over at the satanic end, there's like Harvey Weinstein and his cabal of spanky-fingered glove handlers or whatever the hell's going on over there, right?
	So, your concern is to overcome your resentment and animosity.
	Why?
	If you didn't know, why are you hiring a private investigator?
	I mean, I think – well, that – I mean, that question, why am I hiring an investigator, implies that I knew all along.
	Is that a correct statement?
	You suspected something. Well, at the time, I did.
	And so what you do is you go over and you catch them in the act.
	I don't know what the private eye is.
	It's so avoidant.
	You go and stand in the doorway and you say you whore.
	I was actually in custody of our daughters at the time.
	Oh no. Maybe this is a hopeless case.
	I'm trying to tell you something about how to be in the world so you're not taking advantage of it this way.
	And you're giggling and you're giving me excuses.
	And if you want to do that, that's fine.
	I've got lots of people who want to talk to me.
	But, I mean, if you're not going to listen, you don't have to agree with me.
	I'm not even saying I'm right.
	I'm just giving you a perspective.
	But if you're just going to giggle and give me excuses and avoidance, I mean, life is short.
	I've got to move on, too. No, no, no.
	Please don't move on. I'm really sorry.
	Like, I don't mean to giggle.
	And I know that you don't like people laughing when you're on the call with them.
	I know that. And you still can't stop it, right?
	But this is why you're being disrespected.
	It's like a defense mechanism.
	No, well, it's offering up your belly saying, do with me what you will.
	I have no power, no authority, no effect.
	I can expect nothing from anyone.
	I can't expect loyalty and protection from my mom and my dad.
	I can't expect loyalty and protection from my brother.
	I can't expect sex from my wife.
	I can't expect loyalty from my friends.
	I expect nothing.
	I earn nothing. I deserve nothing.
	I'm gonna laugh about it, make jokes about it, and then say, well, how can I get over any lingering resentment?
	And then you say, well, why are people taking advantage of me?
	It's not funny. It's not funny at all.
	It's not funny. This is your family.
	I'm just worried that I didn't see the signs that they gave me.
	Maybe I'm rationalizing.
	Sorry, what? Who's they here?
	Friends and family. They're not supposed to give you signs.
	They're not supposed to arrange life-saving advice and perspective.
	They're not supposed to arrange it in your tea leaves so that hopefully you'll see it reflected in a mirror somewhere.
	They're supposed to sit down with you and say, you don't seem happy.
	You don't seem fulfilled.
	You seem frustrated. She doesn't seem to respect you.
	She left to fuck another guy after you asked her to marry you.
	This is not going to work out.
	All the signs point to it.
	What are you doing? How can I help you?
	Get out! Of being hypnotized.
	How can I de-thought you, right?
	Yes. This is not something that is supposed to be very abstract or reading signs or maybe I didn't read the signs correctly.
	This is not trying to figure out what shape the cloud above you is.
	This is about people sitting down and taking care of you and protecting you.
	And they did not do that.
	Now, they also, I assume, your family, your parents in particular, but your siblings as well, they probably know that you're a bit of a pushover, that you're a bit of a softie, and that you have trouble standing up for yourself and trouble with people taking advantage of you.
	Now, why? Why do they not want to say to you, hey man, you're going to be going into a marriage here, where you're probably going to be taken advantage of, because I know you have that tendency anyway, and she already broke up with you to go screw another guy, and now she needs you, she's back, you're not going to be her meal ticket.
	So I'm concerned that you have this capacity to be taken advantage of, so I need to stand up for you where you are the weakest.
	No, people are just like, off you go, we'll throw rice at the wedding!
	Off you go into the vagina dentata to be chewed up like Wilford Brimley's cheek tobacco.
	Off you go into a disaster of sexlessness and frustration and betrayal and infidelity and lying.
	Off you go. Good luck.
	We know all there is to know about you and we're responsible for helping you and protecting you.
	We're not going to do a goddamn thing.
	And then we know...
	That ten years later, after you've been betrayed in every conceivable manner, not least by your parents, that you're going to sit there and say, well, I guess I'm making them feel uncomfortable because I'm an atheist.
	You see? All you're doing is wondering and worrying about everyone else and playing these stupid games like...
