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Feb. 8, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:26:11

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	A wonderful Saturday and enjoying yourselves and I guess if you're north of the 48th enjoying the chilly weather and all of that stuff that is occurring up here it's a mind-bogglingly cold day today let me tell you that my friends there is no doubt about the chilliness of the atmosphere And I'm going to talk about Jordan Peterson today and going to take your questions.
	And I do have a complicated relationship with Jordan Peterson, which, you know, seems only fair because, well, it also seems that Jordan Peterson himself has a difficult relationship with Jordan Peterson.
	So that's, I think, entirely fine.
	I will be taking your Comments and questions soon on YouTube, and you can also find me at freedomain.stream.com.
	Find me there as well.
	Everything's coming through, I assume.
	Steph, go on Majority Report.
	Is that Sam Seder's show? I did a debate with him years ago.
	Stefan, you're downplaying the virus.
	Really? Okay.
	I think not, but...
	Oh, and Jay Dyer.
	A number of people have requested that I have a debate with Jay Dyer, who has ripped me several new ones in his mind, I suppose.
	And we're going to arrange and get that sorted out.
	But let's talk about Jordan Peterson.
	And let me just double-check.
	I was tweaking and twerking on the new technology.
	How are the...
	Yeah, the video is good.
	Audio is good.
	Everything's coming through all right?
	Good. All right. So, with regards to Jordan Peterson, for those of you who don't know, let me just scooch over here a little bit, and we're going to talk about what's been going on with him.
	This is a message, a video message, I suppose, video message series from his daughter, And it's really been something.
	And let's have a chat about it.
	So, Michaela Peterson on her father's condition.
	This is from the National Post. Jordan Peterson's daughter gives an update on her father who is currently recovering from near death in an undisclosed location in Russia.
	Never quite agreed with her wardrobe choices, but, you know, that's not, I guess, super essential.
	And, yeah, sorry, there's a little bit of layover here from the social media shares in a transcript given to the National Post.
	So she talks about her father, of course, Dr.
	Jordan Peterson, who has been on my show a couple of times and, of course, has received worldwide fame, adulation, hatred, all of the stuff that happens when you step into the general...
	Amphitheater of lion taming, known as the public domain.
	And she says, Hi, everyone.
	It's been months since we've given an update on Jordan and my family's health, and it's time for one, so here it goes.
	The last year has been absolute hell for the Petersons.
	Dad was put on a low dose of benzodiazepine a few years ago for anxiety, following an extremely severe autoimmune reaction to food.
	Now, I don't think she's a doctor.
	I'm no doctor. I ain't no psychiatrist.
	I ain't no doctor with degree.
	Benzodiazepines, as far as I understand it, are medications, very strong, very powerful, highly addictive.
	It's supposed to be used in very small doses, like what, half a gram or something like that.
	And it's supposed to be used very, very short term.
	Like maybe if you have a huge anxiety flying, you can take one a day when you have to fly or something like that.
	So that's sort of my understanding.
	Highly addictive, highly dangerous stuff and can really mess with your Brain can really mess with your system.
	Of course, Jordan Peterson, I assume, would know all of this.
	He is, of course, trained not as a psychiatrist but as a psychologist, but that is the reality.
	I don't know what a severe autoimmune reaction to food is.
	I have no idea what that is.
	We'll sort of get into that a little bit later.
	Oh, nice to see so many people joining.
	Welcome. So, Michael says, we weren't aware that he was developing a physical dependence on the drug until last April when my mom was diagnosed with...
	Terrible cancer and the dose of the medication increased.
	Now, I mean, oh gosh, massive sympathies for the Petersons for this cancer.
	The mom was diagnosed and it was not looking good.
	I believe she's in remission at the moment.
	But it's interesting the language that's used here.
	And the dose of the medication increased.
	No, no, no, no. Come on. You need to be responsible in your language with all due respect to the suffering that your family has gone through.
	It's not that the dose of the medication increased like the sky got cloudy.
	This is a specific choice made by your father, I would assume in consultation with his doctor or his psychiatrist, or I assume he would talk about that with the family, and this is with the knowledge of the addictive and messy properties of benzos.
	It became apparent, she says, that he was experiencing a paradoxical reaction to the medication, meaning the benzos did the opposite of what they're supposed to do.
	These reactions are rare but not unheard of.
	The worst symptom for Dad was akathisia.
	It's from the Greek word meaning sitting, and it's the opposite of sitting.
	It's this crazy restlessness.
	Akathisia is an absolutely god-awful condition where the person feels an incredible, irresistible restlessness and an inability to sit still.
	It was so severe, he was suicidal.
	I mean, isn't that just a mind-bogglingly awful situation on just about every conceivable level?
	My gosh. To take a drug that is supposed to help you with anxiety, that ends up with you feeling this tortured, ants-under-the-skin, delirious tremens type of restlessness to the point of suicidality.
	Oh, man. That is...
	Well, I had the author of Mad in America on the show a couple years ago, and it's a really, really good book.
	Whitaker is his name. It's a really, really good book to read.
	And the basic argument, I'm paraphrasing obviously, but the basic argument goes something like this.
	Well, if you have an inoculation for smallpox, you would expect the prevalence of smallpox to decline over time.
	You would. If you have an antibiotic that cures strep throat, you would expect The suffering of strep throat to go down over time.
	That's sort of one of the ways that you test for the efficacy of a particular medicine, is you look for the prevalence of that which it is designed to treat.
	And the argument is something like, since the introduction of these psychotropics, of psych meds, of, well, you know the list as well as I do, right?
	All of the Prozacs and all of that.
	Since the introduction of this, the prevalence of mental health issues...
	It has skyrocketed. So that's not good.
	And to some degree, although there were some scientific advancements at the time, to some degree the focus on psych meds came about as a result of an intense humiliation about the field of psychiatry.
	And that humiliation was very, very powerful.
	The humiliation was that I think it was a reporter who decided to test whether The psychological evaluations were kind of valid.
	The whole psych process was kind of valid.
	And this is off the top of my head, but it went something like this.
	He went to a psychiatrist's office and said, I hear the word bump or thud or both, and that's all he said.
	And then he ended up being admitted, and then he dropped all of that, and he said, I feel perfectly normal, I feel perfectly healthy, but they wouldn't let him out.
	Like, it took quite a big effort for him to get out.
	And that was very humiliating for the psychiatrists, right?
	Because that's not good.
	And then what happened was one of the psychiatrists who'd been bamboozled by this said, hey man, you can send anyone you in.
	You can send people in and I'll find them no problem.
	You just send people in who are faking this and I'll find them no problem.
	And then the psychiatrist...
	He said, aha, it was this guy, this woman, this guy, this woman, this guy, a whole list of people he said were faking, and it turns out that no one had sent anyone to him, and that actually made things, well, worse.
	And so, you know, psychiatry was in a grave danger of kind of being laughed out of the medical establishment for reasons that we can get into another time.
	Just look at the multiplication of the number of pages in the DSM from one to, what is it, five now?
	And they just make up a bunch of symptoms, make up a bunch of ailments, and then make up this supposed brain imbalance and so on.
	And that's the reality.
	It's a very subjective voodoo-like field in many ways, and that was a big problem situation.
	So they started saying, okay, there's a brain imbalance.
	We're going to be real doctors. We're going to give people all of these meds to make them better.
	And this is another significant...
	I would say this is another significant crisis.
	I don't know if he got these drugs from a psychiatrist or from a...
	I think doctors can prescribe them as well, obviously, right?
	So this is...
	Well, it's producing the opposite of what is intended, which is not uncommon.
	Quite tragically, not uncommon.
	So... This is really, really tough.
	I'm going to just see if I can get this a little bit better.
	No? Okay.
	Give me just a sec here.
	I'm going to just go, and unfortunately there's a real overlay, and I can't get rid of the text here.
	So I will just go elsewhere to get the text.
	All right. You get to see me.
	This is the joy of life.
	The joy of life, baby life.
	Okay. So, let me turn off the...
	here. And I want to make sure I get the right article.
	Okay. So, she goes on to say...
	For the last six months, he's been in horrible, unbearable discomfort from this drug, made worse when trying to remove it because of the physical dependence.
	We took him to several hospitals in North America where he experienced multiple cases of misdiagnosis and the addition of more medications to cover the response he was experiencing from the benzodiazepines.
	He nearly died several times.
	He nearly died several times.
	And this is what is called a cure, my friends.
	This is what is called a cure.
	A misdiagnosis.
