Feb. 23, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:38:45
4010 Life Long Failure - Call In Show - February 21st, 2018
Question 1: [2:00] - “There is a scenario where a contract legitimizes initiation of force by a collective of people against an individual. Suppose I live in a condo. The members collectively decided to repair the roof. Every member by this decision is obligated to pay his share of monetary expense of the upcoming repair. I live on the first floor and decided to skip the payment: ‘Screw your roof! it is not my roof, I am not paying for your roof.’ What is a NAP-compatible course of action for the members of the condo that leads to a properly maintained roof? (a) in the situation of the rebelling member. (b) in prevention of this situation. It looks to me as if this conundrum might be used to justify taxation.”Question 2: [33:18] - “If love is our attraction to virtue, then how can we know what we are attracted to or why if we can’t even really define virtue itself? Perhaps we can seek a virtuous life by avoiding/undoing aggression and vice, but how does that help in finding a virtuous partner? I’m with a girl now that I can see has problems, but is me enjoying time with her mean I’m attracted to some inherent virtue inside her? Or am I blinded by my own problems that I am still trying to fix in myself?Question 3: [1:56:38] – “My 33-year-old sister, who never had a full-time job and has been unemployed for three years is still living with my parents. My dad is nearly 70, but he's still working 50 hours a week to support my family. My parents haven't done anything that wakes her up. How can I convince my sister that she needs to be independent?”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hey, hey, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope you're doing well. Three callers!
What a great variety it was in the show tonight.
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I'd hugely, hugely appreciate it.
So the first caller wanted to know if there's any situation in a free society under which a contract could end up being the same as taxation.
That's a good question and a good test of the theories of voluntarism.
So we got into that fairly hard and heavy, which I was very pleased about.
The second caller...
Wanted to know if love is our attraction to virtue, then if we're attracted to someone, does that mean that they're virtuous?
And he's with a girl now that he can see has problems, and what is his relationship to her virtue if he finds her attractive?
And I initially said, nothing about your history.
We don't need it.
And, well, you'll see how that worked out or didn't.
And the third caller is a woman who's concerned about her sister.
She's 33 years old, the sister.
Never had a full-time job, been unemployed for three years, still living with her parents.
And their dad is almost seven.
He's still working 50 hours a week to provide for his family.
What can this young woman do to help out her largely inert sister?
And I think my answer might surprise you.
I know it will surprise you for the most part, but I think it's consistent with...
philosophy as a whole. So I hope that you enjoy these calls.
Thanks again so much for listening.
Please like, subscribe, share, do what you can to spread the word.
I hugely appreciate that as well.
So let's go. Alright, well up first today we have Eugene.
Eugene wrote in and said, There is a scenario where a contract legitimizes initiation of force by a collective of people against an individual.
Suppose I live in a condo.
The members collectively decided to repair the roof.
Every member of this decision is obligated to pay his share of the monetary expense of the upcoming repair.
I live on the first floor and decided to skip the payment.
Screw your roof. It's not my roof.
I'm not paying for your roof.
What is an NAP, non-aggression principle, compatible course of action for the members of the condo that leads to a properly maintained roof?
A. In the situation of the rebelling member.
B. In the prevention of this situation.
It looks to me as if this conundrum might be used to justify taxation.
That's from Eugene. Hey Eugene, how you doing?
Hi, I'm well.
Good. What do you mean by justify taxation?
Well, I mean, well, you can construe a contract that will create, constitute a scheme similar to taxation or maybe taxation itself.
No, I understand what that means, but what I mean is how is signing a contract the same as taxation?
I didn't say it is the same.
Okay, how could signing a contract be used to justify taxation, which is not the signing of a contract?
Well, if we are talking about an agreement that may involve paying in advance or collecting payments for roof repairs in advance before roof actually goes wrong, you could be, for example, born into this obligation.
Assume you have been born, your parents hold a share in this condom and they gave you birth and they are legally your guardians and you inherit this condom share from your parents and you are now obligated to participate in this scheme.
It's 100% contractual but you inherited it from your parents And you have to pay in advance for roof repairs.
And if you want to skip this payment, this is the most...
This is the conundrum, actually.
If you want to skip the payment, you are making worse it for other members of the condo.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm a little confused.
So, let's say that you're my son and I sign a contract to agree to repair roofs in a condo, in a free society, and...
Then I die and you inherit this condo.
Then the condition of the ownership transfer would be that you sign this document.
And if you didn't sign this document, you wouldn't be able to assume ownership.
That would be part of the transfer, right?
So now you volunteer. You don't have to take this condo.
You can sell it. You can leave it life-valor, whatever, right?
But if you take ownership of it...
Then you sign the contract to pay for roof repairs, right?
So then it's just like any other contract you've paid for.
I don't understand what the complication is.
Well, if you set no limits to these contracts, you can create contracts, however cruel.
What do you mean set no limits?
What does that mean? Would you sign a contract with a cell phone company that said, we can charge you anything that we want next month?
Well, I mean, they could do it.
What do you mean they could do it?
Would you sign a contract with your cell phone company that said, we can charge you anything you want, anything we want to next month or next year?
You wouldn't sign that, right? No, I wouldn't, but I know many people do.
What, many people sign open-ended contracts that say they can be subject to any charge that other people want?
People sign contracts with corporations without reading these contracts.
But this is a different...
Wait, wait, wait, hang on. People sign contracts without reading them?
Yes, they do. Okay, so...
So they should read them.
I don't know what you're saying, right?
Yes, but...
I went off rails with this.
Look, this roof problem is that when you decide to skip the payment, you actually do harm to other members of this condo.
Sure. And they are justified to use force against you, to initiate force against you to make your payments.
Well, they are justified, perhaps, but that's not what they would do.
Why? Because why would you want to risk, like, bringing guns into a situation?
They would just turn off your electricity, or they would turn off your water, or both, right?
And then your condo would be not livable, so you'd have to leave, right?
Yeah. Or they'd change, you know, while you were gone, maybe they would change the lock on your door.
I don't know. But they wouldn't go in there with guns, right?
I mean, that's very much what people don't want to do.
Now, the government does that, but then they have a monopoly, right?
So they would try and find as peaceful a solution as humanly possible.
First of all, what I would imagine is that, I mean, if I were the condo board, I would do a couple of things to try and avoid this kind of problem.
So the first thing I would do is I would say, first of all, Everybody has to put a $5,000 deposit, and I'll pay you the interest every year, right?
You have to have a $5,000 deposit for emergency expenditures, and I would just take the money out of that, right?
So that people couldn't not pay, right?
And then I would require them to top it up, right?
And that would give me some breathing room.
So you would have money set aside, and then you would pay from...
From there. That would be, you know, one possibility of a way in which you could make sure that people were paid.
The second thing you could do is the condo board could have the right to take a loan out based on the value of your condo.
Said loan not to be more than $2,000 or something like that, right?
So if you decided not to pay, they'd just take out a lien on your condo and then you would be the one on the hook for paying that back to the bank.
Like there's lots of different ways that they could get the money to do the necessary repairs without coming in and having to try and shake you down at the point of a gun.
There's so many different ways that they could figure out how to do this without using force directly.
Well, your first solution Well, okay, I agree that deposit is a good way to mitigate the problem, to alleviate the urgency of the problem, but ultimately there is still a problem to make me pay for something that I signed up for but refused to fulfill my obligations.
Why is that a problem?
If you take out a car loan and then you have the car and you don't pay your car loan, do they have the right to come and take your car back?
Or their car back, I guess, right?
Right.
Of course they do.
So why is this any different?
You have said, I will pay for reasonable maintenance of the condo.
This falls under the umbrella of reasonable maintenance of the condo.
So you have to pay.
I mean, if you order something and it's on a loan payment and you don't pay the loan, they take it back, right?
And if the condition for you living in this condo is participating in repairing the roof, if it's necessary, then they have the right to take the money or take your condo.
I mean, in the same way that if you have the car, they have the right to take the car back if you don't pay.
I don't know what that is.
Oh, yes. They have the right, and I absolutely agree that their actions are justified, they are logical and rightful, but it is still inaction on my part and initiation of force on theirs.
No, it's not the initiation of force.
Why it is not initiation?
Because you're stealing from your fellow condo members.
Oh, yes, you're right.
You sign an agreement.
The agreement must be contractually enforced.
Now, again, I don't think they would initiate force.
They would just turn off the water, turn off the electricity.
You'd get a terrible contract rating.
Nobody would give you a loan.
I mean, but you're signing up for things, right?
I mean, if you sign up for a cell phone and you go over your data plan, you have to pay more, right?
I mean, and if you don't, then they can garnish your wages.
They can take you to court.
They can do any number of things.
But Yeah, you are responsible for the obligations that you voluntarily sign up for and you voluntarily signed up for this obligation by accepting the condo and accepting the conditions of the condo that your father left you.
If I sign this contract, you're absolutely right, but if I inherit it from my father, I'm kind of trapped because I didn't choose this condo in the first place.
I end up living in it, and I have a difficult choice, actually.
How are you trapped? I don't understand.
If the condition of taking possession of the contract is signing...
Sorry, if the condition of taking ownership of the condo is to sign this contract, how are you trapped?
I mean, if your father dies and you want to take on a car loan that he has, the car loan company will be very happy, and you just have to sign The car loan and then the transfer of the right to use the car goes from your dead father to you.
But you're not trapped in the car.
You can just hand the car back to the car company if you want.
I mean, he's dead, right?
You can take it on if you want and you can sell this condo or you can hand it back to them.
You're not forced to take the condo, right?
It's just something that's offered to you in an inheritance.
This is why I use the condo example and not a car example, because I can give up a car, but I have to live somewhere.
I will die if I sleep rough on the street.
So I need to live somewhere, and I have a condo that somehow is not satisfactory for myself, and I am presented a problem to change my life.
To change the condo, to sell it, to buy another one.
I have to solve a problem that I didn't solicit it.
In your world, Eugene, is a free condo a problem?
Free housing is a big problem that is just trapping you?
I tell you what, Eugene, if you've got a bunch of stuff, You can send it to me, and I will not consider it a problem.
If you have bitcoins, if you have money, if you have a car, if you have a condo, you can send it to me, and I promise you, Eugene, I will not consider that a major problem in my life.
Free stuff is not a problem, isn't it?
Isn't that good? It's a clever joke, but I didn't say about free.
I said that this condo comes with obligations that are not satisfactory.
But it's a free condo because you don't have to pay for it.
Right? You have to pay maintenance.
Right. But no, like when Oprah gave out the free car, she didn't also say, and you'll never have to pay for a dime in maintenance.
It's a free car. People say, well, but I'll have to change the oil.
That's true. When in her case, they had to pay the taxes, but that's not a free society issue, right?
So you're not paying for the...
You're getting a free condo.
And this is the biggest problem you can come up with about a free society, is free stuff might come with long-term obligations.
Sure. Absolutely.
And a free car might come with oil changes.
Well, it would. I hope you'd change the oil.
Good. But if we allow...
Look, when I ask this question...
It boils down to contracts override non-aggression principle because we can codify in a contract whatever we like, no limits, right?
What do you mean you can codify anything you want in a contract?
You have to get someone to sign it, right?
So you're limited by what people are willing to sign, right?
If you offer a cell phone that's a million dollars a month, you can say, well, I can put whatever I want in my contract.
Sure you can. But it's not valid or enforceable unless somebody signs it.
And so you are limited in what you can put in your contract based on the voluntary preference of people to not sign it if they don't like it.
But I didn't sign it in the first place.
My parents signed it.
Yes, you signed it.
How many times do I have to repeat this, Eugene?
You do sign it because the condition of transferring the ownership Is that the new person signed the contract, otherwise the contract is not valid.
To own the contract, to own the condo, you have to voluntarily sign the contract, right?
Of course, because otherwise everyone could get out of their homeowner's association by simply buying it and then selling it to themselves the next day and not including any of the conditions.
