March 5, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:46:56
4019 Useful Idiots for Totalitarianism - Call In Show - February 28th, 2018
Question 1: [1:40] - “Is Freudian psychoanalysis still relevant in 2018, and if so, what (if anything) can it tell us about the relationships between men, women, and children, so as to help guide civilization toward a meaningful and productive future?”Question 2: [1:12:55] - “I am a libertarian. For the past two years I have really noticed a huge shift to leftism, pc, and post modernism inside the “libertarian movement”. These left-libertarians have infected state and national parties. These same people are the ones who will smear anyone who thinks Western Civilization and American Tradition is something to be proud of and protected. Nasty people. Even when empirical evidence is provided, they completely cuck out and proceed with terrible analogies, sophistry, and insults. For example, a lot of times when asked about the European migrant crisis they say, ‘I am not living there, so I am not qualified to give an opinion’. They say that but yet, don’t live in Venezuela and know it’s a basket-case. Is that because they have deep rooted relationships with leftists that prevents them from thinking clearly? I have several examples I would like to discuss but my ultimate question is, what do we do with the libertarians? It seems it’s a 60/40 split of left libertarians vs. Hoppean/Rothbard right libertarians. Is it time to abandon the name libertarian or do we fight? I am leaning towards abandoning, but what are your thoughts?”Question 3: [2:02:06] - “I'm training and practicing in the male dominated field of general surgery. I have come under increased scrutiny for not being more of an alpha female. Ultimately, this has led to my seeming weak to my superiors. I'm struggling with accepting and moving on from the cycle I have helped create: I act womanly, therefore I'm treated like a weak-link, therefore I somewhat feel that way, leading to being less confident, then treated with less respect, and the cycle continues. This in the context that surgery as a field and including my superiors, aren't very aware of how to handle the subtle differences between men and women surgeons. Additionally, this has be partially responsible for the program asking/telling me to repeat the 3rd of 5th year of training. My question is, how do I personally and professionally overcome this? Also, as a 31-year-old married childless woman, do I balance this with the small part of me that entertains the idea of quitting and growing our family.“Question 4: [3:29:26] - “How do I peacefully prepare my child for a violent world? - Or - Am I adequately preparing my children for the world by being a peaceful parent? Being a peaceful parent has given me children who are bright, brilliant and kind...but terrified of authority and violence. My little boy is crippled by anxiety. He cries every day before school. The other children seem so unaffected. Living in Appalachia, the general consensus is that I am not doing my part to toughen him up. Do I really have to? We have been to doctors, he is in counseling, but I am afraid...what if the problem is me? (I even learned how to shoot a gun so he feels safer when his dad is not here. I never thought I would ever fire a gun.) I was so glad to find out that Stefan is a peaceful parenting advocate. So many of the advocates make it look like hippy dippy nonsense. I would truly appreciate his guidance. This is not about me, this is about my babies.”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 everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux, Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well. So we had four great callers tonight.
The first was an in-depth examination of the theories and applicability of Freud, Sigmund Freud.
And I have been reading a lot about him lately, so we dipped a little bit into some of the history, but...
Welcome to my show!
Well, two of the main reasons why I ended up splitting from libertarians as a whole those years ago.
The third caller is a woman who is, I guess, close to halfway through the post-MD education to become libertarian.
A surgeon. And she feels discombobulated, like she's not really part of the in-group and the boys' club.
And what should she do about it?
Should she push on? And, well, let's just say her plans for her family struck me as somewhat unrealistic.
So we talked more in detail about that, and I hope you listened to that.
She was a great caller.
It was a great conversation. And the fourth caller, she has a son in particular who's scared and nervous about going to government schools, but she's still sending him.
And I hope that you understand where I stand on that.
I guarantee you by the end of the conversation, she did as well, and I think she'll make the right decision.
So, of course, thanks so much for listening.
Thank you so much for watching.
Please help out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
That's freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Alright, well up first today we have Michael.
Michael wrote in and said, Is Freudian psychoanalysis still relevant in 2018?
And if so, what, if anything, can it tell us about the relationships between men, women, and children so as to help guide civilization towards a meaningful and productive future?
That's from Michael. Well, hey Michael, how are you doing tonight?
Hi, Stefan. Thank you for having me on your show.
Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure.
So, can you tell me a little bit about your history with...
The Froude dude?
Yes. Oh gosh, where to begin?
I should start by saying that I'm a bit anxious about this topic because it's so important to me to share these thoughts.
And I also recognize that Freud and Freudianism is a bit of a controversial subject in general.
Right. My history?
Well, I would like to not go into too much personal analysis as I would like to keep this in sort of an objective realm.
However, I can say that I first became aware that I believed in what I would call Freudian truths around the age of 33.
And I began reading some of his work, and one of the first thoughts I had was, wow, this really helps me to explain precisely how my own psyche actually functions.
And not only that, but also it helped me to comprehend all of the idiosyncrasies I had been observing in my own personal life.
Also, on a public level, when analyzing women's behavior, men's behavior, political phenomena.
And I just thought, wow, this stuff, you know, this is extraordinarily accurate and very helpful to me.
Right. What, in particular, do you remember being a lightbulb moment for you with Freud?
Um... I would say the moment that I recognized that my subconscious is feminine and my conscious is masculine.
That was an epiphany moment for me.
That sounds a little more Jungian than Freudian, but nonetheless, what did you get from Freud that allowed you to assign sex to your conscious versus unconscious?
Yes. I should also state that I occasionally mingle Freud and Jung.
I guess I would say I'm a Freud-O-Jungian.
It's just that term Freud-O-Jungian sounds more like a kind of a Parmesan cheese snack.
Or a character from The Hobbit.
Yeah, okay. Yes. But I would say that while I was reading his work on the ego and the id, And the fundamental implication is that the unconscious is somewhat infantile, and the subconscious is maternal, and the conscious is paternal.
Sorry, just go through that one again, make sure I figure out where your pantheon is there.
So unconscious is maternal, right?
The unconscious is infantile.
Okay, that's the id stuff?
Okay, okay. So the id is this sort of seething, vaguely simian, you know, sex and lust and power and need and greed and so on, right?
I mean, the sort of lizard brain in a way.
Yes. Well, my understanding of it is that the individual id is basically infancy and the collective id or the collective unconscious is basically primordial human history, right?
Right. Okay, so you've got the id, and then we have the ego, right, in the sort of tripartum analysis that Freud has of the human personality.
We have the id, we have the ego, we have the superego.
So where did the ego, and for you, the id was feminine, right?
The id is infantile, and the ego is feminine, and the superego is masculine.
Okay, okay, ego is feminine, alright.
And superego is...
Now the superego, and again, correct me, it's been a while since I've read this, but my memory of the superego is the balance to the id.
So the id is seething, I want, I want, you know, sort of a Nietzschean will to power, will to have sex, will to reproduce, will to gain resources, which...
That civilization can't sustain.
This is sort of the Hobbesian nature, red and tooth and claw stuff.
And on the other hand, you have the superego, which is the internalized thou shalt nots, which are necessary to civilization, of course, and it's kind of what we give up, which is our lust for power and lust to have, you know, like young men will have sex with as many human beings Females as possible, but we kind of give that up in return for society, so we have to restrain our sexual impulses.
We end up not having polygamy or sleeping around, you know, masculine thought style, and we end up subjugating our desires in order to have a civilization which has its benefits and its discontents.
And the civilization, through religion, through patriarchy, through a variety of other mechanisms, I think now he would say through a neurotic political correctness, pushes back.
Against the seething desires and needs and preferences of the id with, you'll go to hell, you'll be punished, you'll be ostracized, it will be bad.
And it's this finger-wagging thing which is necessary but not always fun.
And the conflict sometimes between the id and the superego can produce a kind of neurosis and tension between our animal natures and the inevitable restraints we need to live in a civilized society.
Yes, I fully agree.
Okay, so superego is patriarchy, right?
Yes, I would say paternal, masculine, patriarchal.
And how did you get the ego being feminine for you?
I don't remember gender or sex being discussed in terms of ego and superego in Freud, but I'm assuming that this is something that you got out of self-analysis, is that right?
Yes. And to be clear, I've only read a portion of Freud's work.
He has so many writings.
Even his letters go into like 26 volumes, right?
Yes. Yes, it's fascinating.
And I've only read a portion of his work.
And, by the way, his letters are extraordinarily redacted by the Freud industry, and some of his letters and the redactions are going to be sealed until the 22nd century.
That is fascinating.
Yeah. It's a bit of a business, or at least was.
It's like the Elvis estate, but with cheek cancer.
Okay, so you started working with this stuff, and it made sense for you internally, and it also made sense for you when looking at society, and I assume those around you as well, right?
Yes. Well, here's one fundamental presupposition that I base my Freudian beliefs on.
I know it sounds a bit odd, as though I'm a Christian saying I'm a Christian, although in this case I'm a Freudian saying I'm a Freudian.
I might as well make that self-proclamation that I would identify myself as a Freudian.
But here is the statement.
The infantile id, internal of men and women, both loves and fears, two transcendent metaphysical forces of psyche.
A, the feminine ego's starvation capacity of Eros, and B, the masculine superego's violence capacity of Thanatos.
Okay, let's go over that a little bit more slowly.
Okay.
So, read that to me again, but let me pause where I need it.
Before I read it again, I'll try to give the more vernacular, shorter version of it, which is that the unconscious fear is that women will starve it and men will kill it.
Right. But it also loves women because that which can starve you may also feed you, and that which can kill you may also protect you.
Right, right, okay.
Would you like me to read it again?
No, I think we get it.
I think we get it. And now that is, of course, a hypothesis, a conjecture.
And I guess my question is, where is the proof?
What's the null hypothesis?
How would we know whether this was or was not true?
Well, all we have is circumstantial evidence through observation.
So... My understanding is...
You know, it's terrible.
I get these mind blanks on this where I know I have so much to say, but it's so in-depth that I... Forgive me if I'm...
No, it's fine.
It's fine. Pause for a moment.
Yeah. I would say that when observing men and women's behavior that it appears to me that the unconscious in the female collective as a whole in general is concerned with the loss of the feminine and thus their primary concern is the sustenance of the female ego which manifests as a physical love object Physical and metaphysical as the mind internalizes the physical as the metaphysical.
And thus, the inner child or the inner unconscious, the inner id, so to speak, internal of women fears that it will be starved of its own feminine value as much as the unconscious internal of men fears that it will be starved of the feminine value.
And thus, the unconscious internal of both genders Actually fears it will be starved of a woman, and that this focus on the feminine is why both men and women are primarily concerned with the sustenance of the mother,
of the female collective, of women in general, of the feminine.
Now, let me ask you this, though.
When Freud describes this tripartite analysis of the human personality, do you think that he is describing a healthy personality, the average personality, or a pathological personality?
Well, I would say it applies to all three.
And that the complexes in the pathological personality would not be balanced properly and would thus emerge in neurotic pathologies.
Whereas in the balanced person, through sublimination and various ways of guiding their libido and psychic energy, so to speak, would Conjure all these forces into a productive type of personality.
And what do you think would be a healthy personality?
It's where these forces are more or less balanced?
Well, my understanding is that the healthy personality, it's definitely a lot of conflict.
I mean, it all has to resolve.
But The healthy personality, let's say with a man, for example, would be that he places some of his ego, his feminine ego, in his wife, and some of his inner child or his inner unconscious id,
which needs discipline, in his child, and thus expands his consciousness outside of himself, thus growing as a person, and in a sense becomes a manifestation of the superego itself, and thus When protecting his primary body, he now views his wife as the primary body which he would thus serve and protect, as opposed to viewing his own body as the primary body which he would serve and protect.
And this helps prevent excessive narcissism and thus creates the more self-sacrificing, more Okay, so, I mean, there's a lot of good adjectives at the end.
I'm just trying to figure out the process.
So you take your feminine ego and put it into your child, is that right?
Into the wife. Into the wife.
You take your feminine ego and you put it into your wife.
Now, what does that mean?
I'm not trying to sound skeptical.
I just want to follow the thought process.
Yes, yes. My analysis of it is that the monogamous element in masculinity stems from the fact that we were all born of one mother, and thus the unconscious internal of the male psyche fears the loss of the female love object,
so to speak, With the same passionate intensity that an infant fears the loss of the mother.
So this is what is sometimes referred to as one-itis.
There's one woman for me, and if that woman is to leave me, then a disaster will ensue.
And it's only her, and this causes men to become somewhat enslaved to a particular female's approval or disapproval.
Yes, there's definitely a light side and a dark side to this phenomenon, because on one hand, it can make a man chivalrous and noble and self-sacrificing, the kind of man that would protect his family with his own life.
But on the other hand, it renders the male vulnerable to what Carl Jung would call the shadow of the female anima, which is essentially the vampiric element of the feminine psyche.
So the healthy element of the female psyche would be nurturing and bonding and so on.
And the devouring aspect is the sort of shrew, the harpy, you know, the radical, shrieking, feminist kind of thing, who's using the power that she has, the power over men, to destroy, to undermine, not from a place of love and positivity and engagement, but from a place of, I'm going to Keep applying the hot pokers of my verbal barbs until you give me what I want.
Precisely. And I would generalize that as the masculine shadow is tyrannical, but the feminine shadow is generally vampiric.
Right. Because men are strong enough to impose their will through coercion, whereas women, being physically weaker and smaller, generally have to impose their will through manipulation and verbal control.
Indeed. And also, I would say that it's additionally that the male body is not a primary love object to, on some levels, to either gender, to either men or women, because we are all born of woman.
And thus, to the unconscious, the primary love object is always female.
The primary love object is always female.
That I'm having a little trouble with because there are certainly women who lust after men.
And if you look at Calvin Klein underwear models and so on, they appear to be quite David sculpted and attractive as desire objects.
What does that mean that the object is always feminine?
Well... I guess to state it more accurately, there are indeed gradations.
I shouldn't say that it's black and white, that the primary love object is only feminine.
However, I would say all mammalian species demonstrate a certain behavioral pattern which shows that they value the female at a higher level than the male.
And this manifests in various gradations.
In the most extreme, the men actually kill the younger males off in animals such as lions or...
I was recently reading polar bears also do that.
And they also kill off the younger males.
They also kill off the cubs because it provokes a fertility cycle on the part of the females who are desperate to replace their lost cubs with a new infant.
Oh. Well, that's interesting.
And of course, we understand this, that females reproduce at a higher rate, historically, for most mammals, I assume, females reproduce at a higher rate than males.
Eggs are more scarce than sperm, and therefore, you have, usually, a man must demonstrate fitness in some manner in order to gain access to reproduction, whereas a woman just kind of has to be.
You know, the male frogs fight.
I think the Bowery Birds or something where the male bird builds this elaborate nest, which is designed to lure the female bird in.
And there's a wide variety of tests, either conquesting, like stags ramming each other, the male deer and so on, ramming each other with their horns in order to try and gain access, right?
So the men have tests.
The female test is, do you have a pulse?
Which I think is optional for some of the more thirsty men.
That is a very common pattern.
That's generally because, certainly for mammals, the female has to invest a huge amount of resources in the Growth and nurturing of the offspring, right?
I mean, lizards and amphibians and so on, they don't suckle their young.
And when you give birth to live young, not eggs, and when you then end up having to suckle your young, it's a huge amount of investment.
For the females.
And there's this kind of delicate balance that is really interesting to me.
Because the question for me has always been, well, why didn't the males just, I hate to put it this bluntly, but why didn't they just force themselves on the females?
For mammals, I think the answer is that if the woman, if the female of the species is not emotionally invested in the offspring, then the offspring will die because they're not born able to hunt and digest in the way that, you know, baby... Frogs, baby toads and lizards and so on, they're not born.
So the mom has to willfully and voluntarily invest in her offspring in order for them to survive.
And if a man forces himself on a female, she feels contempt and hostility towards the offspring a lot of times, thus lowering their chance of survival.
And so the participation, the voluntary participation of the female It's essential, which is why, at least among mammals, men, the males woo and the females respond.
And the females must voluntarily choose the male.
Otherwise, she's not going to bond very well with the offspring and not suckle them, not nurture them, not bring them food.
And of course, if the father, if the male forces himself upon the female, because he is generally or often bigger than stronger, then he himself Because there's not that love bond or that affection bond will not invest in his offspring.
So mammals are anti-rape, sort of foundationally.
And I think that's a really important consideration that you do need the voluntary bonded commitment of both parents to have the optimal environment for the children, the offspring to flourish, survive and flourish.
And because the woman must voluntarily engage and bond with the male, The male must prove his fitness in some manner because sperm is much more common than eggs.
Yes. I'm in full agreement on that.
Your ego being feminine, how did you get there?
Well, I would say, here's the theoretical explanation for it, which I fully embrace and believe in myself.
It's that Let's see.
The way the conscious itself develops is that it starts from the beginning, which would be infancy.
And the infant is essentially a representative of the id, in a sense, because it is the unconscious fear of starvation and violence in a very raw, primitive manner, which is not really altered for, as far as we know, for millions of years, infants have remained Strikingly similar.
And so it believes that its body, it has no concept of itself.
The infant cannot perceive that it has its own infantile body.
And thus its concept of its own body is actually its mother's body.
That this is the conscious of the infant, and that because infancy itself becomes the unconscious, the first ego, the first body, the first love object, the first entity of primary value and eros, is actually not its own little entity of infancy, but the mother.
And And yet, this is not a level of consciousness that the infant can recall consciously.
And so, it internalizes the mother as its own body on a deeply unconscious level.
And in theory, this is what drives men to sacrifice for women because on a deeply unconscious level, the male is like a child who fears that the loss of the woman Is actually the loss of its own body.
And it's a bit of an elaborate explanation here, but...
How do you think this plays out in the Muslim world?
I'm all sort of curious if it's going to be a universal phenomenon rather than specific to upper-class Viennese people who are kind of neurotic.
How do you think this plays out in the Muslim world?
Muslims, again, I'm generalizing here, of course, right?
But they don't seem to be particularly...
This is actually a great question, because I've asked myself similar questions, and I'm no more of an expert than anyone on this.
I'm really just trying to find the truth as best I can, but let's see if I can give my best shot at that.
My understanding is that the unconscious is much like an infant, and it fears that the feminine will starve it and the masculine will kill it, and thus, if it is put into a Terribly, a violently patriarchal society, in which the patriarchal superego, so to speak, has become excessively tyrannical, which is essentially the embracing of the superego's shadow.
It will respond to that, and it will crush its inner feminine side.
To some extent. And so I would say that that is definitely a reality.
It's a possibility that can occur.
But it is a deeply unbalanced society in which the masculine has become far too tyrannical.
And then in such a society as the Middle Eastern societies that you reference earlier, I would say the feminine potential for the vampiric shadow is actually just demolished to the point where it's overly demolished, that women have not integrated their shadow in such a society.
Whereas in the West, I see that we have the inverse of that.
I see that the masculine principle, which I refer to as the superego of the collective, has become underrepresented or Why do you think that happened?
In the West?
Yeah, in the West. I believe that the reason that happened in the West is because I believe that the father internal of the household represents the primary superego, which is ultimately internalized into the individual themselves.
