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Feb. 10, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:13:33
3995 One Big Sh!t Test - Call In Show - February 7th, 2018
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Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux.
Hope you're doing well.
Hey, you know what I'm thrilled about?
Ooh, let me tell you, I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking and meeting and greeting...
At hashtag a night for freedom in Washington, D.C. on February 24th.
I will be there.
I guarantee you for hours to meet and chat and back and forth with all of you.
I absolutely love meeting all of you.
So tickets are now available.
I look forward to seeing you there.
That is a night for freedom, D.C. dot com.
Come on out. You'll remember it forever.
So we got some challenging callers.
Tonight, really good callers.
Really good, gristly, meaty, beady, big and bouncy depth going on.
The first caller, he knocked up his girlfriend twice, but now wants to go and dip his wick into Strange and sow his oats elsewhere.
And sounds like a shallow and pompous question, but there's actually quite a bit of depth in this kind of lost wanderlust.
The second caller wanted to know about identity.
What does it mean to be yourself?
Or is what we call ourselves just a reaction to the impressions that other people have made upon us?
And the third caller is a man...
Who has gone from credulity to skepticism in a wide variety of fields and is afraid of looking at his relationship with religion.
Is it worth preserving it or is it worth taking the same skepticism to the roots of his faith?
And the fourth caller is a nihilist.
And we wrestled back and forth about the question of meaning, which really was kind of the theme of the show.
So I hope you'll enjoy it. I think you will.
freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Please don't forget to help out the show.
And of course, you can pick up a copy of Western Civilization's Last Stand, The Art of the Argument, my book at theartoftheargument.com.
Alright, well up first we have Zach.
Zach wrote in and said, And things were fine for the first half of last year.
And then we broke up for different reasons than my infidelity last summer, mainly revolving around communication issues which have always plagued us.
Now, once again, I feel like there may be a chance we can get back together if I were to really pursue it.
There is a part of me that wants to be a good man and make our young family whole again, as my ex-girlfriend is pregnant with our second and due in a few months.
But I also feel like I'm not ready to settle down still.
I still have a part of me that wants to sow my oats, so to speak, and I have the unfortunate feeling that we won't work out no matter how much I have this vision in my head of this perfect family.
I feel divided 50-50, and it doesn't seem to be getting better with time.
So I can't state my question any better than this, What Should I Do?
That's from Zach.
Hey, Zach, how you doing?
Thank you.
Hey, Stefan. I'm doing pretty good.
How are you? You penis-driven life form.
How's your evening?
There's a part of you.
There's another part of you.
50-50. Hey, man, if half your body mass is your cock, I want to shake your hand, but frankly, I'm scared to.
Yeah, I'm doing well.
As well as I can be.
Right. Found out she was pregnant.
Now, unless you are, I guess, bridging the gap between the Old Testament and the New Testament, it was Immaculate Conception.
How did you just find that out?
Were you guys having unprotected sex?
Well, yeah. So what happened was, you know, I'm surprised that I thought this way back then.
Maybe I'm not so surprised because I was...
Much younger, but I guess she had told me at the time that she had a low chance of getting pregnant, I suppose you could say.
So in my mind, I figured, well, if it happens, it happens, and we'll deal with it when it comes.
And in my mind, of course, not having a child at the time, I thought, it won't be a big deal, right?
And then, of course, it happens, and then...
Lo and behold, it is a big deal.
Yeah, you know, there's this wonderful game called Russian Roulette.
You know, you only have a one in six chance of blowing your fucking head off.
So, you know, spin the chamber and pull the trigger.
Pretty much. Yeah.
All right. And then how did the second one come about?
Right, so... We were together, of course, as I said last year, from January until August or something, so we had been trying for one again.
And, you know, the usual methods worked out.
Sorry to interrupt.
Why were you trying for one again? Your relationship kind of unstable, right?
Well, at the time it didn't seem unstable.
It seemed like things were going pretty well.
Were you married? No, no.
We were on the verge of becoming engaged.
Right. So, you had already broken up because you're a bit of a man-whore, is that fair to put it?
I can say I was.
I would like to think, at the very least, that I've kind of passed that now, in a sense.
Sorry, you would like to be a bit of a man-whore now because you say that you want to sew your roads, right?
Well... If you had the opportunity, you'd man-hoored up a lamppost, right?
I was being honest with myself preemptively because I knew that during this call it would probably come up, so I just figured I would say that it has crossed my mind.
Right. So women around you are kind of like the telephone poles or the lampposts in Philly.
You know, they have to oil them up to make sure that people don't climb them.
So I guess for you, women would be like that in your environment.
Potentially. I'm not sure if I understand the analogy, but...
You'd like to climb on women.
You wouldn't? No.
I'm very, very content in my marriage and do not have a wandering eye.
Oh, I see what you mean. So, okay.
Okay, so you think that I... Okay.
I guess half of me does, in a sense, yes.
Maybe not half, but 40%.
Right. So the goal is have a baby...
Break up. Get back together, aim for stability, have a baby, and then try and see if you can get some kind of commitment out of your gonads.
Is that the general plan?
I mean, you want me to be blunt, right?
Sure, of course. You can tell me to F off and hang up anytime you want, but you know, I'm going to be pretty blunt because we're talking a guy to guy, right?
That's why I'm here, right? If I didn't want you to be blunt, I wouldn't be here.
I mean, at the time, and like I said in my email, we didn't break up this previous time because if anything I was doing, I'd stop doing that.
So why did you break up? Well, I'll tell you the whole story just so that you can analyze it in whatever way.
I've done it myself. So she accused me of cheating again.
This time I had. So, to me, she told me her story and whatever, and I told her what happened, and ultimately I asked her to apologize for accusing me.
And she refused. She said, no, I feel like you were, regardless of the evidence that you were giving me.
I feel like you were. That's the argument?
It feels like you were? I'm claiming an objective fact and my proof is my feelings.
What she said, more like verbatim, not word for word, but it was definitely along the lines of she felt like she had enough evidence, I guess, like she was pretty sure of it.
That's what she said, basically.
She felt sure enough of it.
So even when I asked for an apology, she said, no, I'm not going to apologize because I feel like it happened.
It's a sure thing. So...
For me, obviously, I don't want to be in a relationship where the other person can just accuse me of something that's pretty severe like that, and then just not apologize for it at all.
And she is bad with apologies anyway.
She feels like she doesn't need to apologize for a lot of things.
And I was stupid, and this will obviously play a part in it.
I had a few drinks that night to calm my nerves.
I mean, you know, whenever...
The real reason was. Obviously, that's my excuse.
And I kind of egged her on, and eventually it kind of came up.
What do you mean you egged her on?
Well, it came up, I guess, eventually, where she kind of said something along the lines of, well, first of all, here's actually the important part to mention before I go any further detail.
This was all done over a text, like a Facebook chat.
This wasn't done in person. So, basically it had come up that she had, I guess, kind of threatened me with breaking up, I suppose.
In some way, I can't remember how she put it, but, and then I just kind of, you know, egged her on.
Not necessarily egged her on, but I would say, well, you know, I guess she said to me something like, you know...
I don't remember now, but I guess I must have said something along the lines of that, you know, if it's not going to work out, it's not going to work out.
Something like that. And eventually, just kind of like she said, if we break up, it's over.
And then I said, well, if it has to happen, it has to happen.
And that's kind of basically how it happened.
And you're doing this shit on a text chat.
Well, with her, you can't really have these kind of conversations in person because she's...
Not good at that kind of confrontation, I suppose.
What do you mean? You can't talk to her about volatile and difficult issues, so you type about it, and that's an improvement?
Well, she was living out of town.
She still is. Away from me, I should say.
So, at that moment, there was no way to talk face-to-face.
What do you mean? But you couldn't Skype?
No, I mean...
Why? You know that's what we're using right now, right?
Right, but that's the way she wanted to do it.
I guess I should make it clear that she accused me with texts that day at work.
Oh, she texted you at work?
I was at work.
Sorry, just to clear up. I was at work.
She was doing something.
Yeah, she texted me. She was doing something.
I hope that something involved parenting her child.
Yes, yes, yes. Okay.
It's funny because I think I shot a text back to her and then immediately she said, oh, my phone's just about to die.
Talk to you later. So I'm like, okay.
I'm at work. That just kind of, you know, is taking up my whole mind right now.
And then you just say, you know, BRB pretty much so.
But anyway, and then later on, I was having drinks and I responded to her.
She responded to me or something. And then I already told you the rest kind of.
Yeah, I mean, just general things.
Like people don't have important conversations on text.
You just don't.
I mean, I know it feels safe and you can have the last word, you can shut things off, but you can't get tone, you can't get nuance, you can't get sarcasm.
There's a reason why people are tough typists and soft vocalizers, and that's because you can be all kinds of an asshole when you're typing, but...
Right. Don't do it by text.
Now, the idea that she's too volatile to talk to in person, but you give her two kids, I mean, dude.
Yeah, just to clarify, I'm the kind of person that prefers to talk in person, obviously, as most people do.
Not that much. Not that much.
Otherwise, you'd have chosen a different mom for your kids, wouldn't you?
Now, Zach, what's she living on?
What's she surviving on?
Right now, she, well, at this point, she's just entered her second mat leave, of course, but she was working part-time, still.
Full-time, whatever she could get, pretty much.
And who's taking care of your kid while she's working?
It would have been usually her roommate, or a housemate, I should say, or someone else.
Sorry. Who the fuck is the housemate, and why is she raising your kid?
So, previously, before she had recently moved out, she was with her sister, living with her sister and her sister's son.
Her sister's 13 or 14 years older than her.
Her sister's son, wait a minute.
What about her sister's husband?
He asked, knowing the answer already.
Yeah, well, the ex-husband is somewhere in my city, actually.
But her, she isn't, obviously, she was single.
Yeah, just somewhere around. She was on and off, single slash in a relationship with a few different guys over the course of, you know, the last few months that I was with my ex.
Right. Okay, so who is this housemate?
What qualifications does she have?
And why is she raising your kid?
So the housemate was a person that my ex met because they were neighbors when my ex lived with her, the sister I just talked about.
Yeah. I'm going to assume no father there either.
Well, I'm going to say yes and no, because yes, she is still with the father and the father's kind of in the picture.
But then I'll say no, because fairly recently they've been having problems and they did quote unquote wake up and then they just got back together a day later.
So it's kind of a also a volatile situation, I suppose.
Yeah. All right.
And what do you know about this housemate?
I mean, that she's taking care of your flesh and blood.
Other than the fact that she's in an unstable relationship and not married either.
I shouldn't make it seem like she's always doing it.
I mean, other people will come in.
Maybe my ex's sister or one of my parents will come up.
You know, that doesn't make it better.
The fact that there's rotating caregivers does not exactly make it better, right?
And how does the breastfeeding work when your girlfriend is at work?
Right. So, no, no, my, well, my only kid at this point, she's 20 months, so she doesn't drink formula or breast milk anymore, but she's always been After she was a month old, it was always formula.
The breastfeeding never worked out.
What do you mean? As I recall...
I guess my...
I mean, I never really went into too much detail asking my ex about it, but I... Weren't you around at this point?
I mean, have you lived with your daughter at all?
Oh, I was at this time, yeah. No, yeah, yeah.
But she...
I guess maybe it just didn't really work out.
She couldn't get our daughter to latch on properly to get the milk.
Her milk wasn't coming. It wasn't being produced properly or it wasn't...
Did she talk to experts or did she...
Get information about how to...
I'm fairly certain, yes.
I think at one point she got a pump to do it and then put it into a bottle.
I'm sure you know how it works.
I guess that didn't really work either.
I guess it just didn't work out for her.
Yeah. Now, Zach, how is she able...
I mean, I assume that she needs money.
Are you giving her money? No.
Well, of course I have to pay child support.
You have to pay? You mean she took you to court or what?
No, no, no. Well, I live in Ontario, so that's the way it is.
As soon as you have a kid and if you're not together, you pay child support.
And if I don't, I mean, I would have to pay it eventually if she did take me to court, right?
Retroactive. So I figured I would do it anyway.
Plus, you know, it's my kid.
I have to support her. I'm not going to not support my kid.
And how often do you see your kid?
At least twice a week, maybe more.
Right. So, if she's saying basically, do this or we're broken up, how is she – I mean, I guess you'd give her – continue to give her child support and so on, but how would she live?
How would she survive?
I mean, kids are expensive and she's working part-time slash full-time.
I mean, how would she survive without – Yeah, so, well, she probably still would.
I mean, at this point, she's getting still the baby bonus, of course.
And she works still, but at this point, she's probably going to start getting her mat leave.
And then, of course, my child's...
Wait, start getting her mat leave for the second baby?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.
Yeah, okay. Colloquialisms, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I guess she would have to look elsewhere.
I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much of a huge contribution what I give her is necessarily, but she's never been really good with her money.
So I don't know.
She'd probably find a way somehow.
And how pretty was she?
She was and still is quite pretty.
Right. Did you judge her character at all before giving her your seed?
Well, you know, she was really the first serious proper relationship I've ever had and the first person I can say and the only person I can say I've ever actually really loved.
So in terms of...
A partner, I mean, obviously, I'm not saying based on my parents and everything like that.
So I guess at the time I was, I don't guess, I know at the time I was blinded by this summer love, right?
And of course, I was young and stupid, and still I am in many respects.
And what do you have to do, Zach?
Well, I guess, you know, they say opposites attract, and I think a lot of ways we're opposites.
So I guess in a lot of ways, I enjoy a company of someone that's different than me, that offers a different perspective.
But I guess I should start at the beginning, like when we did fall in love, and obviously she's good looking.
Just tell me what virtues you love her for.
Okay. As far as opposites attracting, you're certainly not opposite in terms of responsibility.
Okay. So, what do you love about her?
Well... She's a great mother.
Very great mother. It might not sound like that potentially with what I've said so far, but...
I'm sorry. No, no. Hang on.
Hang on. Hang on. A good mother chooses a good father for her children.
That's the first job.
The first job is to choose a good father for your children.
Do you think she did that?
At the time, knowing what she did?
Potentially. Potentially.
She couldn't have realized that at the time that I was going to do what I did.
You gave no signs of not committing to her.
You have no history of flirtation.
You have no history of cheating.
You have no history or there was no signs, no indications of any way.
That you might not be super faithful.
At the time, there was no history, but she eventually found out because we moved in together.
I don't know if I mentioned that in the email, but no.
Okay, so we had moved. The time I found out she got pregnant was around the same time that we moved out, that we were scheduled to move out to the place that we had rented out.
So once we were living together, of course, she eventually by accident found out that I was talking on the phone to the women.
I'm sure she had had her She had had her thoughts about it probably, but that was the first time that things got rocky from there and then I guess never really stopped.
So your girlfriend is pregnant with your child and you're flirting with other women on the phone?
Yep, that's what happened.
And you think that you were a reasonably good choice to be the father of her children?
If I was in her shoes and I knew all that, I would say probably not.
What do you mean probably not, dude?
Closer to no.
Hang on, Zach. Fuck, man.
We've got to be straight with each other.
Okay. She's pregnant with your child and you're having phone sex with other women.
Is that a good father for her children at the time?
At the time? No.
Okay, good. So, because you gave all this hedgy shit, right?
So, no. That is not a good father for her children.
Right? Because he's trying to find other women to have sex with while she's getting big with his child, right?
Right. So, no.
And you say, you were young and dumb.
And she says, well, it's not too likely that I'm going to get pregnant.
And you're like, yeah, I'll bust a nut in that big serrated jawbone of a Russian roulette and just see what happens.
Let's roll the dice. Let's play the casino of Maybe Baby.
Does that seem like a good father?
Well, I'm not going to commit to you.
I'm not going to marry you, really.
I'm not going to choose to have a child.
I'm not going to choose to not have a child.
But I'm young, dumb, and full of cum.
Does that seem like a good choice to be the father of her children?
No, it doesn't. Okay.
So she's not a good mother in the most important thing, which is to choose a good father for your children.
You say she doesn't apologize, right?
I guess you could say she's getting better at it, it seems, at this point.
But at the time, I don't remember ever hearing an apology from her based on something to do with our relationship.
Okay, so she doesn't apologize.
She feels that her feelings magically translate into truth.
She has communications issues.
She has trust issues.
And she's letting a roommate half raise her kid.
Tell me where the good mom part of this is coming in, because I'm not seeing it yet.
Oh, and also she decided to have another kid with you after you having phone sex with women while she was pregnant.
She's just like, yeah, this sounds great.
Because you say, well, at the time, maybe she didn't know, but she sure as shit knew after.
She caught you on the phone chatting up and breathing and panting on other women, right?
Right. So tell me where the whole good mom thing is coming in because That must be in the sequel to what you're telling me in the first movie.
I mean, at this point, she can't rewrite history, right?
So, the way things are, the way things are right now.
What? She's doing the best that she can.
Oh, don't stop pissing me off, man.
No, no, no. Come on. Did I say it's possible to rewrite history?
Is that where I'm coming from?
No, no, no. I mean, she's doing the best she can right now, right?
She has that kid. She's in the position she is right now.
She can't, you know, magically...
