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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:16:34
Friends Are No Substitute For Husbands
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Now, the next film to talk about is an indie film, though with Emily Blunt, who is a kind of doe-eyed movie star, who I guess was indie slumming it, and I think to good effect, and two other actresses, and she's got this annoying habit that some women have of having her sleeves go halfway up her hands and making her look like a retarded
This is sort of an annoying habit that women have, to look cutesy and all that.
But anyway, some women.
So in this movie, which is really well acted, and it was semi-improvised and so on, which always gives it a kind of immediacy and realism.
To be able to fake realism on screen is really quite a challenge.
One of the things that, you know, celebrity is associated with sociopathy in study after study.
And one of the reasons I think that's the case is to, like, you have to kind of not be sensitive to the presence of other people in order to be a really good actor.
Which is why really good actors tend to be nuts and all that.
So, I mean, if you and I have a camera halfway up our nose and fifty people around us and people holding mics and lighting setups and all that kind of stuff, then to be a good actor you have to pretend that no one's there, and no one's better at pretending that no one's there than a narcissist.
As Marlon Brando said, acting is an empty and useless profession, and Johnny Depp has been talking about that lately as well.
Hopefully that indicates some sort of growth on their part, but anyway.
So in this movie, A man is sent by his best friend, a girl, a woman, to go and stay at her father's cottage.
He goes there and her sister is staying there.
They have sex and it turns out that the sister, the woman who's staying there, wants to have a baby and basically pierces the condom that she provides so that it kind of looks like a lawn sprinkler.
And that's how she's gonna have her baby.
Also turns out that the original woman who sent him up there actually loves him.
So it's all these complications, right?
The woman who sends him loves him, her sister has sex with him, which makes it awkward, and then it turns out that she might be pregnant with his baby, and so on.
He gets really angry that she stole his sperm, and so on, right?
And then the movie ends.
Not with them in the bathroom on a pee stick trying to find out if the woman is pregnant, the sister is pregnant, and you don't find out whether she is or she isn't.
It's on Netflix and I think it's worth watching.
First of all, there is the verbally eloquent, incredibly empty cynicism of a lot of the Generation Y people.
I mean, my friends growing up were so incredibly verbally fluent and particularly funny with observations, with mockery, with jokes.
I mean, you know, people who think that I'm funny, man, you should have been around the people I grew up with.
Holy crap!
I couldn't even remotely keep up.
I mean, they were just literally bitingly funny, and really challenging to keep up.
They could riff, you know?
I mean, I sort of thought that they should have made more of an effort to utilize that and so on, but cynicism kills, right?
Cynicism is, the world will hurt me no matter what, so I will hurt the world first, and so on, right?
Which I think is a more useful definition than that annoying one by Oscar Wilde, a cynic, is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oh, that's clever!
It's a deepity!
What does it mean?
I don't know, but it sure is clever!
So, I thought that the verbal adroitness and the characterization of them... The verbal adroitness is really interesting, the verbal intelligence is really interesting, because it comes so often from emotional immaturity.
Language is so often a scar tissue that heals over the wound of a heart.
And so that is something that I think is tragically common.
And whenever you see people, you know, present company included, whenever you see people who have very strong verbal skills, look for the wounds in their hearts that the verbal skills have grown over to distract other people from.
And I mean, I obviously talked openly about the hurts in my childhood and youth.
And I hope that I have taken the hurts and scar tissue and put them to good, put them to the service of virtue.
But verbal skills arise out of an inability to have spontaneous emotional connection.
I mean, if you're an anthropologist, you can end up knowing a lot more about the local culture than the local culture even knows of itself.
Because you can't experience it, you have to describe it.
Because you can't experience what is actually happening in the world, you have to have language to describe it.
Poetry arises from a lack of emotional experience, which is why so many poets are ridiculously immature, like Percy Bysshe Shelley and so on.
For more on this, read Intellectuals.
That's a really, really great book.
Paul Johnson is the author, who also wrote another great book called Modern Times.
Anyway, I've talked about that before.
So we describe that which we cannot feel.
And so I had a conversation recently, I don't know if the guy's going to allow us to release it, but I was listening to Convo recently.
We're the real cynic.
You know, in the grand scheme of things, in the bigger picture, which is always The prequel to an elephant foot soul-crushing experience of what's next.
You know, we're all going to die.
What does it really matter?
And so on.
The sun's going to go out.
The universe is going to end.
Humanity is nothing more than a stain on the infinite carpet of the universe.
Blah, blah, blah.
Now, he was describing all of this as if he was describing the world rather than himself.
Life has no meaning, you know, to which I asked, okay, so if life is missing meaning, how would you know if it had meaning?
What would have to be added for it to have meaning?
And he couldn't answer that.
Kind of important.
If you say something's missing, then you should be able to say what needs to be added.
But I said it can't be that life lacks meaning because God doesn't tell us what to do, because then it wouldn't have meaning, it would have only obedience, right?
All it would have is Terrorized obedience.
That can't be meaning.
Otherwise the greatest meaning is to be unjustly imprisoned and told what to do 24 hours a day.
That would be to give your life meaning.
No, that would only be to give your life enforced obedience.
Which is of course what religious commandments and hell and all that do.
But he had a girlfriend of about a year and he was telling her in great detail about how life was meaningless and there was no value and no happiness in life and this and that and the other.
And she was crying and I asked him why he thought she was crying and he's all because she's finally accepting that there's no meaning and I said no and he tried three or four times to sort of figure out why the woman was crying and it was all a sort of abstract philosophical intellectual understanding and my daughter asked me what the show was about and she got it in about a tenth of a second
So I was saying, well, there was a man who was saying that nothing in life makes him happy and he was telling this to a girl he kissed.
And she said, nothing in life makes him happy?
Even her?
No wonder she was crying.
Yes, she was crying because when you say life is meaningless, you are saying to everyone in your life you are meaningless.
If life is everything, every subset of that must also be meaningless.
You can't have more meaning in the subset than in the superset and therefore...
If I say ten people in the woods are all lost, one person can't not be lost.
Because there's a subset of everyone is lost and therefore one person can't.
So if life is meaningless then everything included in your life and all the people in it are also meaningless to you and that's why she was crying.
But he couldn't understand that.
He had incredible verbal skills.
Probably still does.
Amazing verbal skills.
But verbal skills are inflamed to cover up for a lack of emotional.
connection and to distract people from your lack of emotional connection, to keep them off balance, to show your superiority, and to hide your vulnerability.