	No, you sit down, you say, our sex life sucks.
	We have no sex life.
	What are we going to do to fix this?
	Because it's going to lead to the end of the marriage.
	What are we going to do to fix this?
	No! I'm not going to initiate sex for a year!
	What kind of plan is that?
	It's an avoidant plan.
	And it's a plan that may have had some influence in driving your woman into the arms of another man.
	Because this guy, he's crazy, but he fucks, right?
	He's probably got harnesses and hedgehogs and water sprays filled with candle wax, and I don't know what the hell's going on down there, but I bet you it's got some serious freak going on, right?
	This guy fucks.
	You don't fuck. Turns out your wife does.
	Sorry, I'm sorry. What the fuck?
	I would if she would, but...
	Like, I'm not gonna fucking rape her.
	Is that what you're saying? You don't rape her!
	What the fuck? Of course you don't.
	But what you do, because you give these extremes, which are unpalatable, you only have one end of the pendulum or the other, right?
	You have, I'm completely passive or I'm insanely violent.
	Yeah. Right?
	You don't go from, I'm not gonna ask for any sex for a year, to rape!
	You sit her down and you say, hey, honey, you satisfied with her sex life?
	If she says yes, you say, well, I'm not, so we need to fix it because my needs matter too.
	And if she says, no, I'm not satisfied with my sex life, you say, well, how are we going to fix this?
	I do not want to spend the rest of my life having sex every time there's a blue moon.
	Eclipses get more action than I do.
	That's not how it's going to be.
	So, I mean, are you saying, are you saying from here on out, honesty?
	Is the fix?
	Or, I mean, sorry, I'm...
	You're trying to paralyze...
	You listen back to this, man.
	You keep trying to paralyze me the way that you paralyze yourself by interrupting me and throwing me these ridiculous questions.
	Were you satisfied with your sex life?
	The answer is no. Was your wife satisfied with your sex life?
	The answer is no. Why don't you sit down and say, and I'm not talking about the past.
	I'm not going to get you kicked yourself out of the past, but you've got a future.
	Is another woman going to come along?
	You're going to get into another relationship at some point, and you need to model some stuff for your children.
	Say, how am I going to help my kids?
	There's crazy guys around her.
	Well, you've got to model assertiveness.
	I don't know what that is, but it sure as hell isn't, well, I'm either going to say nothing or I'm going to rape her, right?
	I mean, sit down and say what you want and what you need.
	You're right. You're absolutely right, Stefan.
	I understand what you're saying.
	I completely agree.
	I have made some strides in the two years since I've been divorced towards that type of thing to be more assertive.
	But I guess my question is, what do I do now about my feelings towards this guy?
	Or when I see him again...
	Okay, you are massively intent on not listening to me at the moment, so here's what you need to do.
	You need to listen back to this call.
	Because everything that you need, at least from my perspective, is in this call.
	You need to listen back to this call and try and absorb what I've said.
	Because going on, you're trying to paralyze me.
	Because I've already talked about all of this.
	I've given you six different examples, six different ways from Sunday on solutions to this problem.
	And you keep coming back and saying, yes, but what do I do?
	I'm not going to let you paralyze me.
	I'm going to model the kind of assertiveness you need to model.
	And I'm going to say, I'm done with this conversation.
	I really enjoyed the conversation.
	I'm glad we have it. But I'm not going to continue to enable this kind of self-paralysis.
	And I'm certainly not going to allow you to infect me with this kind of paralysis.
	So I'm exercising what you need to exercise and saying, this conversation is not working for me anymore.
	But I think that there's enough truth and value in it that if you listen back to it a couple of times, you will get why I had to end it now.
	But I really do appreciate the call.
	And thank you very much. And I wish you the very best with your family.
	Thank you. Thank you very much.
	Alright, up next we have Alec.
	Alec wrote in and said,
	"There's "There's a sort of subservience," my instructor argues, "that is inherent in wages, which is part of this exploitive system." Two, there's the idea of a repressive state apparatus, RSA, that the state uses various institutions to reinforce the ideas of exploitation on its populace.
	This is accompanied by the idea that the population has to be compliant and subservient to the capitalist system that exploits them.
	That's from Alec. Hmm.