The condition of sale is that you abide by the homeowner's contract to pay for the roof if it's deemed necessary.
And you voluntarily sign that contract.
Your parents signed it.
And if you don't want to sign it, that's no problem.
Then you have to sell the condo to somebody who's willing to sign it.
Because basically, when you have a homeowner's contract, you're kind of renting.
Or your ownership is dependent upon your compliance with the general rules, right?
And so you don't get free and clear ownership of the condo because it's part of a general aggregation, right?
I mean, if you have a house in the middle of nowhere, you can play your Led Zeppelin volume 11 all night long and people probably aren't going to complain that much.
But you can't do that in a condo because there's other people nearby.
So there are reasonable rules of restraint and cohabitation in a condo.
And if I were the condo in a free society like the condominium as a whole, I'd say, well, I own...
The condo, but you have the perpetual right to use it as long as you comply with these particular rules.
Now, if you sign that contract to say, okay, to live in this condo, I have to sign these particular rules, and if I don't want to live in that condo, then the condo board will sell the condo at reasonable market rates and give me the money.
That's just the way the contract works because you're cohabiting in close proximity to other people.
So, saying that you're not voluntarily signing the contract, of course you are.
Because that's the condition of living in the condo.
Great. So, cohabitation rules could be anything.
Nope. Nope.
Why not? I already explained that.
Why? And if you're not listening, I'm going to stop talking.
So tell me why they can't be anything.
Because people are free to enter any contractual agreements they wish to enter.
So can they be anything?
Up to participants.
So they can't be anything?
Because contracts are not one-sided, they're mutual, right?
Right. But you cannot tell what these rules would be.
I have no idea what you're saying.
You mean you'll not read the contract?
Well, that's on you for being stupid enough to not read the contract or whoever does it, right?
Well, if I'm presented with the choice either to sign this contract or not, and I decide not to sign this contract, it is because it's not satisfactory.
But it could be unsatisfactory.
Are you ruling out this possibility?
What could be unsatisfactory?
You don't like the rules the condo has?
I don't like the rules.
I want to sell this condo.
Sure, you can do that. I don't want to assume ownership.
Yeah, you can do that.
But logically speaking, these rules could be anything because you do not impose any limitations on contracts.
Contracts could be anything.
No, I don't think that's true.
No, in fact, I know for sure that that's not true.
Because if, let's say the contract says that murder is allowed in the condo building, who would buy that?
Would anyone buy that condo?
Well, is it legal for me to script this contract and offer it to someone else to enter?
Is it legal for you to what?
Is it legal for me to write this contract and offer it to somebody else?
Which contract? What are we talking about?
For the condo? You proposed a hypothetical contract that murder is legal in our condo.
Could this contract be legal in your society?
No reputation firm, no what I call the dispute resolution organization.
Nobody would enforce that contract, so it's immaterial.
You could say, well, I have a contract that a four-year-old can sign away their entire life and labor in the future in return for a basket of candy.
And you could get a little X or the signature of the name of the four-year-old, but nobody would enforce that contract, of course, because nobody would want to do business with anyone who would enforce that kind of contract.
So there would be reasonable restrictions on when you could enter into a contract contract.
And what allowable forms of the contract would be.
And the general revulsion against selling a four-year-old into slavery would be so high that nobody would pursue that.
Because there'd be no money in it, and there would be terrible negative publicity, and it would be horrifying, and it would be like, can you believe this company?
I'm pulling my contract.
I don't want to have anything to do with people who would try to enforce that kind of contract.
I mean, just general social mores would be pretty clear.
There'd be a few gray areas, like maybe some people would say, well, you have to be 19 to rent a car, and other people would say, well, we found a way to make it work with 18, but not four.
That's sort of my point. So your point implies some sort of limitations that are informal, and you refuse to formalize them.
I'm sorry, what now? What do you mean I refuse to formalize them?
You implied limitations to contracts.
You said not all contracts will be enforced.
Yes. And you cannot formalize the difference between those that are enforced and those that aren't.
What do you mean I can't formalize them?
What is the difference between these contracts that That are going to be enforced and that are not going to be enforced.
Where is the margin between them?
Well, would you be happy with the enforcement of a contract wherein a four-year-old would sell himself into slavery?
Well, no.
Good. Okay, so neither would I and neither would any sane, reasonable human being.
So that form for sure would not be enforced.
Now, if you say, well, 21, you can drink alcohol when you're 21, and other people say 20, I'd be like, well, you know, but not three, right?
So, I don't know exactly. The whole point is that these are negotiations in society.
And nobody can come up with, well, 100% right, 100% wrong, based upon one millisecond from the 17th birthday to the 18th birthday.
But people come up with reasonable standards about these things.
And we recognize that a 12-year-old is significantly deficient mentally relative to a 25-year-old.
old.
So there's, you know, we probably would not allow a contract enforceable on a 12-year-old, but 25, you're an adult, assuming that you have mental capacity.
So it would be a negotiation within society, and it would go according to general reasonable social mores, and there may be a few gray areas here and there.
But for the most part, there's a surprising uniformity in that you and I would both not want to do business with anyone who'd even consider enforcing a contract on a four-year-old.
It looks...
It all looks like a gray area to me.
No, no, no. You said that you would not approve of a company that would enforce a self-slavery contract on a four-year-old.
That's not a gray area, is it?
For me, but I don't know about you, theoretically.
Well, personally, about real you right now, I do know, but maybe I don't know about somebody else.
Well, but it has to be a big enough market that it's worth doing, and it also has to be a big enough market that it would make up for all the horrible negative publicity you'd have for enforcing a contract on a four-year-old for perpetual slavery.
You think it wouldn't work? Well, I'm tempted to ask you how do you know, but I have a more specific question.
Sure. You brought up So, do you claim that contract enforcement is a subject of negotiation?
No. Contracts are a subject of negotiation.
Once the contract has been signed, the whole point is that negotiation is done.
Good. And how do you distinguish enforceable from non-enforceable contracts?
Well, they're signed.
So, you are going to enforce self-slavery contract on four years old.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Okay, so, if there's a company called ABC Contract Enforcement, let's say, right, then you and I, by dealing with ABC Contract Enforcement, would be aware, and this would be part of our, we would first sign a contract saying that we're going to have this ABC company as our Dispute resolution organization, right? Our DRO. And the DRO would say, we don't enforce contracts for people who are under 18.
We don't enforce contracts that sign away fundamental rights of property and personhood.
And there'd be a whole list, you know, maybe 10 or 12 things where they say, we're not going to enforce these contracts.
We're not going to enforce those contracts.
You have to be this age.
You have to have whatever it is, right?
And you can't sign away your liberties.
You can't sign away your free will.
There would be a whole series of these kinds of things, right?
Why do you assume that enforcement of self-slavery contracts won't be profitable?
I'm sorry, can you say again?
Why do you assume that enforcement of self-slavery contracts won't be profitable?
It could be massively profitable.
Not if people don't like it.
And slavery is not profitable, economically speaking.
And it's social mores, right?
People don't care that, I mean, do you think children are profitable?
I mean, people still have children, right?
I mean, Christmas presents aren't profitable.
People have Christmas. Human beings aren't just driven about profit.
But no, people don't want four-year-olds signing away their lives.
I know that. And so companies would not enforce those contracts.
And they would say to you when you signed up, they would say, look, here are the five kinds of contracts or the ten kinds of contracts we're not going to enforce.
And you sign that away.
Now, if you want, you could say, well, I'm going to start a contract.
A company that's going to enforce contracts on four-year-olds, right?
And you could see how you do in the market, and you would do very badly in the market because people would be morally horrified by even attempting to do that.
Well, people are morally horrified of many things that are very prominent in modern society.
Yeah, that's not an argument, that's just some words.
What do you mean? You said something that is horrible and people hate it won't be prominent in the society and won't be profitable.
But there are lots of Horrible actions that are profitable and people practice them for profit right now.
Okay, tell me where the profit would come from.
Eugene, tell me where the profit would come from.
I can't believe the conversations are here.
But tell me where the profit comes from from enforcing a contract of universal slavery or perpetual slavery on a four-year-old.
Tell me where the profit from that comes from.
Who pays? Does the four-year-old pay?
Does the four-year-old have enough money to pay for the enforcement of a contract for the next 80 years of his life?
Who pays for that? Do the parents not have any rights or custodial obligations or responsibilities or rights as parents to prevent such a contract from being put into place?
I mean, where's the profit in a perpetual enslavement of a four-year-old?
Just tell me, tell me that. Well, I will.
There are families, Saudi family in Saudi Arabia, they would buy slaves.
There are plenty of slave runners in the world and they are wealthy.
And do you think that, just right now, do you think that if a company in the West were to enforce a contract for a kid to be sold into Saudi slavery, do you think that that would be positive or negative publicity for that company?
For many people, it will be...
Absolutely negative publicity.
Right. Do you think there's any amount of money that the Saudi family could pay that would equal the number of people who would withdraw from such a contract organization?
Say it again.
Do you think there's any amount of money the Saudi money could pay for a Western slave child that would make up for how many people would quit that contract company and discuss, cancel their contracts and never ever do business with them again?
I believe Saudis can make up for local profits.
So Saudis can pay more than your neighbors.
Then I didn't understand it.
Okay. Let's suppose, Eugene, that you were part of this ABC company and the ABC company decided that they were going to enforce a slave contract with a Western baby to a Saudi family.
Would you be happy with that company?
Oh, no. No.
Would you continue to do business with that company, or would you switch to one of their 10,000 competitors who would be trumpeting about how evil this company is?
I would switch.
You would switch. Would you even sign up with a company that said, we enforce contracts on four-year-olds, especially if they're slave contracts to people in Saudi Arabia?
No, I wouldn't.
Okay, so we're done, right?
So, nobody would.
No, we are not. Okay.
What do you mean nobody would?
There are like... Several million people signed up with the military.
There are several million people signed up with police.
There are evil people out there.
Right, and that's why we can't have a government.
Because what you're talking about is there are people who are wholly accepting and supporting of evil.
In which case, those people will end up running the government and will have a monopoly of contract enforcement.
Over everyone else.
At least this way, there's a competition between good and evil contract enforcers.
You see, either very few people will ever support the enforcement of evil contracts, in which case you don't have a problem, or a lot of them do, in which case you can't have a government and have them vote on it because they'll end up taking over the government and enforcing these evil contracts on everyone.
So no matter which way you play it, man, the solution is freedom.
Well, I do not advocate for government.
I do not contest your point.
It's absolutely clear that government is embodiment of all evil in humanity.
But I'm failing to see what stop evil people from recreating government from the scratch in your society.
Would you fight them?
I would, but I speculate they could have a critical mass.
That would have something to do with it then, right?
Right. I speculate they could gather a critical mass and overpower the rest of the society and overthrow your non-aggression principle.
So your concern is that if there's no government, that there might be a group of people who would end up recreating a government?
Yes, exactly. Right.
So if you had cancer, would you fail to take treatment because your cancer might possibly return at some point in the future?
Oh, I see a point.
Of course, I will take the treatment.
Right. So I think we have the answer.
I don't believe that the government is coming back any more than slavery is coming back once we have a free society, but I'll take the risk.
Let me put it to you that way.
All right, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I do appreciate your call.
It's fun talking about these issues, and I appreciate that set of questions.
But let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, well up next we have Daniel.
Daniel wrote in and said, If love is our attraction to virtue, then how can we know what we are attracted to or why if we can't really determine virtue itself?
Perhaps we can seek a virtuous life by avoiding slash undoing aggression and vice, but how does that help in finding a virtuous partner?
I'm with a girl now that I can see has problems, but is me enjoying time with her mean I'm attracted to some inherent virtue inside of her?
Or am I blinded by my own problems that I'm still trying to fix in myself?
That's from Daniel. Hi, Daniel.
How are you doing tonight? I'm a little nervous, but I'm happy to be here.
How are you? I'm well.
I'm well. Thank you. What problems does your girl have, Danny?