Philosophy is the tombstone over the dead heart.
For the most part.
We avoid the absolute statements.
And I like to think that I've resurrected my heart and also kept philosophy alive, which is why what we talk about here tends to be unlike other philosophy.
So in the movie the man who has these great verbal skills and later in the movie says he's tired of being dead and is so immature that when his bicycle breaks he throws it against the wall repeatedly and curses and screams at it and so on.
Yay!
He's going to be great with a baby, right?
But they have these cynical, fluent verbal skills and no emotional connections whatsoever.
And so what happens is The sister, the one who was up at the cottage already, who sperm-jacked, right, who stole the sperm, she might be pregnant, and her sister says, after a suitable amount of pouting, her sister says, you know, you can come and live with me, I have a spare room, and I will take the 3 a.m.
feedings, and I will be there for you, you're not alone, and blahdy blahdy blah, right?
And this is... Boy, you know, I don't mean to sound cynical after talking about it so long, but I gotta tell you that I think this is all quite mad.
This is all quite mad.
Because when you have a child, young lady, when you have a child, People aren't going to be there for you.
Trust me, I have a child.
And it certainly is true that my child requires a few more resources than your average impoverished village, but people are not going to be there for you.
This was like, what, 10 or 15 years ago?
15 years ago, probably, in France, right?
So, Rachel got pregnant, and she's like, I'm freaking out!
I'm pregnant, I'm freaking out!
And all her friends said, there's nothing to be scared of, nothing to be freaked out about.
Don't worry about it.
Because you are not alone in this.
We are all going to be there for you.
Don't sweat it.
You know, we're going to be there whenever you need us to take care of this baby.
We're going to come with you to the doctor.
We're going to come and help you.
We're going to be there.
We're going to be supportive of you.
You are not alone in this.
Blah de blah de blah.
And it all is a massive and immensely dangerous lie.
Look, if friends could replace husbands, the kids of single parents, who I assume have friends, wouldn't be so screwed up.
Almost universally.
Friends cannot replace husbands.
Right?
Friends cannot replace husbands.
Because they don't live with you and they're not committed to the child.
Right?
You get that, right?
We are biological beings, our own offspring, what we provide resources to, what we give all our stuff to, all our time and our energy.
Having a child, having a baby in particular, is literally a 24-hour job.
Literally, not figurative, literally a 24-hour job.
You don't know when they're going to wake up, you have to be there all the time, there's breastfeeding, there's comforting, there's playing, it is A 24 hour a day job.
And unless someone, a friend, is going to move in with you and put their entire life on hold, pretty much, except maybe their work.
If they're going to get up, go to work, come home and spend time with you and the baby and get up three or four times in the middle of the night with you, although that isn't going to work that well if You're breastfeeding and so on.
Unless your friend is willing to do that.
If your friends say, don't worry, we're going to be there for you every step of the way, they say, okay, when are you moving in?
Let's say your friend is half an hour away from your house and your baby gets up for the third time in three hours at three o'clock in the morning.
And you call your friend.
And you wake your friend up and you say, listen, I really need to... Remember that support you promised me?
My baby's up for the third time.
I need you to come over here.
I need you to get out of your warm bed.
I need you to get dressed, brush your teeth, get in your car, drive over here.
And they're going to be there in an hour, which means that the baby is probably back to sleep.
And then you're going to say, well, I need you to stay with me from four o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock in the morning.
I don't mind if you nap, but in case the baby gets up again, so I'm not so alone.
I mean, seriously!
Do you have friends like that who are willing to do this?
Maybe three or four or five or six or seven times a week?
They're gonna say, listen, I'm so sorry I got work in the morning.
I'm exhausted.
I can't come to your house in the middle of the night in case your baby wakes up again and you need some company.
I can't do it.
Which is not to say friends are no help.
They are!
But unless they're moving in, and are going to be there, moved in with you, for the next 20 years, or 18 years at least, unless your friends are willing to become your husband, to contribute financially, to contribute time, to contribute energy, to contribute resources, to put everything else on hold, to not date other people, and not, heaven forbid, get married themselves, or heaven forbid, even more, have children,
on their own.
They will not be there for you.
Don't be fooled.
Yeah, they're going to say all the nice hallmark card sentiments.
Oh, we're going to be there with you every step of the way.
You say, oh wow, every step of the way.
Well, that's fantastic.
How incredibly kind.
I guess we're going to move in together, right?
Because that's what it means to be with me every step of the way.
And you are going to perform all of the functions of a co-parent Basically, you're going to be my husband, but we're not going to have sex, and you are going to stay with me throughout the entire time that this child is growing up.
And you're going to get up in the night, and you're going to come with me to the doctors, and you're going to play with the kid for hours a day, and you are going to put everything else on your life, and hold on, no dating, right?
Because dating would be infidelity to you being there for me every step of the way, and no getting married, and no having kids of your own, because that would be like being married to me, but having a second family.
That would be totally wrong.
Don't fool yourself.
And don't be fooled by the dangerous pseudo-kindness of your friends.
Of course they're going to say the right thing.
They're not going to say, oh, you got pregnant and you have no husband.
Oh man, what a disaster.
What a disaster.
How bad for the kid?
Yeah, maybe once every two weeks you can drop him off for an hour or two.
Let's say you've got to go to the doctor, you don't want your kid to come, and if I'm available, if it's convenient for me, if I'm home, if I'm not busy, yes, I will be happy to have your kid stay with me for a couple of hours.
Not if they're babies because I don't really know what to do with babies, but when they get to be four or five and they can chat.
then yes you can drop your kid off for me you know no more really than twice a month just for an hour or two each time and that's you know that's not bad right?
That will be pretty much best case scenario the extent to which your friends are gonna be into your baby and this is why they're gonna say you know boy if you have a baby And you don't have a husband to help you raise that baby?
You're fucked.
You are screwed.
Because you're going to be doing it all alone.
You're going to be putting twice the resources with half the time.
Because, you know, someone's got to work, I assume, right?
So this fantasy that somehow you're going to stitch together a family out of two sisters and someone whose sperm was stolen, who himself confesses, he says to the woman who's in love with him, the girl who sent him up to the cottage, he says, as your friend I would advise against you having me as a boyfriend.
I am unemployed, I'm financially unstable, I'm emotionally a basket case, and somehow there's this fantasy
That the sociopath who stole the sperm, that the narcissist who had immediate boundary-less sex with the woman he met an hour or two before, and the other woman who's in love with the narcissist, that this somehow is going to stitch together a fine old family for this doomed baby.