	North America. Now, I don't know.
	North America, you know, three countries, right?
	Canada, U.S., and Mexico. So I don't know where exactly this was occurring.
	But it was occurring.
	Actually, you know what? I can...
	Okay. In early January, my dad...
	Let's just see here. In early January, my dad, sorry, my husband, my daughter, and I flew to Russia, she says.
	To make matters worse, he was diagnosed with a fever and pneumonia in both lungs upon arrival.
	He was put into an induced coma for eight days and had the most horrific withdrawal I've ever read or heard about.
	He almost died from what the medical system did to him in the West.
	The doctors here aren't influenced by the pharmaceutical companies, don't believe in treating symptoms caused by medications by adding in more medications, and have the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines.
	That's a big deal, man.
	There's a whole amount of stuff that is packed in here.
	So I don't know what, sorry, North America, I don't know if it's America where they paid privately.
	I don't know if they went to Mexico.
	I don't know if it's the Canadian system, which I've had a massive amount of problems with living in Canada.
	I had to rush to the United States to get diagnosed for cancer after I was undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, counter-diagnosed in Canada for over a year.
	And yeah, it's bad, bad stuff.
	So she goes on to say, so finally dad is on the mend.
	His sense of humor is back.
	He's smiling again for the first time in months.
	But he has a long way to go to recover fully.
	He spent four weeks in the ICU, intensive care unit, of course.
	He has neurological damage from the benzodiazepines, which is hopefully temporary.
	He's still taking anti-seizure medication and he can't type or walk steadily yet.
	Still, this is a vast and rapid improvement.
	Last week he couldn't sit up without help.
	The week before that he couldn't lift an arm or speak.
	My gosh, how monstrous.
	Bringing him here and watching this without knowing what's going to happen has been the scariest experience I've ever had.
	All that being said, the Jordan Peterson you guys know will be back, and we did get through this by the skin of our teeth.
	He's alive because I know how to research, because my husband negotiates extremely well and speaks Russian, because my family was willing to trust us and take a huge and terrifying risk, because we've had extensive help from family, friends, and supporters from all over the world.
	Who've helped him get here because we have access to money and because we found a number of extremely gutsy and competent Russian nurses and doctors that were willing to take a risk.
	It took a village and a lot of luck.
	His recovery has been unbelievable.
	He's improving dramatically daily.
	So she says, so let me make a couple of things clear.
	One, this was not a case of psychological addiction.
	Benzodiazepine physical dependence due to brain changes that can occur in a matter of weeks can destroy lives.
	It can be made even worse by paradoxical reactions that are difficult to diagnose.
	The medication almost killed my dad.
	He's a psychologist, and even if he wasn't aware of how bad these medications are for some people, Physical dependence can occur in a matter of weeks of daily use to biologically susceptible individuals.
	Dad will recover fully, but it will take time, and he still has ways to go.
	Now, I guess that's the difference between psychological or neurological impairment versus damage, right?
	Damage, as far as I understand, it's kind of permanent, but impairment can be...
	It's the difference between an amputation and a broken bone, right?
	We are extremely lucky and grateful that he's alive.
	The next date will come from him directly.
	Thanks again for all the support.
	Michaela Peterson.
	So that is where things are at with regards to Jordan Peterson.
	Now, gosh, I mean, there's a terrifying tale.
	It's a terrifying tale.
	I think that there are lessons to be learned.
	Now, there's a couple of things I want to sort of be fully aware of before I get into all of this, and I really appreciate your patience.
	I will get your questions.
	I've got a nice chunk of time today.
	But let me just OCD center the microphone here because...
	OCD. There we go.
	I moved back a little bit. Sometimes people don't like looking straight up my nose.
	Don't know why, but they don't.
	So, what is the story here?
	The story is really, really quite powerful and fascinating.
	Jordan Peterson is a very valuable guy and a guy who also, I mean, some people have sort of accused him of acting as a gatekeeper and he's worked on UN documents that have highly questionable ethical bases, but Jordan Peterson,
	for me, to talk personally, and I know you guys have your thoughts, and I really do want to get to them, but Jordan Peterson, when I... I've watched a bunch of his videos, and I read some of his book, particularly the chapter on child raising, where he does talk about the value of hitting children, which is not, obviously, where the principled application of the non-aggression principle would lead you, but Jordan Peterson...
	It gives you these flashes of insights, which are really powerful and really good, like his pushback against white privilege, simply labeling it majority privilege, his pushback against the anti-masculinity that is endemic to modern Western culture, his pushback on leftism, on the thought police, on the language police, his pushback upon political correctness, his explanation, which he does more...
	Between the sexes than he does between the races, his explanation of the biological roots and the sort of reproductive roots of differences in outcomes between men and women or between different groups is very important.
	It's very, very important.
	His explanation of the Pareto principle, which is that the square root of any...
	Productive group at Ameritocracy produce half the value.
	It's a great explanation for high CEO pay and wealth disparities and so on.
	So he's got these flashes of illumination that are really, really powerful.
	Now, some years ago, I was on...
	Milo's show, and he asked me about Jordan Peterson.
	Bit of a surprise. I thought we were going to talk about South Africa, but he did.
	And what I talked about with regards to Jordan Peterson, which I still believe and which I think has something to do with some of the challenges he's facing, none of the medical issues, of course, right?
	For those, I have massive sympathy.
	For the others, I have sympathy, too.
	But I said that Jordan Peterson, as a psychologist, is looking for connections.
	He's not... Working from first principles, philosophically speaking.
	So first principles are existence exists, rationality is our valid tool for reason and understanding the world.
	Rationality is objective, the non-aggression principle is valid, and you work from the study of reality, which is metaphysics, to the study of knowledge, which is epistemology, to the study of Virtue, which is ethics to the study of politics, which is political science and so on.
	And you work from first principles like a physicist does.
	Like a physicist doesn't just say, wow, there's a bunch of stuff that falls down and there's a bunch of stuff that floats up.
	Rocks are different than bubbles.
	Anvils are different from helium balloons.
	Wow, we should make a giant list of everything that falls down, and we should make a giant list of everything that falls up, and we should memorize it so that we know what falls down and what falls up, and we can't ever predict ahead of time because we don't have any principles.
	We've just got to work experientially and pile up all of this experience.
	And from piling up all of this experience, we're going to try and transfer this wisdom, but by God, it's a heavy load to carry.
	It's a heavy load to carry.
	It's sort of the equivalent of, you know, when I was a kid, I don't think people do this anymore, but when I was a kid, we used to have to memorize the times table, right?
	From 1 times 1 to 12 times 12 is 144.
	I still remember it after all these years.
	Still math-like after all these years.
	So to memorize those things, that's fine, right?
	I mean, it makes sense. But if you had to memorize every mathematical equation rather than learn the principles of mathematics, even if you had to do it by hand, like the slide rule, the long division, the Multiplication, addition, subtraction, and so on.
	If you had to just memorize, I mean, your brain would break because you would be learning instances, i.e.
	12 times 12 or 15 times 15.
	You would be learning instances rather than learning principles.
	So once you learn, again, even by paper, long division, long multiplication, you can tackle any math problem pretty much that involves those two things.
	It might take a while and so on, but you can tackle it.
	You have the principles, right? But if you had to memorize everything, you'd very quickly run out of brain space, unless you had one of those weird photographic memory kind of things, and then you'd show up on talent shows and show off your mutant brain, right?
	So... With regards to Jordan Peterson, these insights that flash, and for me they're powerful, but then I bring these insights within the realm of philosophy.
	I take these insights and I put them into the realm of philosophy, and therefore they add propulsion to a principle.
	But if you simply are gathering insight after insight after insight, this connection, this connection, this connection, this, you know, then what happens is you end up burdening your brain.
	You end up burdening your brain.
	I'm going to use an analogy. I've used it before, but we have lots of new people always, so I'm going to use this analogy.
	It's very, very important to get this analogy into your brain because it really helps you understand the value of philosophy versus just empiricism.
	So to calculate the orbit of Mars in the old way, which was called the Ptolemaic system after a famous ancient astronomer, So when Earth was considered to be the center of the universe,
	or at least the center of the solar system, then if you sort of think of the concentric orbits of the planets, there are times when, from the Earth's standpoint, because the Sun is the center of the solar system, when the Earth is accelerating around the Sun faster, because it's got a shorter orbit, of course. So there's times when Mars begins, it's called the retrograde motion of Mars, there's times when, from the Earth's standpoint, Mars appears to go backwards.
