March 8, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:12:16
4022 An Honest Conversation With A Mass Shooting Survivor - Call In Show - March 3rd, 2018
Question 1: [1:54] – “I’ve heard Stefan say numerous times that he doesn’t spank as a form of discipline, whereas I find spanking to be the disciplinary measure of last resort. As a father I am always willing to use nonphysical consequences, redirection, reasoning, and the like before any physical consequences, but as these periodically fail to correct a maladaptive behavior I have found spanking sufficient to do this. My position is that spanking is actually an appropriate form of disciple (again as a last resort) primarily because it teaches a truth about life, namely, that sometimes there are physically painful consequences to our actions. These, if done correctively and not punitively, may get our attention and cause us to change our behavior. I’d love to talk about this with Stefan and get his perspective on the issue.”Question 2: [56:45] - “The left uses mass shooting survivors as ‘extra credible’ figures to argue their point. I think this is unethical. As a shooting survivor myself, I try not to do the same. Should I stick to those guns, or should I use my “victim” status to trump the argument?”Question 3: [1:30:30] - “I am the oldest child and only son in my family. My two sisters and I grew up in a single-mother household, and I have seen many of the common negative effects of that environment manifest themselves. I had my "red pill" moment a few years ago and have been obsessively striving towards self-improvement ever since. Given what I now know about the pitfalls of single-motherhood and the importance of positive male role models, I find myself feeling very guilty about not doing much to fill that role for my younger sisters growing up. Of course I began trying to correct that as soon as possible, but I also fear that I have missed the most crucial time period in their lives where I could have made a major impact. Can the older brother effectively fulfill the role left unfilled by the father to any meaningful extent, even if he only becomes aware of the responsibilities of that role after the sisters have entered their teenage years?”Question 4: [2:24:00] – “After watching your videos on free will and AI I find myself questioning your belief that it would be impossible for machines to one day emulate human awareness and free will. If we hold Darwinian evolution to be true, it points to humans evolving from organisms that did not have free will. But merely an instinct to adapt survive and reproduce. Question: Considering the fact that we evolved from apes with no free will, do you consider it impossible that software designed to evolve and learn via neural network machine learning and reproductive evolution could eventually obtain a concision awareness of itself and gain free will given enough time?”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
The first caller, ah, I hope you will send this out to others, to parents, and in particular to people who've got through this habit.
This is a father who spanks his child, his son, twice a week, hundred times a year.
And to his credit, to his courage, to his honor, He is calling in to find alternatives, and we had a great conversation about things he can do instead of what he's doing now.
Really, really worked out well, and please share this one in particular.
The second caller was involved in a mass shooting, and since this topic has come up, in particular since the Florida shooting, he wants to know should he use his personal experience in debates?
Or is it kind of like being the left and using personal narratives in place of recent arguments?
It was a fascinating story, of course, what happened to him and where we came out of it in terms of what should be done, I think, was very positive and productive.
The third caller, the man who takes on too much, who can save the world, who can ride in like a white knight and solve all the problems in his family, he wants to know how he can save his sisters from their combined history.
And just listen to the way that his voice changes from the beginning to the end of the conversation.
It was amazing, amazing stuff.
And the fourth caller, oh, it's almost like he had no choice.
He wants to know why I think machines are very unlikely to ever develop free will.
Now, it started there. That's fairly easy to answer.
And then, wow, we went pretty wide, wild, and deep into the question of determinism and free will.
It's a great conversation. Thanks again to the callers.
Thanks to you. Of course, I can't do what I do without your support.
Please help out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Alright, well up for us today we have Josh.
Josh wrote in and said, Before there are any physical consequences, but as these periodically fail to correct a maladaptive behavior, I have found spanking sufficient to do this.
My position is that spanking is actually an appropriate form of discipline, again as a last resort, primarily because it teaches a truth about life, namely that sometimes there are physically painful consequences to our actions.
These, if done correctly and not punitively, may get our attention and cause us to change our behavior.
I'd like to talk about this with Stefan and get his perspective on the issue.
That's from Josh.
Hey, Josh. How are you doing today?
Good. How are you doing, Steph? I'm well.
I'm well. It's a great question. I appreciate you calling in for that.
Just to be sort of clear, when you say...
That I don't use spanking as a form of discipline, referring to me.
I don't use discipline at all.
Now, that doesn't mean no consequences, but I don't use discipline with my child at all.
Are those different things of consequences and discipline?
I think so. I don't know if we're going to get into semantics here, but...
No, I don't want to do that. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about, if you don't mind, a little bit about...
What behaviors elicit spanking in your family from your kids?
So, I mean, you know, if there's just no other set of consequences or...
No, sorry. I don't mean in the abstract.
I mean, like, so physically, what do your kids do to get spanked?
Like, what is the behavior?
Oh, yeah.
So really, if they get to the point where they just will not listen or respond to any kind of commands or things that we're telling them, or him, we just have one that I'm asking him to do.
Yeah, that's still very abstract, Josh.
I'm asking for a specific incident.
When was the last time that you spanked your child and what happened right before?
I think it was probably a couple of days ago, and I had asked him to brush his teeth.
And he would just flat out refuse to do it.
And so I said, you know, there's a series of consequences, like here's what can happen.
And the last one is, you know, you're going to get a spanking if you're not going to listen to dad and actually brush your teeth.
And how old is he? He's four.
Four. Okay. Now, does he allow you to brush his teeth for him?
He will sometimes, yeah. Okay, so that's one possibility, given that he's four, that you could brush his teeth for him, right?
Yeah, and that's something that we actually will do occasionally.
So if you have an option which doesn't involve hitting your child who's four, why wouldn't you take that option?
No, what I'm saying is we exhaust all of those options.
And it would be kind of a last resort.
So if he said, hey, I will brush your teeth to my son, and he's still not responsive to that, then there's no really other ways to get his...
I mean, obviously there are lots of things to do before I would spank him, but there comes a point where there's really nothing I feel like I have left to do except have a physical consequence that lets him know that this is a serious thing.
And this needs to happen. Yeah, and I mean, as you know, You're not alone in this, right?
So 89% of black parents, 79% of white parents, 80% of Hispanic parents, and 73% of Asian parents say they have spanked their children.
And I'm pretty much going to assume that anybody who hasn't spanked isn't going to say yes, but people who have spanked may say no.
So it's very common.
So I don't, you know, for my audience, it may seem like you're an outlier, but statistically, you are very, very much the majority.
And I just wanted to sort of point...
I just don't think it's a super great thing to do.
I'm not like a spanking, in a sense, an advocate to say, yeah, this is something that needs to happen on a regular basis.
It's not the spare the rod, spoil the child kind of idea.
But I do see it just as a A tool, in some sense, if done correctly, that can be effective in changing behavior.
Sure, sure. I understand that.
Of course, it is on a regular basis.
If your child disobeys you on a regular basis, then it will be on a regular basis, right?
Every time your child doesn't do something important, or as you say, doesn't listen.
And you don't mean don't listen, you mean every time your child doesn't agree with you.
Because a child can listen to what you're saying and disagree, right?
So it's not just he's not listening, it's like he's not doing what I want him to do, and then I can escalate to physical force, right?
So it is as regular as your child disagreeing with you about something that's important for you, right?
Now, how old was your boy when you first spanked him?
He was probably almost three, I would guess.
So two. Two going on three, right?
Two almost three, yeah. Okay.
I'm just going to say two because that's technically accurate.
All right. And do you remember what caused you to spank your two-year-old?
Yeah, I think it was a similar issue.
There's not, you know, I was asking him to do something or telling him to do something and there was a kind of defiant, you know, no, I'm not going to do that or something along those lines.
I don't remember the very specifics of the situation.
And the language is important, right?
Because you say defiance, which is a kind of morally judgy term.
Like he's just disagreeing with you, right?
Sure. Yeah, fine.
We can say that.
Well, no, that's true, right?
I mean, I don't know that a two-year-old really understands the concept of defiance.
I mean, there's just a disagreement.
You say one thing, he wants to do the opposite or something else or doesn't do what you want him to do.
So there's just a disagreement, right?
Now, would you say, how often do you spank?
We'll just talk about the boy. I know you have, I think you have other kids, but...
No, just one. Just one. Oh, just one.
Okay. Now, how often is the spanking occurring?
I mean, probably less than, you know, twice a week, typically.
Not very often. So about twice a week?
Yeah, like I said, it's a form of discipline that I don't like to do at all.
But again, you know, for me, there comes times when all the other options have been exhausted.
And, you know, in some sense stuff, I'm trying to teach him that Listening to his mom and listening to me is good for him and not doing that can potentially be harmful to him, you know? Well, no.
What you're teaching him is that if he doesn't agree with you, you'll hit him.
No, I would disagree with that.
No, no, no. That's exactly what you're doing.
If he doesn't agree with you about something that's important, at least for you, or maybe it's objectively important, like brushing your teeth is important, what he's learning is that if he doesn't agree with you, you'll hit him.
Because he, I mean, I assume it, well, we'll get into that.
So basically, about 100 times a year, you'll hit your child.
Yeah, I will discipline with spanking, yes.
Okay. And when do you think you'll stop hitting your child?
In other words, when do you think he'll be old enough to have graduated from being hit?
That's not something I've thought about to say, you know, this is the time.
So that's a good question.
Would you say around the age of 12?
I mean, my hope is that it's earlier than that.
But that would be like if you're hitting your 12-year-old.
Yeah, that's probably not a good thing.
Okay. So we've got about a decade of being hit, about twice a week, which is a thousand times or so, right?
Yeah. If those are the numbers, yeah.
Well, twice a week, about 100 times a year, give or take.
And 10 years, 100 times 10.
I can even do that in my head.
Okay, so you're going to hit him about 1,000 times as a parent, and it's for him not agreeing with what you want him to do, right?
I don't like the formulation of that for a couple of reasons.
No, go ahead. I mean, if I've got something wrong, I certainly don't want to start off on the wrong foot if I mischaracterize something.
Sure. I mean, maybe at its basic level, that's the way that it could be said, but I don't see it that way necessarily.
He's just being disciplined because he's not agreeing with With me, you know, this is a...
I haven't thought about how to freeze.
No, it's okay. Well, we can put that one on the sidebar and keep moving forward.
Now... And listen, I really, really want to tell you how much I appreciate you calling in with this question.
Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be annoying.
I'm aware of that up front, but I just, I really, really appreciate you calling in about this.
I know the way that you do stuff, so I mean, I called in, so no worries.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So, is it okay if I say Josh?
Do you want the full Joshua? Either way is fine.
Okay. Josh, how much time have you spent with your son explaining to him in ways that he understands why tooth brushing is important?
I mean, we talk about, you know, quite often that, you know, if you don't brush your teeth, your teeth can get sick and hurt and have to, you know, there could be some negative things that happen if you don't brush your teeth.
We talk about it, you know, probably, I mean, at least, you know, at least once a week when we have this issue and he doesn't want to brush his teeth.
And why doesn't he want to brush his teeth?
I mean, you're asking me to mind read a four-year-old.
I'm not quite sure. What have you asked him?
I think there's times when he doesn't want to go to bed, and that's part of the bedtime process.
And so that's not something he wants to do, or he's wanting to play rather than go brush his teeth and get ready for bed and that kind of stuff.
And so I think there's lots of things that prohibit him from wanting to do that particular activity.
Well, you're sort of implying that I'm asking you to be a mind reader of a four-year-old, but have you asked him?
Specifically, no, I don't think I've said, why do you not want to brush your teeth?
But from his behaviors, I can imply or infer in some sense, or maybe that is mind reading for my four-year-old, that he wants to play.
He said, I don't want to brush my teeth.
I want to keep playing. I don't want to go to bed.
I mean, it's things like that. So, he doesn't want to brush his teeth because he'd rather play with you, is that right?
Well, he'd just rather play or, you know, not...
He doesn't like to go to...
Like, he doesn't... He's a small kid, so he doesn't like to go to bed.
Oh, yeah. Well, especially if you're a fun parent.
Yeah. And we have a lot of fun together.
You ever have those nights?
I don't know. I mean, for me, I'm casting back a little bit the net of time behind the boat of age.
But those nights where you just, you never want it to end.
Like, it's so much fun. Like, you go out for dinner with a great bunch of friends.
Maybe you hit a cool movie.
And then you go to a disco.
And it's just like these nights that are like, wow, this is fantastic.
And people are like, you want to head home?
And you're like, hell no! Yeah.
This is a blast tonight, you know?
They're playing all your favorite songs and you're busting some great moves and you're chatting up women and it's just like a great...
You're surfing, right?
I mean, that's... Yeah.
You know, if somebody came along and said, well, that's it, Josh.
Time to go to bed. I'm putting you in a trunk and driving you to a bed.
You'd be like, I don't think so.
Right, right. So, yeah.
I mean, that's what it's like. It's kind of a compliment, right?
Like, I mean, if you're on a blind date and the woman...
Gets those, quote, emergency texts 15 minutes into the date and then says, oh, I gotta go, right?
As opposed to wants to stay out longer.
That's a compliment to your company.
All right. So that's interesting because you said, I can't mind read my son in terms of figuring out why he doesn't want to brush his teeth or go to bed.
But you kind of have mind read your son and you caught yourself doing that, right?
Because you have kind of got this idea that it's just more fun To play than to brush your teeth, right?
Of course, yeah. Now, do you disagree with him that it's more fun to play than to brush your teeth?
No, I wouldn't disagree that it's more fun to play than to brush his teeth.
So he's right about that. In that very specific sense, yes, he is correct.
Okay, in what non-specific sense?
He is correct that it's more fun to play than to brush your teeth.
Yeah, I mean, but the...
I guess it's saying that, you know, playing is important, but also brushing your teeth is important.
Also listening to dad when he says it's time to go to sleep is important.
Like, just like sleep is important.
So, yeah, it's obviously more fun, but it's not what needs to, you know, in that specific situation, not what needs to happen in that moment.
Oh, no, listen, I agree with you.
I'm not saying don't have your kids brush their teeth, just have them play their way into, like, gum disease.
Like, I'm with you.
Kids got to brush their teeth. Of course, right?
Yeah. So, but if you were to ask him and say, why do you not want to brush your teeth and you say playing is more fun, you kind of agree with him too, right?
Because it's not fun for you to spank your son.
It's not fun for you to get into those conflicts.
So you actually prefer playing to your son brushing his teeth as well, right?
It depends. Sometimes I'm ready to go to sleep or ready to have some time with my wife.
And so I'd rather him brush his teeth and that kind of thing.
But that's so you can get to spending time with your wife.
Right. But for you, generally, if it's 10 minutes to bedtime, let's say there was some magic toothbrushing fairy that did your son's teeth while he slept.
If it's 10 minutes to bedtime, you yourself would rather play than brush his teeth, right?
Right. Of course, yeah.
So you can agree with him on that?
Yeah, I can. Right?
And you can have a conversation.
I mean, obviously, you've talked to him about, you know, what can happen with his teeth.
I don't know if you showed him the scary pictures of British teeth or whatever, right?
But so you can agree with him, like, I don't want to brush your...
I mean, do you enjoy brushing your own teeth?
Is that like a sensual experience for you?
Is that something straight out of the Dental Kama Sutra?
Only once in a while, Steph.
Yeah, like when they're really furry, right?
You know, I mean, when they're really furry, if you've eaten, I don't know, a steady diet of peanut brittle for three days straight and you want to just hack something off with a pavement cracker.
But for the most part, brushing teeth and flossing and, you know, it's just a drag, right?
Yeah, absolutely. So, you agree with him that it's not fun to brush your teeth.
You agree with him that playing is more fun.
And... The question, so if you already agree with him, it's almost like if you agree with him, then he's never going to brush his teeth.
But I found... I have found, and not just with my own daughter, but with kids as a whole, that if you empathize with, I don't want you to brush your teeth either.
I don't want to brush my own teeth.
I do taxes, which you'll learn about when you get older.
There's stuff I have to do.
The other day, the sink got clogged with my wife's hair, and I got to get out the corrosive crap.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't want to take my car in to get the oil changed.
There's a whole bunch of stuff.
I don't want to do. I would rather sit here and play with you.
And then you can say, OK, from 1 to 10, how bad is brushing your teeth?
You can give the two hands one above each other and ask them to put their hand, like, how bad is it?
And it's like, oh, it's a 9.
I totally agree.
If I could go through my whole life without brushing my teeth, I would absolutely do it.
That would be the greatest thing ever.
I saw something on the internet.
It was supposed to wash your teeth in like 10 seconds.
And I'm like, oh, that's tempting, because that's like, you know, I guess, you know, over 52, like, I gotta do the water flosser and brush my teeth with...
Anyway, it's just a big deal, right?
Especially because I still have my wisdom teeth, so I... I've got to be extra special with that kind of stuff.
