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April 26, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:59:34

"DO/DID YOU LOVE YOUR FATHER STEFAN MOLYNEUX!?!" Rev Jess Lee Peterson Interviews

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	Welcome to The Fall Estate.
	I am Jesse Lee Peterson.
	Don't forget to hit the like button and the notification bell.
	I am about to have a conversation with a young man that I have wanted to speak to for a long time.
	He's interviewed me several times, but I have wanted to.
	I have with me Stefan Molyneux.
	He is the founder and host of Freedom Aid, the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world.
	And I really appreciate you coming on today.
	Thank you for that. My pleasure.
	First, I want to know, are you a Christian or atheist?
	I am an atheist, but I do...
	It's funny, you know, I was anti-Christian for a long time and then I realized, of course, I was simply attacking the foundations of my own history and I was also attacking the foundations that kept a lot of my most treasured cultural institutions...
	Yeah. On my own head.
	So I've certainly been revising my estimate and appreciation of and positive relationship with Christianity very much over the last probably four to five years, if that makes sense.
	Amazing. So at one point you were a Christian.
	You were raised Christian.
	And at that time, did you believe in God?
	Did you believe there was a God at that time?
	Well, it's funny, you know, Jesse, to be to be frank, I I think I had a stronger relationship to the devil than I did to God.
	And what I mean by that is not that I was doing anything weird with pentagrams.
	What I mean is that I was more concerned or fearful of the devil's power in the world than I was bathed in the light of God's grace in the world.
	And I think that fear of the predator rather than the love of the shepherd, the fear of the wolf rather than the love of the shepherd, is one of the things that It kind of made Christianity, as it stood for me in my mind, unsustainable, because when I grew up,
	I really felt, and I think I was, kind of surrounded by devilish human beings, by human beings who were predatory, who had weird sexual habits, who were irresponsible, who were violent, who were greedy, the sort of marionettes of lust in the flesh.
	One of the things that drove me into philosophy is in these beautiful abstractions, I could escape This hellscape of dysfunctional people around me when I was growing up, and I really felt like, you know, the fallen state, you know, the name of your show.
	I really, really felt that the devil rules, and the best escape was in philosophy, but in philosophy, of course, I found some arguments against religion that I think, to sort of break it down to its essence, I think I was more driven to escape the devils than I was to escape Christianity, if that makes sense? So, growing up, you were raised a Christian, but yet you could see that the world seemed to be evil.
	Evil was operated from understanding you correctly.
	What does it mean to you to be an atheist?
	When you say you're an atheist, I've asked other atheists what it meant to them.
	Does it mean you don't believe there is a God, or you just don't believe in a God?
	So, my position is called strong atheism, whereas in I positively affirm That there is no God.
	But that, to me, is one of the less important aspects of atheism.
	And I'm sorry to give you these big speeches, but given that I know I'm going to talk to you today and given our history of having conversations both in person and online, I knew this was going to be an important part.
	To me, the big question for atheists is not whether there is a God or not, because being atheists, they believe either you can't prove it, which is more agnosticism, or that there isn't, which is atheism.
	The big question is, okay, let's say that you take God out of the equation.
	Okay, what do you do with the need for that extra O to go from God to good?
	Because atheists, by knocking down Christianity in particular, have created a void, a moral nihilism, a will to power.
	They have taken us from the human to the animal.
	And that's kind of what I felt I was surrounded by, these jackals, these hyenas when I was growing up, these manifestations of lust and manipulation.
	And so to me, the big...
	Danger and damage of atheism, which I will fully admit that when I was much younger I contributed to, but I've tried to do penance by working on a secular system of ethics ever since, is, okay, so let's say you don't believe in God.
	That's not the end of your intellectual journey.
	That's the beginning, and it's going to take you a long time to catch up to what Christians have.
	Because where does ethics, where does virtue, where do morals come from in Christianity?
	Well, they come from God's commandments.
	God is larger and deeper and more powerful than the universe, and morals are at the very center of that which exists.
	You take that out of our society, and what do you have?
	You have greed. You have lust.
	You have emptiness. You have manipulation.
	You have no... Fundamental requirement to respect persons, honesty, property, your culture, your history, your parents.
	And that has been a pretty chilling legacy, I think, that this amoral atheism has given us.
	You are very interesting to me because you have the heart of a Christian.
	That's why I really wanted to understand this atheist thing and Christianity with you.
	To put it more precisely, I can't find a rational proof of God, and since philosophy is about reason, That's the challenge.
	And so when you are into philosophy, the ideas and understanding that you get, does it come from you?
	So philosophy...
	I hate to say my philosophy because that's like saying my science.
	It's supposed to be something that is objective.
	So philosophy...
	It first starts with the study of the nature of reality.
	Like, what is reality?
	What is something that exists and something that doesn't exist?
	Because if you don't have existence and non-existence, you can't say true or false.
	Like, if you don't know whether a tree really exists, you can't say that's a tree.
	So you have to start with what exists and what doesn't.
	And from there, you can get to what's true and what's false.
	And from there, which is the step I've been working on for so long, you can get to what's morally right and morally wrong.
	Now, because the study of reality relies on the evidence of the senses, you know, your five senses, and it relies upon rational consistency, logical consistency, it has a problem when it comes to A deity, a God, because God does not impress himself on our senses.
	We can't converse with him in the way that you and I are conversing.
	We can't touch him.
	We can't call him. We can't measure him.
	We can't detect his presence in any way.
	And so, philosophically speaking, that's the same as non-existence.
	And so, that is the challenge that rational philosophy has with God, if that makes sense.
	I see, yes. Do you believe—well, I guess not—is it possible there could be two realities, one real and one fake?
	Do you believe that's possible?
	And not seeing the real world...
	I believe that there are two realities.
	The real reality is within us, which come from God to the outside.
	And the fake reality is that they come from outside to within.
	The world is an illusion.
	Is that possible that the world, the trees, everything, it could all be an illusion, but the real reality comes from within, that there's a new world that's within us that was given to us by God, and once we enter into that world, we live the real deal?
	See, philosophically speaking, you and I are currently in the Garden of Eden, and you're offering me a really tasty apple, and frankly, you're not wearing anything, Eve.
	Right? Because what you're doing is you are appealing to...
	And listen, it's perfectly fair for you to do this.
	I'll be completely honest with how tempting that is.
	Yeah. It's enormously tempting.
	I mean, you really should be wrapped in a snake in Tashikinsky style.
	I'm just going to enjoy that image for a moment, but it's really tempting, man.
	It's really tempting because...
	That makes—so much makes sense in the world, that we have an inner reality, we have a ghost within that lives forever, that is one of God's flock, that gravitates towards virtue, that is tempted by sin and is going to live forever.
	That is a great temptation for me.
	I love my family, I love my friends, and I love the world, although, of course, you know, if I'm immortal in my soul, then I leave the world behind, but at least I get to be reunited with friends and family, and you and I can continue this conversation perhaps on a cloud.
	But philosophically speaking, can't get there.
	Can't get to the deeper reality is something that neither has logical consistency nor Impresses itself on our senses.
	That is the big challenge.
	I get the temptation. I mean, I'm really there with you.
	And you know, part times I think I'm trembling on the brink because it's a really, really tasty apple.
	But the apple in philosophy, the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of right and wrong, of existence and non-existence, it stays in rational consistency and the evidence of the senses.
	Yeah. Now, there are some philosophers who would certainly agree with you, though, which is why I wanted to sort of say my philosophy.
	I mean, I think it's the better philosophy to go with empiricism, like evidence of the senses, but there are a lot of philosophers, sometimes even the majority of philosophers, who would agree with you, that what we see tangibly, you know, like my sweater and the microphone and all of that, that's just a shadow.
	It's like a pale reflection of the truth.
	Existence that is spiritual, that is higher, that is aspirational, and is not coarsened by just this gross material flesh bag that we walk around in.
	It really is. I realize that the world itself is an illusion of the real world that is within us.
	And when Christ came, sent by his Father God, he created a new world.
	Because the old world is doomed.
	It's still the Old Testament is doomed.
	That's why you see so much destruction in the old world.
	But Christ created the New Testament, and the New Testament is hidden within us.
	And it's only for those who can admit That they are wrong, playing God, judging one another, judging himself.
	Anyone who has anger is judging, and to judge is to hate.
	And when you hate your fellow man or yourself, you're separated from the true world, and you're now living in the Old Testament, which is still the world around you.
	And in that, there's nothing but suffering, fear, and doubt, and worry, and insecurity, diseases, and all kinds of things.
	But you can enter into this new world And all the way on the internet, you have to admit that you're playing God, that you're not God, and that you're playing Him.
	And that's what it means to repent, to play God.
	And then overcome your mother and return to the Father.
	When you love the Father, your earthly Father, you can love the true God, the real Father.
	I want to ask, do you believe that human beings are in a fallen state?
	No. Can you give me an easier question?
	No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. That's fair.
	That's fair. No, I mean, I don't want to be glib.
	You know, I have a kind of motor mouth and a motor brain, so I want to sort of slow that down because it's a very powerful question, right?
	And, of course, I'm guessing looking over your right shoulder at the title of your show, you're going with the plus on that, my little tick box on the fallen state.
	I think that since the fall...
	Of Christianity, and not as an effect in the West, but I think for a lot of younger people, right?
	I know in England it's like less than 10% of young people are going to church.
	Yeah, it's the same way here.
	Probably more to mosques than churches these days, but I think that religion is better than Darwinism, and atheists, by taking down religion, Without giving people something to climb out of the flesh pit of Darwinism, have put people philosophically into a fallen state.
	See, we can't be animals because we are human beings.
	The only thing we can be is either human beings, which means we have a higher aspiration, we work with universals.
	One thing I love about Jesus is that Jesus was the only religious figure, at least in the Abrahamic tradition, that said, It's not my team and it's not your team, right?
	So in Judaism, there's the chosen people and they have less moral obligation to non-Jews.
	In Islam, they have less, if not negative, moral obligations toward non-Muslims.
	But with Jesus, it's like everybody.
	It's universal.
	So Jesus is the closest thing to philosophy that any religious...
	And that to me is a very powerful thing, which is why I kind of ran like this weird thing.
	You ever have these dreams where you run away from something and then you end up just right back where you started?
	And so like I'm running full tilt from Christianity in pursuit of universals.
	And then I find that my universals end up matching a lot of what Christ talks about us.
	It's like, good job running away to exactly where you started.
	Or it's like that old poem, there should be no end to our journeying.
	And the purpose of our journeying shall be to return to the place that we started, but know it really for the first time.
	So I think that we are in a fallen state.
	But to me, the fallen state is distanced from virtue, distanced from the essence of humanity, which is to not simply live the life of the flesh.
	We can't do that because we have this brain.
	We have this capacity for these amazing abstractions.
	You know, we can send a spaceship to Jupiter.
	We can send a little bath escape to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
	We can go and explore the Titanic miles under water.
	No animals can do that.
	We can't just be animals.
	We're either humans or we're inhuman.
	In other words, we are the kind of monsters that I grew up around or who grew up in charge of me.
	And so my concern very much is either we get back to Christianity or we get forward or somewhere where we're not just pursuing this hedonism.
	Because while you're young and pretty and fit and all of that, hedonism looks like a lot of fun.
	But, you know, it was nice that you referred to me as a young man.
	I don't feel that often on the internet these days.
	But it is really the case that, you know, you've seen this too.
	And we've talked about this before.
	You see this arc of people's lives, you know, and this, you know, you avoid responsibility.
	You avoid taking ownership of your life.
	You avoid being a good person.