	Oh, hey, Alec. How are you doing tonight?
	I'm doing good. How are you, Stefan? Good.
	Am I safe in assuming that this isn't going to be a conversation wherein wood elves have had sex with your wife?
	No, but that was a fascinating conversation to listen to.
	I think my voice can hold out for this next part, but I'm glad you found so.
	All right. I will run you through some of the basics and get you a slimy A. You ready?
	All right. Yeah, sure. Let's go.
	Okay. So there's two things that you need to think about to understand.
	Exploitation from the Marxist viewpoint.
	The first thing is that everyone's equal and the second thing is the factory is produced by nature.
	So if everyone's equal, why does one person get to be the boss and the other person doesn't?
	It's not fair, right?
	Right. And so if one person gets to be the boss even though everyone's interchangeable, then the person must maintain being the boss unjustly and unfairly by oppressing people, right?
	Right. And so if everyone's equal, then the boss is the boss because of exploitation and injustice, and this creates a whole distortion mechanism, right?
	Right. So think of guys in a band like Queen, right?
	Like they all wrote number one hit songs.
	They're all experts at what they do.
	They're all an integral part of the team.
	And... Originally, they had huge fights over royalties.
	You know, like you've got Bohemian Rhapsody on one side, and on the other side, you have some god-awful thing like Soul Brother or I'm In Love With My Car or something like that.
	It's not fair, right? So this is back in the days of 45s.
	Nobody bought Bohemian Rhapsody for I'm In Love With My Car, right?
	Right. And then later, they ended up just saying, okay, we're just going to split the money equally.
	We're all going to take songwriting credit and so on, right?
	And they still produced some pretty good songs.
	And... So in the second argument, like in the second situation, everyone's contributing equally.
	There's a lead singer, but there's a lead guitarist, and there's a bassist, and there's a drummer, and they're all writing songs, all contributing, and so on, and they're all helping each other improve their songs, and so on.
	Is it fair for one person to get paid ten times what the other people in the band get paid if they're all contributing equally?
	Theoretically, no. Well, no, it wouldn't be, right?
	If they're all contributing equally.
	So why would one person get paid more if everyone's contributing equally?
	Well, because of oppression, and therefore they need the government to oppress people, and they have to make sure that unions don't form, and they have to fire anyone who causes trouble, and they have to bully people, just to maintain this unjust privilege of being paid double or triple or ten times.
	What the workers get paid, even that very phrase, is prejudicial, right?
	The workers, like the managers aren't workers.
	Hell, the managers work like crazy.
	I can't remember it. When I used to work at Pizza Hut way back in the day, our manager had this really stereotypical, you couldn't invent a more Italian-looking name or guy or anything like that.
	And this is like 35 years ago or so.
	And... I remember being really struck by the fact that this guy, holy crap, he works like you wouldn't believe.
	And the same thing happened when I worked at a hardware store.
	The guy had this little tiny office in the back.
	I remember going up there a couple of times because I used to have a pretty good habit of not picking up my paychecks.
	It was my way of sort of saving and not spending.
	I'd get paid like $2.50 an hour.
	I'd work four hours, 5.30 to 9.30, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then 9 to 5 on Saturdays, which would give me a A cozy 40 bucks, minus some deductions.
	And so I occasionally go up to his office, and it was this crappy little thing.
	And he was up there all the time. Now, of course, if you're out there mixing paint in the hardware store, you're mixing paint, you're cutting keys, you're helping people find some god-awful thing in the back of a dusty bin full of plumbing crap or hardware.
	And this guy's just up there.
	Well, you don't see him working.
	He sees you working, but you don't see him working.
	You don't know what he's doing. But this guy worked pretty hard.
	The guy in the pizza place, so this is back in the day, I don't think they've done this for a long time, but what they used to do is they used to put out, I remember these had these green tables, and they used to put these little, this is back when this was kind of cool, they used to put these little digital clocks on the tables.
	And it was five or free, five or free.
	In other words, when you ordered, it was five minutes to get your pizza, or it was free.
	Oh. And holy crap, what a nightmare.
	Because you had to get people's drinks out before you brought their pizzas.
	Right. So you get five or six or seven tables coming out.