So there's a lot of like, oh, I totally give you.
Like, what other things do you not like to do, son?
And they, you know, I don't know.
I like eating candy more than vegetables.
It's like, oh, man, I know what you mean.
If you could live off candy rather than vegetables, how great would that be?
And then, you know, like from 1 to 10, how bad are vegetables?
And from 1 to 10, how good is candy?
And you can have a fun conversation about all the things that you don't want to do.
Yeah, I like that. Which we all agree.
Yeah. You know, life is a fair amount of suckiness.
You know, not too bad in the modern world.
It's not like we've got to go bury our extended kin from smallpox on a regular basis.
But there is a fair amount of death suck in the world.
And it affects you even more.
He has the life of Riley, as they used to say, right?
He has the life of his dreams relative to the stuff that you have to do that you don't want to do, right?
Yeah. Right. Because he gets to play probably like 95% of his day or whatever, right?
So having that whole conversation about, I mean, I'm with you, man.
I mean, it's part of life.
You know, like how much fun is it?
To go to the washroom.
Eh! You know, it's just kind of annoying.
You know, I just can't wait till I get older and I get those adult diapers with no sense of self-consciousness.
I can just stroll around all day, filling up like a water balloon.
But, so you can have this whole conversation about all the things, like, and you can make a list.
Let's write it out.
Like, let's, or draw it out.
You know, all the things that you don't want to do.
Yes. And then let's organize them by what you don't want to do.
And then you can put your own list.
Here's all the things I don't want to do.
Yeah. I don't want to fight with you.
So that's empathizing with the kid's perspective and saying that you have something in common, which you do, which you have in common with every other human being on the planet, which is there's a whole bunch of stuff you don't want to do, right?
Right. I got you. So you get all of that, right?
So these are conversations that can be very helpful.
And then the question is, what do we do?
Right? Any solution which people have helped create, they are much more likely to follow.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So, okay.
Here's where we have our fights.
And it's not fun for you.
I don't want to do spanking anymore.
And I'm, you know, sorry that I did because maybe there's these other ways of doing it.
How do we solve it? Now, you could say, one thing I could do is after you brush your teeth, I could give you a piece of candy as a reward.
Why wouldn't that work, right?
And just see if he understands how much all of that is going along, right?
And it can kind of be a fun...
A fun thing to do. To have this conversation and try and figure these things out.
Now, again, he's four, so, you know, you're going to have to downshift quite a bit.
And, you know, but I'm sure he's, you know, if you're calling into this show, and I'm sure he's a smart kid, and, you know, however, stop and start it might be.
And this may be a conversation that goes on for a couple of days, because it can be tough to keep a four-year-old attention on abstract topics.
But... How can we solve this problem?
Because what you want to do, in my experience, is the moment that you can extract a promise, oh, your life gets so much easier as a parent, because then you have leverage.
Yeah. Right? So, if you can say, like, okay, can we try it for a week?
And you can grade it in.
So, you could say, what if brushing your teeth didn't interfere with playtime?
Like, he'd be interested in that, right?
Right, yeah. So, brushing your teeth is two or three minutes, right?
Mm-hmm. So, okay, what if playtime, like, when does he normally go up for bed?
We usually start like 7.30, 7.45, something like that.
Okay. So what if you say you get an extra five minutes downstairs?
Like you say, well, not like, let's say it's 7.45.
You set not till 7.50. And 7.45, you can set a little alarm on your phone or something like that.
Like, look, we're going to get extra five minutes.
And then, you know, tickle, play, or whatever it is that's his most fun thing.
And that's this way...
You're going to go to bed five minutes later, but you know he's going to go to sleep earlier if you haven't had a conflict and spanking and stuff, right?
It actually saves you time.
Yeah, absolutely. Right? So if we have a deal where brushing your teeth doesn't interfere with your playtime, can we do that, right?
Now, at some point, again, where he's at, and I'm sure he'll be fine to negotiate over time.
But the moment you get, can we try it for a week?
Can we try it for two days?
Like anything, right? Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Now, the moment you get an agreement, then you do your pinky shake or whatever it is that, you know, spit on your hands and, you know, hopefully nothing involving knives and monkey heads or whatever, but something to seal the deal, right?
It's usually fist bumps, yeah.
Yeah, fist bumps. Okay, that works, right?
So, once you have the promise from the kid, I agree to X, right?
Now, he's four, so you've got to remind him, right?
Yeah. So, you wake him up in the morning and say, what was our deal yesterday?
And I can just remind you, fist bump again, keep the deal alive, right?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, he's going to want to wedge out of his deal.
He's going to want to renege, right?
Of course. Always, always.
Yeah, of course. He's like a politician.
Why do you make promises?
Not to keep them, but to get power, right?
Right. So then, the question is around keeping your promise, right?
Now, of course, it is a lot easier to ask him to keep his promise if you have kept your promises consistently, which I'm sure you have for the most part.
So, once you get his agreement on here's a way to solve it, and if he's been part of building that solution, like, feel free, I say this to all parents, like, feel free to go to your kids and say, I have a problem, I need your help.
As opposed to, I have a solution I'm going to impose on you.
Like, I have a problem, I hate the fights we get into about it.
Candy or bedtime or teeth brushing or vegetables or whatever, right?
I really... Help me solve it.
Like, help me. And that's a pretty wild thing for a kid to do.
But that's really cool because they then get to bring their creativity to figuring out how to solve the problem.
Like, I as a parent have a problem.
I'm not happy about something and I don't know what the solution is.
What do you think? And that's...
Sorry, go ahead. No, I like that.
That's good. So then you have the kid engaged in the solution, the kid trying to help his father.
Like, kids are so – they so much want to help their parents.
Yeah, they do. And, of course, you know, they're selfish monsters of narcissism as well, which is perfectly fine.
That's how we should be born and that's how we should – that's what we should grow out of.
But – Now, my daughter is older.
I'm going to just share with you a little something that happened with us to show just how this kind of stuff can work.
So, my daughter, great, but she can be just a smidge negative about things.
Want to do this? No. Want to do that?
No. Want to do that? No.
That's a lot of no's. All right.
And so we did talk about this like it's frustrating because we feel kind of trapped because we want to do stuff and you don't want to do stuff and we don't want to make you do stuff and, you know, and if you come along and kvetch and moan or whatever, then it makes it not fun for whatever, right?
Yeah. So we sort of negotiated about it and I won't go into all the negotiations, but we finally got a promise from her to say yes for seven days.
Well, naturally, she said yes, and then complained.
Fine, I'll play this game with you.
But, you know, she was not very enthusiastic about it.
And that's because she hasn't internalized her own promises, right?
Now, I could have got mad at her.
And it was annoying.
But we had a very important conversation about the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.
She was really interested in that, right?
So I said, okay, what's the speed limit on the highway?
She said 100. Kilometers an hour.
And I said, now, let's say you're going 100.1 kilometers an hour and the policeman pulls you over and says, you're speeding!
Is he right? She's like, no.
Well, yes, but no, right?
So, okay, so what does that mean?
Well, you are speeding, but it's not important.
Ah, right. So that's the letter of the law.
So the letter of the law is anything over 100 kilometers an hour is speeding.
What is the spirit of the law?
Well, the spirit of the law is, we sort of worked, we went back and forth about it, right?
Like 200 kilometers an hour is insane, right?
You know, 100.1, you know, that just could be a breeze behind you or something, right?
Right. And so we had a great conversation about the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.
And this went on for like an hour.
And she was, you know, because she can really contribute.
Now, again, she's nine, so you really, this may be a bit advanced for a four-year-old, but, you know, wherever you can find a place to land, these kinds of conversations.
Yeah, yeah. And so...
I said, so you agreed to say yes to suggestions, and then you went along, but were negative.
Now, is that the letter of the law or the spirit of the law, right?
And she's like, well, it's the letter, right?
And I said, yeah, because you understand, right?
It's the letter of the law.
Well, I did technically, and I said, the moment you used the word technically...
You're in trouble when it comes to the spirit of the law.
So I said, so you did say yes.
Technically, you did follow your agreement.
But the spirit of the law was that not just that you say yes and that are negative, but you say yes and try to be relatively positive about what's going to happen, right?
And this conversation went on for a long time.
And so to me...
It's an opportunity to have a conversation.
Disagreements with your kids are a great opportunity to have a conversation, a discussion, and to enroll them in how to solve these problems.
Because, as you know, Josh, as a dad, you want to raise your kids to be problem solvers.
And you want to raise your kids to be negotiators and to look for win-win solutions.
And you almost can't start too early with that, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
Because you are both in a situation where you are doing things that you don't want to do.
Right. Now, let me ask you this.
So, is spanking getting more frequent, less frequent, or staying about the same since he was two going on three?
It's getting much less frequent.
I think primarily because I've made the conscious effort.
And my wife has done a really good job.
She does some therapy work.
And she's done a good job of educating me as well.
Just about different forms of discipline.
Just different ways to motivate and to correct bad behavior.
That's been a really helpful thing.
I think I was probably more of a knee-jerk kind of spank.
You know, that's kind of the way that my parents did things when I was a kid.
And so I've moved away from that kind of like, that's the first disciplinary, you know, It's the one of last resort.
It's the one that I do not want to do at all, but have resorted to in moments of, I'm just not sure what else is going to get this guy's attention.
If I can say, I don't want to put myself in your shoes, so tell me if I'm going astray here, Josh, but if you have an absolute, which is your son has to brush his teeth, like maybe he had some candy during the day or whatever, right?
So, your son has to brush his teeth, and he won't do it because you're asking him to.
He won't do it because you're telling him to, but he has to brush his teeth, right?
And so, the spanking is like, well, whatever I have to do to get him to brush his teeth is legitimate.
Like, I mean, I'm not going to say set fire to him or anything, you know what I mean?
Like, whatever I can do.
It's like, normally...
When I meet someone, you know, in a car, I might open the door for them to get out, right?
I don't pull them out through the window.
Right. Because that would be very rude.
However, if they're unconscious and the car is on fire, guess what?
I'm pulling them out the window if I have to.
Right. So when you have that, have to.
Now, one of the things that I did was, does your son do the sugar thing much at all?
No, not really, no.
Not too much? Yeah, very little.
Yeah, because I said, I've also explained this to my daughter as well when she was younger, is I've said, you know, human beings, we didn't evolve with toothbrushes.
We didn't evolve with floss.
And why? Right?
And we had a conversation about that and basically it came down to the fact that to a large degree it's because we didn't used to really eat sugar.
Like every now and then you'd get some honey or whatever it is.
But for the most part, I mean that was pretty tough getting the honey because you gotta deal with a lot of bees.
He'll buy all the bees, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you really had to love honey to want those little swords going up your butt.
So When you talk about brushing your teeth, if you can talk about it as the effect of a positive rather than the imposition of a negative, that can help.
You know, for kids, it's a lot...
With everyone, it's a lot to do with how you frame things.
So what I said was something like this when my daughter was about your age.
Like, how good is candy?
You know, I do a lot of this 1 to 10 stuff so I can gauge where she's at in terms of priorities.
And of course, you know, whenever you say to kids about candy...
Their hands go above your top hand, right?
It's the best thing that they can conceive of in a lot of ways.
And so I said, so that's interesting, because one of the main reasons we need to brush our teeth is because we eat candy, right?
And our tongue loves sugar, but our body doesn't love sugar, right?
That's sort of the way that I explained it.
And sugar, you know, makes little bugs in our teeth that eat our enamel and harm our gums and all that.
So we talked about all of that. And I said, so, you don't actually have to brush your teeth if you don't eat anything sweet.
Like, I'll make that deal with her.
Yeah. Right? If she eats nothing that's sweet...
Now, she can swish her mouth out or whatever, right?
And, you know, I knew that she was going to...
Like, you know, it's not like I would have had her not brush her teeth, but you know what I mean.
So, this is the price.
So, I said to her, is it worth brushing your teeth for four minutes a day if...
It means that you can have a little bit of candy during the day.
Yeah, that's good. Because that's the price.
Like everything comes, there's a benefit and there's a cost, right?
Which is, you know, every time I'm playing with you, I'm not doing other things.
Now, I want to play with you, but that's the cost, right?
So is it worth...
Is it worth...
Brushing your teeth if it means you get to eat candy or whatever it is that he likes to eat that's not great for his teeth.
Like if he's a celery-based life form, I'm sure he's fine, but kids generally aren't.
So I said, listen, if you don't want to brush your teeth, we can arrange your life so that you don't eat anything that could be bad for your teeth.
Because that's the way we kind of...
We didn't evolve with toothbrushes, you know, 20,000 years ago when we were living in caves.
No toothbrushes, no floss.
So if you don't want to eat anything sweet or anything that has lactose or whatever it is, right?
Then you don't have to brush your teeth.
But if you do... I think it's a good deal.
Like, I think it's a good deal.
You know, piece or two of candy, but you got to brush your teeth.
I think it's a good deal. And ask them what they do.
Do they think it's worth it? Is it worth it to have access to a piece of candy to brush your teeth or whatever, a dessert or whatever it is?
So, these are ways of...
Whatever you can do to give maximum control to your kids as soon as possible.
Because as you know, if he only eats stuff that's not sweet, then he really doesn't need to brush his teeth as much, right?
Right, yeah. So, give him that choice.
So, the choice is you can have something sweet, My daughter doesn't do anything sugary from Monday to Friday and maybe a little piece of dark chocolate is our family weakness, I suppose, but it's not really that bad for you.
So give him the choice.
If you want the candy, you got to brush your teeth, but it's your choice.
If you don't want to brush your teeth, all you have to do is not eat anything sweet.
And then just rinse your mouth or whatever.
Now, of course, I wouldn't recommend that, but they won't.
No kid alive who's got taste buds would make that deal.
So then he has the choice.
Rather than it's just you have to brush your teeth or daddy's going to hit you or spank you, it's like you want to give them choices and consequences as soon as humanly possible.
As much freedom as humanly possible, because then he's choosing to brush his teeth rather than it being imposed on him, if that makes sense.
Sure, yeah. So these are just different ways of trying to figure out, because listen, you're a smart guy, obviously, right?
And you married a smart wife who's sensitive and all of that.
And you're sensitive too, which is why you're calling in.
And what you're basically saying is, I don't know if I can be so bold.
Let me know if I'm wrong. I don't want to hit my kid, but I don't know how else to get him to do what I need him to do.
Yeah, I mean, that's the simple way to say it.
Right, right. And it's funny because if you have spanking on the table, so to speak, then you'll be less creative about problem solving because you have something that kind of works.
And statistically, all it does is breed compliance.
It doesn't breed internalization of the standards, right?
Okay. Like he's never going to want to brush his teeth.
Because you and I don't want to brush your teeth.
Correct. Because he's never going to want to brush his teeth.
But you want to internalize the value of brushing his teeth, right?
Right. So it's going to breed non-compliance and he's going to view you as somebody who's fun slash dangerous.
And all you're doing, you're not teaching him the value of brushing his teeth.
You're teaching him that you're bigger and stronger and can make him do what you want.
Right. And you want him, of course, to – you want him to want to brush his teeth.
And there's lots of ways, even at the age of four, that he can figure that out.
So give me one other example, if you don't mind, about a conflict that's led to spanking.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's all around the same kind of idea.
We've asked him to do something, whether it's sit at the table and eat dinner with us.
He wants to jump around, bebop around and go play and all that stuff.
Or it's, hey, we need to go.
We need to get ready for the day.
You need to put your clothes on, put your shoes on, those kinds of things.
And it's just a It's all of those kinds of issues.
They're just around not listening to dad and mom when we say it's time to do something or he needs to do specific action.
And that can be so maddening, right?
Oh, yeah. Oh, man.
It gives me a facial tick.
You know, it's like in those horror movies when they have those compasses and the ghost comes around and the compass just starts spinning wildly.
You know, trying to get kids focused sometimes is like you just grab them by the ears and point them at something.
So, I mean, I get that, man.
That stuff can drive you crazy.
I'm a big one for get up and go.
And this slow motion sickness of trying to get out of the house and someone forgets and there's no shoe.
That is one of my big weaknesses.
Okay, so should we do the getting out of the house thing?
Sure, yeah, we can.
So is it stuff like going to get some groceries or run some chores?
Or if we have to go to church or something like that.
He's sometimes laying in bed or he's wanting to play.
He's like, let's put your shoes on.
He's running around the house doing the totally opposite of what we've asked him to do.
It's like, I'm going to pull my hair out.
I know what you mean.
It would be nice to have some sort of net.
You know, like catching a Merlin, just cast it around and put him in the car.
No, I really look at that as one that I have a particularly tough time with, so I'm with you there.
That is really frustrating stuff.
So does he, I guess, sort of similar questions.