And when the father is outsourced to the state, I believe this would be profoundly true, that it actually causes the society itself to enter into a state of subconsciousness.
Because it has become reliant on an external source of paternal responsibility, and thus outsourced that responsibility itself, which is very much like the body outsourcing the mind, because if the government takes control over our behaviors, we might reluctantly obey.
Very reluctantly. And this is very much in the same way that when we give our own body an order and it doesn't want to do something, it obeys reluctantly, but either way, it obeys.
And thus, I'm getting a bit lost here, but what I'm trying to say is that the outsourcing of fatherhood to the state actually causes the feminine principle, which I would define as the ego, to become Dare I say bloated or narcissistic.
Narcissistic, that's the term I mean to say.
It becomes overzealous.
And to reference Jordan Peterson, who I'm a keen fan of, he would define this in part as the Oedipal Mother, which I suppose it's vampiric toward the masculine principle, but it's suffocating towards the The budding, infantile child that is trying to grow up into either motherhood or fatherhood.
Now, I'm going to appreciate that.
Thank you. The maybe fourth time lucky, I'm going to ask how you came up with the idea or how you ended up with the conclusion that your ego was feminine.
Because that's not everyone in the Freudian world, as far as I understand it.
Yes. Now, I know you don't want to answer that question, but you did bring it up.
Actually, I do want to answer it.
Because you've spent half an hour not answering it.
It was my first question. Well, I would say that the reason I believe that the ego is...
Feminine. Wait, ego or your ego?
Well, I believe it's a universal, but all I can actually truly speak for is myself.
But I would also say that it's a human universal, regardless of whether people are aware of it or not.
So you would say that my ego is feminine?
Yes. Okay.
Why? So, if I was a woman, my ego would be feminine, and if I'm a man, since I'm a man, my ego is also feminine?
Yes, I believe that to be true.
And on what grounds?
Do you believe that to be true?
Well, I believe that the consciousness itself is composed of Of love objects, and that the ego is the primary love object, and that for the species to survive, the primary love object has to be female.
And thus, the entire reason for the superego's existence is to serve women and children.
In other words, the only reason men actually exist in our species is, one, to fertilize the eggs, of course, but two, to provide territory and resources for Women and children.
And thus, the consciousness itself, my consciousness, for example, is actually, the landscape of that consciousness is civilization itself, as far as I know it, inclusive of all of the love objects in civilization.
And by love objects, I just mean objects of value, living or not.
Of course, living ones such as women and men and children have a profoundly greater value than Okay, but you can't serve the feminine by being feminine.
You have to serve the feminine by being masculine.
Because if you're going to go out and fight in the world to gain resources to compete with other men in order to gain access to the highest status woman you can get, then if you say that as a man my ego is feminine, then it can't actually serve the feminine.
Because then it would be acting as a woman rather than acting as a man, which would mean that it would not have necessarily the aggression, the assertiveness, or the competitive instinct, or the risk-taking ability to go out and get resources to get a woman's affection, let's say. So I don't know how the ego, by serving the feminine as a man, I don't know how the ego could be feminine.
I'm not sure what it would have to offer.
Well, to be clear, my superego is masculine.
And that is the part that serves the feminine.
But my ego...
In other words, when I say the ego, I don't mean the ego inclusive of the superego.
I mean the ego not inclusive of the superego.
It's actually a common confusion that I face when reading psychoanalysis.
Sometimes they refer to the ego, and I don't know whether they're referring to the ego inclusive of the superego or not.
Does that make sense? So it is the superego that leads you out to compete to get resources, but the feminine that you're serving is not your wife or the woman that you want, but it's your own ego that's the feminine that you're serving?
Well, yes. In a sense, it's both, because for a man's ego to be properly integrated into the culture so as not to become purely self-centric and narcissistic, My analysis is that his feminine ego manifests as all things feminine and those things I would define as being the home,
women, the cultivation of resources.
To explain that on a large scale, I would say, for example, with the country of America, The land itself is a feminine ego, but the state is a patriarchal superego, and the boundaries around it are much like that of a protective father and husband who wishes to protect the internal feminine realm,
and that there is a deeply tribal, ancient, highly gendered relationship between the concept of the land, inclusive of its resources, With the governmental patriarchal overseer.
Okay, so now I think we've come to a testable hypothesis.
It took a little while, but...
So if the government is patriarchal in the super-eco sense, is that right?
Yes. Then why is it as the government gets bigger, the patriarchy gets more and more attacked and diminished and scored?
Because you're saying the state is patriarchal, but the state is getting bigger and more powerful, which means, I think, by your hypothesis that the patriarchy should be getting bigger and more powerful, but it's not.
Quite the opposite is happening.
Yes. Well, that's a fascinating question.
See, I believe it's because, from my understanding, the feminine ego has a vampiric shadow.
Now, it also has that benevolent shadow, which is nourishing and wonderful.
But the vampiric shadow wishes to...
Oh dear, let's see.
Forgive me for pausing for a moment.
I know I have something meaningful to say on this.
Okay, here's my analysis of that.
I have to go all the way down to the unconscious, which is infantile.
The infantile unconscious internal of women, as well as in men, is Oedipal towards the patriarchal force and wishes to...
It thinks that if it overthrows it, it will acquire the feminine Eros.
And this is my understanding of what modern feminism is attempting to do.
However, In doing so, it actually weakens the majority of men while concentrating the patriarchal power in an extremely finite percentile of men.
And thus you'll notice that although the feminists, for example, often proclaim they want to tear down the patriarchy, their actions actually reveal that they're concentrating government power in as finite and as few men as humanly possible.
My understanding of that is that this is also where polygamy comes from.
In other words, the female collective in an ancient tribe would go to the most violent male and they would say, can you please redistribute the wealth made by the beta males or the less dominant males more equally among the women and children?
And this would be an understandable sort of a goal for them.
And so there's an inherent contradiction, which I believe shows that the society is not fully conscious, because it says it wants one thing, but it acts out another.
And to me, that is a sign that, well, to roughly quote a quote by Carl Jung, he said, if you don't make the unconscious conscious, It will rule your life and you will call it fate.
I believe that That's where the contradiction comes from.
But forgive me if that was a convoluted answer.
Well, it was. And, you know, I pointed out a contradiction in a hypothesis that you put forward, and it did seem to be like a deep ink squirt of baffle gap in order to avoid the contradiction.
It always makes me a little suspicious when a contradiction can be waved away with the transfer of the feminine alter ego vampiric under something or other, right?
I mean... That is a challenge.
There's an alternative way, I think, of looking at this, which is in a free market, the Pareto Principle means that more and more resources are generated and accumulate to the smart men in general.
There are some women too, but the smart men create and gain a lot of resources.
Now, they then use those resources to Woo and wed and reproduce with the alpha females, right?
So the alpha males, in an economic sense, end up mating with the alpha females in a fertility sense, which doesn't just mean cute and pretty and tits, and it also means intelligence and a willingness to be a good mom and good provider and all that kind of good provider of services for the household and so on.
Now, in a situation where The economy is not so free.
The gap between rich and poor doesn't really follow the Pareto principle, which is that the square root of the workers produce half the value.
So in 10,000 workers, 100 are producing half the value.
Those 100 are going to make a lot of money.
The smart genes and the alpha genes for the males and the females in a free market gather more and more resources to themselves, and then the alphas have more babies, and the betas, the gammas, the zetas have fewer and fewer babies, and they wish to fight back because their genes wish to survive as much as anything else.
And so the way that they fight back is they say that the alphas are bad, And we should get their resources.
And they can't do that themselves, so they have to use the state to do that.
Which is why there's this celebration of ugliness among the feminists, right?
The celebration of fat and short blue hair and nose rings.
And this is why they convinced Katy Perry to cut her hair, and they convinced...
Miley Cyrus still looks like some demon-spawn freakazoid because they wish to uglify because they can't compete, right?
The average male cannot compete with the alpha male, and the average female cannot compete with the alpha male.
And so they turn to the state, and they have to demonize the alpha males and females.
And then they use the state after they've dehumanized them to take their resources and give them, right?
So feminists and women as a whole can turn to the state to get the resources that the alpha female would have gotten from the alpha male.
So that's A very sort of brief explanation.
And the less intelligent people can't compete with the smart people.
The less intelligent men can't compete with the smart men.
The less emotionally mature men can't compete with the more emotionally mature men who tend to negotiate well and build businesses and can manage people and all that.
So you get lunatics like Karl Marx who couldn't put a coherent plan one foot in front of another.
And they can't compete. So then they want to design a system where they get to be on top, where they get to harness the Pareto principle productivity of the alpha males.
And that's communism, right?
Where the smart people are either killed off because the dumb people can't compete with the smart people.
So they can either kill them off or they can enslave them or take their property or whatever it is.
And I think that's a way of looking at it that...
It has a testable hypothesis to it.
My concern, of course, with the Freudian stuff, and this is why I listened and was looking for the null hypothesis, and when I found one, I said, okay, well, if you feel that the state is a patriarchal superego, then as the state grows, so should the patriarchy, but it doesn't. The opposite happens, and then you came up with a whole bunch of stuff that was really, really kind of impossible to follow, at least for me.
And this is the challenge, right?
So this is not you, but in the Freudian model, the null hypothesis, and this is why it's not really considered science anymore, and this is why over the past decade or two, like, one scientist has referenced Freud, which is, how do you disprove it?
So if, let's look at any sort of Freudian thing, right?
Like the Oedipal complex. Well, if it's there, right, the child's desire to...
Marry the mother and kill the father, right?
So if it's there, you say, aha, that's proof, right?
And if it's not there, you say, oh, well, it's suppressed.
And if the opposite is there, say, oh, well, I wish to, I really dislike my mother rather than wanting to marry her, then you say, ah, it's a reaction formation.
And you see this skiddy, glassy response to the request for empirical data has you move through a world of myth and language where there's no capacity to disprove the world that you are living in mentally.
And I'm concerned about not just the solipsism of all of that, or in a sense the narcissism, not that I'm calling you a narcissist or anything, but the narcissism of my worldview cannot be disproved.
And this shifting of archetypes in order to cover the eruption of any manifestation that doesn't accord with the theory is not philosophical.
It's not philosophical.
For something to be philosophical, for something to be true, it must also have the capacity to be false.
And if something doesn't have the capacity to be false, then I am concerned about its validity, obviously, right?
As you would be as well, I think, if you look at it in this kind of way.
So why is your ego feminine?
You say, well, it's to serve the feminine, right?
And then I say, well, you can't serve the feminine in order to...
And you say, oh, well, no, the superego is patriarchal and it's tied to the state.
Okay, well, I say, well, then the state is growing, but the patriarchy has become...
Oh, and you say, oh, well, that's because of the shadow of the feminine.
You see, I don't know the way out of this foggy maze.
I don't know how to rise above it and say, how is this...
I don't know how to put it best.
This pantheon is probably a good way.
It seems to me like a series of mythological creatures like a pantheon.
How is this pantheon known to be true relative to alternative explanations for things?
I mean, there are biological explanations.
There would be genetic explanations.
I came up with one that, you know, I'm not saying is perfectly proven, but, you know, it's certainly a hypothesis.
How do we know Whether it's true or it's false, if there's no standard for disproof.
Now, it feels true for you, but my concern is because something feels true for you, you know, it doesn't make it true.
And because it has resonance for you, that doesn't make it true.
Because then you may just have an internal prejudice for this.
Or this may be your particular personality structure, which accords with these particular things.
And the last thing that I'll say, which I understand is no argument what I'm about to say, but it is an observation.
Mm-hmm. Which is that, as somebody I've been very interested in Freud and Jung and so on, when I became a father, I was, of course, very curious about how this was going to manifest, or any of these things were going to manifest, in a child who was raised peacefully and reasonably, in my own daughter's mind.
Now, there were certainly some phases that you could consider would accord with some of these archetypes.
My daughter, it's funny, when she was younger, when she wanted to play, she would come to me, and when she got tired, she would go to her mom.
She'd need to be breastfed and soothed to sleep and so on.
There was a phase, which was a very adorable phase, a couple of years ago, maybe when she was three or four, maybe five.
Where her plan was to marry me but it was okay for mom to live next door.
That was the plan.
And that's gone by the wayside now, which is good.
And I don't know if it leaves any kind of archetype or tension like she does.
I don't know about the superego.
I don't know about the ego.
I don't know if she's not the seething ball of gotta have it who basically slaps her own hand back ferociously from a superego patriarchal standpoint so that civilization can survive.
I think that it is more of a map Of brutally raised children, without a doubt, in Freud's day, right, we're talking about the 1880s, 1890s, well 1890s and certainly beyond that into the early 20th century as he was really formulating these theories, the children in his environment would have been raised badly.
I mean, by modern standards.
Probably by contemporary standards there would have certainly been worse childhoods, but by modern standards they would have been raised very badly.
Even some things as As simple as within the Jewish culture, there's more, it's certainly matrilineal, it's more matriarchal, there's circumcision, of course, and there is a strong pressure within the cultural slash religious Jewish community to maintain the standards in a hostile environment, often of anti-Semitism and so on.
And there was actually one of Freud's, Kohler, his name was, one of Freud's friends, ended up challenging Someone who made an anti-Semitic comment to a jewel and gave him two gashes and ended up being kicked out of the university and going wandering from town to town before I think he ended up settling in the United States.
And so there are particular tensions and stresses going on in Freud's day.
And I don't know, and I was kind of curious about this when I became a father, how much of this would translate to how my daughter is.
And I will say that I can certainly see some of the problems that occur in dysfunctional households manifesting themselves in this Freudian trinity, so to speak, right? The ego and the superego, most notably.
That where reason is absent, bullying is how you create conformity, right?
And we see this, of course, with political correctness, which is, I'm not going to debate you, but I'm going to try and destroy your reputation and destroy your source of income.
That's because that's what happens when you become postmodern.
You give up on reason and objectivity and evidence and facts and data and so on.
You end up having to be very aggressive.
Now, the choice, though, to give up on rationality, which then ends up with you having a dominant, submissive hierarchy, is a philosophical choice and is a choice that should have been more strongly resisted by classical liberals, by people who were interested in science and so on, who kind of abandoned the arts to the madmen and the madwomen.
And in a society or a family where you don't reason with your children, then your children have these preferences, these pleasures, these desires, these wants.
They're not negotiated with. They're just bullied and crushed.
And therefore, they're not allowed to enter into the conscious mind.
They're not allowed to be absorbed.
They're not allowed to be acted out upon and integrated into the personality.
They're just kept kind of underground.
And Then you end up with this ego that is relatively weak compared to the seething desires and the brutal bullying that can often manifest as this superego.
So to me, the Freudian tripartite analysis of the human personality has a lot to do With children who are raised without reason, children who are brutalized, children males in particular who are circumcised, with an excessive pressure of irrationality and anti-rationality being placed upon them, which results in a particular kind of unintegrated passion.
The animal side.
A relatively fragile ego, because the ego can't stand up against the bullying of a patriarchal slash matriarchal aggression, which is not reasoning, but threatens with expulsion, threatens with ostracism, threatens with starvation, in a sense, because the child experiences the rejection of the parents as a death threat, of course, because historically, generally, it was.
So I don't know if it is something that is common to all All people.
Or is a kind of pattern that emerges when children are raised roughly or aggressively or anti-rationally.
And that's why, I mean, I know you don't want to talk about your own personal life, and I fully respect that, of course, but I would say that if you want to find out whether Freudian analyses are true, For everyone, then you need to find children who are raised in a different environment and find out if the patterns hold true.
And this is, you know, standard twin analysis, which people have been doing for psychological research purposes for, well, north of 100 years by now, where, you know, they want to find out the genetic basis of IQ, and therefore they look at twins raised apart and they come up with a correlation of 0.77 or so.
Yes. And so my question or concern is that if you have this analysis or you find that this analysis resonates with you, it could be more the effects of a particular kind of child raising.
And your kind of child raising may have accorded with what happened with Freud or what happened with Freud's patients in late 19th, early 20th century Vienna, upper middle class, well-educated.
And of course, you may also end up surrounded by people who were raised in a similar kind of anti-rational, bullying kind of fashion where their passions were not integrated rationally into a coherent and consciously available set of feelings.
And so it may feel true to you because it accords with your history and it accords with those who are around you as a result of your compatibility with them because of your history.
But is it true?
Is it true? Stefan, may I interject?
I actually agree with pretty much everything that you're saying here.
But let's say that was the case.
Sorry, that's a big change, though, what you just said.
I don't like these things that just blow past me because it seems kind of weird to me.
Because I asked you, is this true for everyone?
You said, this is true for everyone.
Now I'm saying, not true for my daughter, and it may not be true for other kids.
And you're like, well, I agree with you. And it's like, that's a big change.
No, I don't agree. I don't agree with you.
I want to be perfectly clear, Stefan.
I do not agree. I'm just trying to...
Wait, didn't you just say you did, though?
As you yourself say, if something is...
I just want to follow this train of thought just to see what the argument is.
Okay. Let's say that was true.
I don't agree that's true. But if it was true, then...
The explanation for it would be all of Freud's theories regarding projection and transference and whatnot.
So even if that is the case, which I don't believe it is...
Wait. Even if what is not the case, which you don't believe it is?
I'm confused on what your point is exactly.
You're saying that... I'm not trying to challenge you.
I'm just not sure what you're...
I said a lot. I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say, I don't think it's the case.
Well... If I understand your argument correctly, you're saying that the hypothesis is not necessarily objectively true, but could possibly be a manifestation of one's own psychological projections.
No, that's nothing at all what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is that if children are raised rationally, Then they don't end up with this fragmented, at war with itself personality.
Because if you raise children rationally, you don't have to bully them.
You can reason with them. And so you don't end up with an internalized fear object of authority and rules known as a superego in combat with an unreformed, unredeemed, uncivilized id.
And so if you reason with children, and you don't hit them, and you don't bully them, and you don't circumcise them, and you don't indoctrinate them, Then they're not going to grow up with this particular pathological personality structure.
This may be a description of the pathologies common throughout human history, but not a description of anything elemental about human nature.
So if you grew up in Japan, let's say in the 14th century, and you never leave your island, maybe you don't even know it's an island.
It's like, well, everyone speaks Japanese.
You wouldn't even really have a language for Japanese, like the language that you speak.
But then when you meet other countries and other cultures and other languages, you would recognize that you have a local dialect or a local language.
And I think you may be thinking that everybody speaks Japanese.
And it's like, well, I'm saying that I think this personality structure, if it's valid, is common to children who are raised brutally rather than children who are raised peacefully.
And I don't think it transfers to the latter.
Well, I would profoundly disagree.
And let's see if I can explain why.
For example...
Okay, let's say there's a person who's, let's say you're outside and you're driving your car and you see a brick wall and you don't want to drive your car into the brick wall.
So you drive around the brick wall.
The superego actually threatens the unconscious id with the reality that will occur if you don't obey your own superego.
And thus, this is much like the punishing So the punishing hand of a father may be for entirely irrational behaviors,
right? So the father may say, I don't know, we're in a cult, and if you sing, I will beat you.
Because singing is outlawed in the cult or something like that, right?
So then you have the imposition of a despotic will and the threat or maybe even the action of brutal violence for an inconsequential action such as singing, right?