	Now that's really a strange thing, and it's hard to understand because the circle was considered mathematically perfect, of course, because of its simplicity and its uniformity, and you don't need nearly as complicated an equation to describe a circle as you do an oval or an ellipsoid or whatever.
	And so they had all of these circles within circles within circles that you had to calculate your way through just to find out where Mars was in the night sky.
	And to explain the retrograde motion of Mars, they just piled equation upon equation upon equation upon equation to the point where things just went kind of crazy.
	It just became ridiculously complicated.
	And then Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, and you name it, they sort of came along.
	And, you know, this general discussion was, okay, listen, we've got to, you know, we've got to Occam razor this mofo just a little bit, right?
	Because it's just getting way too complicated.
	And it's really fascinating that when things do get too complicated...
	That's the time where you need to wipe the blackboard clean of all of these crazy equations and you need to say, okay, we've taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque somewhere, right?
	And we've got into this just massive maze of complexity.
	So we need to wipe that slate clean and we need to go back to first principles and build again from scratch.
	And if you do that philosophically, you end up in a wonderful, beautiful place of significant power and so on.
	But if you don't, If you just continue to layer and layer complexity upon complexity, I think it's bad for your brain.
	It's using your brain in the wrong way.
	Our brain is designed for principles, not the accumulated complexity of mere empiricism.
	You know, you think of ancient tribes.
	Everyone had to experiment with what to eat, right?
	Is this good food or bad food?
	Will this kill me or will this...
	Give me nutrition, right? It's complicated.
	And what happens? Well, you eat the foods you know until they run out, and then you try the foods that you haven't tried because you're starving to death, and you figure out if you live or not, and then you pass that wisdom.
	Well, it's a lot of trial and error. And that trial and error is natural, but it's bad.
	It's not what our brains are designed for.
	Now you can, of course, you know, get a scan, a cellular scan of the food.
	If you find some unknown food, you can figure out its properties, and you can figure out whether it's good for you or not based upon science, which is...
	What our brains are really designed for is concepts, is universals, is philosophy.
	We are a philosophical species or we are nothing but tall, bald, self-destructive mammals.
	So with the Ptolemaic system, they eventually said, okay, this got way too complicated.
	And the fact that we have to go through 500 equations to figure out the path of Mars or where Mars is, it's a bad idea.
	Something's gone wrong. So then they said, okay, well, what if we put the sun at the center of the solar system and then, boom, It all worked.
	It all worked beautifully.
	You didn't need a whole bunch of equations to make it work.
	It just worked.
	And that is an example of simplicity.
	You reformulate your worldview and things are very, very simple.
	And now you are using your brain.
	Rather than grinding through 500 equations, you just need one or two.
	Because you have adjusted your worldview to better match reality.
	And therefore you don't need all of this massive complexity.
	And Jordan Peterson, for his significant intellect and his incredible verbal skills and his debate skills and his moral courage in many ways, all of that, but there is just, to me at least, a kind of bone and back-breaking increased weariness of complexity.
	So He would give you these blinding flashes of insight, which were great, and I have no problem with those.
	I think they're wonderful as long as you can plug them into some existing conceptual worldview that makes sense.
	It's logical and simple.
	But it's kind of like if you've got to go through a thick forest in the middle of a moonless and starless night, if it's pitch black, what do you want?
	Do you want... A weak flashlight or a strong flashbulb.
	Now, for those of you who are younger, flashbulbs are what used to be on cameras before.
	Cameras have these sort of built-in flashes.
	Now, if you have a flashbulb, you get brightness, significant brightness, and you can see where you are, but it's not continuous.
	It's like a very, like a once-a-minute strobe doesn't really help you navigate that much because our eyes are designed for 30 frames a second, not one frame a minute, right, so to speak.
	So you can see where you are, but you can't figure out where to go if you have these bright insights with no continuous philosophical set of principles.
	So I would rather have a weak flashlight than a strong flashbulb when it comes to negotiating the complexities of the world.
	And I think what happens with Jordan Peterson and with the people who, I wouldn't say follow him, but who Imbibe him, so to speak, is you do end up with these insights.
	Oh, white privilege is just majority privilege, and oh, the reason why women don't do as well in the workforce in terms of mere income is they score higher on the psychological trait agreeableness, and they have less testosterone, and they take time off to have babies.
	So all of that is like, okay, now I understand that, but it doesn't knit together.
	It doesn't knit together.
	In the same way as a universe-spanning equation like, you know, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared equals mc squared, that kind of equation, and when you accept that the speed of light is a constant, 186,000 miles a second throughout the universe, then the whole universe kind of fits together.
	Kind of makes sense.
	If you look at other things like string theory and so on, which is complex and impenetrable, largely as when I was dating an engineer, Way back in my early 20s, it still hasn't become any, it still hasn't got any predictive power and it still hasn't been unraveled.
	So that's just, of course, and looking for that kind of simplicity, Einstein was in pursuit of this unified field theory that would link together strong and weak atomic forces, would link together gravity and magnetism and you name it, right, into sort of one theory.
	And maybe it's out there, maybe it's not, but he wasn't able to achieve it.
	When you take a principle, speed of light is constant, the sun is the center of the solar system, you take a principle and you put it at the center of your thinking, then all of the details fall into line and you don't need to memorize the details.
	You don't need to memorize the details.
	And I think with Jordan Peterson, you need a prodigious brain, you need a prodigious intellect, you need a prodigious memory in order to hold all of those insights that are disconnected in your mind.
	And these kinds of insights, when they don't fit together, well, it's all brick and no blueprint.
	You have the materials for a house, but you don't have a way of building it.
	So you just construct this kind of weird, far-falling-over lean-to, rather than a solid and sustainable structure.
	So, if you get physics rather than experience, if you get first principles...
	Non-aggression principle.
	Objectivity, rationality, individuality.
	All the stuff that I talk about in my book, Essential Philosophy, and I talk about in my 2006, my gosh, 14 years ago, I put out an 18-part introduction to philosophy, first on my podcast and later on my YouTube channel.
	If you get your first principles, the amount of energy that you liberate The amount of creativity that you liberate, the amount of joy, really, that you liberate when you're using your body in its proper way.
	If you lift like a straightening twisted L, you lift with your back, you're going to hurt your back.
	You lift with your legs, keep your back straight, then you're going to.
	If you work out well, then you get stronger.
	If you work out badly, you get injured.
	If you're using your body in the right way, it works for you.
	If you use your body in the wrong way, You're punishing it and it will punish you in return with dysfunction, with pain, with all of that, right?
	And so philosophy really is about looking at the mind, looking at what it's for, and having it work in the right way.
	The purpose of our mind is to derive universal concepts from individual instances, from Oranges, we get the color orange.
	We get a sphere. We get the concept of fruit.
	We get the concept of the classification of citrus.
	And we also eventually get something like vitamin C, which, you know, vitamin C was essential for the British Empire because scurvy, which was the absence of vitamin C, nobody understood what was causing it.
	Scurvy killed more British sailors than combat and war did.
	And so the purpose of our brain is to derive universal concepts from individual instance to translate this rock falls down, this helium balloon goes up to, okay, that which is heavier than air descends, that which is lighter than air ascends.
	And once we can go from the individual instance to the universal concept, incredible power accrues to us.
	Think of the power of science.
	Think of the power of engineering.
	Think of the power of The technology required for us to have this conversation is all based upon the philosophical principles of rationality, empiricism, and universality.
	But the question is, of course, why do so few people do it?
	Because it's hard.
	Because power structures in the world are based upon exceptions.
	Power structures within our own lives are based upon exceptions.
	You see a father hitting his child saying, don't hit it.
	You see a mother saying, don't take people's property without their consent, and to punish you for that, I'm going to confiscate your property.
	Take your property without your consent, right?
	So power is based upon having a rule and then creating an exception for yourself.
	Stealing is really bad, says the government, but taxation is a virtue.
	It's the price you pay to live in a civilized society.
	Using force to get what you want, say the teachers in public schools, is really bad.
	Now we're going on strike and we have a monopoly that's enforced by the state so we can bloody well get what we want.
	This is particularly true in Ontario at the moment.
	You create a rule and then you create an exception for that rule for yourself.
	The purpose of rules is not universality.
	The rules were not invented.
	Moral rules were not invented so that we could all be good.
	Moral rules were invented so that you would obey, so that you would not steal, and then you will simultaneously not just allow but encourage the ruler to steal from you.