I thought you might go to that first.
I noticed a few red flags.
She's overweight. How much?
I'm not exactly sure.
I don't think she's obese.
Come on. No, I mean, I asked her, but she wouldn't answer me.
What's your guess? I'm going to guess maybe anywhere from 50 to 70 pounds overweight.
And how tall is she? Not that tall.
Not that tall. How tall is she?
5'3", would be a guess.
Five foot, three inches, 50 to 75 pounds overweight?
Yeah. Pretty sure that's obese.
Oh, yeah, I might be mistaken.
Isn't that morbidly obese?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure where the cutoff is, but that's...
I'm definitely not an authority, so I couldn't...
So she's obese.
Let's just say obese. Okay.
Yes, she's obese.
And what else? Oh, and she didn't want to tell you her weight, right?
She did not, no. Right.
I mean, we've been talking about it from the get-go.
Hiding things, yes.
Right, okay. That would be the third point.
You kind of jumped on that third one right there.
She kind of hides her personality from me, from social circles.
She hides her personality?
What do you mean? She hasn't been the most affront about her political standings.
I mean, she seems...
She's forthright with some hard topics in regards to her family or what she has to do about her weight.
Not exactly what her weight is, but we do talk about that challenge.
But when it comes to social conflicts, like political stuff or gender issues, she seems a little transparent.
I think that's a good word.
Yeah. What does transparent mean?
She doesn't want to stick her head out there.
She wants to avoid conflict.
So maybe if somebody was talking pro-trans or something, she'll be agreeing with them on that.
And then maybe if I'm talking anti-communist or something like that, she'll be kind of for that too.
Not really taking a courageous stand for herself.
There's no real integrity.
No. No.
It's like she's just been introduced to the concept of integrity through words, you know?
All right. What's my next question going to be, Dan?
I'm not sure if you're going to jump for her background or for mine.
No, I don't think we need a background call.
Okay. I think we need a foreground call.
I don't think we need about the past.
I think we need the future in this call.
Is that the question?
How attractive am I? No, what the hell are you doing with this woman?
Yeah, that's a good question. I'm trying something new.
Well, that was the initial thought.
You're trying something new?
That's right. Fat liar, no integrity?
I'm trying something new.
It's called arsenic.
Because I've had it with that caramel shit.
Okay. Okay.
Let's see here. Initially, I didn't take it as dishonesty on her part.
She's an appeaser, right?
Okay, yeah, yeah. And I think, I don't know, maybe I am making excuses, but it did seem to me that she's just being introduced to this kind of courageous integrity through words.
How long have you been going out with her?
Um, not as, not that long.
I think it's been about two and a half months, maybe see her twice a week.
You've been going out for two and a half months, twice a week?
Yeah. Yeah.
How did you meet her? At a, at the local dive bar.
Does she drink? She does.
Yeah. Um, Yes.
And is she in her 30s?
She's 26.
She's 26. Yeah.
And she drinks. And she's fat.
And she has no real integrity.
And she hides things from you.
Which returns me to my earlier question.
What am I doing with her?
What are you doing? Oh, I don't know.
Yes, you do. Who came on to who first?
I guess I came on to her.
You guess? Yeah, I mean, I think back on it, how it exactly initiated.
But I'm pretty sure it was me.
And why did you find her physically attractive?
I did not, no. You know, when I said I was trying something new, I guess what I mean to say is that I was looking for something else other than looks.
That I've had a lot of bad success.
Or, yeah. No, bad success.
I like that. I think that's a good way of putting it.
You've had a lot of bad success with good-looking women, right?
Yeah, actually, yeah. The hot, crazy continuum kind of got you a little down?
Exactly. Right. And so...
You were shallow-hailing a little.
A bit. All right.
Yeah. I mean, and so she's probably the least toxic person I've been with.
I mean, it doesn't say much for my choice in women.
I understand that.
Trying to climb up out of the refuse, as it were.
OK, give me a portrait in crazy.
Daniel, what else have you dipped your wick into?
Oh, god. This is embarrassing.
I know a girl who was fresh out of rehab.
That was a nightmare.
Oh, my God. She...
Rehab for what? Heroin.
You're trolling me.
I am not. You are trolling me.
Come on. I am not.
So, this is a step up, is what you're saying.
Yes. Yes.
So, there's this woman.
She's out of rehab for heroin.
And you're like, let's get it on.
Yeah. I mean, you know, since the attraction is kind of missing, I do find her attractive at times when she's smiling, when she's confident, but it is rare enough.
Yeah, I was just tired of going for the hot and crazy.
And she did...
I don't know. I kind of enjoy a conversation.
All right, fine. Tell me about your mom. Fine!
Fine! We'll go back there.
What's the story with your mom, Danny?
It's not as simple as I'd like to put it.
Probably is, but go on.
I'll try to make it as simple as possible.
Yeah. Single mom.
She warned you about these crazy women at all?
Yeah. She told me not to date till I was 26 and that women are evil.
Evil, yeah. Women are evil.
She includes herself in that?
She did. I thought that was a bit confusing to me.
Wow. Yeah.
That's abominably frank.
So women are evil, including me.
Now, if she's evil and she's telling you other people are evil, they could actually be good, right?
Because good is evil to evil.
I don't follow. Not important.
All right. No, what I'm saying is not important, though, that you don't follow.
OK, so you've got a single mom who says women are evil, and she's evil too.
And what else was she like?
She's an immigrant. Came over here when she was like 16.
English is her second language.
And from where? Vietnam.
Right. I think I can say that, yeah.
Yeah, and she's probably the most liberal or progressive of all her sisters.
She's the youngest. Wait, liberal, you mean like socialist?
No, just kind of free-spirited, if that's a word I could use.
No, I don't know what that means.
I never know what free-spirited means other than generally fucking nuts, but all right.
I'm free-spirited.
I consider physics optional.
Anyway. Of all her sisters, all her sisters got married, stayed married, and she was the only one who didn't.
She got a divorce.
She chose a really crappy person to be my dad, that kind of thing.
And how old were you when they divorced?
Like an infant?
No, like four, three or four, something like that.
I don't have much memories of them.
Right. And why did they get divorced?
He got himself in trouble with a meth addiction and then I guess what the story was somebody was hammering on the door when we were in the house and then my dad decided that he didn't want to put us in that kind of danger so he flew the nest.
So he fled murderous drug dealers he owed money to.
Recently. Like, I contacted him three years ago to kind of get to know him.
Wait, your childhood you didn't know him?
He maybe visited once a year until I was in fifth grade, so not really.
My memory's not great with him.
Nice. I'm sorry about that.
Was he far away? Thank you.
At the time, he was in the throes of his addiction, and then now he's far away.
Right. Like some flyover state.
And he overcame his addiction, of course.
I don't imagine he'd still be around otherwise.
Right. Did he ever make restitution, apologize, anything like that?
Verbally, yeah.
Then I think he was kind of hoping for more like a father-son relationship kind of deal.
And I was a bit too old.
I wasn't so down with that.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Like, I mean, there's kind of like a window for being a father.
Yeah. It's not like, well, now I'm 30, I really don't need a dad.
In fact, it's kind of annoying to have one now.
It is, yeah. I mean, I hate to put it that way, because, you know, I don't want to say no to people who are trying to do the right thing in a way, but it's like, nah, you know...
It's like someone coming up to you with a giant high chair and a big vat of baby food, and it's like, nah, that's kind of in the rear view for me, man.
Take your big bag of diapers and fuck off.
Yeah. Like, I'm sorry, it's...
That ship has sailed.
That time has passed, man.
Here, son. Let me teach you how to walk.
Now, see... I kind of did that quite some time ago, and your help is really more annoying than anything now.
And I just, there's that window.
Now, I mean, I hope that I'm going to be in my daughter's life for her whole life and mine.
But now knowing how much foundation there needs to be, it's really weird being around a dad you didn't grow up with.
I know this. It's awkward as shit.
It is. Because he's like, well, this is your dad.
Yeah, kinda.
But also just some guy that I'm supposed to have this really deep and heavy relationship with that I don't know really from Adam.
There's this just weird kind of awkwardness about it that is way too complicated for mortals to do.
Right. It's really obvious that he wanted that kind of relationship way more than I did, and that he was just not sensitive to that.
He was not keen on that.
Especially if your father has had the kind of life where he's not accumulated a whole bunch of wisdom that can even really help you as an adult.
And especially if it's like, hey, your mom's totally evil.
I'm out of here. Good luck, four-year-old!
Yeah, it didn't pan out.
I went in expecting wisdom, and that was a bit foolhardy.
Yeah, and it's a shame, too, because it is one of these, there's no rewind on the parental relationship.
There's no mulligans, there's no do-overs.
You missed the formative years, guess what?
You missed the formative years.
You're done. Right, right.
Now, it's like that old definition of a banker.
A banker is somebody who will not help you when you're drowning at sea, but the moment you get to shore, he buries you in life rafts.
Because it's like, you need money?
Do you have any assets? Hey, man, if I had assets, I wouldn't need any money.
Oh, you don't have any assets? Can't give you a loan.
Oh, you've got lots of assets?
Okay, I can give you a loan. No, no, no.
See, I have assets now. I don't need the loan.
It's the same thing with parenting.
Right. The ship has sailed.
Yeah. Did you figure it all out?
You're all grown up. You're done right by yourself as best you can.
Okay. Well, I'm here to teach you.
No, no. See, that's not how it works, Dad.
Ready to be your dad now.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, ready to be your dad.
It's like, you know, I could be a granddad almost myself if I was in certain neighborhoods, but...
Yeah, no, it is weird.
It is weird. It's this weird combination of an intense conceptual relationship, but no actual physical relationship.
Because you've got the conceptual relationship, father to son, not just a mediocre Queen song, but a very deep...
Powerful lineage relationship.
So you've got this weird, heavy conceptual relationship that happens to be attached to this guy you barely know.
And it's like, am I having a relationship with the concept or with the guy?
Right. And because without the concept, there's no guy.
Like, could he just be some guy?
Right. You know, some friend of your mom's, you know, like when you were a little baby, shows up like 30, 25 years later and says, I'm ready to lead you into the future.
Be like, you're just some guy who hung around with my mom like a quarter century ago.
I don't, like, what are you doing, right?
Because it's like if you met your dad and he wasn't your dad, he'd be just some guy you'd probably barely pay any attention to, right?
Right. Right.
I mean, we share genes.
I mean, I can notice a lot of similarities there.
But maybe leaving was his only kindness.
I don't know. That's pretty scary, too.
Hey, I was the meth addict who toast really, really bad women to date.
We were genetically similar.
Want to explore that? No!
Really don't. Believe me, I thought about that.
Geez. Things I don't want to know.
You got to quarantine your brain, man.
I'm telling you, this is a general piece of life advice that I learned over many, many years, Daniel.
You got to quarantine your brain.
You got to view that as like your bath.
You don't let people pee into your bath.
You don't let people eat sandwiches over your bath.
You don't let people just pour random crap into your bath.
You don't let people take a dump in your bath.
And your brain is like your bath.
You've got to keep it clean.
You've got to keep it segmented.
You've got to not give crazy people access to your brain.
Because the stuff that's seen can't be unseen.
The stuff that's heard can't be unheard.
And you've got to keep the rubble.
And the detritus out of your brain.
You got to keep the pollution out of your brain.
Like, you wouldn't go work out in a gym, which allowed cigar smoking.
In fact, required cigar smoking on every machine, because it would be like working out in downtown Beijing during a windstorm.
And you have to keep your environment detoxified as much as humanly possible, which means limiting your internet exposure, which means limiting, if not eliminating, the capacity of crazy people to discombobulate your brain.
You've got to keep your bath clean!
It's so essential.
And when bad stuff comes into your brain, it kind of sits there a lot, right?
And that's the kind of thing.
It's like, there are things I know about my own father that I would Give three toes and a testicle to not know.
You know, like, I don't want to know.