He doesn't want to go, let's just say it's a grocery store or whatever, like he doesn't want to go to the grocery store, right?
I mean, it's half and half.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
It's like we went today, this morning, and he was like, it was a no day today.
Like, I don't want to put my shoes on, I don't want any of that.
But there's times where, hey, let's go, let's have an outing, and he's all for it.
Right, right. And, you know, big secret, right?
Josh's son, if you listen to this when you get older, big secret, nobody likes going to the grocery store.
Yeah. Like nobody. Oh, actually, no, that's not true.
People who come from communist countries really like going to the grocery store because they're just – every time I go to a grocery store – you can find these pictures of North Korean grocery stores, quote grocery stores.
And every time I go to the grocery stores like this, it's a miracle of productive capitalism that everything arranges itself here in the right proportions at the right price.
It's incredible. But yeah, so I don't want to go either, right?
So then the question is, okay, you don't want to go.
I don't want to go. But here's the problem.
Yeah. Right? So what can we do?
Right? And this to me is all about the preparation.
If my rule for myself is if I haven't prepared my daughter in advance, I don't get to impose something in the moment.
So, if I haven't told her like the day before, okay, tomorrow morning, where are we going?
The grocery store. Why?
Because we need to eat. You know, the kind of stuff, right?
And I don't want to go, you don't want to go, but we have to go because we need to eat, right?
We can't, you know, eating is good.
We like to eat because that way we get to brush our teeth.
So, once they understand the why, and what time do we have to go?
Well, you know, your kid's 4 or so, you know, 10 o'clock is whatever it is.
It's going to be kind of complicated.
And then, you know, wake up in the morning.
Okay, where do we have to go today?
We have to go here. And why?
Because we've got to eat or whatever. And what can we do to make it more fun?
It's a big, big question for the kids.
Okay, what can we do? That's going to make it more fun.
Get them to be participants rather than feeling like they're being dragged along behind a boat like some water skier whose skis fell off and they just won't let go.
Because when kids feel dragged along, they put up all this resistance.
I mean, this is the most insane thing that happens with kids and happens with adults too.
Is when you need them to hurry the most, they dig in.
I know, it's the worst.
And push back. And it's like, oh yeah?
You want me to hurry?
Do you, Mr. Giant? I'm afraid I can dig in more than you can make me hurry.
You know this? I'm just going to lay down and be dead weight and not do anything.
Oh yeah, yeah. Total rubber bones. Absolutely.
Total rubber bones. And then I'm convinced that they actually can find the shoe.
They just pretend they can't.
Like they'll do... The more you rush them, the more...
And you can't win that battle.
I mean, other than with escalations of force, which you don't want.
You can't win that battle.
And I said this to my daughter when she was younger.
I said, here's the thing. I have about a thousand things going on in my brain.
You have like two.
Plain and candy.
So, I can't win.
This is sort of like... Trying to light up the moon with a candle versus a laser.
Like you can't, like you said, you have these two or three things that you want out of life.
And I have a lot of balls in the air and you can just like, you got like laser, like you're a train track.
And I said, you can't win against that.
And so you have to try and find ways.
Okay, well, we have to do this. I don't want to do it.
You don't want to do it. We kind of have to do it.
So how can we make it fun?
How can we get it done?
Yeah. Now, if there's a way that they can suggest to make things fun, I mean, you have to accept that it's going to slow you down, right?
So for my daughter, it's like, we need to go to the computer store.
And she doesn't want to do it.
Okay, can we play hide and go seek in the computer store?
And it's like, okay, so will I do 10 or 15 minutes of hide-and-go-seek in order to avoid a half hour of conflict?
I certainly will. Yes, absolutely.
I certainly will, right?
And like when I was a kid, I used to love taking the prices.
This is back when they used to have sticker prices because there was no codes, right?
I used to love taking those sticker prices and putting them on my forehead, which was not something I should have done, of course, because then nobody knew what the price was of anything.
There was a lot of real estate up there, too.
Well, not when I was – actually, no, even when I was a kid, I had a pretty high forehead.
So, you know, here's what we have to do.
Here's why we have to do it.
I don't want to do it. You don't want to do it.
But we have a choice about how to make something more fun.
And what that does, of course, is it helps the kid to understand that there's things that you have to do in life, but there's ways to make them more enjoyable.
Right. And it's a problem now that he can help solve.
Mm-hmm. And it gives him something to look forward to, and it means that you're not trying to push that string of trying to get him to go somewhere when he just doesn't want to do it.
So if there's a way to change his mind about wanting to do something, that is really well worth doing it.
And the other thing, too, is you can say, I don't know, like if it's a grocery store that has those little, like my daughter used to love, like these little rubber balls.
You put the quarter in the machine, you turn it and rubber balls or whatever, right?
And she said, okay, well, we can go get a rubber ball or, you know, whatever it is.
And this may sound like bribery and so on, but it's a way of helping the child to understand a positive consequence when they're too young to understand the abstractions, right?
Like we need to eat and food doesn't grow in the fridge kind of thing.
Sure. And it's a way of just, and we do this all the time ourself, right?
Like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, I'll have a butter tart after I do my taxes.
Like, we kind of do this stuff for ourselves sometimes.
It's not the end of the world. So, if he's engaged and involved in solving the problems, then I have found this to be a whole lot easier.
Listen, please understand, these aren't any magic ones.
It's like, well, do this and you'll never have a conflict again.
But it really helps turn the tide.
To the point where the child is engaged in solving a problem rather than trying to avoid a punishment.
Sure. Because it's all about building for the teenage years, right?
I mean, what did they say about early childhood?
The days are long, but the years are short.
Yeah, yeah. So it's all about building for...
Adolescence. Because, you know, in probably 12 to 13 years, right, he's going to start speaking like Barry White, he's going to get hair all over the place, and he's going to need deodorant.
And then, that's what you're building for.
Yeah, absolutely. The power is going to shift to him.
So if you have a power relationship with your son, which is, do it because I'm bigger, basically.
Right, right. Then you have power now because he's four, but he gets the power when he's 14.
Because he can bond with his peers.
He can stay out. And at that point, what can you do?
Well, you can lock him in his room.
But he's going to have the power then.
Right. And so if you've got a relationship with him where it's like, well, whoever has the power gets his way.
Well, you're going to lose that power and he's going to gain his power.
And it's going to be real tough to push back against that from a conceptual standpoint.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if he hasn't internalized, like the good news is you've still got time because he's still only four, right?
So you want him to internalize productive behaviors that are going to stand the test of time.
Now, do something because otherwise someone bigger than you will hit you is not a rule that you want to internalize him, that you want him to internalize because it's not going to do him any good when he gets older, right?
Spanking does not prepare children for adulthood because...
Finding a way to make things that aren't fun more fun or to make things you don't want to do something you're willing to do based upon mindset, that is something that will serve him his whole life.
But do it otherwise a giant will hit you is not something that will serve him when he's negotiating with the boss, right?
Oh, absolutely. So that I think is...
Is the key, right?
I mean, it goes all the way from your son to the state as a whole, right?
People can't imagine how we can have a society without the force of the state, in the same way that it's tough for you to figure out how to get your son to do what you want him to do or what he needs to do, which I agree, kids need to do stuff that they don't want to do, just as we all do, without the hitting.
But if you take the hitting off the table, you get this wonderful creativity.
Like, if you take government central planning off the table, you get this great free market.
You turn Hong Kong from a barren rock into a metropolis.
Yeah, yeah. So those are my sort of suggestions.
And it's going to be so much greater for your bond.
You know, if you don't have to spank him, if you don't have to threaten him, if you don't have – disagreements are opportunities.
That's all they are. Disagreements are opportunities.
Okay, we have a disagreement. That's interesting.
And if we take off, I'm going to force you to obey what I want or the right thing to do, which I'm sure is the same for what you want to do.
Right. Now we have an opportunity.
We disagree. That's fantastic.
Look, what an opportunity to figure out what each other think, why we think it, what an opportunity to enroll someone in a solution, to hold them to their word, to get them to internalize values, to teach them how to approach life based on what you think rather than who you fear.
That is an amazing opportunity.
You know, I've said this to my daughter.
I said, you know, like, we have a significant disagreement maybe twice a year.
Okay. And the other day I just sat down with her and I went over the last couple and I said, weren't those great in a way?
Like we really learned a lot about each other.
We really learned a lot about how to solve problems and they haven't emerged again because we spent so much time on that.
And this investment of time ahead of time, like don't do it when you're having a conflict.
If you're in the moment, Josh, this is my strong suggestion, if you're in the moment, Your son, you haven't prepared for whatever reason, right?
Let's just say it's a toothbrushing thing.
You haven't got his agreement, you haven't got his promise, right?
Because the moment you get a promise, you say, oh, if he breaks his promise, you say, hey, you can break your promise, but that means I don't keep my promise.
Do you like it when I keep, like if I promise to take you to a play center, do you like it when I actually do it?
Yeah. And he's going to say, well, yeah, so what if I said I'm going to take you to a play center and then I promise to take you to a play center and then I don't take you to a play center?
And I go play Crisis 3 for the 12th time, right?
Well, then he's going to say, I wouldn't like that.
Like, that would be bad, right? So, okay, well, freedom for you is freedom for me.
That's why I say to my daughter, freedom for you.
If you're free to break your word, I'm free to break my word.
I'm not going to have higher standards than you.
That gives her word power.
Gives her word authority.
And it gives her leverage. And vulnerability, which is the two things that you need.
So, for me, if...
Your son doesn't want to brush his teeth and you haven't got the whole preparation thing down?
Mm-hmm. Ask him to rinse his teeth and say, we'll talk about it in the morning.
It's fine for one night, right?
Yeah. Right?
You don't have to get him to brush his teeth.
You can let that go. You know, one time not brushing his teeth, especially if he rinses with water, it's not going to be a problem, right?
But then you say, we'll talk about it tomorrow.
So you can let go of needing his compliance in the moment.
If you haven't prepared, that's kind of on you, not on him.
Right. Can I ask a question? Yeah, go ahead.
So that seems to be the main kind of thrust of this, is making sure that thinking ahead enough to prepare for these kinds of situations where you can have those, in a sense, negotiations with your kids.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
Yes. Okay.
Yeah. And that, I mean, that obviously...
I think that the hard thing about that is...
You have these situations just kind of pop into reality that come out of nowhere, supposedly or seemingly sometimes come out of nowhere.
Well, but they don't, right?
Right, right, right. Candy, vegetables, sleep, bedtime, and toothbrushing.
Like, those are the things, right?
It's all coming forward, yeah.
Yeah, this is not like, well, my child suddenly sprouted a second hand that could breathe fire and I had to grab my Medusa shield.
Like, this is not, right?
You know all of this stuff ahead of time.
In particular, now that your kid's older, you know what these all are.
So you have probably a list of five or ten things that you can slowly, over time, build up agreements and enrollment from your son in solving.
Yeah, absolutely. It just takes the preparation and the diligence to do that, right?
Yeah, so like for instance, sometimes you go to a park and you gotta go and your child's not ready to go.
This happens to no other parent but me.
I'm completely alone in this.
Never happens to anyone else. It happens all the time.
Yeah, it happens all the time.
And it's perfectly good.
See, you don't want to break his will.
Right. Right? And so, I like it when my daughter, quote, defies me.
Good! Because the world will try to break you.
And I want her to be unbroken, unbreakable.
Yeah, absolutely. And so, if he wants, I mean, listen, Josh, if you got what you wanted, you'd be the most miserable father in the world, because he'd be just like this broken kid trailing along, doing whatever you want, and being kind of inert.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that would be like, you know, we have to go and he's like, okay, I'll get my shoes on, I'll go to the car.
And you'd be like, oh, man, what have I done?
I mean, I've had coaches.
Yeah, you'd be like, oh, you have to eat your vegetables.
Okay, I'll eat my vegetables.
It's just like, you don't want that.
You want him to push back.
You want him to have his own views, his own perspective.
And that's the challenge of negotiating with your kids.
You want that.
And so... Recognize and respect.
Like, he fights to stay at the park when you have to go because he likes staying at the park when you want him to fight for what he wants in life, don't you?
I do. You've got to respect that.
Yep. And if you're having a big conflict over leaving the park, is it because you haven't prepared him?
Is it because you haven't got his agreement?
And... If you haven't, then guess what?
You've got to stay at the park a little longer because you haven't prepared him and that's on you, not him.
No, that's, yeah, that's right. That's right.
And you can just let that go. Say, okay, well, what does it matter if we stay another 15, 20 minutes?
What does it really matter? Now, I mean, if you have some, you've got to get to an airport.
Okay, well, whatever, right? But then that's on you to prepare him even more, right?
Right, right. Because a lot of times we cross our fingers and hope things are going to go right down the road, and that doesn't work, right?
Right, exactly. All right.
So is there anything else you wanted to ask?
Those are sort of my big tips and tricks.
Well, I was just saying, it's good of you to remind me, because I remember being in situations where I had a kind of authoritarian, you know, a coach when I was in college, and I remember feeling the broken spirit, you know, and how that was just awful, you know, and I wouldn't want to impose that upon my son at all,
you know? Well, especially if you're doing something like listening to philosophy, you need him to be as strong as possible because he's going to face a lot of resistance in the world because he thinks for himself, right?
Yeah. Yeah, and I want him to do that.
I mean, I don't want him to be a, you know, just a, what's the right way to say it?
You know, just compliant and just take whatever, you know, people tell him and accept that and just live that way.
I want him to think for himself. I want him to be strong.
I want him to be brave and And be able to stand against the tides that the world is going to just push against him.
So, absolutely. So, the last thing I'll say is your mission, Josh, should you choose to accept it, is to talk to your son about what the spanking means to him, what his experience of it is, whether it affects his relationship with you, and hoping that I've convinced you that it's not the way to go.
You can do it either like apologize and commit to not doing it or what you can do is you can change without telling him after you've had the conversation.
And then after a week or two of not hitting him and negotiating with him, you can then say, have you noticed something different and here's why I've changed and I'm sorry for hitting you, right?
Because if there's a way to have a productive interaction with these and you hit them, Then that is something to apologize for, right?
I mean, because that was not necessary.
So there's a couple of different ways to do it, but don't just change without acknowledging it, because it's going to be hard for him to trust you if it's just empirical rather than explicit.
Right. No, I totally agree with that.
All right. Will you let us know how it goes?
Absolutely. Thanks so much for taking the time, Stephan.
I appreciate... The advice and the, yeah, just the conversation.
I was a little nervous about it, but it turned out really well.
Thank you. You know what? You caught me on one of my rare days when I'm nice to listeners.
So, you know, I mean, the planets align.
What can I tell you? It's just every now and then I like to throw people off.
But no, it's a great question. And I really appreciate your openness.
And I look forward to hearing how it goes.
Yeah, thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it. Thanks, Josh.
Alright, up next we have Ross.
Ross wrote in and said, The left uses mass shooting survivors as extra credible figures to argue their point.
I think this is unethical.
As a shooting survivor myself, I try not to do the same.
Should I stick to those guns or should I use my victim status to trump the argument?
That's from Ross. Hi Ross, how you doing?
Hey Stefan, nice to talk to you.
Uh, how are you? I'm doing very good.
It's Sunday, my day to kind of relax, and I'm glad to be on the show.
Great, great. What happened?
Oh, man. So, one morning, I was leaving my office to go to the bank.
Decided to actually take a route to the office on foot that I didn't generally take, which is one of the, you know...
A couple decisions that I made that day that led to me actually living past that day.
Went to my office, grabbed a check, started walking across the street.
Embarrassingly enough, I'm a bit of a daydreamer.
And I had a big project I was finishing up, so I was daydreaming about it.
And I was actually walking two or three feet away from a guy that had just shot three people at the street and was headed downtown to do the same.
I don't know if he had seen me.
I don't know why he didn't shoot me.
And I heard sirens coming up.
And I thought, oh geez, there's some sirens, so I should get across the street quick.
They're pretty far away, so I won't be in the way in case they need to turn.
And they got there quite a bit quicker than I had anticipated.
I still really didn't have much of a clue what was going on.
One of the police officers jumped out and leveled his gun.
I thought at the time at me, but it was actually at the guy which now was behind me because I had turned around 180 degrees and just yelled, drop your gun.
I had a briefcase and a dog leash with my dog.
I dropped everything I had and just hit my stomach in the middle of the road there.
They Had a gunfight and killed the guy probably about 20 yards up from where the fight had started.
And I was bewildered.
I had no clue what had gone on.
My dog ran off.
Luckily, my dog lived.
I lived. But yeah, that's my experience with random shooters.
Wow. And how many people had he shot before you ran into him or passed him?
Three. And he was going to just keep going, right?
