April 20, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:11:24
4063 Murdering Logic - Call In Show - April 18th, 2018
Question 1: [1:40] – “I work in a part of the tech industry that is infamous for its increasingly marxist world view. Ever since the 2016 presidential election I have seen sentiment towards conservatives change from a general distrust to an outright hostility among my co-workers and the industry at large. To avoid being ostracized and perhaps even losing my job I consistently lie to my co-workers about my own nationalist views, instead, affecting a facade of general socialist sentiments to mirror those around me. I liken my predicament to a royalist during the terror, unwillingly spouting jacobin talking points in hopes of avoiding the guillotine. Is it moral to obfuscate one's own political views in the goal of self-preservation?”Question 2: [42:55] – “Is the postmodern university beyond redemption? From a philosophical point of view this question is a cracker, because I (feel I) can argue both ‘yes’ and ’no’ compellingly, from an appraisal of the wider situation and my own experience. As mentioned in the question-cum-ramble of my first message, I’ve taken so much from the course—personally and career-wise—that I don’t want to dismiss the institution out of hand. That said, I look around the university at the more ‘SJW’ types, and across the pond at the more extreme American and Canadian situations, and wonder whether I’m an outlier whose subjective experience shouldn’t distort his objective appraisal of the situation.”Question 3: [1:08:57] – “I just watched your last video, on determinism and free will, and would like to debate this from a panpsychic perspective. I came up with a quite simple model, goes like this: 1. I think therefore I am. 2. We talk, therefore we are. 3. Language is refined through use.”“And then suspend disbelief, and imagine how the language of electrons evolves through the ages. What you end up with is a view, where the human experience is the result of a collective agreement. A hierarchy of conscious entities is formed for the purpose of increasing their communication potential. Is the metaphysics I describe feasible, and defensible with regard to current scientific knowledge?”Question 4: [1:45:22] – “I have two toddlers ages 4 and 2 and recently (7 months ago) split up with my sons mother who has helped me raise both children for almost 4 years. To say the least she was slightly unsatisfied in our relationship and the love died between us. I tried for months to make things work to no avail. A couple months ago I started dating a single mom and we’ve based our relationship on virtues and values so far. All of a sudden my ex wants me back and I’m wondering if I should go back for the sake of the children or stay on my path. I feel like she could arbitrarily break our family up at any minute and I really want to talk about this with you.”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hey, do you ever wonder when you pay your taxes just where they go?
Well, we kind of have a tragic comic answer for you with tonight's show.
Four callers who, I think it's fair to say, may have some share of your tax money in their life.
The first caller works at a high-tech California, well, Southern California And it's social justice warriors from here to eternity, and he is nervous.
Well, he's seen what happens to people who question the dominant leftist narrative, the paradigm, and wants to know if he's a sellout.
Interesting question. The second caller went to school to study philosophy and ended up studying...
Well, you know what? I'm just going to let that conversation speak to itself, although there's some really, really great stuff about Hegel in there.
So, good conversation, very interesting.
Might help you figure out whether you want to go there.
The third caller, well, he has a very simple theory that he wants to explain to me that solves the problem of free will.
If you understand this theory, you are far smarter than I am, or you're on his side of the wood salad fence.
I'll let you decide, but man, that was quite something.
And the fourth caller is a serial baby maker with unstable women and wants to know how he can fix things.
Well, of course, punch himself in the nads.
Secondly, well, you'll see the advice that I gave him, which I think was helpful and hopefully will help him not break another family in the future.
So thanks again so much for listening.
Please, please help out the show.
Alright, well first today we have Jack.
Jack wrote in and said, I work in a part of the tech industry that's infamous for its increasingly Marxist worldview.
Ever since the 2016 presidential election, I have seen sentiment towards conservatives change from a general distrust to outright hostility among my coworkers and the industry at large.
To avoid being ostracized and perhaps even losing my job, I consistently lie to my coworkers about my own nationalist views, instead affecting a facade of general socialist sediments to mirror those around me.
I liken my predicament to a royalist during the terror, unwillingly spouting Jacobian talking points in hopes of avoiding the guillotine.
Is it moral to obfuscate one's own political views in the goal of self-preservation?
That's from Jack. Is it really self-preservation, Jack, in the long run?
I believe so, generally.
So you want to keep working at this big tech company?
I do. Right.
Why is that? If it was just the position itself, then I would take a moral stance on how it went.
But two factors pretty much prevent that.
One, it's the industry at large.
There are literal blacklists, I've seen, of people who are outed conservatives.
And then also, I've seen what happens when people, not even show their conservative views, but aren't pro-socialist enough to a large degree, which is why I sort of made the French Revolution metaphor there.
And why do you want to keep working in the company?
It's it's a aside from the um, you know the socialist rhetoric and the oppressive environment I do love the job itself.
Like I love the work. I love the you know Just the interesting things that get to do with technology all day learning new stuff the benefits are nice, you know the climate is good But just the the nature of the ideology that gets shoved down our throats every day is just becoming too much And how is it shoved down your throats?
Well for instance, um Like I said a little bit earlier, like the conservative blacklists, where there's a list of people, and this is between some of the bigger companies in the area, of people who are supposed neo-Nazis or white supremacists, that all they did was agree with the president's tax plan.
Reducing government control over the economy makes you somebody who is in favor of socialism, but the national socialism variety, right?
Yeah, exactly. The three big mantras they sort of efface are, one, the equality of outcome over the equality of opportunity.
They completely reject human biodiversity, and they're in favor of redistribution of wealth, which I think is a bit funny because the CEOs are not in favor of redistribution of wealth.
The middle managers and the company line is, you know, we have to do so much in charity every year, and we have to give this much to the third world every year, and blah, blah, blah.
And, like, for the election, for instance, we got the entire morning off to go vote for Hillary.
Like, we went as a big group to go vote down to the polling booth.
And, you know, like, I just, I went down and obviously in the ballot, you know, I just voted for, you know, the president.
Because, like, that's the only place they can't get to you so much.
For now, anyway.
Right. But, like... If it was a thing where I said, we don't discuss politics at work on either side, I'd be fine with that.
But it's an extreme prejudice against right-wing viewpoints.
Like on the company-wide IMs, like instant messaging, they're always talking about politics and sharing BuzzFeed articles and Post articles.
And like the James Damore thing, when that happened, a copy of his manifesto, quote unquote, was circulating around the office.
And then I was interested about that.
So I went and looked at it, and I found that they had removed the sources for the original document and the one that we were seeing.
Just that kind of general atmosphere of leftism.
Wait, leftist rewriting history?
Never heard of such a thing.
Original, right? Oh, I never see it.
But those are basically the ways in which they permeate this environment.
Does it show up in training and HR and policies and so on?
Oh, yeah. I'm sure you're familiar with the H-1B visa program.
That is used to a very high degree in our company, whereas We had this really big programming team, which I used to be a part of, and I'm in a different part of the company.
They used to have two or three new hires every year.
These were people from the California state university program, people from the West Coast and stuff.
Now, it's just high school graduates from India.
They pay them a third of what the American workers would have.
And this has sort of been creeping, like creeping socialism slowly into different parts of the company, where it's just H-1B, H-1B, H-1B.
And there's almost not so much a union, but there's sort of a voting block of influence of H-1B workers within the community and within the company now.
And that just sort of affects, you know, promotions.
It affects the way we go with our different marketing programs.
It sort of affects everything.
Right.
The same way the demographics in the U.S. are changing slowly, you know, with the illegal vote power.
You know, the power of various minority blocks and not necessarily like pure voting influence, just a creeping social influence in a way of affecting things.
Is there no company that you know of that's not crazy lefty?
There are indie companies like startups, which I have thought about a lot.
But then again, in this environment, it's possible they would be leftists as well.
But in terms of big tech companies and middle ones, because the middle ones follow the big ones, it's this enforced diversity quota all the way through.
Well, it's funny because, of course, the whole goal originally was a race-blind and a gender-blind society.
And, of course, once you get forced hiring, you get quotas, then it becomes anything but blind because gender and race has now become so profitable and such a key part of your success as a worker, as an employee, that everyone is now obsessed with it.
It's like Starbucks.
Recently had an incident and now they're going to shut down all of their stores to conduct sensitivity, racial bias training and so on.
And of course, because it's politically correct and it's just something that they feel that they have to do for, I don't know, customer relations or public relations or whatever...
They haven't checked the data, and the data is that these supposedly multicultural diversity, racial awareness, racial sensitivity trainings increase racial prejudice within the company.
Of course, every time you stare at people and tell them to obsess about race over and over again, to think about race over and over again, It gets exhausting, and it eventually gets debilitating.
Was it a guy who just walked into Starbucks, called them racist, and got a free cup of coffee?
Now, if that ain't the left in a nutshell...
I don't know what is.
So now smaller startups though can't afford this stuff, right?
They operate very close to the bone, having been involved in a couple.
They operate very close to the bone.
They cannot afford political correctness.
They look for competence and excellence and commitment and dedication and they don't care about race and they don't care about gender if they're smart, if they have a chance at And then, of course, they grow to the point where they get enough profits, often either as a result of an explicit or implicit government monopoly.
And then they can afford all of this social experimentation.
So, if you want to be more free, not to express your political beliefs, but just not to have other people's political craziness rubbed in your face all day, well, it's not going to happen where you are.
Yes.
is hugely limited and are you thinking about next paycheck or are you thinking about your career as a whole your career as a whole is going to be significantly limited because the promotion spots are going to be reserved for blacks hispanics and women right indeed so what's your goal here are Is your goal to just keep your head down and get your paycheck?
Or do you actually want to rise and get better at what you do and get more experience and more authority?
The thing is, I'm not even a super activist or vocal about this.
I just want a fair playing field that used to be competence plus charisma plus whatever equals managerial equals upwards mobility like you're talking about.
It's like, what is it, O'Sullivan's first law where it's like any organization that inherently right-wing becomes left-wing every time due to a bunch of factors.
It's just the issue of risk versus reward where it's strange where it's like if your company is left-wing, that's almost a Almost an indicator of success because you can't afford to be left-wing at that point, where you're so successful that you can afford to do all these massively monetary-consuming policies, whereas if you're a smaller place and you're just trying to survive, you're just trying to be a bishop, like you said, a startup, you can't deal with all that nonsense.
It's a meritocracy.
No, HR departments are big companies.
They're kind of like Jay Leno's or Jerry Seinfeld's garage.
He doesn't need 70 exquisitely expensive cars.
But he kind of likes having them because it's kind of like a status symbol, right?
So conspicuous consumption.
Oh yeah, all of this leftist, multi-culti, diversity programming and so on, all it does is say, hey, I can afford it.
It's like women with their long nails, right?
Why do women have long nails?
Why do they wear white? Why do they wear heels?
Because it tells everyone that they don't have to work with their hands or with their feet, right?
So the more elegant and ridiculous and...
The more incompetent or impractical a woman's clothing and demeanor is, the more everybody knows she doesn't work with her hands.
And that's a status thing.
Or she doesn't work at all.
You know, if she has one of those ridiculous little dogs in a purse, she's not going to the customer service department to put in her eight hours now, is she?
So there's a lot of status signaling that goes on.
And virtue signaling is basically status signaling because people...
Who actually have to meet payroll, who have to satisfy customers, and who don't have money coming in either because of government soft or hard monopolies, well, they've got to be pretty efficient.
So, I would just say, if you want to get the paycheck and you don't care about your future career, then, you know, shut up and be well paid for being quiet, right?
I mean, that's the deal, right? If you speak up in the current environment, you're going to be toast, right?
Yeah, and it's a way that silence gives consent, which I'm just writhing about.
My big other concern is that I'm not necessarily sure if the leftist bias is an institutional practice, or if it's generated from the people involved in the industry.
It seems like most of the upper-level people that I meet and most of the people at my level are just such hypocrites, where they claim to be objectivists on facts and evidence, but they're ideologues fundamentally.
And you show them any snippet of evidence or truth that conflicts with their worldview, and then they just jump back to their ideology, and they spout the tenets of that fanatic thing that they're loyal to over the objective world.
And my fear is that if I jump ship to a smaller place or even start doing my own thing, then if it's not inherently left-wing institution, through the people that I attract to myself or people that I hire and come to, they are going to be the left-wing ones that have this sort of ideological view of the world.
Well, no, if you're in charge of the culture, if you're the founder, then you can set the culture, right?
Yeah, I suppose so.
What do you mean? I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's Southern California, and if the permeating leftism I'm scared of just infecting anything I go to, like the place I'm at right now is completely compromised in terms of socialist, redistributionist, Marxist, whatever.
But I'm conflicted about anything I go to would similarly be permeated and where the only solution- No, no, no.
Come on. You're saying that to justify taking a paycheck.
Everywhere is the same as a big tech company in Southern California.
Well, that's not true, right? Yeah, I guess so.
I guess it's just my own trying to validate it to myself about not doing anything, taking any risks.
You can do whatever you want.
I'm not here to sort of tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but the important thing is just to be honest with yourself, which is maybe you don't want the risk of entrepreneurship.
Maybe you like the status of working where you're working.
Maybe you like there's cool perks.
You know, they've got a lot of money. They're fire hosing it at the employees in various ways in terms of benefits and stuff.
That's fine. You know, just be honest with yourself and say, well, I'm going to take the money and I'm going to shut up.
But it's not impossible for you to get into a smaller, more entrepreneurial kind of situation, right?
And... Saying, well, I'm sure it'll be exactly the same as this is just not true.
I mean, so just don't say everything is like where you are, because it's not.
And certainly if you start your own company, I mean, smaller companies don't, you know, quote me on any of this law, but my understanding is that smaller companies are immune from diversity requirements, obviously.
And, you know, where it comes from, where it comes from is very simple.
Where it comes from is anti-science, right?
Because science, the IQ bell curve, the distribution of IQ across different races, perfectly explains what happens in companies.
It explains why Jews are at the top of the language arts and fields in many ways and in many cases.
It explains why East Asians are at the top of tech companies.
They're proportionate to their income.
It explains where whites land, where Hispanics land, where women land, where Black's Land.
I mean, it's just anti-science.
Everybody would love for this radical biologic egalitarianism to be real.
Perhaps none more than me, but we have to grit our teeth and recognize that we need to look at facts.
So when you have a tech company where the engineers are dealing with facts and reason and evidence and efficiency and binary, does it work, does it not work, and so on, and you have an HR department and a weird socialist culture that is actively rejecting facts, empirical evidence, reason, reality, and objectivity, well, the company is going to tear itself apart.
You understand? It's not going to last, guaranteed.
The only reason this stuff happens at all is because the government can fire a bunch of money and give a bunch of preferential loans to people who meet diversity quotas, and sometimes you have to meet diversity quotas, and so you're forcing people to hire people who are far likely to be less competent.
Now, the really tragic thing about that, I mean, there's so much that's tragic about it, the really tragic thing about that There are fantastic black engineers out there.
There are great Hispanic engineers.
There are great women engineers.
But if you force companies to hire people proportionate to the demographics, then what happens is the East Asians and the whites come in contact with less competent black engineers and Hispanic engineers and women engineers.
And then they're going to start to get a negative viewpoint of those races and those genders.
In other words, if they were around competent people, they wouldn't be becoming unconsciously or maybe even consciously, quote, racist, right?
But if they're around groups that are less competent because they're hired to fill quotas, then they're like, ah, well, I can't give it to that guy because he's not very good.
And, well, that woman, she gets kind of stressed and worried about stuff.
And, you know, this guy is kind of slow.
So I guess I'll just give it to the East Asian guy or the white guy or whatever, right?
And so it does end up with people ending up with more negative views of races than if there was no diversity quotas going on.
But of course, you know, what do people care?
I mean, what do people care?
I mean, if you have this radical egalitarian viewpoint...
And if you are a science rejecter and a fact rejecter, then you're just going to want to hit those numbers.
Because if you don't hit those numbers, you feel anxious and racist and bad.
And if you have an organization that's driven by facts, and you have an organization with a mandate for feelings, it's going to collide.
So, I mean, you can hang out there if you want, but when the ship of engineering hits the iceberg of...
Quotas and diversity quotas and so on.
You can stay if you want, but it's just a matter of time.
I guess my question next would be, if I went to a new company, a small company, what could I do to proactively stop the company from turning into the same sort of environment I just lived?