It's not going to help me. Oh, yeah, I understand.
I mean, I had to learn my own story.
I had to learn the story of, like, you know, what became me.
But, I mean, I guess I had a lot of dark spots.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, she's not a meth addict.
She's not a heroin addict.
Who else have you dated? Um...
I had a long-term relationship before, just one.
Wait, was it a Tarantino woman with a machine gun for a leg?
No, no. OK, good.
She was crazy.
But I just had very low parameters.
I had an older sister kind of warned me, probably shouldn't jump into this one, but I didn't heed her warning.
Cockshire and headstrong.
Emphasis on the first syllable.
Yeah. So I... Now the Crazy Hot Continuum, sorry to interrupt, but the Crazy Hot Continuum is not just looks.
It's also sexual athleticism, right?
Oh, yes. Yes.
There's a... There's a Woody Allen bit about that.
Like, some woman, I don't know which movie it is.
People will tell me below. Some, like, glassy-eyed woman staring out a window, and it's like, yeah, she was nuts, but she was wild in bed!
Yeah, because she's insane.
Oh, yeah. So that lasts, like, three and a half years.
And towards the end, she was showing- Wait, how was she crazy?
In what way? I'm sorry?
How was she crazy? In what way?
She struggled socially.
She struggled with social cues.
I remember one time I had invited some friends over from class and she just barged in yelling and saw them continue to verbally assault me.
She did that once while I had family over, aunts over.
It was horribly humiliating.
Just like she just would want to pretend like everything was okay after.
Crazy like that.
So it's not so much trouble reading social cues as no capacity for self-restraint.
Right. I mean, if you'd asked her abstractly, she'd say probably that's not ideal, but she has no capacity to restrain herself.
Mm-hmm. Right. She must have been really hot.
For you to let that happen more than once.
I was less attractive then, so I mean...
You were what? Less attractive then.
You were less attractive then, in what way?
Yeah. Younger and poor, you know, just generally.
A lot less confident. A lot less confident.
Right, right. That was towards the beginning of my dating life.
What's your relationship with your mom like these days?
Distant. Distant.
But we still live in the same house.
I'm sorry, that seems like a bit of an either-or equation to me.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
So you have a distant relationship with your mother under the same roof.
Right. Why are you living at home, Daniel?
I've been an underachiever for an extended period of time before I finally started To pick myself up.
So who's paying your bills?
Other than rent, me.
But I'm subsidized by my mom, so there's that.
So your mom has been enabling your laziness?
Yes. Yes. Why do you think she does that?
Does she like having you around in this distant same-roof relationship?
Right. Yeah.
She worries about me endlessly when I'm away.
She likes having me around to make sure I'm all right.
She worries about you.
What does that mean?
She worries about you how?
Like in what way? You know, it seems to me that if you worry about kids, one thing you wouldn't do is have a meth addict being hunted by drug dealers as their father.
You know, that would be fairly high on the list of things not to do if you worry about your children.
But tell me what that means he'll worry about you.
I guess when my stepdad was still around, every time I would take trips away, like extended trips away, She would fuss over what's happening to me over there or if I was taking care of myself.
And she'd get really upset.
She would almost engage in fights with him when he was just trying to calm her down or tell her it was okay.
I don't know. Does that kind of answer your question?
Kind of. What does she anticipate is going to happen to you?
That I won't have a place...
To live or, you know, or that I won't eat or, you know, I don't know.
Oh, she's concerned that she did an absolutely terrible job raising you and you can't function.
That's it, yeah. You hit the bullseye.
Does she know that or does she project that somewhere else?
I'm sure she projects it.
I wouldn't put too much merit into her ability to self-reflect on that level.
What happened to your stepdad?
Oh, I see.
He passed away a few years back.
And were you close to him at all?
I was. I was very close to him.
I'm sorry about that.
Thank you. Was he a good guy?
Uh, yeah. What was he doing with your mom then?
Yeah, I mean...
Ah! I had that discussion with him, but unfortunately it was on his deathbed, so there's...
And why did he say he was with her?
Um... Let me think now.
She's crazy, but she's great in bed.
Probably. Oh, that's kind of nasty to think about.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess my mom's quite a looker, so...
Oh, she's pretty that way.
Mm-hmm. Right. She is.
The curse of the looks...
Right. I mean, so I guess I was trying to break a cycle.
I don't know how successful I was.
Well, it sounds like you're stepping up, right?
I am. Right.
Yeah, but you don't have time to take this one step at a time if you want to be a family man, right?
Yes. Yeah.
You can't be like, well, I'll do another couple of years with a woman who's a three, and then I'll do another couple of years with a woman who's a five, and you know, like, you don't want to be The Jack Palance dad, right?
Right. No, you're right.
I mean, it's been like every time I discuss the future, which is family and children, it seems like one step forward, ten steps back about finding out more about her.
So, Daniel.
Yeah? Move the fuck out.
All right. Seriously, what's wrong with that as a potential plan?
No, there's nothing wrong with it.
I have been kind of in and out of the house a bit.
I just went traveling.
I just put all of my things in a car and moved away about four years ago.
And then I came back from my stepdad's passing.
And then... And then I was away again for six months.
So I was supposed to just kind of come back temporarily.
But yeah, I catch a drift there.
Quality woman comes along and meets you, Daniel.
And you're, I'm not going to give you your age, but you're not a young, young man.
Right. And quality woman comes along and says, so, Daniel, tell me about your living arrangement.
You're like, well, I have a really mean mom who says that she's evil, and all women are evil, and she's paying my rent.
Yeah. Ain't a schlong big enough on the planet to overcome a rational woman's fear of that kind of situation.
I don't care if you're called the tripod.
Yeah, I guess I have a little trouble vetting Still, but I see what you mean.
And I'm not even playing in the field yet.
What do you mean? For trying to attract a virtuous woman.
You know, what am I doing at home, right?
Like, hoping to even get into the dating game.
Are you going to marry this woman you're dating?
Probably not, unless there's some drastic change.
There will be no drastic change.
Yeah. No, live with that!
There will be no drastic change.
You know what it's like? It's like, you and I, Daniel, we might be immortal.
We might get to live forever.
If massive scientific advances occur over the next couple of decades, we might be immortal.
But we shouldn't really plan for it, if you get my drift.
There might be massive changes in a personality.
But you shouldn't really plan for it, right?
Right, right.
No, you're right. I am running out of time.
I can break into fluent Esperanto!
But you don't really need to plan for it, right?
So then the question is, is it fair to her to, I know it's been a couple of months, but to kind of string her along and Waste her time.
Right. Because I know she's younger, but she's on a different schedule than you, right?
Yeah. No, we do talk about it often.
And I can tell right from the beginning she's been holding back because I think even she's asking, like, what am I doing with a girl like her to herself?
Like, she doesn't quite believe it.
Because you're a looker like your mom?
I am. What do we got on a 1 to 10?
I'm pretty sure I'm at 8.
Right. Feeling pretty good about an 8, yeah.
So you're going to leave her an alpha widow, right?
She's going to be like, well, I'll settle for a beta, but I'm going to think of Daniel.
You know what that is?
Yeah. I used to be big on the Mana Sphere stuff and the pickup stuff.
Calm down a little bit, but...
Because you were afraid someone was going to post pictures of your girlfriend.
I shouldn't. I had to drop out of the manosphere because somebody's going to fisheye Snapchat my girlfriend.
That's how you officially break out of the manosphere is you just, you know...
You just date a land whale and next thing you know you're out of the pickup community, right?
Never to return. Right.
Have you slept with the woman? I have.
How long did that take since you first started dating?
We slept with each other initially, twice.
What do you mean initially? What do you mean?
Before you met? What does that mean?
Oh, I'm sorry.
To not use his computer.
No, when we first met, we hooked up, and then...
Wait. Sorry.
Okay. Pretend I'm not your age and don't know what the hell that all means.
So, hooked up means that you fucked...
The first time you met? Yes.
Right. Right.
And then I wanted to- And then twice, right?
I'm sorry? And twice.
Twice. Yeah.
So you met her in the bar, you went home, and you had sex.
Yeah. I mean, that's near enough the order.
Please tell me, dear God, you're capping the bishop, right?
Like you're wearing protection and stuff?
Yes. All right.
And then I wanted to wait a while.
And then you did that again? We waited two months.
We waited two months. Sure.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I mean, you've got to be respectful.
Or do you just have to wait for the blood test to come back?
No, God. I just...
I don't know.
I wanted to get to know her without the stuff, without the sex, and then...
Well, not too much. Right.
I mean, I failed three times.
I failed three times on that.
What do you mean? I thought we were talking twice.
Oh, and then two months later, when I had planned no sex for three months, and then it only lasted two months.
Wait, you planned no sex for three months after you had sex twice?
Yeah. Sure.
All right. Yeah, I don't know what I was going with.
And who initiated?
So did you hang out at all in the two-month period?
Yes. You did?
Okay. End of sex.
She initiated. And then she initiated, right?
Yeah. Right.
Right. Well, let's get to your question.
Okay. You are not attracted to an inherent virtue inside her.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that you're not attracted to some massive psychotic bunny-boiling dysfunction within her either, and that's a step forward, right?
Mm-hmm. And if you want to get a virtuous woman, then you need to clean up your life and you need to become independent.
You know, I hate to use this phrase, grow up, because it is usually meant with abusive contempt.
And I don't mean it in that way at all, Daniel.
I really feel for you, my brother.
I really do. Raised by a single mom, the decent man in your life died.
Your dad died.
Was a meth addict chased out of your life by murderous drug dealers.
That is some terrible, terrible stuff all around.
And you also have been up close to seeing the molten and melting furnace of female sexuality and that your mom's a looker.
And you see the weakness in masculinity these days.
That the shell means more than the soul, right?
Right. That the vagina means more than the heart.
Far more, infinitely more.
That the tits mean more than the frontal lobes, right?
That kind of power is a horrible thing to see, and I'm I hope I'm not confusing the two of us, because my mom was very much a looker and was able to reel in men for quite a considerable period of time, despite every warning sign in the known universe.
And seeing just how retarded men are around good-looking women is a hard thing to see as a young man.
And you shouldn't see it as a young man.
You shouldn't see it as a boy.
You shouldn't see it at all.
You should see two parents who love each other for their virtues, and are attracted to each other and all of that, but you should see two adults, a mother and a father, and extended family, I hope, who love each other for their virtues, not see the dark, shallow, horrible weakness of men and the smirking, tit-based control of smug, evil women.
You shouldn't see up close men surrender any pretense of self-respect and virtue by chasing after the bouncing tail of immoral women.
And that is a way of approaching right to the cliff edge of the pit, the literal hell, Daniel, of nihilism.
We're all just fuck machines.
We're all just looking to spread our seed.
We're all just looking for a wet place to discharge.
And women have power they didn't earn.
And men have lusts they can't control.
And we are monkeys who fuck.
And it's genetic markers and it's hip to waist ratio and it's hair and it's facial features and it's shit.
And there's nothing pure, nothing lovely, nothing virtuous.
There's lies and lust and sex.
There is nothing pure in this world.
And we should not be exposed to that in general.
But as children, I think it's a very corrupting thing to see.
The power...
That pretty little liars have.
The power that gorgeous evil possesses in this world.
It is kind of satanic in a very deep Darwinian kind of way.
Because it is an unearned power.
And it is in general an unacknowledged power.
Nobody says, well, being in possession of vagina and looks makes women corruptible.
Because we all know that power corrupts and all we think about is politics and money and men.
Yes, power corrupts.
Sexual power corrupts enormously.
And it is hard to have respect for women when you're raised by a single mom, and it's hard to have respect for men when you're raised by a single mom, because what kind of men chase after single moms?
Maybe your stepfather accepted merely out of respect for the dead at the moment.
But it is a dark pack of baying lust hound that chases all sunlit virtues from the landscape.
It's like the toothy vagina rears up and eats the very sun, in both senses of the word, I suppose.