Is it magic that I'm asking for, Zach?
Is it magic really?
Is it magic for me to say it's not a good fucking idea to have a kid with a guy who was having phone sex with other women while you were pregnant?
Okay? That is not brain surgery.
You are not a trustworthy guy to have kids with.
Because you were chatting up other women while your girlfriend was pregnant.
Okay? She chose to have another kid with you voluntarily.
Don't tell me she's a victim of circumstance.
Well, this is what she's stuck with now.
No, these are specific choices.
Okay? She chose to have another kid with you.
First of all, she chose not to be on birth control while she knew she had the chance to get pregnant.
And then you broke up and then you got back together.
Things are unstable. She clearly still has trust issues.
And she chooses to have another kid with you.
And you chose to have another kid with her.
Okay? So please tell me where the good responsible mothering is happening here.
Because your kid has grown up with a part-time dad who's not married to the mom.
And you have fewer resources to provide to her because she needs a home and you need a home, right?
You're not living together, right? Mm-hmm.
That's correct. Right. So if you were both living together, you'd have more resources for your child.
So your child is getting the short end of the stick, right?
They're getting less or fewer resources because you're paying for two.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Tell me where the good mom stuff is coming in.
Well, she's been raising our daughter.
Our daughter's very smart, I think, and she's always been...
She's always been teaching her what a mother is supposed to teach her.
You teach them how to crawl, how to walk, and then you teach them how to talk.
You read stories to them.
You get them involved in things.
She goes to the baby group with the other children.
She's good with her. She plays with her.
My daughter's always happy when I see her, but not so much now because she's getting older and she's getting into the terrible twos, as they call them.
Wait, what terrible twos?
What do you mean? Well, you know, the terrible twos.
No, I don't know the terrible twos.
I'm a dad, and I have no idea about the terrible twos.
My daughter did not have any terrible twos.
She's not had a terrible year of any kind.
Well, you're a lucky man, Steph.
No, I'm not. Jealous.
No, I'm not lucky, man.
Don't ascribe to luck, man.
Do not ascribe it to luck.
What's going on with your daughter and the terrible twos?
Well, she's... Got an attitude, I suppose.
Not supposed. She's got an attitude.
What if she doesn't get an attitude?
If she doesn't get her way sometimes, most of the time, somewhere in between sometimes and most of the time, she'll throw a tantrum.
Like her mom. Who you can't even have a conversation with in the room about important things, which is why you did it on Facebook chat, right?
Does her mom have tantrums?
Not like my daughter does, no.
No, that's not what I asked.
Of course she's not doing it like your daughter.
She's not too. Does your girlfriend have a temper?
No. Then why can't you talk about difficult topics with her in the room?
Because she will, she'll basically shut down.
I mean, she won't, she'll just kind of stare off into space and give me cursory answers pretty much.
She'll just, you know what I mean?
She'll just kind of shut down, really.
I mean, the few times I've tried it, this is what happens.
It doesn't get anywhere. There's no solution that comes out of it.
So she has a temper.
Her temper just manifests in passive-aggressive coldness, right?
Okay, yeah. So in that sense, yeah, she does.
All right. And she does this, of course, to your daughter, I'm sure.
She must, then yes. Right.
Yes. So it's not really your daughter who has the attitude, is it?
No, I guess not. So she won't talk about difficult things with the father of her child.
We don't know what goes on with the roommate, right?
Does the roommate have a temper?
No, she's rather meek.
I think if I had to choose one word to describe, it'd be meek.
So is she easily pushed around?
Yeah. Yeah.
So is she unable to set boundaries for your daughter?
Sorry, my girlfriend?
No, I'm sorry. Is the roommate unable to set boundaries to your child?
Because she's so weak.
Well, it wouldn't be her job to set the boundaries or it wouldn't be her responsibility.
It'd be... She would get the order...
Not the orders, but she'd get the instructions from my ex and then...
Well, no, no. She's watching the child, right?
Yeah. So, I don't understand.
Is it like, well, you know, it's not her responsibility to watch the child or to feed the child if she sees...
I mean... She's the primary caregiver.
She's got to do the things that are good for your child, and one of those things, a very important thing, is reasonable boundaries and responsibilities, right?
I think I see where you're getting at.
Well, yeah, she would...
Yeah, like if my daughter was acting up, so yeah, she would just probably just let her act up and...
Obviously, you don't give the child what they want if they're acting up over it.
If they're not supposed to have it, you just let them do their thing.
At her age, we've tried timeouts and stuff, and that's the best you can do.
And of course, you personally are against spanking, so...
Do you guys spank?
No. No.
Well... She's given her a couple taps, I suppose, you could say.
Nothing. She's told me she makes sure that if she's really upset, she doesn't touch her because she doesn't want to accidentally apply too much force.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, Zach.
I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, man.
That's all right. She doesn't have a temper, but she's scared to touch my daughter when she's angry because she's so angry.
Yeah, I mean, I guess...
Help me square this circle, brother.
I'm having a little trouble following it.
When you open it up like that, it kind of opens it up for me, too, because I didn't really think about it that way.
Clearly. So she has one caregiver who's a pushover and another caregiver with a scary temper.
You know, consistency is key for parenting.
You know that, right? I assume you've read the books, right?
God hope you've read the books, right?
So consistency is pretty key.
And if she has one caregiver...
Who's a pushover and doesn't have any boundaries or rules or significant ones.
And she has another one who's afraid to touch her when she's angry because she's afraid of what?
Punching her, hitting her, I don't know, clawing at her, who knows, right?
That's not a very consistent environment.
In fact, it's kind of an opposite environment, right?
Right. Right.
And you seem to have swallowed the bullshit that somehow your daughter has an attitude and it's the terrible tease.
Nothing environmental about it whatsoever.
Trust me, I understand that obviously children are influenced by their parents and what's around them.
That's not what you told me.
You said mom doesn't have a temper.
Hang on, let me finish.
You said her mom doesn't have a temper.
The roommate is good caregiver.
My daughter has an attitude and it's the terrible twos.
Not one point towards environment at all.
Well, this whole time I was under the impression that that was kind of something that happens to all kids to varying degrees when they get to a certain age that they start to, you know, become more mature and realize that, oh, I can start doing this because they're not going to do it.
There's no consequences, right?
Once they start learning that idea of consequences, you know what I mean?
And I thought... No, I don't know what you mean.
That's just a bunch of bullshit that people say when their parenting blows up in their faces.
Oh, well, now I know that.
Now, the little taps, right?
What does that mean? Well, I would imagine it's probably not quite a tap.
It's probably a little firmer than that, but just to kind of let her know that she's doing something wrong.
But you can let her know that she's doing something wrong without hitting her, right?
Of course. So why is she hitting her?
Well, I suppose she tried to tell her many, many times that it's wrong.
Don't do that. And it didn't.
So, in her mind, the next logical step was to start mild spankings.
But it has to be hard enough and scary enough to change behavior, right?
Right? If it's a little tap, if it's a pat on the head, it doesn't change behavior.
So it has to be startling and painful enough for the child so that the child will change behavior, right?
So all of these euphemisms like light tap, light spanking, come on.
She's hitting the child strong enough to change behavior, right?
Right. Or that's the idea anyway.
Right. So then the question is, why doesn't...
It's a daughter, right? Yes.
Why doesn't your daughter listen to her mom?
Well, before I started talking to you, I would have said that...
You know, the whole terrible twos thing, but I guess at this point, I would say because...
I mean, for me, I would say she doesn't respect my mom.
I don't know. She's only...
She's not even two.
I don't know if she even knows what respect is, but that's...
Sure she does. Yeah.
Yeah, she does. She does.
So that's what I would say definitively is probably what it is, is she lacks respect.
What does your girlfriend say, do you think, Zach, when your daughter asks, where's daddy?
Well, she doesn't speak full sentences yet or even half sentences, but I guess, like, let's say if she was saying dada or something, she would, I don't know, she'd probably say something like, dada's not here right now or something like that.
Well, of course, the child knows that you're not there.
That's why they're asking for data, right?
But when your daughter wants you to read her a bedtime story and you're not there or whatever, right?
I mean, what have you agreed to say?
Like, what is the story? She doesn't...
Our daughter's not talking that much yet, so she wouldn't know if she was asking or not for that, but...
I would imagine if she did ask that to my ex, my ex would probably say, you know, next time or whenever he comes up next time.
Right. If you were living with your girlfriend, would your girlfriend have to work?
Okay, so this is a good time for me to bring up that Since last week, when I was supposed to have this call, me and her had a talk about us getting back together.
So our plan now is to get back together, just so that might change the conversation a bit.
So to answer your question that you just asked, based on what I just said, her plan is to work.
She wouldn't have to work.
I wouldn't force her.
She wouldn't need to. But that's what her plan is.
She's going to go to school and then get a job and work.
Wait, she's going to go to school and work?
Well, she's going to go to school, and then once she's finished school, she's going to work in the job that she went to school for.
Why would she go to school when she has two babies?
Well, because she doesn't want to let that hold her back, I suppose.
That's what I would say. Oh, so you're basically the same.
You guys are perfectly suited to each other.
Because you want to be unfaithful with her, with other women, and she wants to be unfaithful with her babies, with work.
Neither of you can commit to the lives that you've actually just fucking created, right?
Because number one is your kids, right?
Everyone says that very few people live that way.
Number one is your kids. Now that means if you feel like calling up a woman for phone sex, You take the wires out of your phone and you plunge them into your scrotum until you electrocute yourself back into sanity.
You understand? Right.
Because that's not good for your kids.
You're like, well, I want to flirt with other women.
Too fucking bad. Punch yourself in the nads because it's kid time.
Right? And if she wants to go to school, no.
No. Okay.
She can take that curricula and give herself paper cuts on the earlobes.
Yeah. Right, because it's kid time, which means for the first three to five years, five years, five years, you guys can do five years.
For the next five years, that's kid time.
And that's all it basically is.
Now, for you, it's kid time, like, I go to work, I provide for my family, I come in, right?
And for her, it's kid time, like, you need to breastfeed.
Because breastfeeding raises IQ, and when your kids have a higher IQ, it's a hell of a lot more fun being a parent, because you can reason and negotiate with them, right?
Is your daughter in daycare?
Not yet. Yeah.
I think she was supposed to...
I thought we were talking about it months ago, and I just forgot about it until you brought it up.
I imagine eventually she'll be in daycare.
I guess right now my ex doesn't need to put her in daycare because there's people that can watch her if she needs to.
And now, of course, she plans on taking her maternally for the next 18 months or whatever the new maximum is.
So she's... It's going to be around 24-7 from now on.
But that's not going to pay much, right?
Because if she's working full-time or even part-time, I assume it's at a pretty low-rent job, which means that it doesn't...
I think it's a percentage of salary or something.
Well, thanks to the...
As you know now, because I know that you are Canadian, you live in Ontario, and with Trudeau's baby bonus, you get quite a bit of money.
So I don't think she'll...
What's she getting? Jeez, it's been a long time since I've...
I mean, I think right now, per month...
This is not an exact amount, but I'm sure it's at least somewhere around $600 a month.
So I'm paying for your kid.
Well, I guess everyone's paying for everyone's kids except mine.
So, right.
So you guys are getting back together.
You're going to move in, right? The plan is, she told me, once her current lease is up at the place she's at with her roommate or housemate, whatever you want to call her, that we're going to move in together.
Yes. Right. And how far along is she with the new pregnancy?
She is due...
If it was a natural birth, it'd be beginning of April, but she's going to do a C-section.
Again, the first time was a C-section as well.
Why is she doing a C-section? Because...
Honestly, I think for the most part, 100%, it's probably because she's afraid of giving a natural birth.
What do you mean? Like she's afraid of it hurting?
Yeah. Or maybe there's something else in her mind that she's never told me about, but I think that's all I've heard from her is that basically she's given the option.
Let's put it this way.
I guess she took the easy way out, let's say.
But there's epidurals and stuff.
I mean, it doesn't have to be painful.
Mm-hmm. Well, apparently the obstetrician haven't been putting that into her brain enough because she doesn't want to go that route.
And what does she want to go back to school for?
She wants to be a personal support worker.
So not quite a nurse, but basically a nurse.
And why does she want to do that when she has babies?
Why doesn't she wait till she's older?
I guess maybe perhaps she feels pressured to do it now instead of waiting till later.
Get it done now and then it's over with.
Right, right.
Now, does she know that if she has a c-section, it's probably responsible for why she can't breastfeed?
No, she did not. And I don't know that either.
So there's a study called The Impact of Cesarean Section on Breastfeeding Initiation, Duration and Difficulties in the First Four Months Postpartum.
And they say, we found that when controlling for sociodemographics and labor and delivery characteristics, planned C-section is associated with early breastfeeding cessation.
Hmm. It's not the most natural thing to have a giant dragon claw rip out the baby from the mother's womb.
No. It's pretty gruesome to watch.
And that's like the first result in the search engine.
Right. So, I'm certainly no doctor and I'm not giving anybody any medical advice, but it's important to...
For your daughter, if you can make breastfeeding easier, there seems little doubt that it's vastly better in terms of IQ, right?
Right. No, we've heard it all before, you know, and it is not just for IQ, but for many, many, many different things.
Yeah, for like immune system and all that kind of stuff, right?
Right, right. So, she is a good mom, but she didn't look up whether or not C-sections, which she's afraid...
There was no medical pressing reason, right?
She just wanted a C-section?
Oh, no. At the time, our daughter was a breech, so she was...
I'm sure you know what that is. So, yeah.
She was in the breech position, so she was feet first.
Right. So, that's what they said.
Either do a C-section or risk You know, a lot of crap happening by pulling her out and then pulling her out head last, right?
So, obviously, we decided to go with the C-section for our daughter's sake.
Well, I would certainly look into the research and talk to, I don't know, the same doctor?
Who knows? But yeah, just find that stuff out because whatever you can do to make breastfeeding easier and better is for the best for your kid to be.
No, of course. Right, right.
And why do you still want to sow your oats when you're about to become a father for the second time?
What does that mean? Well...
I... I don't know.
I mean, I wish I knew, but I... I guess I can say, from experience, from why it happened in the past, I guess it would be a lack of impulse control, really, when it comes down to it.
Right. What does it mean to you if you can have sex with strange women, with new women?
I've thought about it before, and I don't remember when I heard this last, but when I heard it, it made me think that when I thought about it, it made sense to me.
And the idea that having sex with the women means I'm desired by them, it gives me, I'm desired then.
But you were desired by your girlfriend, right?
Apparently not enough, I guess.
You were desired by her enough to have two children.
Yeah.
Why do you want to be desired by women other than the mother of your children?
Well, I guess it seems probably because there's a part of me that has some sort of issue, I suppose, when it comes to being liked by people.
Actually, I know that for a fact.
I do have an issue with needing the approval of others, I guess would be the psychiatric way to put it.
Needing the approval of others?
Did your girlfriend approve of you having phone sex with other women while she was pregnant?
I don't think so. I'm pretty sure she didn't, if I remember that story correctly.
So what does it mean when you say you want the approval of others?
I mean, was there anyone in your life who gave you the high bro fist pump when they heard about you pseudo-cheating on your girlfriend?
Nope. Was there anyone who approved of that at all?
I would hope not. Right.
You don't have a desire to please others, otherwise I think you'd be a little more pleasing, wouldn't you?
Yeah. Let me ask you this.
Zach, are your parents together?
Funny you mention that, because they were for 30 years, and then they actually just separated in November.
Let me put out a guess here, see how my woo-woo psychic abilities are doing.
Was your father more passive?
in his relationship or more of a people pleaser or a wife pleaser than the opposite?
He was...
Yeah, he was more passive My mom would do all the finances and everything and the child-rearing and stuff he was more passive with as well.
And wife-pleaser, I think up until recent years when he retired, He was more passive and then in recent years he had been more active or trying to be active, trying to be active.
Retired? How old were they when they had you?
So my...
Okay, well, I'm 22, so they would have been...
Well, my dad is around your age, I think.
51, right? 51?
Retired at 51? No, no, no, no, but...
Well, actually, yes, I guess.
All right. Unless he's doing it on my taxpayer dime, good for him.
I guess he is, because he was military, so...
Oh, great. Right, great.
I don't mean to laugh at your misfortune.
I'm just paying through the nose for these kinds of things.
All right. So...
Was your mom a passive-aggressive pullbacker when she didn't get what she wanted?
Well, obviously I was never present in the bedroom chats with my mom and dad when I was a kid, but I would say...
See, the thing is, I think they hit things well because I don't remember there ever being that many issues.
If you're talking about recently, since I've become an adult, I would say...
Half and half. She herself has been changing over the years.
She's been more, I guess, the way I can interpret it is that she's, in her mind anyway, let's say, she's been putting up with stuff over the years, and then it kind of comes, it's been coming out more and more over the years.
Let me put forward a hypothesis, man.
All right? Are you ready to have your mind blown?
I am. That's why I'm here. All right.
Zach? You don't want to sleep with other women.
You don't even want to flirt with other women.
You may feel that way. That's not what's going on.
How good looking are you, Zach?
Well, before I put on some pounds, I would say I was a good solid 8 out of 10, I guess.