What proactive things could I do?
What do you mean? You start with a small company, as I said.
They can't afford this politically correct stuff.
So there is going to be a hiring based on competence.
So the way that you do it, if you're in a tech company, the way that you do it is you stay below the radar of diversity quotas, legally, obviously, and you simply resist hiring as much as humanly possible.
And when you do hire, you hire the very best people, regardless of race or gender or any ethnicity or anything like that.
You just continue to hire the very best people, the very best people, the very best people.
And you resist hiring as much as humanly possible.
And there's a lot you can do these days in Codeland without having, you know, 500 or 1,000 or 5,000 employees.
And you try to resist the portal to socialism that the HR department represents.
I worked in HR departments in my youth, and I went on conferences, and I saw how much work was being done, and I saw just what windbaggy nonsense was happening.
It was allowed to be spouted from various podiums and what feel-good, predatory nonsense was being put.
I'm not... I know what I'm talking about to some degree.
And so you just go for a small company, go for an efficient company, and then convince them to try and resist hiring as much as humanly possible.
It's dinosaurs versus mammals at the moment.
Where you want to be, in my humble opinion, where you want to be as a tech company is you want to be right below the threshold where forced hiring practices kick into your company.
And stay at that small threshold until the bigger companies crater because of political correctness, and then there's a huge market opportunity that opens up, and then I would lobby like crazy to get diversity laws repealed, because they're racist and they're sexist.
Equality before the law is the key.
That's a good point. It's a good point, Stefan.
And that makes perfect sense.
That's what I think as well.
One of the things that sort of confounds me, though, is that, like, this is an industry I work with a lot of very smart people, or people I do for me very smart, like programmers, designers, but They are objectively smart and greatly, you know, competent in their own purviews, you know, math and numbers and physical science, stuff like that.
But then, like in my place for some reason, they're all against the Second Amendment.
I don't know. The objective reality they are subscribed to as part of their job, as part of things they have to do, then this Marxist worldview that they have forced down on them through the company that they can't disassociate between.
But you have no idea what people's opinions are, fundamentally, these days.
Because political correctness is so savage and so brutal and can destroy someone's life.
Like, you know this. You know the sword that everyone's hanging under.
That you cannot just get fired.
But you can get fired, and you can get put on a blacklist, and you can be outed like James Damore was, and anyone who talks to him with some curiosity and sympathy becomes an instant stuck-on Nazi, in the view of the media.
So your life can kind of be destroyed by political correctness.
It is a new form of inquisition, you understand?
It's exactly the same Impulse that drove the purity tests, that drove the Spanish Inquisition, that drove the witch trials, the witch hunts, and show trials in various communist regimes.
It's this purity of thought. And no one fundamentally believes in any of this purity of thought stuff.
Because, you know, when you get someone, I think it was Christina Hoff Summers, when women were at one of her speeches, and they were complaining that there weren't enough men in engineering, and she asked the women, well, what are you taking?
And they said, well, women's studies.
She said, well, why did you take engineering?
They got really upset. I'm sure that's some sort of hate crime in people's minds.
So you have no idea what people believe.
If you're in 1950s Russia under Stalin, you have no idea what people believe.
You don't know whether they're communists or not.
When you have people being put to death for questioning particular kinds of religious doctrine, You don't know what their beliefs are.
We don't know what Socrates' beliefs were.
We don't know what Plato and Aristotle's beliefs were, fundamentally, because they had the example before them of their favorite mentor, Socrates, being put to death for disagreeing with people about the gods of the city and corrupting the young.
So, when you say, well, people believe this or people believe that, everyone is frightened.
You understand? Everyone...
It's threatened. There is a tyranny, a hysterical, violent, mob, life-destroying tyranny.
We live under a desperately dark shadow of rage, of sadism, of violence, of life-destroying self-righteousness.
We live in a kind of tyranny of thought that has not been seen outside of totalitarianism Since the height of religious fervors in the 16th and 17th century in Europe.
It's like human nature.
If you try to drive it out through force, it simply comes in through the back door.
And if you try to drive out religion Then the worst of the religious impulses come back in through the back door.
And now you have all of these purity tests, you have these self-righteous, ignorant people, anti-science people, anti-reality people, who got up every morning full of this sadistic impulse to destroy people who disagree with them.
And so what people believe is impossible to determine, unless...
You know someone really well.
You trust them. And even then, you know, you could be taking your career, your future, everything in your hands simply by confiding in this person a politically incorrect argument or data or viewpoint because you never know.
Maybe they'll be turned. Maybe they'll be cornered.
Maybe you'll gain prominence and they'll go and interview everyone you ever talked with.
Maybe they've got Maybe they were recording something earlier and they forgot to delete it and it's gonna end up somewhere public.
Or maybe they recorded you accidentally.
Or maybe Skype was left on.
Or maybe they've got auto-answer on Skype and someone calls and it auto-answers and this person hears you.
Like, who knows? We live in an ungodly tyranny.
We live in an intellectual tyranny surrounded by sadists who wish to disassemble other people's lives, careers, futures, opportunities, possibilities, love life, careers, income, you name it, for the crime of disagreeing with them.
We live surrounded by bestial, feral, narcissistic sadists who attack viciously.
I mean, For shites and giggles, you can just go to Trump's tweets or some prominent conservative's tweets, just scroll down and look at row after row after row of venomous, poisonous, hate-filled, sadistic, nasty, vicious, manipulative text.
We have opened the gateway to hell over the past 50-60 years and we have summoned unholy people to preside over us.
And It ain't going to end peacefully.
I hope it ends well, but it ain't going to end peacefully, because that level of hatred, you can't reason people out of that which they're not reasoned into.
And when they're simply programmed with that level of hatred, in the name of kindness and sympathy and egalitarianism and this and that and the other, well, when people are programmed with that level of hatred, you can't reason with them.
And we all know what the only alternative to reason is in human affairs, when significant differences of opinion manifest.
If you want to get paid to shut up, then you can get paid to shut up.
But it's not a winning strategy in the long run, because you're just appeasing.
And your future is, I mean, what future are you going to have there, right?
I mean, whereas if you're young and you, particularly before you get married and have kids, the opportunity to jump ship and to explore.
Look, you can go to someplace new and you don't have to come out as the uber libertarian or whatever you are.
You can just go to someplace where people aren't rubbing your face in the cheese grater of their irrational, stupid political bullshit day after day.
That's going to be a lot less stressful.
And, you know, you can always go back if you want.
And if there are any kind of decent larger companies, they'll be happy that you have some entrepreneurial experience.
So, but, you know, given your age, it's probably now or never, right?
And listen, if you take the money, I won't say the 30 pieces of silver, but if you take the money to shut up, then just accept that that's the deal.
You're being paid to shut up and type.
And if they make you attend these seminars, and these sensitivity trainings, and if they make you spout all this bullshit in order to, you know, just say, okay, well, I'm being paid To lie about my true self.
I'm being paid to lie about what I believe.
I'm being paid for my lack of integrity.
And this sounds like I'm condemning you, and I'm not.
Everything is permitted as long as we're honest.
I mean, it's not a violation of the non-aggression principle, of course.
As long as you're honest with yourself and say, well, I could have done this.
It could have been a lot better at a smaller company.
I could have started my own thing and lived with greater integrity.
But the money here is too good, so they're paying me.
To shut up and not, and I'm going to take the money, but don't make up this fantasy where all the companies are like that and there's no place to, like, don't do that, right?
I mean, just take the money and be quiet, or don't take the money and go speak your truth, but don't make up this world where you have no choice, right?
Because everything's still a choice. You're right.
It's hush money. Now that you really put it that way.
And I shouldn't, you know, stop kvetching about it.
And if I'm really serious, you know, do something entrepreneurial, do my own thing, and reform my own reality, so to speak.
Right. Right.
You may, because the problem is that the money comes and goes, but the question is your self-respect, your integrity, and so on.
What's that worth to you? And listen, don't get me wrong.
I mean, we all have to make compromises in the things that we'd like to talk about and the ways in which we would like to talk about them.
We all have to make compromises because we are surrounded by these volatile, dangerous lunatics, right?
I mean, I've mentioned this before, like I gave a speech, people showing up to beat people up.
I made a speech and a guy got clocked and ended up in the hospital.
I make a speech and I'm doing it under bomb threats.
And you make a speech and then, you know, people write all these terrible things about you and so on.
I mean, it is a difficult, dangerous, volatile environment.
And we all have to make compromises.
Don't get me wrong. So I'm not, you know, putting, ah, I live with perfect integrity.
We all have to make our compromises, but you just have to be really honest with yourself about what you're doing, what you're not doing, and why.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
It's just a matter of being more truthful with myself about what my situation is, what I'm doing.
You can't blame other people for your own problems.
That's sort of a mantra I try to live by.
And I think I need to remind myself of that.
And just do what makes me happy regardless of the pressures of any societal agents.
Wait, you can't blame people for your problems?
What do you mean? I mean, it's like, as a generality, you shouldn't try and blame other people for your own problems or problems caused by yourself, you know?
You can't live thinking that, like, the world is out to get you.
What are we talking about, problems caused by yourself?
I'm talking about being surrounded by volatile, dangerous, emotionally reactive lunatics.
I'm not sure what you're talking about now.
We were close to ending, and then we just went off into something here where I'm like...
Sorry, I just mean that I'm like...
As in, I can't go on working at this place voluntarily, taking the money, and then say, there's nothing I can do about this, is what I'm saying.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, but it is other people who are causing your problems.
Right. It's not like you want...
Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
But it's not like you want to stand up in the lunchroom, you know, smash a bottle and scream about the evils of the Federal Reserve to everyone.
I mean, you just want to be able to do your job without your face being pushed into the blender of other people's irrational opinions that are constantly being literally, almost literally shoved down your throat, right?
So, yeah, other people are the cause of your problems.
That's very helpful. Because if other people are the cause of your problems, you can go to where those people aren't, and you'll have fewer problems.
This is something... A guy I did business with years ago, he said to me, if difficult people are in your life, you'll have a difficult life.
Something that always stuck with me.
You know how you just like, you grab these little shreds, like stuff's going through you, like the matrix, just stuff trickling down through the screen, or you're going through hyperspace, all these ideas going past you.
I just remember that one. If you let difficult people in your life, you will have a difficult life.
And so it is their fault.
Because if it's not their fault at all, then you can't escape it, which is kind of your...
You don't want to over-own these problems.
Because there are times where it's like, you know what?
I had to stream the other day.
No, just last night.
No, no, two nights ago. It doesn't matter.
I had to stream two nights ago about an ex-girlfriend.
Have I had those dreams? And I have occasionally...
I have occasionally gotten quite sentimental about women I dated.
Like, before I got married, right?
I would get very sentimental at one time.
I actually got very sentimental about a girl that I dated.
An engineer, in fact. In school.
I got really, really sentimental to the point where, like, the people I was working with, this is when we were working in the bush up north, would play that old song, You're My Obsession.
And this is one girlfriend that I never got sentimental about breaking out with, and I dreamt about her last night, two nights ago.
And it was one of these, yeah, glad we never kept going, glad we never continued down that path.
Because sometimes, I mean, it's good to take self-ownership, but sometimes self-ownership, and I'm glad you brought this up, this is a complicated topic.
But sometimes the problem is other people.
And your ownership then is managing your proximity to other people.
So I couldn't have a good and peaceful and calm and satisfying and enjoyable relationship with this woman.
There were times when it was good, but, you know, such a...
People who...
Okay, maybe I'll do this.
Okay, so... People who are not very competent are initially quite fun to date when you're young, but it quickly becomes very exhausting.
It quickly becomes very exhausting.
I remember a friend of mine was dating this woman who was going to engineering school, and she just got so stressed about exams, and this would just be like, such a big deal, and she couldn't sleep for like a week before exams, and I was just like, it's so exhausting when people just fundamentally are doing the wrong things with their life.
I mean, this woman could have been great in some other field, maybe she should have been a mom, she should have been an artist, I don't know, but she went into this field, and it's like, this doesn't work for you.
And those people, you know, it's kind of easy to get into relationships with them because their standards usually aren't that high.
But what happens, of course, is that then because they're constantly falling, they're constantly pulling you over and pulling you over and pulling you over and pulling you down, like just grabbing onto you as they fall.
You need to keep propping them up.
Quickly becomes exhausting, debilitating, and annoying, and you lose respect, and things just kind of spiral down, but then they're desperate for you not to leave them, so then you feel bad, because they're just so needy, and it's like, oh man, it's a real quicksand.
And so with those kinds of people, you can't have a good relationship with them, because they're incompetent, or they're needy, or they're not that smart, or they're not mature, or they're impulsive, or they are selected, or whatever.
And so you say, well...
My problems aren't other people.
Now they'll constantly try to convince you that the problem is you.
Right? This is something that when you're surrounded by dysfunctional people, they will always try and say the problem is with you, and they'll always try to get you to take more ownership.
You know, like, well, I'm unstable, you're in a relationship with me, and the bad relationship is all your fault.
That's very common.
Now, of course... Self-knowledge is very, very important, but self-knowledge is fundamentally, to me, about learning the limitations of willpower.
What can you affect? What can you not affect?
You can't make crazy people sane.
Nobody knows how to do that, how to make crazy people sane, how to make anti-rational people, let alone irrational people, rational.
Nobody knows. Now, once you get that, nobody knows.
Then you can have humility about your magical power, usually douse or penis based, to change crazy people into sane people.
I can't do it. You can't do it.
No one can do it. Doesn't mean people can't get better.
You know, you can put reasons and arguments out there and evidence out there and sometimes it'll click with people or they'll get a yearning for it and they'll pursue it.
So it's not like you can't make a difference in the world as a whole.
But you can't pick any specific individual and make that person sane.
And crazy people will always say, they're not crazy, you're crazy.
And they will also try to convince you, like a cult, that no matter where you go, you'll end up with the same relationship, right?
So you have some crazy girlfriend.
She's exhausting, debilitating, up all night, crying, losing weight.
Do I look fat in these jeans? So-and-so is successful.
She's neurotic. You know all the stuff that happens when you don't fill the house with babies and love.
All this kind of stuff. And she'll spend a huge amount of time trying to convince you that it's your fault, that you're the issue, or maybe it's mutual, but no matter what, she puts this curse on you, and the curse is, you go to the next girl, it's going to be the same.
You go to the next girl, you're going to be the same.
Oh, the one common denominator in all your failed relationships is you!
Usually it's your parents, but anyway.
So, yeah, crazy people will always try and tell you that it's you, you, you.
And that's paralyzing.
And it traps you there.
Because you say, well, okay, so this is a leaky boat, but the only other boats around are leaky too, so why bother switching?
It's a fundamental way to keep you in a dysfunctional relationship.
And so that's why I want to sort of give this bit, just because you were talking about you don't blame other people for your problems.
Sure you do. Sure you do.
Now, you say, well, I chose this person.
Absolutely, you did. You chose that person.
But that self-knowledge is saying, I chose this person, you figure out why.
And when you're in a bad relationship, a bad romantic relationship, oh man, trust me, it's never just about the girl or the boy.
It's never just about them.
Because for you to end up in a bad relationship, whether it's at work or whether it's in your personal relationships, friendships or romance in particular...
The only way you can end up in a bad relationship is if people abandon and betray you.
Because there are lots of people in your life who say, I love you.
You're so special to me.
You're my brother. You're my sister.
You're my aunt, cousin, son, daughter, whatever, right?
We love you and so on.
Now, of course, if you love someone and they're walking into a...
The whirling blades of a vagina woodchipper, well, you kind of want to tackle them and move them to one side, right?
Or if some guy's coming in with some bludgeoning thundercock like some Scotsman tossing a caver, you want to get the woman out of the way so she doesn't end up hooking up or maybe getting pregnant by some lunatic guy.
You know, some guy who maybe looks like the picture Stormy Daniels drew of the guy who was supposedly threatening her.
So, yeah, there's a reference people will have to look up.
And so, if you're in a bad relationship, it's not the girl.
It's not the boy. It's the whole system.
The whole system around you is reinforcing that bad relationship.
Because there's a whole... Let's say you've got 10 people in your life who really say that they love you.
Your mom, your dad, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends.
Who knows? Maybe it's a dozen. Maybe it's 20.
So the question is, if they love you, why are you in a bad relationship?