And what is left that you can see?
What is left that is noble?
What is left that is heroic? What is left that is virtuous that you can see?
Well, pretty women can be evil, and men give them everything.
And then, when they get too old to extract resources from men, politicians come along with the wealth of the unborn and use it to bribe them even further.
They never lose.
I mean, of course they do lose.
I understand that. But their loss never becomes palpable.
Your mom should have kicked you out 10 years ago, man.
Yeah. Right?
Yeah. 10 years have got behind you.
Ten years of slumming, of lazing.
Video games? You got video games?
Yes. That's your pretend achievement, right?
Since four years old.
I have a gold star and a server that will end up in a garbage dump.
I got the high score and I can respawn In everywhere except real life.
No restart button.
No, there's no restart button.
And there's no save game.
and there's no dry pornography yes Of course, right? Addiction, yeah.
We used to have a little thing called marriage.
Now we have pixels and Kleenex infertility.
We used to have a mission.
We used to have respect. We used to have children.
We used to have a purpose.
We used to be men.
We used to be adults.
And then do you know what we saw, Daniel?
Do you know what we saw? Whether we saw it directly or through the media.
We saw real men wander into a bloody surf and be cut down by machine gun fire.
We watched all the noble, patriarchal, strong, independent, courageous, and powerful men be hurled like lead soldiers into a furnace, melted down to fuel the vanity of those who never fought themselves.
And we looked at the masculinity of the 20th century and we said, so being a man gets you fucking killed.
Being a man gets you spent in useless wars.
Being a man is a suicidal self-detonation to elevate the bloodlusts of those in power.
Being a man means that you end up as a tiny blasted smudge on an infinite golden throne.
That's called manning up.
Man up means blow up.
Man up means die. Oh, or to be a man, to be responsible, to be a father, to be a husband.
Well, that means being nagged.
That means working 50, 60, 70 hours a week.
That means being ambitious and having the cold-hearted, grasping elevation of status-based greed, to climb the ladder, to kick other men in the face, to get higher, to get more resources, to work and work and work, and then be nagged for being emotionally unavailable and not present in the family.
Get me a big house!
Get me a nice car!
You're never here.
You're emotionally unavailable.
You gotta pick one, ladies, for the most part.
And then we see men, and they stand there, somewhat befuddled, and overhead a widening light and a shrill stuka scream As the bombs of separation and divorce and family court and alim only and child support and living in a car and feeling suicidal.
That's what it's like, you see, to be a man over the last hundred years.
Killed by your government.
Killed in a war. Thrown in a concentration camp.
Your savings evaporated in inflation.
Lured into marriage which turns out to be a Marxist trap.
Of testicular destruction.
And women who complain.
And who don't need you. Because they can run to politicians to get stuff.
They don't have to subjugate themselves.
They don't have to be helpful. The man subjugates himself with work and work and work and support and support and support.
The woman, well, she has to subjugate herself for anything.
She can run to the government and she can quit her job and still get paid.
She can go fuck other men, and the father of her children, of his children, still has to pay her money.
He has to pay the money that buys the condoms for the men who fuck the mother of his children.
She lives in the house.
He lives in a studio fucking apartment, if he's lucky.
She has high sexual market value.
He is a broken man.
And then he gets to hear all about his white privilege and his patriarchal powers.
And he is nagged for that as well.
And then he gets to die younger, to lose his property, to lose his future, to lose his resources, and his testosterone.
And his testosterone is going down like 1% a year.
And he gets to be scorned on and spit on by all the secure inhabitants of the cities he built.
All of the people safe behind the walls built by men.
Safe behind the governments built by men.
And though he built these cities, and he built these walls, and he built these structures, and he built these sewers, and he built these roads, and he built these protections, and he built this medicine and this science, he is scorned and spit upon as the new Jesus who brings light and garners only a crown of thorns.
And so I'm aware, Daniel, that when I say to you, grow up, I'm also incredibly aware that saying these days, grow up, lands to a lot of men like, a lot of snipers around, stand up!
Yeah. Yeah.
But our choice is what?
Cash cows and a bullet flutter, right?
Yeah. But our choice is what?
To let the bad people of the world take away everything that gives life the most meaning.
To take away our wives, our children, our families, our futures.
Our sense of self-satisfaction.
And men want to achieve, and we used to achieve real things.
We used to achieve Real things.
There's a line from a novel many years ago.
I read this when I was a kid called Lucifer's Hammer.
And they're trying to decide whether they should try and get a power plant and start a power plant up after a meteor has struck the world and taken everything down.
The guy gives a great speech.
He says, we can sit here and hide in caves and devolve every generation.
Or we can stand up and remember that we're used to control the lightning.
We have built civilization.
Women have grown civilization, but we have built it.
Women grow civilization in children and community and culture and support.
But men build civilization in general.
We're not allowed to do that anymore.
And we can either Give up and retreat into video games, pornography, slacker, travel.
Oh look, I learned how to do parkour!
Or we can sit there and say, I do not accept the denigration of my sex.
I do not accept being spat upon by those Who my ancestors slaved to build the protections that surround them.
I will not go gently into that good night.
I will not surrender the power of masculinity to the lies of the abusers.
I will not pretend that masculinity is toxicity.
I will not pretend that I should be hated for the sake of some imaginary patriarchal privilege that I clearly do not possess.
And I will no longer allow for my sympathy, my empathy, my compassion to be used as a weapon to castrate me.
The one thing we forgot in the West Is that morality, compassion, empathy, that is a relationship.
That is not a commandment.
That must be earned. And to provide it to the unearned is to subsidize parasitism.
I have great compassion for people who are hard done by.
But when people use my compassion in the attempt to humiliate and control and bully and denigrate and insult, fuck them.
They deserve no compassion from me whatsoever.
They deserve and have earned my enmity, my contempt, and yes, sometimes even my hatred.
If you wish me to be kind, be kind.
If you wish me to be compassionate, be compassionate.
But I am tired of taking the high road, and I now return arrows for arrows.
I now return contempt for contempt.
Because I am one of the men who is building the next generation in thought, in word, in deed, and in the flesh.
And I will Carve aside the lies that hide my child from a free future with my bare fucking hands if I have to, with blood running down from my forearms and my nails splintered in wood, if that is what is necessary.
That is what will be done, Daniel, and I am concerned that you have given up building Something great.
Because you have been told that you're nothing and you've been told that women are evil and you've seen that men are shit.
And that's the level that you're at.
That's the level of society that you're at.
Well, you look up and you see this obese woman as a step up.
And I'm saying you don't need a step up, you need a jetpack up, my friend.
You've got to shake off these cobwebs of futility and service to women.
Let me give you a tiny tip.
Okay. If you really want to serve women, Daniel, the last thing you ever want to do is listen to them.
The last thing you ever want to do is listen to them.
It's almost like listen to what women say they want and just do the right thing.
Or do the opposite.
Sometimes it seems that's the way to go.
I want a man who's sensitive.
No, you don't. I want a man who's emotionally available.
No, you don't. That's what God gave you girlfriends for.
God gave you girlfriends, God gave you other women, so you can snipe and bitch and fight with them.
Be their emotional support structure or whatever the hell happens.
But don't listen.
And it's not just women.
I mean, what men say, too.
Don't listen. And for God's sakes, do not listen to anyone tell you What being a man is.
Even me. But you know that masculinity is strength and power, compassion, kindness.
And that we have.
But we have mistaken the entire world for our families, the entire world for our own tribes.
And now we have no boundaries, no borders.
Women say...
We want equality!
No, you don't. You've been lied to about that because what is actually being delivered is superiority, is the tyranny of tits.
Because you say, oh, we want equality.
Really? Why aren't you working in the sewers?
Why aren't you fixing the pylons that come down when there's an ice storm?
Why aren't you lumberjacks?
I don't want equality. 70% women in a lot of university programs these days, nobody's sitting there saying, well, that's too much!
Got to pull that back. We're going to need some outreach for men now.
It's gone too far.
Nah. I like that.
I especially like when you said strength there as a quality of man.
Yeah. You know, it's like, it's been redefined these days, like, Strength to conform, you know, or strength to withstand whatever happens to you.
But, I mean, people forget that strength means the ability to do what needs to be done when the time comes, whatever that may be.
And don't listen to women about what's needed in the world.
For God's sakes!
Did women suggest sewers?
Did women suggest electrical grids?
No! Do you know, here's a piece of genius, a tiny little, there's nothing to do with me, there's a little tiny slice of genius.
Do you know how brilliant the migrants are who've come to Germany from the Middle East and from Africa?
Do you know their nickname for Angela Merkel?
Oh, what's that? It's Mama Merkel.
Mama Merkel. Mama Merkel.
Oh, I see. Oh, I see.
Yeah. Go on. So they play off her motherly role, right?
And take advantage.
Just take advantage of the system.
Just totally abuse and slaughter.
But it's okay because they got Mama to protect them.
Yeah, she has no kids. Yeah.
Doesn't mean she has no maternal instinct.
Mama Merkel. Jeez.
Mama Merkel. Women say, we want diversity!
No, you don't. No, you don't.
Certainly feminists don't.
Because it is unusual for women to be pro-free market.
Just look at the studies about, even among economists, women are much more central planners than free market planners.
And so, if you want diversity, you want the groups with the least representation or the least numerical grouping to get the most airing.
Now, fewer women are for the free market and fewer women are, quote, right-wing or conservative.
And so if feminists like the diversity, then they would be doing a big outreach to free market women, to conservative women, to right-wing women, to make sure that they had their voices.
And they don't. Women are front and center trying to shut down that speech.
Women say they want diversity, but they don't.
They say they want equality, but they don't.
Thank you.
Do you remember Emma Watson, the he for she?
A little trembling fragile flower of a woman in the white dress talking to the UN. And she says, I want men to be sensitive.
I want men to be in touch with their feminine side.
I want men to be emotionally available.
I want men who can cry.
And she's dating a rugby captain.
Don't listen!
Do not listen!
It's a test!
That's how you get friend-zoned!
I want a sensitive man.
Okay, I'll cry. All right.
She's going to go date the rugby captain who's not crying unless he's had a limb torn off and he's currently being beaten on the head with it.
And also, like, women are new to this whole thing.
I mean, I did a show recently on women...
No crap all about politics.
I mean, most women.
So they're kind of new to this, you know?
They've had the vote for less than 100 years in many places and less than that in some places.
Kind of new. They've not gone through this whole cycle of civilization thing yet.
Now, I'm not saying men individually have, but we have a kind of collective wisdom about this.
Right. We have been conditioned by that.
Quick question. Are the flourishing, successful, expanding societies those that either A, listen to women and do exactly what they say, or B, don't?
Don't. Right.
Middle Eastern religions versus...
The West! Right.
So, my concern is that you are, I think, like I was, and I think like a lot of the male callers in, that you are just used to serving women.
Yeah. I mean, I've been trying to climb out of that hole for a long time, and every time I think I'm out, I just, I see another peak I have to cross.
Yeah, this is the great, like, if our civilization is to survive, we have to stop listening to women.
And it doesn't mean stop listening to women about everything, but we have to, we have to stop listening to women and start looking at what they do.
I'm sorry, the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon is indisputable.
I want A, a sensitive man, or B, a guy with a helicopter who beats me half to death.
Look at what women do.
I'm an empiricist. This is nothing sexist.
Look at what men do. Look at what women do.
And look at what they actually like.
Look at how women treat a conservative speaker.
Versus a Muslim speaker.
Look at how women behave when Milo comes to speak, or Ben Shapiro, or Stephen Crowder, or you name it, versus look at Angela May on Visitor Mosque covering her head up in deference to Sharia law.
I'm just telling you, empirically, what women say they want is not matching up with their actions. - Thanks.
Thank you.
I hear you. And if anybody...
I mean, tell me where I'm wrong.
This is just... I mean, maybe I'll change tomorrow.
I'm just telling you what I'm thinking right now.
that there's this big thing where women are going to make a lot of fuss, a lot of noise.