	First of all, you just have to guess how many pizzas and what kind people are going to buy because you can't possibly cook a pizza that quickly.
	Right. We all had to run around like lunatics because we had to take the order, put the order in, get the drinks, get the pizza, and the pizza had to be out in five minutes.
	Or it was free. And what that meant was you got a coupon for the next time for free, for the next pizza.
	This was an insane promotion.
	I don't think they did it more than once or twice.
	Yeah. And this guy would get so stressed about everything.
	He knew screaming at people wasn't going to help, but he would still sometimes do it.
	Like, you know... Gordon Ramsay passing a cactus through his armpit would, I think, be more polite.
	But this...
	I mean, he...
	And I remember this very, very clearly, that he would disappear sometimes into the staff washroom in the back of the restaurant.
	And he would throw up after lunches.
	And once, like, he threw up blood.
	He was that... I don't know if he had an ulcer or whatever.
	I mean, it was awful.
	And I was like, thank God I'm a waiter.
	You know, that job, that's a really tough job.
	That's a horrible job.
	And I don't know, I can't imagine the guy lived very long.
	I mean, he wasn't that old or anything, but it was like, that is like, that's insane.
	And I had exposure.
	Because I was smart and curious and always interested in economics, the bosses would sort of take me under their wing, and sometimes they'd teach me a little bit about the business and what they did, which became helpful to me as an entrepreneur, which I then became, of course, much later in life.
	But I saw the bosses, and it was like, man, that is hard work.
	That is some pretty hard work right there.
	And so if you think everyone's the same...
	And there's no higher requirement for intelligence or risk tolerance or maturity or wisdom or anything like that.
	Then it looks completely unjust that the managers or the foreman make more.
	Right? But I would say this when I was a boss.
	Right? That somebody would have a difficult client and I'd be the one.
	I'd drive down. I'd make the phone call.
	You know, I remember going out to a meeting I thought was going to be a friendly meeting.
	And I got cornered, and I got yelled at, and people were really angry, and stuff was late, and it wasn't working, and they had problems with the project manager and the whole thing, and it had gone over budget, and it was just like, bam, bam, bam, bam, and I'm listening, and I'm absorbing.
	I didn't just start doing the show out of nowhere.
	I got jumped a number of times in business with people who knew I'd listen, and I would take the complaints back.
	We'd work it out and all that, because I was pretty good at listening and working things out.
	And I remember, you know, when my employees, you know, I would remind them, say, oh, yeah, well, you know, one of the reasons I get paid more is because you get to pass the difficult clients along to me.
	Now, if you want to take on those difficult clients, then you can get paid more.
	It's really up to you, right?
	And I would continually remind them.
	And I would also, you know, how the way you come along as your parents, you never think of them as young.
	Like you see young pictures or pictures of your parents when they were young.
	It's kind of weird. It's kind of freaky, right?
	I don't like looking at my mom when she was hot.
	But it's the same thing.
	I had to remind people when I was an entrepreneur, I had to remind people.
	When I was a software entrepreneur, I'd say, listen, I did the 80 hours a week for three years before you came along.
	This business didn't just pop out of nowhere.
	My brother and I came up with the idea, and I did a lot of coding, and he did a lot of work and design, and we did the initial sales.
	You know, when we sold it for a couple of grand each and, you know, it ended up being sold the software system I built for north of a million dollars sometimes.
	So, reminding people, right, that, you know, because, you know, you're sitting there saying, well, my boss is getting more money and, you know, and this and that and the other.
	And you have to keep reminding people so that they don't get resentful because it's conceptual.
	To see what the boss does up in the office is conceptual.
	To see... That the resource, the factory, the software, whatever it is that you're operating in, to see that that didn't pop out of nowhere, and that the blinding amount of work it takes to raise the Titanic of an original idea to a functional business is important.
	So, number one, you have to pretend that everyone's equal, and number two, you have to pretend that the means of production just somehow pop out of nature.
	Because you know how it works, right?
	Like, you sell... I mean, just something as simple as a hammer.
	I guess you could drive in nails with something other than a hammer, but it's not very efficient.
	So what you do is you go and you pay 10 bucks for a hammer so that you can hammer in twice as many nails or 10 times as many nails or whatever, right?