So that is an imposition of will based upon arbitrary rules and violence.
That is not the case of you approaching the wall.
That is an objective. It's not an imposition of will.
It is the natural function of empirical reality that if you drive into the wall, you're going to have a pretty bad day.
But it is not the despotic introduction of will.
You can't evade it.
You can't hide from it. You can't sing out of earshot of your father.
Are you saying that these two, objective empirical reality versus violent, abusive, bullying father, would produce the same structures in the book?
No, not at all. Not at all.
But you see, your example, that's the superego's shadow in a tyrannical format, in a tyrannical manifestation.
No, no. You said that driving into the wall was like the tyrannical superego.
Yes. And then I said, are you saying that driving into the wall is the same as a tyrannical father?
And you said, no. But if If not driving into the wall is the same as reacting to a punishing patriarch, a violent father, then I don't understand the point.
Like, then it just seems you have no null hypothesis, because they can't both be the same.
Because the wall is not violently imposing its arbitrary will upon you, it's just a fact of reality.
The unconscious, my argument is that the unconscious doesn't understand the difference.
The unconscious, you see, So wait, the unconscious views reality as a bully, regardless of whether it's a father hitting you with a belt or gravity.
I wouldn't use the word bully.
I would use the word death, a force of the opposite of arrows, something that is threatening to the sustenance of the ego.
Yes, but there's threats that are personal and threats that are impersonal.
Right? So there's somebody who violently tracks you down and tries to harm you.
And then there's choosing not to jump off a high wall.
Right? These two, I mean, you understand in law, these two are not the same situations at all.
Because the violent imposition of will is immoral and illegal under rational legal systems.
But the actions of mere nature is not, because there's no intent, there's no purpose, there's no will, there's no desire to subjugate or control, right?
I mean, if you run into a wall, the wall does not get charged with assault, right?
But if someone comes up and hits you, though it may produce the same injury, that's a different situation, right?
Do you think the unconscious can't distinguish between a wall and a person?
No, it's not what I'm saying at all.
I believe, well, okay.
The subconscious can.
The unconscious cannot.
Wait, we have two unconsciouses now?
A subconscious and an unconscious?
The subconscious is feminine.
The conscious is masculine.
No, that doesn't clear anything up for me.
Giving them an innie and an outie, mentally, does not clear anything up for me.
So you're saying that the unconscious cannot determine or distinguish between a threat based in nature and a threat based in human aggression.
No, it just responds to the pleasure principle.
However, the subconscious can distinguish between the two.
And how do you know? I mean, you sound very confident.
Has this been tested? I mean, I don't know.
How do you know? Because, well, if you look at the psychological development of children...
No, no, no, no, no!
Is there any proof about what you say?
Has it been tested? Has it been subject to analyses?
Double-blind experiments?
A large sample group?
A measuring of the threat response of humans versus inanimate objects?
I mean...
Well, I would say humans actually acted out.
Now, although I can't prove it in the sense that we can prove the laws of physics, I would say that there are truths inherent in these forms of analysis.
I mean, here's an example. There are fantastic truths in the works of Shakespeare.
Can they be proven in a scientific manner?
Not necessarily.
However, to disregard the works of Shakespeare based upon that...
Okay, give me a truth in Shakespeare.
Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn.
Well, that's not true for all women.
That's true for some women, and I'm not sure that that's measurable.
I'm not sure that that's empirical.
It's striking, and it's artistic, and it might be thought-provoking, but it's not a philosophical argument and cannot be put into the category of empirical truth.
I mean, there are nuns who I'm sure are scorned who don't set fire to the nunnery.
I don't see that we cannot prove Freud in the scientific sense of proof, but I would also say that we should I hope we can agree on this, that there are very helpful meanings in Freudian analysis that people might find extraordinarily helpful in guiding them in their lives.
Look, I understand that.
And again, I am interested in Freud.
I'm currently reading a biography of Freud, which I won't bore you with the details with.
I'll get that into a presentation.
But the question is, is Freud...
Of his time and of his environment, or is Freud universal?
Now, for Freud to be universal, then it has to cross cultures, it has to cross geography, it has to cross time, and it has to cross different ways of raising children.
And I don't think any of that has been tested, and that's my concern.
I think that Freud Describes and has resonance to people who had similar upbringings to Freud and his patients.
And I think confusing that for an objective description of human nature is like taking children who are raised Harry Potter-style locked under a cupboard and half crazed from abuse and saying, aha, I have found the archetype of the human personality.
It's like, nope, you found a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder.
That's not the same as a universal human personality.
Well, I'll concede that partly I agree, but partly I disagree.
To me, it's like saying physics only applies when something is blowing up.
And I would say, no, the laws of physics apply even when an object is at rest.
But you just said we cannot prove these things like physics.
So why are you bringing physics into it?
You said that physics and these truths are a completely separate category, and now you're bringing physics into it.
Well, it's an analogy.
No, you can't say, we can't compare this to physics, and then in the next breath, try to compare it to physics.
That's not honest. Well, no, Stefan, it's an analogy.
You misunderstood the analogy.
I'm not saying that it can be proven in the same way that physics can be proven.
But then you just put physics into it.
Well, it is in the realm of theory.
I'll concede that. But, well...
Does it give you no pause at all?
I'm just curious. When you say we can't compare it to physics, and then you say, well, you know, it's like physics.
Does it give you no pause at all?
I mean, does it not make you say, well, you know, maybe I put a foot wrong there, or I guess that's kind of a...
Like, every time I point out a contradiction, man, you just glide right past it.
Every time I point out the failure of a null hypothesis, every time I make a recent argument as to the fact that Freud was basing what he called a universal theory of personality on very specific upper-middle class, traumatized, often Jewish members of the Viennese society.
And I make a case, and I talk about my daughter, which is, again, not an argument, but it's evidence.
It's at least a sample of one, and I don't know a lot of kids who are raised rationally, but of those who I do know who are raised rationally and peacefully, they do not exhibit these symptoms.
So I gave you some counter-arguments, and I pointed out some contradictions.
I pointed out No null hypothesis.
And then I pointed out when you said we can't compare it to physics and then you used a physics-based analogy literally within 30 seconds.
None of this has given you any pause at all.
I'm kind of concerned about that, to be honest with you.
And this is the great danger of Freud and these kinds of analysis is you can make up stuff To just keep skating on through.
You don't have to pause.
You don't have to organize your thoughts.
You don't have to compare what you're saying with anything empirical or testable, verifiable or rational.
You can just make up whatever you want to glide past any contradictions or requirement for proof.
And that is my particular concern about this inward-gazing stuff, is that you end up being able to Make up anything you want to get past any difficulties that arise.
And that is not philosophy.
That is not truth.
And I don't know that that's mature.
Because maturity is saying, what I believe must be compared.
If I'm going to claim this truth in it, right?
And you said that this is human personality.
That this is common to everyone.
You don't know that.
And I gave you evidence to the contrary.
You just skate right past it.
And that's my concern.
That this may be something that serves your needs, but prevents you from growing intellectually.
Because what are you comparing this to and finding fault with it?
I radically disagree. I radically disagree.
And to be fair, you haven't given...
Stefan, I want you to understand I'm arguing in good faith.
I'm doing the best I can to explain this within my capacity.
And I'm not trying to be...
be, in no way am I trying to be dishonest.
We can go in circles on this, but earlier you said why isn't the patriarchy, you know, manifest the way it does and it The reason that's the case is because there's an oedipal relationship between the citizen and the government.
Okay, how do you know there's an oedipal relationship between the citizen and the government?
Because the unconscious drive of I don't know about an edible relationship with the government.
They have a resource relationship with the government in that they use the government to get resources they don't earn on their own merits.
So why do we need that they want to have sex with the government?
Why do they need that they want to screw the government?
I don't understand how that adds anything.
When we already have the answer, which is they want the resources to flow to them through coercion without taking on the risk of coercion themselves, so they vote for them.
Why do we need the eatable thing?
I'm just not sure. Like, shouldn't the simplest explanation, Hockam's razor kind of thing, that the simplest explanation is usually the best?
Yes, yes, in part, but I... First of all, I want to explain that I fully believe all the Darwinian analysis, and I don't see Freudian analysis as in any way being contradictory to it.
I see it as being entirely complementary to the evolutionary-based forms of analysis.
And forgive me if I'm a bit flustered.
No, this is good. Look, you came here asking for feedback on this.
I'm giving you feedback, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's such a terribly important topic because I genuinely believe that this can help people.
I really do. I really want to help people.
Well, no. I'm concerned that it's trapping you.
This is why I'm pushing back.
I'm concerned that you're trapped here.
Because if you believe...
That this is human nature as a whole.
And if my hypothesis is correct, I'm not saying I've proven it decisively, but let's just go out on a limb and say that when Freud developed his theory, particularly regarding women, Freud his whole career, his whole life said he didn't understand women at all.
And so the idea that he would have some deep insight into the feminine, and he was a tyrannical and monstrous suitor and fiancé and husband.
I mean, just a monstrous And the idea that with no testing, no empirical information, no universal test, he didn't go to Algiers and find some objective way to figure out whether his hypotheses held true in all languages and all circumstances.
And he certainly didn't have access to very many, if any, well-raised children, children raised peacefully and rationally, free from superstition and free from cultural bigotry and bias and so on.
So the idea that Freud found universal truths about human nature by dealing with 100 people in a small section of Vienna in the late 19th century with no test, no universal test, no null hypothesis, you understand that's ludicrous, right?
The odds of that happening are virtually nil.
And so my concern is that if you think that this id, ego, superego configuration is somehow human nature, If it's not, then you're limiting yourself to people who are going to manifest that, which I would argue are largely unprocessed victims of child abuse.
Which means you're trapped in this kind of underworld of people who manifest these kinds of symptoms.
In other words, let's say that you meet someone like my daughter.
Let's say she was raised 20 years ago or whatever.
You meet someone like my daughter 30 years ago.
You're going to shy away from her because her whole existence belies the theory that you think is universal.
You're going to shy away from her. And who are you going to be drawn to?
You're going to be drawn to people who manifest the Freudian trinity.
And I think those people are damaged people.
And I think those people are disturbed people.
is going to trap you in that because when you have a hypothesis that you think is universal, if it's not, you end up trapped with people who confirm that hypothesis and you can't break out.
So that's my concern.
I am very interested in Freud's analysis of dreams.
It's very, very important to me.
I think it's important to think in these terms and I think it's important to explore yourself, but where I hold back from a rational objective scientific standpoint Thank you,
Stefan. Thank you. Alright, up next we have Nick.
Nick wrote in and said, I am a libertarian.
For the past two years I've really noticed a huge shift to leftism, PC, and postmodernism inside the quote-unquote libertarian movement.
These left libertarians have infected state and national parties.
These same people are the ones who will smear anyone who thinks Western civilization and American tradition is something to be proud of and protected.
Nasty people. Even when empirical evidence is provided, they completely cuck out and proceed with terrible analogies, sophistry, and insults.
For example, a lot of the times when asked about the European migrant crisis, they say, I'm not living there, so I'm not qualified to give an opinion.
They say that, but yet don't live in Venezuela, and they know it's a basket case.
Is it because they have deep-rooted relationships with leftists that prevents them from thinking clearly?
I have several examples I would like to discuss, but ultimately my question is, what do we do with the libertarians?
It seems it's a 60-40 split of left libertarians versus Hoppe and Rothbard right libertarians.
Is it time to abandon the name libertarian, or do we fight?
I'm leaning towards abandoning, but what are your thoughts?
That's from Nick. Hey Nick, how you doing?
Good, how are you Stefan? I'm going to give you a little audio simulation of what I think should be done with left libertarians.
Are you ready?
Oh, I'm ready.
I totally agree.
Totally agree. Just kidding, everybody.
Totally. Really. Okay. So, you know, I hate hearing how libertarians are going off the rails, but I'd love to hear you tell me how libertarians are going off the rails.
What else have you seen? Well, I mean, I just see that there's just an appeasing of hysteria and kind of like how you discuss with Tom Woods with the, you know, Sign the petition that libertarians aren't fascists and say, well, what's the logic behind this?
And what are the ramifications and consequences of doing so?
And so I just see a lot of that.
I see a lot of kind of, well, in regards, you know, with the migrant crisis, I think immigration is the big hot button.
And myself included, there is, you know, I've been libertarian for Probably close to eight years now.
And I actively avoided the immigration debate because I just had some tension there and I kind of wanted to focus on other things.
But with the 2016 election coming about, I saw what Trump was saying and how the media was reacting to it and how libertarians were still just not wanting to go through the data.
Or any of the arguments and just doing what the media does and just writing it off completely.
And that's kind of where I found you and went into the empirical evidence and was like, holy shit.
Libertarians are like, what do you guys think about this?
And just either no response or, like I said in my question, they just smear you.
And so I just kind of see a lot of that and it's just kind of a deep, deep problem within the libertarian stratosphere.
And why do you care what's happening in the libertarian world?
Well, I guess I care because, well, I'm beginning to care less, is basically the result.
This was just kind of a question of, like, how do I identify my beliefs?
And I know it's kind of irrelevant to put a label on yourself, you know, My end goal is I want to have, you know, Ancapistan.
You know, I want to have free markets, private property, you know, a Hoppian kind of society.
And so it just kind of frustrates me when I see libertarians that, you know, say, oh, you know, we can see, you know, not only do we get to see the effects of government action, but there's, you know, we see the unseen.
And it's like, how can you honestly say that?
And it just kind of comes down to You know, integrity.
And, you know, because I believe, you know, if we want to have a more peaceful world, that, you know, libertarians need to, you know, engage with people on the right, people that do have a sense of private property norms, because looking at the left, I mean, the left obviously opposes that.
And so it just kind of comes down to just being frustrated and like, what What exactly is the logic and the target audience that libertarians are trying to make themselves more appealing?
And it's just kind of just a puzzling situation.
Are you ready for another soundscape, Nick?
Yes, bring it on. All right.
So, if you want to start talking about things like race, IQ, genetics, cousin marriage, and so on, right?
Then you have to...
Well, here's a soundscape of what happens to your reputation among the normies.
Here we go. That's how it goes, right?
So you have to say, listen, the media is going to do what the media is going to do.
The leftist groups, they're going to do what the leftist groups are going to do.
Of course. I mean, the one topic that the left really, really doesn't want to talk about are these topics, right?
Race IQ and genetics and so on.
And they don't, right? That's the one thing that's unforgivable.
Well, I'm afraid that's where you rationally have to go.
Of course, right? And so what's going on with libertarianism?
Well, they don't want to take on the media.
And they have not often gone directly to the audience.
So, I mean, I said this when I was in Washington, that I can talk about what I talk about because of the donors, because of people who donate at freedomainradio.com slash donate, and no other reason.
It is not courage, it is support that makes this happen.
happen.
And I said at the very beginning that I was going to follow reason and evidence no matter where, no matter what.
And if you're not willing to follow the data, then just go be a cuck.
Go be a conformie.
Go be a normie. Go be whoever.
It doesn't matter. If you're not going to follow the data, if you're not going to follow the arguments, if you're not going to follow the rationality, then you're not a libertarian.
You're nothing. You're just somebody with a clan.
You're somebody with a sad little anti-rational drive.
You've got to follow the data.
You've got to follow the reason.
You've got to follow the evidence.
It's the only way. It's the only way.
It's the only way worth pursuing.
And it's certainly the only way you can win if victory is possible.
So, libertarians want to stay away from those topics, even though I know, and I'm not going to name any names whatsoever, Nick, but I know, sure as sunrise, there are a lot of libertarians who know this stuff.
And not just know it a little bit, not just know it in passing, not just, oh, I heard of the bell curve, I'm not really sure what's in it, but I heard it might be something like, know this stuff.
And they don't want to talk about it.
Why? Because the media will be mad at them.
And because they're not tied into an audience who desperately is looking for a way out of what's happening to the West.
So if they're dependent on advertisers, then they know those advertisers can be targeted, so they shut up and they toe the line.
And they do their little libertarian song and dance, and they shut up about the important issues because they don't want to be targeted.
Or they don't want their advertisers to be targeted.
And of course, I was saying 10 years ago, don't get tied into advertising.
I'm not going to get tied into advertising because that means I will be...
I will pay for speaking about certain topics.
I didn't know what those topics were going to be, but I was pretty sure they were going to come along.
And so they chose not to listen, I suppose, and they chose to...
Either get their money through advertisers, which means often shut up, tell the line, and censor yourself.
I have a First Amendment with advertisers.
I mean, technically you do, but you don't.
You don't. Or what they do is they get donors.
Now, a lot of the donors, a lot of the think tanks, a lot of the people who pay these people are globalists.
They're big business people who don't want borders being brought up, who don't want race and IQ being brought up, who don't want genetics being brought up.
They just want cheap labor, open borders, and it's a bunch of crap.
And so the only way that you can maintain integrity is to tell the truth.
I mean, listen, I could have avoided these topics.
For sure. Last couple of years.
But not only did I make a commitment to the listenership, but I made a commitment to myself.
There's no show if I don't pursue the truth.
And not just the truth as I see it.
The truth. The facts.
The empirical evidence. The data.
There's no show if I don't do that.
I mean, there may be a hollow shell of a show.
There may be me singing a couple of songs and doing some rap and some monkey dances and Interviewing people with my shirt off, but there's no show, really.
Not for what I do and what I'm capable of doing.
There's no show. There's a show.
There's no show. So what do they want?
Do they want the truth?
Do they want to become the kind of heroes that they worship?
That's the funny kind of thing. Ayn Rand's had a huge influence on The libertarian movement, and Ayn Rand has heroes who pursue the truth and pursue integrity and pursue their values, regardless of cost.
Now, that's dramatic, and I'm not saying we do things regardless of cost, but once they turn away from the data, once they turn away from the facts, and listen, I mean, I've had enough people on this show Who have the data.
I have enough well-sourced presentations.
I've had enough experts, enough professors, enough researchers.
I just did an interview today with Dr.
Heyer, who's the editor-in-chief of Intelligence Magazine.
The guy knows his stuff.
He knows his stuff.
There's no real question.
There's no real doubt at all about any of this stuff.
And If libertarians want to turn away from data, they want to turn away from reasoned arguments, well, then they're, like, I hate to say it, because, I mean, I agree with them on so much, but if you claim to be motivated by facts, reason, evidence, and data, and you turn away from it, then you're a hack.
You're a cuck. Especially when it's a very important one.
Like, okay, people are allowed one mistake, one deviation, one, you know, this is an old argument, you get one, one get-out-of-crazy-free card.
But not so many, and not on such an important topic.
And libertarians aren't going to win an election anyway.
Come on. Everybody knows.
You can count, right? I mean, they're not going to win an election anyway, so what could they be doing?
Well, they could be bringing this information to the forefront.
But they're not. And frankly, it would be a whole lot easier if there were other people doing it.
Of course, right? But they don't.
Instead, they will often snip and snipe and whatever I call my name.
I mean, it's funny because for me it's a conscience thing too.
Like if I was in possession of important information that was fundamentally necessary to affect extraordinarily positive changes in the world or at least prevent or slow down negative consequences, if I was in possession of that knowledge, And I chose to shut up.