	When you're young, it looks like you're free.
	Yeah. And then what happens is there's this arc and people begin to fall.
	It usually happens around 30, maybe 35.
	They begin to fall. And I'm old enough now to have seen this arc and all the people who were like, wow, they're totally free when they're young.
	It's like they're now trapped.
	In ways that are really horrible.
	Now, I saw that on the downside when I was born.
	My mom was in her late 20s when I was born, so by the time I kind of knew stuff, she was in her mid-30s, and I really saw that decline, that decline that happens when you pursue lust, when you pursue greed, when you pursue defensiveness, when you can never admit fault, which is one of the big problems.
	For men, we're addicted to status and power.
	Women are addicted often to right-fighting and not admitting fault and so on.
	I really saw that decay.
	Now, that decay...
	Man, that is a fallen state, and that is, to me, it's a hell that people live in, and that was always terrifying to me.
	So, are you saying that, yes, we are in a fallen state, but we have not fallen away from God, but fallen away from the mind?
	Well, I would say that we have fallen away from universals.
	We have to.
	You know, there's that old song, like, you gotta serve something.
	You gotta serve somebody.
	You gotta serve somebody.
	If you only serve your own lusts, you are circular and decaying and you're inhuman.
	Because we are built for so much more than satisfying our lusts.
	You know, you go see a monkey in a zoo, you can see it pumping its...
	Water dish. You give it a banana, it's perfectly happy.
	Zoo? I'm thrilled to be in a zoo.
	This is wonderful. We're not so good with that kind of stuff.
	We don't do well in captivity.
	We have a yearning for something greater than tickling our neurons with whatever pleasure happens to be there, right?
	And there are these experiments with animals.
	They peck a button and they get a pellet and it makes them feel good.
	They'll just keep doing that all day.
	And that's, you know, I guess it's okay.
	They don't really seem to go crazy from it.
	But human beings, we're not built for that.
	We're built for something so much larger than the body.
	You notice that human beings in that fallen state, we act like animals.
	We do what animals do.
	We'll hump a hole in a tree if it looks right.
	In that fallen state, we hate one another.
	We judge one another. Well, that's the thing, though.
	Sorry to interrupt, but the fallen state is fascinating to me because animals, they don't end up hating each other.
	Like, they'll prey on each other and so on.
	And that's why we can't be animals, because we always have to make some moral justification for whatever it is that we're doing.
	And you see this, of course, on Twitter all the time.
	When I talk to women about The responsibility to think about not milking their sexual attractiveness just for money and just for power over men, but actually applying it to being a mom, to raising the next generation of wonderful children,
	to taking that great gift of life that their parents gave to them and paying it forward, not just selfishly consuming it like some kid who inherits a million bucks and blows it on renting yachts and stupid drugs and things like that, to take this gift.
	And when I talk about that, The amount of anger, the amount of fear, the amount of rage that comes raining down on me, I mean, you know, you get kind of used to, you get kind of battle-hardened after a while, but it's wild, Jesse.
	I mean, just... You just say to women, okay, this is kind of the purpose of life.
	The only reason there is life is that for whatever period of time animals had babies, humans had babies, they raised them under very difficult circumstances, you know, plagues and war and famine and so on.
	And you try to remind people what it is to be human rather than Serving your vanity, serving your narcissism, serving your greed for attention, but actually putting it to some productive use like having a family.
	And then you remind women, of course, that it's all fun and games.
	Women start off rich and end up poor, and men start off poor and end up rich.
	It's all fun and games until you hit 35 or 40, and then poof, you become invisible to the male gaze and everything you complained about.
	All that male attention you complained about.
	It vanishes, and now you complain that there's no male attention, and then it's too late to fix.
	They can't help themselves, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
	But let me ask, one other thing about this fallen state situation.
	Do you believe that, I mean, what do you believe?
	Do you believe that we are, in reality, we are a spirit that lives in a body, or do you believe that we are our body?
	I wouldn't use the word spirit because I'm afraid to be annoying.
	That's philosophically imprecise.
	It could mean a drink too.
	No, I'm kidding. No, what I mean is that we are built for abstractions.
	We are built for seeking something higher and more universal than ourselves.
	And that's the only thing that makes us human because that's the only thing we do that's different from the animals.
	Animals have sex, they eat, they sleep, they fight, they play, they do all of that stuff.
	But the one thing they don't do Is universalize, work with abstractions, with concepts that are greater than themselves.
	And so if we reject that which makes us most human, and for you this is the pursuit of the divine, this is the pursuit of virtue, this is the reunion with God.
	For me this is the pursuit of virtue in a philosophical context and having courage against the mob to save the mob from their own lusts and so on.
	We are always tempted by the flesh, but we are only defined by the mind, by the universals, I think what you would call the spirit.
	Do you have peace within?
	Do you have perfect peace? Well, that's a pretty high standard, man.
	Perfect peace! You know, if I say yes, you know what people are going to do?
	What? They're going to find every single...
	I can see this, you know, the trolls, they live in my head.
	In a good way, you know, very helpful, right?
	So here's what's going to happen.
	I'm going to say, why, yes, Jesse, I have perfect peace.
	And then people are going to clip all the foaming at the mouth rants that I have on the play.
	I'm going to say, that's not really perfect peace, man.
	I would say...
	That I do not have perfect peace.
	And there's a lot of reasons for that.
	I don't know if you want to know the reasons why or whether you just want the answer.
	I do want to know the reason why you don't have it, but first I want to know what does it feel like not to have peace within?
	What is that like?
	What is that feeling? What happens if you're not having that?
	Okay, can you... I'm sorry to answer a question with a question, which my aunt almost told me was very rude, but I'll do it anyway.
	No, no problem. Describe to me, please, this perfect piece.
	What it feels like to you?
	It is no conflict within.
	You have no conflict.
	You have no doubt, no fear, no worry, no insecurities, no second thoughts, no mind, body, and soul.
	Within is that peace.
	And it doesn't matter what's happening in the world around you or what's happening to you.
	It's just a situation.
	And because of that peace, you can see that it's not happening to you.
	It's just a situation that you have to deal with.
	You don't identify with the situation at all, no matter what it is.
	You know, that apple just got three times bigger.
	I'm just pointing that out.
	And your snake slipped a little.
	Okay, but don't you feel a little bit like you're at war?
	I mean, this is the fascinating thing, right?
	Because I know you're fighting for a particular viewpoint, often against significant odds, suppression, deplatforming, hostility, and all of that.
	So the perfect peace combined with being at war seems kind of tricky in my mind.
	Well, there is a war happening, and that war is a battle between good and evil.
	In our mind, it's an evil battle against the good within the soul of our belly and our real self.
	And that war is happening through other people as well to try to destroy the good that's in you.
	But if you realize that from within yourself, you're not at battle with that war, but the spirit between the evil and the good is at battle with one another.
	But if you identify with the evil, it's going to feel as though you're at war.
	And when people call me names and they shadow ban me, they try to go after me, They're not against me personally.
	They're not against the person they think they are.
	But the spirit, which is evil, is battling just the spirit which is within me, and that's the spirit of good, which is of God.
	And they're working to defeat one another.
	But if you let that happen without having an opinion about it or judging it or identifying with it, you will find that you will always win the battle over evil with good.
	That's very interesting. Of course, most people, when they attack, say, you or me, they focus on the person.
	And it's always frustrating to me because I'm like, forget about me.
	I mean, I would rather be completely invisible in this process.
	Like, for me, virtue, a good life, a happy life, a responsible life, it's like this beautiful view.
	Now, the best glassmakers, you don't even see the glass.
	You know, bad glass makers, they call this ripples and they got hairs in there, you know, like the candies and cigarette ashes that they dropped in this terrible glass.
	And you can't see the view because all this crap in the way.
	And for me, I'm like, look, I want to show people this view of philosophy, of truth, of virtue, courage, responsibility, all those good things.
	And people are like, I just want to look at the glass and criticize the glass.
	I'm like, look at the glass. Look at the view.
	And so I think what you're saying there is say there's a war of principles.
	There's a war of universals.
	There's good and evil. Yes.
	And people will always try and personalize it if they have bad intent, right?
	They'll try and personalize it upon you so they don't have to deal with the...
	Well, in that fallen state, they can't see, and they don't know that, because they have identified either with the evil, and most people have until they overcome it in that fallen state.
	They believe that it's them.
	They don't realize that there's another identity, another personality that's made a home in them, and it works through their mind and their feelings, and they have identified with the mind, believing that their thoughts are their own, And so if you believe your thoughts are your own, you will be controlled by it.
	But when you start to realize that you are not your thoughts and you don't create thoughts, then the real you observe the not you and that's when you can win the battle.
	Okay. Right.
	What do you think about that?
	Do you believe that you are your thoughts?
	Boy, we're really getting deep here.
	That's good, that's good. No, that's what we thought, right?
	That I am my thoughts.
	I used to believe that a lot more.
	Now I believe that there's a bedrock of identity that was not created by language, existed prior to language, and seems kind of impervious to language, if that makes any kind of sense.
	Like, there's an essence to me that...
	Produces language, but it's not produced by language, in the sense that there's a painter who produces a painting, but the painting doesn't produce the painter.
	So, you do not believe that you are your thoughts?
	No. And you don't create thoughts?
	Wow. Well, okay, so let me give you an analogy here, which hopefully will not confuse me more than it illustrates the point.
	So let's say you play a sport, like ping pong, like some silly sport, right?
	Now, if you practice ping pong for a long time, then you'll get pretty good.
	And so if you win a ping pong game, you've earned that ping pong game, but not in the moment.
	You've earned that ping pong game in the preparation, right?
	In the years that you spent practicing ping pong or whatever it is, right?
	Right. And so do you say, well, have you produced that victory in the ping pong game?
	Well, yes, but not in the moment.
	It's the whole history of leading up to it that is prepared for it.
	So thoughts bubble up in my head.
	Like, I do this at night when I'm sort of thinking of falling asleep.
	It actually helps relax me, and it's like, I just think of a particular problem or a puzzle that's the challenge for me, or I think of a debate that's coming up or whatever, and thoughts will just bubble up.
	I mean, people say to me all the time, like, how is it possible that you come up with these arguments, these analogies on the fly?
	And it's like, well, but, you know, I've been doing this for over 30 years.
	I mean, if I'm not good at it by now, I should be doing something else, right?
	And so I don't feel that I produce thoughts in the moment any more than I think I win ping pong in the moment, but it is the history of thinking that gives me that facility to produce these thoughts in the moment.
	So I can't sort of say yes or no, because I did make the choice to pursue philosophy for many years, although You could also say that philosophy kind of grabbed me like some sort of skyhook.
	Like I first started reading it and I was like, yes, yes, yes!
	There's my peace of mind, by the way.
	And I loved it so much that it was like...
	I mean, I love free will, and I constantly am arguing for free will, but I was thinking just the other day, did I really have free will around philosophy, given how much I responded to it with such joy and such pleasure that has sustained it in me for, oh man, I was just doing this calculation the other day.
	I'm 53, about 17, so yeah, like 30 plus years, 35 years or so.
	I am not philosophy, obviously.
	I produce philosophy, but philosophy also produced me, if that makes any sense.
	I understand that. Do you have negative thoughts sometime at night before bed or anytime during the day?
	Do you have negative thoughts?
	I'm going to be annoying to just ask you to define what you mean by negative thoughts.
	Some people feel that they're not worthy or they feel that fear or doubt or worry or they feel judged.
	When you're alone and no one is watching, you can feel like a nobody or nothing, so you have to grab a book or make a phone call or go eat some ice cream or smoke some pot or something.