	And so the price that you spend on the hammer is much less than the money you're going to make by hammering in the nails more quickly.
	So that's a capitalist selling you a hammer to make you more efficient.
	Now, if the hammer is just somehow magically appears and some guy just magically has it, then you're going to resent having to give 10 bucks to that guy for the hammer.
	But if you recognize that that guy had to create the hammer or buy the hammer or build the hammer or whatever it is, right?
	Somebody originally had to come up with the hammer, design the hammer, get the raw materials, put it all together, ship it someplace or whatever, right?
	Then you say, yeah, it's a fair exchange.
	And it's the same thing with a factory.
	A factory doesn't pop out of nowhere.
	Someone has to risk, they have to have the idea, they have to invest their own capital, whatever, right?
	And even if they've inherited the money or whatever, it doesn't fundamentally matter.
	They still have chose to build a factory rather than go and, you know, screw sea whales in Tahiti or something, right?
	So you have to pretend that everyone's equal and you have to pretend that the means of production magically appear.
	Yeah, it just never made sense to me when he was talking about this because Like you said, things don't just appear, and there has to be some sort of initial investment or risk.
	And this idea that, I guess, the frame in which the author that we were reading was working under was something like, there's 100 workers working on the same task, and then there's one boss, there's one foreman.
	And that's just not accurate to certain scenarios.
	Obviously, I don't know. They didn't provide...
	Ironically, they didn't provide a specific example that we could look at.
	They were just, you know, crafting all this out of thin air.
	Sorry to interrupt, but it's funny how you can literally see a communist professor or a socialist professor standing in front of a hundred people saying it's not fair that one person is in charge.
	Well, who the fuck are you?
	You're in charge. You're setting the coursework.
	You're assigning the content.
	You're assigning the text.
	You're evaluating. You're the foreman.
	You're the boss. You're the one in charge.
	And he's saying somehow this is unjust.
	I mean, that's exactly what they're doing.
	And it takes a staggering lack of self-knowledge and capacity to not introspect and to not look at the mirror of what you're doing.
	You're standing in front of people utterly dependent upon your subjective marking of what they do, saying it's unjust for some people to be in charge and to be in charge of the fates of other people.
	Who's holding the chalk?
	You are! Exactly.
	Everyone should be equal, says the guy who can make or break your entire academic career on his whim.
	Exploitation is bad, so let me sell you some worthless shitty degree for massive amounts of money.
	Oh, and it's really bad to exploit the working classes, says the guy whose salary is half paid for by taxes taken from people who work for a living.
	Yeah. Don't even get me started on my instructor.
	He's a piece of work. Okay.
	Repressive state apparatus, this RSA? Yeah.
	The state uses various institutions to reinforce the ideas of exploitation in its populace.
	One of those institutions, my friend, happens to be academia.
	I was just about to say that and I wanted to tell him that, but for some reason he didn't want to write it down, but I don't know.
	Yeah. You know, it's really, really bad to exploit workers, you see, says the professor who has seven unpaid teacher's assistant do his marking for him.
	Actually, he's a graduate student, but there's many other professors.
	Well, that's because he's doing it in the hopes of being able to get to the place where he can't be fired.
	He gets summers off.
	He gets tours to exotic locations for conferences.
	He gets sabbaticals where he can just sit around on his ass all day.
	And they say, well, it's really, really important, you see, not to have people exploiting others.
	Do you know that 80%, 80%, 80%, 80%, 4 out of 5, Papers in the social sciences are never once referenced by anyone else.
	Really? They write them, they grade them, they get paid for them, and off they go into the library that is forced to buy them.
	That doesn't even surprise me, actually.
	Four out of five!
	Thank you, Jordan Peterson.
	Four out of five papers in the social sciences never referenced by anyone else.
	And that's like one of my main issues with like what we learn in this class is that we've gone over some other things and it's a speech class.
	So you talk about public speaking, which is great and all, like that's fine.
	But when we start talking about these sort of ideals, like there's never any challenge.
	There's never any, well, what about the other side?
	What about the side of the employer?
	What about all the, you know, anybody that would disagree?
	These people, of course, say that there's a power differential that silences the workers.
	They literally say that while punishing anyone who disagrees with them or questions.