I literally could not look myself in the mirror.
I literally could not turn on the camera.
I would feel shame every moment I was staring at the camera knowing that I was in possession of essential information and refusing to talk about it.
Come on. That's not good.
Now, people can't disprove this information.
I guess they can ignore it, which means that they can ignore their own conscience.
And I find people who know the truth but are willing to ignore their own conscience, well, they're kind of dangerous.
And I don't have a lot of respect for that.
Everybody knows this is an important topic.
Everybody knows the science is solid.
It's more solid even than I thought.
I just read Dr. Hyatt's great book.
That came out in 2016.
Latest and greatest stuff. I thought that IQ was 80% genetic later on in life, like middle-aged and after, maybe even late middle-aged, but it's not true.
Latest data is that the heritability of IQ at the age of 5 is 27%.
At the age of 18 is over 80%.
18! Which is not even full Brain maturity, 80 plus percent.
I'm sorry, that's the facts.
So if they don't want to deal with this topic, then what they have is the capacity to know that it's important, to know that it's true, to know that it's essential, and to not talk about it.
And I honestly, I don't know how they live with themselves.
I don't. I don't.
Even to explore the topic, even to have debates, even to...
How do you do it?
How do you get up and talk about other stuff?
I don't know. It's weird.
It's like... I don't know what the analogy is, but it's like...
You know your wife's having an affair...
And you just, oh, can I make you eggs for breakfast, honey?
Oh, I packed tonight's lunch for you.
Can I get you a coffee? What would you like to watch on TV tonight?
It's like, don't you have this torture of there's this thing you've got to talk about?
Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm unusual that way, but I assume that there's financial motives, there's motives of avoidance, and it's just strange to me.
It's strange to me. Sorry, go ahead.
Just even on a personal level, in regards to my question, I see a lot of my...
I ran for office as a libertarian in a particular state for a statewide election.
And so that's why I'm kind of interconnected with libertarianism.
And I see a lot of...
Well, I left the party.
I left the party last year because I just got sick and tired of just...
Literally, like you were saying, just being a cuck, you know, I couldn't take it, like, here are these important issues, and no one's going to talk about it, but hey, let's sign a petition, and let's all, you know, there's just this hedonism behind it, too.
You know, if you have, you know, as a libertarian, you know, if I say, well, maybe it's not such a good idea to have, you Basically naked men with dildos on their head with, you know, kids standing by and watching this, you know, and then you just get criticized as a bigot, you know, and like, oh, you hate gay people.
And I mean, it just, it's nothing to do with gay or straight.
Just like, I have an opinion.
Maybe that's not... I'm not convinced that straight people with dildos would be a great idea either.
Well, yeah, that's what I mean. I mean, it's just this appease to hedonism, like, yeah, man, just do whatever you want.
And even like that CNN, I had to share that CNN article that said, like, how cuckolding can actually improve your marriage?
And just obscene.
And I had shared it.
And all my, you know, some, not all, but a lot of my libertarian friends, left libertarians, like, hey, what's wrong with that?
You know, they're not hurting anybody.
And just like... They ignore, they say that the culture war isn't real, but then they always rush in to defend kind of the hedonist, leftist, and like, oh, well, you know, you shouldn't really read Hoppe, or, you know, oh, Alex Jones is a nutcase, but hey, you know, you need to check out some of these left libertarian, you know, libertarian socialists that no one's ever heard of and has no significance.
And so I guess my question is, on the individual level, Are they doing that just because, like you said, organizations have the donors, but these people have their leftist friends.
That's their dopamine drip.
Would you agree with that, or what do you think?
Yeah, look, there are some people who are into movements for the socializing, and they don't want it particularly to interfere with their lives.
There are people who go to church for God, and there are people who go to church for cake.
If you're into a particular movement, because you have some predilection for some of the ideas and you get along with the people and similar personality types are around, then you're there for fun.
You're there for socializing.
You're there to hook up.
You're there to, I don't know what, talk about stuff rather than do anything.
I guess just be honest, right?
I mean, I'm a chat-pertarian or, you know, a cuck-pertarian.
You're not a true believer.
You're not there for God.
You're there for cake. You're not there for truth.
You're there for gossip.
And, you know, again, I find it hard to be really harsh on people, I mean, that way inclined, because to me, if you're honest about it, That's fine.
Like if you say, well, I don't want to talk about genetics.
I don't want to talk about IQ because, you know, it's going to get me into a lot of trouble.
People might not like me.
And it's like, okay, well, that's honest, right?
I can respect the honesty, if not the path.
But then, of course, what you have to say is that, well, if we're afraid of upsetting anyone, we're never going to achieve a libertarian society.
Because you know what's going to really upset people?
Achieving a libertarian society.
I mean, that is going to be an unbelievable intergalactic crap show.
I mean, just anything.
Take privatizing the post office.
Take privatizing schools.
Take privatizing roads.
Take privatizing government bureaucracies.
Take privatizing universities.
I mean, any one tenth of one percent of these things is going to drive people completely insane.
Try privatizing health care.
Try privatizing Social Security or unemployment insurance.
I mean, people will go. Mental.
You cannot achieve a free society without alarming, enraging, frightening, and provoking millions and millions and millions of people who will think you are the worst thing since the devil invented fructose.
Is that where the split is then?
I don't know how many times I've listened to that Kokesh debate, and I don't want to put you in a position that makes you have to say anything about your friends, but listening to that debate and him and the Kokesh-type libertarians are like, yeah, we need to crash the dollar, we need to crash the welfare system, we need to crash this, crash this.
Oh, it'll be fine because I don't pay taxes and I live off of Bitcoin in a trailer in the desert.
With the right libertarians, it's like, okay, no, the post office, the roads, that's all owned.
That is paid for by the tax victims.
And we need to, like Walter Block said, in regards to privatization of the road system, the most fair way, according to the just principle, would be that the taxpayers already own that and you would start a share program.
And so I just don't understand how they think you're going to get an Ancapistan if we just crash the economy and open the borders.
I just don't understand that type of logic.
I'm baffled because you can't privatize.
How can you privatize something that's not owned it?
Do you just have the government sell off land?
Well, no, because that wouldn't be fair to the tax victims.
Not only are they ignoring the data, like Kokesh had said on your debate, you know, like, well, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm not disputing your data or, you know, or what he called your narrative.
I'm not, no, no, no, I'm not, I know.
And so it's just like, well, what are you arguing for?
And it leads me to my next question.
At what point- Hold on, just hold your question.
I just wanted to clarify something.
Adam Kokesh is not a friend of mine.
I completely understand why you think that.
I mean, we've done shows together years ago and so on.
But he is not a friend of mine.
Friendships, to me, are value-based.
And that, even if you had been a friend of mine, holding that position, sorry.
There are more important things than a mildly shared media history, as far as that goes.
It was the same thing with Walter Block.
When I was talking, I had a debate with him about spanking.
Didn't question the data.
Didn't question the arguments.
Didn't question the facts. Didn't accept the reality.
You know? Well, if drunk people are about to walk off a brain...
Okay. So, yeah, I just wanted to point that out.
And the reason I say that is I've said that friendships must be based on shared values.
And so, if I have a fundamental disagreement with someone like that, no way.
Can't be a friend. Can't be a friend.
I said this back at Libertopia in 2010.
It was a long, long time ago.
And I just really wanted to be clear on that because I know I've said friendships require shared values.
And when you have an opposition, when he calls facts narrative, that is not the same planet.
And I cannot be friends with someone like that.
Right, right. Yeah, no, I totally understand.
And so I guess now my next question is, at what point Logically, maybe that's not the right word, would you consider these people that want to crash everything, want to flood the, you know,
unmitigated immigration, you know, the whole entire world moved to Western civilization, at what point do you just start calling them, you know, is it fair to call them, well, you're basically communists because the end result of your desires is communism.
Is that fair to say?
Well, I mean, it certainly would be...
If you want to invite a lot of people into your country who are dependent on the state, and then the state goes tits up, then you will quite often have...
I mean, there may be some self-deportations and so on, but there will be a lot of conflict verging on secession, separation, civil war, who knows, right?
I mean, that's inevitable.
And if you look at America, I mean, just look at the 19th century, there was pretty open borders then, and there was not a lot of Hispanic immigration, even though the border was significantly undefended, because there was no welfare state.
And so, if you don't have a big government, then with the capacity to redistribute trillions of dollars of resources, then immigration becomes much less of an issue.
Of course. I mean, without a doubt.
And plus, you have private property, private ownership.
The government doesn't own massive tracts of land all over the place that nobody's policing in national parks and crap.
So, at what point are they becoming destructive?
Well, you know, my particular interaction with libertarians and why I began drifting from them was based on two things.
The first was the universal blowback and reaction slash indifference slash hostility slash rage at the argument, which I put out very clearly, that spanking was a violation of the non-aggression principle.
Hey, look, here's something you can do in your life right now.
And I started talking about this 12 years ago.
Now, imagine...
If libertarians had listened to me, hundreds of thousands of libertarians with kids had listened to me, we'd have a whole bunch of people coming into adulthood now who would be magnificent.
Magnificent human beings, hundreds of thousands of them, leaders, fearless, courageous, powerful, inspiring.
Hundreds of thousands of people, children who've been raised peacefully.
Let's say, of course, you start when they're six.
Let's say you start a little late.
Okay, they're 18 now, 12 years ago.
Let's say they were four and they were 16.
Now, do you not think that human beings as a whole would be fascinated?
Would be fascinated by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children who were amazing human beings.
Coming into view as adults.
They would be. And they'd say, whoa, what's that?
Do you not think psychologists would be fascinated to study how their brains work, how their emotions work, how their limbic systems work, how their neurotransmitters fire?
Do you not think they'd love to get them in fMRI machines?
Do you not think they would love to figure out what IQ differences there might be as the result of being raised with negotiation rather than with force?
Do you not think this would be a massive cohort of incredibly powerful examples for society to emulate?
And do you not think, then, that given the studies that would come out of this, or just the personal inspiration for being in the presence of people raised peacefully and rationally, do you not think that that would have a huge impact culturally and prove the value of the non-aggression principle right up front, right there, standing before you, glowing, godlike, With wings on their shoulders.
That would be an incredible example.
And it would have shown that libertarians respected the non-aggression principle, that they refused to initiate force against their own children, and we would all see the glorious results of that.
And I saw that very clearly, and I talked about that very clearly, that we need to demonstrate the value of the non-aggression principle within our own lives, within our own families.
Now, you say, well...
I didn't have any kids, yeah?
How about you know someone or knew someone at some point who had kids?
Could you not have brought them this information?
Could you not have fought for the expansion of the non-aggression principle?
As far and as wide as humanly possible?
No! I want to go to Porkfest and get an STD! I want to let leftists take over the...
Right? So...
The failure of libertarians to say, wow, this is a practical plan with theoretical foundations, with scientific support.
Say, oh, well, you know, this is a rational argument that spanking violates the non-aggression principle.
People didn't take to that.
They got mad at me, generally.
And then I said, okay, well, if they don't like the rational arguments, maybe they'll like the data, because, you know, so data-driven libertarians, so objective, so data-driven.
So I brought in the data. I brought in the facts, the studies.
This was pretty early on in what I was doing.
Eh, they didn't care. I mean, a few, don't get me wrong.
Some cared, but they didn't make it a thing.
They didn't push it. They didn't make it a part of the movement.
So what did they do? Well, they went for politics, and how did that work out?
And they went for their conferences, and how did that work out?
And they talked about rent control, and the Fed, and fiat currency, and private ownership of the roads.
I mean, and what did it do?
What did it do? We could have had a quarter of a million amazing people to show to the world as glorious examples of the non-aggression principle made flesh.
You don't think parents would be interested in children who perform that well, who are that amazing?
I'm telling you, we could have had it right there for people to see from space, from another galaxy.
But they didn't want it. So that was my first sort of, ha, maybe it's a little bit more talk than action.
And the second, of course, which I won't go into any more detail in particular, was universally preferable behavior.
My rational proof of secular ethics.
Soup to nuts. Incontrovertible.
And I said that this is what the world needs the most, the rational proof of secular ethics.
And there was some bitching about it.
There was some negativity towards it.
And I must have done... I don't know, 50 presentations, 20 presentations on this.
I did live presentations on it.
I did arguments. I did debates.
I did rebuttals. I did countless videos on it.
I debated it over and over again just to get the word out on this show, elsewhere.
They don't care. So, I'm an empiricist, right?
I do not cast my pearls.
You know how that goes, right? But I'm an empiricist, which means that I'm going to...
I don't care what people say.
I mean, who cares what people say?
Anyone can say anything. It's like that last guy, you know?
Like, I mean, nice guy. A bit confused, I think.
I'm not sure he was as honest as he thought.
It's like, I'm not trying to be dishonest in any way.
How do you know that? I'm just going empirically with what you're saying.
I don't care what you say.
I care with what you do and what actually happens.
And so those two were like, okay, well, this is not a particularly serious group in terms of really wanting to do things to change the world.
And of course, with the demographic winter, the decline of the population in Europe with race and IQ stuff, and I was like, okay, well, this really better get people's attention.
And, you know, again, just got hostility and so on.
So You know, you try and figure out whether people are serious about their values or not, or whether they're just trying to create a big fish in the little pond, a kind of niche little market for murmurings about how policing might work in a free society.
I've got two whole books on that, so I'm not saying it's terrible to do.
It's nice to have a blueprint. But I don't know if it's because they don't have enough entrepreneurial experience, if they're too owned by think tanks, or if they're too compromised by being embedded in academia.
I don't know.
Or if, as you say, that they get all Bitcoin-y and then they don't have kids and they can pursue this life of hedonism, which means why bother being disliked by many people?
And so I just...
The people who can live with themselves...
You know, nobody came up with a good counter-argument to the spanking argument.
Nobody came up with a good counter-argument to UPB. It just kind of went away, went down the memory hole.
And... I don't...
I mean, we all have to live with the consequences, but...
I certainly don't look and say, well, I should have done more, I could have done more, or whatever it is, right?
You simply have to accept what people do as the empirical facts of reality, and that would have done a lot to help.
That was very practical, that was very actionable, and that was fully in conformity with libertarian values.
UPB could have been spread far and wide, and anti-spanking could have been spread far and wide.
But people didn't want to, for personal reasons of history and lack of self-knowledge, perhaps, or Or the desire to keep everything safely theoretical.
See, when everything's safely theoretical and you don't actually have to enact change in your life or challenge those around you, if everything remains safely theoretical, you can wander off in this decaying orbit bubble of nothingness, getting nothing done, achieving nothing, but not, and really as a consequence of achieving nothing,
not arousing any resentment. So the people who are, want to crash the system and this, that, and the other, it's like, well, I can understand the case.
I can understand the case.
But what they're saying is that they're tough guys willing to see a whole lot of suffering.
But if they're so capable of stomaching suffering, why did they avoid the anti-spanking stuff?
Because, you see, I assume that they felt they didn't argue against the logic of it.
It's unassailable. It's a violation of the non-aggression principle.
If they're so comfortable with suffering, then why didn't they take whatever suffering it was to spread the non-aggression principle with regards to child raising, with regards to spanking?
Why didn't they work harder to spread UPB? Why did they not work harder to bring their values To life in their own empirical sphere of influence.
People want to see that something works.
Before you ask society to give up the only form of organization it's ever known, which is an oligarchical coercive hierarchy all the way back to our tribal days.
If you're asking society to give up everything that it knows and to completely undo the only form of organization that it's ever known, you are asking a lot of people.
And if you want to change society, people are going to be skeptical, right?
They're going to be resistant. They're not going to want to do it.
And if you want to provide as a cure to society something which everyone thinks is a poison, the least people can ask you to do is take it yourself first.
Here, everyone, take this vial.
It's going to half kill you, but you'll be much better off later on.
Have you tried it? Fuck no.
I don't want anything to do with that thing.
So people can't, and I said this repeatedly more than 10 years ago, people won't judge your ideas, they'll judge how you judge your ideas.
And a full commitment to the non-aggression principle within libertarianism, a full commitment to reason and evidence within libertarianism is the only way To elevate the authenticity of the belief, the commitment of the belief to the point where people will even start to consider it.
If you say we're all dying from a deadly disease and you won't take the medicine that you prescribe for others, no one's taking your medicine.
I'm sorry, I don't care how many, you don't want to take it.
And so if libertarians weren't and aren't willing to consistently implement the non-aggression principle in their own families, in their own environments, if they're not willing to stand for the non-aggression principle This is part of the against me argument, too.
That if somebody wants to state a solution to social problems, then they want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them.
And that is an unarguable argument.
You can't argue against it.
And libertarians don't want to enact it.
They didn't want to rest their relationships on an acceptance of the non-aggression principle.
And I've made this a key point of my speaking today.
Ten to twelve years ago.
And they didn't want to do it.
So it's just kind of like a gig.
It's like a fun thing.
It's virtue signaling.
It's self-treening. It's not a genuine thing within society.
Because if you really want to inspire people to change, you have to not be hypocritical yourself.
That's the first sufficient but not necessary requirement for change in the world.
You have to not be hypocritical.
A big-ass hypocrite yourself.
Say, ah, the non-aggression principle is the way to run society.
Now, I can't change society, but I have stood for the non-aggression principle in my own family, in my own circle of friends, in my own extended family, and I have stood firm and given people the data and played them the presentation.
She said, put all this data together for everyone, got all the experts together, made all the arguments.
All they had to do was show the presentations and say, this is what I stand for.
Are you with me? But that's difficult.
I know. I understand.
That's difficult. But libertarians, they don't really want to do what's difficult.
They don't want to talk about basic science at the brain.
They don't want to stand for the non-aggression principle in the family.
They don't want to run the against me argument and the value of the power of it.
So libertarians say, oh, we want to crash the system, which is going to be enormously difficult.
Where's their empathy for how difficult things are going to be for people when they don't even want the difficulty of an uncomfortable conversation about spanking?
Come on. I'm going to crash the system.
It's going to be really horrible for millions and millions of people.
That's fine with me because I think that difficulty should be embraced in the pursuit of a free society.
How did you do with the whole spanking question?
Oh, I just completely cocked on that.
I didn't want to do that because, see, that was really uncomfortable.
It's like, oh, come on.
You've got to be kidding. People will not take you seriously at all.
It doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter how much you say.
People are empirical. They want to see something working before they take the risk.
Does that help at all, Nick? Sorry for the long speech.
No, I completely agree.
Like I said in my question, I've been seeing this specifically for the last two years.
I guess we've been going on long enough, so I'll just leave my last quick question here for you.
You know, is it a deeper problem?
Because I always hear, you know, this is why in my question, postmodernism and subjectivity.
You know, everything's subjective.
Well, you know, if we crash it, though, on the one hand, we'll get rid of it.
But yeah, on the other hand, yeah, some people might, you know, die and, you know, whatever.
So is that the most dangerous element of these people, is the subjectivity versus objectivity?
I think if you want to help society, you have to genuinely care about society.
Of course, particularly if you're asking people to do stuff that's really difficult.
You have to care. And I care that libertarian parents would have good experiences with their children.
I care about the sustainability of the West.