	You never get those thoughts.
	I don't ever feel not worthy.
	Right. Well, I'll just give you an example.
	I don't ever feel insignificant or not worthy.
	There are certainly times where I feel afraid, and there are certainly times in the past where I felt fearful for the future.
	And do you believe that you're creating those thoughts from the past, or do you create them in the present?
	I'll give you an example, right?
	So my mother is German, I'm half German, and I have a lot of affinity for the country, although I haven't been there since I was very little.
	And, you know, Germany is a mess.
	And it's hard to see how Germany can continue for very long, and we don't have to get into details, I just want to say it's a big sealed problem with immigration, with lack of babies, with cultural problems, with the self-hatred that's still being...
	Foisted on Germans who weren't responsible for the Second World War and all of that.
	And I was like, I gotta do something about Germany.
	And it's like, okay. What are you going to do about Germany?
	I'll do some videos about Germany and so on.
	And I get all these messages from people in Germany.
	I get them from Ireland. I get them from all over the world.
	Save us, save us, save us.
	Do this, do this, do this.
	Because, you know, you've got a big platform.
	You've got a good ability to describe things and you're willing to take risks wisely or unwisely that few other people are willing to take.
	So save us, do something.
	And I would take that on, and I would sometimes have a positive effect.
	Sometimes it would feel like I didn't have a positive effect.
	I never really felt like I had a negative effect, but trying to control Political decisions on the other side of the world or even next door is kind of like a recipe for frustration, if that makes sense.
	So I had to kind of consciously say, look, I say my piece.
	I'll say my piece. I'll promote it as much as possible, but I can't own the outcome because that's going to drive me crazy.
	It's going to exhaust me.
	It's going to burn me out. So having to let go of desperately wanting an outcome Well, you know that.
	I mean, look, you want everyone to get to heaven.
	You want single moms to take more responsibility.
	You want people to stop hating their parents, but you can't make them do it.
	That's right. That's right.
	So I would say that, and that still happens to me from time to time.
	It happened to me recently with Ireland.
	It is happening to me with coronavirus to some degree at the moment.
	I really, really want people to listen to me.
	To sense, to evidence, to my caring for the world.
	And, you know, some do.
	A lot don't. Yeah, sure.
	Let me ask, did you grow up close with your father and mother?
	No. No, my father left when I was a couple of months old, and I saw him only intermittently.
	He had a very troubled existence, a very successful man in many ways professionally, but a very troubled existence in his mind and his heart.
	And I was, it's funny, you know, so with my mother, I should really have brought a couch to the interview, but so with my mother, I have an odd affinity with my mother in that my mother is very creative.
	She's very intellectual. She helped me a lot with my novel writing and with my poetry.
	And her father was a writer and her uncle was a writer and intellectuals are all over the place on my mom's side of the family.
	And I always reminded my mother of her father, who she loved.
	And so she was kind of close in a way, but she just had this crazy temper that would just erupt in violence to the point where I literally would fear for my life.
	Yeah. And I tried running away when I was like four years old.
	And I mean, I've said this before on my show.
	She picked me up and beat me against this metal door to the point where I had to go limp or I would have...
	I mean, I could have died. I could have, right?
	So... I did appreciate my mother's enthusiasm for the intellectual work that I wanted to do and she took it very seriously and that helped me a lot.
	But it was again kind of like defusing a bomb, like I want to get the good stuff but I don't want to trip over.
	The rage in her that came out of probably her experiences growing up in the Second World War with horrible things happening to her in Germany from both the German government and the Russians who came in who were horrible to children and little girls in particular.
	So I was...
	Happy in some ways with the fact that my mother took what I wanted to do seriously, which laid some foundation for what it is that I do, Jesse.
	Yes, yes. Man, she was terrifying.
	Is she still living?
	Sorry? Is she still living?
	She is still living.
	And have you forgiven her for traumatizing you in that way?
	I don't know if the longer the pause, the worse the answer, but I would say...
	It's a tough call. So I will say that I have come to peace with it in that I rarely think of it.
	I will use it, like if you bring it up, I will talk about it.
	It's not something where I'm scarred, it doesn't interfere with the pleasure of my day, and I can go for quite, you know, days and days and days, or sometimes even weeks.
	Without really thinking about it at all, you know, when you're a dad and you're raising a daughter, as I do with a stay-at-home dad, you know, she's going to have questions or there's going to be situations which remind you.
	But for the most part, it's not in my mind and it's not something that disturbs me in the present.
	But here's the challenge.
	I believe that forgiveness is something that needs to be earned.
	And while I have had in the past many conversations with my mother about what happened and not screaming at her, not yelling at her, just, you know, this is what happened.
	And, you know, I think that it's important we talk about it.
	And, you know, she just denied that it happened or would blame me or would find some other escape route to not take any responsibility.
	And so I will not say that I have forgiven her because there are other people in my life who've done me wrong, just as I've done wrong to people in my life, and I will ask forgiveness, and I will make amends, and I will make reparations, and I will promise to do better and really stick to that promise.
	And so for me, the people in my life...
	Who've earned my forgiveness, I will give it freely, just as I wish to be forgiven when I've made amends.
	The people who've not made amends, I come to terms with it.
	I release them, in a sense, from the requirement to earn it.
	But I can't use the same word as the people who honorably do earn forgiveness, if that makes sense.
	So, if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying, no, I have not forgiven my mother because she has not earned it.
	Right. And how do you earn forgiveness?
	Well, that's all the stuff I was taught as a Christian growing up.
	You have to admit your sin.
	You have to apologize genuinely.
	You have to work to make amends, if at all possible.
	And you have to really work hard to not repeat the behavior.
	Is it possible that that was a wrong teaching?
	Well, I suppose, philosophically speaking, it's always possible, yes.
	Because forgiveness...
	It's not based on the other person admitting that they did wrong or coming to you and apologizing for it or anything.
	In the scriptures it says, if you have ought, meaning if you have anger against anyone, you go and forgive them and I, meaning God, will forgive you.
	They don't have to admit anything and when you forgive them, He will forgive you and then return you back to your natural state of being before you were traumatized by that person.
	So you can't earn it.
	He doesn't even tell you...
	Sorry to interrupt you, man.
	Let's just back up a sec here.
	Okay, so let's say my mom's in the room, right?
	I just wet myself. Okay, so let's just say my mom's in the room and in this The way that you talk about it, I forgive her, though she hasn't done anything to earn it.
	In fact, she continues to deny and make things difficult, right?
	Of course. So I forgive her, but then God forgives me.
	But what's God forgiving me for?
	I'm the victim. That's a good question.
	That's a whole long question, man.
	That is an amazing question.
	What it is, unforgiveness is hatred.
	And hatred is judgment.
	And when you judge, you're playing God and you're separated from the true God within you.
	And whomever you resent, you become like that person and they control you.
	Let's say that your mother did those horrible things to you and you became angry about it.
	In that very moment, you lost yourself and became like your mother.
	And that made you subject to her.
	And she still can control you whenever she wants to.
	And let's say you move back to Germany and leave mama in America.
	Whatever woman you get involved with is mama because you're attracted to what you hate.
	And you'll find yourself whenever you get in a relationship with different women, you become the boy and they become the mama.
	You won't be able to be honest with the woman because you're afraid of hurting her feelings or don't know how to deal with her overreaction because you were never told how to overcome your mother.
	And so she becomes your God, and every woman you get involved with is your God.
	You become subject to them. That's why when you don't forgive, you're controlled by that, but when you do forgive, you're separated from that, and now you're controlled by what is right within you.
	You are yourself not subject to anyone else, whether they forgive or not or admit it.
	But there's nothing that human beings can do to earn your forgiveness.
	You need to have God forgive you.
	That's why he said, forgive them and I will forgive you.
	Meaning, stop playing God by judging people, but be honest with them.
	Oh, so I would be forgiven for the sin of being angry at my mother, is that right?
	Right, because she couldn't help herself.
	But as a kid, you didn't understand that.
	Okay, but how do you know she couldn't help herself?
	I mean, I'm a big free will guy, so if she doesn't have moral responsibility, then I was basically raised by an angry robot, so to speak.
	You were, absolutely.
	Your mother didn't have a child just to destroy it.
	But because she became like her mother, she has the identity of her mother, she hates her mother, that spirit, I call it a spirit, is living in her and it's driving her.
	And exactly what happened to her, she did it to you.
	And it goes from generation to generation.
	Unless you forgive so you can overcome that and become yourself again, then you would not do that to your children.
	You could start a new generation.
	That is powerfully spoken.
	And I'm going to be, again, kind of annoying and say, but!
	Because, you know, I've got to put up my dukes here for this stuff.
	Absolutely. I'm glad. Absolutely.
	Okay. I have not recreated my history with my child.
	I mean, I've never raised my voice at her.
	I've never hit her.
	I've never called her names.
	And we have a great relationship.
	Are you married? Yes.
	I bet your wife is doing it.
	My wife is wonderful and nothing has been recreated to my knowledge from what happened in the past.
	What happens when you're honest with your wife about her anger and that she needs to back away from your kid to be patient with your child?
	Have you spoken to her about those things?
	Yeah, I mean, she doesn't have much of a temper, but I think like a lot of moms, she's taken the overprotective thing just a little bit too far.
	You know, you kind of need the man to remind the mom that the kid is growing up and needs to, you know, got to stretch out that umbilical and eventually cut it.
	So, yeah, she's pretty good with listening to that and, you know, takes a bit of repetition sometimes.
	Yeah, you're married to your mother.
	She may not be as dramatic the way your mother did you, but what your wife is doing to your daughter is still traumatizing her in the same manner.
	I gotta push back on that pretty hard, man.
	I don't think that's the case.
	My wife and my mother, you know, I could say that they're complete opposites, but then you've got that problem of them meeting around the back, so to speak.
	No, so for me, I think the way that I escaped the cycle was, this is always my fear.
	You know, I don't mind getting personal here because I feel like I'm half inconfessional anyway, so that's fine.
	But no, here's what it is for me, Jesse, that my great fear...
	Was what I call the great dial, right?
	So, you know, like you get an amp on your guitar or whatever, right?
	There are all these different dials, right?
	Bass, treble, and volume, and all that.
	And you can move them all independently.
	You can change your bass, treble, and all that.
	And they're all tied together, right?
	So, for me, there's one dial called free will for human beings.
	And I can't just move it for myself without moving it for everyone else.
	Because that's my common humanity.
	I don't want to divide humanity into different groups, different species, different whatever, right?
	I want us all to be human because that's philosophy.
	It's all got to be. It's got to be for everyone.
	It's not just for me, for blacks, for whites.
	It's for everyone. So for me, there's this dial.
	Now, if I move it for my mom, it moves for me.
	And if I move it for me, it moves for my mom, or you, or my dad, or whoever.
	It moves for everyone.
	Now, if I say, my mom, her free will goes down to zero.
	And what happens in my heart, Jesse, I feel that move, man.
	I feel that free will goes down to zero for me.
	And having a free will of zero is just about the most terrifying thing that I can think of.
	Because then I'm run by history and I'm going to recreate everything that happened in the past.
	I gotta have. You know this stupid movie, like this goes up to 11, right?
	I want my free will to go up to 11, right?
	And so when I dial my free will up to 11, maximum responsibility plus, plus, plus, it goes up for everyone.
	Everyone gets maximum free will.
	And that's how I change history.
	But then if you say, well, your mom had no control, then it's like you're taking this dial down, but you're taking it down for me, for you.