	You understand? Morality, when I talk about universality, universally preferable behavior, ethics, property rights, the non-aggression principle, I'm attempting to wrestle the weapon of morality away from its original purpose, which was to serve the purposes of those in power.
	Serve the purposes of those in power.
	Morality is to get you to not steal because that's inconvenient to the rulers.
	If you steal from the rulers, it's bad for them.
	If you steal from your fellow citizen, it's complicated and difficult because the ruler's got to spend money chasing down and catching and so on.
	So getting you not to steal is very efficient for the rulers, but the moment you say thou shalt not steal is a universal principle and taxation is theft, well, you're taking the moral principle and trying to apply it universally, when the whole point of the moral principle, why it was invented, why it was promulgated, was to get you to be a more efficient serif or tax slave to the rulers that be.
	That's the purpose of morality.
	So And it took me a while to understand this.
	It's like your parents say, be honest.
	Tell the truth, right? Tell the truth.
	But then if you're unhappy with your parents' treatment of you and you tell the truth, they get upset with you.
	The teacher says, be honest, tell the truth.
	And then if you say, but you're paid by the power of the gun.
	You're paid by... Force.
	You're paid by property taxes, whether kids go to school or not, whether people even have kids or not.
	So you're paid by force.
	So who are you to tell me I shouldn't use force?
	This entire structure is built on force.
	It's virtue and honesty then.
	See, you're told to be honest when people in power want something from you, when it's convenient for you to tell the truth because people in power want to get the truth from you.
	It could be your mom saying, who knocked over this lamp?
	It could be something much more General Flynn style.
	But when people want something from you, then truth becomes a virtue.
	But when you speak a truth that is inconvenient to those in power, then truth is bad.
	Truth is defiance. Truth is willfulness.
	Truth is backtalk. Truth is you name it, right?
	Pointless rebellion. Truth is disloyalty.
	So... That's, I think, some of the complications that were going on in Jordan Peterson's mind.
	The other thing too, man, you know, it becomes a very big challenge in this world when you finally get how little truth you're allowed to speak.
	And I don't mean legally, right, but I'm just talking about in terms of what you can actually say in society.
	It's very, I mean, I'm really pushing a lot of Overton windows and I'm pushing the envelope about as hard as anybody else Not just in the modern world, but I'm pushing it pretty hard, let's say.
	And it's a real challenge.
	You know, people say, oh, let's tell the truth.
	Let's be honest. Let's work with data.
	Let's be factual. Let's be, you know, but boy, you start bringing facts up that people don't like.
	I mean, you're ringed with cannons and your name's...
	And your face and your forehead is on each one of those black, pink bowling balls.
	So, of course, Jordan Peterson achieved a level of fame far beyond mine.
	And when you are staring down the falsehoods and the lies within your society, well, the lies themselves don't have any Reality, they're just concepts, right? But the lies serve the very material and addictive power needs of those in control, and that becomes a real challenge, a real problem.
	Now, Jordan Peterson, of course, as a psychologist, is supposed to be an expert in mental functioning and mental health and so on, and he himself says that he had suffered from Depression for many, many years.
	And the question, of course, is why?
	Why? Well, I mean, of course, the psychiatric answer is brain chemical imbalance or whatever, which I don't particularly accept.
	Again, I'm just saying that from an amateur outside standpoint.
	The answer that I think the Petersons came up with, which is mentioned in McHale's video, is it's diet.
	It was diet. It turns out, funny story, it was diet and so on.
	And he went on a You know, I think you went on an all-beef diet with some vegetables and she's on an all-beef diet, I think, and they say, oh, that's made everything better.
	But, of course, the challenge is...
	Well, it didn't make things better because then he's on these benzodiazepines and they cause this terrible condition of restlessness and he ends up in rehab and then he ends up in a medically induced coma.
	My heart is breaking for the guy.
	He's got a magnificent mind and he's a very, very powerful individual in the modern culture.
	Just where he's ended up.
	So where does this come from?
	I don't know much about his childhood.
	I know he was pretty keen to get out of Alberta.
	I think he was raised. So his answer, I think, I'm paraphrasing here, but at least one of the answers regarding depression or dysfunction is to do with diet.
	But that's not...
	I don't know that that takes...
	I originally thought that he was on benzodiazepines as a result of stress to do with his wife's illness, but it seems that this was...
	Beforehand as well, based upon what she says.
	And so it becomes a big question then.
	What is the issue with depression?
	What is the issue with depression?
	And I don't know, obviously.
	I mean, one thing that I would, again, armchair amateur theorize is that if you're gathering insights without tying them together in a coherent first principles philosophical worldview, then you're going to use your brain in the wrong way.
	And if you use your back in the wrong way, you can end up with chronic back pain.
	And I think if you're using your brain in the wrong way, you can end up with something like, It is also, of course, as I mentioned, everybody who speaks truth to power, everybody who brings unpopular truths to a vengeful and petty universe, we all know.
	We all know the bloody histories of people who've done that.
	We all know literally the bloody histories of people who've done that.
	We all know that Socrates was framed for corrupting the young and not believing in the gods of the city and was murdered by the state.
	We all No, the story of Plato, that when he tried to enter politics, he ended up being sold into slavery in Syracuse and was only freed because somebody happened to recognize him and paid a couple of hundred bucks to free him, Libya-style.
	We all know the stories, of course, of those who were considered heretics under the early church.
	We all know the story of Jesus.
	Who rebelled against the in-group moral preferences of Judaism at his time and tried to extend ethics to the universal standard of Christianity and what happened to him.
	We don't actually know what's happened to some of the activists in China who've been speaking out about the coronavirus.
	I mean, they're...
	Well, they're missing.
	We know what happened. At least we have some Indications as to what happened to Dr.
	Liang, who was the first doctor to warn the world about coronavirus.
	And according to some reports, he was in his hospital.
	He was not given intubation.
	He was exposed to the virus by being assigned to very dangerous duties.
	And just bad things, bad things really occurred.
	We know the story of Galileo, who was tortured and took 400 years for the Catholic Church to Apologize for this.
	We know the story of whistleblowers throughout history as a whole.
	And so it is a very dangerous business telling the truth of this world.
	It is a dangerous, difficult, and stressful business.
	And you need to take your breaks.
	Listen, I don't know what his schedule was like, Jordan Peterson's, but to me this is also a warning for a particular kind of Workaholism.
	And look, the guy had such – he still does, right?
	I hope he returns to everything he had.
	I hope he will benefit from philosophical principles as well.
	But look at what the guy was involved in.
	I don't know if it's all at the same time.
	It's off the top of my head.
	You know, he's doing a world tour with significant pushback of speaking engagements with Dave Rubin.
	He was building or in charge of helping to build the website ThinkSpot, which is actually worth checking out.
	I'm on there at the moment.
	ThinkSpot, which is a social media sharing platform that has, as its central commitment, no post will be taken down without a court order enforceable in the U.S. jurisdiction, as far as I understand it.
	So he's also had private practice for quite some time.
	He was an author, of course, writing not just Maps of Meaning.
	I think he rewrote that, but 12 Rules.
	For Life and Antidote to Chaos, he was on these interviews consistently and persistently.
	Also, when he was on my show, he has the self-authoring program that my listeners got a discount to and so on.
	Like, he was just working and working and working and working.
	He had private live streams for people and, I mean, just a wild amount of labor.
	And, of course, he was a professor.
	I know that he backed down from that for a while.
	He's running a lawsuit, if I remember rightly, against a university.
	I mean, this is just a massive amount of labor.
	And I get that the West is in a crisis, it's an emergency, and I get all of that.
	But changing the world is a marathon, not a sprint.
	And I just wonder that level of Energy expenditure and having that many balls in the air and that many responsibilities coming plowing in.
	You've got to dig in.
	You've got to work hard. And I do work hard.
	But man, you've got to take your breaks.
	You've got to measure your doses.
	You've got to surround yourself with joy and frivolity and fun and happiness.
	I was at karaoke not too long ago belting out a public version to a couple of hundred people of Stevie Wonder's Superstition.
	That was fun. You've got to take this.
	You've got to take your joys.
	You cannot be a martyr to change.
	I mean, you can be, but the martyrdom tends to exact a very heavy price.
	And I would really strongly encourage people, you know, take breaks from social media, take breaks from the bad news, focus on the joys, focus on the positivity and all of that.
	And that's so important.
	Surround yourself with love. Have something to fight for rather than endlessly fighting against things.
	So, now the other thing as well, which I'll mention, and I appreciate everyone's patience, I will get to your questions in just a moment.