As far as I know, he was walking down from the neighborhood area towards the busy downtown area on a Saturday morning.
Wow. So, presumably so.
But they killed him, so, you know, who knows?
He... They never got to ask him what he was planning.
Right. Right.
Right. Well, of course, in that situation, there's no reason to not believe the worst, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And the three that he had killed were absolutely random.
One guy was just riding his bike.
And actually, before he had shot the guy that was riding his bike, he had set his apartment on fire.
Right. He had completely lost it.
Killed a guy with a rifle while he was riding by on his bike and killed two women that were smoking cigarettes on their porch on his way down the hill.
I'm not sure why he didn't kill me.
This was a guy I had...
Maybe he liked dogs?
Actually, that's one of my thoughts.
This guy, you know, normally my usual route to work is where his shooting started, which is a nice park sidewalk.
And I would actually see him once in a while and wave and say hi.
I mean, I recognized his face when I saw his picture.
And he always seemed to smile at my dog, so that might be...
That might be. Well, the shooters do have these odd little corners of quasi-humanity, it seems, insofar as I've certainly heard, as I'm sure you have as well, Ross, these stories of the shooters who, like, someone has been nice to them at some point in the past when they're heading into the school and they say, get out of here, bad stuff is about to go down.
Yeah. So, maybe just that little bit of niceness, maybe the, I don't know.
It could be. I mean, I'm definitely always sure to wave to people that I see at least semi-regularly on my walks.
If not specifically, to maybe get some of that karma to go forward into my future still.
It makes a huge difference, these little gestures in life.
We all want these big superhero things where we jump up and stop the meteor from hitting the town.
But there's a lot of tiny little things that you can do in life.
Just smiling at people, waving at people, offering to check the mail of neighbors.
Just little things that you can do that make the perception of the world different for people.
I know for myself, a few small kindnesses that stand out very vividly to me in my childhood Allow me to think that there's water somewhere in the desert.
Somewhere. And that can change a lot.
If you can go from an absolute to a probability, your life can change.
And if you can be positive and friendly and helpful to people where it's reasonable and where it's doable, then I think working to do that is a little...
I mean, I grew up with this sort of tiny gestures.
It may mean a lot. And I think they can.
And in this case, it may have been the difference between life and death for you.
I absolutely agree.
Again, when everything broke out, I was very close in terms of physical location to where he was.
And I'm not convinced that he didn't see me.
So, that also could have been the case.
Right. One way or the other, when it happened, actually, what was going through my mind, I didn't know what was going on.
And this was in 2015 when a lot of the police shooting stuff was big on the news.
And another thing that actually, and you might like to hear this, one thing I remember hearing on one of your shows, just saying blatantly, you said, if the police level a gun at you, just put your hands on the back of your head and drop.
And that's Actually, that's one thing that went through my head.
My thought was maybe they think I'm a guy that has a gun.
I don't know. Well, it's a pretty dicey situation there with cops, of course, because to draw and shoot is a very short amount of time.
Absolutely. And by the by, too, I just wanted to mention this as well.
You can see videos of this, which is people say, oh, he was unarmed.
The cop shot an unarmed.
And what they mean by that is the guy didn't have a gun.
But if he has a knife, man, you got to see how quickly somebody can rush a cop with a knife.
And there are also pictures or videos of what that knife can do to the cop.
So this idea that somebody who's unarmed is not dangerous, when unarmed they often mean without a gun.
But if you're within a certain distance of a cop, And you have a knife.
I mean, it can be as dangerous, if not more dangerous than a gun.
I just wanted to point that out.
Yeah, absolutely. To help people push back against these kinds of narratives.
So, Ross, I mean, what was going on in your heart and mind when all of this was going down?
I mean, what was your emotional experience of all of this?
Well, I mean, it happened very quickly.
The guy had a rifle and a revolver.
He dropped his revolver.
I remember looking up and it was, you know, maybe 10 feet away from me.
And they killed him within 20 seconds.
He fired at them and then started running and someone got him.
My first thought actually was, where is my dog?
I'm very attached to my dog.
I actually take my dog to work and all over the place with me.
So I'm thinking, you know, where is my dog?
What is going on? I didn't know if the guy was a bank robber.
I had no clue.
So I looked up.
The police officer was walking up to me.
Very nice guy. And he just said, do you know him?
And I said, nope. And he said, are you hurt?
And I said, nope. And I just kept my hands out.
Didn't, you know...
Really moved very much.
It was more confusion than anything else.
And I kind of found out through the day what actually had happened.
But my assumption was that the guy must have been robbing the 7-Eleven.
I mean, it wasn't the nicest neighborhood.
So it really didn't occur to me that it was just the guy out killing people.
Right. And when I found that out, I mean, it was a little bit of a mental hurdle to jump over.
Certainly, you know, it's a little surreal.
I had a few days where my attitude towards life was a little self-destructive, I guess, where I thought, well, you know, like, I'm working really hard building a business and doing all this stuff and some guy almost just snuffed me out.
And then there's a lot of grief of thinking about the people that were shot.
I oftentimes imagine myself sitting in their situation.
There's I was jumpy for a while.
Do you think that the bad neighborhood had anything to do with some of this lack of self-protection?
I mean, perhaps, yeah.
Actually, the first thing I did was get a different office in a nicer neighborhood.
And that was good for me.
But I do think the bad neighborhood probably had something to do with it.
But it's weird because it's a very small bad neighborhood surrounded by a pretty good neighborhood.
And he walked in from the good neighborhood.
Right. And this stuff can be pretty haywire.
Like I've read the story.
I'll just touch on it briefly here.
There was a shootout in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.
The police officers cornered a murder suspect.
It was a car. He'd stolen a car they believed belonged to the suspect in a double shooting where one victim later succumbed to his wounds.
So they linked the carjack in the shooting to the same suspect and they found the car and they discovered this guy hiding in a nearby RV. And basically what happened was a gunfight occurred.
And the cops fired 65 shots at this murder suspect and missed 65 times.
And even if they're aiming at the guy, bullets ricochet, bullets travel, aim is bad, adrenaline dumps are shaky in your system, so it is a terrifying situation where you can die from your protector, so to speak, right?
Oh yeah, they fired quite a few shots in this I mean, a lot more of them missed than hit.
And it happens very fast.
You know, it's way different than looking in on it after the fact.
Most of the time, at least most of the time while I was experiencing it, it was just pure confusion.
I made my assessment, which was, they think I have a gun.
I'm going to become a non-target and hope that they get the signal.
At the end of the day, they did a very good job.
But it happens very, very quickly, and there's not much of a rewind button.
So what would you say in a debate about gun control regarding this, if you could bring up your own personal experience?
You know, the only times I'm very tempted to do it is when people insinuate that I don't care because of my views.
And this is kind of a, you know, this is personally a situation.
A special subject for me, especially when people put it into context of public schools, because my entire life I've aligned to try and set myself up so that I can out-compete public schools.
I think public schools are the center of...
destruction really, um, for, for our society.
So when people bring it up that I don't care about the kids in those schools or, um, that my, my insistence on not, not blaming the actual weapons for the violence, it being linked to a lack of compassion. it being linked to a lack of compassion.
I feel very, very tempted to, to use my own experience as a trump card.
Um, but I also know the other side of it, which is after some, after something traumatic happens, there's always the temptation to use your trauma to shirk personal responsibility.
Um, And I don't want to fall in that trap.
I'm not sure how...
What do you mean, personal responsibility regarding this situation?
Well, anybody that, you know, anybody that I think is...
When I'm experiencing something traumatic, there's a, there's a, there's kind of a, at least for me, there was a temptation to say, you know, I think I have an excuse to give up, um, in a way, you know, and, and there are people there that, that are immediately there, they're there and they, Hey, how can I help you?
What can I do for you? And, and there's a, there's a big temptation to take advantage of that.
Um, and I think that that's the same temptation, um, As using the personal experience to gain leverage on your argument.
I think that's kind of the same card, so to speak.
Yeah. I think if you use personal experiences to arrest the flow of a non-argument, I think that's perfectly valid.
Okay. Like, so if somebody's talking a lot about these shootings and so on, then you can say, well, what's your experience with these?
Oh, they say they're going to say none, usually.
But I say, well, I was in this situation.
Okay. Now, I think it's fair to say this doesn't mean that my opinion is better than yours or I'm right or you're wrong.
Right. But it is different when you've been in it.
It is different. Yeah, I mean, it is.
And hanging on to the belief that banning guns is bad is – That's something that experience tested for me.
I feel that I really do have to believe that the solution lies elsewhere to actually hold on to that opinion.
Right. So to me, certainly the left has no problem using sentimentality and emotionality and so on, right?
right like after the florida shooting they're trotting out all of these kids to talk about guns and gun control and so on and it's almost like well you can't say no to these kids because these kids were involved in the shooting as as victims uh or the people around them are victims so the left uses this kind of stuff all the time it's complete nonsense of course right not i mean we should of course have sympathy for these these kids
but if you say to the left if the left say well these kids have something really important to say about gun control because they were in the situation and they are uh we really must listen to them as It's like, okay, well, can we start listening to all kids about what kind of school environment they want?
Can we stop forcing people to pay for school environments that are terrible for children?
Can we privatize the schools and give the kids some say over their own education?
No! Of course not!
Right, so it is completely hypocritical, and having higher standards than the left Is losing gracefully.
And history is written by the winner, so even your graceful loss will be unrecorded.
Yeah. So, to me...
One observation, with these kids, when I see them, the way that they're acting on television, that is the temptation to shirk personal responsibility and action.
I do have a lot of sympathy for these kids, but the public schools, there's an entire dynamic involved with these situations.
And by giving these children this amount of attention because they went through a traumatic experience, we're kind of giving them two things.
One, I feel like it's almost a green light to act like a tyrant.
No, it's just a way of saying to people, because people can't think, it's a way of saying to people, are you really going to argue with somebody who just watched his friend get gunned down?
It's like, yeah, I'm sorry, because trauma is not an argument.
Yeah, exactly. And from the perspective of the kids, you know, it's very tempting to use that trauma to act as a tyrant.
Sure. And to use it to prevent yourself from asking, you know, was there something I could have done to prevent this?
I mean... Well, no, we know exactly what needed to be done to prevent all of this, which I'll get to in a second.
But it's like if somebody is...
If somebody's doing a data-driven presentation, I have no problem responding with data.
If somebody's doing an emotional-driven presentation, then you need to push back against that emotionality.
So if somebody is telling me all about single motherhood and how fine it is for kids and so on, then I do have the right to say, well, were you raised by a single mom?
And if they say no, then I can say, so, it's pretty abstract for you, right?
I mean... You're not giving me much data, you're giving me a lot of sentimentality about an experience that you haven't had.
Yeah. Now, that doesn't prove me right and prove them wrong, but it slows down the sophistry, and it might stop it in its tracks, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think I agree with that sentiment.
Do I get to say what it's like to be a white slave in the Middle East in the 17th century?
Well, I can talk about it, but I can't use emotional sophistry.
I mean, I can obviously talk about how horrible it was and so on, but it's not been my direct experience, so I can't just use sentimentality that way.
So it is a way of saying, elegantly saying, Shut up.
You've not experienced it.
Now, if you want to come back with data, fine.
But if you're going to just talk in very abstract, all the heroic single moms who struggle so hard to raise their children and blah, blah, blah, right?
Yeah. Well, they say, okay, well, what's your experience of this?
Were you raised by a single mom?
No. Then what are you talking about?
And then they're going to say, well, but your personal experience doesn't dictate.
It's like, yeah, I agree. I agree.
And if you were using data, I wouldn't push back against your lack of experience, but you're using sentimentality and sophistry and emotional language, which means I get to push back against that.
I don't even have to use data.
I just have to ask you if you actually know what the hell you're talking about, and you don't.
Yeah, that makes sense. So I have no problem using it to push back against sophistry.
Now, if somebody's giving you a data-driven presentation, I'm not sure that you come in with, well, I was in a shoot, like, you know, because you can respond to that on data, but very, very rarely do people ever do that.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes good sense.
If you'd had a gun and you'd been trained, or if other people had a gun and had been trained and saw this guy walking down the street, could have saved a whole bunch of lives, right?
Well, that's actually a very interesting point.
There was a guy that followed this fellow after he shot the first guy on his bike, and he followed him with a telephone calling the cops.
Right. And I mean, not to detract, it was still a brave thing.
He was in sight of the guy following him.
But he was calling for weapons to come to the scene.
Yeah. Right?
And the left is nuts this way, and of course they're nuts.
Because the left says, well, if you ban drugs, it doesn't matter.
You're still going to get drugs.
Drugs will be everywhere.
You can't ban them.
It doesn't work. If you ban abortion, women will still have abortions.
They'll just have unsafe back alley coat hanger abortions.
But if you ban guns, oh yeah, totally they'll be gone.
Yeah. Right? It makes no sense.
Bizarre. It makes no sense.
Well, of course, the left has a feral desire for dominance, which is interfered with by private ownership of weapons.
That's all. That's all.
It ain't so much fun when the rabbit's got a gun, and it ain't so much fun having a dictatorship when the population is well-armed, which is why dictators always stop by disarming the population.
It's natural. It's got nothing to do with...
I mean, if the left... If the left had a big problem with weapons, then shouldn't under Obama, shouldn't they have stopped Obama from selling untold billions of dollars worth of weaponry to largely third world dictatorships, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, other places like that?
I mean, that is putting guns in the hands of horrible people with enormous power.
Yeah, it's pretty unreal.
I try and make that point here and there.
And I have not been involved in as many political arguments as of late because, you know, I'm just very busy working on building a business.
But the times I have brought up that argument, I don't know if I've ever gotten really a response at all aside from the conversation ends.
The left doesn't want to give up the arms sales because they need the profits from the arms sales to fund the, quote, social programs that they use to buy votes.
Yeah. So, I mean, they have no problem with guns getting to the hands of the worst people you can imagine.
I mean, if you said to the left that what you really want to do is have a government program to allow the NRA to hand out free guns to its members, they would go insane.
But if you have a government program to put civilian shredding mass destruction weaponry into the hands of dictatorships, they're like, yeah, that's great.
You have no problem with that. Yes, it's bizarre.
And we know, I mean, looking at the shooting in Broward County in Florida, it's not hard to figure out what happened.
And we see people say, well, why do you talk about race and IQ? Well, why talk about race and IQ? Here's just one example out of countless that I could pull.
So, a program was started, I think it was under Obama, because blacks and Hispanics were being arrested and At higher rates than East Asians and whites in this region.
And well, of course, in many regions and so on.
Now, the question would be, okay, let's normalize by IQ. Because lower IQ, as Dr.
Kevin Beaver has repeatedly pointed out, lower IQ is the highest predictor of criminal behavior.
More than anything else.
The single biggest predictor of criminal behavior.
And so you would give either IQ tests or you would use marks as a proxy for IQ tests, although they can be pretty heavily rigged.
And you'd say, okay, well, are people getting arrested, are kids getting arrested disproportional to their IQ? And the answer would be probably not, because that's where the data always seems to shake out, is that it's all related to IQ. And then they'd sit there and say, well, what can we do to help this particular situation?
It's not injustice on the part of the cops.
It is not just the presence of single motherhood, which is more an effect of low IQ plus the welfare state.
What can we do to solve this problem?
But it wouldn't just be, well, racist cops.
And so they didn't want to do that because no one's allowed to talk about race and IQ. So what did they do?
Well, they said, we're just going to stop arresting these kids.
Basically. I mean, there was a quota or a limit or whatever.
And then the cops weren't allowed to arrest kids who had been involved directly in criminal activities.
And of course, because there was this immunity for these kids in school, the criminal gang started using them for their nefarious ends because they knew that they had untouchable kids from the law standpoint.
And it got so ridiculous that...
These kids would steal stuff, be found with the stolen property, but the cops would never return the stolen property to the rightful owners because then they'd have to explain how they got it and why no one was charged.
The same thing with Trayvon Martin and other people.
And so the reason why this kid was not arrested, maybe it was the name that involved Jesus Cruz, maybe everybody thought he was Hispanic and was part of that, because you can't talk about race and IQ. They just said, well, we're going to just stop arresting these kids because it's the school to prison pipeline, they called it, and so on. And so this kid was never arrested.
He did not have a record.
And therefore, he could get all the guns he wanted.
There was no intervention. I mean, the...
Nicholas Cruz called up the police after his mom died and said, I'm having a really tough time because my mom died.
And this was the mental health facility said, well, he's okay because his mom's still alive.
He actually called them.
Dozens and dozens of times the police intervened.
But because we can't talk about race and IQ and its relation to criminality and its differences among groups, he was not arrested.
To keep the numbers in the right proportion, the politically correct proportion.
So then what happened?
Well, he shot up a school and murdered 17 people.