	And if we don't have any free will, then you and I are just ping pong balls bouncing around.
	It's not even really a conversation, if that makes sense.
	Do you believe that your mother wanted to treat you that way?
	Her own son, you think that she wanted to do that?
	Well, you know, motivation is always pretty complex.
	I would say that empirically she chose it to the alternative of not doing it.
	I will also say that she had the complete capacity to not do it.
	And so if she had that, why would she do it to you, her son, if she had the capacity not to do it?
	Well, I know that she had the capacity to not do it because she never did it in public.
	She never did it with teachers around.
	She would never belt me in front of a cop.
	Wherever there were negative repercussions to her for abusing me, she found the magical ability to refrain from that abuse.
	Unfortunately, her love for me or my love for her was not enough of a motivation as your average random stranger who might cause her trouble if he saw her beating her son.
	I was not enough.
	And I know it's not personal to me.
	I was an object, in a sense, for her to vent her anger on.
	You know, in the saying that some guy kicks a chair over because he's angry.
	He doesn't hate the chair. He's just kind of acting out his immature anger.
	I was just like that chair.
	It wasn't personal to me.
	It would have been the same with any other kid, for sure.
	But because I knew she had the capacity to not be abusive, that means to me she is responsible for being abusive.
	Oh, I see what you're saying.
	Because she never did it in public, only in private, that caused you to believe that she had the capacity to do it and not to do it.
	It's sort of like, you know, if somebody's epileptic and they have a seizure, they can't possibly not have that seizure.
	That's not a choice.
	That's just like whatever, right?
	But if somebody, you know, punches you, The moment the teacher leaves the room, then they have the capacity to not punch you.
	They're just waiting until they can get away with it.
	That's amazing! We don't have the time today, but I want to challenge you on the free will thing.
	I'll just say, we don't have a free will.
	I know you believe we do have a free will, but we don't have a free will.
	We are influenced.
	Either by evil or by good.
	It's depending on which God that we serve.
	And in the Father's State, we're influenced by evil.
	But when you overcome that Father's State, you're influenced by good.
	We don't have a free will.
	You've got to choose.
	You want to encourage people to choose good over evil, right?
	You don't choose it.
	It choose you when you can admit that you are evil and that you are wrong, but you can't help yourself.
	Then you can overcome it.
	But I gotta ask you this.
	Have you ever done anything that, quote unquote, was negative or wrong?
	To others or to yourself and you say, wow, I can't believe I did that.
	That's crazy. I would never do it again.
	And you go along for a week or two or a month and you find yourself doing it again and you can't believe you're doing it again.
	And you're like, wow, I'm not going to do it.
	You say, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it while on your way to do it.
	Have you ever done that? You mean like, say, checking Twitter in the middle of the night?
	I would say that there have been occasional times where I have relapsed into a not-so-ideal habit.
	Is that what you mean? Yes.
	And it wasn't something that you wanted to do, right?
	I would say that it was kind of rolling the dice.
	If you wake up in the middle of the night and if you're having a little bit of trouble getting back to sleep, Twitter is probably not the best way to soothe yourself off to La La Land.
	So yeah, it's kind of rolling the dice in that if you just lie there stewing...
	Go ahead. How about other things to others?
	You've been in the world for 50 years, I guess, and along the way, have there been things you've done to others, or even to yourself, and you say you would not do it again, and you knew it was wrong, at least you judge it as wrong, but you find yourself doing it again anyway.
	You can't believe that you're doing it again, other than Twitter.
	Well, yeah, I would say not lately, but certainly when I was younger, there were negative habits that were hard to shake, for sure.
	And so was that your free will or were you being influenced from within?
	Well, I mean, that is sort of to say that there's a distinction between the two.
	I mean, I think free will is kind of like a muscle.
	Like you need to, you know, if you want to lift a thousand pounds, you've got to work out for a long time.
	You can just go and lift a thousand pounds, your arms would come out, right?
	I mean, you just walk around like some knight in the Monty Python movie.
	So I think for me, when it came to breaking bad habits, it's kind of like you've got to work up to it, like you've got to work up to lifting a thousand pounds.
	So yeah, there's some repetition, but you kind of break free if you keep working at it.
	You can often break free from those negative habits.
	You know, like, I mean, I dated a lot and irresponsibly when I was young.
	I chose women for shallow reasons.
	I didn't go for qualities of character and...
	I didn't evaluate women for long-term stability and so on.
	Well, I think we all know what I followed, right?
	And so that took a long time to lose that habit, to outgrow that habit.
	That took a fair amount of self-discipline, a fair amount of punching myself in the crotch with a Icicle or something like that.
	So that took a while, but that's kind of breaking orbit from my entire history.
	It's like learning another language. It doesn't just happen overnight.
	You've got to really work at it.
	Is it possible that the reason you were doing those things is because you resented your mother for what had happened to you?
	And by resenting your mother, you became subject to women.
	Because you resented your mother, you resent all women.
	So you became subject to them.
	And so you went around having sex with them trying to find something that was lost.
	Well, I guess when it comes to our own existence, Jesse, one of the most fundamental questions outside of religious questions, one of the most fundamental questions is, why did my father choose my mother?
	That's a very fundamental question for us, right?
	Because why we're here. Why you're here, it's why we're all here.
	Why did my father choose my mother?
	And I think where the repetition was in the sort of fallen state paradigm was this, that My father did not choose my mother for her qualities of character, but because she was a very attractive woman.
	And she was. Great features and all that slender and so on.
	And she's smart and she's a good conversationalist in many ways and all of that.
	But he didn't choose her for moral qualities of character.
	And so it was...
	Animal fertility markers, if that makes any sense.
	It was real mammal stuff.
	It wasn't anything to do with the higher self or virtue.
	And so I think we're kind of programmed to do what our fathers did because we're only around because our fathers were successful and we want to reproduce.
	So we're programmed to do what our fathers did.
	And so I think for me...
	Breaking out of the orbit of just choosing women based on looks or charisma or wit or things like that which don't have any moral content.
	That was very much, well, it worked for my dad and that's why I'm here, so who am I to do different?
	Is it possible your father chose your mother because he was attracted to what he hated because he resented his mother?
	Well, I don't know enough about him to say that for sure, but I'll certainly put that in the square round of possibility.
	Do you love your father? No.
	You don't love your father?
	No. And why not?
	Because parenthood is a verb.
	It's not a noun. I mean, he was like a guy who donated some sperm, took off, and I rarely saw him, if ever.
	But what did he do to you that caused you not to love him?
	He failed to protect me from my mother.
	So he ran from your mother, not from you.
	And you're right. He did fail to protect you from your mother.
	And that's because he was married to his mother.
	Your mother became his mother.
	And he couldn't deal with his mother, so he didn't know how to deal with your mother.
	And so he bailed.
	He left her. He didn't leave you.
	But your mother never said, you know what, your father loves you, but he couldn't handle me.
	She made you believe that she was the victim, and he was the victimizer, but it wasn't true.
	And that's why you don't love your father.
	Sorry to interrupt, but the female sort of playing the victim thing is a very, very powerful thing.
	It's very, very hard for men to...
	To overcome that, right?
	Because, you know, if my mother was going to be honest, she would say, you know, I kind of chose the wrong guy.
	He probably chose the wrong woman.
	I was angry. He was angry.
	We kind of blew it.
	And, you know, now we've got a kind of a wreckage of a family.
	It's not your fault. We made mistakes.
	But, of course, if she was the kind of person to do that, the marriage probably wouldn't have ended to begin with.
	So it's this kind of... I think what you're talking about, this machinery, it's like this closed loop.
	Women are not going to do that.
	This is how it had to be, given who they were. Women would not do that.
	The hardest thing...
	In the world for a woman to do is to admit she's wrong.
	She can point out everybody else, the men, the women, the cat, the dog, the grass, the paint on the house.
	But because of her ego, she will not admit she's wrong.
	She'll send you to hell before she admits she's wrong.
	Well, let me just look at Hillary Clinton dragged America through years of this Russia collusion conspiracy theory because she just couldn't admit that she was wrong about her reading of the American public and what they wanted.
	I'm so out of time, but I gotta ask you this, Stephan.
	Do you have a right not to love your father?
	Sure. My formulation is love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	And my father would need to display significant virtues, which I'm open to hearing and still within the realm of possibility, in order for me to experience the involuntary sensation of love that responds to that behavior.
	Is he still living?
	Yes. Have you ever asked him, why did you leave?
	Yes. And what do you say?
	Um... It was hard to...
	It's hard to get a straight answer from people with a bad conscience, as you know, right?
	Yes. And you know what?
	I just realized that I may not be giving you a straight answer here, which kind of puts me...
	Not only, right?
	Not only. Not only people have bad conscience.
	Um... So my father has this theory of resources, that you only have a certain amount of resources that you can apply in life, and he was just out of resources.
	He was tired of fighting.
	He was tired of the combat.
	He couldn't work where they were because he was trained in another country.
	So he left for Africa, and he worked in Africa for his career.
	And I was not, of course, in Africa, except occasionally.
	And so it was...
	A whole series of impossibilities combined with his lack of emotional resources to be able to deal with the situation.
	That's mostly what I got out of the conversation with him.
	Conversations, plural. So you feel about your father the way that your mother feel about him?
	No, no, no, no.
	I do have a lot of sympathy for my father.
	And listen, I have a lot of sympathy for my mother, too.
	I mean, she had the kind of childhood that made Mike's look like a paradise.
	I mean, her entire world was burning up in the Second World War, and her entire civilization was being bombed into extinction.
	And, you know, she... Her grandmother died in bombing raids.
	I had a rough childhood, man.
	It was nothing like that. And so I do have a lot of sympathy for what my mother had to go through.
	But yet you have not gone to either one of them and forgiven them, realizing that it doesn't make it right what they did to you, but they can help it.
	And yet you have not gone to either one of them and forgiven them.
	Knowing that if they could have done better, they would have.
	And you understand your mother's background, you understand your father's background, but yet you won't forgive them.
	Don't you find that interesting? It's interesting because, you know, you're like, don't judge.
	And you say, it's interesting.
	Unfortunately, or fortunately, it would break my moral standards to forgive people who haven't earned it.
	At the same time, sitting there stewed in anger about things in the past that can't be changed in the present is a complete waste of time and energy.
	So it is very, very important to come to a resolution about history to free up your energies for a more positive future.
	But to me, that doesn't have the moral requirement to forgive people who haven't earned it any more than I would pay someone for a job he didn't do.
	Amazing. And so do you realize the past doesn't exist except in your mind?
	And so when those things happen to you, they happen then.
	They're not happening now, but you're reliving them by thinking it and it feels like the past.
	You're still living something that doesn't exist because you won't forgive and live in the present.
	Well, but you might be shoehorning me a little bit into the theory because I have broken the cycle.
	I've been happily married for 17 years.
	I'm a good dad and a stay-at-home dad.
	And, you know, I mean, maybe you could say I've gone a little bit too far to the other extreme.
	My dad went to Africa and I barely leave the house.
	So, you know, it's like maybe the pendulum swang a little bit too far.
	But, you know, I think if it's swinging in the right direction, that's good.
	What's the difference between men and women?
	What is a man?
	A man is a provider and a protector.
	And unfortunately, both of those roles have been usurped by the government and by a terribly toxic popular culture.
	Men can't protect their women anymore.
	We've got open borders. We've got rising crime rates in many areas.
	And men can't protect their families from terrible decisions by the government, which invite disease and debt and chaos into the environment.
	So men have been kind of emasculated that we can't Protect.