Why have they not sat you down, stepped things through, woken you up now?
Maybe that won't be enough, but if enough people do it, that's the best chance you have.
So if you're in a bad relationship, the question is why?
And it's never just that other person, and it sure as hell isn't just you.
It's everyone around you who is participating and enabling in that bad relationship.
That's, you see, why it's so hard to get out of bad relationships for a lot of people, because it's like you pull that one thread and the entire universe around you unravels.
Your entire social sphere, your family sphere, everything around you is revealed to be enabling and colluding with the person Who is harming you or undermining you or being unfaithful to you or whatever?
And you have to face...
It's not a lack of love in the relationship that's the problem.
It's a lack of love in your entire environment where people aren't willing to step up and save you.
We all need that objectivity.
We all get excited. We all get sucked into the dopamine hormones of lust and love, the early romantic...
Six-month joy blizzard, which is nature's way of cult-bonding you so that you don't abandon your children.
And we all need people to watch out for us and to make sure we don't end up in one of these horrible situations that, you know, people have called in before.
And so the question is, I'm asking you rhetorically, but it's in general.
It's like, okay, who knows about your bad relationship?
Who's helping you with your bad relationship?
Who's said nothing for years over your bad relationship?
Probably it'll be most people around you, and the question is why?
Well, why? Because they're low-quality people.
They're in bad relationships, or they want to exploit you the way that your girlfriend or boyfriend is.
It's a whole system.
The problem is not the boyfriend or girlfriend.
They're just exploiting the problem.
The problem! It's your primary relationship.
So I just really wanted to differentiate that because my alarm bells go off when people take over responsibility.
You are responsible for what you are in life and where you are in life.
But if you take 100% responsibility, you lose the mobility that can actually set you free.
Well, thanks for the call. I appreciate it.
Do let us know how it goes.
But let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, up next we have Liam.
He wrote in and said,"...is the postmodern university beyond redemption?
From a philosophical point of view, this question is a cracker, because I, feel I, can argue both yes and no compellingly from an appraisal of the wider situation and my own experience." As mentioned in the question of my first message, I've taken so much from the course personally and career-wise that I don't want to dismiss the institution out of hand.
That said, I look around the university at the more SJW types and across the pond at the more extreme American and Canadian situations and wonder whether I'm an outlier whose subjective experience shouldn't distort his objective appraisal of the situation.
That's from Liam. Hey Liam, what are you studying?
Stefan the man. I'm studying philosophy, politics and ethics at the moment.
Ethics in university, and what are you learning?
Well, in first year I was learning historical inquiry, philosophy, and then in the second year it sort of took a more post-modern turn.
I enrolled on a course called critical theory, so I went by the Frankfurt School Lord of the Frenchies in the second half of the 20th century.
And I've got to the point now where I'm studying black critical theorists, which is just incomprehensible, irrational, bollocks, right?
So haven't you just answered your own question?
Well, that's one half of it.
And the first year I was Treated to a much more positive sense of what the West is about.
I read Kant and Hegel and I think that a lot of the students didn't read Kant or Hegel or Locke or the other Enlightenment thinkers and I think the atmosphere of the university was hostile to these thinkers in such a way that They're dismissed out of hand, so why bother giving yourself the headache of reading them?
What are you doing?
How long have you been there?
I'm just finishing up now.
I've just handed in my final project, 12,000 words.
Wait, you didn't answer my question.
Sorry, say again, brother?
How long have you been there? Three years.
Why? Why do you want to spend three years studying critical theory and postmodernism?
I mean, why? It's like going to wood class and saying, put your hand in the chipper.
Well, I wasn't really politically awakened in any sense.
In real sense, when I went in the first year, if anything, my sympathies would have been more towards the left.
But when I started reading Kant and Hegel especially, who I've just finished my project on, I was sort of estranged from the mainstream of the university.
And what positively I've taken from it is that I'm going to come out with probably a 2-1 or a first and I'm going to get a job as a teacher back in my home island, which is somewhat less pathological than the which is somewhat less pathological than the UK.
So this is like a hurdle that you pay for or you get through in order to go become a teacher, is that right?
Yeah, but I didn't see it as a hurdle at first.
It's become a hurdle because I've I've read deeply into the subject.
I've not just sort of gone with the flow.
There's one out-and-out conservative in our whole cadre, in our entire year group, and there's hundreds.
You mean among the students? Yeah.
Any among the professors? Oh, come on.
Step up. He's right.
Now, conservative and liberal have biological bases as well, so they are discriminating against an entire genetic group when they don't hire conservatives.
Well, this goes back to your last caller who said that people have to sort of hide their opinions.
You don't know anyone's opinions.
And I've come into this sort of situation in year three where I don't particularly care what these people think of me.
And so I'll argue my points and they're sort of shocked because they just assume a priori that I've got these same sort of leftist Marxist Go for the revolutions or sympathies, and it's almost like it doesn't compute that someone would have an opposing viewpoint.
So they're terrible at philosophy?
The students, overwhelmingly, I'd say yes, but there are some, like, for example, this is why I feel ambivalent about the whole situation.
There's a There's an unreformed Trotskyite who taught me, Immanuel Kant, who's telling me, what's it, sapere orde, dare to know, all of these grand sort of enlightenment themes.
And he's a fucking Trotskyite.
Like, at the same time, he's an unrepentant fucking, you know, he's trying to get people out on the streets to, students out onto the streets to protest, you know, Sort of non-issues about the university.
So, he's like a fucking Nazi.
Because Trotsky, you know, was very keen on slaughtering his political enemies, right?
Like Hitler was. So, he is a big fan of somebody who was into mass murder.
Well, this is the point.
He's given this sort of grand...
He's selling Trotskyism and he was selling Stalinism and saying how well they did economically.
But I've heard from a Russian economist who actually served in Russia before he defected to the US that the only reason that they had such an economic boom is because that was the point where they were killing the most people and it was fear and it eventually dropped off and just plummeted.
The idea that anyone would take Soviet economic statistics at all seriously is delusional beyond words.
I mean, the five-year plan has been enormously successful.
I mean, this stuff was all made up.
They made up whatever numbers they wanted.
The government controlled virtually all the economy except for a few personal items.
How on earth? And the idea too, well, okay, it's true that they did starve, you know, millions of people in Ukraine, and they did throw millions and millions and millions of people in gulags, which were even worse than slave farms.
See, this is the funny thing, the left gets so angry and so upset about slavery, and rightly so, but slaves were far better treated.
Than the people in the gulags, the people in the concentration camps.
Because at least if you bought a slave, which costs like, you know, 30,000 bucks in today's money, at least if you caught a slave, you didn't want to destroy his health.
Because he was your asset.
So you had to work to keep him alive and keep him relatively healthy and treat him reasonably well and give him enough rest so they didn't fall apart.
But the gulags, they just chewed through people because no economic incentive.
Gulags, worse than slavery when it comes to survivability, longevity, and so on.
And of course, it was easier to escape from slavery than it was to escape from a gulag.
The gulags, sometimes the concentration camps, as Hoshinisen writes about, were like in the middle of nowhere in Siberia.
There's no way you could go, and there was no underground railroad to get you out like there was in America along the East Coast up to Canada.
So, worse than slavery, you understand.
Far worse than slavery.
Slaves didn't get murdered indiscriminately, except by the most psycho and sadistic owners.
You know, some people buy a car and drive it into a wall repeatedly, but they're insane.
And some people would buy a slave and harm the slave directly, but they would generally be insane and very rare.
If you had the choice to be a slave or to go to a concentration camp under Stalin, my guess is You probably would want to go be a slave.
So, that's astonishing.
I mean, it's not astonishing to me because I know there are a lot of these guys out there.
And I had a guy who taught me a class on socialism.
He was, I think he was a Marxist.
And I remember, at the end of the class, I mean, I fought him the whole way, the whole way through.
I fought him, tooth and nail.
At the last day of class, I gave this big speech.
He said, anyone have any final thoughts?
Gave this big speech.
On the non-aggression principle, on the free market, on volunteerism, on virtue, sustainability, environmental protection, all the things the market provides.
And at the end of it, he just shrugged and said, well, you know, if that's your opinion, I guess you haven't gotten much from this course.
Not an argument! You big evil teddy bear.
So, yeah, it is...
It's horrendous stuff.
Like, why... Why would you do this?
I mean, I know you said you came in, you were kind of on the left, but did nothing kick in?
Like you said, this stuff was just garbage, right?
Did nothing kick in? Well, like I said, it's...
It's ambivalent. So the start of this critical theory course was Immanuel Kant, Georg Cagle, and then it sort of went downhill from Marx onwards.
No, Kant is pretty terrible as well.
Specifically anti-rational.
To specifically go against rationality was Kant's fundamental objective.
We'll get a whole thing about Kant.
Maybe I'll do a presentation on him.
And Hegel. God.
Hegel. The lovely thinker who gave the idea that God chose certain nations to express a dominant will to power.
Good job. Make sure you tell some Germans.
That's going to work out. Super great.
Well, I've just written 12,000 words to try and argue that that's an oversimplification, but that's probably not the time to be getting into it.
It may not be.
You could say, of course, it's an oversimplification to summarize a guy's entire political arguments, which go on for tendentious book after tendentious book.
But the point is, that's what a lot of people got from him.
And there's not a whole lot that contradicts it.
So you are kind of responsible for what you put out there in the world.
And there are people who will willfully misinterpret you.
But he was not an objective ethics.
He was not... Of course, again, it's hard to know.
People all operated with no free speech that we would understand it today.
And so who knows?
But... Hegel was not.
He was very much an authoritarian.
He had very little problem with dictatorships and subjugation of the individual to the collective.
He was a collectivist, as was Kant.
Kant said that it's never moral to disobey the prince, the king.
It is never moral to disobey the secular authority.
Fucking great. Yeah, be sure to pump all of that stuff into Middle and Eastern Europe.
Sorry, go ahead. I'd actually say that's a misrepresentation of Hegel's views.
That draws from Karl Popper, who wrote an extraordinary diatribe against Hegel, saying that he had this platonizing worship of the state, subjugating all individuals to the collective.
But he was actually more of an Aristotelian, and he didn't see an individual versus collective sort of dichotomy.
He saw it being more Wait, he did not see that there was an economy between individualism and collectivism?
No, no, he doesn't see them as one versus the other.
He sees, he's a Christian, so he sees each individual as divine, but he sees what they create together as something qualitatively different.
So the whole is nothing but its parts, but it is still greater than its parts.
So when it comes to whether the individual rights triumph the collective will, which did he say?
No, it kind of is.
It kind of is.
You've got a group that wants to dominate the individual, and you have the individual who has rights to liberty.
Now, in any rational philosophy, it is the individual that triumphs because the concept, the collective, the mob, gains no additional moral properties By being stacked up like cordwood in a democracy or in a republic or in a theocracy or anything like that.
If you have a bunch of toothpicks and you have one toothpick, let's say, and then you have a thousand toothpicks and you throw them all in a pile, they don't gain other properties.
They don't become anti-toothpicks.
They don't become toothpicks that can breathe.
They don't become jetpack toothpicks.
They're still just toothpicks. And so anyone who says, as Hegel does, that the aggregation of human beings gains some ascendancy over the rights of the individual is a collectivist.
And he can say, well, you know, I view this as a false dichotomy, and this is bullshit.
Do people gain rights over others by being aggregated into a group?
Not in terms of, like, might makes right and so on.
We all understand that, that you don't obey them because they're right.
You obey them because they're bigger and stronger and have clubs.
But that's my question.
Did he say the rights of the individual are paramount and the group merely as an aggregate of individuals gains no additional moral properties or authorities by gathering themselves together in a group?
That is collectivism.
Collectivism says that when you get a group big enough or strong enough or powerful enough or sanctified by God enough or by the will of the people or by voting the majority, whatever, then That group of people gains additional moral rights and powers and properties that allow them to override the rights of other individuals in their society.
Individualism versus collectivism.
It's really that simple. And you're saying to me, well, it's more complicated than that.
Well, it comes down to, does the individual have sovereignty?
Or must he bow towards the moral authority of the mob?
And saying both are valid is not an answer.
Well, then I'd say the individual is sovereign.
What Hegel had in his time in the early 1800s, so just the onset of industrialization, late coming, as you know, in Germany, and so it's got the creation of the proletariat, which he coined before Marx, and they were Asserting political rights in a way that he wasn't totally okay with.
It's one of the reasons why he's not particularly liked on the left.
And on the other side, you've got the burghers, the bourgeois, and he wants to temper both of their excesses in a way that doesn't at the same time compromise individual rights.
I'm not sure if I've explained myself too well there.
No, I'm not interested in what you think of what Hegel think.
I guess let's just ask you, now that you've been training in this for a couple of years, do you believe that the collective has the right to impose its will on the individual, morally?
No, the thought sickens me.
Oh, good. Okay, so you're an individualist, and you recognize that human beings have moral properties that don't alter or reverse if they get a big enough gang behind them.
Agreed, hardly. Good, okay, good, good.
So then you would be critical of any theory which placed the collective over the individual in terms of rights and authority.
Indeed. And Hegel certainly did some of that, right?
Mm-hmm. All right.
How much did all of this cost you, man?
Well, I'm from an island that actually...
Oh, so the taxpayers have paid for you to be indoctrinated or at least be influenced by this stuff, right?
Well, influenced indeed, yes.
How do you think it's going to be any different?
Do you want to go back and what? Teach junior high school, high school, primary school, college?
Where do you want to teach? The equivalent of high school.
I'll be teaching back in my home islands because I believe that schooling has gone much the way of public schooling in the US at the moment.
Is it late where you are?
Yeah, it's very late, mate.
Because you sound down.
You sound not energetic, not enthusiastic, not happy.
I'm sorry, that's my constant monotone.
You don't have to apologize.
It's fine to be sad or to lack energy or whatever, but isn't that going to be a tough thing if you are a monotone but you want to be a teacher?
Don't you want to engage kids in an enthusiastic way?
My ill partner is also asleep in the room next to me, so you'll understand if I'm not too animated at the moment.
But you said it's a constant monotone.
Hmm? You said you had a constant monotone.
I don't know that blaming your sick partner is the way to go.
I wouldn't blame anything on her.
I'd get a smack for it. But I've done placements.
I've done well. I got offered a place on the spot at a university.
So happy days.
Yeah, so, I guess that's good.
So, with regards to, is the university dead?
No, no, no, that's an insult to the dead, because the dead aren't currently strangling the minds of the living.
The university has gone, it's far beyond dead.
Dead is something you can dig a hole and bury it and put it out of your sight.
This is, the universities are like...
Radioactive volcanoes constantly releasing brain-destroying isotopes into the atmosphere.
They are active predators.
They would be, I guess, close to what in Dungeons& Dragons would be called the undead, which is people who have died but who instead have come back to life and are preying upon the living.
So, no, I don't think ill of the dead to the point where I would compare their innocent decomposition with the degrading, mind-destroying virus known as the modern Leftist university.
And now, by that I'm particularly talking about, although it's spreading to other faculties as well, but I'm particularly talking about what are called the arts, right?
The softer sciences, the English, the women's studies, the black studies, the philosophy and other of these sort of social sciences, education and so on.
No, they are actively destroying minds.
They are actively taking minds weakened by constant exposure to the brain-battering sophistry and hypergamy of primary and junior high schools, of which the coup de grace is often placed.
Upon these budding minds by the toxic environment of high schools, whoever is left, whoever managed to stagger through the gates of universities with any possibility of integrity or honor or decency or clear thinking or independent thought, they are quickly dispatched in universities and they're taught that you bow down and you parrot evil phrases invented by and propagated by evil people Or you fail.
And so it is not just the content, the brain-destroying content, the anti-rational, anti-life, anti-white, anti-male content of these universities that is so unbelievably and unrelievably toxic.
It is also the entire environment where you're not allowed to question these things, otherwise you get failed.
In other words, if you think for yourself...
You will bomb out of these universities and therefore subjugation to irrational authority is far worse than in universities than at almost any time Over the last couple of years, a couple of hundred years of Christianity.
In Christianity, I mean, I was raised a Christian.
I had debates with priests.
We had Bible study.
We talked about various things to do with religion.
And you were allowed to disagree, and you were allowed to ask questions.
And nobody tried to destroy your life if you had differing or opposing opinions.