Now, people can say, well, I don't like to talk about race and IQ, and I don't like it, but that's everyone's choice.
But the blood of those people is not on my hands.
Because I've been frank about it, and I really want to solve problems in society.
I really care that people get the help they need.
I really care that people don't get gunned down.
Because the police aren't allowed to arrest clearly dangerous, clearly violent, clearly destructive people who are cutting themselves publicly online, who are posting their desire to become a school shooter, who are pointing guns at people's heads.
Oh, I said, well, there was nothing under Florida law to arrest them.
Of course there was. You point a gun at someone's head?
I'm sorry, that is like, of course you could arrest someone for that.
And so, the people who say, well, I feel uncomfortable.
I don't want to talk about it. It's wrong.
It's racist to talk about. Okay.
The blood of those 17 people is on your hands, not mine.
I really want to be clear to people about this, that the failure to talk about this topic results in just this kind of Of disaster.
And a disaster is really the wrong word.
It's an entirely predictable outcome of very particular policies.
And my conscience is clear.
I have done everything for the last few years to just prevent these kinds of things, to try my very hardest to prevent these kinds of things.
And the people who have not shared this information, the people who refuse to talk about these things, that blood is on your hands.
Not mine. If you can live with that conscience, then you can continue to avoid these topics.
I can't. Because I really, really want to solve problems in the world, and I really, really don't like it when 17 people, mostly children, get gunned down in cold blood because people won't talk about race and IQ. It's a direct line.
It's not even a theory. It's a direct line.
And so people who don't want to talk about these things, okay, don't talk about them.
But you are complicit. In what happened in Broward County.
Because you're keeping this information hidden, which means that people can do these other sleazy solutions that have literally caused the deaths of 17 people.
So easily preventable.
So many warning signs.
And so little capacity for the police to act in a way that would have protected these children.
That's on the police, of course.
It's on Nicholas Cruz, of course.
But if you've avoided these topics in a way, it's on you too.
So I don't like it when things go to, oh, gun control, oh, you know, mental health issues.
It's like, this was all so preventable.
And it was not a failure of the system.
It was the system.
And the system stands because people won't talk about reality, won't talk about things that matter.
And I feel so much for the parents of those children who were murdered that I don't know how people can live with themselves.
I genuinely don't. I have no idea how people can live with themselves.
If it had been your child who was gunned down, would you have said, well, maybe we should have talked about these issues, or maybe I shouldn't have shut it down when people talked about these issues?
This is science. These are facts.
We need to deal with them. We need to talk about them.
We need to have rational discussions about them.
And everyone who shuts down this discussion is helping to load the weapons of the next killer in these kinds of situations and circumstances.
So, the idea that this has something to do with gun control, it's just a cover-up.
The whole issue is a complete red herring.
It's a cover-up for the institutional processes that were set in place by people's refusal to discuss the bell curve.
People's hatred of this uncomfortable reality.
And I don't want I don't want kids to get shot.
I don't want adults to get shot.
I don't want lives to be ruined.
Maybe he could have gotten the help he needed if there had been a stronger intervention.
Maybe he would have just ended up in jail.
But there would still be 17 people above ground right now, and countless hundreds if not thousands of people's lives have been ruined as a result of just this one thing.
This is just one of very many things that arise out of a failure to talk about basic biodiversity.
Maybe people can live with it.
I can't. I can't. I can't.
I'm trying to get through my whole life talking about very difficult issues with no blood on my hands.
So far, so good.
I'm going to keep talking.
All right. I hope that helps.
Thank you very much for your call and my very, very deepest sympathies for what you went through.
It definitely is a pretty enlightening experience.
Thank you, Stefan. Thank you.
Alright, up next we have Connor.
Connor wrote in and said, I,
of course, began trying to correct that as soon as possible, but I also fear that I've missed the most crucial time period in their lives where I could have made a major impact.
Can the older brother effectively fulfill the role left unfulfilled by the father to any meaningful extent, even if he only becomes aware of the responsibilities of that role after the sisters have entered their teenage years?
That's from Connor. Oh hey Connor, how you doing today?
I'm well, Stefan. How are you?
I'm well. I'm well, thanks.
That's a great, great question.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the environment that you grew up in and what it was like?
Yeah, sure. So my parents got divorced when I was 11 years old.
And there's a sizable age gap between me and my sister.
So my next youngest is five and a half years old.
Younger than me and my youngest sister is nine years younger than me.
So they would only be about six and I guess two when that happened.
And so I have a very solid memory of when they were together and a lot of the differences that happened before and after that divorce happened.
But the environment for them was pretty much Single mother to household with a mother who was very very successful in her career but that meant a lot less time around the house so a lot of typical motherly roles were a you know not fulfilled to a great extent and also our father was mostly absent in their life at least in a positive way He was around a good bit for a few years after that,
but I wouldn't call that a positive experience.
Also, there was our mother's sister, our aunt, who lived with us not too long after the divorce.
She was a negative influence as far as putting a lot of more emotional strain in the household.
Kind of devolving away from logic and reasoning that you would like to see.
Was she the primary caregiver of this aunt?
No, she was basically like a nanny.
My mom got her a car and would pay her a little bit of money to help There's household chores and driving us around if it's athletics or lessons or tutoring.
She was kind of like a nanny, but the reason why it was her versus someone else is because she herself was not self-sufficient.
She can't really live, she can't function on her own without the help of family.
Was she mentally challenged?
No, she just hasn't worked for 30 plus years or so and no longer doesn't have a skill set to get a job where she could Live on her own and afford her own home and all that.
What does she live on though, the aunt?
Sorry? What does she live on?
Mostly our mom's generosity.
Right, right. And what was wrong with the aunt emotionally or as a caregiver?
Very... How do I put it?
It's... She herself was just very emotional.
It was very easy to upset her.
She would get extremely moody and if there was ever an argument, it would get extremely emotional.
She's very quick to trigger when it comes to yelling and crying and using those emotional make-you-feel-bad type arguments versus Any kind of self-reflection or objective thinking.
So kind of immature, hysterical, reactionary, like a child.
Yes. Kind of an insult to children, but okay.
Yes. Right, right.
And help me understand the childcare stuff that went on when your parents were divorced, right?
So you're saying that your youngest was two...
How old were you again? Eleven.
Eleven. And...
How were the kids taken care of?
What happened? So there was the nanny.
Were you sort of the step in as well?
No. So at first there was an actual person that was hired to be a nanny.
She didn't live with us, but she was with us pretty much every weekday.
And she would drive us around and help cook.
But, uh, after a few years, my aunt moved in.
And that was because my aunt had been living with our grandmother and was kind of, you know, surviving that way.
And once our grandmother passed away, I think it just, she, you know, they needed to figure out something to do with her.
And it kind of just made sense to, you know, have her move in with us.
And then that was going to be a way that she could be useful to my mom by filling in the roles that the nanny was filling.
And, uh, And, you know, keep her afloat.
So I'm still having, so did your mom go back to work before your parents separated, do you know?
Yeah, my mom was always very successful.
She was always working.
So who was taking care of you when your parents were working?
So that would just be, you know, maybe there was a babysitter who would come in for a few hours after our school every day.
There was always some type of help.
Yeah, okay. Okay, so there was always somebody kind of coming and going as far as that goes, right?
Yes, yes. And one of the things that's kind of true, it's tragic, but it's true, is that you can't be that picky when you need someone to take care of your kids because you're working, right? You've got to get to work.
You've got a whole career.
People are depending on you.
You've got an income. You've got your status.
You've got your projects.
So someone's got to come in.
And so you can't necessarily be really picky about all of that.
With the resulting reality, what kind of people want to take care of other people's kids?
There can be some nice people.
There can be some decent people who are doing it.
But generally not. Right?
Where is it that you've ended up in your life where the biggest skill set that you bring to bear is mostly minimum wage childminding?
Right. Not high quality people in general.
It's just a reality. There's no replacement for the parents.
There's no replacement for the parents.
There is no replacement for the parents.
Right? I've made this analogy before.
I'll do it again. If you're married and it's your 10th year wedding anniversary and you say you've just hired some minimum wage person to go out with your wife because you're busy, what's she going to say?
Yeah, that sounds great. It's pretty much the same.
No, it's not. There's no substitute for the husband and there's no substitute for the parent.
Can't replace the parent.
People try to all the time.
Doesn't work. And it is funny because I view this as a form of infidelity.
It's a form of infidelity to ask pretty much minimum wage strangers to take care of your children.
It's cuck parenting.
It's like hiring a gigolo to take care of your wife's sexual needs.
It's not right. It's your job.
Now, it doesn't mean you can't ever have a babysitter.
You understand? I mean, this is not like, oh, you've got to stare at your children for 18 years straight.
It's nothing like that.
But it is a form of infidelity.
It is cuck parenting.
It is allowing a primary relationship to be substituted for by largely indifferent strangers.
Why are you with your children?
Because you love your children. Why is the babysitter with your children?
Because she likes six bucks an hour.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And, you know, like I mentioned, it's only in the last few years I've really kind of, one, had my eyes open to some of those realities and I've really, you know, dove in the rabbit hole, you know, Kind of get my research on it.
And that's where, one, a lot of the guilt comes from with my little sisters.
And then also kind of the frustration on how do I go about possibly rectifying the structures that have already been set up.
Yeah, well, I've got a lot to say on that.
And I've been thinking about this for the last two days, so...
I hope not to swamp you with a tsunami of language.
But what has been the effect on your sisters?
What has happened? Well, I would say the effect is unseen because you can't exactly tell what would have been had they had a stable two-parent household that entire time.
But what I'm seeing lacking is...
I do see a lack in ability to think critically.
I see a very heavy default leaning to more progressive type of ideals.
I see an inability to communicate and The inability to have tough conversations, rationally, is the big one.
It's very difficult to get them to do anything besides where the conclusion isn't the lovey-dovey, everyone's great, everything's perfect, we love...
All equally, and nobody ever made any mistakes growing up.
Well, except for the men.
Men teach emotional restraint.
If you want to know what's happened, why do we have all these snowflakes?
Why do we have all these hysterics in society?
Why do we have people who want to ban speakers on college campuses and freak out and panic and get raging and aggressive?
Because when they encounter opinions that go against their prejudice, because we have not Maintained the civilization founding value of emotional self-restraint.
Of emotional control.
And of course, you have your aunt, the slash nanny, who was emotionally reactive and hysterical.
And you said that your father was in your life for a little bit, a couple of years, but it wasn't positive.
What was not positive about it?
And then what happened after that time?
So, when my parents were together...
And I look back on those times, I think really only positive memories.
It seemed like a very stable household.
I think I enjoyed a lot of benefits from having that at a young age.
And when the divorce did happen, it came as a big surprise, but my dad at first maintained a household Near us for I guess it was about four years he was living near us and he would still see us you know every other weekend and at first it was like every other Tuesday and you know switch up holidays all that but he was also there should we ever you know have an event or need something but that that whole time period all of the Benefits that could have come from having him near there,
I think were rendered pretty much void by how nasty their divorce was and how toxic it became to be with him because all of the organically positive benefits, it never felt that way again.
It always seemed like there was some kind of agenda behind our conversations.
Kind of using the kids as chess pieces in the divorce.
A lot of anger that would come out about the divorce all the time.
It wasn't a great situation while he was around.
Do you know why they got divorced?
It was his choice.
He said he just The reasoning was behind, he said that he just didn't love her anymore and he said that she was not being good to him as far as belittling him and making him feel like a loser in the household.
I don't know all the details behind that, but it was basically he was saying that he was not happy anymore and he wanted to leave.
It was pretty obvious immediately after that he had been seeing somebody else for a while while they were still married.
And so how much of it was no longer loving her and how much of it was he wanted to move on with somebody else, I'm not sure.
But that's what originally started it.
Right. So nagging, belittling, and an affair.
Yeah the the affair wasn't known until afterwards though.
Well what do you mean? Well to anybody else besides him.
Oh so it wasn't the the divorce was not triggered by him confessing or your mom finding out about an affair?
No she found out afterwards.
Right. I mean a marriage has to be pretty bad for an affair to be happening with people not knowing.
Right. I mean, that's, even if I wanted, which I don't, I can't imagine how.
I'm pretty busy. How do you even get away with it, even if you want to do it?
I don't know. Right.
And what happened, Connor, with the divorce?
You said it was ugly.
Yeah, there was, I mean, For a couple years, it was under a restraining order.
So every single time we changed custody, we had them meet at the police station.
Wait, that was a restraining order against your dad?
Yes. Why? I'm not positive on the instances.
I'm sure there's...
I've heard stories about how my mom thought he was...
Possibly gonna be violent.
She was worried that he would Come to the house and do something and I I never saw him act in a way towards her around us that would lead me to believe that I also am I also would not put my mom above the pedestal of you know doing Much more...
taking much more legal action against my dad than necessary.
You mean you think that she may have lied and put him in legal jeopardy in order to gain leverage in the divorce?
I'm not sure she...
I don't think she would ever... Do you ever remember your father being violent?
Aggressive, for sure, yeah.
What do you mean? Not violent, no.
I mean, he's a...
If he was angry or having an argument, he could get very loud and yell at her.
Well, I'm sure she yelled too, right?
Yeah, of course. But, you know, I never saw him grab her, grab anybody violently.
So she must have accused him of physical violence in order for there to be a restraining order, I assume.
No, she only had to...
Make a solid case that that could be an instance or that he was, you know, perhaps stalking her or following her around.
Right. Modern, independent, strong-minded woman is scared and therefore he's got a restraining order.
All right. And...
After the couple of years, did he move away, or what happened for him to fade out?
Yeah, he eventually just stopped trying to fight it.
I think he moved back to California full-time, so he had been doing part-time in California, part-time where we live, and And he eventually just stopped trying to juggle both and just stayed out there.
And did he get remarried?
No. I understand that.
And it is, you know, it's really tough for...
I think it's more tough for fathers in a lot of ways, and I'll just say that there's obviously overlap, but if the mom really hates the dad, The relationship with the kids is largely doomed.
And it is doomed specifically as a result of the hatred of the mom towards the dad.
The reason being that it seems almost impossible for women to dislike someone without telling everyone.
Like it just seems almost impossible for them to keep their peace about this stuff.
So what happens is the kids end up with a negative view of the father and the only way that the father can correct that negative view is to be honest about the mom but he can't be honest about the mom because then he's afraid that the kids will go back and say oh well this is what dad said actually happened and then what?
right? so he's in a fight where he can't win he's in a fight where he's not just one but both hands tied behind his back because the kids end up having a negative view of the father often as a result of the lies of the mother So the mom can lie about the dad, but the dad can't tell the truth about the mom.
And there's only so much of a losing battle that men can fight before they just have to get out.
So that is something that I am very sensitive to and also that's kind of where I would default to as well if I was hearing this.
But the situation actually, it's confusing because it It doesn't quite add up that way in this specific one because our mom actually was very good about keeping it out of the conversation in general, but certainly never said a negative word about him in front of us.
Oh, Connor, you've got to be kidding me about this stuff.
At least for the first few years.
No, no, no. Come on, man. You've got to be kidding me about this stuff.
I'm sorry. I mean, I know you're inside the family, so things are hard to see.
But brother, let me tell you what I see.
Where were you handed over to your father?
Right, right, right. At the police station.
Why were you handed over to your father at the police station?
Because there was a restraining order against your father for potential violence and stalking towards your mother.
And you're telling me that she didn't somehow communicate that the father was bad to you guys?
No, no. I guess she had the cops do it for her and the court system do it for her, right?
Right. Your father is so dangerous.
So dangerous.
I need a police protection order against him.
Now, off you go and have fun with him this weekend, kids.
Come on. That's fair.
So, uh, but...
I guess the point I would emphasize is that while I hold both sides pretty...
It's a gray area for sure.
But on my dad's end, going over to his place at certain times was kind of a nightmare because he was very, very active in...
Trying to use the kids to hurt mom.
He would be very vocal about every detail he could, about how she was terrible, about how he was a victim in it, blah, blah, blah.
He did a few messed up things.
When I was 12, he fooled me into signing some documents that turned out to be Like a request for a change in custody and I was not aware of what I was signing and then that turned into a whole court battle where they had to you know address that and it just he was he was very obviously using those types of tactics and I certainly don't I certainly would not say my mom did not,
but yeah, hers were probably more subtle.
There's a good deal of blame to go around both sides there.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that correction.
Thank you. So it's a good thing that your mom went to all of this career stuff and got a whole bunch of money working very hard on her career so she could hand it over to lawyers.
Yeah, there's a lot of anger around that.
Good job, everyone. Good job.
Now, why did your father want you to be in his custody, do you think, when you were 12?
I think he owed a lot of money.
What do you call it? Oh, they had child support?