All right. At this point, maybe, you know, not so much.
So a good looking guy, right?
Sure. Zach, this is what's going on.
You are a woman pleaser.
Now, that may seem odd based on what you did to the mom of your kids, but the reason why you're flirting with other women is other women want you to, and you don't know how to say no.
Because it's such a stupid fucking thing to do, right?
You know that. I don't think you're dumb at all.
Yeah, no, but I don't think you're dumb at all.
I just don't think you know how to say no to women.
And so if a woman's attracted to you, you'll please her by flirting with her.
Because your girlfriend didn't want you to flirt with these women.
You knew what a stupid idea it was, but these women wanted to flirt with you.
So I don't think that you have modeled in your life Saying no to women, and trust me, Zach, this is not a problem that just you have.
Not being able to say no to women is why we're within a hair's breadth of losing the entire fucking Western civilization.
You understand? This is not a Zach problem.
This is a, like, everybody west of the...
west of Poland problem.
Right? We can't say no to women.
We can't say no to women.
You didn't see your parents negotiate.
You didn't say... You didn't see your dad say no to your mom very much.
And so when a woman's attracted to you and wants to flirt with you, you're like, well, I can't say no.
I have to give her what she wants.
I don't know if that's...
I mean, in terms of the flirting, the cheating, whatever you want to call it, because I was the one seeking it out.
I mean, I didn't have to go on my phone and start talking to women.
That was me that sought that out.
Okay, so then the question is, why did you seek that out?
And you say it's because you want to feel attractive?
I mean, if you get right down to it, I think that's kind of what it was.
I mean, at the time, I think a lot of it was just looking for a sexual thrill, to be honest with you.
And you couldn't get a sexual thrill from your girlfriend?
Were things on the rocks for you guys sexually?
When it started, no.
I mean, things were...
No, no, when you were flirting. Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Well, yeah. Well, okay.
Well, I guess it wasn't enough, I suppose, because otherwise I wouldn't have done it.
Were you angry with your girlfriend at the time?
The times I didn't know?
I mean, I always kind of kept it separate, right?
You know, in my mind at the time, I think, honestly, I didn't even pay it any mind.
It's just something that I did that I... That I just, I did without even thinking, I didn't think in my mind that this is bad.
I guess now I sound like a villain or something.
No, no, no. Listen, I mean, listen, we'll get there.
And I think we're close.
So, did your girlfriend want a baby?
Looking back on it. I'm not saying consciously or explicitly, but when she says, let's have unprotected sex, and she's young and fertile, did she want a baby?
Yeah, seems like it.
She wanted a baby, and then she wanted another baby, right?
And you gave her what she wanted.
Am I right? Yeah.
Okay. Did you want a baby?
Not, would you be okay with a baby?
Did you want a baby?
Okay, so if you're asking at the time, was my goal in life at that moment to have a child?
No. Right.
So, she wants a baby.
Two times, you give her a baby.
Do you see how that's not saying no to a woman?
Yeah, I guess. Because I remember the last time that she said, you know, basically, I'm ready to try to have another one.
Like, let's try and have another one.
And I didn't think about saying no.
I just was like, all right, let's do it.
Because when you listen back to this conversation, Zach, you'll hear.
My daughter said this. My daughter said we're moving together.
This is the plan for the next thing, right?
And you just kind of...
You're like a balloon on a string.
She makes the choices.
And you do what she wants.
My guess is...
My guess is that...
When your dad retired, he got a little bit sick and tired of being told what to do all the time, fought back, and your parents busted up.
Well, he...
Yeah, I don't know the specifics of whatever is on his mind, but basically, he separated from her because he wasn't happy, I guess.
Apparently, he hadn't been happy fucking since...
Forever, I guess, really.
Right. Floating is a very passive-aggressive thing to do because it clearly is destructive to the basis of the relationship.
And this is why I asked if you were angry at her.
See, I think it went something like this.
I think you like the sex.
I think you found her pretty, but you weren't ready for a baby.
But she said she wanted to have unprotected sex.
Now, unless she's a complete fucking moron, then she wants a baby.
She's not a moron. She wants a baby.
You don't have discussions about it.
You don't look at the ramifications.
You don't even think. Like you said to me earlier, you said, well, I just figured it would work out.
Bullshit you did. Because you're not stupid either.
She wanted a baby.
You provided her with a baby.
You got trapped.
You were angry.
Because you hadn't been assertive.
Right? You got angry.
And you're like, fuck you, man.
You had a baby. I didn't say that I didn't want a baby.
I didn't say, Jesus Christ, I better triple bag this and get myself in a hazmat suit, right?
So she had the baby.
She didn't have an abortion, right?
Is she religious? No, but we're both very good.
Okay, she didn't have an abortion. She didn't give the baby up for adoption, so she wanted that baby, right?
So, you went along with it.
And then you were trapped.
Then you were angry.
And then you start flirting with other women as an elegant fuck you to the woman you feel trapped you.
Communications issues...
Zach, are you even there in this relationship?
Because you just sound very passive to me.
You sound like, well, she makes this decision and she said this and she said, well, it's a baby.
It's a fucking baby.
Do you not think you have a say?
Well, I'm talking retroactively, you know, from where I was at the time.
I mean... Dude, this is five months ago.
Don't tell me what I had at the...
We're not talking about the Paleozoic era, for fuck's sakes.
We're talking five months ago.
She said, I'm ready to have another baby.
And you're like, okay. Oh, okay.
That's what you're talking about. That's what I'm talking about, man.
I thought you were talking about the first pregnancy.
Now, she can't say, well, I don't really have much of a big chance of getting pregnant, you know.
I'm basically a sieve down there.
Come on. Colander brackets don't work, right?
So, she says, I want to have another baby.
You've already broken up once, you've flirted with everyone, you're back together, things aren't working, communications issue and that, right?
Are you even there?
She just talked to you, and didn't even talk to you, just said, I want another baby, and you're like, great!
Okay, if that's what you want, honey.
No, see, I want to make it clear that I want children too.
I mean, it's not just, I'm not just, I'm not just having these kids to please her.
No, no, no. I want kids. You just told me you didn't want to have kids when you had your first kid, all right?
Stop fucking around with me, man.
Don't bullshit me and stop making up this stuff.
You just told... I'm not saying you're not happy with your daughter.
I'm not saying you don't love your daughter.
I'm not saying that you can't be a great dad.
But you didn't want...
Your goal... You said it was not my goal to have kids.
I didn't... Basically, you didn't want kids.
At that time. So young.
You're right. Right. Now, are you telling me that after you half cheated on your girlfriend and broke up and busted up and you had terrible interactions on...
Facebook chats and someone, are you saying, well, now I really, really want to have kids with her because things are going great.
I guess I was just...
I guess I was just deluding myself into thinking that things would get better.
No! You're not deluding yourself.
She wanted children and you provided without consulting yourself.
Right? You do what she says.
You do what she wants and then you get pissed off about it.
Because this is going to happen again if you don't understand it.
You're going to comply and then you're going to fuck it up because you're angry.
Right. You're 22.
You got another kid on the way in a very unstable relationship.
This is not what you wanted for your life.
I bet you weren't 16 saying, man, in six years I really hope to be on the verge of being a father to the second time for a girlfriend I keep breaking up with.
Was that your plan?
Is this what you wanted? The furthest thing from my mind.
Right. Now you need to accept that.
It doesn't mean you can't be with your girlfriend.
It doesn't mean you can't be a Father to your children, it doesn't mean any of that, but you gotta accept the price that you're paying for not being in your own life.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Because if you go back in, and you're just this balloon bumping along on a string, you're gonna fuck it up some other way.
Because you're angry. Because you're not able to vocalize what you want.
Don't let her run the family.
Don't let her run your life.
Do not let her run your decisions.
Be in your life.
Be in your girlfriend's life.
Be in your child's life.
Be there.
And say what you want.
Okay.
Does this make any sense?
It does, you know, and I haven't thought about it in all the ways that, because you're connecting it to everything, and I just thought about it and the fact that she makes basically all the decisions about our daughter.
You're passive! I don't know.
Oh, she's going to go back to school.
No, she's not. Not if she wants to be a good mom, she's not.
She's young too, I assume.
She's got the rest of her life to get an education.
Right now, she's pregnant.
And she's going to have a baby.
And she needs to be there for that child.
Right. Because what the fuck is an education going to do her if her children don't like her when they hit their puberty years?
If they're not bonded, if they're not connected, if they don't respect her, if they don't trust her?
Mm-hmm. Half of parenting is just planning for the teenage years.
That's all it is. It's all it is.
It's like building a house.
You've got to dig down before you build up.
Parenting is all about they're getting bigger, you're getting older.
They're getting stronger, you're getting weaker.
They're getting more independent.
And it is planning for all of that.
Now, you have a daughter, Zachary, which means that you are the model for the man she's likely either going to be attracted to or repelled from.
If she has a good relationship with you, then she'll end up with a guy like you.
If she has a bad relationship with you, she'll end up with a guy who's the polar opposite of you.
Now, the polar opposite of you is a bully because you're over-compliant, right?
Yeah. Have you heard of something called the shit test?
No, I can't say that I have.
Well, let me tell you. The shit test is when a woman tests to see if you're still dominant.
That doesn't mean a bully, and it doesn't mean dominant over her.
It just means a woman needs to feel secure that the man can go out and get resources, so she puts tests on him to see if he's got a spine, to see if he's got...
Willpower. Because a man being dominant and authoritarian is very sexy for a woman, and it is something that makes her feel secure.
And security, as we all know, to the detriment of our remaining freedoms, is something that women desperately want more than anything else, particularly when they become mothers.
Particularly when they become mothers.
And the shit test is when a woman puts forward something outlandish and sees if you just go along with it or whether you have a spine.
she'll pretend to be happy in the moment if you go along with it, but she'll lose respect for you if you do.
Wow.
Never heard of this before.
No, it's not going down that way.
Listen, if women wanted compliant men, Zachary, why would Fifty Shades of Grey be the biggest and best-selling book in the history of humankind?
The beat me, eat me, licorice whip porn shit is what women love.
A woman needs resources and a man does not get resources for his children and his wife by being compliant in the world.
You go out, you carve your piece of the world and you bring it the fuck back to your family.
Mm hmm.
And your wife will give you, your girlfriend will give you tests.
It's really important that we go to my aunt's birthday party on Sunday.
No, I don't want to go. Oh, you got to.
You have to. It's important. It's family.
You go if you want. I don't want to go.
I don't like her. She smells.
She talks about how much she loves Barack Obama and how much she respects the FBI. I can't do it.
Sorry, it's against my values.
Won't do it. You have to do it.
If you love me. No, no, no.
I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it.
And she might bitch and moan, but man, she'll love you for it.
She'll love you for it. No shit.
I'm going to tell you a story. Ready for a story?
Story time! Sure, sure.
A friend of mine got married, and ahead of time, he'd had the conversation about names, right?
Who's going to take whose name, what name is it going to be?
A friend of mine got married, right?
A friend of mine got married and said, you know, it's our tradition.
You take my name. I'm the man.
It's the way things work, right? And it was more than that.
But anyway, she agreed, right?
The morning after they got married, he was telling me the story, they're driving off to the brunch, like the post-wedding brunch or whatever, right?
And she's like, you know what?
Now I've changed my mind. I'm going to keep my own name.
Very first morning of the marriage, there was a shit test.
Jesus. Well, that's not surprising, right?
She got the ring, she got the piece of paper, she got the upper hand.
Of course there's going to be a shit test.
Are you still strong and independent?
You're asking that to me right now, or is this part of the story?
No, no, this is the rhetorical question.
And do you know what he said? Oh, sorry.
He said, no, we made promises.
You made a promise to me.
And being married doesn't change that.
You made a promise to me, and you are going to take my name.
She says, well, am I not allowed to change my mind?
She said the whole point of marriage was having vows where you don't change your mind.
Right. The whole point is together, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
You don't get to change your mind about that.
That's called a commitment.
And you stick to your damn commitment.
That's what I plan on doing.
But.
What?
But you have to be assertive.
Right. You have to be assertive, my God.
For your daughter's sake, for your family's sake, for, if you have a son, your son's sake, for Western civilization itself.
Women are so hungry for assertive men.
I mean, women have teamed up a lot with the state, and the state is used to cow and break men, so you can't fight, you can't win.
They've engaged themselves to the ultimate alpha of state power, so we're all betas.
You know, we're all fucking cucks.
I can't stop. I can't stop the taxpayer from taking money out of my bank account and giving it to your child.
So, women are so desperate for men who'll pass the shit test, they're bringing them in from the third world.
Hmm. Immigration.
It's one big shit test.
Right. I know it sounds weird, but it is.
No, no, no. When you...
Fuck, it makes sense now, eh?
It's one big shit test. Yeah.
No! No, I'm not bringing in replacement men.
No! There's no sexist reason.
Nope. Not gonna happen.
Wow. You know why?
Because it's the only way women get to keep their rights.
So, no. I mean, this shit test, it's just a fundamental biological.
And this happens all the time.
And I remember reading a book many years ago wherein a dog trainer was talking.
And, you know, I'm not saying women are dogs.
Men are dogs are saying that we're all mammals, right?
So this is dog trainer who was saying that the female dogs would just come up and bite the male dog from time to time.
Right. And what he'll do is he'll just turn the softest part of his shoulder to her so that they can't really do any damage.
And after a while, they just give up and submit.
And he said, now, he said, I won't breed a dog, a male dog, who attacks the female dog back.
You just, you don't submit.
But you don't fight back.
You don't fight back. Don't engage at that level, because it's never about what it's about.
It's never about, it's just, can I be secure in the knowledge that you are going to go out, muscle the world, and bring me back some fucking bacon?
And we can, women can marry the state, but they can't change their nature.
Women need to feel secure.
And the way that women feel secure is the man is assertive, and they need to test whether the man is assertive or not.
And the way they do that is the shit test.
So be there.
Don't yell at her. Don't call her names.
That's not assertiveness. That's biting back, which is not right.
Just be firm.
And listen, please understand, I'm not saying that women shouldn't be firm.
Women, ladies, step up and be firm in what you want.
Like this... The problem is neither of you are being firm and you're pumping out babies like a Middle Eastern geyser.
Right? She didn't say, Zach...
I want babies. She's like, well, it's not very likely to have that, right?
She wasn't assertive.
She was assertive with the second one, right?
I assume so. She said, I'm ready to start trying again.
And you're like, but you weren't assertive.
Now, you already have the kids.
That can't be undone. You're right about that when you say you can't go back in time.
But you need to be assertive.
If you want this relationship to work, You better be assertive of what the hell you want.
But I think you don't even know what you want to be assertive about.
It wasn't like she said, I'm ready to start trying for another one.
And you were like, ooh, I don't think so, but I guess I better say yes.
You were like, sure. Right?
I don't think you're even aware of what it is to have a preference that doesn't accord with what the woman around you wants.
Which tells me everything I need to know about your parents' marriage, by the way.
And it is funny how many military men...
Are tough in the battlefield, they'll take down a panzer division with their bare hands, but one frowning set of boobs crosses their path and they crumble like a fast forward of the next thousand years of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Don't appease women. Don't do it.
Don't appease women. It's disrespectful to women.
They can handle it. They can handle it when you say no to them, just like you handle it when a woman says no to you.
Be direct because this indirect shit where you're mad at her for trapping you into being a dad when you're too young and not ready and you're not even sure if it's the right woman so you end up flirting with other women and all these communications issues and all this shit like well I can't be in the same room and have a conversation with her are you fucking kidding me?
You guys are adults. Like, I hate to say this grow-the-fuck-up stuff, but it's kind of real at this point.
You have two kids, right?
One and a half. You need to be in the same room and have conversations, and she needs to.
Stop doing this oblique, passive-aggressive stuff and state what she wants.
None of this, like, white-lipped, turn away, close your eyes, slam the doors.
I mean, fuck that shit. I mean, that's ridiculous.
Figure out what you want.
What do you want? Well, obviously you have this ideal family, right?
In your mind. Okay.
So you have to be...
And it's funny, you know, I was going to say you have to be the leader of this family.
And I don't believe in that.
Because I know that that comes from a Christian perspective.
And I was just talking about this with Dr...
Oh, sorry, with Reverend Peterson, Jesse.
But that's not my particular perspective.
But... If you know that you're in the right, don't budge an inch.
Right. If she's in the right, I would expect her not to budge an inch either.
But be too advanced.
Be assertive. Because otherwise, you're going to get this weird undertone backlash.
This thing's going to go into the ditch in a fiery high-speed chase of your unconscious, and it's all going to get fucked up, and you won't even know why.
You cannot escape the need for assertiveness.
You wanted out when she was pregnant the first time.
And do you think it's accidental that she heard you talking to other women?
Come on. You've got to be smarter than that, right?
Because you are, but you've got to be aware of that.
It was not accidental at all.
Yeah, I always thought it was, but I think about it now and then...
Listen, man, if somebody paid you a million dollars to keep it secret, do you think she would have overheard you?
You would have taken every conceivable precaution known to man, right?
Yeah. So the fact that she heard you, it was like, I don't want to be here.