They let us reason together, saith the Lord.
And that was taken quite seriously by the denominations that I grew up in.
And so... They have become collectivist.
They have become communist.
They have become, I mean, you could say fascist, but that's more of an insult to fascism, which at least had some remnants of the free market left operating.
And at least you were allowed to have pride.
Not that I like fascism, don't get me wrong.
Still collectivist. But no, they are wretched hives of scum and villainy where sadists disassemble young brains unable to defend themselves and where people are bribed into compliance with irrationality, which leaves them with a shameful sense of low self-regard probably for the rest of their lives until at least they wake up.
And why on earth would you want to go to a university to learn how to think?
Of all places. Of all places.
To go to a university to learn how to think?
Come on, you know.
How often were you encouraged to think, to challenge, to oppose, to really dig deep into problems, to work through them, to start with, you know, syllogistical logic and follow it no matter what?
I mean, come on, how often did that happen in your three years?
Not very often. How often?
In our first year, a bit, but it was more of a...
A comprehensive exercise, like sample this before we quickly rush by it.
Three years to learn how to think.
About the basics of reason and ethics and society.
Come on. Non-aggression principle, property rights, free market, independence, rationality, and scientific empiricism.
Boom! That was that.
Eight seconds. You can get the basis of this kind of stuff very, very quickly.
And there are so many excellent writers and commentators now releasing their work on the internet for people to consume.
FreeDomainRadio.com. Please don't forget.
But... So many great people out there.
Why on earth you would want to say, oh, well, you know, but if you study it yourself, who knows if you've passed the test?
Okay, well, that's an interesting question.
I think there should be independent tests.
I think that the way it should work is there should be tests in university.
And you should never have to go to a single class to write those tests.
In fact, I mean, if you want to, sure.
But... If you want to go be a lawyer, just go write the law test.
If you want to go be an engineer, just go write the engineering test.
If you want to go say that you've learned philosophy, go write the philosophy test, and then the people who mark them have no idea whether you've gone to the college or not, whether you're like, they're just, you know...
It's the way it should work. Or fundamentally, all of this stuff should be completely tossed by the wayside.
Because the only thing that should happen now is you should spit in a goddamn cup and have people test your DNA for your IQ and then just go from there.
The idea that we have all of these ridiculous tests to go through, like the universities were invented hundreds or sometimes thousands of years ago, the idea that we would continue to use the same technology that they used 2,000 years ago, Or 2,500 years ago under the Lyceum, the idea that we use the same technology to figure out who the smart people are is ridiculous.
Spit in a cup, check the DNA, or just take an IQ test.
It takes a lot less time and a lot less money to take an IQ test than it does to go through four years of college.
So yeah, IQ test, that's all you need to know.
And that would replace everything, and we could get rid of this toxic mess, this toxic waste dump of brain-eating sky viruses known as the modern university.
It is a vile, vile pit.
And den of iniquity and horror and destruction and bullying and pettiness and viciousness and humiliation of anybody who comes in with even a shred of self-esteem left in their heart.
Well said. All right.
Well, thanks very much. I appreciate the call.
Let's move on to the next caller. Thank you, Mr.
Monterey. Right up next we have Martin.
Martin wrote in and said, I just watched your last video on determinism and free will and would like to debate this from a pan-psychic perspective.
I came up with quite a simple model.
It goes like this.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. We talk, therefore we are.
Three, language is refined through use.
And then suspend disbelief and imagine how the language of electrons evolves through the ages.
What you end up with is a view where the human experience is a result of a collective agreement.
A hierarchy of conscious entities is formed for the purpose of increasing their communication potential.
Is the metaphysics I describe feasible and defensible with regards to current scientific knowledge?
That's our Martin.
Martin, how you doing?
Coordinating. Yeah, I'm fine.
I'm just a bit tired because it's kind of late here, but it's okay.
So this was your simple?
Yeah, I find it very simple.
Like the three steps and then just imagine how it could happen.
Just out of curiosity, have you run this past other people that you know?
And do they also think that it is simple or is that your opinion that it is simple?
I've tried. It's simple, it's not easy.
No, I just asked about simple.
No, I tried it, and people are stuck on the idea that I ascribe conscious properties to inanimate objects.
When you say they're stuck on that, what does that mean?
Because it sounds like you think they should just believe it, and if they don't, they're somehow stuck.
No. Very few people are even willing to discuss the idea.
It just gets dismissed out of hand and that's it.
I'm sorry, why would anyone want to discuss ideas?
If you're saying that...
Let me just make sure I've got the language here.
Correct. When you say...
The electrons, where are they here?
Sorry, I'm just trying to look here.
Okay, quite a simple model.
It goes like this, I think, therefore, and we talk, therefore, we are a language that is refined through use.
Oh, yes. Imagine how the language of electrons evolves through the ages.
So, tell me what you mean by the language of electrons.
I don't know how familiar you are with the panpsychic perspective or how they try to describe the world.
Just tell me how you describe what it is that you're talking about.
What is the language of electrons?
Sorry, do you mean this poetically, like the song of space or something like that?
Or you don't actually mean that electrons have language?
I do mean that the electrons are capable of developing a language.
Electrons are capable of developing a language, okay.
It's not really the electrons.
If you look at what an electron is, basically it's just a standing wave in something.
And a standing wave happens when there is an outgoing wave and an ingoing wave.
So, basically you could say that if You say something to the universe, and the universe answers, then that is an electron.
So each particle is the universe acknowledging itself.
Okay, okay, sorry.
Like, I mean, you say this stuff like I'm just supposed to...
Sure. But I don't really, really follow it.
Are you saying that everything that has a wave is involved with language?
I'm saying that if you imagine, this is metaphysics, this is very abstract.
I don't think it is, but go on.
The idea is to imagine how the universe looks like before there are laws of physics, like what is there.
What? No, no, no, I just, you said that, no, don't take me on another fortune cookie journey, brother.
I mean, let's just do one thing at a time here.
So you said that electrons have a wave and therefore they have language.
Did I get that correct?
No, like the electron is a manifestation of something.
Like the existence of the electron is an act of speech.
Okay, so hang on. You did mention waves, right?
Do you remember mentioning waves at all, or is that...?
Yes. Okay.
Yes. So you said that the existence of the electron is a manifestation of language?
Yes. Now, you do understand that it's a little confusing when you use the same word for an electron that we would use for human cognition and speech, say.
Because you don't want to use the same word for both, right?
Basically, that's why I said it's a very simple model.
You go through the three steps that I... No, no, no.
Don't take me off on another journey.
I need some answers to the question if we're going to progress.
Because you just keep jumping out like I'm trying to grab you like soap in a shower.
Off you go, right? So when you use the word language, like we're conversing, we're two human beings conversing in language, right?
But you don't mean the electron is language in the same way that you and I are conversing, right?
Or do you? I do.
You do, okay. And so our language requires untold hundreds of billions of neurons and brain cells and a larynx and a body and, you know, untold, I don't know, trillions of atoms or whatever it is, right?
So if you're going to use the same word for the aggregation of human consciousness and the manipulation of breath and sound and timber through the voice box and all of that as an electron, it's confusing, you understand?
Because it seems like you're using the same word to describe two very different things.
One is an electron and the other is not an electron, which is the human mind and voice box and all of that.
And does it help if I use communication instead of language?
No. Synonyms do not clarify.
When you go to the bottom of it, there is a special relativity, not that I haven't looked into the physics that much lately, but the idea is that because the speed of life is limited, you can't have instantaneous communications.
It's physically impossible according to or Or to the relativistic worldview.
But then you have quantum physics.
The fastest that light can travel is like 186,000 miles a second.
And therefore, that is the fastest communication.
What is it? 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, eight minutes to the Sun, two and a half seconds to the Moon, or something like that.
And so that's the fastest that you can do.
Exactly. But you see that there is an intersection between physics and communication.
So it's not just a...
No, but you just say things.
It's like, hang on, hang on, hang on.
There is an intersection between physics and communication.
I mean, you assemble these words, but they don't convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you, and that's the big challenge, right?
So if you want to convince me or someone else of your idea, just assembling words together in vaguely coherent but fundamentally empty sentences doesn't do the job.
So let me ask you this.
You decided that you wanted to talk with me, and I appreciate that.
I'm enjoying the conversation. So you decided, Martin, that you wanted to talk with me, and we were going to use language to do that.
Have you ever had conversations in the way that you have with me with, say, an electron?
No. Oh, see, this is why I think we should use different words.
Because if you say, well, electrons are capable of language, human beings are capable of language, but it would be crazy to talk to an electron, then you can't use the same word for both things, right?
Yes. Like, what I would say to clarify that, like, I've studied computer science, and you, like, if you...
Look at it at a very fundamental level.
Every bit that is communicated is basically an electron at some point.
But the language is formed through an ever-expanding range of protocols.
So you have these seven layers of the Internet.
And if you are used to talking on a seventh layer, you don't understand the first layer.
And so if you imagine, like what I'm trying to say, The language of the electrons is the very first layer and human language is like the billionth layer.
Oh, okay, I think I understand.
So because the way that you and I communicate, Requires electricity and TCPIP and Ethernet cables and Wi-Fi and it all has to do with electrons?
Is that what you're saying?
That the way that we communicate, over the internet at least, would require electrons and therefore electrons are communicating?
No. I thought I had it, but I guess I didn't.
Sorry, go ahead. No, you have to understand what panpsychism means.
You have to understand with what?
Panpsychism, psychism, or how do you pronounce it?
So this is like the fourth major concept that I need to understand, and this is the one that you say is quite a simple model?
Is that the theory?
This is a simple model? I got relativity, I need to understand the seven layers of internet communications, I need to understand atomic theory, and now there was something else, and this is your simple model?
No, the simple model is like you can disregard all of that and like these are just examples and try to show you what I mean.
Like you still haven't quite, like the idea is that you go from like the three steps, I think therefore I am, means that consciousness is the primary, the One point then you can start your intellectual journey from.
This is from Descartes, right?
Yes. Yeah, okay.
So where Modern Financial Office practically started.
So you...
This is the first step.
You acknowledge that consciousness is primary.
So it's not a deterministic side effect of brain evolution.
And let me just put that in context for people who don't know Descartes.
So Descartes did a mental exercise where he said, okay, what if everything I believe is completely false?
What if every sense impression, like the matrix, right?
Like what if every sense impression, what if I'm living in a simulation?
What if I'm a brain in the tank being manipulated by some evil demon or for its own purposes or whatever?
Then I can't trust anything about my senses, I can't trust anything about my memories, I can't trust anything about my thoughts, but I can trust, even if I'm being completely fooled, I can trust that I exist at least to the point of being fooled.
And that is the basis of, I think, therefore, I am, that even if reality is some elaborate simulation, if it's some Truman Show, Matrix-style simulation, then I can't trust anything outside of my own consciousness, but I can at least trust that my consciousness itself is being fooled, or being manipulated, and therefore, at least I exist, and that's where he found his only first point of certainty.
Yes, exactly. Okay, I think, therefore, I am, and then the next one?
The next one is that you acknowledge that because you can recognize that other people are showing the same capabilities that you have, then you accept that other entities are also conscious.
So you can be sure or almost sure.
You have to go one step further.
You're going further than Descartes would in his initial formulation.
Because if I'm being fooled by some demon pretending that Martin is talking in my ear, then I can't be certain that you exist.
I can be certain that I'm being fooled and therefore I exist, but I can't be certain that you exist.
Yes. You can also be certain that the demon exists if he's talking to you.
Well, yeah, but I mean, he lived in a pre-computer age, right?
He came up, I think, with one of the first calculators, but it could be a computer now rather than a demon.
Oh, yeah, it's like this all happens at a very, very express level.
Like, it doesn't have to do anything with technology.
So you do go beyond Cartesian certainty when you go to We Talk, Therefore We Are.
Exactly. So you suspend the certainty.
So it could be like that.
It's a popular New Age theory, or how to say it, that we are all one consciousness interconnected and experiencing itself.
I don't want to go there.
So I say that there are distinct Distinct consciousness entities in the world.
And it's human consciousness, right?
No, it's a proto-consciousness.
It's like...
It's what consciousness? A basic consciousness, because...
What was that word? Amazing?
Basic. Oh, basic consciousness.
Okay, what does that mean? Yes.
Yeah, that's one of the weakest points of the theory.
It's almost like the homunculi fallacy that you describe the experience by there is a little guy sitting in your head who is experiencing it.
It's just like this Russian doll situation.
But I take this as not a flaw, but you have to draw the line somewhere and I draw the line here.
So the alternatives are that the universe is pre-constructed by entity or the universe is just created and all the laws of physics just are.
And we are just finding how they work.
And this is An alternative to these kind of theories.
What's wrong with the one you just said where the laws of physics are there and we're just trying to find out how they work?
No, I don't find it intellectually satisfying.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what that has to do with philosophy.
I mean philosophy isn't a hand job through a hole, right?
I mean it's not supposed to be satisfying, it's just supposed to be true, right?
Yes, but I don't find it true.
I don't think that...
What do you mean find it true?
Again, I don't know. Philosophy is not something that you find true or feel is true.
I get these comments and people say, well, it seems to me, Steph, like you're doing...
I feel like you're...
It's like, that's nothing to do with philosophy.
You're explicating your feelings.
So the fact that you don't find something satisfying, or the fact that it doesn't feel true or seem true, I don't know what that has anything to do with philosophy.
It has to do with Martin, and your feelings are important, but I don't know what that has to do with philosophy.
Okay. I'm not sure I can explain it.
Like, panpsychism is a relatively small but steady topic in philosophy studies.
And it's being, like there are a couple of people who are actively working in this field and it's taught at universities.
There are lots of people who work in lots of fields I disagree with.
I mean, there are people who work in particular esoteric disciplines, there are people who work in particular theological disciplines, there are people who Believe that a comet is coming, so you've got to cut your balls off so you can join them in the afterlife.
I mean, the fact that there are people working in the field is not an argument.
It has nothing to do with true or falsehood.
Okay, but there is nothing that says that what I'm saying is false.
No, but you have to make a case, right?
I mean, I hate to hit you with philosophy 101, but if you're going to make an assumption...
Hang on, hang on, still talking.
See, we can't both talk at the same time, even though we both contain electrons.
But if you wish to make an argument, then you have to build the case up.
It's not up to other people to find the flaws.
I mean, that can be helpful if you want to polish your arguments and make sure that they're...
A positive addition to global consciousness, but when you say there's nothing that disproves what it is that I'm saying, well, first of all, you don't know that.
Because I don't know that you've ever run these ideas past somebody who's competent in philosophy.
And secondly, that's not an argument.
It's up to you to make the case.
And if you make a case according to common sense, you have some grounding.
But if you make a case against common sense, right, the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence required.
Like, so when I propose a stateless society, that's an extraordinary claim to many people, which is why I build it from the ground up.
From UPB, through everyday anarchy, through practical anarchy, through my introduction to philosophy.
I've got, like, 50, 60, 100 hours, who knows, right, of various podcasts explaining these sorts of things, because I know that when we talk about a society without a government, that's considered to be an extraordinary thing for a lot of people, so I have to make the case very carefully and very patiently and making sure that people follow what I'm doing.
When you say that electrons have language and the universe listens to you, that is even more of an extraordinary case.
Than a stateless society.
A stateless society is just the interpersonal ethics writ large.
Right? I mean, in a stateless society, it's simply what we say to kids, right?
Don't use force to get your way.
Don't hit, don't push, don't steal.
If we take those ethics and universalize them...
Then we get a system.
So I'm actually not telling people something they don't already know.
I'm just putting it in a context that they find unusual, which is the state rather than one's personal life, one's professional life, one's family life, and so on.
So if you're going to make a case that electrons have language, then you need to make that case.
And if you don't, If you have intellectual responsibility, you need to withdraw that case, go back to the drawing board, and start again.
The issue I'm having here is just to get the basic idea across to you.
I don't think you quite understand what I'm trying to say.
Well, that's because you're not making any sense.
And I got to tell you, it's a little annoying when you use random word salads to just make bold assertions with no intellectual content, no empirical proof, no syllogisms, no rationality.
And then you say that I'm somehow failing to understand.
Are you kidding me? It's your job.
If you're putting forward an extraordinary claim, it is your job to make it clear.
And if I say I don't understand, it's your job to make it clear.