I remember, uh, I remember, Dating a woman once who was like, I want a sensitive man.
I want a sensitive man. And she had a poster of David Beckham on her wall.
Is that on the sensitive wall or not so much?
Maybe that's just because he's a soccer player, you know, easy to injure.
But he's not a sensitive soccer player, that's my point.
He's a ferocious competitor.
And he didn't get to the top of his profession by crying.
I see your point.
Now, if you're in the service of women, Daniel, you said, this girl can't believe you're with her.
Right? Right.
So are you in service to her?
Just as you were in service to the recovering heroin addict?
No. No, I don't believe so.
I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it's a service.
You said you didn't want to have sex, and then you fucked her, right?
Yeah, you got me there. Because she wanted it.
You got me there. Oh, yeah.
No, I see. I see. Are you in service to her?
Yeah. I mean, yes.
I'm not saying 100%.
I'm like, but is there that tendency or is that there?
Yeah, well, I mean, it must be there, right?
Why would I put myself in these situations?
What's in it for you? Yeah.
You're a hot guy. You're a status symbol for women.
You're a himbo. You're arm candy, right?
I'm not saying you're dumb, but I mean, you're in terms of like status for women, you're a high status guy.
Physically, right? Right.
Are you serving women?
Are you serving their needs?
No, I see. Well, of course you are.
That's why you're at home still.
You understand? Your mother needs you.
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. It all comes together.
She's anxious if you're not there.
So don't worry her. Just give up your whole fucking life.
Yeah. You're in service to women.
You're on the plantation, man.
Full on. I see.
I see. It's been a long time.
And it's not, your mother probably says she wants you around or she wants you to be there or she worries about you and so on, but it's not good for her.
No, it's not. No, I see that.
I mean, you know how we were talking about the time for fatherhood is past?
Mm-hmm. It's true for motherhood too, bro.
Yeah. The time for motherhood is past.
Yeah. You're in your fourth decade.
Yeah. Getting old.
Getting old. It'll happen before you know it.
And every day you continue in this big square womb is another day when a great woman gets snatched up never to be on the market again.
You understand there are these skyhooks taking the last of the quality women out of your environment.
And you're just diddling and squiggling and rambling along like you've got all the time in the world.
No! Boom, boom, boom!
They're being teleported out, man!
Yeah, I mean, for a long time I thought there were no virtuous women.
But I mean, I guess...
I guess if there are, I wasn't going to find any like that.
Do you have any siblings, Daniel?
Hmm? Do you have any siblings?
Older sister. And is she out in the world?
She recently came back.
Yeah. Right.
She's married, and then while I was away for six months, she moved back home.
Kind of to help my mom out.
What do you mean? Oh, because your stepdad died.
Yeah, yeah. But what's her husband have to say about this?
It kind of worked out for him because he was kind of in transit from graduating and then to getting a job.
Hmm. Now they're planning on taking over the house financially.
What, your mom's house?
Yes. So they're moving in altogether?
Mm-hmm. But didn't your mom say she was evil?
Yeah. I mean, that was a while ago when she was first telling me about women.
But yeah, she's not the worst single mother ever.
She's made a lot of bad choices.
She's not the worst single mother.
Right. But you've been dating drug addicts and crazy women.
Right. Okay, so sorry, man.
Not by you. Yeah, that's fair.
There's no pass. No, and I mean worse, better, who knows, right?
She's not Hitler. Boy, you don't see too many mother's cards like that.
Well, at least you weren't Mengele.
I mean, it's like, she gave me a sincere apology for not having a father figure in my life, which I appreciate, but it's still like...
Wait, she's a stepdad. Yeah, I mean, it was still a bit late, but yeah, he was there.
How old were you when your stepdad came along?
I think I was about 13.
Yeah. I still feel like I'm shooting in the dark.
A lot of times in life.
Right. Do you think that your sister and her husband should move in with your mom?
I'm kind of glad they are because I was kind of avoiding being put in a situation where I'm helping my mom out so that way I can shove off, as it were, get out and dodge.
Oh, so you'll stuff your sister and her husband into the guilt crack so you can get away.
Right. Well, I mean, they're going to just buy the house from her and get her able to retire so she can, I don't know if she's going to stay.
Do you care about your brother-in-law, Daniel?
Yeah, I like the guy.
Yeah, I do care about him. Well, do you think that it will benefit his marriage to move in with your mom?
Hmm. Hmm.
I don't know. Oh, come on, man!
I don't know if that's... Please, don't make me work this hard.
Oh, okay. Is this going to be a good thing for his marriage, for him being a father, for him being a husband?
I suppose you don't think it is.
What do you think? Maybe, I don't know.
I feel like we're all rough around the edges.
And with our paths, we're all trying to climb out here.
So, I don't know.
Given my mom's past, she doesn't have much credibility with you.
I understand. And she has done everything that she's done.
The way she's raised us, there's not a whole lot to be forgiven.
I understand that too.
But would it be bad for him?
I mean... I guess it would be.
But I'm not sure why he chose my sister if he knew better.
And I wouldn't know how to save him if that were the case.
That this was really ultimately a shit decision for him.
I don't know. I wouldn't even know how to begin to tell him what he's getting into if indeed it's even that bad.
You know, you could just send him this conversation, couldn't you?
I could. Yeah.
See, now you're serving.
Again, you understand that, right?
Because here's the thing, man.
You got to help people.
You got to help people.
This is your family, right?
This is your brother-in-law. This is your sister.
And... Your mother has said, women are evil, I'm evil, and she decided to have a child with a meth addict.
Or children, I suppose.
Yeah, you're the younger. She had two children with a meth addict.
All right? You get that, right?
You understand fundamentally what I'm talking about here.
She was a terrible mother.
I always knew the story, but it's different hearing it like that.
Tell me where the definition of good mom does include having two children with a meth addict who has to flee, drug addicts hellbent on killing him and possibly the entire family.
No, there's no...
It's just kind of weird, you know, how one day...
A day that I was too young to even remember just kind of fundamentally changed everything.
And all the decisions that they made before that day that led down this shit path of just horrible upbringing and strife and failure.
I thought I had already gone through this, but I guess I don't.
at all.
Mm-hmm.
Your mother should have worked really hard to try and keep your father in your life.
Right?
Right.
She was never really good at that.
Did she try? Struggled with my stepdad.
No, I mean, her definition of try is not my definition of try.
Right. Yeah.
Does your sister and her husband, do they want kids?
Yeah, they're trying right now.
All right. All right.
Do you think the children will benefit from close proximity to your mother?
I think my sister would go that way.
I know for a fact she has...
No, no, no. Just answer the question, man.
Come on. We've been talking for a while.
Help me be efficient here. I'm sorry.
Okay, go ahead. Did your...
Will your... Sisters, children, will they benefit from being in close proximity to your mother?
No. Okay. So, who do you owe allegiance to?
The next generation.
Well, yeah. Certainly, you owe allegiance to those who can't protect themselves, right?
Mm-hmm. Now, if you talk to your sister, my guess is that you won't get very far.
Because wanting to get along, wanting to appease female in-group preference, lack of objectivity when it comes to ethics, lack of strength when it comes to protecting the next generation, that may all kick in, right?
Maybe you can talk to your brother-in-law.
Maybe he doesn't know the history of the family.
Maybe he doesn't know that the reason why those kids are not going to have a grandfather is because the mom married a math addict that had two kids for them.
Damn.
Damn.
Right.
You're right. No, I mean, I should at least try to warn him, if only for my conscience, but I mean...
Your definition, remember you said about your mom, my definition of trying hers may not be the same, but the way you're saying you're going to try, Daniel, is you're planning to fail.
You're going to do the least minimum so you can appease your conscience, but you're not really going to make it a mission.
What cost am I willing to save my nieces or potential nieces and nephews?
This is the thing. Now, maybe this is a male thing, maybe it's not, but it certainly is a good thing, which is what cost?
Who cares? It's the right thing to do.
You can't control him, obviously.
You can't make him do something.
You can't. Take over his body avatar style.
I get all of that. Yeah.
But you can go full tilt boogie.
You can go to the max.
You can go to the 10, right? Right.
No, I hear you. I'm playing out the cost in my head.
Sure. The potential could be significant, could be detrimental, could break up the whole family.
I don't know. But I see...
Maybe your mom would be willing to do some therapy.
Maybe your mom would be willing to do more than she has done to fix things that happened in the past or to prevent them from recurring in the future, right?
But so far, the shitty dating decisions have gone from one generation to the next, right?
Nothing has stopped them.
So what is to prevent it from going to the third generation?
What has changed? What is going to change?
Right. I mean, I had hoped that my sister and her husband had such a good relationship that it would reflect well on their children.
But I mean, hope is pretty weak.
It's not really doing anything.
It's just a judgment call from the armchair.
No, that's an excuse.
So, you're right.
You don't want to do something that might interfere with what your mother wants.
Right? Yeah.
Or what your sister wants. Right.
Right. Service to women.
Service to women. It has become pathological.
Not in you, I just mean in the West as a whole.
Well... You're right.
I won't give more respect to women than women give to men.
I'm no longer interested in anything except reciprocity.
And, listen, I serve my wife.
I serve my daughter.
I mean, I have no problem with that.
That's fantastic. But that's reciprocity.
They bring incalculable value to my life.
Voluntarily, not pathologically.
Yeah. It's not appeasement.
It's not fear. It is the honest payment of a debt I owe.
But the reason your mom told you that women were evil, Daniel, is so you wouldn't leave her.
How old were you when she told you that?
Pretty young.
How old are you when you don't do that?
Maybe I was like six or seven.
I don't know, like right when my interest first came out.
Well, that's our selected as hell and that's father absence to be concerned about sexual matters when you're six or seven.
So you're six or seven and she tells you that women are evil.
Mm-hmm. Do you know how destructive that is?
To a child? To a son?
Do you get that? I wish I... I can only imagine.
Well, you can do more than imagine because you can look at your dating history.
That was programmed by your mom.
Because saying to you that women are evil doesn't turn off your sex drive, did it?
It just pointed your sex drive at evil women.
Do you know how destructive that is?
*sigh* Yeah. I mean, my daughter is nine.
The idea that I would say to her that men are evil, boys are rapists.
I mean, it's wildly inappropriate to a nine-year-old.
And how incredibly destructive.
Because you remember it decades later, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Serve people all you want.
But serve good people.
Serve people who reciprocate.
I hear you.
It's a lot.
It's a lot. It's a lot, and you're not alone in this at all.
I was older than you when it first struck me.
I remember very clearly, very clearly.
It first struck me as in a relationship.
And I said to myself, I said, wait, what's in this for me again?
And I was like, it was a really odd thought for me to have.
Wait, I should really be benefiting from this as well.
In a long-term situation.
Right. And it was like, huh, I guess I should really be thinking about what I want and what I need.
Kind of wishing that thought wasn't so foreign.
It is, right? I mean, I don't think I'm alone in that.
Like, okay, well, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What's in this for me? Long run.
How does this accord with my values?
My virtues? What's the big plus?
Here. Right.
I remember I got like goosebumps down my spine thinking, like, wait a minute.
Is this benefiting me again?
And after I asked that question, and after I acted on that question, well, I got what I wanted.
Which is to be in a relationship where I never have to ask that question.
I never even think of asking that question.
What is in it for you?
What is in it for you to appease your mom?
What is in it for you to date this obese woman?
What is in it for you? How does it serve your life, your future, your goals, your desires?
If you can't answer that question, guess what?
You just answered that question.
Yeah. No, it doesn't.
Do not be of service.
Do not be of utility.
Do not be a slave. Be a man.
And what men do is they trade.
Value for value. Be a trader.
Thank you, Steph. Thank you.
All right. Will you let us know how it goes?
Yeah, that's all.
It's a lot there. Thanks, man. I appreciate your call.
You too, man. Thank you.
All right. Okay, up next we have Mindy.