Yes. And so if he got custody, well, he would still owe that money, right?
He just wouldn't add to it.
I think he was trying to change the structure to where she would have to pay child support.
Oh. Because she makes more money, is that right?
Yes. At that time, yeah.
Right. For sure. Right.
Well, I'm sorry about all of that, and that is pretty exhausting.
How was your relationship with your father when you were 12?
Before the Arsenal day, it was fantastic.
Right, but then when you were 12?
Oh, it was very up and down.
There would be... You'd have these big emotional swings like when obviously I trusted him enough to do something like, you know, sign these documents that he told me to sign because that was supposed to just make things better.
But then, you know, the fall from that would make me, you know, almost hate him for a while.
He's my dad and I want to love him.
We'd spend some time together and have a good time.
At some point, there'd be something else that I thought was sleazy or unnecessary.
It was just very up and down.
Part of that was his stress too.
He started becoming very prone to emotional outbursts or The conversation became a lot less fun with him because, like I said before, it kind of felt like there was an agenda all the time.
And he wanted to take pot shots at either my mom or women in general or the legal system, which, of course, now I don't blame him considering how biased against that he probably was in there.
Right. Well, then, of course, he chose to marry her.
Right. Right.
So, the question. How do you save your sisters?
So, you can think of it as...
I think the better way to address it is what...
You know, on the broad scale, it's like, yeah, can an older sibling, in this case a brother, fulfill...
Those roles left by an absent father, you know, and to what extent.
And then in my situation particularly, it's, you know, based on kind of where we're at in our lives now, I mean, how much of that is already formulated, like what is an effective route of communicating to them.
You know, in a way that won't just make them shut down or will actually have a positive effect because, you know, so far it's not gone.
And they're adults, right?
They are 19 and 16 now.
Right. Do they feel like they're in any need of help or do they believe that?
No, not necessarily.
What do you mean not necessarily? Well more recently there's been some conflict with the 19 year old I've been I've been pretty vocal about how I really think that there's some issues that should be addressed and Sort of the path I see her life going right now But beyond that now what are you what are your concerns?
She's far away at school and she's getting a...
She's always been a musician and she is trying to focus on my music career so she's been at a school for music and it's extremely expensive and in my personal opinion I don't think it is worth the most probable return on the investment but also the The environment that she is,
I think, is making her much less like the kind of person that I think I want to see her grow up to be like, or the kind of person that would be able to find a life path that is fulfilling to herself.
What traits in particular are you concerned about?
I'm worried about her going into debt and ending up without a skill set that she can make above a menial salary with.
I'm worried about the kind of people she dates.
I can tell you, she's in Los Angeles and the The SJW type stuff is becoming pretty apparent on her.
So, is it fair to say that your sisters don't even really have a concept that there's a problem?
Fair enough, yeah. Yeah, well then you can't help it.
I mean, if the problem can't even be acknowledged, then it can't be fixed, right?
I shouldn't say that.
With her, she's aware that things aren't quite aligned right, but she's far from admitting that there's a problem with her current path, but she is open that something isn't clicking.
And my youngest sister, I should say, I've had conversations like this with her, and she did at least make adjustments.
So she's at least open to thinking through some of these things and perhaps changing some behavior on it.
So it'd be unfair for me to say that there's not any concept of the problem.
I just think that it's faint.
Who helped you to Become who you are.
I mean, you didn't grow up with a positive role model.
I guess you did for the first little while that you were, sorry, first decade plus that you were with your dad.
But was that enough, do you think?
Or has there been somebody else who has done it?
No, there's quite a few very, very, you know, there's quite a few influences I had that I think, you know, looking back on I'm so lucky came into my life.
But I don't know that they would have any sort of similar type of experience.
Lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
That's an interesting word. Lucky.
Positive influences aren't a matter of luck.
I mean, it's good that they show up in your life But you have to grab them, you have to hold on to them, and you have to have a relationship that's positive with them.
In other words, if there are mentors who've helped you out, you also have to have been someone that the mentors want to help out.
In other words, you have to have acted in such a way that the mentorship is valuable to exercise over you.
It's not just luck. It's not just luck, right?
Does your mother think that there are any problems that needs to be solved with the daughters?
Yes. How would she characterize him, do you think?
She would also say that growing up in a household with one parent and with our aunt certainly is a situation that she regrets having.
She's very open about that.
And why does she regret it and why does she do it?
Because we've had conversations where we've talked about the differences in outcomes in kids from single-parent households versus two-parent households and a lot of the science behind the value of having a father in the home.
She does openly admit that there's a lot of regret in having us come up in the household Where there was no father and, you know, in her words, you know, picking somebody who wasn't around the whole time.
So, isn't it her job to fix it?
Yeah. She broke it.
Of course, yeah.
With your father. It's their job to fix it, isn't it?
Right. Why is it your job?
I don't believe that it's necessarily my job, but it is an issue that I see and one that I would like to do what I can to help rectify.
But what are the opportunity costs of this, Connor?
This is my big concern. Yeah.
How's your level of happiness?
I mean, I know it's always tough to be on a...
Show talking about these things in a public arena, but you've got a kind of monotone thing going on here.
You don't sound enthusiastic and happy to me.
Gosh, I would say I'm...
Yeah, sorry.
I think part of it is a little bit nervous to be speaking on here.
But no, I am extremely happy now.
And I'm happy with the positive direction my life is going.
And I'm very aware of how much of my happiness has come from realizing where my life was heading just a few years ago and a lot of the positive changes I've had to make to correct that course.
But if you'd asked me a few years ago, I would have had no idea.
I would have been able to say, yeah, I don't feel satisfied.
I don't feel fulfilled. But I would not have been able to say, as simple as it seems now, is that, oh yeah, I need to get a skill set that I can create value with.
Oh yeah, I need to find a job that I find fulfilling.
Oh, I need to form relationships with people who are productive and positive and fulfill me in some way.
And I want to help my siblings sort of have those eye-opening moments too.
You know, I understand.
What if I were to say to you, Connor, that this comes at the expense of your future family?
In which case, I'm okay with assessing the situation and realizing that there's some people who don't want to be helped, or it's not able to be done, or if the opportunity cost is too great, I understand that I'm very open to letting it go.
Yeah, let me tell you something about the way that this works, in my opinion.
Let's say that, are you dating at the moment?
Do you have a girlfriend? I do, yeah.
And how long have you guys been going out?
Close to two years now.
And what does she think of your focus on your sisters?
She thinks it's good that I want to help them, but she has a very similar outlook as that.
She wants to see them get help or have that positive role model, but she also doesn't want to see me sacrifice so much time and energy into it if it's not going to lead to a productive outcome.
See, here's the thing. Here's the thing, Connor.
When a woman is with you, she's looking for resource competitors.
She's looking for other people who are going to have claims that you accept on your time and your resources.
Because your time and your resources are going to be her time and her resources.
Why do women like rich men?
Because they have lots of resources. That's why rich men like young, fertile women, because they have lots of fertility.
So, if you have a lot of what you consider to be legitimate competitors to your future wife in terms of resources, other people are going to Call and you're going to spend time, effort, money, emotional energy and all that on other people.
Your sexual market value is going to go down.
Go down. That's really important.
A woman will judge you.
I'm deep down.
According to the resources you can bring to your children with her.
If there are competitors out there whose claims you accept or whose claims are enforced upon you, in the case of child support and alimony and so on, your sexual market value goes down because you're hemorrhaging resources into other people rather than into her children.
This is basic evolutionary biology.
She wants the most resources.
Now, this doesn't mean that you have to be some randy and isolated superhero.
Because if you have a good relationship with good parents, then those parents can provide resources in terms of babysitting and maybe some money and some help.
Babysitting is the wrong term for grandparents, but you know what I mean.
If you have a good extended family, they don't mind the cross-pollination of resources.
So if you have, you say, well, I have a great relationship with my sisters.
They've just had babies, so I'm spending a lot of time helping them.
She views that, your girlfriend, as a positive, as long as your sisters aren't like selfish people who'll never give anything back, right?
Right. So if you want to get the best quality relationship with the best quality women, make sure that you do not have There's vampire resource drainers around you.
People who are you going to give and give and give, and it's not going to come back.
Of course, yeah.
So my concern is that the opportunity cost of what you're doing will be a lack of commitment with your girlfriend.
Because she's going to be like, well, he's a good guy, he's a smart guy, he cares, but every time there's a problem with his sisters, I don't see him for two days.
Or he's emotionally unavailable, or he's whatever, right?
Right. Because that's like, they have their lives, they have their futures, but I want a predictable, stable environment with resources towards my children.
I'm not just talking about money.
Emotional resources, attentiveness, emotional availability as it's called.
If you can't help your sisters, and this comes at the expense of your own Future family.
I don't think that's a good deal.
If you can help your sisters, and that comes at the expense of your own future family, I also don't consider that a very good deal because it's your mom's job to help her children.
It's not your job. Here's my concern.
Women's problem is vanity.
Men's problem is white knighting.
You want to fix what your mom broke and what your dad broke.
Because you take on too much responsibility as a man.
This is men's curse. Take on too much responsibility.
Take on too much ownership. I can fix it.
I will make it better. I will fix what my mom broke.
But let's say you do fix what your mom broke.
Connor, I think that's going to give entirely the wrong message to your sisters.
What message will that give to your sisters if you fix what your mom broke?
That there will always be someone there to step in for them.
Some man's going to come along and fix stuff if you screw it up.
I don't have to be that good a mom.
I just have to have a hyper-responsible son who's going to come in and fix everything up that I smashed up.
Yeah. What you want is to talk to your mom saying, you've got to fix this.
Because... I want you to provide the model to your daughters of a woman who takes responsibility and fixes things.
Because you going in to fix things, I think that's not going to achieve what you think it's going to achieve.
Either you're going to fail, in which case you've prevented your mom from fixing something and maybe made things worse.
Or you're going to succeed, in which case your mom gets off scot-free and your sisters learn there's no consequences to bad behavior.
Yeah, I think that's actually a really good reset of focus there.
Because my mom has been receptive to a lot of these criticisms, and I think she also wants to step up and fix what's broken there.
But yeah, I think that's a good reset there.
And mind you, I did already have a certain energy drain limit set for myself there, where You know, my life does come first.
You know, my girlfriend right now is higher focus, you know, for my energy there than trying to fix up, you know, the mess that I perceive my sister's in, for sure.
It would be interesting to have a conversation for you to have a conversation with your girlfriend because I suspect, it's just a suspicion, Connor, but I suspect that deep down she knows female nature a lot better than you do.
And deep down, she's like, well, I know that he wants to do the right thing by his sisters, but I don't know.
And she's just probably biting her tongue and being nice about a lot of this stuff.
Yeah, she actually hasn't minced words on that.
She says some very similar things.
Right. Helping people is a very challenging business, and it almost...
Never manifests in the way you think it's going to manifest.
I mean, this is my...
Obviously, experience is not some sort of empirical proof, but really helping people is very challenging.
And it usually has to do with modeling better behavior than rushing in to hold up their own collapsing scenery.
Let people fall, let them fail, provide a better example, and be available if they wish to have advice.
But you probably have an impulse to rush in and hold things up and fix things and prevent bad things from happening.
I don't think you can. I mean, you can try, and maybe it'll work from time to time, but it comes at such a massive personal expense.
Do you want to marry your girlfriend?
I do. And why haven't you?
Ah, damn it. Now I can't.
Now I can't show her this video.
Why haven't you? Well, I'm trying to think if she would ever be able to find this video before I want her to see it.
Basically, right now, I'm actually saving up for the ring.
Okay, good. And she's ready for that?
Yes. Yeah, well...
Everyone gets to be an adult.
And... For men, taking on the responsibility for others is our very greatest weakness.
Over-responsibility.
Spreading ourselves too thin.
It is a form of megalomania to think that you as a sibling Who did not make the problem, and who was desperately struggling to survive the problem, that you as a sibling can ride in on your white knight horse and fix what your parents broke?
It's not realistic. And it's not sending the right signal to everyone involved.
Because it's not going to work.
The only way that you can save things is by diminishing everybody else.
Because when you rush in to save people...
The message you give them is that they can't save themselves.
That you don't trust them.
That they're not strong enough.
Now, if you truly believe that, why bother trying to help them?
It's not going to work. If you don't believe that, it's like the bad parent, so to speak, right?
The kid is trying to hit a ping pong ball.
And the parent, you know, just grabs the ping pong paddle out and says, hit it like this.
And then keeps doing that.
All he's saying is that the kid keeps getting it wrong.
It interferes with and the kid gets self-conscious and ends up maybe imitating the parents but doesn't really learn anything.
Yeah. The desire to save.
Of course, this is what the world is counting on with the various disasters that it's engendering at the moment.
Men will just work harder.
Men will just pay more taxes.
Men will just fight in the Civil War.
Men will just whatever. Men will step up and they will fix everything.
Now that's a good thing for men to think of when it comes to building a civilization, building a city, building a sewer, building an electrical grid.
It's great. Man's power over nature is virtually unparalleled.
But our control over people Our control over women.
Well, it's time to recognize what we can and cannot do as men.
We cannot save people from themselves.
We cannot fix what others have broken in terms of relationships and identity and self.
And if you're Eldest sister is being programmed by a bunch of man-hating social justice warrior patriarch paranoiacs in Los Angeles.
Well, most times they win, sadly.
Because they have a comfortable delusion to offer her where all you have to offer her is a bitter truth.
The lineup for comfortable delusions is just a little bit longer than the lineup towards bitter truths.
That actually was another part of that question.
Assuming I've set these boundaries on the time I'm willing to put into it and the responsibility I feel over it, if you were to at least try to make that branch more attractive I do struggle with how do I make that more attractive where...
No, no, you can't make something more attractive in terms of inspiration.
You can only be attractive in terms of inspiration.
You're trying to figure out how to manipulate people when all you need to do is be great yourself.
So if you're happy, if you're productive, you have a great relationship with your girlfriend and you're doing well in life, It's not like if they come and ask you, you're going to keep it.
It's a trade secret, I can't tell you.
Sorry. You've got innies, not outies.
Can't transfer. Of course you can't.
It's the old thing that if you've got a fat family and you're fat, the only way to inspire them to lose weight is to lose weight.
Yourself. Because if you're still fat, they're not going to listen.
So if your life is great, if you've lost the weight, and hey, look, I can climb stairs.
Hey, look, I can play tennis. Hey, look, I can see my toes.
They'll be like, wow, that's actually pretty cool.
You've done it. I'm interested in doing it.
What did you do? Then you can share.
But if you rush in and try and grab the cheesecake from everyone's fork and tell them to stop drinking soda, I can't believe I ever dreamt of that crap.
It's horrible. Well, you're not losing any weight.
They're getting resentful.
Nothing changes. Focus on yourself.
Yeah, wow. Yeah.
Be an inspiration, not an intrusion.
That's really helpful, Stefan.
It seems so simple when you're saying it, but it's something I've been mulling over for a long time and I don't know why That straightforwardness doesn't come so obviously, but... No, because we like to have control over things.
That's what civilization is.
Too cold? Hey, look, I've got a furnace built by men, maintained by men, designed by men.
I'm going to hit this button.
Boom! Up comes the furnace.
And... Oh, it's too hot?
Hey, I've got this really cool air conditioner.
Boom! Built by men, patented by men, installed by men, maintained by men.
I'm going to flick this button. Ah...
So nice. So cool.
We love to have control in the world.
Of course we do. And because we don't have tits, we have to do it through technology.
So we have to impose our will rather than attracting obsequiousness.
So you're used to imposing your will.
You've got a problem you want to fix.
And when it's really hot outside, we don't just sit there pretending to be cool, hoping it spreads.
We go out and fix things in the world, right?
So you want to go and fix things in your family like they're not people but things.
But there are people.
And you can't fix people the same way you fix things, right?
Right. I mean, if you could, you'd have fixed your aunt years ago.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
So when it comes to the world, the things in the world...
Mastery and willpower, nature bends to the will of man.
But human beings do not.
In fact, you generally just build up resistance.
And so I would say, make sure that you take your masculine desire for control over the world and pull it back so that it includes no people whatsoever.
Right?
Understood.
And then anybody who wants can follow in your path.
But trying to drag people, you're just going to end up with bite marks and scratch marks and no progress.
All right. Well, I hope that helps.
Thank you very much for that.
And oh, by the way, sorry, I just wanted to mention this to Connor's girlfriend.
Listen, man. Listen, my dear.
If you are listening to this, I don't want you to get confused.
When Connor was talking about his girlfriend that he wants to marry, he's talking about his other girlfriend, his side piece.
So just don't get confused.
I mean, this may give you a whole other topic of conversation, but don't get confused.
The ring is for his side piece, and just be aware of it.