I'm not happy. I can't talk about it.
So I'm just going to start flirting.
So you think at the time that she could tell I wasn't happy?
Sure, that's why you're mad at her.
You're mad at her because she knows you're not happy, but she's not saying anything about it, and so you have the great fear.
I wouldn't even have thought that that's what happened, you know?
I'm sorry? I didn't. Sorry?
Oh, did I lose you? Hello?
You're still here, Seth. Is he gone?
Zach, we can't hear you.
All right, well, I'll just finish this bit.
We'll go on to the next call. Are you back, Zach?
No, I'm here. Sorry.
It was just a little bit of lag or something.
Sorry about that. So here's what happens, Zach.
I'm going to break it down to you right to ball steep, frankly.
Okay, so you have the great fear that you're being used for sperm and money.
This is the great fear that men have, that we're not loved for who we are.
We're loved for sperm and money.
Because women will love the children, and once we give them the sperm of money, they don't give a shit about us, right?
So your big concern, your big fear, I think, was that you're not happy.
You're not happy, and she doesn't seem to care.
And what did your father say about years of the marriage?
He said, well, I wasn't happy for a long time, right?
And did your mother do anything about it?
Well, she wanted them to go to couples counseling, and she wanted him to talk about it, I guess, and stuff like that.
Did she do anything about it?
Couples counseling is wanting the therapist to do something about it, and wanting the man to talk is wanting the man to do something about it.
Did she do anything about it?
No. Did she even try and figure out what it was?
Because if you say, let's go to couples counseling, the woman is saying, well, I don't have a clue why you're not happy.
I couldn't possibly understand it.
That's what she would say, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. She has no idea. Bullshit.
If you've been married to someone for 30 years and you have no fucking idea what makes them unhappy, you're lying.
Or it's even worse.
You actually don't have a clue because you've never even thought about them as an independent, sovereign human entity with feelings of his own.
Right? So your dad's unhappy and your mom says, well, did your dad make more money than your mom?
Well, yeah, she didn't really make any money.
All right, so, sperm and money.
Sperm and money. Whales and bucks, right?
Sperm and money. Right, so she had the kids, and he's paying the bills.
Now, the farmer doesn't lie awake night thinking, oh, I wonder if that cow or that chicken is really happy or not.
Right? They're just like, I don't know.
They haven't electrocuted them on the fence.
They haven't beaten their heads to death in their tiny stall.
I'm getting my milk. I'm getting my milk and I'll get my meat.
What do I care about? The feelings of the livestock.
And this is the fear that men have.
And you can hear MGTOW men talk about it.
You can hear men's rights activists talk about it.
You can hear men, when they're honest, deep down say, am I loved for who I am?
Or am I loved for my utility value?
Am I loved for who I am as a human being?
Or am I loved for what I do as a human doing?
Does anyone care about me?
Am I disposable?
Or is it just, I'm the resource machine?
I'm the resource machine.
Every man has that fear, deep down or on the surface.
And every man is not crazy to have that fear.
Because if you're in a relationship, you're a man, you're in a relationship, how many times has the woman come and say, you don't seem to be quite as happy.
Is anything going on?
Is there anything that I could do differently?
Anything I could do better?
Talk to me. You don't seem to be quite as peppy.
Now, they might say that if they need you to be happy for a family gathering, right?
But I'm just talking outside of utility value.
Are you cared for as an individual?
It's a big question to ask.
Right. You know what?
I thought about that. She said, do what I want or we're broken up, right?
Pretty much. So there may be no room in this relationship for you to be who you are immediately.
Maybe it'll take time. Maybe you start small.
Maybe you work your back. Or maybe you just sit down and say, listen...
Do you want a guy you can push around or do you want a guy with his own opinions?
Now, if she says, I want a guy I can push around, she won't say that.
She'll say, I want a guy with his own opinions.
Like, good, okay, good. Because I have been negligent and it's partly because of how I was raised and it's partly because of the culture.
Maybe it's partly because of me as well.
But I don't think I was that happy about the first baby.
I didn't even think about not having the second one.
Doesn't mean I'm not going to be a dad, doesn't mean I'm not committed to you and the kids, but I got to be honest about where I'm starting from.
Because if I'm not, if I pretend everything's fine, and it's really not, this is going to blow up one way or another.
Right, right. All right.
Yeah, that all sounds about right, Stefan.
All right. All right.
Well, listen, appreciate the conversation.
I hope it wasn't too blunt. I hope it was helpful for you.
No, blunt was good. Blunt was good.
All right. Will you keep us posted about how it goes?
For sure, Stefan. Thank you very much.
Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Have a good night. Bye.
Alright, up next we have Patrick.
Patrick wrote in and said, Growing up in an abusive household with two alcoholic parents, I've made most of my life about not being them.
Though I fell into alcohol abuse myself and quit drinking and started therapy four years ago.
This created a radical change in my life mentally, physically, and socially.
Through therapy, I had to ask myself this question.
If most of my choices have been made in an effort to not be someone, then who am I? My life today is the polar opposite of what it was just four years ago in a positive way, but I still struggle with that question.
Am I truly myself or just a reaction to someone else?
Is identity just a collection of impressions others made upon you?
That's from Patrick. Hey Patrick, how are you doing?
Hi, good. How are you, Stefan?
I'm well, I'm well, thank you.
Great, thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, I know what you mean with this question.
Who am I? That from Les Mis, great song.
Um, so the question of who I am is very interesting because it sort of seems to imply that we exist outside of purpose.
In other words, that there's a core to you, Patrick, that exists outside of purpose.
And what I mean by that is, I don't know, let's say that you're on a cruise and you fall over the edge of the cruise ship and you see land in the far off distance, what are you going to do?
Swim. Yeah, swim to the land, right?
Now, when you're falling, you don't think, who am I? And when you're in the ocean, you don't think, who am I? Right.
At some point, you're just like, I gotta get to that shore, right?
Now, the whole time you're trying to get to the shore, hoping that you're not going to get eaten by a shark or plowed over by some other ship or whatever, you're not sort of thinking, because you've got a purpose, you've got a goal, and that's it, right?
Mm-hmm. So, this idea of who am I... In the absence of a purpose-driven life, as they say, I don't think it's an answerable question.
We are a process, and the process is purpose.
Right? And so what if, I mean, so you could say, well, I grew up in a household filled with insanity, and so I tried to become hyper-rational and philosophical and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Well, am I just a reaction?
But the problem is, of course...
We are nature and we're nature and nurture, right?
We are genetics and environment and then later choice.
And so I could sit there and say, well, but who would I have been in the absence of these pressures in my life and so on?
But there is no such thing.
There is no alternate dimension.
There's no alternate dimension where you didn't grow up with two alcoholic parents and all of the other disasters that happened with you as a child.
That is who you are.
That is who you are.
There was no original Patrick that existed and then was changed because we grow into.
You see those houses with those big creeping vines all over the side.
They're particularly popular in Enid Blight novels in England as a whole.
You sit there and say, well, who would the vines have been if it was a different shaped house?
It would have gone up a different wall, right?
Yeah. And so as far as your identity goes, if you have a purpose in your life and you're in pursuit of that purpose, then the question of who you are, well, who am I? Well, I am this goal.
And that means that you are a process of pursuit and achievement rather than a settled thing, if that makes any kind of sense.
And the way I think, because I think I understand the kind of childhood that you had, Patrick, because...
Those of us who have these kinds of brutalized childhoods, we end up reacting so much that it's tough to think of a will or an identity outside of just pure reaction.
But if your reaction is in a good direction, and congratulations on not drinking, and congratulations to me on pursuing philosophy and so on, if your reaction is in a good direction, then they have provoked you into virtue.
And who you are is somebody who turned the shit of childhood into the gold of goodness.
And that is an incredible kind of alchemist, but it is a process, not an identity that rests, if that makes any sense.
Like, what is a frog? A frog is a cluster of cells that basically is striving to make another frog, right?
And it's not a thing in itself.
Because if there was no striving for a frog to make another frog, we'd have no frogs to identify as amphibians, right?
So the only reason that we're here is the striving to replicate, the striving to reproduce, the striving to survive.
And I hope the struggle and striving to do good.
So if you try to think of yourself...
As having an identity outside of a goal, outside of a purpose, I think you will look a long time and you will waste many opportunities to go into the right direction.
Whereas if you say, well, as Aristotle says, and as James O'Keefe has quoted recently, we are what we repeatedly do.
And if what you repeatedly do is strive for virtue and strive to make the world a better place, that's your identity.
But if you are looking for an identity outside of cause and effect and outside of purpose, I think...
It's not possible to achieve, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. Well, see, I've never felt like in my adult life, like I do all the things that I generally want to do, but I don't know.
When you're talking about driving towards that goal or that You know, that is who you are.
I feel like I move sluggishly towards those things.
And that through my late teens going into my 20s, I guess, Really drifting into my late 20s, early 30s, that's when I really started to bottom out a little bit.
When you feel like you are spending more time moving away from something, like your energy is focused on moving away from something with no clear understanding of where you're moving to.
Right. Okay. I do understand what you mean.
It would be like me trying not to be crazy rather than actively trying to be sane.
Yes, yes, yeah.
And I, you know, I've thought about it a lot, actually, more because of this call and because of, you know, preparing for the conversation in that, you know, I was striving to not be my parents in a way or, but these are all physical things because when I really think about it, I have no idea who they are personally.
And really in my grandparents, my, you know, all the people that I had interactions with, I mean, I I can't really even think of a time of ever actually having a conversation with them, of knowing who they are.
So it's kind of like going into adulthood in that pursuit, I guess, of virtue of not wanting to be all these terrible things, but really having no model for any of it.
So it was just like rushing away as quickly as I could from a lot of these relationships, but kind of running into the woods blind of having no idea where you're going.
And then I'm 37 years old now and I'm married and I feel like I'm in a very good place in my life.
And it's almost like now that I've got to this good place in my life, it's the first time I've stopped looking, running away.
And then I'm at a point where I look and go, well, I don't know where the hell...
Where's my destination?
Because I've just been moving away from this thing, if that makes any sense.
Right. So I guess when the conversation with identity...
Especially because how much my life has changed in the last five years.
It's not just politically.
That's why I enjoy your show for all aspects.
For the peaceful parenting, the social aspects, and for the political commentary.
That was a really big mental shift of this conversation.
Because I work in the arts and in theater, and all of a sudden, when I got sober, a lot of these leftist socialist ideas really seemed very ridiculous to me.
And I moved, and then all of a sudden, now I feel alienated within this thing that's a big part of my life.
And again, it's like, well, should I stay here?
Should I go somewhere else?
Yeah. I don't know about that.
I mean, that's a big question.
And whether or not you can be a non-leftist in the arts, well, I guess if you're an action hero, you can be, but it's pretty tough.
Yeah, yeah. But as far as identity goes, if you look at the left as a whole, one of the things that just creeps me out about them, and this is not an argument, I'm just talking about another visceral, maybe case-selected reaction to it or something like that, but there was a little...
There's a cartoon floating around Twitter today, which is, you know, here's how the leftists see the economy.
And they look at the Dow Jones, like, up and down, up and down.
Every time it's going up, the word Obama is there, right?
And every time it goes down, the word Trump is there, right?
I mean, this is sort of a joke about how people were saying, well, the Dow is going up because of Obama's policies.
And then when it goes down, it's like, that's all Trump, you know?
There's no principle there.
Right? There's no identity at all.
It has all of the emotional, all the physical integrity of that silver demonic robot in Terminator 2, right?
Just all over the place.
Whatever you need to say to win in the moment.
To get your way in the moment.
The goal is power, of course.
The goal is control.
And... They'll just say whatever they want.
No principles, right? So they say about the Nunes Memo, right?
About the FBI. Oh, it's going to compromise national security, right?
Of course it doesn't. They don't apologize.
And then when the Democrat counter-memo comes out, which does really compromise national security, Doesn't matter.
You know, they didn't care that many, many emails of classified information were found on Hillary Clinton's highly hackable server.
And she emailed back and forth with highly classified information while in the midst of enemy territory and easily hackable.
And they didn't care about national security.
But the moment something's coming out that might look bad for national security, like there's no principles.
I hate that.
I hate that.
Because they know enough to use principles.
They just won't actually live the principles.
And to use principles, merely in the pursuit of power, is absolutely hideous.
I can't even tell you how horrifying.
That is, and what a violation that is of virtue, because it means you know virtue.
It's like the guys who know, well, you care about people, so I'm going to use your caring of people to torture you.
You care about the word racism.
So anyway, that is creepy stuff, but they have no fixed identity in terms of personality.
They only have a fixed purpose in terms of the pursuit of power.
If you live with integrity, and you live with virtue, and you live consistently and rationally, Then you have an identity called goodness.
And hopefully that leads you, even if it's not you directly, it leads other people to be inspired by what it is that you're doing.
But try not to have an identity that is based on something outside of your willpower.
Everything that happens to you just happens to you.
It's not part of your identity.
Your childhood, my childhood, it's not...
Your identity. It's like the last caller from the last show who called in and said, my dad has a lot of money, so I'm very rich.
It's like, no, you're not. Because don't take the accidental as the personal.
Doesn't mean don't respect your history, don't value your culture, but don't take that which is accidental and then just say, well, that's my own personal virtue.
Or vice. If bad shit happened to you as a kid, it's not on you.
It's not foundational to who you are.
It's just something you survived.
It's just something you survive.
And the only thing that counts towards identity is that which you choose.
The values that you choose or reason out, your consistency, your integrity, how you act in the world, that is open to your choice.
You know, if you're coming up with some great idea and then a car veers too close on the road and you jump back, your identity is the thinking that you're doing, not the fact that you're recoiling from the car.
That's just an accidental thing that happens to you.
And do not found your identity on the accidental.
And the fact that you had a terrible childhood, Patrick, is not part of your identity.
And the fact that you have to run away from anything that's like that terrible childhood is also not part of your identity.
Your identity, first of all, is recognizing that it was bad and committing yourself to doing something different.
But it's like if you're in a barn and the barn starts creaking because it's really, really windy and bits of the roofs then start to fall, you're going to get the hell out of that barn.
Now, is your identity to be in the barn?
Is your identity to run out of the barn?
No. It's just some stuff that happens to you.
Your identity is what happens when you're more in control and you weren't in control as a child.
And so for you to have an identity or a personality, it must have something to do with the choices you make that are informed by values.
Because if your choices are not informed by values, they just pinball bounce off whatever other people want or what happened in the past or whatever.
So whatever you...
The values that you... Adopt and maintain, and how they inform your choices, that is the identity that you can have, because those are values in pursuit of something that is not just a reaction to what happened in the past.
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I, you know, looking at myself, I'm thinking, okay, well, again, at a weird middle ground, because I feel like I had identified myself with these events, you know, or even kind of having the idea of you're a survivor of.
It's like labeling yourself as something.
And growing up, you know, my family wasn't religious.
We didn't go to church or anything like that.
And I kind of got my sense of morality from Star Trek or science fiction in some ways.
So I was never really drawn towards a religious sense, but going into adulthood, just not having any way of understanding.
And that is why I'm really glad that I did find your show.
You know, I did take a philosophy class in college, but that was more Marxism.
God help you. Instead of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it was Descartes and Nietzsche and just a way of attacking Christians.
So that didn't really draw me towards philosophy.
Yeah, being in the arts, of course, it's very leftist, very liberal.
And being someone who had, I guess, maybe a malleable sense of ethics, knowing that I wanted to do good.
I never intentionally went out to hurt anyone, but I do feel like I did get mired in this Murky area of right and wrong or consistency or lack of consistency.
Can I tell you a personal story real quick about politics?
The first little chink in the kind of armor was I went to a Michelle Obama rally and I was there and there was a VIP section at the front of the stage.
And I was on the other side of the rope, and other people were on the VIP section, and I thought, well, that's not what we're supposed to be, right?
Like, it's supposed to be egalitarian, like, a classless society.
And that was the first time I really started thinking about, like, well, this isn't...
I don't see you living these things that I'm told to believe.
But I guess it doesn't really have anything to do with our conversation.
No, no, listen. This is exactly right.
We're all equal, and this is why the government needs so much power over you.
It's like, well, that's not very egalitarian now, is it?
Yeah, yeah. So, no, I do understand it.
And that is a way of saying, okay, well, I'm going to compare what is said to what is done.
And where I find rampant hypocrisy, I'm going to try and find a different route, a different approach.
And the thing that I wasn't so much prepared for was losing many long friends, you know, during the election and talking to a friend who I was the best man at his wedding.
And, you know, getting to be like, ah, you're not voting for Donald Trump, are you?
It's like, of course I am.
And he hasn't really spoken to me since.
And so I guess when it...
I mean, some of these conversations about identity is, again, like what you do is kind of who you are.
And this is what I've been doing for a long time.
And all of a sudden, I'm alienated with the people that I'm doing it with.
And I know that if I were to speak my opinion or say my mind, that I would instantly be removed from...
In all aspects. I would go from being, you know, a friend to being a neo-Nazi.
And so that's a strange thing, kind of position where I'm in now and kind of...
Yeah, no, it's real. It's real stuff.