	Yeah, exactly. Remember, the left is all about projection.
	When the left is talking about the capitalists, they're talking about themselves.
	When the left is talking about a power structure, when they're talking about corporatism, they're talking about the state.
	When the left is talking about indoctrination, they're talking about government institutions like government schools or quasi-government institutions like higher education.
	I mean, just look at this Russia collusion thing.
	Trump colluded with Russia for the election.
	It's like, oh my God.
	No, no.
	Hillary colluded with Russia to give them 20% of America's uranium.
	And this whole Russian dossier thing, first it was some Republican donor who got this ball rolling to investigate Trump.
	Nobody ever knows, never found out what that was.
	Then after he won the primary, it was taken over by the DNC who hired a lawyer, who hired an investigative group, who hired this British guy.
	And the FBI paid him partly as well until it was found out.
	The FBI was paying for oppo research on this stuff, which I think is almost completely discredited and nonsense.
	So it's all projection.
	Whatever the academic in particular, whatever they're accusing the capitalist of doing, it's what they're actually doing.
	Except the capitalist is doing it in a free market.
	They're doing it through state power.
	Yeah. I mean, even when...
	There was one time when he proposed a side of, I guess, the free market side, and it was a clip of Peter Schiff.
	You know Peter Schiff? Oh, yeah. Yeah, great.
	It was when he went to the Wall Street protest.
	Yeah. I myself, being a fan of free market things, I watch the whole thing.
	But he shows us a two-minute clip of Schiff talking about his wealth and how he's created jobs.
	And so he poses that as, oh, look, this guy is talking about how successful he is and how you should listen to him because of that.
	And then he showed another clip of some...
	I'm sitting there thinking, you just took a two minute clip out of what, a three hour segment?
	And you're not listening to the arguments?
	You're not analyzing them?
	Yeah, I'm sitting here, I'm like, what?
	What is happening right now? And I call him out on this and he's like, no man, he's just flexing on them.
	I'm like, okay, first of all, trying to use the term flexing in an academic institution doesn't seem very rigorous.
	Wait, he's just flexing on them?
	What does that mean? Like, like, Schiff, like, Schiff was showing off, like, showing off his wealth.
	And, like, you might be able to see that, but only in that two-minute segment and not the ten minutes leading up to it and the two hours afterwards.
	You know what I'm saying? Well, yeah, if you're going to talk about different values in the free market, it makes sense to talk about wealth that you've accumulated.
	But I like this phrase you have.
	You said, there's a sort of subservience, my instructor argues, that is inherent in wages, which is part of this exploitative system.
	And this idea that the state uses various institutions to reinforce the ideas of exploitation on its populace.
	This is accompanied by the idea that the population has to be compliant and subservient to the capitalist system that exploits them.
	Bullshit. The students have to be compliant and subservient to the academic system that exploits them.
	It's not teaching you critical thinking.
	It's not teaching you to challenge those in authority.
	It's not teaching you facts and truth about the world that you live in.
	It's not teaching you something that's going to allow you to appreciate the free market system that can give you such amazing, unprecedented, new-to-history opportunities to better yourself.
	I mean, imagine if I had listened to my Marxist professors.
	Imagine if I had listened to my communist or socialist professors.
	Would I ever have gone out and started a company?
	Well, no. Who wants to be an evil exploiter?
	Would I have ever started this show, Freedom Aid Radio?
	Well, no. Who wants to be some evil exploiter?
	The population is compliant and subservient.
	No. The students are compliant and subservient to the academic system that exploits them that says, hey, you're 17.
	Why don't you sign this loan for massive amounts of money on an unproven education that's probably going to churn you out dumber than when you went in?
	Why don't we not tell you about all the downsides of this education?
	Why don't we not tell you?
	The employment opportunities that this education may or may not provide to you.
	And when you get in, why don't we get you so much in debt, so much in debt, that you will be terrified to think for yourself and challenge any of your instructors for fear of losing the investment you've already sunk in.
	That's insane. What they're accusing the free market of doing is exactly what they're doing, and either they know it, in which case they're thoroughly immoral, or they don't.
	In which case, it's up to me to say it.
	Yeah, I mean, I couldn't say it better than myself.