	And through the welfare state, we're all becoming stepfathers involuntarily to a lot of irresponsible women.
	So because we have to provide for everyone else's family, or we're forced to, we can't provide for our own in many situations.
	So protector and provider, the two things which I think really define men, have been really bypassed by the modern state.
	And by that, I don't just mean the fallen state, but the government state as well.
	What is a woman? Well, a woman is a...
	A courageous nurturer has always been sort of the way that I have characterized women.
	Well, not always, but more recently in my mind.
	It takes a lot of courage, I think.
	I think women have to surrender themselves to trust in a man because women are so vulnerable through pregnancy and breastfeeding and early childhood dependence that they really have to be courageous in surrendering to not the authority in a sense like you boss them around, but just trusting a man.
	It's really, really a tough thing to do.
	I'll never have to trust my wife in the way that she has to trust me to have kids and all of that.
	And so there is that courageous side of women and the nurturing side.
	And unfortunately, a lot of that nurturing has been stripped from women as well as they've been convinced that somehow working in an office is better than caring for their own children.
	And I think that's really taken a lot of the richness out of femininity these days.
	You mentioned, and then I got it wrong, I have another interview coming up, and everybody looking at me, and I knew I was going to— We'll talk about your workaholism next time, Jesse, and I will ask you about your dad.
	That's right. I knew I was going to really enjoy this coming, because I have so much respect for you, and we've spoken at events together, been on your show several times, so I knew I would.
	You mentioned the Adam and Eve story, the snake in the Adam and Eve story, right?
	I believe there's a—I can see— That there's a perfect order to life, and that order is God and Christ, Christ and man, man over woman, and woman over children.
	And what happened in that garden with the apple thing you mentioned is that Adam had a relationship with his father, and then the father created the woman for the man so that they could reproduce and all that kind of appropriated and all that.
	And then the serpent was below the woman.
	And the serpent hate God.
	Jealous of God. He wanted to be God.
	And the serpent tried to tempt a man to, hey, you need to turn away from your father.
	Your father, he's no good.
	He's a slut maker and all that, right?
	But Adam said, no.
	I love my father. I'm never turning.
	So Adam had one relationship.
	A relationship with his father.
	He loved his father. He believed his father.
	They spoke to one another without words.
	It was revelation.
	They should just know what they're thinking.
	And then the serpent went to the woman and said, hey, don't listen to that man.
	That man is a misogynist.
	He's better than you.
	He listened to the father.
	He's not even a real man.
	He listened to his father.
	You can be your own woman.
	You can have abortions.
	You can not wear bras.
	And he kept telling the woman that, and finally the woman believed it.
	Because at first you're like, no, I love my husband.
	Leave me alone. But he kept working on it until he could get her to believe in him.
	And then she's like, wow, my eyes are open.
	I can be like a man.
	And then she lost respect for her husband.
	She went back and said, hey, you can be free.
	Don't listen to your father.
	You can be like me.
	You can be free. Have your own mind.
	And Adam eventually believed the woman.
	And so he had no longer had a relationship with his father, but with his mother.
	And his mother had the relationship with the serpent.
	She became his god as the serpent became her god.
	And that order was broken, and now the woman is God over man, and Satan is the woman's God.
	And Christ came and reversed that order.
	That's why the man have to overcome the woman and return to the father, overcome the mother, return to the father, to bring that order back.
	And then you wouldn't have all this confusion in your life, in your family life.
	It would still be in the world, but it wouldn't be in the new world that's inside of you.
	Is that possible?
	Yes, and it does strike me, of course, that a lot of—I mean, in Judaism, it's a matrilineal, right?
	Judaism comes from the mother, in terms of the descendants and what makes you Jewish if you're not converting.
	And the matriarchal aspect of Judaism, I think, has always had tensions with the patriarchal aspects of Christianity.
	And I guess, if I understand your case correctly, Jesse, what you're saying is that Christ came to save the world from— The overpowering female that was paralyzing its forward progress.
	Absolutely. And she can't help herself because she has the nature of her father, Satan.
	But if the man were to return to the father, if you were to return to your earthly father, realize your earthly father cannot help himself, And forgive him.
	You will be forgiven, and then you will be turned to that natural state of order.
	And no longer will you be subject to the woman, but she will be subject to you as you are subject to the father.
	Because you can't love the creator unless you love your earthly father.
	You have to forgive him. It doesn't mean you got to hang out with him.
	What he did was wrong.
	But if you don't forgive him, you will never return to that order.
	And your daughter will suffer because the love come from above.
	Down through you to your wife and to the mother.
	But if it comes from below, it's going to affect your daughter in a negative way.
	Whether you admit it or know it or not, you've got to come back to that order in order for that to work.
	And then you will have that perfect peace on the inside and deal with your wife and your kids and everybody else with perfect love.
	You won't accept a wrong as a right, but you speak up about it.
	It's just that you won't personally be affected because you operate from the love from above instead of the fake love from below.
	If you notice, women don't have love.
	Women don't have love at all.
	They receive love from the man if that man has returned back to love.
	But women don't have love.
	That's why they destroy everything because they're very insecure.
	They have a big ego.
	They have fear. They have doubt.
	They have worry. And so they make the world rotate around them, their children, their husband, the cat, the dog, the grass, the paint on the house, anyone.
	Because if they lose that They can feel the sense of having fear and doubt.
	They don't feel like anything because they don't have love.
	And men are not giving them love.
	They're only giving them sex because they have not returned to their proper state of being.
	But women need men to be men to receive that love.
	I mean, I put some asterisks on that, you know, the not all women thing, but it just crossed my mind that you're talking about my father who lives in Ireland now.
	He retired. That I have an urge to fly to Ireland, but I can't get out of the country because the communists unleashed the damn virus.
	So I guess we'll have to wait for all of that.
	Amazing. That emptiness that you have, that you feel like something is still missing within, you know what I'm talking about?
	That's the love of your father.
	You're yearning for the father.
	Men and women yearn for their father when their mothers turn them away from their father toward her.
	It still leaves a void and leaves an emptiness and nothing can fulfill it but the love of a father.
	You have to forgive your father.
	I will certainly think over what you've said, and I really, really appreciate the time today.
	We must do this again more often.
	It's been amazing.
	It is very illuminating for me.
	You know what? I didn't get to anything that I wanted to talk to you about.
	Well, I wasn't filibustering, I hope.
	I'm trying to answer these tough questions as concisely as I can.
	But I appreciate the questions.
	Very, very good. It was an amazing conversation.
	I have amazing respect for you.
	Well, thank you. You too, man.
	I gotta quickly put you on the hot seat, and I need you to answer these questions as quickly as possible.
	And then we'll be done.
	Is it beta or alpha for men to wear baby carriers?
	It is beta. Is Lady Gaga...
	What, you're not strong enough to hold your baby up with your biceps?
	Come on. It's not like a weight.
	It's not like a boat anchor. It's a baby.
	Is Lady Gaga right that people are born gay?
	I think that there is some susceptibility to that particular lifestyle, but just about every gay person I've ever talked to about their childhood had something enormously traumatic and sexual occur to them at a very early age, so I think it's a combo.
	Are you a fan of Elon Musk?
	I don't really respect guys who smoke pot into their middle age.
	Should white people make more babies?
	Should white people make more babies?
	Yes. I think just about everybody should try and make more babies.
	But as far as the population decline goes, yeah.
	I mean, whites are not even at reproductive rates.
	And, you know, fertile white women are like in the single digits of the world population.
	I mean, we're like polar bears, man.
	You know, a little bit of banging and babies would not be the end of the world.
	Is there any celebrity that you admire?
	Wait, do you consider yourself a celebrity?
	Oh, look at me sucking up to the host!
	I do admire what you do and I do admire enormously, Jesse, the moral courage that you bring to what it is that you do.
	Oh, celebrities that I admire?
	I admire them for their talents.
	I rarely admire them for their virtues.
	Do you trust vaccines?
	Do I trust vaccines?
	Yes. I would like to trust vaccines more.
	I think they're a little too concentrated and I don't like the fact that it's so hard or impossible to sue vaccine companies.
	If they're confident in what they're doing, they should open themselves to the legal framework for restitution.
	You somewhat have already answered this next question, but do human beings have a free will?
	Yes. Should women be in politics?
	I think that women should be free to pursue whatever they want, but they should roundly reject subsidies and pity and beta support and e-thought money and all that kind of garbage.
	Just compete on the open field with men just like men have to with each other.
	Is Joe Biden mentally fit to run for president?
	No. I mean, based on his politics more than his stammering, but yeah, I think so.
	Who is more evil, Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton?
	Well, Nancy Pelosi, because Hillary Clinton doesn't have power.
	Did you have fun?
	I had a great time, man.
	It's always a great pleasure to chat with you, brother.
	I have with me Stefan Molyneux.
	I interviewed Stefan for my Fallestate.tv show, and it will air tomorrow, a live premiere tomorrow at 12 noon, the Fallestate.tv.
	And on there we talked about his relationship with his father.
	And I had suggested that Stefan should go and forgive his father.
	But apparently his father died last week or maybe the week before.
	I'll find out here in a minute. But Stefan is a philosopher and host of Free Domain.
	Free Domain.
	And we'll tell you how to get all that.
	But I wanted to talk to him because I have so much respect for this guy.
	He's like... When I first heard of him, I was like, wow!
	And then I found out he lived in Canada.
	And I've been on his show several times.
	I always wanted to interview him.
	So I got the chance to do it for the Fall Estate.
	He's back now, and I wanted to talk to him about his father's situation, how he's feeling about all that.
	Stefan, welcome to the show.
	Thanks, Jesse. It's great to be here.
	I really appreciate you coming on.
	Before we get to this, your father's situation, and you and your father's situation, can I play a soundbite and I can get his opinion about?
	Yeah. Okay. We're having the Chinese virus situation here in America, as you know, and the government don't want to let go.
	They don't want the people to go back to work.
	They want to control the people.
	And so I had this video that I can play for my audience here in a minute.
	I thought, let me ask Stefan what he think about this.
	But I'm being told right now you can hear it, but you won't be able to see it.
	So I won't play it, but I'll just tell you about it.
	This is from MIT Technology.
	MIT is working on a software that can detect if you are following social distancing.
	So what they're doing is working on this software.
	They'll put it out there on the streets.
	And if you don't have on a, if you're not separated the way they think you should be, a red light will come on and they can get you for that.
	It's a surveillance footage software.
	What do you think about the idea that the government is creating and doing this type of thing?
	Oh, it's beyond horrible, Jesse.
	I mean, this is exactly what the great fear of the government comes from, is that they will exploit a disaster in order to further control the people.
	Look, if it's really, really bad to get close to each other, if it's really, really bad to get out of your house or to go to a playground, then why on earth are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of guest workers and migrants and seasonal laborers coming, pouring into America Over the next little while.
	Yeah. There's this woman by the name of Alexander Cortez.
	She's a Democrat and she's in Congress.
	She said on an interview that people should say no about opening up society.
	People should say no about going back to work.
	She doesn't want them to go back.
	Well, of course. I mean, because there are many of the elites who hate economic freedoms, who hate our free markets, who hate our opportunity to work, who hate capitalism, who hate economic opportunity.
	And in particular, they hate the kind of freedoms that can lift people out of poverty.
	Because I was just listening to you tell your last caller, you know, you're a grown man, you shouldn't be living with your mama and agree with you more.
	But, you know, we're grown men, we shouldn't be depending on the state for our daily bread.
	That is a sin morally and economically.
	When I was growing up, this would not have happened because the people were more aware of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence.