I mean, dear God in heaven, What is wrong with getting married and having children?
I mean, that's the free market solution, right?
I mean, that is what happened when governments weren't involved in screwing and making babies.
When governments weren't involved, what developed was marriage.
And why did marriage develop?
Well, for very simple reasons.
That we are one of the slowest developing species on the planet Human children require enormous amounts of resources to achieve reasonable levels of independence.
Like at least 12 to 15 years, probably more.
I mean the human brain doesn't mature until 25 years, dear God!
We're like slow rinse elephants as far as that goes.
Just add water and then turn to stone waiting for the plant to grow.
So that's nuts!
The amount of resources human babies require, it's staggering.
I still am processing it.
It's unbelievable.
People say you have a baby to bring you closer to the mom.
It's ridiculous.
My wife and I are lucky to get 10 minutes of adult conversation a day until Isabella goes to bed.
There was a little bit more when she was younger, but now, whatever we're talking about, she wants to know what we're talking about, and that's perfectly fine and perfectly fair.
So then we have to downshift.
Like, I'm trying to up her language skills like we're plowing our way through Pride and Prejudice, you know, with a little bit of downshifting for her language skills.
But she wants to know everything that we're talking about, and there's a few times that we'll say, sorry, we can't right now, but for the most part, we then have to stop the conversation to downshift it to her, and then to explain it to her, and then by the time that's all done, I don't know what the hell we were talking about, right?
But you simply don't have a lot of time for adult-adult conversations when you have toddlers.
It doesn't happen.
It's staggering the amount of resources that are required to raise a healthy child.
So marriage was developed for two basic reasons.
One, resources from the man and two, monogamy from the woman.
That's all it comes down to.
That's what marriage is for.
That's what it's all about.
The woman wants to make sure that somebody is going to be responsible for bringing her resources when she has a baby, when she's pregnant or when she has babies.
Because remember, of course, in the past, with no birth control, women were pretty much perpetually pregnant.
Perpetually breastfeeding, disabled, as far as any kind of productive work went, for the most part.
And so what is marriage?
Well, marriage is the covenant which says, I will exchange monogamy in return for resources.
I will give you exclusive control over my reproductive organs, says the woman.
And the man says, I will give you mostly exclusive control over my muscles.
Both give up control of the body.
The woman with the uterus and the man with his productive labor, whatever, even if it's intellectual, it still requires muscles to type.
That's the basic deal.
That's what marriage is for.
And this is why for a man to have an affair generally was not considered as bad as a woman having an affair throughout history.
Because the man can still provide resources if he has an affair.
There's a problem with it because now his resources and intentions are split.
But he can still provide resources if he's rich and he has an affair.
And the idea that rich men can have affairs is not as bad as Poor men having affairs or women as a whole having affairs.
I mean, this is why.
Because a man who's got a couple of million dollars can have an affair and support two households and therefore is not fundamentally breaking the covenant of give me enough resources.
The woman doesn't need exclusive use of the man's body.
She needs enough use of the man's body to have resources to raise her kid.
Their kid, right?
So a man who's wealthy, who has affairs, is not fundamentally breaking the covenant.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's wrong and all that, there's vows, but from a sort of biological standpoint, it's not as bad.
Now, a woman who has an affair is fundamentally breaking the covenant, if she's fertile.
Because a woman who has an affair is giving up the exclusive control over her reproductive system that's the whole point of her getting married, the whole point of marriage from the female standpoint, or rather from the male standpoint.
Why he wants marriage is to make sure that he's not investing resources in somebody else's kid.
As Chris Rock says, men's lies and women's lies are different.
A man's lie is, yeah, I was at Stan's on Friday night.
A woman's lie is, sure, this is your baby.
So, I mean, that's what marriage is about.
The woman wants a guarantee of enough resources to raise her children without starving to death, and the man wants a guarantee that the babies are his.
Which is why, throughout history, up until quite recently, throughout history, up until, I think, the seventies, any child born in a marriage was considered the child of the husband.
No matter what.
I mean, he could come out green with polka dots.
He could be impregnated by space aliens.
He could come out with an afro to a white couple.
Doesn't matter.
You are the father if you are married to the woman, and that's the deal.
That's how paternity was solved before paternity tests.
If you're married to the woman and she has a baby, that is your baby.
Now, if you're not married to the woman and she has a baby, you have no claim.
Now, that changed in the 70s and the 80s where men could then have a legal claim to children Even though they weren't married to the mother.
But that was really the function of marriage.
To guarantee resources to the woman and to guarantee paternity to the man.
That's what it was all about.
It's fundamentally for kids.
For children.
Children and the need for resources and the need for paternity.
A woman always knows the kid is his, the man doesn't.
That's why there were chastity belts and so on.
And the fact that some women, I mean, a lot of women are driven by, at least unconsciously, by hypogamy, which is the desire to trade up men, right?
To get a man with more resources and so on.
You know the way that men sort of trade in older wives for younger women?
Well, women have this desire to trade in their current men for men with more resources.
And the best way to do this, as Simon Cowell is finding out these days, is you get pregnant with the richer man's baby and then you can ratchet yourself up to a higher class and more money and so on, right?
So that's what marriage is.
That's how it develops.
That's what it's for.
That's my kid.
Give me resources.
And that's why the traditional exchange is attractiveness for money.
As the song says, your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking.
That's the trade.
Beauty and fertility for money and resources, which is why men get more attractive as they age and women get less attractive as they age.
Anthony Quinn can have a baby when he's in his seventies, but a woman in her seventies can't, right?
This is why it's such a shame when women squander their sexual attractiveness on idiots.
I mean, boy oh boy.
Anyway, we'll get into that another time.
But that's what marriage is developed for.
Now we have paternity tests and so on so it's a little bit different but the fundamental mechanics remain the same.
We commit to each other for the raising of children.
And the reason that it's lifelong rather than... The reason why it's until death do us part rather than until our children are grown is because a woman hits menopause when Her labor and energies are more profitably sustained for the gene pool in taking care of grandchildren than attempting to coax another baby out of eggs that are 50 years old.
So you stay together for the long term so that you can take care of grandchildren.
And marriage is fundamentally, at least in the second half of life, pro-woman.
Because the woman has become much less valuable, the man has become much more valuable.
But monogamy, which is now slanted in favor of the woman, is what is considered to be the standard, right?
The man can go and have another family, right?
And then he has more of his genes to sire than simply taking care of his grandchildren.