Many years ago, I made this...
I feel like I'm better, though.
Like, I'm much better than I was five years ago, a much better person, a much more, you know, understanding and patient and good person.
And so it's strange that I feel like I'm a good person, but you liked me better when I was not a good person.
Well, they didn't like you.
Yeah. I made this case years ago.
It's called the against me argument.
And it says that if people support government programs that interfere with your freedoms, they want you killed for disagreeing with them.
Or they're willing to have you killed if you disagree with them.
Like if they want to raise taxes and you want lower taxes, then they want your property stripped from you by force.
And if you oppose the government stripping your property from you when the taxes go up, then they support you being subpoenaed, being jailed, and if you resist, being killed.
And people were like, oh my god, that's terrible!
Do you not think the left does, like, the left gets it.
Why does the left win so often?
Because they get it, and they're committed.
They want your stuff, and they will bust up marriages, they will bust up friendships, they will bust up families to get it.
The question is, do you want your stuff more than they want to take your stuff?
Do you want to keep your freedoms more than they want to take your freedoms?
Do you want to keep your property more than they want to take your property?
Are you willing to do what they are willing to do?
History goes to the hungriest.
The future accrues to whoever wants it most, to whoever wants it more.
And so when I point out the basic realities, nobody could discount the argument because the argument is perfectly valid.
But when I say... Should you be friends with people who want you dead for disagreeing with them?
People were shocked and appalled.
And it's like, well, the left does this all the time.
The left is like, well, you know, you don't want to vote for Bernie Sanders if we can't be friends.
I can't be in a relationship with you.
Because they know what the stakes are.
They get it. And people who aren't on the left, libertarians and so on, they're like, well, I can't break up friendships based upon political disagreements.
They're not political disagreements.
For Christ's sake, they're not political disagreements.
They're disagreements about whether you live or whether you die.
They're disagreements about whether you're free or whether you're in fucking prison.
Don't give me this, you can disagree about art, you can disagree about music, you can disagree about food, you can disagree about music.
Literature? Sure. Absolutely.
Have those debates. But when it comes to the use of force in society, do not appease by being friends with people who want you dead if you disagree with them.
And we see this now.
We see this very clearly when Donald Trump came along and you pointed this out, Patrick.
People said, you vote for Donald Trump, I can't have a relationship with you.
There were leftist Websites all over the place.
Saying, break up with your husband.
Break up with your boyfriend. Don't date this guy.
Don't date that guy. There was a show called Coupling.
It's actually a pretty funny show.
That was on British television many years ago, I suppose now.
Lesbian Spank Inferno.
Just wait for it. It's pretty funny.
And this was all the way back then.
So back then, there was a guy who was a conservative in this group of friends.
And the women... Didn't want to sleep with him because he was a conservative, you see.
Except he had a big cock.
Really big. Like baby's forearm holding an apple kind of thing.
And so the women ended up, some of the women ended up sleeping with him just because he had this giant wang.
But they hated themselves for it.
But you see, that's what you have to have.
But this is the programming.
Don't sleep. And the leftist side, do not sleep with the Donald Trump supporter.
I slept with the Donald Trump supporter.
Now I hate myself for it.
They're willing to program genetic death into Donald Trump supporters.
That's how much they understand what politics is all about.
The left gets politics.
And that's because they live on politics.
They live on the fruits of state labor.
They live on the fruits of your labor.
So, of course, the pickpocket studies you a lot more than you study the pickpocket, right?
You're walking down the street, you're into a crowded street or whatever.
The pickpocket is... You see him, you glance at him, and you're like, you know, it's just some guy, right?
You don't even barely register him.
But the pickpocket is studying you like crazy.
He knows a hell of a lot more about you than you know about him, and that's the whole point.
It's the whole point. If you look at him and see pickpocket, well, he can't really pick your pocket now, can he?
So the left, being dependent on the fruits of state power, understand politics in a way that we need to learn from if we're not on the left.
And so the fact that your friends dumped you, best man, doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. They understand what politics is about.
They understand that if you get your way...
Let me ask you this, Patrick.
Are you in favor of government subsidies to the arts?
No, I'm not. Of course not, right?
Because you're a rational human being who respects property and conscience and freedom of association.
And so they understand that if you get your way...
They don't get free government money.
And if they don't get free government money, it means that they actually have to put out art that appeals to the masses, which means they can't do their socialist wank job onto a canvas and call it modern art.
Well, it kind of is modern art.
It's just crap. And so they get it.
Yeah, they get it. Their survival depends upon state power and government power.
So if you don't like government power, You are interfering with their survival.
As they see it, you know, would they survive?
Yeah, but there would be an adjustment and they'd take a big blow to their vanity, right?
They don't want the free market test.
They don't want to provide value to the consumers.
They don't want to reach the average person.
They want to live in a leftist bubble of government privilege and then call themselves radical egalitarian bullshit artists.
So they get politics.
They understand what it's about.
They know the importance.
But everyone who's not on the left is like, well, we're just going to agree to disagree.
Really? That what's going to happen when the cops come by because you didn't pay your taxes?
Are you just going to get to agree to disagree with them?
No. So, yeah.
It's a test. And it's a damn important test.
And that doesn't mean you can't have fellow travelers on a big direction and so on.
I'm happy to travel with people who are minarchists.
I'm happy to travel with people who want smaller government.
I will not travel with people who either want the existing system or bigger government.
That's not going to work because I understand how important it is just as the left does.
Well, and I really started, you know, after this whole, you know, kind of breakup, I started evaluating my relationship with this person and going back over the years and really seeing Applying ethics,
I started actually judging myself as to why I was in such a close relationship or seemingly or whatever with someone who, in hindsight, if I reflect on it, is a rather immoral person.
You know, I could look back and point to things, to moments or behavior that I go, I don't know what you were doing or, you know.
And so I just started almost judging myself as to why I maintained a relationship with this person for so long because I don't, now judging, I don't think that they are a very good person.
Right. Well, I hope this helps.
And if you have a goal and are in pursuit of goal, you won't have to worry about identity because you'll have purpose.
And that is, I think, the best kind of and the most recordable and sustainable and transformative kind of identity that there is.
So thanks, Patrick. I really, really appreciate the call.
And let's move on to the next.
All right. Thank you. Alright, up next we have Mike.
Mike wrote in and said, I'm afraid that I've developed a very scientific slash debunker mind over the last ten years totally separate from my faith.
I'm honestly afraid to even approach the subject but feel an intellectual urge to do so.
To put it simply, I'm afraid to look at it for fear my Christian faith will go away like my previous strong beliefs and I will be an atheist.
Which is not to say that I have any problem with atheists slash agnostics.
I'm a big supporter of stuff, for example.
I'm basically at a crossroads in suffering with this decision on whether or not to review my faith.
Is 100% preserving my faith by not looking into it worth it?
Or is being 100% intellectually honest and risking a troublesome outcome better?
That's from Mike. Hey Mike, how's it going?
Oh, hey Steph, thanks for making the time.
My pleasure. It's what I do.
Alright. So, what happened with UFOs?
Oh, geez. Well, I was a big believer.
I grew up reading all the UFO books in the 80s from my library and other sources, and I was really, really into it and embarrassed myself a lot and believed some really silly things.
And, you know, somewhere around 10, 15 years ago, I kind of snapped out of it and became a very aggressive debunker of conspiracy theories and what I believe to be, you know, silly, silly things like that.
And kind of learned the scientific method and debunking and looking at things critically.
You know, I was I didn't have a father growing up, so I didn't really have anyone to kind of guide me.
I kind of lost myself in books and, you know, and it was kind of they kept me company.
So that's what happened with the UFOs.
And I've I'm now a hated debunker online, you know, on posting boards and things of that nature.
Right.
Right.
And Now, there weren't any particular value, moral content, things associated with those beliefs, were they?
No, no. I just found them fascinating.
Right. So the big difference here is that there are morals and values associated with Christianity that are trickier to replicate in the absence of religion.
Is that a fair way to put it?
Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.
It's really personal, yes.
Right, right, right.
And how much of your social environment is predicated on religion?
I mean, I like to say, I'd say it's accurate to say rather literal, or minimal, is what I meant to say, sorry, when it comes to church-going and And so on.
But it's always kind of in my mind and in my heart when I make decisions.
And I reflect on growing up and the values that I, you know, try to teach my children and how I conduct myself in business and ethics.
And it's just kind of been a, you know, a friend and a father to me, really, is what kind of really how I look at it from growing up.
And now that I, you know, I've recognized where I was really going wrong, you know, UFOs, Bigfoot, you name it.
I kind of recognize some of those thought patterns with Christianity and my faith.
I'm now just staying away from the subject completely.
It's been bothering me, though, feeling intellectually dishonest about it.
I don't want to be a fraud.
I like to fancy myself a critical thinker, and I can handle it.
I admit, That I've been kind of a coward about it.
I don't even approach the subject.
So I don't debate faith, none of that.
But if there's content, and I'm always looking at content, intellectual content, reading and online, I simply skip it.
And I'm a little afraid to look at it because I feel there's really a risk on that.
And do you have a way to sustain virtue and values and morals and meaning in the absence of religion?
Isn't that the big concern, that there's a void?
Yes. I mean, I think I absolutely could sustain it.
Maybe I'm being a little irrational where I would say that it almost feels like a bit of a I do believe that it certainly helped me growing up and becoming pretty successful.
I like to think good guy and good father and good friend and all that.
Very imperfect. It almost feels like I'm kind of turning on and betraying it, you know?
And, you know, when you have no father growing up, he dropped dead when I was a little boy.
And, you know, Jesus was kind of a big brother figure.
You hunger for that when you're a little boy with no father and just a mother.
And God was kind of the father figure, you know, besides Stallone and Schwarzenegger and all the movie guys I looked up to.
But, you know, it almost feels like you're kind of like that's why it's so personally like I even to look at it in question.
It feels like kind of a betrayal.
More than I'm going to be so worried that I won't be able to be moral without it.
You see what I'm saying? Why did you not have any other father figures when you were growing up?
What did you? Real ones.
I was blessed enough to have a twin brother who's, you know, my best friend.
So that was very, very wonderful.
Oh, no, no. Yeah. So I'm saying besides that, I had three older sisters and I had just a mother.
My mother... I was very Catholic, like my father was.
Never remarried, and I didn't have...
No, but that doesn't have to be a direct father or stepfather, but you can have a father figure in extended family, grandparents, grandfather, uncles, you name it, brother-in-law, who knows, right?
I mean, I know exactly what you're saying, and to be honest with you, that's something that when you become a father, perhaps, at least when I did...
I did look back and I got a little disappointed in some uncles and some people that didn't maybe at least check in.
No, I had zero father figures.
And I'm not complaining about it.
Now, that's your mother's job though, right? I mean, in and among the mourning of your father dying, for which I have, of course, great sympathy, it is your mother's job to make sure that you have father figures in your life.
Am I right? Yes, you are correct.
I mean, you can't sit there and say, well, my husband died, so I don't have to feed my kids anymore.
My husband died, so I don't have to pay my bills.
And my husband died. That means, okay, well, now, honey, I'm sorry to say it, tragic though it is, your job now is to make sure that your children and your sons in particular, although it's also important for your children, Daughters have a father figure.
So, let me put forward a hypothesis?
N hypothesis? I will say A. Okay.
Alright, let me put forward a hypothesis.
You ended up bonding with God, with Jesus.
Yes. Because your mother didn't provide for you a father figure.
What's in the other side of your belief in religion is anger at your mother for not doing her job and getting you a father figure?
And that's more what you're concerned about than anything to do with religion or morals.
I mean, that last part, I mean, I would have screamed in disagreement until I became a father seven years ago.
So, I mean, you know, I know you're probably used to hearing this, but I mean, you're right on.
You know, I, much like my faith, I was afraid to ever look back and review Look, my mother, who I love very much, she went to work and took care of five kids after getting such a horrible stroke of luck, and I would never have ever...
Wait, but did your father not have insurance?
They had their own business, and there was a problem with the IRS. And no, she just had only the Social Security.
He was in the military, and he got a little bump.
But no, the health insurance was not...
What do you mean the health insurance?
No, I'm talking about life insurance.
Life insurance. I misspoke.
I apologize. The life insurance was not taken care of.
He had no life insurance.
Yes, it lapsed. Oh, it had lapsed?
Yes. Well, shit.
Yeah, it lapsed by just like 60 days.
You know, and listen, again, this has nothing to do with the sorrow.
Of course. But the money sure helps, right?
Oh, yeah. So, what the hell?
Why? I mean, if you're self-employed, or you're running your own business, it had lapsed by 60 days when your father died?
Yes. God Almighty.
Yeah. And who was responsible for keeping the life insurance up to date?
I mean, my mother handled the bills.
I've never got a chance to ask my father about it.
So it was your mother's job, most likely, right?
Yeah, yeah. It was Christmas time when he passed.
And, you know, I kind of heard, you know, I was eight years old.
I wasn't asking my mother.
No, no, no, I understand that.
But it's most likely that it was your mother's fault that there was not...
The money that she could have used to stay home for quite some time, if not forever, if she'd invested it to take care of her children, right?
Correct. Absolutely. So that was a massive fuck up.
Yes, it was absolutely.
100%. Wow. And that also adds, I'm sure your mom's not happy about that.
Like, talk about self-recrimination.
Oh, my God. Yes.
Yes. And, you know, my father died and now we have no money and there's problems with the IRS. We don't have any life insurance because I let it lap 60 days ago.
Yes. Do not let your life insurance lapse, people.
Yes. Oh, God.
I make sure mine never does, put it that way, but...
No, it was a horrific time and I'm not, you know, trying to get any symptoms.
It was a very horrible time having, you know, the IRS on.
Do you have no extended family?
Why were there no men around? Well, now you're getting the stuff that I was saying as of when I got to be a father in talking with my sisters who are all now mothers and my brother, it is disappointing because she had a couple of sisters and with husbands and families who lived, you know, you know, in the suburbs, you know, with us basically within 20 minutes, let's say.
And, you know, it was now, I would never thought of it then because I was kind of taught to never complain and just kind of shut up and, you know, don't give your mom a hard time.
But now as a, as a father, the conversations with my, my family, my sisters and my brother over the last, let's say 10 years or seven years since we became parents, basically stuff is what just you're hitting.
I'm like, wow, if something ever happened to one of you, I mean, I would be all over your kids.
That's how we talk to each other, and I believe we're all sincere, and I believe we would be if something, God forbid, happened when we had young kids.
And yeah, yes, we did have extended family, and we just saw them at Christmas.
I mean, I'm just being honest about it.
Wow, so your father died, and your extended family didn't really sort of kick in and mentor?
No. No.
Zero. What do you think that was?
Again, I think you understand that you start to ask these things when you become a parent.
Our guesses were, of course, you throw in the stock while they're busy with their own families.
I did have an uncle who was my father's buddy.
They would meet with him, at least they had each other, and have a drink at the bar during Christmas.
I saw him just a year ago, and he was crying.
He goes, I can't believe I didn't ever check in on you.
I don't know what happened.
He actually said something.
I don't know. I think they had a very strange upbringing, the three sisters.
You know, they had a very cold mother.
I think, you know, there's talk that they were a little bit jealous of my mother.
My father was, you know, like very successful and kind of a, you know, just a bit larger than life sort of figure.
I mean, those are sort of the ideas put forth.
No, they were never asked directly by us as when we became adults going, Why the hell didn't...
Why wouldn't you at least just a little checking in or something kicking in?
Instead, we had to sell our house and move to an apartment.
You know what I mean? So I've never...
I mean, you know, I would say they grew up in a very strange kind of cold household, my mother and her sisters.
And that might be something to do with it.
You know, it's a funny thing, too.
Mike, it's really quite tragic, and I remember going through this phase as well, of sort of looking back, looking back and saying, what the hell was everyone thinking?
I mean, certainly for me, like I remember with my extended family, they knew my mom was nuts.
They knew. And yet, they never checked in.
And I would be over there, I would go and spend weekends there.
I have very strong memories. I think it was kindergarten of being there for quite a long time, like months.
Nobody ever asked. Is it okay?
How's she doing? I think my mom was hospitalized often.
I know she was for depression after I was born and all that.
Clear indications of mental instability.
Yeah, I mean, I was alone with my mother.
My brother went to England for a couple of years when I was in my early teens.
I was completely alone with my mother.
And over those couple of years, not one phone call.
Not one phone call from my father, from my extended family, from anyone.
And this is when my mom just wasn't getting out of bed.
She was like, it was a terrible, terrible time.
And this is, you know, and I try not to be too cynical about it.
Because part of me is like, when everyone says we care about the poor, it's like, yeah, fucking don't.
Yeah, fucking don't.
What a load of horseshit.
You want to pay the poor so they don't get upset?
Fine. You want to buy them off?
You want to seal them up in their ghettos?
Fine. Don't talk to me about caring about the poor.
Man, my own fucking flesh and blood couldn't be bothered to pick up a phone for two years when I was stuck with this crazy woman.
My own flesh and blood on either side of the family.
Not one call. Wow.
Over years, when I was stuck in a tiny apartment with a crazy woman.