I care about the quality of the immigrant experience, that they come to a particular culture and we should try and maintain the good stuff within that culture and not surrender it to endless waves of immigration.
I care about minorities within white countries and I care that blacks get better opportunities and better education.
This is why I'm talking about non-spanking and breastfeeding and peaceful parenting and this is why I work with People to get that message out.
And one of the things I was happiest about with the Trayvon Martin presentation was it got two, probably two million people, podcasts and downloads, the peaceful parenting message.
A lot of those people were blacks.
Very, very important.
So if you're coming from a place of caring and a place of love, you can't just callously say, well, let's just crash the system.
I mean, a lot of people are going to die.
And to just glibly, oh, well, you know, just crash the system, you know.
I don't know. That's not Atlas Shrugged, man.
That's real...
It seems like a downward spiral because I can't say this because my donors and because I have donors, I associate myself with low-rent people and...
It's just a feedback loop mechanism just over and over and over and just goes down into degeneracy.
And that's why I kind of asked, would you consider these people proto-communist, soft-communist?
Because what's the endgame?
If they get their way, the left is going to throw us all into a gulag.
And so, I mean, if they're actively, you know...
I frown upon anyone that calls himself a political activist.
That just means that you can't get a job or create value.
But that's just...
I just don't understand.
I mean, is it a soft communism?
I know Hans Hoppe has talked about democracy as a soft communism type thing because of the outcome.
You know, the end game.
If you take these realities...
And take them to their logical conclusion, this is what you're going to get.
Well, it's like an off-ramp, right?
I mean, there's a highway that leads to the promised land, but there's off-ramps.
And there's people laying out candy, and there's sexy women twirling their purses with fitch-snap stockings saying, come over here, sailor.
All these off-ramps, right?
Which is designed to get you to turn off from the path.
So that you become inconsequential.
And libertarianism, and I've said this about political action back in the Ron Paul days, because political action was in direct competition to peaceful parenting and to UPB and other kinds of things.
And so to me, libertarianism in general, and there are noble libertarians and there are people who I very much like in the libertarian movement, so I'm painting with a broad brush and there are exceptions and all the caveats that everyone will ignore.
I'll just put them in for my own conscience and yours, of course, Nick.
But it's just a way of getting people to turn away from integrity.
We have a great thirst to feel good rather than do good.
Of course, right? I mean, because...
That's more fun. And it's easier, and there's much less blowback.
Because if you can tempt people into feeling good rather than doing good, then they won't disturb the evildoers.
Of course, right? So libertarianism is kind of like, you know, they want to come rob your house, and they throw the meat down with the drug in it.
And that way the dogs eat the meat, get drugged, pass out.
So libertarians just kind of like, yeah, you can go over here.
Yeah, you can have your little non-aggression principle.
Just don't use it to actually affect any real change in your personal life or the lives of those around you.
We're good.
Go have your conferences.
Go have your speeches.
Go do your talks.
It's fine. And we hope more people join you, right?
But if no one's yelling at you, if you're not in any trouble, I'm like, I'm sorry, you're not doing any good.
And so I think that is a way, it is a way of, of, Trapping people into seeming effectiveness, which gets them off the road towards real effectiveness.
And that's a shame.
But everybody has to live with the choices that they make.
I wish that libertarians, 12 years ago, I'd listened to the airtight arguments and the data.
I wish that a couple of years ago they'd listened to other things.
Because see, there are movements that are going on in the world and there are people's perspectives in the world that libertarians don't have any access to because they're not respected.
And they're not respected because they keep talking about the non-aggression principle.
Self-ownership and self-responsibility.
And they reject facts.
They reject arguments. They reject data that makes them uncomfortable.
And then they say, why can't we sell freedom to anyone?
Because freedom makes people uncomfortable.
Freedom makes people uncomfortable, to put it mildly.
In fact, it makes them freak out in general.
So if you want to sell freedom to people, you better not be somebody who freaks out at facts.
You better not be somebody who freaks out at data.
And you better, better not be somebody who freaks out at recent arguments.
Because if you freak out at recent arguments, you cannot blame other people for freaking out when you present your libertarian arguments.
It is the, like, if I make arguments And provide data that spanking violates the non-aggression principle, and libertarians shrug it off and go on with their lives, and then they go and try and convince other people, you can't do it!
Because you've already got the principle embedded in your consciousness, embedded in your conscience, that you can wave away uncomfortable arguments.
So of course you can't convince people.
You have to go through the difficult process of accepting uncomfortable truths and working with them.
And enacting them in your own life, then and only then do you gain the authority to change people's minds against their preferences.
If you've already changed your own mind against your own preferences, then and only then do you gain the power to change other people's minds.
And this is all stuff I said 10 plus years ago.
If you want to teach piano, you've got to learn piano.
And if you want to teach people how to overcome difficult arguments, you yourself have to learn how to overcome difficult arguments.
And I knew. I knew.
UBB and spanking violation of non-aggression principle were difficult arguments.
And people chose to avoid difficult topics and then wonder why people avoid the difficult topic of freedom.
And so, by having this off-ramp, by denying reason, by denying evidence, A lot of them turn into useful idiots for totalitarianism.
And I wish it wasn't the case.
And it was a great disappointment of mine, I'll be perfectly frank with you, Nick.
It was a great and painful disappointment of mine.
As is mine, because, I mean, you know, the liberals want me to apologize for my skin color, and then now libertarians are demanding me that, oh, you don't hate the U.S. government enough, you don't hate the West enough for what they've done, and it's just so...
It's so tiring and boring.
Like I said, I love the party.
I don't talk to these people anymore.
It's good grief. I'll move on.
I'll find different friends.
I have no problem with people disliking certain aspects of Western societies.
But first of all, recognize that they still have the right to criticize those societies, which is of great value.
And please understand that there are theocracies and brutal dictatorships around the world that are far worse than the government we live under.
And making the analysis that the West is obviously better than anything we've ever seen.
Well, it's like when I show sympathy for the victims of a theocratic dictatorship in Iran or a communist cult of personality dictatorship in North Korea, libertarians get mad at me for having sympathy for the victims of the state.
Because you're a warmonger, man!
Oh, yeah. So now we're just cold-hatted bastards.
And that's really going to help sell freedom because we'll be just perceived as so moral and compassionate.
All right. Well, thanks, Nick. I appreciate your time.
I'll move on to the next caller. But, you know, we'll grieve.
We'll move on. We'll build something better, right?
Yes. Thank you for everything you do.
And thanks for the call. Thanks. Alright, up next we have Madison.
Madison wrote in and said, I'm training and practicing in the male-dominated field of general surgery.
I have come under increased scrutiny for not being more of an alpha female.
Ultimately, this has led me to seeming weak to my superiors.
I'm struggling with accepting and moving on from the cycle I have helped create.
I act womanly, therefore I'm treated like a weak link, therefore I somewhat feel that way, leading to being less confident, then treated with less respect, and then the cycle continues.
This in the context of surgery as a field, and including my superiors, they aren't very aware of how to handle the subtle differences between men and women surgeons.
Additionally, this has been partly responsible for the program asking slash telling me to repeat the third or fifth year of training.
My question is, how do I personally and professionally overcome this?
Also, as a 31-year-old married childless woman, do I balance this with a small part of me that entertains the idea of quitting and growing our family?
That's from Madison. Hey, Madison, how are you doing?
I'm fine. How are you?
I never want to play you on Fruit Ninja.
I'm just telling you that right now.
I don't even know what Fruit Ninja is, sir.
It's a slicey-dicey game that, boy, if you knew it, that would have been a hilarious joke.
And everybody else who does it says it's really not that hilarious.
Everybody else probably knows what it is.
Operation! Did you ever play Operation as a kid?
I actually didn't.
We didn't have Operation. I get to play it as an adult, so it's great.
Okay, okay. Wow.
Yeah, it's a big question. It's a big question.
What is the relationship that goes on between the dudes and the non-dudes when it comes to the community, the hanging out, the camaraderie, and so on, like the stuff to do?
You always get right to the point.
So, after I talked with our male program director and assistant program director, I was talking with one of the female residents who's above me in training, but still a resident.
And I found out that the program director, in fact, has all of the guys out to his house to go shoot.
I don't know how often this happens.
Frankly, I'd be fine to go out and shoot or not.
Another one of the staff, who's my superior, will also have the male residents over to play poker for a night every year, a couple times a year.
And then at one of our national meetings, a bunch of the guys will go out together after dinner and more or less have said, we'll send the women home.
I didn't know these things happened.
I kind of, I suspected.
But I think there's a lot of opportunity for the guys to be guys.
And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
But that also gives opportunity for them to gain the trust of the staff, the people that are our bosses.
And I don't have those opportunities.
And frankly, I don't think I ever will.
On some level, I don't care to go shoot.
I don't care to go smoke cigars after our clinical congress meetings.
But I do care that I am given the same opportunity to gain their trust outside of work, which obviously translates to work.
Are there other female surgeons in your program?
There are. And thankfully, I will be honest, I'm in a very nice program, which is probably a big part of the reason I'm here.
But even with that, there can be some hostility between us.
Between who? Between women.
No, no, sorry. You probably don't understand that it's a sisterhood of mutual support, so that never happens, just in case you're wondering.
Oh, yeah, it never happens. Yeah, it never happens.
So you clearly are just mistaken in all of that, because women are wonderful.
We all wear our pink hats together to work.
Yeah. Right? They offer you back rubs and to pick up your food.
How did you know?
Yeah, it's, you know, I've seen the movies.
So, what happens, or how much do you think Madison, the Me Too...
What stuff has influenced mentoring and men's comfort roughhousing around women?
Oh, I... I don't know that Me Too has so much impacted the world of surgery.
I started to think after listening to you more and like Jordan Peterson and Sternevich and connecting with the world outside of surgery, I realized it's a very odd...
Specific bubble I live in, so I really don't know how much other people are part of that or experience that, especially while in training, because it can be very hard.
We work very long hours a lot.
I think...
I think...
So some of the first women surgeon residents came in in the late 70s We're now, in terms of entering surgery residents, a third of the class, which I think average number of graduating medical students is a little over 50% for women across the nation.
But in academics, it's even less.
Wait, sorry. So a third of the students who come in are women.
There's a 50% grad rate for women.
Do you know what it is for men? The opposite of that?
The opposite of 50%?
I'm going to go with it. I think now it's a little over 50% of the graduating medical students, the graduating doctors, are women.
So it's like 53, something like that.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you meant...
My apologies, sorry.
I thought you meant that 50% of the third who started graduated.
Oh, no, no, I'm sorry.
I was talking... So medical students, people who graduated with their MD... I think you were clear.
I just think I didn't follow. Okay.
Yeah, because men these days, or I guess men throughout history, but particularly these days, you have to kind of watch what you say if there are women around.
No, no, they do. And I do think they're trying to be very respectful of that.
And not as a backlash, maybe as a backlash.
They have these other outside...
Meetings and events and play times and I think the attack on masculinity is terrible and we're gonna experience a terrible backlash from that as a society.
And so I don't want to at all seem like I disparage men getting together and enjoying each other's company and just like growing out essentially because that's not the case.
But I do think that there is an amount of trust That is gained by those male residents to male staff that I'm not even invited to the table to gain that.
And I don't see other opportunities where I have the option to gain an equivalent of that.
Does that make sense? Oh no, I completely understand.
No, listen, I completely understand.
What do you think this has in terms of the impact on mentoring itself?
Which is more direct, right?
More one-on-one.
I do think they can probably more...
And some of this is just the nature of guys versus women.
And so it's hard to tease out the difference.
I do think that it's easier for men to mentor men.
There are not a lot of women staff at my program, which is the case throughout the country.
That's not... I'm normal just because there are fewer women staff in general because they choose not to go into academics, understandably.
So I'm not going to go into academics, so I can relate to that.
Yeah, because I mean, one of the challenges, I know you said that the Me Too movement wasn't having a huge impact, but I just wanted to mention something that may come up over time, Madison, which is the Me Too stuff is difficult because a lot of this stuff happened a long time ago.
Oh, sure. So the problem is that for men, they can say, okay, well, I might think everything's fine.
And look, some of the Me Too stuff is without a doubt not fine and maybe criminal.
But some of the stuff, which is the he said, she said stuff.
So men might say, okay, well, the blowback could come 20 years from now.
Because if the women had said, you know, this guy did something and right away they march, they deal with it and so on, then the bad guys are going to get weeded out and there's not this sense of like, well, this could be festering for 20 years or something, right?
So the slowness by which some women, and it does seem to coincide with the drop in their sexual market value as they turn their 40s and 50s as actresses, but nonetheless, skepticism aside, the slowness of the...
Accusations arising has made, I think, men kind of jumpy about, okay, well, I could mentor a man.
I know I'm not going to get any Me Too stuff.
Or I could mentor a woman, and I'm a good guy, but maybe I do something that she misunderstands.
Maybe she does something that I misinterpret.
Or maybe she's crazy.
Now, if it's a man, it's going to be kind of tough to do the Me Too thing to another man.
But if it's a woman, it's, you know, you can say, well, it's a 2% risk.
And okay, it's a 2% risk, but it's a career-destroying risk.
And, you know, I don't care if there's 50 chambers in the gun when you're playing Russian roulette, I don't want to play, if that makes any sense.
I don't, in my experience, at least, and what I've seen, I don't know that it's been so much mentoring, so much as just flat-out treating me different.
Like, I've had some staff who physically will not, when we do an appendectomy, they'll not, like, move the camera to a certain port.
They'll leave it, like, at the far port.
And it's harder to do the dissection.
It's possible. Wait, what?
What does that mean?
I don't know. Huh?
I don't know what that means, a port.
No, no. So...
Sorry, I'll explain it different.
So sometimes I have had a staff who physically, they would not adjust the surgery as would be normal because that would mean they have to like put their arm over my arm and often you end up like elbowing them in the chest.
Oh, so they don't want to give you the boob shot with the elbow, right?
For fear that you might misinterpret that as some sort of sexual harassment, right?
Right. And so I've had that a couple of different times.
And I've never at all, I don't think, sent the message that I would be offended by that.
I mean, I realize like we're just trying to operate.
I want to do the most safe thing for the patient.
So that's happened.
There was another incident where I think probably more so not related so much to like sexual harassment, but just being treated.
I will step back and say, would you have Would your response have been the same in this instance if I had been a man or if I had been a woman?
What? Wait, do you have another personality there?
Can I talk to her too?
It's my evil twin.
I'm just kidding. No, but this is the thing though, Madison.
Sorry, y'all not the same.
If I accidentally elbow a guy in the boob, nobody cares.
Right. Right? If I accidentally elbow a woman in the boob, that could be a problem.
Because here's the thing, too. I don't know what these guys are thinking, but part of you is probably like, do I say something?
Do I apologize? Does that make it worse?
Does that make her notice? Does that make me think of her as fragile?
Is that going to draw her attention to it?
What if it happens again? Like, you just start.
And, of course, in a surgery, you don't want that stuff because you really want the surgeon to be concentrating on what's going on.
Right? Right. Right.
No, I completely agree.
And me, personally, I have not noticed it, unless it's been the time where they didn't move the instruments where they should be because of my chest.
But other times I've been accidentally hitting the chest, and I honestly didn't even notice until the staff was like, oh, I'm so sorry.
They're just like, let's just operate.
Like, I just want to operate, sir.
Right, right. But I think more so, it's how we're perceived.
Not necessarily operating in those more specific instances, but times where women are obviously more likely to say, well, I think this.
Versus a guy is going to say, well, this.
And our thought process is probably somewhat similar, but...
Whenever we say, well, I think this, or it could be this too, where I think I'm displaying my, not necessarily my intellect, but my thought process in terms of a diagnosis or whatever, and they perceive that as being weak and not making a decision.
Whereas for me, it's like, well, no, I know what the answer is.
I don't know. No, I understand.
It's the California question mark that drives men crazy.
So the California question mark comes out of a little valuable speak, and I'm not going to make fun of the way you speak, which is perfectly fine, of course.
But, you know, the world is round.
The world is round? You know, I remember a professor telling me this once.
It would drive him kind of crazy when some of the young women would come in to talk to him.
It's like, well, I really want to do a thesis on, you know, like I'm really interested in sheep in southern France.
And it's like, why is everything a question?
And this is not for all women, but there is this women will say something a lot of times as a question, not because they're not certain.
They're just looking to create positive feedback or a positive feedback loop.
And there is a certain linguistic tick.
Women, and I think this is more like women around men who are just like, the world is flat.
You know, this guy has a tumor or something like that, right?
Which is 99% of surgeons.
Right, right, of course, because you want that kind of certainty, even if they're wrong.
You may want. So you want that.
But for women, it can be tougher.
And I find that men don't mind it when women are assertive, but women sometimes mind it.
Oh, yeah. But for women, a lot of times it's like, do we all agree?
Can we collaborate? Can we get together?
Are we all on the same page and so on?
Which is, you know, these are two different styles and there's really lots of pluses to be said for both.
But I think it can be a bit of a challenge when it comes to appearing assertive, if that makes sense.
No, it does. And I think that is where my struggle started off.
And then it became, they would question me.
And then... I would question myself.
In general, I would know the right answer.
I would know the right thing to do. I would know how I would want to do this surgery, but then you're doing the surgery how they want to.
There are 15 different ways to skin a cat, if that makes sense.
We often use that very terrible analogy.
Now that I say it out loud, it sounds really gruesome.
It's not meant that way.
I don't want to hear about first year.
Right. And so you have a high degree of agreeableness, which is common for women, right?
And you have a high degree of conscientiousness of go on.
And in terms of like, see, to tell people what to do, you have to have dialed down the empathy just a little bit, right?
And I'm working on that.
Right. Now listen, I, you know, as far as surgeons and empathy, I mean, I guess I want an empathetic surgeon, but I also want a guy who just goes in and cuts out, or a woman who goes in and cuts out whatever is in there that needs to be taken out or whatever, and it's decisive that way.
And so there is a kind of coldness to being commanding, and there is, in a sense, a driving out of the personality of the other in an attempt to impose your will on the other person's body or in the other person's mind, if that makes any sense.
And I think that comes a little bit more to men than to women as a whole.
No, I agree. Completely.
And I don't know how to break that cycle.
Well, you're well armed, right?
You've got lots of knives around.
No, I'm just kidding. Yeah.
So how do you think this has played out to this asking slash telling you to repeat the third or fifth year?
How did that play out?
What do you think the effect is that produced that?
So my first and second year I spent over half of that time with two Cheap women who were very cutthroat and really very nasty and also very vocal.
All right, but not nasty how?
Give me some gossip. No, I mean just roughly in general, like nasty how?
Nasty in terms that they would get on to me for things that were wrong, that I had genuinely done wrong.
And I would see other people do the same thing and it was like no big deal.
Or I would try to defend myself.
Hang on, Madison. I'm so sorry to interrupt just after I ask you for details.
So when you say that they came down hard on you for one thing, you see other people doing the same thing and they don't come down hard on them.
Would those other people, genitally speaking, be outies or innies?
Audis or innies, what do you mean?
Genitally speaking. In other words, would those women be as tough on the men as they were on you?
No, they would definitely be harder on women.
Right. In my experience, and after the fact, talking to other residents.