	It seems like what's really keeping a lot of my fellow students back is the ideology pushing that's going on, and I'm fortunate.
	I'm getting an engineering degree, and I'm going into industry, and I do have some loans, but I'm in a good place, and also I know a lot of this is bullshit, so I don't soak it in and let it influence me, but I know a lot of people that are getting liberal arts degrees or something similar or even engineering degrees, but they think the same way.
	And they get the mindset of, I can't go into industry because I want to have to work for somebody.
	Well, there'll be engineers who get corrupted with this too, right?
	Exactly, yeah. Or who spend their whole lives feeling they're participating in an immoral system, which brings all the anxiety, depression, and self-hatred that comes along with that idea.
	Exactly. And I don't know how you're supposed to function in the engineering world, and I want to go into the medical device world.
	I don't know how you function in that, thinking that you're being exploited when you've got to work 40 or 60 hours a week just to try to put something to market after a couple of years.
	I don't understand how you can have this ideology and do that at the same time.
	So we're either going to see an influx of people going into higher academia, which is...
	Fine for research, but if they're corrupted, then it's just going to perpetuate the cycle, and we're going to see a decline in people and industry, which means we're not going to have any sort of competition or any sort of bettering of technology.
	And that's just only in the engineering world.
	I can't even imagine what's going to happen with politics and social structures and whatnot with people getting those liberal arts degrees and other kind of stuff.
	stuff.
	And it just, it really pisses me off that you can perpetuate these things.
	And it, what it comes down to is, I think that's sort of interesting is that, um, a lot of these things that they're saying aren't true about the capitalist system, but it's true about themselves.
	And you alluded to it early.
	And I think that's something that I found interesting that you might find interesting is that they're pushing these ideas of, well, the state wants to oppress you in this direction.
	And they use it through, uh, academia and the military and all the courts and all this kind of stuff.
	But really, they're doing that with their ideology.
	They just don't want to admit it because then they're the bad guy.
	Well, if you're committing a crime, you want to point somewhere else.
	You want to be the guy who's pointing somewhere else, of course.
	If you're the one who's exploiting The workers, through forcing them through the state to pay your salary and provide you with tenure, if you're the one exploiting young people by filling them full of garbage, trashy, anti-life, anti-human, anti-happiness ideas while at the same time taking their money and promising them some glorious future, if you're the one, I mean, if there was truth in advertising and academia, I mean, you'd nuke it from orbit.
	And so, of course you want to say that the real exploiters are over there.
	Of course you do. I mean, as I said before, if you're the murderer, you want to be on the jury.
	And you go, oh, that guy.
	So, it is.
	And, you know, this is going to...
	Hopefully I can keep my listeners away from this toxic brain-eating cesspool of socialism and communism known as higher education.
	You have to go through it and you at least have the intellectual ammunition and you can mouth off whatever platitudes you want.
	You're forced to take this course and so what you do as a response to that has no moral content.
	You can say, oh yeah, Marx was the best guy.
	There's all this terrible exploitation and I can't wait to go out there and be a social justice warrior and fix it all and so on.
	You can do all of that because they're forcing you to take it in order to get what you want out of life and that's fine.
	I pay my taxes and obey the law and you can do this if they force you to do it as no moral content.
	I mean, you can't fight that kind of game anyway.
	And you reject it. See, either they get you and you believe this shit or you don't, in which case you feel bad.
	You either fight and lose or you feel bad.
	For complying. It's a no-win.
	And the only way to win is to say, yeah, fine.
	Force me to do this. I can write this garbage.
	Yeah, here we go. And move on and get what you want out of life and say, well, that was an unpleasant situation where I was held hostage.
	But it's not my fault.
	It's the fault of the system that holds you hostage.
	So you can definitely get out of that.
	All right. I'm going to close the show down.
	It's been a wonderful evening of chatting and kibitzing, I suppose we could say, with you all.
	And I appreciate everyone's call and time and effort and energy to go into this conversation.
	Don't forget, theartoftheargument.com to pick up the book.
	It does sometimes slip my mind that this is a great book out there.
	But The Art of the Argument, you can get it on audible.com as well.
	And you can follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
	You can sign up for our mailing list at freedomainradio.com freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
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