So I hope that I've helped clear things up and made your life easier.
You have. Thank you very much, Stefan.
It's been a pleasure. Alright, up next we have Alejandro.
He wrote in and said, And reproductive evolution could eventually obtain a conscious awareness of itself and gain free will given enough time.
That's from Alejandro. Well, hey Alejandro, how are you doing?
Hey there, Stefan. I'm doing good and I'm really happy to be here.
Good, good. Let's hope we can keep it that way.
Really? Did I say that it would be impossible from now until the end of time for machines to do anything to do with human awareness and free will?
I haven't obviously got a list of everything I've ever said on the topic, but that sounds like a little bit more absolutist than I would generally go.
Well, no, no, no.
Because you said that free will has to be something that's not imitated by machines, that cannot be imitated by machines.
You've actually said that.
Well, sure, because if it's an imitation, then it's not the real thing.
Would you rather buy the Mona Lisa or an imitation of the Mona Lisa?
That's true. You could get computers to simulate free will, but that's not the same as having free will.
It would still be following a particular set of code.
I'm very careful, and it's not like I never slip up, but I'm very careful when I use the word impossible.
Impossible generally means to me like square circle.
Are there fire-breathing dragons somewhere in the universe?
Could be. Could be.
So the idea that it's impossible for machines to ever develop consciousness, that is a huge statement.
I would be very, very surprised if I'd ever said that.
And if I did, I would withdraw it as hyperbole because saying what is impossible in the future regarding technology is generally not productive.
Well... The thing is that I differentiate consciousness from free will.
Because I actually believe that you can be conscious, but at the same time not have free will.
Which is basically what...
Because I've been watching a lot of videos and reading up on determinism.
I actually didn't know much about determinism until probably a few months ago.
And I started researching it and diving deep.
And it's just like a rabbit hole of free will versus determinism and conscience as well.
Wait, conscience or consciousness?
Consciousness. Sorry. Consciousness.
I can't say that I understand it all because honestly we don't even understand consciousness so it's very complicated but the way I feel, the way I'm interpreting it is that you can be conscious but not have free will and we are because we can look into ourselves and I know I am me, I think therefore I am but I think therefore I act and I choose to act.
I don't think that's the same thing.
You know what I mean? Well, of course, yeah.
Of course you can be conscious without having free will.
That's the whole point of propaganda, right?
No, seriously. I'm not kidding.
That is the whole point of propaganda is to turn you into a machine.
Right? So you take someone on the internet, let's say there's a theoretical person on the internet, and you find their beliefs objectionable.
They make you emotionally troubled.
Now you can't actually rebut the reason and arguments behind them.
So what do you do? Well, what you want to do is you want to create a moat of negative adjectives around that person.
Here be dragons!
Do not enter! And so you'll call, say, this theoretical person, far right, an extremist, a hate monger, right?
Now, are these arguments?
Of course not. No.
Of course they're not arguments. But what they do is they scare people away.
You don't have a dog.
You have a recording of the dog that is activated when the doorbell rings, right?
And so what happens is people then either say, well, somebody who's that hated...
By people who aren't very honorable, right?
Well, maybe they have something important to say.
Or they say, well, that person sounds bad-think, must flee.
Okay, well, if that works, far right.
Well, of course, they're going to be Nazi, right?
So, if that works, then people never get a chance...
Well, sorry, never get... If that works, then people give up the chance to evaluate new information.
Yeah. And...
They then don't have all of the choices that exist when you evaluate new information, right?
If you understand the world as a sphere, hey, guess what?
You can navigate around it.
If you don't, you can't.
That's true. Right? So, hang on.
New information gives you new choices.
So, of course, you can be conscious.
And what people do is they set up these verbal landmines around particular sets of ideas so that you don't explore them.
Now, when you don't explore them, do you have any choice?
So when it comes to combating poverty, the left doesn't talk about the role the free market has played over the last four or five decades in reducing poverty around the world by staggering and absolutely unprecedented degrees.
They will not talk about it.
They won't talk about it at all.
When it comes to Why Germany and Japan did so well after the Second World War.
People won't talk about IQ. They won't talk about, in Japan, ethnic homogeneity as a possible reason for low crime combined, of course, with high IQ. They won't talk about it.
So, what do they do?
Well, where ignorance exists but an answer is needed, propaganda rushes in to fill the void, which is why propaganda wants to create that void.
These answers are unacceptable, false, true, untrue, bigoted, racist, sexist, whatever.
So then you create this burning question with no answer.
And then they give you an answer.
Oh! It was the Marshall Plan!
That's why those countries did so well, because the Allies transferred a lot of money to Germany and Japan.
To which the next logical question is, well, wait a minute.
Hasn't even more money been transferred to Africa?
Why isn't Africa wealthy then?
Well... Racist! Right?
So... So you...
Of course, this is the whole point.
Is that people on the left in particular...
See, people on the right are largely...
Or more religious than people on the left.
So they have...
Not a good answer, but at least an answer that maintains the value of free will called to soul.
But on the left...
They don't want facts.
They want conclusions.
They don't want questions.
They want propaganda as pseudo-answers.
And if people buy that propaganda, then what they say is, healthcare is so expensive, government has to subsidize it.
Now, if you say, no, no, no.
Healthcare is expensive because the government subsidizes it.
Well, they can't process that because they've never been exposed to that way of thinking.
They don't understand it. And what the leftists do is they say, anybody who wants to cut welfare hates the poor.
Anybody who wants to get rid of affirmative action hates blacks and Hispanics.
Anybody who wants to get rid of sex preferential legislation for women hates women.
Yeah. Now you don't want to be associated with somebody who hates so many people, do you?
Do you? Do you punk?
Go on, say privatization one more time.
And so they have no functional choice to support freedom, to support a reduction in the initiation of the use of force.
They have no choice.
So propaganda, of course, is designed to elbow a side.
It's designed to elbow aside our capacity to make choices by scare-quoting and firebombing verbally a whole bunch of ideas so that people think it's evil even to be exposed to them.
So yeah, I agree. You can totally be conscious without free will.
And most people are.
That's actually so interesting.
Because while I was thinking about that, I was like, okay, so you can be conscious and not have free will.
And then I got into the rabbit hole of childhood, and I was like, are we born with consciousness and free will?
Because a baby that comes to this world, I don't want to say it's a blank slate, but I mean...
It kind of is.
At least that's the way I think of it.
Right. What do you mean a blank slate? What does that mean?
Like, a baby that comes into this world is a blank slate.
It gets imprinted onto it what it takes from its environment, cues from its environment, irregularities in speech, and that's how it learns language.
Well, that's not true.
No? No.
Like, this is not even something I... Have to put many caveats in.
Now, of course, children are affected by their environment.
A baby growing up with Japanese parents in Japan will probably end up speaking Japanese, not Croatian.
So, of course, environment has an effect.
There's no question of that.
But genetics are significantly deterministic with regards to personality, with regards to intelligence, with regards to the big five personality traits.
And that's what I was wrestling with.
I was wrestling with...
If environment and genetics make up a large majority of who you are, like, so at that point, and that's the basis of determinism, that your environment, nature, and culture shape you.
And essentially, they shape the decisions that you will make, past actions and past...
Experiences that you've had make you who you are.
And I'm like, so at what point do...
Because obviously you're not born with consciousness and free will.
I mean, I don't know.
But at what point do you get...
Are you conscious of yourself and your actions?
I mean, it's like a whole child psychology type thing, you know?
Well, just because...
Okay, there's a couple of things in what you said.
It's all very, very interesting stuff, Alejandro.
And I really appreciate you bringing this up.
No problem. So, first of all, the fact that we're born without free will doesn't matter.
We're born less than six feet tall.
That doesn't mean nobody ends up growing to be six feet tall.
You know, little baby boys are born with undescended testicles.
That doesn't mean that they can't bang like rabbits in their 20s, right?
I mean, so the fact that we're not born with something doesn't mean that we can't achieve it.
Now, also the fact that we are shaped by culture and shaped by genetics does not deny free will.
It enhances free will.
So, for instance, If you know that your degree of conscientiousness is influenced by genetics, then that means a couple of things.
It opens up your choices.
So number one, you can say, well, I want to have a job that requires high conscientiousness.
And maybe you get tested and you find out your conscientiousness is low.
Okay, then you have something to be aware of when it comes to planning and executing a high conscientiousness career.
Right? Which is, okay, I have a challenge in this area, so I better double down on committing to it and I can learn how to enhance it.
These personality traits can be compensated for with self-knowledge.
Like if you remember Jordan Peterson's interview with leftist poison spike claw-armed sea anemone Kathy Newman, he said, listen, women tend to score higher on agreeableness, which makes it tougher for them to negotiate hard for pay.
And he said, and this is why I work with women.
I think he's closed down. He has closed down his private practice, but he worked with women to help them earn up to three times their salary within a couple of years just by being good negotiators, right?
So these women came and said, I'm not getting what I want at my job.
And he's like, well, women tend to score higher on agreeableness, so that may be what we want to focus on.
So he worked to have them compensate for some of the challenges they had from their personality.
So once they understand That as women, they may have to work harder to be, quote, disagreeable on average.
Well, that tells them what to focus on, right?
And this is what we do all the time.
If there's a basketball player who's a little shorter, he's going to have to work on a different kind of game.
Now, if he thinks he's just about to get taller when he's not, then he's going to plan for entirely the wrong kind of game, right?
Yeah. So, it is important...
Let me give you another silly example.
You got a beautiful head of hair and you're a hair model, right?
And then you get genetics that say you're going to start going bald in your late 20s.
That's going to have an influence on how hard you work as a hair model in your 20s.
Yep. Because it's going to be kind of tougher to do it later on, unless you want to be the before and after picture guy, right?
So if you don't know that you're going to go balding in your 20s, Then you might take it kind of easy as a hair model saying, ah, you know, I can be a hair model forever.
But if you know you're going to go bald in your 20s, well, I don't know, maybe you can take pills to prevent the hair loss or whatever, but you're going to then have a choice which otherwise you wouldn't have, which is to either make more money now or continue your career through some other method, right? Yeah.
So the fact that we have genetics involved...
It gives us significant choices, even with regards to IQ. Because when we choose to do things we just can't do, That's a bad exercise of free will, right?
If I chose to try and become a countertenor soprano in an opera, I don't have the voice for it.
Yeah, or jump off a building trying to fly.
So I would then end up expending a huge amount of resources trying to do something that I just can't do.
So that would be bad.
Now, if I recognize my limitations, I can apply myself to something which I can really do and do well.
And that gives me choices.
If I spend a whole bunch of money and time and effort trying to become a countertenor in an opera company, I'm going to fail.
And that means I end up broke, embittered, without other job skills, and with a whole bunch of things I've studied that I can't put to any practical use because I can't sing that I. So that's true.
Pursuing things you can't do strips away your free will.
Accepting your limitations, your strengths and weaknesses, and understanding their genetic influence liberates you.
It liberates you into actually having authority.
So the fact that, like, when I was younger, I was interested in acting.
I acted in Thornton Wilder's Art Town in high school.
I acted in Pinta plays.
I acted in Shakespeare.
I acted just a wide variety of different kinds of theater.
And I was interested in becoming an actor.
So I went to the National Theater School in Canada.
I did a year of acting. I did almost a year of playwriting.
And I didn't really like it.
I didn't really like it.
I didn't really like the environment.
Seemed kind of pretentious. I didn't really like the lefty monotro...
The metrodome that's just left, left, left, left, left.
This is left all the time. Yeah, it's pretty common nowadays.
Yeah, and I didn't...
I always felt that my own natural language fertility was always at odds with needing to empty myself out for other characters.
If you want to be a good actor, you have to be able to blank out yourself and substitute another character.
And I'm too vivid for myself to be able to blank it out.
I have too many of my own words to empty myself out and be filled with other people.
You're too good at being Stefan.
Yeah. I mean, for me, trying to get other characters into my personality was like those Japanese subways where they got those guys in uniforms trying to jam more people into the car.
Like, sorry. I'm sorry.
We're full. I can't fit anyone else in here.
It's already quite a party.
But if I had continued and wanted to do that, I would have wasted a lot of time, money, and energy.
Now that I'm doing something that I'm good at, Well, I have a lot more choices than otherwise.
So the idea that our genetics somehow destroy choice, well, genetics are, like, they have not found a single personality trait that's not influenced by genetics.
Not one. And there's an old saying which says, everybody with one child is an environmentalist, and everybody with two children is a geneticist, so to speak, right?
Everybody with one child believes in environment.
Everybody with two children believes in...
Genetics. And it is, of course, a sorrow that I will live with, of course, that I have only one child and can't see just what a difference it would be to have another child, particularly a child of a different gender.
But the fact that we're influenced by genetics, the fact that they are very strong influences in some ways, you know, by the time you're 18, more than 80% of your IQ is genetic.
Well, that's important to know.
So that we don't spin our wheels trying to do things we can't do and we actually gain traction, which gives us choice in life.
If you're not smart enough to become a doctor, then maybe you can become a nurse.
And if you're not smart enough to become a nurse, then maybe you can work as a waiter.
And if you're not smart enough to work as a waiter...
Maybe you can end up teaching feminism.
And if you're not smart enough even to teach feminism, maybe you can run for office as a leftist.
I mean, there's lots of things. I mean, I don't know how far down we want to go, but it's a long way down, that hole.
And if we accept and understand that, that gives us choices rather than denies us choices.
One other stupid example, and then we'll shut this part down.
If I went... If I was an actor and I kept auditioning for roles as a Hispanic woman, Well, I don't think I'd end up with a whole lot of choices in my career because I wouldn't be cast, right?
And so once I accept that my Caucasian-ness and my masculinity is, you know, kind of the way things are, then I can go for those roles and end up with some traction, some choices.
So if I deny the fact that there are genetics involved in who I am, I end up with very little, if any, power over my life.
If I accept these things, I get a lot of traction because I can focus on leveraging my strengths and compensating for my weaknesses.
So I don't think that it's an either-or.
If we're a blank slate, which we're not, I don't see how that would fuel free will.
And the fact that there's genetic influence on who we are does not deny free will.
It actually makes free will that much more valuable.
Because let's say that culture, right?
Culture has a big effect. Okay, but if I know that culture has a big effect, I gain a choice over it.
If I think culture is like physics, it's just reality, well, I don't sit there trying to will gravity to be different.
Yeah. And so if I think my culture is perfectly good and perfectly right and there's no problems with it whatsoever, then I'm not going to try and change it or evaluate its influence on me or add to it or anything like that.
It's already perfect. It'd be like having a suggestion box for God.
It's like, nope, omniscient and all-powerful, right?
Can't make mistakes. Yeah.
And so, but once I understand that culture has had an influence on me, then I can look at things philosophically.
And look at the good and bad in my culture, add to it, refine it, help improve it.
That gives me choices.
So, I can't think of a single scenario upon which having more knowledge results in less choice.
True. That's true.
Hmm... Well then, that's actually very true.
Then the other thing I would think of, because I find myself leaning towards determinism, but I don't like that idea.
And so I find myself pushing back against determinism, because society needs free will, because without free will you can't have ethics.
And without ethics, society falls apart.
So either you have an illusion of free will that is an instinct evolved from...
Either you have free will that came out of evolution.
Thus, with bigger brains, you need ethics because you can't have a society without ethics.
So as a means to survival, we evolved the illusion of free will.
And I say illusion because...
We need that sense of free will.
You need it. And I can't prove it exists.
Because if I can tell you what gives you free will, then I can kind of tell you...
It's artificial.
At the point that I tell you what is free will, I can tell you this, this, this, and this.
That makes free will.
I can reproduce free will.
Then it's not intrinsic to...
Yeah, but you don't have to prove that free will exists.
It's axiomatic in the very act of debating.
Do I need to prove to you, Alejandro, that language has some meaning?
No. No, because for us to even have this conversation, we have to both accept that language has some meaning.
Do I need to prove to you that I exist?
Or that you exist? Do I need to prove that to myself?
No, by the very act of having this conversation, we both accept that each other exists, independent of our own minds, right?
Yep. So you don't have to prove something that is implicit in the very request for proof.
So somebody says to me, Alejandro, you prove free will.
And then you say, okay, so if I prove free will, you'll change your mind.
I certainly will. Well, that's your free will.
Right there. Done.
Because what's nagging me is how do I prove that determinism is not...
Accurate. You don't have to.
It seems so accurate.
No, you don't have to. You let the determinist do that for you.
You do, because the determinist says, free will is false, you need to change your mind to accept determinism.
Well, you've just told me I can change my mind.
You've also said that there's such a thing as a preferred state, which is true beliefs versus false beliefs.
But in a deterministic universe, there is no such thing as a preferred state.
That's true. Impossible.
Because everything is just a continuum of what came before.