Why do you think? I think that there is part of women that just, especially in a dominating field like surgery, that they prey on other women Oh, hello. I'm here.
Okay, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, and that's a...
But why do you think they are preying on women or more aggressive to women?
I really don't...
I don't know.
And I just...
I don't know.
That's a big question, right?
I literally one of them told me once that as a woman...
I had to be ten times better than a man to be considered half as good.
Oh, I hate that.
I hate that phrase.
Right. No, that doesn't even make sense.
And even despite the fact of the hardships I've had, I never felt like that's been the case.
That's so drastic and extreme.
So maybe they feel that they have to be harder on you so that you won't make women look bad.
Yeah. Because if you have that perspective...
Then you're going to be brutal towards women for fear of women making women look bad.
But that actually does make women look bad because it makes them kind of jumpy, which is somewhat what you've experienced, right?
Yes. Yeah, very much so.
Right. Yeah, because I think that sort of started a lot of the issue from spending literally over half of my residency the first two years with Either both or one of these two people.
It completely killed my confidence.
I would question everything I did.
Not so much when I wasn't around them.
Somewhat when I wasn't around them.
But when I was, man, I literally could watch on my Fitbit and my heart rate jump up.
It was terrible.
And now they're gone. At least gone from our program.
Not gone, gone. I'm really starting to overcome that and to leave that behind.
They are fine surgeons, but they're not here anymore.
I wish them well, but they're not in my life anymore.
I'm happy about that.
I think a lot of it started there and has been the spiral that I could not figure out how to stop from there, to be completely honest.
Do you think that you were looking more for approval from the women than from the men?
Yes. Right, right.
Would you think you were looking for maybe a little bit more sisterhood with the women and had more vulnerability to their negative viewpoint?
Yep. Right.
It's a lot of power, right?
It's a lot of power that they had. Yeah.
And I've recognized that and I'm now like a mid-level in training, not like a junior, but mid-level and not a chief.
I have made a point to say to the younger residents that bullying will not be tolerated.
You always have a person to come to and talk to about whatever in me and it will be confidential.
I want to end that cycle of violence.
And it is a form of violence, I think.
Because I don't want other people to feel the way that I did.
Right. And this is kind of a hazing thing that does happen for sure, right?
I mean, this is a kind of hazing that happens in these kinds of situations.
Working, you know, 80 plus hours a week and, you know, having four days off a month is not like enough hazing in itself.
Right. Can I ask you a completely immature and annoying question?
Of course. Are you prettier than them?
One for sure. The other, I don't know.
The other was older. Right.
I don't know that that matters. It probably means nothing.
It's a completely immature question to ask.
On the inside, I was definitely prettier than both of them.
And I was definitely liked better by patients and respected more by the staff, women included, women especially, because I was nice and I took time to explain why I was doing what I was doing.
Well, and it's funny too because this idea that you have to be harder on women as a woman to make sure that they can cut it means that, of course, women don't want you as a mentor.
Oh, yeah. And that reduces the demand for that.
And I don't like this, oh, you've got to be ten times as good to be, like, that just creates a whole antagonism with the entire environment, that there are enemies, they're going to cut you at every turn.
It turns into, like, Stalin or something, and knives in your back at all times.
It's like, oof. So now you can imagine, like, being told I need to repeat a year, which if I truly, technically need to repeat a year, I've told them, like, That's fine.
At the end of my training, I want to be a safe surgeon.
That's my goal. And if that means I need another year, then I am fine with that.
But man, it sure does, like, lend credence to what she said.
And that's part of why I contacted you, because I don't want to be angry about this.
I don't want to be frustrated.
I don't want to feel like every time something happens, is this because I'm a woman?
Or is this because of them being so vocal early on in my training?
Sorry to interrupt, Madison, but what happened with the mentor was because you were a woman and because of her perspective on how tough she needed to be because you were a woman, right?
Yeah. Because she wasn't that way with men.
Now, this can happen sometimes the other way with men, that you get this sort of alpha battle that occurs between mentor and mentee for men, and they can sometimes be softer on the women as a result of chivalry and this kind of stuff.
So it could go the other way as well, for sure.
Right. And I do think there have been instances where I've benefited somewhat from that, in terms of them being like men Surgeons being less harsh-toned if I do something wrong in the operating room.
And I appreciate that.
Right. And that's how you work, and that's how it works for you, right?
Some people do respond to the harshness.
And some people don't, right?
And I sympathize with both perspectives.
And if you're not this kind of person, you know, your mentor obviously is with the goal of delivering you as a safe surgeon to the patients.
It's funny because if the harshness is causing you to back down, then, of course, some people could say, oh, well, you know, you couldn't hack it if you can't handle this stress.
How can you handle the stress of ham and ham and?
But the point is, of course, you're supposed to grow into your confidence.
About how to handle that kind of stress.
You don't want confidence too soon because then you become reckless.
And you don't want confidence too late because then you're overcautious.
But I think part of mentoring is to help people to develop that sense of rational confidence at the appropriate time.
And if you've just beaten people back down, you're delaying that which you're supposed to be nurturing, which is a growing rational confidence.
Yeah. And I completely agree.
And as you were saying that, I was just like, In my head imagining the span of the almost three years that I've had now and I think part of the problem and this is with surgery training in general and I don't know how to fix this system problem but we spend one month on a service and over the last month I've operated with three different staff and there's not a lot of continuity for the resident in terms of being with the same person Who can really help hone those skills and know when to push you,
when to back off, what you've genuinely done better, what you still are not listening to them about, and that's just not really there.
Right, right.
And it's a constant battle of, oh, I'm working with this staff.
How do they like to do this?
I don't remember. I wrote it down in my notebook.
Well, but this is the challenge, right?
You're saying, how does the staff like to do this?
Whereas some of the women and some of the men might be like, well, they'll do it the way that I want to do it.
Yeah. And I'm only just now, after having listened to Jordan Peterson and him talk about agreeableness, and I think with I don't remember the name of the talk that y'all had talked about it.
It's like, oh, I need to be less agreeable.
That's what I need to do.
That's what he talked about with Kathy Newman a little bit, right?
That women score higher on agreeableness and neuroticism and so on.
And he does work with women to get them to negotiate more for what they want.
Yes. And so I have been more direct in saying, no, I want to do the lap cholecystectomy this way.
This is how I want to do it.
Right. And that's worked a third of the time?
What do you mean? To get what I want?
Ah, you see now, if you're saying it worked a third of the time, that's not really the same as assertiveness.
Because in a sense, you're still asking for permission to be assertive.
Yeah, probably. You know, like, if you're really being assertive, and if you're in the right, and you have the authority...
Then it should be just about 100% of the time.
Like, unless you're approaching an appendectomy with a chainsaw and a spork, in which case you want people to talk you out of what you're doing.
But you don't ask for permission to be assertive.
You say, this is the way I'm going to do it.
And if people disagree, you say, okay, well, make your case.
You know, tell me why I shouldn't do it this way.
If they make a good case, you can adjust.
And if not, you say, well, I disagree with you.
I'm the one with the authority here.
And this is what I'm going to do.
And, you know, I'm going to appreciate your support on that.
Okay, I'll work on that.
Right. And, I mean, of course, it's nicer to be agreeable than not to be agreeable, and the fact that you care about it is not a bad thing.
You know, it means that it's tougher for you as a surgeon, but it's probably better for you in your relationships, your marriage and friendships and so on.
That kind of empathy and agreeableness can be very positive in those environments, right?
Yes. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the hubster, the himbo, the man-boy toy.
All right. 31-year-old married childless woman.
You may want to have kids.
Oh, no, we do want to have kids.
Oh, you do want to have kids?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Because you say here, do I balance this with the small part of me that entertains the idea of quitting and growing our family?
Sorry, I guess I was not very clear.
I meant in terms of quitting and fulfilling my life dream of having six kids, although I think that ship has somewhat sailed.
No, not really. Start now.
Versus... Maybe, yeah.
You have one a year.
37, 38, you know.
Maybe not six, but you know.
I guess I just have one...
Teeny, tiny little question, Madison, if you don't mind indulging me.
If you want to have six kids, why are you trying to become a surgeon?
Partly, I grew up in a family that we lived paycheck to paycheck.
There were four kids.
I had an older half-sister, so five technically, but she didn't live at home with us.
My parents are still married.
I'm sorry, who didn't live at home with you?
My older half-sister.
Okay. But all four of my direct siblings are from my parents, and they are still married and happily married.
Does that make sense? Doesn't answer my question, but I appreciate the tour of the family tree.
I'm getting here. So, growing up, living paycheck to paycheck, and somewhat my father...
Wanted us to be independent, wanted us to not have to rely on somebody else to provide for us out of him probably feeling like he didn't fully provide for our family, but also just out of probably being scared that,
oh my gosh, I have all these women daughters and I want them to be financially Free to not be dependent on somebody else.
And how much debt are you currently in for your education, Madison?
I actually paid off my student loans yesterday at the grace of my in-laws.
Huh? What does that mean?
How much did you pay? A total for my education.
Yeah. $300,000.
All right.
I know. I know. So you bought a house of blood.
No kidding. I was going to say $300,000.
And how did your... The blood that I spilled cutting on people.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, boy, there better be some gold in that, in those bellies.
I'm told there is.
I don't know. So $300,000.
And who paid this?
I did. No, but how?
So initially I went to a junior college.
I had a scholarship after that.
So I went to a two-year college for three years because that's normal.
But I figured out when I was there that I wanted to be a doctor and not like an accountant slash lawyer.
So I stayed longer to do science classes at a cheaper rate.
It was She asked that I could work at a fast food place and pay for it myself after my scholarship ran out.
So I did that and then went to a four-year public university.
Then did my master's in public health for one year.
And then med school is unbelievably expensive.
When I initially When I started looking at it, the total cost of attendance was like $32,000 a year.
By the time I graduated, it was like $56,000.
Unfortunately, the cost wasn't every year since the early 90s.
I'm sorry. Can you just cut out for a second there?
You said that the cost? The cost of medical education to become a doctor grows, has grown greater than GDP every year since the early 90s.
Oh yeah, no, it's one of the reasons why healthcare is so expensive, but you've not answered my question as yet.
Again, backstory is fun, but you had a $300,000 bill and you've been a student most of your life.
How did you pay for it?
I took student loans.
I understand how you got the $300,000.
I'm curious. You mentioned something about your in-laws.
Oh, I'm sorry. Yes.
So my in-laws have financed a personal loan.
So we paid it off so we don't have to pay the 6.7% interest that Congress thought we should pay for most of my medical student loans.
Yeah. And instead we're paying 0% interest and we'll start paying that back when I'm done with my training.
So you haven't paid off your loans?
Right. No, but I'm also not accruing.
See, you said you paid your loans off yesterday.
And what is happening is you're getting a subsidy from your in-laws.
Yeah. So they're paying the interest in losses on being able to invest that money, right?
Correct. Okay.
Okay. So you're still $300,000 in the hole.
No, some of that I had already paid off, so I'm only $263,000 in the hole.
$263,000. Okay. Right.
So, you know, well north of a quarter mil in the hole.
Yeah. And if you quit, oddly enough, your father's advice to end up being independent will have achieved quite the opposite, right?
Right. Yeah.
In that you will have a useless, incomplete degree and over a quarter million dollars in debt, and so you will not have achieved the independence that your father wanted for you so much because you don't finish, if you don't finish, right?
So when I said quit, I meant quit surgery training.
So I've graduated with my MD and my MPH. Those are fine.
Nobody can take them from me.
I have not graduated surgery training, which is the extra little bit...
A lot of it after that.
But you've done three of the fifth year, right?
Correct. And you would have to repeat that third.
Sorry. You would have to repeat that third year, so then you would graduate when you were 34 or so, and then you would do what?
Do you then go into the program?
What's the program that comes after the fifth year?
I would go into private practice.
Oh, so you can just start practicing right away after the fifth year?
Yes. But if you want to have kids, you can't really have them before you graduate, right?
Doesn't that put you into being 34, 35?
No, you can.
80 hours a week? What are you talking about?
You can. No, people do it.
Women do it. Yeah, but not well.
No. I mean, yes, it is physically possible for you to have a baby and give birth to it while you have four days off a month and you're working 80 hours a week and studying for exams.
Lots of women who do it.
But terribly. Hopefully not terribly.
No, terribly. Not as well.
No, I gotta be frank with you here, Madison.
Terribly. You cannot be a good mother to a newborn if you're gone 80 hours a week.
You are a terrible mother.
You are not breastfeeding.
At least you don't have skin-to-skin contact.
Your child is not bonding with you.
It's terrible. I mean, you're a doctor.
You know the importance of all of this early childhood stuff, right?
Yep. Tell me where I'm wrong.
No, it's true.
I also, you know, when you're 20, you think, oh, I'll get married and have children while I'm in medical school.
It'll be easier then. Well, then you don't meet your husband until you're in your second year of medical school.
Wait, you had thoughts in your 20s of having children while you were in medical school.
Yeah? I mean, just when you're kind of...
Did you ask anyone? Did you do any research?
Did you find out, hey, I wonder how many hours a week I'll be working in medical school?
It's better than residency.
That's your response? It's better than residency?
No, I'm being honest, and I think this is probably a problem.
It is a problem. That a lot of people are going to face and face currently that because half of the people who graduate medical school are women and they're going to deal with this too and they are dealing with this too and it's not...
What do you mean they're dealing with this?
I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't know what it means when you say they're dealing with this.
I mean are they being terrible mothers or they're not being mothers?
Both. They're dealing with both.
Obviously not the same person.
No, no, no, I know. But we've got half the women graduating in their early to mid-30s, I assume.
And either they're going to be terrible moms or they're not going to be moms at all, right?
Or they give up the entire field, at least for the time being.
Yes, which is, you know, a fair number that happens too.
Yeah, no, I get it.
Like 40% of women with MBAs don't even work in the business world.
Because society apparently loves training women, loves spending...
You've probably had well over a million dollars of resources poured into you so that you can go and breastfeed.
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, the state has definitely paid for far more of my education than I have.
Right. And society, if you want to become a mom, society is going to be down one surgeon than if you were a man.
Yes. Yes. That being said, I think we've kind of, you know, the bar has been passed.
Women are in surgery. They cannot go back on that.
And unfortunately, men or boys are not being really given the opportunity in school to become doctors in a large degree to get to this point.
So we're kind of, we're here to stay.
Well, I mean... Never say never, right?
Because this is another reason why healthcare has become so expensive, is we're training women to become doctors who then often want to go and become moms.
And women, of course, as you know, work fewer hours in the long run than doctors to the tune of hundreds of hours a year less, right?
Yes. Interestingly, there's this recent study that says women surgery residents actually work more than men.
Residents, okay.
But if they want to have kids...
In the five-year training period, I'm sorry.
Right. But if they want to have kids, then society either ends up with bad moms or bad doctors, right?
Yeah. And this is, you know, one of the things that I've heard about with regards to women, and men have their own trade-offs.
But women can, you know, you have three things.
You have motherhood, you have your relationship, your husband, and you have your career.
You can pick two, but you can't pick three.
Right, you got your motherhood, you got your relationship.
So you can be a good mom and a great wife, but you can't have much of a career.
You can be a good wife and have a great career, but you can't be much of a mom.
You can pick two out of those three as far as what you can do in your life with any reasonable degree of competence.
And it's funny because I don't know that this is really talked about much.
Because, I mean, women do get a lot of this.
You can do it all, right? I mean, you are the modern woman.
You can balance a baby on your hip while you're sailing the Titanic or something.
But there is, as you know, a finite number of hours in the day.
And you can have it all.
Men can't either, if it's any consolation.
Nobody can, right? No.
And I do think women surgeons, at least on Twitter, have started shifting what they talk about in terms of a work-life balance to some other catchy phrase, I'm sure.
But they do talk about that you can't have it all, that it's not about having it all, it's about doing each thing when you're doing it well.
But you can't, if you're doing surgery well, you can't be doing parenting well because you're not there.
Any more than you can be great, you can be a great surgeon while you're breastfeeding.
I mean, and we all know, we all know who ends up getting the short end of the stick and it's the kids, right?
Because the kids don't have any authority in the situation.
What does your husband do? So he is an audiologist and teaches part-time, and then the rest of the time he works from home.
What does he make a year?
You don't have to give me specifics, just roughly.
Enough. And he has come into the relationship with enough.
Yeah, so like 100K, something in the six figures kind of thing, maybe a little higher?
Total, somewhere in there.
So he couldn't really support a family with multiple children and your dad on his salary, right?
I don't know.
I don't know because we just have not looked at numbers that closely for that, if that makes sense.
Well, okay, so if he's making $10,000 a month, you know, he's got probably, if he's self-employed, 20% in taxes, that gives you his, he's got $8,000 a month.
Let's say you need $3,000 for your living space, you know, internet and heating and so on, maybe another.
Where are you living now?
I don't know. I mean, if you want to have a whole bunch, if you want to have a mass of kids, a house is, you know, a small house is going to be a challenge.
So yeah, maybe it's less.
Maybe it's $2,000. Maybe you can get that for $2,000 a month.
But then, of course, there is property taxes and so on.
And so you've got 2K, 3K, including car and gas and insurance and stuff like that.
And then, yeah, it's a challenge.
And I would invite you to do that math just to sort of figure out what's going on.
Because my concern, Madison, is that if you keep going on with the surgeon stuff, how are you going to be a mom?
A good mom. No, it's going to be hard.
No, no, hard is not an answer.
You're fogging me now.
How are you going to do it?
Let's say you want three kids, right?
So, those children...
I would theoretically only be able to have one...
At most, at absolute most two in residency because there is a rule that says you can't take more than like two extra weeks off per year due to like FMLA type things, whether that be from like a bum knee or pregnancy.
In your first through third, and then separate from that, your fourth through fifth year.
I realize it's super technical.
Basically, I would at most only be able to have two, probably only one in residency.
And after that, I plan on negotiating the heck out of a good contract in terms of where I end up in private practice, largely because the state I'll go to has a very significant shortage of general surgeons, and I'll have the liberty to do that.
Okay, so let me understand the residency thing.
So with residency, you're doing surgeries, but you're also learning and there's exams and stuff like that, right?
Correct. We have one exam a year.
And how many hours a week are you working in residency?
Our average reported for our program is 77.
77 hours a week.
And you're allowed four days off a month?
Yes. How are you going to be a mom?
How are you going to be a mom?
No, it's hard. No, no.
Hard is not an answer.
I'm going to have to, I hate to say this with a surgeon, but I'm going to have to drill down a little bit.
77 hours a week.
And that's like in-hospital hours.
I know! So that doesn't even count going to work, coming home from work.
It doesn't count your husband is working full-time or whatever, right?
So it doesn't count getting ready for work.
I mean, we're talking 13-hour days, 12-hour days, including commute and getting ready and all that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, normally more like...
15, 16 hour days, but yeah.
Okay, so 15, 16 hour days.
Does that include studying for the exam?
No. So it's more, right?
Mm-hmm. How are you going to be a mom?
Don't say it's hard. Say it's hard one more time, Madison, I dare you.
It's hard! Okay, sorry.
How are you going to be a wife?