	It was talked about, it was known about, and the citizens made sure the government protected that.
	Now the young people, millennials and Zs, they don't know about the Constitution.
	They're not aware of how freedom works, at least in this country.
	Is there any way to stop the government without knowing and understanding the Constitution?
	Yeah, and I would also argue that knowing and understanding the Constitution is knowing and understanding a higher morality than our daily needs.
	This is the whole point of us being not apes, not animals, is we're supposed to be able to focus on something that is higher than our own immediate needs rather than being some greedy jab-of-the-hut wannabe who stuffs food into his mouth and stuffs our body organs into other people and sleeps when they're tired.
	We're supposed to have a higher calling, and the only way a moral society Can function is if the people who disobey those morals are very few in number.
	Yeah. And not part of the police force and not part of the court system, not part of the political elites.
	This is how America was founded.
	It said it was founded as a Christian nation and only Christian morality can sustain it.
	Yeah. And as people have fallen away from Christianity, and it's not like they've ended up in my corner by the billions as moral philosophers.
	So if you have people who are just looking to maximize their pleasure in the moment, whether that pleasure is controlling others through sadistic desires or whether that pleasure is for sexual access, regardless of consequences, or for food, regardless of health consequences, then If we can't defer our gratifications, we don't deserve and we will not keep the civilization we ever inherited from people who knew how to put pleasure in its proper place.
	That's amazing. I totally agree.
	I was talking this morning about, I work with a lot of men around the country and around the world now.
	And I know a lot of young men, when I say young, they're 18 and over.
	And they're living at home with their mothers.
	They have no jobs.
	They are high on drugs and pot and other types of drugs.
	And they don't seem to mind.
	They're not. It's something missing within that would cause them to fight for their lives.
	You know, I gotta get over this drug.
	I gotta get me a job.
	I gotta be out on my own.
	They seem to have settled.
	I remember once when I moved from Alabama to Los Angeles in my early 20s, I met friends and I ended up smoking pot.
	But I still had that drive.
	I knew I wasn't going to stay on pot.
	I had to fight to get off, and I did.
	But I also knew to take care of myself, to work, to have my own place, to pay my bills.
	A lot of young men today seem to be comfortable with living at home and on drugs and no job.
	What happened to that?
	And how can they overcome that?
	Well, I'll tell you, Jesse, I think it comes back to the family.
	It comes back to our primary relationships.
	So I have been a foe for many decades of government control of health care, government control of medicine.
	I think it's extremely dangerous.
	I think you get some short-term benefits like any drug.
	But in the long term, having people who are addicted to power in charge of your access to health care is a very bad idea.
	And I remember talking about this with my mother.
	I was raised by a single mother, of course, as you know.
	And my mother got so insanely angry, it was beyond belief, right?
	Now, this is partly because she's a hypochondriac and loves going to doctors to get them to poke and prod and have conversations and gain pity and all of that.
	And so the problem is, The system that we have right now is unsustainable, and it's largely unsustainable because of debt, and it's largely unsustainable because of debt because of the welfare state.
	And the welfare state is almost totally the single mother state.
	So if you're talking about finding a way to have our system survive, you have to talk about ending the welfare state.
	And we can talk about that in abstract moral and economic terms, but the problem is if you have a single mom who's dependent on the welfare state and you start talking about ending the welfare state, I guarantee you that single mom, your own mother, the woman who gave birth to you and raised you, is going to take that very personally and get very angry.
	And so the path to saving our society runs directly against the interests of many of our mothers, and that is a very, very tough thing to overcome.
	That's amazing because that's what happened to the black people in America is that the civil rights movement started and they became the head of the people and the civil rights movement made a deal with the government, especially the democratic government.
	Okay. And they told the black people, we're your leaders.
	You have to listen to us.
	And they went to the government and made a deal.
	Okay, government, you need to give the black people welfare.
	You need to take care of them for this phony idea of racism, right?
	And then the blacks said yes to that.
	I'm glad my family didn't say yes to that, but a lot of black people said yes to that.
	And I remember when the social worker would come around, they said, you can't have a man in the home.
	You can't be married. You can't have a husband.
	And those women who were married, they would make their husband hide for the day or leave home.
	So the social worker would not know it.
	And then the social worker would give them a check, you know, sign them up for a check.
	And it's just been downhill ever since.
	And so today, if you try to take government away from the blacks, they'll cut your head off before they let you take the government away.
	Well, it's a terrible shame.
	And I think it was not done, of course, with any interest in the black community or for the black community in the long run.
	And of course, as you know, and as you've pointed out repeatedly, the same things happening to other communities, the white communities and so on.
	It's just a better generation behind, but it's just as brutal.
	But I think they did it because they wanted to wreck the system that was.
	They associated the evils of Jim Crow and segregation and slavery with capitalism, with the free market.
	But slavery had nothing to do with the free market.
	That's right. And all of these, slavery is a government program.
	It requires the government to enforce it.
	Like in Brazil, they ended slavery by just stopping enforcing slave contracts.
	And boom, the slaves were free.
	You didn't even take a civil war that killed 600,000 men.
	Slavery is a government program.
	What was Jim Crow? Jim Crow was a government program.
	What was segregation? Segregation was a government program.
	If you look at one of the origins of the civil rights movements, Rosa Parks on the bus, well, A, she was a communist subversive who was trained in that sort of stuff, but also the bus companies didn't want to segregate against blacks because blacks were one of their biggest customers.
	They didn't want to offend and upset their customers.
	They were forced to by the state.
	So what happens is the government has all these terrible programs That harms minorities, that harms blacks, that harms Hispanics.
	And then people come along and say, well, the problem, you see, is not the government that forces the bus company to have you sit in the back.
	The problem is the bus company.
	And the solution is to surrender even more power and even more control by the government.
	My gosh, Jesse, that's how they get you.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And the last question about that, because I brought you on to talk about your father.
	Why can't white people look at the physical example of the blacks and say, you know what, I'm not going down that road.
	I'm not going to destroy my family.
	I'm not going to allow my kids to be relying on the government and all that.
	Because they see the destruction in the black community, at least here in this country, why can't the white people look at that and say, no, I'm not going down that road?
	Because they are going down the same road that the blacks have gone down and are going down.
	It's a big question. It's kind of funny that you brought me on to talk about my dad and talk about my mom.
	But anyway, that's natural, I suppose.
	So look, I mean, I think a lot of the brutality and tragedy within the black community has largely been hidden from society as a whole.
	Because like the smoking company doesn't want to show you someone who got sick from smoking, right?
	And the government doesn't want to show you the advanced destruction that has occurred in other communities.
	For fear that you're going to turn back and also rescue your brothers and sisters who are, you know, further down that road.
	So, I mean, a lot of, of course, a lot of white people don't live in black neighborhoods.
	They maybe get their view of blacks from television, which is pretty sanitized, and they don't actually see.
	Like every now and then when the topic arises, I'll post the fact that a study shows that about half of black girls are raped by black men before they turn 18.
	Now, that is horrendous.
	I mean, my first goal is always to protect children in society.
	They're the most vulnerable.
	They have the least voice.
	They have the fewest rights and they need the most protection from people who see.
	And people are absolutely shocked at that.
	And I show them the study and it's like, yeah, it's not 100%.
	It's not 100% of everyone who answered.
	But, you know, it's a pretty big indication of what's going on.
	And a lot of that has to do with the single mother state.
	Like, if you want to prey on children, first thing you need to do is separate the male lion from the herd, right?
	First thing you got to do is get that husband, get that father of those children out of the house.
	Yeah. And then you can date the single mom and you can prey on the kids.
	And this is why child abuse from non-related males in the household, like males who are not biologically related, that child abuse is over 30 times higher than what it is if there's a biological father.
	And I knew this. I knew this kind of stuff growing up, right?
	I didn't know the data, but I had friends from, you know, single mother households who were talking about the dangerous men in the house.
	And my mom had dangerous men in the house.
	You're going to bed and waking up every day in a lion cage.
	I mean, it's a dangerous, dangerous situation.
	And so I think there's a lot of sanitizing and people don't see all of the horrors that are going on because if they did, not only would whites turn back, but we'd work a lot harder to try and rescue everyone else.
	Yes, absolutely.
	So I want to get to your father's situation.
	I heard you say that your father aspired, may his soul rest in peace, and I definitely wish you guys well in dealing with that.
	How is it going for, and I've seen your talks on your radio show there, but how are things going for you personally now that your father has aspired, and did you get a chance to talk to him after we talk?
	I did not talk to him after we talked.
	I had a number of conversations with him in the past, trying to talk about what happened in my childhood, trying to talk about what was important to me.
	I did get rebuffed and rejected every time.
	He just refused to talk about it, and this was some years ago.
	So I did not talk to him again before he died.
	But I did, as I mentioned on my show, I did write a poem I wrote a poem many years ago about, oh gosh, I was in my early 20s, so a long, long time ago.
	30 years or so.
	And it was about the death of a father.
	And I wrote it for a friend of mine whose father died, and she read it as a funeral.
	It's called Farewell, Father, and it's about dealing with the death.
	Of your father and the poem basically sat in my drawer for 30 years and then I just published it on my show a couple of days before he died.
	It was just the strangest coincidence.
	So, as far as my emotions go, I'm...
	I'm split. I'm two people, which I guess is good because it's down from more people than I often am.
	So I'm down to two people and one person is the part of me that says, you know, this was your father.
	This was the guy who, although he didn't stick around and made, I think, terrible decisions, he did give you life and there were some interactions that mattered.
	That's part of me that says, this is a significant life event.
	And then there's another part of me that says, okay, that's all well and good from a sentimentality standpoint, but What practical difference does it make in my life, given that I hadn't seen or spoken with my father in many, many years, that he's dead?
	I mean, I get it from an abstract standpoint, but I don't know if it's a cynical part of me or a part of me that's just too practical, or maybe it's the right amount of practicality.
	I don't know. But part of me has moved deeply, and part of me is like, eh, you know, I mean, when I look at it from a day-to-day standpoint, what has really changed?
	So your father left home when you were six years old.
	No, no, six months.
	When you were six months? Oh, they have six years.
	That's amazing, man.
	And did you ever ask him why did you leave?
	I did. I did.
	And what did he say? I did. His answer was twofold.
	One was that my mother has not got the sweetest disposition in the known universe, to put it as nicely as I can.
	And of course, you know, the family court system is very anti-male and women can really use it as a vengeful bouncer to drag a man away.
	Along through the bramble hedge of statist power for many years, if she so chooses.
	And there was some concern about that.
	But also because he studied to be a geologist, and my mother was, and we moved between Ireland and England, there's not a lot of gold mines there.
	And he had to return to Africa, which is where he lived and where he studied and where he spent his career.
	When he told you why he loved That helps you to understand at all is that your father left your mother.
	He did not leave you.
	He loves you. It's just that as most men can't handle the women in their lives, they end up leaving the woman, but not their children.
	And the woman makes it difficult for the father to have a natural relationship with Did you understand at all that he didn't leave you, he left your mother because he didn't know how to deal with that, and he loved you?
	He actually did give me a beautiful gift of explaining his life.
	And when you hear someone explain his life, it does lift an enormous burden from you.
	And I would not be the man today if my father had not given me that great gift about 30 years ago of explaining his life.
	Because when you hear someone say, well, here's why I did what I did, it does take...
	A big burden off you.
	And it does help you not look at things like everything just revolves around you, but other people have their own lives, their own histories.
	I mean, look, I was never really of the opinion that I had done something to offend him when I was six months old.
	I was pretty sure I didn't like pee in his eye or something.