	There's something else I want to share with you.
	And I obviously have no knowledge about whether Jordan Peterson was thinking about this, but I think there's a possibility.
	Our beliefs, our principles, have significant roots in our genetics.
	There's no personality structure unaffected by genetics, but there are correlations as high as over 0.6, which is a high correlation.
	Attitudes on immigration, they've done twin studies and so on, attitudes on immigration are up to two-thirds genetic.
	And you go through people's beliefs and you can find very strong, to sometimes not so strong, to sometimes outwardly weak, Perspectives.
	Genetic roots for perspectives that we have, moral positions that we have.
	And we think we're individuals, and of course we are, and philosophy aims to go against the prejudicial by appealing to the rational.
	But there is, in this post, in this post-rational universe, in this anti-reason culture, There is a terrible thought that, I mean, it doesn't exactly haunt me, but it's in the house I live, there's a haunting.
	It's the closest I can get to it.
	And the basic idea goes something like this.
	If people have abandoned reason, then all they're following is cultural, historical, and or biological prejudice, right?
	That's all there is. You feel like immigration is a good thing.
	You feel like socialism is a good thing.
	You feel like government education is a good thing.
	You feel that way, but your feelings come from genetics.
	And listen, I mean, when I was...
	Genetics aren't everything.
	I mean, I have, obviously, I think a genetic...
	It's predisposition towards the love of reason and evidence and the free market and so on.
	And there's lots of reasons for that, which I'll go into another time.
	I want to make sure I get to your questions.
	But what if, in trying to reason with people, we're trying to talk them out of their genetics?
	Can you imagine me...
	Saying blue eyes are great and going to a brown-eyed guy and trying to debate him or argue him or give him reason and evidence about blue eyes are great in order to get him to change his eye color.
	If I were to say, you know, being bald is really, really efficient because if you do a lot of videos, man, you just need a towel and you're good to go, right?
	You don't need to worry about your hair and getting bedhead and the right amount of gel and depth.
	Oh, yeah, I remember. I had hair in the 80s.
	And then I would try and talk to someone into going bald.
	Talk someone into going bald.
	Or if I said, you know, one of the reasons you can't get girls to go out with you is because you're 5'5", so I'm going to debate you into turning into 6'2".
	Isn't that terrible?
	I mean, that would be the mark of a crazy person.
	But what if, in an anti-rational culture in particular, I, you, we, are trying to talk people into changing their genetics, their genetic beliefs.
	I mean, I was pro-socialist when I was younger and then I started reading about the free market and I just, I responded to it.
	I was like, oh yes, this is the answer.
	Like I had a genetic predisposition for liberty and I happened to be exposed to, you know, like a seed has a Predisposition to grow, and if it's exposed to enough sunlight and nutrients in the soil and water, then it will grow. So you have potential.
	But what if I'm just putting the stimulus out to activate people's latent genetics for liberty?
	There's no talking people into anything!
	I mean, that's an extreme view and so on, but I got to think, you know, after Jordan Peterson was out there in the world, you know, his tens or hundreds of billions of video views, his Cathy Newman debate went viral, and tons of debates that he did went kind of viral.
	How much changed? How much reversed?
	How much adjusted?
	What impact did he have? And you can look for individuals and you can say, I get these emails all the time.
	People are like, hey man, I had a call-in show with you three years ago.
	I'm now happily married.
	I've got a kid. Whatever it is.
	I get these messages.
	They're wonderful. And actually, I've got a blog post at freedomain.com pinned of testimonials when I remember to shift them over about people, the sort of feedback that I get.
	So individuals, you can hugely help when it comes to society as a whole.
	Are you trying to talk... You can talk an individual person into a better perspective, but when it comes to aggregates, is it sort of the effect of trying to talk East Asians into ending up being taller than Swedes?
	It's a chilling thought. It's a chilling thought.
	Because, of course, you know that when we surrender the capacity to reason with each other, the only thing that's left is institutional or individual violence.
	Maybe he was... Focusing on that, bringing reason and evidence to the world in his particular insightful fashion.
	Maybe he was beginning to understand that the time for arguments may have passed.
	Maybe. The last thing I wanted to mention, and I'll get straight to your questions.
	Thanks, everyone. The last thing I want to mention is...
	And listen, I'm aware I can be criticized for trying to shoehorn a particular agenda into this family tragedy.
	I'm really not. I'm really not.
	I know that's not an argument, but I'm telling you that I'm not because it's very, very important.
	So I've not heard Jordan Peterson speak out against socialized medicine, against collectivized medicine, which is very common in the U.S. and almost universal within Canada.
	But if the majority of his experience was in socialized healthcare, then that's important.
	That's important. Socialized healthcare does not make money off prevention.
	It makes money off endless cures, which is why this pharmaceutical route is so often taken that is referred to in Mikhail Peterson's video and in the National Post article as a whole, that In Russia, I mean, there's a lot of government-run medicine in Russia, but there's significant proportions.
	I got this since 1996.
	Government health facilities have been allowed to offer private services.
	Since 2011, some private providers have been providing services to the state insured.
	The private sector in Moscow has expanded rapidly.
	One chain treats half its patients under the official insurance scheme at low cost and the other half privately at a profit.
	So there's significant amounts Of private healthcare in Moscow, and private healthcare, you make money from two things, prevention and quick cure.
	So if you have an insurance company, the insurance company makes money when you're healthy.
	Therefore, the insurance company has an incentive in a free market environment.
	A free market system has an incentive to get you tested early, to get the scans, to make sure nothing spreads, to make sure you don't end up like Rush Limbaugh with his dangerous, I guess, maybe stage four lung cancer.
	And so in a free market environment, people are very proactive to keep you healthy.
	It's like in the old Chinese model where you paid your doctor until you got sick.
	So we had every incentive to keep you healthy.
	Now, in a socialized healthcare system, it's like a conveyor belt.
	It's like you get paid per patient and very few people directly pay for their own I mean, most people get it paid through their work or the union or whatever it is.
	So if you are a doctor in a socialized healthcare system, and you can think psychiatrist in particular, your goal is to try and get people in and out of your office as quickly as possible and have as many medications pumped into them as possible.
	And tragically, that's how you make the most money in many ways.
	So if someone comes into your office, let's say you're a doctor or maybe a psychiatrist, someone comes into your office and says, you know, I feel depressed and anxious, right?
	Well, that's a big question.
	You know, maybe they're low in testosterone.
	Maybe it's some hormonal thing. Maybe it's a diet thing.
	Maybe it's an exercise thing.
	Or maybe they're surrounded by difficult narcissistic people who are abusive and negative and destructive and you name it, right?
	In which case, man, that's a big, complicated challenge.
	You've got to explore a whole bunch of things.
	It's time-consuming. And the treatment for it could take a long time.
	As I've said before, you might not have social anxiety disorder.
	You might just be surrounded by assholes.
	And so, unsurrounding yourself from that type of person is a big, complex, and challenging extraction.
	And you need a lot of wisdom, and you need a lot of courage, and you're also going to really annoy the people who are exploiting the victim.
	You know, if, let's say, it's parents who, you've got some adult who's depressed and anxious because his parents still remain abusive, and you say, you know, well, you don't have to spend time with abusive people.
	It's a choice, blah, blah, blah, and it might be better for your mental health if you take a break from the abusive people.
	Well, then, the guy withdraws from his parents, and his parents start pounding the table and say, what the hell happened?
	Who told you? Right, they come and make your life difficult, and it's Maybe the kid's in school.
	Maybe he doesn't have ADHD. Maybe he's just really, really bored and the teachers are terrible and the school environment is violent and dangerous and its lowest common denominator is sociopath bottom-of-the-sea feed time.
	Well, that's complicated.
	Doctors alone, psychiatrists alone can't go fix the school system.
	They can't make it voluntary. They can't make it better.
	Maybe he's being ignored at home.
	Do you sit down with his parents and say, ah, you know, you've got to spend more time with your kids.
	You've got to be more proactive parents, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Well, if they're selfish, mean parents, they don't want to hear that, right?
	What do they want to hear? Oh, it's a chemical imbalance.
	Here's a pill. Boom.
	Ka-ching, ka-ching. Next one, next one, next one.
	And they come back and say, you know, well, you gave him these pills to calm him down.
	He's more hyper. It's like, oh, okay, well, let's add in this mix.
	Let's add in this medication.
	Let's add in this solution to fix the problems caused by the last solution.