Okay, how are you going to be a mom?
The same way that...
The people who've done it before me have.
Poorly. And you know what that means, Madison?
That means that your kid won't be getting breastfeeding.
I mean, you may be able to pump it, you know, in the car.
I don't know what the hell, right? But it means your kid's not going to get regular.
They do have rooms for that.
And staff will let you leave operations to go do that.
Thankfully. Yeah.
You're not going to have any time with your kid.
No. No time.
And that means that either you get a nanny, in which case, what's the point?
That's like hiring someone to sleep with your husband because you're too tired.
Which I'm sure will cross your mind at some point.
Which means hiring a nanny and the child is going to bond with that nanny and then that nanny is going to go somewhere else because nannies don't stick around.
There's high turnover with this stuff.
Which means that your child is going to experience functionally the death of the caregiver because the caregiver is going to vanish.
Which means the child's going to be pretty traumatized, which means you're going to have another nanny coming in, and that your kid's going to be really upset and emotional and difficult, which means that nanny may not stick around.
You're going to have a whole series of non-bondings occurring.
It's going to break your heart.
You're going to have to harden your heart against the needs of your baby, who's going to be clutching onto you, crying, Mommy, Mommy, don't go.
When you have to head off to the hospital, you're going to be crying in your car on the way to the hospital.
Yeah. And your kid is going to barely remember who you are because half the time, if not more than half the time, your baby's going to be asleep or sleeping when you crash for a couple hours before getting up and heading out again.
And that means without a bond that when your kid gets older, it's going to be really, really difficult, particularly the teenage years.
Because without the bond, there's no trust.
Without the trust, there's no respect.
Without the respect, there's no authority.
Which means, hey, you did what you wanted, Mom, I'm gonna do what I want.
You didn't care about me, I'm not gonna care about you.
You are setting the stage for, in my humble opinion, a very negative parenting experience.
So how does the father play into all of that?
Because I will say, my husband is awesome, and on our third date, and very genuinely said, His goal in life is to be a good father.
And he wants to be a stay-at-home dad.
So if you're in school and you owe $300,000, sorry, $263,000, although it's going to be higher.
No. If he's staying at home with your baby and you're accumulating more debt, how's it going to get paid?
How are you going to live? What are you going to live on?
Sorry, so the agreement with the loan was that it is interest-free and we don't start paying it back until after my training.
Okay, but do you get paid for these 77 hours a week?
Yeah. Okay, so you're done paying for school.
Now you're getting paid. Yes, I do get paid.
I finally get paid.
But not much, right? Huh?
But not much. It comes out to a little over $12 an hour.
Granted, it's 77 hours a week, but it does include a lot of decent benefits.
Healthcare is pretty inexpensive when you're a doctor.
So we're talking $2,000 a month.
So if your husband's going to be a stay-at-home dad, how are you going to live on $2,000 a month?
After tax is about $28,000.
Where I live now, I have...
Oh, sorry. I'm thinking 40 hours a week.
Okay, so $2,800 a month.
So your husband is going to give...
So now society's got one surgeon, but is that one audiologist, right?
Because your husband's staying home.
Yeah, well, and he was teaching part-time.
Well, yeah, but if you have two babies...
I mean, I don't know.
If you're moving to another state in particular, you're not going to have extended family, right?
Correct. They will come and go, but...
So if someone's got to stay home with the babies...
He would stay home.
Okay, so then he's not working.
Yeah. I mean, he would work from home whenever I come home and crash.
Yeah, I wouldn't count on that a huge amount.
So the other part of the time, he does art stuff.
Well, yeah. You have kids, he did art.
It's a 24-hour job because you're either parenting or you're exhausted.
At least, you know, the beginning, right?
Mm-hmm. So, yes, he can quit and you can live on the $2,800 a month, but you won't have anything to do with the parenting.
Right. Because the four days off, don't you have to, like, study and research and get ready for your exams and other stuff?
Mm-hmm. So...
I mean, ideally, yeah.
Right. And then, of course, if you want to go...
And get a practice or you want to go work someplace.
If you're hiring and I don't know what the laws are.
I'm just talking from a free market standpoint.
So if you're hiring and you come in and you say, I have two children who are under three years of age or under four years of age.
And some other young guy comes in who says, I'm single.
Who would you hire? No, sure.
Like I said, there's A severe shortage of general surgeons and where I'll be going home to.
At some point you just have to hope it works out.
No, no, no. Hope is not a strategy.
No, no, no, no. You are a very, very intelligent woman.
You don't get away with crossing your fingers on this call.
You know, you gotta think, this isn't how you do surgery, is it, my friend?
Well, you just gotta cross your fingers and hope it works out.
Very rarely. I hope not, right?
And I think that your baby may be more important than an appendectomy.
So, I don't know about this whole work-it-out thing somehow, somehow, someway.
Because it's tough, right?
I mean, you want to be a surgeon, and you want to be a mom.
Yeah. And you want to be a wife.
And you want to have a life.
But it's so many hours in the day, right?
Mm-hmm. And so, probably I should clarify.
So, surgery practice is infinitely different from what I have been told on many accounts from surgery residency.
That it is much more like a 40-hour work week.
Granted that it's still 40 hours away, you know, plus commute, etc., From your child, but it is not the same as surgery residency.
Right. And have you verified that where you're going?
Because if there's a severe shortage of surgeons, won't they want you to work a lot?
Yeah, so you'll still be busy.
The place I've looked at has three other surgeons, so you'd at least be splitting up call.
They're... Older, not older, but middle-aged surgeons who are at least, you know, have done this for a while.
But yeah, I mean, you're still going to be busy.
But not busy like, like one day this week, I worked 90 hours.
This next two months, or one day this...
One week. One week this month, I worked 90 hours and I was like exhausted and You know what's funny?
Just to interrupt, I just want to very briefly say, that bothers the heck out of me.
You know, you can't be a truck driver and drive for more than seven hours, right?
But you can be a surgeon tottering around 90 hours a week.
That is a mental system.
I just wanted to mention that.
I just think the amount of sleep deprivation, like what is the number two killer of Americans in medical errors sometimes or in some circumstances?
Do we think that the medical errors might be something to do with God-forsaken levels of exhaustion.
I've just really always disliked that.
You know, I've been in hospitals with doctors standing in front of me and I can tell that they've got like one eye propped open with a toothpick and the other one is completely asleep.
And it's like, I don't want to deal with this guy.
Can you give me a guy who's fresh?
Can you get me a guy who's had a good night's sleep?
Because I don't want this guy making decisions.
It's terrible. It's a terrible system.
And if it were any other... It would be absolutely unthinkable.
You get overtime if you're a plumber.
If you fall asleep on a plumbing job, people don't die.
A surgeon would just say, okay, we'll work. I'm sorry?
A surgeon would just say, okay, we'll work.
Because the stakes are different, right?
Being a plumber versus being a surgeon.
There's actually documented studies that show that surgeons operating, there are significantly more endorphins released And so our attention level in the operating room, there was a good study, I think, out of NEMJ that showed there were no differences in surgeons operating post-call.
So they'd operated all day, they were on call that night, and they were operating the next day that those surgeons technically did not make any more errors.
Well, I mean, I don't know the study, but I know that traffic accidents go up.
Sure. Hang on. Traffic accidents go up when the clock switches one hour.
So when people lose one hour of sleep on a weekend, traffic accidents go up.
That's one hour. Of possible less sleep that people get.
Traffic accidents go up.
So, you know, that's studies that I know.
I mean, the studies that you're talking about, I don't know.
But sleep deprivation has a significant effect on performance as far as I can tell.
And I will say, in residency, it is very graduated that there are people, staff, and other residents that we talk a lot about recognizing when we're exhausted and calling for help.
And I've done that myself.
No, I don't.
Obviously, I can't tell you what to do.
I don't tell people what to do as policy.
But I would be curious, Madison, what you would say to a woman who's 18 or 19 or 20 about how to plan her life.
Because it seems like you're kind of on a collision here.
Something's got to give. If you want to have kids in the next little while, let's say that you have to do this third year again, well, you've got another three years to go.
I don't know that you want to start trying to start a whole new career in a whole new place and try and have kids at the same time.
That's going to be a real challenge.
You'll be working less, but people get sick.
People go on vacation. People get too tired.
People have been up all night. There may be times when you are on call and have to go in, even if it's supposed to be 40 hours a week, at the same time that you're trying to start a family at the same time that you're trying to pay off this debt or whatever debt may, I guess, won't accumulate from here.
What would you want to say, or I guess what you wish someone had said to you when you're sort of 18 or 19 or 20 about how to plan for these kinds of things?
Hopefully the 19 or 20 year old version of me or the generic version would listen to data.
I mean, I think at one point you had said a child, an infant who is away from their mother 20 hours a week or more perceives that as like death of the parent.
Maternal abandonment, yeah, yeah.
Yep. 20 hours a week is not a lot at all.
That's like sleep time minimum.
And sorry, technically the status to do with daycare.
I mean, I think if they're with grandparents or whatever, that's different.
It's if they're in daycare. Okay.
I think regardless, it's incredibly hard for somebody to balance that whenever they're Probably at that point in their life don't have some kind of marriage prospect.
I certainly didn't. Were you even thinking of it at that point?
I knew that I wanted to be a mother.
I knew that I had watched my mom, who's a nurse, work.
She has four children.
I think we're all fairly successful.
Wait, your mom's a nurse?
Yeah. Okay, I'm so sorry.
Again, I asked you a question, but I just had to kick my jaw back up into my chin.
Your mom's a nurse, but you thought that maybe you could have kids while you were in this program.
Wouldn't she have told you, oh no, you're working like crazy hours, you can't do that?
No. Why wouldn't she tell you that?
So she's a nurse who works with second-year surgery residents.
And has for 37 years.
So she knows the insanity of the program intimately?
Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She absolutely does.
So didn't she tell you you can't possibly think of having kids in this program?
No. Why? She said it's going to be hard.
She said you're going to miss your child, and there are going to be days that you cry.
But she still thinks it was a good idea.
But she still thought that I could do it.
That's what I tell other medical students who think they may want to do surgery.
You have to imagine that you will not be happy at all doing anything else.
This has to be the last plan.
You have to want this more than anything else.
Obviously more than anything else because I'm not a mother at this point.
But you cannot imagine yourself doing some other specialty in medicine.
Well, or be a good parent.
Right? But we don't really talk about that.
Why? And when they ask me, I tell them, like, I want to have children in residency.
And I see other people do it.
So I'm thinking that I can do it.
But that's the only experience I can offer them.
No, you can't do it. Like, you can't be a mom in residency.
Like, I just want to be really clear about that.
I mean, you can physically, biologically, you can give birth to a child, but you cannot be working 70 to 90 hour weeks, four days off, where you're studying for your exams.
You can't do that and be a mom.
I mean, I just want to be really clear about it.
That's not even my opinion. That's just temporal fact.
Yeah, and that's...
I'll be perfectly honest. That is not a fact that we are taught on our pediatric rotation.
Your mom works in this program!
But that's not a fact that was ever talked about until the last few weeks that I have heard it.
Whether in medical school or from my mother.
Does your mom love you? Yes.
Then why wouldn't she tell you?
That this can't possibly work?
Probably because she was thinking, man, my daughter's going to be a surgeon.
This is so great. Oh, so vanity.
She chooses vanity and status over what makes you happy or basic facts you need.
You and I may have slightly different definitions of the word love.
I'm just telling you, you got a whole family who has way more knowledge of the situation than I do.
Why are you getting these questions from a podcast?
Not to downgrade the podcast.
It's a great podcast, don't get me wrong.
But you've got a mom who works not just in the field, but in this exact program.
Why didn't she say to you, nah, can't do it.
Because she thought, oh, well, I did it.
I've seen other residents do it.
And so she sees them at work.
She's a nurse, not a surgeon.
Yeah. Is she working 90 hours a week?
There were times when I was growing up that she did run a clinic and worked 70 hours a week.
There were times she did work much more.
And how old were you during those times, Madison?
I was in junior high and high school.
So not as a baby.
No. I don't know.
I think she only worked 40 hours a week when I was a baby.
And how often did your father work?
Or how much did your father work when you were a baby?
I don't know.
When I was older...
Wait, you don't know what I mean?
No, I assumed he worked full time.
So my dad has a high school education.
He would work like odd construction jobs.
And that being said, he's like an incredible father and I adore him.
But then later in my life, his mother and my grandmother lived with us, and we were all working early morning jobs, and so he would stay home.
He actually stayed home to take care of his mother and would also help us do laundry, you know, house stuff, and make sure we had breakfast before we left.
So he was actually like a stay-at-home dad for part of that time.
Did your mom become a nurse?
I mean, back in the day, you could become a nurse with like a two-year degree.
Did she get it that way?
Yes. Yes.
She knows that that's quite a bit different from what you're doing, right?
Yes. And so what worked for her when she could work 40 hours, if she wanted, with a two-year degree and not a massive amount of debt back in the day?
I mean, does she know about this $263,000?
Oh, yeah. Yep.
Does she know how much you want to have children?
Has she tried to help you?
Other than saying it's going to be hard, has she actually tried to sit down and help you get what you want?
Yeah, I mean, they've said, her and my father both have said that they'll, because we live about seven hours apart right now, but they've said that they'll be here half the time.
What does that mean, half the time?
Like a month, a year, a day?
Half the time, like in a month?
So they will quit their careers to raise your children?
Yes. They would scale back.
So they would reduce their work hours to raise your children.
Does that not seem a bit odd to you, Madison?
That not you as the mother would do it, but they as the grandparents would do it part-time?
I think partly it does take a village.
I was largely raised by my grandparents, or not largely, partly raised by my grandparents on both sides.
I mean, frankly, At least in retrospect, I don't know about at the time or how that affected me long term, but really enjoyed the time that I had with my grandparents.
I just, I mean, I'm just telling you this as a father, which is not an argument, I'm just telling you where it's coming from, is that, you know, if my daughter wants to become a surgeon and wants to become a mom, we're going to sit down with a damn spreadsheet.
No, seriously, I'm not kidding.
No, we're going to sit down with a spreadsheet and say, okay, well, how's this going to work?
You know, you're 20, you want to become a surgeon.
Hey, if you want to become a surgeon, we'll try and find a way to make that work.
You also want to become a mom.
Now you have a couple of choices.
You can find a man to marry now, and you can become a mom right now, and then you can start becoming a surgeon when you're in your mid to late 20s, when your kids at least have hit the four to five year threshold where the personality is largely established.
And then, let's say it takes you eight years to become a surgeon, you can start practicing in your Early to mid-30s and you can be a mom first and be a great mom and then you can go and be a great surgeon and you'll have to have a husband or some support system, maybe it would be me, who would be there to help raise the child when you got older, but that would be one way to do it.
The other way to do it is to get your degree, stop and have children and then crank it up later.
Which is obviously a challenge because you have to keep your education current and you may find that you don't want to go back.
Because the other thing too, she might enjoy so much being a mom that she doesn't want to go become a surgeon later.
She just really enjoys being a mom.
But if my daughter wants something and I have life experience in this to some degree, as does her mom, then we sit down and we try to figure out how it's going to work.
Because it sounds like you're just kind of stepping, like looking down, stepping, you know, one exhausted foot in front of the other, but the big zoom out picture of how your life is going to work seems to be kind of sketchy.
Like it's thrown into this big giant foggy bucket called, well, it'll be hard, but it'll work out.
Yeah, no, that's fair.
And these are the questions, and the reason I'm spending so much time is, you're a great woman and I want you to get what you want, Madison, but also there are younger people here, and I've made this case before, you need to think about this stuff before you're in it, right?
Because now you're in it, and you're 31, you're $263,000 in debt, you've got another three years to go before you can start to make any real coin and figure out what you want, and your fertility is declining.
And your husband has a good education and a good job and important work helping people here.
And he may have to quit.
And, you know, society now loses one audiologist and suffers thereby.
So, these are difficult and challenging questions.
And it's easier to ask them before you're 31 and halfway through your surgery program.
Yep. And instead, it's just like a nebulous, like...
Fingers crossed!
It'll just work out.
Yeah, yeah.
And the reason you can make that...
Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Has got me kind of far in life, because certainly, I mean, obviously, like you said, my mom has a two-year nursing degree.
I'm essentially, or by, I guess, U.S. FAFSA standards, I'm a first-year college graduate.
First-generation college graduate and went to medical school and is now in surgery training.
Those are not normal odds.
No, clearly you have a very high IQ and clearly you have a lot of hand-eye coordination, no shaky hands and a very good concentration and very intelligent.
There's no question of all of that is wonderful.
The trick in that is that you think, oh, just a little bit more of myself I can give...
Well, but no, here's the challenge.
And this is sort of what I want to really impress upon you and the listeners.
And please understand, Madison, this doesn't mean I'm right.
Just because I want to impress, it doesn't mean that I'm right.
I'm just telling you the stuff that's going through my mind.
Is that the difference, as you know, theoretically, but very practically when you hold that newborn in your hand, is when you become a parent, your willpower isn't enough.
See, you can make sacrifices Of your own time.
Because it's your time.
You can, in negotiation with your husband, you can make sacrifices of his time or your time together, right?
Because you're both adults, you're both there by choice, and you both have lives.
Your baby is not there by choice, did not choose you, and needs you desperately.
And so this is not something you can manage, and this is not a decision that you can make on your own.
Because you're now responsible for a child.
So to take a silly example, you can say, well, I'm not going to make my bed.
All right? You don't have to make your bed.
You can say, well, I can go and work five days straight at the hospital.
And you can go work five days straight at the hospital.
But if you have a dog at home, someone's got to feed the dog.
Like, you can't just make those decisions independently anymore.
So when you become a mom...
And this is, I think, what you didn't get from your own mom because she was working a lot of hours sometimes, maybe even when you needed her because junior high and high school can be challenging for girls and boys, of course.
But the only reason this can possibly work is if you sacrifice the interests of the child.
In other words, if the child's preferences, if the baby's needs, that's the variable that's going to have to give.
And that, I guarantee you, is the variable that will give because they have no power over you.
You know, your boss yells at you to come into work, and your baby's yelling at you to stay home.
You're going to go into work, because your boss can fire you, but your baby can't, right?
And this is the problem that I have as a whole with Western civilization, which is one of the reasons not to put any pressure on you, Madison, but it's one of the reasons why Western civilization is not doing that well, is that children complain the least because they have the least power, so their interests get cast aside the most.
Ah, your schools are too bad.
Too bad. We need to appease the teachers' unions.
And we want free union donations to Democrats.
Oh, national debt?
Well, we need to appease the voters.
We'll just bury you under the debt because your needs don't really matter.
Oh, you know, I've got an ambition.
I've got ambition. I want to work.
I want to go out and do things and make money.
Your needs are going to have to come last.
And that is not bringing us much happiness.
That is not bringing us much happiness.
At the end of your life, I can tell you, you know, you're going to be 80, 90 years old.
I don't know, maybe 200 if gene splicing continues to go its funky way, but you will at some point be on your deathbed.
And I'm really sure that you and I and others will look back and say, not Did I put out another podcast?
Did I do enough surgeries?
Did I spend enough time at the hospital?