I'm a smart guy. I know philosophy.
I'm not too bad at science.
So, if you're not making any sense to me, it's your fault.
You have to fix it, not me.
Telling me that I'm not understanding something when I push back and say you need to prove something is kind of a dick move, frankly.
Just so we understand ourselves a little better, this is a metaphysical argument.
Okay, what is your definition of the word metaphysics?
Because I think you're using it just to baffle-gab me and try and make me think that I'm not understanding something.
What is the definition of metaphysics for you?
It's like the area of thinking that goes beyond material world.
That is incorrect. That is not the definition of metaphysics.
Metaphysics is a study of the essential nature of reality.
It has nothing to do with otherworldly phenomenon.
And so what you're telling me now is you've never studied even some basics with regards to philosophy.
No, it's... I think that what you said and what I said is very similar.
No, it's not. There are central questions of metaphysics.
It's ontology, identity, causality, necessity, cosmology, mind and matter.
So what I'm trying to talk about is mind and matter, cosmology, and determinism and free will.
So these are the topics which I would like to discuss.
Okay, well, let's put aside this whole confusion about the word metaphysics.
It's a study of the essential nature of reality.
Now, you can make the case, if you want, your metaphysics can include something like Kant would call it a new amino reality, the Buddhists might call it nirvana, or Plato might call it the world of forms.
You can say that the essential nature of reality is beyond the senses, or what could be called suppersensual.
You can make that case. But you can also make the case, as Aristotle does, as Ayn Rand does, as a bunch of other thinkers do, that the nature of reality is matter and energy, and that there's no such thing as an otherworldly, anti-sensual concept-populated universe that Does not respond to reason and evidence.
But metaphysics is not the study of what is beyond the material.
Metaphysics is what is the essential nature of reality.
It's a study of the essential nature of reality.
Some people say there's a higher reality, a heaven, a god, and so on.
And some people say it's base, sense, material reality that is the fundamental reality.
So if you say that metaphysics is the study of beyond the material, then you're begging the question.
The whole question of metaphysics is, is there something beyond the material?
Is there something beyond the senses?
Is there something beyond what we can prove?
Now, my argument is that if somebody says that, then they're talking about theology, they're no longer talking about philosophy.
Because once you say that there's something beyond the senses, there's something beyond reason, there's something beyond evidence, then philosophy says, okay, well, you can talk about it all you want, but philosophy and you have to part ways there.
It's no longer philosophy. I mean, people would say, are you saying that Plato is not philosophy?
Well, some of Plato is philosophy, but when Plato starts talking about these higher forms and these realms impervious to human reason and...
Excuse me, human science.
Then I would say he's jumped the shark as it were and he's no longer talking about philosophy.
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, that's basically what I want to say that this is a version of the plateau cave or something like that and what I'm saying is that not that there is something beyond the physical but at the very basic level That the material is made out of consciousness.
Okay, so that's a hypothesis that you would put forward, right?
Now you understand that saying that doesn't make it true.
Saying that the essence of matter is consciousness does not make it true.
So the question is, how do you prove that?
Yes, and that's the topic that I wanted to discuss with you.
How can you...
Be nice if you would, so let's hear your proof that the essence of matter is consciousness.
This goes into the electrons have language, right?
Yes. Okay, so how do you prove that matter is consciousness?
Yeah, I can't prove it.
That's the idea. But I think that my explanation...
Oh, it's simple because you don't have to prove anything.
Is that what you mean? No, no.
Well, sure. I mean, that is very simple.
I would agree with you. It's just not philosophy.
No, like the alternative is that you say all the laws of physics and everything is predetermined.
And I don't need that.
I can explain...
Wait, are you telling me that my argument is that we have no free will now?
No. What I'm saying is that from the three steps, you can derive...
You can explain how the material world comes to be.
Through simple interactions at the lowest level.
No, no, but you say that matter is consciousness, and you say you can't prove it.
So I'm not sure why I would listen to you beyond that.
Because you're just basically making sounds with your breathing hole that have words in them, but they're not philosophical.
You might as well say, I like ice cream.
Well, actually, we can kind of prove that and see if you actually eat ice cream.
Maybe you're lactose intolerant.
I don't know. But when you tell me that the basic assumption that you're making can't possibly be proven, I'm not sure why I would listen to you after that.
It'd be like you stand in front of me.
I'm an investor, right? And you come and you say, I'm an entrepreneur.
I've got a great idea for a business.
And I say, wow, okay, how much time do you need?
And you say, well, I'll need you about, I'll need about, I don't know, four hours of your time to make the presentation.
I'm like, wow. And you're like, yeah, but it's a really, really great product.
And I say, wow, okay, you're asking for a big time commitment.
Why don't you at least tell me what the product is?
And you say, it is a product that cannot be built or made.
What do you think the investor would then say, my friend?
I get your point.
What would the investor say?
That he has more important things to do.
Well, more important things to do, like stare at a wall.
He would say, get out of here, because if your product can't be made, why on earth would I listen to your presentation?
If your basic premise can't be proven, why would I listen to anything after that?
You've already told me that everything is just subjective opinion masquerading as objective truth.
So why would I listen to you when you tell me that your basic premise can't be proven?
So what I would argue is that through Occam's razor, You don't need the baggage of like the last maybe 500 years of philosophy which tries to solve this mind-body duality.
So you're not going to answer my questions basically, right?
You just you go on like word fart random intergalactic salads of syllables rather than just ask the question which is why on earth should I listen to you if you tell me your basic premise can't even be proven?
Talking about Occam's razor and 500 years of philosophy is just an elegant way of not answering my fucking question.
Are you going to answer the question why I should listen to you if you tell me your basic premise can't be proven?
No, I think that it fundamentally cannot be proven just by the nature of reality.
So that's why I consider all this...
Wait, wait, wait. If you're saying it can't be proven by the nature of reality, then you're appealing to a proof called the nature of reality, which says that your thesis can't be proven.
Have you talked this through with anyone who is really critical and skeptical and educated?
Yeah. Like, there was a couple of people who studied...
Was it one of the teachers of the last caller?
No. Was it like a Trotskyist?
Because it seems like you're kind of murdering logic.
No, I... Okay, so your thesis can't be proven.
So I'm curious why you're interested in pursuing this basic idea if you can't even prove it.
Like, why? That first step's kind of important, isn't it?
It's like you're someone who spent five or ten years in their garage trying to put together a product while saying at the very beginning, this product can't be made.
That would be the actions of a crazy person, right?
Like, why are you spending so much time trying to pursue a hypothesis which you say can't possibly be proven?
You're kind of giving philosophy a bad name, my friend.
This is one of the reasons why I want to spend some time with you on this, is you're going out there and people are thinking, wow, this is what philosophy is.
Hey, it's not. It's really not.
I don't know what this is, but it's got nothing to do with philosophy.
So why do you want to pursue this?
What does it matter if you say you can't prove it to begin with?
The issue I have with philosophy Like you said, there is a lot of stuff that gets tossed around.
For example, the simulation hypothesis of the matrix, which got some traction in popular science recently.
Or you have the many words hypothesis of quantum theory.
And I find these things offensive.
It's just hogwash.
Oh, I agree with you that the hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis is terrible.
But go on. Yes.
It's not an argument. I just wanted to point it.
I know that's not an argument. I've got a whole book I'm working on about this, but go ahead.
Yeah, and many worlds of quantum mechanics is also like that every wave collapse causes a new universe come to be and where the decision is like that every Subatomic particle, when it makes a decision to collapse its wave, a new universe is created.
Like, this is...
Well, that's the kind of science that can only come out of government funding, let's put it that way.
Yes, yes, exactly. And like, the ideas I'm putting forward here is just cut the bullshit to the bare minimum, but no more.
Well, but the problem is, I think in your goal of cutting the bullshit, you may have missed just a little bit.
And here's the thing to do.
Here's the thing to do. I'm going to move on to the next caller, but here's the thing to do.
Listen back to this conversation.
I mean, I hope you will.
I hope you will. And try and listen to it from...
My perspective. And my perspective is not, oh, you're a mean guy, you're a bad guy.
I'm genuinely trying to understand what it is that you're saying, but because I care about you, I'm not going to let you get away with baffle-gab bullshit.
Just as I don't let myself get away with baffle-gab bullshit, right?
So I say this with, you know, love and respect and affection, and like you need to listen back to this conversation.
Because I know it's been frustrating for you, because you, like, when people have a big series of statements that they want to make, and I stop them at the beginning and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, right?
Then people feel like, oh, let's just move past this.
Let's pretend the product can be made and start building a factory.
It's like, no, no, no, I really want to understand.
Can this product actually be made before we go any further?
Can your basic premise be established before we go any further?
I refuse to jump over.
That hurdle. Because I respect you.
I respect your time. I respect my listeners' time.
And I really, really respect philosophy.
Which means I'm not going to give you a jetpack to drive over or to jump over any Grand Canyons of missing links.
So listen back to this conversation, Martin.
I'm begging you. Listen back to this conversation.
Figure out where for you it went awry.
Certainly figure out where for me it went awry.
And, you know, feel free to come back and know that I need you to prove stuff before we move on to the next step.
I'm not just gonna say, well, let's pretend this product could be made, let's pretend this square circle could be made, and let's just keep going.
It's like, I can't.
Because that would be bad for you, bad for me, bad for my audience, disrespectful to philosophy.
And if you are on the wrong path, you should save your time and your intellect and your obvious verbal skills And focus them on something that's good for the world.
I don't think this is good for the world.
I think this is baffling.
I think it's confusing. I think it's circuitous and it's fundamentally unproven.
Which means that you're out there confusing people rather than clarifying them.
If you're a good thinker, if you're a good communicator, you need to clarify things for people and you need to stop insulting people by saying this is simple and then putting in all this polysyllabic word salad that doesn't make any sense at all because that's just kind of hurting people.
Because if you say, this is really simple, and then you confuse the living hell out of people, it's a subtle form of cruelty.
It's a subtle form of sadism, I would say.
Because you say, well, why can't you get this?
It's simple. It's like, you know, you're making people feel insecure.
The purpose of philosophy, like if you're building a forklift truck, the purpose is to help people lift more.
The purpose is to make people stronger in a way.
And whatever you do that's supposed to enhance someone's life, that's supposed to be a positive to them, must strengthen them or make them more comfortable or better in some manner.
Like you buy an air conditioning unit because you want to feel more comfortable in the heat or whatever, right?
You have heated floors if you're crazy rich because you don't want to wear slippers or something.
And so if you have this desire, this thirst, this ability to put together arguments to Communicate complex ideas to people.
You know what you want them to feel?
You want them to feel smarter.
After you have spent time with them, you want them to feel empowered.
You want them to feel that they understand the world, hopefully a lot better, but at least a little better.
You want them to feel stronger intellectually.
You want them to feel smarter.
You want them to feel more certain of things that can be challenging to understand.
You do the exact opposite because you say, this is simple, it's a three-step process, and then you call in these mad airstrikes Of polysyllabic nonsense.
And you say, but it's simple.
And it's not. Listen, man, I've been doing philosophy 35 years now.
And I've almost never heard a more baffling sandstorm of bullshit in my life.
I'm just telling you straight up what I think, right?
I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm just trying to be clear with you so that you can use your obvious talents to better the world rather than to baffle the world.
So have a listen. And maybe you can come back if you want.
But we're going to move on to the next caller at the moment.
Okay, I'll get back to you.
All right, well, up next we have Tyler.
Tyler wrote in and said, I have two toddlers, ages four and two, and recently, seven months ago, split up with my son's mother, who has helped me raise both children for almost four years.
To say she was slightly unsatisfied in our relationship and the love died between us.
I tried for months to make things work to no avail.
A couple of months ago, I started dating a single mom, and we've based our relationship on virtues and values so far.
All of a sudden, my ex wants me back, and I'm wondering if I should go back for the sake of the children or stay on my path.
I feel like she could arbitrarily break our family up at any minute, and I really want to talk about this with you.
That's from Tyler.
Tyler!
What a story. What a story.
Are you on? Yes.
Stefan, can you hear me? I can hear you.
I can hear you. Wow. Do you want to give me a little bit more backstory?
Remember, no names, no places, but a little bit more backstory about what's going on?
Yeah, my question actually skims the iceberg.
There's a lot more to it.
How far back do you want me to go?
Well, I don't know. I mean, it's your story, man.
Where do you want me to start? Where do I want you to start?
I have no idea. Wherever you think the most relevant place is.
Okay, I guess we'll start with the birth of my daughter, which I found out that I had a daughter around the time she was born.
No, I think we're going to have to go a little further back than that, I'm afraid.
I'm sorry to tell you and then disagree with you, but dude, what?
So was this like a one-night stand, or what happened?
Yeah, I was going to get to that.
It was a one-night stand, and...
She notified me that she was having my daughter around the time that she was supposed to be born.
Wait, wait. Were you bareback?
I mean, why are you re-entering the atmosphere without tiles, my friend?
Why is there no cap on the goalie?
No condom! Why no condom?
What are you doing? I was making a lot of bad choices back then that I wouldn't now.
Were you drunk? No.
No? Were you stoned?
No. So why were you making these bad choices?
It's not like those are the only two reasons.
Those are the two that popped to mind.
Right. I guess I was kind of wild.
At the time, I actually was drinking and smoking, but for that specific event, I was not.
So, wild, is that like a cool word for just kind of retarded?
I would say so, yes.
Okay, I just, you know, I don't want to glamorize it up.
I don't want to put any lipstick on the pig, you know, because people say, well, I'm a wild child!
It's like, you are not an Iggy Pop song.
You were just, like, it was just dumb choices, right?
We've all been there. We've all made them, but I didn't call my bad choices wild.
They were just dumb. I was really bad in my early 20s and my teens.
And by bad, do you mean retarded?
Because again, you're just sexy, you get, I'm a bad guy, born to be bad, right?
But it was just dumb. Was it just dumb stuff?
It was a lot of dumb stuff, horrible choices, things that I wouldn't do now and I wouldn't want my children doing.
And why were you doing these retarded things?
You know why I'm asking, don't you?
Because you're asking me, am I doing a retarded thing now?
And if you don't know why you're doing your past retarded things, I'm not sure we can figure out why you're doing your current retarded things.
Right. I'm not sure I can pinpoint the exact reason.
I mean, I was really into partying and drinking, and I was more of a nihilist back then.
An atheist and a leftist, so I just kind of didn't really care about many things and my future specifically.
And you said that your parents got divorced.
Yeah, my parents got divorced about 10 years ago.
Right. So they made it through your childhood, right?
Yeah, I was about 21, 22.
No, no, no, don't worry. I don't need all the details.
I just was curious. They made it through a child.
And did they know that you were out doing this dumb stuff, like drinking and smoking and having unprotected sex with unstable women or whoever?
I'm going to assume unstable, because why would a woman have unprotected sex with a man who's not her husband or who she wants to have kids with?
They knew about it, and I would get Grounded and they would call the cops on me for various things and stuff like that.
But it just, nothing really clicked to me.
I think it made me rebel more.
And when did this behavior start?
This dysfunctional behavior, when did it start?
Probably when I was around 15 or 16.
Why do you think it started at that age?
Because you could have started at five, maybe, right?
right?
So why did it start at that age?
I'm not sure.
I mean, I can say that I was a dumb teen, No, no, no, no. First of all, all teens are pretty dumb.
Because your brain doesn't mature until like 10 years later.
Right. Was there a particular crowd that you fell into?
Did you start drinking at that point?
Was there some trauma or upset or difficulty in your home life?
Was there a breakup that was heartbreaking?
Did you break out of the Dungeons& Dragons orbit?
Was there anything that may have happened around that age that might have put you on a bad path?
The crowd I got into was pretty bad.
I was, I guess you could say, a punk rocker, and a lot of my friends were into all that unsavory type of Stuff, and going to shows, and getting fucked up, and basically that whole kind of lifestyle.
Drinking, smoking. And why were you, because there's lots of different groups in school, right?
So why do you think you were drawn to that group?
You could have joined them athletes, or the football team, or the chess champions, or the AV club, or you know what I mean?
Like the photography club, if such a thing even exists still, but why that group?
I guess we all had musical tastes in common.
I guess that would have been the only thing to draw me towards this group of people would be that we all liked punk rock and the Ramones and stuff like that.