	And you end up with Mickey Mouse trying to swab the deck with his endless broomsticks.
	To infinity or to brain breakage, in my opinion.
	So the fact that Jordan Peterson's family flew him halfway across the world to, I assume, well, it has to be a private healthcare system for him.
	He's not a Russian citizen, right?
	So they flew over the world to try and get him saved, his life saved, in a free market system.
	That's very important.
	If your life is saved by the free market, as mine was, I fled Canada and went to the surgery center of Oklahoma to have, this is the scar, which is very mild, which they left.
	The Canadian doctors would talk about opening up half my face and told me I didn't have cancer.
	And I fled and paid.
	It saved my life. Now, of course, I'm pro-free market, so for me, that just reinforces the value of the free market.
	This is something, over time, when he's better, to mull over, which is that he fled socialized or semi-socialized healthcare, and I bet you he went free market.
	I bet you he went free market.
	That's important. If the free market saves your life, I hope that you have a slightly more positive view of the free market as a whole.
	Just wanted to mention, just saying, oh, I hate that phrase, so I'm sorry for just saying it.
	Okay, so that's what I wanted to say about Jordan Peterson.
	And I really appreciate your thoughts and time regarding all of this.
	And let's see what we've got going on over here.
	If you want to help me out, listen, I hope you will.
	I hope you will. It's a challenge these days.
	Funding is a challenge. Social media reach is a challenge.
	So freedomain.com forward slash donate would be...
	Would be really, really helpful.
	And, yeah, it's very, very important for me at the moment.
	And please, please help out.
	Like, subscribe, and share. Listen, if you don't have any money, that's fine.
	I understand that.
	I've been broke myself.
	But, you know, please help out as best you can.
	It would be – well, it is essential.
	It is essential. And there's a bunch of more stuff I want to do this year that's new and interesting and I think will be most enjoyable.
	All right. Gabor Maté says, what's wrong with Jordan Peterson?
	He is a man consumed by an unresolved rage that has made him both physically and mentally, spiritually toxic.
	Yeah, so Gabor Maté, I'm ambivalent about him.
	He's been on my show a couple of times.
	I love what he has to say.
	It's not an argument I understand, right?
	But I love what Gabor Maté has to say about...
	Childhood Trauma and Addiction in the Realm of Hungry Ghost is a very important and powerful book.
	He's got great books on stress and its effect on the system and so on.
	But, you know, he is a crazy anti-Trumper and other things that are just, you know, stick to medicine.
	That's great. And, you know, maybe not so much with the philosophy.
	All right. I had echo or I have echo?
	There is an echo now.
	I don't know what changed. All right.
	I turned off the speakers, although there's nothing on my desktop audio.
	It's muted on my audio, so let me just see here.
	All right. Let's see here.
	Somebody says, hey, Steph, about a year ago we had a great conversation.
	I was the pickup artist that got married in Bulgaria, still happily married.
	The conversation was never published, wondering why.
	I'm afraid sometimes people in conversations do get left behind.
	I do apologize for that.
	I will check.
	I will check. If you could just send me an email with the date of the conversation or your email address, that will help quite a bit.
	So thanks very much. Dear Steph, do you think that your free market world view on society stems from your personal experience, especially you being forced at a very young age to work while your mother wouldn't?
	Ah, no, no. I can understand why you would know that.
	You would think that. So my mother did work, and she worked pretty hard.
	She was a secretary for quite some time, and then she did a bunch of temp work in Canada and so on.
	It was... I'm trying to think...
	It was in her 40s, late 40s.
	She stopped working. She hasn't worked since.
	I've been on government support.
	And so I was forced to work.
	It wasn't like, you know, if you don't work, you won't eat.
	I wasn't sort of trapped in this hypocrisy of the communist manifesto.
	So my free market view on society...
	I just... If you have self-confidence, if you value and respect yourself, well, you just have too much pride to be told what to do.
	I mean, let me dig deep here and tell you where it came from.
	I'm just going to check the sound here before we go in.
	So... When I was growing up, as everybody knows probably, or maybe you don't, I was subjected to extraordinary levels of violence within the home from my mother, who was very loud and very screamy and very hitty and threw things and threw forks and beat my head against doors and so on.
	And there was an extraordinary levels of violence, but it wasn't like silent torture.
	It was loud, screaming, and brutal.
	And we didn't live in a shack in the woods where no one could hear.
	We lived in these paper-thin government housing complexes where hundreds of people over the years in the various places we lived, hundreds of people would have heard all of this.
	Nobody ever did anything.
	No one knocked on the door. Nobody found out if I was okay.
	Nobody talked to me. Nobody called the cops.
	Nobody called Child Protection Services, even anonymously.
	Nobody. And they could have done this without my mother ever finding out.
	All of this could have. No teacher ever said anything when I came to school, you know, dazed or bruised or with no clean clothes or whatever, right?
	No society, they didn't care.
	Or if they did care, they certainly didn't act.
	So when you've been through this kind of abuse in a collective environment, in other words, in an environment where other people are certainly aware of it, and, you know, it was even within my family, nobody asked, nobody, extended family, nobody asked, nobody cared, and so on, right?
	So when you go through that, the idea that society is moral is genuinely offensive and incomprehensible.
	So when society says, oh, but they lock children in cages, that's just political garbage.
	In fact, it was Obama who did it.
	No, but that's just political garbage, right?
	It's nonsense. It's nonsense.
	People, society, they don't stand out for what's right or what's good.
	And this was, you could say, well, this is just a class thing.
	There were poor people and so on, but, you know, there were wealthier middle-class people, even rich people that I knew.
	Didn't do anything. Didn't ask.
	Didn't find out. Didn't care.
	Didn't stand. Didn't rebut. Didn't...
	Do anything to comfort or acknowledge or save me from anything.
	So this idea, when you recognize and accept that basic reality, that society in its current form is largely a garbage mountain of selfish indifference to the suffering of others, then when you hear people say, oh, but you know, we've got to have the welfare state because we care about people.
	We've got to have socialized medicine because we care about people.
	Right? We've got to have a government education because we really need people.
	No. No, no, no, no.
	No, don't. Don't.
	It's insulting.
	It's insulting to the lived experience of everyone who's been abused, who's processed it.
	So, you know, then the idea that there's this wonderful people out there who can productively and morally manage the free market and so on is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And then, you know, go out in the world and try and stand up for children, try and stand up for the rights of children, try and Stand against spanking, try and stand against circumcision, try and stand up for the rights of adult children and to not see abusive people and just see how moral the world is.
	All right. Sarah says, Hi, Steph.
	Your work has seriously helped me out.
	I've become a much better person.
	My question is, can you be a good parent if you don't homeschool?
	Well, I mean, it really depends, which I am – It depends where you are in the world.
	It depends on the local school curriculum.
	I think homeschooling is better.
	It's better if you can.
	And if you can't homeschool for whatever reason, then please do a lot of deprogramming with your kids because they're going to learn a lot of garbage and nonsense.
	Thoughts on Jay Dyer?
	I don't really know much about him.
	Last night, for some reason, I couldn't sleep.
	So like 3.30 in the morning, I got up and I had a little something to eat and I checked Twitter and somebody had posted a Jay Dyer video that was lambasting me.
	And listen, I always have this time whiplash.
	I always forget to check the dates, so I thought it was a newer video.
	And I listened to it for a little while.
	I skipped a little bit at the beginning.
	I started listening from, I don't know, 27 minutes up to over 40 minutes, and it was nothing.
	I mean, it was snarky.
	It was negative. I mean, I'll debate the guy, and we've got a comment going on with each other, which is fine.
	I will debate the guy and maybe it'll be fun and productive debate.
	Maybe we'll end up fast friends.
	I don't know. But the stuff that he was putting out there was, you know, he seemed to...
	He was saying basically that I'm some big fan of...
	They call it globo-capitalism, like modern globo-capitalism.
	It's one of these things I don't really know what it means because most of the world is anti-capitalist, including the West these days.
	So this sort of...
	Like I'm some big fan of the modern globo-capitalism, but he also refers to me as an anarcho-capitalist.
	He... Made fun of my name, said it didn't sound like a real name.
	Like it just seemed kind of snarky and negative.
	He said, well, I'm just projecting without providing any evidence.
	So it didn't seem to me very rigorous.
	And I did write back and said, well, you know, I've got this book, Essential Philosophy.
	He wrote back to me and said, well, yeah, but this video came out two years before that book was even out.
	And it's like, yeah, well, that's fair.