Did I spend enough time in the financial service of others?
Did I spend enough time cutting and slicing and sewing and stitching?
All that matters at the end of our lives, and I think not just at the very end, but towards the last quarter or even third, is our relationships, is what we've built with each other, our loves, our binds, our connections, our sorrows, our joys, I think that work is a very distracting devil for youth and middle age.
But if you don't lay the foundations for the last quarter or third of your life, and those foundations are not in work, and not even fundamentally in money or resources or savings or assets, but in love, in connection, in intimacy, in closeness.
Honesty. And that just takes time.
You can't milk relationships like you milk a cow.
You can't just squeeze intimacy and love out of relationships like it's the last piece of toothpaste in a toothpaste tube.
It is time and connection and humor and stories and shared experiences.
love is being there.
You know, there's something that was quoted in a book I read many years ago by Daniel Crittenden, where a workaholic woman, she said, but I do live in my children's hearts, you know, like she was dead.
It's like you can't live in your children's hearts, I mean, unless you are dead.
All they know is that you find everything in the world more interesting than they are.
Every time you're not around your children, They know that you find whatever you're doing more important than them.
Now, this doesn't mean like I'm doing this.
My daughter's home, right? My wife's home too, but I'm doing this.
I'm not saying you sit there and stare unblinkingly at your child and never do anything else because the purpose of being a parent is to raise your child to be functional in the world, which is not just staring at your child.
So it's good for them to see you doing things.
It's good for them to see you have ambition and achieve things.
And my wife and I both have careers and all of that.
But... If you are not there very much, or if you constantly have higher priorities than your children, they experience themselves as not interesting, as not able to capture your attention, as not able to hold on to your attention.
And what they generally do then is they'll do whatever they can to get your attention because children need their parents' attention no matter what.
And if it's negative attention, it's negative attention.
This is why teenagers with absent moms, absent dads, they act out.
They get angry. They cause trouble.
They stay out too late. They get drunk.
They crash a car because, hey, look, I'm getting mom and dad's attention, which is what I desperately need.
Because if you continually say to your children, well, you know, you're interesting.
But mommy really loves to cut.
You're interesting, but trying to get this...
Trying to deal with this subdural hematoma that's really got mommy's juices flowing.
You know, you're interesting, but the hospital is more interesting.
You're interesting, but my practice is more interesting.
I mean, after a while, it just becomes kind of humiliating.
It becomes embarrassing, or you feel like you're an imposition.
Because children are very empirical.
If you're constantly interested in everything but them, they get the message that they're not interesting to you.
Now, what that means is that they'll either say, I'm not interesting at all.
Mommy's not interested in me because I'm just not interesting, and then they have no sense of self-worth, right?
Or they say, I'm interesting, but mommy's selfish.
I am interesting, but mommy's self-absorbed.
I am interesting, but mommy's narcissistic.
And then they get, instead of having no sense of self-worth, they get angry and resentful.
And they oppose you.
And I didn't travel.
I didn't really give public speeches.
I didn't write books for like seven or eight years.
Because that's the investment.
That's the deal. That's what you do.
I did shows, but I can do shows in a way that doesn't interfere with...
I don't want to say quality time.
People always say, well, it's quality time.
It's like, no. If you only get one meal of 500 calories a day, I don't care how good the food is, I'm hungry.
And you're hungry too. There's no such thing as, well, there's enough quality food to make up for having no meals for the rest of the day.
It does not work that way.
There's no such thing as quality time.
There's just time. And to be there for your children makes parenting so much fun because they know that you care about them.
They know that you enjoy their company.
They know I don't know, but I mean, I'm just telling you my own experiences as a child, Madison, that I didn't know what I was there for.
My mom didn't take pleasure in my company, really.
She didn't take pleasure in being a mom.
She'd open a yell in the middle of the night that she hated these effing children referring to us.
You don't know why you're there if you're just a bother to your parents, if they don't genuinely enjoy your company, if they don't look forward to seeing you, if they don't have a great time when you're together and regretfully go to do other things.
Why are you there? It's a fundamental confusion.
Why did mom have me so she could be at the hospital?
Why did mom have me so other people could raise me?
Why did mom have me if she didn't want to spend time with me?
It's very confusing for children, and I think it leads them to be quite vulnerable to love bombs when they get older, by the by.
If you have this hunger for connection, then you get groups that come along, and oh, I love you, and you're special, and the love bombs come in, and the peers become so important as well, right?
If you don't have a strong connection with the parents, the peers become...
Really, really important, and they displace parents, and then you end up with your children being raised by indifferent teachers and psychotic peers, because it's the lowest common denominator that dominates in those situations.
So my concern is that the only way any of this can work is if your children's needs are sacrificed.
And if your children's needs are sacrificed, Why have them?
Why bring people into the world so you can spend time elsewhere?
Why? Why? That doesn't make any sense to me.
Now, you can say, well, my husband's going to be around, or my husband's going to be there.
And listen, that's not unimportant, for sure.
It doesn't give them the breastfeeding in the way that they should have it.
But, you know, there's, you know, bottles and all of that.
You can probably make that work.
But... If you want to be a mom, it's going to take some time, especially in the first couple of years.
You don't have to sit there and stare at your kids and spend 16 hours a day with them when they get older, because that's probably a little claustrophobic, but especially for the first couple of years, I think it's a full-time job.
It's more than a full-time job.
As they say about early childhood, the days are long, but the years are short.
And I miss that time, you know, when we're around kids who are younger than my daughter.
I do miss that time.
But I don't miss it, like, yearningly.
Like, I wish I had more of it.
It's like, oh, that was a great time when she was like three and four or two or one.
But I don't sit there with any sense of, like, I didn't get everything I could out of it.
And that question of your children's needs, what if you design your life around what your children need?
And that's, to repeat myself, that is my fundamental concern, is that if you say, okay, now what do I need?
Or what does my loans require?
Or like, what if I put at the very center of my thinking about my life what my children need?
Will my children want me to be a surgeon working 70 hours a week or 60 hours a week or 50 hours a week?
Will my children want me to be gone that much?
Well, no, of course not when they're babies.
They don't want that at all. They don't think, oh, mommy's got to go save some lives.
It's like, no, they don't care.
They don't care about that.
They care about you. And if we design our lives around what our children need, what do our lives look like?
Because as a society, and I think a little bit in your family, Madison, the children's needs have not come first.
And I'm going to submit the possibility that if you want to have a great time as a parent, design from your children's needs up from there, rather than thinking, well, I'm going to do what I want, and they're going to fit in somehow.
I don't think they will. And that's the end of my big sort of thoughts and talks about this, and I hope that has some value or makes some kind of sense.
It does. It's like one last thought.
I will kind of Push back and say, there was at one point, my mom and I worked together.
She was obviously a nurse. I was a secretary in the same unit.
And literally in the same day, I met four people whom my mom had touched.
And there were times she missed sports events that I was doing in junior high.
So obviously junior high, not earlier in life.
But one of them was a father of a 13-year-old girl who had been burned.
And who still knew my mother and still knew the great care that she had given.
And I just remember thinking, man, what my mom was doing was so much more important.
And I still, you know, I wish she'd been at those events.
I wish she'd done more things.
But I recognized, as an adult, as like a 23-year-old, that over a decade before What my mom had been doing was more important than what I needed.
Like I said, different age than what we're necessarily talking about, and I realize we've gone for a long time.
I really appreciate this.
It's a lot to think about in terms of my life and planning.
Yeah, but what she didn't teach you was how to put kids' needs first.
And that is great that she helped other people, but charity begins at home.
That's what I was always taught.
So let us know how it goes.
I really, really appreciate you opening up this thought process.
This is a big challenge, and I really, really appreciate the conversation.
I hope it was valuable to you. I certainly found that very important.
So yeah, let us know how it goes, and very, very best of luck with things.
Thank you. Take care. Alright, up next we have Anna.
She wrote in and said, Living in Appalachia, the general consensus is that I am not doing my part to toughen him up.
Do I really have to?
We've been to doctors, using counseling, but I am afraid.
What if the problem is me?
I even learned how to shoot a gun so he feels safe when his dad is not here.
I never thought I would ever fire a gun.
So I was glad to find out that Stefan is a peaceful parenting advocate.
So many of the advocates make it look like hippy-dippy nonsense.
I would truly appreciate his guidance.
This is not about me.
This is about my babies.
Hey, Anna. Appalachia?
Appalachia? How is that?
Yes. Yes.
Wait, those were two slightly different pronunciations.
Appalachia or Appalachia?
Well, it kind of depends.
I think both are technically accurate.
Oh, like Stefan and Stefan. Okay, got it.
Exactly. How old is your boy?
He is seven.
And your daughter?
She is five.
Okay. And what's your son's education like?
Where's he going to school? Or is he?
He goes to a public school.
He is extremely smart and very bored at school most of the time.
I don't think he's really challenged enough.
He's exceptionally good with computers.
He's a brilliant kid.
He thinks a lot. He, you know, from the time they were born, you know, I started with the attachment parenting and the baby bees and, you know, all of that stuff.
And it all worked so well.
But it's not working well for him In the outside world.
Why is he in government school?
I wanted to homeschool him.
You know that they come to your house when your child is about three or four, they start coming to your house around here.
See, the area that I live in is extremely impoverished.
There's a lot of children who don't even live with their parents, a lot of drug use.
In West Virginia, the drug epidemic is so bad that they can't afford to bury them.
The indigent burial program is completely overwhelmed.
So they're all very concerned about everyone.
They show up at your house and they kind of make you feel like a criminal if you don't send them to school.
And there's actually no other options that's anywhere nearby for schooling.
It's homeschool or it's public school.
And so, why is he in government school?
Because they came to your house? You don't have to send them to government school, right?
I guess not, but I'm afraid of them.
Well, but you can get information about that, right?
True. I also doubt, I mean, I have some doubts about myself.
Your son feels anxious because you don't want to feel bad?
No, no, no. I don't know that I am doing him any favors if I keep him at home, because he's eventually going to have to go out in the real world.
But the real world is not government school.
The real world is the remnants of the free market.
I mean, unless you want him to go to prison, which I hope you don't, and of course he won't, but the real world is not government schools, right?
Government schools are horrendous environments, particularly for boys.
So if you, like, sending...
Someone to government school to prepare them for the real world is like locking them in a dungeon to prepare them for a life of freedom.
It's not going to prepare them for the real world because hopefully he'll have nothing to do with that kind of coercive environment when he gets older.
Right. I don't know anyone who homeschools.
The consensus is if you homeschool your child, they will be weird.
They will be this. They will be that.
Because no one does it here at all.
Right. It's just never really seemed like something I should do.
Like, it's just like what you have to do is send him to school.
So it'll be normal. What does your husband say?
He kind of leaves that up to me.
Right. He would be very supportive.
Why? He's got a son? Well, what does he mean he leaves it up to you?
I suppose because I'm the primary caregiver.
Yeah, but he's a father. What does he mean?
His son is unhappy.
Yes.
So what's he doing about it?
I don't mean to be annoying.
I'm just... These are genuine questions.
Like, if your son is anxious, you said, right?
Yes. He doesn't like going to school?
Right. So he doesn't want to be there.
So what are you going to do? I mean, you're home, right?
So you can... Yes.
You can keep him home. You can homeschool him, right?
Yeah, I could. So, I'm trying to figure out the resistance here.
You don't like what I'm saying, and I'm just trying to figure it out, right?
Right. I suppose there's also an issue.
I'm not sure that I... I'm afraid that I cannot properly educate him, that I am not adequately prepared for it.
Why not? He's a brilliant child.
Well, do you think he's getting anything at school?
He's not now, but I believe that he will in the future.
Why is that? Because the schooling gets so much better in Appalachia when he gets older?
No, but I would assume the coursework would get more challenging eventually.
Does he read and study and work with computers at home?
Yes, he does. But he's just getting smarter.
Yes. So even if the coursework gets more challenging, he's still going to be taught by mostly idiot teachers.
Like, you understand, teachers are the stupidest profession, statistically.
Like, if you've got really high marks, you go into physics.
You're really high IQ, you go to physics, you go to philosophy.
Those are the two highest, right?
It's the bottom, the dregs, who end up at the education department.
And, you know, like, I'm sorry to be so blunt, but statistically, it's generally the case.
The teachers are the dumbest professionals on the planet.
Well, in the West. Why?
That seems so backwards.
Of course it is, but it's the government.
Why is that?
There are brilliant teachers. We've had some call into the school.
I'm just talking about an average, blah, blah, blah.
I know that. But it's a government program, right?
So, of course, it's going to be the opposite of what it should be.
You know, the police in Broward County were supposed to go into the school and put lead into the bad man.
But they didn't. So no, you're not going to get quality education.
And I don't know, he's got mostly female teachers, I assume.
Yes. Right. And a lot of them have gone through the education department where they've been indoctrinated with fairly radical feminism.
Yes. And so they have an anti-male, anti-boy bigotry.
They are relentless sexists in general.
This is true. So you're putting him into a toxic environment where he's disliked for his gender.
You're right. So of course he's anxious.
I would assume. Yeah.
On average, that would be the case.
He's very much, you know, he's very, you know, hyperactive, nonsense, So yes, he doesn't really fit in the mold very well.
So that would make sense.
Do you need to stay in the neighborhood?
I absolutely do not want to.
That is what we're actually saving up to get out of here.
Yeah, because, you know, the drug addicts can't afford to bury the dead.
Kids aren't around their parents.
Kids are... Truly. Right?
I mean, this is Lord of the Flies material, which you probably want to...
If you boogie out to some other place, you can find a place with more homeschooling if isolation is the concern.
Yeah, you're right. I suppose it's not that I don't like what you're saying.
It's that I already know this.
And I have let social pressure keep me from doing what I should do.
And what is the social pressure from who?
From the drug-addicted neighbors?
Yeah. Just anyone I know.
I mean, you know, my own family is concerned about, you know, weirdness at school, but they're coming around on that.
You know, if you don't go to school, you'll be weird.
But I think that they're kind of seeing that that's not really working out that way.
It's making him weird, if anything.
I don't mean to laugh. Just a quick question.
The drug addicts and smashed up families, did those people mostly go to government schools?
Yes. You say nobody homeschools, right?
So that means that these smashed up, drug-addicted, broken, drunken, beating, cheating families around you, well, those people all went to government schools, so I'm pretty sure that anything that's not that is an improvement.
You're right. It's frustrating.
Oh, it is. Because you're forced to pay for it either way, right?
Of course, absolutely.
That's the scam. People had to go to war in the past.
Now we just have to not send our kids to government schools.
Yeah. That's true.
They're garbage. What kills me is that the homeschooling requirements.
I would have to teach him in order to match up with public education standards.
I would have to teach him about two hours a day is how it would work out.
Wait, why? When he gets older and things get harder.
Wait, wait, why? Just the basic standards.
But you said he's really smart.
He is. I'm saying at the absolute maximum, two hours a day.
You might be surprised how quickly a smart kid can chew through a government curricula.
Oh, I believe that. Oh, I have no doubt.
I mean, that's like their minimum that they give.
Why do they put them in there for seven hours a day?
What are they doing? Well, it's just daycare.
I mean, it's so parents can go off and work, and governments can collect taxes from parents going off to work, and so that teachers' unions can...
Pay their teachers.
And, you know, indoctrination is not a split-second affair.
Indoctrination, you know, it takes time.
It takes time to really grind out the powder of the soul that keeps your children's personalities together.
It takes quite a while to foot-stomp on the face of their identity.
So, yeah, you've got to sand this stuff down.
People resist. Kids resist.
And it takes time to undo the molecular personalities that keep your children together.
That's interesting. That's one thing that, you know, I had, I have said before, my daughter's not in, she is not in school yet.
And I've said, I don't, oh my God, there's no comparison.
She's an incredibly happy child.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
I, you know, it's just, I've had a lot of doubt and You know, I don't want to make the wrong decision because their education is such an important decision.
No, it's not. No, I'm sorry.
No, the data says that it's not at all.
The data is very clear that it doesn't matter how your children are educated.
Oh, I just mean them having an education.
No, no, it doesn't matter. So, I mean, I just had this conversation with the editor of the magazine, of the journal called Intelligence.
Mm-hmm. I mean, I've heard from Charles Murray that it doesn't matter how your children are educated.
It doesn't matter if they're homeschooled, if you spend $20,000 a year on public school, it doesn't matter.
In terms of how they're going to turn out, it has as much relevance to their ending IQ as school has to their height.
Right. How smart your son is going to be is how smart your son is going to be.
And at his age, there's probably about a 30% About 30% of his intelligence is genetic.
By the time he's 18, it's going to be over 80%.
I mean, unless he's really traumatized.
Right. So, it doesn't matter.
I mean, I know we've...
And the guy I was talking to today, he said that nobody can find, in terms of how life outcome goes, nobody can find that education of any kind has more than a 10% variance, which is not much.
Which is not mine. That's amazing. I know we're supposed to freak out about education because that's how they sell us a whole bunch of crap.
Yeah. But statistically, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if your kid's homeschooled.
In terms of happiness, it matters.
In terms of trauma, in terms of their bond with you, their trust in you.
You're supposed to be there to protect them from being preyed upon, to protect them.
You don't protect them from every bad experience.
No. But you protected them from needlessly bad experiences, right?
So you don't say, well, we've got to bubble wrap these kids every time they go outside because they might get strawberries on their knees.
But you don't, you know, just push them down the stairs and say, well, that'll toughen you up, right?
I mean, that's just abuse, right?
And I don't see how you can...
Particularly with boys, how you can send boys to public school and be a peaceful parent.
It is a toxic environment.
It is an indoctrinating environment.
And it will cause problems.
It has gone against everything that I do at home.
So you've got to deprogram too.
And then what your kid says in his heart is he says, so mom sends me to a place she really disapproves of.
Why? Why? Well, because he knows why.
He knows why. It's because you're afraid of peers and you will submit to peers and you will submit to peer disapproval.
So then what's he going to do in school?
He's going to submit to peer disapproval.
Oh, that's terrifying. Of course.
It's Appalachia.
Not to overly cliche things, but...
No, truly, it is.
You're in get-or-done territory and not in a good way.
No. No. I'm glad to know that about the IQ because his IQ is higher than mine.
Which means you don't have anything to worry about as far as, you know, keep him safe, he's got a sibling, and you don't have anything to worry about as far as his success will be in life.
His high IQ is the single biggest predictor of how well he's going to do in life.
And good for you. All you have to do is give him a positive environment, as positive environment as you can.
You know, I mean, he'll figure things out very quickly in a way that's maybe even faster than you can teach him, particularly around computers.
So if he's high IQ and fascinated by computers, you know, good thing his mom, his future is set.
He's made. Thank you.
Good. That's...
I appreciate that very much.
All right. All right. All right.
So let us know how it goes.
And yeah, if you can't find anything positive in the environment, you know, it's a free country.
You can go anywhere you want.
You're right. Thank you very much.
You are very welcome. You are very welcome.
And thank you, everyone, so much for calling in and for being part of this, I think, the greatest conversation in the world.
He said humbly, well, it has a huge amount to do with the listeners who are very honest and very open.
And revelatory to me every time this happens.
So thank you everyone so much.
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