Okay. When do you first remember being drawn to that kind of music?
Because again, there's lots of different types of music in the world.
You can get into ragtime, you can get into blues, you can get into jazz, you can get into heavy metal, you can get into Queen, which is all of those things.
things you can get into country you can get like so why that particular really ferocious and angry music um i'm i'm not quite sure Well, because you were angry. I mean, punk is angry, right?
I guess it was sort of an outlet.
Yeah, I guess it was an outlet for that.
Sorry to interrupt. What were you angry about?
That the music reflected?
People are always advertising.
I won't go into a long rant here, but people are always advertising themselves.
Always advertising themselves.
They're putting out signals saying, here's my state of mind.
They manifest what's going on inside them externally all the time.
So guys who are really buff are like, I'm insecure sometimes, right?
Women who dress themselves up really hot say, you know, I'm too lazy to develop much of a personality and conversation can be a challenge for me, right?
And the guys who've got like piercings everywhere, like they fell down a flight of stairs holding a tackle box, they're saying, I'm wounded.
I'm wounded. So look, here's all the stuff through my face.
So that you can see how wounded I am.
And guys with tattoos all over the place, they're saying, I have very high pain tolerance.
So the question is, why do you have high pain tolerance?
Because you're dissociated.
Anyway, I could go on and on, but people are constantly in their haircuts, in their, you know, they got a soul patch, right?
Which means, well, I work in the business world, but I'm kind of a rebel, right?
I mean, they have all of these ways of presenting themselves.
You know, like if it's some weird hair color and so on, they're kind of saying, I'm not so much for employment.
So if you want somebody with very low standards, then probably not a lot of IQ, I'm the hair color for you, right?
There's lots of ways in which people are constantly manifesting, and part of the way they manifest is through music.
I took a funny story. Years ago, I was in a company that wasn't doing well.
Sounds bad, but you know, it wasn't me.
And the accountant took me for lunch because he wanted to talk about some business matters.
And we get into his car, and you know, straight-laced guy and so on, and he cranks up the M&M and he's like, I love this guy!
And I'm like, oh, that's not good.
I put my resume out that afternoon.
I'm like, I don't mean to sound prejudiced or anything like that.
But if the 50-year-old accountant is really into angry Eminem, I don't know how well this is going to go for this company.
So people are constantly putting, so what were you angry?
I mean, punk, right, is angry, nihilistic, rebellious, and, well, hypersexual.
And so... What was going on in your life that this was the music that spoke to you?
Who did you hate?
I was a militant atheist, and it speaks about that a lot.
So God would be one of those things that you hate?
At the time, yes.
Um... I don't know.
I don't know.
I won't say that I hated my family, but I know I didn't like spending time with them, and I would often choose my friends or a party, and I have a lot of regrets about that.
And why didn't you enjoy spending time with your family?
I just felt like the punk rock outcast that I didn't like sports, and I wasn't into the pop culture, and I just...
I don't know.
I guess I didn't find the right connections with them at that time.
This... Yeah, hatred and contempt for mainstream...
Popular culture is quite common in these kinds of situations, right?
And it really does often take the form of music, particularly for young people, for teenagers and so on.
So... Right. What did you hate about popular culture?
Um... I guess it was just the bubbliness and happiness and that kind of stuff.
Yes. Now we're getting somewhere, Tyler, my friend.
Yes. Right. There is joy in the world.
I will crush it with my hairdo.
Yes, exactly.
Right. Right. And I won't go into any details in particular here, but I had a couple of friends.
One in particular comes to mind.
I actually first met him when I was 11, and then we kind of became friends later.
Oh, man, this guy was cynical.
Dark, in a way, cynical.
Very funny, right?
And the punk scene can be hilarious.
Because nihilism has a certain kind of...
This is why a lot of comics are nihilistic as well, because...
There is a certain freedom in rejecting everything, and a certain comedy in having no standards, so to speak.
And this guy, man, he ended up in a bad place in his life, but I was so cynical.
And I remember him.
We were sitting in a car, and he was watching some young women who were, you know, kind of made up and kind of had the sort of bouncy 80s hair or whatever.
And they were running to catch a bus, and she's like, yeah, I remember him saying so clearly, he's like, yeah, run along, sonnies, run along, you gotta get your brain surgery class so you can save civilization, off you go!
Catch that bus! And it was like, I don't know, it's just kind of cynical.
And God help you, if you ever mistook a cover band for the original song.
Like, if you ever thought...
That David Bowie and Mick Jagger were the first ones to sing Dancing in the Streets?
Oh, man! You were doomed.
You were just doomed, right?
Because you had to know the original!
The old school!
You couldn't know any new stuff!
And if anyone ever did a cover of an old song he loved, like...
Puff Adder Venom!
And so cynical, and...
No joy, really.
There was some bitter humor.
And again, could be very funny.
But it was kind of an unholy bargain with hopelessness, I think, deep down.
Never really enthusiastic about much.
Great singing voice.
Could play guitar. I'm like, man, you should write some songs.
He's like, come on.
Right? Like, just eye-rolling stuff, right?
Lot of talent. Lot of talent, this guy.
Smart as a whip. In fact, his wife married him because she thought he was just going to be, and she told me this once, he's going to be like he was doing this, he was doing that, he's going to be huge, he's going to be so smart, so talented, and he was.
But, so cynical.
I know where it came from, and I won't get into sort of why.
It's family stuff, but it's, it gives you a kind of peculiar dark energy when you're younger.
Like a kind of black electricity energy.
A kind of charisma that is like a very compelling, swirling star quicksand down to a place that looks fun, but it's just kind of an early spiritual grave.
And there is a wildness, and there is a wonderful but terrifying lack of regard for the future, right?
Hope I die before I get old.
Not that he was a punk, but there is this nihilism, right?
Like, it's kind of cool...
When you don't have to buckle down and study because you want to get somewhere, or when you don't want to struggle through a difficult book because you want to expand your mind and you don't want to try and master some new skill, which is why this stuff, they don't sit there and say, I know everyone, let's get really, really great.
At squash or Rubik's Cube or chess because that would be to start not knowing stuff and feeling humiliated and feeling ignorant and feeling incompetent.
So they never want that stuff, which is why it's always like, let's go drink and skateboard, you know, or whatever, right?
It's always... Exactly.
Right, let's do something that we know we can do that's either bad for us or we're good at.
It's never... Let's go and volunteer to Soup Kitchen.
Like, that's incomprehensible, right?
Right. Even though a lot of punks are leftists, they won't do a damn thing to help people who are struggling or people who are poor or people who need, right?
And they condemn the church, which, you know, does a lot of that kind of stuff.
I was talking to a fellow the other day.
It's a fascinating story. So he was in Costa Rica and he was driving around and he noticed that the schools, that the children were lined up for food and there just didn't seem to be much food there.
So he stopped and he said, what's going on?
And they said, well, we have a lineup.
We have like, you know, 100 kids.
We have 50 lunches. And even those are paired back to like just beans and rice.
We've got 100 kids. We've got 50 lunches.
And they're like, well, what happens to the kids at the end of the line?
They get nothing. Well, why don't you have any lunches?
Because we're paying so much for electricity.
So why are you paying so much for electricity?
Because it's a monopoly, they jack up the prices, and we can't pay for electricity, so we have to take money from lunches, and the kids are hungry, and it's terrible, right?
Now, this guy...
I actually asked him if I could tell this story, and I wasn't sure where to put it, but I'm going to put it in here.
It's a really wild story. It's a great story.
So this guy... He was in the army.
So he's like, you know, plus, minus, just like the army, the smart and competent ones, the real problem solvers, right?
They walk through walls to get problems solved.
So he's like...
You know what? He says, I don't like charity, because if charity is not sustainable, and charity requires on everyone being not corrupt, benevolent, and so on, you get a business going.
You find a way to make money helping people.
Now it's sustainable. Now you've got people invested.
Now you don't have to rely on integrity.
You can rely on self-interest, which is much more reliable.
I'm like, yeah, tell me more. So he put a proposal together to get solar panels in there, put them on the roof of the schools, And that way they could get Costa Rica, right?
So get solar panels and they could then cut back or maybe even not use the electricity and then they'd have more money, more than enough money left over for food for the kids, right?
Because right then they had to say, bring rice or pick fruit, you know, it's Costa Rica, there's food everywhere, pick fruit on the way to school so that you'll have enough to eat.
So he talks to a couple of the schools, they're like, you know, that'd be great, you know, fantastic, right?
So he goes and gets a whole bunch of investors together.
And they raise an ungodly amount of money because he can give them the numbers and he can show how this can actually work and pay for itself.
So then he goes to the school, central school authority in Costa Rica, and they say, oh yeah, well we can't impose this, right?
We can't require it because for every single school in Costa Rica there's a school board.
I'm like, oh man, I think I can see why you're having trouble paying for things because you got all these layers.
So he ends up, he says, you know what, I'm just like, I can't stand the idea of these kids being hungry in school.
So he took a year off his career, and he just, he literally drove with his family, with his little girl, with an engineer or two, and he just, he drove from school to school to school, getting their buy-in, and as soon as they got, he got their buy-in, putting up These solar panels.
And, you know, he's like, he goes to some of these schools, they're so old, they're falling apart, right?
And... Right. He's like, you know, we've got to put these solar panels on the roof.
He's like, man, look at the roof. There's like, it's calf crumbling down.
It's like a watercolor Minecraft situation here in the rain.
And he's like, well...
We'll build up the rules.
Come on. We'll just make it work.
Make it happen. So then he gets his engineers.
They build up the roof. Anyway, long story short, he gets a huge amount of Of these schools hooked up to solar power.
Now, of course, the government monopoly power company goes in and tries to screw it up and stop it and roll it back and overcharge them for whatever, right?
But anyway, the point is that he actually did.
And I'm like, this guy's a Christian, this guy's ex-army, and he really did some great things to help kids who probably couldn't learn very much because they were hungry now.
I didn't get into the whole, well, the IQ of the island because, you know, I don't care.
I still want these kids to have enough to eat.
Sorry about that. Call me harmless.
You know, I want these kids to have enough to eat.
I don't care what the average IQ of the island is at this point.
The kids are hungry. And it's predatory because the, you know, the asshole electricity company is doing its thing.
Not a lot of punks out there.
Doing that kind of stuff, right?
So it's kind of a selfish lifestyle.
It's a predatory lifestyle insofar as it tries to spread.
It's nihilism around.
There is this hatred of happiness and positivity and success.
And there is this weird thing that goes on for a lot of people, and maybe you were part of this too, Tyler, but a lot of things that go, like happiness is shallow, but misery is deep.
Joy is frivolous and frothy and stupid.
You know, like that old R.E.M. song, shiny happy people holding hands, or however the hell it goes, but they're shiny, they're happy.
And I remember this, the same cynic guy was, he was down at some fair, and there was a guy who was selling pens.
And I think they had the word Hollywood on them or maybe some outline of the Hollywood sign or something like that.
And he was, there's this poor guy, he's this guy in his 30s or 40s, you know, just some poor bum who's selling pens.
And he was crying out with this sort of Vegas whiskey voice, you know, he would be crying out, Hollywood pens for Hollywood people!
Get your Hollywood pens for Hollywood people!
Now, this isn't a great tagline or anything, but this guy, Would just mock this guy.
And this went on forever. Like, this went on for months afterwards.
And he'd be like, plastic pens for plastic people!
Plastic pens! And he would just come up with other things to make fun of this guy.
And I remember he was really into photography and he took a picture of some old depressed looking guy at the Eaton Center and printed it and then put some, you know, You know, Vegas!
Thanks for the memories! Saul!
Or something like that, you know?
And it was just some depressed guy.
Who knows what the hell? Some Holocaust victim or something like that.
Who knows what had happened to this guy in his life.
But just this trying to find the worst and trying to mock and trying to claw down anything that was better or higher or nicer or sunnier and anyone who had ambitions.
And it was just, it's a hell of an undertow.
It's a hell of an undertow.
And man, he paid for it.
He paid for it. So, I just wanted to point that out.
We don't know. You know you didn't like spending time with your family, and you had been infected with the idea that happiness is shallow, that beauty is predatory, that joy is idiocy, and those who see deeply see darkly, right?
absolutely how would you characterize your parents positivity during this phase of your life or shortly before um I well my dad worked a lot um
He would come home and watch football and baseball, so he was never really like I don't know, I guess affectionate and caring and all that kind of stuff.
My mom was, but there was never any fighting or anything like that going on.
They were generally in good spirits.
When you say your father wasn't affectionate, what do you mean?
Um, like, I've told him several times in my life that I love him, and he's never said it back.
Has he ever said it, initiating from himself?
Not that I can remember.
Oh, you'd remember. You'd remember.
Yeah. Okay.
Does he, or did he, when you were a kid, did he seek out and seem to enjoy your company?
Um, he, he did.
I think I just, I just didn't gravitate towards him too much.
Like he had me in baseball and all kinds of different sports and stuff like that.
Um, you know, we would go play mini golf and I have a lot of memories with them.
It's just, it wasn't a lot of talking, I guess.
Was there talking about important things at all?
No. Huh.
I'm now realizing that, thanks to you and Jordan Peterson, all that kind of stuff, which I wish I had my whole life.
I'm sorry about that, because this small talk stuff is horrible.
Yeah. Small talk is like death by a thousand mosquito bites.
Small talk is...
I can do a little bit, like a pearl diver or whatever, and go down for a minute or two, but if I'm not having some important conversation about something interesting, you know, I mean, sooner or later, I'll just...
I gotta go pick up a book or something.
I'm sorry. I just can't stay at that nothing level for very long.
Right. And I'm sorry for that because clearly you have a thirst for that, right?
A thirst for something deeper. Or deep at all, right?
Yeah, I think there's definitely something that I was missing.
Maybe I never really knew it.
I mean, this morning I was talking to my daughter and we were trying to work out the economics of slavery.
Like, does slavery actually make money?
And we, you know, we were doing the math and doing the charts, and I was like, I'm genuinely curious about it.
I ended up doing some research on it.
I probably ended up doing a show on it.
But she's really fascinated.
It's like, well, it's like a car, and, you know, is it different if you catch a slave versus if you raise a slave, you know?
Of course, you know, the immorality of slavery we talked about very briefly, but the more interesting thing was, was there any way to have slavery make money relative to industrialization?
Now, I think that's a fairly deep topic.
It's a very interesting topic.
It is. For me. Yes.
And she remembers this stuff, too.
Like, if I bring it up six months from now, she'll remember the arguments very well.
Can never remember to take her plate to the kitchen after dinner.
But! For the important stuff, she's down with it.
And so maybe there was a little bit of...
The nihilism comes from not having been raised...
With important topics or meaningful topics if that makes sense.
Yes. So maybe that becomes then a celebration of nihilism because you miss meaning.
That makes a lot of sense.
I was in a play once With an actor, you know, I don't dislike a lot of people in this world.
But, you know, every now and then you just meet someone and it's just like, you and I are fated to not be friends.
And I really, really dislike this guy.
Now, fortunately, I was supposed to dislike him in the play as well.
I played a character who got paralyzed halfway through the play and I had to play that, which I actually played by, I put duct tape on the side of my face for most of the rehearsals so I could get used to not using those muscles.
And I really, really disliked this guy.
And I disliked him to the point, and I remember the director sitting down with me and saying, like, I don't think this is acting anymore.
Like, you really... And she said, it was a very smart thing to say, she said, you know, as a director, I'm ambivalent about your dislike of this character because, or this actor, because it comes across like you dislike his character, which is great, but I'm concerned that you dislike him so much as an actor that you're going to start sabotaging the play.
Right. And I was like, you know, that is a very, very smart thing.
And then they did the stupid...
She did the stupid thing of like, I'm going to leave you guys to sit together and chat for a while.
And that's going to go well.
And it's like, I bet you it won't.
I bet you it won't. And I'm a pretty friendly person.
I can get along with a lot of different kinds of people, at least for a short amount of time.
But this guy... Just rubbed me the wrong way.
And... So it's kind of like, I disliked him to the point where I was almost like sabotaging the play.
Not consciously, and once it was pointed out, I was able to rein that in.
Right. And...
Oh yeah, that was the play.
There was a woman who was supposed to freak out, and she freaked out so convincingly.
I'm like, you know what, I don't think I'm ever going to be an actor because...