It's like saying, like, could we ever go to an astronomer and say, the orbit of Mercury is immoral.
No. The orbit of Mercury would be moral if it was one mile further out.
And it would be morally ambivalent if it was two miles further out.
But as it stands right now, the orbit of Mercury is evil!
What would the astronomers say?
That's ridiculous. I think he would nod and smile while pushing the button for security under his desk, right?
Yep. Because that's crazy.
The orbit of Mercury is determined by the laws of physics.
There is no preferred state for the orbit of Mercury.
It's just what it is.
Yeah. It's not better or worse or good or bad or right or wrong or true or false.
It just is.
Now, if everything is as determined in the universe as the orbit of Mercury, there is no such thing as a preferred state anywhere in the universe.
It's not better. It's not worse.
It's not right. It's not wrong. It's not good.
It's not bad. It's none of those things.
Those are all delusions. Now, if someone comes to you and says, your belief in free will is bad, believe in determinism because truth is preferable to error, and being correct is preferable to being wrong.
They've just said there's such a thing as a preferred state.
The moment they've said there's such a thing as a preferred state, determinism self detonates.
Yep. Now, what's funny is that in religion, it flips.
In religion, the universe is moral.
There is a preferred state.
No, it is. The universe is a preferred state because it's designed and created.
And therefore, Earth's orbit at 93 million miles from the sun...
Eight light minutes. Yeah, yeah.
I was a geek when I was younger.
I had a telescope. I tracked sunspots.
I did the whole thing. So the eight light minutes that sun is from the earth, that is good.
That is right because the earth was placed in the temperate zone, the Goldilocks zone, not too hot, not too cold, by God in order for life to flourish.
So it's good because it's designed.
So in religion...
The universe has preferred states in terms of physics.
God can create miracles.
God can intervene. God can turn empty bags into loaves and fishes.
God can set fire to bushes.
God, through Jesus, can drive demons into a herd of pigs where they run off a cliff.
What the pigs did, I don't know.
But anyway, so the universe has preferred states in religion.
But people are doomed to sin.
But in the secular view, the universe has no preferred states.
So you have consciousness without matter so that you can have free will, which is the soul.
And both human beings and the universe have preferred states.
Which is why when people get sick, they will sometimes say, if they're religious, this is a test from God.
Even my illness has a preferred state, which is God wants it so that I can be tested.
Or if something bad happens, it's a test of faith.
The universe is alive.
The universe itself, physics, has preferred and non-preferred states.
And you've got to find God's plan, and God works in mysterious ways, and so on.
Now, in the secular world, saying that human beings have preferred states or that human consciousness had preferred states is as ridiculous as saying that it's immoral for the sun to be its current temperature, but it would be more moral if it were five degrees warmer.
It makes no sense. It fundamentally makes no sense.
So the moment that a determinist says to you, Alejandro, that there's such a thing as a preferred state, determinism is out the window.
There's a higher value, there's a lower value, you should choose the higher value and reject the lower value.
Everything to do with free will is supported by the very act of correcting the person who believes in free will.
So what does that make of the scientific approach?
Where like, let's say I'm talking to a doctor, a surgeon, a neurosurgeon, and He states, well, you know, your actions are caused by mental states.
And, you know, your mental states are, at any given point, your mental state is a snapshot of your brain state.
And your brain state, if you go down a little bit deeper, is a snapshot of your biological state.
You know, your hormones, the synapses firing your brain at that given time.
And if you go down a little bit deeper, that is a physical state at that specific moment in time.
And physical states in the universe are deterministic.
So, not to go as deep as the example with the atoms.
No, no, no. No, come on.
There's no atom that can perform a surgery, but this guy can perform a surgery, right?
There's no atom that's alive, but life nonetheless exists.
I mean, there is such a thing as emergent properties.
Consciousness is one, life is another.
Yeah. Free will is another, conscience is another, right?
So there are emergent properties.
Anybody who argues against that is saying, I'm a pile of atoms.
It's like, well, I've never heard a pile of atoms speak before, so you've got to be something a little different from just a pile of atoms.
No, you understand, to say that there's no such thing as free will, not only is it logically self-contradictory, Alejandro, but it is fundamentally a statement of superstition.
Now, what is superstition?
Superstition It's claiming that you have an answer when you don't.
Why did the volcano erupt?
The volcano god was angry.
That's my answer. You don't have an answer.
Pretending you have an answer is superstition.
And how should society be organized?
The state! That's superstition.
Why did it rain yesterday?
Because God wanted to punish my wedding for having sex before marriage.
Well, that is not an answer.
The illusion of an answer when you don't have an answer is the foundation of superstition.
It's a thirst for the unearned, as all corruption is a thirst for the unearned.
So, you know, newsflash everyone, we don't know what's going on in the brain.
So shut up and keep an open mind.
You don't know. Well, it's just atoms.
It certainly is.
But we don't know what's going on in the brain, and we may not for a long, long time.
I know, and it's so weird because if...
If you were to tell your response right now to a scientist, they would be like, well, are you saying free will is outside the realm of science?
In that case, like...
No, of course it's not outside the realm of science, but science ain't done yet, douchebags!
You're not finished!
Newsflash! There's more to learn in the world!
This is this! Three pounds of grey matter, that's the most complex shit in all of existence!
Absolutely and totally the most complicated thing in all of existence.
So we don't know. And you know what you should do if you're an honest person with a halfway pixie shred of integrity?
When you don't know something, do you know what you do?
You know what you say? Repeat after me.
You don't know something, you say, I don't know.
I don't know.
Why did the volcano erupt?
I don't know. Why did it rain yesterday?
I don't know. I know it wasn't a volcano, God.
I know it wasn't because God wanted to punish my wedding for premarital sex.
I know that's not true. I know it wasn't a square circle curse.
I know it wasn't voodoo.
I don't know what it was, though.
Now, I know that there is such a thing as free will because it's required for anyone to argue against it.
That's philosophy, baby.
I also know, as I've talked about before, that we do treat the human brain as singular in the universe because we never debate with anything else.
So we can't say it's the same as everything else in the universe.
Because we only debate with the human brain.
So I know empirically everyone treats the human brain as different from everything else in the universe.
So you say, well, can you prove to me free will?
No. You just proved it by asking for proof.
You're saying proof is a preferred state.
Truth is a preferred state.
So you say there's a preferred state.
We should choose the preferred state and reject the non-preferred state.
That's free will, baby. That's why I made that definition 10 years ago.
It's not an accident. So when somebody says, well, we can't prove free will.
Therefore, determinism is like, well, so that's not an answer.
Determinism is not an answer.
And it flies in the face of correcting people and only debating with human brains.
And it's like saying, well, you can't prove to me exactly why that volcano erupted when it did.
Therefore, it's a volcano god.
That is not a logical statement.
It's not a logical statement.
We don't know. We don't know what is going on in the human brain.
There's some tantalizing research.
There's some indications that That they have found some roots for free will, but it's probably going to be a long time before it's understood.
And people who claim knowledge before they have knowledge are douchebags.
Superstitious, voodoo-based douchebags.
You don't know. I don't know.
Nobody knows. So the idea that we're going to rush to some kind of conclusion that we're all just robots and machines when we don't know?
That's anxiety management.
Let me ask you something, Alejandro.
Sure. Is there anyone around you who you think has a bad conscience?
Not really.
If you mean, like, regretting things done in the past, no.
What, nobody around you?
Come on, man. Nobody around you regrets something they've done in the past?
Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, everybody does.
Everybody does. But, I mean, as far as having a bad conscience, like, I did something and I'm not telling anybody.
I mean, I guess so. I guess so.
Everybody would forget something.
Well, you wouldn't know if they hadn't.
Yeah, exactly.
What is the worst thing that you know someone close to you has done?
Probably steal.
Steal.
Steal what? I think my father probably stole a car when he was younger.
Yeah. I don't have the answer to this and it's just a theory so don't take it obviously very seriously but I have a theory that we are drawn to determinism either because we ourselves or someone close to us has a bad conscience and the way that they deal with that bad conscience is to say well I didn't have a choice well I can actually talk to you about what steers me towards what steered me towards determinism and it's I like to approach things logically and That's,
determinism seems like the most logical answer when it came to, like, the face of free will.
Because you can't scientific method the free will, you know what I mean?
But you can't scientific method determinism either.
Because human beings are not planets.
Human beings are alive and therefore are not the same as inanimate objects.
So determinism would essentially be stripping the humanity out of humanity.
Well, it's pretending that human beings are not alive and human beings do not possess consciousness.
That is a complete rejection of basic biological reality.
So we don't say if a piece of, like, let's say you're walking under a building, it's cold, and an icicle falls on your head.
We don't say bad icicle and take it to court for assault, right?
Yeah. Because that's an inanimate object with no life and no free will.
So now I'm starting to see how dangerous determinism is because Like I said in the beginning, the reason why I don't like determinism is because you need free will to have a sense of responsibility.
If not, then nothing matters and everything is basically nihilistic.
Nothing matters, everything is pointless and there's no meaning to life.
And that's just horrible. It is a virus, honestly.
It is a brain-destroying, soul-destroying in the secular sense, identity-destroying, conscience and moral-destroying virus.
It springs from person to person by pretending that the person is nothing more than a meat machine.
That you are a robot with no choice.
Now, if that is a wrong perspective...
It is an incredibly destructive thing to do to people.
So the people who talk about determinism as if it's just true, they're very dangerous because if they're wrong, they have done a terrible thing to human beings, which is to take away that which makes them human.
Is to take away that which makes us moral.
Take away that which gives us pride.
That which allows us to have moral indignation.
That which allows us to strive to improve.
They turn human beings into zombies.
Zombies don't have a choice.
You can't reason with them.
And the growth of determinism And determinism takes many forms.
You understand it's not just the scientific determinism, it is also the determinism, which says that somehow your beliefs are determined by your gender or by your race, which is identity politics.
Also, it is the idea that your economics and your capacities to trade are determined by your class, which is traditional Marxism.
Shows up in a wide variety of places.
And to me, as determinism has grown, it's not an accident that zombie movies have also become more and more and more popular.
Because determinism is the pseudoscience of turning human beings into machines, of stripping them of what it is that makes them human.
Determinism is a devil that takes your soul in exchange for pretend knowledge.
Do you think it's a coincidence that this sudden rise in determinism correlates to the rise in leftist power during the last eight years before Trump?
Well, more than eight, but yes.
Since the 1960s, determinism has been on the rise, while leftism has been on the rise.
Because you see, statism as a whole means that you must view human beings.
As not sovereign. In order to control a human being through coercion, through force, through law, through the state, through power, or through debt, in order to control a human being, you must view them as less than yourself, of course.
The farmer ends up having a chicken coop because he views the chickens as less than himself.
Slaves are owned by people who think that the slave is less than themselves.
Now, what is it that makes a human being less than you?
They're a machine. They don't have a conscience.
They don't have a soul.
They don't have a moral identity.
They don't have any choice. Now, everybody excludes themselves, of course, right?
Yeah. Of course. Let's say you're a determinist and you write a book.
Why do you get to keep the profits?
That's not fair. Oh, but you see, there's no such thing as fair or unfair, right?
I mean, you understand. Why do you write a book to try and change people's minds about free will?
Because you can't help yourself.
You can't help yourself. Everybody says...
I want the law to exist for everyone except me.
I want everyone to obey property rights except me, because that makes me a very effective thief.
I want everyone to pay their taxes except me.
I want everyone to have free will.
Sorry, I want everyone to be deterministic except me.
Because that way you get to be in charge.
You are a farmer of the machines of mere mortality.
It's a dehumanizing perspective.
And it is fundamentally a drive for control, domination, and subjugation.
It is literally dehumanizing.
Because all of the people who claim to believe in determinists, with no exceptions, strive mightily to convince others of their perspective, which means that they view that there's a preferred state and that they're dehumanizing other people while exercising the greatest gift of humanity, which is choice and preferred states and morality and truth.
They are dehumanizing others while at the same time Using their uniquely human gifts to do so.
It is predatory.
It is incredibly destructive.
And it has led to enormous suffering and death in human society.
Because you can't ever choose wrong and therefore there's no reason to be right.
You can't ever make a mistake and therefore there's no reason to improve.
Everything you do is justified by the dominoes of what happened before.
You are a rock bouncing down a hill.
You are not a sovereign individual with a conscience, a mind and a thirst for justice.
You are a machine.
And like all machines, you will be owned and put to use.
That's horrible. The more we talk about it, the more horrible it gets.
That's the reason I took your call, man.
I pulled you back from the brink. Yeah, it's...
Talking about it, like, with myself.
I like to talk back and forth with myself.
It didn't seem as horrible.
That's why I wanted to call you.
Because you put it in a perspective that shows you how bad it really is.
Oh, it is terrible. It is terrible.
And then it gets me kind of scared.
Because I don't...
I was watching your videos about how we might be on the brink and you don't know if it's a sunrise or a sunset.
And that's kind of how I feel.
I don't know if...
I mean, things seem to be getting better.
But I don't know.
Not really. So I don't really know if...
At least with everybody that I've been talking to, determinism is pretty popular.
And I don't know if there will be enough effort put into curbing that because it seems so...
It's convenient to know that you're not responsible for your actions.
You know what I mean? So people take that as a placebo.
Well, to be fair to people, Alejandro, because we have such giant governments these days, how much control do people really have?
You know, everyone in Europe wants smaller or less to no immigration.
They're getting more. You know, in Ireland, the guy's talking about bringing a million immigrants from the Middle East.
And the government is actually paying journalists to pump this narrative.
To pump this as a great thing.
That's horrible. And what can people do to control what's going on in their own countries?
They don't want mass immigration.
Mass immigration. We're just finding out today.
I don't know what the answer is, but going to the polls in Italy.
One of the guys running for contention wants to deport half a million migrants.
Who aren't migrants, economic opportunists.
And people tried to exercise control in Brexit.
Said, we want the United Kingdom to be a sovereign country again.
It's not happening. People voted in Trump for control over their borders, reductions to immigration, and the self-deportation or deportation of illegal immigrants.
It's not happening. People supported Jeff Sessions because they thought Jeff Sessions would do something other than defer to other people, recuse himself, go after medical marijuana, and go after people and seize their property when they hadn't even been convicted of a crime yet!
So how much, you know, in a free society, you know, where was the heyday of free will was the 19th century?
Because people had a very small government and very large control over their lives.
But now that there's this big giant government that can do pretty much anything it wants, if it can't get, like, if you can't get what you want legally, you'll just do it through executive...
Orders. DACA. We'll just delay the deportation of people in the country illegally.
We'll just, you know, do whatever they want.
You can't fight with reason against free stuff.
This is one of the big problems.
You cannot fight with reason against free stuff.
Because human beings are hardwired to accept free stuff.
Free stuff is like the candy.
It's like the cocaine of the human system.
To gain resources without effort is, well, it's been the entire function of human evolution in many ways.
To reduce the effort it takes to get things to the point where it's like zero effort.
You used to have to get an orgasm by getting married.
Couldn't masturbate, couldn't have sex before marriage.
So you used to have to get an orgasm by getting married.
But it's the effort put into things that makes getting things worthwhile.
No, it's not. Come on.
When you're cold, do you go chop wood and start a fire or do you just touch a heater?
I guess. If it's too hot, do you go and get a whole bunch of ice and bring it down from the mountain?
No, you just put on an air conditioner.
I guess for necessities, yeah.
I guess it's just luxuries.
Do you grow your own food?
Drive through at McDonald's or wherever, right?
It's a pretty easy way to get some calories.
Every now and then, just look at a meal that you're eating and say, okay, I've had to produce all this myself.
Take a piece of bread. I don't know.
I mean, I know how to make bread if you get the bread maker, but, you know, grow the wheat and pound the flour and, oh my God, what a nightmare.
Plus, it isn't even that good for you.
So, no, you can't reason against free stuff.
Like, if somebody's just won a million dollars in the lottery, You can't go to that person and say, well, you shouldn't cash that in because the government doesn't really have any money and you're just increasing the general indebtedness of the nation as a whole.
What's he going to say? Out of my way!
I got free stuff!
Yeah. And so reason is what's needed to get things that aren't already there.
And if things are already there, if free stuff is as abundant as oxygen, well...
You can't really argue against it.
All you can do is say, it's going to cost you.
It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you.
It's going to cost you.
And then when it costs people, at least then you have the, hopefully you have the authority of having been right.
But you can't, this is why free will has become somewhat diminished of late, is that people are getting stuff just for sitting around.
People are getting free money from the government just for sitting around.
So the value of free will becomes blunted if you just get a whole bunch of free stuff.
So anyway, I hope that helps.
Thanks very much for your call. Thank you, everyone.
For calling in, please don't forget to help out the show.