	But also on the other hand, I did put out in 2006 my intro to philosophy.
	So he also said, you know, that I don't, he said, I don't know much about the guy.
	I'm paraphrasing. He said, I don't know much about Stefan Molyneux.
	I think he was some kind of entrepreneur, and then he popped up on YouTube, and it's like, yes, he hasn't been around philosophy, but it's like, well, my graduate degree was in the history of philosophy and so on.
	All right. We will have our debate.
	We will have our debate.
	Another couple of questions?
	It'd be great. Temp work.
	Sit in a room for eight hours waiting to get called to go pick up garbage on a construction site.
	Stefan, typical narcissist.
	All roads lead back to his opinions and life.
	I mean, that's kind of mean, I get.
	It's kind of mean. Typical narcissist.
	No, I don't think so.
	Obviously, I don't think so.
	I mean, I am a really, really good listener.
	And actually, somebody suggested in the last live stream I should do a video on how to listen, right?
	Because I could spend like half an hour, sometimes an hour just listening to people before giving feedback.
	So, no, this narcissistic, not really the case.
	And, you know, it's just funny, you know, you really shouldn't throw that label around.
	If somebody asked me why I became a free market person, referencing my life is perfectly valid, right?
	So you shouldn't. I mean, I'm sorry about this is the way that you were raised and this is what you think is the right thing to do, but you really shouldn't.
	All right. One, how do you know if your parents are toxic?
	Oh. How do you know if your parents are toxic, and if toxic, how do you leave them behind if it will ruin other non-toxic relationships?
	Well, there's a sort of complex answer and a simple answer to that.
	So the complex answer is Their level of functionality, your level of honesty with them, how they react to your genuine thoughts and feelings and all that.
	But there's a simpler thing, which is your feelings are very, very important in these areas.
	Your feelings can be very powerful in helping identify toxicity around you.
	So, for instance, when your phone rings and you see that, let's say it's your mom, you see it's your mom calling, how do you feel?
	You know, I come down in the morning.
	If my daughter's up before me, she'll like do a little dance and try and give me a collapsing hug on the stairs and like we're overjoyed to see each other.
	And, you know, sometimes I sort of go in to sort of say goodnight to her and we end up chatting for like an hour or whatever.
	I guess just really enjoying the conversation.
	So when I see her, when she sees me, I see my wife, she sees me.
	We're very, very happy. My wife calls.
	I'm like, hey, you know, how's it going?
	I'm looking happy. So when people call you in your life, how do you feel?
	Do you get a sinking feeling or do you get an elevated feeling?
	Or do you not care? So you have an enormous amount of information just in your emotional system regarding your life with your parents and the nature of everyone around you.
	It's highly compressed, zipped, or rard, so to speak, and stored in your emotional limbic system.
	And how do you feel when they are in contact with you?
	It's an interesting question, right?
	Interesting question. All right.
	Question. Can you provide internet links inside China on coronavirus?
	I do not know. I do not know.
	Would you rather the Earth survives and humans die or vice versa?
	Silly question. Sorry.
	Stefan, you are brilliant. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. I don't do YouTube donations.
	If you want to donate, which I really, really appreciate, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate and also FreeDomain.stream.
	You can donate there as well.
	All right. Let's see here.
	The FBI asked an ex-check counterfeiting kingpin how he would instantly identify a fake check.
	He said it's not by memorizing every type of counterfeit, but by mastering what a real check looks like.
	I guess earlier too, right?
	All right.
	Oh, gosh, this like OCD thing about one freaking dollar, one freaking dollar.
	um Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of boring.
	But for those who don't know, some years ago, somebody donated $2.
	And I went to, I think it was on Twitter, and I said, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but, right?
	And that's all I said, right? And it's like I don't.
	I mean, two bucks is, you know, if that's all they can afford, I don't want the two dollars because I don't want to think of them not being able to buy milk or take a bus to work.
	Please don't send me your last two dollars.
	Please don't send me what you can't afford, right?
	That's really, really important.
	And if you can't afford more, then it's a little bit of a, well, like when I was a waiter, and maybe people who have not been waiters don't know this, right?
	But when I was a waiter, I'd rather not be tipped than be tipped like two bucks on a hundred, right?
	Because if you tip $2 on $100, it means that people know that they're supposed to tip, but they're just tipping you really badly.
	And I'd rather not get tipped at all, because the $2 is a negative thing.
	Because you've got to manage it, you've got to store it, you've got to report on it.
	It's complicated stuff when you get these kinds of support.
	So it was just not an entirely positive experience for me.
	If somebody says, well, you're worth something but only two bucks, it's complicated.
	And then people say, well, if that's all they can afford, it's like, I don't want, you know, if you only have two bucks to your name, please don't send it to me.
	Please get a bus to a job or something like that.
	Or, you know, if you want to help the show, you can like, subscribe, share.
	You can talk about the ideas.
	You can anything, right? That's fine.
	I'll take that over two bucks.
	But now it's become, oh, he attacked a listener for only donating two bucks to the poor listener, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, that's not... I wrote a whole essay on it, but nobody cares, right?
	I mean, that's just stupid stuff that's not an argument.
	All right. All right.
	What have we got here? Will you be making a video or watching the Corey Feldman documentary?
	I probably will. I talked about him many, many years ago.
	He's got a real view on Hollywood that is horrendous.
	Not his view, but what's in Hollywood is horrendous.
	So yes, I saw that mentioned somewhere and I'll have a look.
	Hey, Stefan, could you interview Dr.
	K from Healthy Gamer? He's an addiction psychiatrist and is helping gamers with gaming addiction.
	Lots of interesting stuff you could talk about.
	Yes, thank you. Try to talk to Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho about recent politics in Brazil, US, and the world.
	I think that's a great idea. Thoughts on the game series Bioshock?
	A bit too complicated for me.
	And of course it was pretty negative on objectivism, which is not an argument, but you know, sadly it's the way that these things kind of go.
	It's all just propaganda. You should give a talk at Anarcha Pulka.
	Oh, that's Jeff Berwick, right?
	We shall see.
	We shall see. Let's see here.
	Are you planning to talk about the rise of Skywalker and or Star Wars in general?
	Star Wars just becomes so boring and so predictable and so social justice-y and so propaganda-y.
	I just can't.
	I can't do it. I can't do it.
	I mean, I could do it. We'll see.
	We'll see. As a Canadian, what's your opinion of the band Triumph?
	Triumph. I'm thinking of Boston.
	I don't really have much opinions about them, I'm afraid.
	I don't really have many thoughts about it.
	Let's see here. Should the state execute felons to protect society?
	Well, I'm not a statist, so I would not do that.
	Adam Green. Oh, yeah. The traps Trump is setting for the deep state.
	Yeah, I know. This is the Q thing, right?
	That there's all of this sleepy Jeff Sessions stuff and there's a cobra about to strike hidden in the grass and so on.
	We'll see. We'll see.
	We'll see. Okay.
	Come on, man. Would you rather the Earth survive than humans die or vice versa?
	Well, if the Earth dies, then humans will die.
	Come on. I mean, this is like a ridiculous false dichotomy.
	All right. I agree that taxation is theft.
	You probably have answered this before, so sorry, but for listeners who haven't heard the answer, what type of government do you suggest instead?
	Well, it's like saying, what type of rape do I suggest instead?
	What type of murder do I suggest instead?
	The answer is none. No rape, no murder, no government.
	And there's four conditions for this, right?
	Either people are perfectly good, everyone is perfectly good, in which case we don't need a government.
	Either everyone is perfectly evil, in which case we can't have a government because evil people will use it, constantly fight over it to use to dominate other evil people.
	If the majority of people are good but the minority of people are evil, we can't have a government because the first place the evil people will do is go to the government and use it to subjugate the good people.
	And if the majority of people are evil and only a minority of them are good, we can't have a government because the good people will be outvoted by the evil people who will use the power of the state to subject them to horrible things, right?
	So let's see here. How do you improve your social circle when your current one is not into self-improvement?
	Well, try and sell them on self-improvement.
	And if you can't, well, then you have a choice to make.
	Let's only send him two bucks now.
	That's interesting. And that's a real shame.
	So when I say that something troubles me, then the first thing you want to do is trouble and upset me.
	Honestly, it doesn't really trouble and upset me.
	I'm surrounded by love and light and great people and so on.
	Some good friends of mine just had their third baby.
	Another good friend of mine just having their fourth baby.
	Beautiful. I'm surrounded by life and joy and babies and happiness and so on.