	And he's like, that's it. This kid is rude.
	I'm out of here, right? Like that was not part of my thinking.
	But realizing, of course, you know, it's kind of tough to look at your parents And remember that they were a kid like you.
	They have their history. They have their baggage.
	I do this with my own daughter.
	I'll talk from time to time about my own childhood to remind her.
	When I was your age, we moved to Canada and so on.
	Just to remind her that I'm not just this big giant half-god in the sky who was born this way, but I went through all the same things that she's going through because I don't want her to...
	To worship me. Because when you worship someone, when you find a flaw, you tend to turn to neutrality or negative feelings.
	But if you love someone, you accept them with their flaws and history and everything.
	So I did come to a lot of reconciliation with regards to that stuff.
	And that was my father's doing.
	I want to ask you about the letter, but let me ask, so did you forgive him once he explained to you, I left your mother, I did not leave you, I love you.
	Did that cause you to forgive him?
	I will say this, because I want to make sure we're using the same word.
	But I will say this, I can absolutely, completely and totally see that in his position, I may very well have done the same thing.
	In other words, having spent most of his youth getting an education, he went all the way to a PhD and all of that, and not being able to practice his...
	His work, where I was, and, you know, my mother not going to move to where he was.
	He had to make money.
	He had to have a life.
	And just sitting in a tiny apartment trying to find a low-rent job while being harassed by the courts, I can absolutely, completely and totally see...
	If that makes sense, and therefore I don't harbor resentment in that way.
	I totally understand that.
	It's a system.
	Yeah.
	And so did you forgive your mother for turning you away from him and the things that she did?
	Did you go to her and forgive her for what she did?
	Wow.
	Actually, I was just here to talk about my dad because that's a lot easier.
	No, I'm just kidding. So, yeah, my mother is a tougher one.
	My mother is definitely a tougher one.
	My father's absence is something that you kind of have to work through emotionally, but there's not sort of physical scars that remain.
	My mother's violence is sort of a different matter.
	Like, that's not an abstract thing.
	Like, I'm wanting something that's not there.
	I'm sad. I'm not sad or a kind of thing.
	But I don't know what kind of devils, in fact, possessed my mother to commit the kind of violence against me that she did.
	That's a tougher canyon to cross.
	Do you realize that your mother had her issues?
	She could not help herself.
	She resented her mother. And it's just been passed on from generation to generation.
	And unless you forgive, you become like what you hate, even though you try to get away from it, you try to be nicer or whatever, but you still end up doing the same thing.
	So why not Just as you understood your father's situation because he shared it and told you, why not realize that your mother, yes, she's crazy, yes, she's wrong, but she simply cannot help herself.
	Go to her and forgive her.
	Hey, I'm sorry for resenting you for what you've done to me.
	I realize now you couldn't help yourself.
	Your whole world would open up even more so if you did that.
	Why not do it? And it would be the hardest thing you ever have to do in life.
	Well, I certainly agree with you there, brother.
	Why not do that?
	Here's the challenge, right?
	And I was just thinking about this two days ago.
	So here's the challenge for me.
	Free will. Free will is like...
	It's my navigation system.
	It's the foundation of everything I do.
	What do I do? I debate with the world and try to get the world to change its mind, as you do, to try and get people to become enlightened, to try and get people to put their higher interests first, to let go of immediate happiness for the sake of long-term happiness, which I guess is kind of what you're trying to do with me here today, which I appreciate.
	But no, here's...
	The problem is that if I say to my mother in my heart, you never had a choice, then I'm taking an entire category of people called abusers or wrongdoers or, you know, whatever, and I'm saying they don't have free will.
	They don't have a choice.
	But my mother did have a choice.
	So you say, well, she couldn't help what she did, but she did.
	She never committed violence against me.
	In the presence of anybody who had authority, right?
	She didn't hit me in front of a policeman or a teacher or anything.
	So anytime that she could have experienced negative consequences, For her violence or her abuse, she was magically able to restrain her behavior and put on a happy face and be nicer.
	It's just that behind closed doors, that was a different matter.
	So I can't say she couldn't help herself because you know what I think is someone like epilepsy or someone who has Tourette's and just blurts out inappropriate words, like they genuinely can't help themselves.
	And I call it like the million dollar question.
	If you were a cruel person, you said to someone with epilepsy, I'll give you a million dollars if you don't have an epileptic attack.
	Well, they can't. It's like someone giving us a million dollars to have fine heads of hair.
	Well, actually, I don't know if you shave or not.
	But for me, a million dollars ain't going to grow me a fine head of hair.
	Maybe I'll put some AstroTurf up there, but that's about the best I can do.
	And so the million dollar question is, could you change the behavior for a million dollars, right?
	So you say to someone who's got cancer, I'll give you a million dollars to not have cancer.
	Well, they still have cancer. You say to someone who's short, I'll give you a million dollars to be tall.
	They're still short. You say to somebody who's got epilepsy, I'll give you a million dollars to not have an epileptic attack.
	They will still have an epileptic attack.
	But if you say to someone who's an abuser, I'll give you a million dollars to not abuse your kids this week, they will be able to achieve it.
	And that's where the free will part comes in.
	So saying my mother couldn't choose better, That's tough.
	I mean, I'm not saying maybe it's all just a big elaborate emotional defense, but if I say to her, you don't have free will, well, I'm her child.
	How do I get free will?
	Amazing question. I want to tell you that there's no such thing as a free will.
	And the reason that your mother didn't treat you that way in the public, because the pressure of society caused her to contain that, because had she done that in public, She could have been arrested or whatever, right?
	But behind closed doors, she was influenced to treat you that way.
	And so she's controlled within by evil, which is hatred, which is anger.
	And then she's controlled outside by the pressure of I would be free.
	I would never do anything wrong.
	I would never have a wrong thought.
	I would always... Treat myself well.
	Treat others well. And so if your mother had had any love at all, she would not have treated you that way.
	She simply did not have it.
	And she was controlled by the spirit of anger that was passed down to her.
	She resents her mother and all that.
	And she couldn't help herself.
	We don't have a free will.
	We're either influenced by evil And if you have overcome that, you're influenced by good, which is of God.
	We are not in control, but the enemy of good, the dark force of delight, want you to think you have a free will, and you don't.
	And a lot of people judge themselves because they're in situations and they're trying to will themselves out, but they can't get out, so they judge themselves.
	And when you judge yourself, you get worse rather than get better.
	So your mother, if she could have done better, if she had love, you would have received love from her.
	It's just not in her.
	Well, I think that's the core for me.
	It's the core of the issue.
	And it probably is for your listeners and others.
	And it's this. It is profoundly humiliating as a child to realize that your mother could treat you better, but she just doesn't have the incentive.
	In other words, if there's a knock at the door and it's someone in authority, maybe it's the police or maybe it's the superintendent of the building or something, so she's doing something terrible to you and then there's a knock on the door, and what does she do?
	She brushes her hair back, she stands up straight, she puts on a little bit of lipstick, she goes and answers the door.
	Hi! Yeah.
	You know, like, and you realize she can flip like that, right?
	Yes. She can flip like that.
	I mean, I remember she had this kind of weird Jim Morrison screeching thing that would go on, and then the phone would ring.
	She'd think it might be one of her boyfriends.
	Really, hi! You know, just immediately just flip, right?
	Right. Yeah, yeah.
	So that's the thing, right?
	So like some random boyfriend, some superintendent, someone knocking on the door, the phone ringing, all of that can turn her into a better person.
	But I can't.
	My existence doesn't do it.
	It's not enough for her to turn into a better person.
	In fact, my existence seems to turn her into a worse person.
	It's hard to feel like a good person when you feel like you bring out the worst in your mother, if that makes sense.
	Right. I understand that.
	That's why we need good fathers in the home with the mother and the children, so that the father can stand between the mother and the children and say, you know what?
	Your mother is angry.
	She's out of control. Don't resent her.
	Speak up, but don't resent her.
	Let me know, and I'll deal with it.
	The father's supposed to protect the children from the mother, but because most fathers haven't overcome their mothers, they end up marrying to the person they hate, and so they don't know how to deal with it.
	But I want to ask you quickly, and then I want to hear more about this letter.
	What do you think would happen if you went, if you realize, you know what, yes, she's evil.
	Yes, what she did was wrong.
	Even though she put on this phony act when the police showed up, it's still not real.
	She's just being controlled or contained by the law.
	But the real her is still there.
	What do you think would happen if you realize she really couldn't help it, and you went and forgave her?
	Hey, I forgive you for screwing up my life.
	It was evil. You were wrong.
	But I'm sorry for hating you for it.
	What do you think will happen?
	Well, unfortunately, my mother is not of a mental state where that kind of conversation could happen.
	And I know that because I've tried to have not that exact conversation, but conversations around reconciliation.
	I had those conversations.
	Probably 20, 25 years ago.
	Because I was in talk therapy for a number of years and worked over this kind of stuff.
	And I did try and have those conversations saying, you know, this is what happened.
	Let's talk about it reasonably and so on.
	And yeah, it's tough, man.
	You know, when you confront someone who's done you real wrong, There's certainly, there's a little bit of startling that happens.
	And the sad thing is, I think what often happens, what happened with me, is you get to sit across a table with someone and you get to see them performing this calculation in their mind.
	What can I get away with? How can I turn this to my advantage?
	How can I fog the person?
	How can I misdirect the question?
	How much can I claim to not remember without looking ridiculous and all that?
	It's really, really tough.
	It's like fighting this big foggy squid that can get inside your ears.
	And so I did have a number of those conversations and did my very best and made my requests for her to stop talking about certain subjects that were disturbing to me and so on.
	And it just escalated and it went right back to that kind of escalation.
	And so for me, it's like, okay, you know, I had the reasonable conversations.
	I tried my best and I tried saying, look, let's say that everything that's happened to you medically is entirely true and I'll accept all of that and I'll be with you.
	But, you know, there's things you can do to manage the symptoms.
	There's things you can do to manage the stress of your illnesses and so on.
	And again, just kaboom, right?
	Any kind of And I felt that it was actually bad for any chance for us, for both of us, to be in that kind of situation.
	That's the conversations that I did have.
	I don't, I mean, I don't sort of sit there and seethe with resentment towards my mother every day.
	I actually don't think of her, you know, I'm a father myself, I've got a busy life, and I don't think about her.
	And with regards to her, it is really, you know, it's a great line from...
	In Hamlet, someone asked Hamlet about the ghost of his father, he says it was more a countenance of sorrow than of anger.
	And it is really, you know, my parents are two remarkable people, highly intelligent, great talents, and I think to me they're just...
	It's really an example of how tragic it can be to make those mistakes, or to put it, I guess, in a more detailed manner, to make those mistakes and then do so little to unmake them.
	You know, we all make mistakes. Of course we do, right?
	We all make mistakes. It's a live show, right?
	So you have it every day, I have it every day.
	I couldn't even say a word earlier in this show.
	Sentimentality. So...
	We all make mistakes, but to me, the great tragedy is holding onto those mistakes and not trying to make amends.
	So I did go as far as I could Well, I shouldn't say, because I've got free will, right?
	So for me, I could go further.
	So I didn't go as far as the conversation that you say, but I did get to a place where I was trying to have reasonable conversations, where I was present in the conversation.
	I was talking about what I thought, what I wanted, what I needed, and what I got back was either minimization, indifference, or very explosive escalation.
	Yeah. One last thing about that.
	The beauty of this, excuse me, the beauty is we are a spirit created in the image of God, and we live in a body.
	The real person is a spirit created in the image of God.