Not one call. My brother, he was safe.
He was airlifted out. He was good to go, man.
But, so when people, and now that's just my family, right?
So, like, I mean, that's, I don't want to judge all of society, all of society by that.
But there's pretty strong indications.
Yeah. That we've lost a lot of sense of community.
And, you know, you're younger than me, but we're still post-welfare state kids.
Yes. And we've just lost a lot of looking out for each other.
We've lost a lot of looking out for each other.
And they don't care.
Everyone's got a good excuse every day.
I'll get to it later. I'll get to it later.
Just postpone, right? Absolutely.
But the funny thing is that when they get old, what happens, Michael?
Yeah. You gotta come by and give me a hint.
Right. And it's like, yeah, I'm not sure about that.
Let me check your account here, my friend.
Let me check your deposits and see if you've got any credit with me.
You're light, right?
Seems to me...
Would you agree, Steph, that...
Did you have that happen when you became a parent then?
Maybe you're already thinking things, but that snaps and gives you perspective on stuff that we're speaking about.
That was unbelievable. It was almost shocking to me.
This was all laying under my nose.
I don't know how you had it, Michael.
I'll keep this brief. I think the thing that happened to me most when I became a parent was...
This really isn't so fucking hard.
Right. This really isn't so difficult.
In fact, it's a lot of fun.
And all I heard, oh, these fucking kids.
And my mom would say, I hate these fucking children.
And, oh, it's so hard.
And it's so difficult. And parenting is so tough.
And it's like, the fuck?
A bunch of fucking whiners and liars.
It's really pretty fucking easy.
Like, I was sitting there thinking, like, it's like, you gotta lift this car!
And it turns out the car is a helium balloon!
It's like, oh, that's...
What? This is what you guys were bitching about for so fucking long?
Are you kidding me? It's hard being a parent!
It's tough! And they're not that expensive either.
They wear what you give them. They eat like fucking birds.
Let's knock that off too while we're at it.
Yeah! You know what I mean? I'm sorry, right?
I mean... Yeah. It's tough, you know.
Sometimes you gotta lie with your newborn on a rug and you gotta blow raspberries into their belly while they giggle.
Fuck, that's tough, man.
Holy shit. That's like war.
Sometimes you have to feed them, sometimes you use the choo-choo, and sometimes you use the airplane.
That's tough shit. You can't just fake that.
Jesus Christ!
The whining that I heard from parents!
It's hard work, man!
Yeah, I know. It's tough, man.
Sometimes you have to use different voices when you read Three Little Pigs.
I mean, it's not like everyone's a trained actor.
You could hurt yourself.
There are paper cuts.
You don't even know.
Sometimes with rock, paper, scissors, you go like 35 seconds without somebody winning.
This is tough shit, man.
I mean, there's Storm on the Beach at Normandy.
And then there's playing patty cake with a giggling baby.
That's tough shit, man.
I want to see the movie Dunkirk, you know?
It's like, I'm trying to get out of my kid's room and they're not quite asleep.
Jesus fucking whiners.
It's a blast!
It's great! But did you give, if I could ask you, because it relates to me, did you give those people we're kind of speaking about now a break when you were young because you felt they could do no wrong and they knew better?
Because that's what I did. No, I gave them a break because I desperately thought I would need something from them at some point.
And I gave them a break because I didn't want to burn the bridges just in case there was something good coming my way.
And I didn't give them a break because I didn't want to realize just what a shitty bunch of selfish fucking people they were.
Right. Well, I'm okay.
Good luck with the crazy woman, kid.
Because you're 11.
You're going to have no problem with this.
We can't bother making a phone call for years, but you'll be fine.
They didn't even know. The eviction notices when she got institutionalized, nobody knew.
They didn't care. So this whole, yeah, well, you know, without the welfare state, we care about the poor and the sick.
It's like, yeah, yeah, my fucking flesh and blood for extended family layers and layers, they didn't care.
So don't give me this. We all care.
So that's bullshit. Yeah, me too.
No, you're absolutely right.
And, you know, yeah, and it's, I mean, there's things I wasn't even able to approach.
Until the last 10 years, you know, like I'm in my early 40s and, you know, I had a very lonely growing up.
You know, I suffered horrific insomnia and, you know, didn't sleep for three, four days at a time regularly and started doing bad in school.
I mean, they were going to skip me grades and all that.
And then, you know, after my dad died, all of a sudden I got, you know, put, you know, into different sort of classes and And kind of just fell behind and was just dying to work, man.
You know, I was 14 years old.
You could get a job out here. And I couldn't wait.
It was a long wait. And, man, I went to work.
And, okay, I'll take care of myself.
And that's kind of how it went.
But, you know, there was, you know, like I said, my connection as far as, you know, sort of a father figure, God and Jesus and that sort of, you know, being ethical and be kind of a, you know...
I don't know, simple and virtuous as you can be and try not to bemoan your bad luck.
And that stayed with me all through this.
And when I think back on the stuff you're talking about and I'm talking about, one of the most Catholic people I know is my mother.
Again, I love my mother, but it's like, wow.
You know, you kind of let this happen, or, you know, I don't mean to pick on you now, you're old, but for goodness sake.
What do you mean? Why is this?
You have even less excuse when you're old than when you're young, and if they impose those values when we're kids.
Yeah. And I kept waiting for it to get tough.
Now, I mean, the sleeplessness, don't get me wrong, the sleeplessness can be kind of rough, I mean, and I absolutely understand that.
But I kept waiting for this tough stuff, you know?
It's like war movies.
Dear God, break her down, break her down.
We have a father with bubble juice in his eye because a bubble popped near his eye.
We need a medic, stat. It's like, mash out here.
Go, go, go! It's like, what the fuck is wrong with you people?
We have a punch to the groin from a child who's two.
Quick, stat, we gotta get bandages out here.
Get the medevac. I mean, good lord.
Absolutely. A balloon popped!
Someone startled! Quick!
CPR! I could go on and on.
A book corner to the eyeball!
We're gonna need a replacement.
An IED just went off.
That's an improvised enjoyment device known as a baby.
Giggle, giggle, giggle. Keep going, Steph.
Get it all out, man. Sometimes, sometimes, you have to spray water in your own face to get your child to laugh.
It tastes like blood iron and defeat.
Sometimes you have to do funny dances while your children dangle over the side of their crib and giggle, and sometimes that might give you a slightly tough back situation.
It's like Born on the Fourth of July, the shelling of fun.
Oh, well, I can pretty much do that all night.
But yeah, I just kept waiting for it.
Where's the tough part, everyone?
Oh, you wait till those terrible twos.
Oh, yeah. They're cute when they're young.
You wait till the terrible twos.
And then you know what you hear on the midnight of their birthday.
When they're going from one to two, you hear tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
And then you get attitude.
You get tantrums.
You get crazy stuff going on.
They'll pee in your eyeball.
They'll punch you in the groin.
They'll run headfirst downstairs.
You're gonna be dead, man.
It's chaos. That's just basic training from zero to one, but two is the real war.
I kept waiting for it.
Every day I'm like, oof, that's it, man.
Fun time's over.
Terrible two's coming. And it's like, hey, Dad.
Don't play coy with me, kid.
I know you're about to blow!
I got a seven-year-old girl and I never, I never, it's been wonderful.
It's great! And you know, people are like, oh yeah, you wait until they're teenagers.
Yeah, yeah. Bullshit.
You did terrible parenting and now you're reaping the shitty rewards.
Hey, you didn't fertilize your crop and now you get...
What, an ear of corn the size of a chilly Japanese penis?
All right, well, so you did a bad job and you get a bad harvest, but it's been great and it's fantastic and it's still enormously enjoyable and I don't know what everyone's talking about.
It's like this weird thing where they've got to say how tough it is.
Why? So you feel guilty and obligated?
Jesus. They're like the 2012 people to me, Steph.
They wait till the twos, no, wait till the threes, we'll wait till they hit school, we'll wait till she starts...
Yeah, you know, growing out her hair.
I'm like, she's seven. Oh, no, wait till teenage.
It's like, keep kicking the end of the world doomsday down.
Well, wait till 2024.
That's when the... Fucking meteors come and no, they're full of shit and they've lost all credibility with me.
Sometimes my child doesn't want to go to bed.
The horror. The horror.
Sometimes I have to get in bed and she falls asleep on my arm and I have to chew my own arm off just to get out of bed and leave a dying and pulsing blood into the pillow.
And it's like, I don't know.
Sometimes my child wakes up at night.
And I wake up too.
I get her a glass of water.
I kiss her on the forehead.
And I go back to sleep.
But I'm haunted by it all night long.
And it's like, are you kidding me?
This is like the least difficult thing I've ever done in my life.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
I agree. Sometimes in Pac-Man, you go in the wrong direction and there are ghosts around the corner.
I don't know. They'll eat your brains.
It's like, I don't know.
The Duke Nukem Joyful Fatherhood Edition is like the least compelling video game I've ever played in my life.
They're quiet, you know.
Sometimes you have headphones on, you're working at a computer, you turn around, and they're just standing there, like that kid with the hair out of the ring.
They're just standing there, and there's something on your screen, and there's something in your ear, and you didn't even hear them coming.
And sometimes, when you move your chair, there's the rollers on the carpet, and you have to ask them to move their feet so you don't squish their toes with the rollers.
And sometimes, and this is the worst of all, sometimes they wish to make medieval forts in the living room using your furniture and blankets, and then sometimes...
Sometimes, for verily days at a time, it can be tough to find a comfortable place to sit.
I'm sorry I had to share that with you, but it's the truth.
Yes, the cold hard truth.
So, oh man.
Don't even get me snorted on the snow forts!
Anyway, sorry. Sorry, Michael.
I'm going to hurt my voice if I keep doing that.
Yeah, parenting.
It's tough. Sometimes you get in really hard to bend places in a McDonald's playpen.
And it's tough.
And you're like, I shouldn't have had that fillet of fish because I can't bend that way.
Sometimes you have to try climbing up slides in your socks.
It's like tunnels under NAMM. Easy stuff.
Like I said, you reflect on this stuff.
Sorry, that just cracked me up.
I got off track for a second.
What do you...
I mean, I guess I'm not going to solve this problem, but how would you approach it?
Like I said, all that stuff that I got really into, I forged for info.
There was no internet in the 80s and I'd read anything I could, and I found all this creepy conspiracy stuff fascinating, and I delved into it.
And then I grew out of it, snapped out of it, and got really into debunking and all that.
I think I made it clear, and I think you understood how important...
You're right, I didn't have a father figure.
Like I said, Jesus was my big brother figure, God was my father figure.
I look to that, and it almost feels like a bit of a betrayal to...
To review it.
It's the last belief that I have yet to review.
I'll tell you what I think it is about all of this.
I think I can explain the UFO, JFK conspiracy stuff and all of that.
And for JFK, of course, read Roger Stone's book, Who Killed JFK? It's very good.
But as far as this stuff goes, I'll tell you what I think.
Because I had the same thing.
I still remember when my brother went to England and my mother went to Germany for a whole series of medical things that I never quite fully understood.
And I was kind of dumped at a friend of mine's grandparents' place and she was ill and it was like, I had nothing to do, I had no money.
And I didn't really know these people.
And I was just kind of stuck there for like a couple of like months in the summer.
And I, I go to the library a lot and I'd read and, you know, I mean you make the best of it and all of that.
And, um, I, I didn't connect with these grandparents, not my grandparents, my friend's grandparents.
I didn't connect with them at all. And I remember walking with the grandfather.
I still remember where, exactly.
I remember walking with the grandfather, and I was so stuck with conversation with the guy.
I looked at a donut shop, and I said, I said, it's interesting...
And I didn't think it was that interesting.
I just needed something to say.
And I remember looking at the donut shop and I said, it's interesting how donut is spelled D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T, but they spell that D-O-N-U-T as in do not.
And it's almost like they're telling you to not have a donut.
Do not! Anyway, you know, that's not that brilliant.
I was 11 or whatever, right?
And he turns to me and says, what are you saying?
You want a donut? It's not what I'm saying at all, but okay, I'll have a donut, because I'm not having a conversation, so I guess I'll have a donut.
But, and of course, I don't know what was going on, and then actually my friend died the next year.
It was really, it was very sad.
Oh, very sad. So...
I remember I had a set of binoculars.
Oh, they had a set of binoculars. And I remember looking in my bed.
I would look out through the window. I couldn't sleep, right?
And this is the time when, you know, the late great planet Earth and close encounters and stuff like that was going on.
And there was a big UFO thing. And I remember looking.
Out for UFOs and so on.
And it's a weird mindset.
And I'll tell you why I think that mindset occurs.
And I think it particularly occurs for boys who grow up without fathers.
And the reason for this all is that you cannot connect with your mother as a boy.
You can connect with her as a child and you can connect with her in a way as a son, but you can't connect with her in the way that you can connect to a father because she's not a man.
Yes. And in puberty in particular, it hits because you have no guidance and you are alienated from your mother because your mother can't tell you how to be a man.
Right. And so you're alienated and you're disconnected.
And I think what happens is you get so used to that alienation and disconnection that you develop beliefs that lead you to maintain that alienation and disconnection within society itself.
Oh, wow. Because I've never seen freakier beliefs than particularly single sons of single moms.
But it is boys who grow up without fathers, particularly around puberty, they get some pretty outlandish concepts.
I know I did. And it took a lot of- That was me.
Spoon bending and telekinesis and all kinds of crazy shit.
And can you sharpen a blade by putting it under a pyramid?
You know, all kinds of crazy stuff.
All kinds of crazy stuff.
Well, and when you have insomnia too, yeah. There's a whole crazy-ass section of the bookstore back when there were bookstores, all devoted.
It's like, hey, can I connect with your mom going through puberty?
Here's some crazy shit that'll help keep you alienated from everyone.
Right. And I did.
You're absolutely right. I dove into those books and, you know...
And it was puberty, right? Yep.
Absolutely. And, you know, I was just up all night with nothing else.
You know, I could... Keep watching the same movies over and over at 2 or 3 in the morning on school nights, which I did.
But, you know, and then just go out for walks and just walking around at night, you know, as a...
I mean, it's almost like there should be a book out there.
Maybe Space Aliens can help me.
Handle my pubic hair.
You know, because it's like, mom gone.
You know, you can't. You can't talk to a father about this stuff.
You cannot talk to a mom about this stuff.
And that fundamental lack of training that the boy's brain after puberty in particular desperately needs a father or a father figure.
And listen, moms, if you're out there and there's not one of these in your son's life, you need to get one of these for your son.
Like, you need to get him inoculations, food, and oxygen.
You need to get him a man that he can talk to, that he can respect.
You need that. Can I ask you, what do you just think in my case?
Like my mom, again, wasn't interested in remarriage.
Was it just looking out for him, making sure whether it was an uncle or...
No, she fucking calls up the extended family and says, get your shit together, people.
We got a boy here without a father.
Exactly. Get your shit together, invite him over, come on over, big brother the shit out of him.
Right. That's your job.
Like, hello! You know, man does not live by bread alone.
Pick up your Bible. Boys need fathers.
I can't be his father.
Step in, step up.
We're family. That's what you do.
Absolutely. But she didn't.
I agree. I agree.
And it's one of these things like...
The fact that boys need fathers can't be spoken of in our society because we have organized society where boys don't have fathers so much.
Like I did this thing with Jesse Peterson about like, insane.
77% of black boys growing up without fathers.
Oh my god, yeah. I saw that.
Jesus, literally. And we simply, we can't discuss this.
And like, I know with yours, your mother was a widow, so I'm not putting her in a single mother category.
I know. People are all kinds of confused about that, but...
So, you know, but we don't process the fact that boys need fathers.
Boys need fathers.
And if boys don't have fathers, they go kind of squirrely.
Of course they do. Like, I don't know if you've heard this story, right?
So there was this... A group of elephants.
What are they called? A pride of elephants?
No, that's lions. A pack?
A pack? I don't know.
A tribe of elephants.
I'm sorry. A pack of elephants.
And I think poachers shot the elder males.
And so it was the moms who were raising the baby elephants.
And what do you think happened to the baby boys?
The elephants believed in UFOs?
Well, the baby boys...
When they grew up into their teenage years went nuts.
Really? A herd of elephants, or a parade.
A herd of elephants. So in the herd, the males were shot by poachers, and it was up to the resulting widows to raise The next generation of elephants and the female elephants did all right, but the male elephants went nuts.
They were very aggressive.
They raped. They pillaged.
They ate too much.
They just had no self-control.
And the only way that they were able to restore this herd of elephants back to any kind of normalcy was they actually had to fly in an adult male elephant.
Elephant. Now, after they flew in this adult male elephant, everybody calmed the fuck down in about 24 hours.
Really? I'm telling you.
I'm telling you. This is not specific to human beings.
We're not alone in the animal kingdom.
That young man in particular, they need father figures.
Yeah. They do.
I used to, for me, ridiculous as it sounds, I used to dream...
Daydream. I used to daydream of sitting with the singer Sting in an old Victorian mansion talking about Charles Dickens.
And he would have these turtleneck collars and his hair would be swept back.