	So this, like when I say I experience, you know, I don't care if it's crypto, it's fine, right?
	But if it's difficult, it's more difficult to track and so on if it's a sort of visa or something like that.
	So if I say, well, that sort of troubles me, and then the first thing you want to do is, let's only send him two bucks now.
	Boy, that's a real shame.
	Because the funny thing is, you think it's bothering me.
	It's like, you can send me two bucks, right?
	It's not like it ruins my day or anything.
	But the habits that it ingrains in you, which is to...
	Work to frustrate and bother people when they express a vulnerability or talk about something that's difficult for them that you want to put your finger in the wound and widen it.
	I don't think you really get how destructive that is for your happiness.
	Oh, someone has expressed a vulnerability.
	Someone has said, you know, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but, you know, I'm a bit ambivalent about this two bucks, you know, it's challenging, you know, it feels a little insulting, and it's, you know, expensive to manage and all of that.
	And so when I talk about that, and you're like, oh, great, let's send him two bucks.
	It doesn't ruin my day, but the problem is you're repeating a pattern and a habit that is going to keep love from your door forever.
	Because in order to be in love, you have to trust, you have to be vulnerable, that somebody is going to take your vulnerabilities and treat them with respect and treat them with care.
	It doesn't mean to agree with them or anything, because that would be manipulation.
	If you are like, oh, somebody's expressed a vulnerability and a discontent, so let's exacerbate the conditions that produce that vulnerability and discontent, it's going to take love out of your life forever.
	Because no good or decent person is going to want to be around someone like you.
	If you say, oh, I wonder if I'm gaining weight a little, maybe.
	And then you say, oh yeah, you're fatty.
	You know, you just do that, right?
	Why would anyone have any quality of any self-respect?
	I want to be around someone like that.
	And I don't say this to make you feel bad.
	I'm just like, I want you to feel good.
	I want you to feel happy.
	I want you to not do silly, destructive things like that so that you can get quality people in your life and you can be a quality, supportive, good person in other people's lives.
	Just don't do that stuff.
	It's just bad. The momentary satisfaction you get from that mild sadism, it comes at such a high price.
	I just don't know why anybody would want to do that.
	I laughed when you described some time ago how someone had said, you must be such a drag to have along in a theater.
	I see a good comic coming out of that.
	Yeah, funny, right? Stefan sounds possessed by the spirit of philosophy.
	Well, that's quite a complicated thing to unpack.
	Trudeau is coming for the guns, people.
	That's what happens when you get lefties in power, right?
	You think of a lot of things. Curious which ideas have you thought about the most throughout your life?
	Sex? Let's see here.
	It's a good question. I go through phases.
	That's the problem, right? There's not a lot of continuity.
	So for those who've been around the show for a long time, I go through these phases, right?
	So there are phases which is, like, I'm really, really into metaphysics or epistemology or ethics or politics or economics or Bitcoin or cryptos or IQ or, you know, whatever, right?
	I mean, there's just...
	They kind of come and go.
	I get...
	I would say bored of topics, but I lose the mojo.
	I lose the juice for particular topics.
	We are all demoralized.
	Yuri was right. Yeah, that's Yuri Besmanov, who was talking.
	He was a KGB defector who came to the...
	And I think it was in the 80s he produced a series of videos where he talked about how to demoralize a country, how to turn it against itself.
	You saw David Hart this way, you know, talking about the genocide of the natives perpetrated by the Europeans.
	Like, hey, man, you're not giving your...
	What is he at Harvard? You're not giving up your spot in Harvard for a native, right?
	So shut the hell up. And this is how you demoralize a country.
	How do you demoralize America?
	Well, you simply continually beat the drum of native genocide, of slavery, of the poor, of the robber barons, and you just make the country feel like shit.
	It's just a form of verbal abuse.
	You do that to an individual.
	You're responsible for soul murder.
	And what you do is you just keep talking about...
	Now, of course, if you're concerned...
	About the transmission of illnesses or dysfunction, you would say, well, you know, the Europeans gave them smallpox, but they give the Europeans tobacco and syphilis, right?
	So, you know, sad exchange of values, right?
	And you would say, well, the natives were eating each other.
	They were committing genocide at times.
	They were waging endless war.
	They used rape as a weapon of war.
	I mean, there was some really nasty stuff going on among the natives.
	And the Europeans came along and interrupted that to some degree and made that illegal, and now the natives aren't eating each other, they're not committing genocide against each other, and they're not using rape as a weapon of war.
	So, you know, is that progress?
	You could make a case for that, I suppose.
	But the problem is, of course, once somebody's been demoralized, it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.
	Like, if you've been psychologically broken to the point where you dislike yourself enormously, Then all evidence that might support you gets rejected out of a desperate wedding to that negative view of yourself, which is why when, and of course,
	if the leftists, if they cared about mass murder, if they cared about Then they would be constantly talking about, I don't know, the Holodomor, where 10 million Ukrainians were slaughtered, starved to death by the government in largely an act of political mass murder.
	They would talk about the Great Leap Forward.
	They would talk about the collectivization of farms under Pol Pot or Chairman Mao.
	They would talk about all of the mass slaughters that occurred, the 250 million slaughtered under governments in the 20th century alone, outside of war.
	They would talk about all of that stuff, but they don't.
	They want to demoralize the United States.
	David Hogg was out there talking about, oh, the smallpox myth.
	This is a complete myth. Smallpox blankets were not used to infect the natives.
	It was discussed once in a letter, but there's no indication it ever happened.
	They didn't even have a germ theory until the 1880s, so it was all just bad luck.
	Bad luck and unfortunate. There's significant arguments that Europeans were the first in North America and then the natives came later.
	So the problem is though that when somebody's demoralized to that extent, what happens is when they gain evidence counter to their demoralization, they reject it emphatically and they're sort of sealed off in this death spiral of psychological self-destruction.
	How do you convince an adult child to take responsibility for their life and become a responsible adult and parent?
	Wait, your child? If it's your child, you've got to apologize for not inculcating that as they were growing up.
	All right. What's the limit on money?
	Well, I mean, I see on the website back in the day, I had a, back then, I had a $5 was the minimum subscription per month, so that's, I think, a reasonable place to start.
	How many lives do you think communism claimed last century?
	100 million plus.
	Why is the media concentrating on racism during the coronavirus instead of dealing with the medical facts and figures?
	So here's an interesting question.
	I don't know the answer to this, but you guys can let me know.
	Here's an interesting question. Have more hostile articles been written about me, or about the Chinese government that sat on a potential pandemic for many weeks, thus Really getting behind its spread that has now infected over 35,000 people and cost, what, north of 600 lives.
	If you do a search, am I negatively more talked about or is the Chinese government and their response to the coronavirus outbreak spoken about more negatively?
	Kind of an interesting question.
	Hey, you know, I have my faults, but I haven't covered up a spreading pandemic that's killed hundreds of people and infected 35,000.
	So, but you know, I did say to people that they don't have to spend time with abusive people.
	So clearly, you've got to have a lot of negatives.
	I mean, it's a funny thing about Wikipedia.
	So I talked about this general in the communist army who starved 150,000 people to death in a siege.
	Like, that's not even mentioned in Wikipedia.
	But all the people I've interviewed is not mentioned in Wikipedia for me because, anyway.
	Are you preparing for coronavirus?
	I certainly am.
	Are you going to see 1917?
	Yes.
	I'm sure I will.
	Sorry, I don't know about the coop refinery strike.
	I'm sorry. All right.
	Another question or two? Another question or two?
	Do you know your voice sounds like Frasier?
	I don't think it does, but...
	Frasier Crane has a...
	No. The actor, he has a nice voice.
	I can live with that. All right.
	Nothing worse than a bad, abusive parent blaming their child's failure on the child.
	Yes, yes, of course, right?
	Of course. All right.
	All right. I think we will close down things.
	I really do appreciate it. Please don't forget to help out the show.
	Really, really appreciate it. freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	And I really appreciate everyone's time here today.
	It was a delightful chat and a really wonderful questions, everyone.
	And thanks to the people who came by.
	A great pleasure to chat with you.
	Now I'm going to mistime everything in the exit of the live stream because...
	I never know what's happening.
	Please don't forget, FDRURL.com forward slash Hong Kong, FreedomMain.com forward slash documentaries.
	Please watch and share these documentaries.
	They are very powerful.
	They are very important to me and I think helpful to the world as a whole.
	Thanks, my friends. A great pleasure and honor to chat with you.

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