It seemed kind of shameful in a way to be that freaked out.
She had a job as a phone psychic and she said, oh, you just make all this stuff up.
I guess you get to practice ad-libbing and acting all day.
But it's like, where's your pride to freak out that much?
Anyway, so... Yeah, maybe it's like the dislike gets strong enough or the loneliness or the absence gets strong enough that it almost becomes fetishized.
and then it's like you want to sabotage not just the play but the life.
life.
Or in other words, deep people can only drown in the shallows.
Right.
So how, um, so you're partying, you're doing all this kind of stuff, and then you have unprotected sex with this woman, and then she comes up nine months later and says, hey, surprise!
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Right, you have a daughter? Yeah, my daughter is, she just turned four.
How do you know it's your daughter?
I got a test through the courts.
Right, okay. And did you try and make a relationship go with the mom?
No. Right.
Why did she get in touch with you?
With your daughter? She told me that she was having my baby.
And I said, okay, well... No, not how.
Why? Um...
I mean, she could have just not tell you, right?
That's actually what she said.
After she told me, she said, you know what?
Delete my number. Pretend this never happened.
I was kidding. She did not.
Oh, really? Absolutely.
No, you're shitting me, man.
She says, you have a kid.
No, no. Forget I sent...
Oh, my God. Are you kidding me?
And then it was a battle trying to get the paternity test.
She kept saying that she couldn't do it and she...
Which means she probably didn't know.
That's what I felt because I even offered to pay out of pocket even though she could have got it at the hospital.
But she kept denying.
I tried four or five times to get it and then we ended up going through the court.
Did she want money from you?
She... She filed and got child support, and I started basically becoming 100% responsible for my daughter, and I went to fight the child support, and they ordered her to pay me, but I denied it, I guess, out of ego or something like that.
I didn't want, I guess, money that I hadn't earned.
Yeah, so this is a scam that women sometimes run.
And the scam goes something like this.
You just have unprotected sex with a bunch of guys and you pick the richest one when the kid's born, hope that the kid looks like him, and then you go for that, right?
It's a ka-ching move, right?
And the reason why you don't tell The man, while you're pregnant, is so that he can't talk you into getting an abortion or say, if you have this child, I'm going to have nothing to do with it and try and get out of it that way.
So you wait until the child is born and then you just, some guy who's got some money, you will then try and get money out of him using the court system.
And I guess it didn't quite work that way because you ended up taking care of your daughter and refused child support from her, right?
Right. I felt the whole time like she was trying to scam me, but I just knew all along that I just needed to take care of my daughter, and that was my main goal ever since.
And you were going to say something else about the test?
Sorry if I cut you off.
Oh, just that she was so...
I guess so dragging her heels about getting it, which also made me think, like, okay, well, obviously she doesn't know.
But she turned out to be mine, so...
Well, that doesn't mean she knew.
Right. She could have had sex with seven guys that week, right?
Exactly. So, is she still in...
Sorry. So, was she out of your daughter's life for a good chunk of that time, or most of it, or some of it?
She was never permanently out, but she definitely became really disconnected to times where I would have her for weeks at a time.
She would just kind of see her here and there, a day or two here and there.
And since then...
She's gotten a little bit better.
But when I went to court for custody, I mean, I just had, like, I 100% financially support her.
I do all the daycare, the healthcare.
Basically, I've been keeping a calendar of all the times I have her and all the times that her mother flakes.
It looked really bad on her, but they still gave her 50, which that's what the family courts aim for.
And when was this?
Oh, this was... No, sorry.
When was this ruling?
That was about a year and a half ago.
And has she been doing her 50 or what?
She was at first and then went back into her old ways and I've been keeping notes about everything.
And what are her old ways, Tyler?
You're going to get a kick out of this.
She will often tell me, hey, I can't get her.
I can't pick her up.
I can't keep her this weekend.
Can you take her for me? And then she'll say, it's because I have to work.
I'm doing two shifts.
She has two jobs.
And then we have a couple mutual friends and they'll send me pics of her at the bar taking shots on the nights that she flakes on me.
So it's like, Okay, this is your choice, and I have these pictures, you know, this is not some fairy tale, like, you're really acting like this.
But she'll just say she has to work.
Yeah, so she's a liar.
I don't mind having my daughter.
I would take her, whether she lied or not, but she doesn't need to lie to me.
Or be avoiding taking care of our daughter.
Right. Is she an alcoholic?
I'm not sure about an alcoholic, but she's definitely in that lifestyle of going out and clubbing and getting drunk and doing all those types of things that I was doing, I guess when I was younger.
How pretty is she?
She's... She's not pretty.
She's not a catch. Is she overweight?
I'm going to be honest with you.
She was, I guess, a bit of a big girl.
She's gotten bigger since she had the baby, but she has really big tits, if I'm just going to be frank with you.
I think that's what kind of suckered me in.
High price to pay for that fetish, I suppose, right?
It really is, man.
Right. Is her parenting moving anywhere closer to norm, or is it staying about the same, or is it getting worse?
It really fluctuates.
In the last year, She started to get really bad.
And then maybe within the last...
I want to say month or two, she's gotten better.
She's actually sticking to the schedule now.
So there's really no telling, like, if she's going to pick her up or, like, I don't know.
You know, the stability of...
Sorry, interrupt. What does your daughter think of this?
Of her mom? She understands.
And this is...
This tripped me out. I know it's going to trip you out too, but we were listening to one of your call-in shows about a week ago, and you were talking to some guy who was saying his father was really great, and you had uncovered that the dad was a workaholic and he didn't raise him, and the kid was doing drugs and drinking and all this stuff.
Like, oh, why are you saying your dad's so great?
And we were driving, listening to the podcast, and she says, hey, my mom does that.
And sometimes so-and-so picks me up, and my mom's at work.
I'm like, I was just baffled, for one, that she was listening, and two, that she understood it and related it to her situation.
I'm not sure that my stuff is four-year-old friendly, to be honest with you.
Maybe a set of headphones might not be the end of the world when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Right. Right. I mean, I know kids kind of tune out stuff that they don't understand or whatever, but I'm just going to kind of point that out.
Not for the kids.
Not for the kids. Right.
But anyway, all right. I think you kind of get that.
I mean, how do you explain the mom's unreliability?
Do you say, like, your mom's coming and then mom doesn't come?
What do you say? I'll just say, oh, she can't get you today, but daddy's here.
I'm going to take you to school. I'm going to pick you up.
Just kind of reassure her that she's not alone.
I'm always going to be there.
Even if it's not my day to have her, I'll always pick her up if I can.
And I let her know that.
So, I mean, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what you're doing.
But to be clear, you do kind of have to lie to her about her mom, right?
Because her mom can come.
It's just, you know, if you say mom's, you know, probably out doing shots off some guy's back, right?
I mean, that's not going to be...
However accurate that might be, that's not what you want to tell your daughter, right?
Exactly. And it tears me up to not tell her the truth, but I know there's some things that...
I'm not criticizing it.
I'm just pointing it out that it's a very awkward position to be in where you've got to lie to your kid about her mom.
Exactly. Something came up.
I bet it did. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Now, do you think that your daughter is in appropriate hands when she's with her mom?
I don't think she's with her.
Honestly, half the time, I notice on the school sign-up sheets when it's her days, her aunt and grandma are picking her up, and she will tell me a lot.
I say, oh, what did you do at mommy's house?
What do you guys talk about?
And she'll tell me, Oh, I was with so-and-so, or I went here and my mom was sleeping, or oh, my mom was at work.
So she gets it and she relays it to me that she's not around as much as she should be.
I just wanted to say, Tyler, I'm really, really sorry for your situation as a parent.
I mean, these are the kinds of situations that happen when you're barebacking it with a lunatic, right?
Only takes one sperm, only takes one puck to get past the goalie, right?
Only takes one sperm and then boom, 20 years, baby jail, right?
So, I mean, you know, we'll talk and I don't want to, you know, derail this, but this is a course to retail.
Keep it in your pants.
Keep your sperm away from crazy.
And, you know, I'm not saying, I mean, you love your daughter, you're glad she's in your life, and I'm not trying to diminish that, but it sure as hell would be better if you had a woman you were married to who you loved, who was reliable, who could, you know, co-parent with you.
It's a mess, right? Yeah, and I try to relay that message to some of my younger cousins.
And I don't know, just people that I come across, but it's like, okay, I didn't do it, so I don't know why they would listen to me.
Yeah, what crazy women need is a dick bomb.
You know, like you go in there and there's no plastic, it's like a landmine, like a thought mine.
Not that it hurts anyone.
It's just a spiritual one, you understand.
But something that's just going to blow you back out before you blow in.
I just really wanted to break that out.
But you know, of course, nature hasn't designed us that way.
Life finds a way in Jurassic Park.
Yeah. And in a young man's, young, dumb, and full of, oh, I can't remember how that ends.
But it's a tough situation, Tyler, and I just really wanted to extend some basic sympathy for that, because it's very difficult, and it's tough.
There's ways you could phrase it, maybe, where you're not lying to your daughter, but if she doesn't feel treasured by her mom, I mean, it's hard.
It's hard on her, and it's hard on you.
And now, even if you're...
I don't know. I mean, she's not your ex-wife.
She's not even your ex-girlfriend.
But if the mother, so to speak, quote mother, right?
It's not a noun. It's a verb.
But the mother of your child, even if she would have, you know, come around tomorrow and be like Mary Poppins, be like 150% great mom, it wouldn't really help that much.
And in fact, it might even make things worse.
Because after years and years of neglect and lies and abandonment and whatever, right?
There's no bond.
And then if the mom changes, then it's like, you can't rewind.
You can't go back and have that bond if the bond wasn't there to begin with.
And what are you going to do?
How are you going to fix it?
You can't fix it. This is why early parenting is so important.
This is why I urge people, you know, you take four years off to go to college and you take the financial hit.
Takes as much time as you humanly can.
Move to a smaller place. Live in a car, you know, if you have to.
But find a way to be with your kids for the first couple of years.
It makes parenting so much easier.
You know how, like, you say, oh, well, if I get a good education when I'm younger, my whole life gets easier and better.
It's like, well, okay, that's arguable, but let's say that's true.
In terms of, like, government education or university education or whatever.
Let's say that's true.
Well, if you spend a year or two, maybe even three, with your kids when they're young, if you got to move into your mom's basement, you know, and you get along with your mom, like, it's a really strong case to be made.
You put the time in when they're young, you get the bond.
And when you get the bond, it means you need the very lightest of touches to course-correct.
When you get older. I mean, I very rarely get annoyed at my daughter.
Very rarely. But when I do, it's like she really listens.
Because it's unusual and she trusts me and we've got that bond.
It just makes parenting so much easier if you have that bond.
And parenting just becomes a living hell.
I think, over time, if you don't have that bond, right?
So, like, Tyler, you have that bond with her, right?
Because you've been there for her and all that kind of stuff.
But if the mom doesn't, it's gonna be mighty tough going forward for her.
Yeah, I don't want her to be confused or feel lost or anything like that.
I don't know what she's gonna think about it when she's older.
Oh, well, we know, right?
Might be some contempt.
And did you say you had two kids?
I do. Okay.
Other kid? I... Give me an origin story, Tyler.
Yeah, definitely. A few months before she told me that she was having my daughter...
I started dating a girl who stayed with me through the whole thing.
And we were together for about four years.
My son just turned two.
So she found out with me and went through everything with me.
And you're not together anymore, right?
No, we're not. Why?
We split up back in August and...
It felt like we were already broken up.
We were basically babysitting for each other.
I know a lot of it was my fault.
We weren't going on dates and doing anything like that.
It just became... Like, I don't know, we just became kind of like co-parents.
It sort of happened naturally.
And then I would talk to her about it a lot, like, hey, we're getting pretty distant.
I don't like it. And then we kind of stopped hanging out, and I told her, okay, so, well, what are we doing?
We need to have a talk about this.
And She came over and basically said that we need to spend time apart and all this kind of stuff.
She basically broke up with me.
I'm not going to say I gave her an ultimatum, but I said something needs to happen.
We need to change this.
This is not right.
We're both not happy. And she wanted to go her separate way immediately.
I think she had been thinking about it for a while.
Um, and then, I'm sorry.
No, sorry.
Finish your thought.
Then I'll ask my question.
At first I guess it was mutual and then the following months I was just trying to work things out for the sake of our son and my daughter I considered her a mother figure.
Actually, back in December, my son got really sick.
He had pneumonia, and we both stayed with him in the hospital for three days.
I brought it up.
I said, hey, why are you doing this?
this.
Are you happy with this?" She said, "Yeah, she's happier without me." And I don't know, that's just the way things went.
I know I wasn't really putting in the effort.
I guess that ship kind of sailed by the time I did start trying.
And why weren't you putting in the effort?
I took her for granted.
Yes, but why did you take it for granted?
I don't know.
Maybe I knew that there was no future, or I think I was still a little bit juvenile in my thinking.
We never talked about marriage or anything, I guess, really super important.
I started realizing that.
Now, let me ask you this.
So, did she know about your daughter when she got together with you?
Yeah, I told her immediately The second I found out, I told her.
No, but how long were you and her going out before you found out about your daughter?
I want to say about two months.
And so she had a child with you after she knew that you had a child with a crazy woman?
Yes. How good looking are you?
I think I'm pretty handsome.
Do you think that women make bad decisions around you because you have the big tits, so to speak?
I guess so.
Looking at things historically, yes.
Do you come from a Catholic culture, my friend?
No. Were you raised a Christian?
No, my parents are not into the whole church thing.
I think I got some of that from them.
Right. Where church was kind of a joke in our house, like if we were in trouble, they were going to send us to church or something like that.
So why did she get together with you knowing that you had a child with a crazy woman?
And then give you a child afterwards, right?
Like a year or two after you were going out?
Is that right? A year after you were going out?
Uh, yeah, it was about a year after, um...
And was that child planned?
He was not planned, but when we found out, we were both really happy about it.
I was happy with her at the time.
Okay, what do you mean it wasn't planned?
What do you mean? Help me understand this, man.
This is number two. Oh, okay.
Yeah, I get you. We were having unprotected sex, but it wasn't like, hey, a conscious decision of we should make a baby right now, but we did.
Oh, no, no, no. Don't try and sell me that line.
Come on. Well, I was playing Russian roulette, but it wasn't like I wanted to shoot myself or anything.
Come on, man.
Right. I did drive blindfolded.
It wasn't like I wanted to crash.
You have an unprotected sex.
Your fertility is confirmed.
So, what are you doing?
You got one kid without a stable family structure.
Sure.
Right. You have an unprotected sex with another woman.
You don't think there's much of a future in it?
I don't know.
Like, what are you doing?
I'm not a big fan of adult castration, but...
No, seriously, what are you doing?
I... Your kids deserve better!
absolutely so what are you doing I wasn't thinking about my future Sure.
But you've got kids.
This is like you making people here.
What about their future?
Now you've got two kids growing up in essentially single-parent households.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes. Twice! It's not like you had twins.
What are you doing?
Like, I need to fundamentally understand this.
Like, I can't fathom what you're doing.
Is it that you just don't like condoms?
Is it that it just feels better?
Is it that you just don't care?
I mean, what is that?
Well, I definitely don't like condoms, but I mean...
Now my kids are having to deal with this, having separate families.
it bugs me a lot and are you paying child support to this woman now no No. We...
It's weird.
We're on good terms. I know I've heard you talk about that on the show before where it's like, I don't know, everything's great, but if it's so great, then why did you break up?
But we're on good terms.
She picks up the kids from school sometimes for me.
I'll do the same for her.
The kids, like, so she takes your daughter?
Yes. My daughter is still involved with Her brother's family with all of them.
And how does it sound like when you're telling this story?
What does it sound like to you? It's a lot.
It's a lot. It's really confusing.
Go on. But I didn't want to just like...
Once we broke up, like, yank her away from them, although it crossed my mind that that might naturally happen.
But, I mean, she's my son's mother.
We're going to be communicating with each other for at least the next, I don't know, 16 years.
So, you know, my daughter loves spending time with them.
You gonna do this again?
I don't know, Stefan.
Oh man, really?
You don't know if you're going to get another kid out of wedlock.
Definitely not going to have another kid out of wedlock, but I thought you meant as far as because I am dating someone else now.