Mindy wrote in and said, My 33-year-old sister, who has never had a full-time job and has been unemployed for three years, is still living with my parents.
My dad is nearly 70, but he's still working 50 hours a week to support my family.
My parents haven't done anything that wakes her up.
How can I convince my sister that she needs to be independent?
That's her Mindy. Hello.
Hey Mindy, how are you doing tonight?
Pretty good. How are you?
I'm well, thanks. Boy, we're just talking about a man too much in the service of things and your dad is 70, still working 50 hours a week.
Does he love his job?
Yeah, he really likes his job.
Oh, good. Okay. Okay, good.
Does he like working 50 hours a week?
I mean, I know retirement is not that great, particularly for men, but is he okay with that?
Yes, I think he likes to keep moving and not really settling in-house, so he doesn't really mind.
Right. And Mindy, what do you think happened with your sister?
Why did she not get going in life?
Because she has lots of problems with social skills and she's not really good to talking to people and working with someone else.
That really disrupts her.
Has she always been that way?
Yes.
From little kid onwards, right?
Yeah. Huh.
And do you know if she ever got help with these issues of social anxiety or whatever it is?
I found some books about developing social skills but it doesn't really help.
Oh, it didn't help?
Did she ever talk to a professional or therapist or anything like that?
No, I don't think so.
Why do you think not?
I mean, if she has issues with these anxieties, wouldn't you go...
You know, if she had a broken arm, you'd take her to a doctor, right?
I mean, if she has issues with these anxieties, wouldn't you want to deal with it?
It's exposure therapy, right?
Like, if you're scared of spiders, you look at a picture, and then you look at a spider in a box, and then eventually you get more comfortable over time, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
It's not really common to go to therapists in Japan.
Right. So, yeah.
It's Western white magic voodoo, right?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, got it.
Got it. And have you talked to your parents about any of this?
I didn't, but my other sister was really upset about what's going on to my sister.
Go on. It was a really long time ago and she was upset about my elder sister not working and my middle sister was talking to my parents that they need to work on and make her independent but they didn't really do anything.
Do you think there's any chance for her?
Whenever she gets motivated, yes, but it never happened.
What do you mean?
She never tried to work on like to be skilled or look for a decent job.
Right. Does she feel nervous at all about her life and where it's going or not going?
I think she is, but I think she's too afraid to move on.
Does she want to get married or have kids or anything like that?
No. And do you know why?
She's not attractive and I think she's a terrible person to get married with.
Why is she not attractive?
She's overweight and she never put makeup on, doesn't dress nice.
I think she's not interested in having a relationship.
Does she know that Japanese women aren't really allowed to be overweight?
Is that... Does she know that?
Yeah, she does.
Okay, okay, just checking.
Because genetically, it's hard for Japanese people to gain weight, right?
I mean, it's not the same as other ethnicities, but all right.
So, wow, is there...
Is there anything in the culture that has, you know, there are some cultures where one kid is kind of picked to take care of the parents when the parents get old?
Is there anything like that?
Like one sibling just can't get married because he's got to take care of the parents?
Yeah, but she's not really taking care of my parents.
No, I guess not. And is she smart?
Yeah, she's got a bachelor, so she's not stupid.
Well, that depends.
What's her bachelor's in? She studied Japanese literature.
I'm not quite sure, but something like that.
Right. Okay. And so she's smart.
And what does she do with her?
It's always kind of confusing to me because I have been busy my whole life.
I have been busy my whole life.
Like today, just by the by, you know, I get up.
I play with my daughter.
I have some breakfast.
I chatted with a friend.
I chatted with Mike. We went over a presentation.
I did an hour and a half recording of a presentation.
Didn't quite get it finished. Grabbed Something to eat for 15 minutes, and now I'm doing a three-and-a-half-hour call-in show.
That's a bit of a long day. You forgot the 60-minute interview you also did today, Steph.
You forgot about that.
Oh, right! That's right!
I did an interview with Suzanne Venker, which was very enjoyable.
And that's a bit of an unusual—I don't want to sound like a workaholic.
That was an unusually packed day.
But if there's less work, then there's more parenting or friends or whatever it is, right?
Or time with my wife.
So, do you have any idea what she does with the 16 hours that people are awake in the day?
She's not really doing anything.
I remember that she was just playing video games, and that's about it.
Right, right.
Yeah, well, that is the big problem, right?
Video games can stave off boredom to the point where people's lives get completely destroyed.
Yeah. Now, if you could...
Mindy, when you think of talking to your sister, do you feel nervous?
Do you feel angry?
Do you feel frustrated?
Do you feel hopeful?
I mean, what are your feelings when you think about talking to her?
I feel nervous and kind of sad.
When I'm talking to her, I have to be careful not to say anything like, is she working?
She's emotionally very unstable, so I don't want to say anything to her that makes her emotional.
All right. You're saying she's got a mean temper?
Yeah. Okay, because when you say unstable, that could mean she's really joyful but a little random.
But if you feel nervous, it's because she's got a...
Has she got a bad temper? Uh-huh.
Yeah. Right.
And how long has she had a bad temper for?
Since... Since when I started remembering things, she's been really compulsive.
Right. And she hit you when you were a child, right?
Yeah. And what was the story with that?
When I was six, she was studying She was studying something in the college and I took out one last tissue and she got really angry about it and get really grumpy and throwing things and something like that happened several times when I was little.
Right. Right.
And was she kind at times when you were little, Mindy?
Yeah, she was really sweet sometimes, but she gets really violent sometimes.
Yeah, and she would hit you, if I remember rightly, about once a month?
Mm-hmm. Right.
So she's violent, she has a bad temper, she's fat, she's unstable, and she's lazy.
Yeah. I can tell you what I think, and then you can tell me you don't like it.
Is that alright? Can we have that deal?
Yeah. Why do you want to save her?
I'm worried about my parents because he has to work really hard to support my sister and my mother and I don't really want that happen too long.
Well, your parents don't have to do anything to support your sister.
I mean, in reality, right?
I know that there's cultural reasons and family reasons and so on, but they don't actually have to support her.
They could kick her out tomorrow, right?
Yeah. Now, I'm not saying that would be easy, but they could, and she would probably find a way to survive, right?
Mm-hmm. So, it seems to me that as the youngest person in your family, is that right?
You're the youngest? Yeah.
Okay. So Mindy, it seems to me that as the youngest person in the family, you're trying to do the job that your parents should be doing.
Yeah. But you can't, because you're not your parents.
Like, you can't...
If you were the parents, right, then, you know, somebody might say, well, sorry, you've got to cut her off.
You've got to kick her out. She's got to go get her life started, right?
But you can't convince her to leave if your parents keep giving her free stuff.
Because she's had now, I guess, three decades or more Of avoiding her anxieties, of avoiding her fears, and of being kind of mean and nasty, right?
So those are very long-term habits, and it's very hard to break habits Even when you are experiencing very negative consequences.
Like it's tough to quit gambling even if you're losing your house.
It's tough to quit drinking even if your liver is starting to fail.
It's tough to stop overeating even if you become really fat.
So even if you personally are experiencing very negative things from your bad habits, they're very, very tough to quit.
I mean, talk to any smoker, right?
And say, oh, are you happy about smoking?
No, I hate smoking, but I'm addicted and I'm going to die from it.
You know, like, it's really, really tough to quit habits, even when negative stuff is happening to you.
But what negative things are happening to your sister?
Yeah. She doesn't want to get married.
She doesn't want to have kids.
She doesn't want a job.
She enjoys playing video games.
She likes not having to get up and go to work.
She likes not having to be nice because, you know, if you have a job and you throw things and yell at people, then you won't have a job for very long.
Unless you're in pro wrestling, which she may not be quite big enough for.
So as long as your parents...
Are continuing to support these bad habits, what chance does she have of stopping them?
None. I don't think so.
At least I wouldn't put much money on it.
Now, what about talking to your parents and saying, guys, you're not helping.
This is not working.
Yeah. Yeah, my sister did it, but they don't.
What my parents said was, it's too much for her if they kick out her.
So they don't want to do that.
Well then, nothing's going to change.
Yeah. Now they could of course say, you have six months.
And we will, I don't know, maybe pay for therapy.
If she's got a part-time job, she's unemployed for three years, right?
She's probably got no money. But they could say, listen, there is therapy that can really help you.
And there is, as far as I understand it.
I mean, I can't diagnose her and I don't know for sure, but there's lots of cognitive behavioral therapy that can help you.
Your sister with her social anxiety and other issues of self-regulation, anxiety or whatever is going on, there's lots of therapy that could really help.
But if nobody's willing to do anything to change, then nothing's going to change.
Well, other than your sister's going to get older and probably fatter, right?
Yeah. So, I should just leave her as it is.
Well, you could talk to your parents, and in particular your father, right?
Do you have a sense of whether it's your father or your mother who's more resistant to giving your sister some consequences?
My mother...
It's kind of giving up and she doesn't really care but like she would starve after my dad passed away.
Right. And what do they think is going to happen to your sister when your parents die?
Maybe they think either me or other sister help her.
Well, that's great.
Way to go, mom and dad.
Good job taking leadership.
Good job taking control.
That's terrible.
Yeah. That you have to clean up the mess that your parents are making.
What if you and your sister go and say, nope, we're not going to do it.
She's not retarded.
She's not incapable.
She's not paralyzed. She's not gravely ill.
I'm not taking her in like she...
I'm going to have my own children.
I don't want a child who's older than me.
Right? So if you both went...
I don't know. This is just... I'm just throwing out ideas here.
If you both went...
To your parents, your sister and you, Mindy, and you went to your parents and you said, we're not taking her.
We're not taking her.
So when you guys die, she's on her own.
So you better get her ready to be an adult.
What do you think they would say? Maybe my dad say I'm being cold.
Oh, so he's concerned that you might be being cold.
Now, listen, Mindy, when you were a child and your sister was hitting you or throwing things at you, did your father...
Well, what did your father do in those situations?
My dad wasn't really involved in the household.
He was just working.
And basically, my mom was...
Protecting me from my sister.
But your father was still a father, right?
I mean, I'm sure he wasn't working 100 hours a week.
There must have been times when he was home, right?
So what did he do about your sister being abusive?
I was really little, so I don't quite remember what he did.
I think he told her off a little bit.
but it didn't really change.
Right. So I think the answer is not much.
He didn't do much, right? So he's asking you to be, I guess, warm and friendly and supportive towards your sister, but he did not require that when you were a child and your sister was much older, that he be warm and friendly and supportive towards you, right?
Sorry, that was the smallest sound I've ever heard in my life.
I'm not sure whether that was a yes or a no.
Yes.
Now that's a yes with a question marker.
I'm still not sure if that's a yes or a no.
Tell me if I'm wrong. Honestly, that's totally fine with me.
Yeah, I think that's correct.
Okay.
So if she can be cold to you and mean to you, why can't you be cold to her?
I don't really want to be.
To be what? To be mean to my sister.
Why not? That feels like I... I became personality as my sister.
Oh, so you feel that if you're, quote, mean to your sister, that you're being like your sister?
Yeah. I don't think so.
I mean, I'm not suggesting that you hit your sister, or you scream at your sister, or you call her names, but refusing to support a grown adult who's much older than you?
No. That is not the same as being mean.
Like, let me ask you this.
Mindy, let's say that you and I are in college together, and I ask you to help me to cheat on an exam.
What would you say? No.
And I'd say, but Mindy, you're being so mean to me.
You're being so cold.
I need. I couldn't study.
I didn't understand it. I got the date wrong.
The dog ate my homework.
I got confused. Space aliens abducted me.
I'm bald. You have to help me.
Don't be so mean.
Don't be so cruel.
So cold-hearted.
What would you say? I still would say no.
Right. Why?
I need it.
Oh, Mindy, I would totally help you cheat.
You ever need me to help you cheat?
Well, you're Japanese, you wouldn't.
But if you ever did need me to help you cheat, I would totally help you.