A man who's had some success, who has some resources, can go and have another family when he's 50 or 45 or whenever his kids are grown.
But until death do us part is a way of making sure that the loss of value that the woman has, as far as the gene pool goes, is not abandoned by the man.
So it becomes very sort of pro-woman in the second half of life, which I think is kind of important to remember.
But that's what marriage is all about.
It's not that complicated.
But this idea that you can somehow stitch together these Franken-families It's pretty tragic.
I mean, it's pretty ridiculous.
And it really is tragic, the degree to which people have somehow believed or accepted this.
How sad!
This is a great possibility.
Now the woman can control her fertility with the pill.
We don't need any We don't need any traditional structures.
We've got hormones.
You know, I mean, it's crazy.
And this is why, of course, so much control historically was exercised over teenage sexuality.
I mean, prior to the welfare state, the parents had a direct financial interest in controlling female and male sexuality when they were teenagers.
Because if the teenager has a baby, who ends up raising it?
Well, parents, right?
And, of course, the problem is, as well, that this is something else that isn't generally talked about, but it's important.
And it's sort of embarrassing to have to talk about this stuff because it's so obvious, but it doesn't seem obvious to a lot of people, so I will.
I will!
So, ladies, when you have a baby, your market value in the dating arena plummets for anything other than casual sex.
Ladies, I repeat it again.
When you have a baby, your value in the dating pool plummets to negatives.
This is kind of important.
There's a scene in As Good As It Gets where Helen Hunt is trying to neck with some young kid and her baby wakes up and spits up and she tries to go back and kiss him and she's got baby spit up on her neck and, oh, it's a bit too much reality for me and all that, right?
I mean, I've never dated a woman who has kids.
I mean, that's messed up.
I remember listening to some black guy, I mean, the only reason it's important that he's black is it's such a big issue in the black community, basically saying, should I date a woman who has a kid or who has kids?
And he's like, well, I gotta tell you, no.
First of all, you can't have loud sex.
Some kid will come and find out what's going on and bloody blah.
Secondly, how involved do you get with the kids?
Do you get them birthday presents?
Are you responsible for that kind of stuff?
I mean, how does it work when you are dating a woman who's got three kids and their birthdays are coming up?
Do you take them out for parties?
You know, all that kind of stuff.
Well, that gets kind of complicated.
And she, of course, wants you to have this relationship with the kids, but you're like, well, I don't know.
I mean, you don't want to break the kids' hearts if it doesn't work out with the mom, and at the same time, you don't want to pretend like they don't exist, so it's complicated.
And he said, his words, not mine.
He said, also, what if there's some thug around who's the original dad who kind of resents you banging his ex-girlfriend and being around his kids and giving them presents?
I mean, who knows what the hell that lunatic's going to do?
So, you know, on the whole, no.
It's not a good idea to date.
Single moms, it's messy and it's complicated, and it's expensive, right?
I mean, if you want to start taking care of her kids, well, you know, and then if you have a kid with her, then you have one kid that's yours and, say, three kids that aren't.
I mean, is that going to give you some favoritism?
Is that going to create some family tension?
Yeah, it seems sort of inevitable, right?
Anytime you say no to the kids who aren't yours, you're going to be accused of, you know, you just like your kid because he's yours kind of thing.
So it's really kind of a mess to to date single moms.
And also, of course, if she's getting alimony from her ex, if she was married, then that's going to kind of interfere with you maybe getting married.
You getting married is going to cut that off for her in a lot of situations and so on.
So it's a, I mean, it's a complete mess.
And, you know, when you have Babies, or toddlers, or teenagers, or what have you, if you have kids, and you're a woman, guys will have sex with you, but they're pretty much not going to date you.
Like, I had a friend who was going through this many years ago.
I had a friend who was going through a really tough time in his marriage.
And his wife was... I went for a walk with his wife when she had a baby, a new baby, about six months old.
And she was like, oh, I'm just going to divorce him.
I'm going to go marry some nice doctor and lawyer or whatever, right?
And I said, Are you crazy?
You've got a baby!
No rich, successful, attractive lawyer is going to want to marry you or date you in any serious way when you have a baby!
What, are you going to go away for the weekend?
Are you going to go out for dinner and leak boob juice all over your top and then have to go and pump in the bathroom and then have to rush home because you've got to feed your kid?
That's not what dating is.
Why is it even relevant to say this?
It's like reminding people that the world is a sphere.
But it does need to be said.
You may get married, if you have kids, you may date, but these are just low self-esteem, ridiculous men.
A man who's confident, who's successful, who's a winner, who is mature, is going to have enough brains to recognize how complicated and expensive and unproductive biologically it's going to be to date a woman who's got kids.
Plus, if you're not around for the kid's first five years you will never be any authority.
You will never be able to tell that kid what to do.
What are they going to say?
You're not my dad!
You're not my dad!
Screw you, old white guy!
Right, so whether it's that way or something nicer, you cannot be the authority figure, any kind of authority figure in those kids' life.
You certainly can't be any kind of disciplinarian, for want of a better phrase.
You cannot be any kind of authority figure in those kids' lives if you weren't around for the first couple of years.
I don't mean consistently around and not in the last day of their fourth year.
And so what do you got?
I mean, you got a situation where you're going to be spending a lot of time with those kids but you have no authority over those kids.
And please understand, I'm a peaceful parenting... I'm just talking about what people generally understand.
Why would you do that?
I mean, you would do that because you're such a hopeless loser as a man that you figure this is the best you can do.
You know, in order to get sex you're willing to have crappy times in blended families Because that's the best you can do.
I mean, clearly, if you could do better, you would do better than date or marry some single mom and try and struggle with the raising of some other guy's kids and, oh man, I mean, it's just a mess.
And so this is why, another reason why, in the past, really until the rise of the welfare state, Society put a huge amount of resources into controlling the sexuality of teenagers.
Because massive resource drain on the parents, a real mess for the teenager's life.
Assuming she's breastfeeding, what's she going to do for a year or two?
Hang around the kid, breastfeed, try and take care of it, but no resources, so that has to come from the parents.
Which means the parents have fewer resources for grandchildren.
Which is, you know, the more responsible and better way to do it.
Better for the kids, for sure.
And so all of this stuff is important.
And of course, when the 15-year-old or 16-year-old or 17-year-old or 18-year-old has a baby, no man's gonna want to marry her.
Because it speaks to character, it speaks to self-discipline.
Teenage women who have babies are basically saying, I'm an idiot.