	But then when we are born into families that are screwed up like this, we start to resent because we were born free.
	We were born with love, not judgmental, but love.
	But then when we're born into crazy families like this, they cause us to become angry.
	And anger is the same as hatred.
	It's the same as resentment.
	And when you're angry, you play God.
	You start to judge.
	You don't like them.
	You judge them. And the moment you do that, you fall away from your true identity and you wake up to the darkness that they're into because you become like them.
	So you lose the light and you're now in darkness.
	Your spirit is now in darkness.
	When you forgive, that's why God said, if you have any problem with anyone, go and forgive them and I will forgive you.
	Meaning that your mother doesn't have to apologize for anything.
	She doesn't have to admit to anything.
	You don't need to have a long conversation with her.
	You just need to forgive her so God can forgive you.
	And the real you will return to your natural state of being, which is of peace and which is of logic, which is of perfect love.
	But it doesn't mean you've got to hang out with her.
	She doesn't need to admit to anything.
	And so that will cause you to go free.
	All that anger and doubts and all that will disappear because when you forgive her, I'm sorry for resenting you, mother.
	I realize you're crazy.
	I know you're angry. I'm sorry for resenting you.
	You could walk away and never have to look back again.
	You did tell me. What do you think about that?
	Seems kind of beta. It does.
	I understand. It does.
	Listen, I mean, maybe it's just a man pride, but the idea that I would go and, in a sense, apologize to somebody who...
	But you apologized before resented a person who could not help themselves.
	Well, but that's predicated on abandoning free will, man.
	I'm not doing that. I'm not going to abandon.
	Because if she doesn't have a choice, then why are you trying to change my mind, right?
	If my mother doesn't have a choice, then I don't have a choice.
	And if I don't have a choice, why are you trying to convince me to do something different?
	So you'll be free from her.
	And then you will pass down love to your wife and your kids.
	Okay, but you are trying to change my mind about something, right?
	Not really. I'm just trying to...
	I'm trying to inspire and get you to think about something.
	But you're trying to inspire me to change a course of action, right?
	Only if you can see that it's true, yes.
	No, no, I get... I get that you're trying to do me good, and I appreciate that.
	That's why I enjoy our conversation so much.
	I really get that you're trying to do me a good...
	You're trying to do me a solid, as they used to say when I was a kid, right?
	Back in the 60s, right?
	Well, I was only four, I guess.
	So I get that you're trying to do something positive for me, and I love you for it, and I appreciate that.
	I really, really do. But nonetheless, you are still trying to get me to change my mind, to consider a course of action...
	That is beneficial to me and will be beneficial to my mother and will be beneficial to my family.
	It might not benefit your mother, but it will benefit you and your family.
	Right. So you are trying to get me to change my mind about something.
	Right. And I appreciate that.
	But then, the more that I can change my mind, the more my mother could have changed her mind.
	And that kind of puts me back to square one.
	These two dials, right?
	There's me and my mom. If I up my free will and my choice, I up her free will and her choice, and so she's more responsible.
	Well, she's definitely responsible for herself.
	Do you... Oh, sorry, I just lost your audio.
	Do you think that...
	Are you able to hear me now? I can't hear you.
	Oh, what happened? Hold on.
	Sorry, hold on a sec. It says here, your internet connection is unstable.
	All right, one minute. Look at that.
	Oh, we're back, we're back.
	Oh, good.
	We're good.
	Do you think you have a right to hate her?
	But I don't hate her.
	Do you think you have a right to be angry at her?
	Yeah.
	I'm not angry at her in the present.
	And in the past, I was certainly angry.
	You know, as a teenager, right?
	All the guys, in particular with single moms, go through this kind of flip, right?
	So you're under the thumb of your mom because you're small and she's big.
	And then you get bigger and she goes from doing this to doing this.
	And it kind of changes quite a bit, right?
	So I did go through a lot of anger and frustration at the sort of control and the bullying and all of that when I was a teenager.
	And, you know, I've been on my own since I was 15 years old.
	So I had to escape that situation.
	I mean, it really was driving me to a very dangerous and...
	Terrible place. Absolutely.
	And so, yeah, there was a lot of anger back then.
	And I did try for a long time to have a more reasonable, like many, many, many years to have a more reasonable relationship.
	But I could not go in and self-erase.
	Like I could not just erase myself and be there for some abstract thing like forgiveness.
	The only way that I could be there...
	Was to actually be there, to tell her honestly what was on my mind.
	And honestly, what was on my mind is, let's talk about what happened.
	Because if we can't talk about what happened, I can't pretend that it didn't happen because then I'm here but not here.
	And I don't want to be in relationships where I'm there but not there.
	You know, like if you have friends and all you can do is get together and be drunk, then you're there but you're not there because you...
	Killed your higher faculty.
	I wasn't going to be in a relationship with my mom where I couldn't tell her what I was thinking.
	And what I was thinking was about this stuff.
	And it wasn't about, oh, you're a terrible person and I'm a victim.
	Yeah, she was a terrible person.
	I was a victim. But as an adult, I have a different choice.
	But I wasn't going to be there in the room with her and lie about my experience of being in the room with her.
	I was not going to bear false witness.
	That was my favorite commandment.
	It always has been, thou shalt not bear False witness.
	So if I go in with something like I forgive you and so on, but is that an honest reflection of my thoughts at the time?
	It wasn't then, but as far as Being angry.
	I mean, the good thing about passing the half century is it's all pretty deep in the rear view by now.
	And I have a great life with my family and a great career with what I do.
	And there's not...
	Oh, that's interesting.
	So there's not much to resent with her anymore.
	But it does sometimes see, like, new enemies take the place of old enemies.
	And maybe that's what forgiveness is about.
	Yes. Absolutely.
	Because once you forgive her...
	You only have perfect love operating through you.
	And the enemies to come will not be able to harm you in any form or not.
	And they will try. They'll lie on you.
	They'll try to destroy your career.
	But it wouldn't.
	It wouldn't harm you.
	I got to ask you this, though, because we ran out of time and I always enjoy talking to you.
	Yeah. The letter that you wrote for your father, is it a long letter?
	How long is it? It was not too long now.
	Are you able to read it to us now?
	Do you have it? No, unfortunately, this was about 30 years ago.
	Oh, I see. Is it up on your site or anywhere that people can read it?
	No, it was sent, and unfortunately, it's long in the rear view.
	But no, I was just talking about the history and the things that he didn't seem to know about my mother and the violence and all of that, and it was saying, let's talk about it.
	Because that's an important thing.
	Unfortunately, it was one of the most...
	like I couldn't have an honest relationship with my father as long as I was hiding everything that happened.
	It's like, it's like being in some criminal gang.
	It's like you got to, or like being, it's like being in a crime gang and then being around honest people.
	You got to hide everything about who you are.
	And I just, I was tired of that, you know, like I really want to be authentic in the world.
	This is why I'm talking about personal stuff with you in public.
	It's on my mind.
	I think it's an important topic.
	You're a good friend who asks.
	I'm just tired of hiding everything and pretending that things happened that didn't happen or didn't happen that did happen.
	The children of the lie.
	These lies start.
	This is where they start. It's in falsifying your own history.
	So you love your father? I would say that I accept all the reasons for his decisions.
	I have massive sympathy for the way his life played out.
	And I suppose I still feel a little upset that I didn't even know he was unwell.
	He lives half a world away.
	I didn't know that he was unwell.
	I only found out after the fact.
	I guess I was a little upset that he didn't Let me know or give me now.
	Of course, you could say that God was letting me know through you.
	I had a conversation with you and that was the prompt to go, right?
	Yes. I would certainly say he gave me some great gifts.
	And the great gift that he gave me was just one six-hour bus ride that we were on where he unpacked his whole life.
	And that was a great gift.
	And I certainly respect him for that.
	I respect him for his intellectual accomplishments were great.
	His career was pretty good. And he did stay married to his second wife for many decades.
	So there's a lot that was positive in that.
	As far as love goes...
	Got to tell you, you know, I didn't really know the man.
	And I certainly don't know why he became, or why he made the choices he made.
	In other words, why did he become who he was?
	I mean, when he was an adult, he made choices.
	He explained those to me. But I don't know the source.
	And that honest conversation about early experience is what I try to bring to the world.
	Because I think if we know everyone's history, the world makes sense.
	Like, if we know what kind of If we know the origin story of people in an honest way, I think we have much less conflict in the world.
	We can accept and understand why people make these kinds of choices.
	Why is someone a drug addict?
	Well, most likely because they were abused as a child.
	You know, why is this woman promiscuous?
	Well, she grew up without a dad and never talked about it.
	Or, you know, why is this guy so violent?
	Well, because he was beaten as a child.
	I mean, there's so much that we can unpack from our early histories that half the world makes sense in a way that we don't just get to sit on this high throne and cast these thunderbolts of judgment at everyone.
	So I accept.
	I accept.
	I'm not sure that I can transition to love for a guy I didn't really know, but I certainly accept and I don't hold him accountable anymore.
	So as you know, I'm black and slow.
	Do you love your father?
	No.
	Thank you. But that doesn't mean I hate him.
	It doesn't mean that I resent him.
	It doesn't mean that I'm going to go and spit on his grave.
	How old was he when he inspired?
	This is how little I know the guy, right?
	Um, 77, 77.
	Early 80s.
	Oh, okay. And the last thing, you said your father helped you choose a great wife.
	How did he help you do that?
	Well, he did not choose a great wife, so I learned what not to do.
	I understand. My mom was a beautiful woman, right?
	And beautiful women are like, they're the sirens, right?
	They're, in a way, the devil for a lot of men, because they can make you do crazy things.
	So I think he succumbed to physical beauty alone.
	And of course, I had that temptation when I was younger.
	I was a fairly dashing young man myself.
	And I did pursue beauty off a cliff a whole number of times before you just go, well, this ride really isn't any fun at all.
	My wife is a lovely and wonderful woman, and I'm incredibly blessed to have her in my life.
	And I learned what not to choose, and he did give me that gift.
	And I also learned how to be very, very close.
	As a father, as well.
	Because the distance, I know how much it can be destructive.
	My father moved across the world.
	I barely leave my daughter's side.
	I think that's another gift that you can get out of that situation.
	Right. Did you tell me you are an atheist?
	Yes. You are an atheist, meaning that you don't believe there is a God.
	Yes. Oh, okay. I thought you did.
	You know what, man? You made my day.
	I had only planned to hold you over for 30 minutes.
	This hour is up already.
	Tomorrow, the fallestate.tv interview discussion that we had will be premiered.
	The live premiere is tomorrow at 12 noon Pacific time.
	I really, really appreciate you.
	I learned so much from you because you're so honest about you.
	And I really do appreciate that.
	Thank you for your time today.
	How can people hear your radio show and read all your writing?
	Oh, the letter's not up, though.
	But how can people...
	Yeah, so you can go to freedomain.com and you can follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
	Link is all on the website and all of that.
	And listen, I really, really appreciate this too.
	This is very much a two-way street.
	I do take what you say, although I fight you ferociously in the moment.
	I do go away with the Jesse Lee Peterson machinery churning away in my brain.
	So, you know, this idea that you're passing across to me, although I'm fighting you in the moment, it does...
	I do consider it afterwards, so please don't think that you're just beating against the wall here.
	It gets through, and I really do mull it over, and I really, really do appreciate the care that you bring to my happiness.
	I totally understand that, and thank you two for your friendship and everything, man.
	I wish you well, your family well, and your father's situation going through that.
	We'll talk again. I appreciate you, all right?
	All right. Thanks, man. All right, buddy.

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