Why won't you help me?
I don't want to cheat either.
Yeah, see, that's the problem, right?
But it would be wrong, right?
It would be wrong to transfer your knowledge to me because I'm being tested on my knowledge, not yours, right?
Yeah. Now, is it wrong to transfer your hard-earned resources to your sister when she's fully capable, with work, of supporting herself?
Aren't you helping your sister cheat in life?
No. To get resources without working for them.
Now, if it's not cold-hearted for you to refuse helping me cheat, how is it cold-hearted to say, no, I'm not supporting my sister.
She's a grown person.
She's capable. She's intelligent.
She can do it. It sounds to me, Mindy, like your sister.
Has kind of bullied everyone.
And everyone's kind of afraid of her temper.
Is that fair to say? Yeah, I think so.
Boy, you get the one openly aggressive person in Japan these days.
You can rule the entire island, it would sound like.
It's like being the one assertive person in Germany.
Yeah. So...
I would say that...
If you can get together with your family, now I don't know how many people or who should be involved or whatever, but I'll tell you the way that I would approach it.
I don't know what you should do. I'll just tell you what I would do.
So I would sit there and you can't get people to solve a problem unless they admit that there's a problem.
So if you can get together with your family, everyone is the best.
And you can say, look, this is not working.
My sister's 33 years old.
She's been unemployed for three years.
She's never had a full-time job.
This is not working. She's not mentally incompetent.
She's not paralyzed. She's not ill.
She can do it. She's able-bodied.
Maybe a little too able-bodied, but she's able-bodied.
So can we agree at least that something is not working perfectly here?
Now, if they can't admit that, then you just, you wash your hands, you go home.
And you say, well, I gave it my best shot.
Because if they can't say that the 33-year-old who's fat and inert and still mean and socially anxious and not doing anything with her life, if people can't even admit that that's a problem, okay, well then there's no solution is coming and you can't affect anything.
Now, if they say, it's a problem, but we can't fix it, well, then you've got your first opening.
So if they say, well, yes, it's a problem, but we can't fix it, right?
Then... It's like, you know, the image that strikes...
So you and I are walking out of the university, and there's a door...
And I pull on the door and it won't open.
And I say, Mindy, we're locked in.
I'm pulling on the door.
I can't solve it.
It can't fix it. It won't open.
And what would you say?
Well, you have to open.
Do you want to try pushing there, white boy?
You want to try pushing?
Because if I say, well, I'm pulling on the door.
It won't open. We're locked.
We're trapped. We can't get out.
And you say, did you try pushing?
Oh, okay.
Well, that's better.
That was close. We were almost trapped.
So if your parents say there's a problem, but we don't know how to fix it, then you say, what have you tried to fix it?
Now, I'm going to assume they're going to say basically not much, right?
We made some phone calls.
We asked her to do this, right?
Because if people have a problem they say can't be solved, you have every right to ask them how many things or how many ways have you tried to solve this problem, right?
Then you can say, so there's things we haven't tried, right?
Now, there's a couple of things we could try.
We could try not paying for her, right?
We could try not paying for her and then she would have to get, like we could either charge rent or we could kick her out or then she would have to get a job and she'd have to deal with that.
Now, given that your parents have enabled her for over three decades to be lazy and belligerent, that's a lot to ask for.
Then you could say, well, and you could do the research and say there's been good treatments, like your sister could be 12 weeks away from having much less social anxiety.
12 weeks! It's not a long time for this exposure therapy to work.
So you could do the research and you could get the facts and you could say, well, this could really help.
Could help her control her temper, could help her control her social anxiety, could help her become more ambitious.
Can we try that? And if they say no, then you say, listen, you're Japanese.
This is data. You have to agree.
It's just the way it works.
It's science. You're not allowed to say no.
Don't make me break out math, because I totally will.
Right? So they have to, okay, there's a problem.
How's this for a potential solution?
Now, if they say, okay, maybe that's a solution, then you've got a problem identified, you've got paralysis, which is we can't solve the problem, you've got that to one side, and you have come with a solution,
right? And if you, now your sister's either going to say, I don't want to change anything, or Or she's going to say, you know, I'm terrified, but I'd like to do something different.
Okay, now, if she says she's not going to change anything, then you can say to your parents, well, she's not going to change.
I can't make you guys stop funding her, so you're the only people who can bring change.
You, mom, and you, dad, are the only people who can bring change to this situation.
Now, if your parents then say, we're not going to change anything, then you get closure.
Okay? Because if your sister doesn't want to change and your parents won't change, then nothing will change.
Guaranteed. 150%.
Okay?
Now, if they say, yes, it's a problem.
No, we haven't done everything we possibly could.
And here's a data-driven solution that you're bringing to us.
So we're going to try that.
Well, then you have got...
A potential solution.
Now, just because they agree in the moment doesn't mean they're actually going to do it, right?
But at least you've come with a solution.
And either then they're going to do that stuff or they're not.
Now, if they do it, the odds are that she, if she wants, will improve and will have a life and will have something to thank you for.
And if she doesn't change, or if your parents don't require her to change, even though they've admitted there's a problem and they've admitted that there's a solution, then, Mindy, it's going to be both painful and good.
The painful part I don't have to explain to you.
That's why you're calling in. You'll see your sister continue to rot away playing video games and sitting on a dried-up pair of...
What is it called?
The dry fish lady eggs?
Anyway... But I'll tell you...
I'll tell you an upside.
Now, you are a very nice young lady, I can tell that.
And I'm going to invite you to not be quite so nice.
Just for a minute or two. Just for a minute or two.
Okay. Your sister has a mean streak, right?
Mm-hmm. She can be abusive, which is why you're scared of her, right?
Mm-hmm. She can be...
Nasty, right? Like, does she use words as well as, like, just use words to be mean?
Um... Call your names or call other people names?
Um... No, like, do you mean, like, swear or something?
No, you know, call people stupid or idiots or...
Oh. Um...
Not really. She's just become really angry and violent.
And she's still violent now?
No, it's getting much better, but it was really bad, like, a while ago.
Right. But she still is occasionally, but she's getting better.
Is that right? Mm-hmm.
All right. So...
Mindy, have you ever read comics or watched superhero movies or that kind of anime?
Yeah, a little bit.
Do you think that bad people should suffer for what they have done?
It depends on their attitude.
Yeah.
About what they think they've done.
What do you mean? If they...
I know that they have done something bad and they try to make it better.
They don't have to suffer.
Right. But what if they are, I don't know, the word is unrepentant.
What if they don't admit that there's a problem or admit it but don't do anything about it?
And what if, let's say, there was a supervillain?
Hmm. And we'll call her Chunky.
Then we have a supervillain called Chunky, who sits on her fat behind, plays video games, yells at people, and drives her dad out to work for money for her when he's nearly 70 years old.
And uses violence and used to beat up her nice sister.
Do you think that person should suffer for the wrongs that they have done if they do not acknowledge those wrongs and apologize?
Yeah, I think so.
Good, good. Okay, I quite agree.
Now, it is important to be nice, and I appreciate your niceness, and I think it's wonderful, but it is more important to be just than nice.
You see, nice is a wonderful quality if it is earned.
Nice is a weak quality if it is given without being earned.
It is more important and more moral to be just than it is to be nice.
And justness means we are not nice to people who are not nice.
And so I'm going to invite you into a way of thinking.
That I have found helpful.
You may find it helpful as well.
And it's going to blow your mind.
And it is going to be something that is going to make you recoil.
But I'll tell you anyway.
An important part of being moral is learning to relish the suffering of bad people.
Now, When I say relish the suffering of bad people, I don't mean that we want people to be bad so we can enjoy it.
But what I mean is that to take satisfaction in the reality that the world is just and fair.
And so we do good to be happy and And people who do wrong, I don't know whether we can say that your sister is evil or just bad, let's just say bad, to do wrong, to be bad, doesn't make people happy.
Now, if we want to break that rule, then we kind of want to undo the entire moral universe.
And the conscience of humanity and the cause and effect of reason equals virtue equals happiness.
So if you want your sister to not suffer, it means that you want the universe to not be moral.
Because if your sister, which you say she is, violent, mean, abusive, lazy, and preying on your elderly father for money, that's horrible.
And by God, she should be miserable.
Because if she's not miserable, there's no moral arc to the universe.
There's no reason to be good.
In terms of happiness. And you might as well be a lazy, fat, violent exploiter, because you can be perfectly happy doing so.
So, when I say relish the suffering of evildoers, relish it because it reminds us that the universe is moral.
And the universe is moral.
By that, I don't mean that there's a God.
I am an atheist. But I do mean that we have a conscience.
An evil doing, being predatory, being violent, being abusive, being exploitive, makes people unhappy.
And I'm glad that it makes people unhappy.
You couldn't be a nutritionist if people could eat whatever they wanted and it would be healthy for them.
You couldn't be an exercise coach if people could exercise or not exercise and have exactly the same effect.
There would be no point being a moralist if there was nothing innate to humanity that strove towards virtue and pushed us away from vice, from wrongdoing.
The record in the mind of what we do is unerasable.
Conscience is the recording of what we do according to moral standards that are outside of our control.
Like if you eat a lot of junk and you don't exercise, you will be unhealthy.
What we put into our bodies passes beyond our control.
If you eat a lot of junk, you don't exercise, you have no muscles and a lot of fat, and your bones will weaken, and your joints will weaken, and your tendons will shrink, and all this nasty stuff will happen.
We have a choice over what we put into our mouths, chew and swallow.
We don't have a choice how that affects our bodies.
Now, in the same way, we have a choice about the actions we take In every moment of every day, we have a choice.
We have a choice about what we do.
We have no choice about the effect that has on our conscience.
If we have a conscience.
If we don't have a conscience, then we're like kind of another species, and that's still a miserable existence in a miserable environment, but it's beyond the scope of what we're talking about here.
I'm going to assume that your sister has a conscience of some kind.
Cross our fingers. And so, learn to relish the suffering of people who do wrong, because that reminds us of the value of virtue.
It reminds us Of the universality of ethics.
It reminds us of the fact that we have a conscience which we need to take care of, and we cannot do it directly.
You cannot talk your conscience into or out of a damn thing anymore.
You can talk your body into developing muscles if you refuse to exercise.
The conscience is that part of our mind that records the universality of our actions and is not accessible to language correction.
You can't talk yourself in and out of it.
It's like trying to talk yourself in and out of being taller or shorter.
Your sister has done wrong, and she's done wrong by reasonable standards.
It's not like she didn't support a stateless society or whatever it was.
She has done wrong.
She has been mean. She has been a bully.
She's been a coward by not confronting her fear.
She's been lazy in terms of...
She's on the internet.
She could find out about these therapists and say, well, maybe there are not a lot of them in Japan, but...
She can find therapists who speak Japanese or whatever in other places.
It's available on the internet. And there are even self-help workbooks that you can work through in these areas.
So she's done wrong.
She has become a bad person in many ways.
And I think it's very nice of you, Mindy, to try and save her and help her.
And I think it's a good thing to do if you still want to do it.
But you do have to have a time where you're gonna stop doing it and get on with your own life.
I say, well, she's miserable.
It's like, yeah, she is.
I'm not glad that she did what she did, but I'm glad she's miserable because it reminds me of the power of being good, of being courageous, of living with independence and integrity, and of caring for your nearly 70-year-old father who should and of caring for your nearly 70-year-old father who should not be used as a workhorse to buy more junk food to pour down your sister's throat.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
it.
Good. Let us know how it goes.
It's a tough thing to do as the youngest child to try and get the family to deal with these kinds of issues.
But I really, really respect and admire you for taking this on.
But... You can't run the whole family.
All you can do is make the case and see what people do.
So thanks very much for calling in.
Thanks everyone so much for the opportunity to discuss these amazing topics with you.
It is a great and deep pleasure every time I get to do it.
Please don't forget to help the show out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Oh, February, it's a cruel and slightly decapitated Take care everyone.