I have no capacity to defer gratification.
I have no capacity to think ahead.
And I dated some guy who wouldn't even marry me.
And I had sex with some guy who wouldn't do the right thing.
So I have terrible taste in men.
And I'm an idiot.
Let's get married!
It's a clear sign of a pitifully bad gene pool and a pitifully under-functioning brain.
I have sympathy, blah blah blah, like I get the girls who grew up without fathers.
I have sympathy for that, I really do.
But the reality remains the same.
And this is why to literally avoid catastrophic negatives to the gene pool and family relationships and so on, You had to put tight reins on female sexuality when kids were young, and male sexuality too, but everyone gets you can't really restrain male sexuality, so you focus on the women, right?
It's a Sandra Dee before-and-after shot, right?
Only in the 60s and afterwards could you have a movie like Grease, where, you know, the slut walk is the breakthrough, right?
Although even that, you have, what's her name, Rizzo?
I feel like a broken typewriter.
I think I skipped a period.
She's terrified she's pregnant.
And so what used to happen, of course, is the reins were put on female sexuality and then what would happen is if those reins didn't work and the woman got pregnant, girl got pregnant, then she'd be sent away.
She'd have the baby and the baby would be put up for adoption, which is fine.
They'd find some suitable couple, right?
They find some suitable couple who couldn't have kids or wanted more kids, and they would make sure that the couple was older, that they had resources, that the marriage was stable, that they were good parents, and they would then give that baby to those parents, and that baby would do fine!
Adopted babies have no worse outcomes than naturally conceived and born babies.
They're fine!
They don't know.
And even if they find out later, it's still not a problem.
Because, you know, it's their best chance to get into a stable family is to be adopted.
Because sure as hell isn't going to happen with a teenage pregnancy.
So this was, of course, in a sense, the free market.
In other words, when the mistakes... I mean, fundamentally, teenage pregnancy remains a mistake on the part of the parents, which is why it's not unfair that the parents pay for it, right?
Because you have failed to raise your daughter in such a way that she's not going to get pregnant.
It's really not that hard to not get pregnant, right?
I mean, just don't have sex, have non-vaginal sex, condom, pill, whatever, right?
It's not that complicated.
It's not brain surgery to pop a pill or slap a rubber on your John Thomas, right?
So, if the teenager gets pregnant, then It is pretty much the parents' fault for not raising that kid, and not instructing them, and not taking care of them, and not monitoring, and all that kind of stuff.
And so it's the parents' fault.
That's why the parents would usually be the ones that end up paying for it, right?
Through time and resources, raising the kid or whatever.
Which is why the parents would then have the decision to give the kid up for adoption.
And that's the way that the natural aggregation of responsibility and consequence helped to shuttle children from disastrous teenage single momdom to perfectly fine being adopted by a stable coupledom.
Much better for the kids.
You know, I mean, it's not my argument, but the argument is, I think it's a good argument, it's a true argument, it's a fair argument, that single moms are incredibly selfish.
Because they are choosing to have children Without a father, which means that they're choosing to harm their children for the sake of their own preferences to have a child.
You know, if you don't have a dad, don't have a child.
If you don't have a husband, don't have a child.
I mean, it's selfish, it's destructive.
It's harming the child.
Get mad at me all you want, but you cannot argue with the statistics.
I mean, you can, but you're just an idiot.
If you do, it's ridiculous.
You just have to look up the statistics.
And I've got whole presentations on them, and it's catastrophic.
No single worst predictor of a negative outcome for a child than being raised by a single mom.
No single worst predictor for the outcomes.
Worse than anything to do with class or race or gender or nationality.
I mean, it's the worst single factor.
So it's incredibly destructive for children.
You know, we get that moms who smoke like chimneys around kids are not doing them any favors.
It's pretty selfish, right?
Go outside and smoke if you really have to and quit.
But that's much less harmful to children than being a single mom, not having a father around.
I mean, it really, really harms children and it harms society because single mom kids are responsible for the majority of of crimes and destruction and dysfunction in society.
And the welfare state is fundamentally driven by, I mean, if you take, I mean, if marriage rates had remained the same now as they were in 1970, there'd be almost no need for a welfare state.
A welfare state is, right, the faceless alpha male of the state steps in and provides resources for men and women and the unborn because women can't keep their legs closed or put a condom on the man or pop a pill.
Because, right, that's really complicated, right?
I mean, the only reason we have a welfare state is because of the rise of single motherhood.
And now, of course, there's a massive voting bloc and a cultural bloc which supports it and so on.
And single motherhood is a curse on society.
And single fatherhood, too.
It's just that, you know, 98%, whatever, 90% single moms.
So, watching this movie, there's this mad fantasy that somehow you can stitch together this Franken-family from these monstrously self-involved and selfish people And this is not considered to be a bad thing.
It's not portrayed as a catastrophe or a tragedy.
You know, because all you ever hear about is sort of the noble blended families and the single motherhood and all this kind of stuff.
You know, like, so you've got these three people who we presume, I don't know, maybe two of them are going to have sex, I don't know, it's hard to say which two or whatever, but My God!
I mean, what's going to happen?
One of them starts dating the other person.
What are they going to do?
As soon as one of the three starts dating, they're going to put a disproportionate burden on the other two.
Because they're not going to be available for child care nearly as much anymore.
So let's say the sperm jacker starts dating.
Well, she's going to be unavailable for a while.
At least a couple of nights a week.
Probably, for child care.
Going to put a disproportionate burden on the others.
They're probably going to resent it.
And let's say that she then wants to have the guy move in.
I mean, what if they don't like him?
What if he doesn't fit?
Whatever, right?
I mean, it's just such a ridiculous mess.
And, I mean, my God, STDs!
I mean, do you know that in the 1960s there were really only two STDs that were of any concern?
And now there's over 20 of them that are significant problems.
Like one in four Americans has an STD.
I think it's even teenagers.
And like 8,000 new STDs every day in the United States.
Marriage solves the problem of STDs, right?
That's kind of important.
These are significant problems.
I mean, a lot of this stuff is penicillin-resistant.
I think Eddie Murphy said about herpes, just luggage stays with you forever.
I've never had one, but I hear they're bad.
Right?
So, I mean, this is just important stuff, again, to point out that these problems were all designed to be solved by the institution of marriage.
Now, yes, the government shouldn't have that much to do with marriage and so on, but unfortunately the government has a massive amount to do with sex reproduction and all that, right?
You know, as Trudeau famously said, the government has no places in the bedrooms of the nation.