Sure. But we...
Um, I don't know, like, it just seems like a lot.
It's a lot to me.
So you're dating someone now, Tyler, who knows that you have two kids with women you're not married to.
Yes, and I was up front with her about that.
Why is she dating you? Is it because of your integrity, your intelligence, your honor, your commitment, your responsibility to your children?
I mean, why is she dating you?
I guess you're good looking and she's shallow, is that right?
Well, I'm a really good dad to my kids.
I think she sees that.
No, you're not. Because a good dad for his kids chooses a good mom for his kids.
And makes it work.
Right. Now, you, as far as you treating your daughter one-on-one, I'm sure you're fine.
But kids grow up better in two-parent households.
And you chose bad moms for your kids.
Or you were a bad husband or partner or boyfriend or whatever the hell we're calling it.
It's not just you and your kids.
It's the entire environment that they need to grow up in.
And that is a two-parent environment.
Best for the kids, no question.
No question. The data is very clear on that.
And I need you to know this, although it may be a bitter pill to swallow, Because you're going to stop barebacking it again and have another fucking kid.
And you can say, well, I'm a good dad to that kid too.
It's like, you're not though.
How about you just fucking get married and have kids with a wife?
Is that entirely beyond the realm of possibility?
No, this information that you're telling me is something that I know.
And after we broke up, that was one of my main...
One of the reasons for trying to win her back was keeping our family together and having the kids raised by both of us, and she didn't want to have any of it until recently.
Wait, so the woman you're thinking of getting back together is your son's mother?
Yes. Right.
So Tyler, why did she prefer you not being around?
It can't have been just that you were inattentive and it wasn't romantic.
You know, newsflash! When there's a toddler in the house, it's kind of tough to be romantic.
Romantic is what gets you together.
Expecting romance to last forever is like expecting an erection to never go down.
If it's been 24 hours, go see a doctor.
If your romance is continuing past childhood...
You're insane. I mean, it's not like you can ever have it, but that's kind of, that's the booster to get you to the kid phase, right?
And after that, things become a whole lot more practical and pragmatic.
And there's just not quite as much romance going on when the woman's leaking breast milk into her bra.
So I'm just going to give it to you straight up as an old married guy.
Romance, love, I still buy my wife flowers from time to time and all that, but don't get me wrong, it is a phase.
And it's a fun phase, but it's like expecting a honeymoon to last forever.
That's going to cause you to be unhappy because it's completely unrealistic.
Now that I've had sugar, I'll never want sugar again.
I mean, it's just not going to happen that way.
So, why did she want you out of the house?
Because, like, let's say it's not super great between you two, but at least you're there co-parenting with her, which makes parenting a lot easier.
So, why did she want your ass gone?
What was going on that she prefers you not to be there at all?
Living. Well, what she actually said was her reasoning was that she...
Wasn't in love with me anymore.
She loved me as a father to the children, but she wanted to, I guess, just be, I don't know, it sounds weird saying it, but she just wanted to be single.
So, it wasn't anything you did that was really bad or wrong.
She just got bored with you, or what?
Yeah, I mean, I never, like, neglected her or abused her or yelled at her.
There was never anything, like, horrible going on.
It's just, like, like I said in the original question.
And you didn't, like, lose a job or get fat or anything like that, right?
No. No, nothing like that.
Why didn't you marry her?
Or is that bourgeois and square and middle class?
I think I should have...
I definitely should have.
No, but why didn't you?
I didn't Maybe I didn't think I was ready, even though I should have been.
I mean... I don't know.
If she's pushing out one of your babies, it might be a fairer time to get ready.
You know, saying I don't want to go parachuting is generally advisable before you've jumped out of the plane.
Just my thought. Yeah, it's...
That...
The thought crossed my mind at times.
Did she ever talk about it? I never...
We talked about it.
I want to say in four years we talked about it maybe once or twice.
But it was never a concrete idea in my mind of this is what I want to do and I'm going to do it this way.
Did you work a lot maybe?
Were you working overtime or were you gone a lot making money?
No. Just, I guess, like 50 hours a week.
I mean, I have a normal job.
I do a little bit of overtime, but no, I wasn't gone a lot.
Well, you know, of course, it's hard to commit to...
It's hard to ask people to commit to us more than we're willing to commit to them, right?
Was she a Christian, the mother of your son?
She is a Catholic and her parents are...
Super religious. Would you say she's a good Catholic?
No. Definitely not.
Right. Well, she's having a child out of wedlock and then she's asking the father of her child to leave the home.
Yes. I assume that also means sex before marriage, unless it's something pretty immaculate.
In which case, don't get a paternity to test it.
It will make the entire lab explode like a supernova.
And what is she living on if you're not there paying the bills?
What's she surviving on?
She's a nurse.
And who's taking care of your son when she's working?
We had him in a daycare but now that he turned two he goes to a preschool with my daughter so we have them both at the same preschool sort of thing.
How long after your son was born did your girlfriend go back to work?
She went back fairly quick.
I want to say within about, I think it was four months in when she went back.
And why did she go back?
She wanted to work.
Why did she want to work rather than spend time with your son?
I don't know.
How did she breastfeed?
Or did she? She only did for like, I don't even remember how long, but he was mostly bottle fed.
And I think she did that to go back to work so that he wasn't dependent on the tit.
And did you know anything at the time about how bad it is to send kids off to daycare when they're little, that kids in daycare more than 20 hours a week experience the same time, same symptoms as those who've been literally abandoned by their mothers?
Did you know much about how bad it is to not breastfeed your kids if it's at all possible to do so?
Did you know any of that stuff or is that something you've learned later or is all this news to you now?
At the time, I did not know that.
I wish I had been listening to your show for longer.
I know that now, but at the time, I knew none of this.
I was a fool. Well, no, I mean, I wish that people talked about this more, but of course, the powers that be don't want children to go out with a strong bond with their parents, they don't want strong family units, and they sure as hell don't want women home when they could be out there providing services and paying taxes, right?
So, there's a lot of incentive as to why this information is not provided to people, and I'm sorry that you didn't Get a hold of it.
So your son went into daycare when he was four months old?
He stayed with her grandma here and there for a while.
He didn't go into daycare until he was I think around seven months, we would have family watch him.
Why did that change?
Well, what she told me was that her grandma was getting a little too old for that.
Yeah.
He's a pretty heavy boy.
I guess he was hurting her back, so we just got him a daycare.
Right. Right.
Why should your parents or her parents who raised you guys to do this kind of stuff suffer anything for the consequences of their parenting?
Absolutely not. Throw the kid in daycare.
Throw the baby in daycare.
Yeah. So let me ask you this, Tyler.
Let's fast forward 20 years.
Okay. Your kids call you up and say, You know, we were listening to this old podcast.
We heard you on this podcast.
Yes. And we want to talk to you, Dad.
What do you think they're going to say to you?
Let's start with your son.
What's he going to say to you? He's probably going to ask why he didn't make better decisions and maybe treat his mother a lot better.
And what will you say? That I made some bad choices and all I can do is take responsibility for the bad choices I made and try to move forward and try to give my kids a better life.
And how are you going to give your kids a better life?
Well, Peaceful parenting and talking to them and being involved with them.
We read a lot and stuff like that.
If you get along with the mom of your son, why not just marry her?
She's Catholic, right?
Yes. Did she have a lot of boyfriends before you?
No. Okay, so that's good.
That means her heart hasn't been broken by repeated penis stabbings.
So, why not marry the mother of your son?
And try and at least build the second round in a more stable foundation.
You say you get along well, you know what her complaints were, lack of attention, so you can at least fix that to some degree, right?
Right. So, what does that sound like as a possibility?
Maybe you can have one kid in a stable family environment.
Who knows? Would you like me to help you with this decision?
You are already helping me, but I would love...
Whatever you have to say, Stefan.
No quality woman will date you.
Guaranteed. No woman...
I'm seriously... I'm not saying you're a bad guy, but given where you are in life...
Right. Like, can you think of any sane, rational, healthy, intelligent woman who'd sit there and say, well, Tyler, what's your life story?
And you're like, well, I had...
I had one kid from a one-night stand with unprotected sex with a woman who's got big tits.
She's half a drunk and she lies to me about it and is never there for her daughter.
And then I had another kid, didn't marry the woman either, and she just left me because she thinks she can do better.
What's that? What is any quality, smart woman going to say?
Doesn't sound good. I'd like to thank you for my tax bill and good luck with that soap opera, right?
Right. So there's no one out there who's going to be better than the mother of your son.
Because she's there.
No woman with any brains is going to want to get involved with you and these two other women and these two kids by two different women.
Are you kidding me?
If she has any choice, she's gonna go wig-tow, right?
Any choice whatsoever, she's not gonna get involved with you.
So there's no great woman out there for you.
Sorry, that's just the way it is.
You have to cut that possibility off in your mind and on your dick.
Sorry, you dipped your wick in crazy, you don't get to crawl to the island of Seine, right?
Right. This is where you are.
This, whether you like it or not, is where you're stuck.
This is the quality that you're stuck with.
Because you can't go to higher quality because you have this.
You have two children by two different moms.
And if you were a woman who had two children by two different dads, I'd be saying exactly the same thing.
No sane, high quality woman is going to want you.
Yes. Okay? And I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm just telling you the way that I see it.
So if you take that possibility off the table, that there's some Mensa-level Angelina Jolie out there just waiting to scoop you and your bastards up, I just need to tell you, that's not going to happen.
Now, that doesn't mean you have a terrible life, but you have to adjust your expectations to be realistic, right?
I don't have a ballet future, and you don't have a high-quality woman future.
Now, maybe the mother of your son, you know, you never yelled at her, you never abused her, you didn't neglect her, you seem to be getting along with her.
She sounds like a reasonably decent woman, right?
Yes. So, that's...
And she's the mother of your son.
Now... You're going to have problems with that boy because he was thrown into daycare when he was seven months old and he had inconsistent parenting before that and he was not breastfed.
Yes. So that's going to be a challenge.
He's still young so maybe if you pour a lot of resources into him now you can head off the worst of that.
Maybe you can fix a lot of it. I don't know.
I'm not a psychologist or anything like that.
I don't know if anyone can answer that but it sure as hell doesn't hurt to try, right?
Yes.
So why was there such a pause when I said, why not marry the mother of your child, of your son?
There's a few different things going on right now.
I am dating someone right now, and then there's the possibility if I do stay with my son's mom, Of her possibly leaving me again.
And then I don't want to end up 10 years down the line regretting a decision I made.
Or looking back and thinking, I should have done this or I should have done that.
The new woman you're dating?
How big are her kids? They're not huge.
Not at all. Alright.
So it's not that.
Just because we know where your weak spot is, right?
Or spots, I suppose. No, it's not that.
She's really smart and really beautiful and has a son that is my daughter's age.
That's not that great, I think.
Yeah, it's a whole thing, I know.
I mean, not biologically related?
Yes. I'm no expert, but I'm not entirely positive that's ideal.
I'm hearing you, Stefan.
And what's her ex like?
The man? According to her, he was pretty bad to her and neglectful and would like her locked up all the time.
Would like her locked up? What do you mean?
Just would expect her to sit there in the house and take the car.
Sorry, I thought you meant legally, not Sharia style.
Okay, I got it. I got it.
No, just keep her cooped up and he's not very involved in his child's life.
He sees them maybe every two or three months, once in a while.
He pays her child support.
And how long were they together before she had a child?
I don't know exactly.
Just roughly? Months, days, years?
Probably a couple years. So she knew what he was like when she decided to give him a child, right?
Yeah, and she left him.
So, I mean, there's a possibility of getting up and leaving.
And she left him because he was neglectful.
What did the mother of your son leave you for?
For being neglectful.
Right. That could always happen.
You know, and I'm just going to point this out, because there are so many good quality men in this world that women aren't giving their eggs to, that they keep rolling their eggs down to these assholes.
And it's frustrating, you know, knowing, as what I know about genetics and intelligence and personality traits and hereditary and all that kind of stuff.
The fact that these women just keep rolling their eggs towards these jerks is really frustrating because it absolutely takes a hammer blow to the very foundations of civilization.
And the fact that you're all out there procreating with no commitment.
See, you say you're a good father, right?
This is your goal is to be a good father, right?
Absolutely. So, you still have a ways to go, with all due respect.
And listen, I appreciate you sharing this story and all this kind of stuff, but here's the thing.
When I asked you, what about marrying the mother of your son, there was a long pause, and then you started talking about what you wanted, right?
Right. Why is that a bullshit answer?
I guess I was avoiding answering the question because I know what I should have done the whole time.
Whose needs are you not talking about?
At all? My children.
Your sons, in this case?
Yes. Right.
Do you get that now?
Yes. Ah, well, you know, there's this hot single mom I'm banging, so...
I don't know.
I don't want to regret those decisions in 10 years.
You know, me, me, I, I, penis, penis, cock head, right?
Right. What does your son need?
No, what does your dick want?
Of course he does.
Yeah. So doesn't that make things just a little simpler?
It really does. Because that's the price of parenthood, man.
It's not like you don't exist, but for a long time, you ain't even close to first in line.
I'm like the only 51-year-old guy.
Bye.
Doing flips into a ball pit.
At a trampoline place.
Yeah. Do I want to be there?
I really don't.
That makes your daughter happy.
Makes my daughter happy and that's the deal.
That's the deal. Yeah.
And that makes me happy.
I mean, it's not like, oh, I'm a martyr, and I'm selfless, and blah, blah, blah, or something like that.
It's just, that's the deal.
You become a parent, and your needs go to the back of the bus.
I mean, your selfish needs, like just the I mean me I stuff.
Your needs expand to include your children's happiness.
Now, if the mom of your son wants to make a go of it, and you guys are getting along and things are going well, you know, a lot of people who get divorced really regret it.
The majority of people who get divorced, sorry, the majority of people who are about to get divorced then stay together, five years later they say, man, I'm really glad I did.
Yeah. Because you're only thinking about, I might regret not being with this hot single mom with the absent ex or crazy ex or controlling ex or whatever.
In 10 years, I, I, I, I, me, me, I, I, I, right?
Well, I hate to put it this bluntly, but you fucked a lot of women, so fuck you.
It's not about you anymore.
It's about your kids.
You do what's right for your kids.
You do what's right by your kids.
Now that will make you happy in the long run.
What you're talking about now, the hot single mom and 10 years from now, that won't make you happy in the long run.
You know, it's one of these funny things about sacrifice.
If you do it for the right reasons and for the right values, it's not a sacrifice at all.
I am... Incredibly honored and blessed and privileged to have been able to spend nine and a half years with a wonderful child, for the most part, full-time.
I have written one book in nine and a half years.
I used to write more than two books a year sometimes.
I'm like 18 books short, right?
Yeah. But I don't feel like I've lost anything.
I've gained. I'm not going to be surrounded by Books on my deathbed.
I mean, I could be, but it'd be pretty sad, right?
So if you reorient yourself and you say, okay, I'm going to start making my decisions for the best interests of my child or children.
And start organizing your life along those lines.
What's best for my son?
What's best for my daughter? It simplifies everything.
And it is the best foundation that I know of to build your future happiness.
Because if you're selfish, when your kids are young, you know what's going to happen when you get older.
They're not raised with honor thy mother and thy father no matter what.
They're raised without that.
They're raised with not judge not lest ye be judged, but judge and prepare to be judged.
And you want to build that foundation for the second half of your life so that you have loving children who say, you kind of screwed up early, but you did good.
You made good later. And if you just keep following your pleasures, your life, your preferences, and say, well, I really want to avoid regret for myself in 10 years, it's like, okay, but who's paying the price for that?
Your children. And they did not choose to be born.
They sure as hell did not choose this environment.
They didn't choose you as a father.
And they didn't choose the mothers that you chose to have your children.
They are the beings without choice in this environment, Tyler.
And you need to start respecting and manifesting protection for them.
Security for them.
It's about them now.
It's not about you for a while.
A long while. I agree.
All right. Well, do let us know how it goes.
And I do want to thank everyone so much for calling in.
I hugely appreciate and respect the calls.
It is a tough thing to do to come in in a public forum and talk about personal things or deep thoughts you have or have not had for quite a while.
So I really, really appreciate that.
Please don't forget to check out theartoftheargument.com for a great book.
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You can, and I please ask you to.
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