I do think that Barnaby Rudge may have one of his better works.
I could literally think of some fucking singer who's a total cuck...
And ridiculous, open borders, anti-white, apartheid-hating lunatic.
Indeed. And this, I mean, he is an entirely punchable guy.
And, you know, I remember seeing a speech given by the drummer.
Of the police about, well, he focused on Sting a little bit.
And he had, I think he had written on there, on his drums, F off you, see you next Tuesday, pointed directly at Sting, because apparently he was kind of insufferable, which I think is probably quite true.
But back then I didn't know any of this stuff, right?
No internet. And I could just look at all the cool pictures on the sleeve of Zenyatta Mondata and say, oh, that's a life I'd like.
And I used to, like, fantasize.
And even when I was in my 20s, and I was working with a guy who was, I guess he was about my age now, and I remember asking him, I remember, when do you eat dinner?
What do you eat for dinner? When do you go to bed?
When do you wake up? What do you do here?
I had no idea. My mom had a crazy schedule, and by then she was not working, so she could just go to sleep.
She was up all night, paranoid shit.
And I just had to ask.
And as I mentioned this before, I had to learn how to shave, what to pick up.
And if society as a whole had said, no, no, no, go get him a man so he can learn how to shave.
I want shaving my legs.
My mom couldn't do me much good.
I sure as hell wasn't shaving my armpits.
My mom couldn't do much good. So to go to the library, I had to look up how to shave.
Right? And people say, oh, well, it's easy.
It's like, it's really not that easy.
Do you go with the hair, against the hair?
What is the best kind of lather to use?
And do you use a straight blade?
My friend of mine used to use a straight blade to shave.
He said double, triple, you know, it's not that as simple as people say.
And the idea is like, you just something as simple as that.
Something as simple as that. A friend of mine's—because, you know, when you're a kid, you don't need deodorant or antipersonal.
Well, you don't need deodorant because you don't really smell when you're a kid, right?
You get your squishy bits, you get your hairy stuff, and, you know, suddenly you just become this stench factory, right?
Right, right. And I remember a friend of mine's father—I used to go over to his house after school— Nice family.
Always kicked me out at dinner time, but I appreciated the time after school.
We learned how to program.
And his father had to bring me into his study when I was 11, maybe 12.
And he had to say, well, as your body's changing, you are developing smells.
And he gave me a deodorant to use, right?
And he was nice about it.
Don't get me wrong. He was absolutely nice about it.
It's still kind of humiliating, to be honest with you, for your friend's dad to have to say, sorry, kids, you're kind of stinking up the place here.
And you know, but how long had that been going on for?
Where I actually, you don't smell yourself usually, like now you stick your face in your armpits and get a sniff and you can get a sense, but I didn't smell myself and I didn't know I was supposed to smell myself.
No idea. No idea.
How long had that been going on?
Months? More?
I don't know. At least somebody finally stepped up and said, kid, you stink.
Basically, here's some deodorant.
Right, right. You know, I mean, it wasn't like I didn't bathe or anything.
I mean, I did, but, you know, just the way it was.
I mean, even now, I need, I can bathe the night before.
I need deodorant the next day. It's just the way, because I work out and, you know, I'm pretty active and it's just the way it is.
Absolutely. You can't, like, God, kids, sis.
If you had a whole bunch of girls growing up without moms, society would go mental.
Oh, they need their mentoring, they need their sisterhood, they need it.
But boys? Exactly.
Boys? Yes. So I would look at, not at religion, myself, I would look at what is on the other side of Of fatherlessness.
Right? Look at the cause, not the symptom, myself.
Forget the faith stuff.
Look, and don't leave religion if you don't have a good place to go.
Because nihilism is worse than faith.
Yes. So if you have a good place to go, I mean, I remember the time between religion and objectivism.
A little bit on the aimless side.
So, I would not tempt nihilism.
No. I would not leave religion unless I had a...
And not atheism is...
Is not ethics. And atheism is a big void of social justice warrior, nightmarishness for the most part, and leftist statism.
Atheism is far worse for the West in general than Christianity has been for hundreds of years.
And so I wouldn't worry about that.
I would, if I were you, I would just say, okay, well, what purpose did religion serve for me?
And if I didn't have religion, what would I be feeling?
And I would work on those feelings, and that way you'll have a good sense of, if you want to, go from religion to philosophy.
Listen, I'm always going to encourage people to go from religion to philosophy, but don't go from religion to atheism.
Go from religion to philosophy.
That's like saying, well, I don't like this food, so I'm going to starve to death, rather than, well, I don't like this food, but I got better food coming.
Right, right, right. Gotcha.
All right. That's not a total fraud, though, to just not look at it.
And you're right, I agree. No, you're absolutely right, because your instinct says that there's something wrong with just becoming an atheist at the moment, and I think you're right about that.
Because the question is, the father figure stuff and conversations you might have to have, or you could probably fruitfully have with your mom or with your extended family, like, did you guys not know my dad died?
Did you not think I needed any fatherhood, fathering, mentoring, or any father figures or anything like that?
And of course, they can say, well, nobody ever talked about that.
And nobody is still talking about it, but it's a good conversation to start.
All right. I appreciate it, Steph.
Thanks, man. And I am sorry for what happened with your father and for what subsequently happened with your extended family.
Oh, yeah. And likewise, my friend, thank you for everything you do and take care.
Take care, man. Yeah, God bless.
Bye. Okay, up next we have Jacob.
Jacob wrote in and said, It's naturally what we do, as all other animals.
Do you believe we could ever achieve a world of nihilism and still progress as a species, or must religion always maintain that push towards function of our species?
That's from Jacob. Jacob, how are you doing?
I'm doing fairly well.
Fairly well. That's a good nihilistic response.
Can't be good, can't be bad, but fairly well.
You could also look at it as being balanced, perhaps neither happy nor sad, just in the moment, present.
Sure. Okay, okay.
I see no true meaning to life.
What do you mean by that?
Okay, let me expand.
Again, to say we have meaning seems to imply a purpose.
That seems to suggest perhaps a goal, something higher than ourselves.
That, to me, seems like an abstract thing.
It's not tangible in the real world.
I don't understand that.
To say we have a function means what do we do naturally?
We breed.
So we continue progressing the species.
And a positive spin on that is the human animal does need to achieve some level of happiness in order to even continue this function.
So that is how I sort of look at that.
Again, a lot of people chalk up nihilism to being degenerate rats and leftism and things of that sort.
It simply does not equate to that.
It may lead to that generally, but that does not necessarily mean it equates to that.
It just means, again, that we're here, we popped up, and that might be it.
To me, that seems to be the most rational approach that I could come up with at this time.
And what was your childhood like, Jacob?
I'm not actually going to go personally into my own life, but I grew up religious.
It was called non-denominational Christian.
And again, I'm not going into my personal life, but if you're wanting to know how, do you want to know how I came to this worldview?
Because I can expand on that.
Sure. I suppose religion.
At some point, there's this documentary, it's three hours long, but there's this one clip on YouTube called God's Son.
S-U-N. And I believe I watched it in senior year of high school.
Some fellow comrades at the time showed it to me, and it felt like a gut punch.
Because my religion was challenged for the first time, and I didn't know what to do with this.
I look back on it now, of course, with a bit of bliss, because I'm trying to achieve rationality to the highest level.
So, you know, feelings are not in my case.
But at the time, that was kind of where perhaps it started.
Then later on...
I explored, um, I came to know the four horsemen of atheism.
For those who don't know, that's Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.
And I just began to see flaws and holes, and I realized overall, where is the actual evidence?
So for me, it just, for whatever reason, I don't know if I was prepositioned this way or how it came about, but I just realized I want to try to achieve to be an intellectual, and I need to pursue absolute fact in order to achieve that and to achieve enlightenment.
So that's kind of, I suppose you could say, religion helped push me toward this.
To some extent, if you understand the angle in which I'm coming from.
I'm a little confused because, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm not sure how you're talking about enlightenment and truth if you're a nihilist.
I mean, isn't the nihilist's position that there is no such thing as truth?
No. There are two different definitions of nihilism.
I know the one you're coming from.
One of them means something too effective.
There's no such thing as the self.
I don't know what that means. Nihilism from the definition that I've come from, and again, there are several, but is that there is no actual meaning to life.
Again, that would imply something put us here and we have a goal to achieve.
And do you accept free will?
You reject Sam Harris's determinism, is that correct?
I wish I could comment further on this.
I've actually not read his book yet, and I actually do not know my position on that, but I've actually been wanting to explore that book in time, but I can't comment on that at the time.
Though there was somebody who once said something to- Wait, sorry, but what is, forget the Sam Harris formulation, but what is your perspective on free will?
I don't actually know.
I always thought it was something to the effect of, I want to do, I want to walk across the street, and I walked across the street.
Free will. Again, I haven't actually explored it to really give an intellectual remark on it.
Initially, I would say you have free will, but again, I'm having to rethink what that exactly means.
I don't know.
Okay. So I won't be able to give you anything on that.
Okay. So with regards to nihilism, just to make sure we're on the same definition.
So there's a couple of entries with regards to nihilism that I looked up.
One, total rejection of established laws and institutions.
Two, anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
Three, total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself.
Four, philosophy, an extreme form of skepticism, the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth, nothingness or non-existence.
Five, sometimes initial capital letter, the principles of a Russian revolutionary group active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.
Six, this is, I think, what you mentioned, annihilation of the self or of the individual consciousness, especially as an aspect of mystical experience.
I'm not sure where what you're talking about fits into that.
I've looked up this definition multiple times.
It essentially means that there's no – I don't know what website you're using, but from what I took from the definition, it simply means there's no meaning to this.
We're just here, and it just happened by chance or however it actually came about.
I don't claim, of course, how.
Oh, it's dictionary.com.
Okay, I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, I don't mind using whatever language you want to use.
I just wanted to, in case people are confused, I'll look it up.
I just wanted to have that. Okay.
I do want to make sure, obviously, the terminology is right, because I know.
Sure, sure. So, for you, Jacob, there is no meaning, but there are preferred states.
I assume that you would believe or accept that truth is preferable to error and enlightenment is preferable to ignorance.
Yes, I'm very fact-based.
In fact, I get very triggered when people are irrational.
It irritates me.
Right. Well, you're not alone in that, so I get it.
And so, you do have preferred states.
I would also assume that we at least can conditionally accept free will for the purpose of this conversation.
And my definition of free will is that we do have the capacity to compare proposed actions or ideas to ideal states.
So the proposal 2 and 2 make 5, we can compare it to what it actually makes, which is 4, and we can compare our proposed actions to ideal states, and that gives us some choice with regards to that, because that's one thing that we can do.
Because, like, what you've talked about in terms of, like, we have sex, we reproduce, and so on, well, you know, that's...
Single-celled organisms are not however you want to define sex, but that doesn't give anything specific to humanity, whereas our capacity to compare proposed actions or ideas to ideal standards, such as truth and virtue, that is something that only human beings are capable of doing, as far as we know.
Okay, yes, and we seem to be on the same level with that, yes, taking it at that.
Okay, so there's no external purpose to life.
In other words, it is not that we are put here into this valley of tears and this veil of Satan in order to reject temptation and find our way to heaven, right?
So there is no external script that we are supposed to be following in order to achieve Some otherworldly objective, and you and I would be on the same page with regards to that.
And so if meaning is defined as following an external narrative for the sake of a goal not generated through reason and evidence, then I would agree that there is no meaning to life as far as that goes.
So, we are animals, we are mammals, and I don't believe that we have any intrinsic meaning to our life, or we're not part of any larger script that is generated by omniscience or omnipotence outside our own minds.
And so, as far as that goes, I think that we are on the same page.
But saying that the only function we fundamentally have is breeding, I don't agree with.
Well, What do you mean by that?
Could you expand on that? Because I don't literally mean that that is the...
Could you further expand on it so I make sure I'm on the same page with what you mean by that?
So... For us to have a conversation about ideas, ideals, or truth, like nihilism, we must be more than animals to have that conversation.
So then to say that we can have that conversation, but that the fundamental purpose or meaning of our life is exactly the same as the animals, when the only capacity we have to discuss something other than that is because we're not base animals.
To me, needs to be kept in mind.
Certainly, breeding and having children progressing the species is kind of necessary for us to have this conversation, because if your parents and my parents didn't choose to have children, well, there'd be a whole lot of dead air right about now, and there'd be a studio for no reason whatsoever.
So, it's necessary but not sufficient for human life that we breed and progress the species.
But I do believe that There are preferred states for human beings.
The preferred state, fundamentally, of course, is always survival, and we share that with the animals, but assuming that survival, bare survival requirements have been met, What is the preferred state?
Well, the preferred state is to believe things that are true rather than things that are false, and to do good rather than to do evil.
Now, these two are, I understand, there's a Humian skepticism that there is the identification of the true, and then there is the identification of the moral, and the two are not identical.
But I do believe that truth is preferable.
True error, that accuracy is preferable to inaccuracy.
And this is the value of engineering, it's the value of mathematics, it's the value of science, and it is the value of philosophy, which helps us ensure, to the best of our ability, that the contents of our mind that we call true are in fact true.
And that is not an externally imposed meaning, but neither is it purely subjective, because truth is not something we make up.
Truth is not handed to us By a Bible.
But truth is also not just made up within our own minds, otherwise it is mere taste or perspective or subjectivism.
But there are aspects of our mind and our thinking that can latch onto, through our senses and through reason and through evidence, that can latch onto universal truths.
We do that through science, of course, all the time.
We do that through principles of engineering, and we do that through philosophy.
Okay, so you're talking about essentially having a, I suppose, higher level of consciousness, going back to what you're saying, from the animal.
Okay, so I understand. I want to ask this question.
You're talking about truth is always preferable than error.
I didn't say always, but it is in general preferable to error.
Always is an absolute that invites immediate tendency towards disproof, and I'm happy with some of those, but I didn't want to make that case, because then we get into, well, I can imagine a situation where lies would be preferable, right?
So I just say, in general, truth is preferable to error.
Well, given our state of things, as you can see, the way with, I suppose, becoming a little more atheistic, Though some people still might claim to believe in a god, but we are going in that direction, and then the direction seems to be more leftist politics.
Would you be willing to ever invoke a noble lie of some sort of religion if you felt that it would actually progress the species in the positive direction instead of this destructive direction?
Would I prefer that we had more Christianity if that meant less Islam?
No. Would you invoke perhaps what you may perceive as something that is false?
If yes, I guess if you thought that it might push back against that instead of taking the truth route.
I would absolutely take Christianity over Islam every single day of the week and twice on Sundays, as the saying goes.
Okay. I actually agree with that.
I'm more than willing to even – I've questioned this multiple times, and I go over this stuff hours and hours in my head.
I believe to some extent that I think for the average person, they might need to believe in – I'm not trying to be derogatory when I say this – fables or fairy tales sometimes to keep them in order.
Oh yeah, no, this goes all the way back to Plato's Republic and before, where the idea is that there's a noble lie that helps keep society organized.
And the noble lie is that there are gold people, silver people, and bronze people.
And the gold people are the philosophers, and the silver people are the professionals.
And the bronze people are the tradespeople and the ditch diggers.
And that people need to understand where they fall in that so that society can be properly organized.
And it is totalitarian, and I am currently going through a massive reevaluation of Plato because I hated the totalitarianism in the past, but the radical egalitarianism that has taken hold of the West is far more destructive than Plato's noble lie because it's a far more destructive lie.
And so there is the question of the noble lie.
And the problem is I'm a bad liar, right?
So am I.
Because I focus so much on trying to achieve verifiable, objective, rational truth, the idea that I would stand in front of a crowd and tell them something that was utterly false is, well, you could make a case under some situations where that well, you could make a case under some situations where that might be a value, but it's not something I could ever really You can't train yourself one way and then just go the other way for expediency's sake.
I mean, I do remember when I was a kid.
Thank you.
Very little, I don't know, maybe four or four and a half years old, that my mother told me, I think it was my mother, maybe it was somebody else, but somebody told me that the reason I needed to brush my teeth was that sugar fairies would dance on my teeth and crack them with their high heels if I didn't brush my teeth at night.
And I wouldn't want my teeth cracked because that would be very painful.
So I would brush my teeth to take the sugar fairies off so they would not dance and break my teeth.
So I brush my teeth. Now, I don't know that that was a particularly great way of telling me.
I think it was a kind of a mystical weird thing that there's tiny beasts alive in my mouth at night that I half swallow and half spit into the sink.
That's just kind of weird and creepy.
I mean, you can, you know, I told my daughter about cavities and sugar and all that kind of stuff.
And it was fine, and I didn't need to then re-explain it to her and tell her, basically, I lied to you beforehand.
So I think that's just a kind of sadism and mental disintegration rather than a rational explanation of how things are.
So I don't believe that noble lies are necessary.
And of course, once you have, it's the problem.
Noble lies is one of these...
Definitions like hate speech or problematic.
You know, if you say something's problematic, you're just inviting people to be hysterical and have problems with stuff because then they gain power.
And every moral advance in human society was highly offensive to people at the very beginning.
You know, any talk of equality for women under the law, highly offensive.