Fantastic!
Then, don't subsidize single parenthood, don't punish marriage, don't reward, you know, don't tax and subsidize various arrangements of marriage.
And if women get pregnant, then the problems accrue to the family.
Right?
And that way, parents are willing to have fights about sexuality with their kids.
Right now, with the welfare state, it's like, well, you know, whatever, right?
But, of course, if the government... I mean, people think that the government involvement in marriage has something to do with licenses, or has something to do with whether there's gay marriage.
I mean, that's nonsense.
I mean, those are tiny, tiny, tiny aspects of the degree to which the government has involvement in marriage.
I mean, the fundamental government involvement in marriage is, you know, public schools and the welfare state.
I mean, yes, there are tax aspects and this and that and the other.
Oh, and alimony.
And no-fault divorce.
And child support.
These are ways in which governments have massive involvement in marriage.
Until quite recently, there were only two reasons that were valid to get divorced.
Only two reasons were valid to get divorced.
Number one, cruelty.
Mostly physical abuse.
So if your husband generally, we're still processing the fact that the majority of Victims of domestic violence are men, just as the majority of rape victims in America are men, because of prisons.
But generally it was, if your husband was beating you, you could get a divorce.
That was sort of number one.
And number two was adultery.
So if you were being If your husband or wife always cheats on you, you get a divorce.
Sorry.
I don't need to explain to you what adultery is.
My apologies.
I just was trying to think of the next point and I stalled my tongue.
And then no-fault divorce came in.
And no-fault divorce combined with alimony is a ridiculous incentive to get divorced.
If you're right, the majority of divorces between 60 and 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women and the number one reason for divorce is cited is dissatisfaction.
You know, I'm just not that happy with my marriage.
So it's over.
Now in the past you could of course not live together.
I mean, it meant you couldn't get remarried.
You could just not live together.
And nobody could force you to live together, but you didn't get alimony or child support if you just happened to move to a different place, right?
Alimony is a particularly ridiculous aspect of status laws regarding marriage.
Because alimony is exactly the same as continuing to get paid after you voluntarily quit a job because you don't like it in the moment.
So, to take the typical example, if you're a wife and you get married, then you have a job called being a wife.
And just as my job as a philosopher is to provide value to you, the listeners, my job as a wife will be to provide value to my husband.
Whatever that is.
Whether it's bringing money in by working, whether it's taking care of the house, raising his kids, whatever it is going to be.
Sex is not a value because sex is mutually pleasurable.
I mean, it's a value, it's just not something that only a woman brings, right?
So your job as a wife is to make your husband happy, and your job as a wife is to choose a man who's going to make you happy.
So you have this job called being a wife.
Now, if you quit a job, one of the first things that happens is you don't get a paycheck anymore.
Hello!
How can this be complicated?
If you have a job, called being a wife, and you quit your job, then why do you still get a paycheck?
It makes no sense to me!
Makes no sense to me!
I say, ah, well, the woman, she deferred her education and her earnings to be married.
Yes, and she got paid for that.
So if she's with a guy who makes $100,000 a year, and basically he pays for everything, then she's getting at least $50,000 a year worth of value for being a wife.
That's her paycheck for being a wife.
And given that women control like 80% of purchases, she basically has control over $80,000 a year.
I mean, forget taxes, his take-home, whatever it is, right?
So she gets control of $80,000 a year.
And that's her job.
Now, if she quits her job and says, I don't want to be married to this guy anymore, fine, she can do that.
You shouldn't have to stay married if you don't want to stay married.
But I don't understand at all the logic of, I'm quitting my job called being a wife, so now he has to pay me as if I was still his wife.
Right?
I mean, if I quit, it's like me quitting being a waiter And then showing up for the next 10 years demanding that people tip me anyway.
Even though I'm not bringing them food anymore.
In fact, I just mail the tips to me at home.
There's a little sign there saying, I used to be a waiter here 8 years ago.
Mail your tips to me at this address.
I like 15%.
People would look at that and say, well that's ridiculous.
You're not bringing us food.
You're not telling us what the specials are.
You're not mouth-wateringly describing a profiterole for us to eat, as I used to do when I was a waiter at a high-end restaurant.
You quit your job.
Now, what if your husband leaves you?
Well, that's not you quitting your job, that's you getting fired.
Right?
It's you getting fired.
And if you get fired, well, I don't see how you continue to get a paycheck anyway.
Let's say I'm a shitty waiter.
Drop half the food, spill hot coffee on the customers, go out for smoke breaks in the rush hour.
I get fired.
I mean, how much more ridiculous is it for me to post a sign in the restaurant saying, I got fired from this job.
Oh, must be 11 years ago now.
Because I was a crappy waiter.
I stole.
I cheated.
Please send your tips to this address.
I like 15%.
People would look at that and say, what?
If you quit, you certainly shouldn't get a paycheck.
If you get fired, you certainly, certainly shouldn't get a paycheck.
So if you have no false divorce and alimony well then of course what we need to do is make that a rule and say that anybody who quits a job or gets fired should still get a paycheck.
Let's just make that a rule because that's obviously right for marriage, right?
If you quit marriage or get fired from your marriage then you should still get the money even though you're providing none of the services you're not providing value to your spouse, you live in some other place.
So even though I'm not being a waiter, even a bad one, even though I'm not being a bank teller, you know, if I quit, I still get fined.
We all know what would happen, right?
If you quit your job and you still get your paycheck, how many people are going to go to work?
Well, this is exactly why nobody's getting married anymore.
And this is why the divorce rate went up so high.
Hey, wait a minute, I can quit my job.
I don't have to provide a reason and I still get A paycheck?
Woohoo!
I'm down with that!
Because I don't like my husband this week.
That's why divorces went up 300% in the 1970s.
This is why marriage is collapsing throughout the West.
The welfare state fundamentally changes reproductive strategies.
Rather than being very selective about who you have to pick because there's no backup other than moving in with your parents if you can.
The welfare state allows women to shallow out what they want, basically turn into guys.
This is why the requirements of male beauty have gone up so high these days.
This is why the six-pack has emerged, why muscles have emerged, why the need for hair and the chiseled chin and blue piercing eyes and why all this has emerged.
Because women get resources from the state And therefore they don't need to choose quality men.
They can only choose pretty players.
Which they primarily choose so that their girlfriends will go, ooh, he's cute and funny.
So it shallows out women's preference for quality men.
Because women don't want quality men anymore, men spend less energy and time developing their qualities.