Any talk of the end of slavery, highly offensive to people.
Any talk of atheistic solutions to areas formerly reserved for religion, highly offensive to people.
So this idea that offense and hate speech and so on, it's like...
There was the Wall Street Journal, the unbelievable piece of shit rag known as the Wall Street Journal is out there talking about how, well, you know, we got to differentiate true from false information.
It's like, yeah, because the Wall Street Journal knows how to do that, which is why they never, ever publish anything that's ever false and everything they publish is true and not just true, but the most important truth there are.
It pretty much gets handed out in philosophy classes about how to make recent arguments based on evidence.
It's like, it's bullshit. How do you find out what's true and false?
Free speech. No one can tell you what's true and false.
People put forward their arguments, and everybody who puts forth their arguments probably believes those arguments are true.
And other people believe those arguments are not true.
And through the back and forth, you figure out what's true over time.
But the idea, it's like central planning for human speech.
It is like how they think they can run this big giant economy with a couple of central planners and they think that they can run what is true or false with a bunch of troll heads at the Wall Street Journal and on YouTube and Facebook and label it this way and this is legitimate and this is illegitimate and this is true and this is verifiable and this is right and this is wrong and this is...
It's bullshit. Just shut the fuck up, open the gates, let people talk freely, and the truth will emerge over time.
But the idea that you can put these fucking idiot gatekeepers who probably don't even know how to shave yet, put these fucking idiot gatekeepers putting this sticker on and this sticker on and this label and this is good and right and wrong and bullshit.
Bullshit. Anybody who's got half a brain knows that you cannot centralize the production of truth in society any more than you can centralize the production of fucking test tubes or sneakers or any other product.
It is the free market of ideas through which the truth gradually and painfully sometimes emerges.
It is not through sticking a fucking label on a YouTube video or a warning on a Facebook click.
I mean, that's just bullshit. And so this idea of the noble lie, well...
If you open up the floodgates to the noble lie, everyone thinks, ah, well, I'm going to be the one who determines what's noble and what's a lie.
No, once you open that floodgate, then everyone can claim that their bullshit is a noble lie.
So no, I don't think it should be legitimate because it is a...
It is a centralized plan in a sense.
Lots of people lie.
Lots of people put forward false arguments and false ideas.
Either consciously or unconsciously, they're lying.
And the solution for that is the free market of ideas.
It's free speech. It's the back and forth.
Oh, and I actually, but by the by, I do love the fact that the Wall Street Journal, I think, is sort of advocating or is talking about, well, these are legitimate news sources and these aren't.
And this is how stupid these people are.
This is the Pareto principle. I'm sure that the last smart person left the Wall Street Journal years ago, just like they left The Economist and years before that Newsweek.
And the only people who are left are people who are so fucking dumb or propagandized, which is kind of the same thing in its effects, that they think that the younger generation is going to look at a sticker on YouTube that says, legitimate, and it's going to think it's legitimate.
You know, it's like, I don't know, it's like...
You've got a piece of half-rotten meat on the floor of your basement and someone comes in and says, best before, and they changed the year rather than it being two years ago.
It's next year. And you're like, oh, well, that's going to be tasty then.
It's going to be the complete reverse.
And they don't seem to understand this.
If you start slapping legitimate and illegitimate on websites, the young people in particular are going to gravitate towards the illegitimate ones.
They're going to say, wow! Wow, there must be something cool here if they don't like it, because nobody respects the elites anymore.
Nobody respects the central censorship of the tech giants anymore.
It doesn't work.
It's not going to happen. I welcome this.
I hope, I hope, God above, please make my website illegitimate.
Please put illegitimate, dangerous, bad, wrong on all of my videos, because they couldn't It's like they never learned that in the 80s, they put these parental advisory stickers on albums with questionable lyrics that might be...
The kids are all like, well, I'm not buying an album with that ad on it because those are the coolest albums there are.
And it's like, I don't know.
Yeah, just keep trying, man.
You can't fight the reality.
That your publications are shit and ours are cool.
And we're gaining market share and you're losing market share.
And running to the teacher and saying, well, you put illegitimate stickers on their stuff because ours is legitimate.
It's like, yeah, yeah. You keep doing that.
You keep doing that rather than hiring smart people to make good decisions in your organizations.
It's just going to speed up the transfer of the mindshare.
Well, first, I think it needs to be said that that fairy tale story is intensely gay.
Oh, my sugar plum fairies dancing on my...
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I don't know. Fairies used to have one meaning, like the word gay, but anyway.
Yeah, and I know a few things about censorship.
I've been targeting myself on YouTube and Twitter for censorship, so the European governments don't like some of my content, apparently.
But I wanted to ask, because some people – I want to go on this if we have the time for a moment to dive maybe into one more point on this.
A lot of people say, well, if you're an nihilist, where do you get your morality from?
What is morality to you?
So in one form, to me, I look at morality as it's just a code of conduct to try to progress the species, try to obtain the most peace and happiness.
And then there's another side that seems strange and abstract to me.
An example, some people may say that premarital sex is immoral or pornography, even in minor chunks, is immoral.
I don't understand that because I'm trying to figure how is it tangible in the real world that I can look at and observe.
But again, on the flip side, the way I view things in the world is maybe offensive to people.
To me, that which is bad is negative.
Being negative means it is destructive.
So which is good is positive, thus being constructive.
And a lot of people might take offense to that because there's some things and accidents where they want you to absolutely say, but it has to be wrong or evil.
Let's take a controversial point here.
Rape. For the woman, you could say that that is bad.
It's negative. It's destructive.
You can analyze her life and how it may affect her.
But for the individual who's doing the violation, you could say for him it might be a positive experience.
I can't say that it's evil because that word, again, it's It's abstract.
I don't understand what that means.
And I want to know, what are your thoughts on that?
Because to me, that seems to be the most rational look at it, without having your feelings have to make up all these abstract things or try to identify how you feel about this thing you're witnessing.
I don't know. What do you mean?
So, it's positive for society?
That's what's moral? No.
For the individual itself, the one entity, it might actually be positive.
But for the woman itself, it is a negative thing and experience.
You could look at it, obviously, drawing that to society.
Okay, so who wins? The rapist wants to rape, and the woman doesn't want to be raped, or the man.
So who wins in the nihilistic morality?
Well, I don't understand what you mean.
One wins and one loses.
There's no whole one win or lose.
No, no, why is rape wrong?
It is a negative thing for the individual who is being violated.
Well, sure, but it's a positive thing for the rapist, otherwise he wouldn't be doing it.
If he doesn't get caught with it, if he doesn't actually get prosecuted or things of that sort, you could look at it that way.
No, he does the rape because he wants to do the rape.
It's a positive for him, right?
Again, assuming, yes, that it could actually be for him, yes.
No, it is. We know that empirically because he's doing it.
Therefore, it is a positive for him.
He wouldn't do it if it was a negative for him.
Correct. So, the woman doesn't want to be raped, the man wants to rape her.
So, who's right?
What do you mean by who is right?
I don't understand the question.
Okay, so do you think that rape is wrong?
Again, that seems like an abstract thing.
What do you mean by wrong? You have to break it apart and explain it better.
You brought up ethics, right?
So people say to you, how do you get ethics if you're a nihilist?
Which is a fair question. Yes, a good question.
So, do you believe that rape is immoral?
It is negative and positive.
This word immoral seems to suggest some abstract thing that's not tangible to actually observe with empirical evidence.
So you have no ethics then as a nihilist?
No, I have a code of conduct.
There's things that I want in society now.
Wait, but a code of conduct is an abstract thing.
Why is a code of conduct somehow not abstract, but ethics are?
Because you can observe the way that I conduct myself based on what I want in society.
You can observe this.
What? No, no.
How is the word ethics abstract, but the word code of conduct is not abstract?
Because it's just like, well, this thing is abstract, but this thing, which is pretty much a synonym, is totally not.
Okay, could you expand on the—I want to make sure I do understand the definition of ethics.
Could you define that for me to make sure I know exactly what you're referring to so we can continue on?
No, it's what you mean by code of conduct.
Okay. So how do you determine what is a valid or true or good code of conduct?
Well, this would go into a sort of an attitude of social Darwinism, or perhaps a Ragnar Redbeard's might-is-right worldview.
So that's not a code of conduct, because evolution has been practiced long before anybody had a concept of ethics.
It's just survival of the fittest, right?
It's a description of Darwinian power, lust, and sexual lust, rather than any kind of ethics.
It's like a biologist's description of the natural world, not a moralist's description of universally preferable behavior.
I mean, there's no code of conduct between a lion and a gazelle, right?
That's just evolution, right?
If the gazelle can outrun the lion, the lion might starve, and if the lion outruns the gazelle, then the gazelle dies, right?
So that's not a code of conduct.
That's the description of what is, based upon survival of the fittest, right?
That's not ethics. A description of biological reality is not ethics, right?
Correct. Okay, I see. Okay, so what do you mean by Code of Conduct?
The way that I choose to conduct myself in order to achieve the world which I want.
And of course, that would be in a more positive direction.
But the world that you want. So, I mean, the lion wants to eat the gazelle, right?
And so the lion arranges his life and his decisions so that he can eat the gazelle.
The gazelle wishes to escape the lion, so the gazelle arranges his life and his blurred fast feet in order to escape the lion, right?
So, again, we're not back to any kind of ethics.
The fact that you want stuff, well, that's common to everything from the boll weevil up, right?
I mean, dung beetles want to roll dung to feed their babies and stuff, right?
So, We're not talking about anything specifically human, and therefore we're not talking about ethics.
I'm not sure. I don't fully comprehend what you're saying.
I'm telling you that what you're saying, that you organize your life because of the things that you want in the world, that's true of every organism in nature.
And therefore we can't be talking about ethics if we're talking about stuff that animals do.
We need to have a higher consciousness in order to achieve ethics, if you will.
Is that sort of what you're trying to tap into that I'm missing?
Okay, do ethics apply to dung beetles?
No. Okay, do ethics apply to any human beings other than, sorry, to any animals other than human beings?
No, they do not. Okay, so it has to be something specific to humanity.
So if you tell me ethics is how you organize what you want to get what you want, well, every animal does that.
Every animal organizes its life to get what it wants.
So we have to have something that's specific to humanity, because if it's common to animals, it's not ethics.
Now, don't get me wrong.
It's a tough-ass question, Jacob, please.
Like, I'm not like, oh, well, two and two make what?
I mean, this is a really horribly tough and difficult question.
But when people say to you, well, if you're a nihilist, where do you get your ethics from?
I think we're finding, so far, you don't.
That would seem to suggest, again, a world of might is right, and I'm just playing along with natural law.
Okay, but natural law is not ethics.
That's just Midas, right?
That's survival of the fittest, right?
Correct, yes. Okay, that's not ethics, because that's enacted long before human beings came along and by just about every living organism under sun and moon.
So that's not ethics.
That's just a description of biological reality.
So, if you are a nihilist, then you don't have ethics.
And listen, I sympathize, Jacob.
This is one of the big... I talked about this with Dennis Prager of PragerU, which is, in the absence of religion, people don't have ethics.
They have this kind of collectivism, like, greatest good for the greatest number, which is all just a bunch of bullshit.
And they have consequentialism, they have a kind of pragmatism, or they have this sort of Nietzschean will to power, or the survival of the fittest, but they're not ethics.
It's not ethics at all.
Is that not in any way suggesting the idea of a noble lie then in order to achieve ethics?
Because I'm trying to think how I can observe this in the real world with what you're saying.
Again, I will think back on this for many hours, but maybe you could expand on that.
What do you exactly mean then?
And how would one achieve ethics then from this perspective?
Well... Because with Dennis Prager, it seems he's going in a religious direction.
No, and he's right. And one of the things I'm really pissed off about with philosophers and atheist philosophers in particular, and Sam Harris has done, I think, some fairly decent work in this area, so although it's sort of made up for by race cockiness and a lack of understanding and acceptance of free will, but he's done books on ethics, that atheists...
And philosophers as a whole really, really, really need to figure this ethics shit out.
Really need to give human beings morality in the absence of religion.
Because when you create a nihilistic void at the heart of Western civilization by eviscerating Christianity and the ethics which it produced without providing people something else, you have just unraveled the greatest civilization the world has ever known.
So this is important stuff.
And one of the first things that I did in my public life as a philosopher was was come up with a theory of ethics called universally preferable behavior and the book is called universally preferable behavior a rational proof of secular ethics I can give you the two-minute version if you like Yes, because I've wanted to do it, but I'm reading other things at the moment.
But yes, please give me.
It's a free book, and it's an audiobook.
It's a PDF. You can order a print one if you want.
It's pretty cheap. FreeDomainRadio.com slash free.
All right. Are you ready, Jacob, to have ethics without God?
I'm curious to hear what you have to say.
All right. We, the two of us, already agree that there is universally preferable behavior.
Truth is preferable to error.
Being correct is preferable to being incorrect.
So, we already have universally preferable behavior.
The question is, what is universally preferable behavior?
Now, you can't argue against it, because then you're saying it's wrong and it's incorrect and you shouldn't accept universally preferable behavior.
In other words, people would say it is universally preferable behavior to reject universally preferable behavior, which is a normative contradiction and therefore can be dismissed.
So the question is not, is there universally preferable behavior?
The question is, what is universally preferable behavior?
Now, when it comes to property, respecting property rights...
Or stealing. Now, if we say stealing is universally preferable behavior, we immediately trigger massive self-contradictions in our proposition.
So, let me ask you this, Jacob.
Is it possible for you to steal from me something I wish to give you?
No. No, it's not, right?
Well, I'm... No.
Right. I mean, if you come up and stick a knife in my ribs and say, give me five bucks and I give you five bucks, I'm giving it to you not out of free will, but out of, well, not out of a desire to give it to you, but desire to avoid getting my ribs stuck with a shiv.
But if I give, voluntarily give my five dollars to somebody on the street, they have not stolen from me.
So if we say stealing is universally preferable behavior, then we say everyone must steal all the time, always, everywhere.
Because it's universally preferable behavior.
Now, even if we cast aside the problems of people who are in comas, of people who are in wheelchairs with no arms, of people who have no mobility and therefore can't really steal from them, if we cast all of those aside, then if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then, Jacob, you want me to take from you.
Because stealing is universally preferable, and I want you to steal from me.
Like, you have an iPad, I have an iPod.
You want me to take your iPad, I want you to take my iPod.
Because it's universally preferable behavior.
But if I want you to take my property, you're not stealing.
So stealing cannot be sustained as universally preferable behavior.
Because if everybody wants to steal and be stolen from, it's not stealing.
It's the same thing with rape.
If someone wants you to have sex with them, you cannot rape them.
I guess you could roleplay or whatever kinky shit you're into, but you can't rape someone who wants you to have sex with them because the very point and definition of rape is unwanted sexual activity.
And so if we say rape is universally preferable behavior, then everybody wants to rape and wants to be raped, which means rape can't exist as a category.
It's the same thing with murder.
It's the same thing with assault.
If I want you to hit me, fight club style, if I get into a boxing ring with you and I'm accepting that risk, I play hockey, I walk in Philadelphia, I'm accepting that and you know something's going to, then it can't be assault.
And the law clearly recognizes that.
So rape, theft, murder, assault cannot possibly be universally preferable behavior.
On the other hand, a respect for property, the non-initiation of force, These can all be sustained as universally preferable behaviors.
We can go through this entire world and entire life.
Everybody can respect everyone else's property.
Everyone cannot rape someone else.
Everyone cannot murder someone else.
Everyone cannot assault someone else.
These can all be achievable as universally preferable behaviors.
And so the very, very brief tour through what I call UPB, or universally preferable behavior, is that universally preferable behaviors are valid.
So the question is not, should they be, but what are they?
And as it turns out, coincidentally, as it turns out, the major moral bans that almost every ethical system has, bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder, all conform to universally preferable behavior.
And violations of these are asymmetrical, which means that for rape to occur, the man has to desperately want sexual activity and the woman has to desperately not want sexual activity.
Therefore, it can't be universalized because it's asymmetrical.
One person wants the other person wants the opposite.
They can't both fulfill their desires at the same time.
Now, if two people want to have sex, they can both fulfill their desires at the same time.
They can both achieve that goal of having sex at the same time, which is why lovemaking is moral, but rape is not.
Because rape can never be universally preferable behavior.
And so, respecting persons and property, universally preferable behavior.
Violations of persons and property do not conform to universally preferable behavior and therefore cannot be moral.
That's the very, very brief run through of the argument.
In time, when I'm done with some of my other literary work that I'm going through, I might, well, actually, I'll probably end up getting your latest book, The Art of the Argument, because that seems like that might be more interesting at this time.
But I have to ponder over this for many hours, as I usually do, and think on this.
Oh, yeah. No, listen, I appreciate that.
And yes, theartoftheargument.com.
You should pick up the book. I'm very pleased with it.
And it's a really, really great book, so I hope that you will check it out.
All right. I'm going to pack in the show, but I really, really appreciate everybody calling in tonight.
As always, it is a great pleasure to chat with you all.
Please, please don't forget, anightforfreedomdc.com.
February 24th, 2018.
Just come out, check it out.
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