Which is why you've got, one of the reasons why you get this whole failure to launch generation, why these men on strike, as the woman who wrote the book recently, I can't remember her name, it's a worthwhile book, you get it on Kindle, it's worth reading.
Men are on strike, this is why you have MGTOW, it's why you have men going their own way and all this kind of stuff.
Why would a man want to develop quality, which he can develop, right?
How hard he's going to work, how many resources he's going to gather, his emotional maturity, these things are under your control.
How good-looking you are is to a large degree not under your control.
And so when the welfare state and the public schools, there's not a massive size, public schools are daycare, right?
Daycare from the ages of 4 or 5 to 17 or 18.
It's ridiculously terrible.
Because every time the state provides resources to women, women have less need or desire To choose quality men, because they get the resources elsewhere.
Right?
Having the state subsidize child raising for women is like having the state subsidize sex activity for men.
State sends over a... and you don't even know it, right?
It's not a prostitute like a prostitute, but the state will pay some woman to seduce you in a bar twice a week.
What's that gonna do?
To your capacity to develop meaningful adult relationships when your sexual needs are met by the state.
Well, we all know what that would do to the quality and maturity of men.
And that is what happens when the faceless alpha male of the state strips money by force from men and women who are responsible and gives it to men and women who are irresponsible.
Fundamentally changes
So, I mean, in the 70s and 80s, rather than magazines aimed at girls which taught them, you know, how to be good homemakers or be career women if that's what they wanted, and, you know, here's some nice boys in a suit and so on, what happened was the general zeitgeist changed, so that now, Teen Tiger Beat and all these kinds of magazines, they focus on sexuality enormously.
And they have an endless parade of, you know, baby-faced pretty boys, right?
Like the Justin Bieber's and the NSYNC's and the New Directions and all this kind of stuff.
Oh yeah, I go to malls.
You got a problem with that?
Right, that's really what happens is that girls then are, you know, cute and funny and fluffy.
Becomes the deal no matter how dysfunctional the person is, right?
And that's pretty tragic.
Because then they're trained not to look for men, when they get older, who have the necessary resources to support a family.
And maybe that guy, and he probably is not, the pretty boy.
But somebody with some, you know, not the pretty boy's kind, but somebody who has some real substance.
Somebody who has some earning potential.
Somebody who's mature.
Somebody who is caring.
Stable.
Stable.
Not a player.
But women can afford to have sex with players and to be attracted to players because the faceless alpha male state is going to provide enough resources for them to get by.
Now, will they be rich?
No.
It doesn't matter, fundamentally.
The difference between 100,000 and 120,000 is nowhere near the difference between 0 and 20,000 a year.
And people on welfare, again, this is off the top of my head and I read this a while back, but including all benefits and subsidies and so on, they get like $50,000, $60,000 a year. .
And I don't think that's even counting public school, which adds another $10,000-$15,000, right?
$60,000-$70,000 plus.
Well that's enough, that's fine.
$60,000, $70,000 plus.
Well, that's enough.
That's fine.
But that will do.
I mean, that's richer than just about anybody in history, and it's richer than 98% of the world's population.
No, maybe not 98%, but richer than 70% of the world's population, probably 80%.
So they're doing well.
And so women can focus on the pretty boys, and this is where the metrosexual comes from, right?
I mean, this is where the men's health magazine comes from.
It's an old comedian joke.
I don't remember who said it, but some comedian was saying, men's magazines of the past, what was it?
How to connect your stereo.
A couple of gay guys in suits.
And an article on how chicks really dig love handles.
Nobody got hurt!
Right?
It's not like women's magazines, in which apparently you have to liposuction your eyeballs in order to give men mind-blowing orgasms in bed.
Government's involvement in marriage has fundamentally mutated marriage or child raising or child rearing and the sexual selection.
What is it you always hear from women?
Why do nice guys get stuck in the friend zone?
Because women say, I just don't feel that way about you.
There's no chemistry.
I don't feel the sizzle.
I don't feel that tingle.
I don't, right?
Well, what is that?
That's lust.
There's nothing wrong with lust.
But it's not something that you make central to your decisions about sexuality.
I mean sugar is nice too, but you don't make that central to your diet.
And so women can afford to indulge in, I want the chemistry.
What am I supposed to do if I'm just not attracted to the man?
Well, first of all, look at your history of what it means to be attracted.
Have you simply been exposed to unrealistic expectations?
I mean, this is like porn addicts saying, well, I'm just not attracted to a real woman with real breasts and whatever, right?
The natural cellulite of the female flesh that's not stick-thin Angelina Jolie style.
When I saw a woman, a teenager, 17 years old, a dancer, she had cellulite.
It's okay.
It's the way the body is for a lot of women.
You say, well, I'm just not attracted.
You know, I watch porn six hours a week, but I just don't find myself attracted to regular women.
Maybe the problem is the porn, right?
And if, as girls, you grew up on a steady diet of six-pack boy band guys, With airbrush and no pimples and perfect hair, right?
Then maybe your level or response to what is attractive is a little off kilter.
I'm just saying maybe.
But women couldn't afford sizzle when they needed a man who was actually responsible.
Sizzle is just lust.
And lust is not a basis for a lifelong relationship.
Of course not.
So women who say, well, you know, I just don't feel that way about you.
Why are women attracted to the bad boys?
Because lust, right?
Because in a time of combat, in a time of war, women would be more attracted to sociopaths because then they would be more likely to have children.
Not that it's genetic, but they would be more likely to have children who would be raised by the sociopath to be more brutal and thus, quote, win in a time of conflict.
When resources are short, brutality tends to win.
When resources are plentiful, negotiation and win-win tends to win.
Guys with a lot of money generally tend to date pretty women.
Because they can afford them.
And so when women get a lot of money from the state, a lot of resources from the state, you know, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year in resources, then they can afford to focus on pretty men, on unstable men, right?
Because they don't suffer the consequences of their own bad choices.
Their children do, and more responsible taxpayers do.
And so the state has fundamentally reshaped Romance, sexual relationships, attraction.
Through the forced redistribution of resources from the responsible to the irresponsible, right?
That which you tax diminishes, that which you subsidize increases.
Lust is subsidized, lust increases becomes a central aspect of life.
I mean, even Seventeen magazine gets into trouble regularly by talking about, you know, how to masturbate, what your clitoris is for.
I mean, there's sex, sex, sex, sex, sex all the time.
I mean, Cosmo and other... I mean, have... I mean, to me, shocking content!
You know, graphic detail of what to do sexually to make a man climax in ways that make him, you know, squirt crude oil out of his ears, I don't know.
All that kind of stuff.
I mean, it's shocking, constant sexual content.
Now, why is there a shocking constant sexual content?
I mean, society's become like, you know, if you go down to Vegas, there's just like porn everywhere, you know, and hookers everywhere, and it's just this madcap sexual... It's like being constantly catapulted with sex hormones all the time.
But society's become like that.
We've become sex-obsessed as a society, fundamentally because sex has been divorced from the economic realities of procreation and child raising.
So sex can be indulged in and of itself in the same way that like food has been largely divorced from that which you need to survive and so everybody eats crap and gets fat.
Because the state so heavily subsidizes sexuality and its effect which is babies and STDs which you know I would love to be you know in a free market There would be insurance policies that would not cover STDs, you know, which responsible married people would take and would cover STDs, right?
You'd pay a hell of a lot more.
There would even be insurance against pregnancy.
At least I would think somebody would offer that.
It would make good sense.
And, you know, it would be we will pay the cost of The health costs of having the baby, and we will also pay to have the baby adopted, and all that, right?
Or if you want to keep it, then whatever, premiums are ridiculous.
But sexuality has been heavily subsidized, which means we've become a hyper-sexualized society.
Where sexual attraction has, like shockingly, it would be incomprehensible that sexual attraction would be the basis of a relationship.
In the same way, it would be like saying that which tastes the best to you in the moment should be the entire basis of your approach to eating.
That which doesn't ever make you feel uncomfortable should be the entire basis of your approach to exercise.
It should never make you sweat.
It should always be more comfortable to exercise than it is to sit on the couch.
If I were to put those things forward, that would be incomprehensible to people.
That would be ridiculous.
It would be like a joke diet book.
Whatever tastes best for you at the moment should be the entire basis of your dietary plan.
Ooh, me like chocolate and Skittles, right?
Exercise should never be uncomfortable, should never make you feel uncomfortable, should never be unpleasant in any way, shape or form.
I mean, that would be ridiculous, right?
But making sexuality the basis of your relationships is as insane as making sugar the basis of your diet.
Nothing wrong with sugar in your diet.
Nothing wrong with sexuality in your relationships.
Sugar tastes wonderful in your diet.
And sexuality is wonderful in your relationships.
But it cannot be the foundation.
Healthy sexuality, positive loving, great sexuality is an effect of love.
It is not the cause of a relationship, for heaven's sakes, right?
That these things need to be said.
But I mean, this is how much foundational elements of human identity are reshaped in the carved bloody channels of state coercion.
I mean even down to our erections and our female arousal mechanisms are fundamentally shaped by the bloody tidal shifting of resources at the point of a gun and debt and currency manipulation that is statism.
Statism and the violence of its laws, of its rules, of its regulations, of its subsidies, of its bans, of its prescriptions.
Statism is like the complicated vessel that we all conform to in our very deepest selves.
And statism fundamentally alters things like culture, like sexual arousal, Like romance.
Like child raising.
And so the idea that it's around gay marriage that we have to sort of focus on how the state does things is madness.
Gay marriage is like the very least of the aspect in which the state is fundamentally reshaped in a very tragic way.
What it means to be in love, to have children, to have a relationship.
It's all Fundamentally changed based on the state.
So if you watch this film, My Sister's Sister, I guess it's like the status drinking game.
One of the ways that the status drinking game would work is you take a drink every time a character makes a decision that would be impossible or at least highly unlikely without the state.
So at the beginning The man says, I decided not to take this job in such and such a location, right?
Because I just wasn't quite ready for it, and this and that and the other.
And later in the film, he basically says he's unemployed, and he's in his early thirties, he's unemployed, and he seems to, it's been a year since his brother died, which was something that happened before the movie, so we assume he's probably been unemployed for a year or more, right?
It doesn't really happen without the state, without unemployment benefits, without welfare, without whatever subsidies he's getting to stay alive.
Right?
Not gonna happen.
The woman decides to steal the man's sperm and have a baby.
Right?
Doesn't really happen in a free society because she doesn't have the resources to do that.
He can only do that because of the state.
So in the end when they're all sitting there trying to figure out if the woman's pregnant or not with the guy's stolen sperm, it's only possible because the government is going to be providing health care and daycare and school and welfare and free roads and subsidized housing.
This is all only possible.
Now the government Water is nowhere mentioned in the film.
The power of the state is nowhere mentioned in the film.
But the film is nothing but the power of the state.
Like water is really not mentioned much, if at all, in Finding Nemo.
But water is almost in every single frame.
It's everywhere.
That's why the film is what the film is.
It's like in The Sopranos.
The government is rarely mentioned in The Sopranos.
I didn't watch too many of them, but I watched a few.
The government is not really mentioned in The Sopranos, but everything that Tony Soprano and company do is based upon the state.
The state has made prostitution illegal, and drugs illegal, and gambling illegal, and all that.
And therefore, these are all the activities.
So you understand, even though the government is rarely mentioned, the government is in every frame.
The government is the entire environment that makes the story possible.
Now, in something like The Wire, the government is quite often mentioned, but the whole environment is statism, and the war on drugs and all that, right?
So, I'm sort of inviting you to look at the art that is out there, and say, how would this look?
without the government.
How many of these people's choices are created, conditioned, enabled by the power of the state?
And I can almost guarantee you that just about everything you see that is not fictional and animal-based, well, not fictional, sorry, my sister's sister is fictional, But it's not like an animal kids movie.
Once you get animals, you usually don't have a government, right?
No government in Finding Nemo.
Which is why he succeeds.
If it was a government program, he'd get as lost as his son.
But when you look at shows, TV shows, movies, try and figure out, it's an interesting mental exercise, try and figure out how many choices the characters make are conditioned by the power of the state.
And then you can go to the next level, the 25th level, the super paladin level, and you can look at the people around you, people in your life, family members, friends, colleagues, lovers, and try and figure out How many of those people's decisions are based on the power of the state?
Whether they know it or not, whether it's acknowledged or not, but to what degree have they adapted themselves to a system of near-universal state power?
Maybe even unconsciously, and to what degree have their entire personalities been shaped by statism?
I think, by the way, it's very hard to have and sustain without the state.
So if their personalities, if they've been raised by an instinct of motherhood, then that's one way in which their personality has been fundamentally affected by the state.
You can think of many, many others.
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These thoughts require calories and your cashola.
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